In France.

See-Dub snarks, "How could I have possibly missed this trial? It was all over the mainstream media in 2005, wasnÂ’t it?"

Yup. The media has Soros Insider Trading Conviction Fever, baby.

Posted by: Ace at 10:26 PM | Comments (20)
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They're really pulling out all the stops. Someone wrote a few weeks ago that they'd decided polar bears would be the human face of global warming.

Well, not human face, technically. But a cute face.

Polar bears in the southern Beaufort Sea may be turning to cannibalism because longer seasons without ice keep them from getting to their natural food, a new study by American and Canadian scientists has found.

The study reviewed three examples of polar bears preying on each other from January to April 2004 north of Alaska and western Canada, including the first-ever reported killing of a female in a den shortly after it gave birth.

...

Polar bears kill each other for population regulation, dominance, and reproductive advantage, the study said. Killing for food seems to be less common, said the study's principal author, Steven Amstrup of the U.S. Geological Survey Alaska Science Center.

"During 24 years of research on polar bears in the southern Beaufort Sea region of northern Alaska and 34 years in northwestern Canada, we have not seen other incidents of polar bears stalking, killing, and eating other polar bears," the scientists said.

Ummm... two paragraphs ago, the article said polar bears killing each other for food was "less common" than than other motives for bear-on-bear violence. Now this, um, "scientist" seems to be alleging bears killing other bears for food has never been seen before.

Which is it?

Gee, I hope this isn't a bit of hype to advance the global warming agenda. I hope that the rest of the experts in this article will avoid rhetorical flourishes better delivered from behind a politician's podium than a scientist's lectern.

...

Deborah Williams of Alaska Conservation Solutions, a group aimed at pursuing solutions for climate change, said the study represents the "bloody fingerprints" of global warming.

There you go. Sober and scientific.

Posted by: Ace at 10:07 PM | Comments (44)
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The things we do for love:

The couple were discussing marriage early Wednesday when the woman said she wasn't sure if she was ready, according to Ann Arbor police reports. The man responded that taking risks is an important part of life and, to prove his point, jumped out of a first-floor window and ran naked across the street.

Before he could return, he spotted a couple walking and hid in some bushes to avoid them. A 28-year-old man noticed the bushes rustling and bare feet underneath, then drew a .40-caliber handgun and ordered the naked man out, police said.

The naked suitor ran away, but the armed man gave chase and threatened to shoot, police said. The gunman fired a shot and the naked man fell to the ground, suffering minor injuries.

As the woman remains unconvinced, he plans to next show the value of taking risks by engaging in the dangerous "extreme sport" that's sweeping the nation: alligator taint-polishing.

Posted by: Ace at 09:46 PM | Comments (17)
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He had been in prison for molesting a six year old. After just a few weeks out of jail, he kidnapped a three year old, repeatedly violated her, and then brought her to a pedophile party to share with his friends.

Life in prison is his sentence. Sounds good-- except he's eligible for parole in five years.

His mother made the heartbreaking statement that it would have been easier to find that her daughter was dead, rather than multiply raped by a pervert. That may sound harsh, until one thinks about how horrible this all is.

On the plus side, this British editorial is spitting angry and contemptuous of moronic, effete judges. America had to go through this too.

Posted by: Ace at 09:03 PM | Comments (22)
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I tell you, the Ace of Spades Lifestyle (TM) is like Atkins. Twenty years from now it will be standard medical advice to reduce cholesterol by setting fire to sleeping hobos.

For many men, a finding by Oregon researchers sounds too good to be true: An ingredient in beer seems to help prevent prostate cancer, at least in lab experiments.

The trouble is you'd theoretically have to drink about 17 beers a day for any potential benefit. And no one's advising that.

Or... are they?

Thanks to Bill.

Posted by: Ace at 07:06 PM | Comments (14)
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I think Ann might be rattled. I've heard before she shies away from book signings because she fears the hostility of masses of liberals. Carlin will most likely get nasty if he's on the panel with her, and I'm not sure Leno will change the format to prevent that.

Update: Carlin up first, so presumably he'll be on the couch as Jay interviews Coulter.

Rumor has it that Carlin was funny from 1975 to 1979.

Before I really got political, I watched one of his shows on HBO. As a kid, I thought he was hilarious. He said dirty words.

But watching him as an adult, I thought it was all kind of sad. And I wondered if he had never really been funny at all, or had been funny but simply lost it.

Those old shows don't hold up well at all either. Which isn't necessarily a knock. Most stand-up doesn't hold up very well. Hell, even classics like Monty Python don't hold up very well. I'm not sure if Fawlty Towers was funnier than Monty Python, but it sure seems less dated.

Carlin's Stand-Up... was lame. It was fast-talk use of buzzwords, often paired in contradiction, like "The software on my hard-drive is hard-core, no soft-porn" and "I bought a microwave at a minimall and a minivan at a megastore."

It's, um, cute, I guess. Sort of. It's just so very, very 1977.

Well, old school is the new new school, I hear. So it's very cutting edge, in a way. Like Gallagher.

