A lot of people have wrote in to describe the strange error message that pops up when people try to comment. I've seen it myself. It goes like this...

An error occurred:

Invalid [] range "f-b" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/(babes|porn|boobs)

[\w\-_.]*\.[a-z]{2,}|(cialis|meridia\b)[\w\-_.]*\.[a-z]{2,}|(diet|penis)....

at extlib/jayallen/Blacklist.pm line 3098.

Not sure what that means. I think it might just be the spam-filter finally deciding to cut to the chase and simply ban all comments.

I'm looking into adding a holoscan comment system, because this is just getting nuts. If anyone knows of a better one -- maybe with a sign-in system that will actually remember names, and maybe with registering, to keep out the spam and such -- please let me know. By email, of course, as you can't comment.

Posted by: Ace at 10:19 AM | Comments (6)
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The snake threatens a pilot in an effort to provide "synergistic buzz" for Sam Jackson's coming movie.

"I was just doin' my part," said the snake, a 22 year old student from La Jolla. "Snakes on a Plane is the 'Brokeback Mountain' for serpent-kind."

Monty Coles was 3,000 feet in the air when he discovered a stowaway peeking out at him from the plane's instrument panel — a 4 1/2-foot black snake.

...

"Nothing in any of the manuals ever described anything like this," the 62-year-old Cross Lanes resident said. But the advice given 25 years earlier from his flight instructor immediately came to mind: "No matter what happens, fly the plane."

An attempt to swat the snake only resulted in it falling to Coles' feet under the rudder pedals. It then darted to the other side of the cockpit.

While maintaining control of the single-engine plane with one hand, Coles grabbed the reptile behind its head with his other.

"There was no way I was letting that thing go. It coiled all around my arm, and its tail grabbed hold of a lever on the floor and started pulling," Coles said.

Thanks to Randy.

Posted by: Ace at 09:01 AM | Comments (2)
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So where does a Muslim refugee go to get away from genocide?

An Arab Muslim country perhaps? Nope!

Eurabia? Guess again!

How about the Zionist entity? You got it!

Shlomo Reisman remembers vividly from his childhood the visage of Jewish refugee kids after World War II. They sneaked into pre-state Israel illegally, defying a ban by the British authorities.

"They came here without anything," says Mr. Reisman. "Without underwear, in shorts, with torn shoes."

Now, a new group of refugees is slipping into the country illegally - a mix of Muslims and Christians from a country that's officially at war with Israel.

Wait it gets better!

The flow of refugees to Israel has picked up over the past six months since 27 Sudanese asylum seekers were killed late December in clashes with Egyptian police at a sit-in demonstration at a UN refugee agency office in Cairo.

"I wasn't protected by the UN in Egypt. I was afraid that my visa had expired and they would take me back to Sudan," says Deng, a Sudanese refugee who paid $600 to a Bedouin guide to sneak him into Israel from the Egyptian Sinai desert. He received the money from friends living in Australia. "I was expecting to be protected. I am a refugee."

He will mark soon his first anniversary in an Israeli jail, a year in which he's had no contact with four daughters he left behind in Sudan. "Prison is a prison, but it's better here than the jail in Sudan or life in Egypt," he says.

That's right folks, its safer to be a Muslim in an Israeli jail than to be "protected" by the UN in Egypt!

Posted by: Tanker at 08:35 AM | Comments (3)
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It looks like the African-American Ketchup Queen is having to send some of the "little people" to the unemployment line.

Ketchup maker H.J. Heinz Co., under pressure from investor Nelson Peltz to improve its performance, said on Thursday it would cut 8 percent of its work force as part of a move to increase spending on the development of new products and on marketing.

Heinz said it expects to cut 2,700 jobs and exit 15 plants in 2007 to cut costs. Another five plants could be closed in 2008, it said.

I'm not an economist, but I do play one on TV. Heinz's problems are definitely Heinz's problems. You can't pin this on the President or the economy!

WASHINGTON, June 2, U.S. non-farm payroll employment rose 75,000 in May to leave the nation's unemployment rate steady at 4.6 percent, even as wages kept rising.

Posted by: Tanker at 07:28 AM | Comments (25)
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Or so Jack says, contradicting my assertion that Giuliani had not taken a strong position on the immigration issue.

Personally, I think a lot of the positions he took as mayor of New York can be walked away from. Your mileage may differ, of course. Also, this really doesn't speak to the current issues-- he's dealing here with immigrants already in the country. He could -- if he were smart and wanted to be president, which I think he is and and he does -- join with the security-firsters.

But here's the dirt:

"Two days ago I announced that the City of New York has filed suit against the federal government. We are challenging a provision of the recently enacted federal Welfare and Immigration Law....Our lawsuit contends that the new federal law violates the Tenth Amendment of the United States Constitution by invalidating New York City's "Executive Order 124."

"For those who may not know, "Executive Order 124" is New York City's policy regarding undocumented immigrants. This order was issued seven years ago by Mayor Ed Koch and then later reissued by Mayor Dinkins and then by me. "Executive Order 124" protects undocumented immigrants in New York City from being reported to the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service while they are using City services that are crucial for their health and safety, and critical for the health and safety of the entire city."

That's from here.

Jack says he has a lot of that "baggage" stuff I said a candidate could only have so much of, too.

Additionally, he is a big time gun grabber which will go over real big in most red states.

[quoting]And Giuliani doesn’t shy away from such questions, either. He is enthusiastically opposed to respecting American citizens’ Second Amendment rights, and supports gay rights, women’s right to abortion, and the “rights” of illegal immigrants.

That's from Intellectual Conservative.

