Maureen "Marcia" McCormick is now on Celebrity Fit Club, better known as "Celebrity" Fit Club. Skip ahead a bit.

Eh. Just a little more Marcia to love. I'd still hit it.

Posted by: Ace at 06:39 PM | Comments (62)
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Apparently he's jealous of all the good press Mike Nifong is getting.

The trial, laced with references to inseam measurements, pants cuffs and designer labels, got off to a rocky start. Judge Judith Bartnoff of District of Columbia Superior Court limited Pearson's last-minute bid to broaden aspects of his case and cut short his efforts to portray himself as a "private attorney general" championing the rights of every Washington consumer.

"You are not a we, you are an I," Bartnoff said in one of several testy exchanges with Pearson, 57, who is representing himself. "You are seeking damages on your own behalf, and that is all."

Later, while recounting the day he says the cleaners tried to pass off a cheaper pair of pants as his, Pearson began to cry, asking for a break and dabbing tears as he left the courtroom.

...

Using a complicated formula, Pearson argues that under the city's consumer protection law, the owners, Soo and Jin Chung and their son, Ki Chung, each owe $18,000 for each day over a nearly four-year period in which signs at their store promised "Same Day Service" and "Satisfaction Guaranteed."

In opening statements, Pearson cast himself as a victim of fraud on a historic scale, perpetrated by malicious business owners who had no intention of delivering on those promises.

"You will search the D.C. archives in vain for a case of more egregious or willful conduct," he told the court. He called a series of witnesses who complained of rude or unresponsive treatment at Custom Dry Cleaners.

...

Pearson's future as an administrative law judge is in limbo. His two-year term expired on May 2, and a panel has yet to decide on his reappointment.

They have yet to decide? They're, uhhh... what now? Waiting to see if he can successfully restrain himself from killing, gutting, and stuffing a teenage hitchhiker as a decoration for the parlor before tallying up the pros and cons?

Things work differently in DC, don't they?

This man is obviously emotionally disturbed, if not outright crazy. And they haven't yet decided if he should be ruling on people's fortunes, freedoms, and lives as a judge?

Thanks to RichardMc.

Even The French Are Laughing At Us: If he's such a snazzy dresser, why does he wear a jogging suit?

Not to be The Boy Who Cried Reverse Media Racism, but I just found out today the guy was black. Why have the cable channels and print media been so skittish about showing this retard's photograph? As a plaintiff in a lunatic-fringe frivolous lawsuit -- and as a public official -- he's, you know, a public figure so there's no privacy concerns about exposing a private citizen.

They had the photos. Why were they almost never run?

Just strikes me as curious.

Posted by: Ace at 06:11 PM | Comments (32)
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In making a very stupid point, she makes a very stupid error of attribution.

Multiple layers of painstaking fact-checking editorial oversight, continued.

Incidentally, I thought Alexander Pope said it. Then again, I didn't dose the Pulitzer committee with acid and somehow get them to award me the Pulitzer Prize for commentary.

Posted by: Ace at 05:55 PM | Comments (15)
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Boulder, Colorado. Go figure.

No, Dave Kopel isn't a left-winger, but I do think he is, as O'Reilly says (and I can't believe I'm writing this) an "S-P." How can he be anything else and yet defend the Boulder school system?

Kopel slams O'Reilly for taking comments supposedly out of context. I don't know about you, but I have trouble imaging what possible context could rescue these comments from the category of "grossly irresponsible suggestions that high school students have sex and take drugs."

Even if the transcript does include a warning that condoms should be used, it can't help but be noticed the guy's delighting in telling kids how awful condoms are, and really, how much better sex is without one. Hey, you're preaching to the choir, buddy; and yet I don't think this is a very good message for kids who really oughtn't be having sex anyway. It's like one of those old High School Confidential type magazines in the fifties, where a salacious storyline of sex and drug use by a "bad girl" passed censorship standards by including a halfhearted moral at the end (the bad girl sees the error of her ways, whatever). That sort of tacked-on moral -- which everyone ignored in the fifties too; hey, people weren't reading these salacious books for the strong moral teaching contained in the concluding paragraph -- really don't offset the main message: Sex is fun; sex with condoms is less fun; drugs are fun; cool people have sex and do drugs.

