Genius. All they had to do was play out the clock and let the Europeans indulge in their fantasies about negotiations and diplomacy. But they just couldn't help themselves.

I could run down the Drudge links, but why bother when Allah's already done such a bang-up job?

They seem to have followed through on their threat of taking Western hostages in retalliation for their captured spies/saboteurs/terrorists in Iraq as well as their missing officers. The capture of the British sailors is fairly plainly a set-up, a mission with the precise objective achieved -- waiting for Westerners to put themselves in a position to be captured, and then taking them. Interestingly, the CIA warned Britain of this possibility, but they don't seem to have increased their security in response to it. Blair lied?

It's not clear to me what they hope to achieve from this. Or, rather, it's clear what they hope to achieve; I'm just baffled that they really think they've got enough pimp-hand to be successful at it. Iran has a Navy (um, or "Navy") only because we permit them to. Within two days, should we choose, the entirety of that "navy" will lie thirty fathoms beneath the Persian Gulf.

And we have little choice now but to instruct the Iranians that, due to their act of war and apparent intent to engage in similar acts of war in the future, we are unilaterally restricting their territorial waters to one or one and a half miles from the coast of Iran; any Iranian ship of any sort, even a "civilian" one, spotted outside that zone will be subject to first a shot across the bow and then, should it not move closer to Iran's coast, an actual attack on the ship until it is sunk.

Saber-rattling is really a game for those with the big sabers. Iran doesn't have big sabers; they just believe they're the only ones willing to use them. They're wrong, grievously wrong, and they are embarking on a strategy almost guaranteed to solve many of our foreign policy problems and leave their military, economic, and political infrastructure in smoldering piles.

I would caveat all this now with the typical Assuming Bush isn't a complete appeaser, but I don't think I need to. There is no longer any pretense; there are those who will, of course, claim that Iran is peaceful and just wants to fly kites, but no President, not even a liberal appeaser, can afford to let a hostile enemy nation begin kidnapping its sailors and threatening its battleships.

Iran has played its last trump. It has a certain amount of time to pull that trump back; after that begins the escalation, starting with the sinking of Iran's pitiful Navy and the ravaging of all its military-capable ports.

And then it gets a bit worse for them.

Posted by: Ace at 05:45 PM | Comments (122)
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I will not refer to Slate the way I usually do, because this article about the "hostile New Age takeover of yoga is just plain good. It's not just about yoga; it's about a plainly unhinged woman's obsessing over a guy she knew 20 years ago, when she was 16, and her stalking of him, and the abetting of this bad behavior by "yoga therapists" who have lots of advice on how to continue her journey of self-discovery with scented bath-oils and aromatherapy candles.

This open letter to the political left at the American Thinker asks them if it's more important to prove themselves right by engineering an American defeat, or assisting in an American victory. Um, the question sort of answers itself, but it's still worth a read.

The Indepundit takes on a "Tsunami of Stupid" he saw at an anti-war demostration. Love the schizophrenic's pamphlet.

For those who care, Jonah Goldberg responds to Andrew Sullivan's latest snit. He doesn't leave much bark on this particular heroic, independent-thinking tree.

Thanks to Ken, the folks at Hard Core Politics, and Instapundit, who continues "blacklisting" me.

A Good Watch: Mary Katherine Ham is very funny in her latest HamNation.

Posted by: Ace at 04:11 PM | Comments (57)
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The Malcontent speculates, as I did, that Simon & Co. are beginning to realize that Sanjaya could actually win this thing, despite their best efforts to get him voted out.

With Howard Stern campaigning for Sanjaya, it's within the realm of possibility he could take the prize. Lord knows Stern's fans enjoy phone pranks.

I'm wondering if blogs can have an impact too. I want the show to die, I think. I say this not as a TV snob; I've watched the show, on and off, for most of the past seasons. But now I'm pretty sick of it, and I think I'd rather have something else on -- anything else -- in this time slot.

Anyone want to kill the show and help bring the blogosphere on board with the project?

It just takes a few cheap text-messagings once a week.

The idea of Simon Cowell having to contort himself to pretend he thinks Sajaya is the best singer -- something he has a financial interest in doing -- is pretty fun.

Can we screw up a TV show? We sadly seem unable to move the MSM as far as news coverage (witness the MSM's downplaying of the Coalition of the Bribed story). But maybe we can do this.

Posted by: Ace at 03:51 PM | Comments (43)
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I don't believe him. I believe the reports from yesterday.

North Carolina officials have not yet made a decision on whether to drop sexual assault and attempted kidnapping charges against three Duke University lacrosse players, according to the North Carolina attorney general's office.

