The Scouring of the Shire? It appears so:

MODERN humans wiped out the hobbit-sized people who lived on the Indonesian island of Flores, research suggests.

Remains of at least 13 members of the little species, Homo floresiensis, who were about a metre tall, were unearthed in Liang Bua between 2001 and 2004. The hobbits lived there from 95,000 to 12,000 years ago when a layer of volcanic ash filled the cave.

...

Mike Morwood, co-leader of the Australian and Indonesian discovery team, said he now believed modern humans, who arrived on the "lost world" of Flores soon afterwards, hunted the stegadon to extinction and were responsible for the disappearance of the hobbits.

Cave-paintings suggest that the genocide was prompted by Elijah Wood's prehistoric media tour. The humans said, "If that fey fuckjob says 'We really were a fellowship' one more time, it's go-time, baby," and he just didn't listen.

Posted by: Ace at 10:02 AM | Comments (26)
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I hope I'm not letting forbidden cats out of the embargo bag when I mention that an NR guy told me that the last speaker was planned, for some time, to be Rudy Giuliani, who later backed-out and was replaced by Tony Snow. (Who rocked the house -- and more on that later.) This NR guy (who I won't name, as he wasn't speaking on the record, and also because I forget his name) said he figured Giuliani had decided not to attend because he hadn't figured out how to address a truly conservative audience yet, nor had he decided yet how he was going to handle his famously liberal positions on gay marriage, immigration, guns, and abortions.

I objected that he could just deliver a similar speech to his RNC address, and that the delegates at the RNC were every bit as conservative (if not more so) than those attending the NR Symposium; then again, he was addressing the RNC in support of Bush, whereas he'd be addressing the Symposium in support of himself. A big difference, I guess.

This leads to my problems with Giuliani and Romney.

Romney's Boy Scout flag coda seemed a bit synthetic to me -- an attempt to evoke, weakly, the same emotions many Americans associate with the Steel Cross that remained standing in the aftermath of 9/11. It's not as powerful a symbol, nor is it associated with as epochal an event, but it's somewhat similar. Same but different. And also, a little bit forced. An echo, but a quiet, tinny sort of echo.

My one big problem with Romney is that, policy-wise, I have no problems with him whatsoever. I began to get interested in him when I began to notice that I liked everything he said. He just didn't seem to strike a single false note.

After a time, however, I began to find the lack of false notes to be itself a false note -- is it just pure coincidence that Mitt Romney happens to (now) be a passionate supporter of virtually every consensus position of the conservative primary-voter mainstream? Did he just sort of luck into that happy circumstance?

Like the flag story, is Romney himself a bit too synthetic for his own good?

Authenticity is greatly overvalued in candidates. After all, we're electing a government official, not a drinking buddy. Who cares if someone is altogether sincere in his beliefs so long as he votes the way you want him to? Is it better to have a president who sincerely, authentically puts forward policies you object to or one who insincerely, inauthentically champions policies you prefer?

Still, if there's one thing that keeps me off the Romney train, it's the suspicion that I don't really know what Romney's core is. Perhaps it'll turn out Romney's core is simply whatever will please the conservative base -- which would be fine enough, I suppose, but there is something on a gut, drinking-buddy-evaluation level that wants to know what he's really all about.

On the other hand, there's Giuliani. I have long believed that Giuliani would begin walking back his very liberal positions towards something more palatable to conservative primary voters. I never expected him to completely renounce his former positions nor reverse himself completely; I did, however, expect him to begin changing his positions on social hot-button issues from liberal to moderate, at the very least. No, he can't out-conservative Sam Brownback. But could he at least try to to out-conservative Dennis Kucinich?

Why he hasn't done this yet I don't know. Maybe it's just because he's a proud man, and he's delaying doing something that's going to cause a lot of controversy and mocking -- Bush the Elder was savaged for his sudden coversion to the pro-life cause when he joined the Reagan ticket, and I can't imagine Giuliani is looking forward to his own time in the fire.

Or it could be that he just actually believes in those positions too strongly to change them.

Or it could be that he wants to gamble and see if he can win the Republican primaries still having those positions, and then go on to the general elections holding them, where they'll actually help him a bit. (After all, if you've already got the Republicans on board, having more liberal positions can only help with Independents and even some Democrats.)

