Where is the Special Proscutor?

Just saying this smells vile. You can't honestly say that this doesn't sound like a major work of CYA by these political appointees.

Facebook

I recently joined Facebook, and now I'm wondering if my original resistance wasn't justified. I originally didn't participate due to privacy issues, but the title article link has some better reasons overall.

That said, there is new concerns with "features" that Facebook is adding or has added. Like this:

After testing on a select group of US accounts (privacy laws aren’t so strict here), Facebook is officially rolling out a new feature that recognizes people’s faces and offers to tag them automatically in photos uploaded to the social network.

So, besides the fact that Google abandoned similar technology due to privacy concerns, why is this bad?

Well, let’s say your friend Becky adds a few photos to her “Druunnkkk!!1!” album and you’re seen making an ass of yourself in several of them. All Becky has to do is click “yes” – which is great for her since she doesn’t have to tag each individual picture of you – and every shot you’re in will be marked accordingly.

Also, and I’m not trying to get all “Big Brother” here, but Facebook is host to over 90 billion images with 200 million being uploaded every day! That’s one hell of a database. How soon until someone can just snap a picture on the street and suddenly know everything about you?

Lovely thought there. I'm thinking the idea that privacy is a dead issue is probably being brought to fruition by the likes of these guys, and the useful idiots that throw money at them.

Gurkas

Damn.

'That incident happened in the middle of my tour and after that I thought nobody can kill us now - when we met the enemy I wasn't scared.

'I thought the Taliban did not have the capacity to fight with us.'

Cpl Pun, an acting sergeant during his Afghan deployment, was on sentry duty at the time of the attack when he heard a clinking noise outside the small base.

At first he thought it might be a donkey or a cow, but when he went to investigate he found two insurgents digging a trench to lay an improvised explosive device (IED) at the checkpoint's front gate.

He realised that he was completely surrounded and that the Taliban were about to launch a well-planned attempt to overrun the compound.

The enemy opened fire from all sides, destroying the sentry position where the soldier had been on duty minutes before.

Defending the base from the roof, the Gurkha remained under continuous attack from rocket-propelled grenades and AK47s for more than a quarter of an hour.

Most of the militants were about 50ft away from him, but at one point he turned around to see a 'huge' Taliban fighter looming over him.

The soldier picked up his machine gun and fired a long burst at the man until he fell off the roof.

When another insurgent tried to climb up to his position, the Gurkha attempted to shoot him with his SA80 rifle. But it did not work, either because it had jammed or because the magazine was empty.

He first grabbed a sandbag but it had not been tied up and the contents fell to the floor.

Then he seized the metal tripod of his machine gun and threw it at the approaching Taliban militant, shouting in Nepali 'Marchu talai' ('I will kill you') and knocking him down.

Two insurgents were still attacking by the time the heroic Gurkha had used up all his ammunition, but he set off a Claymore mine to repel them.

At this point his company commander, Major Shaun Chandler, arrived at the checkpoint, slapped him on the back and asked if he was OK.

In total he fired off 250 general purpose machine gun rounds, 180 SA80 rounds, six phosphorous grenades, six normal grenades, five underslung grenade launcher rounds and one Claymore mine.

The only weapon he did not use was the traditional Kukri knife carried by Gurkhas because he did not have his with him at the time.

These guys always amaze me.

The Race

Krauthammer's odds. I came up with something pretty similar lately in an email conversation. I didn't put numbers though. Best part:

Donald Trump: He’s not a candidate, he’s a spectacle. He’s also not a conservative. With a wink and a smile, Muhammad Ali showed that self-promoting obnoxiousness could be charming. Trump shows that it can be merely vulgar. A provocateur and a clown, the Republicans’ Al Sharpton. The Lions have a better chance of winning the Super Bowl.

Trump is a liability to the small government movements. I understand that he's liked for his willingness to confront Obama, but that isn't what we need for president. We need someone whose less self serving. I just don't trust Trump (Kelo is a litmus test he failed appallingly) and I don't expect he'll be much more than a metrocon at best.

