3) It makes no difference.

Even if you'd avoided Iraq or Andalusia or British banks or Pilger or any other affront to Islamist sensibilities, you'd still be a target. As the PR guy for the Islamic Army of Aden said after blowing up that French tanker: "We would have preferred to hit a US frigate, but no problem because they are all infidels." Commissioner Keelty is confusing old-school terrorism – blowing the legs off grannies as a means to an end – with the new: blowing the legs off grannies is the end. Old-school terrorists have relatively viable goals: They want a Basque state or Northern Ireland removed from the UK. You might not agree with these goals, you might not think them negotiable, but at least they're not stark staring insane.

That kind of finely calibrated terrorism – just enough slaughter to inconvenience the state into concessions – is all but over. Suppose you're an ETA cell. Suppose you were planning a car-bomb for next month – nothing fancy, just a dead Spanish official plus a couple of unlucky passers-by. Still want to go ahead with it? I doubt it. Despite Gerry Adams's attempts to distinguish between "unacceptable" terrorism and the supposedly more beneficial kind, these days it's a club with only one level of membership. That's why so many formerly active terrorist groups have been so quiet the past couple of years. In that sense, Bush is right: It is a "war on terror", and on many fronts it's being won.

If Islamic terrorism were as rational as Irish or Basque terrorism, it would be easier. But Hussein Massawi, former leader of Hezbollah, summed it up very pithily: "We are not fighting so that you will offer us something. We are fighting to eliminate you." You can be pro-America (Spain, Australia) or anti-America (France, Canada), but if you broke into the head cave in the Hindu Kush and checked out the hit list you'd be on it either way.

So the choice for pluralist democracies is simple: You can join Bush in taking the war to the terrorists, to their redoubts and sponsoring regimes. Despite the sneers that terrorism is a phenomenon and you can't wage war against a phenomenon, in fact you can – as the Royal Navy did very successfully against the malign phenomena of an earlier age, piracy and slavery.

Or you can stick your head in the sand and paint a burqa on your butt. But they'll blow it up anyway.

The drum beat for Kerry, where I live, is constant. I’m on the Metro the other night after work, and a bunch of younger folks – probably Teach for America kids, or maybe Georgetown students – were ranting about how awful Bush is, and how they are excited about this upcoming “Beat Bush Back to Fucking Texas” party that a friend was throwing. I have friends working in the law enforcement and intel agencies around the government, who have gone gray haired since 9/11 – they always look tired for some reason and when some mutual friend starts going on about the phonied up war on terror, they look ill. Occasionally, it slips out on CNN that some terror suspect was caught coming into the country, and I hear rumors from my reasonably well placed friends that we are only getting the tip of the iceberg – that we don’t get the 90% that’s below the water line. Meanwhile, a liberal ex-friend of mine keeps sending me Rall cartoons, horrific videos alleging all sorts of wild Bush-led conspiracies to make money on oil, and the whole left side of the political class is going on about how Florida was stolen. And my friends working on the national security side of life get grayer, and grayer, both in the face and the hair. It’s like we aren’t even in the same world.

Then this huge attack happens today in Spain, and I can tell you, the result will be predictable: the Chomskies and Sonntags of the world, and all their bush league imitators, will say Spain had it coming for sticking with America. They shouldn’a gone on that cockamamie imperialist adventure in Iraq. It won't even be on the radar for most of the left in this country - the sophisticated Europhiles simply won't register the attack, because it doesn't fit their world view, except as an attack on an America proxy, and thus expected. 'Cuz America is evil, you know. At least when it has a Republican president.

Quite frankly, I’m sick of it. Sick sick sick sick sick. It’s like sitting in a burning house, and your friend in the adjacent easy chair keeps offering you popcorn, and insisting that the burning smell is in your imagination. Or at worst, it’s because you burned the popcorn you idiot, now shut up and watch the movie.

I want . . .

I can understand why some don’t like video games – what’s the point? All those hours spent clicking and mousing, and for what? I can see that; I feel the same away about opera: people striding around yelling in Italian. Does nothing for me. But I’ve been playing Halo again (on the Mac – a far superior experience than the Xbox version) and I realized that these games give you choices and situations real life never presents. Nevermind the fact that I will never find myself riding a commandeered alien vehicle and interrupt a battle between the Covenant and the horrid flood, and e forced to dismount and engage in a shoulder-mounted RPG duel. Goes without saying. But when the battle’s over, you scavenge for ammo. There’s lots of RPG ammo. There’s a rare sniper rifle, too. Since you can only carry two weapons, this means you’d have to drop your Trusty Shotgun for a sniper rifle, and your other weapon would be a rocket launcher. This is the worst combination you can have – two long-range weapons, nothing for close work when one of those gawdawful Flood bipeds comes running at you. But the game seems to suggest that this is what you should do, so you do it.

In a world where your choices are usually of the paper or plastic nature, this is a welcome change.

If you want to coexist with different breeds of geeks, you need to adopt a value-neutral approach to the platforms. So, while there are many conversations one can have regarding different computing methods, I typically do not choose to have them. Gabriel and I no longer discuss God for the same reason - people express themselves via means as divergent as spirituality and operating systems, so as soon as the topic starts to get interesting it invariably becomes personal. Obviously, that has a tendency to occlude rational dialogue. There might have been a point where I had a surplus of energy to invest in philosophical cul-de-sacs. I no longer remember it.

The way Apple projects its brand, however, has nothing to do with the underlying technology. It could not be more divorced from it. So if they want to create largely empty stores staffed exclusively by young hardbodies in ill-fitting t-shirts, it's open season. Its possible that each manifestation of this chain does not resemble the others, that each one is not populated with the scrubbed, tousled young things of the sort one sees in serious teen dramas. You'll forgive me if I don't believe that. I'd say it's far more likely that there is a single Apple Store, connected by a serious of geographically distinct portals.

His Excellency Inocencio Aris
Spanish Embassy
2375 Pennsylvania Ave. N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20037.
Phone #202-452-0100

I'm completely at a loss. There is no logic here. Could someone explain this bizarro world crap to me, or at least pass me some of whatever good shit these folks are smoking? Why is it that the trans-nationalists are the greatest proponents of untouchable national sovereignty? Why is it that the same people who tell us the government is always full of the most ruthless, evil people on Earth also want to increase the power and wealth of the government through nationalization of industries and socialization? Why is it that the same people who yell loudest about racism want to implement the most racist of policies? Why is it that the same people who rant about fascism from sun-up to sun-down complain the loudest when fascist regimes are destroyed? Why is it that the same people who see bigotry and hatred against women, minorities, gays, and wiccans everywhere they look in the west can't see bigotry in places where it's a daily fact of life? There's a disconnect in there somewhere for these people. Because none of this crap makes any fucking sense.

Sometimes I want to just give up and beat idiots with a shovel. But, of course, eventually I come to my senses and realize that this is not the way to enlightening the world. Because beatings are way too labor intensive.

Eating a Big Mac, supersize fries and a supersize Coke isn't healthy. Nobody should be "confused" by that. If you eat like that everyday YOU WILL GET FAT. If you don't get fat - you either have a helluva metabolism or you spend way too much time working out.

I don't want you suing Mickey D's into bankruptcy or changing it's menu. I like a Big Mac every once in a while and I sure as hell want to get one when the urge hits me. Same with KFC, Wendys, BK or whatever. We like our fast food. Leave it alone. Oh, and keep your greedy paws away from Taco Bell!

If this bill fails and people can sue restaurants, these restaurants will suffer economically and then what? How can McDonald's or whoever protect itself?

Perhaps, employees should start telling patrons that they are too fat for the Quarter pounder with cheese. How about refusing service to overweight/obese persons? Or maybe only allow them to buy a salad and a diet cola?

That won't happen will it?

People will then sue because they were discriminated against. If people refuse to accept responsibility for their choices and results of those choices, what will happen to our freedom?

Thank you, President [Al] Hunt, members of the Gridiron . . . at one point during your skits, I had a little scare. I felt a tightness in my chest. I started gasping for air and breathing irregularly. Then I realized it's called laughing. . . .

Lots of familiar faces here tonight. I always feel a genuine bond whenever I see Senator Clinton. She's the only person who's the center of more conspiracy theories than I am.

. . .

Here's an unsigned question. "Mr. Vice President, don't you think it's time to step down and let someone else add new energy and vitality to the ticket?"

No . . . I don't. And Rudy [Guiliani], you need to do a better job disguising your handwriting.

Oh . . . and Rudy has a follow up. "How can you be so sure you'll be on the ticket?"

Because the CIA told me so! . . .

. . .

Dave Broder: "How would you accurately describe your role in this administration? Be honest."

I would say that I am a dark, insidious force pushing Bush toward war and confrontation. . . .

Cuba? It was great, say boys freed from US prison camp

Asadullah strives to make his point, switching to English lest there be any mistaking him. "I am lucky I went there, and now I miss it. Cuba was great," said the 14-year-old, knotting his brow in the effort to make sure he is understood.

Not that Asadullah saw much of the Caribbean island. During his 14-month stay, he went to the beach only a couple of times - a shame, as he loved to snorkel. And though he learned a few words of Spanish, Asadullah had zero contact with the locals.

He spent a typical day watching movies, going to class and playing football. He was fascinated to learn about the solar system, and now enjoys reciting the names of the planets, starting with Earth. Less diverting were the twice-monthly interrogations about his knowledge of al-Qaida and the Taliban. But, as Asadullah's answer was always the same - "I don't know anything about these people" - these sessions were merely a bore: an inevitably tedious consequence, Asadullah suggests with a shrug, of being held captive in Guantanamo Bay.

On January 29, Asadullah and two other juvenile prisoners were returned home to Afghanistan. The three boys are not sure of their ages. But, according to the estimate of the Red Cross, Asadullah is the youngest, aged 12 at the time of his arrest. The second youngest, Naqibullah, was arrested with him, aged perhaps 13, while the third boy, Mohammed Ismail, was a child at the time of his separate arrest, but probably isn't now.

Tracked down to his remote village in south-eastern Afghanistan, Naqibullah has memories of Guantanamo that are almost identical to Asadullah's. Prison life was good, he said shyly, nervous to be receiving a foreigner to his family's mud-fortress home.

The food in the camp was delicious, the teaching was excellent, and his warders were kind. "Americans are good people, they were always friendly, I don't have anything against them," he said. "If my father didn't need me, I would want to live in America."

Asadullah is even more sure of this. "Americans are great people, better than anyone else," he said, when found at his elder brother's tiny fruit and nut shop in a muddy backstreet of Kabul. "Americans are polite and friendly when you speak to them. They are not rude like Afghans. If I could be anywhere, I would be in America. I would like to be a doctor, an engineer _ or an American soldier."

Three Pakistani gang rapists who are facing life in jail yesterday begged a judge to be pardoned, citing cultural differences that led to the brutal attack, immaturity on their part and hardship within their families if they were imprisoned.

. . .

The girls were repeatedly raped, threatened with knives and bullets and one was told the other had been killed because she had resisted her attackers. None of the men can be named because the younger brothers, MMK and MRK, 18, were minors at the time. Another man, known as RS, is 25.

