Monday, April 23, 2007

USAID funding Hamas?


In a late March story that did not receive the attention it deserved, Joel Mowbray revealed that the United States indirectly funds the terrorist group Hamas. USAID -- a taxpayer-funded development organization -- gave nearly $150,000 to Gaza's Islamic University since 2004 and $2.3 million to Al-Quds University.

Al-Quds, for example, has on-campus student groups aligned with terrorist organizations and recently held a weeklong celebration of the inventor of the suicide bomb-belt.

And no one questions Hamas' deep ties to Islamic University. The founder of Hamas actually founded the school in 1978 and several of its leaders have used the school's campus as a base of operations. Hamas has also hosted conferences at the school.

Hamas, of course, is the violent terrorist group best known for its suicide bombings and other attacks against civilians. Hamas' charter still calls for the destruction of the State of Israel. And, even now, Hamas isn't exactly trying to fly under the radar.

Gateway Pundit calls attention to the prayers of Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmad Bahr (via Publius Pundit and MEMRI):

Yes, [the Koran says that] "you will be victorious," but only "if you are believers." Allah willing, "you will be victorious," while America and Israel will be annihilated, Allah willing. I guarantee you that the power of belief and faith is greater than the power of America and Israel. They are cowards... who are eager for life, while we are eager for death for the sake of Allah...

America will be annihilated, while Islam will remain.

Yep, I'm sure these are just the folks American taxpayers want to fund.

Sunday, April 22, 2007

This doesn't exactly give you a warm and fuzzy...


So I was ordering a new piece of exercise gear online this morning. And, yes, I saw a pretty good TV commercial yesterday that closed the deal for me. Anyhow, after completing the obligatory, multi-page order form, I got to the Confirm your order button.

When I pressed it, I received this reassuring page (some information redacted to protect the guilty):

Appears that someone needs to read about handling error conditions gracefully as well as tunable logging.

And based upon these errors, I'd wager the site is also susceptible to one or more of the standard attacks (SQL injection, XSS, etc.). Ah well, I've alerted the owner of the site to the situation. And I'll keep you -- all nine of my valued, regular readers -- posted on these momentous topics.

Saturday, April 21, 2007

Line o' the Day


Opinion Journal's James Taranto:

Latter-Day Copperhead

* “I believe . . . that this war is lost, and this surge is not accomplishing anything, as is shown by the extreme violence in Iraq this week.”–Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, April 19, 2007

* “Resolved, that this convention does explicitly declare, as the sense of the American people, that after four years of failure to restore the Union by the experiment of war, during which, under the pretence of military necessity, or war power higher than the Constitution, the Constitution itself has been disregarded in every part, and public liberty and private right alike trodden down, and the material prosperity of the country essentially impaired, justice, humanity, liberty, and the public welfare demand that immediate efforts be made for a cessation of hostilities, with a view to an ultimate convention of the States or other peaceable means, to the end that at the earliest practicable moment peace may be restored on the basis of the federal Union of the States.”–1864 Democratic platform

Democrats wage Information Warfare against U.S. forces


In Military Review, Lt. Col. Timothy Thomas (Ret.) lists strategems of information warfare (IW), which include:

* Direct [enemy] commanders' thinking and force them to make errors by attacking cognitive and belief systems.
* Generate heavy psychological pressure by using intimidation to signal inevitable [enemy loss] concentrating forces and coordinating information networks [such as mainstream media].
* Hide reality by creating a fictitious reality.
* Mislead the enemy by pretending to follow his wishes.

These strategies are designed to force cognitive errors in the enemy and create a multidimensional threat with which the enemy must contend...

Let's take each in turn and determine whether the Democrats and their public relations arm -- the mainstream media (MSM) -- qualify.

Direct [enemy] commanders' thinking and force them to make errors by attacking cognitive and belief systems: In declaring the war 'lost', Democrat Harry Reid has attacked U.S. commanders' belief systems. Reid has plainly stated that commanders are waging a pointless war and -- in the words of military blogger COB -- has thereby placed a very real stake in the ground:

If Senator Reid, based on the information that the Senate Majority Leader has, has determined that this war is lost; there is nothing left to do but come home. The way I see it, if you were to vote for anything less; you would be personally liable for any future wounded or God-Forbid dead soldiers...