Not Any Funnier: "Ask me how old I am."

"How old are you?"

"SIXTY NINE!!!" Carlin exclaims.

Um, okay. I don't know. Far be it from me to knock someone for having a childishly prurient sense of humor, but, look, at least my humor is eighth grade. "SIXTY NINE!!!" is sixth grade, I think.

Bad Premise, With a Bad Payoff: The Catholics don't have an atomic bomb?

France?

Well, okay, maybe they're not so Catholic anymore.

Either way, not funny.

No Fireworks: Carlin made one playful (but not very funny) joke and then gave Coulter a friendly punch in the arm. He was quiet throughout. Coulter pandered (she doesn't need a bodyguard, she travels "with conservative men," which pleased the conservatives in the audience). Leno asked her all the required questions, which she deflected, by and large.

She wasn't funny either. And looked a little stranger than usual.

Leno follows Carson's admonition to not take sides in political disputes. Letterman doesn't. Which is odd, because Letterman idolized Carson.

Bill Maher Vetted Her Book? She claimed her "smartest liberal friend" had been given the book and told to attack it for problems. When Leno asked her if she had many liberal friends, she said just one.

This would seem to be Bill Maher, whom she gets along with famously.

Odd.

Some Quotes: At NoDNC. He liked the appearance more than I did.

A Freeper Report: Says that Ann said Carlin was nice to her. He seemed nice. I figured his fan-base would be upset if he didn't go after her. I was pretty surprised he was so well-behaved.

The guy's report says Leno asked "strangely pointed" questions. I really have no idea what the hell this could possibly mean. There's a controversy around her; how could he not ask the questions? And I have to say Leno asked them as politely and deferentially as one could imagine them being asked.

For example, in asking why she used such aggressive language, he said he always comes from the perspective that you attract more flies with honey, but then added, "Maybe that's just because I'm a comic," i.e., depending entirely on audience goodwill for a living.

This is "strangely pointed"? The guy gave her polite, straight-ahead, gentle interview.

I don't like when "my side" acts all moonbatty.

It makes me feel dirty. And not good-dirty, either.

Posted by: Ace at 06:43 PM | Comments (74)
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In this article, the NYT allows a terrorist to tell his story, without offering any external factual guidance.

I WAS released from the United States military's prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in July 2004. As I was about to board a plane that would take me home to France, the last detainee I saw was a young Yemeni. He was overwhelmed by emotion.

"In your country, Mourad, there are rights, human rights, and they mean something," he said. "In mine they mean nothing, and no one cares. So when you're free, don't forget what you've been through. Tell people that we are here."

I now know that this Yemeni was not among the three prisoners who committed suicide at Guantánamo last weekend, but since then his words have been echoing in my head. Although I'm now a free man, the shared pain endlessly takes me back to the camp.

In the early summer of 2001, when I was 19, I made the mistake of listening to my older brother and going to Afghanistan on what I thought was a dream vacation. His friends, he said, were going to look after me. They did — channeling me to what turned out to be a Qaeda training camp. For two months, I was there, trapped in the middle of the desert by fear and my own stupidity.

As soon as my time was up, I headed home. I was a few miles from the Pakistani border when I learned with horror about the attacks of 9/11. Days later, the border was sealed off, and the only way through to Pakistan and a plane to Europe was across the mountains of the Hindu Kush. I was with a group of people who were all going the same way. No one was armed; most of them, like me, had been lured to Afghanistan by a misguided and mistimed sense of adventure, and were simply trying to make their way home.

I was seized by the Pakistani Army while having tea at a mosque shortly after I managed to cross the border. A few days later I was delivered to the United States Army: although I didn't know it at the time, I was now labeled an "enemy combatant." It did not matter that I was no one's enemy and had never been on a battlefield, let alone fought or aimed a weapon at anyone.

He alleges he was tortured by the US Army.

Here are the facts the NYT "forgot" to add to the story:

1) The man has been repatriated into France, where he awaits trial on terror charges.

2) The man's father is an extremist cleric, and a convicted terrorist.

3) The man's brother is a convicted terrorist, and indeed was convicted today (the day the sob story ran).

4) The man's mother is a convicted terrorist.

5) So is his sister.

So, O'Reilly says, the man is claiming he "accidentally" wound up in an Al Qaeda terrorist camp due to some snafu in booking a a weekend in Bali, and then was just trying to get home after 9/11 when he was captured... in the vicinity of Tora Bora.

His whole family are terrorist scum, but we are to believe he "accidentally" wound up at an Al Qaeda terrorist camp, and then "accidentally" also wound up being captured at the place of Osama bin Ladin's fortress.

The NYT uses this man's charges of torture, without noting he comes from an entire family of terrorists, against the US Army, and treats them credibly, giving him a thousand words of precious advertising space to propagandize against his enemy, the United States of America.

Un. Befucking. Lievable.

Remember this when you hear for the ten thousandth time about all these poor innocent noncombatants who were randomly captured by Pakistan, sold to the US for bounties, and unjustly locked away forever.

