Terrific.

Malkin questions the timing (see the link in the previous post) of the Big NYT Scoop on eavesdropping.

Does the CIA's war against Bush continue? So it would seem.

Posted by: Ace at 10:51 AM | Comments (34)
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Michelle Malkin obliterates the NYT piece on Bush's scary secret eavesdropping program.

And not until the 16th paragraph, some 1,110 words into the massive piece, does the paper tell you the important context in which the program was created and used:

What the agency calls a "special collection program" began soon after the Sept. 11 attacks, as it looked for new tools to attack terrorism. The program accelerated in early 2002 after the Central Intelligence Agency started capturing top Qaeda operatives overseas, including Abu Zubaydah, who was arrested in Pakistan in March 2002. The C.I.A. seized the terrorists' computers, cellphones and personal phone directories, said the officials familiar with the program. The N.S.A. surveillance was intended to exploit those numbers and addresses as quickly as possible, the officials said.

In addition to eavesdropping on those numbers and reading e-mail messages to and from the Qaeda figures, the N.S.A. began monitoring others linked to them, creating an expanding chain. While most of the numbers and addresses were overseas, hundreds were in the United States, the officials said.

Did this information actually improve our security?

As a result of the NSA program, buried down in the 11th paragraph, we learn that the terrorist plot involving convicted al Qaeda operative Iyman Faris was uncovered--possibly saving untold lives, not to mention New York bridges and possibly Washington, D.C. trains.

Michelle notes:

Civil liberties extremists pretend there are no tradeoffs, no costs, to putting legal absolutism over national security.

There are, of course.

Posted by: Ace at 10:45 AM | Comments (10)
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And you should listen to him. He gave Bruce Wayne the Batmobile.

It seems to me that all of our racial problems would be ended in a day if more grandfatherly black men gave Batmobiles to white guys.

I realize this may not be a practical solution. But if I stand charged of idealism, and of believing that black people should give me tricked-out supercars, then I plead guilty. Guilty-- and proud.

Posted by: Ace at 09:22 AM | Comments (23)
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Via Kaus, this videoblog debate between himself and Robert Wright.

Wright takes the position that straights with an aversion to witnessing homosexual intimacy can be "desensitized" by frequent exposure to it. Kaus takes the position it may well be genetic.

Well, they may both be right. It may be both genetic/innate and quite possible to overcome or suppress by exposure to it.

Actually, the same can be said of homosexuality. Your natural sexual orientation may well be genetic (and let me use the word "genetic" here rather loosely to include, in addition to actual genetics, all sorts of innate hormonal and developmental factors; a better term might be simply "biologically innate"), but one would imagine that, like virtually all behaviors, habits, or preferences, it could be modified via intensive therapy.

But gays, of course, are passionately against he suggestion that they should undergo such "conversion therapy." (With good reason, I think.) But shouldn't similar reasoning suggest that straights shouldn't have to undergo gay-sex-desensitization therapy, either?

So: Assuming it's possible for a straight guy to no longer be queasy at the sight of men kissing, what degree of duty do they have to undertake such desensitization therapy just to make Andrew Sullivan fully free?

I'm personally wigged out by spiders. Yes, I could very well overcome this phobia by a few months of arachnid-petting. If arachnophilia became the new sexual hot-button issue, should I be required to undergo such a distasteful therapy just to be politically correct? Yes, there would be benefits to people who dig on spiders, but how far am I expected to modify/suppress my own natural inclinations in this regard to benefit others?

Again, it seems to me this is a bridge too far. The Brokeback Bullies seem to be suggesting -- they dare not actually declare it -- that the American public has a duty to watch gay porn films in order to desensitize themselves to the idea of gay sex, and thus fully liberate gays from the social antipathy towards gay intimacy.

Light Content Advisory: Towards the end of the exchange Mickey Kaus asks about the sanitariness of certain sex acts. It's a clinical sort of question, but the key words are used, so it may not be cool for work.

Posted by: Ace at 08:20 AM | Comments (127)
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So, on one of the most historic days of the Iraq War/Reconstruction, the MSM decides to suddenly start running the story that Zarqawi was detained by Iraqi troops, and then released because they didn't recognize him, a year or so ago.

Ummmm... anyone experiencing deja vu? I know I am, because I remember posting this story closer to the time it actually happened.

Iraqi officials echo Dave From Garfield Ridge and confirm this story is in fact old, and not only is it old, there's not even any new information to justify running it again:

An Iraqi deputy interior minister said on Friday a report that Iraq's most wanted man, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, had been briefly detained and then released was many months old and there was no new information.

"More than a year ago the Iraqi police in Falluja captured Zarqawi but released him after three or four hours because they did not recognize him," Hussein Kamal told Reuters.

