At various points I've read that kite-flying was banned in parts of the Islamic world.

Just another crazy Islamic law, I figured. Mohammad doesn't like Giant Manta Rays in the sky.

Actually, it's a great law, because this is not the sort of kite-flying you're thinking of.

Flying a kite in Pakistan is a dangerous pastime.

Already it's banned for all but 15 days of the year but a provincial minister warned kite-flyers this week that any who cause injury or death with string made from metal or coated with glass could be tried under anti-terrorism laws.

...

Kite-flying in Pakistan and neighbouring India often involves aerial duels in which participants try to bring down each other's kites using string coated in a sticky paste of ground-up glass or metal.

Every year, Pakistani media report dozens of deaths and injuries caused by kite flying, mainly of children and motocyclists whose throats are sometimes cut by metal or glass-coated string.

On one hand: it transforms kite-flying from a girly time-waster into a manly sport of aerial stragegy and combat.

On the other hand: They're decapitating people all over the g-damn place. It's like lofting OJ Simpson into the air and letting him ride the winds.

So sort of a difficult question to sort out.

So, there you go. The ban on kite-flying has nothing at all to do with some crazy interpretation of a 700 year old "holy book."

Some Islamist groups have staged protests in the past week after newspapers reported several deaths caused by kite-flying, denouncing the activity as un-Islamic.

Well, okay, almost nothing.

What's un-Islamic about decapitating random civilians, anyway? Perhaps Islam can be reformed after all.

Related: Another popular Pakistani sport, grabbing random pedestrians and sticking their faces in a tank full of slavering pirhana-fish, will be limited to just ten days of legality in June to coincide with the traditional start of Grabbing Random Pedestrians And Sticking Their Faces In A Tank Full of Slavering Pirhana-Fish season.

Thanks to LauraW. and scott.

Posted by: Ace at 09:35 AM | Comments (25)
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Apparently it's okay to data-mine to determine Americans' likely political preferences so they can be targeted for mailings, but it's a gross breach of the Constitution to use the same techniques to find likely terrorists:

A group of well-connected Democrats led by a former top aide to Bill Clinton is raising millions of dollars to start a private firm that plans to compile huge amounts of data on Americans to identify Democratic voters and blunt what has been a clear Republican lead in using technology for political advantage.

The effort by Harold Ickes, a deputy chief of staff in the Clinton White House and an adviser to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), is prompting intense behind-the-scenes debate in Democratic circles. Officials at the Democratic National Committee think that creating a modern database is their job, and they say that a competing for-profit entity could divert energy and money that should instead be invested with the national party.

Note the argument is about money, not the principle of data-mining. The DNC suspects this is largely an operation to benefit Hillary! only, and resents that.

So... no problem with using powerful computers to sift through the billions of records stored in corporate and government databases on all of us. It just depends on whether you have an intent important enough to justify such an intrusion. Electing Hillary! president is important enough; finding Mohammad Atta's successors is not.

...

The pressure on Democrats to begin more aggressive "data mining" in the hunt for votes began after the 2002 midterm elections and intensified after the 2004 presidential contest, when the GOP harnessed data technology to powerful effect.

In 2002, for the first time in recent memory, Republicans ran better get-out-the-vote programs than Democrats. When well done, such drives typically raise a candidate's Election Day performance by two to four percentage points. Democrats have become increasingly fearful that the GOP is capitalizing on high-speed computers and the growing volume of data available from government files and consumer marketing firms -- as well as the party's own surveys -- to better target potential supporters.

The Republican database has allowed the party and its candidates to tailor messages to individual voters and households, using information about the kind of magazines they receive, whether they own guns, the churches they attend, their incomes, their charitable contributions and their voting histories.

Those who shriek about government intrusiveness always seem to forget this information is already all out there, able to be collected by anybody with an interest in doing so.

Posted by: Ace at 09:25 AM | Comments (6)
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Pretty Farkin' funny. Scan down to the comments until the big long post that looks like, well, an internet web chat transcript.

I like that Alito signs in as "l33to."

Thanks to Johnny Catbird.

Posted by: Ace at 09:16 AM | Comments (5)
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Really not a joking matter. Just strange.

Josh Hershberger spent the last moments of his life in the same light-hearted, fun-loving way he spent many other moments of his life, having fun with his little brother and sister.

The 15-year-old Brandon High School sophomore was doing something many kids do from time to time, ignoring the age-old warning not to play ball in the house, investigators say.

Hillsborough County SheriffÂ’s Office spokeswoman Debbie Carter said the teen was sitting on his bedroom floor Monday night with his 14-year-old brother. Their sister, who is 9, was on a bed, and a big rubber ball they were playing with bounced off the wall and knocked down a gothic-style ornamental sword that was mounted there, sheriffÂ’s officials said.