This, apparently, is one of the more credible accounts of how such a tragedy of circumstance may have occurred -- after all, the "Paper of Record" gave him a thousand words to explain his innocent-as-a-lamb life story.

Andrew Sullivan-- suck my hog. Seriously, you preening jackass.

Posted by: Ace at 06:25 PM | Comments (29)
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Meaning, a case where the blogosphere did not correct a media inaccuracy, but rather pumped an inaccuracy into it.

Here's something pretty obvious. It took a week for the MSM to get interested in Rathergate, despite the fact that rightwing bloggers were showing their work. They did not rely upon claims of personal knowlege; they did things like type up the "1972 typewritten document" on modern day MS Word and showed the two in comparison (LGF) or interviewed the man who, literally, wrote the Bible on a typewriter font indentification and authentication (Bill From INDC).

Despite that -- despite the fact that the media was not required to accept anyone's personal say-so that the documents were fake -- it took a week for the MSM to acknowlege the controversy.

And when it did, it tended to lie. For example, the NYT, I believe, interviewed Bill From INDC's source and cherry-picked his quotes so as to suggest that he thought the Rathergate docs were real. He didn't think that at all. He said they were most likely fake but that he had to check a few things to be sure; they wrote that up as him saying the documents seemed authentic as far as he knew.

Now, compare that to the MSM's behavior when a story comes from the left side of the blogosphere, and concerns someone they don't like.

The story gets talked up a lot more, and quicker, too, eh?

Gee. I wonder why that should be.

Sort of Related: Kausfiles notes that Kos' "Screw them" comment is far more offensive than anything Ann Coulter's ever written.

So why all the scrutiny and criticism for Ann, and none for Kos?

Before anyone says "Because he's just a blogger" -- ummm, unfortunately, no he's not anymore. He's a bonafide new media and netroots phenomenon, courted by real Democratic politicians-- including candidate for president Mark Warner.

I don't see any Republican politicians cozying up to Ann Coulter. They know the media attacks would be vicious.

So.... why, exactly, the pass for Kos?

Correction: Bill From INDC says:

Sorry Ace, but this is sort of untrue - the Washington Post, Chicago Sun-Times, NYTimes and Globe had prominent stories within 24 hours of that first blogging day. And of those four, only the Globe tried to spin it that the docs were real. The WaPo ran a front pager on the online site that night.

Ah. The Globe. That's right. That's the one I incorrectly remembered as spinning the expert's words to suggest the documents were real.

While there were stories -- I stand corrected -- I don't think they did much more than note the documents had been challenged.

When there was substantial evidence that very first day to make a provisional determination they were fake.

Teachout's claims may not have been treated by the media as Gospel, but they sure seemed to make it on to Hardball and Olbermann and the like.

Posted by: Ace at 03:24 PM | Comments (19)
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Kind of a non-story. So, the guy's an arrogant dick, spends too much of his time sending emails to people he can't trust, and talks badly about colleagues.

Not really the biggest scandal ever.

The dope even responded to my emails, until I grew bored with the exchange. Shouldn't he have something better to do? I should have something better to do, too, but I don't have any money, am stuck in a crappy Boston suburb, and I couldn't get my leg humped in a kennel with a pocket full of Snausages and dog-porn.

Anyway. The guy seems to be a kind of junior-league blogger type who's somehow wound up on TV. Well, not tv. Basic cable. Very basic cable.

But I thought this was humorous.

There, the media blog Jossip.com asked Olbermann — who was accompanied by "his self-described 'friend' Katie" — if he'll now be answering to [MSNBC host turned boss Dan] Abrams.

"I don't answer to anybody," Olbermann insisted.

Oooooooh. A loose-canon maverick rebel who plays by his own rules!

Look, I'm not gay, but I'm not going to lie to you. My nipples are as hard as diamonds right now.

Posted by: Ace at 02:42 PM | Comments (27)
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Heh:

For the fifth time in a week, a stash of drugs was found in a cabinet at a Home Depot store in Massachusetts or discovered after the fixture was brought home.

A plumber in Southwick discovered 40 pounds of marijuana and three kilograms of cocaine stashed in a bathroom vanity he'd purchased at a Home Depot in Chicopee.

A second stash was found at that store and at least two more were discovered at a Tewksbury Home Depot, Southwick Police Lt. David Ricardi said. One of the Tewksbury stashes was discovered June 8 after a homeowner brought home a cabinet and found 50 pounds of marijuana.

Police also found drugs in a fifth cabinet. Ricardi would not say where or when it was discovered but said it was within the last week.

"It's a smuggling operation gone bad," Ricardi said. "Somebody owes some money."

Every drug user in the world is now scrambling to buy cabinets from Home Depot. Not because they think they'll get free weed and coke; but just so when the police come, they can put their stash in the cabinet and then just say, "Hey, man. Home Depot. What do you expect?"

Reasonable doubt right there.

Posted by: Ace at 01:38 PM | Comments (25)
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