The Coburn-Obama amendment to create a searhable database of earmarks, and the Congressmen introducing them and supporting them, is a terrific way to ferret out waste, profligate spending, and yes, even bribery. It's nice to know that the guy who just got, hypoethetically, $10,000 from a waste maangement lobbying group also just introduced an earmark for $10,000,000 to pay waste management companies to "explore and develop new methods" of "exploring markets not previously exploited by waste management companies, like the production of baby food."

There's a secret rat in the Senate. Help out him.

Call your Senators and get them to deny they're the rats. And record it, why don't you.

Because if the son of a bitch lies to a constituent, he's in trouble.

Via Mary Katherine Gallagher at Michelle's.

A Stone Cold Mystery Update: I'm absolutely baffled, because the only "brown person" in the Senate, and hence the obvious culprit, is Barack Obama, and he co-sponsored the Amendment.

Obviously, he's guilty (and also, I'm afraid of him, and in fact wetting myself even typing his name); and yet, why would he put on a hold on his own Amendment?

You see the problem there?

I guess it's possible he's engaging in skullduggery, introducing the amendment to get the positive press and yet secretly killing it to keep his bribe-money flowing; but this strikes me as too subtle for a "brown person" to manage. I figure if Barack Obama was against this amendment, he would just stab the amendment's suporters to death, like OJ did.

They're probably buddies. Obama could probably get some good stabbin' tips from OJ.

Thus, my befuddlement.

So now I'm annoyed, angered, befudddled, and scared out of my wits at the thought that there is a "brown person" walking the Senate halls with no police escort whatsoever, probably stealing all the priceless portraits of John C. Calhoun and selling crack to kids visiting from Iowa.

God, I'm so scared. Someone hold me.

Posted by: Ace at 03:12 PM | Comments (21)
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Just about all of them are now out; I have about ten or fifteen people to thank from there recent donations. In some cases I've found previous donations I'd not thanked people for, and thanked them very belatedly; once I'm done, I'll take a trip back further into the Yahoo account to see whom else is owed some gratitude.

In a couple of cases, the thank-yous keep getting mailer-daemon blocked from delivery. One reader's email is too full to accept further mail.

I can confidentally say, though, that this time, just about everyone has been thanked. If you haven't got one by tomorrow, your donation got buried somehow; let me know and I'll try to make good.

Once again, thanks everyone. I make jokes about the money being the most important thing in many thank-yous, and while that's not completely a joke, the support from you all makes this odd sort of bizarro job worth it.

To Richard, Who Thinks He's Been Banned: Richard, I checked your IP, and you're not on the banned list. I tried to tell you this by email, but your email box bounced me. I hope you see this; I have no idea how else to contact you.

Posted by: Ace at 02:33 PM | Comments (71)
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It's fashionable for the West to self-flagellate whenever asked, but what about the actual facts?

Islam has embraced armed military expansion for religious purposes since its earliest decades. In contrast, Christianity struggled in its divided attitudes toward military force and state power for its first 300 years. No “theology of Crusade” existed in Western Christian thought until the 11th century. In fact, the Christian Byzantine Empire had already been resisting Muslim expansion in the East for 400 years before Pope Urban II called the First Crusade — as a defensive response to generations of armed jihad.

Much of the modern Middle East was once heavily Christian. Muslim armies changed that by imposing Islamic rule. Surviving Christian communities have endured centuries of marginalization, discrimination, violence, slavery and outright persecution — not always and not everywhere; but as a constant, recurring and central theme of Muslim domination.

That same Christian suffering continues down to the present. In the early years of the 20th century, the Muslim Ottoman Empire murdered more than 1 million Armenian Christians for ethnic, economic, but also religious reasons. Many Turks and other Muslims continue to deny that massive crime even today. Coptic Christians in Egypt — who, even after 13 centuries of Muslim prejudice and harassment, cling to the faith — continue to experience systematic discrimination and violence at the hands of Islamic militants.

