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Tuesday, April 16, 2002
For those who missed seeing that infamous CAIR poll Glenn Reynolds and others have been talking about, shortly after Reynolds made his original prediction that the poll wouldn't remain up long (He was right. It didn't), I took a screenshot of the thing. Here it is:
This was created about 10:06 PM, Pacific Standard Time yesterday, shortly before about ten thousand "no" votes vanished, to be later followed by the disappearance of the entire poll.
I don't really buy this overheated account - I recently bought a pistol on the Internet, and I had to jump through all the usual hoops, including having the gun shipped to a licenced firearms dealer, not directly to me - but if it is true, it's just one more reason why gun control will never work.
"It looks like a national ID, walks like a national ID and quacks like a national ID," said J. Bradley Jansen, deputy director at the Free Congress Foundation, a conservative think tank, in remarks prepared for Durbin's panel.
The congresswoman who accused the Bush administration of allowing energy and defense industry profits to guide its war policy has accepted campaign contributions from employees of groups that support terrorist organizations, according to Federal Election Commission records.
I am not so exercised about these connections - with the current cash and carry electioneering systems, everybody who runs for office accepts some questionable money - but it does point out how insane McKinney's accusations against the Bush administration are.
The article goes on to mention that McKinney is likely to face court action on another issue:
McKinney is currently under investigation for at least six counts of alleged election law violations stemming from her purported activities in a voting precinct in DeKalb County, Georgia on election day 2000.
An administrative law judge will hear charges that McKinney "invaded" a polling place during polling hours, harassed and intimated poll watchers, and directly solicited votes while there.
The Georgia State Board of Elections has voted unanimously twice to recommend action by the state on all six counts.
Though definitely one of the most egregious offenders, McKinney is not alone is feeling some sort of imperial entitlement to her office, which she obviously believes places her above the law - let alone public opinion. In the end, though, she's not really to blame even for that. That responsibility must rest with those who keep re-electing her, in effect telling her she can do no wrong.
In technical terms, Congresswomen (and men) like McKinney are a tragedy of the commons, in that her voters continue to re-elect her, even when it is obvious she is not at all concerned for the common weal, but only for her own purposes, and periphally theirs. But her supporters, like her, are unconcerned with the health of the commons - and in the end, multiplied by a hundred or more, these tragedies will end up destroying the commons for everybody.
Let's try some fancy blogrolling: Matt Welch links to an article in Business 2.0 by James Wolcott called Blog Nation. Naturally, the article was yet another entry in the Great Mainstream Discovery of the blogosphere.
And as I was cruising through that same blogosphere this morning, I discovered this on ur-blogger Jason Kottke's Kottke.org:
I got "pitched" this morning. At least, that's what I think it's called...I'm not too up on PR speak these days. A woman from Business 2.0's PR company sent me an email pointing to this article on weblogs on her client's Web site in the hopes that I would link to it. Mission accomplished. Now for the good part (or bad part, depending on your perspective). The article isn't that good. It starts out by talking about weblogs as the "blinking neurons of an emerging, chatterbox superbrain" and ends with a mention of the weblog collective (running the now-standard blog/Borg joke). Given that and the title of the piece (Blog Nation), you'd think that there would be an interesting story in the middle about the network of weblogs: why it's interesting, why it's annoying, what it's good for, what it's bad for, are people doing things with it that haven't been done before, is it significant, etc. etc.
Instead, Wolcott gives readers the impression that the only thing worth checking out in this blog nation are the "superstar" warbloggers talking about the "war" and politics. Contrary to what the article says implies, "warblogging" (two of my least favorite words, together at last!) is a recent invention and not representative of weblogs as a whole.