. . .

The brothers are representing themselves because they believe an anti-Muslim conspiracy has prevented a fair hearing. Their father, a practising doctor, told the court they should be pardoned because they “did not know the culture of this country”.

Rhys-Davies sees these same themes espoused in The Lord of the Rings, observing, "[J.R.R.] Tolkien knew that civilization is worth fighting for. There are times when a generation is challenged and must fight to defend their civilization from annihilation."

Of course, others on the set didn't see it the same way. Viggo Mortensen, who played Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings, wore a "No Blood for Oil" T-shirt during a promotional interview for the movie on Charlie Rose's PBS show.

Ironically, Mortensen's character in the movies is a military leader. And many have drawn parallels between the conflict in The Lord of the Rings with the war on terror. With a twinkle in his eye, Rhys-Davies confides that a friend whispered to him while watching Mortensen in The Return of the King, "Does he realize he's George Bush?"

Rhys-Davies used to be a radical leftist, as a university student in the '60s. He first started to come around when he went to the local hall to hear a young local member of parliament by the name of Margaret Thatcher. "I went to heckle her," Rhys-Davies says. "She shot down the first two hecklers in such brilliant fashion that I decided I ought for once to shut up and listen."

HALIFAX - The Nova Scotia government has published a list of words and phrases it wants banished from the news media, including "madman," "nutcase," "fruitcake," and "kooky," and will pay people for reporting their use.

The Health Department is offering cash awards to citizens who inform authorities of instances of "outdated, negative, inappropriate" terms it considers offensive to people with mental illness.

The government even says "mental hospital" and "nervous breakdown" should be verboten, not only in stories dealing with the mentally ill, but in all public discourse.

2. Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:

a) freedom of conscience and religion;
b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;
c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and
d) freedom of association.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

UPDATE: CapLion IM's:

So like, what are the canucks supposed to fight back WITH? They can't use guns OR harsh language, now.

Me:

Maybe they can use ironic social commentary in public-funded naked sitcoms.

Cialiys is knowwn as a Super ViagrYa or Weekend Viagrua because its eetcffs start snooer and last much lenogr.

The Big Mac, epitome of American culture and the junk food revolution, receives an unexpected thumbs up from two leading French nutritionists in a "good food guide" to supermarkets and fast food restaurants published today.

The relative fat-to-protein contents of a Big Mac is considerably healthier than classic French snacks such as quiche lorraine and better than many other sandwiches or fast foods on the market, the authors say.

"Strangely enough, the products which are the most demonised are not necessarily the worst," say Jean-Michel Cohen and Patrick Sérog who analysed 5,000 forms of food readily available to consumers in French shops, supermarkets and restaurants.

But the human rights co-ordinator for the Islamic Council of Victoria, Bilal Cleland, warned KFC's menu may not in fact be halal.

"We hope that people are not taken in by this scheme. Just because you take the bacon out of the burgers doesn't make the food halal," he said.

"There has to be authentic certification that the food is halal and I haven't seen any evidence of that."

He said that all the meat, including chicken, must be certified as halal before it was acceptable to Muslims.

Each blogger is the czar of his or her domain, the autocrat of the bits, keeper of the sacred opinion. There are varying degrees, of course, but everyone more or less wants to be right and not just most of the time, all the time. We want to be infallible, offering forth our wisdom on a heady brew of subjects that define who we are as people in this digital bouquet of interests and experiences.

At an appearance at Michigan State University in late January, Moore took questions after his two-hour talk. A student asked if rumors about him building on a wetland Up North were true.

Silence. Then: "Don't know what you're talking about."

According to state records, Moore partially filled in a wetland to improve his beach. He quickly fixed the problem and wasn't fined.

Why deny it?

"A pathological need to be right," Hamper said.

UPDATE: Chris pointed out that if a person admits he's wrong, people might actually pay more attention to what he says-- because they can feel confident that if he says something that turns out to be wrong, he'll set the record straight. Otherwise he just ends up looking really silly, and not very authoritative, when his listeners find out independently that he was wrong.

Lileks subsequently went through what he describes as a “mid-30s polar realignment”. Mine began earlier and was largely complete by my mid-20s, after I’d endured and observed a gulag-load of left-wing hypocrisy, illogic, and outright wrongness. There’s only so many times you can be told that 2 + 2 = Walrus before this thought strikes: “You know, maybe these people don’t know what the hell they’re talking about.”

UPDATE: Okay, picky, it's not actually NTP... it's the weird analog ticker-radio thing astronomers and such use. Same concept.

Now, if I had wired up some kind of micro-PC in the wall, and written a port of ntpd to run on WallOS, then we'd be in business...

Maybe I'll get in touch with Larry Wall.

The computer whiz then asked the court to identify the plaintiff in the case. Ware explained that the United States was the plaintiff, and was represented by assistant U.S. attorney Ross Nadel. Heckenkamp said he wanted to subpoena Nadel's "client" to appear in court, and Ware asked him who, exactly, he wanted to bring into the courtroom.

When Heckenkamp replied, "The United States of America," Ware ordered him taken into custody.

"The comments that you are making to the court lead me to suspect that either you are playing games with the court, or you're experiencing a serious lack of judgment," said Ware. The judge added that he was no longer satisfied that Heckenkamp would make his future court appearances.

Heckenkamp had been free on $50,000 bail, and living under electronic monitoring -- prohibited by court order from using cell phones, the Internet, computers, video games and fax machines.

Before two deputy U.S. marshals hauled Heckenkamp away, he threatened legal action against the judge. "I will hold you personally liable," he said. "I will seek damages for every hour that I'm in custody."

Prosecutors agreed to recommend no more than two years in prison, and not to seek restrictions on Heckenkamp's employment-related use of computers and the Internet in the period of court supervision likely to follow any prison term.

The hacker will get credit for approximately eight months of time that he spent in custody in 2002, after he fired his lawyer to clear the way for a series of unusual legal challenges that only served to perplex and anger federal judges in two jurisdictions.

Among other gambits, Heckenkamp had argued that the government lacked standing to prosecute anyone, and that the indictments in the case referred to a different defendant: they spelled his name in all capital letters, while he spells it with the first letter capitalized and subsequent letters in lower case. Angered by the arguments, federal judge James Ware declared Heckenkamp a flight risk and ordered him arrested in the courtroom. He was released on bail, months later, only after accepting legal representation again.

This contemptible little turd needs to be put up on that bench and had his "guilty" sentence read loud and proud on national TV, with a nice close-up on his face, so everybody can see just what can happen if you think it's a game to go making life miserable for overworked site admins at high-profile commercial websites.

If only we could, wouldn't we throw the book at hurricanes and floods and earthquakes for all the damage they do? We have to budget for them and buy insurance policies to cover them, because we can't do a thing to control them. We also have to budget for and insure ourselves against hackers, and yet we can control them. They're not a natural disaster, they're people. And that means they can be caught and punished.

I just want to see one of these kids' cocky little asses worked over with a potato peeler and a bag of rock salt, and photos of the results posted to every newsgroup and mischief-making web forum on the net. The fear of God is a wonderful thing, especially when put into someone who has no concept of it.

In a 2002 jailhouse interview with SecurityFocus, Heckenkamp claimed that hackers had penetrated his dorm-room computer and used it to crack other systems. "Some of these companies I had never even heard of before I was charged," said Heckenkamp. A similar theme dominated a website set up by supporters and maintained by Heckenkamp's father, coloring the hacker an "innocent scapegoat of a restless, unrelenting and desperate FBI, caught in the middle of a 21st century spin-off of McCarthyism."

That website could no longer be reached Monday.

In the whirl wind of political debate that is circling around the president regarding his motives for going to war, I find it curiously strange that no one has asked the opinion of those of us who have put our lives on the line to carryout that vary decision. Who better than us to answer the question regarding the existence of weapons of mass destruction as a premise for going to war? Do the self proclaimed political experts write us off, assuming we are like sheep blindly following a miss guided shepherd to the extent of putting our own life in jeopardy? Do they really think we have not thought about the reasons for and justifications behind leaving our families and putting ourselves in harms way?

The vast majority of the military unanimously support the president's decision to take preemptive action against Saddam Hussein. We agree it was necessary in order to eliminate a serious threat to the stabilization of this region of the world, to free a country of people from bondage and torture, to prevent a continuation of an anti-American sentiment, for that matter anti-Western world policy, with the real potential, if not actual, to create such weapons and aid our enemies in their terrorist activities.

Why is it that the people of the US armed forces have not and are not speaking out against the president's decision, if in fact the WMD issue was the only premise behind making such a decision to go to war? Yes, we believed all along that he had such weapons before, that he had such weapons now, or that he possessed the knowledge and the capability to use, share, or develop such weapons in the future to promote his own anti-American plans. I have said all along that Saddam's only real weapon against us was to hide everything so well that we would never find such evidence of their existence, in hopes that by doing so he would create a back lash of political opposition for the president.

Clearly understanding that I was heading toward an F in this class, I took off on a suicide mission. I approached the lit stage where these “poets” sat warmed by applause and proudly waiting for more compliments.

“Don’t you think,” I asked, “it is pathetic to perform in this anti-war circus now that Saddam has been captured? How do you feel about his capture?”

“It’s great that they got him,” one of the guys on the stage answered.

“But how,” I asked, “could it have happened without a war?”

The instructor flew at me like a vulture, “Tatiana! Stop this immediately!”

He already knew my ways; I had had a few words with him regarding his anti-American attitude.

“Don’t try to shut me up! You guys are such conformists. No courage to be dissidents even for a change. Go and study accounting! Your poetry sucks!”

A woman collapsed in an East Wichita theatre this morning, during a showing of "The Passion Of The Christ". Peggy Law apparently suffered a heart attack. She was pronounced dead a short time later at a Wichita medical center.

Peggy Law, also known to some by her married name Peggy Scott is a respected figure in the local broadcasting community. The tragedy has hit some here at KAKE especially hard. She was a former employee.

People viewing the movie at the Warren Theatre East say Law collapsed during the portion of the movie where the crucifixion of Christ was shown.

Former Republican Congressman Bob Barr:
Make no mistake, I do not support same-sex marriages. But I also am a firm believer that the Constitution is no place for forcing social policies on states, especially in this case, where states must have the latitude to do as their citizens see fit.

Vice President Dick Cheney:
I think that means that people should be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want to enter into. It’s really no one else’s business in terms of trying to regulate or prohibit behavior in that regard. I think the fact of the matter, of course, is that matter is regulated by the states. I think different states are likely to come to different conclusions and that’s appropriate. I don’t think there should necessarily be a federal policy in this area…. I think we ought to do everything we can to tolerate and accommodate whatever kind of relationships people want to enter into.


Republican activist and CitizenOutreach founder Chuck Muth:
If gay marriages or civil unions are to be recognized, it should be by ballot referendum or via the elected representatives (who are subject to recall and defeat in popular elections) of each state. Don’t you agree?

If you DO, however, then you CAN’T support the notion of a federal marriage amendment banning gay marriages. That would be just as wrong as imposing them by judicial fiat. This matter should be resolved by the people and their elected officials in each individual state. Period.


