Duck Season

Another film better than Gigli.

Jennifer Lopez on Ben Affleck: "Ben is unbelievably creative, funny, sexy and so smart he could become president if he had enough ambition for it."

Traficant, Affleck, ???

First, Jerry Springer runs for Senate in Ohio.

Next, Larry Flynt runs for governor in California.

Now, James Traficant might run for president.

"[I]t stinks."

"[T]his is just pathetic."

I guess Kevin Drum isn't exactly impressed with Howard Dean's speech to the Council of Foreign Relations:

A few pro forma words about being responsible and working with our allies, and that's it? Followed by a quick jump to homeland security?

What does he think about military transformation? Relations with Saudi Arabia? The neocon domino theory? Reform of the CIA? Etc. etc.

Fairly or not, Dean more than anyone has to prove that he's not just a squishy peacenik who doesn't really know anything about national security issues. And while I realize that campaign speeches aren't white papers, this was a major address to a serious audience, so I assume he put a good deal of thought into it and consulted with foreign policy experts in its preparation. If he had any major proposals for actively fighting terrorism he would have mentioned them, but I don't see much there, and I don't see any sound bites that he could extract from this speech either.

This kind of thing might sound good on the blogosphere, but if Dean wins the nomination he's going to get pummeled on this stuff starting next summer — and BushCo's phasers are going to be set firmly on obliterate. He'd better have a bit more to say than this, or else we'll be scraping him off the floor come November.

I'd be more inclined to read it if Oakland can win a playoff series for once. Right now I'm reading Christopher Hitchen's Why Orwell Matters and just started playing Xenosaga, an RPG that supposedly have cut scenes that run for longer than an hour.

From Joe Lieberman's website:

Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.) criticized President Bush and fellow Democrats over Iraq yesterday, arguing that the president's postwar policies threaten to erode public support for a just war and that the postures of some of his rivals in the presidential race threaten to brand their party as soft on terrorism.

Lieberman issued a broad indictment against the president. Bush failed, he said, to have U.S. units ready to locate weapons of mass destruction when the major fighting ended and should have built international support to secure the peace. He also said Bush overstated the case against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in the State of the Union address in January by claiming Iraq had tried to buy uranium in Africa.

But Lieberman, a staunch supporter of the war, charged that members of his own party, either through their opposition to the war or their ambivalence about whether it was justified, failed to live up to the Democratic Party's traditional muscular internationalism.

"By its actions, the Bush administration threatens to give a bad name to a just war," Lieberman said in remarks delivered in the Senate Press Gallery. "But by their words, some in my party are sending out a message that they don't know a just war when they see it, and, more broadly, they're not prepared to use our military strength to protect our security and the cause of freedom."

Gregg Easterbrook has a simply scandalous idea, why not make States earn what they spend?

"I'm the only candidate in this race who has ever balanced a budget," Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis memorably claimed during the 1988 presidential contest. In the current primaries, former Vermont Governor Howard Dean has bragged, "I'm the only candidate in this race who has ever balanced a budget." In truth, neither Dukakis nor Dean ever came remotely close to balancing a budget, at least in the sense of raising as much money as he spent. The Massachusetts and Vermont ledgers, like all state budgets, were in the black only because of federal aid. In fiscal 2001, 21 percent of state revenue came as federal grants for education, transportation, Medicaid, and a range of other programs. Were it not for such donations from the U.S. Treasury, all states would run perennial deficits.

Read more in the latest issue of The New Republic.

Jayston Stark wrote an entertaining and informative column the other day breaking down the Winners and Losers after the Major League Baseball trading deadline passed. The biggest winner was, of course, the Boston Red Sox.

The BoSox traded for the four best pitchers available during the MLB season, and if the sports talk on their flagship radio station is to be believed, the Red Sox may have finally closed their talent gap with the Yankees. Jayson's sources tell him that "if you stack up the Red Sox against the Yankees right this second," said one AL scout, "Boston is the better team. But how it plays out, we'll see. Hey, they're still the Red Sox."

But he's probably a Yankees fan, isn't he Pete?

The best line of the column comes in the section dedicated to the Oakland Athletics:

They almost traded for Reggie Sanders and Juan Gonzalez. They made a run at J.D. Drew. But in the end, the A's traded two pitchers they'd soured on (Aaron Harang and Joe Valentine) for the hottest bat out there, Jose Guillen, even though it's clear, from his microscopic career walk totals, that Guillen never read "Moneyball."

If you're a baseball fan who cares about the business of baseball then Moneyball is a *must* read.

Q. Who's the only late night talk show host to have worked with the World's Greatest Heroes?

A. David Letterman of course, in Avengers Volume 1 #239.

From his website, the:

Top Ten Signs Your Neighbor Is Harboring Saddam Hussein

10. A lot of "Sorry about the deaths of your monstrous, sadistic sons" bouquets being delivered

9. His garage door used to be white; now it's white with a giant mural of Saddam Hussein

8. Mailman mistakenly puts "Deposed Dictator Monthly" in your box

7. He asks, "When are we having the Baath party -- I mean, the block party?"

6. You hear his television blaring "Queer Eye for the Fallen Dictator Guy"

5. The hourly deliveries of hummus

4. The Kurdish family across the street have really been on edge lately

3. He's in the yard chopping wood to build a beret rack

2. His last houseguest: Haitian dictator "Baby Doc" Duvalier

1. Floating in his swimming pool: an inflatable goat

Also not to be missed is the Top Ten Reasons Arnold Schwarzenegger Is Not Running For Governor of California.

Cool: band with a blog

Uncool: band with a blog not updated for 42 days

Maybe they got SARS at the SARS benefit concert.

And speaking of a blog with nothing to say...

Mr. Daschle, meet Mr. Bandwidth.

Okay I'm done now.

That'd be assuming he was ever on my draft board (not to say he wasn't). [How's that for a complete lack of information. You should be writing for Howard Dean's blog--ed.]

Having decided that I should check out some of the blogs Hei Lun has linked us with, I found this wonderful piece by Eve Tushnet discussing comics, philosophy and art. The gist would be "if you're cool with Raskolnikov you can't object to Charles Xavier on realist grounds."

Read more.

Since I can't give Eve anything but a glowing praise on her writing, i'm gonna give her a shout out. Eve baby, if you're loving those comics you *need* to read Black Panther. The series just ended two weeks ago, but the first 50 issues are absolute GOLD, while the last dozen weren't half bad.

The New Republic on the classified portion of the 9-11 report:

... an official who has read the report tells The New Republic that the support described in the report goes well beyond that: It involves connections between the hijacking plot and the very top levels of the Saudi royal family. "There's a lot more in the 28 pages than money. Everyone's chasing the charities," says this official. "They should be chasing direct links to high levels of the Saudi government. We're not talking about rogue elements. We're talking about a coordinated network that reaches right from the hijackers to multiple places in the Saudi government."

***

The official who read the 28 pages tells The New Republic, "If the people in the administration trying to link Iraq to Al Qaeda had one-one-thousandth of the stuff that the 28 pages has linking a foreign government to Al Qaeda, they would have been in good shape." He adds: "If the 28 pages were to be made public, I have no question that the entire relationship with Saudi Arabia would change overnight."

So does this mean Emmitt Smith is off your draft board?

If you agree with Panetta's argument (Panetta's been mentioned as a potential candidate in California, incidentally) that safe seats are bad, wouldn't the logical position be to support the Texas Republicans' redistricting plan? Their plan, as I remember, is to eliminate safe seats which would put some seats at risk but give the Republicans a chance to increase their majority.

no class

Howard Dean won't release his gubernatorial records:

"Well, there are future political considerations," [Dean] said at a news conference. "We didn't want anything embarrassing appearing in the papers at a critical time in any future endeavor."

A.O. Scott, reviewing Gigli in the New York Times:

[Jennifer Lopez's character] threatens the apparent ringleader with a baroque martial-arts torture, which involves gouging out the eyes and also removing that part of the brain that stores visual information, so that the victim will not only be blind, but will also lose all memory of what he has seen. Having seen "Gigli," I must say that the idea has a certain appeal.

This spoof is probaby a better film.

Good news on the search for WMD, courtesy of The Daily Telegraph:

The United States has found evidence of an active programme to make weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, including "truly amazing" testimony from Iraqis ordered to dupe United Nations inspectors before the war, the man leading the hunt said yesterday.

David Kay, a former UN inspector and now the CIA's leading consultant who is joint head of the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), offered an unprecedentedly bullish assessment of the hunt for weapons of mass destruction.

