The Brief Rise and Quick Fall of Ben Domenech

The Washington Post's online arm, blog.washingtonpost.com last week decided to expand their readership and hire a rabid conservative. Their choice for this noble purpose was a young, home-schooled former speechwriter named Ben Domenech. Three days after his first post, he resigned due to allegations of plagiarism.

A brief synopsis of the furor in the blogosphere was published on Editor and Publisher. And the entire run of Benny's column can, at the moment, be found here. Three days, six posts (seven, if you count his self-aggrandizing bio), and a resignation notice from the editor.

During those three days, left-leaning bloggers everywhere went digging through his earlier writing, and turned up ample evidence that Benny wasn't always as original as he could have been, and often had a difficult time with that elusive concept, "the truth." Atrios discovered that Spinsanity had mentioned him - by name - for lying, back in 2002. His fascinating point of view was trotted out into the open, as was his taste in movies. And Talking Points Memo actually managed to link him to Jack Abramoff. By the time they were done, even the equally-rabid Michelle Malkin couldn't back away from this kid fast enough.

Under his RedState.com pen name, "Augustine," Benny wrote a relatively pissy retrospective of his brief mainstream-blogging career, wherein he explained "I am a conservative, not a partisan," among other fascinating insights into his attitude toward the truth. One of the excuses he offered for, in this case, plagiarizing P.J. O'Rourke, is as follows:

But the truth is that I had met P.J. at a Republican event and asked his permission to do a college-specific version of his classic piece on partying. He granted permission, the piece was cleared with my editors at the paper, and it ran as inspired by O'Rourke's original.

Strangely enough, if you do a little research and dig up the article in question, nowhere does it mention P.J. O'Rourke, nor does it reference his book "Modern Manners," the source of Benny's column.

Let's compare. Here's Ben Domenech, from his Flat Hat article:

Real parties vary tremendously in type and style, but I've noticed they all share certain things in common.

- Real parties don't start until after midnight. - No friendships or romantic relationships should survive a real party fully intact.
- Neither should much furniture.
- Someone should be wearing undergarments on his head by 2 a.m.
- By 3 a.m., someone should have called the police.
- Someone else should have called George Bush long distance to invite him over.

And here's P.J. O'Rourke, from Modern Manners:

Real parties vary tremendously in type and style, but all share certain things in common.

- Real parties don't start until after midnight.
- No friendships or romantic relationships should survive a real party fully intact.
- Neither should much furniture.
- Someone should have underpants on his head by 2 a.m.
- By 3 a.m., someone should have called the police.
- Someone else should have called George Bush long distance to invite him over.

I see the difference: Benny added "I've noticed" in the first line, and used "undergarments" instead of "underpants." It's a completely different bit. (That's called the "Vanilla Ice defense" - claiming that a single changed note at the end of a line made "Ice Ice Baby" entirely different from David Bowie and Queen's song "Under Pressure.")

The Flat Hat, the student newspaper of William and Mary College, where Ben got his extra-domiciliary education, was the source of many of the plagiarized articles in question. The Flat Hat editors refuted Benny's claim that they were either complicit with or responsible for Domenech's plagiarism.

So many examples of Domenech's repeated acts of literary theft were turned up that only one question is left. In the bio on his deceased WaPo blog, we find the following statement:

Ben is now a book editor for Regnery Publishing, where he has edited multiple bestsellers and books by Michelle Malkin, Ramesh Ponnuru, and Hugh Hewitt.

So you have to ask yourself: what are Regnery's standards, and how do they feel about plagiarism?

Len Hart on H.L. Mencken

I seem to be posting other people's work as often as my own, of late. But we have here, in the midst of a longer pro-Mencken piece by Len Hart, in his blog The Existentialist Cowboy, a literate description of the problem with American discourse these days.

Dr. John Lienhard, whose Engines of Our Ingenuity is a nationally syndicated radio program, called Mencken a brilliant iconoclast "...who knew language and who wielded it like a surgical laser." To be honest, I wish I had that gift. I would turn it upon what appears to be a deliberate attempt to water down the language, rob it of its power, and reframe debates to right wing advantage.

Terms like "pro-life" and "death tax" are conservative inventions designed to tilt the debate. Progressives lose by merely using those terms. Doing so legitimizes them; liberals lose. Pro-life is deliberately intended to disguise conservative hypocrisy with respect to partial-birth abortions —itself a misnomer designed to reframe the debate. [See: About "partial birth abortion" (a total misnomer)]. The term pro-life tends also to restrict the debate; those opposed to conservatives must, therefore, be opposed to life. It is easier to get away with non-sequitur logic if the very terminology seems to compel it. The modern right wing uses language like Edward I used the archer's fussilade into melees in which his own soldiers were embattled. He was willing to sustain the loss of life for the ultimate victory on the field.

In fairness, anyone claiming to be "pro-life" must also be anti-aggressive war, especially when that war causes the violent deaths of thousands of civilians —many just kids and infants. But perhaps for the pro-life crowd, life is only sacred when it's still inside the womb, but fair game once birthed.

In his day, Mencken towered above his peers. But because Mencken would not countenance or buy into the sloppy use of language today, he would be hard pressed to get published in the corporate media which would subject it to focus groups, tedious research, and the gospel of PC. It is our loss.

Sadly, Mencken seems all but forgotten among the general populace, and, among those who know his name, he is often thought to be liberal. Mencken was, in fact, a libertarian and an individualist.

Mencken's audience was not one of poltroonish ignoramuses; rather, he wrote for the intelligent few. Clearly, his intention was to make a difference by making a point among those who could make a difference with the mere public expression of an informed decision. Surely, he hopes to help shape that opinion. There is no way of knowing whether or not he succeeded.

It is for that reason, obviously, that Mencken wrote more about the American Language than anyone. He would be angered by the meaningless platitudes that often parade as literate speech or political debate; he would snort at puffed up slogans like family values and compassionate conservatism; he would slice and dice pure bunkum like supply side economics.

The best example is still the word liberal —the successful debasement of which spelled doom for the liberal movement. Now liberals feel obliged to change the name of their movement to progressive.

Liberal once meant "free" but that predates Joseph McCarthy, Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, Karl Rove and the current occupant of the Oval Office. In each case and many more, language itself is attacked, exploited, degraded and debased by those motivated to cloak a disingenuous agenda.

The word Liberal derives from the latin "liberalis", meaning "pertaining to a free man". Other words from that root are "liberty," "liberation," and libertarian, and, of course Liberal. It is the "liberte" in the French rallying cry: "Liberte, Fraternite, Egalite." To be "Liberal," therefore, is to be free, to believe in freedom. Those opposed to liberal are therefore opposed to "freedom". That describes the American right wing, its recent bent toward totalitarianism, its successful attempts to link Liberal with waste, communism, Keynesian economics, and big government. It is ironic that both big government (under Reagan) and Keynesian economics (under Bush) have ostensibly been embraced by the Republican rank and file even as they denounce the "liberals" who presumably espouse it. I think the word for that is hypocrisy —a word not found in the modern conservative lexicon.