...You, a person in high authority in the US government, have made a definitive statement that an action is occurring with no redeeming value. Said action is causing harm and death to US citizens. You have the unique power to stop said action and thusly stop the harm...


Generate heavy psychological pressure by using intimidation to signal inevitable [enemy loss] concentrating forces and coordinating information networks [such as mainstream media]: The mainstream media has, for the last several years, rallied around the meme that "Iraq is Vietnam" and various calls for retreat and surrender (see Murtha, Reid, et. al.). ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, MSNBC, PBS, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, and other major print and broadcast outlets have studiously ignored the facts surrounding the Iraq War and the rise of global Islamofascism. Instead, the MSM has called attention to car bombings and -- by historical standards -- a very low death rate among U.S. forces.

Gateway Pundit also points out that the MSM/DNC's drumbeat has been picked up by the foreign (and some would say "enemy") press. That is, The Tehran Times, Al-Jazeera, Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, and Iran Press TV have all led major stories with Reid's statement. The Volokh Conspiracy concludes, "it seems to me hard to doubt that this statement will have grave cost."

Hide reality by creating a fictitious reality: The New York Times is the poster-boy for a fictitious reality. As the standard-bearer for much of U.S. media, the Times provides a template for other outlets to follow. And consider its Al-Qaqaa fabrications synchronized to impact the 2004 Presidential Election; its unleashing details of Saddam Hussein's active nuclear weapons program -- ostensibly to discredit Republicans -- just hours before the 2006 Congressional Elections; its revelations of classified programs including monitoring of international calls to terrorist enclaves, phone-number call analysis, and SWIFT; its 'selective' censorship of the National Intelligence Estimate... all are simply examples of a blinkered, rapidly spinning and fictitious reality designed for a single purpose. And that purpose is to coerce Americans into a hopelessness, a loser's mentality; so that America itself will lose any war in which it might engage.

Mislead the enemy by pretending to follow his wishes: Democratic leaders routinely state that they, "support the troops." Yet, the leadership has wildly -- and some would say schizophrenically -- switched positions on the war. Just a few months ago, Democratic leaders such as Harry Reid and Silvestre Reyes were in favor of a troop surge. They unanimously confirmed Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Army General David Petraeus.

Yet, only days later, the Democratic leadership began a campaign to undermine the troops and their mission using every tool in their information warfare arsenal. All the while, Democrats continue to pretend that they support the troops while their very statements embolden the enemy.

Imagine it's the year 2020. An Alien invasion force has landed on the Earth in multiple locations. Possessing many forms of advanced weaponry, Alien forces inexorably obliterate city after city, razing each to the ground and killing every human that stands in their way. Would the likes of Reid, Pelosi, and Murtha hem and haw; decry our military's attempts to defend the Earth; and visit alien leaders in vain attempts to negotiate?

Well, news flash. Iran's mullahs are Hitler with nukes. Worse, they represent only the leadership of a worldwide, nihilistic cabal of extremists bent on destruction. Or are the attacks in Manhattan, Washington, Bali, Beslan, Madrid, London, Iraq, Uzbekistan, Israel, Mumbai, Kashmir, Thailand, Darfur, Somalia, Australia, Indonesia, and the Philippines not connected? Not according to the Democrats and the MSM.

Put simply, the Democrats and their public relations arm -- the MSM -- are successfully waging information warfare against the United States military. No war, not even a global conflict against an intergalactic alien invasion force, can be won with the useless, treasonous, and duplicitious "opposition" party represented by today's Democratic leadership.

We need patriotic Democrats in power -- not this despicable crew -- and I fear it will take major bloodshed on American soil in the form of yet another terrorist attack for it to happen.

Harry Reid must resign now.

Update: Dan Riehl is even more upset than I am... and that's saying something. And Jules Crittenden takes note of Andrew Sullivan on the Reid resignation issue.

