Fox News links to Yon

This is good news all around. Fox News has agreed to link to Michael Yon’s dispatches on their front page – and to not edit him. Read Ernie is Dead.

This week, journalists are all around this area—ABC, Fox, New York Times, Associated Press, The Telegraph, Stars & Stripes (DoD publication) and others, all flagships—but where are the bloggers? Prohibitive costs, very high risks, and an increasingly shrinking market for the work probably contribute to the poor showing. Will the blog-world still maintain the attack on coverage from the mainstream media? Instead of looking for mistakes in some coverage, the common cause might be better served by well-informed bloggers searching all sources for the reports that get it right and driving readers to those.

Ad Baculum Watch

As we all know, consensus, intimidation and physical threats are the key to science.

What’s So Funny?

Benchley said there was no end to which humorless people wouldn’t go to analyze humor. On the other hand, the research can be both funny and illuminating. Muffin jokes and all. (Free subscription required. If you don’t like registering, there’s always bugmenot.)

“It was a small conference attended by some of the most senior researchers in the field,” he recalls. “When they heard me, a lowly graduate student, tell the muffin joke, there was a really uncomfortable silence. You could hear crickets.”

Stereo Eclipse

NASA provides some stunning images from a calibration test for the Stereo A statellite. I didn’t even know about Stereo A and Stereo B. They promise to provide some amazing 3D images of solar flares later on.

Apple, Orwell, Hillary and Obama

An Obama supporter has a very clever mashup.

One Last Chance for Kahleefornia?

Tom McLintock writes of a last-ditch effort to reign in the mess in Sacramento. The radical idea: Ask the voters before raising taxes.

Senate Constitutional Amendment 5, now pending in the Senate, would restore that political balance at its fundamental level: the voter. It would bring back the common dictionary definition of a tax and require that all taxes be approved by voters. By reinstating taxpayers to the decision-making process, voters could judge for themselves whether their money is being spent wisely and whether they wish to entrust government with still more of their earnings.

I hope it works. I don’t know if we can survive much more of Gray Davis On Steroids.

DC Circuit Court Rules on Second Amendment

Make sure you’re sitting down.

To summarize, we conclude that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms. That right existed prior to the formation of the new government under the Constitution and was premised on the private use of arms for activities such as hunting and self-defense, the latter being understood as resistance to either private lawlessness or the depredations of a tyrannical government (or a threat from abroad). In addition, the right to keep and bear arms had the important and salutary civic purpose of helping to preserve the citizen militia. The civic purpose was also a political expedient for the Federalists in the First Congress as it served, in part, to placate their Antifederalist opponents. The individual right facilitated militia service by ensuring that citizens would not be barred from keeping the arms they would need when called forth for militia duty. Despite the importance of the Second Amendment’s civic purpose, however, the activities it protects are not limited to militia service, nor is an individual’s enjoyment of the right contingent upon his or her continued or intermittent enrollment in the militia.

And here’s an argument made better than I’ve heard gun rights advocates make it:

When we look at the Bill of Rights as a whole, the setting of the Second Amendment reinforces its individual nature. The Bill of Rights was almost entirely a declaration of individual rights, and the Second Amendment’s inclusion therein strongly indicates that it, too, was intended to protect personal liberty. The collective right advocates ask us to imagine that the First Congress situated a sui generis states’ right among a catalogue of cherished individual liberties without comment. We believe the canon of construction known as noscitur a sociis applies here. Just as we would read an ambiguous statutory term in light of its context, we should read any supposed ambiguities in the Second Amendment in light of its context. Every other provision of the Bill of Rights, excepting the Tenth, which speaks explicitly about the allocation of governmental power, protects rights enjoyed by citizens in their individual capacity. The Second Amendment would be an inexplicable aberration if it were not read to protect individual rights as well.

The whole decision, in PDF format, here.

Richard Lindzen bleg

I happened to be in the car today when Rush Limbaugh was quoting MIT meteorologist Richard Lindzen as saying that environmentalism has become a religion, complete with superstitious beliefs and requirements for strange rites, like changing lightbulbs and planting a tree for every airplane flight. I’ve tried locating the source for that, and haven’t been able to. Please leave a comment if you know where it is.

Meanwhile, I did find a lot about him which is well worth reading if you can handle anti-alarmist science. He wrote this op-ed in 2006. He’s mentioned in this smackdown of the whole anthropogenic global warming scene, and written about in the Boston Globe. I got close to what I was seeking with this article. If you happen across whatever Rush’s source was, please chime in.

Politics in Iraq

Omar says, “Back to politics!”
There’s a big reshuffle of political alliances going on. Looks like at least some of the fallout will be beneficial.

Speaking of the reshuffle, it looks like about 10 ministers will be changed -mostly of civil services ministries- of which six are run by ministers from the Sadr movement.

