Profiling IV

I risk turning this Blog into a single-issue, "pro-profiling" Blog, but I cannot fathom the lunacy of the anti-profiling crowd.

From Charles Krauthammer's column:

...The American response to tightening up after London has been reflexive and idiotic: random bag checks in the New York subways. Random meaning that the people stopped are to be chosen numerically. One in every five or 10 or 20.

This is an obvious absurdity and everyone knows it. It recapitulates the appalling waste of effort and resources we see at airports every day when, for reasons of political correctness, 83-year-old grandmothers from Poughkeepsie are required to remove their shoes in the search for jihadists hungering for paradise...

...Assuaging feelings is a good thing, but hunting for terrorists this way is simply nuts. The fact is that jihadist terrorism has been carried out from Bali to Casablanca to Madrid to London to New York to Washington by young Muslim men of North African, Middle Eastern and South Asian origin.

This is not a stereotype. It is a simple statistical fact...the overwhelming odds are that the guy bent on blowing up your train traces his origins to the Islamic belt stretching from Mauritania to Indonesia...

Read the whole thing for a clever way to get around the issue by working backwards.

Many hard working, rational people file into buses, subways, trains, and planes everyday without questioning the lunacy of this as if they have all been hypnotized by ACLU therapists (or "conditioned" by their sociology professors). Terrorism cannot be eliminated unless they wake up, rise up and demand that their representatives create laws that allow profiling.

Profiling III

From the New York Post:

ISRAELIS KNOW: PROFILING'S KEY

By YISHAI HA'ETZNI

SINCE 9/11, U.S. officials have struggled with how to protect the American public without infringing on individuals' rights and sensibilities.

The touchiest issue of all is "profiling" — using various factors, including race or ethnicity, in security checks. So, it wasn't surprising that, when New York announced last week that it would begin screening passengers on the city's subway, officials promised loudly and insistently that the checks would be random and racial profiling would not be used.

Such a policy avoids discrimination against certain ethnic groups — in effect, inconveniencing, embarrassing and perhaps even punishing individuals for crimes they did not commit. This is an important value and a worthy goal. Unfortunately, however, blanket avoidance of profiling undermines the entire point of checking passengers.
Following a spate of terrorist hijackings and other attacks on civilian aircraft and airports in the late 1960s and '70s, Israel developed a security system that utilized sociological profiles of those seeking to harm Israelis, among other factors.

The American system developed at the same time relied primarily on technology like scanning devices, which checked people and baggage uniformly.

Facing a less benign threat, Israelis found this system insufficient: Explosives and other weapons could slip through too easily. Since it wasn't feasible to perform extensive security searches on every passenger, Israel used sociological profiles in addition to screening devices: Each passenger is questioned briefly and then airport security personnel use their judgment to identify suspect would-be passengers, who are then questioned at greater length and their bags searched more thoroughly. It is targeted and far more effective than random searches, which end up being nearly cosmetic.

Screening and random searches would not have averted the tragedy that profiling stopped on April 17, 1986. Anne-Marie Murphy, a pregnant Irish woman, was traveling alone to Israel to meet her fiancé's parents. Her bags went through an X-ray machine without problems, and she and her passport appeared otherwise unremarkable.

But in a perfect example of the complexity of profiling, a pregnant woman traveling alone roused the suspicions of security officials. They inspected her bags more closely and discovered a sheet of Semtex explosives under a false bottom. Unbeknownst to Murphy, her fiancé, Nizar Hindawi, had intended to kill her and their unborn child along with the other passengers on the plane...

...The American system's "blindness" cuts off the most important weapon in the war against terrorism: Human capability, judgment and perception. Now that the United States faces a higher threat, it cannot afford to neglect those tools.

Using sociological data as well as constantly updated intelligence information, trained security personnel know who is most likely to be perpetuating an attack, as well as how to identify suspicious individuals through behavior. (Again, it is important to note that ethnicity is only one factor among many used to identify potential terrorists.) Removing intelligence and statistical probability as tools would render this model far less effective...

Is profiling worth the resulting infringement on the democratic values of equality? Yes. After all, protecting human life is also a democratic value, perhaps the supreme one.

Random searches of grandmothers and congressmen may make Americans feel virtuous, but they don't keep Americans safe...

...Terrorists use our society's openness against us. Free, democratic societies must carefully balance our rights and responsibilities, lest we saw off the branch upon which democratic freedom sits...

WHEW!...

...that's a relief:

China affirms 'no first use' nuclear policy after uproar over general's warning


BEIJING -- China won't be the first to use nuclear weapons in a military conflict, the foreign minister said Thursday, trying to quell an uproar over a general's remark that Beijing might use them against U.S. forces in a conflict over Taiwan.

Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing said China "will not first use nuclear weapons at any time and under any condition," according to the official Xinhua News Agency. Li said China has embraced that stance since it developed nuclear weapons in 1964 and it "will not be changed in the future."

