baldilocks

Farce

Looks like the DNC needs to send its minions to a Microsoft Word certification course or get out of the document-creating business using the program altogether. This latest work of art has Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito as its subject and appears to document his alleged ties to the Mafia, among other things. (An Italian involved with the Mafia; how original.) One problem: the properties of the document show the authors to be DNC employees Douglas Graham and Chris Prendergast and its most recent editor is shown to be DNC research director Devorah Adler. The original title is, "how they made their $$, personal holdings, the whole deal." Kevin at Wizbang notices some other things as well.

First it was written July 7, 2005, implying that the DNC developed these anonymous hit pieces on every possible Supreme Court nominee prior to Roberts nomination. Second, while Prendergrast might have been [the author of] the original version, DNC research director Devorah Adler was the most recent editor. For someone who was just promoted into the research director position in September, Adler stumbles right out of the gate...

Here’s the document link.

I realize that all sides do their hit pieces, but is it too much to ask to at least be a little sneakier about it?

MSNBC's Chris Matthews says that it's 'bad politics.' No, Chris. It's the politics of the IT illiterate.

Normally I Don't Do This, But...

Happy Halloween!

(Thanks to reader Teal Marie)

Plot or Blunder?

Several commentators are wondering why the CIA sent a non-operative like Joseph Wilson to Africa in order to verify the British report of possible illicit yellowcake sales to Saddam Hussein. Why would the CIA send someone over whom they had no control on such a sensitive trip? And why would they send a man whose relationship to one of their "secret operatives" was so close that any public disclosures from the man could endanger that operative?

Glenn Reynolds:

Assuming that Valerie Plame was some sort of genuinely covert operative -- something that's not actually quite clear from the [Libby] indictment -- the chain of events looks pretty damning: Wilson was sent to Africa on an investigative mission regarding nuclear weapons, but never asked to sign any sort of secrecy agreement(!). Wilson returns, reports, then publishes an oped in the New York Times (!!) about his mission. This pretty much ensures that people will start asking why he was sent, which leads to the fact that his wife arranged it. Once Wilson's oped appeared, Plame's covert status was in serious danger. Yet nobody seemed to care.

Cliff Kincaid:

In my recent special report on this matter, former prosecutor Joseph diGenova called the Wilson mission a CIA "covert operation" against Bush. Like the Novak column, a [New York Times reporter Judith] Miller story about this matter could have raised questions about the purpose of the trip and who was behind it. But if Miller had done such a story for the Times, the impact could have been enormous. After all, the Times was the chosen vessel for Wilson to write his column claiming there was no Iraq uranium deal with Niger.

Miller could have revealed that Wilson was recommended for the mission by his own wife, a CIA employee. His wife's role was critically important because a truly undercover CIA operative would not recommend her husband for an overseas trip and then expect to maintain her "secret" identity as he proceeded to write an article for the New York Times and become a public spectacle because of it. Her role in the trip means that she was not undercover in any real sense of the word.

(All emphasis mine.)

Also note that, following his trip to Africa, Mr. Wilson was debriefed in his home by two CIA personnel with his wife present. Additionally, he never filed any kind of written report.

Anyone who has done anything remotely governmental knows that such missions nearly always require some sort of hardcopy report. But, since Mr. Wilson was not one of their assets, they couldn’t make him write a report, which brings us back around to the original question: why him? Surely, the CIA has people versed in the geopolitics of Central Africa, who could be expected to file a timely report and who could be expected to have the usual CIA-required amount of discretion; unless the CIA actually wanted Mr. Wilson to talk.

However, I’m not usually inclined to be this conspiracy-minded and I don’t think that the Plame/CIA “leak” is one. I think that it’s merely a case of human laziness and short-sightedness on the CIA’s part: instead of looking for an Africa expert among their own ranks, they have one dropped in their proverbial laps by one of their WMD analysts (Plame). They assume that a retired ambassador like Mr. Wilson will understand the value of secure information. It never occurs to them that he might be an attention-seeking narcissist who will blab his (self-)importance all over the media and, therefore, invite questions as to how he got the job in the first place.

And, to point out the obvious, it’s not as if it was the first time that the CIA got something wrong. “Slam-dunk!”

(Thanks to reader Steve)

New Supreme Court Nominee

President Bush has nominated 3rd Circuit Appeals Court Judge Samuel Alito to take the place of retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Connor on the United States Supreme Court. This nomination is already shaping up to be a whole different ball game than the last one. Judge Alito appears to have all of the qualities desired by some conservatives who were both for and against the Miers nomination.

• The elite education (Princeton undergrad; Yale JD)
• The paper trail of legal philosophy
• The conservative strain snaking through his decision-making (some might arguably call it a constitutionalist strain)

In fact, Judge Alito is sometimes dubbed ‘Scalito,’ as in Justice Antonin Scalia, and it’s not merely because both men are of Italian descent and a shared birthplace (Trenton, New Jersey).

Of course, the Democrats are girding their loins for battle. Of the newest Supreme Court nominee, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) says:

The nomination of Judge Alito requires an especially long, hard look by the Senate because of what happened last week to Harriet Miers. Conservative activists forced Miers to withdraw from consideration for this same Supreme Court seat because she was not radical enough for them. Now the Senate needs to find out if the man replacing Miers is too radical for the American people."

"President Bush would leave the Supreme Court looking less like America and more like an old boys club."

Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) says:

This controversial nominee, who would make the court less diverse and far more conservative, will get very careful scrutiny from the Senate and from the American people.

Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA) says:

Rather than selecting a nominee for the good of the nation and the court, President Bush has picked a nominee whom he hopes will stop the massive hemorrhaging of support on his right wing. This is a nomination based on weakness, not strength.

When all the right people are lined up against a nominee, the temptation is to say, “good pick, Mr. President.” But let’s see what a few Republican/conservative bloggers say.

Patterico takes a look at Judge Alito’s lone dissenting opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, concerning a law requiring spousal notification before an abortion. P. opines that Judge Alito’s dissent is an assertion that it isn’t any court’s business to make these types of decisions.

Confirm Them further touts the judge’s qualifications and notes that he is a member of the Federalist Society.

And over at Red State, Pejman Yousefzadeh says that Republican/Conservatives shouldn’t shy away from the fight that the nomination is bound to encourage.

The president called for the confirmation of Judge Alito by the end of the year, in time for January 9, following the holiday break of the SCOTUS term. Good luck.

Is anyone still wondering why the president didn’t pick someone like Judge Alito the last time? I’m not. I still think that he may have been trying to stir up the right side of the fence (at least in the Senate; the stirring up of the conservative general public was likely an unforeseen consequence). I’m betting that it worked, but keep your fingers crossed.

UPDATE: Roundups:

Wizbang
Michelle Malkin

UPDATE: Jeff Goldstein has the Leftist roundup. A sample:

The Chimp bowed down at the altar of Dobson, Bauer, Schlafly, and the rest of the AmTaliban to save his “base” of the wild-eyed Freeper set, nominating Samuel Alito. I’d someone will ask an obvious question—how on earth did Harriet Miers rate ahead of Sammy when the Chimperor was looking down the short list?

LOL! That's why I love blogging.

It's Always the Cover-Up (UPDATED)

I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney’s Chief of Staff, has been indicted for obstruction of justice, perjury (two counts) and making false statements (two counts) in the Plame CIA leak investigation. All are felonies and Mr. Libby has already resigned from his post.

I’m sure that there are a lot of people out there who haven’t been following this investigation due to its extremely confusing nature, so I’ll attempt to give a synopsis. Feel free to correct any error, and/or add any pertinent info since I’m recounting much of the particulars off the top of my head.

During President Bush’s 2003 State of the Union address, he mention the (in)famous ‘sixteen words’: “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” The type of uranium, nicknamed ‘yellowcake,’ can be used to as a key component of nuclear weapons.

Before that, in 2002, retired Ambassador Joseph Wilson had been sent by the CIA to Niger, in central Africa, to attempt to corroborate the findings of the Brits. Upon his return, Wilson disputed the findings, deeming as forgeries some documents supporting those claims--document which he did not personally see, by the way--and, separate from that, accusing the Bush Administration of possibly misleading the nation in order to justify going to war in Iraq.

Undoubtedly, the White House wanted to know who it was that was calling the president a liar, so they began digging. After finding out that Mr. Wilson wasn’t a CIA employee, they wanted to know how he got the job of corroborating (or disputing) the claims made by the British (and the Italians).