I've seen these sorts of cats in high school -- basically they're just out of high school themselves, maybe a couple of years out of college, tops, and sort of get off on the power trip and ego-stroke of being able to talk to young people about all sorts of forbidden topics, speaking, as they do, from a place of greater experience. I had a substitute teacher, right out ofo college, come in to health class and tell us about the night a chick in his dorm "pulled a train" -- i.e., indulged in a full-dorm gang-bang, all comers served -- and we all just thought he was too cool for telling us all about it.

In fact, he was a douchebag loser, thinking he was all high and mighty because he could speak authoritatively about sex to a group of kids who had precious little experience in that regard. (I should note that his tone was much more sedate and down than the guys in Boulder -- he had a somewhat-sorrowful tone as he told us of the long line outside the girl's dormroom -- who are downright gleeful about underage sex and drug usage.)

Encouraging same-sex "experimentation" as "natural" is just the cherry on the sundae.

Kopel says it's up the parents of Boulder high school students to decide if a school should be telling kids to have sex (hey, condoms suck, man!) and do drugs (at least take drugs "appropriately," whatever that means). And yet he concedes that the Boulder high school system did not inform parents or students they could opt-out of this repulsive panel -- so how can Kopel claim that parents were able to exercise their rights to raise their children the way they would like in this case?

And frankly, if Boulder parents want to teach their own kids to have sex at age 14 and do drugs, they can do so in the privacy of their own homes; they hardly need the state's assistance in this regard, do they?

After all, if you're going to be a Cool Dad or Cool Mom who encourages your kids to have sex and do drugs, don't you want the credit of being a Cool Parent? Why let the Boulder High School System steal your Coolness Thunder?

Meanwhile, for the rest of the kids whose parents might not quite be on-board with the Sex, Drugs, & School Spirit program promulgated by Boulder high school administrators, they still know -- kids talk -- that the official adminstrative suggestion coming from school authorities is that only geeks and losers and Jesus freaks don't fuck and smoke hash.

I'm so tired of the attitude of people like Kopel, who insist (as Bill Maher noted) that children are actually just "Li'l Adults," who can and should be "trusted to make their own decisions" about sex and drugs. Well, as a practical matter, they will be making all such decisions themselves; no parent can keep track of his child's every movement.

But forgive us "censorious" conservative troglodytes, Mr. Kopel, if we happen to believe that the official message that should be communicated to underage children is that sex is something that can wait and drugs are something to be avoided.

In Fairness: Kopel makes at least one decent point -- in context, the condoms-suck message is indeed part of a warning to use condoms.

Whether or ot the warning is effective given his quite-true statements about how godawful condoms are is another story entirely.

Here's at least one place where Kopel goes off the rails into pettifogging apologism:

As oft-played on OÂ’Reilly and C&S, Prof. Joel Becker began:

IÂ’m going to dovetail off a little bit of what Andee said, but I think IÂ’m going to go in a little bit of a different direction, because IÂ’m going to encourage you to have sex, and IÂ’m going to encourage you to use drugs appropriately. (applause and cheering from audience) And why IÂ’m going to take that position is because youÂ’re going to do it anyway. So, my, my approach to this is to be realistic, and I think as a psychologist and a health educator, itÂ’s more important to educate you in a direction that you might actually stick to. So I want to, IÂ’m going to stay mostly today talking about the sex side, because thatÂ’s the area I know more about.

Becker’s particular remarks on safe sex consisted of the dangers of having sex under the influence of alcohol or drugs, and a warning against have sex before one is emotionally ready. Yet Caplis & Silverman wrongly claimed “They encourage the kids to drink, do drugs, and have sex all at the same time.”

He provided some examples about 14-year-olds to illustrate his point about not being emotionally ready. The largest part of his presentation consisted of encouraging masturbation as an alternative to having intercourse or oral sex with someone else. This discussion was offensive, ignorant, and religiously bigoted. It was another example of how the panel was undermined by its lack of balance. It was also another example of the type of material for which parental consent should have been sought in advance, and the many parents who would object should have been given the opportunity to say no.

Becker undercut his own point about “you’re going to do it anyway” by citing a survey showing that a third of Boulder High students had had sex—which of course implies that most do not. But the crucial missing context comes in the final Q&A from a student. Student Daphne White:

Â…Mr. Becker, you discredited abstinence, and this is something that a lot of people feel very strongly about, and I just want everyone to know that there are two sides to the argument, even though this has been fairly one-sided. And also, I noticed that you were taking some of these serious issues to be humorous, and I think that, if anything, kind of encouraging teens to kind of the opposite of what I thought this panel was supposed to be
about, encouraging teens to be abstinent.