These facts are not merely antique trivia, nor are they a childish game of "You did it first."

Islamic extremism thrives on a sense of unfair treatment and historical grievance. It nutures this, derives its fanatical power from the legend of a thousand years of Christian crusades, slaughter, and persecution.

The sense of unfairness is one of the most potent engines of political passion. Why does the dextrosphere constantly slam the media? Because we sense in our hearts it's deeply unfair. Why has the left gone bugfuck crazy? Because of the triple shocks of the Clinton Impeachment, Bush Victory in Florida, and 9/11, which, unfairly to their minds, shifted the politics of the country in a direction very favorable to the Republicans. One can see how this endlessly-nutured sense of having been done wrong has deranged many of them.

And so it is in the Islamic World -- but several orders of magnitude worse.

It is time to confront the Islamic "historic greivance" hucksters with actual history and end their eternal wallowing in the Christian and Jewish sins of the past, 50% of them wholly imaginary, 40% of them real but quite balanced out by equivalent Islamic sins going on at the same time.

The academics, the media types, the obsequious liberals do the West no favors, nor do they do any favors for Muslims, when they fail to challenge these absurd claims of a thousand years of well-nigh interrupted Christian assaults and Jewish predations on the innocent-as-a-lamb Muslims.

Context. Nuance. Factual accuracy.

Academics, the media, and liberals are supposed to be big on these things, right?

Then why do they greet every claim of Muslim victimhood with the credulous, and very condescending, reaction of "Yes, yes, you poor dear, we've been just awful, just the worst sort of rotters, really, and we can hardly blame you for feeling so terribly put-upon as to resort to support for terrorism" ?

That dishonest, ahistorical, and racially condescending response is not helping anyone.

In fact, it's contributing to people being murdered.

Thanks to OgreGunner.

Posted by: Ace at 02:26 PM | Comments (44)
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I don't think it's funny. It's a HuffPo attempt at humor, which seems, you know, pretty doomed to failure from the get-go. It's the New York Times, as seen through the eyes of right-wingers.

The premise is good, as is the tech to make it work (I guess), but the actual gags are lame. It's all obvious, hack shit.

I can laugh at stuff like this, just not this particular stuff, 'cause it's hack. Jimmy Fallon delivered a great line on SNL along these lines. He intro'd a news segment about the battle of creationists and evolutionists in a school, and then said the two groups had reached a compromise: "Evolution can be discussed, but dinosaurs are now to be called Jesus Horses."

Man, I just giggled again writing it.

Anyway, that's funny.

This HuffPo thing? Not funny. Except, I guess, for the (CONTENT WARNING) Klimt thing at the bottom, which Allah thinks is pretty funny, I guess, as he mentions it.

Via Hot Air. Thanks for the tip to shawn... kind of.

I don't even think I get the prawn/sushi joke. What is trying to be said there, exactly?

Posted by: Ace at 12:38 PM | Comments (64)
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This article says that the Ramseys were circulating this sketch based on a psychic's description for a long, long time, with the message attached:

Have you seen this man? This man may have been in the
Boulder area in December 1996. ... We firmly believe that this
most horrible of killers will be caught based on information
provided by people who care about right and wrong. ...
Please help, so another innocent child will not be a victim
and another family will not suffer unbearable grief.

Okay, the neck, kinda, the mouth, kinda. Maybe the sketch captures a little of the man's fastidiousness with the hair.

Eyes? Nose? Cheeks? Seems to be total misses.

Even assuming this article is legit, and even assuming that this kinda-close-but-not-really sketch is a better than random guess, there's still one big problem:

The guy probably didn't do it.

Thanks to Allison for that. Not enough weird news on the site lately.

Why Do I Say He Probably Didn't Do It? Well, apart from the ex-wife's alibi for him, and the DA's reluctance to go out on a limb, there's a very simple reason to doubt his guilt:

He's not a "brown person." Jeeze, he's whiter than I am. It's preposterous to think he could be mixed up in any criminal activity.