Near the end of the article, he even laments that what's missing are "blogs dedicated to cultural pursuits written with the same enthusiastic, hobbyhorse zeal as the breaking-news blogs". The funny thing is that if you break the habit of only reading the sites listed in Instapundit's sidebar, you'll find that there are *tons* of weblogs out there doing just that. Granted, many of them are about technology and Web design, but there are more and more on music and movies and television and theatre and cars and sewing and parenting and cooking and eating and and and! And the majority of weblogs aren't even focused at all...they just talk about whatever strikes their fancy. A more interesting point to make here is how weblogs on specific topics are hard to find unless the weblogs writer is already some sort of known journalist (i.e. the network is huge and therefore valuable, but it's largely useless without tools to get people to the information they are looking for).
Anyway, I should come up with some sort of snappy summary here, but I've got 50 billion things to do...and unlike Mr. Wolcott, I don't have to write a thorough, accurate article because this is just a weblog. So nyah.
Nick writes in about the article discussed above, calling it fourth wave journalism. Heh.
And the wheel goes round and round, and it comes out...here...
It must be nice to have a pr person. I wonder if I should start a service like that for bloggers?
"Dear BigBlogger: I just posted an article on the profound influence of the Illuminati on the history of Yasser Arafat, Ringo Starr, and Osama bin Laden. Could you link to it...?"
The draft complaint cites one case in which the FBI arrested a Muslim imam, Ibrahim Turkman, on Oct. 13 in West Babylon, N.Y. Agents allegedly accused him of being an associate of Osama bin Laden but never charged him with terrorism.
Turkman, whose tourist visa expired a year earlier, "has never been involved with terrorists, terrorist organizations or terrorist activities," the suit says. "Indeed, he abhors terrorism."
The detainee was held without explanation for more than four months in the Passaic County Jail in Paterson, N.J., where he was housed with dangerous criminals and prevented from practicing his religion, the suit says.
His tourist visa "expired a year earlier?" In which case he was an illegal alien when he was arrested. What more explanation do you need for holding someone? His very presence in the United States was aganst the law. And by the way, as a "tourist," how does it slip your mind for a year that your visa has expired?
You know what? In my humble opinion as a writer with thirty some published books, I think Vincent is doing what we in the trade call "lying for effect."
This is actually pretty funny. Evidently the writer (a Brit) thinks that "Web defacements" are a terrifying weapon, and is highly impressed that
The most active anti-Israeli hacker group claims to be Egyptian and started its activities just weeks after 11 September.
Just weeks? How long did it take them to track down some script-kiddy kits? Then there's this:
Israel is vulnerable not just because of its action against the Palestinian Authority, but also because it has the largest number of internet connections in the Middle East.
Israel has 2.4 million net connections, more than any of the 22 Arab countries.
But what isn't noted is that this article was lifted from a press release issued by the security firm mi2g, where we find this quote:
Israel has suffered 42% (548/1295) of the Middle East overt hack attacks, while Turkey (13%), Morocco (12%) and Egypt (12%) were also targeted. Israel’s digital risk is greater because it has the most Internet connections (1.1 million) in the Middle East (more than all 22 Arab countries combined).
Not "more than any," but more than all 22 Arab countries combined. Somehow the numbers got jiggered, and the quote got changed. Evidently BBC doesn't want to underline just how pathetically backward the Arab societies really are. I wonder why?
This is going to engender a lot of snickering about the irony of it all, and even some impassioned howling about "endangering the children," but a lot of urban folks may not realize that in some parts of the country, people under the age of eighteen really aren't considered helpless infants.
ROME (Reuters) - Pope John Paul has telephoned Franciscan monks holed up in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem to express his solidarity with them, the Vatican said Tuesday. Israeli soldiers have surrounded the church which Christians believe stands on the site of the birthplace of Jesus, for about two weeks in a standoff with about 100 Palestinians inside. They include gunmen and dozens of Christian clerics.
Only a 100 Palestininans left? But wasn't it just a few days ago that Reuters was reporting
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Israel's president has rejected a Roman Catholic Church proposal for ending a standoff at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, telling Pope John Paul that Israel would not let Palestinian gunmen escape...