Panelist Andee Gerhardt then said, “I personally want to thank you for being brave enough to do that. I don’t know that I would have ever been brave enough to do that, so I think you should give—feel really good about that.”

Becker then answered:

I would second that opinion, and even though I think you may have thought that I was—what did you say, something about abstinence—I actually tried discrediting it? I wasn’t discrediting it. In fact, I started by saying, I’m not telling you whether you should or you shouldn’t choose abstinence; I just think if you choose abstinence, it doesn’t obviate your need to still be educated about sex...

Becker gave himself too much credit, because the most reasonable meaning of his opening words was to discredit abstinence. But once Becker realized that his ill-chosen opening words had been construed to discredit abstinence, he specifically affirmed the validity of abstinence as a personal choice.

To play BeckerÂ’s opening remarks, without also playing (or at least summarizing) his subsequent explanation of what he meant to say is incomplete and misleading. Again, I think that WhiteÂ’s interpretation of the meaning conveyed by BeckerÂ’s opening words is more persuasive than BeckerÂ’s own interpretation. But Becker did specifically repudiate the message he had wrongly conveyed, though poorly-chosen words, about abstinence.

Remember, Kopel is defending Becker and the Boulder HS system, and this is the best he can come up with. He acknowleges Becker did in fact encourage sex and drug use in teens -- but claims it's "misleading" to state he opened with this exact, admitted exhortion, because later, after being chastised by a student for so grossly crossing the line, he halfheartedly acknowleges abstinece is also an option.

Just not a particularly good one, it seems, or else he would not have "encourage[d]" (his words) students to have sex and do drugs.

Right, Kopel. "Misleading." Because he bends to a pissed-off student's rapping of him for encouraging sex and drug use to even acknowlege that other kids (dweebs, losers, Jesus-freaks) may choose to do differently. Because he realizes that he has crossed the line -- badly -- when a student objects to his enthusiastic championing of sex and drugs and tacks back away slightly, it's "misleading" to say he encouraged kids to smoke hash and fuck.

That's Kopel's big defense of this guy -- that when cornered by a student, he allows for the acceptability of not doing drugs or having sex while underage and unmarried. Doesn't bring that up himself -- merely acknowleges that it's a possible path that some (misfits, dolts, cowards) may choose, after braggin' on how great sex, masturbation, and drugs are for fifteeen minutes.

Gee-- he says kids are allowed to not have sex or do drugs when pressed on the point by a student! What a positive social message!

Mr. Kopel -- if that student had not been so brave to bring up the slim possibility of avoiding sex and drugs, would Prof. Becker have mentioned it at all?

You concede implicitly he would not have -- so how the fuck is it "misleading" to note, quite properly, that the main point of his little pep talk was to encourage kids to have sex and do drugs "appropriately"?

Kopel Is Himself "Misleading" And Quoting Selectively: Even as he reports Becker's comments, they're awful. Yes, he allows for the possibility of teenagers choosing not to have sex or do drugs when cornered into allowing for this.

But check out the rest of his quote about this option -- nicely buried by Kopel in a footnote:

I also think that—I’m so glad to hear the student body clap for this young woman, because I see that you have respect for a person who has views different than you, and you’re saying that this is this girl’s choice to make. One of the things I’m afraid happens in the religious movement is they don’t give the same choice to other people. They try to tell other people that what they’re doing is right, and what these people are doing is wrong. That’s my issue. I think you’re very right for you.

Kopel acknowleges himself in the footnote this is "anti-religious" and "fatuous," and that Beckel ought to have stopped himself from talking earlier in his allowance that kids aren't required to have sex and do drugs. One point to Kopel for including it all; but nine demerits for hiding it away in a footnote.

But check out the condescension. And check out the main message: Only brainwashed Jesus freaks don't do drugs and have sex. People who believe in "choice" and "thinking for themselves" will of course opt to do these things. But, Young Stupid Christian Sheep-Girl, your stupid moronic Victorian choice is fine... for you. And other braindead cowards who bury their heads in the sand about the joys of sex and mind-expanding drugs.