California Republican and anti-affirmative action crusader Ward Connerly:
As a conservative, I value commitment and responsibility. I also believe government should not intrude in people’s private lives. That is why conservatives should oppose Prop. 22 [which would ban gay marriage].


National Review Online editor Jonah Goldberg:
I’ve been opposed to [the FMA] for two reasons. The first is that I’m not a fair-weather friend of federalism. Real diversity, as the founders envisioned it, requires accepting that some communities will do things you don’t approve of. The second reason is technical: I favor civil unions and I can’t get a straight answer — pardon the pun — on whether any or all of the proposed amendments would allow them.

Please do note that most of these people have been denounced routinely by gay-rights extremists and plenty of other Lefties as rabid, fascistic monsters for a long time now. Do any of these statements seem “extreme” to you? Do any of these statements bespeak anything like knee-jerk homophobia or hate? Do any of these statements seem to justify a denunciation of the speaker as “an enemy”?

UPDATE: What a short, strange trip it's been. In the past-- what, month? I've rubbed shoulders with religious-right creationist types who think homosexuality is the cause of everything from teen pregnancy to 9/11; gay radicals who don't even want to win the right to "marriage" because it's tainted with the stink of straight people; neocons and war-liberals who think gays are just peachy and are willing to vote against Bush because of the FMA; flowers-and-sunshine Leftists who nod and smile at me as long as I'm talking to them, and then go back to raving against Bush the moment my back is turned. I've probably seen more of the political spectrum, first-hand, in the past month than I've been exposed to in my whole life to date. I've written post after post, starting as calmly and evenly as I knew how, and ending up with this bristly piece of lunatic ravery that I know full well looks like I've come totally unhinged. And maybe that's sort of intentional-- maybe I wanted to just stick a stake in the ground that shows how far I'm willing to go if I'm pushed really hard, but where I'm really not comfortable being. I imagine people from all the aforementioned walks of life will read the post above, and each will have his or her own strong reaction.

And I know who I'll really be catching it from, if and when they stumble across this post: my dearest and closest friends.

For the past twelve years, George W. Bush has had to endure charges that he didn't take the final two years of his Guard service as seriously as duty required. (For updated timeline, click here.) And the two witnesses who have come forward in support so far haven't exactly cleared things up. We at the Town Hall believe that with everything he has on his plate, Mr. Bush shouldn't have to contend with attacks on the National Guard, which is serving so bravely in Iraq. And we're willing to back up our support with cold, hard cash.

Granted, this has been tried before. In 2000, concerned veterans in both Texas and Alabama offered cash rewards to lure former guardmates of Mr. Bush into stepping forward, to no avail. The problem, in our view, was that these enticements weren't serious enough, that the sums offered were insulting. In contrast, we at the DTH&WP respect how inconvenient it can be to subject yourself to worldwide media scrutiny in general, and Fox News in particular, and are thus prepared to sweeten previous offers by a factor of five. That's right, we're offering $10,000 cash! Yours to either spend or invest in job creation. All you have to do is definitively prove that George W. Bush fulfilled his duty to country.

So don't let the smear artists define the president. If you personally witnessed George W. Bush reporting for drills at Dannelly Air National Guard Base between the months of May and November of 1972 we want to hear about it. Help Mr. Bush put this partisan assault on his character behind him, so he can focus on more serious issues like jobs, the deficit and the coming civil war in Iraq. Just contact us below with the salient details. If we think you're a possible winner, we'll get back to you pronto. Good luck to all contestants!

UPDATE: It should perhaps be pointed out that Bush's statement left open the possibility of state definitions of civil unions:

But Bush also said state legislatures should be left to define "legal arrangements other than marriage," suggesting that such an amendment would allow states to establish civil unions.

In other words, the FMA as currently worded (with its "and the legal incidents thereof" clause) is not what he's backing. You'd think that would make Sullivan happy. But no... this is war.

UPDATE: Nathan at Dean Esmay's blog said, the other day:

Has there ever been an issue in which the opposition has so patiently repeated exactly what it will take to convince them (opponents of SSM saying, "give it more time, don't push us")? And has there ever been an advocacy group who so completely ignored such advice?

No kidding. I feel like screaming, but I'm too tired.

"The candidates are an interesting group with diverse opinions," Bush said. "They're for tax cuts and against them. They're for NAFTA and against NAFTA. They're for the Patriot Act and against the Patriot Act. They're in favor of liberating Iraq and opposed to it. And that's just one senator from Massachusetts."

"They now agree that it's better that Saddam Hussein is out of power. They just didn't support removing Saddam from power," Bush said, a smile growing across his face. "Maybe they were hoping he would lose the next Iraqi election."

Scott had emailed me that there were going to be the usual corny protestors outside, so I was expecting the small crowd gathered across the street from the place. I walked in and checked my coat and while I was doing that I heard someone say 'Karl is going to talk to them!' I walked over to the door and looked through the glass and indeed, Karl Rove was crossing the street to go talk to the protestors. Everybody watched and whispered 'what is he doing' as he walked over to them. The crowd shifted down the street as he approached them. I watched some of the protestors take his picture. It was stunning.

I don't really like the Bush Doctrine, okay?

After 9-11, I thought we should confine our efforts to the Al Qaeda organization. Instead, Bush decided to condemn half the Middle East with his Axis of Evil speech and roll tanks into Iraq.

It bothered me. It still bothers me. But dammit, if you look at the patterns, it seems to be working. The Middle East thinks Bush is batshit crazy, and their governments are afraid of us. Do you get that? The bad guys are afraid of us, because against all logic and common sense, we went into Iraq and we took Saddam down.

We ignored all the reasonable advice from Asia and Europe and people like me, and we went in with guns blazing. We've paid a terrible price in men and money, and we're still there.

What's the lesson? Fuck with America and we will intervene, flagrantly, in the Middle East. So, if you want us to go home, what should you do? What will happen if we get attacked again? What will happen to the governments of Syria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia if Al Qaeda sets off a nuke in Times Square?

You think we'll just pack up and go home? Or will we stick our meddling capitalist fingers in every Middle Eastern cesspool on the planet, hoping to turn up a needle in the haystack?

Middle Eastern governments want us to leave them alone. They'll snipe at us when they feel protected, funneling money to terrorist organizations when they think they won't be traced. But what happens when we follow that money home? What happens when their attempts to scare us backfire, and the crazy American president starts taking out dictators in Iraq and Afghanistan?

I'll tell you what happens. The money dries up, and governments that used to wink and nod at terrorism get on their secret satelite phones and tell their extremists to cool it, unless they want to see Marines taking showers in the palace.

Bush wants to be like Reagan, and he has succeeded. Everybody thought Reagan was crazy, when he went on TV and said, "We begin bombing in five minutes." His comments scared the shit out of people. It scared us in America, and more important, it scared our enemies.

In 2001, New York was burning and we were afraid. Today, there are American flags flying in Baghdad and our enemies are afraid.

I don't have access to all the documents, but I must entertain the possibility, the possibility that the Bush Doctrine is working. We have been relatively safe since 9-11. Iraq is a hot zone, but there have been no major attacks on U.S. soil. Why? Because the people who finance terrorism are afraid of us.

We will be hit again, okay? That fear has limits, and Bush is pissing a lot of people off. But tyrants around the world are making compromise noises because we have put the fear of God in them. And if Kerry wins this election, all of that progress will be rolled back.

Europe will love us. The UN will praise us. The Arab world will breathe a huge sigh of relief. And money will start trickling back into Al Qaeda's coffers. The bad guys will tighten their grip on their respective populations, and the price we have paid will have been paid for nothing.

However, Galloway’s abhorrence of tyranny is not as absolute as he likes to think. The noticeboard that covers one wall of his office bears portraits of Galloway’s personal idols, some surprising (Churchill, Bobby Moore), some not (Aziz, Arafat, Marx, Guevara, Castro). I make an idle reference to this as a “rogues’ gallery”; Galloway seizes on the phrase.

“I don’t – and I don’t think many readers of The Independent on Sunday – consider Castro or Guevara a rogue. These people are heroes.”

But Castro is a dictator, and you just said. . .

“He’s a hero. Fidel Castro is a hero.”

He’s a dict. . .

“I don’t believe that Fidel Castro is a dictator.”

I honestly can’t think of anything to say to this.

“Fidel Castro is a great revolutionary leader. But for 40 years or more of siege, undoubtedly Cuba would have developed, democratically speaking, differently. But when the enemy is at the gates, spending billions to destroy the revolution, you have to accept that there will be restrictions on political freedoms in a place like Cuba.”

You’ve met El Presidente, I take it.

“Yes. Magnificent. He’s the most magnificent human being I’ve ever met.”

At this, I laugh out loud – as much with delight at Galloway’s fabulous effrontery as with derision at the absurdity of the statement. Fortunately, if one thing can be said to have defined Galloway’s career, it’s fondness for an argument, and he presses on with a grin.

“You won’t get me to resile from this point. He is the greatest man I have ever met, by a country mile. You simply cannot compare Fidel Castro to Saddam Hussein or to any other dictator.”

While my take on the word freedom may be slightly different than those of the Duke Conservative Union (slavishly following the commands of Sauron--oops! I mean David Horowitz--does put a slightly different slant on the term) I do appreciate their efforts to call to our attention the lack of diversity in party affiliation among some Duke faculty.

While there are important differences, we must keep in mind that the Democrats and Republicans show negligible divergence on major domestic and foreign policy issues Clinton's government, after all, bombed Iraq repeatedly while George W. Bush just did it all at once. Neither has released data on the numbers of Iraqis killed; social services, welfare, support for education and the environment were gutted under both regimes and no high ranking member of either has been held responsible for personal benefits derived from ties to the military cybernetic complex, etc....

Given this, I also want to know, where is the diversity? Where are the Greens, Labour, the Christian Democrats, the Socialists, the Communists, the Workers Party, the Black Panthers, Puerto Rican independistas, etc...? Where is the truly wide range of partisan organizing that, across the globe, offers diversity in imagining options for the future?

The artist, who fears retaliation from former regime loyalists for his work with the Coalition, spent several months sculpting and casting the statue. Though he created the original statues of Saddam along with another artist, he created the 4th ID memorial through his own design, said Anderson.

     The sculpture is based on a scene many in Iraq have witnessed in one form or another. A soldier kneels before a memorial of boots, rifle and helmet – his forehead resting in the hollow of his hand. Behind and to his right stands a small Iraqi girl with her hand reaching out to touch his shoulder.

     The little girl portrays, in her eyes and presence, a sympathy mixed with gratitude. She was added to remind people of why the sacrifice was made, Fuss said.

     “It’s about freedom for this country, but it’s also about the children who will grow up in a free society,” he said.

Kerry, who has a commanding lead in the race to oppose Bush this fall, chided the president for taking time out Sunday to attend the Daytona 500, saying the country was bleeding jobs while he posed for a "photo opportunity." Bush had donned a racing jacket to officially open NASCAR's most prestigious event in front of some 180,000 fans.

"We don't need a president who just says, `Gentlemen start your engines,'" Kerry said. "We need a president who says, `America, let's start our economy and put people back to work.'"

