I wrote a few weeks ago that California Senator Diane Feinstein better strap in, for siding with Republicans on AG Mike Mukasey and judicial appointments. Last week, Far Left individuals in the California Democratic Party made a resolution to censure Feinstein for not toeing the party line.

On Saturday, that resolution failed amidst procedural objections (link is to HuffPost). The HuffPost writer (and others) are angry at the party "senior adviser" for blocking the censure resolution and trying to keep the entire story under wraps:

As the story moved around the room on Sunday, people became incensed. Mr. Mulholland waited until the 90-second procedural discussion about the censure resolution to physically block a video camera that had been recording the day's events. When asked to move, he would not. When later asked by several delegates to talk, he shouted out "you are all worse than Bush." This is how the CDP treats those who volunteer their time to work within the system to make change, rather than just bolting.

A resolution by the CDP to define waterboarding as torture also failed. In short, Feinstein is not without friends in the California party, most especially among those who do not want to lose her senate seat to a centrist Republican.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 09:34 AM | Comments (10)
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India has monkey problems.

"Monkeys are wreaking havoc in my constituency by taking away mobile phones, toothpastes, sipping coke after opening the refrigerators," Hiren Das told Assam state's assembly.

He said the primates were "even slapping women who try to chase them".

Religion and human expansion are blamed. Are they cylon monkeys?

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 09:14 AM | Comments (10)
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I saw this on Friday, but decided to take the weekend off. It's still worth a comment. Lindsay Lohan did the single-day L.A. County Correctional facility massage and meditation treatment last week.

Lindsay Lohan was a jailbird for just 84 minutes Thursday, becoming the latest celebrity to serve less than a day for a drunken driving offense.

Lohan, 21, turned herself in to the Los Angeles County women's detention center in Lynwood at 10:30 a.m. She was searched, fingerprinted and placed in a holding cell in the inmate reception area but got to keep her street clothes, sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore said.

The sheriff's office insists that this is normal and that Lohan did not receive any special treatment. He emphasized the non-violent nature of Lohan's offense.

UPDATE: Mike Tyson was just sentenced to one day in jail for possession of cocaine and driving under the influence. I wonder if his time will be reduced to 84 minutes for good behavior, too.

"I take responsibility for my actions," Tyson told Superior Court Judge Helene Abrams in an almost inaudible voice before she handed down the sentence.

Tyson, who will begin serving his jail time Tuesday morning, left the courthouse without speaking to reporters.

Tyson had faced a possible maximum sentence of four years and three months in prison. Prosecutor Shane Krauser had recommended one year in prison Monday, saying that Tyson was a multiple offender who previously had been convicted of a violent crime and that only now has he sought treatment for his drug addiction.

"Judge, by my calculations, this is his fourth or fifth chance," Krauser said.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 09:05 AM | Comments (15)
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Over the past few weeks, I've noticed that the Clinton camp seems to be getting a bit desperate and more prone to angry retorts (see, for example, them getting sarcastic with ABCNews here). The downward spiral continues:

"If John Edwards really cared about working people, he wouldn't have taken a $500,000 salary from a hedge fund that is foreclosing on working people around the country," said Clinton campaign spokeswoman Hilarie Grey. "Sen. Edwards should spend his time talking about how he's going to help those people instead of launching ridiculous attacks against Sen. Clinton."

The two candidates have been vying for the title of "Working Man's Candidate" for the past few months, but the rivalry got a kick in the pants this past week when Clinton laughed off a question about NAFTA at the CNN debate in Nevada.

Edwards hammered her about it on talk shows this weekend. Now it seems like Clinton is done pretending to be nice.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 08:56 AM | Comments (20)
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California firefighters did an excellent job combating the wildfires in October. They had the help of the National Guard, the Navy, and the Marines to contain and extinguish 21 fires in difficult terrain and extreme weather conditions. Now that the fires are out (the last was put out November 9th), some folks just can't help but start assigning blame.

Here's the story. I'll tell you what it says, and then tell you the important things it left out.

Some lawmakers and military officials have claimed that California "did not effectively marshal all its available air resources" to end the fires. Two charges are made, the first explicit, the second implied. First, the AP believes that high winds did not ground aircraft during the first two days of the fires. Instead, they imply that California officials blamed high winds so as to cover up their own unpreparedness.