Others calling for Reid's Resignation: Byrne's Rightings, Chicago Ray, JWeaver, Mark Levin (National Review Online), Mark Levin Fan, Never Yet Melted, Ol' Broad, OPNTALK, Politics, Hon, Right Angle, Right Wing News, TomG Report, UCV

Friday, April 20, 2007

Thanks, NBC! Another gunman and random killing


Moments ago, WAVY reported that another hostage situation has drawn to a tragic close:

A NASA contract worker took a handgun inside an office building Friday at the Johnson Space Center and fatally shot a hostage before killing himself, police said. A second hostage escaped with minor injuries.

The gunman shot himself once in the head more than three hours after barricading himself on the second floor of Building 44, which houses a laboratory... The slain hostage was probably killed "in the early minutes of the whole ordeal," Houston Police Capt. Dwayne Ready said.

Want to bet whether this event was -- along with scores of other threat reports around the country -- at least partially inspired by NBC's glorification of the Virginia Tech killer?

Thanks, NBC! I hope the lift in the Nielsen ratings was worth it. Does anyone know of an emoticon for disgust I can use?

Masterline Theater


Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed. He who molds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions. He makes statutes or decisions possible or impossible to execute.
           -- President Abraham Lincoln

One cannot wage war under present conditions without the support of public opinion, which is tremendously molded by the press and other forms of propaganda.
           -- General Douglas MacArthur

The printing press is the greatest weapon in the armoury of the modern commander.... In Asia we were so weak physically that we could not let the metaphysical weapon rust unused.
           -- T.E. Lawrence

Hat tip: Air War College

Harry Reid signs articles of surrender to Al Qaeda


We have exclusive photos of Harry Reid signing articles of surrender to Al Qaeda's Iraqi commanders. After announcing that the the war was lost, Reid decided to make it official, signing documents of unconditional surrender to Al Qaeda in Iraq.

During the ceremony, Reid stated, "These fearsome suicide belts and car bombs have destroyed any hopes of success! Our military has no way of defeating these awesome weapons. Our military -- Marines, Army, Air Force, Navy -- all are powerless against these ragtag warriors with their AK-47s, rusty knives, and decades-old artillery shells."

"It's best to turn tail and run home to America with sincere hopes and prayers that these terror... -er- insurgents won't follow us," Reid said.

Asked about "never forgetting the lessons of 9/11", Reid noted that the Democratic statute of limitations for never forgetting was five years, which had expired in September of 2006.

Thursday, April 19, 2007

Line o' the Day


Wall Street Journal reader James Morrison:

We have had access to guns for almost 400 years, yet mass killings are a recent phenomenon. It is the culture that determines if a country has mass killings, not access to guns.

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

The folly of a 'reactive security posture'


Guest-blogger Armed Folk Singer posts:

In 1973, I was VP and GM of a company with 800 employees, most of them female. In one week, we received 3 bomb threats. Each time we evacuated the plant causing lost time, lost wages and obviously creating emotional impact much to the joy probably of some former employee. About a week later, an employee’s spouse attempted to enter our plant in order to do harm to the employee. This had been an ongoing problem with spouses/boy friends.

One week later, we did the following:

1. Hired a security service (armed) to verify employee ID’s and do random inspection of all bags brought into the plant. No one entered the building without an ID or a pass.

2. Developed a “bomb search team” with special pagers so that if a bomb threat was called in, the team was notified and did specified searches of all areas of a very large plant. This also forced a high level of orderliness.

3. Installed TV cameras at all entrances and exits which were monitored but not recorded Just the existence of cameras caused a high degree of awareness.

4. The result was that our employees came to work feeling much safer about their environment and confident that the employer cared about their safety.

5. Over the next 15 years, any incidents that occurred were outside the building and the police were immediately notified. We never again had a serious bomb threat or internal domestic disturbance.

This situation took place over 30 years ago. Today, it is unconscionable for any business, institution or organization to be so naïve as to assume a "reactive posture" on providing a safe environment.