Some 200 Palestinian gunmen and civilians took refuge in the Bethlehem church complex last week and have remained holed up inside along with 40 Franciscan monks and four nuns.
Did the IDF let half the Palestinians go? Did half of them fight their way to freedom? Does Reuters have its head up its laptop?
On Friday, Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) announced with much fanfare that Republicans were launching a Web site to chronicle what the GOP views as the slow-as-molasses pace of the "obstructionist" Democratic majority. The site, www.disappointed.senate.gov, was to play on Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle's (D-S.D.) aw-shucks penchant for saying how "disappointed" he is by GOP partisanship. Then something truly disappointing happened. Democratic faithful pointed out that Senate rules prohibit the use of the Senate's dot-gov Web site for partisan activity. It says so on the Web site: "The use of Senate Internet Services for personal, promotional, commercial, or partisan political/campaign purposes is prohibited." Astute Internet surfers will notice that there is no site at disappointed.senate.gov. That's because Lott beat a hasty cyber-retreat. "Man, we're disappointed," said spokesman Ron Bonjean. Lott will find another solution -- either using a private domain or posting a more temperate version on the Senate site, he said.
You'd think these guys could find fifty bucks or so in one of their huge slush funds to pay for a new domain, and somebody smart enough to put up a web site. Hey! Maybe they could start a blog?
I've jiggered around with the comment system until I think I've got it working right. If you have problems with it, though, please email me and I'll get it fixed toot sweety.
ANNOUNCEMENT: I've added a new comment system, which necessitates changing the extension of the filename of my blog. If you are linking directly to the actual file, you would need to change your url to:
http://www.iw3p.com/DailyPundit/dailypundit.php
If you are using the www.DailyPundit.com link, you're fine, and need make no changes. That is now redirected to the correct url. Hint: if you use the www.DailyPundit.com url, you'll always be okay, no matter where or what I do to DailyPundit.
Caveat: it may take a day or two for the new redirect to filter through the system for www.DailyPundit.com. If you need a DP fix right away, use the direct link instead.
Lawyers and activists discussed how the country can heal lingering wounds of slavery....
Let me guess. Maybe by slathering huge gobs of money on people who were never slaves, whose parents were never slaves, whose grandparents were never slaves...?
...through reparations at a two-day symposium at the University of California’s Boalt Hall School of Law. Some called for direct payments...
No applause, please. No doubt it was just a lucky guess on my part.
Depending on the media reaction, this could prompt the administration to step up the hunt for Osama. Perhaps a better measure of success, at least for now, is that bin Laden's network doesn't seem to be attacking anyone at the moment.
Hm. Howie must have missed that report yesterday about al-Qaeda claiming credit for the Tunisia mosque synagogue bombing a few days ago.
UPDATE: Thanks to Letter from Gotham for the nice catch vis my idiotic use of "mosque" instead of the correct "synagogue."
The USS Cole warship, left with a gaping hole in its side from an attack by a boatload of suicide bombers, is ready to return to action after 18 months and $250 million in repairs, a Navy spokesman said on Tuesday.
As so will all Osama bin Laden's works come to pass - into nothingness.
Yep, the new NYC newspaper with a conservative viewpoint, helmed by Seth Lipsky and Ira Stoll is finally rolling out. They aren't starting with a big bankroll, so every little bit helps. If you live in the NYC area, you can help, too - by subscribing today.
Oh, and welcome aboard, guys. The blogosphere loves new grist for the mill, and we'll be watching.
Interviews with residents inside the camp and international aid workers who were allowed here for the first time today indicated that no evidence has surfaced to support allegations by Palestinian groups and aid organizations of large-scale massacres or executions by Israeli troops. Thus far, about 40 bodies have been recovered, according to the Israeli military and aid groups.
In other words, to the great disappointment of their myriads of claques, the Palestinian propagandists and their fellow travelers are lying again.
