McCain has $3.6MM on hand, but apparently some bills to pay as he is expected to report a debt of $1.5 million.

Meanwhile Democrat front runners Obama and Hillary raise eleventy seven gazillion bucks in the past three months, and Dennis Kucinich won a toaster.

Posted by: Dave In Texas at 10:23 AM | Comments (18)
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It didn't help Craig's case that he also sought injunctive relief in the form of a sherry enema.

Posted by: Ace at 10:10 AM | Comments (10)
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Posted on NRO but apparently flying around in emails. Worth reading... skeptically.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 10:07 AM | Comments (27)
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I can't wait to find out why. I've got two guesses and I think that's all I need. I'll save the third guess for "lunatic," though I think that's implicit in my first two guesses.

he Dallas trial of a charity accused of financing Middle Eastern terrorists took a twist Wednesday when jurors indicated that a member of the panel was refusing to vote.

Jurors in the case against the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development were called back into the courtroom of U.S. District Judge A. Joe Fish, who told panelists they had a duty to try to reach a decision.

The judge ordered jurors to resume their deliberations, which were in their ninth full day after a two-month trial.

Posted by: Ace at 09:59 AM | Comments (21)
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It's so absurd. Whenever a Democrat is caught grabbing a guy's joint the media springs into Stalinist action airbrushing him out of the Democratic Fraternity Composite.

Thanks to Pablo Honey.

Posted by: Ace at 09:38 AM | Comments (18)
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If Ken Salazar doesn't know what's meant by the term, maybe he should talk to his brother, a Congressman:

His brother, meantime, U.S. Rep. John Salazar, D-Colo., is working to establish a database of soldiers who have earned military honors so that people who falsely claim to hold medals can be prosecuted under the Stolen Valor Act, which John Salazar authored.

I think another good idea would be a ratings system for the media as to how they pimp and misrepresent the records of soldiers and phony soldiers who tow the official media line on the war.

Meanwhile, the corrupt mayor of Atlantic City has gone missing after admitting he lied about his Vietnam record. And, of course, not only has he himself gone missing from the city, his party affiliation has gone missing from the article about him.

Thanks to CJ.

Even More... links from Instapundit.

You know, if the media did its job and checked the claims of these supposed heroes before trumpeting their Absolute Moral Authority, Rush Limbaugh wouldn't have to note the existence of phony soldiers in the first place.

Posted by: Ace at 09:28 AM | Comments (8)
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All well and good, but honestly, we would have probably picked him up were we on patrol in neighboring Okinawa.

Iraqi and US forces have detained a man they believe received 100 million dollars this summer from Al-Qaeda sympathisers to hand out for "terrorist" operations in Iraq, the US military said Thursday.

"The 100 million was what our intelligence reports indicate he has received spanning several months this year," US military spokesman Sam Hymas told AFP. "That is all the unclassified information I can give you."

A statement from the military said the man, who was detained in the central Baghdad neighbourhood of Al-Kindi, was suspected of handing over 50,000 dollars a month to Al-Qaeda using his leather merchant business as a front.

"He is believed to have received one hundred million dollars this summer from terrorist supporters who cross the border illegally or fly into Iraq from Italy, Syria and Egypt," the military said.

He is suspected of travelling abroad himself to seek money for Al-Qaeda and of employing up to 50 extremists to help deliver bomb-making materials to insurgents attacking the US-led coalition.

The US military also accused the unnamed man of involvement in two attacks on a revered Shiite mosque at the heart of Iraq's bitter sectarian conflict.

He was linked to purchasing explosives and weapons for the February 2006 attack on the Al-Askari mosque in Samarra, widely seen as the trigger of Iraq's sectarian strife. Another attack on June 13 of this year destroyed the mosque's two minarets.

The suspect, who according to US military intelligence has stores in Jordan, Syria and the Iraqi city of Fallujah, is also wanted for allegedly shooting dead three US soldiers and wounding another in April this year, the military said.

Wow.

Big effin' fish.

Posted by: Ace at 08:52 AM | Comments (13)
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I'm so upset by this lawless, unconstitutional assertion of absolute executive authority that, as a silent protest, the next time I order Ultimate Nachos from Bennigans I'm not even going to touch the guacamole.

And then when my server Chip comes over to ask if there's something wrong with the guacamole, I'll just hiss through clenched teeth, "No, it's fine. It just tastes like it turned a bit fascist."

We have to fight back any way we can.

Anyway, the NYT continues its courageous War on War:

When the Justice Department publicly declared torture “abhorrent” in a legal opinion in December 2004, the Bush administration appeared to have abandoned its assertion of nearly unlimited presidential authority to order brutal interrogations.