In addition, every educational institution should teach a one hour course weekly on "how to protect oneself in a crisis" (a hurricane, a tornado, a terrorist act, a fire, a bomb, an attack, etc. etc.) Education is teaching our youth survival in a very complicated world... and that is not just economic survival.

The Age: search for 'Ismael Ax' sparks web frenzy


Australia's The Age reports on the flood of searches for information on 'Ismael Ax':

All at once, the world went searching for the meaning of "Ismail Ax"... Those two words, written in red ink on one arm of Cho Seung Hui, the 23-year-old Virginia Tech student suspected of the campus shooting spree, set off a massive internet hunt by the public for clues to what might have motivated the nation's worst mass killings.

Almost as soon as the Chicago Tribune's website reported that detail, which was then picked up by news organisations around the world, the blogosphere filled with theories about the possible meaning of "Ismail Ax." Hundreds of bloggers speculated on a link to Islam or to literature; thousands offered their opinions and millions read the commentaries, according to Technorati.com...


For a couple of hours, a recent post on this site ranked #1 on Google's search results for the term.

The resulting flood of traffic, which I could never have predicted, was significant (especially for an eighth-tier blog like this one):

We're still a long way from the daily record -- which occurred after a story made the front-page on Digg -- of 18,000 visitors. But it certainly highlights the firehose-like power of Google's search results.

Line o' the Day


Mark Steyn, writing in The National Review:

...we live in a selectively infantilized culture where twentysomethings are “children” if they’re serving in the Third Infantry Division in Ramadi but grown-ups making rational choices if they drop to the broadloom in President Clinton’s Oval Office...

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

'Ismael Ax' - Cho Seung-Hui's scrawl


Scrawled on Cho Seung-Hui's arm was a cryptic phrase: Ismael-Ax:

"Ismael-Ax" could refer to God's request that Abraham kill his own son, before God intervenes on the boy's behalf. In the Judao-Christian tradition, the son is Isaac, the father of the Jewish people. Islamic texts hold that the subject is his older half-brother Ismail. In some versions, of the story the instrument is a knife, and in others it is an axe...

A Hot Air reader has an interesting conjecture regarding the phrase, noting that the killer was an English major:

You probably already know this, but in James Fennimore [sic] Cooper’s story “The Prairie,” the settler Ishmael Bush, who is attempting to escape from civilization, sets out across the prairie with two key tools, a gun and an axe. Each has a symbolic meaning. The axe — which can either kill or provide shelter — stands for both creation and destruction. Given that the VT killer was an English major, might this be the likely meaning of the words on his arm? Just my two cents.

There might be something to this suggestion. In History and Mythology in The Prairie, the University of Copenhagen's Henning Goldbæk describes the protagonist:

...there is the Squatter, Ishmael Bush, who is brutal, stupid, representing the border between nature and civilization, or the first step of civilization. He seems to be the most interesting character in the book, because he represents almost all phases in the book. He has left civilization, he lives an almost mythic life on the prairie, but at the end of the novel he returns to civilization...

The Squatter is interesting, because he is the person, who casts a shadow before. He lives "on the skirts of society...", he is not religious, and the only learning he respects, is "that of the leech." He has no respect for nature, he fells any tree he wants around him, because he is "above" the law.

But what is the law? Ishmael Bush is above the law...

Any linkages between "the Squatter" and the Virginia Tech mass-murderer are rank speculation, to be sure, but interesting nonetheless.

Mayor of Nagasaki Assassinated


The Mayor of Nagasaki died earlier today after being shot by a gangster in a subway station:

The motive for the shooting remained unclear, but public broadcaster NHK said Shiroo was upset at the city's handling of a traffic accident four years ago in which his car was damaged as it passed a public works construction site.

In other words, the killer was completely off his rocker. His car was damaged, so he whacked a public official over the affront.

Nonetheless, this report can't be right. There are extremely tough gun laws in Japan.