****

Briefing officials and Congress on the first five weeks of work by the coalition team, he said: "We have found new evidence of how they successfully misled inspections of the UN and hid stuff continuously from them.

"The active deception programme is truly amazing once you get inside it. We had people who participated in deceiving UN inspectors now telling us how they did it.

"We have Iraqi scientists who were involved in these programmes who are assisting us in taking them apart."

After the private briefing, he said: "We are making solid progress. It is going to take time."

He said a programme shielded by security and deception over 25 years would not be easy to unravel.

The United States is negotiating with Iran to turn over captured Al-Qaida members. With Iran being by far the most stable member of the "Axis of Evil" I would hope that this administration continues to engage Iran in all sorts of dialogue. Wouldn't this send a positive message to Iran's democracy starved and increasingly frustrated masses? The Mullahs want very little to do with the United States, but shouldn't we hold out the olive branch to those who want to reach past the Mullahs and seize it?

Leon E. Panetta has this to say about the California recall:

Republicans will never agree to raising any taxes. Democrats will not agree on spending cuts. The reality is that both taxes and cuts are needed, but instead we're facing political gridlock on the most important budget issues facing the state.

Redistricting has reinforced the partisanship by creating "safe" districts for both parties. Elected representatives need not reach out to other constituencies or new voters when their political base is all that counts. Ideology, not compromise, is their key to political survival.

Forced redistricting two years after your previous redistricting is just a despicable display of partisan politics. The Dubya administration should question if a few seats in Congress are worth such a bitter partisan battle.

Of course this is probably going to end up in a court house with a law suit accusing the Republicans (of all people) of 'changing the rules of the game'.

Why would you bury a plane? A team searching for weapons of mass destruction have found:

Dozens of fighter jets from Iraq's air force buried beneath the sands, U.S. officials say.

****

Rep. Porter Goss, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said the discovery pointed to how far Iraqi forces went to conceal their activities. The Florida Republican was briefed on the discovery during his recent trip to Iraq.

"Our guys have found 30-something brand new aircraft buried in the sand to deny us access to them," Goss said. "These are craft we didn't know about."

Better answer: maybe scared Iraqi pilots burried their planes so they couldn't be ordered to fly them? That seems just as likely to me as what Rep. Gross suggests.

According to Emmit Smith last years Dallas Cowboys team was "the worst year I ever went through playing football" and that "people [were] always looking to me for answers, and I didn't have the answers for them about why we were so bad. It felt like being a diamond surrounded by trash."

Have you not looked around much in training camp yet? Or aren't you aware you've joined an Arizon Cardinals team which lost 5 of its top 6 (Plummer, Boston, Jenkins, Sanders, Thomas Jones) offensive players in the offseason? You've said goodbye to the garbage can and hello to the planet of junk.

First of all, I think you should re-read my post and see that at no time did I say that I support the idea of a fence. Much like eveything else in the area, it's a complicated issue and saying that it hurts the peace process is not sufficent to making a covincing argument against, since it is very debatable whether the peace process is progressing or even desirable. All I'm saying was that there are many better sources to support your argument, and if you had read some of Raimondo's other pieces in the last six months, you too may have doubts about his credibility. I'd expect you'd have a similar response if I had quoted David Duke or What's-her-face.

A new book reports that Stalin put a price on the head of John Wayne:

Joseph Stalin ordered the KGB to assassinate John Wayne because he considered his anti-communist rhetoric a threat to the Soviet Union, according to a new biography of the film star based on interviews with Wayne's close associates and the movie legend Orson Welles.

Stalin apparently learned of Wayne's popularity from the Russian filmmaker Sergei Gerasimov, who attended a peace conference in New York in 1949. Michael Munn, a film historian and author of John Wayne - The Man Behind The Myth, said Gerasimov told Stalin of Wayne's fervent anti-communist beliefs

****

"Yakima told me that the FBI had discovered there were agents sent to Hollywood to kill John Wayne," said Mr Munn. "He said the FBI had come to tell John about the plot. John told the FBI to let the men show up and he would deal with them."

(Link via 'The Corner')

Larry Flynt files to become the next Governor of California. "California is the most progressive state in the union," said Flynt, 61. "I don't think anyone here will have a problem with a smut peddler as governor."

Of course Ben Domenech is wrong because Darth Vader has succombed to the dark side of the Force as a Sith and is therefore not molding the same power as Ben Kenobi. None the less, it is a neat little analogy.

Warning: that Darth Vader link to the official Star Wars site contains SPOILER information not seen in any of the movies. I must now bash my head against a wall until all has been forgotten.

Hei Lun said: Yes, let's compare Jews to Communists. There's a moral high ground.

You don't see the amazing similarity between the Berlin wall and the Israeli security fence? Wasn't the article simply comparing "fence" policy?

And this: I'm willing to debate the merits of the idea of a wall, but comparisons to Communists, calling the wall as Sharon's "monument to Israeli arrogance", and predicting that Israel "will conduct the pogroms" against Palestinians I consider to be outside the bounds of civil discussion.

Those are two seperate charges, and i'll treat them as such. First off, to Mr. Sharon's arrogance. While I believe he may have nothing but the best of intentions in mind, how can you not see the arrogance at work here? Maybe you should see photos of the fence first (click here or here). It's 25 five foot tall monument to steel and concrete. We've all heard the proverb that "good fences make good neighbors." This isn't a good fence, it's a militarized blight on the landscape, a constant reminder of Israeli power, affluence and military strength on the necks of every Palestinian. If demonstrating your wealth, power and resources in a monstrosity of engineering, and then believing this fence will *help* the peace process isn't arrogant, then I don't know what else to call it. (Merriam Webster defines arroagance as "a feeling or an impression of superiority manifested in an overbearing manner or presumptuous claims." The fence is a manifestation of Israeli superiority in the worst way.)

In theory, the fence, like communism, is a very good idea. In theory it certainly will keep suicide bombers out, since I can't even begin to imagine how to get around 25 foot fence which spans an entire regional border.

Where it is a complete failure is in the war for the peace. In this period of nervous calm the Public Relations battle is by far the most important one. The peace will come not by the death or containment of every terrorist, but when the weight of Palestinian society has been convinced that it can live peacefully aside Israel. There is nothing in this perverse expenditure of tax money which fosters peace. The majority of Palestinians will not attain a peaceful state of mind if they consider themselves to be in an Israeli fishbowl, entirely vulnerable to attack from a far superior foe. There is a lot of fear and animosity on both sides of this conflict, but these are emotions which are only overcome through intergration and trust. This fence is a big "fuck you" to any Palestinian who thought the Israelis would learn to trust the Palestinian people.

Let's not forget the serious political impact of the fence. As OpinionJournal reports:

If Mr. Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon expect Mr. Abbas to rise to the challenge, they will need to take steps to strengthen his political position. This will have to include addressing the issue of the unpopular Israeli security fence, which is being constructed well inside the borders of the West Bank and the existence of which is incompatible with any realistic vision of a permanent settlement.

****

The important thing as far U.S. policy is concerned is that there be no double standard on the issue of terror. The two sides have reached this moment of opportunity precisely because they believe Mr. Bush when he says terror won't be tolerated. If the Palestinians become convinced they cannot bomb their way to statehood, sooner or later a leader will arise who will make their independence a reality.

There is to be "no double standard on the issue of terror" is synonomous with "no double standard on the issue of trust." Dubya himself has said "it is very difficult to develop confidence between the Palestinians and Israel with a wall snaking through the West Bank." While Secretary Powell has said "you see it [the fence] going in ways that will make it very difficult to get to the next phases of the road map.'' The fence not only creates enough potential wake to drown Mr. Abbas politically, it's a violation of the spirit of trust needed to forge ahead in the peace process.

Let's not ignore the problems literally down the road I believe Secretary Powell was referring to, namely an Israeli land-grab: "international aid donors said in a recent report that the route of the wall, which brings a number of Jewish settlements on to the Israeli side, will involve the loss of more than 10 per cent of West Bank land." While "international aid donors" may be a problematic source in and of themselves, I think the land problem serves not to prove the Israeli arrogance, but to fuel the fears of those who wish to seek peace.

He also said: How credible do you find someone who predicts that the Israelis are going to massacre the Palestinians?

Hasn't each side been massacring the other? Isn't that the problem we're trying to resolve, a constant barrage of tit-for-tat violence which has caused an avalanche of death and destruction through the years? How does the wall settle that? It doesn't, it just serves to "function as a lightning rod for terrorists, a provocation in stone and steel."