It turns out that Mr. Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame (Wilson) worked for the CIA and recommended her husband for the assignment. Now here’s where things get strange. At some time in her career, Ms. Plame has been a covert agent for the CIA and, according to the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, it is illegal, under certain conditions to divulge the identity of a covert agent. One of those conditions includes whether the person in question is considered a covert agent or not (see 'definitions').

On July 12 2003, columnist Robert Novak wrote an op-ed piece regarding Mr. Wilson’s trip to Africa. In it, he identifies Ms. Plame as an ‘Agency operative’:

Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report. The CIA says its counter-proliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to contact him.

(Two senior administration officials: Libby and Karl Rove?)

That’s when all hell broke loose. Mr. Wilson began accusing the administration of deliberately publicizing his wife's name to get back at him for calling the ‘sixteen words’ bogus. (Later, before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, he contradicted the claim that the information was bogus. Additionally, the British still stand by their intelligence report concerning Saddam, Niger and ‘yellowcake.’)

It appears that the information links as to how Ms. Plame’s employment with the CIA became public are nearly impossible to untangle. The media types say the members of the Bush Administration told them who Ms. Plame was or they don’t say at all how they found out. (New York Times reporter Judith Miller even went to jail for withholding the identity of a source—Lewis Libby—who had given her permission to divulge his name a year before she went to jail. However, that’s a separate and very strange story in and of itself. Additionally, there seems to be no investigation of Mr. Novak.) But when the question came to Mr. Libby, he claimed—several times—that he got the information from other reporters. However, his own notes show that he received the information from Vice President Cheney. This is the reason that Mr. Libby is looking at fifteen years in a federal prison.

(Question: how did Special Counel Patrick Fitzgerald get ahold of Mr. Libby's notes?)

Karl Rove has also been investigated regarding this case, but Mr. Fitzgerald did not indict him for anything. It remains to be seen whether Mr. Rove will continue to be investigated.

Does anyone notice that there are no charges against Mr. Libby (or anyone else) for divulging Ms. Plame’s identity? If he lied about this thing, then he deserves what he gets. If he lied about something that isn't even a crime (divulging Ms. Plame's identity) then his error was a foolish one born of...arrogance? unnecessary secretiveness? protectiveness?

If found guilty, Mr. Libby should pay for his crimes. However, other than that, I'm forced to wonder what has been accomplished. Weren't the two years of Grand Jury investigation supposed to uncover the person who exposed Valerie Plame's identity? And do we even know whether that exposure is a crime in the first place? (And what about the fact that the Brits still stand by their yellowcake report? Wouldn't that remove the motive for some sort of backlash against Mr. Wilson?)

If Mr. Libby had been indicted for the exposure, I'd say that all of this stuff made sense, but he wasn't. The indictments, while legitimate, strike me as peripheral and pointless.

See Jeff Goldstein for more thoughts.

UPDATE: Jeff points out that since neither Libby nor Rove were indicted for outing Plame, that neither could have been Novak's source (a big 'duh' on my part).

UPDATE: Ace of Spades:

The Threshhold Question: The first question Fitzgerald needed to answer was whether or not there was even a possible crime committed, even assuming the facts to be the most harmful to Libby. [SNIP]

This question could have been, and should have been, answered in the first month of legal investigation, using no greater investigative resources than a law library.

And yet, two years later, Fitzgerald apparently finds there was no violation of the [Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982], the Espionage Act, or any act involving the dissemination of classified information.

And during those two years he's had people in jail for contempt and questioned many witnesses before the grand jury.

Why was he doing all that when month's work of legal research should have told him there wasn't a crime committed?

Wasting time and money.

Family Feud

Well, this certainly ups the level of discourse: “Simple Sambo Wants to Move into the Big House.” Not. Be advised, the content might make your boss believe think that you’re surfing a white supremacist or neo-Nazi site, so you might want to wait until you get home to check it out. [The photo has been removed. You can see the update further down; however, you can also see the original photo at the bottom of this post.] That site isn’t white supremacist or neo-Nazi, however; it’s run by Steve Gilliard, a man of the Left who happens to be black. For those of you who are unwilling to go to the site, the post refers to the US Senate campaign of Lt. Governor Michael Steele (R-MD), who is also black. Mr. Gilliard has Photoshopped a Sambo-like blackface over a photo of Lt. Governor Steele, complete with huge rosy-red lips; one is reminded of the song “Old Man River” when looking at it, if one is of a certain age.

I have linked to Mr. Gilliard’s site a couple of times before, most famously when he accused Glenn Reynolds of racism for wearing this t-shirt (don’t ask me).

He went on to accuse Frank J. of being racist for the latter’s running gag regarding monkeys, because—according to Mr. Gilliard—the word ‘monkey’ is Frank’s code-speak for the n-word.

That gives you an idea of what we’re dealing with here.

This also gives you an idea of the state of much of the dialogue between black liberals and their conservative counterparts. Many (not all) black leftists don’t want to hear the theme of self-reliance; not unless it’s couched in anti-white rhetoric and practices (see the Nation of Islam), and even then it’s rarely a go. Often, when a conservative Republican of any color talks about the Republican method of self-reliance, some blacks on the Left don’t hear the words said; they hear whatever ideas that exist in their own mind about the Right. Hence we get posts like that of Mr. Gilliard’s, designed to inflame rather than to convince or reasonably oppose or encourage dialogue (he admits that he doesn’t want to talk). After all, who wants to get called offensive names or caricatured in the manner specified?

(Side note: white liberals take their cues on how to treat black conservatives from black liberals. Hence, white cartoonists like Jeff Danziger think it’s okay to liken Condoleezza Rice to Butterfly McQueen’s Prissie from Gone With the Wind.)

If this were the only type of dialogue between this ‘family,’ (sometimes literally family), I’d be very depressed. Fortunately it isn’t.

The Cobbfather (thanks, Avery) has long been at the forefront of intelligent dialogue between liberals and conservatives who happen to be black. (From the Left, Tony Pierce has also been very civil, at least to me.) Here is an excerpt from one of Cobb's most recent posts.

In my case, I found it rather sad that the cat engaging me was literally screaming for the answer to the question - What is the Republican plan for helping blacks in the ghetto? The quick answer to that question, any conservative will tell you in well rehearsed soundbites: We need you to help yourself out of the ghetto - it's a plantation of dependency from which you must escape. Of course when you get down into the details there's much more nuanced stuff to say, but there is one basic undeniable point on which most all on the Right will agree. America is not responsible for solving the ghetto dysfunction. In the infamous post-Katrina phrasing: "You're on your own".

This really sounds harsh to progressives, who are looking for ways to improve life through innovation and reform in government. It sounds downright evil to liberals whose expectations of government are to manage the problems of the relatively indigent. To conservatives, it sounds bracingly honest, forthright with a minimum of BS. It is the political equivalent of spinach, an ugly vegetable that actually is good for you and makes you stronger.

But here's where it get's particularly ugly - we inject race into it. And with race comes identity. As soon as you say 'black progressive' or 'black conservative' you've raised the complexity and volume of this simple ideological conflict. Here's why.

So, instead of letting the emotionalism provoked by Steve Gilliard’s post overwhelm you, go read Cobb’s post. Perhaps it will enlighten some who are willing to be enlightened.

(Thanks to Michelle Malkin, Robert George and Booker Rising)

UPDATE: Actions have consequences. Virginia gubernatorial Democrat candidate Tim Kaine has pulled his ads from Mr. Gilliard's site.

(Thanks to Expertise)

UPDATE: Story here. Now Mr. Gilliard says that Lt. Governor Kaine is racist for pulling the ad.

The blogger, Steve Gilliard, said the Kaine campaign had paid for a month of ads. He defended his attack on Steele and, after the Kaine campaign's action, changed the Web site again to feature an attack on Kaine as a "coward" for pulling the ads.

"I guess they have a problem with black people expressing themselves in print," Gilliard said. "At no point did they bother to ask me what I thought or why I did it."

What a charming fellow this Gilliard is.

It's pretty plain what he thinks.

UPDATE: David Anderson, noted man of the Left, also black, also hasn't let our ideological differences get in the way of his being a gentleman. I've even been a guest poster at his place.

UPDATE: Mr. Gilliard has taken down the altered photo, apparently at the behest of the Washington Post who owned the original.

Don't Jump!

