Too damn funny. A website dedicated to Harrison Ford's frequent use of his pointed finger to indicate anger.

Just the mention of the concept recalled a dozen angry finger-pointings by Ford.

I had a theory that you couldn't be an actor unless you could control your eyebrows. It's not that people's eyes act; it's that their eyebrows act. If you can't scrunch down your eyebrows angrily or quizically, or raise one (and only one) eyebrow in an arch, um, arch, you can't be a real actor.

Now I have to modify the theory. You need to really be able to act with your index finger, too.

Posted by: Ace at 09:56 AM | Comments (28)
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Nice:

Former political prisoners who were in Evin Prison in 1981 have said Ahmadinejad was known to them as “Tir Khalas Zan”, literally meaning “he who fires coup de grace”.

The government-run website Baztab quoted allies of outgoing President Mohammad Khatami as confirming that Ahmadinejad fired coup de grace at prisoners who were executed in Evin Prison in the 1980s.

And he's also rumored to be an assassin, killing Kurds in Austria.

Coming Up on NBC Nightly News With Brian Williams: Ben Franklin -- Inventor, Statesman, Master of the Sneak-Attack Garrotte-Execution.

Posted by: Ace at 09:50 AM | Comments (13)
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Could just be gossip, but I have a feeling it isn't.

Instapundit suggests that media-types -- who first pushed this, then began claiming no crime had been committed when their fellow reporters were threatened with jail for not revealing sources to a grand jury -- will now reverse themselves and claim a very GREAT crime has been committed, as the grand jury now seems to have what it needs and the 666th name of Lucifer, Karl Rove, has been mentioned.

Goodness. I certainly don't imagine that media-types would so cynically begin reversing themselves. This Instapundit character seems like an unhinged paranoiac.

Posted by: Ace at 09:20 AM | Comments (20)
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Corrected: Whoops! See below.

I missed this from Best of the Web yesterday.

The best prediction, though, is the Wednesday Associated Press dispatch, which we noted yesterday, that flatly stated O'Connor would retire:

Sandra O'Connor, Baltimore County's state's attorney for more than three decades, has said she will retire, her office said Wednesday.

A Republican, O'Connor said she would retire in December 2006 when her eighth term ends, according to a release from Baltimore County State's Attorney's office. . . .

O'Connor grew up in Catonsville and obtained her law degree at Indiana University School of Law, according to a biography on the office Web site.

Actually, O'Connor is a U.S. Supreme Court justice, not the Baltimore County state attorney; she has served for just under 24 years, not more than three decades; she is retiring as soon as her successor is confirmed, not in December 2006; Supreme Court justices serve for life and thus cannot have an "eighth term"; and O'Connor grew up outside Duncan, Ariz., not in Catonville, and went to law school at Stanford, not Indiana University.

Other than that, the story was accurate.

Taranto also notes the "strange new respect" O'Connor is getting from liberals, and wonders if this the same Sandra Day O'Connor they vented so much spleen at after Bush v. Gore.

As far as I can tell, it is. So I'm very confused.

Correction: Well, the strange new respect stuff still stands, but an unnamed commenter says that a Sandra O'Connor just did in fact retire from the Baltimore DA's office. They just happen to have the same name and are retiring at the same time.

So the article isn't in error. It's just confusing for those of us outside Baltimore, is all.

The Washington Post also notes her retirement.

Posted by: Ace at 07:45 AM | Comments (5)
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Uh-huh.

And let's also not become a single-issue hack who deceives his audience about his politics and his bandwidth costs.

I would guess that maybe Excitable Andy is being "ironical" here, except he seems utterly devoid of a sense of humor. Irony requires a somewhat detached sense of perspective, and you just can't have that when every single thought is unhinged elation or black-mooded depression and "outrage."

From Matthew.

Posted by: Ace at 12:25 PM | Comments (14)
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Okay, not only is this a huge model of an F-14, but the thing looks really cool when it flies.

Thanks to someone I'll have to hat tip later, because I forget who put me on to this.

I'd like to see a squadron of these strafe Brian Williams' soft, pliant ass with roman candle cannons.

Posted by: Ace at 12:15 PM | Comments (13)
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Happy F'n Fourth of July, eh? Enjoy the fireworks.

Many Americans woke up to a curious story this morning: several of the former Iran Hostages have decided there is a strong resemblance between Iran's new president and one of their captors more than 25 years ago. The White House and most official branches of government are ducking any substantive comment on this story, and photo analysis is going on at this and other news organizations. It is a story that will be at or near the top of our broadcast and certainly made for a robust debate in our afternoon editorial meeting, when several of us raised the point (I'll leave it to others to decide germaneness) that several U.S. presidents were at minimum revolutionaries, and probably were considered terrorists of their time by the Crown in England.