In large part, the article places the blame for grounded Marine and Navy helicopters on a California regulation that requires state fire spotters to be on board to manage the aircraft. It also questions the judgment of state fire officials who chose to keep some aircraft in reserve in other parts of the state in case new fires began.

Mike Padilla, aviation chief for the state Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, tries to defend:

The state has determined it had enough spotters for the helicopters it knew were available but had to scramble to find spotters for the Marine and some of the Navy helicopters because it wasn't expecting them, Padilla said.

"When we found out how many military and Marine helicopters were available, we put in orders and began trying to find qualified managers that weren't already assigned," he said.

The article concludes by noting that the rule requiring state fire spotters was dropped, but not until almost 2,000 homes had burned. And just in case you didn't get the message, here's the last paragraph:

Three years ago, a state firefighting panel said it should be a "high priority" to find ways to quickly get military helicopters and planes airborne during fast-moving wildfires.

Now, here's what they left out. The state firefighting panel referenced was convened after the October 2003 fires in Southern California. That same panel recommended the state fire spotter rule because the lack of coordination between state and military air resources led to wasteful duplication of effort and in a few cases endangered aircraft during that fire.

The rule was instituted in order to more efficiently and safely combat fires. It is to their credit that state fire officials waived the rule after it became apparent that it was more of a hindrance than a help. Second-guessing the timing and manner in which decisions were made in the heat of the moment is shameful and counterproductive; no plan survives contact with the enemy.

Incidentally, one of those lawmakers who criticized the state fire spotter rule was Republican presidential candidate Duncan Hunter.

"I'd give a very high grade to this operation," Hunter said. He said that while the rule about having trained "fire spotters" on military choppers should be changed, state firefighting officials waived it after he and others talked to them early in the week, and it might not have made much of a difference anyway.

Also, the revelation that the Marines and Navy had so many helicopters to offer California that it didn't know what to do with all of them reveals Nancy Pelosi as a liar. She claimed that that fire operations were hampered because too many resources were committed to Iraq and Afghanistan. Surprise, surprise: it turns out the opposite was true.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 08:26 AM | Comments (21)
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Cool, I always wanted one for a pet.

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 05:12 AM | Comments (32)
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The NY Daily News has a real "gotcha" piece. It seems that Rudy Giuliani spent $122,000 on campaign travel that paid for jets provided by "casino kingpin" Sheldon Adelson.

The piece has two premises: (1) Giuliani is a hypocrite because he's "wooing Bible-thumping conservatives" and (2) Giuliani is a hypocrite because he "wants to be the crimefighting candidate." (Note, there is no question about the legality of the spending.)

Adelson is tarred because of his association with gambling, which in some minds is inextricably linked with immorality and crime. No actual evidence is required. Giuliani is tarred by association.

To be honest with you, as a Catholic I've always been a bit confused by other Christians who insist that gambling is wrong (do many Christians really think that?). Moreover, it's insulting for the NY Daily News to pin that particular belief on all "Bible-thumping conservatives."

The article helpfully reminds us that Clinton and Obama have decided not to use corporate aircraft and instead rent jets at full cost so as to avoid the "appearance of a conflict." I can't tell if I'm supposed to be impressed with how virtuous they are or with how much money they've raised.

No mention is made of President's Clinton's rewarding people with flights on Air Force One, or of Senator Clinton's use of Air Force One during her first campaign. As for the "appearance of a conflict," no mention is made of the Lincoln Bedroom either.

The article concludes with a list of "corporate connections" who are "big-moneyed interests" from who Giuliani has bought air travel. Honestly, I'm shocked that Giuliani hasn't been renting jets from the mom and pop store down the street.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 10:42 PM | Comments (44)
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Senator McCain says that the Secret Service is an inconvenience for himself and others and that it costs too much for too little protection.

"It's my intention, if we win this nomination, to reject Secret Service," he said during one of his many conversations with reporters on his Straight Talk Express this weekend. "Why do I need it?"

[...]

McCain admitted that a modern American president can't live without Secret Service protection. But he said presidents have let the protection get out of hand.

You get that? McCain is so concerned about your taxed dollars that he's willing to give up his own protection. I'm not comforted by this. Nor am I impressed. In fact, I'm questioning his judgment.

The Secret Service exists for a reason. Presidents have extraordinary authority and possess important secrets. Keeping them alive and unhurt isn't something to be shrugged at. And it's not like murder attempts on presidents are unheard of.