No, what we're looking for here, I'm pretty sure, is a bona-fide, no-argument-about-it "brown person" of some sort. Or at the very least a Chinaman or Injun or something.

I don't want to say the killer will definitely be brown, yella, or red, but I can't imagine he won't have some traces of "exotic," "fiendish," or "heathen" facial features.

Excuse me again, I just filled my Depends (TM) thinking about the hordes of darkies, Chinamen, and Injuns who want to break into my place and steal my TV.

Personally... I think the psychic was actually seeing the coming murder of the Star Wars franchise. Compare for yourselves:

Police... say that the sketch is actually pretty nondescript, and could match thousands of people. Although it does bear a passing resemblance to a man known as "Thomas Ellers," aka "Ellison," aka "Wilson," aka "Rick Ellensberg:"

Police have little interest in this man, however, as he resides in Brazil, apparently the kingpin of large gang of wireless bandwidth pirates.

Thanks to RLW for that, and for Dave in Texas for the suggestion of a better photo for Karr, and to Rosetta for his alien suggestion, although I was trying to find a pic of that Star Wars alien since yesterday. I just didn't know what the things were called.

"Kaldonians" or something, it turns out.

Posted by: Ace at 12:18 PM | Comments (67)
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Betsy's bage, quoting Bryan Cunningham:

Much will be said about this opinion in the coming days. IÂ’ll start with this: I wouldnÂ’t accept this utterly unsupported, constitutionally and logically bankrupt collection of musings from a first-year law student, much less a new lawyer at my firm.

Patterico's down on it too. Here he quotes Dan McLaughlin:

Judge TaylorÂ’s opinion reads like a parody of bad judicial reasoning. The self-appointed legal solons of the Left will have to work long and hard to compose the straight face to dress up this opinion as anything but a travesty of the judicial process.

Lots of links at both places.

It's interesting how the "judge" contrived standing for the plaintiff's. Standing is a requirement in any case, to keep the court ruling on live disputes between actual litigants suffering actual harm, and out of the realm of simply dictating general public policy.

"Standing" here was found by lawyers claiming they were speaking constantly to potential terrorist targets overseas, and their possibly-terrorists clients were too a-scared to speak freely.

Even if you buy that, the harm is suffered by the non-citizen terrorist clients, not by the American laywers themselves.

Basically, this is like the SCOFLA in the Bush v. Gore case, where a determined, ideological liberal politician posing as judge is willing to buy into any amount of bullshit necessary to get to the decision she wants to make.

Larwyn just wrote to me that Taranto is wondering if the plaintiffs' admissions here are grounds for getting FISA warrants on the lot of them.

(Whoops... just wet myself a little. Be right back.)

Posted by: Ace at 11:48 AM | Comments (47)
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Imminent?

Maybe they just tape these things as a matter of simple prudence, like drafting a will even when you're young and healthy. Just in case something happens, you know. Five years from now you might have the unexpected urge to detonate yourself in an Quizno's, and you wouldn't want to be caught without a martyr tape.

Police investigating an alleged plot to bring down airliners have found several martyrdom videos in the course of their searches, the BBC has learned.

Unofficial police sources said the recordings - discovered on laptop computers - appear to have been made by some of the suspects being questioned.

Scotland Yard has refused to comment on what officers are finding.

No comment even for Andrew Sullivan, "Shadow Minister" for Heart-Ache?

Please excuse me. I just wet myself again.

This is getting ridonculous. I can't keep changing my pants every half-hour. Sure, I'm wearing Stain-Gard sansabelt slacks, but I don't want to push it.

Thanks to IreneFingIrene.

PS: There is good reason to believe the plot was hatched by Al Qaeda's No. 3 man, and maybe its No. 2 man, Zawahiri.

