Kevin Sites gets world recognition, this poor guy merely gets a decline-to-prosecute:

Military investigators have decided there is not enough evidence to bring formal charges against a Marine who killed an unarmed Iraqi while his unit searched a Fallujah mosque, CBS reported on Wednesday.

...

After what he reported as movement, a Marine fired at one of the men on the floor, killing him.

"The insurgents, it turned out, were unarmed," CBS reported. "But investigators say the Iraqi the Marine thought he saw moving could have been going for a weapon."

"At the very least, Navy legal experts believe the situation is ambiguous enough that no prosecutor could get a conviction," the network reported.

Justice.

Of course we want our boys to be careful about pulling that trigger. But no man can be expected to show godlike restraint in the face of possible threat to his own life, or the lives of his comrades in arms. Even if that possibility turns out to be phantasmal.

Thanks to Hobgoblin.

Posted by: Ace at 01:31 PM | Comments (14)
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Ahhh, the sophistication and nuance of Democratic diplomacy:

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has touched off a diplomatic flap with Iraq's incoming government by questioning whether the leading candidate to become the next prime minister is too close to Iran's ayatollahs.

The likely new prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, shot back at Clinton, who just completed a visit to Iraq, by questioning her credibility as a spokeswoman for U.S. foreign policy.

"Hillary Clinton, as far as I know, does not represent any political decision or the American administration and I don't know why she said this," al-Jaafari told The Times of London.

"She knows nothing about the Iraq situation," he added.

...

"There are grounds for concern and for vigilance about this," said Clinton, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Deciding she needed to do even more to advance American interests around the globe, she then offered her opinion that Tony Blair "might not be gay per se, but I'm sure he didn't make it through the British public school system with his boycherry completely intact."

The weird thing about this is that Ahmed Chalabi may actually be picked, after all that stuff about how no Iraqis would ever accept him.

He probably won't be picked, but I think the fact that he is al-Jaafari's major competition within the party says something, yet again, about the predictions of the anti-war left.

Ummm... A Clarification I Didn't Think Was Necessary: Hillary did not say that about Tony Blair.

It's the usual set-up you see on Conan O'Brien or Weekend Update on SNL. First comes the real news, then comes a hyperbolic joke riffing off the news item.

I thought that was obvious. But sometimes, I guess, the obvious isn't so obvious.

Posted by: Ace at 12:51 PM | Comments (13)
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Living in Berkeley does not, in fact, give you license to be a complete asshole.

Digger's realm is all over this story, with exclusive photos of the Pearce couple's other patriotic displays.

Hat tip to Riehlwordview, who offers effigies of the America-hatin' couple in return.

Dirty Pool Warning: Please don't post personal phone numbers in my comments. There's free speech and then there's just harassment.

It's one thing to blitz a company with complaints, but someone's personal phone numbers are a different thing entirely.

I wouldn't want the moonbats to publish my home number; I trust none of you would want the same done to you.

So-- no personal addresses, no home phone numbers. Nothing that can be used for simple petty harassment.

Thanks for understanding.

Posted by: Ace at 12:43 PM | Comments (23)
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Just heard back from RockNClothing...

They say it would not be difficult to offer the shirt in two different forms, one with the Mencken quote, the other without it.

I think, though, that the shirts without the quote would have nothing on the back, which I don't think is a major deal, but maybe some people wanted *something* on the back.

I asked about the possibility of two alternative quotes -- maybe "You're all on notice" or "Slice like a fucking hammer" -- but I think that is the Rubicon which they will not cross.

Alternate Quotes: Not right now, says the vendor. He'll wait and see about the initial response to the basic shirt. He doesn't rule out alternate quotes in the future, though, should the initial purchase be large enough to justify setting up a new screen for printing.

Posted by: Ace at 12:17 PM | Comments (29)
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Your three choices:

a) "Trinity" from the Matrix

b) "Neo" from the Matrix

c) "Hitler," also from the Matrix (glimpsed in one of the TV's in "The Architect's" office in the second movie)

If you didn't guess before seeing the answers, you just haven't been paying attention.