Trump is calling him names, but that just validates Krauthammer in my view.

I like Pawlenty for what I have found, but Ryan would be my perfect candidate at this point.

Ron Paul? Not a chance. We don't need more of the Ross Perot nutcases running.

Palin is damaged goods and will never get fair press from the lame stream media.

Gingrich is smart, but I don't think he can play the political game at that level. We need leadership, not fights. Bolton falls in this category as well.

Romney is too liberal for my tastes and the fact that he approved RomneyCare in Massachusetts, not mention just having been governor of Massachusetts, is a finisher.

Cain? Yeah, I like what I've heard him say in just about every venue. From the Islamist issues to smaller government. I'd like to hear more though just so I know where he really is. I know he'd have the race card played against him, but that would just be the norm from the left.

Anyhow, read Krauthammer. He's looking at the smaller field, but he looks to be spot on.

Egypt Heading the Way of Iran?

I certainly hope Egypt doesn't turn into Obama's Iran, but as Barry Rubin discusses, he isn't doing much differently from what the Carter Administration did.

But Obama’s rhetoric – the exact opposite of what it was during the upheavals in Iran which he should have supported – seems dangerously reminiscent of President Jimmy Carter in 1978 regarding Iran.

He has made it sound – by wording and nuance, if not by intention – that Washington no longer backs the Egyptian government.

I really hope that doesn't become the case. Egypt does have a similar Islamist overtones in the Muslim Brotherhood. Andrew McCarthy discusses them here.

From what I'm seeing, there may not be a good path out of the problems that the US has supported for too long.

Imam Caught Entering from Mexico

Interesting. Especially since it doesn't seem to be getting much press time.

From the Daily Mail:

U.S. border guards got a surprise when they searched a Mexican BMW and found a hardline Muslim cleric - banned from France and Canada - curled up in the boot.

Said Jaziri, who called for the death of a Danish cartoonist that drew pictures of the prophet Mohammed, was being smuggled into California when he was arrested, along with his driver Kenneth Robert Lawler.

Now why would you think he'd be coming into the country illegally? No doubt it is all an innocent error. Can't wait to see where this leads.

New Black Panther Party and the DOJ - Now the Facts

Jennifer Rubin goes into the details of the final report.

The statements indicate several points: 1) the New Black Panther Party case brought by career Justice Department employees was meritorious on the law and the facts; 2) there is voluminous evidence of the Obama administration's political interference in the prosecution of the New Black Panther Party case; 3) there is ample evidence that the Obama administration directed Justice Department employees not to bring cases against minority defendants who violated voting rights laws or to enforce a provision requiring that states and localities clean up their voting rolls to prevent fraud; 4) the Justice Department stonewalled efforts to investigate the case; and 5) vice chairman Abigail Thernstrom has, for reasons not entirely clear, ignored the evidence and tried to undermine the commission's work.

That's just wonderful. Hope the GOP gets on this quickly. Maybe they can pound the MSM into actually reporting accurately on this. Well we can hope.

A lot more details at the title link.

While you're at WaPo read Krauthammer's latest.

NH NEA - Educated Imbeciles

Fools in the Teachers union continue to miss the little fact that a criminal wouldn't be stopped from bringing a gun to the statehouse when legal carry was disallowed. Now they think it's a shooting gallery.

A New Hampshire teachers' union is defending its cancellation of a traditional Dr. Seuss reading at the State House, saying the recent removal of a ban on guns there raises safety concerns for participating fourth-graders.

The decision involves the Read Across America program that the National Education Association-NH has held with state senators for 12 years. It's a one-day event, unrelated to the several thousands of school children who visit the State House every year.

"We lock down schools if there is a gun within the neighborhood," NEA-NH President Rhonda Wesolowski said. "But to send them to a place where they specifically are allowed is a bit of a different story. We keep children, our most precious resource, safe in the school system. Why would we take them to a place where they say it's OK to have guns.

