I'm not quite clear yet. Can you provide a visual statement for us morons?

Like, say, French troops flying the national flag?

Ah. That should do it.

Via Free Republic.

Allah Fact-Checking Service: He says that's just the UN flag with the sunlight washing out any emblems to make it look entirely white.

Posted by: Ace at 08:42 AM | Comments (355)
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Wow:

The writing, acting, directing, editing, cinematography, and overall story-telling are first-rate. "The Path to 9/11" is fast-paced and thoroughly gripping the entire way. The five-hour miniseries (aired over two nights) is based on the 9/11 Commission report, and also on ABC News correspondent John MillerÂ’s book, "The Cell." ABC is going to air the first three hours on Sunday, September 10, and the final two hours (which culminate in a shattering depiction of 9/11) on Monday, September 11.

Let me start by saying that "The Path to 9/11" is one of the best, most intelligent, most pro-American miniseries I've ever seen on TV, and conservatives should support it and promote it as vigorously as possible.

This is the first Hollywood production IÂ’ve seen that honestly depicts how the Clinton administration repeatedly bungled the capture of Osama Bin Laden. One astonishing sequence in "The Path to 9/11" shows the CIA and the Northern Alliance surrounding Bin LadenÂ’s house in Afghanistan. They're on the verge of capturing Bin Laden, but they need final approval from the Clinton administration in order to go ahead. They phone Clinton, but he and his senior staff refuse to give authorization for the capture of Bin Laden, for fear of political fall-out if the mission should go wrong and civilians are harmed. National Security Adviser Sandy Berger in essence tells the team in Afghanistan that if they want to capture Bin Laden, they'll have to go ahead and do it on their own without any official authorization. That way, their necks will be on the line - and not his. The astonished CIA agent on the ground in Afghanistan repeatedly asks Berger if this is really what the administration wants. Berger refuses to answer, and then finally just hangs up on the agent. The CIA team and the Northern Alliance, just a few feet from capturing Bin Laden, have to abandon the entire mission.

Thanks to CraigC.

Posted by: Ace at 08:28 AM | Comments (41)
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After Motorhead's Ace of Spades, of course.

And after "Everybody Has Had More Sex Than Me."

And after the "More Cowbell" theme. (Courtesy of Blaster's Blog.)

And after Allah's filthy mash-up of Pat O'Brien's sex tapes with Lionel Ritchie's Hello, of course.

But after those, here's the fifth Ace of Spades theme, by Dan Collins.

Based on a Billy Joel song. Figures. more...

Posted by: Ace at 08:24 AM | Comments (31)
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Just watching the Bill Maher show with Chris Hitchens. Interviewing Elvis Costello -- one of my favorite artists, until Spike, leastaways -- Maher flattered Costello by saying he'd never had a scandal, never done anything stupid.

Costello said, basically, "Well that's not really true, but it's nice of you to say that."

It wasn't really true. Costello had stepped in it big-time in 1979.

His success in the US was severely bruised when, during a drunken argument with Stephen Stills and Bonnie Bramlett in a Columbus, Ohio Holiday Inn hotel bar, Costello referred to James Brown as a "jive-ass nigger", then upped the ante by pronouncing Ray Charles a "blind, ignorant nigger".

Bramlett and friends had evidently been baiting Costello with derisive comments about British rock music in general and "sawed-off Limey"-type comments aimed at him in particular.

A contrite Costello apologised at a New York City press conference a few days later, claiming that he had been drunk and had been attempting to be obnoxious in order to bring the conversation to a swift conclusion, not anticipating that Bramlett would bring his comments to the press.

According to Costello, "it became necessary for me to outrage these people with about the most obnoxious and offensive remarks that I could muster". In his liner notes for the expanded version of Get Happy!!, Costello writes that some time after the incident he had declined an offer to meet Charles out of guilt and embarrassment, though Charles himself had graciously forgiven Costello ("Drunken talk isn't meant to be printed in the paper").

Well! You don't have to go hunting for the definition of that particular slur, now do you?

Just curious about the limits of forgiveness for racist or antisemitic remarks. As always, there seems to be a greater amount of give for those beloved by intellectuals and whose liberal papers are in perfect order.

Posted by: Ace at 07:57 AM | Comments (29)
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It plays a couple of more times today.

Jeff and I had on Jim Pinkerton, Jim Geraghty, and Mary Katherine Ham. It was a pretty decent show, I thought.

Thanks to Marilee for reminding me about this.

I'm not very on top of things.