UPDATE: George Will has a bunch of questions for Kerry, which are along the same lines as the famous "letter to Dr. Laura", and just as unanswerable.

Among the ugly rituals of the Romans on this day was the sacrifice of a dog and a goat, the daubing of their blood onto two youths then washing the blood off with milk, etc… This is something that would cause revulsion in anyone of a sound nature, and it is unacceptable to the sound mind. 

In November 1970, the commander of the Texas Air National Guard, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian, called Mr. Bush, then 24, "a dynamic outstanding young officer" who stood out as "a top-notch fighter interceptor pilot" mature beyond his age.

"Lt. Bush's skills far exceed his contemporaries," Colonel Killian wrote in recommending that Mr. Bush be promoted to first lieutenant. "He is a natural leader whom his contemporaries look to for leadership. Lt. Bush is also a good follower with outstanding disciplinary traits and an impeccable military bearing."

I really enjoyed listening to you on Boston's NPR tonight. After listening to the Christian Coalition spokesman tonight, I write in what I suppose is a defense of Evangelicals -- we're not all like that. I'm 20 years old, a senior at a large (liberal) public university, straight, female, an evangelical christian, a conservative, and a vehement supporter of civil gay marriage. I've been involved in theatre and the arts for most of my life, and have known and loved a number of gays, and seen the war waged on them by the religious right, which is what brings me to this fight anyway...

I was once walking across campus and found myself trying to navigate between a group of LGBT folks and the Fred Phelps psychos, and I thought "If I have to pick sides here, whose side do I stand on?" and it was without question with the LGBT folks. I'm willing to cede gay marriage because it's practical, and because I dream of the day that gay people don't automatically assume that Christians are out to get them. What Jesus has to offer is for everyone, not just heteros, and in any case, he never sought to change the laws of his culture, he set out to change people. And he hung out with the beautiful people that made the Pharisees uncomfortable. I still have issues with gay marriage in the church (if I thought I could rationalize it with the Bible, I'd support it in a heartbeat, but as much as it kills me, I can't) but as far as I'm concerned, if you want to marry the man you love at the courthouse (or wherever, really), that's fine by me. The amazing thing is that most of my conservative Christian friends agree with me on civil marriage for various reasons. We're not all the Christian Coalition.

UPDATE: Citizen Smash agrees:

Having said that, I fear that the gay activists are over-playing their hand. Public perceptions of homosexuality have been slowly shifting over the past few decades from fear and ignorance to greater inclusion and acceptance. But I don't think American society is quite ready to openly embrace the concept of legally recognized gay marriage.

By forcing the issue in the courts, the gay activists are inspiring the opposition to mobilize. This wouldn't be a problem, if the Gay Rights movement enjoyed the same level of popular support as the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.

Unfortunately, it doesn't. It now appears likely that wherever gays win a victory in the courts, they will be overturned by legislative action and, when necessary, constitutional amendments. And that is truly a shame.

When I ask gay people what they expect to get out of this, their answer almost always includes "respect." But they don't seem to understand that respect cannot be won by a court decision or a legislative act.

Yep. Respect must be earned, never given, just like self-confidence. It's like "Sincerity is the key. If you can fake that, you've got it made!"

The Worknet is instrumentalist, goal-oriented and largely characterized by commercial and retail sites, but also news sites, information portals, and even political posting sites.

One senses that the inhabitants of the Worknet (as opposed to those who just drop by to shop) are typically older, less educated but more experienced, and politically centrist, liberal or conservative.

Most of all, the Worknet is thoughtful — it is about learning things, getting stuff done, staying on top of what’s happening. In the Internet landscape, the Worknet is suburbia and the city downtown by day.

The other Internet might be called the “Playnet,” because it is the Internet we largely use when are just having fun — and because it reflects a distinctly emotional view of cyberspace. The Playnet is experiential, self-directed and largely characterized by chat rooms, .alt sites, games of all kinds and the cult of celebrity.

One senses that the inhabitants of the Playnet (as opposed to those who just drop by to play) are typically younger, more educated but less experienced, and tend towards libertarianism, political extremism and anarchism.

The Playnet is emotional — it is about breaking the rules, experiencing the novel and taboo, becoming viscerally engaged, and even about killing time. It is about feeling. In the Internet landscape, the Playnet is rural districts, college towns, and the city downtown by night.

Okay, well, outtakes: went back to the microfilm today to February 1998, when the Clinton adminstration was making the case for attacking Iraq. How things change. Clinton was arguing that Saddam not only had WMD, but that one day he might want to make more WMD, and this wasn’t acceptable. Interesting to read between the lines - the Clinton administration seemed to be arguing that the potential for future production was itself a valid reason to strike. Military force is never "the first answer,' Clinton said, “but sometimes it’s the only answer.” “If Saddam isn’t stopped now,” the AP story said, quoting Clinton,“’He will conclude that the international community has lost its will. He will then conclude that he can go right on and do more to rebuild an arsenal of devastating destruction. And someday, someway, I guarantee you, he’ll use that arsenal.’” Thus spake Clinton in 1998. He went on to note that the strikes planned could not possibly destroy Saddam’s arsenal, because A) they didn’t know where everything was, and B) they didn’t want to kill Iraqis by unleashing clouds of toxins. And it gets better: a sidebar noted that this war plan – Desert Thunder – had been prepared weeks before, in case Saddam stiffed in the inspectors.

Bill Clinton had a plan to go to war before the crisis flared! What does that tell you? Obviously, he was looking for any excuse! Halliburton! We all know about the ties between Clinton and Halliburton – he gave them a sweet no-bid contract after his Balkans war, you know.

Anyway: it's deja vu all over again. You want to talk imminence? WMD? Democratic concern and conviction? Go back to the papers of 1998; it’s all there, right down to the terrorist links: Hezbollah, for example, swears it will strike Israel if the US attacks Iraq. (A poll of Palestinians showed that 94% supported Iraq, and 77% wanted Iraq to kill Jews if the US attacked Iraq.) Bob Dole was quoted as supporing the strikes but urging Clinton to seek Congressional Authorization. A story on Bush 41’s reaction said that the former president would completely support Clinton if he decided to attack, but noted that Bush 41 urged Clinton to get more international support - which was lacking at the time.

And indeed, Kofi struck a deal. Which fell apart by summertime. Which lead to cruise missile strikes. Which lead to boredom and disengagement. Which lead to half a decade of Saddam on the throne and the dissidents in the shredders and the tots in the gulag and dead people heaped in ditches and oil-for-palaces deals and Uday and Qusay pleasuring themselves in Rapeland Incorporated and Abu Nidal putting his feet up in a Baghdad apartment, pouring a nice cool glass of tea, and thinking: ah. This is the life.

UPDATE: Maybe Kerry can blame it all on typos. Good God, this is funny.

UPDATE: One source for anyone who wants to see more where the Clinton stuff came from is Snopes. A whole blinkin' page full of "Democrats in favor of taking out Saddam" quotations from 1998 on. It's as comprehensive a list as I've seen. (Thanks to Tim Blair.)

Wow. I just love it when libertarians can't find a right to privacy in the Constitution -- but they can find states' rights there.

Is everyone in the whole damned world a statist, and a lover of government power? Or do they all just really, really, really hate faggots?

Our people in uniform understand the high calling they have answered because they see the nation and the lives they are changing. A guardsman from Utah named Paul Holton has described seeing an Iraqi girl crying and decided then and there to help that child and others like her. By enlisting aid through the Internet, Chief Warrant Officer Holton had arranged the shipment of more than 1,600 aid packages from overseas. Here's how this man defines his own mission: "It is part of our heritage that the benefits of being free, enjoyed by all Americans, were set up by God, intended for all people. Bondage is not of God, and it is not right that any man should be in bondage at any time, in any way." Everyone one in this room can say amen to that.

Morgan Spurlock, director of "Super Size Me": My body just basically falls apart. I start to get tired; I start to get headaches; my liver fills up with fat because there's so much fat and sugar in this food. My blood sugar skyrockets, my cholesterol goes off the charts, my blood pressure becomes completely unmanageable.

How much weight did you put on?
About 25 pounds in a month.

How did you feel?
I felt terrible! I put on this weight so quickly my knees hurt. I would eat, and I would feel so good because I would get all that sugar and caffeine and fat and I would feel just great. And then an hour later I would just crash--I would hit the wall and be angry and depressed and upset. I was a disaster to live with.

Why McDonald's?
The chain has 30,000 restaurants in more than 100 countries on six continents. McDonald's could institute real change. If the company would launch healthier menu options, it would happen across the board.

Subject: why me?

You say in the www. that i'm a terrorist!!!

No way out for you. I REPORT YOU !

You've said THAT about me

Germany is seeking to distance itself from France's tight embrace and realign itself more closely to Britain and America, senior German officials signalled yesterday.

They said the row with Washington over Iraq had been "catastrophic" for Berlin and Chancellor Gerhard Schröder had become "a prisoner" of President Jacques Chirac's campaign to oppose the war to topple Saddam Hussein last year.

"We were more dependent on the French in that situation. But this will not be a permanent situation," said one authoritative source.

Another official explained: "We have to be careful that we are not identified with every word that the French president utters. We must have our own identity and be a little more clever."

The latest indications of Berlin's quest for a rapprochement with London and Washington came two days after Joschka Fischer, Germany's foreign minister, abandoned Berlin's dream of creating a European federal state.

In an interview with The Telegraph, Mr Fischer said the Iraq crisis had exposed the divisions within Europe and brought home to him the need to accept diverse traditions and history.

He even adopted some of Tony Blair's language about the need for the European Union to rest "on strong member states" rather than becoming a "superstate".

Oh, and later, the same friend opined that the Walt Disney Company, in order to survive, ought to remove not just Michael Eisner, but also Senator Mitchell, from the board of directors. Why? "Like a Republican knows anything about being creative," he scoffed.

PEPSI IS ABOUT TO DUMP 100 million free iTunes songs into circulation. During the Super Bowl, they'll be launching a promotion that gives you a 1 in 3 chance of winning a free iTunes song under the bottlecap of a Pepsi. Those 100 million caps could theoretically mean 65 million dollars for record labels and musicians (that's what's left after Apple's cut).

But we have a hunch that most Pepsi drinkers won't bother to download and install iTunes just to get a single song. To help remedy the situation, we are announcing the Tune Recycler which lets people donate their unwanted iTunes codes, which we will redeem. Of course, we would never send Pepsi's money to the big five labels (that would be a little incestuous, don't you think?). We'll be using the codes to buy music from independent labels. We're going to pick single albums and buy them over and over-- each purchase sends a little cash to some cool people.

Good daytime, my name's Tavu and I am under severe circumstances claiming your assistance.

The Paris suburb of Evry, which has one of France’s largest Muslim populations, has decided to install video screens to enable the local faithful to watch some 3,300 sheep being slaughtered for Eid this year.

The televised ritual slaughter which will take place in a large mobile abattoir is the idea of a local meat wholesaler.

“If the idea succeeds this year then it’s likely to become a permanent fixture of Eids in future,” a local municipal spokesman said.

Meanwhile, at Le Mans, west of Paris, the local authorities have decided to build a “hard” structure in which the sheep belonging to local Muslims can be killed.

