Robots at War

Blackfive posts images of EOD using a robot to destroy an IED. The robot gives his all, thus making EOD people thankful for robots.

Democrats Admit “Gun Control” is a Losing Issue

USA Today reports that someone wised up.

“When we as Democrats are trying to reach out and speak to voters in the center of the country, I don’t think that we can support gun control,” he explains. After seeing Democrats hammered at the polls for voting to regulate guns, many of his colleagues seem to agree. As a result, a number of pro-gun measures moving through Congress will most likely face little opposition, as advocates of gun control increasingly find themselves marginalized and ignored.

Well, a little. Some people are slow learners.

Gun-control proponents should avoid efforts like the assault weapons ban that were more effective at agitating gun owners than at preventing gun violence, says Daniel Webster of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research. He recommends targeting unscrupulous dealers, and points to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who leads a coalition of over 50 mayors backing a crackdown on illegal gun sales. For backers of gun control, perhaps that’s a start.

Anything Nurse Bloomberg suggests is sure to be a bad idea.

It Was a Dark and Stormy Night

It’s that time of year again. This year’s Bulwer-Lytton winner has been announced:

Detective Bart Lasiter was in his office studying the light from his one small window falling on his super burrito when the door swung open to reveal a woman whose body said you’ve had your last burrito for a while, whose face said angels did exist, and whose eyes said she could make you dig your own grave and lick the shovel clean.

Emergency Over, Saith the Court

Charles Krauthammer on the Supreme Court’s arrogant power grab in Hamdan:

The court’s wanton overriding of Congress and the president is another in a long string of breathtaking acts of judicial arrogance. But it is fixable. The Republican leadership of the Senate responded to the court’s highhandedness by immediately embarking on writing legislation to establish military tribunals.

The unfixable part of the Hamdan ruling, however, is the court’s reading of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. The Geneva Conventions, which were designed to protect civilian populations and those combatants who respect them, were never intended to apply to unlawful combatants, terrorists of the al-Qaeda kind. The court tortures the reading of Common Article 3 to confer upon Hamdan — and by extension the man for whom he rode shotgun, bin Laden — the kind of elaborate legal protections that one expects from “civilized peoples.”

Old Myths Die Hard

Today’s entry in the “everything you know is wrong” category is a paper which debunks the myth that the Gulf Stream is what keeps Europe warm.

Like many other myths, this one rests on a strand of truth. The Gulf Stream carries with it considerable heat when it flows out from the Gulf of Mexico and then north along the East Coast before departing U.S. waters at Cape Hatteras and heading northeast toward Europe. All along the way, it warms the overlying atmosphere. In the seas between Norway and Newfoundland, the current has lost so much of its heat, and the water has become so salty (through evaporation), that it is dense enough to sink. The return flow occurs at the bottom of the North Atlantic, also along the eastern flank of North America. This overturning is frequently referred to as the North Atlantic thermohaline circulation, or simply the “Atlantic conveyor.” It is part of the global pattern of ocean circulation, which is driven by winds and the exchange of heat and water vapor at the sea surface.

The Gulf Stream indeed contributes to Europe’s warmth, but it is wrong to conflate the climate difference across the North Atlantic with the northward flow of warm water in the Gulf Stream. This erroneous logic leads to such statements as (from The Times of London): “The British Isles lie on the same latitude as Labrador on the East Coast of Canada, and are protected from a similarly icy climate by the Atlantic conveyor belt.” Such claims are absolutely wrong.

The interesting part is that it turns out England owes its mild climate mostly to a prominent feature of American geography.

Islam: The Roach Motel of Religions

You’re allowed in. But you’re not allowed out. At least according to this letter from the Dark Ages

Islam is being embraced by people of other faiths all the time. They should know they can embrace Islam, but cannot get out. This rule is not made by Muslims; it is the supreme law of God.

A missive from the Middle East? Nope.

East Lansing, Michigan.

Meanwhile, over in the real Middle East, kiddies who are too young to be tempted by 72 raisins are lured to kiddie paradise by a music video.

Now tell me Islam isn’t sick.

If the fire is not completely out, it is completely burning

Michael Yon checks in with There be dragons, an update of Afghanistan in the news.

Iraq is not a quagmire and might be a good ally some day, but Afghanistan is a stone-aged disaster.

It’s worth reading the whole thing, even though it’s a long post, just for the analysis of the British press, if nothing else.

Pot declines linkage to Kettle

In the wierd world of the MSM this perhaps passes for “integrity”. Seems to me more a case of “I’m not as bad as that guy, even though I probably would have done the same thing.”

Steiger said he was approached to be part of the Op-Ed last week, but declined to say who made the request or exactly when. “I don’t want to go into details,” he said. “We talked about it and I decided it did not work. I considered it and I decided not to go in because our position was different from theirs.”