As for the rubble, yes, there will be a fair amount. That is what usually happens when a modern military is forced to fight house-to-house against guerillas using the civilian population - and their homes - as shields, mini-fortresses, booby-traps, and bolt-holes.
Editor -- "Humbug" is what I say to BART and its so-called deficit. If it would get rid of some of those people who are rude when you ask them a question, then perhaps the transit agency would not have such a deficit. To think BART would threaten us with shorter and dirtier trains is absolutely appalling! LLOYD E. SCOTT Oakland
BART is public transit, Lloyd E. Scott.
"To call something public is to define it as dirty, insufficient and hazardous. The ultimate paradigm of social spending is the public rest room." --P.J. O'Rourke
The next time you feel the urge to excoriate Israel and the IDF for their "brutal militarism," consider what the world might be like today if Israel had not done this twenty-one years ago. They were roundly condemned by world opinion then, too.
What Sharon has been doing is to give way to Israeli rage. The rage is hot, deserved and purposive. But to proceed on the assumption that water and electricity lines and schools and hospitals are vital organs of terrorist excursions is untenable except on an understanding that General Sharon hasn't articulated. If you say: The poison that animates the suicide bombers is endemic in every stick and stone that make up the West Bank, then it would follow that a destruction of everything and of everybody standing would follow, as an inoculation would serve to chase down the infection in any part of the diseased body. Sharon hasn't ordered his soldiers to mow down every Palestinian standing, but his artillery and air force haven't been discriminating.
I'm not sure what it is about Ariel Sharon that so inflames the usually sound Bill Buckley, but here he is simply hysterical. His thesis - that Sharon is out to destroy Palestine in its entirety - is made ridiculous by the fact that Palestine still stands, and that the death toll among Palestinian civilians is dozens, not hundreds of thousands.
Buckley further embarrasses himself:
There is no way to be entirely discriminating in a military offensive designed to find something that can't be found, namely the fuse box that causes an 18-year-old Palestinian girl to arm herself with a bomb and detonate it in an Israeli mall. There aren't, sitting about, neat paramilitary kiosks with explosives and rosters of willing terrorists.
No, Bill, but anybody with your former connections to CIA should be able to understand that those 18-year old girls don't simply look underneath their kitchen cabinets for Semtex blouses, nor do they check the phone book and the newspaper ads for their targets, nor do they travel to their targets by calling up an Israeli taxi. Each of these bombers has a support team, is trained, armed, and delivered by a fanatic cadre that is itself part of a larger infrastructure. And that infrastructure can be reached, it can be hurt, and its functionality can be disrupted. Else why have there not been dozens of suicide bombings per day in retaliation for the IDF attacks on that infrastructure? Could it be that your contention is simply wrong, and terrorists can be defeated?
What's really disheartening is the one thing that is missing in your senseless diatribe against Sharon - some alternative available to him that wouldn't drive you so obviously batty. (Link courtesy Harrumph! Yeah, Right...).
There's an interesting nugget buried in the middle of this fascinating thumbsucker:
In Europe, the agency mostly abandoned its efforts to recruit Arabs with information about Islamic extremists in the mid-1990s, after Germany and France demanded an end to covert operations on their soil.
Given that several of the 9/11 hijackers were trained in, and financed from, terror cells in Germany, and that the so-called "20th hijacker," Zacarias Moussaoui, was born and raised in France, perhaps the EUniks may share a bit more responsibility for the 9/11 attacks than they'd like to admit - and, wonder of wonders, the CIA a bit less.
Despite Yasser Arafat's denunciation of terrorism ahead of his meeting with Colin Powell, Islamic states at the United Nations Human Rights Commission will today win backing for a resolution that is expected to condone using "all available means, including armed struggle" to achieve Palestinian statehood.
Evidently as far as the United Nations is concerned, the "human" in Human Rights Commission doesn't encompass "Israeli."