(Non-waffling answer to your question: I think the conspiracy idea that the wall is a pretext for an Israeli war to end the Arab birth-gap is nuts. However, just because the doctor is off with the diagnosis doesn't mean he didn't attribute some of the symptoms correctly.)

NOTE: The opinion piece by Justin Raimondo in question has moved. It can be found here.

Just heard Will on the radio interviewed by Don Imus. He gave the best reason I've heard against the Federal Marriage Amendment, which would ban gay marriage and prevent one state from recognizing civil unions by another (there are disagreements on what the FMA really means, but this is the reading I got). Will's reason is that wherever one stands on this issue, social policy shouldn't be codified into the Constitution.

I still have a foot-and-a-half on the Lieberman bandwagon, but anything that lowers the chances of Kerry getting is elected is fine by me.

Why was she wearing a blowfish?

I believe the answer you're looking for is.... the sexiest jew alive

Ben Domenech says that neocons are Obi-Wan Kenobi and paleocons are Darth Vader: "we all may be using the same force, but that's where the similarity ends."

Nick Schulz is skeptical about a new technology that supposedly could turn turkey guts into crude oil.

Conservatives say stupid things too. Occam's Toothbrush links to this story by Jack Kelly in the Washington Times:

The North Vietnamese and their Viet Cong allies were bright, skilled, resourceful, well-led, and very brave.

In Iraq, we're fighting Arabs.

(Via Instapundit).

A: monkfish, Jerry Seinfeld, and baseball

Q: What are three excuses to bash George Bush?

First we have this nugget from a recipe from the New York Times:

If you see a whole monkfish at the market, you'll find its massive mouth scarier than a shark's. Apparently it sits on the bottom of the ocean, opens its Godzilla jaws and waits for poor unsuspecting fishies to swim right into it, not unlike the latest recipients of W's capital-gains cuts.

The next two comes courtesy of Dan Drezner. Tom Shales, in the Washington Post, was disappointed that there wasn't any Bush bashing in Jerry Seinfeld's comedy act, so he couragously fills the void:

The one disappointment was that neither Seinfeld nor Leifer did any political humor. It seemed especially odd since President Bush is such an easily mocked figure. Maybe that's it. Maybe it's too easy. It was dismaying, too, to hear Seinfeld ask for a round of applause for "the troops" in Iraq. Not that there's anything wrong with that. And not that "the troops" don't merit honor and homage. But what an easy way to get applause.

It was dismaying that Tom Shales is such an idiotic asshat. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Finally, we have Frank DeFord from Sports Illustrated, who thinks that football is more popular than baseball because of ... racism! And let's throw Bush in there too:

... maybe these times are most in tune with football. At a time when the United States is arrogant, unilateral and insular, baseball can have all its Latins and Asians, and basketball can have all its Croats and Lithuanians, but football is still ours, 100% pure 'Mercan. It's ironic. Although George W. Bush is of baseball, he operates with none of the patient rhythms of the sport but simply charges ahead. He is perhaps the most un-baseball president since the unrepentant Teddy Roosevelt, who declared: "In life, as in a football game ... hit the line hard."

Drezner has a suggestion I'm sure Nick would like:

Drezner's assignment to Gregg Easterbrook: eviscerate Deford's absurd position -- in haiku.

What's that I hear about media bias?

Michele Catalano links to this story:

For the first time since the abortive efforts of the "human shields" who volunteered to protect Saddam Hussein from American missile strikes, radicals are putting themselves on the battle line. An organization calling itself the “International Occupation Watch Center” has set up shop in Baghdad with the express purpose of inciting U.S. troops to seek discharges and be sent home as conscientious objectors. It is inciting defection of troops at war by (technically) other means.

***

As Americans come under fire, Occupation Watch wants to deplete the number of Americans who will be shooting back. Weakening the American military -- which is what the peace movement has generally intended -- encourages further terrorist resistance and killing. It puts American soldiers at greater risk , emboldens the enemy and -- if successful -- will shift the battlefield advantage to Saddam and al-Qaeda. Which is exactly what "International Occupation Watch Center" intends.

And to put away question that these people are just misguided:

The organizers of this sabotage effort have a long history of supporting America's enemies and the enemies of freedom generally. The Baghdad effort is the brainchild of Medea Benjamin, a long-time Castro acolyte and a key organizer of the "anti-war" protests as head of "Global Exchange" and instigator of "Code Pink" (a feminist front for the anti-war radicals). She is abetted by long-time Communist Party member and pro-Castro spear carrier, Leslie Cagan. Cagan is the leader of the "moderate" wing of the peace movement, United for Peace and Justice, a brainchild of People for the American Way. Cagan maintained her membership in the Communist Party even after the fall of the Berlin Wall. As head of the anti-Semitic and pro-Communist Pacifica radio network, Cagan is a key promoter of the anti-American cause. Benjamin, who once described Castro’s gulag as “heaven,” was a key proponent of the effort to send “human shields” to terrorist rogue states like Iraq. She was also one of the planners of the 1999 Seattle "anti-globalization" riots. These anti-capitalist farragoes were the real spawning ground of the "anti-war" crusade.

Medea Benjamin laid out a skeletal blueprint for Occupation Watch in her essay “Toward a Global Movement," which was published in the flagship organ of the anti-American left -- The Nation. “Working with local communities where U.S. troops are based, let's start a Bring All the Troops Home campaign to stop the expansion of U.S. bases and start dismantling some of the hundreds of existing bases overseas.” She also called upon these “grassroots teams” to “link up with appropriate local and regional groups” in terrorist states. What are these “appropriate groups”? The fedayeen, perhaps? Hamas? The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades? Benjamin does not name names, but her exhortation for the Left to “channel the bursting anti-American sentiment overseas” speaks volumes.

At least one member of the Advisory Board for Occupation Watch has called for the murder of U.S. troops and anti-Saddam Iraqis. Author Tariq Ali, who intimated that 9/11 gave America a taste of its own medicine, made his bloodthirsty goals explicit in the May-June 2003 issue of New Left Review.

***

Other luminaries include:

*Jodie Evans co-founder (with Medea Benjamin) of Code Pink. As Jean Pearce has noted on FrontPage, Evans is also institutionally tied to Mike Roselle, founder of the domestic terrorist organization Earth Liberation Front (ELF), “which along with the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) is ranked the No. 1 domestic terrorism threat by the FBI. The FBI attributes over 600 criminal acts and $43 million in damages to the two groups since 1996.”

The rest of the list is just as bad as the ones quoted.

Can we lock these people up for treason?

Man sues stripper for aggravated assault for... you'll just have to see for yourself.

Remember the professor who said that football teams should go for it on forth-down more often? The New York Times discusses him and others who study sports decision-making today.

The professors say that coaches and managers often go awry when faced with a decision involving an obvious, yet ultimately sensible, risk. They seem to focus too much on the worst-case scenario: the Bonds home run, the game-ending brick, the failed fourth down. Travelers who drive hundreds of miles because they are afraid of a plane crash make the same mistake.

In the most recent Super Bowl, the Oakland Raiders' coaching staff sent in the punting unit when faced with fourth-and-4 on the Buccaneers' 45-yard line during the first quarter. Going for the first down, after all, would have risked giving the Tampa Bay Buccaneers excellent field position.

That decision may indeed have been the correct one, given the strength of Tampa Bay's defense, but punting on fourth-and-4 from just past midfield, which teams do, is usually a mistake, according to Romer's research. The chance to keep a drive going when a team is so close to field-goal territory is usually more valuable than the 30 or so yards of field position the team gains by punting.

Or imagine a basketball player who makes about 50 percent of his 2-point shots and 40 percent of his 3-pointers. If his team is down by 2 in the final seconds and he takes the 3-pointer, the team has a 40 percent chance of winning. If the coach instead designs a play that gives him a 2-point shot, the team has only about a 25 percent chance of winning: the 50 percent chance that he will tie the score multiplied by the roughly 50 percent chance that the team will win in overtime.

Snopes reports that this isn't just an urban legend:

Claim: In the days just prior to the September 11 terrorist attacks, the stocks of United and American Airlines were shorted by parties unknown.
Status: True.

***

Options are wagers that the price of a 100-share block of a particular stock will rise or fall by a certain date. "Puts" are "shorts" — bets the stock price will fall. "Calls" are bets the price will rise. Thus, one who has reason to believe a particular company is about to suffer a terrible reversal of fortune would purchase "puts" against that entity's stock.

