Construction on Pixar’s Phase Two building has reached the pile-driving stage. We’re on loose soil that used to be part of the Bay, so over five hundred giant concrete columns will be driven into the ground. Some are annoyed by the sound.
Others hear music.
It’s trying to keep track of the Justice Departments position on “torture”. Andy McCarthy takes one for the team:
As K-Lo notes, I have an article (posted on the homepage this afternoon) which recounts how the Obama administration is urging the Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals to adopt the same interpretation of federal torture law that it is investigating former Bush administration lawyers for developing. (And why shouldn’t AG Eric Holder rely on the memo written by Jay Bybee and John Yoo in 2002? After all, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals already adopted it as the law of the United States in a ruling last year — as I also recount in the article).
But now there’s more. As Jan Crawford Greenburg reports at her ABC News blog, Legalities, the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility — by playing partisan politics — has blown the critical filing deadline for referring Prof. Yoo for professional sanctions. Don’t get me wrong, this is a very good thing — as I’ve been arguing, there is no legal or ethical basis to pursue this cockamamie investigation. But this is an episode that should be studied given all the blather about how it was Republicans who politicized the Justice Department.
Ten people are alive today because the right guy had a gun.
Bailey said he thought it was the end of his life and the lives of the 10 people inside his apartment for a birthday party after two masked men with guns burst in through a patio door.
“They just came in and separated the men from the women and said, ‘Give me your wallets and cell phones,’” said George Williams of the College Park Police Department.
Bailey said the gunmen started counting bullets. “The other guy asked how many (bullets) he had. He said he had enough,” said Bailey.
That’s when one student grabbed a gun out of a backpack and shot at the invader who was watching the men. The gunman ran out of the apartment.
The student then ran to the room where the second gunman, identified by police as 23-year-old Calvin Lavant, was holding the women.
“Apparently the guy was getting ready to rape his girlfriend. So he told the girls to get down and he started shooting. The guy jumped out of the window,” said Bailey.
I’ll update and bump this post if I find anything that changes my mind, but I’m inclined to agree with the RLCC that the best course is to vote no on everything.
The sample ballot for the special election showed up the other day, and some of them “sound good” in the brief description, but I’m easily convinced that they are wolves in sheep’s clothing.
Update:
Funny how the commercials from the Howard Jarvis group used exactly that metaphor. As is often the case, all you need do is listen to who it is sponsoring the ad to know how to vote. The pro side is the teachers union. The con side is Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association. And there’s nothing in the voter info pamphlet to convince me otherwise, so it’s final: Vote no on all of it.
One More Update, and bumped:
Tom McClintock has posted his recommendations, wherein he makes a tepid case for voting yes on 1D and 1E. I, frankly, don’t see it. But look at his arguments.
Polling Update:
This is good news.
The Sensuous Curmudgeon has posted a thoughtful letter with which I largely agree. It’s worth reading the whole thing, but here’s an excerpt:
My fellow Republicans:
As our party is going though a much-needed period of introspection, please consider that there was a time when this party stood for the Constitution, the rule of law, national defense, free enterprise, limited government, low taxes, balanced budgets, and individual rights. We still honor those principles; but those who now govern have no concern for or even understanding of such matters.
While the other party has been winning elections and undermining everything we have traditionally valued, what issues dominate our political discourse? Our party has been talking about sex and religion.
When we say “sex,” we mean topics like abstinence, promiscuity, homosexuality, pre-marital relations, contraception, sodomy, nudity, pornography, masturbation, same-sex marriage, sex education, abortion, and morning-after pills. Does that list sound familiar? It should, because those are the issues that too often dominate your campaigns.
Except for late-term abortion, where the other party has an extreme position that could be exploited (except that it’s lost in a sea of other sex-related issues), there is absolutely no reason to discuss such matters as part of our party’s policies. The Constitution doesn’t give the federal government any authority over those issues. If they need to be addressed, it should be done only at the state level.
When we speak of religion, we mostly mean the current movement to insert religious doctrines into public school science classes, especially creationism and its love-child, intelligent design. It seems to us that this is a latter-day substitute for prayer in public schools, which is essentially a dead issue these days, but still a hot-button item. There are other religious issues, like objections to certain areas of biological research.
I think, parenthetically, that the case can be made that same-sex marriage is not a “sex” issue. But her larger point is very well taken. If the Republicans’ lunatic fringe creationist, bible-thumpers take over the party will be marginalized. It’s time to focus on what the real core values of conservatism are: “the Constitution, the rule of law, national defense, free enterprise, limited government, low taxes, balanced budgets, and individual rights.”
I suspect that those who like their so-called social conservative issues would be more comfortable in a country governed by those principles than the country we’re heading for.
Update:
Here’s a prime example of what I’m talking about. Note how when Ol’ Tingle Leg asks Pence a direct question about evolution, he squirms and evades and absolutely refuses to answer the question. Now he may be smart and honest enough to recognize evolution as the fact that it is, but he’s obviously pandering to the lunatic fringe of his party. This kind of embarassing performance is no way to govern, and no way to win elections.
