Saturday, April 07, 2007

Must see

I seldom demand that my vast readership follow my links, but here's one you gotta see.

Friday, April 06, 2007

Jon Stewart for President

Okay, so only 8% of those polled said they'd definitely vote for him, but the percent who'd definitely not vote for him was lower than the percent that definitely wouldn't vote for Newt or Hillary. What does that tell us? I don't have a clue.

Iraq Today

This site regularly lists military developments and acts of violence throughout Iraq. Several weeks into the "surge" the news from yesterday, April 5, doesn't look so good, does it? I wonder how long the U.S. public would stand for our continued presence in Iraq if a daily tally such as this were featured in a boxed article on page one of just a few MSM newspapers.

(No need to read each word of the day's accounts--but do scroll through the entire April 5 post to get a sense of the scope and variety of mad acts. The site was recently moved from here, a site that contains three years' worth of archives of previous daily postings to a similar effect, if you want to compare the present level of violence to earlier periods. Hint: No big difference, except in the increasing sophistication of forms of attacks.)

Thursday, April 05, 2007

Holding my breath

The rumor of an imminent attack by the U.S. on Iran, due at four a.m. Iran time tomorrow (see my post below, "Whaddya Think?") has bounced around the web for a few days and I've even heard it discussed among some of my leftist friends, whose reaction is "I don't doubt it one bit."

Well, I do doubt it, frankly. But then I doubted Bush would attack Iraq in the months before the invasion; I doubted he'd nominate Bolton, Alito, Roberts, Gonzalez; I doubted he'd veto embryonic stem-cell funding. In fact, I've doubted scores more actions by this administration only to be proven wrong, and yet I still can't believe Bush is the monster he--it turns out--actually is.

So, having been wrong about Bush so many times in the past, I'm turning on my TV at eight this evening, hoping all's quiet in Persia.

BTW--Here's a fellow nonbeliever, but for a different reason.

Wednesday, April 04, 2007

Maybe there's hope for us, for the U.S.

I have long argued--including several times in this blog--that true conservatives and liberals agree on a fundamental tenet of constitutional law: a strict restraint on executive power over personal freedoms. Now, finally, we are seeing a rejuvenation of a conservative movement that represents that view--as opposed to the Anne Coulter wing of the right, that accedes to any presidential power that Bush seeks--and its joinder with the liberal left. (Note the membership list in the middle of the article.) Could it be that sanity, and constitutional law, will once again obtain in this republic?

Tuesday, April 03, 2007

Yeah, what about that?

Remember the "incident" back in January, where American forces grabbed five Iranians in a town in northern Iraq? The justification for it was that they were "Iranian agents" or something, and we've not heard a peep about their whereabouts or disposition since. Well, now it turns out that that act was apparently a blundered attempt by the US to snatch senior Iranian officials--highly-placed intelligence officers--who were in Iraq at the time.

So what's the difference between Iran's seizure of British sailors--even if they were in Iraqi waters--and America's seizure of Iran's officials on Iraqi soil? They're either both illegal, or neither is. But there's this difference: We know where the British sailors are.

Sunday, April 01, 2007

You can't make this shit up

From the Washington Times:
"The head of a California company hired by the U.S. government to help build a fence along the Southwest border to curb the flow of illegal aliens into the United States has been sentenced on charges of hiring illegals for the job."