***

The Chicago Board Options Exchange is investigating each of these trades and at this time is declining to offer comment on its progress. The volume traded and the one-sidedness of the trades, however, make it clear that those who had knowledge of the details of the attacks (which airlines would be involved and that the World Trade Center was a target) were behind them and stood to profit mightily from them.

(Via Tom Maguire).

Kevin Drum is running a pool on how many candidates will appear on the final ballot of the California gubernatorial recall election. According to a story to which he links, there are already 123 people who have filed papers, though I don't think all of them will end up on the ballot.

I'll guess 35.

Christina, I promise you that anytime you visit my house you will always be able to drink out of either a glass or paper cup:

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the singer had a major meltdown at a posh Hollywood eatery recently, when she asked waiters for a doggy bag but was handed a Styrofoam box. The report claims that after she blew her cork over the fact that such a stylish spot was using such dangerous and toxic material, she tried to explain to the waiter why the stuff is so bad. But alas, the puzzled server barely spoke a word of English, so a disgusted Christina took off without her leftovers.

link.

John Derbyshire: "Hardly anything is more fun than embarrassing your kids."

From Jay Nordlinger's Impromptus:

As Reuters tells it, ". . . the [Malaysian] government's senior religious adviser has decreed that Muslim men can legally divorce their wives through text messages from their mobile phones. Islamic law permits a man to divorce his wife by declaring 'I divorce you' three times. Text messaging 'is just another form of writing,' [the adviser] was quoted as saying . . ."

Turns out that women aren't as pro-abortion as conventional wisdom, according to this new survey commissioned by a feminist group:

Faye Wattleton, former president of Planned Parenthood, announced some "alarming" news in late June. Her organization, the Center for the Advancement of Women, had commissioned Princeton Survey Research Associates to do a major study on contemporary feminism. The result was "Progress and Perils: A New Agenda for Women," a 140-page report on women's views on a range of issues, including abortion. The central finding: Far from wanting abortion as readily available as botox or tattoos (1.3 million abortions took place in 2000), most women oppose the procedure. As Wattleton wrote in the introduction, "There is significant and growing support for severe restrictions on abortion rights."

Of 3,329 women surveyed, 51 percent wanted to ban abortion altogether or to limit it to cases of rape, incest, and where the mother's life is endangered. Another 17 percent said the procedure should be available under stricter limits than now apply. At a time when pro-choice feminists repeatedly invoke the magical three-word phrase "right-wing extremist" to describe President Bush's judicial nominees, the study's results are alarming indeed.

Michael J. Totten is dead on:

Say what you will about the Iraq war. Say it wasn't worth it if you must. Gripe about proceduralism if that's what you care about most.

But liberating an enslaved people from a genocidal monster is not a crime against humanity. It put an end to crimes against humanity.

Placing bleeding-heart liberals like Tony Blair in the same moral category as Saddam Hussein and Pol Pot won't garner a whit of sympathy from the United States for any court that might take such arguments seriously.

You all need to read this: link.

Subj: Hey!
Date: Thu, 31 July 2003 02:19:16 -0400 -0400
From: obese@dork.com
To: me
Reply-To: obese@dork.com
Sent from the Internet (Details)


CRACK!

...but a food product called Mr. Brain's Pork Faggots made by the Doody family is extremely funny. Gotta love the British.

(Via Lileks).

A friend: Did you hear Bush talking about gay marriages?
Nick: I heard some of the soundbites, yeah
Nick: Why?
A friend: Just wondering...
A friend: It never crossed my mind that we had to have a strict definition for what marriage is. Man and woman.
Nick: Well, have you ever considered marrying anything other than a man?
A friend: I wanted to marry liam gallagher once
Nick: but liam is a man?
A friend: and this awesome dinner I had...
Nick: Ever consider marrying something that is not a man?
A friend: Probably not
Nick: bigot!

It's a truely sad day, Futurama has been cancelled. CNN celebrates the show in its demise:

The line between clever and stupid

"Futurama" informs us that, a thousand years from now, advertisements will be beamed into a sleeping person's dreams.

"That's awful!" says Fry. "It's like brainwashing."

"Didn't you have ads in the 20th century?" asks Leela.

"Not in our dreams!" replies Fry. "Only on TV and radio. And in magazines. And movies. And at ballgames. And on buses. And milk cartons. And T-shirts. And bananas. And written on the sky. But not in dreams! No sirree!" Even when the "present day" of 3000 appears enlightened, any such sign of progress serves to underscore the follies of the "past."

For instance: Remember garbage, that signature of the 21st century? They don't in the future. No one knows what garbage is.

"We recycle everything," Leela boasts to Fry. "Robots are made from old beer cans."

"Yeah," adds Bender, hoisting a brew, "and this beer can is made out of old robots!"

It falls to Fry to share long-lost techniques for littering. Just as, on another episode, he draws on 20th century logic to argue that TV should avoid all cleverness, since "clever things make people feel stupid, and unexpected things make them feel scared."

As viewers eons from now may discover, "Futurama" never bothered to take its own advice.

From CNN.com:

NEW YORK (Reuters) -- Call it one of the biggest turkeys of all time.

The romance between Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez has captivated the American public, but their first movie together is already being called a low point of cinema history.

If early reviews are anything to go by, the pairing of the real-life love birds in the movie "Gigli" looks set to bomb when it opens at the U.S. box office on Friday.

Among its biggest problems is a love scene in which Lopez spreads her legs and tells a smoldering Affleck, "It's turkey time. Gobble, gobble."

Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall it ain't.

The movie is familiar fare for Affleck, since "much of the movie features Affleck's efforts to change Lopez' character from being a lesbian into a straight woman. Needless to say, by the time she's saying, 'Gobble, gobble,' she's changed sides." How does Kevin Smith spell law suit? C-H-A-S-I-N-G A-M-Y.

But wait, there's more!

While their romance was said to have been originally sparked with the shooting of "Gigli," critics see little of that spark in the movie. Critics have compared the film to such box office flops as Madonna's "Swept Away," Mariah Carey's "Glitter" and Britney Spears vehicle "Crossroads."

"From 'Gigli's' first test screenings, where writer-director Martin Brest clashed with Revolution studio chief Joe Roth over the film's final act and pace, to the film's poster, which allegedly featured a retouched version of Lopez's famous derriere [which the studio denies], nearly every step of the film's path to the screen has been chronicled by the Internet, the tabloids and, eventually, the mainstream media," the Los Angeles Times wrote.

"Taken together, 'Gigli' has single-handedly disproved the maxim that there's no such thing as bad publicity."

That, folks, is a seriously bad review. Mmmwahahaa.... Maybe this will speed production for Daredevil 2?

ESPN's Page 2 has an excellent article from the female perspective of this case:

So, with that said, I refuse to form an opinion of the alleged victim in the Kobe Bryant sexual assault case. Furthermore, I reject all the preconceived notions of how women behave around sports stars, what levels we'd stoop to for 15 minutes of fame, and what we should and shouldn't "know" going into a given situation.

****

When you wonder what the alleged victim was doing in Kobe's room that night, ask yourself a question: Would you have behaved differently? C'mon, it's Kobe Bryant. Kobe Freakin' Bryant asks you to bring him some grub after hours, and you're telling me your response would be, "Nah, man, kitchen's closed?"

Say yes, and I will call you a liar.

But she's a woman, you say -- no, she's a girl, but we'll get to that later -- and most likely an attractive one, so she should have known better. She should delve into the male psyche and know that he only wants one thing.

He's a 24-year-old married man with a child, but this 19-year-old girl should be smarter. She should know the score. How convenient for him, that she holds the key to all accountability.

Jonah's gone.

Bonus NRO: I can only pray for this to come true.

Those might be some snazzy song titles, but you can't beat The Simpsons when it comes to one-liners about school children.

See:

The fire department is called in to try to rescue the trapped pair. Chief Wiggum arrives, greeting the basketball-playing Eddie and Lou with, "That's nice work, boys." Mrs. Krabappel sees superintendent Chalmers arriving and takes great glee in pointing this out to the still hiccuping Skinner.