The epithet "big government Liberal" in the mouths of a Republican is oxymoronic, hypocritical and ludicrous. Nixon said "...we're all Keynesians now" and it was Nixon, of course, who is known for the very un-conservative imposition of wage and price controls, a draconian measure of big government if there ever was one. The biggest U.S. governments since World War II have all been of GOP creation. It was the Democrats who were tarred with the label "tax and spend", but, in reality, it is the GOP that presided over the largest military build up in the world and it has done so upon the backs of those who can least afford it.

Proportionally, the biggest tax burdens have fallen upon lower and middle income earners —the very groups who lost ground over a period of some 30 years. It was over that period of time that the incomes of the upper one percent of the U.S. population increased exponentially. Only the upper quintile prospered; everyone else lost ground.

Bush doesn't do nuance. And that is a shame; someone, somewhere feels pain everytime Bush fails to do a nuance. Can you imagine explaining Adam Smith, Malthus, Ricardo, or Keynes to G. W. Bush —a man who claims to be conservative but would be hard pressed to tell you why?

What is to be said of someone who refuses to be informed? Is this the root of Bush antipathy to the Constitution —or is his ignorance a disingenuous act to conceal the real reasons that he would subvert the underpinnings of American democracy? I am, admittedly, overly fond of quoting Bertolt Brecht on this point but no one makes that point more succinctly:

A man who does not know the truth is just an idiot but a man who knows the truth and calls it a lie is a crook!
—Bertolt Brecht

Iconoclasts are always misunderstood; truth telling has become un-patriotic. Were he alive and writing today, Mencken would be assailed for telling the truth. But Mencken had the verbal ammunition to take them on. As Mencken himself said, "One horse-laugh is worth ten-thousand syllogisms." Mencken would dispatch Bill Frist with a single phrase: "Puritanism —The haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy."

Which pretty much says it all, doesn't it?

Prejudice, the 82nd Airborne and Brokeback Mountain

Let's talk about homosexuality for a moment.

First, let's consider the Christian perspective. That's the excuse that a lot of people choose to structure their personal dislike of homosexuals around. "It's in the Bible! God hates fags!" Of course, there are a number of answers to that. The easiest is to find out if they ever eat pork or shellfish, or mix two different fabrics together. Those are also banned by the Bible, but very few people pay attention to those issues.

Secondly, let me give you two other Bible quotes. Matthew 7:1-3. “Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged; and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. And why beholdest thou the mote in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?”

That's the King James version. I may not be especially religious, but I've always preferred the poetry of that language.

Here's an even better verse, though. Mark 12:29-31. “The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love they neighbor as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.”

Seems pretty plain to me. (Even if King James thought "there is none other commandment" was proper sentence structure...) Like I said, I'm not all that religious. But if you're going to claim to be a Christian, shouldn't you pull the rules for your life from the New Testament instead of the old one? Otherwise, you should just convert to Judaism.

But the military has fallen fully in line with the bad Christians who make up the "Religious Right," and the ban on gays in the military is fully in effect. I actually had a briefing from the Legal Office a few years before I retired (shortly after Dubya was elected), where the military lawyer tried to explain that "Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Pursue" was not official military policy. But, you don't ask somebody what his sexual preference was, and if they don't tell you that they're gay, then you don't go after them to find out if they're gay.

I'm serious. He was doing his best Scotty McClellan, trying to tell us that, although "Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Pursue" was not policy, you still weren't allowed to ask or pursue, and the homosexuals who didn't tell would be just fine. Honest.

And what has this led to? What we have, just under a month ago, is seven members of the 82nd Airborne, one of the Army’s most elite units (no, really, “most elite” makes sense. It does. It just seems redundant because you don’t think like the military does. See, they took the phrase “elite unit,” and instead of it being descriptive – “elite” – of the group of people – “unit” – they drained all of the meaning out of it, so that “elite unit” is now a philosophical construction, and the best of the people in that group… oh, never mind. Just trust me, they understand it)…

Where was I again?

Oh, right. Anyway, what we have is seven members of the 82nd Airborne, a group of Special Forces paratroopers (I really want to go off on a tangent about “special education,” but I’m too easily distracted anyway) are getting kicked out of the military for making videos that were simultaneously both pornographic and homosexual.

Now, let’s be real for a second. If these guys can still fight and kill, what excuse is there for kicking them out of the Special Forces? After all, they proved that they can work as a team, right? But the military has this stupid prejudice against homosexuality, which probably stems from the fact that they’re pretty heavily repressed themselves.

I mean, look at them. Big leather boots, polished like mirrors... crisp, starched uniforms... berets perched on their closely-shaven skulls... working out all the time, so they’re obviously fixated on the male physique... Come on! It’s like they’re auditioning for the Village People twenty-four hours a day.

And because of this extreme self-loathing, the military has to kick out anyone who brings out a PING on their gaydar. Even if it means that they have to kick out every Arabic translator right before they invade an Arabic-speaking country, they aren’t going to let things like logic get in the way of their prejudice.

(In case you’re curious, they get around this little problem through the all-American habit of “out-sourcing.” When I was in Iraq, all of the translators I met, outside of a few locals hired as secretaries and the like, were contractors, hired at ten or twenty times the price of keeping the military translator and ignoring his sexual orientation. Makes sense, doesn’t it?)

But despite this hatred of all things gay, somewhere out there is a requisition form that might just include the line “Videotape, homosexual, one each.” Because… well, we’ll just let the news article speak for itself.

Military interrogators posing as FBI agents at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, wrapped terrorism suspects in an Israeli flag and forced them to watch homosexual pornography under strobe lights during interrogation sessions that lasted as long as 18 hours, according to one of a batch of FBI memos released Thursday.

That’s right. They set up an S&M disco in Guantanamo. And think about it for a minute. Somebody had to actually audition the videos. Somewhere out there, some colonel had a big stack of movies, probably smoking a big cigar (because, after all, sometimes a cigar isn’t just a cigar…), saying things like “Nope. Not gay enough. Next!”

And he had to watch them all the way through, right? You’ve got to make sure that it’s gay from top to bottom (so to speak). You can’t let any straight sex scenes sneak in, can you? Wouldn’t that ruin the effect of the movie?

And those prejudices can pop up in a number of places. Here's a question for you. It almost seems like it isn't related, but if you think about it for a while, maybe you'll see that it is. Because Hollywood has taken a number of hits lately from the right wing about how liberal they are. So did they cave in to pressure?

If a man is given the Best Director award, wouldn't you think that the only movie that he directed that year, a product of his vision and a tribute to his directing talents, would be the best film that year? Especially if the script is the "Best Adapted Screenplay?" (Not to mention that it had the "Best Original Score"...) Doesn't that seem to follow? So, we have Ang Lee, the Best Director, using the Best Screenplay (that was taken from another source), and setting it against the Best Original Music out there. But despite that, his film Brokeback Mountain was not the Best Picture?

It's just a thought.

Pay too much and you could raise the alarm

OK, I usually post my own thoughts. But I want to do my part to make sure that this story doesn't just disappear from the Internet. It's from the Providence, Rhode Island Journal, and written on 28 February, 2006 by Bob Kerr for the Scripps Howard News Service.

Walter Soehnge is a retired Texas schoolteacher who traveled north with his wife, Deana, saw summer change to fall in Rhode Island and decided this was a place to stay for a while.

So the Soehnges live in Scituate now and Walter sometimes has breakfast at the Gentleman Farmer in Scituate Village, where he has passed the test and become a regular despite an accent that is definitely not local.