Wesolowski called it "ridiculous" that allowing guns in the State House is a potential learning opportunity.

"We understand what is out there in the real world," she said. "I'm sure the parents of Christina Taylor Green didn't think for a moment their child was in any danger when she went to see the congresswoman in Tucson."

Emphasis mine. Of course that's not true about the lock down. There is no such thing as a gun free school zone. I still find it fascinating that people like this choose a party line rather doing any investigation, or simple use of logic, to understand that laws don't stop criminals. They only stop law-abiding citizens.

Children live in a world where their parents and neighbors own guns. That doesn't make the non-school world a constant war zone. I love them dancing in the blood of the Tuscon shooting. Because god only knows that the NH statehouse is exactly the same as a safeway parking lot.

Not that they are playing political games:

"I am disappointed that the NEA is using New Hampshire fourth-graders as political pawns," he said. "I have participated in Read Across America for a number years when there was no gun ban in effect and they never raised the issue. This is clearly a political move."

Bragdon said there has been no change of rules regarding deadly weapons in the Senate Chamber. Unlike the House, which specified where and how weapons can be carried around Representatives Hall, the Senate does not address the issue in any way, he said.

The joint House-Senate Legislative Facilities Committee voted this month to repeal a year-long ban on weapons in buildings at the State House complex. The new policy leaves it to Senate and House sergeants-at-arms to enforce rules in their respective chamber. New House rules allow members and citizens to carry weapons anywhere in the State House. Except for law enforcement officers, weapons cannot be displayed in areas immediately adjacent to Representatives Hall. Senate rules are silent on the issue.

Interesting. Why are they protesting now if the ban was only in place a year and pretty much didn't change anything? Oh, because they are trying to enforce their distrust of responsible citizens who choose to protect themselves.

Personally, I say to hell with the reading program. If they want to hold it hostage to petty stupidities that have no relevance to an identical reality from only two years ago, so be it. But don't blame the legislature, the cause is their own.

Transparency - And a Tracking List

This is an interesting story from the AssPress. Interesting that it ever saw the light of day as far as I'm concerned. I'll give them the credit of putting it out there though. This should be noted as the action of the administration that was supposed to be the "most transparent evah!" From the looks of the report they are behaving as all the other administrations. Maybe worse, but that's hard to tell.

The Associated Press reported in July that for at least a year, Homeland Security had sidetracked hundreds of requests for federal records to top political advisers to the department's secretary, Janet Napolitano. The political appointees wanted information about those requesting the materials, and in some cases the release of documents considered politically sensitive was delayed, according to numerous e-mails that were obtained by the AP.

The Freedom of Information Act is supposed to ensure the quick public release of requested government documents without political consideration. Obama has said his administration would emphasize openness in providing requested federal records.

According to Issa's letter, Homeland Security's chief privacy officer and FOIA official told committee staff in September that political appointees were simply made aware of "significant and potentially controversial requests."

So what are the political advisers doing with all those names? And when the list is done, what is being done with it?

Guess I'm glad they are having congressional oversight on this. At least it will get some airing and the public will get to see more details of how Obama is running his administration. Not that I expect more from the MSM, but you can always hope.

Rep. Peter King - Stupid Legislation

I find this proposal bafflingly stupid. I'm still wondering who the security experts are that he spoke with. Do they honestly believe a 1000 ft. zone would stop anyone intent on murder? Or will this further exacerbate the harassment of lawfully acting citizens in public places? This is security theater at it's most pathetic.

I have to say I'm glad NRO did this article. It really leaves you wondering why they can't realize that making a law that will be difficult to enforce and difficult to interpret is worth the effort.

Here's a great start:

King, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, acknowledges that his legislation, if it had been on the books, might not have prevented the attack on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D., Ariz.) and others. “Maybe not in this case, but in others it could be prevention,” he argues

Prevention? I find that highly unlikely. I can't see someone just randomly deciding to off a congresscritter because they just happen to be walking by with a gun. If there are such people I'm betting they are very rare. My bet is on the perp generally planning out the whole thing and knowingly ignoring all the laws against murder before they even think about any law about carrying a gun within 1000 ft of a politician.