Chalmers: [voice rising] Skinner...!
Skinner: Superintendent Chalmers! You didn't have to come all the way down here. Everything's under control.
[fireman falls off ladder, which smashes the gym window]
Chalemers: Oh, I have had it, I have _had_ it with this school, Skinner! The low test scores, class after class of ugly, ugly children --
Skinner: Oh, now I really think the children's appearance --
Chalmers: Seymour, you are in very, _very_ big trouble.
[SLH falls into his arms] Why, looking into this lovable mutt's eyes just melts my heart. Seymour, all is forgiven.
Willy: [yells] Make way for Willy!
[lands on Chalmers]
I said "Make way for Willy," you bloated gasbag.
Chalmers: Seymour...
Skinner: Hmm?
Chalmers: You're fired!
[Bart gasps]
Skinner: I'm sorry, did...did you just call me a liar?
Chalmers: No, I said you were fired.
Skinner: Oh. That's much worse.
-- In some ways, yes, "Sweet Seymour Skinner's Baadasssss Song"

or:

Edna: Seymour, the teachers are fed up. You have to start putting money back into the school. You've cut back on everything: salaries, supplies, the food -- [takes a bite] -- I don't care what you say, I can taste the newspaper.
Skinner: Posh. Shredded newspapers add much-needed ruffage and essential inks. Besides, you didn't notice the old gym mats.
[Lunch Lady Doris feeds some into a grinder]
Doris: There's very little meat in these gym mats.
Edna: Our demands are very reasonable. By ignoring them, you're selling out these children's future!
Skinner: Oh, come on, Edna: we both know these children _have_ no future!
[all the children stop and look at him]
[chuckles nervously]
Prove me wrong, kids. Prove me wrong.

-- The Skinnerian challenge, "The PTA Disbands"

Here's the crux of the prosecution's argument according to ESPN.com:

Those sources claim that Bryant met his alleged victim when she gave him a tour of the Lodge & Spa at Cordillera, during which he extended an invitation for the woman to come to his room later that evening, which she accepted.

The 19-year-old woman did go to Bryant's room the night of June 30, where she spent less than half an hour, according to the sources.

ABC News sources claim that the two engaged in some consensual sexual activity in Bryant's room, but that the intercourse that took place was not consensual. Those same sources say that the alleged victim sustained some physical injuries, which Eagle County District Attorney Mark Hurlburt and his staff plan to say prove that the sex was not consensual.

So how long does it take to sexually assault someone? How does this scenario work? The woman arrived, there was petting and foreplay, and then either A)he wanted more and she said no, thus leading to the assault, or B)they had consensual sex and now she's lying about it? It's still too early to tell which party is lying here.

Whatever one might think of country music, they sure do have the best song titles.

I'll add this one: Here's A Quarter (Call Someone Who Cares).

(From Carnival of the Vanities #45).

Is that Mad Dog guy out of Mexican prison yet? If so, how soon until Tom DeLay sicks him on the Texas Dems, who've run to New Mexico? This is one blog that will not blast these patriots! Fight the power, prevent redistricting at the whimsy of the majority.

The New Republic slams John Kerry:

...to suggest that Kerry is "not talking about" his rivals is, at best, "technically accurate," since his campaign spokesmen fill the airwaves--and news pages--with disparaging remarks about rivals every day. Consider, for example, what Kerry campaign manager Jim Jordan had to say in today's New York Times piece on Dean:

"Governor Dean is simply reinventing his own position and that of others, and that's the rankest kind of politics. ... He was an unemployed doctor with no responsibilities, and it was easy to sit there and take political potshots from the outside."

For the record, the candidates could do worse than to mix it up once in a while. Democrats need the practice at political hardball, since the Republicans aren't exactly known for playing nice. It's Kerry's pious, I'm-above-that-sort-of-thing attitudes that's so grating--particularly on a candidate who already could use a little humanizing.

I may not like his politics, but I'd take Dean over Kerry any day.

If this isn't a clear case of media bias, I don't know what is:

So, here's what Tony Blair said (in response to a question about whether he would continue to serve as prime minister in a third Labour term in government): "There is a big job of work to do - my appetite for doing it is undiminished."

And here's what the BBC reported in its lede: "Mr Blair, who said his appetite for power remained 'undiminished'...."

And not to let a good distortion go, the website then links to the story thusly: "Tony Blair sidesteps questions on the David Kelly affair - but says his appetite for power is "undiminished"."

Yes, let's compare Jews to Communists. There's a moral high ground. I'm willing to debate the merits of the idea of a wall, but comparisons to Communists, calling the wall as Sharon's "monument to Israeli arrogance", and predicting that Israel "will conduct the pogroms" against Palestinians I consider to be outside the bounds of civil discussion. And just in case, here's the American Heritage Dictinary definition of pogrom:

n. An organized massacre of a minority group, esp. Jews.

How credible do you find someone who predicts that the Israelis are going to massacre the Palestinians?

A victory for free speech. Let's celebrate.

We all know that Meatloaf's Paradise by the Dashboard Light is one of the absolute most fun 'event' songs of all time, but after hearing it on the radio last night my mind was fraught with questions. Let's put aside the easy one, namely who owns knvies with glowing metal edges? In this era of Sabermatics and Moneyball, who bunts with two outs and a man on third in the bottom of the ninth? Honestly, who does that? And does this explain negative population growth in the western world?

In response to Daniel Pipes words comparing Nazis and Muslims CNS News.com has published this retraction:

(CNSNews.com) - In an article published July 25, 2003, CNSNews.com inadvertently misquoted some remarks by Middle East Forum Director Daniel Pipes during a July 24 address to the Young America's Foundation National Conservative Student Conference in Washington, D.C.

The article erroneously stated that Pipes doesn't perceive the Islamic people as divided into two groups - radical terrorists and those who are not. In fact, Pipes used the term "supporters of militant Islam," not Islamic people.

"My view is 'no, there is no good and bad in militant Islam,' no more than there are good and bad Nazis," Pipes said, according to an audiotape of his remarks.

Pipes also criticized militant Islamists for misrepresenting the "personal faith of a billion people" and has differentiated between militant Islam and moderate Islam, saying militant Islam is the problem and moderate Islam is the solution.

Similarly, Pipes did not use the term militaristic Islam, but rather, "militant Islam."

***

The full quote of Pipes' remark was obscured as a result of the quality of the audio recording of his speech.

C.A.I.R., through whom I was made aware of this story, published a link to this clarification as the very last item in their daily e-mail:

CNSNEWS.COM SAYS MIDDLE EAST ANALYST MISQUOTED
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewForeignBureaus.asp?Page=\ForeignBureaus\archive\200307\FOR20030729f.html

Right. I'm glad that was cleared up. It wouldn't have hurt to actually use Pipes name, would it?

Look! A lefty article that I pretty much agree with in principle:

Faced with a similar architectural monstrosity, Ronald Reagan – for all his faults – did not hesitate to say what needed to be said:

"Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall!"

I can hear the amen corner now: the Wall of Separation is meant to keep terrorists out, not to keep people in. There is no similarity. But isn't there? The Wall is meant to cut off all contact between ordinary people on both sides, which is precisely what the East German commissars sought to accomplish. The Commies knew that the most powerful weapons in the Western arsenal were the economic and social links which invariably bind communities in close proximity. So they quite logically – and murderously – sought to isolate their subjects from such subversive influences, thus ensuring their Marxist purity.

The entire thing can be found here. Or you could read this article about the destruction the wall is bringing to Palestinian villages. Both links courtesy of C.A.I.R.

doesn't apply to Muslims according to the University of San Diego:

A UC San Diego investigation into the distribution and publication of a magazine ridiculing Islam has concluded that the students involved will not be disciplined because the content is protected speech.

While images and articles in the magazine portraying Muslim women as sexual objects were highly offensive, university officials said, they were satirical and therefore not defamatory.

"The campus understands that there are going to be publications that contain very offensive and objectionable content," said Nick Aguilar, UCSD's director of student policies and judicial affairs. "But the First Amendment is of higher order of importance for us in making sure we do not discourage or interfere with the rights of our students."

From the "Bad News Good, Good News Bad" file, the Guardian has an opinion piece on the new WMD, Global warming:

If political leaders have one duty above all others, it is to protect the security of their people. Thus it was, according to the prime minister, to protect Britain's security against Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction that this country went to war in Iraq. And yet our long-term security is threatened by a problem at least as dangerous as chemical, nuclear or biological weapons, or indeed international terrorism: human-induced climate change.

As a climate scientist who has worked on this issue for several decades, first as head of the Met Office, and then as co-chair of scientific assessment for the UN intergovernmental panel on climate change, the impacts of global warming are such that I have no hesitation in describing it as a "weapon of mass destruction".