The hard left, the third-worlders-are-just-better-than-us-left, and many liberals refuse to distinguish between what they ironically term "freedom fighters" and terrorists.

Let me, for the hundredth time, explain things to these fucking anti-american morons.

The left likes to pretend that terrorists are merely guerilla fighters. As the patriots who liberated this country used guerilla tactics some of the time (to much better effect than conventional tactics, of course), the left loves claiming that the Minutemen and such are no different than Zarqawi's murderers.

Wrong.

Guerilla fighters violate some of the rules of war -- they often do not wear recognizable uniforms, and they often blend into a civilian population after an ambush on an opponent. They strike quick, kill a few soldiers, and attempt to melt away.

Yes, these are violations of the rules of war. But this does not make them terrorists.

Because, unlike actual terrorists, guerilla fighters strike legitimate military targets (enemy soldiers, enemy bases, the enemy's political control structure which may include political leaders and police, which are quasi-military and thus at the very least semi-legitimate targets).

Terrorists strike illegitimate targets-- namely, civilians. And they don't strike them accidentally, as collateral damage inflicted in striking a legitimate target; their purpose is to slaughter "soft targets" as frequently as possible. That's their primary goal-- not to defeat an enemy's military, which is the goal of guerillas; but to shock and terrorize a civilian population into acquiescence and appeasement.

Does everyone get that now? Just because the Minutemen hid behind trees and were irregular troops often having no real military insignia (though they did often sport those, actually) doesn't make them terrorists... so long as they were killing British troops, which, last time I checked, is what they were doing.

Of course any war will feature atrocities committed by angry or undisciplined soldiers who decide to kill civilians. And these soldiers are criminals and could be characterized as "terrorists." But generally these are aberrations in wars between civilized peoples, and the culprits are brought to justice.

So, for the last fucking time:

Just because someone is not part of a regular military force does NOT make him a terrorist. He is a guerilla fighter. He MAY be a terrorist, depending on his choice of targets. And, as in Iraq, he may often switch frequently between being a not-quite-lawful-but-not-quite-disgusting guerilla fighter, attacking legitimate targets (like our troops and Iraqi recruits), and then blowing up civilians and attacking hotels.

In Iraq, the insurgents/guerillas are also largely terrorists, because they engage in terrorist attacks a good amount of the time.

But that's not often the case. And it was not the case as regards our Founding Fathers.

So, Brian Williams: Save your dopey leftist cant for when you retire. Read more, think more, yap less.

You stupid fucking newstwat mannequin.

Posted by: Ace at 10:12 AM | Comments (26)
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Just about my least favorite justice. Too powerful in her role as a swing vote, and very often making a muddle of the law with laundry lists of competing factors that must be "balanced."

Conservatives are angry about the possible nomination of Alberto Gonzales. Robet Novak reports he would not support parental notification while on the Texas Supreme Court and considers Roe v. Wade "invioble."

At least on that issue, then, Gonazales' appointment would represent an affirmation of the status quo.

It's a gamble. Whether or not Bush has the political power to muscle through a truly conservative jurist in place of a more moderate one is very much an open question. He seemed to have lost an ersatz test vote earlier-- if the Republican Senate caucus was willing to use its majority power to push through nominees the Democrats despised, we wouldn't have had that "bipartisan centrist compromise."

Novak argues that with Bush's popularity declining, nominating a pro-choicer would be disasterous, as it would alienate his base. On the other hand, I'm not sure Bush has the stomach for another political defeat. Each political defeat seems to embolden the opposition and further weaken him.

On the plus side-- Gonzales is no worse than O'Connor when it comes to the abortion question, and he probably couldn't be any worse on most issues.

Still, that's it. He wouldn't be worse. He wouldn't, presumably, become a reliable conservative vote and thus tilt the court the way we might like.

I'm not sure if Bush has the political capital to do more. I suppose he can be faulted for not trying, but I don't think we want to see him a lame duck with three years left in his term.

The Democrats will filibuster any strong conservative nominated to replace a moderate. Yes, the agreement says they'll only filibuster in "extraodinary circumstances," but the changing the composition of the court by swapping in a conservative for a nominee will, of course, be deemed just such an "extraodinary circumstance." And I doubt that Lindsay Graham, John McCain, and the rest will suddenly grow the balls for the nuclear option.

I think this particular battle was lost in most important ways some time ago.

Posted by: Ace at 08:55 AM | Comments (54)
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