Posted by: Ace at 11:11 AM | Comments (11)
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Yes, you read that right:

A PLAN by a German zoo to test the sexual appetites of a group of suspected homosexual penguins has sparked outrage among gay and lesbian groups, who fear zookeepers might force them to turn straight.

"All sorts of gay and lesbian associations have been emailing and calling in to protest," said a spokesman for the zoo in the north-western city of Bremerhaven.

Theorizing that perhaps the male penguins had turned gay due to a lack of females, the zoo's director decided to ship in some, get this, Swedish female penguins. (No information as to whether or not they played vollyball.)

And that was too much for gay activists, who saw the scheme as some sort of a flightless-bird conversion process to repress gay penguin activitiy.

But the zoo was quick to attempt to assuage the newly-minted Gay Penguin Lobby:

"Nobody here is trying to break-up same-sex pairs by force," the zoo's director Heike Kueck told public broadcaster NDR.

On the other hand, the zoo is planning to decorate the penguin cage with posters of Daisy Duke and Sports Illustrated football phones. The penguins will also be forced to watch 24-hour A-Team marathons while wearing "Who Farted?" t-shirts.

Update: The zoo suspected the penguins were gay when they were incapable of reading a map to find their way to the closest Waffle House.

(Which article, by the way, sort of suggests that Tall Dave is wrong-- homosexuality probably is largely an innate, in-born phenonmenon.)

Posted by: Ace at 10:40 AM | Comments (31)
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Ohh, it keeps getting better and better.

Thanks to JimW.

Update: "What obligation does society have to fund its own sickness?" Newt on Churchill.

Also contains the Coulteresque line: "We should give him free speech by not paying him."

Posted by: Ace at 09:51 AM | Comments (14)
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Nice:

The economy grew at a solid 3.8 percent annual rate in the final quarter of 2004 - stronger than previously estimated- and an encouraging sign that the business expansion was firmly entrenched at the start of the new year.

The new reading on gross domestic product, released by the Commerce Department Friday, was better than the government's initial calculation made a month ago. That estimate showed the economy growing at a 3.1 percent pace.

...

The new fourth-quarter GDP figure also was better than the 3.5 percent growth rate that economists had forecast in advance of Friday's release by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Although economic growth in the final quarter of last year was a bit slower than the 4 percent pace measured in the third quarter, the performance was still solid.

For all of 2004, the economy expanded by 4.4 percent, the best showing in five years. This annual estimate was the same as first reported last month.

Thanks to Chickpea.

Posted by: Ace at 09:49 AM | Comments (7)
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Some of my readers have expresed interest in an Ace of Spades HQ t-shirt. I've always wanted to put t-shirts like that out; hell, at this late stage of the game, it's probably the closest I'm going to come to feeling like a member of Led Zeppelin.

Well, except that my editor choked on his own vomit. But I don't like to talk about that much.

I haven't done it before because I couldn't find anyone willing to print color graphics on to dark-gray shirts. The best I could find was some sort of "ash gray," which is code for "sort of dirty speckled off-white, like you ran a t-shirt through the washer with a pack of Marlboro Reds."

But RockNClothing does offer charcoal gray, and they seem to be able to handle somewhat intricate graphics.

They told me "no problem" with getting the sort of shirt I wanted printed up.

So, what I'm thinking is: the death card on the right breast, beneath that Ace of Spades HQ (in red Copperplate, just like in the banner).

more...

Posted by: Ace at 11:38 PM | Comments (87)
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H/t to Alarming News, whose title, I think, sums it up pretty well: Can't Say I Saw This One Coming.

Is this due to behind the scenes pressure by Bush to appease China in order to get their help with North Korea?:

Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian told an opposition leader Thursday that he would not shut the door on eventual unification with rival China if Beijing expressed goodwill.

Posted by: Ace at 10:38 PM | Comments (8)
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