Mark Steyn on the UN. Just read it.

Good friend of Chirac, Robert Mugabe, may step down:

South African President Thabo Mbeki says his Zimbabwean counterpart, Robert Mugabe, is seriously considering retirement.

President Mbeki says Mr Mugabe has told him several times that he is contemplating retirement.

Mr Mbeki says the Zimbabwean President and the ruling ZANU-PF party are considering a renewal of leadership.

Last week, during an interview with Zimbabwean state television, Mr Mugabe said he was getting to the stage that retirement might be possible.

The 79-year-old has previously suggested that he would step down when his controversial land reform program was completed.

But there is no obvious successor to take over the presidency.

Mr Mugabe has been in power since 1980.

Controversial land reforms? The man singlehandedly removed whites who had owned those lands for generations and plunged his country into near famine. Where was Kofi Annan?

Chirac to pose naked for Entertainment Weekly?

MR. CHIRAC, HIS HANDS strategically covering key parts of his anatomy, appears buck naked on the magazine cover with controversial phrases and epithets such as “cheese-eating surrender monkey” written on his body in what appears to be magic marker.

Secretary of State Colin Powell, who just last week said that the French would be “punished” for opposing the U.S.-led mission in Iraq, said today he was not sure whether Mr. Chirac’s naked photo shoot fit the bill. “After looking at Mr. Chirac naked, it’s hard for me to say who’s punishing whom,” Mr. Powell said.

In other news overseas, British Prime Minister Tony Blair made a rare visit to Great Britain today. Mr. Blair said he had been “overwhelmed” by the warm greeting he received from the British people and that he hoped to visit again “soon.”

Thank god, it's just satire.

Christopher Hitchens has his finger on the pulse of the world. With Iraq, Afghanistan, and North Korea at the forefront of the news, Hitch brings us the story of the removal of the wall in Cypress. I didn't know of the wall in Cypress but I'm interested to know now.

Niel Cavuto smacks the idiotarians:

I see a people smiling now. I'll never forget the people who made them smile.

We should all die making such a difference. All you protesters, should live, making such a difference.

I want you now to look at the faces of sacrifice and honor and courage. And of people who spent their time, not burning the flag, but fighting and dying for it.

So the next time you refuse to bury the hatchet and insist you weren't wrong, think of those who are burying their loved ones and need to know their cause was right.

They made a difference. You just make me sick

That's a nice roundhouse upside the dome. These people have been waiting for a Republican to start a war since the first Bush. Do you think they're going to go away so easily? I think they will hold on to this for as long as they can until the entire country reminds them that they irrelevant.

This can't be good:

"He was the victim of anthrax," said Brazilian federal police spokesman Fernando Sergio Castro, adding that officials were 90 percent certain that anthrax was the culprit.

Reuters reported that several health workers who discovered the body were evaluated at a hospital after becoming sick, but are now out of danger.

Ibrahim, a crewman aboard an Egyptian merchant ship called the Wabi Alaras (search), was transporting the suitcase to Canada, although authorities do not believe he knew what was in the bag, according to Reuters.

"He opened it because he was curious," Castro told Reuters. "We imagine that this is about bioterrorism and Brazil was just used as a point of transfer."

Ibrahim had traveled from Cairo to Brazil to join the ship, but he died before it sailed to Canada, Reuters reported. Canada was alerted about the ship through Interpol, and officials quarantined the vessel last week.

"There is absolutely no criminal or terrorist threat to Canada," Royal Canadian Mounted Police (search) Inspector Dan Tanner said from Halifax, Nova Scotia.
(Emphasis mine)

There is no threat to Canada? Take your head out of your ass and see that, yes, there's a huge threat to Canada.

I don't even no where to begin with this piece of shit, LGF (again) goes into the sewer to pull out the things that make you want to take a shower:

9/11 was a hoax. This is no longer a wild conspiracy assertion; it is a fact, supported by thousands of other verifiable facts, foremost of which are:
- The attacks of 9/11 COULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED without the willful failure of the American defense system. In Washington, Air Force pilots demanded to fly but were ordered to stand down.
Yet instead of prosecuting the president and military leaders for this unprecedented dereliction of duty, military leaders were promoted and the president was praised for presiding over a defense system that suspiciously failed the most crucial test in its history.

