Check out questions...

#5 (near-50% pluralities say we're giving "the right amount" of protection to American's and even terrorists' civil liberties, plus 8-10% say we're doing "too much" to protect such rights);

#6 (65% say it's more important to investigate terrorist threats than protect privacy; 32% disagree);

#8 (64% say that the federal government is intruding into people's privacy, but 49% call that intrusion "justified");

#16 (53% say Alito should be confirmed); and

#20 (44% say that abortion should either be overturned or subject to greater restrictions, as opposed to 38% who say leave it as it is; 18% have no opinion).

Posted by: Ace at 09:46 AM | Comments (11)
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I hope I don't jinx things but it looks like those hockey pucks up north are going to election a "conservative" government. So long Martin/Chretien!

Bush re-elected.

Blair re-elected.

Howard re-elected.

Schroeder defeated and working for Russian dictator.

Chirac less popular than Pierre Laval and set for retirement next year.

Only the Spanish turned out to be pussies.

Posted by: Tanker at 09:40 AM | Comments (21)
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We have some small amount of time, but no dicking-around time.

Israel is updating plans for a pre-emptive strike on Iran's nuclear facilities which could be launched as soon as the end of March, according to military and intelligence sources.

...

The Israeli raids would be carried out by long-range F-15E bombers and cruise missiles against a dozen key sites and are designed to set Tehran's weapons programme back by up to two years.

Pilots at the Israeli air force's elite 69 squadron have been briefed on the plan and have conducted rehearsals for their missions.

The prime targets would be the uranium enrichment plant at Natanz, 150 miles south of Tehran, a heavy-water production site at Arak, 120 miles south-west of the capital, and a site near Isfahan in central Iran which makes the uranium hexafluoride gas vital to the arms manufacturing process.

Here's the kicker:

Sources say one, possibly two airfields in Kurdish northern Iraq have been earmarked as launch-points to reduce flying time over Iran.

Sweet.

Posted by: Ace at 09:01 AM | Comments (26)
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Good stuff:

Ms. Rice's criticism can be explained with the politician's personal peculiarities. Why is Condoleezza Rice so fond of her "strict teacher" role? Is it her technique that she follows to stay in the center of political attention? The leader of the Liberal and Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR), Vladimir Zhirinovsky [an ultra-nationalist communism-nostalgist demagogue] expressed his opinion on the matter in an exclusive interview with Pravda.Ru.

"Condoleezza Rice released a coarse anti-Russian statement. This is because she is a single woman who has no children. She loses her reason because of her late single status. Nature takes it all.

...

"This is the only way to satisfy her needs of a female. She derives pleasure from it. If she has no man by her side at her age, he will never appear. Even if she had a whole selection of men to choose from she would stay single because her soul and heart have hardened. Like Napoleon, Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, or Alexander the Great of Macedon Ms. Rice needs to fight and release tough public statements in global scale. She needs to be on top of the world.

...

"Condoleezza Rice needs a company of soldiers. She needs to be taken to barracks where she would be satisfied. On the other hand, she can hardly be satisfied because of her age. This is a complex. She needs to return to her university and teach students there. She could also deal with psychological analysis.

"The true reason of Ms. Rice's attack against Russia is very simple. Condoleezza Rice is a very cruel, offended woman who lacks men's attention. Releasing such stupid remarks gives her the feeling of being fulfilled. This is the only way for her to attract men's attention," Vladimir Zhirinovsky said.

In fairness, the "genius" cartoonist responsible for Boondocks has a similar therory.

Posted by: Ace at 08:36 AM | Comments (41)
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Some Frenchmen are... okay.

This is odd:

Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin thanked U.S. authorities and French diplomatic and intelligence officials over Planche's "liberation." President Jacques Chirac thanked "coalition forces who permitted this liberation."

So this hostage was "liberated" but the rest of Iraq wasn't?

Also at Non-Parasan: French Protest Warrior-Types spoil celebration of Francois Mitterand by reminding the crowd he worked for the Vichy Government. At least until they're stopped by cops.

Bush "chills the dissent" of protestors, even in France. Damn, that guy is good. I wish I could have voted for him twice. Someone in the Democratic Party is going to explain to me how I can do that.

Posted by: Ace at 08:19 AM | Comments (4)
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Allah also seems to have purged the world of Hamza's hands, but no word yet on his thinking on that one:

Muslim cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri wanted a caliph sitting in the White House and said Hitler was sent into the world because Jews were blasphemous and dirty, a London court heard on Wednesday.

Hamza, 47, is the most high-profile figure to go on trial in Britain on charges of incitement to murder and stirring up racial hatred since the September 11, 2001 attacks on Washington and New York.

Interest in the case has increased since suicide bombings on London's transport system last July killed 52 people.

Prosecutor David Perry said the Egyptian-born cleric used public meetings at the Finsbury Park mosque in north London and private meetings to incite his followers to kill non-Muslims.

"The prosecution case is, in one sentence, that Sheik Abu Hamza was preaching murder and hatred in these talks," Perry told the Old Bailey court.

But was he preaching positive hatred and compassionate murder?

Where's the nuance?

Thanks to A-Man.

Posted by: Ace at 07:31 AM | Comments (19)
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The Weekly Standard took a blowtorch to Ney about a week ago.

Seems Ney was doing the bidding of mobbed-up casino operators. What a shock.

Thanks to Kelli.

