Alito hearings in Jan
I have seen many folks on the right bemoan the hearings for Judge Alito being pushed out to January. It occurs to me that it might actually work to the Republican's favor. Any or all of the following may happen between now and Jan. 9, 2006.
1. Having gotten a judge he seems happy with, Tom Delay may get the ridiculous charges against him thrown out.
2. I suspect that the investigation into Bill Frist's stock transactions will conclude with a big yawn.
3. The "phase 2" report that the Dems through their tantrum over will be published with a resounding yawn.
4. Karl Rove still won't be indicted and claims that it is coming any day will continue to sound more and more hollow.
5. The "centrist/soft" Republicans have to go home and see real people who actually vote.
I don't think the timing of the hearings affect the outcome. Judge Alito will be confirmed. The question is what, if anything, happens to or with the filibuster. If the only topic that the wacko lefty Dems have to talk about to the microphones when they come out of the hearings is the Judge or Iraq they are going to be much less bold.
If all of these things do happen you might see something never before seen.... Chucky Schumer walking past a microphone and not saying anything. Probably not, but it is a happy thought for the day :-)
Dry Bones on the French Intifada
The cartoon is
here.
The more interesting thing on this one is the description of his process below.
The idea for this cartoon was not that creative.
Sort of simplistic.
I scribbled out the text while sitting in a barbershop.
But I needed to see some photos of the riots in order to draw the cartoon.
"Easy" I thought, so when I got back to my studio and computer, I jumped to a great site called newseum that shows the front pages of newspapers from 45 different countries.
I was certain (foolish me) that the front pages of the world's press would be covered with photos of the "French Intifada"... but on the 7th day of Paris burning practically no paper had any front page note of the riots.
My next step was to check news reports and found numerous versions of an AP story (with no photos) which focused on the plight of the poor "victims", like Farah:
Why are there so few pictures of this? Is the French government preventing journalists from getting them? Are they too afraid to go there and get them? Do the pictures show something they don't want seen? In mainland Europe with a "news event" that has been going on for over a week we should have lots and lots of pictures, don't you think? This is happening just outside Paris for goodness sake, not in the middle of the Sahara Desert.
Dry Bones on the French Intifada
The cartoon is
here.
The more interesting thing on this one is the description of his process below.
The idea for this cartoon was not that creative.
Sort of simplistic.
I scribbled out the text while sitting in a barbershop.
But I needed to see some photos of the riots in order to draw the cartoon.
"Easy" I thought, so when I got back to my studio and computer, I jumped to a great site called newseum that shows the front pages of newspapers from 45 different countries.
I was certain (foolish me) that the front pages of the world's press would be covered with photos of the "French Intifada"... but on the 7th day of Paris burning practically no paper had any front page note of the riots.
My next step was to check news reports and found numerous versions of an AP story (with no photos) which focused on the plight of the poor "victims", like Farah:
Why are there so few pictures of this? Is the French government preventing journalists from getting them? Are they too afraid to go there and get them? Do the pictures show something they don't want seen? In mainland Europe with a "news event" that has been going on for over a week we should have lots and lots of pictures, don't you think? This is happening just outside Paris for goodness sake, not in the middle of the Sahara Desert.
What's the point?
The Senate Dems threw a tantrum this week on a stalled investigation about? How can this help them?
Powerline asks the questions and makes some good points.
Wilson debacle
Scott at Powerline has a great post where he starts praising Sen. Zell Miller and then moves to quoting
Victoria Toensing (sub may be req) on the relevant facts and timelines:
• First: The CIA sent her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, to Niger on a sensitive mission regarding WMD. He was to determine whether Iraq had attempted to purchase yellowcake, an essential ingredient for nonconventional weapons. However, it was Ms. Plame, not Mr. Wilson, who was the WMD expert. Moreover, Mr. Wilson had no intelligence background, was never a senior person in Niger when he was in the State Department, and was opposed to the administration's Iraq policy. The assignment was given, according to the Senate Intelligence Committee, at Ms. Plame's suggestion.
• Second: Mr. Wilson was not required to sign a confidentiality agreement, a mandatory act for the rest of us who either carry out any similar CIA assignment or who represent CIA clients.