And it was there, at his usual table last week, that he told me that he was "madder than a panther with kerosene on his tail."

He says things like that. Texas does leave its mark on a man.

What got him so upset might seem trivial to some people who have learned to accept small infringements on their freedom as just part of the way things are in this age of terror-fed paranoia. It's that "everything changed after 9/11" thing.

But not Walter.

"We're a product of the '60s," he said. "We believe government should be way away from us in that regard."

He was referring to the recent decision by him and his wife to be responsible, to do the kind of thing that just about anyone would say makes good, solid financial sense.

They paid down some debt. The balance on their JCPenney Platinum MasterCard had gotten to an unhealthy level. So they sent in a large payment, a check for $6,522.

And an alarm went off. A red flag went up. The Soehnges' behavior was found questionable.

And all they did was pay down their debt. They didn't call a suspected terrorist on their cell phone. They didn't try to sneak a machine gun through customs.

They just paid a hefty chunk of their credit card balance. And they learned how frighteningly wide the net of suspicion has been cast.

After sending in the check, they checked online to see if their account had been duly credited. They learned that the check had arrived, but the amount available for credit on their account hadn't changed.

So Deana Soehnge called the credit-card company. Then Walter called.

"When you mess with my money, I want to know why," he said.

They both learned the same astounding piece of information about the little things that can set the threat sensors to beeping and blinking.

They were told, as they moved up the managerial ladder at the call center, that the amount they had sent in was much larger than their normal monthly payment. And if the increase hits a certain percentage higher than that normal payment, Homeland Security has to be notified. And the money doesn't move until the threat alert is lifted.

Walter called television stations, the American Civil Liberties Union and me. And he went on the Internet to see what he could learn. He learned about changes in something called the Bank Privacy Act.

"The more I'm on, the scarier it gets," he said. "It's scary how easily someone in Homeland Security can get permission to spy."

Eventually, his and his wife's money was freed up. The Soehnges were apparently found not to be promoting global terrorism under the guise of paying a credit-card bill. They never did learn how a large credit card payment can pose a security threat.

But the experience has been a reminder that a small piece of privacy has been surrendered. Walter Soehnge, who says he holds solid, middle-of-the-road American beliefs, worries about rights being lost.

"If it can happen to me, it can happen to others," he said.

Welcome to America in the 21st century. George Orwell was just 20 years early.

Down to the Sea in Ships

I wasn't going to talk about the Dubai port deal. I mean, hell, it's the story of the day. Everybody's chiming in on it, and I hate being accused of jumping on a bandwagon. But there's just so much material here - come on, even the Department of Homeland Security objected to this backdoor deal.

And, by the way, it's not just six ports any more. It's twenty-one. I'm starting to wonder if we'll have any American-controlled ports left after this settles down.

But let's be clear on one thing. Scott McClellan (who has got to have problems sleeping at night, considering the amount of open, obvious lying he's been doing in this job) said "This not about control of our ports, this is not about the security of our ports. And let me be very clear, one thing we will never do is outsource to anyone the control and security of our ports, whether that's Dubai or any other entity that operates terminals at our ports."

Well, let's turn that answer over to CNN correspondent Bill Tucker.

In simple terms, at most ports security works like this: while the ship is in the water, it's under the jurisdiction of the Coast Guard. While docked at the port and those goods are being unloaded, it's under the jurisdiction of Customs and Border Protection. But the minute those goods come off of the ships and land on the dock, security is the sole responsibility of the terminal operator.

The security plans are reviewed by the Department of Homeland Security, but the terminal operator is solely responsible for the execution of those plans. The plans are classified secret. If a foreign government gains control of the terminal it becomes privy to the classified security arrangements.

It's strange, really, that Bush has been consistently bringing up 9/11 as justification for invading Iraq, but now he's willfully ignoring the fact that, unlike Iraq, the United Arab Emirates had extremely strong connections to the 9/11 hijackers.

But guess who did the investigation on Dubai? John Negroponte, who used to cover up the murder and torture of South American dictators. At least we know that investigation was thorough, right?

So, why is Bush so adamant about trying to get this deal through? Could it be the money? After all, Dubai gave one hundred million dollars in Katrina relief, nearly four times as much as all the other countries who donated, combined.

Or is the money a little closer to home? After all, the UAE gave one million dollars to the Bush Library. (Which won't be more than a closet, anyway. How much room does two copies of My Pet Goat need, anyway?) As CNN correspondent Christine Romans reported on Lou Dobbs' show, the Carlyle Group, where Bush Sr. worked as a senior advisor, got $8 billion in Dubai money just last year, and Neil Bush (the unknown Bush Brother) received funding for his educational software company from UAE investors. Two of Bush's aides have business ties to the very same, UAE government-controlled company that is now trying to buy our ports.

But the Bush family has never had a problem working with dictators if there was a little money in it for them, have they? His grandfather worked with Hitler, his father worked with the UAE in the Carlyle Group, and here's our President, selling out to the people who financed 9/11.

Kinda makes you feel warm all over, doesn't it?

It's All About The Lies

Why is the fact that Dick Cheney shot a man in the face important? What is it about that act that makes it the perfect touchstone for the problems of the Bush Administration?

Is it because our boy Dick shot a man in the face? Is that all it is? Simple schadenfreude? Well, yes and no. It's nice when someone so blatantly unlikable, so wildly unconcerned about his fellow men, has a bad day. That's a simple fact about the human psyche - if you don't like someone, you don't want him to succeed. But that's not the most important factor here.

And, incidentally, nobody really wants Whittington to die. But consider the ramifications for old Dead-Eye Dick if one of those pellets that he pumped into that 78-year-old lawyer causes an embolism, or migrates into his heart. Dick has already openly and publicly done something unique in the Bush White House: he accepted blame for his actions. So what happens if it turns out that Dick committed "negligent homicide"? Does he go to jail like an ordinary citizen?

Probably not. But now we've touched on part of the problem. Cheney refused to go to the hospital, and was able to avoid law enforcement officials for an entire day. So is it any wonder that people ask if alcohol was involved in the shooting? He violated the most basic rule of firearms and a man went to the hospital because of it. At the very least, anyone else would have been forced to take a Breathalyzer test. But if you think that our vice president is going to be humiliated like that, then you don't know Dick.

There is no accountability in any of this Administration's dealings with the public. How can you tell when the White House is lying? When they make an official statement on any subject. They took us to war against Iraq based on lies.

They keep bringing up the specter of terrorism to keep the American people fearful, but a look around will show that they aren't really doing more than spying on Americans and slapping a new coat of paint on the old, ineffective programs. They haven't guarded any of the various chemical plants around the country, and the ports are not only unprotected but one of the country's largest was recently sold to the United Arab Emirates.

They claim to support the troops, but, not only does Bush not bother to send in enough troops or give them adequate equipment, but he is trying to give them the lowest pay raise in decades - a pay raise that not only lags significantly behind inflation, but is also the lowest raise offered to people putting their lives on the line since 1988. (It's equal to the pay raise given the troops in 1994 - when none of them were being actively attacked - but you have to go back to Reagan and George Bush v. 1.0 to go any lower. For obvious reasons, the Military Officer's Association tracks that kind of thing, and they show how badly the military lags behind the civilian populace in pay parity.)