I don't have the energy (tonight) to respond to this. What bullshit these scumbags come up with.

A Congressman wants to explain something to the future leader of Palestine:

Tom Lantos, the only Holocaust survivor in the US Congress, told Palestinian Authority prime minister designate Mahmoud Abbas during their meeting Monday that he will guide him through Washington's Holocaust Museum when Abbas comes calling.

(Via LGF)

Abbas wrote a doctoral thesis some 20 years ago for Moscow's Oriental University denying that six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust, saying the number was even fewer than a million Jews."

He'll never accept the invitation.

Bloggers working to keep each other running is always a good thing. Kinda the cyber version of mi casa, su casa (sp)

Bill Gertz is on top of all things military:

U.S. intelligence agencies concluded this week that they were fed false information on Capt. Michael Scott Speicher, who has been missing since the 1991 Persian Gulf war, as the result of the searches of three sites in Iraq, one intelligence official said yesterday

I fear that even Saddam wasn't stupid enough to allow Capt. Speicher to remain alive.

Jonah Goldberg responds to the hacker who whacked the NRO site:

DARK INTRUDER
Speaking of free speech for me but not for thee, you may have heard that NRO was hacked over the weekend by someone who can neither spell well nor tolerate the free expression of views he disagrees with. The homepage went down for part of Sunday and was replaced with a message reading "Hacked by DarkHunter ... Freedom for palestian and Iraq ... gr33tz to #USG and #teso channels." Maybe the radio signals in this guy's fillings garbled the text.

Anyway, I thought about delivering a "we're gonna get you, sucker!" diatribe and a defiant call-to-arms like Cyrus in The Warriors: You can't stop NRO! Caaaaannn youuuuu diiiiigggg itttt!?" But you know what? That's what these date-less wonders want: some attention. I'm sure this guy or someone else with too much time on his hands could hack us again if they were determined to do it. As the old adage goes, you can't stop someone from making a jackass of himself forever. So, good for you DarkHunter, I'm sure your inflatable wife and dog are very impressed.

I don't want to be too critical lest I intimidate his right to free speech.

This guy was either watching the BBC or the new Madonna video.

Kind of like what Bush is doing to the Dems lately:

A politician in north India was crushed to death by his pet elephant on Sunday morning, police said.

Samajwadi (Socialist) Party leader Ram Lakhan Verma died instantlty in the incident that occurred in his village Tahapur in Ambedkarnagar near Faizabad, 210km from here

The dude had a pet elephant. There goes that idea.

Easley Proclaims April 29, 2003 Dale Earnhardt Day

How do you celebrate a day like this? Here's some ideas;

Not brush your teeth

Chew huge wads of tobacco

Move your trailer to another property

Make left turns only

Take you sister out on a date and ask her to wear Daisy Duke shorts

Plaster advertising all over your clothes and body

Make a website like this

What do you think Plumbers charge to make repairs there?

Cuba to try for 2012 Olympics

Cuba will bid for the 2012 Olympics, hoping to land the showcase event by drawing on its tradition of strong amateur sports.

The Cuban Olympic Committee said Monday it will submit its bid May 5.

"Cuba has sufficient athletic merits to be the capital selected," Jose Ramon Fernandez, president of the Cuban Olympic Committee, said at a news conference.

They will try to add several new events:

The Dissident Throw

The Quickest Trial and Execution Event

The Anti-Castro Biathlon Chase

Yachting on a Boat Fashioned From 55-Gallon Drums. You race from Havana to Miami

Juan Gato has new look and puts into words what I tried but failed:

Freedom of Speech is: The right to say whatever your fool mouth wants to say without fear of any consequence.

Freedom of Speech is not: The right to criticize what anyone has said or to point out that their words prove they are a moron. In fact, this means you hate free speech.

Freedom of Speech, however, includes: The right, nay, the responsibility to criticize or call a moron anyone who criticized or called someone else a moron as long as that criticized criticism is criticizing an initial enactment of speech.

For example: Tim Robbins says something stupid. Under this understanding of free speech, those rights do not extend to allow me to say he said something stupid. But if I do say he said something stupid, then free speech rights are immediately re-invoked for someone else to call me stupid and a free speech hater for saying he is stupid.

Therefore, initial criticism of statements by others is an attack on free speech. Secondary criticisms of the initial criticisms are free speech in full flower and sniffle inducing bloom.