Again, he was, you know, mayor of the most (or second or third most) city in the country. If he didn't adopt most of those positions, he never would have been mayor at all, and NYC would still be in the grips of ever-escalating crime.

He chose one or two big things he could possibly accomplish and he accomplished them. It seems to me rather far-fetched to have expected him to change New York City into a Red State county.

Still, I suppose we'll be having this argument until he fleshes out exactly what his take on these issues is now or gets trounced in the early primaries.

Related: How liberal is NYC? Well, a former NYC official of some sort, and now state comptroller, just "joked" that Charles Schumer should "put a bullet between Bush's eyes."

Funny stuff, huh?

Look, when you're a missionary bringing the Good Book to the pagans, you can be excused for taking a few liberties with the religion to get them to at least partially convert, you know?

Posted by: Ace at 02:04 PM | Comments (30)
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She's wrong. Has she forgotten the man she once worked for?

First, her take:

more...

Posted by: Ace at 11:09 AM | Comments (75)
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Snopes reports that Cindy Sheehan claims she paid for the headstone, even though I've read other accounts that said that the rest of the family -- i.e., not Cindy -- was now taking responsbility for finally putting up the headstone that Saint Cindy couldn't be bothered with.

This doesn't sound like it was approved by Cindy:

"Our Casey," reads an inscription on the front. "Ever faithful, kind, and gentle, good son, beloved brother, brave soldier, dear friend, you loved your family and lived your life serving others to the end." Six icons grace the other side, representing a military insignia, the theater, Eagle Scouts, Van Halen, the World Wrestling Federation and Superman.

No "Bush Lied, Casey Died"? I can't say Cindy had nothing to do with the headstone, but it sure doesn't sound like the sort of thing she'd put on her son's grave. It displays a respect for the military, and a sense of humor, that I just don't think Peace Mom possesses.

Thanks to the Skinner Sphere.

Posted by: Ace at 09:56 AM | Comments (47)
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God bless her heart.

Palmer developed the idea for the [Cornhole Classic] soon after being introduced to... cornhole while living in Cincinnati. “Shae and I got hooked on... cornhole right after we moved out here. We have wanted to do an event that incorporates the sport for the past few years so we are excited that it’s finally going to happen,” said Palmer.

You can read more about Shae Palmer in this month's issue of The Most Awesome Wife In The Whole Wide World. (Yeah, Norm MacDonald joke. So what? He's not using it right now.)

Thanks to Jimmy Page, who I used to know back on Slate's forums.

Update: An Artist's Conception of Shae Palmer: Or at least what I imagine she might look like.

I expect these will be even more popular than caps reading "Bikini Inspector #69:"

I have a question. Cornhole, the game, seems to be a recent invention. Whereas "cornhole," the slang term for, well, an unnatural sex act, has been around for decades.

I would understand if Cornhole, the game, had been around for a long time, and the term was appropriated as prison-slang for a bit of shower-room fun. And then those who played the innocent form of Cornhole refused to cede the name to the potty-mouths.

But that doesn't seem to be what happened. The naughty version of cornhole has been around forever, and yet they decided to name this fun little game for families and kids after the really hot part of The Shawshank Redemption.

More on cornhole from PlayCornhole, home of the American Cornhole Association, and the Ohio Cornhole Company, which offers an "Assurance of Quality" for its cornhole.

Because no one wants their cornhole to be substandard in quality.

Thanks to Registan for those two links.

Posted by: Ace at 09:23 AM | Comments (27)
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94% of Republicans support the searches. It's all part of Denny Hastert's secret plan to piss off every American voter in the country.

Does anyone else note a whiff of self-interested hypocrisy in Congressional Republicans supporting Bush, properly, on various warrantless eavesdropping/call tracking programs, and yet balking at having their offices searched even with a judicially-issued, legal warrant?

The Congressmen have a slight point about a narrow issue. The Speech and Debate Clause says they shall not be questioned by anyone for any statement they make in regard to legislative activity. Bush's compromise -- which is really not as much of a sell-out as some would have it -- is that the seized documents will be examined by a neutral panel of investigators not associated with the case, to determine if various papers are relevant to the investigation, or merely have to do with lawful legislative activity. A judge will decide situations where there is a dispute.

The only constitutional leg Congress has to stand on comes from the Speech and Debate Clause. And yes, an expansive reading of that clause would, I guess, suggest that a congressman's papers cannot be searched willy-nilly by the executive, as that constitutes a violation of his right to be free of legal hassels in communications he makes in his lawful capacity as legislator.

But.

Offices themselves are not sacrosanct, and it is hardly a workable reading of the Clause to suggest that any papers a congressman may have cannot be subpeonaed or searched or seized in a lawful investigation simply because any of them might have something to do with his legislative activity.

Hey, who's to say that he didn't have notes for a speech written down on some of those $100 bills he had stashed in his fridge? Since he might have been using his bribe money to make notes about upcoming votes, that means we can't seize those bills too, right?

Add that to the fact that the stupid greedy son-of-a-bitch was already caught trying to hide papers during a previous search by the FBI.

I think Hastert and other congressmen should have softly raised some concerns about the search, and sought clarifications from the FBI on these matters. As well as softly voicing the concern that seizing a congressman's papers might constitute, in some cases, an arguable violation of the Speech and Debate Clause.

But to go nuclear over the issue like this?

Unacceptable. If these guys want immunity from all criminal process during the duration of their terms as officials, they should run for president of France.

Posted by: Ace at 09:13 AM | Comments (53)
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Sort of "marriage with benefits," and I'm not talking about the ease of opening a joing checking account. How very European of him.

As a commenter at Althouse says, St. Andrew of the Sacred Heart-Ache just set the case for gay marriage back a little.

Posted by: Ace at 08:22 AM | Comments (35)
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