And the actions of the Bush Administration aren't just angering progressives and liberals. George Will is an old-school conservative (something becoming rare in the Republican Party these days), and he has started pointing out the flaws in everything from taking us to war based on a lie, and then illegally spying on American citizens.

And in the latest news, despite official statements that American troops will be withdrawn from Iraq as soon as the Iraqi military can fend for themselves, it's becoming apparent that the US military has no intention of departing Iraq any time soon, since we're sinking billions of dollars into Iraqi superbases.

Which brings us back to why Dick Cheney's hunting accident is such a big deal. Because it shows just how the White House deals with the public. And it's something that the average man can understand. God bless Dick Cheney and his itchy trigger finger.

And by the way, if American officials are going to buy a hunting shotgun, wouldn't it be nice if they bought American? TheSmokingGun.com has gotten their hands on the report filed by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, which shows that Cheney was using an Italian-made Perazzi shotgun. (Hmm... where have I heard about that brand of shotgun before?)

Shh! Be vewwy vewwy quiet! We're hunting honkies!

While hunting for quail in Texas on Saturday, the Vice President of the United States shot a 78-year-old millionaire lawyer named Harry Whittington. (You know, there might be a joke I could make about "Dick Whittington," but I guess it wouldn't really be funny.)

And today, there are more variations of the sentence "I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die" floating around the Internet than there has been during any Administration in the history of the United States, to include the presidencies of Washington, Lincoln, Wilson or Roosevelt.

It's relatively certain that the shooting was an accident, since rich white guys are the group normally referred to by the Administration as "our base."

Katharine Armstrong, the ranch's owner, saw what happened Saturday and told reporters yesterday that Cheney was using a 28-gauge shotgun, which shoots fewer pellets and has a smaller shot pattern than a 12-gauge shotgun, making it harder to hit the target. Whittington was about 30 yards away when he was hit in the cheek, neck and chest, she said...

It was Armstrong's decision to alert the news media. Cheney's office made no public announcement, deciding to defer to Armstrong because the incident had taken place on her property. Armstrong called the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, and when a reporter from the paper called the White House, the vice president's office confirmed the account.

Yes, true to their policy of never informing anyone about anything, the White House wasn’t going to break this story. Katherine Armstrong got nervous about that whole "criminal charges" thing, and contacted the Corpus Christi Caller-Times (free registration required).

According to her account, the Vice President was about 30 yards away from Whittington, and both were wearing orange vests. The Vice President was said to have a valid hunting license, but a spokesman for the Texas Game & Fish Commission stated that lawyer season wasn't due to start for another three weeks.

First of all, one of the primary rules of using a firearm of any kind is to know your backstop: if you're going to shoot in any direction, you damned well better know what is past the thing you're aiming at, because bullets don't just fly up to the target and then quit moving – they keep going for miles, sometimes.

Secondly, how can the White House not think that this was important enough to pass along to the press? When was the last time that a sitting vice president actively shot another person? I'm thinking that we need to go back to Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr for that. Maybe, just maybe, if you dig a little, you'll find some historical significance in this.

But in actual fact, the rumor is that Cheney was heard stating that Mr. Whittington was known to have reconstituted his nuclear weapons program, and the people of Corpus Christi would greet him with open arms as a liberator.

Happy Valentine's Day. Leave the check on the bureau.

It's sad, in a world where there should be equality between the sexes by now, that men are often required to initiate courtship or romance. It's especially unfortunate, because most often, when women initiate either one, it works. However, from a simple cost-analysis perspective, it makes sense for the men to have to do the work, because, as Gary Busey's character pointed out in DC Cab, women "have half the money and all the pussy." So, with the fairer sex holding all the cards, it makes sense, from their perspective, that the men should be carrying the load in this endeavor.

However, continuing in that cost-effective vein, it seems that if the man wants to win her heart, he doesn't need expensive presents or jewelry. All he needs is a restaurant reservation.

Men who want to impress a woman will do best to wine and dine her. In this instance, we aren't taking our advice from any of the usual sources - not marriage counselors, not advice columnists, and especially not women (hey, what would they gain from giving us a straight answer in this case?) Instead, in this instance, we turn to words of wisdom from mathematicians.

A team of mathematicians from Imperial College London developed a mathematical formula to determine the best way to woo a woman. They did this by modeling courtship as a sequential game, according to Reuters.

The results:Women aren't impressed by cheap gifts. Don't waste your money.
Expensive gifts can definitely show a woman that the man has serious intentions, but if the woman is uninterested (or simply mercenary), it could backfire, and the man would end up with no woman and less cash.

So what's the best answer? A dinner at a fancy restaurant or an evening at the theater are considered expensive, but worthless gifts ("worthless" because they don't have intrinsic value, the way jewelry or a car do). Why is a worthless gift so effective? If the woman is not interested and doesn't accept the invitation, there is no cost to the man. And if she's already accepted the date, he knows she's interested in him, and is halfway home already.

Unfortunately, the date can't be inexpensive. A cheap meal and a video won't impress anybody. "Our analysis shows there is evolutionary logic in men 'burning money' to impress the girl," study co-author Robert Seymour told Reuters.

So, what do we learn here? Dinner works better than diamonds, but there had better be wine, candlelight, and incredible food. (The study findings were published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society of London.)

Of course, love and romance are murky subjects at best, and no one study is likely to get it right. Somewhere out there, there might just be a winning formula for romance. In the meantime, send her a card, you cheap bastard. And reflect on the fact that while Valentine's Day is a cash cow for florists, candy makers and Hallmark, it's also a big day for private detectives.

An Award For The Lynch Mob

Let's consider the continued separation of reality from myth in the Iraqi conflict.

The Associated Press has a story out on the wires talking about the 1st Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, which was given the Valorous Unit award last Friday (January 27).

Reading through the story, you get the impression that the Rangers got the award for the rescue of Jessica Lynch - they were one of the units that participated in that operation, after all, and most of the story talks about that particular event. But they never really say that, and the unit has deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan seven times since September 2002.

But, in fact, if you try and research the story, some versions come right out and say it: "Army Unit Honored For Rescue of Lynch." Which is entirely the wrong reason to give anyone an award.

The story of Jessica Lynch is a heart-rending story of a real American hero persevering in the face of danger. When the convoy she was riding with took a wrong turn and was ambushed by Iraqi soldiers, they fought back with everything they had. Surrounded by the corpses of fallen comrades, Jessica fought to the last, until finally, brutally stabbed and her body riddled with bullet wounds, she fell to the ground unconscious, both her legs broken by gunfire.

The Iraqi's held her in a hospital under guard, but a heroic Iraqi lawyer, visiting his wife in the hospital, saw her there being interrogated. He risked his life to alert the US military where she was being held, and in a stunning late-night raid, US forces entered the hospital under heavy fire and snatched the abused young woman from the clutches of her torturers.

They flew her to the US Army medical facility in Ramstein Air Base, Germany suffering from gunshot wounds and broken bones, and she was later awarded a Bronze Star for her heroism under fire. Mohammed Odeh al-Rehaief, the lawyer who found her, was flown out of the country with his entire family, to prevent reprisals by the Iraqi government.

That's how it was reported. That's what her family was told. Unfortunately, it's a lie.