McCain knows this, so I have to wonder if he's really thought this through or if he's relying on the fact that, if he were president, the Secret Service would disobey him in order to protect him. If it's the first one, then he's totally unfit for higher office; we need leaders less likely to endanger national security. If it's the second one, then it's just bravado. It's just as unattractive in a septuagenarian as it is an an adolescent and as likely to result in the same thing.

Either way, it's disappointing to see in a presidential candidate. What do you think?

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 10:00 PM | Comments (61)
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I don't know. I've been hurt so many times before. Hold me.

The gist of the new evidence is this: roughly one quarter of Saddam's WMD was destroyed under UN pressure during the early to mid 1990's. Saddam sold approximately another quarter of his weapons stockpile to his Arab neighbors during the mid to late 1990's. The Russians insisted on removing another quarter in the last few months before the war. The last remaining WMD, the contents of Saddam's nuclear weapons labs, were still inside Iraq on the day when the coalition forces arrived in 2003. His nuclear weapons equipment was hidden in enormous underwater warehouses beneath the Euphrates River. SaddamÂ’s entire nuclear inventory was later stolen from these warehouses right out from under the AmericansÂ’ noses. The theft of the unguarded Iraqi nuclear stockpile is perhaps, the worst scandal of the war, suggesting a level of extreme incompetence and gross dereliction of duty that makes the Hurricane Katrina debacle look like a model of efficiency.

Without pointing fingers at the Americans, the Israeli government now believes that Saddam Hussein’s nuclear stockpiles have ended up in weapons dumps in Syria. Debkafile, a somewhat reliable private Israeli intelligence service, has recently published a report claiming that the Syrians were importing North Korean plutonium to be mixed with Saddam’s enriched uranium. Allegedly, the Syrians were close to completing a warhead factory next to Saddam’s WMD dump in Deir al Zour, Syria to produce hundreds, if not thousands, of super toxic “dirty bombs” that would pollute wherever they landed in Israel for the next several thousands of years. Debka alleged that it was this combination factory/WMD dump site which was the target of the recent Israeli air strike in Deir al Zour province.

Senior sources in the Israeli government have privately confirmed to me that the recent New York Times articles and satellite photographs about the Israeli raid on an alleged Syrian nuclear target in Al Tabitha, Syria were of the completely wrong location.

Posted by: Ace at 06:36 PM | Comments (63)
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How much better must things be getting in Iraq that even AFP is running a story on how normal life is in parts of Baghdad?

"Even two or three months ago we would have been afraid to come here at night," said 20-year-old Hussein Salah, an off-duty soldier, slurping a milkshake with his wife, Shihad, at the Mishmesha (apricot) juice bar in Baghdad's relatively safe Karrada suburb.

"Now we sometimes sit outside here till one or two in the morning. It is quite safe. The security situation is vastly improved," said Salah, the orange light from a nearby flashing palm alternatively brightening and dimming his clean-shaven face.

Declines in Iraqi civilian casualties and a sharp reduction in bomb and mortar attacks have sparked optimism that the capital is at last starting to revive.

US military commanders attribute the fall in violence to a "surge" of American troops on the ground, their decision to set up small military posts in neighbourhoods, and the increasing number of Iraqis joining US forces in anti-insurgent alliances.

Residents interviewed by AFP on the streets of Karrada were adamant, however, that the Iraqi government and the Iraqi army are entirely responsible for reining in sectarian bloodletting unleashed by the bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra in February 2006.

"We have the Iraqi government to thank for the peace in our neighbourhood," said fishmonger Muqdad Mohammed, 38, smoking "mazguf" (carp) -- a Baghdad delicacy -- netted in the Tigris river on an open fire at a street corner.

"Things are normal here" now

While it might be a little annoying that the story doesn’t really give credit to the surge, ultimately it’s better that the Iraqi’s take ownership for their country. That is the goal at the end of the day. Why, some might even call that ‘political progress’.

Of course, there are always reminders that things are delicate in Iraq and the enemy is a vicious and cowardly bunch.

A suicide bomber detonated his explosives as American soldiers were handing out toys to children northeast of Baghdad on Sunday, killing at least three children and three of the troopers, U.S. and Iraqi authorities said.

Still, things are undeniably improving in Iraq. Well, undeniable unless you are a Democrat and youÂ’ve placed your bets with the terrorists.

Posted by: DrewM. at 04:04 PM | Comments (27)
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