Is English this reporter's fourth or fifth language?

The weapon cut into JoshÂ’s neck and shoulder. He was rushed to Brandon Regional Hospital but later was pronounced dead.

Via Drew Curtis' Fark. Accept no foreign-made alternative Farks; only Drew Curtis' Fark carries the "Drew Curtis" seal of quality.

Posted by: Ace at 08:32 AM | Comments (22)
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Old, yes, but thanks to Yeff for reminding me.

Cool stuff:

Batman's old-school, Batman: Year One style outfit. I think they just went with gray long johns because it's a lot cheaper than a body-sculpted rubber suit of armor, but it looks good.

Decent visual swipes from movies and comics. Batman rising up with his cape lifting up from the ground is pretty good.

Bad stuff:

The dialogue between Batman and the Joker is terrible and derivative. If you're going to invest time and money into something like this, why just have your two speaking characters say crap they've said in movies and comic books before? The "You made me"/"No you made me" crap from the first Batman movie was bad the first time around; why repeat it?

And the ending's a swipe too. Again, do something new.

Anyway, some pretty professional-looking amateur filmmaking.

Related: Yeff also sends this geek love song by "Tripod" I posted a few weeks back. If you haven't seen it yet, it's pretty damn funny.

Posted by: Ace at 08:01 AM | Comments (5)
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The power is officially granted by Congress, with some oversight, and no investigation:

Moving to tamp down Democratic calls for an investigation of the administration's domestic eavesdropping program, Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee said Tuesday that they had reached agreement with the White House on proposed bills to impose new oversight but allow wiretapping without warrants for up to 45 days.

The agreement, hashed out in weeks of negotiations between Vice President Dick Cheney and Republicans critical of the program, dashes Democratic hopes of starting a full committee investigation because the proposal won the support of Senators Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Olympia J. Snowe of Maine. The two, both Republicans, had threatened to support a fuller inquiry if the White House did not disclose more about the program to Congress.

"We are reasserting Congressional responsibility and oversight," Ms. Snowe said.

The proposed legislation would create a seven-member "terrorist surveillance subcommittee" and require the administration to give it full access to the details of the program's operations.

Ms. Snowe said the panel would start work on Wednesday, and called it "the beginning, not the end of the process."

"We have to get the facts in order to weigh in," she said. "We will do more if we learn there is more to do."

The agreement would reinforce the authority of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which was created in 1978 to issue special warrants for spying but was sidestepped by the administration. The measure would require the administration to seek a warrant from the court whenever possible.

Whenever possible. Kind of vague.

Seems to me that Congress seeks to reassert the relevance of FISA by diminishing it.

Congress had oversight, or at least its leaders were kept informed of the program; this agreement simply codifies that. The only real change seems to be the 45-day grace period for seeking a warrant.

Posted by: Ace at 07:35 AM | Comments (9)
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No, really. He doesn't just inadvertantly quote it, or almost quote it. He cites it in a footnote. (See the bottom of the order.)

Billy Madison.

Thanks to Crosblog. Who has, in case you remember it, the sentencing for the parties involved in the MacDonald's sexual-harassment-by-crank-phone-call case.

Harry Callahan's Legal Update: Law blogger Professor Bainbridge has obtained a copy of the motion that prompted the response. See for yourself here.

Posted by: Ace at 04:23 PM | Comments (28)
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Frank Rich was right! Brokeback Mountain really has caught on in the heartland!

Okay, yeah, they didn't have sex with sheep. But they had sex near sheep, okay?

Leroy Donald Johnson was caught this weekend in a barn with his pants down, literally, according to a sheriff's office report.

"You caught me ... I tried to (expletive) your sheep," Johnson told his neighbor, according to the report.

But the Mesa Fire Department deputy fire chief changed his story when a sheriff's deputy arrived on his doorstep minutes later, denying anything happened.

Johnson, 52, was jailed on suspicion of disorderly conduct and criminal trespassing...

Criminal trespassing? Illegally entering the property of another?

I guess that's one way to say "sticking your business in someone else's farm animal."

This guy? No way.

...after the neighbor told investigators he found Johnson, unzipped and holding a sheep down on its side.

That's the sanitized version. The Maricopa County Sheriff's Office report released Monday night is a little more graphic.

Johnson's neighbor told sheriff's deputies he was called home Saturday afternoon when his 13-year-old daughter saw Johnson drag one of their sheep into a barn.

...