Tongue, meet cheek. If only that were the case.

From a FNC story:

"I think [law enforcement officials] are trampling on our rights and they are doing it in the name of trying to protect us from domestic terrorism," said Rep. Butch Otter, R-Idaho.

Otter led the fight for an amendment to the State, Commerce and Justice departments' spending bill that passed the House last week. The amendment stops funding for so-called "sneak and peek" searches, where federal agents first conduct a search, then notify the suspect after the fact.

The Supreme Court first found "sneak and peek" constitutional in 1979. The Patriot Act, which passed the Congress by a margin of 98-1 in the Senate and 357-66 in the House of Representatives in the weeks following Sept. 11, codified how that power is used by federal officials.

If made into law, Otter's amendment would prohibit the use of funds to ask a court to delay notice of a search warrant.

Since 9/11, domestic violence has been on the rise in the American Muslim community, according to social-service agencies nationwide. The weak economy, an insulated culture and intense scrutiny from law enforcement and locals alike have created a powder keg that’s all the more frightening because there are so few resources to deal with the problem; only three shelters in the United States cater specifically to Muslim culture. And, with the authorities threatening arrest and deportation for suspicious foreign nationals, Muslim women are even more hesitant to report abuse than usual, according to Nora Alarifi Pharaon, a psychologist at the Brooklyn, N.Y.-based Arab-American Family Support Center.

Link courtesy of C.A.I.R.

A group of parents in Oberlin, Ohio, are aiming to dissuade their local high school from allowing a white teacher to teach a black history course. This problem arose due to a scheduling conflict which could force "the district to reassign the black teacher who has taught the course for seven years."

Here are what professionals in the region have to say:

Using a white teacher at Oberlin High School would send the wrong message to black students, said A.G. Miller, an associate professor of American and African religious history at Oberlin College.

"The message is that we are not concerned about the importance of your historical background ... that that is less important than a schedule conflict," said Miller, whose three children graduated from Oberlin High School.

****

Michael Williams, interim director of Cleveland State University's black studies program, said schools should choose a black teacher if that person is most qualified, not just because the teacher happens to be black.

If two teachers are equally qualified, Williams gives the edge to the black teacher. "That person still has the advantage of the culture," said Williams, who is black. "They understand the nuances of the culture."

Phyllis Yarber Hogan, a member of the Oberlin Black Alliance for Progress, said a white teacher wouldn't be well-suited to teaching students about subjects like slavery.

"When you talk about slavery, students need to understand it is not our fault," she said. "Our ancestors did nothing wrong to be enslaved. "

"How do you work through that when the person teaching it is the same type of person who did the enslaving?"

While I agree there is probably a lot to be said for having a positive role model teaching *any* subject to students, Ms. Hogan's statements are just mind-numbing foolery. Maybe the new white teacher has a new perspective to bring to this class, having (probably) studied this cirriculum as an outsider. Isn't it just as likely that the new white teacher is a decendant of radical abolitionists? What better perspective to bring to a discussion of slavery than to introduce the problem of the Constitution, which William Lloyd Garrison characterized as "a covenant with death and an agreement with hell" ?

Original article can be found here, brought to my attention via the Wall Street Journal's daily 'Best of the Web' e-mail.

Hei Lun's previous post about "The Producers" detailed Randy Barnett's complaint that he "could not understand why everyone was laughing so hard at such antiquainted schtick, including good old fashioned gay jokes that never ended." After seeing the show on Saturday night I was left with pretty much the same opinion. It was a fun play, I enjoyed the music and can actually remember a few lyrics as well as a line or two of dialogue, but this play had Mel Brooks written all over it. Which, for what I paid (and I only paid half price for my ticket), wasn't neccessarily a good thing. I felt almost as if I had walked in on "Robin Hood: Men in Tights - The Musical"

The whole experience left me with the impression that "The Producers" was just an excuse for a bunch of "high-culture" people to pay $100.00+ to sit and laugh at a bunch of dick and fart jokes. (And let's not even talk about the Jew jokes that went right over my head.) I think i'd go and see it again, if only because the plot is just too cheeky not to love, but only if the price dropped to say... $20. I'd much rather spend my "dick and fart joke" money on whatever a Kevin Smith DVD cost these days.

US District Court Judge William Young, after sentencing "shoe bomber" Richard Reid:

What your counsel, what your able counsel and what the equally able United States attorneys have grappled with and what I have as honestly as I know how tried to grapple with, is why you did something so horrific. What was it that led you here to this courtroom today? I have listened respectfully to what you have to say. And I ask you to search your heart and ask yourself what sort of unfathomable hate led you to do what you are guilty and admit you are guilty of doing. And I have an answer for you. It may not satisfy you. But as I search this entire record it comes as close to understanding as I know. It seems to me you hate the one thing that is most precious. You hate our freedom. Our individual freedom. Our individual freedom to live as we choose, to come and go as we choose, and to believe or not believe as we individually choose.

Here, in this society, the very winds carry freedom. They carry it everywhere from sea to shining sea. It is because we prize individual freedom so much that you are here in this beautiful courtroom. So that everyone can see, truly see that justice is administered fairly, individually, and discretely. It is for freedom's sake that your lawyers are striving so vigorously on your behalf and have filed appeals, will go on in their, their representation of you before other judges. We are about it. Because we all know that the way we treat you, Mr.Reid, is the measure of our own liberties. Make no mistake though. It is yet true that we will bear any burden, pay any price, to preserve our freedoms.

Read the whole thing here.

Pinched from both sides: Dan Drezner doesn't like Howard Dean's trade policy:

...the notion that protectionist barriers via labor standards will somehow increase demand for U.S. exports is bulls#@t of such a high order that I can only admire the complete absence of economic logic from Dean's thinking.

Matthew Yglesias can't discern what Dean's policy is:

What, exactly, does Dean propose to offer his negotiating partners in exchange for these concessions? Alternatively, if he's not offering anything, what is he threatening to do if they don't agree? Will he pull out of NAFTA? For that matter, before we get into the question of what Dean's going to offer, what is he asking for? The economy section of Dean's website doesn't mention trade at all, while the labor page says nothing about NAFTA. It does state that Dean won't sign new trade deals unless they include "meaningful labor, environmental, and human rights protections" but there's no hint of what this means either.

***

He also says that he will "vigorously enforce anti-dumping laws," which is closer to being a comprehensible proposal, but if the implication is supposed to be that he's going to outdo Bush in the field of protectionism for the steel industry then it's just bad policy pure and simple.

I agree with "Juan Non-Volokh" at the Conspiracy:

If this is in fact the standard – if some of Pryor’s opponents believe that deeply felt, religiously inspired opposition to abortion, disqualifies a nominee for confirmation to the federal bench – then it is the functional equivalent of a “Catholics Need Not Apply” sign, in that it will bar devout Catholics who follow church teachings (among others) from the federal bench. This does not, however, justify accusing Pryor’s opponents of anti-Catholic bigotry, as such. I have seen no evidence that attacks on Pryor are motivated by anti-Catholicism. Nonetheless, I do not think it is inappropriate for Pryor’s supporters to note that the position articulated by some of Pryor’s most vocal opponents would, in practice, exclude devout Catholics and others who believe abortion is murder due to their religious faith. If pointing out this fact makes some of Pryor’s opponents uncomfortable, so be it. If they cannot live with the logical implications of their position - a position which is quite extreme given the division in the country and the legal academy over abortion and the legitimacy or Roe (see Larry Solum's post here) - they should reconsider their views. Again, however, Pryor’s defenders should be careful to distinguish their defensible claim – the abortion litmus test adopted by some discriminates against devout Catholics and other religious groups – from the indefensible claim – Pryor’s opponents are anti-Catholic bigots. [emphasis in original]

In my view, the real question should not be whether an individual nominee has deply felt religious beliefs about abortion, homosexuality, the death penalty, or some other controversial issue. Rather, it should be whether a given nominee is capable of separating their personal views from the their obligation as a judge – whether, for instance, an anti-abortion judge could nonetheless faithfully apply Roe and other relevant precedents, or whether an anti-death penalty judge could nonetheless faithfully apply laws providing for capital punishment. I believe Pryor’s record as Attorney General suggests he is capable of this, but I respect that reasonable minds may disagree. The point is that the confirmation debate should focus on a nominee's qualifications to be a judge, not their personal religious or ideological views. In my opinion, insofar as some of Pryor's critics are imposing an abortion litmus test on judicial nominees, they have reaped what they sowed.