What about a situation where a gun is fully concealed and law-enforcement officials are unable to spot anything suspicious? “In that case, then this wouldn’t work, but there can be cases where it will. Would it work in five percent of cases? Ten percent? Twenty percent? Thirty percent? I don’t know, but I do believe it would certainly work in some instances. I don’t see the downside.”

He doesn't see the downside. Obviously because he isn't thinking. How much will cops be forced on trying to detect concealed weapons rather than actually watching for odd behavior. Or, how many cops will be looking for the concealed carrier? What about events with no LEO involvement? What about the person who didn't know that a political master was in the area and came out of a shop with a gun, would they be breaking the law? Do concealed carry permit holders have to run searches to find where the politicos are and map ways around them to ensure they don't break the law? The point is this legislation would make criminals out of most law abiding citizens for just living normally.

This bit is the saddest:

In Tucson, onlooker Joe Zamudio was armed when he witnessed the developing scene in the parking lot. Zamudio, within seconds, had his hand on his gun, ready to shoot, in case Loughner was not subdued. Does King think citizens have the right to be armed, and respond, during unexpected violent outbursts in public?

“It’s more helpful if you had security in the area,” King replies. “If something did start, and police were firing, I would not want a civilian firing at the same time. When we balance the equities, I’m saying there is a greater good to be obtained by keeping weapons out of that thousand-foot zone.”

Ok, what if there aren't any police in the area? Not to mention I can't recall an instance where a CCW holder got into the fight when the police were involved. And I'm betting when it has occurred it has been extremely rare.

Then there is the enforcement angle.

Enforcement, King admits, would be tricky, so “reasonable exceptions” will be detailed in the legislative language. “I don’t think the federal government has the right to keep someone from bringing a gun to a state or local event,” he says. “We will have to make exceptions, for example, for storeowners who have guns in their store for protection; it’s their right to have them there.”

Another exception may be making the so-called ‘bubble’ around public officials only applicable at public events — enabling neighbors of public officials who may own firearms to not be bothered. “It would be primarily about public events,” King says. “Again, laws should be interpreted reasonably and we will write it to allow reasonable exceptions.”

You have to love that part. How complicated will the law be when you add all exceptions? What if you miss something reasonable? This bill will quickly turn into the law that forgot that people lead varied lives and just because a politico couldn't think of all exceptions that are reasonable for everyone's life doesn't mean that the law abiding citizen should now be the criminal.

Just a very clueless politician.

Guns in the MSM

Very funny piece trying to let the MSM talk intelligently about guns even when they are obviously wrong on the topic.

As a gun owner and hunter, and as someone who’s spent a fair amount of time thinking and writing about the legal and empirical debates that surround guns, I’m here to help. Here are some quick and easy tips for anti-gun columnists — if you follow them, you’ll still be wrong, but at least you won’t sound so ridiculous.

Read it. it's worth a laugh.

Revelations from Tuscon

Have to say that the killings themselves taught us that there needs to be change with how we deal with the mentally ill. Not sure myself what the solution is.

The reactions to the event taught us that the left is willing to go to total war to continue their power.

There has been a great effort this week to come to grips with the American left's reaction to the Tucson shooting. Paul Krugman of the New York Times and its editorial page, George Packer of the New Yorker, E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post, Jonathan Alter of Newsweek and others, in varying degrees, have linked the murders to the intensity of opposition to the policies and presidency of Barack Obama. As Mr. Krugman asked in his Monday commentary: "Were you, at some level, expecting something like this atrocity to happen?"

The "you" would be his audience, and the answer is yes, they thought that in these times "something like this" could happen in the United States. Other media commentators, without a microbe of conservatism in their bloodstreams, have rejected this suggestion.

So what was the point? Why attempt the gymnastic logic of asserting that the act of a deranged personality was linked to the tea parties and the American right? Two reasons: Political calculation and personal belief.