Iraqis taking care of business

Add to the list of things that should be bigger news this item from Iraq The Model: The folks in Samarra have put a bounty on the mastermind of the Golden Dome bombing.

The 100 million dinars (~ $ 68 000) is not a lot of money compared to the multi-million rewards offered by governments for similar hunts but when it comes from a single tribe (or even a bunch of them) it reflects the seriousness of these people in what they’re saying and doing.

Supreme Folly

This is a few days old, but make sure you don’t miss it. Mark Steyn scores a bullseye.

The U.S. Supreme Court has now blown a hole in the animating principle behind the Geneva Conventions by choosing to elevate an enemy that disdains the laws of war in order to facilitate the bombing of civilian targets and the beheading of individuals. The argument made by Justice John Paul Stevens is an Alice-In-Jihadland ruling that stands the Conventions on their head in order to give words the precise opposite of their plain meaning and intent. The same kind of inspired jurisprudence conjuring trick that detected in the emanations of the penumbra how the Framers of the U..S Constitution cannily anticipated a need for partial-birth abortion and gay marriage has now effectively found a right to jihad — or, if you’re a female suicide bomber about to board an Israeli bus, a woman’s right to Jews.

What did al Zarqawi have in common with Paris Hilton?

Hint: it has to do with cell phones.

Not sure I believe everything in that article.

Meanwhile, al-Zarqawi’s wife told an Italian newspaper that al Qaeda leaders sold him out to the United States in exchange for a promise to let up in the search for Osama bin Laden.

Riiiiight.

They already knew the colonists were fed up

Powerline lets us know what would have happened had the NYT been around for the revolution.

Why isn’t this bigger news?

A quick scan of Iraq The Model shows that not only is Operation Forward Together having success (attacks down 19%), but first seven and now ten “militant groups” have accepted Prime Minister Maliki’s offer of amnesty. (Which is not, BTW, extended to killers). Maliki stated clearly

The amnesty doesn’t include those who have killed Iraqis or even coalition forces because those soldiers came to Iraq under international agreements to help Iraq

And the Samarra bombers have been arrested.

The title of this post is, of course, a rhetorical question.

Why We Watch Algore

John Stossel has finally identified why all the fascination with Algore’s doom and gloom.

“They are much more skeptical, but the alarmists always get the news. I`ve covered this over the years. Killer bees were going to get us, SARS, anthrax, mad cow disease, saccharin, Nutrasweet, scares one after the other. Cell phones are going to give you brain cancer. Everyone was convinced about that. We just like to be scared. It`s why we go to horror movies and now we believe Al Gore and global warming.”

The outrage of Hamdan

Mark Levin lays into the activists Supremes for their usurpation of presidential power.

Little else need be said.

Swiftboating Murtha

The unindicted co-conspirator has a Navy SEAL on his case at murthalied.com.

Hat tip, Blackfive.

Take the test

Here’s a citizenship test. I scored 95%, missing only the question about INS forms. Which gripes me, because my wife went through that process.

See how you do. And no peeking at the constitution!

Stopping the Leaks

Andrew McCarthy is way out front on all of this stuff. He has now squelched any desire I had to prosecute newspapers like the New York Times.

But, as he points out, reporters are another matter.

He’s right on the big point: The goal must be to stop the leaks.

Jail’s Too Good for ‘Em

Indications are, over on Michelle Malkin’s blog, that I’m not the only person wondering why the traitors at the NYT and LAT aren’t under arrest, along with every traitor in the CIA and State Department (and wherever else) who sourced the leaks.

As one correspondent writes, “If this isn’t treason, what is?”

And wait till you see the names of people on the Left who urged the Times to spike the story. Hint: One of them rhymes with Bertha.

Breathaking arrogance

Let’s see if the enemy camp at the Times deigns publish this letter to the editor from John Snow.

You have defended your decision to compromise this program by asserting that “terror financiers know” our methods for tracking their funds and have already moved to other methods to send money. The fact that your editors believe themselves to be qualified to assess how terrorists are moving money betrays a breathtaking arrogance and a deep misunderstanding of this program and how it works. While terrorists are relying more heavily than before on cumbersome methods to move money, such as cash couriers, we have continued to see them using the formal financial system, which has made this particular program incredibly valuable.

How About A Nice, Big Glass Of…

Michelle Malkin has some great blabbermouth posters up on her site. And my favorite is in this batch.

They’re just more important than you are

Andy McCarthy blows the fog away from the NYT’s position and makes it clear why they choose treason.

The Times prattles on about what it claims is a dearth of checks and balances, but what are the checks and balances on Bill Keller? Can it be that our security hinges on whether the editor of an antiwar, for-profit journal thinks some defense measure might be interesting?