In the Immortal Words of "President" Dave Chappelle:

Schumer SHUT THE F UP!!! (at 3:10)



Schumer:

"I voted against Judge Roberts for the D.C. Court because he didn't answer questions fully and openly when he appeared before the committee. For instance, when I asked him a question that others have answered — to identify three Supreme Court cases of which he was critical, he refused."

The 2003 hearing was one of the most memorable in the recent contentious battles between Republicans and Democrats over judicial nominees. Then-committee chairman Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican, first praised Schumer and then used a derogatory term to ridicule his questions of Roberts.
Hatch began by saying Schumer asked intelligent questions, then switched course: "Some I totally disagree with. Some I think are dumb... questions, between you and me. I am not kidding you. I mean, as much as I love and respect you, I just think that's true."

Shocked, Schumer asked Hatch if he wanted to revise his comments. Hatch declined...

Taylor Sacks Shuler

This may be the only time I hope to see the headline:

"Taylor Sacks Redskins Quarterback"

Ex-Redskin Shuler To Run for Congress
Post
Tuesday, July 19, 2005; E02

Former Washington Redskins quarterback Heath Shuler plans to run for Congress in North Carolina.

Shuler, a Democrat, said in a statement yesterday that he has filed papers with the Federal Election Commission that clear the way for him to run next year in the 11th Congressional District for the U.S. House seat held by Republican Charles Taylor.

Multiculturalism IS a Suicide Pact II

A victory for multiculti over common sense
By Mark Steyn
(Filed: 19/07/2005)

It has been sobering this past week watching some of my "woollier" colleagues...gradually awake to the realisation that the real suicide bomb is "multiculturalism". Its remorseless tick-tock, suddenly louder than the ethnic drumming at an anti-globalisation demo, drove poor old Boris Johnson into rampaging around this page last Thursday like some demented late-night karaoke one-man Fiddler on the Roof, stamping his feet and bellowing, "Tradition! Tradition!" Boris's plea for more Britishness was heartfelt and valiant, but I'm not sure I'd bet on it. The London bombers were, to the naked eye, assimilated - they ate fish 'n' chips, played cricket, sported appalling leisurewear. They'd adopted so many trees we couldn't see they lacked the big overarching forest - the essence of identity, of allegiance. As I've said before, you can't assimilate with a nullity - which is what multiculturalism is.

Sir Edward's successor, Mr Blair, said on the day of the bombing that terrorists would not be allowed to "change our country or our way of life". Of course not. That's his job - from hunting to Europeanisation. Could you reliably say what aspects of "our way of life" Britain's ruling class, whether pseudo-Labour like Mr Blair or pseudo-Conservative like Sir Ted, wish to preserve? The Notting Hill Carnival? Not enough, alas.

Consider the Bishop of Lichfield, who at Evensong, on the night of the bombings, was at pains to assure his congregants: "Just as the IRA has nothing to do with Christianity, so this kind of terror has nothing to do with any of the world faiths." It's not so much the explicit fatuousness of the assertion so much as the broader message it conveys: we're the defeatist wimps; bomb us and we'll apologise to you. That's why in Britain the Anglican Church is in a death-spiral and Islam is the fastest-growing religion. There's no market for a faith that has no faith in itself. And as the Church goes so goes the state: why introduce identity cards for a nation with no identity?

It was the Prime Minister's wife, you'll recall, who last year won a famous court victory for Shabina Begum, as a result of which schools across the land must now permit students to wear the full "jilbab" - ie, Muslim garb that covers the entire body except the eyes and hands. Ms Booth hailed this as "a victory for all Muslims who wish to preserve their identity and values despite prejudice and bigotry". It seems almost too banal to observe that such an extreme preservation of Miss Begum's Muslim identity must perforce be at the expense of any British identity. Nor, incidentally, is Miss Begum "preserving" any identity: she's of Bangladeshi origin, and her adolescent adoption of the jilbab is a symbol of the Arabisation of South Asian (and African and European) Islam that's at the root of so many problems. It's no more part of her inherited identity than my five-year- old dressing up in his head-to-toe Darth Vader costume, to which at a casual glance it's not dissimilar...

...One of the striking features of the post-9/11 world is the minimal degree of separation between the so-called "extremists" and the establishment: Princess Haifa, wife of the Saudi ambassador to Washington, gives $130,000 to accomplices of the 9/11 terrorists; the head of the group that certifies Muslim chaplains for the US military turns out to be a bagman for terrorists; one of the London bombers gets given a tour of the House of Commons by a Labour MP. The Guardian hires as a "trainee journalist" a member of Hizb ut Tahir, "Britain's most radical Islamic group" (as his own newspaper described them) and in his first column post-7/7 he mocks the idea that anyone could be "shocked" at a group of Yorkshiremen blowing up London: "Second- and third-generation Muslims are without the don't-rock-the-boat attitude that restricted our forefathers. We're much sassier with our opinions, not caring if the boat rocks" - or the bus blows, or the Tube vaporises. Fellow Guardian employee David Foulkes, who was killed in the Edgware Road blast, would no doubt be heartened to know he'd died for the cause of Muslim "sassiness".