But soon after Alberto R. GonzalesÂ’s arrival as attorney general in February 2005, the Justice Department issued another opinion, this one in secret. It was a very different document, according to officials briefed on it, an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency.

The new opinion, the officials said, for the first time provided explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures.

Mr. Gonzales approved the legal memorandum on “combined effects” over the objections of James B. Comey, the deputy attorney general, who was leaving his job after bruising clashes with the White House. Disagreeing with what he viewed as the opinion’s overreaching legal reasoning, Mr. Comey told colleagues at the department that they would all be “ashamed” when the world eventually learned of it.

Later that year, as Congress moved toward outlawing “cruel, inhuman and degrading” treatment, the Justice Department issued another secret opinion, one most lawmakers did not know existed, current and former officials said. The Justice Department document declared that none of the C.I.A. interrogation methods violated that standard.

The classified opinions, never previously disclosed, are a hidden legacy of President BushÂ’s second term and Mr. GonzalesÂ’s tenure at the Justice Department, where he moved quickly to align it with the White House after a 2004 rebellion by staff lawyers that had thrown policies on surveillance and detention into turmoil.

Not hidden anymore. Who turned these opinions over, I wonder?

...

A White House spokesman, Tony Fratto, said Wednesday that he would not comment on any legal opinion related to interrogations. Mr. Fratto added, “We have gone to great lengths, including statutory efforts and the recent executive order, to make it clear that the intelligence community and our practices fall within U.S. law” and international agreements....

After the Supreme Court ruled in 2006 that the Geneva Conventions applied to prisoners who belonged to Al Qaeda, President Bush for the first time acknowledged the C.I.A.’s secret jails and ordered their inmates moved to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The C.I.A. halted its use of waterboarding, or pouring water over a bound prisoner’s cloth-covered face to induce fear of suffocation.

But in July, after a monthlong debate inside the administration, President Bush signed a new executive order authorizing the use of what the administration calls “enhanced” interrogation techniques — the details remain secret — and officials say the C.I.A. again is holding prisoners in “black sites” overseas. The executive order was reviewed and approved by Mr. Bradbury and the Office of Legal Counsel.
...

From the secret sites in Afghanistan, Thailand and Eastern Europe where C.I.A. teams held Qaeda terrorists, questions for the lawyers at C.I.A. headquarters arrived daily. Nervous interrogators wanted to know: Are we breaking the laws against torture?

...

The questions came more frequently, Mr. Kelbaugh said, as word spread about a C.I.A. inspector general inquiry unrelated to the war on terrorism. Some veteran C.I.A. officers came under scrutiny because they were advisers to Peruvian officers who in early 2001 shot down a missionary flight they had mistaken for a drug-running aircraft. The Americans were not charged with crimes, but they endured three years of investigation, saw their careers derailed and ran up big legal bills.

That experience shook the Qaeda interrogation team, Mr. Kelbaugh said. “You think you’re making a difference and maybe saving 3,000 American lives from the next attack. And someone tells you, ‘Well, that guidance was a little vague, and the inspector general wants to talk to you,’” he recalled. “We couldn’t tell them, ‘Do the best you can,’ because the people who did the best they could in Peru were looking at a grand jury.”

Mr. Kelbaugh said the questions were sometimes close calls that required consultation with the Justice Department. But in August 2002, the department provided a sweeping legal justification for even the harshest tactics.

I find this absurd as usual:

“I know from the military that if you tell someone they can do a little of this for the country’s good, some people will do a lot of it for the country’s better,” Mr. Hutson said. Like other military lawyers, he also fears that official American acceptance of such treatment could endanger Americans in the future.

“The problem is, once you’ve got a legal opinion that says such a technique is O.K., what happens when one of our people is captured and they do it to him? How do we protest then?” he asked.

Note he's worried about protesting the torture, maiming, raping, and beheading of our captured troops, which we all know is precisely what Al Qaeda and jihadists have planned no matter what we do. He's not worried about stopping this in advance -- something that can be had through interrogations.

He just wants a firm basis upon which to "protest" a soldier already kidnapped, tortured, and beheaded. That's his only worry. A paper protest.

Posted by: Ace at 08:44 AM | Comments (18)
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Out of the mouths of mimbos.

Pitt then proposed his own plan to disarm Iran, involving a team of 11 thieves, a holographic projector, and thirty gallons of chicken fat.

He suggested that, prior to the execution of the "Peace Heist," Christopher Walken should be cast as the President of Iran, "because he brings such a menacing presence to the shoot."

Posted by: Ace at 08:29 AM | Comments (20)
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If "Abscam Jack" Murtha's dodge is that the jury's still out, well, buddy, they're on their way back in.

Posted by: Ace at 08:14 AM | Comments (9)
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