I know that this blog is only read by a handful. So far, at least. And yet I hope that nobody reading Buttle’s World is giving a penny of subscription money to the New York Times or the Los Angelese Times.

We have to draw the line somewhere.

And tell a friend.

UPDATE:

The Editors at NRO have a good idea of what else to do to the Times: Yank their White House press pass.

Name Space

And now, as they say, for something completely different. If you have a surname which might have been common in England, take a look at the Surname Profiler.

The War Against The War

Andy McCarthy correctly identifies the enemy today on NRO.

For the second time in seven months, the Times has exposed classified information about a program aimed at protecting the American people against a repeat of the September 11 attacks. On this occasion, it has company in the effort: The Los Angeles Times runs a similar, sensational story. Together, the newspapers disclose the fact that the United States has covertly developed a capability to monitor the nerve center of the international financial network in order to track the movement of funds between terrorists and their facilitators.

Has the treasonous MSM gone too far? By any rational measure, yes. Long ago. But will this finally create a backlash against today’s Fifth Column? Michelle Malkin certainly hopes so, and if the reactions of her readers are an indication the answer could be yes.

Don’t miss Michael Ledeen’s take on it, and Tony Snow telling Hellen Thomas to shut up either.

Two views of death

VDH sums it up nicely, as usual.

For Westerners, death ruins the precious good life; for the topsy-turvy Islamists, death salvages the bad life.

Then he asks some good questions. As usual.

How do you arrange a marriage, insist on a beheading for adultery, conduct a proper honor killing of your daughter, or calmly call Jews “pigs and apes” when the wider Westernizing world broadcast into your living room, car, and workplace thinks you are some groveling zombie? Can an Airbus or Compaq be constructed according to the principles of Sharia? How can you demand amoxicillin as your birthright, but hate the system of free thinking and rationalism that created it? Does the Islamist despise equally Chinese internet pornography; does he issue fatwas against South Korean video games; does he ostracize Latin American evangelical Protestants, or burn down Bollywood? In the short-term maybe; in the long-term it is not so easy.

And we’ll take our rifle back, thank you very much

BlackFive writes about the very satisfying recovery of a Marine sniper rifle from the “insurgents” (sic) who stole it two years ago from the 4-man sniper team they killed. Read Part I and Part II.

A true shot through the window killed an insurgent sniper. A Marine sniper from 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment shot him through the window at a distance near Habbaniyah, Iraq June 16. Sgt. Kevin Homestead, a 26-year-old squad leader for K Company, was spotting for the sniper section leader when he noticed the insurgent was videotaping a convoy with a scoped rifle by his side. Only after killing the shooter and the driver who was spotting, did they discover the M-40A1. The rifle was lost when it was taken from four Marines assigned to 2nd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment after they were killed nearly two years before in Ramadi.

Yes, we’re better than they are

A nice one-two punch for anybody who might fall for "moral equivalency" from Andy McCarthy and James Robbins.

It's not popular to recognize that there may be good guys and bad guys in a war. In this war there are.

Score one for the whirlybirds

ABC news has confirmed that Mansur Suleiman al-Mashhadani was killed on Friday by US forces in Yusifiyah, south of Baghdad.

Describing his killing, General Caldwell says US troops had attempted to stop the vehicle in which Sheikh Mansur was travelling with two others.

He says when they kept driving they decided to fire at them from a helicopter that had been backing up soldiers on the ground.

General Caldwell says coalition forces were "following and tracking him for sometime as the intent was to capture him".

"When that proved something that was not able to be achieved by forces involved in that operation, they went ahead and used air assets to engage and destroy that vehicle," he said.

I gather from that description that we're not talking about a polite shot to the engine block by a sharpshooter with a Barret .50.

The Forgotten Founder

Ever heard of John Witherspoon? I’m ashamed to say I hadn’t until I read this fascinating piece on the New Criterion site. He was certainly a key part of early American history, not least for being James Madison’s mentor. Just goes to show how having the wrong building burn down can plunge one into obscurity.

I like this bit of advice, certainly heeded by Madison:

“Ne’er do ye speak unless ye ha’ something to say, and when ye are done, be sure and leave off.”

Another One Bites The Dust

Captain’s Quarters has followups on CENTCOM’s announcement.Check the link for updates. Last I saw, it appears that not only is this high-value target dead, but we also have another in custody.

Hoo-ah.

UPDATE

Michael Ledeen has more.

Coalition forces in Iraq killed 15 terrorists and detained six other suspects and a senior terrorist leader during raids yesterday and today near Baqubah, military officials reported today.

He suspects it’ll get little MSM play, due to this closing paragraph:

Several women and children were present at the raid sites, officials said. None was harmed, and all were returned to their homes once the troops ensured the area was secure, they added.