But among all these many examples of the multiculti mainstream ushering the extremists from the dark fringe to the centre of western life, there is surely no more emblematic example than that of Shabina Begum, whose victory over the school dress code was achieved with the professional support of both the wife of the Prime Minister who pledges to defend "our way of life" and of Hizb ut Tahir, a group which (according to the German Interior Minister) "supports violence as a means to realise political goals" such as a worldwide caliphate and (according to the BBC) "urges Muslims to kill Jewish people". What does an "extremist" have to do to be too extreme for Cherie Booth or the Guardian?

Oh, well. Back to business as usual. In yesterday's Independent, Dave Brown had a cartoon showing Bush and Blair as terrorists boarding the Tube to Baghdad. Ha-ha. The other day in Thailand, where 800 folks have been killed by Islamists since the start of the year, two Laotian farm workers were beheaded. I suppose that's Bush and Blair's fault, too.

I'd like to think my "woolly liberal" colleague Vicki Woods and the woolly sorta-conservative Boris Johnson represent the majority. If they do, you've got a sporting chance. But in the end Cherie Booth and Dave Brown and the Bishop of Lichfield will get you killed. Best of British, old thing.

No Litmus Test?

From The Washington Post

...One list that circulated was top-heavy with the names of women. Judge Edith Clement of the U.S. Court of Appeals in New Orleans was among them. Another female candidate thought to have been under consideration was Edith Hollan Jones, who also serves on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans.

Bush said he had considered "a variety of people, people from different walks of life..."

...Other names that have been mentioned are Maura Corrigan, a judge on the Michigan Supreme Court; Cecilia M. Altonaga, a U.S. District Court judge for the Southern District of Florida; Mary Ann Glendon, a Harvard Law School professor; Karen Williams from the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va.; Janice Rogers Brown, recently confirmed by the Senate for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit; and Priscilla Owen, who was just confirmed for a seat on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Other possible (token) candidates are conservative federal appellate court judges Samuel Alito, J. Michael Luttig, Michael McConnell, John Roberts Jr., Emilio Garza and J. Harvie Wilkinson III; and former deputy attorney general Larry Thompson...

Maybe Torricelli's Nickname Should Have Been "The Snake"

From NewYorkMetro.com

“...There’s a whole group of us who believe that when Jon (Corzine) developed his relationship with Torricelli, he began to live some sort of lifestyle that resulted in the breakup of his marriage,” says someone close to Corzine and his ex-wife...

...Corzine had a two-year affair with a woman named Carla Katz. What makes this relationship of public interest is that Katz, a cagey political operator, is president of the Communications Workers of America Local 1034, a union that represents nearly half of all New Jersey state employees.

A few people close to Corzine believe that Torricelli engineered the coupling. “Katz was told where to be and when to be there,” one of them told me. "I think Torricelli wanted to control Jon. In order to do that, he had to bring him down to his level. He had to bring him into his political world, and Carla Katz was a key part of that world.”

But whether the former senator played matchmaker is only part of the issue. Two weeks ago, the union endorsed Corzine for governor. No surprise there. But in a somewhat bizarre public display given their romantic history, Katz introduced Corzine at the rally in a very personal kind of way, telling an anecdote about the first time they met. (She said she was expecting Gordon Gekko, and instead, “I found myself shaking the hand of a slightly rumpled, bearded guy.”)

This episode opened the door for at least one Jersey newspaper, the Bergen Record, to mention their relationship in print for the first time. Up until then, none of the papers had reported on the Corzine-Katz coupling. And it put Corzine and Katz in the position of having to face reporters’ questions about their relationship. Both refused to talk about their personal lives.

Though their relationship has been over for a while, the fact remains that one of the most important issues the next governor will have to deal with is getting the salaries and benefits of state workers under control..."

Another reason to vote for Forrester.

I've Been Posting for Two Weeks...

...and I've only received one comment from someone other than "Dave," who is a bud. Maybe blogs have exceeded the saturation point.

If anyone else besides Dave and (Magnum PI) has read any of these and would like me to continue, please post a comment (libs need not bother with vitriol).

Thanks,
R

Can W Find a Cabinet Post for this Man?

VDH and W, perfect together.

"...this (western self loathing) version of events brings spiritual calm for millions of troubled though affluent and blessed Westerners. There are three sacraments to their postmodern thinking, besides the primordial fear that so often leads to appeasement.

Our first hindrance is moral equivalence. For the hard Left there is no absolute right and wrong since amorality is defined arbitrarily and only by those in power.

Taking back Fallujah from beheaders and terrorists is no different from bombing the London subway since civilians may die in either case. The deliberate rather than accidental targeting of noncombatants makes little difference, especially since the underdog in Fallujah is not to be judged by the same standard as the overdogs in London and New York. A half-dozen roughed up prisoners in Guantanamo are the same as the Nazi death camps or the Gulag.