• Third: When he returned from Niger, Mr. Wilson was not required to write a report, but rather merely to provide an oral briefing. That information was not sent to the White House. If this mission to Niger were so important, wouldn't a competent intelligence agency want a thoughtful written assessment from the "missionary," if for no other reason than to establish a record to refute any subsequent misrepresentation of that assessment? Because it was the vice president who initially inquired about Niger and the yellowcake (although he had nothing to do with Mr. Wilson being sent), it is curious that neither his office nor the president's were privy to the fruits of Mr. Wilson's oral report.
• Fourth: Although Mr. Wilson did not have to write even one word for the agency that sent him on the mission at taxpayer's expense, over a year later he was permitted to tell all about this sensitive assignment in the New York Times. For the rest of us, writing about such an assignment would mean we'd have to bring our proposed op-ed before the CIA's Prepublication Review Board and spend countless hours arguing over every word to be published. Congressional oversight committees should want to know who at the CIA permitted the publication of the article, which, it has been reported, did not jibe with the thrust of Mr. Wilson's oral briefing. For starters, if the piece had been properly vetted at the CIA, someone should have known that the agency never briefed the vice president on the trip, as claimed by Mr. Wilson in his op-ed.
• Fifth: More important than the inaccuracies is the fact that, if the CIA truly, truly, truly had wanted Ms. Plame's identity to be secret, it never would have permitted her spouse to write the op-ed. Did no one at Langley think that her identity could be compromised if her spouse wrote a piece discussing a foreign mission about a volatile political issue that focused on her expertise? The obvious question a sophisticated journalist such as Mr. Novak asked after "Why did the CIA send Wilson?" was "Who is Wilson?" After being told by a still-unnamed administration source that Mr. Wilson's "wife" suggested him for the assignment, Mr. Novak went to Who's Who, which reveals "Valerie Plame" as Mr. Wilson's spouse.
• Sixth: CIA incompetence did not end there. When Mr. Novak called the agency to verify Ms. Plame's employment, it not only did so, but failed to go beyond the perfunctory request not to publish. Every experienced Washington journalist knows that when the CIA really does not want something public, there are serious requests from the top, usually the director. Only the press office talked to Mr. Novak.
• Seventh: Although high-ranking Justice Department officials are prohibited from political activity, the CIA had no problem permitting its deep cover or classified employee from making political contributions under the name "Wilson, Valerie E.," information publicly available at the FEC.
Dems kill Online Freedom of Speech Act
Backed by, you guessed it, the MSM and their supporters. It is always amazing that the libs swear they support freedom of speech.... so long as they control the media. Thomas Paine would be proud. (HT:
Powerline)
Dems kill Online Freedom of Speech Act
Backed by, you guessed it, the MSM and their supporters. It is always amazing that the libs swear they support freedom of speech.... so long as they control the media. Thomas Paine would be proud. (HT:
Powerline)
Man kills burglar in home
This happens periodically here in the states. This time it happened in Melbourne, Australia. What is different about this one?
AN INTRUDER has been killed and his accomplice injured by a sword-wielding man whose south-west Melbourne home they broke into early today, police said.
He didn't shoot them, he went after them with a sword. Good for him. It hurts more.
Unhinged
Just finished watching a Dayside segment. Michelle Malkin was on promoting her book. As a counter balance they had some liberal writer from Vanity Fair. He attempted to make the point that there was nothing liberal or conservative about public figures (in this case Michelle) getting despicably slurred. Everybody in the public eye gets that.
Michelle said fine. The black Democrats in the state house pelted the black Republican governor of Maryland Michael Steele with Oreo Cookies saying he was white on the inside. She then said that she hadn't seen the mainstream press or anyone from the Democratic Party denounce it. The Vanity Fair weenie wouldn't denounce it either but kept digging the hole deeper. I have to find the transcript and post it.
I think Michelle actually overreached. He was Lt. Gov. at that time, and he wasn't pelted by other black politicians. As far as I can tell from a quick search,
the incident in question is that at a debate when running for Lt. Gov. with Gov. Erlich (they won) supporters of the opposition passed out Oreos to the crowd.... saying they represented Steele. This is despicable and the Democratic Party did not denounce it, but I find no reference to him being "pelted" which would have been worse.