Who the hell would want you to reproduce anyway? And when a stupid Jesus-Bot like you gets pregant, she stays pregnant, unfortunately, refusing to use abortion clinics "appropriately."

Yeah. "Misleading." O'Reilly's really misrepresenting the tenor and thrust of Bekcer's speech, huh?

Instapundit... took Kopel's side in this, by the way. But I can't imagine he read Kopel's woeful defense.

I think he just took a look at the parties in the dispute -- Kopel and O'Reilly -- and guessed that Kople was the reasonable, rational one, and O'Reilly the pandering idiot.

That would be a good guess -- 9 out of ten times.

But this would be that tenth time.

Posted by: Ace at 04:48 PM | Comments (38)
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Too [bleep]ing funny.

Thanks to dri, via BlackFive, the Partrooper of Love.

Of course... I can't let this pass without noting it's very similar to this scene from Arrested Development, a show I continue to pimp despite the fact that 1) it's off the air and not coming back and 2) many of you disliked it and refused to abide by my Important Action Alert to watch it even when it was on.

Posted by: Ace at 03:32 PM | Comments (13)
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As you might know, I was once a huge Giuliani supporter until he refused to budge on abortion, which I thought made him all but unelectable and not a terribly serious candidate.

However, while Fred! may be our Great Grey Hope, he might fail. So it's important to keep the other guys -- Giuliani and Romeny -- in mind.

Giuliani did something pretty smart the other day. Taking a page from Gingrich's Contract For America, Giuliani revealed his "12 Commitments."

I will keep America on offense in the Terrorists' War on Us.

-I will end illegal immigration, secure our borders, and identify every non-citizen in our nation.

-I will restore fiscal discipline and cut wasteful Washington spending.

-I will cut taxes and reform the tax code.

-I will impose accountability on Washington.

-I will lead America towards energy independence.

-I will give Americans more control over, and access to, healthcare with affordable and portable free-market solutions.

-I will increase adoptions, decrease abortions, and protect the quality of life for our children.

-I will reform the legal system and appoint strict constructionist judges.

-I will ensure that every community in America is prepared for terrorist attacks and natural disasters.

-I will provide access to a quality education to every child in America by giving real school choice to parents.

-I will expand America's involvement in the global economy and strengthen our reputation around the world.

With the exception of his weak-tea position on abortion ("I will increase adoptions/appoint strict constructionist judges"), you have to admit, it's a pretty damn solid list of priorities. I like his accurate, if not exactly catchy, replacement of "the War on Terror" with "the Terrorists' War on Us," something he says all the time now. Good idea, but he needs to make it roll of the tongue better.

I badgered Allah into cutting these clips from his interview with Hannity. I think he presents himself very well; he's especially good on immigration, noting we can act now with the laws currently on the books to reduce illegal immigration by up to 98%. A tad overoptimistic, but it's the right idea.

He may not be ideal, but give him a listen. We can't put all of our eggs in one basket, even a kick-ass basket carried around by Fred! as he stalks and then kills the Easter Bunny, whom he considers "the true most dangerous game" as well as "the most delicious game."

Posted by: Ace at 02:45 PM | Comments (74)
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I saw part of this last week. The difference between Wolf Blitzer's questioning of Republicans -- treating fairly mainstream Christians, and a Mormon, as if they were part of the Hale-Bopp Cometary Death Cult -- and the treatment of Edwards, Obama, and Hillary on their religious beliefs was astounding.

For Republicans, religion was raised as a sword to cut their connection from the "average American voter."

For Democrats, religion was used as a shield to defend them from charges they didn't share the values of the "average American voter."

As has frequently been suggested, they're not even bothering to hide their bias anymore.

We on the right used to ask for precisely that -- but with an important correlative: That the MSM actually admit its bias forthrightly, rather than continue the laughable ruse they're neutral and objective.

Well, they definitely have given us half of what we asked for. Their bias is so transparent and egregious it's hardly worth mentioning anymore.

And yet still they claim they're politically neutral and report "straight down the middle."

Posted by: Ace at 02:34 PM | Comments (12)
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A decent slogan, and one I've been receptive to. But all along the slogan contained an implication I missed -- We're fighting them over there because we refuse to fight them over here. Or even, you know, take the most basic steps towards tracking them over here.