“If this works out,” says an official for the prefecture which is overseeing the development, “then it’s an idea that will probably be tried elsewhere in France.”

The new approach to the slaughter of the Eid sheep comes after years of difficulties for French Muslims who, having bought a sheep for Eid, thought it was their right to see them killed in a local slaughterhouse.

On Monday, January 26th, 2003, a debate about the Iraq War was held out in the hallways. While there was strong anti-war support, there were a few individuals, such as myself, who believed the war was justified. Those individuals, who believed that there was such justification, were badgered, and silenced by one person, because their opinions differed from her own. Even those who unsuccessfully tried to moderate the discussion were criticized viciously for having done so.

Because I was not allowed to openly say my piece, I expressed myself in an alternative form- writing. I put a three page paper on my door (largely derived from the online journal, “USS Clueless”) [Stephen denBeste -ed.] that for the most part, outlined, why I believed that there was a need to remove Saddam, and the Baathist party in Iraq; and also reform sects of the Arab culture (such as the Wahabi) that have long supported terrorism by all means. These three pages have caused quite a stir on the hall. So much so that:

· someone removed the three pages from my door

· I have been called (possibly by the same person who removed the paper from my door) a racist, a fascist

· those who stuck by me were repeatedly vilified for doing so.

I have reposted my opinion on my door, only to have it torn down again and again.

Oh: The woman on the front? I believe her name is Joanne Royalty Free.

It's not every day that I have an FBI agent who's also a computer security expert come speak to my class, so I invited other students and friends to come hear him speak. On the night of Dave's talk, we had a nice cross-section of students, friends, and associates in the desks of my room, several of them "computer people," most not.

Dave arrived and set his laptop up, an IBM ThinkPad A31. He didn't connect to the Internet - too dangerous, and against regulations, if I recall - but instead ran his presentation software using movies and videos where others would have actually gone online to demonstrate their points. While he was getting everything ready, I took a look at the first FBI agent I could remember meeting in person.

Dave is from Tennessee, and you can tell. He's got a southern twang to his voice that disarms his listeners. He talks slowly, slightly drawling his vowels, and it sort of takes you in, making you think he's not really paying attention, and then you realize that he knows exactly what he's doing, and that he's miles ahead of you. He wears a tie, but his suit is ready to wear and just a bit wrinkled. His dark hair is longer than you'd think, hanging below his collar, further accentuating the country-boy image, but remember, this country boy knows his stuff. All in all, he gives off the air of someone who's busy as heck, too busy to worry about appearances, and someone who's seen a lot of things in his time.

Dave had some surprises up his sleeve as well. You'll remember that I said he was using a ThinkPad (running Windows!). I asked him about that, and he told us that many of the computer security folks back at FBI HQ use Macs running OS X, since those machines can do just about anything: run software for Mac, Unix, or Windows, using either a GUI or the command line. And they're secure out of the box. In the field, however, they don't have as much money to spend, so they have to stretch their dollars by buying WinTel-based hardware. Are you listening, Apple? The FBI wants to buy your stuff. Talk to them!

Dave also had a great quotation for us: "If you're a bad guy and you want to frustrate law enforcement, use a Mac." Basically, police and government agencies know what to do with seized Windows machines. They can recover whatever information they want, with tools that they've used countless times. The same holds true, but to a lesser degree, for Unix-based machines. But Macs evidently stymie most law enforcement personnel. They just don't know how to recover data on them. So what do they do? By and large, law enforcement personnel in American end up sending impounded Macs needing data recovery to the acknowledged North American Mac experts: the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Evidently the Mounties have built up a knowledge and technique for Mac forensics that is second to none.

(I hope I'm not helping increase the number of sales Apple has to drug trafficers.)

UPDATE: Oh, one more, thing, from an anonymous tipster.

Here's how Microsoft recommends you protect yourself from malicious URL-spoofing, phishing, and other spam-scam tricks:

The most effective step that you can take to help protect yourself from malicious hyperlinks is not to click them. Rather, type the URL of your intended destination in the address bar yourself. By manually typing the URL in the address bar, you can verify the information that Internet Explorer uses to access the destination Web site. To do so, type the URL in the Address bar, and then press ENTER.

Now that's the wave of the future right there. Good going, Microsoft.

I’m not going to comment about the rightness of the statement with more than saying that only a (blind) man would believe it and only a man blinded by his ambitions would dare to say it, but when you say such words, don’t you mean in other words that the sacrifices made by the American soldiers are all in vain? And that these soldiers are not doing a service to the world, nor to Iraqis and not to America. In fact you are saying that since they didn’t do the world, America or us a favour then they’re only doing a favour to GWB and his administration.

Don’t you agree that by saying those words you accuse the American soldiers of one of two charges each of which is worse than the other;
You are saying that, either they are stupid enough to sacrifice their lives for the sake of GWB political future, or they are evil people who love fighting and killing and they are doing this only for money, in other words they’re no more than mercenaries. Saying that you only disagree with the way this issue is handled will also not change the fact that you are only harming your men and women on the battlefield.

By statements like these you deny any honourable motives for the great job your people are doing here. How in your opinion will this affect the morale of your soldiers? Feeling that their people back at home don’t support them and that they’re abandoned to fight alone in the battlefield.

And all of this for what? For staying in the white house for 4 or 8 years? Is it worth it?
And this is not directed only to Mr. Dean, it’s for all the Americans who support such allegations without being aware of their consequences. What’s it that you fight so hard for, showing your soldiers as s occupiers and murderers, the soldiers who I had the honour of meeting many, and when talking to some of them, I didn’t see anything other than gentleness, honesty and good will and faith in what they’re doing.

Your words and those of others were insults to the Americans, Iraqis and moreover to yourself, and I’m certain you don’t represent the number of Americans you fanaticise about.

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 28 (UPI) -- Documents from Saddam Hussein's oil ministry reveal he used oil to bribe top French officials into opposing the imminent U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

The oil ministry papers, described by the independent Baghdad newspaper al-Mada, are apparently authentic and will become the basis of an official investigation by the new Iraqi Governing Council, the Independent reported Wednesday.

"I think the list is true," Naseer Chaderji, a governing council member, said. "I will demand an investigation. These people must be prosecuted."

Such evidence would undermine the French position before the war when President Jacques Chirac sought to couch his opposition to the invasion on a moral high ground.

UPDATE: Interestingly, though, this represents a rather less nuanced and more pedestrian (though more sensational) view of things than Steven Den Beste's thesis, which states that France (and friends) have been actively trying to thwart American power and influence in the world by creating a European political bloc to oppose us in our international endeavors, obstructing us in post-9/11 action, etc. This news suggests that they're simply motivated by money. Does it mean that if Saddam hadn't bribed Chirac, he would have supported us? How much oil did it really take to move France from a "token participant" to an outright diplomatic opponent? Or was it more like a "thank-you" note?

Neither interpretation is going to leave Chirac standing, if the right questions end up getting asked.

Oh, and now is it clear why our soldiers guarded the Oil Ministry building after April 9th, and not the Iraqi National Museum?

Jan. 27 - North Korean dictator Kim Jung-Il got his first glimpse of Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean on the evening of the Iowa caucuses last week and is now “terrified” by the former Vermont governor, associates of Kim revealed today.

According to those sources, the ruthless North Korean had spent a long, hard day reprocessing nuclear fuel rods and was looking for something relaxing to watch on TV when Dean first appeared on the screen, delivering his bizarre post-Iowa concession speech.

As Dean built to a crescendo...

...Kim appeared alarmed and agitated, the sources said. “Who is that madman?” the madman reportedly asked.

According to one of Kim’s aides, “There’s only one way to describe the look on Kim’s face when he was watching Dean: pure, unadulterated terror.”

Kim’s every waking moment is now haunted by his fear of Howard Dean, the aide revealed. “At night, Kim gets out of bed and wanders the hallways in his pajamas, muttering Dean’s name,” the aide said.  “Dean really gives him the willies.”

But according to Dr. Randolph Koestler, a professor of Far East Studies at the University of Minnesota, Kim’s all-consuming fear of Howard Dean could impel the brutal dictator to abandon his nuclear program if Dean is elected President.

I got an e-mail from a friend of mine in Florida who is trying to find a home for a cat. Hopefully someone can help.

I'm trying to find our cat a new home. It is a nice cat, even likes baths, as you can see from the picture. Trouble is, my husband says the cat stares at him, and it freaks him out. Even though it is all in his head, I have find the cat a new home. Interested?

Picture of the Kitty

UPDATE: Of course, for some people-- the ones whose skin burns at the mere mention of the word "preemption"-- the problem of terrorism is a self-solving one. Terrorists commit horrible acts, yes, but they kill themselves in the process. Justice is served! Problem solved! Everybody go back to discussing Ben and J-Lo!

Were I in command of the Vast Homosexual Conspiracy, I would order an immediate halt to give our troops, and the American public, time to regroup and assimilate what has already happened. I would stop pushing right now because the ground has gotten weak, and it would be best to wait for it to be shored up.

The problem is, I can't do this. I have to deal with the real terrain as it is.

One of the greatest battles of the civil war, Gettysburg, was basically an accident, and was kicked off by a small Confederate batallion that was foraging the countryside looking for shoes! Neither side wanted a major fight at that particular time or place. However, the confederates ran into a small Union detachment, the pieces were set in motion, things escalated, and all you had to fight on the given terrain with what you had, as there was no other option.

I don't want this fight now, it is a bad tactical situation for my side. But, the enemy is counter-attacking, and if we try to withdraw or pause the fight, we will get wiped, because now THEY have smelled blood.

Reasonableness is called for. Baby steps. Broad, sweeping generalizations about those who are opposed to SSM just makes folks more stubborn. It's forced many folks (like myself), who are supportive of 90% of other homosexual rights issues, to stand with the folks at the other extreme. And to be perfectly frank, I don't like it over here, but that seems to be the only group to stand with. (And, I should add, while I'm over here, I'm getting an earful on a whole bunch of other issues. My "resist, resist, resist" warning systems are pretty good, but I'm sure there are cracks in my armor. Do you want a significant majority of reasonable folks left out with this side? I don't).

UPDATE: Mike Silverman has a point-by-point response, from a viewpoint that's a bit less compromising than mine. And that's fine-- his circumstances are such, for instance, that marriage would be more meaningful to him than it would be to me. I don't think there's really any argument to be had, just an acknowledgment of different positions on the spectrum.

However, I should clarify one thing. Yes, I know that it's a flawed argument that "gays have a free ride because they don't have spouses and kids". I realize that lots of straight people are single, and plenty of high-achievers in history have been so with large families. And I know there's a statistically non-trivial number of gay families with kids. I'm not saying there's any kind of direct correlation between "swingin'" and "success". But that's a misunderstanding of my point. I'm not describing reality here; I'm describing perception. Isn't Middle America's collective "gut feeling" something along the lines of: Well, gays have it pretty darn good, it seems to me! The way the movies show it, it's an endless life of partying and sex for twenty years or more while the rest of us slave away in the mortgage mines. Who hasn't thought something like that once in their life?