Update:
Michelle was referring to this article in the
Washington Times today where Lt. Gov Steele was apparently pelted with the Oreos...... I assume Howard Dean, Bill Clinton, Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, and Harry Reid will be on the national news tonight denouncing this behaviour.
Another Legend has passed
The first Blue Angel,
Captain Roy "Butch" Voris, Ret. passed away in his home.
Frist says he has the votes
Carol Platt Liebau points us to an article by
Jack Kelly at Irish Pennants. Jack says that Senator Frist has told Tony Snow that he has the votes for the Constitutional/Byrd Option.
On seeing the way Frist's eyes were popping out of his head when he walked out of the Senate floor this afternoon after Reid's little stunt I had one thought. In about 10 minutes his entire staff is going to be making phone calls, impolite ones, and counting noses. While Republican Senate Caucus rules, unlike the Democrat ones, do not allow the leadership to remove posts on Senate Committees from colleagues who don't go along with the party line, the Majority Leader of the US Senate can still wield a number of pretty big sticks when he wants to. It is rarely done by Republicans but one might say that these are "extraodinary circumstances".
Jack's post was at 3:31pm EST. He points to a partial transcript on
Powerline tagged 1:31 (I think CST). I don't know when the Tony Snow show spot was aired. It is entirely possible that this statement was made before Reid insulted him.
How far over the cliff are the radical left wingers going to take the Democratic Party before they decide that it is not real smart to play hardball when you are consistently losing national elections? Do the stop when the Republicans have 60 Senators? 65? Since JFK the Democrats have only won the Presidency with one guy (Carter doesn't count as a loaf of bread would have beaten Ford, Ford lost an election, Carter didn't win one). That guy, Bill Clinton, ran as a moderate, twice. He governed slightly farther left than he campaigned but he was not a radical left winger in the mold of Teddy "hiccup" Kennedy and Dick "my brain has been surgically removed" Durbin.
I believe in a two party system as it keeps the country in balance. Each party will have people leaning to their edges. They shouldn't be in charge at a national level. When you put the radicals in charge you marginalize the party nationally and in fairly short order the other party holds all the cards. Reid has not only overplayed his hand, he keeps counter-raising. If they don't get a clue the Republicans will hold the presidency, a supermajority in the House, and 60 Senators after the 2008 election. As much as I generally agree with the Republicans more than the Democrats it is always good to remember that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The country works best when compromise is required.
Bizarre footage
Apparently Wilma left a cow in a residential neighborhood.
Alive and in the pool!
Is this a game of chicken?
Prof. Bainbridge thinks it is a game of chicken. He also has identified the correct analogy to throwing the steering wheel out the window.
Two members of the Spineless Seven Republicans from the "Gang of 14" have already said they will vote for the constitutional option if the Dems filibuster.
Let us do a little math. The Republicans have 55 seats and the Vice President who would presumably vote for the constitutional option in the event of a 50/50 tie. The odds are pretty good that this means there are, therefore, 45 locked in seats to defeat the constitutional option. So the Dems need 6 Republicans to cross the line and support them or they must swerve because they need 51 votes. There were only 7 willing to support the "Gang of 14" document to avoid the fight last time. The right wing has shown its teeth (on this particular issue no less) recently which had not happened the last time.
7 - 2 = 5
5 < 6
At this point they need at least one non-gang Republican to cross the line. And every gang member we can get to state that this is not an "extraordinary circumstance" makes it one vote harder. And then Reid pulls an insulting political stunt today. I have a feeling that Bill Frist is not in a mood to be nice to his fellow Republicans unwilling to announce that this is not an extraordinary circumstance.
I think Reid just officially overplayed his hand.
Hugh back to being Hugh
Hugh Hewitt has a great take on the
Democrat's political stunt today.
Tom Delay judge removed
According to the Judge who presided over the hearing of his removal the following is the standard:
Perkins had declined to withdraw from the case, and prosecutor Rick Reed argued at the hearing that DeLay must prove that a member of the public would have a "reasonable doubt that the judge is impartial" before Perkins could be removed.