Japan has very strict gun control laws... The last known murder of a politician in Japan was in October 2002, when lower house member Koki Ishii was stabbed to death by a member of a right-wing group in front of his Tokyo home.

I suppose the knife-control laws didn't work either.

There's a lesson here somewhere, though you probably won't see it reported on CNN.

Monday, April 16, 2007

Campus Self-Defense Squelched at Va. Tech in 2006



One News Now offers its perspective on the unspeakable Virginia Tech tragedy:

A Virginia Tech official in 2006 praised the defeat of a proposal to allow students with state-issued concealed handgun permits to carry their handguns on college campuses in Virginia... Virginia House Bill 1572 was proposed in 2005 by Shenandoah County, Va., Republican Del. Todd Gilbert after a Virginia Tech student with a state-issued concealed handgun permit was arrested and charged only with "unlawfully" carrying a handgun on campus. The bill would have prohibited state universities in Virginia from enacting "rules or regulations limiting or abridging the ability of a student who possesses a valid concealed handgun permit ... from lawfully carrying a concealed handgun."

After the proposal was squelched, Tech spokesman Larry Hincker was outspoken in his opposition to the bill:


"I'm sure the university community is appreciative of the General Assembly's actions," Hincker said on Jan. 31, 2006, "because this will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus."

Not exactly.


ONN reminds us that at least two school shootings have been stopped by armed civilians before police were able to arrive on the scene:

· January 9, 2002, Appalachian School of Law in Grundy, VA - 43 year old Peter Odighizuwa, who had flunked out of the small law school earlier in the week killed three people and wounded three others. Two law students - Tracy Bridges and Ted Besen - retrieved a handgun from Bridges' vehicle and held Odighizuwa at gun point for several minutes before police arrived...

· October 1, 1997, Pearl High School, Pearl, MS - 16 year old Luke Woodham carried a rifle onto the school campus, killed his ex-girlfriend and one of her friends and wounded seven other people. Assisstant Principal Joel Myrick retreived a handgun from his truck and held Woodham for police. It was later learned that the teenager had beaten and stabbed his own mother to death before the attack at the school.

In fact, the mainstream media has worked tirelessly to ensure that reports of these incidents omit the most crucial details. That, in short, armed and law-abiding citizens -- not police -- ended the situations.

As to the media coverage of [the Virginia] shooting... author John Lott notes that out of 280 news stories, only four mentioned the hero student's use of his gun to subdue the attacker. "Unfortunately," said Lott, "the coverage in this case was not unusual. In the other public school shootings where citizens with guns have stopped attacks, rarely do more than 1 percent of the news stories mention that citizens with guns stopped the attacks."

It is an unfortunate fact that police and security forces can't be everywhere.


Utah and Oregon specifically permit law-abiding citizens with concealed carry permits to possess firearms on state university property. Most other states prohibit CCW-holders from carrying firearms on campuses.

Erich Pratt, with the Virginia-based Gun Owners of America, calls that philosophy "idiocy," and notes, "[e]very [other] school campus in this nation is a 'gun free zone,' supposedly," Pratt bemoaned. "But, isn't it amazing that criminals, bad guys never obey those laws... [and] Isn't it interesting that that's the one state where we haven't heard of any school shootings."

Update at 20:40 ET: The Chicago Sun-Times has identified the gunman as a "Chinese National" according to The O'Reilly Factor. Coincidentally, China's XINHUA Online posted an update at around 18:30 ET:

Virginia Tech authorities and the police are investigating the identities of those killed as well as the gunman in the campus shooting rampage, a Virginia Tech spokeswoman told Xinhua on Monday... It is not immediately known if there is any Chinese students among the killed or wounded. U.S. media said there are a total of over 2,000 international students in the Virginia Tech and about half are from India and China.

Second Update: WaPo reports, "A range of sources, including federal and local officials with knowledge of the case, have told the Washington Post that the assailant was of Korean descent. His parents live in Fairfax County, one official there said."