And

The divide between this strain of the American left and its conservative opponents is about more than politics and policy. It goes back a long way, it is deep, and it will never be bridged. It is cultural, and it explains more than anything the "intensity" that exists now between these two competing camps. (The independent laments: "Can't we all just get along?" Answer: No.)

The Rosetta Stone that explains this tribal divide is Columbia historian Richard Hofstadter's classic 1964 essay, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics." Hofstadter's piece for Harper's may be unfamiliar to many now, but each writer at the opening of this column knows by rote what Hofstadter's essay taught generations of young, left-wing intellectuals about conservatism and the right.

After Hofstadter, the American right wasn't just wrong on policy. Its people were psychologically dangerous and undeserving of holding authority for any public purpose. By this mental geography, the John Birch Society and the tea party are cut from the same backwoods cloth.

"American politics has often been an arena for angry minds," Hofstadter wrote. "In recent years we have seen angry minds at work mainly among extreme right-wingers, who have now demonstrated in the Goldwater movement how much political leverage can be got out of the animosities and passions of a small minority."

I think the left has missed the point for all their denigration of the tea parties. Calling them names and insulting them doesn't get you more votes, it gets you less. I doubt they will learn anything from the elections of 2010 and no doubt will not learn anything from their reactions to the events in Tuscon.

Stuxnet Worm

Interesting bit of work this worm. Being called "military grade" in a lot of places. I just enjoy the fact that the title article actually seems to think it may have succeeded in damaging the Natanz uranium enrichment facility.

On July 17, 2009 WikiLeaks posted a cryptic notice:

Two weeks ago, a source associated with Iran’s nuclear program confidentially told WikiLeaks of a serious, recent, nuclear accident at Natanz. Natanz is the primary location of Iran’s nuclear enrichment program. WikiLeaks had reason to believe the source was credible however contact with this source was lost. WikiLeaks would not normally mention such an incident without additional confirmation, however according to Iranian media and the BBC, today the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, Gholam Reza Aghazadeh, has resigned under mysterious circumstances. According to these reports, the resignation was tendered around 20 days ago.

A cross-check with the official Iran Students News Agency archives confirmed the resignation of the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization.

According to official IAEA data, the number of actually operating centrifuges in Natanz shrank around the time of the accident Wikileaks wrote about was reduced substantially .

Very interesting.

According to DEBKAfiles the Iranians are in a panic to get someone to fix it since apparently their own efforts not only failed, but made things worse. I'm not certain of the veracity of the site, so read on your own and decide.

Tehran this week secretly appealed to a number of computer security experts in West and East Europe with offers of handsome fees for consultations on ways to exorcize the Stuxnet worm spreading havoc through the computer networks and administrative software of its most important industrial complexes and military command centers. debkafile's intelligence and Iranian sources report Iran turned for outside help after local computer experts failed to remove the destructive virus.
None of the foreign experts has so far come forward because Tehran refuses to provide precise information on the sensitive centers and systems under attack and give the visiting specialists the locations where they would need to work. They were not told whether they would be called on to work outside Tehran or given access to affected sites to study how they function and how the malworm managed to disable them. Iran also refuses to give out data on the changes its engineers have made to imported SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) systems, mostly from Germany.
The impression debkafile sources gained Wednesday, Sept. 29 from talking to European computer experts approached for aid was that the Iranians are getting desperate. Not only have their own attempts to defeat the invading worm failed, but they made matters worse: The malworm became more aggressive and returned to the attack on parts of the systems damaged in the initial attack.

One expert said: "The Iranians have been forced to realize that they would be better off not 'irritating' the invader because it hits back with a bigger punch."

I really hope that report is accurate. And I really hope no one helps them. This could be very good news.

As to the worm's creator. They're going on pretty slim evidence.

Deep inside the computer worm that some specialists suspect is aimed at slowing Iran’s race for a nuclear weapon lies what could be a fleeting reference to the Book of Esther, the Old Testament tale in which the Jews pre-empt a Persian plot to destroy them.