Our second shackle is utopian pacifism — ‘war never solved anything’ and ‘violence only begets violence.’ Thus it makes no sense to resort to violence, since reason and conflict resolution can convince even a bin Laden to come to the table. That most evil has ended tragically and most good has resumed through armed struggle — whether in Germany, Japan, and Italy or Panama, Belgrade, and Kabul — is irrelevant. Apparently on some past day, sophisticated Westerners, in their infinite wisdom and morality, transcended age-old human nature, and as a reward were given a pass from the smelly, dirty old world of the past six millennia.

The third restraint is multiculturalism, [Ed. Note: It is a Suicide Pact] or the idea that all social practices are of equal merit. Who are we to generalize that the regimes and fundamentalist sects of the Middle East result in economic backwardness, intolerance of religious and ethnic minorities, gender apartheid, racism, homophobia, and patriarchy? Being different from the West is never being worse.

These tenets in various forms are not merely found in the womb of the universities, but filter down into our popular culture, grade schools, and national political discourse — and make it hard to fight a war against stealthy enemies who proclaim constant and shifting grievances. If at times these doctrines are proven bankrupt by the evidence it matters little, because such beliefs are near religious in nature — a secular creed that will brook no empirical challenge.

These articles of faith apparently fill a deep psychological need for millions of Westerners, guilty over their privilege, free to do anything without constraints or repercussions, and convinced that their own culture has made them spectacularly rich and leisured only at the expense of others.

So it is not true to say that Western civilization is at war against Dark Age Islamism. Properly speaking, only about half of the West is involved, the shrinking segment that still sees human nature as unchanging and history as therefore replete with a rich heritage of tragic lessons.

This is nothing new...."

Great...

...now how am I supposed to flick my cigar ashes out of my gas guzzler onto all of those Priuses with Kerry bumper stickers?

(Seriously, aren't Kerry bumper stickers everywhere? Don't these people know the election is over?)

New Jersey Legislator Wants to Ban Smoking in Your Car
New Jersey legislator proposes $250 ticket for smoking while driving.

Lighting up while driving would become a crime if legislation proposed by New Jersey Assemblyman John McKeon (D-Essex) makes it into law. Assembly bill 4306 would allow police to issue an extra $250 ticket to a smoking motorist who is pulled over for a primary offense such as speeding. The bill has the heavyweight support of the Assembly's majority leader, Loretta Weinberg (D-Bergen) and has been referred to the Assembly's Transportation Committee for consideration.

NJ state government is absolutely horrible.

If Al Gore Had Won in 2000...

...this guy might have been our Secretary of Defense today. Just as a turbulance-tossed airline passenger kisses the ground when his plane lands safely, I kiss W's photo whenever a Clintonista opens its ugly mouth.

July 15, 2005
Time to Pull Out. And Not Just From Iraq.
By JOHN DEUTCH
Cambridge, Mass.


...Our best strategy now is a prompt withdrawal plan consisting of clearly defined political, military and economic elements. Politically, the United States should declare its intention to remove its troops and urge the Iraqi government and its neighbors to recognize the common regional interest in allowing Iraq to evolve peacefully and without external intervention...

John Deutch, deputy secretary of defense from 1994 to 1995 and director of central intelligence from 1995 to 1996 (in the Clinton Administration)

Yes, let's urge Iraq's neighbors to play nice when we high tail it out; that'll work.

I know: Let's get Berger and Albright to come to the Oval Office at around midnight. We'll order in some pizza and Diet Coke and before sunrise we'll all learn like Rhodes Scholars how to say "pretty please" in Arabic; problem solved.

Multiculturalism IS a Suicide Pact

The Washington Times
www.washingtontimes.com

Facing hard facts
By Diana West
Published July 15, 2005

Only one faith on earth may be more messianic than Islam: multiculturalism. Without it — without its fanatics who believe all civilizations are the same — the engine that projects Islam into the unprotected heart of Western civilization would stall and fail. It's as simple as that. To live among the believers — the multiculturalists — is to watch the assault, the jihad, take place, unrepulsed by our suicidal societies. These societies are not doomed to submit; rather, they are eager to do so in the name of a masochistic brand of tolerance that, short of drastic measures, is surely terminal...

...It is a strange, tentative civilization we have become, with leaders who strut their promises of "no surrender" even as they flinch at identifying the foe...

Very Strange, indeed.

The Constitution is Not a Suicide Pact (or Profiling II)

More reasons to eavesdrop on mosques.

15, 2005
U.S. Faces Danger From Terrorists Traveling Legally
By Mort Kondracke

While talk show hosts and politicians have been fixated on illegal immigrants pouring into the United States, a more chilling potential danger comes from terrorists traveling to the United States on a perfectly legal basis.

The menace detailed in the summer issue of Foreign Affairs by the scholar Robert Leiken of the Nixon Center is that of "passport-carrying, visa-exempt mujahedeen coming from the United States' Western European allies." ...

..."Unlike American Muslims, who are geographically diffuse, ethnically fragmented and generally well-off," Leiken writes, "Europe's Muslims gather in bleak enclaves with their compatriots," isolated from their host population and "bitter" in outlook...