You can climb down off that ledge now, Patrick. Harriet Miers has withdrawn her nomination for the Supreme Court.

WASHINGTON - Harriet Miers withdrew her nomination to be a Supreme Court justice Thursday in the face of stiff opposition and mounting criticism about her qualifications.

Bush said he reluctantly accepted her decision to withdraw, after weeks of insisting that he did not want her to step down. He blamed her withdrawal on calls in the Senate for the release of internal White House documents that the administration has insisted were protected by executive privilege.

Perhaps that's the case. But the excuse sounds a little canned, a little pre-planned, I think. Strange how she had just re-submitted her answers to a questionnaire from the Senate Judicial Committee (they had forcefully rejected a previous set of answers last week, calling them 'incomplete to insulting').

It will be interesting to find out, ten or so years from now, whether I was right about this nomination or not.

Okay. Bring on the real candidate.

UPDATE: Perhaps the leadership has been listening.

Miers never overcame doubts among conservative opinion makers and within Bush's political base about her powers of intellectual leadership and reliability on such issues as abortion, affirmative action, gay rights and school prayer.

"The reaction to her nomination has been so intense and sustained that the White House couldn't ignore it any longer,'' said Roger Pilon, director of the Center for Constitutional Studies at the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington, in an interview before the withdrawal. "Confirmation was doubtful."

Will the Senate GOP be willing to fight for a Janice Rogers Brown now? Hopefully, the president will allow us to see what they are truly made of.

(Thanks to Confirm Them)

Heather Bare

Better known as Momma Bear, Heather passed away today after a battle with cancer. She simply was the blog-Mom--in the encouragement and friendship sense--to lots of folks, including me.

Rest in peace, Momma Bear.

Cool Picture

Here's something interesting I found just lying around.

The gentleman in the center was my great-uncle, David Jenkins (my maternal grandmother's brother). The back of the photo reads "Toulon, France 9-44."

It isn't apparent from the photo, but Uncle David was very light-skinned; so much so that he was originally put in an all-white unit (remember that the Armed Forces were segregated back then). Legend has it that he corrected that "error" with a quickness.

It's nice not to be living in the same sort of 'interesting times' in which Uncle David lived.

UPDATE: Uncle David and friends were probably a part of Operation Dragoon.

Operation Dragoon was the Allied invasion of southern France, on 15 August 1944, as part of World War II. The invasion took place between Toulon and Cannes. During the planning stages, the operation was known as Anvil, to compliment Operation Hammer, which was at that time the codename for the invasion of Normandy. Subsequently both plans were renamed, the latter becoming Operation Overlord, the former becoming Operation Dragoon; a name supposedly picked by Winston Churchill, who was opposed to the plan, and claimed to having been "dragooned" into accepting it.

Hah!

In Search of A Survival Plan

(Long post alert)

A few months back, Senator Chuck Hagel—a Republican senator from Nebraska--said that the Iraq War was turning into another Vietnam. Elections and many other differences aside, in a certain sense, the senator was correct. The concept of the Vietnam War—rather than the actual war itself—was shaped by the media of that time and today’s overwhelming Democrat, leftist, "anti-war" media is attempting, with some success, to shape how the American public thinks about this war. The question needs to be revisited, however: to what end?

For whatever reason, the vast majority of the American media, a good portion of the Democrats and even some so-called Republicans envision the defeat of the Republican/conservative agenda in general and the disgrace of the sitting Republican president in particular by the proverbial any means necessary. Whether the endeavor is something as serious and far-reaching as war and its purpose or a triviality, any endeavor by the “neo-cons” must be stopped. Whether the issue is objectively good or bad in actuality matters not; the only thing that matters is that the undertaking is authored by Republican/conservative. But in order to color any of these endeavors as objectively bad in the minds of a significant portion of the American public, Republican/conservative authorship isn’t quite enough. Not yet. The endeavor must be flawed or tainted somehow. The truth, logic or importance of the flaw/taint is irrelevant, however. It is merely enough that the idea has been planted.

Rosa Parks

One day you're an unknown Negro seamstress in the segregated South. The next day, you're a legend whose very name evokes hope and change for the better in an America that lives up to her ideals.

DETROIT - Rosa Lee Parks, whose refusal to give up her bus seat to a white man sparked the modern civil rights movement, died Monday. She was 92.

Mrs. Parks died at her home of natural causes, said Karen Morgan, a spokeswoman for U.S. Rep. John Conyers (news, bio, voting record), D-Mich.

Mrs. Parks was 42 when she committed an act of defiance in 1955 that was to change the course of American history and earn her the title "mother of the civil rights movement." [SNIP]

The Montgomery, Ala., seamstress, an active member of the local chapter of the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, was riding on a city bus Dec. 1, 1955, when a white man demanded her seat.

Mrs. Parks refused, despite rules requiring blacks to yield their seats to whites. Two black Montgomery women had been arrested earlier that year on the same charge, but Mrs. Parks was jailed. She also was fined $14.

Speaking in 1992, she said history too often maintains "that my feet were hurting and I didn't know why I refused to stand up when they told me. But the real reason of my not standing up was I felt that I had a right to be treated as any other passenger. We had endured that kind of treatment for too long."

Her arrest triggered a 381-day boycott of the bus system organized by a then little-known Baptist minister, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who later earned the Nobel Peace Prize for his work. [SNIP]

The movement culminated in the 1964 federal Civil Rights Act, which banned racial discrimination in public accommodations.

Amazing how small events can ripple out into meaningful change.

Rest in Peace, Mrs. Parks. You've definitely earned it.

A Little Jesus-Preaching

Call this a sermon or a testimony if you wish. Myself, I’d call it survival.

In my September 11, 2005 post, my readers helped me celebrate my first voluntary baptism. One of them suggested that I read C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity. The fact is, however, that I was already in the midst of re-reading it in spells. Allow me to discuss my reading habits for a bit.

Similar to not a few people, I’m usually reading more that one book during any given time interval. For me, the quantity is usually three, for three separate types of occasions: waiting for church services to start, waiting for all other occasions and bedtime. For the last two, the subject matter of the book could be anything that strikes my interest. However, the waiting-for-services book is always theological or spiritual in nature. Most of the time, it isn’t the Bible and right now, it’s Mere Christianity. (I mentioned that it’s a re-read. I had tried to read it before--when I was a wild heathen--but it couldn’t quite get into it. What a difference a conversion makes.)

About the reading of multiple books: it’s not that I’m such a brainiac; it’s just that sitting around with my thumb up my butt boredom makes me nuts.

Now on to the book.

One of the things which occurs when one becomes a Christian is that all past sins come back up to hit one in the head like a hammer. All of the terrible stuff that you had blocked out and had no intention of ever thinking about again breaks through that mental wall behind which it was imprisoned. I call that wall the Wall of Forgetfulness and of Rationalization. Accepting Jesus Christ as your Savior bulldozes that barrier and crushes it to powder.

“Oh yes. Remember when you did that? And that? And what about that?” I was a particularly heinous person in that I did what was right for me first and foremost and to hell with who it hurt.

Have I changed? In a sense, no. My first inclination is to still do what’s right for me first and all others second (a particularly strong trait in the first-born). My second inclination, however, now is to remember what that can lead to—becoming the type of person who not only sees truth as relative, but whose method of thinking always makes her desires equivalent to what is good and real and makes the opposite true as well: what she doesn’t want becomes wrong and false.

The Bible says that Satan is the Father of Lies; these progeny include the lies that you tell yourself. And once you get into the habit of lying to yourself about yourself, it becomes almost instinctive. But when reality butts against your instinct, it interrupts the play of the little DVD of self-serving scenarios running in your head and you scream “no!” and try to turn your “truth” into reality...if you're really far gone into self-delusion, that is.

A genuine conversion to Christianity throws cold water on all of that fantasy and shows you what you are and were on your way to becoming and points you in the opposite direction. You still fall short sometimes but you know you have broken the rules and you don’t try to cover it up or rationalize it away. Simply becoming a Christian doesn’t put Big J’s approval on everything an individual Christian does. We still sin and, if the conversion is true, we feel the sting of guilt even more keenly because we know what the rules are.

But also we know that we are incapable of sticking to the rules perfectly. And, most importantly, we know that our adherence to the rules isn’t what has saved and will save us anyway.

But what happens to the person—especially the one who calls herself a Christian—who continues to willfully take the wrong turn, who consciously makes the choices dictated by her appetites? Or her pride?