The Better Part of Valor

Is wearing a burka.

This Just In

Someone’s trying to repeal the First Law of Thermodynamics.

A very bright coworker wonders if this is a scam, hoax or delusion. I’m coming down on the side of scam. But these days you never know.

Calderon Promises to Keep Mexicans at Home

As reported here, the new Mexican President is showing signs of being much better than Vicente “Clinton” Fox, not that it would be too hard. This is good:

If implemented, his proposals could help transform Mexico from a labor-exporting country with relatively low growth, productivity and wages into an investment-rich, job-producing economy with better living standards for its 107 million people, nearly half of whom still live in poverty.

But this is why I caution that there is no such thing as a conservative in Mexican politics:

Among other things, he has proposed labor, energy and judicial reforms to encourage investment, promote competition and create jobs; improved tax collection to generate more revenue to fight poverty and improve education; universal health care and support for small and medium-size businesses.

Since when has “more [government] revenue” ever fought poverty?

Still, this looks to be quite an improvement. Calderon at least seems to know how to govern. Fox was, just like Clinton, a campaign-only president. He just kept campaigning all through his term. But he’s not as clever or well-read as Clinton.

Because You Can Never Be Too Careful

When in doubt, drive a stake through his heart.

NASA paints Google Earth with near real-time data

This looks cool.

NASA paints Google Earth with near real-time information by ZDNet‘s Garett Rogers — NASA is now providing some interesting KML files that add near real-time overlays to Google Earth. The information they are using comes from MODIS (Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) — some data from this source (updated daily) can be viewed on Google Earth by clicking here. One example of the new data is temperature maps.

Nasty Little Man Watch

You’ll never guess who is sending copies of his vile little book to public libraries.

A Slice of the Summit

One of the speakers writes about how her eyes were opened to the barbarity of Islam. This is how anybody calling herself a feminist should think.

According to the chair of the meeting, Ibn Warraq: “What we need now is an age of enlightenment in the Islamic world. Without critical examination of Islam, it will remain dogmatic, fanatical and intolerant and will continue to stifle thought, human rights, individuality, originality and truth.” The conference issued a declaration calling for such a new “Enlightenment”. The declaration views “Islamophobia” as a false allegation, sees a “noble future for Islam as a personal faith, not a political doctrine” and “demands the release of Islam from its captivity to the ambitions of power-hungry men”.

Now is the time for Western intellectuals who claim to be antiracists and committed to human rights to stand with these dissidents. To do so requires that we adopt a universal standard of human rights and abandon our loyalty to multicultural relativism, which justifies, even romanticises, indigenous Islamist barbarism, totalitarian terrorism and the persecution of women, religious minorities, homosexuals and intellectuals. Our abject refusal to judge between civilisation and barbarism, and between enlightened rationalism and theocratic fundamentalism, endangers and condemns the victims of Islamic tyranny.

Meanwhile, in Baghdad

Omar reports on encouraging signs from Operation Imposing Law.

While many Iraqi families are returning to the homes they once were forced to leave, there are also Baghdadis who are reopening their stores, ending the months they spent out of business because of violence and intimidation. Some streets that were virtually deserted a few months ago are slowly showing signs of returning to life.
The reopening stores even include some liquor shops! There are two stores on one street that I used to shop that closed early last year when their owners received death threats from the insurgents and the militias. Yesterday I walked through that street and, to my amazement, I found both stores open and back in business.

No, I’m not picking a candidate yet, but this does sound a bit like what Juliani did to clean up New York.

Other law enforcement officials are also getting more serious in doing their job. Traffic cops who would normally stop a suspicious vehicle only if it passed by their post are now riding their motorbikes and chasing suspected vehicles down highways and other streets.

This is an indication that Imposing Law does not mean only sending soldiers to kill terrorists. It is reaching out to deal with other aspects of mess and to counter relatively “benign” violations-like breaking the “odd and even” traffic rule, defensive irregular roadblocks and unlicensed kiosks and stalls-by providing protection for the personnel of civilian departments while they do their job.

Cause for Celebration

Michael Ledeen thinks that “moderate Muslims” do exist.

The trick is getting any media to pay attention.

Defections in Iran?

We can only hope.

The mysterious disappearance of an Iranian general in Turkey in early February has led to speculation he either was kidnapped or defected.

Someone over at LGF spotted the story a while back, and notes that now it’s appearing in the MSM.

A Modest Proposal

Here’s a regulatory scheme that’s sheer genius. And it would only cost us about $300 billion.

Feel Safer Yet?

Isn’t it wonderful how pilots are now armed in the cockpit? Oh, wait. Only a few are: The Federal Flight Deck Officers. At least they are armed. Right?

Not always.