If it becomes apparent that Dean won't get the nomination, he better not endorse Kerry. That guy's a bastard.

If Kerry's our nominee, we're f---ed.

kerry won so im all done i,=m not voting this years

Give a high grade for clearly focusing on the big picture. Watch out for "The Spin" and subtract for only talking about side issues that make him look good. Give a failing grade for using lies or misleading statements. Extra credit should be awarded for offering up real solutions to our nation's problems and facing up to our most difficult problems.

Economics
The Big Picture: During the President's term the number of jobs in this country has actually declined by over 2 million. The poor have gotten poorer. Record deficits have kick-started growth, but recent gains in jobs aren't even enough to cover the number of new workers looking for jobs due to natural population growth.
The Spin: Recent economic growth is a sign of better things to come.
The Lies: Everyone got a tax cut and the rich and poor benefited equally.
Extra Credit: Give the President extra credit if he admits that the rebound in the economy is being fueled by record deficits that will eventually choke the economy if we don't change things soon.

Social Studies
The Big Picture: After 9/11 everyone wanted to help us, now almost nobody does. Osama is still on the loose and our bullying overseas adventures are fueling Al Qaeda recruiting.
The Spin: The President is taking strong and decisive action. We haven't had an attack on our soil since 9/11 and unnamed evildoers have been thwarted.
The Lies: Iraq was involved in 9/11.
Extra Credit: Give the President extra credit if he admits that last year's State of the Union was all about Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction that did not exist.

Health
The Big Picture: We do have a new Medicare benefit for prescription drugs. Unfortunately it was done in such a way only drug companies could love. Heck, the new law actually makes it illegal for states to join together and negotiate lower drug prices. Meanwhile, 44 million Americans don't have any health insurance. That's an increase of about 4 million since President Bush took office. The rest of us are paying more for the coverage we do have.
The Spin: The Medicare drug benefit is great.
The Lies: We can't afford to give everyone health insurance.
Extra Credit: Give the President extra credit if he admits that we are the only wealthy nation in the world without universal health insurance.

Environmental Sciences
The Big Picture: Changes by the Bush administration are making the air dirtier, the forests shrink, and the globe warmer.
The Spin: These changes won't really hurt us but will help the economy.
The Lies: Letting power plants pollute more leads to "clear skies," letting lumber companies cut down forests saves them, we don't know why the earth is warming.
Extra Credit: Give the President extra credit is he simply admits the planet is warming and we share some of the responsibility.

The Three Rs
The Big Picture: The President gave the schools a whole bunch of expensive new requirements but didn't provide any way to pay for them.
The Spin: The President gave the schools a whole bunch of new requirements.
The Lies: Giving schools a whole bunch of expensive new requirements without any way to pay for them will make kids smarter.
Extra Credit: Give the President extra credit if he proposes money to pay for the new requirements.

Arts and Crafts
The Big Picture: So much of the State of the Union Address is about image. The President will be prepped by pros to read a speech written by a team of wordsmiths. All the while he'll try to come across as a regular guy, only smarter.
The Spin: No, really, he's just a regular guy, only smarter.
The Lies: He's a regular guy. He's smarter.
Extra Credit: Give the President extra credit if he doesn't cynically exploit someone who actually did something heroic by putting them in the visitor's gallery and pointing to them during the speech.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. President Pro Tempore, members of Congress, and fellow Americans:  

In the normal course of events, Presidents come to this chamber to report on the state of the Union.  Tonight, no such report is needed.  It has already been delivered by the American people.

We have seen it in the courage of passengers, who rushed terrorists to save others on the ground -- passengers like an exceptional man named Todd Beamer.  And would you please help me to welcome his wife, Lisa Beamer, here tonight.  (Applause.)

-- 9/20/01

Incidentally, here are transcripts of all the SotU speeches since Truman's in 1945. Fascinating... and very illuminating.

In the interview, Rhys-Davies, who plays heroic dwarf Gimli and recorded the voice of computer-animated character Treebeard in the Hollywood blockbuster, interprets Tolkien's story of good versus evil as a metaphor for modern race relations.

He said: "There is a demographic catastrophe happening in Europe that nobody wants to talk about, that we daren't bring up because we are so cagey about not offending people racially. And rightly we should be. But there is a cultural thing as well.

"By 2020, 50 per cent of the children in Holland under the age of 18 will be of Muslim descent.

"I think that Tolkien says that some generations will be challenged. And if they do not rise to meet that challenge, they will lose their civilisation. That does have a real resonance with me."

"I am for dead, (traditional) white male culture," said Rhys-Davies, who divides his time between his homes in Los Angeles and the Isle of Man.

"Many do not understand how precarious Western civilisation is and what a joy it is.

"From it, we get real democracy. From it, we get the sort of intellectual tolerance that allows me to propound something that may be completely alien to you.

"I'm burying my career so substantially in these interviews that it's painful. But I think there are some questions that demand honest answers."

And don’t forget, coupled with this there is this collapse of numbers. Western Europeans are not having any babies. The population of Germany at the end of the century is going to be 56% of what it is now. The populations of France, 52% of what it is now. The population of Italy is going to be down 7 million people.

There is a change happening in the very complexion of Western civilization in Europe that we should think about at least and argue about. If it just means the replacement of one genetic stock with another genetic stock, that doesn’t matter too much. But if it involves the replacement of Western civilization with a different civilization with different cultural values, then it is something we really ought to discuss — because, [hang it all], I am for dead-white-male culture!”

"I condemn these comments as being racist and ill-informed," said Adam Price, Plaid Cymru MP for Carmarthen East & Dinefwr.

"It is obvious that this man who now lives in the lap of luxury in Hollywood is out of touch with realities of the nature of present day European society.

"His attack on Muslims and comments about the threat that they pose to Western society shows his ignorance of world events and the true teachings of Islam.

"Ammanford people will feel very let down by a man with such close connections to the town."

Last night Mohammed Javed, chairman of the Muslim Society for Wales, said: "We want an apology. This could stir up racial hatred in society. It's ignorance, he should learn more about Islam and the religions before he makes these comments.

"They are based on his ignorance and nothing else."

Chief executive of the All Wales Ethnic Minority Association (Awema) Naz Malik agreed.

He said: "I do not know why he has said these things. If 50 per cent of people in Holland under 18 are Muslims in 16 years time, so what? In Britain the fastest growing race is mixed race, people of dual heritage. It is a cause for great celebration that our cultures are mixed.

"We live in a global society - we celebrate what is good in cultures and challenge what is bad in civilisations.

"Does he ever listen to any music other than European? Does he eat Indian food? Does he ever appreciate art other than that from Europe?

"I feel sorry for this actor because he must feel very insecure about his future. I feel sorry for his close mindedness."

UPDATE: Alan e-mails to point out that the portrayal of the BNP as a skinhead/KKK-like group is entirely accurate, and Rhys-Davies is well advised to keep from being associated with such a bunch of thugs. I suspected as much, but I had no context for knowing for sure what the story was. I stand clarified.

In any case, it sorta confirms my point: if a major cultural confrontation is coming, it'll be between the radicalized fringes of society. And if the BNP is having as much success handing out these leaflets as the article makes it sound, then that ugly day may not be too long in coming.

Guns are bad. All my life, it's been that simple. At my son's preschool, if a child pointed a banana and said "bang," he was admonished to "use the banana in a happier way." As far as I was concerned, the 2nd Amendment gave us the right to protect ourselves against invading armies, not the right to buy a gun and keep it under our beds.

So what would make someone like me change my mind? I met this gun enthusiast. As research for my new novel, I asked him many questions, all the while voicing my disgust. My character might use a gun, but I never would. "Come to the range," the gun guy said. "I'll teach you to shoot."

I expected a dungeon full of men missing teeth and wearing T-shirts decorated with Confederate flags. Instead, I found a sunny, wood-paneled lobby and guys who looked like lawyers on their lunch break.

The man behind the counter was as pleasant as a grandfather from Central Casting. "What would it take for me to buy a gun?" I asked him. He explained the California laws, some of the most stringent in the country. I would have to wait 10 days — the "cooling off" period. There would be federal and local background checks. I'd have to take a safety class. I'd have to buy a childproof lock. I couldn't purchase an assault weapon. I couldn't buy more than one handgun per month. Of course, he said, if I didn't want to wait, I could drive 10 minutes and buy an Uzi illegally out of someone's car.

Later, I was surprised to discover that some of my closest friends owned guns. People I never would have suspected confessed that their guns made them feel protected. Still, most of my friends thought handguns should be outlawed, completely, in every circumstance.

I no longer was so sure. I did some research — there are countless testimonials about guns saving someone's life. I looked into shooting as a sport. I spoke to a woman who had found a wounded deer and shot it, ending its agony. I changed my mind: Guns aren't bad.

Which leaves gun violence. At least in California, we don't need more laws — we just need to enforce the ones we have. What else?

The answer has to be education: teaching people to deal with anger, to solve problems, offering them brighter futures, but also Gun 101. Maybe if teenagers were given computer-generated pictures of their own bodies, post-gunshot wounds, it would help them understand the enormity of firing a weapon. Maybe if everyone spent an afternoon at the shooting range, forced to follow the rules, they would respect the power of a gun.

I confess, I don't know exactly how to solve the problem, but at least now I know I don't know. Firing guns as a sport is great fun. Having a gun because it makes you feel safer seems understandable. Changing the way people behave? If you thought gun control was a distant dream … it could take centuries.

We have always had sick people, poor people, bad people, and uneducated people. And when I say always, I mena for the last 100,000 years of so. Do you really think that closing up space to future exploration is going to change any of that? No! We have always had these problems and we are always going to have these problems. We spend hundreds of billions on education in this country every single year and yet there are still people out there who can't read. Want to know why? Because they are stupid or lazy or both. We spend further hundreds of billions on health care and yet people continue to get sick and die, the ungrateful bastards. Should we put on hold everything not health care related until we have conquered death and disease? Don't be a frigging maroon!

This country has proved that it can do more than one thing at the same time. we can fight terrorists (which are never really going to go away so you can quit holding your breath), protect the environment, try to make people's lives easier, educate the educateable and go to the moon and beyond. Will it be worth it? We can't know until we try it, can we? Will all the money spent on health care stop people from dying from a variety of horrible diseases? Probably not but we can still make life better while we try. Going to the moon is in the same category.

LET THE KIDS PAY FOR IT: I'm talking about this $170 billion foray into space. After all, the next generation will be paying for a collapsed social security system, a bankrupted Medicare program, soaring interest on the public debt, as well as coughing up far higher taxes to keep some semblance of a government in operation. But, hey, the president needed another major distraction the week before the Iowa caucuses, and since he won't be around to pick up the bill, why the hell not? Deficits don't matter, after all. And what's a few hundred billion dollars over the next few decades anyway? Chickenfeed for the big and bigger government now championed by the Republicans. This space initiative is, for me, the last fiscal straw. There comes a point at which the excuses for fiscal recklessness run out. The president campaigned in favor of the responsibility ethic. He has governed - in terms of guarding the nation's finances - according to the motto: "If it feels good, do it." I give up. Can't they even pretend to give a damn?