NB: Matthews in no way “destroys” Pence. Pence does that to himself.
Another Update:
But let’s not listen to Colin Powell either, OK?
The party must realize that the country has changed, he said. “Americans do want to pay taxes for services,” he said. “Americans are looking for more government in their life, not less.”
Malcolm Gladwell on how David beats Goliath.
David’s victory over Goliath, in the Biblical account, is held to be an anomaly. It was not. Davids win all the time. The political scientist Ivan Arreguín-Toft recently looked at every war fought in the past two hundred years between strong and weak combatants. The Goliaths, he found, won in 71.5 per cent of the cases. That is a remarkable fact. Arreguín-Toft was analyzing conflicts in which one side was at least ten times as powerful—in terms of armed might and population—as its opponent, and even in those lopsided contests the underdog won almost a third of the time.
In the Biblical story of David and Goliath, David initially put on a coat of mail and a brass helmet and girded himself with a sword: he prepared to wage a conventional battle of swords against Goliath. But then he stopped. “I cannot walk in these, for I am unused to it,” he said (in Robert Alter’s translation), and picked up those five smooth stones. What happened, Arreguín-Toft wondered, when the underdogs likewise acknowledged their weakness and chose an unconventional strategy? He went back and re-analyzed his data. In those cases, David’s winning percentage went from 28.5 to 63.6. When underdogs choose not to play by Goliath’s rules, they win, Arreguín-Toft concluded, “even when everything we think we know about power says they shouldn’t.”
Update:
Well, the New Yorker’s fact-checking continues to be first rate. Turns out that, while parts of the article have merit the basketball part is pretty weak. I’ll bow out of that debate; I have no dog in that hunt. I don’t watch, much less play, basketball.
Kudos to CPAC for letting Jonathan Krohn speak, but why was he limited to two minutes? He makes more sense than anybody else who spoke there.
Joe the Plumber, you played a good role during the election, that of showing what thugs Barry and his media cronies were. It was illustrative to see how badly The One handled a decent, honest question from a Regular Guy.
You even gave being a war correspondent the old college try, and did better at it than most “professional” journalists.
Thanks for your service, Joe. Now it’s time to go back home and resume your normal life. Because interviews like this make you look like an incoherent fool and will not, repeat not, help get any good people elected. This is the sort of thing that will haunt you if God ever “tells you” to run for office.
Krauthammer has it exactly right.
But once the law is passed, the only job a judge has is to interpret the law without consideration of a person’s standing in life. Otherwise you could never have, say, a bank foreclosing on a home, because who, after all, is more affected, a bank that might lose a few dollars, or a family that’s going to lose its home and future livelihood, et cetera?
The whole idea blinds a justice and the statutes that we have outside our courthouses of a blindfold over justice is that you do not look at a person’s station in life, their needs in life, requirements in life. It’s entirely about the law.
And for Obama to state the exact opposite openly as a way that will guide him in his appointments is quite radical.
I could see this coming before the election, and I know I’m not the only one.
Once again, President “57 States” has to be glad that his last name isn’t Bush.
(Apologists will point out that May is the fifth month, and the months in Japanese are just numbers, so He was actually just being Pacific Rim Hip.)
Update:
At this blog, at least, I will be poking fun and laughing at this eminently risible president as often and as loudly as I feel like. And trust me, his race(s) have nothing to do with it, no matter how much He or His sycophants want to play that card.
I mean, He is funny in ways that Bush never really was. And Biden? Where does one even start?
Remember this face when the chatterers in Washington go on about “Single Payer Health Care”, aka socialized medicine. It probably won’t survive long.
have attacked Iraq.
Details on the airstrikes remain sketchy. Voice of America says the attacks were carried out by helicopters, which remained in Iranian airspace. Al-Arabiyah television, on the other hand, says it was “Iranian planes [that] raided those villages.”
It is a serious development because the Iraqi airspace is under the control of the US Air Force and under US protection. So the raids are either approved by the United States, as was the case when a US nod was previously given to the Turkish Army, or such operation was a surprise by the Iranians.
Important event at the White House. In-depth coverage vital to every American.
But the AP needs to dig deeper. Missing from this report: The flowers that spontaneously bloomed beneath Their feet. The ethereal faerie music. The ponies and unicorns at play. The kittens.
Where are the frollicking fuzzy little kittens, dammit!
Be very afraid.
As the insurgency of the Taliban and Al Qaeda spreads in Pakistan, senior American officials say they are increasingly concerned about new vulnerabilities for Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, including the potential for militants to snatch a weapon in transport or to insert sympathizers into laboratories or fuel-production facilities.
The officials emphasized that there was no reason to believe that the arsenal, most of which is south of the capital, Islamabad, faced an imminent threat. President Obama said last week that he remained confident that keeping the country’s nuclear infrastructure secure was the top priority of Pakistan’s armed forces.