The convoy might have been ambushed: a lot of convoys were, both before and since. But Private Lynch was injured when her vehicle crashed, and her gun jammed before she could fire. The Iraqis took her to a hospital in Nassiriya, where she was given the only "specialist bed" in the hospital. Both the Iraqi doctors (and the American doctors in Germany) found no gunshot wounds, no stab wounds, just the standard injuries you'd expect for the victim of an auto accident. They gave her three liters of blood - because of shortages, two of those bottles had to be drawn directly from the arms of Iraqi hospital personnel.

When the commando raid rescued her, the Iraqi military had been gone for at least a day. There may have been scattered gunfire from insurgents outside, but there was no resistance inside the hospital. From a Guardian article about the incident:

"We heard the noise of helicopters," says Dr Anmar Uday. He says that they must have known there would be no resistance. "We were surprised. Why do this? There was no military, there were no soldiers in the hospital.

"It was like a Hollywood film. They cried, 'Go, go, go', with guns and blanks and the sound of explosions. They made a show - an action movie like Sylvester Stallone or Jackie Chan, with jumping and shouting, breaking down doors." All the time with the camera rolling. The Americans took no chances, restraining doctors and a patient who was handcuffed to a bed frame.

There was one more twist. Two days before the snatch squad arrived, Al-Houssona had arranged to deliver Jessica to the Americans in an ambulance. "I told her I will try and help you escape to the American Army but I will do this very secretly because I could lose my life." He put her in an ambulance and instructed the driver to go to the American checkpoint. When he was approaching it, the Americans opened fire. They fled just in time back to the hospital. The Americans had almost killed their prize catch.

Private Lynch herself has criticized the military accounts of her rescue, saying that they exaggerated events and recast her ordeal as a patriotic fable.

Through all of this, the Iraqi lawyer came out of it the best, being flown out of a third-world country at war, his entire family taken to New York, asylum granted by the US government, and a $500,000 book deal (Because Each Life is Precious, HarperCollins, 2003).

But the US government was desperate for a hero who they could parade in front of the American people. So Jessica Lynch was awarded a Bronze Star by the US Army, for being in a car wreck and getting adequate care at an Iraqi hospital.

That's what we call "the power of myth."

Heckling the State of the Union

This post might be a little longer than most. Bush gave his "State of the Union" address last night. It might have been easier to watch if I'd been drinking. Or if he had.

You know, the "State of the Union" address is actually a requirement from the Constitution. To be exact, Article II, section 3: "The President shall from time to time give to Congress information of the State of the Union and recommend to their Consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient."

That's it. That's the requirement. "From time to time." And here, by the way, is where I'm supposed to say something snarky like, "Well, gee. We've found a part of the Constitution that Bush isn't willing to despoil. Yet."

On the other hand, I could just say nasty things about his speech. That might be fun. So let's see what we've got here. He starts by talking about Coretta Scott King, who died yesterday. Nice touch. So he covered that. Let's move along.

In a system of two parties, two chambers, and two elected branches, there will always be differences and debate.

Yeah. It wouldn't be nearly as humorous for him to say that, if it wasn't the same day that Samuel Alito was confirmed to the Supreme Court. Meaning that ONE party now controls all three branches of the government.

Not that I'm bitter...

But even tough debates can be conducted in a civil tone, and our differences cannot be allowed to harden into anger.

Is it my imagination, or is this statement coming from the single most partisan president in the history of the United States?

Tonight the state of our Union is strong

Well, yeah. Sadly, it's strongly opposed to you. But let's not get into that...

The only way to protect our people, the only way to secure the peace, the only way to control our destiny is by our leadership -- so the United States of America will continue to lead.

Where are we going, and what are we doing in this handbasket?

On September the 11th, 2001, we found that problems originating in a failed and oppressive state 7,000 miles away could bring murder and destruction to our country.

Whoa. Not even a minute into it, and he's already brought up 9/11, and used it to justify attacking Iraq. Gotta say, I'm impressed.

In 1945, there were about two dozen lonely democracies in the world. Today, there are 122. And we're writing a new chapter in the story of self-government -- with women lining up to vote in Afghanistan, and millions of Iraqis marking their liberty with purple ink...

Yup. Awesome job. The Palestinians just voted for Hamas, a known terrorist organization, the Iraqi's voted for closer ties with Iran (the second leg of the "Axis of Evil")... oh, let's just stop it there. The Middle East is a powder keg. 'Nuff said, right?

Well, you'd think. But Bush doesn't shut up about it for another couple of minutes.

We remain on the offensive against terror networks. We have killed or captured many of their leaders...

That's true. We've captured the Number Three man in al Qaeda about seventy-two times, haven’t we?

The road of victory is the road that will take our troops home. As we make progress on the ground, and Iraqi forces increasingly take the lead, we should be able to further decrease our troop levels -- but those decisions will be made by our military commanders, not by politicians in Washington, D.C.

See, it's simple. We'll pull out of Iraq, just like the Democrats want. But we'll do it slowly and carefully, just like the Democrats want... No, wait, that's not it...

In the coming year, I will continue to reach out and seek your good advice.

He probably won't listen, but at least he's seeking it, right?

Hindsight alone is not wisdom, and second-guessing is not a strategy.

Translation: ignore what I've done before now, and pretend that I know what I'm doing.

With so much in the balance, those of us in public office have a duty to speak with candor.

As long as what you say agrees with what I want. Otherwise, you're "aiding the terrorists."

A sudden withdrawal of our forces from Iraq would abandon our Iraqi allies to death and prison...

As opposed to all those other Iraqi's we've abandoned to death and prison...

...would put men like bin Laden and Zarqawi in charge of a strategic country...

Wait a minute. Are those two even in Iraq? Yeah, I didn't think so. And just how strategic is Iraq, anyway?

Our men and women in uniform are making sacrifices...

Hang on. You're talking about the people who actually joined the military, right? Not the ones who used the National Guard to avoid combat, right? And maybe didn’t even show up when they were supposed to. Of course, that was back when the National Guard wasn't sent overseas to Iraq, too.

They know what it's like... to wear heavy gear in the desert heat...

Well, some of them do. The ones who actually have armor.

So the United States of America supports democratic reform across the broader Middle East.

Until they elect Hamas, anyway.

The same is true of Iran, a nation now held hostage by a small clerical elite that is isolating and repressing its people.

What? They've got Focus on the Family there, too?

The Iranian government is defying the world with its nuclear ambitions, and the nations of the world must not permit the Iranian regime to gain nuclear weapons.

Oh, gawd. Please don't say "weapons of mass destruction." Please don't say "weapons of mass destruction." Please don't say "weapons of mass destruction."...

We show compassion abroad because Americans believe in the God-given dignity and worth of a villager with HIV/AIDS...

Which he probably caught because we refuse to send condoms to Africa. But that's OK. It's God's will, right?

But enough about those foreigners. Let's talk about how we can strip more civil rights from Americans, OK?

It is said that prior to the attacks of September the 11th, our government failed to connect the dots of the conspiracy.

That's correct. Like on August 6, 2001, when our government failed to connect with a Presidential Daily Briefing entitled "Bin Laden Determined To Strike In US."

...I have authorized a terrorist surveillance program to aggressively pursue the international communications of suspected al Qaeda operatives and affiliates to and from America.