"We captured a Saudi terrorist ... and he told us this information," he said. "I said that before."

Reuters attempts to spin its reasons for running the old story again:

Kamal originally told reporters the story in January but its repetition in a television interview prompted new questions.

Guys? A lot of old information is repeated in interviews, constantly. People constantly state things they've said before.

There is no reason for this story to suddenly be mentioned on every radio news report again. (That's where I heard it again, last night.)

Except that the MSM desperately needs some bad news to go along with the good news. And if the best bad news they have dates from last January, oh well, that's close enough. They'll just run it with the urgency of a new, breaking story, claiming that the mere repetition of old information in an interview "raises new questions."

Posted by: Ace at 07:49 AM | Comments (11)
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The guy caught a fastball baby. Pretty cool.

Thanks to Craig.

Posted by: Ace at 07:24 AM | Comments (33)
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Nancy Pelosi tries to put a smiley face on incoherence and inconsistency by calling it diversity.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said yesterday that Democrats should not seek a unified position on an exit strategy in Iraq, calling the war a matter of individual conscience and saying differing positions within the caucus are a source of strength for the party.

Pelosi said Democrats will produce an issue agenda for the 2006 elections but it will not include a position on Iraq. There is consensus within the party that President Bush has mismanaged the war and that a new course is needed, but House Democrats should be free to take individual positions, she sad.

"There is no one Democratic voice . . . and there is no one Democratic position," Pelosi said in an interview with Washington Post reporters and editors.

Meanwhile: The house organ of the Democratic Party, the New York Times, apparently has no position on the great success of yesterday's voting in Iraq. They fail to run a single editorial or op-ed or guest editorial about the historic day today.

I guess it takes a couple of days to figure out how such unambiguously good news is really bad news.

Posted by: Ace at 06:49 AM | Comments (109)
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I didn't mind Randall on The Apprentice. I didn't think he or Rebecca, his cute, spunky competitor, were stand-out stars, but neither was either incompetent or objectionable as a person.

Until.

Trump began tipping his hand that he was inclined favorably to both candidates early in the finale. I began to wonder if he would offer both jobs. Maybe both wouldn't be officially "The Apprentice," but both would wind up with essentially the same contract from Trump.

At the end of the show, Trump gave the nod to Randall. Randall made more sense on paper (better education, better experience), but hadn't done an especially good job on the show, especially in its later half. It wasn't surprising Trump picked him.

But then Trump asked Randall if, in Randall's opinion, Trump should hire Rebecca as well. All he had to do was say, "She's a great person who'd work well in your organization," and Trump would have offered her a job as well. He said as much later.

But Randall, selfish as sin, told Trump that there is only one Apprentice, not two "Apprenti," and so that Rebecca shouldn't also be offered the job.

Deferring to the winner (which makes some sense-- he did kinda win), Trump didn't make the offer, though he did say that a good word from Randall would have increased the nation's jobs creation figures by one.

Randall won; he was officially the Apprentice. He had a nice one-year contract at a prominent company and all the press one could wish. But he couldn't stand the idea of sharing any of the limelight.

Well, now he will be known as a major-league asshole. The guy who, with one word, given a job to a friendly rival with little cost to himself, but chose instead to deny her that.

That audience booed, feeling as betrayed as Rebecca must have, and as Randal jogged to the end of the stage to wave at the crowd, he was facing a group that had lost some of their respect for him; their clapping and cheering was subdued, and boos were still audible.

Rebecca just shook Trump’s hand and said, “That’s unfortunate.”

Randall's probably regretting his decision right now. So, for that matter, is Trump.

Thanks to Chickpea.

Posted by: Ace at 06:37 AM | Comments (34)
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They have a new movie coming out, The Ringer, about a non-handicapped guy who dishonestly enters the Special Olympics. Apparently the script idea was pitched to the South Park people, but not directly to Trey Parker and Matt Stone. They claim they never heard of the Ringer script and had already had the idea.

The Farrelly Brothers call Parker and Stone "creepy."

Posted by: Ace at 06:23 AM | Comments (22)
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Thanks for being such digital troopers and voting for me in the Weblog awards.

Congrats to Dave From Garfield Ridge for edging out a win in a down-the-wire battle.

I'm really sorry I didn't realize Rightwingsparkle was so close to winning... I'm sorry, RWS, had I noticed, I would have linked your category directly. I apologize to Lorie Byrd on that score, too. I'm really very sorry.

John From Wuzzadem did well, but he couldn't overcome the liberal Yellow Dog Blog or the very feisty Atlas Shrugs.

Congrats to the winners, and all the nominees too, except for those blogs that suck, like Atrios, Kos, etc.

Posted by: Ace at 10:34 PM | Comments (31)
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