Check the 1pm Update.

Posted by: Ace at 12:23 PM | Comments (20)
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Not as good as Australia's big bust, but it does show we're using some of that "detective work" that Tubino suggests is the key to stopping Al Qaeda.

Just like "detective work" after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing insured that the Twin Towers would continue standing. I'm so glad those big boxes still adorn the lower Manhattan skyline.

Posted by: Ace at 12:13 PM | Comments (6)
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The Purple Avenger notes that a brigadier general in the PA's military intelligence branch was killed in the bombing.

Is that a coincidence? Or was he the target?

Thanks to cutaway.

It Hardly Needs To Even Be Said Update: A CNBC news producer says that the Amman bombing casts doubt on George Bush's anti-terrorism policies.

I didn't know that the DHS now had a branch office in Jordan.

Just curious-- if Bush is responsible for the bombings in Jordan, is he likewise responsible for the lack of bombings in the United States itself?

No?

Didn't think so.

Arab Street Update: The Arab Street is angry. At Al Qaeda.

Three terror bombings that killed at least 56 people in Jordan's capital sparked furious protests against al Qaeda on Thursday after a Web site carried a claim that the group was behind the attacks.

Jordanians flooded Amman blaring car horns and waving the nation's flag to protest the suicide attacks at three hotels with Western connections.

Hundreds of angry Jordanians rallied shouting, "Burn in hell, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi!" after the terrorist group he leads claimed responsibility for the blasts.

A CNBC news producer blamed Bush for Jordanian rage at Al Qaeda, until he realized it was a good thing, and then he said "Hey, what's that big spider doing on your shoulder?" and quickly sneaked off the set.

Posted by: Ace at 11:48 AM | Comments (4)
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It’s remarkable to me how many European commentators cling to the old delusions — mocking Bush for being in thrall to his own Texan version of Osama-like fundamentalism. I look on religion like gun ownership. That’s to say, New Hampshire has a high rate of firearms possession, which is why it has a low crime rate. You don’t have to own a gun and there are sissy Dartmouth College arms-are-for-hugging types who don’t. But they benefit from the fact that their crazy stump-toothed knuckle-dragging neighbours do. If you want to burgle a home in the Granite State, you’d have to be awfully certain it was the one-in-a-hundred we-are-the-world pantywaist’s pad and not some plaid-clad gun nut who’ll blow your head off before you lay a hand on his $70 TV. That’s the way it is with religion. A hyper-rationalist might dismiss the whole God thing as a lot of apple sauce, but his hyper-rationalism is a lot more vulnerable in a society without a strong Judaeo-Christian culture. American firearms owners have a popular slogan: ‘If you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns.’ Likewise, if you marginalise religion, only the marginalised will have religion. That’s why France’s impoverished Muslim ghettos display more cultural confidence than the wealthiest enclaves of the capital.

-- Mark Steyn

A good if depressing analysis of demographics in Europe. The full article requires free registration.

Although I'm reliably informed a search on Free Republic for "demography" will turn up the whole article.

Posted by: Ace at 11:39 AM | Comments (31)
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Lies. More lies from Bushitler!

I'm not clear on the details of all this, but I think the reason the press never mentions this (apart from bias) is that all of this nuclear stock was already known about, and kept under UN seal from being used.

So it's nothing to worry about, really, because as Iran proves, when the IAEA or UN gives orders to a despot determined to have nuclear bomb, those nuke-obsessed tyrants snap smartly into line.

And oh yeah-- rockets capable of delivering liquid payloads were also discovered in Iraq. Nothing to do with chemical weapons, though. Saddam just wanted to fill them with water and use them to explosively irrigate the deserts.

Posted by: Ace at 11:11 AM | Comments (38)
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For now:

- A nearly two-decade effort to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling suffered a severe setback at the hands of moderate House Republicans just as Congress was about to deliver it to President Bush as his top energy priority.

GOP leaders scrapped the drilling plan in a search for just enough votes to pass another of Bush's priorities, a $51 billion deficit-reduction program cutting spending on food stamps, Medicaid, child support enforcement and other domestic programs through the rest of the decade. Also axed was another conservative priority, a plan allowing states to lift a moratorium on oil drilling off the Atlantic and Pacific Coasts.

Despite those two actions late Wednesday night, Republican leaders still appeared to lack the votes they needed for the budget measure, postponing the opening of debate Thursday as they leaned on more wavering GOP lawmakers.