This guy contributed to MoveOn.Org. The trial is going to cover the legality of some political money moving by the state of Texas and national Republican Party. One of the people on trial was the Republican House Leader.
What was this guy thinking when he thought the public wouldn't have a reasonable doubt that he would be impartial. Notice, you do not need to prove he would be, just that there is a reasonable doubt. So some retired judge has to come out of retirement to tell him something that is utterly obvious to anybody with a brain.
Judges are elected in Texas and are free to contribute to candidates and political parties. DeGuerin said no one contends Perkins did anything wrong, but "to protect the integrity" of the judicial system, he should not preside over a trial for someone to whom he is opposed politically.
And to prevent looking like a buffoon you step aside politely and don't force the issue into a court room. People respect that.
Quotes from a
My Way News article.
Dry Bones agrees
I didn't make it over to Dry Bones yesterday, but by some miracle his topic of the day was the same as mine. Go check out the cartoon for a
humorous look at the Charles visit. Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words.
Then look at
today's which made me crack up.
While I am in disagreement mode with Brits...
I have to disagree with my buddy Richi's preference for governmental involvement in getting ISP's to work on the "bot" problem. We generally agree on technology issues and this case is no different. We agree about the technology solutions, I just disagree that the free market isn't capable of enforcing them.
His post, entitled "
Governments should offer ISPs incentives to clean up zombies" is entirely correct on the technical assessment of the problem. What I disagree with is that the government needs to get involved.
The problem, stated well by Richi is:
Most spam is sent by zombies -- PCs infected with viruses, which allow spammers to remotely control them.
There are two things that come to mind when I read this statement.
1. If we could just convince the world to get off of the Microsoft operating system, and in this case Outlook as an application, the world would be a better place.
2. The ISP and corporate partners could eliminate this problem quite easily.
I have a significant personal bias on both, just for the sake of professional disclaimer.....
SPs are in a great position to slash the number of zombies operating today, so why the lack of action? Basically, ISPs have little incentive to identify zombies and help their users clean up their PCs. It requires an investment in time and technology for which there's little payback in their business model. Margins are razor-thin in a competitive, commodity marketplace. Few consumers will choose an ISP based on how good they are at cutting off infected PCs.
This is where we disagree. Most of my customers in the large ISP space and a remarkable number of the large corporate customers and government customers recognize that they have a roll to play in limiting the effect of "spam bots" as we call them and "zombies" as Richi does. There are a few small steps that all large mail carriers should be doing. Smaller carriers have an obligation to the Internet community to decide when they become targets and act accordingly.
What are those steps?
1. Publish a list of their IP address space and the IP addresses of their outbound mail servers.
2. Force customers/users to do authenticated send to their outbound routers.
3. Prohibit customers/users to send to the standard SMTP ports, with the exception of the published list of authenticated outbound servers defined in #1 and #2. My ISP does not need to prohibit me from sending via .Mac as it has a known IP list and requires authentication to send, as an example.
4. Prohibit inbound messages from IP addresses that are contained within #1 but are not coming from authorized outbound SMTP sender IPs as described therein.
5. Monitor the send rate of customers (authenticated) and shut down access to customers who exceed reasonable limits until they phone in and the ISP can verify that the sends are not "spam".
6. Blacklist IP carriers that do not follow the above steps and generate significant amounts of "spam".
Many of my customers (meaning large ISPs and large corporations) in the email space have enacted most or all of the above without government intervention because it is bad business to do otherwise. If you are blacklisted for being an open relay or a source of spam bots it has very real consequences to a public or private carrier. This is both the carrot and the stick. If you play nice we will respect and trade with you. If you do not, we will punish you into submission.
In my experience the large ISPs are some of the most proactive entities on the planet in trying to prevent you from being spammed.
BTW, I am still waiting to comment on
this post of Richi's. For the wierdos out there who are into our inside baseball, I will comment after he publishes the second half. I agree with most of what is in the article and I don't want to expound on it and then find that my "extension" was part of his second half.
And why do we care?