See, we're calling it "terrorist surveillance" now. That whole "domestic spying" thing didn't go over too well.

This is getting boring. He's gonna try to justify spying on Americans for a while. Let's skip a little.

American leaders -- from Roosevelt to Truman to Kennedy to Reagan...

Huh, three Democrats and a Republican. Oh, wait. He probably meant Teddy Roosevelt, didn't he?

Together, let us protect our country, support the men and women who defend us, and lead this world toward freedom.

Yup. Protect their Constitutional rights, give proper armor to troops who are getting shot at, and... hmmm... don't know what Bush considers "freedom" anymore.

We will build the prosperity of our country by strengthening our economic leadership in the world.

I think he means that "outsourcing jobs to other countries is good," but I'm not clear on this one.

We hear claims that immigrants are somehow bad for the economy -- even though this economy could not function without them.

You're right. Somebody's got to pick the lettuce.

Keeping America competitive begins with keeping our economy growing.

Pay no attention to the automakers behind the curtain. And pay no attention to me while I try to justify tax cuts despite the billions (or even trillions) of dollars being spent in Iraq.

The retirement of the baby boom generation will put unprecedented strains on the federal government. By 2030, spending for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid alone will be almost 60 percent of the entire federal budget.

Oh, he is NOT going to try and justify privatizing Social Security again, is he?

Congress did not act last year on my proposal to save Social Security (applause)

OK, hear that, George? They applauded the death of your stupid program. Get a clue here, will you?

Keeping America competitive requires affordable health care...

Hang on. He just said WHAT?

And because lawsuits are driving many good doctors out of practice -- leaving women in nearly 1,500 American counties without a single OB/GYN...

You're right. Who was it that said, "Too many OB/GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across this country"? I know I've heard that somewhere...

America is addicted to oil...

Now is where we start giggling like schoolgirls, since most of the Bush administration gets their money from Big Oil. Hell, Bush had Harken Oil, Condi Rice had an oil tanker named after her, and let's just ignore that whole Cheney energy task force thing. So, if oil is an addiction, what does that make YOU, Mr. President? A pusher?

...many Americans... still have deep concerns about the direction of our ... They're concerned about unethical conduct by public officials, and discouraged by activist courts that try to redefine marriage.

Whoa. I'm sorry. I nodded off. Did he just talk about DeLay, Abramoff and gay marriage in the same sentence? What'd I miss?

Maybe they're going to share a cell. That would be cool.

As we look at these challenges, we must never give in to the belief that America is in decline, or that our culture is doomed to unravel. The American people know better than that. We have proven the pessimists wrong before -- and we will do it again.

Yup. Hopefully in November of this year, and again in November, 2008. Assuming that we can't impeach your sorry ass before that.

Honorable people in both parties are working on reforms to strengthen the ethical standards of Washington...

Well, yes and no. "Honorable people" are indeed working on Congressional ethics. Sadly, none of them are Republicans....

OK, I'll admit it. Bush surprised me at this point. First he promised more money to rebuild New Orleans, and then he said this:

A hopeful society acts boldly to fight diseases like HIV/AIDS, which can be prevented, and treated, and defeated.

I'm going to assume he means "homosexuality can be wiped out in our lifetime," though, because a George Bush who worries about HIV makes my head hurt.

Yet the destination of history is determined by human action, and every great movement of history comes to a point of choosing.

Yup. Like Cindy Sheehan getting moved out the back door in handcuffs, because you didn't approve of her T-shirt. That's a fine choice, Mr. President.

Lincoln could have accepted peace at the cost of disunity and continued slavery. Martin Luther King could have stopped at Birmingham or at Selma, and achieved only half a victory over segregation.

Holy crap. You did NOT just compare yourself to Lincoln and King, did you?

You gotta admit, he's got cojones.

The United States could have accepted the permanent division of Europe, and been complicit in the oppression of others.

And if you’re trying to compare the conflict in Iraq to World War II, you’ve already lost. The only way the two would compare would be if the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor, and in response, American forces invaded Brazil.

May God bless America.

And may God save us from you and your cronies.

Alito and the "Unitary Executive"

It seems that the difficulties in earning a living will occasionally prevent me from posting more than once a week. I'll try to avoid letting that happen too often.

Not that I have any evidence that anyone but me is reading my scribblings. (*sigh*) I guess I'm not nearly as entertaining as I think I am. I am, however, the master of the run-on sentence. And to prove it, let us consider the strange case of Samuel Alito.

As far as anyone can tell, the nomination of the uniquely unqualified Harriet Meiers as Supreme Court justice was just a feint by Bush, to see just how stupid a decision he could make and get away with it. And since he didn't, in fact, get away with that one, he stopped letting his ADHD make decisions for him, and went back to his original purpose: the gutting of the US Constitution, and the remaking of the United States in his own, uniquely Stalinesque image.

Bush has managed to get away with a number of things that the American people should have objected to, but not everything has worked out the way he wanted.

OK, really, not much has worked out exactly the way he wanted. The Iraqi people didn't welcome us with flowers, he couldn't dismantle Social Security, and every time he tries to take a vacation, people point out that he's spent more time clearing brush on the Crawford ranch than most presidents have spent on the toilet.

(And to be fair, that last argument completely ignores William Howard Taft and the Constipation Crisis of 1911, but it took a special Congressional Order requiring them to invoke the Federal High Colonic to clear that up.)

However, in Samuel Alito, Bush has found a way to ignore 230 years of American history and give the Presidential Finger to the "Founding Fathers."

You see, despite that whole "we don't want a king, so we'll elect a President with severely restricted powers" argument that describes the state of mind of Jefferson, Adams, and the rest of the Constitutional Congress, Bush got tired of not having god-like powers. So to counter this, Bush nominated the only judge in America who thought that what our country needed was a "Unitary Executive."

Here's the problem. In the early days of America, our "Founding Fathers" (who, admittedly, weren't always saints either) were pretty strongly opposed to America being governed by a King. They'd tried that form of government, and they didn't enjoy it. They had some pretty strong ideas about how much power a president should have.

Unfortunately, Bush doesn't agree that his power should be limited. But fortunately for him, he found a judge who agreed with him. In 2001, Alito gave a speech to the Federalist Society, where he said, "When I was in (the Office of Legal Counsel)..., we were strong proponents of the theory of the unitary executive, that all federal executive power is vested by the Constitution in the President. And I thought then, and I still think, that this theory best captures the meaning of the Constitution's text and structure . . . ."

"All federal executive power." That's what Alito believes Bush should have. It seems that having the ability to gut environmental laws and being able to take the country to war for no apparent reason isn't good enough. Alito wants Bush to be the next Pharoah.

The eternal God-Emperor. That should satisfy them, shouldn't it?

Will we have to start building pyramids next?

Some nights, you don't feel cynical. Just old.

Wilson Pickett died on Thursday, January 19 from a heart attack, in a hospital in Reston, Virginia. He was 64.

Several news stories announced that piece of trivia today. And those twenty words may be the only thing that most people bring away from the report. But there was a time in America when "soul music" didn't mean recycled R&B, and didn't mean easy-listening pap sold on late-night television. A part of America has died this week, and too many people don't know to mourn for it.

His mother was abusive. One of eleven children, in 1955 he finally left Prattville, Alabama to live with his father in Detroit.