I hate to be dick, but Mr. President, isn't it possible to fight them over there and over here?

Spongeworthy objects to the stats mentioned in the post below regarding the great decline in terrorist-related deportations under Bush. He states that this number is potentially misleading, as many questionable individuals have chosen to self-deport rather than live in a society suspicious of them.

In addition, there was a report -- a while ago; I doubt I can find the link -- that embassy staffs never had the capability of truly vetting a visa application. So, post 9/11, they took a different tack -- they simply began rejecting most applications from terrorist-infested countries without bothering to prove any terrorist-connections on the part of a particular applicant. They did so without much fanfare -- they didn't consider it politically or diplomatically helpful to announce to the Muslim world that Muslims were now to be presumptively denied visas in many if not most cases -- but that might in fact be a contributing factor to the decline in terrorism-related deportations.

However. There are still plenty of illegal immigrants here -- some with terrorist designs -- who snuck into the country pre-9/11. The left -- and Bush, of course -- would like to bury the fact that the Fort Dix Six Duka brother terrorists had illegally enterred the country from Mexico, for example.

The Duka family entered the United States illegally through Mexico in October 1984, according to the sources. In 1989, Ferik Duka made an application for asylum with the Immigration and Naturalization Service and acknowledged the family's illegal entry into the country.

Nobody in the family was ever given legal residency status, the sources said. It was unclear why the Duka's had not been charged with immigration violations earlier.

It's a bit clearer to me -- the Bush Administration, like previous administrations, simply doesn't "do" border security or immigration enforcement.

Even as regards potential terrorists. Why, it's unAmerican to deny such people their shot at the American dream... of blowing up Americans for the glory of global jihad. I think the Statue of Liberty expressly invites such folk into the country -- Give us your teeming, huddled, basement-bomb-making massess...

So, you know, the fact that the French-created Statue of Liberty invites terrorists into our country makes it unconstitutional to do a damn thing about them.

I have an FBI source -- yes, me, I've got a source -- whose job it is to track and surveil suspected Muslim terrorists all day long. That's all he does -- tail, videotape, watch, listen. And his report from the front-lines is this: Even in the case of those strongly suspected of being terrorist plotters and sleepers, the FBI simply doesn't have the manpower to watch them all 24/7. In fact, they get watched perhaps two or three times a week for 8 or 12 hour shifts. Then he has to move on to the other high-risk terrorist suspects.

It's not his fault -- his team is relatively small and there are just far too many high-risk terrorist suspects for them to watch all the time, even if they were somehow able to work seven days a week and 24 hours a day.

And you can ask MI5 about what can happen when you simply don't have the manpower to track each and every suspected terrorist:

MI5 is being accused of a cover-up for failing to disclose to a parliamentary watchdog that it bugged the leader of the July 7 suicide bombers discussing the building of a bomb months before the London attacks.

MI5 had secret tape recordings of Mohammad Sidique Khan, the gang leader, talking about how to build the device and then leave the country because there would be a lot of police activity.

However, despite the recordings, MI5 allowed him to escape the [surveillance] net. Transcripts of the tapes were never shown to the parliamentary intelligence and security committee (ISC), which investigated the attacks.

The disclosures prompted allegations of a "whitewash" from politicians and victims of the attacks this weekend.

Last week the committee, whose members are appointed by Tony Blair and report to him, cleared MI5 of blame after it failed to thwart the attacks, which killed 52 innocent people and injured more than 700. It concluded that MI5 had no reason to suspect Khan of plotting attacks in Britain. [The ringleader of the 7/7 Tube bombing] was regarded as "peripheral" to higher priorities.

The new evidence shows MI5 monitored Khan when he met suspects allegedly planning another, separate attack; that he had knowledge of the "late-stage discussions" of this plot; and that he was recorded having discussions with them about making a bomb and leaving the country. He was also recorded talking about his plans to wage jihad - holy war - and go to Al-Qaeda terrorist camps abroad.

...

The MP said that if the transcripts showed Khan had been involved in discussions about bomb-making and another possible attack, the committee had been seriously misled. "If that is the case, it amounts to a scandal," said the source. "I would be outraged."

Rachel North, a survivor of the bomb at King's Cross, was shocked by the disclosure: "I am shaking with anger.

...