...According to The New York Times, counterterrorism officials estimate that 10,000 to 15,000 Muslims living in Britain are supporters of al Qaeda and that about 600 have received military training in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

The danger to the United States is that jihadist recruits carry European Union passports and are therefore entitled to visa-free travel into the United States without an interview...

Ah, the Grey Bitch...

...clearly, she is no longer a lady. Not when her headlines imply that Rove is guilty, but she buries the one essential line from the source of the story that implies he is innocent. There are many who expose this bitch, so I'll let them do the heavy lifting. When I learn how to list them on this blog, I will place them to the right of this column.

July 15, 2005

Rove Reportedly Held Phone Talk on C.I.A. Officer

By DAVID JOHNSTON
and RICHARD W. STEVENSON

WASHINGTON, July 14 - Karl Rove, the White House senior adviser, spoke with the columnist Robert D. Novak as he was preparing an article in July 2003 that identified a C.I.A. officer who was undercover, someone who has been officially briefed on the matter said.

If you only read that headline and opening line, you walked away with this impression: Rove GUILTY!

For those who read carefully, the story's source offered the following line of exoneration, which was buried in the seventh paragraph. Remember, the source of this story is the only reason for the story in the first place. The source was obviously trying to take the heat off of Rove, apparently because he believes Rove has been unfairly attacked. Yet, the bitch only saw "fit" to print this one line:

The person discussed the matter in the belief that Mr. Rove was truthful in saying that he had not disclosed Ms. Wilson's identity.

The bitch would have been completely justified if her headline read: "Rove Told the Truth", but she did not print that. In fact, she quickly followed the exonerating sentence with this paragraph:

The conversation between Mr. Novak and Mr. Rove seemed almost certain to intensify the question about whether one of Mr. Bush's closest political advisers played a role in what appeared to be an effort to undermine Mr. Wilson's credibility after he challenged the veracity of a key point in Mr. Bush's 2003 State of the Union speech, saying Saddam Hussein had sought nuclear fuel in Africa.

Almost certain to intensify the question of Rove's role? There is no question that Rove was trying to undermine Wilson's credibility because the Grey Bitch and her sisters would (or could) not. The bitch gave Wilson all of his credibility in the first place when she allowed Wilson to make false statements in her pages. It is a good thing for Rove that discrediting false witnesses is not a crime.

I think Tigerhawk is correct in his assessment that this is all about Democrats (and Liberals) getting all of their punches in before Rove's exculpation.

...If there is no crime, the Democrats have to get a lot of bashing in while the press is paying attention (which it is likely to do while Judith Miller languishes in jail protecting a source who is manifestly neither Karl Rove nor Scooter Libby). Otherwise, Evil Karl will live to torture them another day...

Profiling in the War on Terror

Abdel Rahman al-Rashed, the general manager of the Al Arabiya television station, wrote:

“It is a certain fact that not all Muslims are terrorists, but it is equally certain, and exceptionally painful, that almost all terrorists are Muslims.”

We should pay attention to these words if we want to win a war against terrorists. In addition, we must face the following facts:

First, we are in a war;

Second, our enemy in this war has already infiltrated our country and, indeed, all western democracies; and

Third, this enemy cannot be appeased;

Early in any engagement in a traditional war, a military tries to debilitate its enemy's systems of protection and weapons. In the war on terror, our enemy uses privacy laws and the deceipt of being your neighbor as his shield. And, he is using common western technology for his weapon (jet planes and cars) or his battleground (trains, subways, and buses). We must remove his shield and his ability to use that technology for harm. Given the facts listed above, that means we must PROFILE.

We can no longer use real or imaginary transgressions of the police against certain races as a blanket excuse not to profile Muslims in this country. Political correctness and the ACLU be damned; this is a war. To paraphrase Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson: "The Constitution is not a suicide pact."

Maybe we should start by placing eavesdropping devices in every mosque known to have belligerents in the congregation. And, how is it possible, after 9/11, that airport attendants rifle through the underwear of seventy-year old caucasian grandmothers and ten-year old caucasian Little Leaguers at least as often as guys with names like Abdel Rahman al-Rashed? As someone who is very close to me who has blond hair and blue eyes once said:

"If all terrorists had blond hair and blue eyes, I'd accept that I'd have to get to the airport a little earlier to catch my flight"

Innocent Muslims in the west need to have thicker skin and accept this environment. They also need to raise their voices and arms against this scourge.

The Most Dangerous Place in Washington DC...

...is the space between Chuck Schumer and a TV camera.

Sorry, we lost the link. It was originally linked to a Drudge Report story about Schumer's press conference with Joe (I'll talk to any MSM outlet who) Wil(lis)son.