That use of the word “Myrtus” — which can be read as an allusion to Esther — to name a file inside the code is one of several murky clues that have emerged as computer experts try to trace the origin and purpose of the rogue Stuxnet program, which seeks out a specific kind of command module for industrial equipment.

Not surprisingly, the Israelis are not saying whether Stuxnet has any connection to the secretive cyberwar unit it has built inside Israel’s intelligence service. Nor is the Obama administration, which while talking about cyberdefenses has also rapidly ramped up a broad covert program, inherited from the Bush administration, to undermine Iran’s nuclear program. In interviews in several countries, experts in both cyberwar and nuclear enrichment technology say the Stuxnet mystery may never be solved.

Personally, I think it was the Israelis. They have the ability and the motive. The US does as well, but this doesn't sound like something the ONE would have allowed. I'd be proud of him for the first time if he did.

Schneier posted on it being impressive as well.

WW1 Ended On September 26, 2010

Yep, reparations are finally done. Took them 92 years, well, with a big war that those reparations caused.

I'll stick with Keynes on this one:
"Germany will not be able to formulate correct policy if it cannot finance itself."

Makes one wonder about where the US debt will lead.

Sibelius Thuggish Rule

This bothered me extremely the first time I heard it, but then I realized that in 2014 when this all is supposed to happen there is a chance that she won't actually be there. And if she is, I expect that the lawsuits will become a tsunami.

'As a consequence of us getting 30 million additional people health care, at the margins that's going to increase our costs—we knew that," President Obama said at his press conference Friday in response to a question about rising health spending.

That wasn't how he sold the plan, but, anyway, that's a truism. Here's another: The White House was always going to blame insurance companies for any cost increases, even when its own policies cause them.

Witness Kathleen Sebelius's Thursday letter to America's Health Insurance Plans, the industry trade group—a thuggish message even by her standards. The Health and Human Services secretary wrote that some insurers have been attributing part of their 2011 premium increases to ObamaCare and warned that "there will be zero tolerance for this type of misinformation and unjustified rate increases."

Zero tolerance for expressing an opinion, or offering an explanation to policyholders? They're more subtle than this in Caracas.

What Ms. Sebelius really means is that the government will prohibit insurers from doing business if reality is not politically convenient for Democrats. ObamaCare includes a slew of mandated benefits for next year, such as allowing children to remain on their parents' plans until age 26 and "free" preventative care (i.e., no direct out-of-pocket cost sharing for consumers). The tone of Ms. Sebelius's letter suggests that she doesn't understand that money is exchanged for goods and services, and that if Congress mandates new benefits, premiums will rise.

In a lot of ways I'd love to see the Dems lose all control of the House and Senate, but on the other side of the argument, they'll then be able to blame the Repubs for all the problems when they conflict with the desires of the ONE. Frankly, a slight majority in both houses for the Dems would ensure Obama would be restricted to only one term and end this BS.

ObamaCare gives Ms. Sebelius's regulators the power to define "unreasonable" premium hikes, which will mean whatever they decide it will mean later this fall. She promised to keep a list of insurers "with a record of unjustified rate increases" and then to bar them from ObamaCare's subsidized "exchanges" when they come on line in 2014. In other words, insurers must accept price controls now or face the retribution of a de facto ban on selling their products to consumers four years from now.

The usual way of governing. Don't bother to define what the law actually means, just leave it so vague as to allow the career bureaucrats to make up the rules. This Obamination really must be terminated.

Ground Zero Mosque - More of What it Means

This is an interesting little bit of an article that no doubt will be ignored. Caught this linked at Wizbang.

Here's the interesting bit of historical perspective.

Should there be a mosque near Ground Zero? In fact, what is pro posed is not a mosque -- nor even an "Islamic cultural center."

In Islam, every structure linked to the faith and its rituals has a precise function and character. A mosque is a one-story gallery built around an atrium with a mihrab (a niche pointing to Mecca) and one, or in the case of Shiites two, minarets.

