The Giuliani campaign issued a short statement today about the gun case which was accepted by the Supreme Court this morning. In its entirety:

Rudy Giuliani made the following statement today regarding the Supreme CourtÂ’s decision to review the Court of Appeals ruling in Parker v. District of Columbia:

"I strongly believe that Judge SilbermanÂ’s decision deserves to be upheld by the Supreme Court. The Parker decision is an excellent example of a judge looking to find the meaning of the words in the Constitution, not what he would like them to mean."

Sounds good to me.

More, less flippantly: This statement calls into question Giuliani's prior support for gun control, generally. I don't think we can take it as an example of a position change (or a dreaded flip-flop). What I think it does is show his respect for conservative jurisprudence and intent to see the judiciary take a right-ward shift.

I think it means we can take him seriously when he says he'll appoint judges like Roberts and Alito.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:04 PM | Comments (32)
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As they say in court: When the facts are on your side, pound the facts. When the law is on your side, pound the law. When neither is on your side, pound the table.

There is some truth that ultimate victory must be ratified and consolidated via political means. However, there is indeed political progress being made as well; grassroots reconciliation is doing much of what the elected officials will not.

Furthermore, we've had serious political progress before -- like the free and open elections -- and Murtha didn't seem to care about such progress then, only the military situation. Isn't it funny that when the military situation is improving far more than anyone could have anticipated, Murtha's suddenly decided it's entirely irrelevant?

House Democrats' point man in the war-funding showdown with the White House today dismissed U.S. military gains in Iraq and vowed to tighten the purse strings until President Bush accepts a pullout plan.

"Look at all the people that have been displaced, all the [lost] oil production, unemployment, all those type of things," said Rep. John P. Murtha, chairman of Appropriations defense subcommittee. "We can't win militarily."

The Pennsylvania Democrat conceded violence was down dramatically and some normalcy restored on Iraq's streets, but he said U.S. victory remains unattainable as long as Baghdad fails to pass national reconciliation laws.

"To change the political law, it doesn't seem to me you need the military stability," Mr. Murtha told reporters on Capitol Hill.

Ah, Abscam Jack Murtha, master theorist of war. I guess Clauswitz was all wet with that crap about war being the continuation of politics by other means, eh?

Thanks to CJ.

Posted by: Ace at 01:31 PM | Comments (34)
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Until I quit smoking finally, I have to add pot into the mix?

Posted by: Ace at 01:18 PM | Comments (52)
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Then he's hospitalized for an Ecstacy overdose, if you can believe such a thing.

Via Breitbart, who has that crazy Drudge money.

Posted by: Ace at 01:16 PM | Comments (6)
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So here's the pick reminder.

I think both of the games on Thursday are NFL network games, which means no football for you out of market viewers. I might be out of market myself, haven't checked.

The real kicker is going to be the game between Dallas and Green Bay on the 29th.

AoSHQI, II and now III (where the fuck did you guys come from?) standings:

1 PHenry 94
2 Bart 88
2 Slublog 88
4 Stashiu3 87
5 Mr_Wide_Stance 86
5 Drew Bledsoe for HoF 86
5 anotheranon 86
8 Texas Rooster 85

Still sorta in it despite my godawful 6-10 8 week. Arg.

Bonus coverage on Thursday, after I get my pecan pie.

Posted by: Dave In Texas at 12:56 PM | Comments (7)
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"Unwittingly"? I don't know about that. This measure -- an attempt to cut off our aid to ally-against-terrorism Ethiopia is part of an unmistakable pattern of Democrats seeking to undermine our allies and aid our bloodiest enemies.

They say one should not attribute to conspiracy what can be more easily explained by simple stupidity, but a long enough pattern of stupidity starts to look an awful lot like knowing and willful malice.

With Democrats insisting on cutting vital money used to protect troops in the field from IEDs -- money that will run out in December -- precisely how long are we supposed to give them the benefit of the doubt that they are merely "misguidedly idealistic" rather than willfully callous about our troops' very lives and the nation's security?

Thanks to CJ.

Posted by: Ace at 11:56 AM | Comments (61)
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The long-anticipated insurgent/jihadi Tet is coming. It must come. Al Qaeda and their bloody-minded "nationalist" allies aren't going to give up the war without a last ditch attempt to break the American spirit.

They know all about Tet. They've attempted Tets in the past. And a Tet is their last remaining hope.

So there will be a Tet. And the media will be filled with stories about it, deeming the new offensive a true "trend" which hardly needs confirmation by repetition and duration, and a complete vindication of Harry Reid's "The war is lost" unilateral declaration of surrender. All of this is as inevitable and predictable as the chiming of Big Ben.

