If Fallujah was hit, you must acquit:

One of the best ways to repair such a damaged society is a systematic judicial investigation of the old regime's crimes. That should be followed by a scrupulously fair trial of those found personally accountable. In the case of Iraq, where legal training and appointments had been bent for decades to the political whims of the dictatorship, that should have called for enlisting help from international legal experts and using relevant precedents in international criminal law. The Bush administration and its Iraqi allies strongly opposed that step because it would have excluded the death penalty.

Ah. The Times is even against the death penalty for Saddam Hussein.

Stop telling us about "international precedents." This is just code for "the rest of the world is more progressive than America, and we should listen to them."

And this is frankly baffling:

Finally, this prosecution would have been conducted differently if it were a serious attempt to uncover the murky lines of authority and responsibility within the Baathist regime and establish Mr. Hussein's clear personal responsibility for at least some of the roughly 300,000 murders committed in his name. It would have built up its case methodically, from the field operatives carrying out the killings to the officials who gave them their orders and on up the chain of command to Mr. Hussein himself.

Instead, today's trial will begin with what prosecutors and politicians decided was the easiest case to prove, a mass execution in a Shiite town that followed a failed 1982 assassination attempt against Mr. Hussein. These killings ought to be prosecuted. But if the aim is to uncover the broader criminal conspiracy in order to punish the truly guilty and absolve those guilty only by association, other trials should have come first.

Imagine that! Prosecutors going for the crime that is most easily proven! And this is no tax-avoidance rap like they got Capone on; this is a MASS MURDER with orders PERSONALLY SIGNED by Saddam Hussein.

Anyone get the feeling the New York Times would like this detailed, exhaustive investigation to go on long enough so that the trial occurs after the 2006 elections?

I question the timing.

Embarassing. Make no mistake-- there is a segment out there, a lot of them at the Times apparently, that has come to love Saddam Hussein as a plucky underdog with a can-do attitude, sort of like Rocky Balboa except with acid-baths and neurotoxin attacks on civilian populations.

Posted by: Ace at 09:03 AM | Comments (10)
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The guy they pick will undoubtedly turn out better than the guy from Exxxtreme. (Although Rest in Peace (aka Make Love, Not War) rocks.)

CBS brings back its successful Rock Star: INXS for a second season, rumor has it the next band in line is California's Van Halen.

This summer's inaugural season was a ratings winner for CBS and a reputation enhancer for reality TV producer Mark Burnett -- and it gave INXS a new singer, a new hit single, an upcoming album and a world tour.

CBS has remained hush-hush on whether Rock Star will return next summer, but MTV reports if it does, look for Eddie and Alex Van Halen along with bassist Michael Anthony in the judges' chairs originally filed by INXS.

Oh happy day.

Now let's hear you jackasses knock the show for featuring a "has-been" band.

Okay, so they are a little has-been. But they're, you know, f'n' Van Halen, aren't they?

Can't wait -- CANNOT wait -- for Rock Star: Blind Melon.

Thanks to Dr. Reo Symes.

Thanks to zetetic for the correction on the "Rest in Peace" title.

Posted by: Ace at 08:56 AM | Comments (21)
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They just never got the main point: You don't need a shoestring, semi-professional media outlet when you've already got ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, NPR, PBS, the NYT, the WaPo, the LAT, etc....

It's endlessly amusing to me that the left imagined its savior to be the hyper-charismatic, endlessly talented Al Franken. You know, the guy who worked at Saturday Night Live for ninety-three years before Lorne Michaels made him a cast member.

Passed over again and again in favor of such greats as Brad Hall, Terry Sweeney, Randy Quaid (!) and Anthony Michael Hall, after he traded steroids for humor.

But this was the guy. This was the franchise. The guy who had exactly two funny bits on his three-hundred-forty-two year history on the show -- "The Al Franken Decade" and the first six thousand Stuart Smalley sketches.

This legend was going to give birth to a new industry and turn American politics around 180 degrees.

What, they couldn't get Jon Lovitz? At least he could do that Master Thespian bit.

When The New York Times Was Covering Air America Every Day Of The Week... You know, before they actually debuted, before the network was revealed to be a corrupt embarassment, there was talk by liberals that every day people would say at the water cooler, "Did you hear what Al Franken said today?"

My prediction was borne out: The Top Ten Things People Are More Likely to Say Than "Did You Hear What Al Franken Said Today?"

You may have to do a search for "Franken," as the link just seems to take you to the top of the archived page.

Posted by: Ace at 08:23 AM | Comments (10)
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Hey, remember when the Republican party was all about cutting government spending and getting out of the way of the states, giving them the flexibility to attack problems? You can do it. Think back. (C'mon, try harder.)