Everything clear now?

I like the look, it's not goth enough, like the day he want all Kaflooey but he's still posting.

Only lawyers can work 81-hour days:

The lawyer for Upper Darby's financially pressed schools paid back $19,361 in fees after The Inquirer showed him evidence that he had billed the district for more than 24 hours' work on each of four days.

He charged the district for 81 hours worked in one day - including $10,500 for a meeting that lasted less than an hour.

Barry Van Rensler, who was paid $421,327 last year and more than $2.8 million in his last 14 years as district solicitor, said the billings in question were innocent mistakes involving misplaced decimal points.

I only work 10-12 per day, I feel like such a slacker.

I can be reached via e-mail at sswenviron@comcast.net.

Adam Sparks explains the liberal dictionary to us:

Left Winger, a: This term doesn't exist. Don't speak it or think it. You may have seen the term "right winger," as it's frequently used in connection with both political or religious leaders by the Left and their friends in the media, but you won't see "left winger." To the Left, there are only right wingers, dumb taxpayers and Progressives.

Thanks to the indispensible Lucianne Goldberg site, information such as this is all in one site:

Nissar Hindawi, a leading figure in Iraq's biological warfare program in the 1980's, says the stories and explanations he and other scientists told the United Nations about the extent of Iraq's efforts to produce poisons and germ weapons "were all lies."

Dr. Hindawi, imprisoned during the final weeks of Saddam Hussein's rule, is now free to talk about his experiences in the program, in which he says he was forced to work from 1986 to 1989 and again sporadically until the mid-1990's.

And this little gem:

FRANCE gave Saddam Hussein's regime regular reports on its dealings with US officials, The Sunday Times reported, quoting files it had found in the wreckage of the Iraqi foreign ministry.

The conservative British weekly said the information kept Saddam abreast of every development in US planning and may have helped him to prepare for war.

One report warned of a US "attempt to involve Iraq with terrorism" as "cover for an attack on Iraq", according to The Sunday Times.

Another, dated September 25, 2001, from Naji Sabri, the Iraqi foreign minister, to Saddam's palace, was based on a briefing from the French ambassador in Baghdad and covered talks between presidents Jacques Chirac and US President George W Bush.

Notice the insertion of "conservative" when describing the paper? In other news George Galloway's polical career continues to implode on a daily basis. This from the "liberal" Observer:

The embattled Labour MP George Galloway acted as the secret 'emissary' for a British-based Islamic dissident who purchased a satellite phone supplied to al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.
The phone was used by Osama bin Laden and his associates to plan the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya.

Further details of Galloway's relationship with Saad al-Fagih, a fundamentalist opponent of the Saudi regime, emerged this weekend as the Glasgow MP continued to fight for his political life.

A former media adviser to Saudi dissidents in London has told The Observer that Galloway, who last week denied that he had received money from Saddam Hussein's regime, flew to Morocco on 2 February 1996 for a secret meeting to discuss the political situation in Saudi Arabia. Only two others were present: Crown Prince Mohammed (now the King) and a senior Moroccan intelligence official.

linking him with al-Qaeda and Saddam. Seems treasonous to me:

George Galloway, the anti-war Labour MP who is suing over allegations he secretly took money from Saddam Hussein, faces the prospect of a criminal prosecution for treachery.
The Observer can reveal that the Director of Public Prosecutions is considering pursuing the Glasgow politician for comments during the Iraq war when he called on British troops not to fight.

In an interview with Abu Dhabi TV during the Iraq conflict, Galloway said: 'The best thing British troops can do is to refuse to obey illegal orders.' Lawyers for service personnel claim his call for soldiers to dis obey what he called 'illegal orders' amount to a breach of the Incitement to Disaffection Act 1934. The maximum penalty is two years in jail.

The relevant part of the Act is Section 1, which states: 'If any person maliciously and advisedly endeavours to seduce any member of His Majesty's forces from his duty or allegiance to His Majesty, he shall be guilty of an offence.' Under the terms of the Act, the word 'maliciously' means wilfully and intentionally.

And in Franco-German news:

The German government has intercepted a shipment of German-made aluminium tubes probably destined for use in North Korea's nuclear programme, according to a German magazine.

