Sorry guys. This one is removed because it's just not that funny.

My apologies to the cobloggers. I was trying too hard.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 03:46 AM | Comments (54)
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Yesterday's NY Times editorial grudgingly admits that the situation in Iraq has taken a positive turn. It even manages to hold off the "but..." until the final paragraph. But the editorial, "Making (Some) Progress in Iraq" doesn't say a word about plummeting death tolls and reopened Baghdad neighborhoods. Once consumed with "tragic milestones," the editors have refocused their attention on more ambiguous benchmarks. And, boy, does this one ever begin with a whopper:

Good news is rare in Iraq. But after months of bitter feuding, IraqÂ’s Parliament has finally approved a budget, outlined the scope of provincial powers, set an Oct. 1 date for provincial elections and voted a general amnesty for detainees.

O RLY?

UNRELATED GROUSING: I've had no complaints about Windows Vista so far, but does anyone know how to keep it from rebooting itself without warning in order to install updates? I thought for a minute I lost this post (I may have awoken the neighbors with the cussing) and it is only through the goodness that is Mozilla Firefox that my text was saved. Responses from MacHeads or those extolling the virtues of Linux are not desired and will not be appreciated.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 03:16 AM | Comments (36)
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The House voted today to certify contempt citations for Josh Bolten and Harriet Meirs. Bolten and Miers have refused to comply with subpoenas to testify about and produce documents related to the U.S. Attorneys firings. President Bush has claimed executive privilege for both of them. (For those interested, I have summarized the law of executive privilege.)

While the Democrats in the House were pontificating about imperial presidencies and contempt of Congress, the Republicans staged a weak-ass walkout over FISA reform. This was quite a dramatic way of protesting the Democratic dismantling of our intelligence programs. It doesn't hurt to remind people that there is a war on. It was also pretty convenient timing because it means that none of them are on the record opposing Bolten's and Miers' contempt citations. I'm less pleased about that.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:47 AM | Comments (4)
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As Ace posted yesterday, the Democrats have decided that there isn't enough time to reconcile the House and Senate versions of the new FISA law. They've already left Washington for a week-long recess, despite Republican offers to stay in town and work as late as necessary to get the law done. August's temporary patch runs out at midnight tonight.

At that point, various terrorist surveillance efforts and other necessary foreign intelligence collection will be in violation of outdated laws which require that thousands of warrant requests be brought in secret to the FISA court. In a world of wireless communications and disposable phones, the old FISA law will grind our intelligence-gathering operations to a halt. We need a new law and we need it now. There is a war on.

Andy McCarthy, writing over at National Review, describes the problems with FISA reform, and why we absolutely must have it. Democratic obstinacy about this has centered on the issue of telecom immunity for participation in the government's terrorist surveillance programs.

For nearly three years, Democrats and their Bush-bashing allies have politicized national security, inveighing — despite the aforementioned court precedent — that it was a violation of law for the telecoms to comply with the administration’s post-9/11 requests for assistance (requests made when intelligence indicated additional waves of attack were likely; requests about which top Democrats in Congress were fully briefed). Democrats have encouraged the lawsuits as useful tools for portraying the administration as lawless. Not content to leave the telecoms holding the bag, they have taken every opportunity to signal their determination to make the telecoms pay for the Bush administration’s purported sins.

So, if you’re a telecom, why on earth would you cooperate if the Bush administration yet again decided to resort to its constitutional power to protect the country? You might be totally sympathetic — and the telecoms’ prior patriotic service demonstrates that they are. But you’d be opening yourself up to yet another round of multibillion-dollar class-action suits. You’d have no choice but to say, “Mr. President, sorry, but you need a court order.” And, indeed, if Democrats continue their recklessness, someone is eventually going to say, “Y’know, we can’t even trust your court orders — how do we know you’re not going to let someone sue us for complying with them?

It being an election year, I would be remiss if I did not tell you that Senators Clinton and Obama have both repeatedly opposed telecom immunity and responsible FISA reform (although only Obama showed up for Tuesday's vote). As for the probable Republican nominee, I've already said that I may not select a presidential candidate on my ballot this year. Singing his faint praises ("don't you know he's a war hero!") isn't likely to change my mind. But I suspect they'll get better results, and not only from me, by emphasizing just how horrible the opposition is on things like FISA reform.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:30 AM | Comments (9)
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Interesting read here about a program the Air Force is running at the Camp Bucca detainment facility.

...The Dar al Hikmah, Arabic for "House of Wisdom", is an education program at the TIF offering volunteering detainees an Iraqi government certified elementary-level education, religious discussion facilitated by local religious leaders, arts and crafts taught by professional artists, and Iraqi civics classes.

"I have heard the detainees say great things about the classes; they seem to really enjoy school here," said Airman 1st Class Enriquez Franz, deployed from MacDill Air Force Base, Fla., who is a TIF guard force member in the education facility. "I work directly with the detainees every day, and I've noticed how much their English has improved after they graduate."

With an approximate 40-percent illiteracy rate among detainees within the facility, this is a great program, said Capt. Justin Secrest, deployed from Vogelweh Military Complex, Germany. Through the detainees' education advancements, one can see that something good came from their time...

