Ah, feuds.
Have you ever found yourself going tit-for-tat with some idiot, when you know it will probably only make things worse?
Have you ever expended time and energy into demonstrating that you are the bigger jerk, because, well, it would give you great pleasure to piss that guy off?
Me neither.

As neighbor disputes go, the one between Alekson and Dow on Meadow View Drive has dragged on for so long it resembles a geo-political conflict.

Soon after Alekson moved into his house, his neighbor started calling the police and other town official on him for every infraction under the sun.

On Oct. 29, Dow, who lives at 35 Meadow View Drive, called the police, the town manager and the mayor at home in the middle of the night to complain that people were urinating on the lawn at Alekson's Halloween party.

He's even reported Alekson to the building department because Alekson parks his pickup truck with commercial lettering in the driveway, a fine punishable by $88 a day.

But in defense of Mr. Dow's prickly nature, his young neighbor does have a brace of plastic pink flamingos on his lawn. Inexcusable.

So Mr. Dow went to considerable expense, and erected an eight-foot fence on his property to relieve his vision of this horrid suburban bourgeois devilry.

So Alekson obligingly mounted the flamingos on top of nine foot poles.

The two parties are in mediation and the healing process is underway.

Posted by: LauraW. at 05:51 PM | Comments (34)
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I'm surprised it took them this long.

More welfare & government guarantees for the disaffected Youth of Undetermined Ethnic Extraction.

It's hard to fault France with a perfectly clear conscience for this, because a lot of people who know France better than I do seem to think the French truly have treated the YOUEE's pretty shabbily and have excluded them, de facto, from jobs.

Still... good to know what US tourists will have to do next time America wants French agreement on a UNSC resolution. Just light up some Peugots.

Posted by: Ace at 05:02 PM | Comments (15)
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Thank you, Porter Goss.

Posted by: Ace at 04:12 PM | Comments (12)
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Not sure if I give a lot of credence to Trent Lott, but if this is true, investigate him, put him under oath, destroy his future as a politician, revoke any security clearances he may have, and put him in jail if he lies under oath about it.

Who could the leaker be? Obviously, I don't know. But let's play a game of hangman and see if we can't guess:

J O _ N M_ _ A I N

I can't believe I'm about to write this, but: Hat tip to Tubino.

Posted by: Ace at 01:20 PM | Comments (49)
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One again: If outing an already-outed desk-bound non-spy compromised national security, surely outing an entire program of secret prisons and embarassing and endangering our allies who hosted them compromised national security.

Can't wait for the MSM to make the case for "good leaks" (good felonies) versus "bad leaks" (non-felonies which nevertheless hurt a Democrat operative).

That federal reporter shield law is going to have to wait for a year, don't ya think?

Put them under oath, and direct the Seargeant at Arms of Congress to escort them to the DC jail if they refuse to answer.

Posted by: Ace at 11:40 AM | Comments (49)
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Karol's doing her thing on election day here in New York, so I'm going to try to wing this show without an, um, wingman.

My guest will be Tim Worstall, apparently a European of some sort, but don't hold that against him. He's just edited a book about the best in British blogging, called 2005 Blogged: Dispatches From the Blogosphere (available from amazon.co.uk, but not amazon.com).

We'll be talking about blogging in Britain, the EU, Youths of Undetermined Ethnic Extraction, and maybe our favorite parts from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

I'll also be ranting about this Joe Wilson character.

At Rightalk at 4PM Eastern, 1 PM Pacific, 9PM London/Lisbon time.

Given the fact that I'll almost certainly be reduced to a gibbering ooze of naked primal fear ten minutes into the show, it would be a good time to call in, at 866 884 TALK, to add your thoughts or maybe make fun of a retard.

Posted by: Ace at 10:39 AM | Comments (29)
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Momentum is building.

Jed Babbin notes that not only was Joe Wilson "unspeakably unqualified" for the Niger mission, not only did he tell everyone he interviewed he was a representative of the United States Government (which seems intended to make sure no one told him anything the US Government wouldn't like to hear), not only wasn't he signed to a confidentiality agreement, which seems by design, so that he would take his non-findings about his non-secret-mission public in an election year, but that the CIA's criminal referral to the Justice Department is possibly a felony, if the CIA had reason to know no crime was committed. (Which no crime was, of course).