"It seems that MI5 taped Mohammad Sidique Khan talking about his wish to fight in the jihad and saying his goodbyes to his family - a clear indication that he was intending a suicide mission . . . he was known to have attended late-stage discussions on planning another major terror attack. Again, I ask the home secretary whether that is true."

Reid said the questions were "legitimate" but failed to answer them.

Although there's room here for blame on the part of MI5 -- not just their initial botched evaluation of the threat posed by Khan, but their later cover-up of their deadly error -- the greater scandal is that Western populations are content to allow these murderers free reign in their countries and refuse to take the threat seriously.

MI5 erred badly in not prioritizing Khan more highly. But it is the fault of the British public -- and the American public, too, as well as our political leadership which downplays the actual dimensions of the threat -- for expecting law-enforcement to be able to track so many terrorists with so few agents and so few resources. Rather than take the common-sense approach of making our agents' jobs easier by deporting any and all suspected terrorists -- allowing agents to concentrate on the remaining citizens who are possibly terrorists -- we continue to pretend everything is normal and there's no reason at all for such "drastic" measures.

Bush is to blame, Congress is to blame, and the American public is to blame. In that order.

And one day we're going to have 100 or, who knows, 1000 people killed due to our governments' blithe disregard for terrorist immigrants -- both illegal and legal -- and the government will claim "We couldn't possibly have known, we couldn't possibly have done more," the same as MI5 and Tony Blair's government claimed after 7/7.

Bullshit. After 9/11, you're all on clear notice. You cannot claim you haven't been warned. You were warned, to the tune of 3000 dead and the spectacular destruction of the Twin Towers.

If megaterrorism like this was supposedly "inconceivable" before 9/11 -- a shaky propostion at best -- it is certainly no longer inconceivable.

And yet, despite the promises made immediately after 9/11 that everything would change and we would never forget, not much at all change and we have almost entirely forgotten.

How many have to die, exactly, before government shakes out of its business-as-usual don't-rock-the-boat mode? 3000 didn't do it; perhaps 10,000 is necessary.

PS: I had really wanted to link a powerful British video report on the failure to track Khan I'd watched about a month ago, but I haven't found it. If any of you have the mad Google skillz, let me know if you hunt it down.

Update: Muslim Immigration Levels At Highest Levels In Two Decades. At least in 2005:

In 2005, more people from Muslim countries became legal permanent United States residents — nearly 96,000 — than in any year in the previous two decades.

Thanks to Aldolfo.

And, thanks to Sinistar Entropy, here are a pair of videos -- not the one I remember, but still good -- about MI5's failure to watch Mohammad Sidique Khan closely. Part of it was due to a lack of resources to watch all possible terrorists; part of it was a spectacularly bad evaluation of Khan as relatively low-risk.

Here's the deal: Law enforcement wouldn't have to engage in such potentially-disasterous prioritization of threats so frequently if our nations more highly prioritized reducing the overall threat by reducing the number of potential malefactors in our countries.

It might not be as bad here as it is in "Londonistan," but my FBI friend tells me it's pretty damn bad. When you can only surveil what you consider to be your top-level security risks two or three days a week at most (and only for part of those days)... well, that means for 75% of the week they're entirely unwatched. Just as Mohammad Sidique Khan was unwatched.

And we see how well that worked out for the Brits.

But immigration is, you know, just terrific for the economy. Look at all the big-spending, pump-priming reconstruction after a particularly econically-stimulating visit by 19 immigrants willing to do the jobs that almost no Americans were willing to do.

Posted by: Ace at 01:27 PM | Comments (41)
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Reviews seem to agree he wasn't Mr. Adrenaline, but I'm not sure that's the image he's going for. Decide for yourselves.

Right now I'm lobbying Allah hard to cut and post Giuliani's interview with Hannity from last night's H&C. He was outstanding, at least on my top three priorities, including on amnesty. He has now come 'round, at least rhetorically, to the strong enforcement-first position, noting that the government currently has all necessary mandates and laws to actually pursue security without need of additiona laws or amnesties, if only it had the will to enforce its own laws.

Pro-lifers will be underwhelmed by his commitment to decrease abortions and increase adoptions, but they will most likely be impressed by the rest.

I haven't even bothered covering Giuliani lately, having written him off as a non-serious candidate due to his suicidal embrace of pro-choice politics. But last night's interview really reignited my old Rudy fever.