There’s a reason that one’s Christianity is referred to as a “walk of faith.” Every step of the way is still fraught with choices; “Do I take the road of faith or the road of sin?” is a question that has to be, a choice that has to be made every single day—every single moment.

Lewis is ever mindful of the fact that Christians believe in eternal life; that the soul lives forever. In one of the chapters of Mere Christianity, “Morality and Psychoanalysis,” he estimates how a person’s morality affects the soul’s composition and its eventual fate.

People often think of Christian morality as a kind of bargain in which God says, “If you keep a lot of rules I’ll reward you, and if you don’t I’ll do the other thing.” I do not think that is the best way of looking at it. I would much rather say that every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with its fellow-creatures, and with itself. To be one kind of creature is heaven: that is, it is joy and peace and knowledge and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage impotence and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or to the other.

That explains what always used to puzzle me about Christian writers; they seem to be so very strict at one moment and so very free and easy at another. They talk about mere sins of thought as if they were immensely important: and then they talk about the most frightful murders and treacheries as if you had only got to repent and all would be forgiven. But I have come to see that they are right. What they are always thinking of is the mark which the action leaves on that tiny central self which no one sees in this life but which each of us will have to endure—or enjoy—for ever.

To me, this seems to be a particularly Catholic way of thinking--Catholics, feel free to argue--and though I have no intention of converting, it makes a lot of sense to me. If you’re going to be stuck with ‘you’ forever, it behooves you to try to become the type of person that you want to be stuck with for that long. After your threescore and ten are done (plus change, if you’re lucky/unlucky), all opportunities for modification will be past. To put it in geek-speak, in the eternal life realm, you'll have all the features and bugs that you’re ever going to have. Apart from radical change, a person is always headed in one direction or the other; therefore the time to make changes is now.

Life is short. Well, this one is.

What's Been Going On

Though I haven't been writing, I have indeed been reading and these are the items that have drawn my interest.

Patterico, playing to lovers of lawyer jokes everywhere, is ready to make a good start end it all over the Harriet Miers nomination to the SCOTUS. Check out all of his subsequent posts.

Steve H., previously one of Ann Coulter's many worshipers, is kicking her to the curb. He says that it’s over her faulty logic in her stance on Miers, but I think it’s because of her refusal to eat roast pork on a spit, or cornbread or flan or darn near anything else.

Rep. Curt Weldon goes ballistic (in a good way) over Able Danger and the Defense Intelligence Agency's apparent attempt to smear its whistle-blowers. AJ Strata has more and Captain Ed has much more. (Background is here.)

The Wilson-Plame maze still goes on, allegedly to determine who blew the CIA cover of one Valerie Plame after her husband, Joseph Wilson IV disputed the White House's claim that Saddam Hussein had attempted to acquire nuclear weapon materials from Niger. I’d be the last to say that I have a handle on who might have done what, but one issue I don’t find ambiguous is this: according to this standard, no law has been broken. Remember that the next time some legislator goes off on a tangent about wasting time and money (like that’s ever going to happen). Tom Maguire is the best source for all things Plame and Roger Simon smells a snipe hunt.

And, as Florida stares another hurricane straight in the eye, Val P. puts on his hurricane deflector hat. (Is it made of tin-foil?) Speaking of tin-foil, one wonders what George W. Bush has against his little brother. After all we just know that the president is producing these things from his hurricane machine located in the bunker deep beneath the White House. Right? Right? Or is that type of schizophrenic paranoia applicable only when the local government is incompetent?

On a serious note, Val also observes that Cuba will catch the worst of Hurricane Wilma, for specific reasons.

Back Again

Hello Strangers. That little hiatus was forced by circumstances. But a little help from relatives and friends saved the day.

When one is used to tracking and commenting on the events of the day, then takes a mere seven days off, it's like jumping out of a 150 mph car at a racetrack and depositing yourself in the stands. After a while, everyone is way ahead of you.

No matter. I'll just deposit myself back in and pretend that I never fell out of line.

UPDATE: BTW, I'll be doing double duty; posting here.

To the Local Paper of Record

Since the average age of newspaper readers is fifty-five and I am only forty-four, please, Los Angeles Times, stop calling me and trying to sell me your newspaper. Why should I pay for something that I can get for free?

Last night, one saleswoman even tried this selling point: that I couldn’t read the pixelated version of the LAT at the breakfast table. Have these people not heard of laptops? I don’t have one, but Sheesh! At least I know they exist.

Evolve…

The audience for network news on TV has dropped faster than for newspapers, he said, and radio news has almost disappeared.

Or die.

(Thanks to Roger L. Simon)

How to Become an Embed

Michael Yon, who is back in Iraq, writes about the process and the experience.

Question From an Evangelical Christian (UPDATED)

If Harriet Miers is the strictest of constructionists and an originalist, why is her evangelical Christianity—with the stamp of approval from Focus on the Family’s James Dobson, no less-- being showcased as a feature?

"People are interested to know why I picked Harriet Miers,'' [President Bush]; said. "They want to know Harriet Miers' background. They want to know as much as they possibly can before they form opinions. Part of Harriet Miers' life is her religion.'' [SNIP]

On a radio show broadcast Wednesday, James Dobson, founder of the conservative Focus on the Family, said that before Miers was nominated, deputy White House chief of staff Karl Rove reassured him that she was an "evangelical Christian, that she is from a very conservative church, which is almost universally pro-life.''

I’m starting to think that not a small amount of hypocrisy is part of the Miers nomination; that some conservatives believe that it’s okay for a judge/justice to be a judicial activist as long as that activism favors perceived conservative positions.

Unless this reaction is part of the plan.

In case you're wondering, I'm still on the fence but leaning toward 'no.'

(Thanks to M. Simon)

UPDATE: When a rabid atheist and a bunch of rabid fideists (thank you, Mr. Hitchens) are in agreement and religion is a major part of the subject, you know that a certain decision needs to be reviewed.

UPDATE: Cal Thomas--a very Christian man--also has questions in this vein:

If Harriet Miers can easily set aside her faith on the job, what is the point of nominating someone with such faith? Why not nominate someone of no faith and the question would never come up? Is faith good only for the confirmation process, but not the job?

These questions help outline the disconnect between the Bush Administration playing up Ms. Miers' faith and the job description of Supreme Court justice.

Most of the Christian Right do not want a religious test applied to candidates and nominees of government office. It's obvious that we "snake-handlers" were "misunderestimated." But that's no surprise by now.

Mortality

I could talk to this man forever, but it appears that we don't have that long.  Only one Being knows why things happen the way they do and I wasn't there when He separated the Night from the Day.

ARRRRGGGHHH!!!

That's for you, Typepad! There. I feel better now.

Vote for King of the Cotillion!

It’s Cotillion Day and there is a scaled down version of the carnival at North American Patriot.  Recall that last week the Cotillion began taking applicants for Blogger Babe.  Well, several gentlemen applied and here they are:  Typepad is giving me html issues, so go look at the photos at North American Patriot.  You can make your selection for the King right here, however.

Vote for King of Cotillion!
	B.C., Imperial TorturerT
	Hardcore Conservative
	MacStansbury
	Retired Geezer
	Bullwinkle
	Mark
	Hubris
	Timmer
	Gregg
	Casey
	Patriot Xeno
	Citizen Grim
	Alan Woody
	Xavier
	Jay
	Masked Menace
	Thunder6
	Rick
Free polls from Pollhost.com

 

This poll will be located on my right sidebar until next week when the finalists are tabulated.  After that, another poll will appear.

Enjoy!

Steve H. is jealous because nobody nominated him.  You’re were supposed to nominate yourself, darling.

Five Years

Alan Gray remembers the fallen of the U.S.S. Cole.

On October 12, 2000 at 1118 hrs a small boat approached the USS Cole, moored in Aden, Yemen for refueling, and detonated a bomb, killing 17 of our shipmates and wounding 39 others. Built in Pascagoula, MS and commissioned in 1996, the Cole is named for a Marine Corps machine-gunner killed on “Iwo Jima” in 1945. Fifty-five years after that epic battle, 17 young sailors, male and female, serving their nation would be killed by suicide bombers intent on bringing their Islamo-Facist global jihad against the West.

Go read their names and remember as well.

Down Intermittently

Typepad has been doing maintenance for a couple of days, so bear with me.