Inside Lacrosse Magazine writer Paul Caulfield told FOX News on Thursday that several sources have revealed to him that the assault and attempted kidnapping charges still pending against Collin Finnerty, 19, of Garden City, N.Y.; Dave Evans, 23, of Bethesda, Md.; and Reade Seligmann, 20, of Essex Falls, N.J., will soon be dropped.

Caulfield said his sources include more than just attorneys for the defense.

"There is no case here and they will be hearing a dismissal in the coming days," Caulfield told FOX News.

But Noelle Talley, a spokeswoman for Attorney General Roy Cooper, told FOX News that there are no plans to make any announcement on the case this week. But the announcement could come at any time, she said, and is at the discretion of the attorney general and the special prosecutors who took over the case from Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong.

"Our review of the case, including reviewing documents and conducting interviews, is continuing," Talley said. "[A] decision hasn't been made. ... We expect our review of the case to wrap up within the next few weeks and ... no announcements about the case by our office have been scheduled."

It's now Friday evening heading well beyond the evening news on the East Coast.

Think there might be a decision announced after 10:00 Eastern time (after the news on the West coast)?

Posted by: Ace at 03:35 PM | Comments (2)
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Whenever I see on the news calls against "Islamophobia," my first thought is, "Good God, who did they kill this time?"

And similarly, whenever I see HuffPo cited on rightwing blogs, I shudder to think who just died or was diagnosed with cancer.

This time it's Tony Snow, acting, he says, with an abundance of overcaution in getting a growth (apparently not now cancerous) removed from his abdomen Monday.

And of course the HuffPoohs come out of the woodwork to wish him ill.

Funny. The right was able to discuss Elizabeth Edwards (patron and fan of Amanda Marcotte, remember) and her cancer diagnosis without wishing death upon her.

Death-wishes are pathetic (and I mean that in the proper sense of the word, not the collequial one). These impotent fairies are reduced to spitting curses like some 108-year-old Gypsy hag, spitting broken-English curses at the ConEd meter-reader.

It's so sad, so Old World, so medeival, so primitive, so classless, so revealing of not only the shabbiness of their spirits but their utter lack of accomplishment or dignity.

When you're reduced to babbling in Gypsy-crone hexes, you really don't have much going on in your life, do you?

Posted by: Ace at 03:26 PM | Comments (18)
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Provocative.

Because Iran recently declared it might begin kidnapping Western soldiers in retaliation for tis missing generals. And it declared it might resort to "illegal" methods of resistance if the UNSC votes against it.

And of course Iran seized 15 British sailors in a capture that seems an awful lot like a set-up (where did the Iranian Navy come from, all of a sudden?).

Allah thought this must have just been a mistake about where Iran's territorial waters actually began, thinking that Ahamadinejad wouldn't have told his Navy to take some hostages just as he's heading to New York to make his case to the UN.

But now he's not coming. So maybe it was planned.

It makes sense, though. Provoking the British, who have been very reluctant to endorse military strikes against Iran. And doing so further by challenging them on the high seas.

Good strategy. More or less the sort of thing I'd expect from these psychopaths.

It ain't 1979 any more, chums.

Iran seems to be all but begging for a full-on shooting war. They think that Bush is too politically wounded to respond in kind, and our forces too stretched out in Iraq to touch them.

This is a grave miscalculation. Is far as I know, the Air Force and Navy are not seriously overtaxed conducting security sweeps in Baghdad.

And Americans don't have much patience for ground combat. But we do loves us some shock and awe airstrikes.

Thanks to a-a for the tip.

Good News All Around: Attacks via explosively formed penetrators are down dramatically since the surge began, and since US troops, coincidentally, began detaining Iranian agents in Iraq.

At some point there will be undeniable evidence that Iran is killing US soldiers.

And that will be that.

I don't think this is just bluster on my part. Air power cannot seize territory per se, and it can't capture enemy leaders. But it can all but destroy a country's economy and its governments capacity to rule.

Posted by: Ace at 02:17 PM | Comments (30)
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You had me at "grrrrr."

Were "animal rights" advocates ever serious about killing this little bugger, or were they just trying to create a controversy so as to demonstrate to the world that polar bear cubs are almost diabolically cute, and then use that to push global warming alarmism?

It must be that.

More pics here.

Posted by: Ace at 02:06 PM | Comments (48)
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Andrew Sullivan whining about Jonah Goldberg not giving him the Daddy Time he craves:

What can this mean, except a petty sand-box approach to journalism? I disagree with many people at NRO but I always link and write and even praise when it occurs to me. In contrast, JonahÂ’s comment suggests an actual informal policy of blacklisting this blog and its arguments at NRO. Blacklisting others is not, I think, a sign of a movementÂ’s intellectual health.