If he's thinking along the latter lines, he's fooling himself. As a dedicated Rudy guy, sure, I'll vote for him, assuming his candidacy is even still alive when voting comes to my state. But I won't consider him a truly serious candidate, and my real candidate will be my Plan B guy, whoever I think can actually win the nomination, even if I like him a little bit less.

I imagine the Giuliani people keep their eyes on blogs, especially a pro-Giuliani one like this one, so let confirm to Giuliani's guys what they already know but seem to be resistant to believing: Yes, indeed, abortion is a very important issue to Republican stalwarts. Trust me, guys, this blog isn't exactly the most Christinist of venues, and even here, the pro-life side has both the numbers and the passion. The sooner you confront this reality, the better.

So the two guys I'm most supportive of seem to have opposite problems. Romney's positions seem suspiciously carefully-tailored to win in the South Carolina primary, whereas Giuliani's seem to win... well, not really anywhere, really, except maybe in New York in the general elections, which he'll never make it to anyhow if he holds to his current stances. If Romney's a bit too synthetic and shameless about adapting his positions to Republican primary voters, Giuliani's too proud and "authentic" for his own political good. I could stand to see Romney taking a couple of unexpected positions I don't necessarily agree with, and I sure the hell could stand to see Rudy trying to meet Republican primary voters at least half-way.

We don't need Giuiliani to be a True Believer, but at least need a little lip-service, I think. A little bit of insincerity goes a long way.

Posted by: Ace at 09:51 AM | Comments (50)
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A disappointing effort, especially from someone who had been gathering buzz as a rock star. K-Lo says the speech was lame as nicely as she can.

Bill Sammon liked it. I was stading at the back of the room and asked him about it. He said he found it moving, especially at the end.

Well, here was the end. As a big coda, Romney related the story of how a Boy Scout troop wanted to have their flag carried aboard the space shuttle. NASA wasn't eager to do so -- "Space is at a premium in space," Romney said -- but (I think) a call from Romney got the flag aboard the shuttle.

Well, the shuttle blew up. And then the Boy Scouts wanted to know if their flag had been recovered from the wreckage. They were told there was very little chance of it even surviving the explosion, let alone being found.

And then weeks (or months, whatever) later an "air-tight container" is delivered to Romney, from NASA, and he opens it up to discover the flag inside. Touching that flag was "electric," which means something or other about the promise and dream of America.

I don't know. The shuttle blew up, people died, America lost a multibillion dollar shuttle and presitge and confidence, and we're talking about a flag that made it back? This is a rousing climax?

Seems to be defining expectations down a bit.

The anniversary of the shuttle explosion was very day he made the speech. Oh wait, actually, it was the following day. He said so (didn't try to claim an incorrect deate), but that last little datum sort of underlines the basic lameness of the story -- it wasn't even actually the anniversary, just close to it. Just like the story really didn't pack any particular emotional punch -- just kinda-sorta close to it.

Jack M., who'd come by to share a drink, watched most of the speech with me, and said "He's losing the room." Particularly on the point of Iran. Romney suggested tough economic sanctions and a (purely symbolic) indictment of Ahmadinejad for attempting to incite genocide (I missed which legal venue this indictment was to be pursued in). Not exactly what a conservative crowd is looking to hear from a presidential candidate on Iran. (In fairness, however, few speakers addressed Iran in much more than generalities, and no candidates called for airstrikes that I can remember.)

A funny story about this. Later, at the hotel bar, a woman named Molly said she thought the speech was a clunker. Sitting next to her was Kate O'Beirne, who suggested Molly tell the man to Kate O'Beirne's right her opinion on the speech. So Molly told the man she'd found it very disappointing, meandering, uninspiring, scattershot.

The man, it turns out, liked the speech a bit better than Molly did: He was Romney's speechwriter, he explained.

Kate O'Beirne giggled. Evil.

Caveats:

1. I got there five minutes after this Kate O'Beirne set-up occurred. I'm guessing the part about "giggling," but it seems a good guess. Molly told me about, so at least it's second-hand.