But the United States does not know where all of Pakistan’s nuclear sites are located, and its concerns have intensified in the last two weeks since the Taliban entered Buner, a district 60 miles from the capital. The spread of the insurgency has left American officials less willing to accept blanket assurances from Pakistan that the weapons are safe.
Claims that Pakistan is not an Islamic country are of little comfort.
This report by Bill Whittle is required viewing.
This could be the best political news of the decade, if someone will sieze the opportunity.
It’s worth saying again: If the twittish, PC L.A.Times is now going after the teachers’ unions, those unions have lost the PR battle in the mainstream press. Does President Obama (“We can afford nothing but the best when it comes to our children’s teachers”) know this? Do the Republicans who are desperately looking for an issue to use against the Dems?
Bear in mind that the teachers’ unions are not a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Democrat Party – it’s the other way around. The national union alone has more paid political operatives than both major parties combined. The damage to this country that is done by other unions, like in the automobile industry, pales compared to the damage done by the teachers’ unions.
Wolfram is the Real Deal and, in spite of the typically breathless tone of this news article, Wolfram Alpha is very exciting indeed. I can hardly wait to play with it.Wolfram Alpha will not only give a straight answer to questions such as “how high is Mount Everest?”, but it will also produce a neat page of related information – all properly sourced – such as geographical location and nearby towns, and other mountains, complete with graphs and charts.
The real innovation, however, is in its ability to work things out “on the fly”, according to its British inventor, Dr Stephen Wolfram. If you ask it to compare the height of Mount Everest to the length of the Golden Gate Bridge, it will tell you. Or ask what the weather was like in London on the day John F Kennedy was assassinated, it will cross-check and provide the answer. Ask it about D sharp major, it will play the scale. Type in “10 flips for four heads” and it will guess that you need to know the probability of coin-tossing. If you want to know when the next solar eclipse over Chicago is, or the exact current location of the International Space Station, it can work it out.
Don’t say “the sky is falling”, just say “there are atmospheric disturbances.”
Doesn’t matter what you call it, as long as you get your way.
The intriguing story of how “The Wedge” was outed by a guy in a copy room. And how a tiny think tank in Seattle has tried to pollute science education in the entire country – with a few backfires along the way.
All that was asked now was that students be apprised that there was a controversy.
That was apparently all that was in question when, in late 2004, a district school board in a small suburb of York, Pa., voted 6-3 that high-school students “will be made aware of gaps/problems in Darwin’s theory and of other theories of evolution including, but not limited to, intelligent design.” A month later, the board mandated that starting in January 2005, ninth-grade biology teachers would be required to read to their students a four-paragraph statement encouraging students to look into alternatives to Darwin and suggesting Of Pandas and People (available in the school library) as a good place to start.
Even though the new policy did not include active teaching of intelligent-design theory, Discovery Institute fellows issued a warning that the policy went too far and might, in fact, damage the cause rather than further it. Little did they know how damaging it would be. On Dec. 14, 2004, a district parent opposed to the new policy filed suit in federal court to block it. Tammy J. Kitzmiller and 11 other parents were represented in their suit against the Dover Area School District by 13 lawyers from the ACLU, the Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and the National Center for Science Education. Against this legal lineup, the constitutional-law equivalent of the Pittsburgh Steelers offensive line, were the Dover board’s defenders, fielded by the conservative Thomas More Law Center of Ann Arbor, Mich.
Considering that the Center for Science and Culture had publicly opposed making the situation in Dover a test case, it seems curious that two of the Discovery Institute’s most prominent fellows signed on to testify at the trial as expert witnesses: Lehigh University biochemist Michael J. Behe and University of Idaho microbiologist Scott Minnich. But testify they did, and it was their testimony, more than that of many experts fielded by the plaintiffs, that left the scientific credentials of intelligent design in tatters.
“Nice life you have there, Chrysler executive. It would be a shame if something bad were to happen to it.”
That our empty-suit President is rather a thug comes as no surprise. Does anybody really think someone can rocket to the top of Chicago politics and retain a halo?
I hate to say it, but I told you so.
Update:
Remember, this Chicago thug is also a student of Alinsky.
And how it, with the help of the ACLU, will probably get more US forces killed.
Outside the puzzle palace, I’m told that commands are girding for any upswing in violence should additional images come out. They completely understand what is likely to be the 2d and 3d order effects and are properly preparing. Our troops are not stupid. They’ll be ready.
I thought Miss California didn’t do such a great job at answering the gay marriage question, but then the bar is kind of low in an event that requires bikinis and high heels. Her answer was, at least, civil.
And the breast implants? Who cares? She’s competing in a bikini and high heels. Like we expect Berkeley “earth mother” types with hairy armpits and floppy boobs to show up there? (Their answers would be even dumber, I hazard.)
But look at these two boobs:
Yes, I realized that by posting that video on this blog, which occasionally has more than 80 readers per day, I have doubled Keith Olbermann’s audience.
Sue me.
Watch his face squirm before he answers the first question in the first video on this page.
Even the Newt Gingrich video is worth watching.