Also see:
Atlas Shrugs, Blue Crab Boulevard, Captain's Quarters, Hang Right Politics, Hot Air, Jules Crittenden, Michelle Malkin, Rick Moran, RWN, Texas Rainmaker, Wizbang

A heated exchange for Hillary


ABC's News Blog reports on an interesting confrontation at a New Hampshire Town Hall meeting:

After fielding many questions ranging from mental health care to veteran affairs at a Town Hall Meeting in Hampton, NH, Senator Hillary Clinton received a heated question about Iraq. A woman who had traveled from New York asked Sen. Clinton if she had read the report given to her in 2002 on intelligence and the Iraq war.

Clinton said she had been briefed on the report, and the woman screamed back, "Did you read it?!" Notably uncomfortable, the Senator repeated that she had been briefed. This exchange went back and forth about three times.

The woman sat down and Clinton explained, "If I had known then what I know now, I never would have voted to give this President the authority." Clinton also said she believed she was giving the President the authority to send U.N. inspectors to Iraq...

Talk about disingenuous. I'm not sure who is more culpable here: Clinton for thinking people would believe a line that is provably baloney; or the folks who cheered her statement as if it reflected reality.

Sunday, April 15, 2007

Democrats' Latest Brainchild: a Department of Genocide



During the 2004 Presidential campaign, Dennis Kucinich had a brainstorm. Why not create a U.S. Department of Peace? Such an agency would be responsible for disarmament, consensus building, and the promotion of nonviolence worldwide.

Stunningly, Charlottesvillian reports that such a plan has now achieved party-wide currency with the introduction of a bill by Democrats. The bill would establish -- I'm serious here -- The Department of Peace and Nonviolence:

For those looking for a distillation, imagine a governmental agency responsible for advising on non-confrontational foreign policy options, establishing and enforcing new gun control measures, designing school curriculum, establishing and enforcing new legislation governing "hate crimes" and violence against animals, and my favorite, establishing a "Peace Academy," a four-year institution of higher learning modeled on our service academies. (Wait, doesn't the Ivy League already have like six of those?)

The bill -- H.R. 808 -- is a work of art. Idealistic, utopian, and nonsensical art, but art nonetheless.


Consider this snippet from Section 2 (Findings):

During the course of the 20th century, more than 100,000,000 people perished in wars, and now, at the dawn of the 21st century, violence seems to be an overarching theme in the world, encompassing personal, group, national, and international conflict, extending to the production of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons of mass destruction which have been developed for use on land, air, sea, and in space...

It would be hard to overstate the ignorance of the bill's authors as they blithely ignore the backdrop of one hundred million deaths.

A simple analysis would ask: how many of those deaths were caused by genocide incited by Nazis, Communists and Socialists who sought to suborn the rights of man to the rights of the state?


The answer would have been the vast majority: Stalin's pogroms, Hitler's genocide, Tojo's militaristic brand of Shintoism, Pol Pot's killing fields, etc.

This naive, guileless proposal suggests that Nazism, for instance, was an act of nature that a legal document with a Force majeure clause could somehow have remedied.


Only one approach could have and did stop the Nazi genocide: pure firepower backed by the will to use it. The free world marshalled a massive juggernaut of armed forces and leveraged a kill-or-be-killed mindset to obliterate the enemy.


Put simply, a thousand-year Reich would have been the result of a Department of Peace had it been in existence during the rise of Nazism.


Could a Department of Peace have stopped the Rape of Nanking, prevented the Nazis from fueling the ovens of Auschwitz with millions of innocents, or successfully negotiated with Pol Pot to halt the Khmer Rouge genocide?


The answer, for anyone other than a blithering idiot, is of course not.

The very real challenges of the 21st Century


If our current challenges were as simplistic and nebulous as H.R. 808 makes them out to be, such a bill might make sense. But, in fact, the threats facing the American brand of freedom are very real and very obvious.


In a 2006 post entitled An Unremarkable Declaration of War, I noted the de facto call to arms against the West by Iran's militaristic leadership:

"We have a strategy drawn up for the destruction of Anglo-Saxon civilization...

...Is it possible for us to witness a world without America and Zionism? ...you had best know that this... goal [is] attainable."