Posted by: Ace at 07:16 AM | Comments (5)
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And Iran makes another threat:

In Iran's first response to the international outcry, former President Hashemi Rafsanjani said he was "astonished" by the West's attempt to "bully" Iran.

"If they cause any disturbance, they will ultimately regret it," he warned.

"Keeping the Third World and the Islamic world several steps behind has been the West's traditional colonial policy," he said in a speech for the Islamic holiday of Eid al-Adha broadcast live on state television.

"Even if (the Westerners) destroy our scientists, their successors would continue the job," he said. "It would not be easy for them to solve the (nuclear) case by imposing sanctions or anything like that."

Mission: Doable: Israeli general thinks that a strike could "cripple" Iran's nuke program.

Thanks to Ilbis for that.

Posted by: Ace at 06:57 AM | Comments (11)
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Allah sent me this promising it was good, and to ignore the ridiculous amount of Bush-bashing in the early going. I almost didn't believe him and for a time I stopped reading. But at the end I did learn something pretty interesting:

[A]re the mullahs untouchable? No. Paradoxical as it may seem, their greatest weakness is their oil and gas industry. Sure, Iran has the second largest oil reserves in the Middle East, after Saudi Arabia. But its facilities for pumping and processing the stuff are in such a sorry state that domestic demand for gasoline is 60 percent greater than the country's refining capacity. To keep up, the mullahs have to import more than 95,000 barrels a day. Iran has the second-largest known reserves of natural gas in the world—but it's a net importer of the stuff its people use. To make matters much worse, the mullahs long ago adopted a policy trying to buy popular support with massively subsidized prices for cooking gas, gasoline and other products. Today, those subsidies eat up a whopping 10 percent of Iran's gross domestic product, according to the latest World Energy Outlook report from the Paris-based International Energy Agency (not to be confused with the IAEA).

Even without the current crisis, Iran needs foreign technology and hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign investment if it's going to meet its domestic energy needs. Yet for that to happen, as the same report suggests, "a resolution of the nuclear issue would be required." "We have a big problem, but the Iranians also have big problems," says the European diplomat. If Ahmadinejad succeeds in provoking the United Nations to impose serious sanctions, cutting off Iran's imports of heavily subsidized natural gas and gasoline, the first people to suffer would be the Iranian president's core constituency—the poor and uneducated.

Marshall MacLuhan Update: A-Man steps out from behind a marquee and says "You don't know my work at all."

He says this is the key part of the article:

Even some of the most rabid Iranian opposition groups think the mullahs can withstand whatever the Israelis or Americans throw at them from the air—and in the aftermath the Iranian public would rally around the turbans. Indeed, some opposition groups think Ahmadinejad is intentionally goading the Israelis to launch a strike for just that reason. "If they attack him, he will have his war; if they do not, he will have his bomb," says one well-connected exile who still makes occasional visits to Tehran and asked not to be named.

...and notes that this particular pacifist writer cannot be trusted as regards the efficacy of sanctions. He (and Newsweek) would always support sanctions over force, whether they could work or not.

That's true, and as other commenters note, sanctions did nothing to bring Saddam down.

But I don't think we're ready to strike at Iran yet, so sanctions, in the interim, would not necessarily be a bad thing.

Furthermore, I pretty much doubt the efficacy of anything short of a full-scale invasion or massive nuclear strike on Iran. I just don't think we can bring down the regime with conventional airstrikes alone. And, as they say, if you take a shot at the king, you'd better make sure you kill him. Hitting Iran with enough force to give it a pretext to use the bomb -- while not actually ending its mad-dog mullarchy and its capacity to build the bomb -- would not be, oh, what's the word?, good.

I guess I'm just looking desperately for options at this point. I can not imagine living in a world in which Iran has the atomic bomb, nor can I imagine a likely sort of military assault capable of stopping it from getting one.

I freaked people out at a bar talking about this a month ago. Later they wanted me to give my same downer Iran speech to other people in order to depress them, sort of like a party trick.

Posted by: Ace at 10:10 PM | Comments (99)
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Rep. Bob Ney (R-Ohio), so "lucky" he may wind up in jail:

Some of Ney's actions may be hard to explain. In 2003, Ney went to London to meet the operator of a Cyprus-based airplane firm, FN Aviation, which was seeking Ney's help in getting permission to sell U.S.-made airplane spare parts to Iran. The owner of the company, Nigel Winfield, a thrice-convicted felon who once went to prison for trying to fleece Elvis Presley, wanted a "humanitarian" exception to a ban on the sale of U.S. high tech to Iran (Iran's aging Boeings had begun crashing). Ney, his lawyers acknowledge, did talk to the State Department, though nothing came of it. (Winfield did not respond to calls from NEWSWEEK.) But on another trip to London, Ney called up Winfield's Syrian-born business partner, Fouad Al-Zayat, known in London casinos as The Fat Man, and suggested they go gambling together. Putting down a $100 bet, Ney ended the evening $34,000 richer, according to his financial reports. Ney says nothing improper took place; he just got lucky. It may also be a coincidence that a year earlier Ney acknowledged at least $30,000 in credit-card debts which he paid off after his gambling windfall.

Not only was this sonofabitch paid off, he lobbied the State Department to sell spare airplane parts to friggin' Iran.

He should be stripped of his seniority and all committee memberships immediately.

Posted by: Ace at 09:27 PM | Comments (14)
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