Congress' top Democrats complained Monday that three leading cable television networks have been all but ignoring them while giving heavy coverage to the White House. Network officials said their coverage reflects President Bush's commanding role in the battle against terrorism, not political bias.
"Uh, lessee, Frank. Which should we run today? We got Al "The Stiff" Gore raving something about how he's gonna "faaaat fer you," we got Tiny Tom Daschle whimpering about Social Security in 2074, or we got Bush announcing that Big Red One will be landing this evening in Kuwait to take up positions next to the Iraqi border..."
"What? Use my own judgement? Well, I dunno Frank, it's a toughie, isn't it?"
Here is a wonderful example of the kinds of possibilities available when parents, students, and the state are able to loosen the iron chokeholds of teachers's unions and educrats to create innovative partnerships that offer real and promising alternatives to failing public systems.
"All of us in the Harvard community are grateful to Cornel West for his significant contributions to Harvard's academic life, especially the great inspiration he provided to so many students," Summers said in a statement. "We will miss him and I wish him every success at Princeton."
After this statement, paramedics were summoned to minister to President Summers, who inexplicably fell to the floor behind the lectern, stricken by uncontrollable fits of hysterical laughter.
Together, as the sun rose March 27, they awaited word that President Bush had signed into law the most significant rewrite of federal campaign finance rules in 28 years. Then, even as backers exulted over the law's enactment, the attorneys filed separate lawsuits asking the courts to strike it down as unconstitutional. The NRA won the race to be first.
Frank Sorauf, a University of Minnesota professor of political science, says the courts face the task of "balancing two constitutional imperatives" -- protecting the First Amendment and keeping the political system free of the appearance of corruption.
There is no "constitutional imperative" to "keep the system free of the appearance of corruption." Especially not if the statutes purporting to do so are themselves egregious violations of the First Amendment. Look for the sixty day pre-election limit, if not the entire bill, to be struck down by Christmas.
And shame on President Bush for signing it into law in the first place.
BOSTON (AP) Cornel West, the Harvard University professor who recently announced he was leaving for Princeton University, said the colleague who brought him to Harvard to establish a stronghold of African American scholarship is ''leaning toward'' following West to Princeton.
In some quarters this might be considered a revelation. Not the blogosphere, though. The Instantman already told us about it three days ago.
"This suicide operation is also a reprisal for (Arab) governments' refusal to allow their peoples to launch jihad (holy war) against the Jews," said the text carried by the newspaper.
No, this is who the primary target of the attack was. It's a warning, not to the governments for supposedly keeping the Arab street from running wild, but about helping the United States in any way in the war against terror - specifically, the upcoming battle against Iraq. It is also an effort to show that al-Qaeda is still capable of mounting terror operations. Osama bin Laden is not about to let Yasser Arafat, who he despises, gobble up all the headlines with the intifada.
Near Ramallah, Israeli forces arrested Palestinian activist Marwan Barghouti on Monday, the Israel Defense Forces said. Barghouti, considered very close to Arafat, is the secretary-general of Arafat's Fatah movement, and has been accused by Israel of having links to Palestinian militias and the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a military offshoot of Fatah.
For a slightly less "objective" (and considerably more accurate) view of "activist" Barghouti, see TalG in Jerusalem's take on this murderous bozo.
JERUSALEM - As a teen-ager Clara Rosenberger was one of few members of her family to survive Auschwitz. Now, nearly six decades later, a Palestinian suicide bombing has left her paralyzed from the waist down.
The most disgusting thing about the apologists for Palestinian terrorist savagery is that they fail to recognize or acknowledge that a direct line runs from Hitler's Nazi death camps to the Palestinian goals and their murderous human sacrifice campaign.
That warblogging book project that Ken Layne, Matt Welch, and others have been musing on is gathering steam. It has its own blog now. (Link courtesy Tres Producers).