Outside Looking In

Miers: I’ve never seen so many PO’d lawyers at the same time before. One almost expects the pistols-at-dawn routine in some cases.

It’s rather entertaining. However, here's hoping that the duel scenario doesn't occur at the next Bear Flag League gathering.

Being in America Pays

...even if you're homeless; even if you're an illegal immigrant. Put it this way: homeless illegal immigrants in Pakistan are probably dead now by the tens of thousands. And, if they're not dead, they probably wish they were; there's no Astrodome filled with caring citizens intent on helping to insure that they and their children stay alive, much less fed and sheltered.

So when you pray for the relief of the Central Asian suffering and give to entities like WorldVision, don't forget to thank God for the prosperity that we in America experience, just by being here instead of there.

Related: read Rabbi Daniel Lapin's 2003 take on why Judeo-Christian nations--especially those culturally steeped in the Protestant ethic--suffer less during natural disasters than do other countries.

(Thanks to Michael Williams and Michael Medved)

"Kick Me"

Let me get this straight: Clinton-appointed FBI Director Louis Freeh goes on CBSNews “60 Minutes” to accuse the former president of a) promising, but failing to pursue the perpetrators of the 1996 Khobar Towers terror attack in Saudi Arabia—in which 19 members of the US military died without being able to raise a weapon, and b) soliciting a donation for his future presidential library from then-Crown Prince Abdullah of S.A. as quid pro quo for not pursuing the investigation--and CBS goes to Sandy Berger to rebut the charges?

When the convicted burglar of classified material is set forth on a long-running television network news program as the voice of integrity, you know the level of contempt that the network has for the American public. Along with Mary Mapes’ and Dan Rather’s dogged insistence on the veracity of information contained in patently forged documents, asking Sandy Berger for confirmation of anything more complicated than whether rain is wet or not is a sign of how ignorant CBS believes the average citizen is.

The frightening part about this is that CBS may be correct.

The Political Teen has video of the Freeh interview, naturally.

A New Disaster

By now everyone knows about the 7.6 earthquake that rocked Pakistan and the Kashmiri part of India on Saturday morning. As is often the case, a disaster which would yield a lot of casualties in a developed region, yields a mind-bogglingly high number in a region of ancient-vintage architecture and non-existent building codes.

From throughout Pakistan, a variety of estimates on the death toll poured in. By evening, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said 19,369 people had died and at least 43,000 had been injured, based on estimates from local officials. But with much of the country still unseen by the authorities, it was impossible to settle on a definitive figure. "There are clearly several areas which are inaccessible," Mr. Aziz said. "Gradually, in a day or two, we will reach them."

At least 600 people were reported killed by the quake in neighboring India, and the United Nations said 2.5 million people in the entire stricken region needed shelter.

The toll will rise.

I heard someone on the news ask whether Pakistan and India had come to this country’s aid in its recent time of need. The answer is and should be: who cares? You know the drill by now.

PAKISTAN QUAKE RELIEF: Americares

Bork: Not Miers

(Can't get enough of this legal/political soap opera!)

Judge Robert Bork—he whose name has become a verb in Senate Supreme Court hearing lore--is just as angry about the Harriet Miers nomination as most of the rest of the legal and/or conservative luminaries of this country.

TUCKER CARLSON, MSNBC HOST: Are you impressed by the president’s choice of Harriet Miers?

JUDGE ROBERT BORK, FORMER SUPREME COURT NOMINEE: Not a bit. I think it’s a disaster on every level.

CARLSON: Why? Explain the levels on which it’s a disaster.

BORK: Well, the first one is, that this is a woman who’s undoubtedly as wonderful a person as they say she is, but so far as anyone can tell she has no experience with constitutional law whatever. Now it’s a little late to develop a constitutional philosophy or begin to work it out when you’re on the court already. So that—I’m afraid she’s likely to be influenced by factors, such as personal sympathies and so forth, that she shouldn’t be influenced by. I don’t expect that she can be, as the president says, a great justice.

But the other level is more worrisome, in a way: it’s kind of a slap in the face to the conservatives who’ve been building up a conservative legal movement for the last 20 years. There’s all kinds of people, now, on the federal bench and some in the law schools who have worked out consistent philosophies of sticking with the original principles of the Constitution. And all of those people have been overlooked. And I think one of the messages here is, don’t write, don’t say anything controversial before you’re nominated.

(Emphasis mine.)

After what I found out about the Federalist Society and Judge Bork’s role in its creation, his opinion of the Miers nomination is no surprise. However, I hope that Judge Bork will come out and express himself as to who is slapping him and his Federalist Society cohorts in the face. Hint: it isn’t President Bush.

Leaving aside his speculation about Ms. Miers' legal talent, surely Judge Bork remembers his own…ahem…borking. If the last part of Judge Bork’s statement is truly the message sent to wannabe Supreme Court justices, then who is the sender of that message? If a climate has been created in which any lawyer who dreams of sitting on the High Court some day has to be an automaton with no known opinions, emotions or feelings—an android—then who fostered that climate?

(BTW, I hope all of you blogging lawyers are content with your present station in life as far as your legal careers go.)

I mean come on. Before the age of four-year-old Jack Roberts was well-known, opponents of his father’s nomination to the High Court were speculating that both John Roberts and his son were homosexuals; to see if the mere innuendo could help spike the nomination. Because of now-Chief Justice Roberts’ near perfection as a candidate, that pathetic implication was the best that any opponents could muster. But that’s how ugly and ridiculous the atmosphere surrounding these appointments has become--at least for open, hardcore conservatives--as Judge Bork well knows. But interestingly enough, as the judge and many others have pointed out, the public still doesn’t know Chief Justice Roberts’ views on the burning legal issues of the day (as it should be). Chief Justice Roberts walked in on sheer and demonstrable talent. That doesn't seem to be a strong factor for Ms. Miers, though Bill Dyer/Beldar researches and makes the case for the excellence of Ms. Miers’ accomplishments.

Understandably, everyone wants ‘paper’ on Miers and that which she does have is deemed unacceptable to a certain segment of observers, especially as stacked up against that of the available talent. But if the president picked a Harriet Miers when he could have picked a Priscilla Owen, most observers shouldn’t have to ask themselves why that is so.

Outside of the Roberts hearings, these federal court (non-)confirmation hearings are becoming a repetitive set of quagmires and people seem to have forgotten this. (Strange. Memories seem short and patterns are ignored among the high priesthood of professional punditry. You wonder how they got through school.) Recall that it was agreed upon by the infamous Gang of Fourteen senators that the first SC nominee would not be filibustered. Was a second nominee a part of that agreement?

Another part of the agreement brokered by the Gang was to stop the four-year long filibustering of Judge Owen’s nomination to the Federal Appeals Court (and two others) and prevent the filibustering of the Roberts nomination. Recall that Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid came straight out and told Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist that the Democrats would filibuster Owen if she were the president’s choice to replace Justice Sandra O’Connor.

Owen, [Janice Rogers] Brown and [William] Pryor were among 10 federal appeals court nominees blocked by Democrats during Bush's first term with a procedural hurdle known as a filibuster.
The three were confirmed this year as part of a bipartisan truce that cleared some of Bush's most conservative nominees for Senate votes while preserving the right of Democrats to filibuster -- but only under "extraordinary circumstances."

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid and Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, wrote Bush that nominating to the Supreme Court any of those previously blocked "would represent an unnecessary provocation and would be met by substantial opposition."

“Extraordinary Circumstances” means, of course, the nomination of anyone whose opinions can be construed as so conservative that the balance of the court will be shifted rightward. (Addendum: no one on either side seems to care about whether a candidate knows how to get to a decision properly; only that they get to the "correct" decision.)

With an eighteen-year pattern of behavior by the Senate Democrats, a promise of same from them, and a GOP majority that allegedly doesn’t have the stones want to fight, one wonders why anyone is surprised that President Bush picked someone who appears to be a cipher.

So what should we—the People—do about it? I’m a Californian. What are you folks with Republican or center Democrat senators going to do about it?

(Thanks to Memeorandum)

EXTRA: Could you just imagine the bloody mess caused by cranial detonation if a non-lawyer were nominated to the Supreme Court?

UPDATE: Half the Senate Republicans don't know if they will vote to confirm Harriet Miers.