These terrorists-- such enormous fans of Joe Lieberman. The convoluted schemes they'll go to to keep te Joementum going!

Posted by: Ace at 11:20 AM | Comments (15)
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You know, there was a line sung by Bono, I think, in one of the better mid-eighties charity/cause songs, I Ain't Gonna Play Sun City. He sang/asked, "Why is that we're always on the wrong side?"

Other people should ask themselves that.

Holy Warriors. Yeah. Tough guys. Some of these Ramadan Rambos have ten, eleven confirmed kills on seven year old girls.

BTW, Chris Hitchens coming up on Cavuto, Larwyn informs me.

Posted by: Ace at 11:11 AM | Comments (19)
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I'm not endorsing, just "airing," the possibility that John Karr is a DNC plant, put up to falsely confess to the JonBenet murder in order to distract from the fairly serious terrorist threat and fairly remarkable efforts to thwart it.

Hmmm... John Karr "confesses" just as the RNC rolls out a new ad challenging the Democrats anti-terrorism bona fides.

I guess that's just a coincidence, huh?

Via PoliPundit.

Who also has this, which is pretty funny. Democrats Reid and Kennedy have sent a letter to Bush demanding that he reaffirm his committment to building democracy in Iraq.

Now, if that doesn't make sense to you-- it's a cheap bit of political grandstanding riffing off a (denied) report that some in the DoD were rethinking the goal of establishing democracy in Iraq, perhaps settling for an authoritarian Shiite regime.

So, we now have Reid and Kennedy on record saying: Stay the course.

I'm sure they mean it, too.

Also thanks to Larwyn, who's like the Joannie Appleseed of the dextrosphere.

Thanks to Larwyn.

Posted by: Ace at 10:27 AM | Comments (19)
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I'm sure this will get the play that the Gibson story did. After all, this is a fairly prominent Democratic official making these remarks; why on earth wouldn't the media put the spotlight on this?

Speaking as a spokesman for Wal*Mart (nice call, guys), Young said, in response to whether Wal*Mart ought to be concerned about driving "mom and pop" stores out of business:

"Well, I think they should; they ran the 'mom and pop' stores out of my neighborhood," the Sentinel, a newspaper serving the African-American community, reported. "But you see, those are the people who have been overcharging us — selling us stale bread and bad meat and wilted vegetables. And they sold out and moved to Florida. I think they've ripped off our communities enough. First it was Jews, then it was Koreans and now it's Arabs; very few black people own these stores."

You know, there's an elephant in the room, and no one wants to talk about. The media is forever hectoring white people to not be racist. Fine-- it's a good message, and furthermore, 30 years of the anti-racist drumbeat has had positive effects. It's now socially impermissible to make overtly racist remarks. Some still think them, of course, but progress is progress.

But the media is less inclined to lecture the black community, which, let's not mince words about this, is extremely, extremely antisemitic.

There are three groups in America which are currently not only antisemitic, but so unashamed of it to actually give vent to Jew-hatred without a second's thought. And yet no one seems particularly willing to talk about it.

For the media's, and anti-racist warrirors', edification, the three groups currently possessing a high number of members who wallow in open Jew-hatred are:

1) blacks

2) Muslims

3) major cast members of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome

I admire the media for targeting one of these groups for public shaming, but one out of three ain't good. Note that the two groups harboring large numbers of anti-semites that the media won't mention just happen to be, coincidentally I'm sure, important blocs in the Democratic-Liberal-Media Coalition.

And note that while the left peddles the claim the right are anti-Muslim, it was one of their own caught calling Arabs greedy predators. And echoing the Sharpton slur about Koreans to boot.

More at Donnah's link. Andrew Young is getting good at resigning over shameful remarks. It's a wonder Wal*Mart hired this idiot.

Missed H/T: Jack Straw sent me this earlier, too, but I only now opened it. Thanks, Jack.

Posted by: Ace at 10:01 AM | Comments (61)
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