That said, though... I would very much like to be there during something as huge and exciting as the first moon landing. Lance has told me with some asperity that humans have not been to the moon during my lifetime, and I sure hope something as petty as whether the line-items all fit on the page doesn't stand in the way of whether that remains the case.

In Mecca, I found the same mixture of confusion, oppression and apathy I thought I had left behind in Egypt. But as in Egypt, nothing worked, even at the blessed hajj, for we were visitors not to an Islamic state but to yet another cynical Arab kleptocracy which only pretended to adhere to the true ideals of Islam.

The Saudis couldn’t even organize the hajj safely. Each day, as I performed the rituals of the hajj, I was part of massed crowds of Muslims from all over the world: Turks and Pakistanis, Nigerians, Malaysians, Arabs. We would shamble forward without order or seeming direction, endangering lives as we knocked over women, the lame and the elderly in our hurry to get from one ritual to the next. Once, in a street so filled with pilgrims that I could not take one step forward, I was forced to jump into the back of a truck to avoid being killed in a stampede.

At night, I would wander through the pilgrim camps, disgusted by the sight of the mud-faced pilgrims who were only too happy to sleep on the filthy streets. In the morning, the streets would be clogged again, and veiled women who had trouble walking because they’d so rarely been let out of their homes would waddle slowly before me. At the stoning ritual, I watched little girls fall under the crowds of pilgrims: Turks shoving Arabs, Africans shoving Indians until each day a few more pilgrims were trampled to death. The next day I would read of the incident in theSaudi Times (FOURTEEN PILGRIMS KILLED IN STAMPEDE) which would quote a hajj official who never took any responsibility for the deaths. He would only say that since the pilgrims had died on hajj they would ‘surely enter Paradise’. There was never any promise to cut the number of hajjis or control the outsized crowds to prevent these needless deaths.

The mutawan, the dreaded Saudi religious police who enforce the rigid observance of Wahhabi Islam, patrolled the streets, beating or arresting anyone they caught missing a prayer; it was impossible ever to know if the native Meccans prayed out of genuine piety or to avoid a whipping.

I returned from prayer in the Grand Mosque one morning to find my sandals stolen from the shoe racks.

I was riding a train home from a short trip with friends to Assuit in Upper Egypt when the war in Iraq began. Our Egyptian guide told us the bombing had started the night before and that we should no longer speak English on the shuddering train or venture out of our apartments when we got back to Cairo. I locked myself in my flat and waited for word from the American Embassy. The next Friday from my balcony I watched a quarter of a million Egyptians rioting in the streets below, men and young boys chanting, smashing windows, pelting soldiers with stones and carting banners. A giant tank rushed down my street, its water cannons hosing the crowds while the soldiers drove back the protesters with batons.

I fled home the next week, leaving all my illusions of the Arab world in my Cairo flat. I couldn’t wait to be in America again. On the long flight home, I promised myself I would never accept anything less than full democracy for my fellow Muslims in the Arab world or apologize for the tyranny that now masquerades as Islam.

Yet, for all the hypocrisy and suffering I witnessed during my time in Egypt, it was impossible to ignore the sincerity of the poor and righteous and the depth of the belief of Muslims and Copts alike. I studied Islam with a village sheikh from Giza; I watched shop owners feed strangers during the nights of Ramadan; the local beggars, men who should have lost all hope, prayed each day without fail on tattered sheets of cardboard. It is only because of these expressions of true spirituality that I never lost my faith.

Even now, I can remember the dread in the faces of my Egyptian friends at what would become of their lives. Could it be, that the fascism which once bubbled up in Europe has now invaded the Middle East and that in our time, all hope for the true Islamic values of freedom, modernity and equality in the Muslim world lies not in the East, but in the West?

According to De Volksrant, the Dutch government is having difficulty finding business sponsorship for their EU Presidency.

On Saturday, the newspaper quoted the foreign ministry as saying that "seemingly businesses would rather not advertise with the Dutch EU Presidency".

The government is hoping to save two to three million euro from the overall costs, which are predicted to be around 68 million euro, through business sponsorship.

Perhaps corporations don't think they get the bang-for-the-Euro from this that they would spending that money in other ways. The Dutch, always pragmatic anyway, might consider a more direct way to reward corporate sponsors, like those which are already used in the sports world.

The top contributor would get to have his name associated with the position during that six-month period in all news reporting, e.g. "The Mercedez-Benz/German presidency", "the "Guinness/British Presidency" etc. The executive would have a special jacket made which he would wear at all official appearances and especially at photo-ops which would display the corporate logos of the next five or ten contributing corporations, with placement and size being a function of the amount of money the offered.

LONDON - The world's largest cruise ship, Queen Mary 2, set sail for the United States on its maiden voyage Monday, carrying 2,600 passengers who paid up to $48,000 for the privilege.

The 150,000-ton Cunard Line vessel left the southern English port of Southampton on the 14-day journey to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., its first voyage with fare-paying passengers.

Although Cunard has denied reports of a terrorist threat against the vessel, security was tight and police maintained a high profile.

. . .

As a small flotilla of boats turned out to watch the giant liner pull away, passengers lining the ship's balconies waved Union Jack flags and threw streamers.

UPDATE: Reader Kenny puts on the finishing moves:

Clark: "There is no connection between the arctic icepack and icebergs. This was an unnecessary war."

Dean: "There's this theory floating around that the President was warned by the Eskimos that there were icebergs in the North Atlantic before the sinking..."

Kennedy: "This war was planned back in Texas between Bush and his Iced Tea industry buddies to take control of the ice from the polar bears."

No blood for ice! Peace Dude.

I've just got one question to ask each and every one of the Democratic candidates for the Presidency. I just want an honest answer: What would you do if the terrorists nuked New York?

I don't want to hear any tap-dancing; I don't want to hear any name-calling. Just give me a clear answer: If they hit us again, with bioweapons or nuclear weapons, which someday they will-- what will be your military response? When the chips are down, when the American people are counting on you to defend them... what will you do?

Speaking of moonbats, remember Kate Raphael of Berkeley? Arrested for protesting the "apartheid wall"?

Turns out she is an active member of QUIT. No, it's not an anti-smoking club, it stands for - wait for it - Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism.

That's right, queers undermining the only state in the Middle East where they have equal rights, the state to which Palestinian queers flee so they don't get tortured and killed by fellow Palestinians.

Anyway, the QUIT site has a running account of Kate's travails (she was released on Thursday).

Meanwhile, gay activists prove that they can be just as self-hating as Jews:

Emmaia Gelman, a member of Queers for Palestine, a New York-based activist group that she said has some 20 to 30 members, said gays and lesbians are disproportionately represented in leadership roles in pro-Palestinian activist groups.

"Queer activism has traditionally fought to recognize the parallels between all kinds of oppression that are based on identity and on the wish of a government or society to repress a certain kind of people, or to erase people from the public dialogue or public space whose existence is inconvenient," Gelman said. "And so in that way there are enormous parallels between the queer liberation struggle and Palestinian struggle for human rights."

It is all, as you can see, just a little unwieldy, but it is the simplest model that can explain all that happens in the world of particles. Most particle physicists feel, as Leon Lederman remarked in a 1985 PBS documentary, that the Standard Model lacks elegance and simplicity. "It is too complicated. It has too many arbitrary parameters," Lederman said. "We don't really see the creator twiddling twenty knobs to set twenty parameters to create the universe as we know it." Physics is really nothing more than a search for ultimate simplicity, but so far all we have is a kind of elegant messiness-- or as Lederman put it: "There is a deep feeling that the picture is not beautiful."

Matters in physics have now reached such a pitch that, as Paul Davies noted in Nature, it is "almost impossible for the non-scientist to discriminate between the legitimately weird and the outright crackpot."

Scientific topics receiving prominent play in newspapers and magazines over the past several years include molecular biology, artificial intelligence, artificial life, chaos theory, massive parallelism, neural nets, the inflationary universe, fractals, complex adaptive systems, superstrings, biodiversity, nanotechnology, the human genome, expert systems, punctuated equilibrium, cellular automata, fuzzy logic, space biospheres, the Gaia hypothesis, virtual reality, cyberspace, and teraflop machines. Among others. There is no canon or accredited list of acceptable ideas. The strength of the third culture is precisely that it can tolerate disagreements about which ideas are to be taken seriously. Unlike previous intellectual pursuits, the achievements of the third culture are not the marginal disputes of a quarrelsome mandarin class: they will affect the lives of everybody on the planet.

UPDATE and random thought: Many people seem to be under the erroneous assumption that engineers love saying it depends, because we say it so much. Really, we don't. But we recognize that it's the only way to give a correct answer to most technical questions. We'd love it if we could explain things in simpler terms, but most often we just can't if we're trying to be accurate. Engineers vastly prefer correct answers over pleasing answers. It's when an answer is both correct and pleasing that we like it the best-- that's what elegance is.

I think the Left is having such a hard time because the right has co-opted idealism. And idealism is a big part of nice, so they've somewhat lost the nice, and they aren't happy about it. Mostly, they are confused. "But, *we're* the nice ones - how can those mean repugs be freeing people in Iraq? How can they be deposing evil people like Saddam Hussein when *we're* the nice ones???" It's a real problem for them, but they are so brilliant they can easily postmodernize their way through it and come up with some twisted, convoluted logic where they are still idealistic and nice. But, it must be convoluted because they really have lost idealism. Their only real idealism now - environmentalism - is based on junk science. Ouch.

The parties have essentially switched - not policies, but in spirit. I've always been an idealist, and I am right at home in the current internationalist policies - freeing the people of Afghanistan and Iraq. I am not secretly evil, trying to take over their lands - I am genuinely nice and want people to have good lives, even if they had the misfortune to be born in the Middle East. I believe you share some of the same sentiments. It's the same reason I offer drunk people rides home from parties (if I am safely able to drive myself) or offer to lend my tools to my neighbors or stop to give people a jump start.

On a personal level, the liberals I live near are very nice, just the type of people I like to hang around with. However their politics have been dictated from the national level, and no longer align with the good-hearted people they are. It must be quite upsetting to have it thrown in their face by such a cretin as Bush, yet there it is - smiling Iraqis, Saddam - not Karl Rove - being frog marched.

It's the "Stupid factor," the S factor: Some people -- sometimes through no fault of their own -- are just not very bright.

It's not merely that some people are insufficiently intelligent to grasp the nuances of foreign policy, of constitutional law, of macroeconomics or of the variegated interplay of humans and the environment. These aren't the people I'm referring to. The people I'm referring to cannot understand the phenomenon of cause and effect. They're perplexed by issues comprising more than two sides. They don't have the wherewithal to expand the sources of their information. And above all -- far above all -- they don't think.

You know these people; they're all around you (they're not you, else you would not be reading this article this far). They're the ones who keep the puerile shows on TV, who appear as regular recipients of the Darwin Awards, who raise our insurance rates by doing dumb things, who generally make life much more miserable for all of us than it ought to be. Sad to say, they comprise a substantial minority -- perhaps even a majority -- of the populace.