Read the linked story. It’s been up since mid February, while the MSM has been broadcasting the story. It’s about a serious probe on the same American Airlines flight Richard Reid tried to blow up. You did know about this from all the news media reports, right?

Oh.

Well, at least we can still have granny frisked at the airport. That ought to help.

Signs of Hope

How about a Secular Islam Summit? One of the speakers is Wafa Sultan herself.

FBI: Criminals ignore gun laws

This keen grasp of the obvious has been buried – until now.

Granted, 40 is not a very big number. But the results are just a tad lopsided:

The existence of the report was first discovered by self defense civil rights activists in January 2007 when it was mentioned in a law enforcement newsletter. According to the December 28, 2006 issue of Force Science News, the FBI research focused on 40 incidents involving assaults or deadly attacks on police officers, in which all but one of the guns involved had been obtained illegally, and none were obtained from gun shows.

Ad Baculum Redux

Michael Crichton is truly a treasure, even if all of his books aren’t that good. If you beleve in the Goracle, you won’t want to read this.

Imagine that there is a new scientific theory that warns of an impending crisis, and points to a way out.

This theory quickly draws support from leading scientists, politicians and celebrities around the world. Research is funded by distinguished philanthropies, and carried out at prestigious universities. The crisis is reported frequently in the media. The science is taught in college and high school classrooms.

I don’t mean global warming. I’m talking about another theory, which rose to prominence a century ago.

You should studiously avoid reading this (PDF file), and this would bother you quite a bit.

And you probably won’t want to watch this, either.

I’m trying to teach my daughter that, no matter what the topic, if someone’s argument sounds like it’s trying to scare her, she should doubt it.

Evil Book Watch

Speaking of giving a good dressing down, Orson Scott Card gives Steve Berry quite the spanking.

Let me tell you about an audiobook that I hated.

I didn’t hate it because it was badly written — it was mediocre in the way that mediocre thrillers usually are, and that means it would ordinarily have been tolerable.

No, the reason I stopped listening to Steve Berry’s The Alexandria Link is that this book is evil.

I don’t mean it’s about evil. I don’t even mean that it is evil-porn, like those horror books whose authors are pervertedly devoted to thinking up cool ways to torture and kill people.

I mean that this book, to the degree that it is read by people ignorant of history (i.e., practically everybody), will move us closer to a future in which our society permits or even approves of the murder of Jews and the destruction of the state of Israel.

Yet another great find on LGF, which is quickly becoming one of the most essential blogs around.

Hooray for our side

In her report from CPAC, Michell Malkin takes Ann Coulter to task.

With a single word, Coulter sullied the hard work of hundreds of CPAC participants and exhibitors and tarred the collective reputation of thousands of CPAC attendees. At a reception for college students held by the Young America’s Foundation, I lambasted the substitution of stupid slurs for persuasion– be it “faggot” from a conservative or “gook” from a liberal–and urged the young people there to conduct themselves at all times with dignity in their ideological battles on and off campus.

I made something else explicitly clear: Not all of us treat the communication of conservative ideals and ideas as 24/7 performance art. You can and should use humor to convey your message. You can enlighten and entertain–without becoming a tired old schtick. You can joke without becoming

Points all well-taken. It’s worth noting that when someone on the Left says something stupid and offensive, the typical reaction is to circle the wagons. Or get them a job blogging for Edwards. When someone on the Right does, the heavy artillery comes from our own camp.

It was stupid of Screamin’ Dean to insist that all the Republican candidates “apologize” for Coulter’s remark, for no other reason than they didn’t make the remark. But the political reality is that they had to say something about it. That was Coulter’s fault. It was even more stupid of her to have made it. Why? She’s smarter than Dean. She also gets held to a higher standard than Dean, because she’s not (supposed to be) a raving lunatic.

Don’t get me wrong: I love a good polemic, especially from a polemicist who looks that hot in a miniskirt. I’ve been a fan of Coulter’s for years.

She should apologize. But not to the Breck Girl, and not to Mr. Yeaaaargh. To us.

Cassini-Huygens

Don’t miss the stunning images and animations sent back by our robot emissary to Saturn.

The wealth of data coming back from this mission must be amazing. Frankly, if all it did were bring back images like these it’d be worth every penny.

Thug Watch

As if desperate to prove how beholden to union interests the Democrats can be, they’re trying to strip workers of their right to anonymous votes. It passed the House, of course. It may get held up in the Senate.

Unremarkable Statistic OTD

Over at Newsbuckit they came up with a way of counting how often the “seven words you can’t say on television” appear in the blogosphere. They then determined that, comparing left-wing and right-wing sites, that…

Oh, I won’t spoil it for you. You’ll probably guess anyway. What you might not guess is the ratio.

Jihad, the Movie

LGF just linked to this little gem of a short film. My comments on it are there in the blog comments. Don’t read the comments (anybody’s) before seeing the movie.