2. One bad speech doesn't doom a candidate.

3. Saturday was a grueling day at the Symposium. The NR people had panels running nearly continuously. I'd gotten up to see Newt at 8 and by 7:30, when Romney spoke, I was pretty wonked-out -- and I hadn't gone to nearly all the panels. Plus, there was actually a break, I think, between the last late afternoon panel and the Romney dinner address. Being extremely tired and finding that caffeine and nicotine weren't waking me up, I figured I'd try drinking a lot of alcohol. So when I was watching Romney I wasn't exactly in the right frame of mind to appreciate a political speech. And I wonder how many other people had decided to have a few drinks before the speech. The last comic performing at a comedy club knows he has to be loud, profane, and very obvious if he wants to get a reaction from the few drunks left in the room.

Who knows -- Bill Sammon was straight-up sober. Maybe his opinion is closer to the truth.

Herd Mentality Alert: I just want to caution that while most people seemed to have thought the speech was disappointing, it wasn't dreadful or anything. It just wasn't very good. I imagine the media, an echo chamber of baa-ing herd animials, will play this up as some sort of major set-back.

Just one unimpressive speech. Not exactly Nixon's loss in California, which, as it turns out, wasn't even all that bad either.

Posted by: Ace at 08:42 AM | Comments (24)
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Sullivan's defense? Well, they're not in uniforms.

Well, yeah, moron.

Apparently he meant they just weren't part of the offical Iraq Army -- you know, the legal one. (Well, yeah, moron.) Or who knows what he meant? Even he doesn't know:

His latest swipe is about this post, where I show a British Channel 4 video showing Shiite soldiers beating Sunnis on a joint patrol with U.S. forces. I describe the victims as "civilians," which gives Mickey an opening to ignore the point I was making and accuse me of inaccuracy. Hey, it gets him up in the afternoon. I referred to them as civilians because they are residents of the neighborhood, not in uniform, and unarmed, as compared with the soliders in Iraqi army uniform. Mickey protests because the video clearly shows the beaten men had mortars in their car. So they're not civilians, right? That depends on who is or is not a civilian in a messy civil war like the one we're now policing. The insurgents are civilians in as much as they are not in the Iraqi army, not in uniform, and often residents of a neighborhood. But they are not civilians in as much as they are engaged in a violent insurgency - actively or passively.

Hah. They're not civilians "in as much" as they're combatants. I.e., they're not civilians "in as much" as they're not civilians.

This, I guess, is as close as we can hope for a retraction/correction/apology from St. Andrew of the Sacred Heart-Ache (who'll sell you back your conservative soul at bargain-basement remainder-bin prices).

Can't wait for that novel.

The post has further updates on the four-not-destroyed-mosques false reportage from AP.

Posted by: Ace at 08:26 AM | Comments (36)
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Irony.

Maybe she was just trying to be funny and/or serious. We shouldn't "psychoanalyze" her too much, though.

Old definition of "psychoanalyze:" a deep probe into one's subconscious motivations to understand the reasons for one's behavior

New Hillaryspeak definition of "psychoanalzye:" just trying to figure out what the hell someone meant by a statement

Posted by: Ace at 07:42 AM | Comments (50)
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NYT link, but maybe worth clicking on.

At least 250 militants were killed and an American helicopter was shot down in violent clashes near the southern city of Najaf on Sunday, Iraqi officials said.

For 15 hours, Iraqi forces backed by American helicopters and tanks battled hundreds of gunmen hiding in a date palm orchard near the village of Zarqaa, about 120 miles south of Baghdad, by a river and a large grain silo that is surrounded by orchards, the officials said.

It appeared to be one of the deadliest battles in Iraq since the American-led invasion four years ago, and was the first major fight for Iraqi forces in Najaf Province since they took over control of security there from the Americans in December.

That handover was trumpeted by the Iraqi government at the time as a sign of its progress in regaining more control of Iraqi territory.

The American military confirmed that the helicopter crashed around 1:30 p.m., and said that two soldiers aboard died in the crash. But American military officials said they could not confirm the total number of dead in the battle.

Col. Ali Numaas, a spokesman for the Iraqi security forces in Najaf, and an Interior Ministry official said the number of dead could rise. They said that the fighting stopped just after 10 p.m. and that most of those killed were militants. An employee at a local morgue said at least two Iraqi policemen were among the dead.

In a statement, the United States military said bodies of the two soldiers aboard the helicopter were recovered. The crash, at least the third involving an American helicopter in Iraq over the past week, is under investigation.