He grew up singing in gospel choirs, and even toured with Sam Cooke as part of a gospel music group. To support his family, he began singing more secular music, and, following a musical tradition slightly different from the blues, he helped to create "soul music" as a force of its own.

He joined a group called the Falcons in 1959. They climbed to #6 on the R&B chart in 1962, with Wilson singing lead on "I Found a Love." But his greatest success was from solo hits, starting with "It's Too Late," But of his hits, the two songs synonymous with his name, were "In the Midnight Hour" and "Mustang Sally."

Mustang Sally, think you better slow your mustang down.
Mustang Sally, think you better slow your Mustang down.
You been running all over the town now.
Ooh! I guess I'll have to put your flat feet on the ground.

All you want to do is ride around, Sally,
(Ride, Sally, ride)
One of these early mornings,
Oh, you gonna be wiping your weeping eyes.

I bought you a brand new Mustang,
'Bout nineteen sixty five.
Now you come around signifying a woman,
You don't wanna let me ride.
Mustang Sally, think you better slow your Mustang down.
You been running all over the town now.
Oh! I guess I'll have to put your flat feet on the ground.

All you want to do is ride around Sally, ride, Sally, ride...

His slightly raspy voice and the feeling he could put into a song gave a sensuous edge to his music that other, smoother soul singers couldn't match. It also earned him a title from a public slowly climbing out of the sexually-repressed Fifties: "the Wicked Wilson Pickett."

But times changed, and with his biggest hits behind him, Wilson didn't react well to fading into obscurity. He was arrested several times in the Nineties, for assault, carrying a loaded weapon, and drunken driving. And at the start of 2006, his heart gave out.

His songs were recorded by everyone from the Rolling Stones and Hootie and the Blowfish, to Echo and the Bunnymen and Ani DiFranco. "Mustang Sally" alone was recorded by, among others, Los Lobos, blues contemporary Buddy Guy, and even, in her original demo CD, by pop-tart Jojo (who just turned 15 a month ago). In 1991, the Oscar-nominated movie "The Commitments" was essentially built around a framework of his music, although he himself never appeared in it.

I'm gonna wait 'till the midnight hour;
That's when my love comes tumbling down.
I'm gonna wait 'til the midnight hour,
When there's no one else around.
I'm gonna take you, girl, and hold you,
Do all things I told you,
In the midnight hour.
Yes I am, whoa, yes I am

I’m gonna wait 'til the stars come out,
See them twinkle in your eyes.
I'm gonna wait 'til the midnight hour,
That's when my love begins to shine.
You're the only girl I know,
Really love you so,
In the midnight hour.

Most of his hits came before I was old enough to remember. But one of the earliest memories I have of my wife involves his music.

We had a good-sized group of friends who used to get together every weekend. And much of the time, we would end up moving the furniture out of the way, playing the music much too loud, and dancing. Everyone brought a few albums, but invariably, one compilation that one of us had put together would get played. And among several other hits of the Sixties and Seventies, there was "Mustang Sally."

I had spent the first two decades of my life not dancing - I couldn't dance. I was too cool. I was too scared. I just didn't.

But Wilson Pickett, in a recording from decades earlier, would belt out the often-covered lyrics, and Annette, long before we started dating, would drag me out on the dance floor.

It took another year or two before we got married, but we're still together eighteen years later. And now the Wicked Wilson Pickett is dead, and it's been a long time since I danced with my wife.

Perhaps it's time to start again.

All you want to do is ride around, Sally,
(Ride, Sally, ride)
One of these early mornings,
Oh, you gonna be wiping your weeping eyes.

I'm not armored against this

OK. I'm finding myself deeply conflicted by a story that's currently... well, by a story currently not really in the news. It's covered, in passing, by a couple of sources. They make a quick reference to it, and then they go away. They ignore it.

The only people who are really interested is a couple of bloggers, and me. And, really, the entire armed services of the United States. But do they really matter? (Except as a prop for a couple of politicians who pretend to care about them, I mean...)

Oh, I'm sorry. Did that sound cynical? Damn it. I've got to stop that.

But maybe there's a reason for my attitude.

Body armor has come a long way over the last couple of centuries. The average soldier wanted all the protection he could get for a while, and the early armor, which could protect pretty well against a sword, was what he wanted. Big iron breastplates and chunks of metal that were strapped all over his body.

But, as the sword was replaced by the gun, those pieces of iron just didn't do the trick. And as the gun became more prevalent, less people wanted to hang heavy chunks of metal all over their body: it slowed them down, and really didn't do a thing to keep them safe.

But people kept trying to invent something that might work. The Vietnam-era flak vest was popular for several decades (I had one when I entered the Air Force), but it mostly protected against flying debris from a bomb. Nobody thought that it would stop a bullet, but we wore them for years anyway.

Several versions came and went, but finally, as time went on, we ended up wearing the Interceptor body armor. It was an advancement. It claimed to stop the largest round used by any military, and we were happy with that.

Of course, then we went into Iraq. First we didn't use as many troops as we needed, and then we started over-using and abusing the Reserves and National Guard. Regardless, we didn't have enough armor to go around. And after a while, a bunch of people started buying their own armor, assuming that the Department of Defense cared about them and would reimburse them for the money that those poor bastards spent trying to save their own lives.

Well, that didn't work. A lot of the survivors discovered that the military was in no hurry to repay them for the armor that they bought out of their own pockets. Apparently, somebody in the Pentagon realized that it cost less to pay for a funeral than to reimburse a soldier for body armor.

I'm sorry. Did that sound cruel and unreasonable? Well, here's the truth of the matter. A bunch of soldiers bought a higher-quality armor than the Interceptor vests that the military had been supplying them, and the Pentagon got cranky.

These soldiers had bought a product called Dragon Skin, and the military was apparently upset that it seemed to work as well as it was supposed to. In fact, soldiers were ordered to leave their Dragon Skin behind when they deployed to Iraq; the word had also come down from on high that soldiers who were killed in combat while wearing any armor that the military didn't give them, would not be paid benefits from the military life insurance policy that they'd been paying into since they entered the military.

Isn't that just adorable? And here's the cool part. Daily Kos looked into it, and noticed that the primary supplier of body armor to the military just happened to be a major Republican donor.

Is this just a coincidence? Hell, I don't know. I only know one thing.

When I was deployed to Iraq (we were the first relief team in after the invasion), we wore Interceptor vests. So I was there, on the ground, wearing the crappy vests that studies are now showing wouldn't have protected me if a bullet had come my way.

Does this bother me? Hell, I'll leave that for you to figure out. In the meantime, I'm finding that I'm suddenly happier that I made it home.

And so are my wife and kids.

Let's consider Ms Malkin

You know, I don't want to become one of those obsessive Malkin-watchers (and they are out there), but I clicked over to one of her stories this morning, and she commits the same errors there that she did in the cell-phone incident that I talked about in my previous post.

In fact, looking at her work, all I can say is that the woman is ridiculously partisan, and because of this bias, her work is filled with factual and logical errors that a more objective mind would avoid. And so, because I'd already wasted my time reading her column, I decided to waste a little more and write her an e-mail.