As a born-and-raised Hoosier, and alum of Indiana University, I have to add The Hoosier Review to my list of permalinks. It doesn't hurt that it's really, really good, either. (Link courtesy Midwest Conservative Journal).
TOWNSVILLE, Australia –– An American tourist stung by a jellyfish while snorkeling off Australia's northeast coast has died, his partner said Monday.
King is believed to have developed irukandji syndrome from the sting, causing a rapid rise in blood pressure and a cerebral hemorrhage.
Oddly enough, reading certain Australian newspapers can have a similar effect. (Paul McGeough "was rounded up twice by two APC crews, once by a soldier who jumped menacingly from a truck and demanded that [he] get off the road...") The horror.
European Union (EU) ministers, meeting in Luxembourg, Belgium, said they regretted the Israeli leader had omitted the EU from prospective delegations to a Middle East peace conference.
Sharon wants peace talks without the EU or Arafat
"If Mr Sharon only wants to talk with those who agree with him, he'll soon find himself without interlocutors," said Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Pique.
In your case, EUniks, I don't think Sharon gives a damn. You exhausted your credibility with Israel long ago - about the time the French ambassador to England was sneering at "that shitty little country Israel..."
Editor -- Regarding your editorial, "The limits of loyalty" (April 9): I appreciate that The Chronicle has begun to criticize the Israeli government for ignoring President Bush's request that it call off the bloody offensive in occupied Palestinian territories. But now that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's defiance of the United States has been going on for more than a week, isn't it time to tell President Bush to cut off the more than $2 billion of U.S. funds that supports Israel's military and its ever more brutal occupation? The United States can no longer afford to fund terrorism, whether it is carried out by a state or by private organizations and individuals. Peace will come when Israeli settlements are dismantled, the occupation ended and a dignified Palestinian state established. This is the way to dismantle the true infrastructure of terror. TED LEWIS Human rights director Global Exchange San Francisco
Yes, Ted Lewis, what a wonderful idea! Let's cut aid to Israel. And then, as "Israel's military" grinds to a halt for lack of funds and parts, and the Palestinians dismantle the settlements, end the occupation, and establish a Palestinian state on every square inch of Israeli ground, I'd hope you'd move to this new paradise on earth. Be sure and wear a yellow star-of-David on your arm, so the Arabs will know which side you're on - and what to do with you.
TEL AVIV: Israel officials say U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell is open to an Israeli-proposed regional peace conference. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon proposed the conference in talks late Sunday.
Held under U.S. auspices, the talks would gather leaders from Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and other states, as well as a Palestinian delegation endorsed by Israel, but not Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
The Bush administration is poised to complete the biggest increase in government spending since the 1960s' "Great Society," the result of conducting the war on terrorism while substantially boosting the education and transportation budgets, according to a detailed analysis of government spending patterns. Spending on government programs will increase by 22 percent from 1999 to 2003 in inflation-adjusted dollars, according to the analysis by The Washington Post and vetted by budget experts in both parties.
At what point, then, is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.
Reader David Rothschild writes in to point out that my three month old cite of a Pauline Kael anecdote in which the formidable film critic supposedly said that she was baffled by Ronald Reagan's election (because nobody she knew voted for him) is probably incorrect. In fact, it was more than likely Richard Nixon about whom Kael was speaking.
Mr. Rothschild goes on to say:
One sign of bias is a unwillingness to not check the facts on something that proves your political point. It would nice if you could correct your original post.
Palestinians have insisted that there can be no consideration of a cease-fire as long as the Israeli military offensive continues.
Then there will be no cease fire until the IDF has finished, at which point the Palestinians will have a lot less equipment and a lot fewer gunnies to stand down when the ceasefire does finally arrive.
Juan Gato turns the big iron on the hapless Mary McGrory this morning. The effect is something like using a nuke on a gnat, but it is sure as hell entertaining to watch the destruction.
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