Now why doesn't the NYT or WAPO report on detainee reintigration programs like this? Yea, I know - stupid question. Silly me.

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 03:44 PM | Comments (10)
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More here. Moderately filthy.

Thanks to Temple of Jennifer.

Posted by: Ace at 03:38 PM | Comments (32)
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She's lucky he didn't take the relationship to the "next step" and saw her head off.

O.J. SimpsonÂ’s long-time girlfriend has severe injuries that are consistent with an assault, rather than simply a fallÂ…

Christie Prody, 32, remains hospitalized at Baptist Memorial Hospital in Miami and may be facing brain surgeryÂ…

O.J. says that ProdyÂ’s injuries are self-inflicted and that she went on a drunken binge and fell down. But cops arenÂ’t convinced, insiders say. And ProdyÂ’s injuries are so severe that they are consistent with an assault. Prody was hospitalized after she collapsed at a gas station and hit her head. Simpson was not with her at the time.

But once Prody was examined it became clear that she had more injuries than could have been caused by the fall. She had numerous large bruises and abrasions on her face, arms, legs and buttocksÂ…

It's from the National Enquirer. I don't know why we have to keep pretending that Enquirer is less accurate than the MSM, but there's your disclosure.

From Simon.

Posted by: Ace at 02:24 PM | Comments (28)
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On all the cable news channels now. Here's an early account from Fox.

Northern Illinois University issued an alert on its Web site Thursday to notify students of a possible gunman on campus.

"There has been a report of a possible gunman on campus," according to the alert. "Get to a safe area and take precautions until given the all clear. Avoid the King Commons and all buildings in that vicinity."

DeKalb Police Department says there are reports of multiple people shot.

A student told FOX News that the shooting occurred in Cole Hall, a building with lecture rooms.

Richie Dalitto, a freshman at Northern Illinois, told FOX News he heard that a student walked into Cole Hall carrying a shotgun, "went absolutely crazy" and fired some shots inside.

Update: Just over the air, reports that the gunman is dead.

Of course.

Brave little psychopaths always chose the heroic way out, eh?

Posted by: Ace at 02:11 PM | Comments (45)
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Neat-o timesuck site featuring lots of cool animated maps. Among them, this animation of American war casualties under different political leaderships.

Not really red meat or anything -- can't blame Lincoln for the Civil War mess too much, nor FDR for that whole Nazi/Empire of Japan unpleasantness -- but interesting to watch.

Via the Weekly Standard blog, which also includes a link to a conservative producer's take on progressivism killing dramatic fiction. And how Joel Surnow exploited the deadness of the form to "shock" people with rather simple twists that were only "twists" at all because Hollywood had long ago deemed them verboten:

Before Hollywood started working for al-Queda [sic] my biggest complaint with them was how left-wing cliches were killing films and television. Once you know how the simple liberal mind works — once you crack that code – you can see plot-twists coming from a mile away. Liberal purity has created more cliches and ruined more thrillers and action films than I can even begin to count.

I donÂ’t know the man, but Surnow seemed to consciously understand that over the decades a liberal socialization had taken place with television audeinces which would allow him to create truly shocking plot twists by playing on what weÂ’ve expected from liberal Hollywood for decades and then turning those expectations on their ear.

Black presidents torture? Torture works? The bad guys really arenÂ’t white? A black first lady is the villain? The hippie kid really is a snivelling punk? The protagonist loves his country? The guy who played John F. Kennedy is torturing his own son because his country comes first? Terrorism is always a bad thing? Non-white people are terrorists? Guns do good? And those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head.

There have been many complaints that “24″ wasnÂ’t truly conservative. True. But again, thatÂ’s a good thing because ideological purity ruins drama. You never knew what was going to happen on “24″ because the plot wasnÂ’t beholden to any ideology and this freed the creators to keep the twists coming from any direction.

That's a pretty good point. Star Wars owed its popularity in no small measure to the simple rediscovery of age-old tropes that Hollywood had long considered unfashionable.

It's not that politics alone preclude me from liking a movie like Shooter, a paranoid dark fantasy about Old White Republican Men conspiring to murder us all. Time was, and time could be again, that I liked that kind of movie. They're fun.

The trouble is that this is the only permissible plotline in filmed entertainment anymore -- and alternatives are only barely permissible in print, either, allowed only in low-rent trashy action thrillers -- and the same goddamned plots, tropes, stock characters and standard villains only have so much fucking juice in them. And all of that juice was used up sometime around 1982.

Posted by: Ace at 02:02 PM | Comments (27)
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This is really horrible. I like the Pats. I really do. I've lived five (bad) years of my life in Boston. Had to enjoy something about the city.

Hell, I even like Belichick. I like that he's a dick to the media. I hate the media too.

But now everything is going horribly wrong.

If the Pats had won the Super Bowl, I think it's clear that, human nature and corporate imperatives being what they are, this all would have been buried forever, for the good of all.

But 18-1? Now it's coming out.

BTW, Belichick says it's his belief that the taping of opponent teams' defensive signals was legal. Who knows, maybe the rules aren't clear on this point.

Posted by: Ace at 01:27 PM | Comments (59)
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