The American people need this matter investigated forthwith, and not -- God help us -- by yet another special counsel. The Senate Intelligence Committee should, immediately, investigate and cause the following questions to be answered publicly as soon as possible:

1) What precisely does the CIA criminal referral that started the Fitzgerald investigation say? It should be declassified and published;

2) Who approved the criminal referral and why?

3) Was Pavitt the person who approved the Wilson mission? Who else approved the mission and how it was to be performed?

4) Why did they choose Wilson instead of someone qualified?

5) Why wasn't Wilson required to sign a confidentiality agreement?

6) Were his various op-eds vetted at CIA?

7) Who else, beside Vallely and his wife, knew Plame was a CIA employee, when did they know it and from whom?

Who was Bob Novak's source? Was it Wilson? Pavitt? Someone else at CIA?

There are hundreds of other questions that should be answered publicly. Let's get ol' Joe in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee, under oath and with the television cameras on. Let's see if he does as well as George Galloway did in front of Norm Coleman's Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. I have no doubt he'll fail to rise to even that standard.

Just because a lot of people are saying similar things doesn't mean we're right. But it does increase the odds we'll get some traction on this with government officials who can, maybe, tell us if we're right.

Posted by: Ace at 10:18 AM | Comments (14)
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The dream is dying?:

CONFIDENCE in the European Union (EU) is in freefall across almost every member state, according to the EUÂ’s own opinion poll.

...

Trust in the Brussels commission, the executive branch of the EU, has plunged from 52% to 46% throughout the union. In Britain, the commission is trusted by 31% and distrusted by 38%.

Fall-out from the recent French and Dutch campaigns for the EU constitution referendum has prompted a fundamental rethink across Europe about the future of Brussels, the majority of Europeans believing the European CommissionÂ’s budget should be frozen.

The cascade of negative data from the study is the most severe since records began in 1975...

Particular dismay with the EU was found in Britain, where a majority – 42% to 40% – believe the UK has not benefited from its 30-year membership and only 36% of those questioned considered membership “a good thing”.

Here's the basic theory behind the EU: Take a bunch of dysfunctional, backbiting fuck-ups and aggregate them into a big group of dysfunctional, backbiting fuck-ups, and all problems will be solved out of this gestalt (German for "cretinous clusterfuck").

After all: It worked in the Police Academy movies.

Posted by: Ace at 10:13 AM | Comments (7)
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Sounds like a witness in Libby's trial to me... to prove the non-materiality of the alleged lies:

A retired Army general says the man at the center of the CIA leak controversy, Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, revealed his wife Valerie Plame's employment with the agency in a casual conversation more than a year before she allegedly was "outed" by the White House through a columnist.

Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely told WorldNetDaily that Wilson mentioned Plame's status as a CIA employee over the course of at least three, possibly five, conversations in 2002 in the Fox News Channel's "green room" in Washington, D.C., as they waited to appear on air as analysts.

Strata-Sphere has found at least four occasions when Vallely and Wilson were guests on Fox at about the same time.

Posted by: Ace at 09:58 AM | Comments (15)
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Giant frickin' apes:

A gigantic ape standing 10 feet tall and weighing up to 1,200 pounds lived alongside humans for over a million years, according to a new study.

Fortunately for the early humans, the huge primate's diet consisted mainly of bamboo.

Scientists have known about Gigantopithecus blackii since the accidental discovery of some of its teeth on sale in a Hong Kong pharmacy about 80 years ago. While the idea of a giant ape piqued the interest of scientists – and bigfoot hunters – around the world, it was unclear how long ago this beast went extinct.

Now Jack Rink, a geochronologist at McMaster University in Ontario, has used a high-precision absolute-dating method to determine that this ape – the largest primate ever – roamed Southeast Asia for nearly a million years before the species died out 100,000 years ago during the Pleistocene period. By this time, humans had existed for a million years.

Giant. Frickin'. Apes.

Posted by: Ace at 09:00 AM | Comments (17)
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