No idea why this has flared up. Here's a specific thread for intergenerational warfare.

Although I think most of this just concerns the obvious fact that Bob Munck is an idiot who's so moronic he mistook himself for clever.

Posted by: Ace at 11:21 AM | Comments (131)
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Put up or shut up, buddy. We're all eager to hear the names of the "neocon thugs" who have infiltrated the AP, NYT, Reuters, WaPo, etc. corps.

He makes this charge in order to pull a sort of "Nyah, nyah, Thuggish Neocons did it first, so Beauchamp's just pushing back" defense.

Amazing. These people are supposedly our "patient fact-finders."

I congratulate Chait for standing his ground. And his comments left me thinking back to BushÂ’s awful Weimar speech from yesterday. Did Bill Kristol have a hand in that atrocity as well? In any event, that speech was clearly stained with Neocon DNA.

This guy claims to have first hand proof of faked reports from Iraq, which makes him more inclined to believe Chait and Beauchamp without actual confirmation?

Funny how that works.

This guy needs to be blitzed. I think he's a BDS ideologue who's flat-out lying. He can disprove this by offering details of his claims of Beauchampian lies.

One wonders why he did not rebut these false reports earlier. In fact, given his claim of blatant fabrication, one wonders why he's not rebutting them now by naming names and citing specific reports he claims to be false.

Or is covering up for fabulists now considered a professional courtesy in the MSM, as most of us suspect?

Update: Thanks to Tara at CY, we seem to have found the article Horton is challenging without actually naming.

Thanks to Jose for pointing that out.

Another Update: Confederate Yankee doesn't think that's the article being referred to, as he thinks (based on what he knows) that Horton returned from Baghdad in spring 2006, and his reference to "last spring" would seem to mean spring of 2006.

Who is Scott Horton, by the way?

Just consider the case of CBS cameraman Abdul Ameer Younis Hussein. In April 2005, he was shot in the hip by an American sniper while filming the wreckage of a car bomb in Mosul. US troops then detained him, claiming he had tested positive for explosive residue and that images in his camera linked him to the insurgents.

He was imprisoned in Abu Ghraib for more than a year without due process.

Abdul Ameer was released just last week after an Iraqi criminal court acquitted him of collaborating with insurgents, citing a lack of evidence. No charges were made public until the trial itself.

The case is not an isolated one. The Committee to Protect Journalists documented seven cases in 2005 alone in which U.S. forces detained Iraqi journalists for many weeks or months without charge or due process.

Scott Horton [is] a New York attorney who recently returned from Baghdad where he was working on Abdul Ameer's case. Horton is Chairman of the International Law Committee at the New York Bar Association.

Ah, nuance. I'm glad the MSM is employing such obviously unbiased folks as their blogger/reporters.

Posted by: Ace at 10:34 AM | Comments (19)
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Just watch it and be ummm....amazed. more...

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 07:40 AM | Comments (126)
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The U.S. isnÂ’t the only nation with immigrant issues in the south.
Southern Europe, especially Spain and Italy, has had to deal with people fleeing Africa for decades. They attempt to cross the Mediterranean because of war and persecution. Those that survive the crossing (many don’t) then have to be dealt with by European nations increasingly worried about terrorism and unemployment among the mostly unskilled migrants. These nations have been attempting to cut down on this type of thing and it seems to be working, although the article does quote one U.N. “assistant high commissioner” who draws the opposite conclusion; she fatuously claims that disincentives to migrancy are obviously not working since people are still coming.

Violent crime has apparently doubled in the U.K. in the last ten years.
While it includes the stats for all violent crime in the U.K., the article spends most of its time discussing ways of preventing crime among youths, implicitly assigning blame for violence to young people. No mention is made of 1997Â’s ban on handguns.

DNC will take away FloridaÂ’s convention delegates unless it agrees to push back its primary election date.
Florida has 30 days to push back its primary contest by a week or the DNC will refuse to accredit FloridaÂ’s delegates to the party's nominating convention next summer. Florida will cave, of course, but I almost wish it wouldnÂ’t. This situation raises some very interesting legal questions: because of the quasi-governmental action performed by the DNC when it comes to selecting candidates for election, it is likely illegal for the DNC to strip Florida of its chance to vote in the convention.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 10:21 PM | Comments (12)
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Whatcha gonna do when they come for you?

Posted by: Open Blog at 09:56 PM | Comments (8)
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You know, I was a lot more excited about the upcoming Voltron movie before I read this (with even more discussion here)...

Incidentally, more silly Cloverfield rumors have surfaced since Ace's last post.

Posted by: Open Blog at 09:46 PM | Comments (4)
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Also with more cowbell. more...

Posted by: Open Blog at 09:37 PM | Comments (6)
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Here's a rumor that I hope isn't true. Michael Chertoff has been a spectacular failure as head of DHS. I can't imagine he'll be any better as Attorney General.

Setting aside his pre-DHS role formulating early Administration war policy--policy that was easily predicted to be slapped down by the Supreme Court and which was at least three times for falling seriously short of complying with domestic and international law--he has consistently championed President Bush's pro-amnesty efforts while simultaneously cracking down on those immigrants who most deserve a little lee-way (LPRs and refugees).

The (mis)administration of federal Hurricane Katrina relief has also been his responsibility.

More than that, he's shown a dangerously thin skin for such a high-profile cabinet member, often chastising critics and even getting into a spat with a Congressman.

Just for fun go here to read what Michelle thought of Chertoff before he became DHS secretary; she approved of the guy (and so did the Senate, unanimously). Her latest piece blasting him is here.

[Yes I know I over-linked Michelle's site in this post. I'm using a borrowed laptop (from the library; who knew that libraries lent laptops?) and so I don't have the same right-at-my-fingertips tools and links and such.]

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 09:18 PM | Comments (9)
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I just flipped through this paper on termites out of CalTech and its full of pretty interesting stuff.

I never knew that termites required an army of 200+ different bacteria species to actually digest the wood they eat. The termite itself doesn't digest the wood, the armada of different bacteria do. Its symbiotic. Apparently, neither could exist without the other. These bacteria species have largely been hiding out in the guts of termites for millions of years so we never knew much about them.

However, the paper author is taking a look at these termite specific critters with an eye towards some genetic mods that might allow termites to become a more efficient biofuel source than corn, sugar cane, etc such which are apparently very wasteful. Within, you find out that it takes 4 gallons of water during refinery processing to crank out a gallon of ethanol.

The paper is in PDF format so you'll need Adobe Reader to read it. Worth a look though and the guy's writing style is pretty accessible to anyone with a modest amount of science background. I've had a year of college biology and a couple of years of chem/o-chem and it wasn't over my head.

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 06:13 PM | Comments (9)
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With cowbell, by request. more...

Posted by: Open Blog at 04:04 PM | Comments (5)
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