Not a sign of the conservative movement's intellectual health, but apparently quite congruent with the "increasingly salient" Party of Andrew movement.

Because Andrew Sullivan has been blacklisting conservative gay bloggers for years. You'd think that as a, ahem, "conservative" gay man he'd want to do his bit to increase the visibility of fellow travellers like Gay Patriot, the Malcontent, or Eric from Clasical Values.

Not so much. Not only does he not link such conservative gays as a general matter, he routinely swipes stuff he found on their sites without so much as a simple hat-tip.

For weeks he's been knocking the HRC (not that there's anything wrong with that) and using this graphic whenever he does so:

Not sure what it means; I guess it's a suggestion that HRC preaches not gay equality but gay superiority.

Trouble is, this graphic was created by Matt at the Malcontent, who allowed the gay political site Bay Windows to use it. Sullivan lifted it from there, it seems (though I'd say it's even money that he swiped it from the Malcontent directly), and refuses to give a hat-tip or any credit to the Malcontent. When emailed that he was using Matt's graphic, he simply hat-tipped Bay Windows, even though he had been informed of the true provenance.

So Sullivan seems to believe that sites he typically trashes in rather nasty ways (like the "Christianists," "theocrats," and "torture advocates" at the Corner) owe it to him to link him frequently, else it constitute "blacklisting," but sites that trash Sullivan are not owed any links in return -- even when Sullivan is directly stealing from them.

Big blogs like The Corner are obligated to frequently engage ideological opponents like Sullivan, but Sullivan is not, it seems, obligated to engage, or even mention, his own ideological critics. Seems like all he's saying is that he should get traffic from big blogs but he can refuse to give smaller blogs any traffic.

Blogs can, and do, ignore other blogs that are either such ideological opposites as to hardly even be speaking the same language, or blogs that simply trash-talk it. I do it. I do it all the time. And I think that's just fine. Why increase the profile of a blog just for provoking you?

Sullivan seems to agree, hardly ever linking critics (although Michael did one time get this blog linked for criticizing Bush, if I recall correctlly). And yet when bigger blogs do the same to him -- ignoring a quite off-the-reservation and nasty-tongued hack -- it's some sort of McCarthyism.

Incidentally, it's this habit of Sullivan's -- eternally engaging in a "philosophical inquiry" that seems to be little more than a childish attempt to discover "objective rules" that favor him over his opponents -- that makes his thinking so muddied, and made his book sell so poorly.

And that's the real reason The Corner and, yeah, even Instapundit are so reluctant to toss Andrew Sullivan links. No matter what the ostensible subject, he never seems to be discussing anything except Andrew Sullivan.

Posted by: Ace at 01:32 PM | Comments (13)
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He has to do it at some point. I just don't buy claims that Republicans want an "authentic" Rudy who's is "maverick" enough to buck the orthodoxy. If they wanted that, we'd have already coronated John McCain. What Republicans want is somewhat authentic Rudy who's maverick enough to buck the New York Times editorial page and push the Republican agenda. Recanting all those well-known (though not quite universally known) liberal positions is going to be messy and look an awful lot like pandering, but he has to take the hit if he really wants to win this.

So far it's a bit of dog's breakfast of "maybes" and half-steps, but perhaps it signals a willingness to "evolve," as the New York Times calls it when Republicans move to the left.

On guns (NYT link):

As mayor of New York City, Rudolph W. Giuliani became the favorite Republican of gun control advocates.

He spoke in favor of a licensing system for gun owners that would require trigger locks and firearms training, and he lobbied Congress to outlaw most military-style assault weapons. He was the only Republican mayor to join a lawsuit by dozens of cities against the gun industry, and he complained that Southern states had lax gun laws that fed the illegal weapons trade in the Northeast.

...

But as a presidential candidate, Mr. Giuliani now talks very differently about guns as he tries to allay the concerns of Republican primary voters. He says he supports the right of individuals to bear arms, and that states — and generally not the federal government — should decide whether to put some limits on that right. He also spoke in favor of a federal appeals court ruling this month that struck down a District of Columbia ordinance barring people from keeping handguns in their homes.

Perhaps most striking, Mr. GiulianiÂ’s campaign says it is not clear that he would support a measure he once championed, an assault weapons ban. In explaining his past positions, he and his aides say they were about fighting crime in New York City when he was mayor, adding that restrictions that make sense there can be wrong for other parts of the country.