Oh... The long knives are out for Fred!

Did I say "long knives"? I meant "blunt, badly-balanced rusty old short knives."

The Politico runs down Fred!'s possible liabilities with the Republican base. This isn't even weak tea; it's just a brown crayon dipped in hot water. (I think Linus from Peanuts made "hot chocolate" that way one time.)

And the DNC is going to have to do a little bit better too. They made "allegations" against Fred! -- like his allegedly irresponsible noting that the KGB dictator of Russia is in fact a Russian KGB dictator -- which were so thoroughly rubbished in their very comments section so as to require their shutting down the thread in embarrassment.

You're really not bringing your A-game, fellas. I don't think Fred! has brought his A game yet either -- and yet his B-game has resulted in either tying Rudy for the national lead or else putting him in striking-range second place -- which means you're really going to have to work much, much harder once he does.

Posted by: Ace at 12:32 PM | Comments (26)
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Thanks to Slublog for that.

James Pinkerton floated a theory on Fox News Watch this Saturday.

Why had the revelation that the suspected terrorist dry run by the "Syrian musicians" was in fact likely a terrorist dry run been so grossly underplayed by the media and by the Bush Administration itself?

The media underplayed it due to their kneejerk bias to play down terrorist threats due to their hatred of Bush (and "his" War on Terror) and their relentless boosting of multiculturalism and the "global community," whatever that is.

Fine -- obvious enough.

But why had Michael Chertoff not made more prominent mention of it? Why had the Bush Administration not highlighted it?

Because, Pinkerton suggested, the story undermines Bush's push for amnesty without security, as it exposes the fact that no one -- no one -- is seriously scrutinizing visa applicatants for terrorist ties, and in fact serious scrutiny is all but impossible given how unseriously the government takes this problem.

Pinkerton went on to suggest that the NYT's page-37-noncoverage of the JFK bomb threat was particularly perverse -- they'd buried the story about immigriants seeking to kill Americans in hopes of thwartwing Bush, but in fact had actually done his precise bidding by soft-selling this continuing unadrressed threat.

Bush doesn't want these stories played up, as they defeat the narrative he's peddling: Immigrants help the economy. Even the ones who want to blow up Americans and destroy millions in proprety and inflict billions in additional psychological-terror economic damage.

Heck, every terrorist allowed here by our broken, underfunded immigration-security system winds up adding money to the economy due to the additional security and law-enforcement jobs created, right?

I didn't take that suggesiton very seriously at the time -- it seemed too neat, and, frankly, a bit too I Question The Timing. After all, if I routinely dismiss claims of political motivations behind terror busts, I'm sort of also compelled to dismiss political motivations behind burying terrorism-related stories.

But this seems to add credence to the theory:

After analyzing close to 4 million records obtained from the Immigration Courts and the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys under the Freedom of Information Act, TRAC researchers found that in the last three years, just 12 individuals were charged with terrorism or terrorism-related activities — out of a total of 814,073 facing immigration charges. Of that same number, only 114 were charged with national security violations.

"More individuals were charged each year in Immigration Courts during the nineties for national security and terrorism than has occurred annually since 9/11/2001," the TRAC report added, with national security charges down a third and terrorism charges down more than three-fourths. And despite a rising volume of deportation cases on lesser charges, there are "consistently declining percentages" for aggravated felonies and other serious crimes as well.

This means that we are jailing or deporting fewer alleged foreign criminals and terrorists now than we did in the early ’90s — before most of the public had even heard of Osama bin Laden. The final stat says it all: Only 37 of these extremely high-risk individuals were physically removed from the United States between 2004 and 2006. No wonder nobody believes the feds when they claim to make terrorism prevention their No. 1 priority.

A couple of weeks ago Rush Limbaugh suggested that Bush had, essentially, chosen to give up the War on Terror for amnesty. A dire thought indeed, but perhaps it's not even a fresh decision -- it seems Bush decided to lose the War on Terror some time ago.

Only one third of the country are strong supporters of a vigorous War on Terror. We call these people "The Republican Base." And Bush is determined to alienate just about every single one of these people, so critical for sustaining what he himself calls the defining conflict of our generation. And, most likely, the next generation, and perhaps even the one after that.

Priorities.

Posted by: Ace at 12:15 PM | Comments (39)
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