Organization is not a part of the Ace of Spades Lifestyle (TM).

Ever notice how some bloggers have a good essay ready to go on major anniversaries or holidays? That's because they kind of see them coming a week or two ahead.

Me? Every December 7th, I'm surprised that December 7th has once again followed December 6th, without any warning whatsoever.

Posted by: Ace at 07:15 AM | Comments (7)
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If war isn't "the answer" to this kind of apocalyptic, murderous, death-cult religious extremism, perhaps you're just not asking the right question:

He kept saying there was no pressure, no pressure in Islam, that they were forbidden from forcing people to convert. True acceptance must come from a free will.

TheyÂ’d kidnapped me, and they all had guns ready to kill me, but, oh no, no pressure there.

And yet "Peace" Ninnies of the West give their passionate support t o Hamas and Hezballah. As Tim Blair notes, while many in southern Lebanon despise Hezballah for turning their homeland into a battlefield, they're all very popular in the fashionably unbathed circles of the "Peace" movement.

Thanks to yls for the Jill Carroll tip.

Posted by: Ace at 06:14 AM | Comments (12)
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The Weekly Standard notes the "breakthrough" wasn't a breakthrough at all:

While ACT did indeed issue a press release heralding its embryonic stem cell experiment as having “successfully generated human embryonic stem cells using an approach that does not harm embryos,” the actual report of the research led by ACT chief scientist Robert Lanza, published in Nature[,] tells a very different story. In fact, Lanza destroyed all 16 of the embryos he used, just as in conventional embryonic stem cell research.

BizzyBlog thinks there might be a case here for the SEC, as ACT is a publicly traded company, if they did indeed make a materially misleading statement to the public.

As a crush of new investors just drove their stock price up by a factor of about 10, there seem to be a lot of people who may have a case against ACT if the statement was misleading and relied upon investors.

Thanks to Larwyn.

Correction: Post caveated more per BizzyBlog's request, who thought I overstated his conclusions.

Posted by: Ace at 05:51 AM | Comments (25)
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Well, they're not speculating anymore. They're claiming to have a source for a phone call in which Armitage says to Colin Powel, referring to the Robert Novak column that identified the leaker as "no partisan gunslinger," "I'm sure he's talking about me."

Captain Ed writes:

The more I think about this, the angrier I get -- and not just at Patrick Fitzgerald. Richard Armitage confessed to the DoJ in October 2003, and then sat on his ass for the next three years as the media and the Left play this into a paranoid fantasy of conspiracies and revenge. I know Armitage dislikes Rove, Libby, Cheney, and Bush, but what kind of man sits around while the world accuses people of a "crime" that he himself committed? Armitage did nothing while the nation spent years and millions of dollars chasing a series of red herrings, never speaking out to remove the mystery and end the witch hunt. Even three years later, Armitage hasn't mustered the testicular fortitude to publicly admit that he leaked Plame's identity and status; he has Isikoff and Corn do it for him.

Let me also add that this buttresses Bush's claims that no one in his White House had leaked the name -- or, at least, it demonstrates why he believed that to be the case.

He knew early on it was Armitage, and that it was done not out of some partisan political malice.

But let me also echo Captain Ed: How the hell did this guy stand silent while this huge investigation went forward?

And what the hell was Fitzgerald doing investigating at all, when he knew who the leaker was from the get-go?

The Threshhold Question: ...was, as I wrote before, whether or not a crime had been committed at all. And this could have been determined by a day at the law library. No crime = no pretext for investigation.

The fact that Fitzgerald knew from the start who the leaker was just makes this stink even worse.

I'm trying to find the Fitzgerald quote where he claims to be investigating an alleged "politically-motivated conspiracy" to punish Plame. Now, that is not a crime. There is no law on the books against such a "conspiracy." The relevant statutes were the Espionage act and IIPA and such.

Whether there was a "conspiracy" to out someone who'd already been outed is not the domain of a prosecutor, as it is simply not a crime. It is an interesting question, and one worth digging into-- but by a reporter, not a prosecutor with subpoena power, as it is, again simply not a crime.

And Fitzgerald knew that from the beginning.

Fitzgerald had to postulate a non-crime in order to have the pretext to continue an "investigation" into what he already knew was NOT a crime, and, furthermore, in a "case" in which he already knew the culprit committing the non-crime.

The Newsweek Article: Read the whole thing.