Nearly half of Senate Republicans [twenty-seven] say they remain unconvinced that Harriet Miers is worthy of being confirmed to the Supreme Court, according to a survey conducted by The Washington Times. [SNIP]

Sen. Sam Brownback, Kansas Republican and a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said last week that he is perfectly willing to vote against the nomination if he is not convinced that she will be reliably conservative on the high court. That view has been echoed by his fellow committee member Sen. Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican.

If Mr. Brownback and Mr. Coburn joined all Democrats on the committee in opposing Miss Miers, her nomination would fail in committee. However, because it is a nomination for the Supreme Court, it would still go to Senate floor for a vote by the entire chamber -- albeit with a negative committee recommendation.

I still could be wrong.

Mary Mapes

Mary Mapes, former CBS producer, has written a book about her attempt to influence the 2004 US Presidential Election using a set of laughably amateur forged papers and sparking the incident colloquially know as Rathergate. The title of the book? Truth and Duty (audio CD). I'm sure lots of fun can be had with that title.

Most of you know the story, so I won’t bore you with it. I simply have a question for the women (and the men, I guess). Regarding this reported reaction from Ms. Mapes when the jig was up and various website analyses were exposing the CBS papers on President Bush's Texas Air National Guard service as frauds:

“And right now, on the Internet, it appeared everything was falling apart. I had a real physical reaction as I read the angry online accounts. It was something between a panic attack, a heart attack, and a nervous breakdown. My palms were sweaty; I gulped and tried to breathe. . . . The little girl in me wanted to crouch and hide behind the door and cry my eyes out."

Since you’ve been an adult, have you ever felt like the part emphasized? Have you ever gone all little-girl in a crisis? Maybe it’s me, but, that is just weird.

But I suppose that I would indeed have a cow if I had attempted to pass phony papers about the president and was outted instantly in front of millions.

Welcome to the 21st century, Ms. Mapes.

People like Ms. Mapes are some of the most frightening of all. Anything can be justified in the name of a "righteous" cause. She still doesn't think that she did anything wrong and getting a book deal--accruing profit--from the scandal she helped create only re-inforces that willful blindness. Kinda helps to make a person cynical, no?

Cheer up. God is in control.

(Thanks to LGF)

Miers: View From the Cheap Seats

I’ve kept out of the hair-raising debate on the Miers nomination simply because I’m one to acknowledge my own short-comings, my own gaps in knowledge. I simply am not a lawyer; I don’t even have an undergraduate degree.

Observing as those who do possess the formal credentials and/or demonstrable knowledge duke it out has been a valuable learning experience for me, however. The paid pundits on the right are, for the most part, against the nomination. Wait, allow me to rephrase that: the paid pundits on the right are, for the most part, rending their garments and tearing out their hair over the nomination.

George Will derides Miers' alleged intellectual inferiority and--sounding like the most leftist of leftists--gives her patron a kick in that area to boot.

[President Bush] has neither the inclination nor the ability to make sophisticated judgments about competing approaches to construing the Constitution. Few presidents acquire such abilities in the course of their prepresidential careers, and this president, particularly, is not disposed to such reflections.

Ann Coulter is incensed that such an inferior being—read: someone who did not attend an Ivy-league law school—has been put forth as the nominee. Coulter:

Harriet Miers went to Southern Methodist University Law School, which is not ranked at all by the serious law school reports and ranked No. 52 by US News and World Report. Her greatest legal accomplishment is being the first woman commissioner of the Texas Lottery.

And this is just unnecessary:

While Bush was still boozing it up in the early '80s, Ed Meese, Antonin Scalia, Robert Bork and all the founders of the Federalist Society began creating a farm team of massive legal talent on the right.

So let them get elected president and they can make the choice themselves.

(I used to think that Ms. Coulter used her legendary vitriol as a tool to get out the conservative message; something that I thought she believed in. Now I suspect that her vitriol is merely a character flaw, wielded against anyone who doesn’t toe her mark in the manner that she sees fit.)

Don’t our opponents claim that conservatives only believe that the privileged should be in power? It appears that, in some cases, our opponents were correct. We unwashed and uneducated masses are forced to wonder whether a complete program of law is even being taught outside of the elite list of schools. If not, why don’t we just shut down these Acme Law Schools right now and disallow any and all practice of law unless the “lawyer” in question was fortunate enough to get into Yale, Columbia, etc.?

If this nomination has no other use, it has served at least one purpose: it has revealed how certain privileged members of society view the rest of us, even those of us who are formally educated. Ms. Miers' qualifications as a Supreme Court justice are fair game; the rest is merely snobbery.

Onward.

Daniel Henninger and Virginia Postrel (read various posts) make a case against the Miers nomination that is patently 180 degrees opposite of that of Will and Coulter, that it is actually born of a different sort of snobbishness: Texas cronyism. Miers was nominated solely because she is a friend and professional colleague of the president.

Henninger notes (as Coulter also quite crudely does above) that a lot of the anger against President Bush for this nomination stems from the perception that, by nominating Harriet Miers, he is ignoring or repudiating everything that the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy has built up since the beginning of President Reagan’s first term.

In 1982, five years before Ronald Reagan nominated Robert Bork to the High Court, law students at several top-tier schools founded the Federalist Society, dedicated to shaping a robust, coherent conservative theory of jurisprudence. Robert Bork was a society lodestar, the most formidable conservative jurist of his generation. The Democrats destroyed his nomination by personalizing their disagreement with him. After that, reforming and retaking the Court became a personal crusade for many conservatives. [SNIP]

For nearly 25 years, conservative legal thinkers have been building an argument that liberalism transformed the Court into an instrument of national policymaking more appropriate to the nation's legislative institutions. Roe v. Wade is the most famous of those policy decisions. [SNIP]

Across these many years conservatives have been creating a structured legal edifice to stand against a liberal trend toward aggrandized federal power that began in the 1930s. [SNIP]

Harriet Miers may share these reformist views, but her contribution to them is zero. Conservatives are upset because they see this choice as frittering away an opportunity of long-term consequence.

In short, the Big Boys and Girls are ticked because, after all that hard work they did, they--or one of their number—doesn’t have sole dibs on the spoils.

Still others surmise that the nomination of someone like Miers is born of Senate Republican cravenness; their unwillingness to go against the likes of Kennedy, Schumer, Clinton, etc., to push the conservative agenda forward. Says Thomas Sowell:

When it comes to taking on a tough fight with the Senate Democrats over judicial nominations, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist doesn't really have a majority to lead. Before the President nominated anybody, before he even took the oath of office for his second term, Senator Arlen Specter was already warning him not to nominate anyone who would rile up the Senate. Later, Senator John Warner issued a similar warning. It sounded like a familiar Republican strategy of pre-emptive surrender.

Before we can judge how the President played his hand, we have to consider what kind of hand he had to play. It was a weak hand -- and the weakness was in the Republican Senators.

(The Anchoress notes that Robert Novak and Mark Levin concur.)

So what’s a literate, blue-collar sort supposed to conclude from this mish-mash of opinion, speculation, hysteria and cowardice?

Why would President Bush pick someone like Harriet Miers who has never sat on a bench and has no real legal scholarship--as opposed to either Janice Rogers Brown or Priscilla Owen, each of whom possess both qualities? Several answers come to mind:

1. Because he was told that neither of the latter two candidates (or someone like them) would make it out of the Senate Judiciary Committee (unknown),
2. Because the latter two candidates (or someone like them) would have their nominations filibustered by the main body of Senate Democrats (proven),
3. Because the Senate Republicans are unwilling to go to the mat for a strong conservative choice, type of candidate that will cause the Democrats to pull out the proverbial big guns (proven),
4. Because the president doesn’t understand what his responsibilities are as president when it comes to selecting persons to sit on the High Court (unlikely, judging by the nominations he has made for lower courts and for the Chief Justice of the United States),
5. Because, for whatever reason, he wants to stick it to the conservative elites; the type who formed the Federalist society (would be an out-of-character example of stage-one thinking), and/or
6. Because he wants to light a fire under the Senate Republicans to get them to fight for the conservative agenda (I hope).

I agree with Sowell, et al., that number six is most likely true.

All the talk about Ms. Miers’ evangelical Christianity, her various first-female-lawyer milestones and the fact that she is a long-time colleague of the president’s seem merely like adequate cover against allegations of Souter-syndrome: being a liberal in conservative-clothing. (I think that most of us who know even a little bit about the judicial branch of government only want a justice who isn’t an activist even if that activist errs on the conservative side.)