It's the only play that makes sense for them. If they've delayed it this long, it's only because they're having trouble arranging a big coordinated series of bombings with the US military and even Iraqi forces harrying them at every turn, and probably because they want the attack to have maximum impact -- and maximum impact requires maximum disappointment. It requires the US public finally beginning to think that maybe this war can be won, or perhaps even is won -- and for once, perhaps, the MSM is inadvertently thwarting Al Qaeda's propaganda goals by not reporting on the recent turn towards victory in Iraq, thus denying the jihadis the circumstances of hope and optimism which is necessary for their Tet to work.

The question isn't whether there will be a Tet, but what the reaction from the American public -- and supporters of victory in Iraq -- will be, what the cost to an already-degraded Al Qaeda will be, and what the follow-up will be. If this Tet is like the last one, we can guess that the costs will be punnishingly high for Al Qaeda and their dwindling native allies, and they will have very little left in the tank for follow up attacks. What we don't know is how America will react after allowing itself to grow somewhat optimistic about the war again only to see yet another burst of demonic carnage unleashed.

We, the supporters of the victory, can only brace ourselves for it, knowing it is on the way, but taking small consolation in the fact that it will be Al Qaeda's Hail Mary of mass-murder. Every operative and every bomb will be throw into the attack -- perhaps once Iran deems the time right and gives the go-ahead -- but this Tet, like the last one, will be a Pyrrhic victory for the killers: "One more victory such as this and we are done for."

Red Flag: MiR cautions:

I'm as hard right as anyone else, but you guys are really pumping this whole victory thing too hard and too quickly.

Unless there's a serious reconciliation between the Shi'ite and Sunni leadership (beyond form), there's still some serious shit that can go down after the surge trails off. The military itself is hurting to say the least.

That isn't MSM bullshit.

MiR refers to stories like this, in which military officers are indeed warning the Iraqi government and feuding sects to use this hope to finally make a lasting peace that can, finally, end the war... and the Iraqis don't seem to be listening;

As Iraq's government on Monday trumpeted a dramatic decline in violence, describing it as a sign that sectarian warfare is waning, U.S. officials warned that the gains would be short-lived if the nation's leaders did not use the relative calm to advance political reconciliation.

A day after U.S. military officials proclaimed that bombings and other attacks had dropped 55% nationwide since June, the Iraqi government released figures showing steeper declines in the capital and surrounding areas. According to its figures, there were 323 violent attacks in the governorate of Baghdad last month, compared with 1,134 in June.

The violence remains high, but the current level is a vast improvement, one that turned government spokesman Ali Dabbagh nearly giddy as he spoke on Al Arabiya TV on Monday. Dabbagh said Baghdad had "defeated the forces of darkness" and returned to its glory as "the beautiful city of the 'One Thousand and One Arabian Nights.' "

"Certainly we still have more to do, but no one can deny that we have passed the difficult stage in Baghdad, the stage that we all had fears of sliding to a civil war," he said.

...

But military and government officials warned at the start of the clampdown that it would not have lasting success unless it was matched with political progress. It is a message being repeated with a new sense of urgency, now that Iraqi leaders can no longer blame huge bombs, mass abductions, and street-by-street fighting as an excuse for political paralysis.

...

Odierno said the government has a window of opportunity, perhaps until next summer, to act before gains begin unraveling. "Security is better, so now is the time to reach out to the other parts of the Iraqi populace," he said. "It's time to really look at delivering services to all Iraqis in Baghdad and around" the country.

U.S. government officials agree.

"This is absolutely the case," said U.S. Embassy spokesman Philip T. Reeker. "This really is the time when they need to take advantage of the window that has been given."

As MiR says, this is not just MSM bullshit. There is a window and it will not be open forever.

And the triumphalism on the right may indeed be premature.

That said, while everything could truly go to hell at any time, one has to imagine that the Iraqis long for normalcy and and have grown to hate death, the same as any other war-ravaged people might. And that stories about mobs besetting those who are (probably wrongly) suspected of breaching the peace seem to suggest that having gotten a taste of peace, they do not long for civil war again.

Posted by: Ace at 11:43 AM | Comments (45)
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Don't trouble them with facts. They've got their insecurity blanket of American failure and soldiers' deaths and they're not giving it up, even if left-liberal outfits like the NYT and WaPo begin gently tugging at it.

Guys, I hate to say this, but you're getting too old for your baa-baa.

Thanks to CJ.