(Kudos Dave)

Rove v Crazed

Thanks to Dave for alerting me to this Ann Coulter column:

...Driven by that weird obsession liberals have of pretending they are Republicans in order to attack Republicans, Wilson implied he had been sent to Niger by Vice President Dick Cheney. Among copious other references to Cheney in the op-ed, Wilson said that CIA "officials asked if I would travel to Niger to check out the story" that Saddam Hussein had attempted to buy uranium from Niger, "so they could provide a response to the vice president's office."...

...Dick Cheney responded by saying: "I don't know Joe Wilson. I've never met Joe Wilson. I don't know who sent Joe Wilson. He never submitted a report that I ever saw when he came back." Clown Wilson's allegation that Cheney had received his (unwritten) "report" was widely repeated as fact by, among others, The New York Times...

...So liberals were allowed to puff up Wilson's "report" by claiming Wilson was sent "by the CIA." But...Republicans were not allowed to respond by pointing out Wilson was sent to Niger by his wife, not by the CIA and certainly not by Dick Cheney...

...Wilson's report was a hoax. His government bureaucrat wife wanted to get him out of the house, so she sent him on a taxpayer-funded government boondoggle.

That was the information Karl Rove was trying to convey to the media by telling them, as described in the notes of Time reporter Matt Cooper: "big warning"! Don't "get too far out on Wilson."...

...Rove had simply said Wilson went to Niger because of his wife, not his skill, expertise or common sense. It was the clown himself who outed his wife as an alleged "covert" agent by saying he was not recommended by his wife...

More on Iraq and al Qaeda

In my inaugural post on June 30, I listed pieces of information that create a mosaic that connects the war in Iraq with 9/11. After all, all terrorists and terrorist activity is connected in some way with all states that sponsor terrorism. In today's WSJ.com opinion Journal, Claudia Rosett continues the argument.

...there's another speech Mr. Bush still needs to give. That would be the one in which he says: I told you so--there was a connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda.

In some quarters, that would of course provoke the usual outrage. Since the U.S.-led coalition went outside the corrupt United Nations to topple the Baathist regime in Baghdad more than two years ago, it has become an article of faith that there was no such connection...

...Actually, there were many connections, as Stephen Hayes, writing in the current issue of the Weekly Standard, spells out under the headline "The Mother of All Connections." Since the fall of Saddam, the U.S. has had extraordinary access to documents of the former Baathist regime, and is still sifting through millions of them. Mr. Hayes takes some of what is already available, combined with other reports, documentation and details, some from before the overthrow of Saddam, some after. For page after page, he lists connections--with names, dates and details such as the longstanding relationship between Osama bin Laden's top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and Saddam's regime.

Mr. Hayes raises, with good reason, the question of why Saddam gave haven to Abdul Rahman Yasin, one of the men who in 1993 helped make the bomb that ripped through the parking garage of the World Trade Center. He details a contact between Iraqi intelligence and several of the Sept. 11 hijackers in Malaysia, the year before al Qaeda destroyed the twin towers. He recounts the intersection of Iraqi and al Qaeda business interests in Sudan, via, among other things, an Oil for Food contract negotiated by Saddam's regime with the al-Shifa facility that President Clinton targeted for a missile attack following the African embassy bombings because of its apparent connection to al Qaeda. And there is plenty more.

The difficulty lies in piecing together the picture, which is indeed murky (that being part of the aim in covert dealings between tyrants and terrorist groups)--but rich enough in depth and documented detail so that the basic shape is clear (Ed. Note: Hmmm, it sounds like a mosaic to me). By the time Mr. Hayes is done tabulating the cross-connections, meetings, Iraqi Intelligence memos unearthed after the fall of Saddam, and information obtained from detained terrorist suspects, you have to believe there was significant collaboration between Iraq and al Qaeda. Or you have to inhabit a universe in which there will never be a demonstrable connection between any of the terrorist attacks the world has suffered over the past dozen years, or any tyrant and any aspiring terrorist. In that fantasyland, all such phenomena are independent events.

Mr. Bush, in calling attention to the Iraq-al Qaeda connection in the first place, did the right thing. For the U.S. president to confirm that clearly and directly at this stage, with some of the abundant supporting evidence now available, might seem highly controversial. But reviving that controversy would help settle it more squarely in line with the truth.

If You Need Me, I'll Be in the Bar...

From The Wall Street Journal

Drink More, Earn More (& Give More)

By ARTHUR C. BROOKS
July 13, 2005; Page A14

W.C. Fields once recommended, "Always carry a flagon of whiskey in case of snakebite and furthermore always carry a small snake." Traditionally, practical rationales for drinking were unconvincing, at best. More recently, however, alcohol's reputation has improved as new benefits from drinking have come to light. Best known are the studies showing the health benefits of moderate alcohol use. It is now so well established that it is almost a cliché that red wine lowers the risk of heart disease. A new study by researchers at the National Cancer Institute also claims that drinkers may have a lower risk of lymphoma than nondrinkers.

Economists assert that benefits from alcohol are also financial, showing that moderate drinking is associated with higher earnings. If two workers are identical in education, age, and other characteristics except that the first has a couple of beers each night after work while the second is a teetotaler, the first will tend to enjoy a "drinker's bonus" in the range of 10% to 25% higher wages...