In a 2005 post entitled The Stockdale Paradox and the Modern Left, I described some of the uncomfortable realities facing the progressive left:

1: On show at [Iran's] annual military parade were thousands of troops and a range of hardware including six of Iran's Shahab-3 ballistic missiles, which sported banners saying "Death to America", "We will crush America under our feet" and "Israel must be wiped off the face of the earth".

2: In the first such statement by an Iranian president in nearly 20 years, Mahmood Ahmadinejad said his election would mark what he termed a new Islamic revolution. Ahmadinejad said such a revolution would spread throughout the world... "The era of oppression, hegemonic regimes, tyranny and injustice has reached its end."

3: [Al Qaeda] spokesman, Suleiman Abu Gheith, published an article on the alneda website that claimed: "We have the right to kill four million Americans - 2 million of them children..."

4: A university student from Egypt was ordered held without bond after prosecutors said they found a pilot's uniform, chart of Memphis International Airport and a DVD titled "How an Airline Captain Should Look and Act" in his apartment...

5: Four men, including the head of a radical Islamic prison gang, were indicted on federal charges of plotting terrorist attacks against military facilities, the Israeli Consulate and synagogues in Los Angeles...

6: Iran... resumed its work at the plant near Isfahan, where uranium oxide (called yellowcake) is converted to uranium hexafluoride gas... This gas is the feedstock for centrifuges that enrich uranium to varying degrees: 4 percent for power plants, 20 percent for research reactors and 90 percent or higher for weapons. This was a clear breach of Iran's agreement to suspend "all uranium enrichment related activities"...

'The Department of Misguided Naivete and World Genocide'



Perhaps a day will come when a Department of Peace will be a practical next step in the advancement of mankind. But so long as dedicated enemies of freedom circle about us, killing scores of innocents on a daily basis, and dedicating themselves to the acquisition of WMDs, pursuit of such a department is misguided at best and treasonous at worst.

If we were to properly name such an agency, it would be called the Department of Misguided Naivete and World Genocide.

I hesitate to call H.R. 808 brain flatulence (you know, because I'm too polite and civil), but that's precisely what it is.

Major hat tips: TigerHawk, Gateway Pundit, and Larwyn.
Also see: BlackFive, Castle Argghhh!, Daled Amos, Keith D. Milby, Say Anything, Solomonia, Sister Toldjah, War on Guns, WE Blog

Jason Whitlock pillories 'terrorists' Jackson and Sharpton


Kansas City Star columnist Jason Whitlock offered some strong words on MSNBC after his recent column raised eyebrows (hat tip: Macsmind).


Strong statements, to be sure, but ones certain to foment candid debate on the glorification of "playa culture" by record companies, recording artists, and entrepeneurs with divinity degrees.

Saturday, April 14, 2007

Personal Ad


I don't judge people by their looks, power or money, as long as there is some chemistry.

Cheaters and players need not apply because I'm not looking for games.

I'm not a Princess or a Barbie Doll... but look inside and you will find them.

Must enjoy: a bottle of wine on a moonlit night; occasional speculation about the meaning of legal briefs; travel to faraway counties; living on the public dole when necessary. Pessimists, blow-hards, freaks, wannabes, and hangers-on need not apply. (hat tip: Don Surber)

Associated Press Parade of Stupidity, Chapter 7,410


The AP's Woody Baird provides an in-depth look into the corruption case rocking the state of Tennessee. John Ford, a member of the politically powerful Ford family, was caught on video tape in a compromising position. After reviewing a bill that would benefit a company he thought was real, he accepted cash payments that eventually reached $55,000.

In the 14-paragraph version of the story (the most common one, it would appear), Baird omits one teensy little detail: which political party Ford and his family represent.

That would be the Democratic Party, of course. I'm sure Baird just forgot to mention it.

Controlled explosions my a**, part II



Another one for the 9/11 "truthers" to contemplate: a video of a government test in which an F-4 Phantom crashes into a concrete wall (hat tip: Eject! Eject! Eject!).