The precise affiliation of the militants was unclear.

Asad Abu Ghalal, the governor of Najaf Province, said the fighters in the orchard were Iraqi and foreign, some wearing the brown, white and maroon regalia of Pakistani and Afghan fighters. He said they had come to assassinate Shiite clerics and attack religious convoys that were gathering in Najaf, one of Shiite IslamÂ’s holiest cities, and other southern cities for Ashura, a Shiite holiday that starts Monday night.

At a news conference on Sunday afternoon, Mr. Ghalal said the fighters called themselves the Soldiers of Heaven, and seemed to be part of a wider Sunni effort to disrupt Ashura, which marks the seventh-century death of the Prophet MuhammadÂ’s grandson Hussein.

The holiday attracts hundreds of thousands of Shiite pilgrims to Karbala, where Hussein is believed to have been killed, and for days, the roads of southern Iraq have been filled with convoys of pilgrims beating drums and preparing for the dayÂ’s rituals, which include self-flagellation. In past years, Ashura has been a magnet for violent attacks from Sunnis, with at least 180 people killed on the holiday three years ago.

But two senior Shiite clerics said the gunmen were part of a Shiite splinter group that Saddam Hussein helped build in the 1990s to compete with followers of the venerated Shiite religious leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. They said the group, calling itself the Mehwadiya, was loyal to Ahmad bin al-Hassan al-Basri, an Iraqi cleric who had a falling out with Muhammad Bakr al-Sadr — father-in-law of the Shiite leader Moktada al-Sadr — in Hawza, a revered Shiite seminary in Najaf.

The clerics spoke on condition of anonymity because they said they had been ordered not to discuss Shiite divisions.

Iraqi officials said the group of 100 to 600 fighters was discovered in the orchard Saturday night, leading to a midnight meeting of local authorities who hatched an attack plan.

“We agreed to carry out an operation to take them by surprise,” said Mr. Ghalal, the Najaf governor.

At dawn, the governor said, the area was surrounded and the offensive began. He said the militants had antiaircraft rockets and long-range sniper rifles, and, according to a soldier involved in the fighting, Iraqi security forces encountered heavy resistance. Commanders called for reinforcements and a brigade of soldiers from nearby Babil Province joined the fight.

Eventually, Iraqi officials said, they called on the United States military for help. American tanks and helicopter gunships arrived, and gun battles continued into the night. By 10:30 p.m., the gunfire had died down and Iraqi troops began searching the area for bodies.

250 here, 600 there. Pretty soon that adds up to real money, doesn't it?

Posted by: Ace at 07:28 AM | Comments (17)
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You realize, of course, that someday all activities which feature exhilarating speed will be outlawed.

At the federal level, Health Canada recommends that all children use a helmet when sledding.

In some provinces, most recently Ontario, suggestions have been made to encourage safer sledding but none have tabled any formal legislation.

Francescutti said that although helmets are not a requirement by law, they should be something that parents - at a minimum - should make their kids comply with.

And he thinks adults should wear them, too.

"If you require them for kids, why wouldn't you require them for adults?" he said.

That jerk probably wears a helmet when he's sitting on the can, in case of meteors.

Don't laugh at the hapless Canadians. Don't you friggin' laugh.

Remember that on some US playgrounds, running is verboten.

I think about some of the toys I used to play with when I was a kid that were made of tin with razor-sharp edges; the tall trees we used to climb and occasionally fall out of; the miles-long walks and bike rides we used to take while our parents had no Earthly clue where the Hell we were; and the myriad of things we set on fire just to watch them burn.

Kids today are so totally screwed.

In thirty years they'll embrace all the restrictive laws anybody ever throws at them, because they haven't been raised to understand the dangerous and essential nature of freedom.

Via Fark.

Posted by: LauraW. at 08:29 PM | Comments (192)
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I wish more of this kind of footage would get out.

Interesting to those of us who have never served, and remarkably free of both MSM sermonizing and FOX cheerleading.

Who, What, Where, and When, guys.
It's a winning formula.