Nick: "Which is not to say that i'm opposed to International Courts. Quite the opposite, i'm heavily in favor of international justice when it actually targets criminals. Unfortunately, organizations like the ICC seemed destined to waste their time blowing smoke at the Good Guys.

Why don't critics of the US ICC policy ever consider that our Constitution may not allow our participation?"

Article VI, Clause 2: This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.

If the US cedes jurisdiction to the ICC, it would be legal because treaties are generally determined to supercede the Constitution. This, of course, is exactly what proponents of the ICC want, for international law to override our national sovereignty.

UPDATE: Byron Scott comments:

Notice these same people aren't filing cases against Saddam Hussein and his cronies for using civilians as human shields, filling mass graves, gassing civilians, using elementary schools and hospitals as military outposts, etc.

Michele Catalano doesn't like the school for gays in New York City either:

So what happens when the gay students are shuttled off to another school? I know what it does not do. It does not make the situation any better, it only sweeps a portion of the situation under the rug. You're still left with bigoted, small minded kids in the other school. You have not taught them anything good. The only lesson learned here is that if you act brutish enough, people will remove your enemies out of your way. What a fabulous lesson to take out into the world after high school, eh?

I also imagine that the high school will become a focal point for anti-gay activists, now that they know where to find a whole bunch of gay kids in one place. It's like sticking a target on their head and yelling "Ready, Aim, Fire!" to their opponents.

So does anyone like this idea?

Tony Blair has been formally accused of crimes against humanity by Greek lawyers:

The Athens Bar Association filed 22 charges against the Prime Minister and senior Cabinet members, alleging that they invaded a sovereign country on a dubious pretext.

"The repeated, blatant violations by the United States and Britain of the stipulations of the four 1949 Geneva conventions, the 1954 Convention of The Hague as well as of the International Criminal Court's charter constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity," said the group.

The case is based on press clippings and news reports, many from Greece's anti-American media.

Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, and Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, were among those named, but the Bush administration was spared because America has refused to sign up to the ICC.

Washington fears the court could degenerate into a political circus and subject US officials to constant harassment.

No friggin way. Which is not to say that i'm opposed to International Courts. Quite the opposite, i'm heavily in favor of international justice when it actually targets criminals. Unfortunately, organizations like the ICC seemed destined to waste their time blowing smoke at the Good Guys.

Why don't critics of the US ICC policy ever consider that our Constitution may not allow our participation?

The Constitution says in Article III. Section 1 that "the judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish."

Article III. S. 2 Clause 1 says that "the judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority;--to all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls;--to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction;--to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party;--to Controversies between two or more States;--between a State and Citizens of another State; --between Citizens of different States, --between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects"

I read these words to mean that the Supreme Court is the highest court recognized by the people of the United States to settle cases and controversies amongst people of the United States and foreign nationals.

Symptoms: Aggression against people or animals. Frequent bullying or threatening. Often starts fights. Used a weapon that could cause serious injury (gun, knife, club, broken glass). Physical cruelty to people. Physical cruelty to animals.
UHS Diagnosis: Conduct Disorder
True Condition: Conservative

Symptom: The patient is distrustful and suspicious of others, whose motives are seen as malevolent. Interprets hidden, demeaning or threatening content into ordinary events or comments. Persistently bears grudges. The patient responds quickly with anger and counterattacks.
UHS Diagnosis: Paranoid Personality Disorder
True Condition: Feminist

More here.

(Via Eve Tushnet).

The government settled with J.P. Morgan Chase and Citigroup yesterday:

The settlements, with J. P. Morgan Chase and Citigroup, are the broadest to date reached with advisers that played roles in the financing and structuring of the off-the-books partnerships and transactions that contributed significantly to the collapse of Enron in December 2001.

***

But the bank settlements — reached with the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Manhattan district attorney's office — have a significance far beyond the issues in the Enron case. That is because, for the most part, the transactions between Enron and the banks met legal and accounting requirements but still led to what regulators said was misleading information in the company's financial reports.

***

Under their settlements, the banks neither admitted nor denied any wrongdoing.

***

Legal experts said the banks could hardly have refused the settlement offer because both still face lawsuits from Enron shareholders who lost money in the collapse. Under the securities laws adopted in the wake of the corporate scandals since 2001, settlement money that goes to investors through the government can be counted against any final settlement of class-action suits.

Robert Musil sums up the case against Enron:

To date:

No member of the Enron board has been charged with any crime, not even Ken Lay or Jeff Skilling.

No Enron officer has agreed to plead guilty - not even Mr. Fastow, who has been indicted on charges only marginally related to the alleged central "fraud" he perpetrated at Enron.

Enron's main bankers who created, marketed and financed the very structured finance transactions that were supposedly so openly and obviously fraudulent are essentially off the hook for a pittance. Citigroup, with about One Trillion Dollars in assets, will pay $135 million - far less than what it earned from facilitating Enron's actions. Morgan will pay about $100 million.

Enron's accounting firm has been "convicted" only through a bizarre and exceedingly dangerous misreading of the law which will be eventually overturned, by a jury which refused to accept the confession of the Andersen partner and rejected as a joke the governments assertion that the Enron paper shredding was an obstruction of justice.

And, by the way, if Citigroup had all that copious "knowledge" of how bad they and Enron had been, and how hopeless the Enron financial situation was - what does that say about Robert Rubin when he called his former Treasury subordinate to ask for federal intervention to save Enron? Did he share all that "knowledge" when he attempted to induce highly material actions on the part of that government operative - as Mr. Rubin was required by federal law to do? And is it really true, as the Journal says, that Sandy Weill's recently announced decision to retire as CEO also removes the issue of responsibility at the top - even setting aside the fact that Mr. Weill will remain Citigroup's Chairman of the Board for at least two years?

Vote Bill back in office! From 'The Corner':

Bill Clinton Declares California Residency William Jefferson Clinton, a professional public speaker, said today that he is officially a resident of the state of California. Mr. Clinton said his move "is" unrelated to the gubernatorial recall election coming up this fall.

"I've always been a Californian in my heart," said Mr. Clinton. "Although I had not heard of the recall situation, I am, of course, a servant of the people. Let the will of the citizens be done."

Petter Gammons reports that Bernie Williams' CD is now the number three seller on Billboard's soft jazz chart.

Mr. Prime Minister, tear down this wall! Well... maybe not. The Bush team still has concerns over the Isreali security fence.

More on this story from the New York Times:

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon promised today that Israel would continue to work for peace with its "Palestinian neighbors." But he again demanded an end to terrorism, and he insisted that Israel would continue to build a security fence that has become a source of irritation between the two sides.

"A security fence will continue to be built with every effort to minimize the infringement on the daily life of the Palestinian population," Mr. Sharon said on the steps of the White House with President Bush by his side."

News Corp. has agreed to sell the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team to the owner of the NFL champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Malcolm Glazer. The deal is pending review by the NFL due to "rules on football team owners also owning teams in other sports, and how they pay for and fund those teams."

Why exactly would anyone from the NFL want to buy into baseball? MLB and its guaranteed contracts are a long way from the manageable salaries and owner-friendly contracts of the National Football League. The Los Angeles Dodgers are the epitome of this fact. Just look at how their fortunes have faired with respect to the health of Kevin Brown:

Year       Kevin Brown IP    LA Record

2003           131.1               54-50

2002           063.2               92-70

2001           115.2               86-76

2000           230.0               96-76

1999           252.1               77-85

He of the $15,000,000.00 contract this year has not made a noticeable impression on the fortunes of his team, and the Dodgers have never made a playoff appearance with Kevin Brown on their roster.

A motion to dismiss in a misdemeanor case against a high schooler who used the f-word to his high school principal goes into the history and usage of the word. Best parts from the motion:

"Literally millions of Fucking records have been distributed by national recording artists ..."

"A search of internet web sites suggests Fuck is a more commonly used word than mom, baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, and Chevrolet."

"Word/Approximate number of hits
Fuck/24,900,000
Fucking/24,700,000
Fucker/735,000
Mom/9,040,000
Baseball/13,600,000
Hot Dogs/607,000
Apple Pie/308,000
Chevrolet/4,090,000
Freedom of Speech/542,000
First Amendment/933,000
Unconstitutional/691,000
Sticks and Stones May Break My Bones/7,360"

"Fuck possesses incredible versatility. It can be a noun (you fuck), a verb (everything Billy touches, he fucks up), an adjective (I'm really fucking broke!), an adverb (I've been fucking drinking too much), an exclamation (holy fuck, Batman!) or question (what the fuck?)."