...indeed, moderate drinkers tend to be more charitable than nondrinkers...

...Shakespeare's Pericles warned that, one sin "another doth provoke." In the case of booze, however, the good news is that one sin a few virtues doth provoke.

As Lincoln said when he was warned that Grant was an alcoholic: "Then buy all of my Generals some whiskey."

Go Get 'em, Mr. Levin...

Mark Levin's NRO piece is right on point as always:

...President Bush is at an historic crossroads. His supporters — who defended him through the 2000 election court battle, the attacks on his cabinet members, the attempts to undermine the war effort at home, and, yes, the blocking of his appellate-court nominees — deserve better. It's one thing to be demeaned by the liberal media, the Democratic party, and the Inside the Beltway crowd. But it's another thing entirely for the president himself to treat his base like the crazy aunt in the attic when legitimate concerns are raised about something so important as the next Supreme Court nominee.

It is critical that the White House understand how passionate conservatives are about the Supreme Court's abuse of power. Since Dwight Eisenhower, Republican presidents have promised to appoint individuals to the Court who would uphold the Constitution. They've done a miserable job. Yes, there have been occasions when nominees have changed philosophies after confirmation. But too many times Republican presidents have chosen nominees for reasons that have nothing to do with their judicial philosophy but rather with political calculations to appease liberal demands. Among them are William Brennan, Lewis Powell, John Paul Stevens, and Sandra Day O'Connor.

I understand why Democratic presidents aren't sensitive to the conservative base, but not President Bush. The Supreme Court is out of control and President Bush has the chance to do something about it. And, indeed, he promised to do something about it — i.e., appoint justices who share the judicial philosophies of Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. So, of course, the president's base is nervous when he embraces his adversaries and takes swipes at his friends.

And if political calculations are part of the process, as they undoubtedly they are, surely the White House must know that nothing will be more dispiriting and debilitating to the Republican base then yet another fumbled Supreme Court appointment. The consequences to the Republican party and the nation could be devastating. President Bush — please listen to your supporters, not Harry Reid.

— Mark R. Levin is author of the bestselling Men In Black, president of Landmark Legal Foundation, and a radio talk-show host on WABC in New York.

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Let's Hope So, Mr. McCain (and your Gang of 14)

Straight from Drudge today:

Sen. McCain [R-AZ] Strong Words On Supreme Ct Nomination at Dallas Fundraiser: 'During the campaign, President Bush said he will appoint judges who will strictly interpret the constitution... thinking anything else is either amnesia or ignorance... elections have consequences... whomever he nominates deserves an up or down vote and no filibuster... and an up or down vote is what we will have'...

Transcript from Meet the Depressed on June 19: Tim Russert and Senator John McCain:

MR. RUSSERT: November 1999, Republican presidential primary debate. The question to John McCain: "Who would be your role model for your first justice named to the Supreme Court?"

John McCain: "I guess my particular role model would be Judge Scalia."

SEN. McCAIN: I think he would be frankly someone who would be approved by the Senate.

MR. RUSSERT: You do?

SEN. McCAIN: I don't believe he would be filibustered. No, I don't. There's many others that I also would strongly approve of as well.

Let's also hope that President Bush heeds Fred Barnes' advice:

"President Bush needs to keep two facts in mind as he looks to replace retiring Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O'Connor (and, should he step down, Chief Justice William Rehnquist). The first is that he can win confirmation of almost any conceivable nominee for the High Court, screams of protest by Democrats and hostile media coverage notwithstanding. The second is that he has a promise to keep. Since he began running for the White House six years ago, he has declared endlessly his intention to select judges who interpret the law rather than create it--in a word, conservatives."

-- Fred Barnes, for the Editors of the Weekly Standard

The Great Mark Steyn

I know this is a little late, but I just read (and loved) the Steyn column on the Supreme Court's ridiculous eminent domain decision.

...A couple of days beforehand, the majesty of the law turned its attention to "eminent domain" -- the fancy term for what happens when the government seizes the property of the private citizen. It pays you, of course, but that's not much comfort if you've built your dream home on your favorite spot of land. Most laymen understand the "public interest" dimension as, oh, they're putting in the new Interstate and they don't want to make a huge detour because one cranky old coot refuses to sell his ramshackle dairy farm. But the Supreme Court's decision took a far more expansive view: that local governments could compel you to sell your property if a developer had a proposal that would generate greater tax revenue. In other words, the "public interest" boils down to whether or not the government gets more money to spend.

I can't say that's my definition. Indeed, the constitutional conflation of "public interest" with increased tax monies is deeply distressing to those of us who happen to think that letting governments access too much dough too easily leads them to create even more useless government programs that enfeeble the citizenry in deeply destructive ways.

Nonetheless, across the fruited domain, governments reacted to the court decision by sending the bulldozers round to idle expectantly on John Doe's front lawn: In New Jersey, Newark officials moved forward with plans to raze 14 downtown acres and build an upscale condo development; in Missouri, the City of Arnold intends to demolish 30 homes, 14 businesses and the local VFW to make way for a Lowe's Home Improvement store and a strip mall developed by THF Realty.