Can that many people be enamored of what he has accomplished in Iraq? Of how he has fortified our constitutional freedoms with the USA Patriot Act? Of how he has bolstered our economy? Of how he has protected our environment? Perhaps they've been impressed with the president's personal integrity and the articulation of his grand vision for America?

In response to a question testing his youth-culture awareness, Dean did a brief takeoff of a song by Outkast, the hot hip-hop group. "He knows the lyrics to Outkast songs and, man, can that dude dance," enthused a 16-year-old.

UPDATE: Steve at Enter Stage Right reminded me that I wrote about this phenomenon back in May. I knew this was all sounding too familiar...

We want to run ads that are of the people, for the people, and by the people. Joining us in this effort is a great panel of celebrity judges, including Jack Black, Michael Moore, Donna Brazile, Gus Van Sant, Michael Stipe, Margaret Cho, and Moby.

UPDATE: The baldfaced demonization of religion in this ad, by the way, further bolsters my belief that the Left thinks quite honestly that America has either out-evolved a need for religion, or deserves to be eclipsed by countries whose people have. Those who know me know I'm pretty much devoid of any religious conviction, but the principles of faith fascinate me, and I'm not so chauvinistic as to claim (as I did in high school) that to believe in a higher power is inherently irrational. The MoveOn.org-style Left, however, views religion with unmasked revulsion, and I somehow don't think that'll play very well in Middle America.

Brian i need your help really bad. i know it's not really ____ related. but could you please post something asking the members to help me? it seems as though Canada wants to allow the hunting of harp seals. and there are just WAY too many animals being killed because of us. like horses and dogs and cats and pigs and everything. just because we say there isn't enough room for them. yet we have enough room for new shopping malls and houses for ourselves. i for one and so hurt by what i read on some of the sites i went to. there are lots of sites, i've been going to www.peta.org, www.hsus.org, andwww.theanimalrescuesite.com. i'm very sorry for sending this letter. but i'm so hurt by what we're doing to these animals. even TV programs are against saving the animals. please Brian i need all the help i can get, would you please please please help me help them? i'm gunna send an attachment with this e-mail. if you can resist such a cute face then i don't know who would help me. i'm begging you Brian, please can you help me!!!!!

but you posted about Sept. 11. should not the death of innocent animals be equily as important as that of humans? and you posted about lots of other stuff before, Brian, i know that it may not be that much of a big deal, but what if there were no more animals, there'd have never been a ____ for you to make your site on. if you won't help me than no one will, you know this is the first dream/wish i've had in a long time, and i didn't wanna give it up. but now that i see that your not even conserned about the animals i think i'll have to. but just remember that without the animals we as the artists on the site would have nothing to draw, and you'd have no website and wouldn't know any of us artists on the site. i would say thank you but i'm not sure what it'd be for. but just so you know, if you're with the other people that want to allow the hunting, etc. then i refuse to draw on your site again.

The BBC recently gave its radio listeners a chance to express their will, but did not want to hear the result. The great unwashed mass, who cough-up the license fees which pay the Beeb’s freight, were asked to suggest a piece of legislation to improve life in Britain, with the promise that an MP would then attempt to get it onto the statute books.

Listeners to BBC 4’s Today program (the very same show which claimed that intelligence on Iraqi WMDs had been “sexed up”), reposnded with a suggestion that would allow homeowners to defend themselves against intruders, without facing legal liabilities. The winning proposal was denounced as a "ludicrous, brutal, unworkable blood-stained piece of legislation" - by Stephen Pound, the very MP whose job it is to try to push it through Parliament.

The Independent reports that Mr Pound's reaction was provoked by the news that the winner of Today's "Listeners' Law" poll was a plan to allow homeowners "to use any means to defend their home from intruders" - a prospect that could see householders free to kill burglars, without question.

"The people have spoken," the Labour MP replied to the programme, "... the bastards."

Having recovered his composure, Mr Pound told The Independent: "We are going to have to re-evaluate the listenership of Radio 4. I would have expected this result if there had been a poll in The Sun. Do we really want a law that says you can slaughter anyone who climbs in your window?"

UPDATE: Lest I be accused of Dowdification, I should point out that Pound's actual quote was this:

"My enthusiasm for direct democracy is slightly dampened," the MP told Today. "This is a difficult result. I can't remember who it was who said 'The people have spoken - the bastards'."

But I don't think this context changes the meaning as much as some people say it does. By couching the quip as an extant witticism that he's merely quoting, all Pound is doing is trying to deflect criticism from people alarmed at the directness of his language. He can say, "But I didn't actually mean that-- I was just echoing an aphorism I heard someone say once, as a way of exaggerating my own point!" But he's still saying the same thing. He'd have said the bare words himself if he weren't worried that the microphones were on.

Hopewell Junction attorney Aziz Ahsan and his family took on the task of seeking a patent for the symbol following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Patenting the symbol was Ahsan's attempt to create a positive Muslim identity.

''There was a feeling that Muslims had something to do with the attacks,'' said Ahsan, adding most Muslims are law abiding citizens.

Being an American trapped in a Canadian's body means always having to say, "You're stupid."

When my hometown of Toronto awakened to the news that Saddam Hussein was in custody, we reflexively switched on CNN in my house. Why? Because Fox News still isn't available up here (although, in the spirit of "multiculturalism," Al-Jazeera's broadcast application proceeds apace).

At our only other option, the state-owned Canadian Broadcasting Corp., commentators repeatedly hoped Saddam Hussein would receive "a fair trial" through "an international tribunal" that "reflected Canadian values" – presumably the same "Canadian values" former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien invoked when refusing to send our troops (such as they are) to Iraq in the first place.

Such smug, pseudo-sophisticated "insights" would be only slightly less offensive if they weren't being paid for by my tax dollars.

I once was one of those smug sneerers at our southern neighbor, the product of a typical Canadian upbringing: my memorizing Trudeaupian doctrine about our superior "cultural mosaic" and the Yanks' inferior "melting pot."

The U.S. Bicentennial made a particularly indelible impression. I was 12 in 1976, the perfect age to be scandalized for life by red, white and blue toilet seats.

And like all Torontonians, I have my share of Stupid American Tourist Stories: loud, super-sized folks wearing what appear to be pajamas, asking if they can walk to Niagara Falls from here.

So, what happened?

Well, I am a recovering liberal, and Sept. 11 is my dry date.

This is a Cocoa OpenGL screensaver. It's modeled on the pretty falling snowflakes animation that Apple have been running on an iMac in the window of the local Apple store. (Theirs is actually a QuickTime movie, and not available to customers. People have asked.)

The Los Angeles-based Constitutional Rights Foundation was established in 1962 to “instill in our nation’s youth a deeper understanding of citizenship” and “values expressed in our Constitution and Bill of Rights.” Its $3 million annual budget creates and distributes teaching materials ostensibly to support the Bill of Rights. However, CRF’s Service Learning Network in 2002 issued online “diversity” teaching units featuring terrorism and Islam sections—plus a whitewashed history of Islamic law and a proposed blasphemy amendment to the U.S. Constitution. CRF created the Islamic Issues segments for the winter 1998 edition of its quarterly newsletter.

Its final Islamic study unit does ask students to consider Islamic views on the Salman Rushdie case—and a proposed blasphemy amendment to the U.S. Constitution stating, “The First Amendment shall not be interpreted to protect blasphemous speech. States shall be free to enact anti-blasphemy laws as long as they prohibit offensive speech against all religions.” Students are asked to define blasphemy, explain the “strong” Islamic reaction to Rushdie’s novel, and assume the role of a U.S. Senator considering the amendment. They are not asked to discuss the Sharia punishment for blasphemy, which traditionally has been death. Such condemnations occur to this day.

The regime's plainclothes men and security agents have arrested in several cities, such as in Tehran and Esfahan, Iranians who angered by the situation had shouted publicly unprecedented slogans considered almost as a blasphemy by the ruling theocracy.

These unprecedented slogans were nothing else than "Long Live Israel !" and "Long Live America !" shouted during tens of popular Blood collect gatherings by Iranians welcoming the Israeli and American support of the quake's victims.

The popular anger has been boosted as the Islamic regime has banned any Israeli support of the quake's victims by rejecting this country's offer of aid. Many Iranians consider such rejection as another prove that the regime's leaders are more willing to let Iranians die by sacrifying them in order to keep their backwarded anti-Semite ideology.

Many also are cheering the US President for his constant support of Iranians and are qualifying the landing of US Aid planes as another "slap in the face of the regime".

I heard a speech by a man that made me realise that my quest to discover how humankind - being so unsuited to the rigours of this world - had managed to survive and prosper, was pointless and irrelevant. That man was US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld and what he said was this, in relation to his country's failing search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq: "There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things we know we don't know. But, there are also unknown unknowns. These are things we don't know we don't know."

When exposed to a mind like Mr Rumsfeld's the question of how we survived loses all import. In its stead looms the much more important and ultimately more troubling question of why.

Fuck all your right wing nazi parroting. See youn assholes on the streets.

Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) has given his U.S. captors information on hidden weapons and as much as $40 billion he may have seized while he was Iraq (news - web sites)'s president, an Iraqi official was quoted as saying on Monday.

"Saddam has confessed the names of people he told to keep the money and he gave names of those who have information on equipment and weapons warehouses," Iyad Allawi, a member of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, told the London-based Asharq al-Awsat daily.

"The Governing Council is searching for $40 billion worth of funds seized by Saddam when he was in power and which has been deposited in Switzerland, Japan, Germany and other countries under the names of fictitious companies," Allawi said.

He said the council had asked international legal companies to track the money.

Allawi said interrogators were now focusing on whether Saddam -- arrested by U.S. forces this month and held at an undisclosed site -- had any links to militant groups.

"Interrogators are now focusing on the relationship between him and terrorist organizations and on funds paid to groups outside Iraq," Allawi told the newspaper.

UPDATE: Incidentally, when I tried to submit my vote, I got a server error. Hmm.

December 29, 2003: The War on Terror has had an unintended, and welcome, side effect; world peace. Since September 11, 2001, and the aggressive American operations against terrorist organizations, several long time wars have ended, or moved sharply in that direction. Many of these wars get little attention in American media, but have killed hundreds of thousands of people over the last decade. These include conflicts in Nepal, Sri Lanka, Colombia, Chad, Congo, Kashmir, Israel, Kurdistan, Philippines, Burundi, Somalia and Sudan. Some of these conflicts diminished because they had been going on for a while and, as is usually the case with wars, eventually the participants are worn down and make peace. But in all these sudden outbreaks of peace there was another factor; an American crackdown on terrorist activities around the world. The rebels in most of these wars depended on money raised outside their country to keep the fighting going, and on gun runners able to get weapons in. American anti-terrorism operations, energized by the shock of the September 11, 2001 attacks, now included cooperation from many nations, especially in Europe, that had tolerated, on their territory, fund raising, recruiting and public relations efforts by various rebel groups. No more. Most of these rebel organizations had already been declared "terrorist groups" (which they were, as most rebellions use terror, the American Revolution included). Once the U.S. and other nations began to crack down on the fund raising and other activities, it became difficult to keep many wars going. 

UPDATE: Whoah. Check out these older proposal diagrams of the Freedom Tower. It could have been way worse.