According to the deputy's report, "(The owner) took me into the back yard and showed me where he and (neighbor) pulled up. He took me through the corral gate and I saw the victim for the first time. She was a small gray lamb about three feet tall and four feet long."

The men then told the deputy they walked over to the small barn, opened the door and "saw Leroy holding the lamb down on its side in the hay with his pants down trying to have sex with it. That's when he made the statement about (expletive) the lamb."

In Leroy's defense, the lamb did look almost old enough to be a ewe.

The men said Johnson stood up and zipped up his pants.

"The sheep ran out of the barn at that point," the report says.

Johnson apologized, according to the report, and said he'd had "too much to drink."

I for one am astonished that alcohol played any role in this.

Thanks to Joe, who opines: "I think this man was just using his sexuality, as we all use our sexuality, as a part of his personal armory in daily battle."

Posted by: Ace at 03:57 PM | Comments (54)
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Basically, it appears that Wal-Mart sends stories and tips (in its favor, of course) to bloggers who show some sympathy to its cause.

The New York Times seems aghast at this practice.

Just wondering-- how many New York Times stories per week are cribbed directly from DNC sources, DNC releases, or "studies" by liberal-leaning advocacy groups?

They're making an issue of the fact that Marshall Manson, a co-blogger at RedState and (serendipitously) ontapblog.com (where Jim Geraghty co-blogs) sent tips and such to Rob at Sayanythingblog.com.

And that Manson offered to give Rob a tour of Wal-Mart's corporate headquarters (and possibly would help defer travel expenses).

Whoo-hooo! Touring a corporate HQ. It's payola and graft of the worst sort. Why, that's a privilege afforded to... well, just about anyone who's interested, I'm guessing.

In the spirit of disclosure, Marshall was nice enough to buy me several Miller Lights and one rum & diet coke at CPAC a few weeks ago (as he bought for most bloggers on Blogger Row). The topic of Wal-Mart never came up, but I'm sure I've been corrupted by that crazy Wal-Mart money. Some subliminal message he sent me compels me to publish something about dirt-cheap snow shovels.

PunditGuy also seems to have been caught up in this web of deception and corporate chicanery:

Bloggers who agreed to receive the e-mail messages said they were eager to hear Wal-Mart's side of the story, which they said they felt had been drowned out by critics, and were tantalized by the promise of exclusive news that might attract more visitors to their Web sites.

"I am always interested in tips to stories," said one recipient of Mr. Manson's e-mail messages, Bill Nienhuis, who operates a Web site called PunditGuy.com.

You see that? He's always interested in tips to stories. It's practically a bribe. He's "tantalized by the promise of exclusive news that might attract more visitors to" his web site.

Because if anything draws eyeballs, it's hot stories about Wal-Mart!

Let me go on the record right now: I'm interested in ALL tips about news, including from major corporations. Just don't clutter my email box with pure bullshit. Keep them infrequent and only send me the interesting ones.

And by all means invite me to tour your corporate headquarters-- that's the key to buying me off. General Mills, I'm looking right at you. I've always been fascinated by how you guys make Lucky Charms, and who thought of the masterstroke of adding the blue diamond. Send me a few snack-packs and I'll print just about anything you want me to.

It's all so stupid. Someone who wants press sends tips to someone who may or may not provide press (as he determines himself) and it's a scandal.

I'd like to see the emails between NYT and the DNC.

Oh, And... A left-wing anti-war veterans group is always sending me tips. I don't know how I got on their list, but I did post one tip (I think it was about Paul Hackett bad-mouthing the Democratic Party). They continue sending me tips, although, obviously, we're not on the same page.

It's just absurd. Of course advocacy groups are sending stuff like this to bloggers -- just like they send this stuff to the NYT.

Posted by: Ace at 03:26 PM | Comments (18)
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I guess it's something, at least.

Cheney, speaking to the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC, also reaffirmed that the United States was keeping all options on the table -- including military force -- in its determination to prevent Iran from developing nuclear arms.

"The Iranian regime needs to know that if it stays on its present course the international community is prepared to impose meaningful consequences," Cheney said.

Cheney spoke as the 35-nation International Atomic Energy Agency governing board was meeting in Vienna to decide its next steps on Iran.

"For our part, the United States is keeping all options on the table. ... We will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon," Cheney said.

But at some point a nation gets the bomb and "all options" are no longer on the table.

In fact, in the case of Iran, they don't even necessarily need to get a bomb. They just have to get fairly close. Forcing a regime change at that point would simply cause an evacuation of the mad mullahs and their atomic scientists... who would seek shelter with Al Qaeda types.

Posted by: Ace at 10:07 AM | Comments (60)
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