Much was made today on the upcoming visit of the Prince of Wales to the US for the first time after 9/11. The big "topic" was that the Prince intends to "advise" the US government that they should be more "tolerant" of Muslims. And I should care why? With all due deference and respect to my many British friends....
1. We fought a war that we won a long time ago to not be governed by a monarchy.
2. The subjects of Great Britain long ago limited the role of the monarchy officially to ceremonial roles and the governance of The Church of England.
3. Very few people outside of Great Britain (and not all that many inside it) personally respects the man.
4. His own mother didn't show up to his wedding..... not because it was inconvenient. Even his own mother doesn't respect him and she may very well pass him up for his "birth right" to the throne. If she doesn't, some suspect that the House of Lords will.
5. The vast majority of people around the rational world have great respect for his mother.
not to mention.... Ladies please excuse the extreme maleness of this one, I was born with a Y chromosome and I cannot be held responsible....
6. While married to Diana he was voluntarily sleeping with Camilla. He is therefore, for the purpose of judgment by any rational male in the free world, certifiably insane.
And I am supposed to care about his opinion on anything why? This is a total non-story. If he really is pompous enough to come over the pond and try to tell President Bush how to do his job, a man that the elected leader of his own country publicly, whole-heartedly, and to his own political detriment, supports on the war on terror.... one has to believe that the Queen will be forced to do something that no mother in her right mind wants to do. If she is who many, including myself, believe that she is she will be forced to publicly humiliate her own son by denying him the throne.
The throne does not get into other nations politics. It is part of the deal the throne made to not be decimated when our friends in Great Britain decided that rule by the people was a hip idea (after we kicked their butts and proved it to be a good idea, sorry I couldn't resist).
I have great personal respect for the Queen. Part of the reason that I have that respect is that she would never travel abroad and tell other governments how to deal with serious threats to their own national security. Further, she has the judgment to realize that this country is the most tolerant country in the world when it comes to minority religions. Her embarrassment of a son probably does not realize this and I suspect that a majority of the citizens of this republic recognize him for what he is.... an embarrassment to his almost saintly mother..... and we care about as much what his opinions are as we care whether the 12 year old kid down the street has a girlfriend.
If the elected leader of the British people, in this case Tony Blair, wants to venture across the pond and give us advice on domestic, foreign, or security issues, we should listen. We should not defer to that advise as a reflex, but we should seriously consider the advice of the elected leader of one of our foremost allies. We should ignore Charles as the pompous idiot that he is, and feel sympathy for his mother and the terrible position that this embarrassment for a man has put her in.
Oprah on Rosa Parks
I caught part of the coverage of the memorial service today. I wasn't in front of the computer at the time so I don't have an exact quote. That said, Oprah said something that intrigued me. The beginning was just what you would expect from one of the richest women in the world. Without Rosa Parks it would not have been possible for me to achieve many of the things I have. I am in awe, etc. But then she said:
"I feel obligated to honor your sacrifice with success."Again, the quote may not be exact but the sentiment is correct. She is not only grateful for the opportunities she had as a result of the work of Rosa Parks and her peers, she feels obliged to be as successful as possible to show it. It is an interesting insight into the thought processes of a self made woman who has achieved so much.
Michelle outs the NYT again
Michelle Malkin has a great post on the NYT selectively using part of a letter written by a now-dead soldier to his girlfriend to be read in the event of his death. You have to read the whole thing to appreciate just how intentionally dishonest the reporter was. (HT:
Powerline)
Aussie Police told to Show Tolerance for Wife Beating
LGF points to this
article in the Herald Sun about the Australian police being told to be "understanding of the traditions, ways of life and habits of Muslims."
And it gets better:
They are told it would be appreciated in cases of domestic violence if police consult the local Muslim religious leader who will work against “fragmenting the family unit”.
If I were a cop I would have to respond to such silliness.
"I understand the traditions and habits of wife beaters. Unfortunately for wife beaters it is against the law in our country to actively practice some of their traditions. We must either be respectful of all traditions or none. In my case, my people had a tradition of the local male population escorting wife beaters out into the woods in the middle of the night. The government made that illegal too since most of them were never heard from again, so now we just arrest them. If you will agree to be respectful of my tradition I will happily be respectful of theirs."