Other Islamic structures, such as harams, zawiyyahs, husseinyiahs and takiyahs, also obey strict architectural rules. Yet the building used for spreading the faith is known as Dar al-Tabligh, or House of Proselytizing.

This 13-story multifunctional structure couldn't be any of the above.
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.
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In fact, the proposed structure is known in Islamic history as a rabat -- literally a connector. The first rabat appeared at the time of the Prophet.

The Prophet imposed his rule on parts of Arabia through a series of ghazvas, or razzias (the origin of the English word "raid"). The ghazva was designed to terrorize the infidels, convince them that their civilization was doomed and force them to submit to Islamic rule. Those who participated in the ghazva were known as the ghazis, or raiders.

After each ghazva, the Prophet ordered the creation of a rabat -- or a point of contact at the heart of the infidel territory raided. The rabat consisted of an area for prayer, a section for the raiders to eat and rest and facilities to train and prepare for future razzias. Later Muslim rulers used the tactic of ghazva to conquer territory in the Persian and Byzantine empires. After each raid, they built a rabat to prepare for the next razzia.

It is no coincidence that Islamists routinely use the term ghazva to describe the 9/11 attacks against New York and Washington. The terrorists who carried out the attack are referred to as ghazis or shahids (martyrs).

Thus, building a rabat close to Ground Zero would be in accordance with a tradition started by the Prophet. To all those who believe and hope that the 9/11 ghazva would lead to the destruction of the American "Great Satan," this would be of great symbolic value.

Further evidence that this isn't a place to put the Mosque. It is clearly worse than insulting to place it at Ground Zero since this is not only an insult to those who were murdered there, but it is as though they are planting a flag of conquest over the site intentionally. If that isn't a propaganda coup for them, I'm not sure what you would call it.

But, I doubt you'll hear any of this in the MSM, since it doesn't go along with the narrative they wish to proclaim about moderate Islam. Nor will you hear this discussed by any politician since it would be a clear eyed understanding that Moslems don't choose to live as we do in the US, they want to turn us all to dhimmi or eliminate us and our culture completely.

And if you haven't caught the discussion of dawa related to all this you should read Andrew McCarthy's writing on the subject.

Media Morons

Ah, the elitist pricks of the press, having failed to convince conservative knuckle draggers of their superior intellect and the divinity of the One have now gone to the methods of calling us stupid. No real surprises here. Seeing that they expect to lose sufficient control of congress to get it back to at least being under control by grid lock the punditry come out and tell anyone not on the band wagon what exceptional morons they are.

Read Hindraker's analysis. He does a fine job of bleeding the idiot with his own evidence. I won't link to Egan's moronic petulance. No need to help out a paper that I wouldn't wipe my ass with.

Then there is the old reporting method of speculating who is the criminal with no evidence. Another one of those making up the facts as you go. The Daily Caller has this one in hand. I suppose it is a blog after all, but I guess he should expect to get a lot of ugly responses if you want to stick your finger in the eye of a very large group of people. This does tread into that realm where I don't like blogs. You have to pull this turd out as being a jokester who can't take the heat when people don't find him funny.

Political Correctness or Just Plain Stupid?

At first I was surprised, then I realized is makes perfect sense.

A group of high school students from around the country learned that lesson the hard way on June 25 when they sang the “Star Spangled Banner” at the Lincoln Memorial. A United States Park Police officer told them to pipe down because their singing was considered an illegal demonstration, as Fox News reports. The students, who are members of the Young America’s Foundation, were visiting the city for a conservative leadership conference.

What law, exactly, was being violated? According to Fox News:

U.S. Park Police confirmed that the students were in violation of federal law and their impromptu performance constituted a demonstration in an area that must remain ‘completely content neutral.’”

Evan Gassman, who was one of the attendees, says of the episode:

This is a perfect example of political correctness run amuck. I would hope that displays of patriotism would be encouraged, not censored.