I don't have any illusions that she'll even consider what I said, but I sent it off to her anyway.
_____________

Subj: Starbucks bombing
Date: 1/16/2006 10:02:19 AM Mountain Standard Time
To: writemalkin@gmail.com

OK, so I'm thumbing through the internet, and I came across your column on the Starbucks "bombing." And in it, you say:

Bay Area moonbats have quite a history of Starbucks-bashing... Apparently, they don't think the left-leaning corporation is guilty enough about its profits or organically pure enough for their caffeine-stained tastebuds.

Then you go on to quote one of your readers, who adds:

Once again, left-wing terrorism and violence gets a pass in the MSM. The Chronicle was equally coy when left-wing terrorist groups like ELF exploded devices at Emeryville's Chiron headquarters. But if a right-wing anti-abortion group placed a pipe bomb at a Planned Parenthood office, you wouldn't see such vague "vandals" descriptions.

Very nice. A little wide-eyed. Paranoid, even. But let's not go so far as to say "insane." That's a loaded term. But then, in your update, you provide the most important point of the story. And the headline says it all.

Starbucks 'bomb' found to be harmless
Preliminary tests apparently find no explosive material

Now, in light of that, let's go back to your initial writeup. You ended it as follows:

Whoever it was that left the IED in Starbucks ought to face serious consequences for endangering people's lives. But it's the Bay Area. So they won't.

Hmmm... But what we have here is a hoax. Possibly just something innocent that was misidentified - the Bomb Squad doesn't like to take chances on things like that - but more likely a hoax. So how "serious" do the charges have to be?

Perhaps, instead of "it's the Bay Area," you should say "it's the way justice works in this country."

Now, I realize that you're trying to be a neo-David Brock (from the early part of his career, of course - we all know how he ended up), so it's unlikely that you're going to pay any attention to me, but you also claim to have been a journalist. So I'm hoping that you can see where you screwed up on this one. You shouldn't express a wildly inflammatory opinion like that, without having all the facts.

Not that that's ever stopped you before, admittedly.

You know, whatever your degree was in, I hope it wasn't journalism, because your professor would be ashamed of you.

Take care

What the hell is the matter with you people?

Does anyone remember the Cold War? How about the mostly-false image that Americans had of the Warsaw Pact countries, with a cowed populace peering fearfully around the curtains, while out in the street, Stalin-trained agents waited for anyone to screw up, so that they could swoop down on them and drag them off to "reeducation camps" in Siberia.

Note that I said mostly false. I'll be the first to admit that there was some truth in it, but it was magnified in the public perception until it resembled an ongoing, Orwellian nightmare. But regardless of how overblown the fantasy was, nobody wanted to live that way.

Until now.

Apparently, there is a large contingent of people who think that should be a description of America. Running and hiding from the evils of those evil Muslim terrorists, they are willing to accept any kind of behavior from their government, as long as it can be justified in the name of "the War on Terra."

Why should the government need a warrant to listen in to any phone line they find? And, for that matter, why should they actually hold trials for the people they arrest? It's inconvenient - let's just put 'em in Guantanamo and forget about them! And of course the CIA can have secret bases to imprison enemies of the state! Hell, yes! We'll even rent out those gulags in Siberia! Nobody's using them, are they? Just tell me you're doing it to protect me from the evil terrorists, and I'll let you do whatever you want. Civil rights? Who needs 'em?

Here's a new word for you, folks. Dystopia. It's the opposite of Utopia. Look it up. I can wait.

What makes me think this? Well, for one thing, there's this little piece of whimsy from Michelle Malkin, which she entitled We Are All Homeland Security Agents:

Picture this: You're a retail store clerk. It's the busy Christmas season. A half-dozen men of Middle Eastern/South Asian descent walk into the store. They want to buy between 60-150 disposable cell phones--you know, the kind that can't be traced. The kind that have been used by terrorists as detonators.

What do you do?

Do you think nothing of the incident? Hope for the best, sell them what they want, and move on?

Do you feel guilty for "profiling" them and dismiss any misgivings you have? Or do you listen to your post-9/11 conscience and contact the authorities?

...if 9/11 taught us anything, it was to be unapologetically vigilant. To act now and avoid the cacophany of hindsight hysterics later. What good are all the "Be alert" admonitions from the government if no one alerts authorities when their alarms go off?

Some civil liberties absolutists will no doubt go bananas over "racist" store clerks who blow the whistle on suspicious behavior. But the rest of us, including the feds who are now following up on the citizen watchdog reports, should be nothing but grateful--and ready to do the same.

And she's not the only one, either. A kid with an annoying love of boldface and brightly-colored letters (but an apparent hatred of spell-checking), who self-righteously calls himself Astute Blogger (a.k.a., "reliapundit"), goes even farther.

The jihdoterrorists might now each be using a series of phones (each only once or twice) to communicate with other jihadoterrorists who are also using a series of disposable phones - each only once or twice. All they have to do is tell their comrade which cellphone number to use next. NOW HOW ARE WE SUPPOSED TO GET WARRANTS ON THAT!? It's impossible. Which is why it's ABOSLUTELY necessary for the POTUS, as CinC, to use his Article II powers during wartime in order to get the foreign intelligence we need to DEFEND OURSELVES.

By exposing the NSA intercept program, the leakers and their comrades at the NYTIMES have CONFIRMED valuable information to the enemy, alerted the enemy to the information, and NOW - AS A RESULT - the enemy has adjusted. Therefore, the leakers and the NYTIMES have endangered the lives OF MILLIONS of Americans, and our entire economy and also the world's economy (which after all depends on the US economy). They should ALL be charged, tried, convicted, and executed for TREASON.

I tried to reproduce his formatting, just to show you how annoying it is to read. Oh, incidentally, he also wants to make sure that you know one thing:

And BY THE WAY: I WAS THE FIRST BLOGGER TO CONNECT THE NYTIMES "NSA LEAK" TO THE "DISPOSABLE PHONE PURCHASE SURGE".

You can tell that this message is important to him. That's why he puts it in bright red, bold-faced capital letters. Did you ever feel like you're the last adult in the playground?

Nor are they alone. They link to several other blogs who are salivating to lock down the country. And what do all of these people have in common with George Bush, other than a blind love of the government posited in 1984? Well, they're all willing to go out on a limb based on inaccurate, cherry-picked intelligence. And the sad part is, Malkin even has this link at the end of her story.

Bill Vanderland, the agent in charge of Midland's FBI office... said Thursday after the ABC report aired that assertions of a connection between a terror cell and the men who attempted to purchase cell phones from a Midland Wal-Mart were invalid.

"There is no known link or demonstrated link or any other kind of link at this point between the people here and any terror cell," he said.

Yes, folks, we had a single immigration violation. No terrorists. But that's OK, right? We're being protected from the evil, wicked, vicious Islamic terrorists! It doesn't matter what the government does, as long as we're safe! After all, those nasty jihadists haven't been able to attack us since 9/11, right?

Doesn't anybody have any kind of memory?

On February 26, 1993, Ramzi Yousef tried to bomb the World Trade Center. After that attack, it took those nasty Islamic terrorists eight and a half years to try again. As I write this, it hasn't even been five years since 9/11. Maybe they just like to take their time.

Grow up, people. When you give in to fear like that, the terrorists have won. Al Qaeda doesn't have to do anything to destroy America. Apparently, we're going to do it for them.