While skeptics have paid more attention to Mr. GiulianiÂ’s favoring of abortion rights and same-sex civil unions as potential problems with conservative voters, many Republicans say his positioning on guns could be just as problematic in important primary states. Fergus Cullen, the Republican Party chairman in New Hampshire, said Republican voters there were divided on questions like abortion, but nearly unanimous on guns.

...

There are people on both sides of the gun control issue who say Mr. Giuliani has changed positions, not just language, on a matter of vital importance to many voters. The most important example, they say, is that as mayor he advocated national standards, while recently he has said that gun control issues should be decided by state and local governments.

“There can be reasonable restrictions, and they largely should be done by state and by — and then, you know, done by legislatures,” he said at a news conference on March 12 in Washington.

People on both sides of the issue say that represents a shift.

...

Mr. Giuliani’s aides say his basic view — allowing reasonable limits on gun ownership — has been consistent over the years.

“His history is of enforcing gun laws, not of gun control,” said Anthony V. Carbonetti, a senior adviser. “Rudy took over a city that averaged over 2,000 murders a year, and 90-some-odd percent were gun-related murders. It was all about taking guns out of the hands of criminals.”

Mr. Carbonetti added, “Responsible gun owners will see him as an ally.”

Well, that's yet to be seen. The gun issue hurts him more than the abortion issue. Simply appointing conservative judges is all a president can really do to limit abortions, and he's promised to do so. Not so on gun control, where courts have been generally happy to pretend the second amendment doesn't exist. The President and Congress can sharply limit gun rights, if they choose to do so.

It should be said that President Bush -- generally acceptable to conservatives for five or so years of his presidency -- always promised he'd sign the assault weapons ban renewal if it came to his desk. Thanks to a Republican Congress, it never did, and given how many Democrats are hawks on the 2nd Amendment due to the demands of their voters, an new ban not likely to land on Rudy's desk, either.

Still, Giuliani needs to go further on this issue than claiming it should be almost exclusviely a "local issue." It's not exclusively, or even mostly, so. The trick is changing his substantive position while claiming, with superficial plausibility, that he's merely changing his language and has been consistent. That'll be, um, difficult.

On gay marriage:

Mr. Giuliani supports civil unions, but not same-sex marriage. He has said he would likely oppose a constitutional amendment banning it, but he has not ruled out supporting it in the future.

Again, it should be noted that Bush didn't exactly put his presidency on the line for this issue, and, even if he had, it's unlikely that any Congress would pass the measure with the supermajority required. Unless facts on the ground change, such as more courts getting a little feisty on the issue and deciding to impose gay marriage on reluctant states. That is, I guess, the escape-clause implicit in his hedge about "not rul[ing] it out in the future."

Giuliani continues courting the Log Cabin Republicans, which most Republicans keep far away from.

Support from the Log Cabin Republicans likely wouldn't help Mr. Giuliani get the party's nomination, and it could hurt, a political science professor at the University of Virginia, Larry Sabato, said. "My guess is if Giuliani gets nominated, he will have had to have made some pledges to evangelical Christians along the way," he said.

Um, yeah.

Meanwhile, Fred Thompson's credentials on the abortion issue just took a hit with new reportage about his pro-choice position back in 1994. If Romney and Giuliani can change their positions, of course, so can Thompson (and, he says, he already has).

Via Hot Air, which leads with lots of polling news, including the fact that Fred Thompson beats Hillary 44-43 in a Rasmussen head-to-head, but trails Obama.

Oh! The Pajamas Media straw poll is open again. Actually, I think it's more or less always open.

Still no Fred Thompson on the list. So go ahead, vote for Tommy Thompson, you idiots.

Actually, it really is the only way to register support for Fred Thompson if they continue omitting him from the ballot.

Posted by: Ace at 01:09 PM | Comments (33)
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Anyone remember the media firestorm over Tom DeLay's promises of porks, and threats about payback, in regards to the passage of the prescription medicine bill?

No firestorm this time.

So if I have this right: It's wrong for a Republican Majority Leader to cut side-deals and make threats regarding the passage of a purely domestic social welfare bill -- so wrong the media was all but calling for a federal investigation -- but it's okay for a Democratic Speaker of the House to do precisely the same to secure a bill about war?

Do I have that right?

Does anyone remember the media saying during the DeLay controversy "of course all of these actions would be justified if the bill under consideration had to do with war"?

Because I don't remember that. I sort of think -- stay with me on this -- the media has invented this new rule quite recently in order to provide cover for Nancy Pelosi.

I know it sounds crazy.

Posted by: Ace at 11:32 AM | Comments (55)
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