Personally, I think this is a perfect activity for a tea party event. Get a couple thousand tea partiers to fill the Lincoln, and any other memorial, and sing the national anthem.

I still can't figure out exactly how they have defined the Lincoln memorial as a "completely content neutral" site. I suppose Martin Luther King would be arrested today if he made his "I have a dream" speech there. Or maybe the present class of public servant thinks that the Gettysburg address is content neutral.

This is a regulation that should be violated on a regular basis and bludgeoned out of existence.

Then there is the Public Servant Widget giving us his opinion:

“We need to make certain that all other visitors that don’t want to be a part of that or just choose to be tourists are able to do so in the same light that probably President Lincoln wanted – which is completely content neutral,” he said.

I truly doubt that a man who was CinC during the bloodiest conflict on our nation's soil would believe everything should be content neutral. If that had been his belief during the war there would have been no war at all.

WikiLeaks - Activism Not Journalism

I have to agree with Andrew Exum here. Wikileaks revealed pretty much nothing that wasn't already common knowledge to anyone who reads the newspaper or watches the news. The real damage is the release of NATO and US troop procedures and protocols, which in the end will likely get our people killed. But, Hey, don't stand in our way of getting out the truth while ignoring the consequences.

The Times, The Guardian and Der Spiegel did nothing wrong in looking over the WikiLeaks documents and excerpting them. Despite the occasional protest from the right wing, most of the press in the United States and in allied nations takes care not to publish information that might result in soldiers’ deaths.

But WikiLeaks itself is another matter. Mr. Assange says he is a journalist, but he is not. He is an activist, and to what end it is not clear. This week — as when he released a video in April showing American helicopter gunships killing Iraqi civilians in 2007 — he has been throwing around the term “war crimes,” but offers no context for the events he is judging. It seems that the death of any civilian in war, an unavoidable occurrence, is a “crime.”

If his desire is to promote peace, Mr. Assange and his brand of activism are not as helpful as he imagines. By muddying the waters between journalism and activism, and by throwing his organization into the debate on Afghanistan with little apparent regard for the hard moral choices and dearth of good policy options facing decision-makers, he is being as reckless and destructive as the contemptible soldier or soldiers who leaked the documents in the first place.

I wonder how this weighs in the concept of sedition.

McChrystal's Mouth

I keep hearing that, McCrystal made a very poor choice, but I'm not so sure. I think BlackFive has the best round up of some of the better blog discussions.

He quotes Daniel Foster on the thought that McChrystal is tired of the whole mess and is falling on his sword about the Afghanistan mess struck me as having some probability. I guess I don't know enough about McChrystal to make that judgement,

Blogs of War have a discussion as well with loads of quotes.

I guess my biggest push to believing that McChrystal is either trying to shove the administration of amateurs into doing the right thing comes from comments by the press moron for the POTUS.

PETER MAER, CBS RADIO: Robert, you spoke a couple of times about what's owed to the people who are serving over there. What should people put in harm's way make of their commander taking these kinds of shots at the commander-in-chief and -- and the comments made by his close aides about the vice president, about General Jones, about Ambassador Eikenberry, and others?

GIBBS: Look, we -- I think anybody that reads that article understands, as Secretary Gates talked about, what an enormous mistake this was, given the fact that mothers and fathers all over this country are sending their children halfway across the world to participate in this. They need to know that the structure -- the structure where they're sending their children is one that is capable and mature enough in prosecuting a war as important as Afghanistan is to our national security. I think that is one of the things that the president will look to discuss tomorrow …

TAPPER: Can I just follow up on a question? You've said that -- you've said that the -- the parents of soldiers need to be sure that the command structure in Afghanistan is capable and mature enough to lead. Did I hear you correctly? You're -- so you're questioning whether General McChrystal is capable and mature enough to -- for this job he has?

GIBBS: You had my quote right.

Wow. I'd have to say putting them on a scale comparing maturing and capability would find the President and his amateurs wanting.