Well, looks like Florida and the Feds just got a little 'old school':

The Bush administration approved a sweeping Medicaid plan for Florida on Wednesday that limits spending for many of the 2.2 million beneficiaries there and gives private health plans new freedom to limit benefits. ...

In his state of the state speech to the Florida Legislature in March, [Jeb] Bush called for transforming Medicaid, saying it was unsustainable in its current form.
"Over the last six years," he said, "Medicaid costs have increased an average of more than 13 percent annually. State revenues grew an average of 6 percent a year."

The plan, to be put into effect over five years, will significantly increase the use of managed care. Questions and answers prepared by federal officials say that a principal aim of the Florida program is "to bring predictability to Medicaid spending and to reduce Medicaid's rate of growth."

I dunno, maybe this isn’t all that ‘radical.’ If you read the details, it just sounds like they’re turning over to HMO’s some of the benefit decisions, allowing citizens to choose from different packages, essentially privatizing some of the decision-work previously done by the legislature.

But still, the Feds are allowing a state to try something different, to serve as a test-case incubator for a potentially good, money-saving idea. (Oh, my God! I just wrote ‘incubator!’ Man, does that bring back memories.)

Sure, Medicaid's boring stuff, right up there with Social Security reform. But with all the talk about how Republicans have become a stodgy, inflexible party of big-government lately, thought itÂ’d be nice to point out something that says, hmm, maybe not.

Posted by: Dr. Reo Symes at 08:03 AM | Comments (5)
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Fucking idiot:

If you need further proof that this administration's abandonment of clear Geneva guidelines has clearly undermined the war, then read this [a link to the body-burning story]. The use of religion to taunt and torment the enemy has been going on for a long time now. From smearing inmates with fake menstrual blood, to desecrating the Koran, to forcing one Abu Ghraib prisoner to drink alcohol and eat pork, to burning Muslim corpses facing West ... we now have a litany of abuses that are objectively evil and almost designed to lose us support among the broad Muslim population.

Andrew Sullivan has a wonderfully stupid position on the War. Prosecute it brutally and mercilessly, but, by all means, be scrupulously polite about doing so.

Now he's steamed because we're gay-baiting cowards who come from a homophobic culture. Oh, and we called them cowards for not claiming their dead. And we burned rotting, disease-incubating terrorist bodies.

Is it possible to get gay marriage laws passed in Afghanistan? Can't the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court make some goofy claim of jurisdiction over that state? Seems they rather easily claimed jurisdiction over a matter expressly left to legislators in the Massachusetts Constitution.

Ann Coulter had an interesting point. If, as many "tolerant" folks claim, jihadism is a "perversion" of "true Islam," and terrorists are not in fact practicing real Islamic faith (The Religion of Peace (TM)), then why do those same sort of folks continue insisting these putative heretics be treated with all the panoply of rituals associated with "true Islam"?

And why is it, exactly, that we are expected to respect Muslim traditions (no war during Ramadan) that Muslims themselves tend to take a more lenient attitude about?

I've seen accused Palestinian informers being dragged through the streets until the skin was flayed off their muscles. Presumably this was okay, because they were at least being dragged-to-death in the direction of Mecca, I suppose?

Thanks to Allah.

Posted by: Ace at 07:54 AM | Comments (26)
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Among the many consequences of this much-longer and much-bloodier-than-expected war in Iraq is that Iran knows we're pinned down and can't deal with them more firmly.

Which I'm sure is one of the reasons they continue smuggling weapons and bomb-makers into Iraq.

I am at least heartened by the example of Michael in The Godfather. One day -- and may that day come sooner than later -- the situation in Iraq will stabilize, and our troops will have a year or so to rest up and replenish and retrain. Recruiting will improve greatly, and the American War Machine will be back up to 90% strength.

Not saying we should invade. But Iran would undoubtedly be better behaved if they knew we could -- if we really felt like it -- begin bombing all of their government offices, army barracks, tanks, and police stations.

I doubt the American public would support a full-fledged invasion. But perhaps they'd support a cruise-missile and stealth bomber campaign at complete destabilization of a country.

Superficially a nastier campaign than the one in Iraq, where we set out to replace the crippled government after ejecting the old one. But the rebuilding there has been too costly and too bloody to attempt again. Better to just reduce a country to a state of absolute anarchy and let the locals figure things out for themselves.

Yeah, I know, supposedly there's this progressive-minded populace that wants to seize power. But we've been waiting on that for a while. Maybe they need a little help to get the ball rolling.

And hopefully they'll get it.

Question: Not sure about this... but what would military-minded people think about just air-dropping in crates of guns, grenades, and radios into a country we don't like very much, and which rules by force?