I'm betting that President Bush is doing what he usually does: call people out. Why should he put a Janice Rogers Brown up to be savaged by the Democrats if the Senate GOP isn’t willing to stand with him and give Brown cover? If they can't hang, then whose problem is that? The president might as well put me up for nomination.

My predictions: if Harriet Miers is lucky enough to make it through the judiciary committee, she will be voted down by the full senate. Then what? Following the rejection, President Bush makes a phone call to Senator Frist and asks: “now are you willing to fight for the type of candidate that you claim to want?”

Then again, I could be wrong. :-)

For all their Ivy education and conceit, these screeching pundits would be road-kill in a game of chicken. Or poker. It’s sad that a decisively-elected second-term president has to resort to this type of strategy, but the president is only playing the hand that he has been dealt.

UPDATE: Thanks, Glenn!

More Espionage

Here’s a spy case that I hadn’t noticed until today.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — A top Pentagon analyst with expertise in the Middle East pleaded guilty Wednesday to giving classified information to an Israeli embassy official and members of a pro-Israel lobbying group.

Lawrence A. Franklin, 58, said during a plea hearing that he was frustrated with the government and that he had hoped the two members of the lobbying group could use their connections at the National Security Council to influence U.S. policy.

With as much paranoia, general hatred and barely disguised jealously that so many groups feel for the Jews—oh, excuse me, the neocons--and for Israel, one would expect to hear shouts of Zionist Plot!!! echoing throughout the land in regard to this case. Thankfully, that isn’t the case.

We seem, however, to have several allies who want to dig in our back pocket without telling us. Why is that?

(Thanks to Jeff Goldstein)

It Sure Would Be Nice

If someone bought a Blog Ad.

For Those Wobbly Days

President Bush, today:

[W]e're not facing a set of grievances that can be soothed and addressed. We're facing a radical ideology with unalterable objectives: to enslave whole nations and intimidate the world. No act of ours invited the rage of the killers, and no concession, bribe or act of appeasement would change or limit their plans for murder.

On the contrary, they target nations whose behavior they believe they can change through violence.
Against such an enemy there is only one effective response: We will never back down, never give in and never accept anything less than complete victory.

The president needs to reiterate this again and again. Some of us need a constant reminder.

(Thanks to Mary Katharine Ham)

Oklahoma's Latest Bomber and the Press

Mark Tapscott notes that the Oklahoma would-have-been homicide bomber, Joel Hinrichs, was known to the Norman Police Department.

Norman, Oklahoma, feed store owner Dustin Ellison's Sept. 28 encounter with University of Oklahoma suicide bomber Joel Henry Hinrichs was witnessed by a plain-clothes police officer who happened to be in the store at the time, Tapscott's Copy Desk has learned.

Ellison declined to sell any of the fertilizer [ammonium nitrate, which Ellison says that Hinrichs attempted to buy on the date in above; the bomb that blew Hinrichs up used hydrogen peroxide] , which was a main ingredient used in the April 19, 1995, bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Hinrichs could not explain why he wanted to buy a large amount of the fertilizer. Ellison recorded the license plate number of Hinrichs' car as he drove away.

Mainstream media in OK confirm this. Read this one and the rest of Mark’s posts on the bombing “accident.”

Additionally, Hinrichs had tried to enter the stadium during the OU-KSU football, but ran away when authorities requested to search his backpack.

If it walks like a duck…

What can we speculate from this incident? If all the previously reported information is true, then some Islamist elements are inculcating non-traditional (read: white/Hispanic American-born) converts into their ideology. Hinrichs was known to be a book-smart loner with emotional problems (according to his own father); a ripe pick for any creed that might give a semblance of direction and structure to a world that such a person—especially a young one—might find frustrating; the old “order out of chaos” phenomenon.

Did Hinrichs detonate on purpose? That’s something that we’ll never know, obviously, but something to consider. He was depressed already and when he failed to reach his target, he might have felt like even more of a failure. And since he just happened to have a bomb in his backpack, why not?

(I shudder at the depths of despair that people like Hinrichs experience; Hell on Earth. The Evil One whispers all manner of lies into the ears of the depressed. I know.)

And, what of more nationally-known elements of the press? The reluctance to report on this story could stem from the fact that no one but the bomber was hurt. If this is the reason that little information is forthcoming from, say, the New York Times regarding Hinrichs, then it is a short-sighted decision. As I said earlier, this is the second suicide-bomber incident on American soil in four years and that is no minor incident to relelgated “National Briefings” section of the so-called Paper of Record. We all need to be mindful of what can happen every time a large crowd gathers and authorities--public and private--need to be thinking about, re-thinking and implementing security measures.

If the mainstream media thinks that it has responsibilities toward the public, one of them, IMO, is to get information out that helps keep the public safe. Perhaps these entities are hesitant after the Katrina reporting fiasco—believing authority figures, who, by virtue of their office, should know what’s going on. If, that’s the case, however, they are swinging too far in the other direction: they’re not reporting at all!

Sorry, NYT, but we need to know about incidents like the one that occurred in Norman, OK this past weekend. Report on it; but don’t be lazy like you were during Katrina. It shouldn’t be too difficult to verify information, put out a disclaimer or, at the very least, issue a correction. You folks are doing that last all the time anyway.

(Thanks to Michelle Malkin)

Previous Post:

Splodey Chronicles

UPDATE AND RELATED: NYC is under terror alert for a threatened subway bombing.

NEW YORK - Authorities stepped up mass transit security Thursday after receiving a credible threat that the city's subway system could be the target of a terrorist attack in coming days.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said at a news conference the threat originated overseas. Bloomberg said it was the most specific threat New York officials had received to date. He said no one in New York has been arrested.
A law enforcement official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the threat is "specific to place, time and method" and involves a bombing.

Games People Don't Play

DNC Chairman Howard Dean weighs in on a meaty problem.

"...I think with a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court, you can't play, you know, hide the salami, or whatever it's called. He's got to go out there and say something about this woman [Harriet Miers] who's going to a 20 or 30-year appointment, a 20 or 30-year appointment to influence America. We deserve to know something about her."

His favorite place to eat must be delicatessens and it colors his judgment on the issues!

What?

(Thanks to Wizbang)

This is Unsettling Heinous

A spy in the White House has been caught. Iranian? Cuban? NorKo?

Nope. Filipino.

Officials tell ABC News the alleged spy worked undetected at the White House for almost three years. Leandro Aragoncillo, 46, was a U.S. Marine most recently assigned to the staff of Vice President Dick Cheney.

Hired in 1999, Mr. Aragoncillo also worked for former Vice President Al Gore. There is also a report of him working for the FBI at an intelligence center at Fort Monmouth, N.J (just great).

"I don't know of a case where the vetting broke down before and resulted in a spy being in the White House," said Richard Clarke, a former White House advisor who is now an ABC News consultant.

It figures that your allegedly all-seeing self wouldn’t know of any other case, Mr. Clarke. Go sit down somewhere.

That this happened at all--in 2005—should sound quite a few alarms. The man in question is a naturalized US citizen, served in the Marines and was born in a country that has long been a US ally. (What is it with the Marines anyway? It seems that there are no neutral ones.) Mr. Aragoncillo’s alleged purpose in funneling informational material to his old country is an ominous one.

[ABC] quoted officials as saying Aragoncillo has confessed to stealing classified information from Cheney's office, including damaging dossiers on the president of the Philippines, which he allegedly passed on to opposition politicians planning a coup in the Philippines.

What kind of coup (and, yes, it matters)? Remember that the Philippines have a female president (Gloria Arroyo). Don’t the Filipinos have a Jihadi problem of their own? Why, yes they do.

This situation is most definitely President Bush’s fault. He keeps doing a certain something over and over again and it keeps biting him--and us--in the butt. It should by obvious by now that all personnel leftover from the previous administration merit serious scrutiny—down to the cooks in the White House kitchen. (See above example, Richard Clarke.)

(Thanks to my buddy Stinkerr, to LGF and to CountryWatch)

UPDATE: It appears as though Mr. Aragoncillo was working for former Phillipines President Joseph Estrada and has been passing him classified documents while the former was still a Marine.

Estrada told a Philippine newspaper last month that Aragoncillo had passed material while visiting him at the Veterans Memorial Medical Center in Manila, where the former president was receiving treatment while being held on corruption charges from 2001 through 2003. Part of that stay would coincide with Aragoncillo's time in Cheney's office. [SNIP]

Aragoncillo retired in 2004 after 21 years in the Marines and began working for the FBI as an intelligence analyst.