Get the picture? New Hampshire businessman Logan Darrow Clements did. He wants to build a new hotel in the town of Weare and he's found just the right piece of land: the home of Supreme Court judge David Souter. In compliance with Justice Souter's view of the public interest, Clements' project will generate far more revenue for Weare than Souter's pad ever could. The Lost Liberty Hotel will include the Just Desserts Bar and a museum dedicated to the loss of freedom in America.

I don't know about you, but the last time I was in Weare, N.H., I couldn't help thinking that what this town urgently needs is a good hotel. If it will help the Board of Selectmen in their decision, I personally pledge to take the most expensive suite in the new joint for the first month it's in service. I'll be sluicing plenty of big columnar bucks around town, racking up big N.H. Meals Tax payments at Weare's finest restaurants and, along with my fellow guests, doing far more for the local economy than one ascetic, largely absentee bachelor like Justice Souter could ever do. Indeed, under Souter's definition, it would be hard to think of a property doing less for the public interest than his own house. So let's get on with putting his principles into action, and with luck his beloved but economically moribund abode will be rubble by the end of the year.

North of Weare, by the way, many Granite State municipalities face problems with land that generates even less revenue than David Souter's. In small North Country towns like Warren, for example, half the land belongs to the White Mountain National Forest, and thus is off the tax rolls. Can the Select Board of Warren force the federal government to make way for a logging camp? Or even for a rusting doublewide for David Souter once he's booted out of Weare?

How's that banned-in-Kentucky Commandment go? "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, nor his ass." However, if thy neighbor is an ass and thou hast financing for a luxury hotel, covet away.

Lincoln was right about a robed state: A handful of whimsical commissars settling the rights of 300 million citizens is not republican government. This Independence Day, America needs a "new birth of freedom."

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Life Imitates Art

Art:

"This is not a war. This is an extermination!"

-Harlan Ogilvy (played by Tim Robbins) in War of the Worlds



Life:

"We are not fighting so that you will offer us something. We are fighting to eliminate you."

-Hussein Massawi, Islamofascist and former leader of Hezbollah


Life:

"The real matter is the extinction of America, and God willing, it will fall to the ground."

-Mullah Mohammed Omar, Taliban leader

Hail to the Sing Sings

Recent Redskins stories in the washington Post include a story about Sean Taylor's trial for assault with a weapon, and a story about a security guard who was shot at a party thrown by LaVar Arrington. It's almost enough to get a Skins fan to give up his season tickets...but, not quite enough, yet.

If Joe Gibbs is arrested for something, then I'll give them up...maybe.

Greenday Cowards

While flipping through the channels today, I managed to catch about ten minutes of Live 8. For now I'll save the comments about the road to hell being paved with good intentions and instead will focus on one of the three songs that I was able to see performed.

Greenday has an interesting sound, but I found myself hoping that they would perform the song they sang (see lyrics below) at a benefit for firefighters and policemen in lower Manhattan instead of lecturing us with it from the Brandenburg Gate.

American Idiot

Don't wanna be an American idiot.
Don't want a nation under the new mania.
And can you hear the sound of hysteria?
The subliminal mindfuck America.

Welcome to a new kind of tension.
All across the alien nation.
Where everything isn't meant to be okay.
Television dreams of tomorrow.
We're not the ones who're meant to follow.
For that's enough to argue.

Well maybe I'm the faggot America.
I'm not a part of a redneck agenda.
Now everybody do the propaganda.
And sing along in the age of paranoia.

Welcome to a new kind of tension.
All across the alien nation.
Where everything isn't meant to be okay.
Television dreams of tomorrow.
We're not the ones who're meant to follow.
For that's enough to argue.

Don't wanna be an American idiot.
One nation controlled by the media.
Information age of hysteria.
It's going out to idiot America.

Welcome to a new kind of tension.
All across the alien nation.
Where everything isn't meant to be okay.
Television dreams of tomorrow.
We're not the ones who're meant to follow.
For that's enough to argue


While watching Greenday I was immediately struck by two things. First, was the irony of that band calling Americans idiots at the gate where Americans had the biggest hand in "tear(ing) down that wall" and freeing Eastern Europe. I wondered how many eastern Europeans reveled in the performance, if any. I doubt any did. It has been less than fifteen years since the wall came down and I don't think that is enough time for an oppressed people to assimilate into the self-loathing culture of old, socialist Europe.

The second thing that struck me was how, in probably their biggest moment with their largest audience, they chose that song to sing from the bosom of American-bashing Europe. I know that is their current single, but they have many other songs. Most of the artists at Live 8 were only given the chance to sing one or two songs (except for Sir Paul). They could have avoided that one.

As I said above, I would love to be there to see them sing that song at a benefit concert for firemen and policemen at the site of the World Trade Center. But, we all know they are too cowardly for that.