Posted by: Ace at 11:01 AM | Comments (15)
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On Sunday, the New York Times carried this story about a classified program to help Pakistan secure its nuclear weapons. Here are the eleventh and thirteenth paragraphs:

The New York Times has known details of the secret program for more than three years, based on interviews with a range of American officials and nuclear experts, some of whom were concerned that PakistanÂ’s arsenal remained vulnerable. The newspaper agreed to delay publication of the article after considering a request from the Bush administration, which argued that premature disclosure could hurt the effort to secure the weapons.

[...]

The Times told the administration last week that it was reopening its examination of the program in light of those disclosures and the current instability in Pakistan. Early this week, the White House withdrew its request that publication be withheld, though it was unwilling to discuss details of the program.

So the NYTimes managed to keep itself from reporting on a classified program for three years. That's impressive.

Today, the Politico tries to discover why the story was released now. Their answer: "We got bubkis."

Gordon Johndroe, White House National Security Council spokesman, told the Politico that “it was determined in 2004 that publication of the information would be harmful.”

But subsequently, Johndroe said, details of the secret program have “slowly, over time, become more public.” For that reason, he added, “there was no point in still maintaining our objection to publication.”

The Politico article leaves one wondering what the difference was between this program and the other classified programs that were disclosed by the NYTimes. The NSA wiretap program and the SWIFT tracking program, revealed in December 2005 and June 2006 were aimed squarely at hurting President Bush and the Republicans in an election year.

On the other hand, a story about how the Administration was conducting a program to secure nuclear weapons abroad would come disastrously close to sounding like the president was making progress curtailing nuclear proliferation and nuclear threats. Of course the NYTimes was willing to sit on it.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 10:48 AM | Comments (12)
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I wanted to write about this somewhat obvious but still worthy point for a week -- and composed it in my head over coffee today -- but Rand Simberg seems to have beaten me.

It's not that the surge isn't working -- it is. It's that the surge is chiefly taking advantage (and crucial advantage) of trends which actually began before the surge. Namely, the fact that insurgency had run out of fight before our troops did, and Al Qaeda had by then worn out its welcome. The surge was, I guess, a necessary but not sufficient precondition for ultimately securing Iraq. It was the three years of hard fighting before that set the new strategy up to work.

And Simberg is reading my mind here when he gives Bush political credit for his "stubbornness" on this issue.

But I think that the most important factor was simply that the Iraqis tired of the insurgency and Al Qaeda. I think that Petraeus was the right man at the right time, but I don't think that it takes anything away from him to question how well the strategy would have worked two, or three years ago. It probably would have been better than what we were doing at the time, but I think that the time had to be ripe for the awakenings in Anbar and Diyala, and now in Baghdad. It may be that the Iraqis simply had to go through this brutal period to understand the barbarity and viciousness of the fundamentalists that were attempting to colonize them, as they had Afghanistan under the Taliban, and the benefits of working with Americans and each other, rather than trying to fight each other for the spoils of the war.

...

I don't think that it was ever realistic to think that we were going to get a well-functioning democracy quickly in Iraq, even if we managed to get votes much more quickly than most predicted. Anyone who has studied military history knows that wars, and insurrections, are generally long protracted periods of one disaster after another, until one side finally throws in the towel. World War II was a series of bloody blunders, in both theaters, but we had the will and the resources to continue on regardless until the enemy was finally defeated. That's why I was never as critical of Bush and Rumsfeld as many were. Not to say I think the decisions flawless, but sometimes things have to happen at their own pace, regardless of tactics. The only wars that America has lost are those in which it got tired, and gave up.

One fears that the attention-deficit, teevee-remote, video-game generation won't have the patience to win the long war against our new ideological enemy, which is likely to continue for decades, as our war against totalitarian communism did. But give the president credit for standing firm in the face of the surrender demands of the Democrats after the election. I think that history, however else it judges him, will be kind to him in that regard, and less so to the Reids and Pelosis.

I still wish Bush and Rumsfeld had surged earlier, but it is possible that had they moved earlier, it wouldn't have worked -- the timing may not have been right. This is not to credit Bush and Rumsfeld as being precognitive, merely fortunate in the timing off having their hands forced, perhaps, in that their refusal to surge earlier may haven not have been as harmful as earlier imagined.

Another possible cause for the exhaustion of insurgency, and Al Qaeda, was the 2006 Democratic Congressional victory -- and then the realization months later that while they had won a victory on the relatively easy battlefield of US public opinion, those troublesome US troops still weren't going anywhere soon. And, in fact, even more off them were on their way.

That had to be a rather bad surprise for them, like Lucy pulling the football away at the last moment. Lord knows a similar morale-depressing effect gripped America when we thought we'd won the war in 2003 only to have the insurgency slap us bloody in the face; jihadis and insurgents aren't immune to the disappointment of dashed hopes, either.

Posted by: Ace at 10:45 AM | Comments (25)
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