What if suddenly a lot of military weaponry began finding its way into the hands of civilians? Sure, the Iranian military would seize a lot of of it, but no big deal, as they've got as many guns and grenades as they could want.

Radios would be key too. Not only to allow communication between possible revolutionaries, of course, but to give helpful tips to American warplanes that might be overhead at any time.

Posted by: Ace at 07:43 AM | Comments (16)
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It's the tragedy of the commons. When no one has any incentive to conserve or manage a property prudently, and all are allowed to take from it what they will, it quickly becomes a ruin.

As a general rule wasteful -- often perfectly useless -- porkbarrel spending has been unchecked, as no one in the commons was keeping an eye on his fellows despoiling the land. Now Tom Coburn has started pointing fingers, and, hopefully, the Alaska delegation will point fingers back at Coburn-- which is good, because I'm sure Oklahoma has a lot of pork too.

These jackasses have to stop winking at this boondoggle -- "free" money which isn't free which is used to fund "critical" local projects which aren't critical at all (or else they would already be being paid for by local governments) -- and start attacking each other's pork.

Good on ya, Senator Coburn.

One some issues, we need unity. On a lot of others, we need a lot of disunity and argument. This is one of them. If checks and balances are a good thing, it will be useful to have some checks and balances in the Senate itself, between states pointing out other states' wasteful pork.

As Traffic Non-Santa notes -- and which I've noted before -- yes, it's true that pork is not the biggest part of the budget that needs to be trimmed. But it's the easiest problem to tackle -- most Americans are against pork, at least as a general matter -- and if they can't do this there's no way they get to the bigger problems.

Posted by: Ace at 07:22 AM | Comments (10)
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They say the bodies had begun to decompose and burning them was the most hygenic manner of disposal.

Apparently, though, they used the opportunity for some psyops:

Footage showed two US soldiers reading two messages from a notebook that they said had earlier been broadcast.

"Attention Taliban you are cowardly dogs," read the first soldier, identified as psyops specialist Sargeant Jim Baker.

"You allowed your fighters to be laid down facing west and burnt. You are too scared to retrieve their bodies. This just proves you are the lady boys we always believed you to be."

The other unidentified soldier read a second message, part of which said: "You attack and run away like women. You call yourself Talibs but you are a disgrace to the Muslim religion, and you bring shame upon your family. Come and fight like men instead of the cowardly dogs you are."

That bit is from Al Jazeera, which Bareknuckle Politics links, but I won't.

Because Bush is overspending and nominated a lawyer I don't like for the Supreme Court, I will seize on this to break with Bush. I cannot tell you how filled with "heart-ache" I am at this gob-smackingly vile action.

I call for a full investigation, a Congressional Amendment to the Defense Appropriation Bill stating clearly that rotting Taliban bodies will not be burned, but lovingly buried in full accordance with Muslim funerary rituals, and for Senator Wayne Allard to resign.

Why Wayne Allard? I don't know. I just get a bad vibe off him. He seems like the kind of guy who'd act like your "best friend" and then, when you're trying to pick up a chick, start undermining you by saying things like "Oh, he's an absolute prince to all his dozens illegitimate children. He lovingly calls them his 'Li'l Bastards.'"

Absolutely sickening and disgusting, and I expect -- nay, demand -- that the MSM covers this wall-to-wall for the next three weeks. Or at least until there's another hurricane they can pin on Karl Rove.

Posted by: Ace at 06:59 AM | Comments (18)
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South Park gets flooded, and the media breathlessly reports that "hundreds of millions" may have died in this town of population 8,000.

With videoclips.

Bonus Silly Video: I just saw this on VH1's Greatest Clip Compliation of Previous Greatest Clip Shows We've Done. Or maybe it was I Love the Second Week Of October 2005 (starring comedian "Ant").

Anyway, it's pretty funny. On Scare Tactics, they hire a PETA activist to help back up a closed "biological research lab" where they've spliced human and rat DNA.

This guy absolutely flips out when he sees the "rat monster" (just a midget with tail and rat-snout).

Posted by: Ace at 06:33 AM | Comments (7)
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To help authorities fight counterfeiting.

This sparked a memory of a thought I had a long time ago, when typewriters were going obsolete.
Remember why ransom letters on TV were made from characters cut from magazines and newspapers? To throw off the cops, since typewriters produced unique text and could be tracked down.

I remember wondering if criminal investigations would be affected by the new technology. Specifically, by a criminal's ability to produce perfectly untraceable text. Silly me!

Privacy concerns are raised by this of course, as well as concerns about how closely government agencies interact with certain businesses.

Posted by: LauraW. at 06:19 AM | Comments (6)
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