...
The budge
t bill is immune from filibuster, but drilling proponents suddenly found it hard to get the measure accepted by a majority of the House. That's because Democrats oppose the overall budget bill, giving House GOP opponents of drilling in the Arctic enough leverage to have the matter killed.

Twenty-five Republicans, led by Rep. Charles Bas of New Hampshire, signed a letter asking GOP leaders to strike the Alaskan drilling provision from the broader $54 billion budget cut bill.

The moderates knew they had leverage, given the narrow margin of GOP control of the House. It only takes 14 Republican defections to scuttle a bill, assuming every Democrat opposes it.

Still, removing the Arctic oil drilling provision may incite a backlash from lawmakers who strongly favor it, which is a big majority of Republicans. House and Senate GOP leaders are likely to push hard for the final House-Senate version of the bill to include it.

Why doesn't Bush speak to the nation about both reducing the deficit and drilling in Alaska? Make it simple: If you oppose this, you can blame yourselves for high oil prices and ever-increasing dependency on foreign sources of oil.

Thanks to Sue Donhim for suggesting we rename ANWR the "Strategic Caribou Reserve."

It comforts me greatly to know that, should Canada ever attempt to choke our economy by embargoing the sale of caribou, we'll have plenty of those useless moss-covered simu-Bullwinkles* stored up to get us through the emergency.

* As Dennis Miller dubbed them.

Posted by: Ace at 11:04 AM | Comments (21)
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I forgot to post this story when it broke earlier in the week. It's a must-read, and further evidence you should not trust Joe Klein, Time Magazine, or the MSM generally.

Read the so-called "smear" right on Real Clear Politics site and ask: Why didn't Joe Klein ask to see the alleged "smear email" himself before making his charges?

Will Joe Klein or Time issue a retraction or correction? I have a feeling they won't.

Multiple layers of rigorous editorial fact-checking. Is there anything it can't do?

Posted by: Ace at 10:56 AM | Comments (9)
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"Pretext arrests" to stoke a "phantasmal fear" about a "fictitious threat" have, somehow, uncovered real would-be bombs:

The Sydney arm of the alleged Islamic terrorist group raided this week had stockpiled enough chemicals to make at least 15 large bombs to be used against selected targets, police say.

Only chemicals freely available at hardware stores were then needed for the group to be able to replicate the formula used to make the bombs that killed 52 people - and four suicide bombers - in the attacks in London on July 7, senior investigators say.

Senior police decided at the weekend to stage Tuesday's raids on dozens of properties in Sydney and Melbourne because they believed the Sydney suspects were so advanced they could have produced bombs within days.

The investigators say the group registered a series of company names to justify the purchase of industrial chemicals.

Police said they had also learned that suspects in Melbourne and Sydney had made legal appointments, leading intelligence analysts to believe they may have been planning to write wills.

Does anyone else worry that we're not making arrests like this here? Surely we haven't been so effective at preventing terrorism that there are no cells here in America.

Posted by: Ace at 10:44 AM | Comments (7)
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From the same folks who brought you the beheadings of schoolgirls a week or two back:

TWO schoolgirls have been shot in the face in Indonesia's troubled district of Poso, ramping up tensions in a region where 10 days ago three Christian schoolgirls were beheaded, and a fourth wounded by a gang of six masked men.

The 17-year-old high school students were outside their boarding house in Poso city in central Sulawesi on Tuesday night when a man, or possibly two men, drove past on a motorbike and shot both girls, police said yesterday.

One girl had a bullet lodged in her chin, and is suffering wounds in both cheeks where the bullet entered and exited. Both girls were in a critical condition when they were moved to the city's police hospital yesterday.

It remained unclear whether the girls were Christian or Muslim, although a senior police officer who wished to remain anonymous said he believed one girl was Christian and one Muslim - leading police to question the motives for the shootings and whether they were another attempt to foment sectarian conflict in the area.

What is left to say?

Posted by: Ace at 10:38 AM | Comments (6)
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You know, if a star hits you moving at 1.5 million MPH, it could probably do some damage.

Astronomers using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope have recorded a massive star moving at more than 1.5 million mph.

Since stars are not born with such large velocities, its position suggests it was ejected from the Large Magellanic Cloud, perhaps by a massive black hole in the Milky Way's closest neighbor.

Posted by: Ace at 10:30 AM | Comments (22)
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