Novak provided a tantalizing clue: his primary source, he wrote, was a "senior administration official" who was "not a partisan gunslinger." Armitage was shaken. After reading the column, he knew immediately who the leaker was. On the phone with Powell that morning, Armitage was "in deep distress," says a source directly familiar with the conversation who asked not to be identified because of legal sensitivities. "I'm sure he's talking about me."
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Armitage's admission led to a flurry of anxious phone calls and meetings that day at the State Department. (Days earlier, the Justice Department had launched a criminal investigation into the Plame leak after the CIA informed officials there that she was an undercover officer.) Within hours, William Howard Taft IV, the State Department's legal adviser, notified a senior Justice official that Armitage had information relevant to the case. The next day, a team of FBI agents and Justice prosecutors investigating the leak questioned the deputy secretary. Armitage acknowledged that he had passed along to Novak information contained in a classified State Department memo: that Wilson's wife worked on weapons-of-mass-destruction issues at the CIA. (The memo made no reference to her undercover status.) Armitage had met with Novak in his State Department office on July 8, 2003—just days before Novak published his first piece identifying Plame. Powell, Armitage and Taft, the only three officials at the State Department who knew the story, never breathed a word of it publicly and Armitage's role remained secret.

Armitage, a well-known gossip who loves to dish and receive juicy tidbits about Washington characters, apparently hadn't thought through the possible implications of telling Novak about Plame's identity. "I'm afraid I may be the guy that caused this whole thing," he later told Carl Ford Jr., State's intelligence chief. Ford says Armitage admitted to him that he had "slipped up" and told Novak more than he should have. "He was basically beside himself that he was the guy that f---ed up. My sense from Rich is that it was just chitchat," Ford recalls in "Hubris," to be published next week by Crown and co-written by the author of this article and David Corn, Washington editor of The Nation magazine.

It's time to investigate Fitzgerald.

Thanks to Geoff for that.

Drew sums up:

So will Fitzgerald be dropping the indictment against Scooter Libby first thing tomorrow monring? Remember when Fitzgerald said that what Libby did was like throwing sand in the umpire's eye?

Well, if he (Fitzgerald) knew who the leaker was in October of 2003 what exactly was he umpiring in the first place?

Allah argues:

Armitage wasn't the only one who leaked it, though. Rove also told Novak that he'd heard Wilson's wife worked for the CIA. Two strands of the investigation (or three, if you count the CIA spokesman who also confirmed her employment there for Novak). Fitzgerald was trying to find out whether, in any of the three strands, someone had deliberately outed her.

Well, actually, Rove told Novak "yeah, I heard that too," providing confirmation, not the original information.

The buzz was put out there by Armitage. Inadvertantly, stupidly, vainly (in a look-at-what-I-know gossipy way). Fitzgerald knew this from the start.

Posted by: Ace at 05:41 AM | Comments (56)
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Joemetheus Unbound?

As Heh notes, this is a bad sign for the Democrats, and the nutroots.

If they've only managed to swap Loyal Democrat Lieberman for Quasi-Republican Lieberman, this will be their first, only, and most costly "victory."

Posted by: Ace at 05:23 AM | Comments (23)
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Free!

The two journalists were dropped off at Gaza City's Beach Hotel by Palestinian security officials and appeared to be in good health. A tearful Centanni embraced a Palestinian journalist briefly as he entered, then rushed upstairs as Wiig followed.

Centanni, in a phone interview shortly after his release, said "I'm fine. I'm just so happy to be free."

He said he was so emotional because he was out and alive.

"There were times when I thought 'I'm dead,' and I'm not," Centanni said. "I'm fine. I'm so very happy."

And all it cost them was a forced "conversion" to Islam.

I'd like to think that this will reveal the face of Islamism to those who have been willing to engage in apoligism for it, but somehow I doubt that.

Two kidnapped Fox journalists appeared on a new videotape released by their captors on Sunday in the Gaza Strip, in which the reporters said they had converted to Islam, the Fox News Channel said.

...

They were shown separately sitting cross-legged, reading a statement which Fox said was an announcement that they had converted to Islam. At times in the video they were wearing long Muslim robes.

Wiig called on leaders of the West to stop "hiding behind the 'I don't negotiate with terrorists' myth". He then read some words in Arabic.

"The issue of the two kidnapped journalists is on the way to being resolved," Seyam told Reuters. "Efforts are under way with several parties to secure their release within the coming hours."

Thanks to Larwyn again.

Video Update: The "conversion video" at Hot Air.

Posted by: Ace at 04:10 AM | Comments (53)
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