Posted by: LauraW. at 04:47 PM | Comments (92)
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It's the New York Times, so, per Ace's policy, I won't encourage you to follow the link. Here's the gist of it, though:

WASHINGTON, Jan 27 — The Bush administration will inform Congress on Monday that Israel may have violated agreements with the United States when it fired American-supplied cluster munitions into southern Lebanon during its fight with Hezbollah last summer, the State Department said Saturday.

The finding, though preliminary, has prompted a contentious debate within the administration over whether the United States should penalize Israel for its use of cluster munitions against towns and villages where Hezbollah had placed its rocket launchers.

...

Midlevel officials at the Pentagon and the State Department have argued that Israel violated American prohibitions on using cluster munitions against populated areas, according to officials who described the deliberations. But other officials in both departments contend that IsraelÂ’s use of the weapons was for self-defense and aimed at stopping the Hezbollah attacks that claimed the lives of 159 Israeli soldiers and civilians and at worst was only a technical violation.

By way of contrast, here's the transcript of an interview Michael Totten did with an IDF soldier:

MJT: The reason I ask what kind of targets you were marking is because the majority of people inside Lebanon think the Israelis were firing at civilians deliberately.

...

(IDF soldier "Eli") When they say that Israeli artillery was aimed at civilian targets, I can tell you a bit about how the artillery works. If I find a target in the middle of a village, like one house that I see that there are armed people going in, and I will aim artillery, heavy artillery, on it. Not Air Force, not like pin-pointed targets. Artillery will dispense rounds 100 meters from that target also. ItÂ’s not accurate. Anyway, even if a target is next to it, these houses were empty. No civilians were walking around South Lebanon. I know. I was in their villages. In their houses. Anyone who was there was definitely working for the Hezbollah or working as a Hezbollah fighter.

...

Eli: I didnÂ’t see any Katyusha rockets being installed inside houses. But IÂ’ve seen stuffÂ…like we went toward this house, we were fired upon from inside the house. We went into the house. We cleared the house. Anyone who was in the house was neutralized. We went down to the basement. And also in the basement everything was neutralized. And we saw a periscope in the basement that was looking up toward the main road.

MJT: A periscope like something they use in a submarine?

Eli: Yeah, a periscope. You know, you can be underground and see above. It was a pipe that had mirrors that were reflecting up. And a small kind of detonator. Our team checked it out. There were 500 kilos of explosives under the road waiting for Israeli tanks. There were really ready. They built these houses for that purpose because they knew this was going to happen some day. They were just waiting for the tanks to roll in.

I'm not sure why we're so eager to criticize Israel for doing what American soldiers would do in the same situation. It's not going to buy us any brownie points with other countries critical of Israel, it'll annoy one of our few allies who takes Hezbollah seriously, and it plays directly into terrorist propaganda.

0 for 3.

Posted by: AndrewR at 08:40 AM | Comments (53)
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I hate using the 1930s appeasement analogy, because it's become such a cliche, but reading stories about Iran's nuclear program every day makes me think of it nonetheless. Is this what it was like back then? That slow, dying-by-inches, gnawing-at-your-gut feeling?

IRAN is installing 3,000 centrifuges at a uranium enrichment plant, which will stabilise its "capability in the field of nuclear technology".

Large-scale use of centrifuges is necessary to enrich enough uranium for use in a nuclear reactor. Highly- enriched uranium is required to make nuclear weapons.

...

But the timing of the work may in part be a gesture of defiance. The UN Security Council's 60-day deadline for Iran to suspend uranium enrichment runs out next month, paving the way for further sanctions.

A US State Department official warned:

"If they [Iran] think they can get away with 3,000 centrifuges without another Security Council resolution and additional international pressure, then they are very badly mistaken."

Ah, the State Department. Truly, the very mention of it strikes fear into the hearts of our enemies across the globe. Honestly, if you were the leader of a nation violently opposed to the U.S., and you'd been reading the papers the last few years, would that sort of statement even get your attention anymore?

Imagine for a moment the least threatening things you can think of. The list will probably look something like this:

1. Gloves

2. Soap

3. Frosting

4. The United States State Department

See? It can't even beat frosting. We could replace all those ambassadors and special envoys and undersecretaries-in-charge-of-who-the-fuck-cares with delicious apple fritters and they wouldn't take us any less seriously.

And at least that way we could eat them when they failed.

Posted by: AndrewR at 08:43 PM | Comments (104)
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