The Washington Post article also names an accomplice, a citizen of the Philippines who works for an opponent of President Arroyo.

Michael Ray Aquino, a former official with the Philippines National Police arrested in March for overstaying a tourist visa, was charged alongside Mr Aragoncillo with "acting as unregistered agents of a foreign official and passing classified information to that official and others in the Republic of the Philippines." Mr Aquino is a known protege of opposition leader Senator Panfilo Lacson, who has been active in opposition efforts to oust Ms Arroyo.

This situation is maddening. However, I will stipulate that maybe, just maybe Aragoncillio and Aquino aren't working for Abu Sayyaf or some other enemy of civilization.

But what about the next one?

(Thanks to The Belmont Club; Wretchard thinks it might be a Filipino mafia story.)

UPDATE: Welcome LGF, Michelle Malkin and Daou Report readers! I suggest that you read my about page before you make assumptions about the author of this page. And a note to trolls: I will change your posts to something more to my liking and I will have an excellent time doing it. Just so you know.

UPDATE: Some of my readers are pointing out that the Johnny Chung issue--linked above--isn't a spy case, but a finance scandal case. Granted; with a 'but.'. See the comment section for more discussion on the matter.

Splodey Chronicles

In case no one noticed, several terrorist bombings occured this weekend. Bali was, once again, the target of Islamist bombs; this time it was suicide bombers.

Indonesia — Homicide bombers targeted the Indonesian tropical resort of Bali (search) with coordinated attacks Saturday that devastated seafood and noodle restaurants packed with foreigners, killing at least [22] people.

And 104 people injured.

On cable news, a chilling homemade video was shown displaying one of the bombers casually strolling through a crowded restaurant, picking a plum spot; the detonation was caught on camera. There were three bombers in total, in as many locations.

To me the ugliest and most terror-inducing factor of suicide bombing isn’t the deaths, but the injuries. The things that people think they can’t live without—eyesight, mobility, physical beauty—are gone permanently, but many continue living radically altered lives. Pray for these people.

One can’t live without one’s head (warning: graphic), however, not even mighty jihadis. Enjoy your “virgins.”

*****

It appears that the second suicide bombing in twice as many years has occurred on US soil . Outside of Oklahoma Memorial Stadium in Norman, during a football game between the OU and Kansas State University, one Joel Hinrichs spontaneously exploded. Fortunately the culprit only succeeded in blowing himself up. Was it a “work accident” (as in premature detonation)? Mark Tapscott thinks so and also thinks that the university officials are being rather circumspect on the interpretation of this incident.

University of Oklahoma President David Boren seems determined to have everybody believe Joel Henry Hinrichs III was merely a disturbed young man who decided to commit suicide by blowing himself up within 100 yards of a stadium containing 84,000 screaming fans of Sooner football.

Sorry, I don't buy it, at least not yet. Here's why: First, The Daily Oklahoman is reporting authorities found a large cache of bomb-making materials in Hinrichs' apartment. The cache is so big that the Oklahoman reported one of the officials on the scene estimated a full 24 hours would be required to cart away all of the material.

Suicide victims don't normally accumulate a large amount of bomb-making material in their homes. People intent on blowing up other people do.

All indications point to Hinrichs being a convert to Islam. Mr. Hinrichs’ father is in denial about his son’s intentions, however. (Wouldn’t you be?)

“Joe would have become a Muslim fanatic when pigs fly,” the father said.

Interesting metaphor.

It would seem to me that the reason for circumspection on Mr. Boren’s part would be to help keep panic or--more likely--vigilantism down to a minimum in his state. After all, Oklahoma is the one of the reddest of Red States.

Keep your eyes open.

(Thanks to Michelle Malkin who, as usual, has many of the intricate details and thanks to Charles G. Hill of OKC.)

UPDATE: Eric at Classical Values reports that few in the Big Media are reporting on this story.

Fly Heaven

I have strange friends. One of them sent me this story about one of the more gnarly (gnarlier?) aspects of Katrina's (and Rita's) wake.

Across the flood-ravaged city, refrigerators spent a month sitting silent and dark, baking in the 90-degree heat. Now, as homes and restaurants are cleaned out, tens of thousands of appliances are releasing a gag-inducing stench of rancid shrimp, sulfurous eggs, rotting fruit and putrid meat. It is an invisible but unavoidable cloud floating in the breeze, faint on some blocks, so potent on others that passers-by have to cover their mouths. It may be most concentrated in the French Quarter, where truck-size waste containers hold the foul contents of restaurant and hotel refrigerators and freezers.

Read the rest at the risk of the contents in your stomach.

(Thanks to David)

Bad Girls

The Gray Tie (who has a beautiful site) single-handedly hosts the Cotillion this week.

Additionally, to spice things up, we of the Cotillion are holding a Blogger Babe contest (men only; sorry, we’re being heterosexualist). All you fine blogging gents who think you are All That and the requisite Bag O’ Chips are encouraged to volunteer either with me or your favorite Cotillion babe (which, of course is me anyway, right?) For more details, go to Beth’s site.

Guys, just think of the lovin’ you’ll get! Linky type, that is.

Able Danger: Letter From Attorney

Captain Ed received a letterblog comment from LTC Anthony Shaffer’s attorney, Mark Zaid, which clears up several aspects of the charges leveled at LTC Shaffer—and makes them look even more foolish, not to mention the Associated Press reporter who wrote about case. The latter's lack of military knowledge does great damage to her ability to convey this information.

One of my readers asked why the Army Reserves promoted LTC Shaffer to O-5 while they had questions about his suitability for a security clearance. That question, among others, is answered in Mr. Zaid’s letter.

The follow-up Able Danger hearing, presumably still before the Senate Judiciary Committee, is set for October 5.

Previous posts:

Danger Able Danger
Cover Up? Doubtful
Able Danger Officer Named
Mea Culpa?
Commission Retort
Commission Admission
Oh That Mohammed Atta
Placing Blame

(Thanks to reader gingeroni)

Stamped

President Bush nominated Harriet Miers, his White House Counsel, to be an associate justice on the Supreme Court. Watching and listening to the reporting and opining on the choice is illuminating. Did you know that the retiring Sandra Day O’Connor’s seat on the court is now a “woman’s seat” henceforth and forevermore? It now has the designation ♀ next to it.

When did that happen?

UPDATE: Liberals are happy with the choice, conservatives aren't. Uh oh.

Chris Cilliza points out that Ms. Miers donated to Democrat presidential candidates but notes that the donations occured in the eighties.

Heck, a lot of people :::cough::: were Democrats in the eighties who are not now.

Something tells me that this confirmation process will be far more interesting than that of now Chief Justice Roberts.

Clearing Up My Remarks on the Bennett Remarks

Apparently, some on both sides of this "argument" are not getting my message; perhaps I'm not being shrill enough. However let me not be shrill, but blunt (as if that's ever been a problem before): I have no issue with what Mr. Bennett said. I said that I found it 'curious' that he used black babies for his example, but, once I thought it through, I understood it: black people have a higher crime rate that other segments of our society and aborting black children en masse would, indeed reduce the overall crime rate. Mr. Bennett's point, however, was that the ends do not justify the means and he used a monstrous example to hammer home his point.

Including Mr. Bennett in my lament at the state of rhetoric in this country was a slight bit of irrationality that we all have a twinge of when someone says something that's truthful but says it in a manner that's bound to stir up feces.

However, my main point was that the Big Media has created a climate in which Mr. Bennett's actual message can't get out without certain segments taking that message, twisting it to their own ends and turning into a tool that causes micro- and macro-divisions; among blood kin and among countrymen. Now that the original message has been twisted, fewer will listen to the actual message. The distorted, mutated message--undoubtedly unrecognizable to staunchly pro-life Mr. Bennett--is that Republicans are evil and racist.

And, that is what people like Howard Dean and Nancy Pelosi and not a few leftist bloggers have wrought.

UPDATE: David Gillies at Daily Pundit despairs:

Jeff is right to bemoan the erosion of the idea of intentionality, i.e. the belief that a speaker uses words to convey his meaning, and that it is illegitimate to force one's own interpretation on those words. But intentions matter little in this era of attenuated political discourse. Can anything be done about the public's mayfly attention span, unwillingness to consider reasoned discourse, and the grievance-mongers' desire to exploit them? I'd like to think so. But I can't.