"...it is nevertheless true that one man's vulgarity is another's lyric."

"...yelling "Fuck!" in a crowded theatre does not create a clear and present danger to anyone and thus cannot be outlawed. Although they are both four letter words that start with F, the distinction is constitutionally significant."

"Fuck is certainly a controversial word that may be appropriate in certain venues and locales (Florida Elections Commission, speed eating contests, public defender offices) and may be inappropriate in others (weddings, Chuck-E-Cheese pizza parlors, district attorney offices."

(Via Hit and Run).

Finger pointing: the new dance move!

Dannii Minogue sparked a new dance trend at an outdoor concert when she tried to alert the crowd to a capsized boat in the lake behind them.

The Australian pop star began pointing frantically over the heads of the audience as she saw the boat overturn at the water park in Warwickshire, England.

But the fans thought it was a new dance move and began joining in, pointing back at her, British newspaper the Daily Star said yesterday.

***

Teenage fan Gemma Jones, 13, said she had not realised anything was wrong.

"I saw her doing this strange move which was not like her normal dance routines. I thought it might be some new sort of dance craze and started copying," Jones said.

"Every time she pointed out at us, we pointed back at her."

(Via Tim Blair).

Will be investigating potential human rights violations by British troops in Iraq.

link.

This is far too much fun; rate the girls, who would you Fuck? Marry? Kill?

Warning: I'm using Opera browser with a built in pop-up blocker, so i'm totally unaware of the amount of pop-ups this site generates (i'd imagine it's a few).

Who said this of the Democratic Party? Not a Republican operative or writer. It's from Evan Bayh, Democratic Senator from Indiana and chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council. This comes from a story in the Washington Post:

DLC leaders have criticized former Vermont governor Howard Dean, whose antiwar rhetoric fueled his rise to prominence in the Democratic presidential race, and today, Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), the DLC chairman, warned that the party is "at risk of being taken over by the far left." The choice for Democrats, Bayh said, is, "Do we want to vent or do we want to govern?"

A DLC poll shows that while Bush is vulnerable, the Democrats might not be able to capitalize:

But [pollster Mark] Penn said Democrats must make a concerted effort to appeal to white voters, particularly men and married women, to make the 2004 race competitive. He said just 22 percent of white men identified with the Democratic Party in his poll, and he said younger men are even more strongly Republican in their leanings.

Penn's poll was used by DLC leaders to press their argument that Democrats must embrace the kind of centrist policies espoused by Clinton to avoid a humiliating defeat in 2004, and they used the two-day conference to continue a debate over the direction of the party that has intensified in recent months.

"This time I think the Americans are serious. Bush is not like Clinton. I think this is the end." - Uday Hussein, in April

(From Andrew Sullivan).

Peter King is notorious for bad predictions:

I wouldn't be surprised if Blake throws to a whole bunch of guys a whole lot of times, and has a 3,800-yard season ... This, I believe, will happen because Blake will find a groove with [Anquan] Boldin or Larry Foster or Kevin Kasper, strange as it sounds, and start beating some people deep.

Still working on putting in all the links on the right. And thanks to Viking Pundit for adding us to his blogroll. The links to the polls comes from his site, btw.

John Kerry didn't show up for work last week, again.

That doesn't seem to matter though, at least in New Hampshire, where two polls show he is tied with Dean. In the Boston Herald poll, Dean leads 28-25; Kerry leads 25-19 in the American Research Group poll.

Most interesting tidbit from the poll by the ARG: Dean's numbers in the six previous monthly polls in New Hampshire were 18%, 19%, 19%, 22%, 16%, 15%. Which means that for all the work the Dean supporters had done online in the last six months and all the momentum that he had supposedly gathered, his numbers had barely moved in the most critical state in Dean's campaign.

New York City creates first high school for gays, bisexuals and transgender students:

"I think everybody feels that it's a good idea because some of the kids who are gays and lesbians have been constantly harassed and beaten in other schools," Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Monday. "It lets them get an education without having to worry."

***

The new school's principal, William Salzman, said the school will be academically challenging and will follow mandatory English and math programs. It also will specialize in computer technology, arts and culinary arts.

UPDATE: Ben Domenech points out that the school's admission policy discriminates against straights.

Texas Democrats leave state again to avoid redistricting.

Weekly Standard parody on what's-her-face.

(Via Oxblog).

Black parents in Oberlin, Ohio don't want a white teacher to teach a black history course:

Using a white teacher at Oberlin High School would send the wrong message to black students, said A.G. Miller, an associate professor of American and African religious history at Oberlin College.

"The message is that we are not concerned about the importance of your historical background ... that that is less important than a schedule conflict," said Miller, whose three children graduated from Oberlin High School.

Jaqui Willis, a black Oberlin parent, said the teacher is a role model and that removing him from the class would be detrimental to students.

David Bernstein coments:

I have heard that it's extremely difficult for whites to get college-level jobs teaching African American studies, and that's a shame.

As for the Oberlin case, it would clearly be unconstitutional for the school board to reserve the teaching of African American history to blacks, just as the board could not limit to whites the teaching of European history, or to Asians the teaching of Asian history. The school board should not only reject the parents' protest, but should also regularly assign qualified white teachers to the class.

Will anyone protest if in a new horror movie a white guy dies first, with the claim that blacks are better at playing the role of first-to-die?

This kind of thing is bad not only for the whites who don't get the job, but also for blacks who are type-casted into these kinds of jobs.

"The obligation of the United States government is to rapidly internationalize the effort in Iraq, get the target off of American troops, bring other people, particularly Muslim-speaking and Arab-speaking Muslim troops, into the region.''

John Kerry's one smart guy, isn't he?

Mickey Kaus points out that this would have been the kind of thing that gets Bush labeled an idiot.

Paul Jaminet questions Kerry's strategery strategy:

Let's overlook the "Muslim-speaking" slip and just consider the proposition that the U.S. goal should be to "get the target off of Americans" and onto Muslims. Is this a realistic strategy for winning the war on terror? Is it an attractive sentiment?

Supposedly from Playboy.

Why am I so interested in a gubernatorial race in a state I don't live in? Because it's a real race in a non-election year. It'd be like a football game in April, or if NBC suddenly announced that they just found an episode of Seinfeld that they had never aired.

Anyway, Rick Hasen reveals this about California elections:

... under California law, parties may pay people to turn out to vote in elections (so long as there are no federal candidates on the ballot). Democrats can target such payments in poor neighborhoods to get out the vote.

What's to stop Republicans from doing the same thing? Aren't they supposed to have more money?

(Via Kausfiles).

I endorse Georgy Russell for governor of California. (Who cares that I don't actually live there?)

Howard Kurtz on Georgy:

No, this is a topsy-turvy race in which anyone with 65 signatures and 3,500 bucks can run. Which brings us to Georgy Russell, described by the San Francisco Chronicle as "a 26-year-old high-tech programmer from Mountain View." Or, as her campaign manager described her in an e-mail: "A cute girl looking to fill the Democratic void in this election." The campaign motto: Beauty, brains, leadership. It's a strategic tack that may explain the Georgy for Governor thong underwear ($14), one of 18 Georgy items for sale on her Web site."

How cool is that? The Oakland Tribune asks: "Would anyone ever wear Gray Davis' or Darrell Issa's name on a thong? Maybe Russell is a contender after all." Georgy also has a blog (hey, who doesn't?) on which she says things like:

"Hari and Ben from KTVU you are awesome!"

I especially like the "I asked Georgy out T-shirt".

From her blog:

Top Ten Reasons to Profile Georgy

1) She's willing to take on Arnold in an intellectual debate or mud
wrestling. His choice.
2) Darrell HAS a brother, and his brother's name is Darrell.
3) Her hostname is Cali, and she knows what a hostname is
4) A free Georgy for Governor t-shirt
5) A future georgyforgov.com poll could include YOUR name
6) Georgy for Governor, because she won't go GRAY til her term limits
are up
7) Georgy Porgy pudding and pie, votes for her make Bushies cry.
8) Gray, Dick, & Bill are four letter words. And they remind her of Clinton.
9) She's the only candidate who sells (wears) thongs
10) A catchy title: "RUN Ahhnold, RUN!" (for the hills)

(Via Instapundit).