The weekly magazine Der Spiegel said in its issue due to be published on Monday that 22 tonnes of aluminium tubes, essential in the manufature of enriched uranium, were loaded onto a French ship in Hamburg in early April just as German federal vetoed the shipment.

In the words of one commenter at the site:

German equipment loaded onto a French ship and destined to a murdering psychotic midget - Let's have Libya investigate.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Environmentalists have been stopping this development with every weapon at their disposal:

The snakes have won another one - for now.

A Superior Court judge yesterday dismissed a lawsuit by Signature Homes that would have required the New Jersey Pinelands Commission and Evesham Township to allow it to begin building homes on the remaining 22 lots it owns in the Sanctuary.

The 663-acre development has been a battleground between developers and environmental groups for years.

The Pinelands Commission in October stopped construction in the Sanctuary, which borders Wharton State Forest, after Signature Homes had built 38 of its 60 planned houses.

That decision came a few months after a nest of Northern pine snakes, a threatened species, had been discovered. It also came almost two years after a settlement had been reached between developers and the commission to protect the Pinelands timber rattlesnake, an endangered species that was discovered living in the Sanctuary.

It started with the Timber Rattler and now it's the Northern Pine. Endangered species, be they plants or animals. can probably be found in every square acre in the country. Where's this going to stop?

The London Telegraph is reporting that links between Saddam and bin-Laden did indeed exist:

Iraqi intelligence documents discovered in Baghdad by The Telegraph have provided the first evidence of a direct link between Osama bin Laden's al-Qa'eda terrorist network and Saddam Hussein's regime.

Papers found yesterday in the bombed headquarters of the Mukhabarat, Iraq's intelligence service, reveal that an al-Qa'eda envoy was invited clandestinely to Baghdad in March 1998.

The documents show that the purpose of the meeting was to establish a relationship between Baghdad and al-Qa'eda based on their mutual hatred of America and Saudi Arabia. The meeting apparently went so well that it was extended by a week and ended with arrangements being discussed for bin Laden to visit Baghdad.

The papers will be seized on by Washington as the first proof of what the United States has long alleged - that, despite denials by both sides, Saddam's regime had a close relationship with al-Qa'eda.

The Telegraph found the file on bin Laden inside a folder lying in the rubble of one of the rooms of the destroyed intelligence HQ. There are three pages, stapled together; two are on paper headed with the insignia and lettering of the Mukhabarat.

I give the Bush administration credit. They have not crowed when they have found evidence of WMD or links to al-Qaeda. They will not even comment until they have proof which is the proper way to handle this whole scenario. Here is a more in depth look at the report.

They found what looks to be potential nerve gas in north central Iraq:

U.S. soldiers found 14 barrels of chemicals yesterday in a vast weapons storage area in north-central Iraq, and three initial tests indicated that they contained a deadly mixture of cyclosarin nerve agent and mustard gas.

Previous finds of suspect chemicals in Iraq have turned out to be false alarms, and a Pentagon spokeswoman said yesterday that defense officials had no conclusive evidence that the barrels contained chemical weapons.

She said samples from the barrels would be sent to the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland for further testing, a process that could take a week or longer.

i think the US is gathering all this information together to present to the UN. Instead of disclosing finds here and there, we'll present it all in one overwhelming dossier that will be indisputable.

The non-partisan National Research Council has come out with a report concerning carbon monoxide (CO) pollution:

Once a far-reaching menace, carbon monoxide emissions from cars and pickups are now a stubborn problem mostly in the West, where weather and terrain tend to trap pollution, the National Research Council says. Federal air quality standards and tailpipe emissions controls over the past three decades have reduced concentrations of the gas, the council said in a new report.

This is great news. As a nation we have taken great strides to reduce harmful emissions which contribute to numerous pollution concerns.

THIS REGULATION “has been one of the greatest success stories in air pollution control, reducing the problem, once widespread, to a few difficult areas,” panel members wrote in their report to Congress.
When it persists in the air, the colorless, odorless, poisonous gas enters the bloodstream through the lungs. It comes mainly from incomplete burning of carbon in fuel and in other products such as cigarette smoke.
To illustrate the success, the council, which is part of the National Academy of Sciences, pointed to Denver and Fairbanks, Alaska. Denver has not violated the federal standards for carbon monoxide since 1995, but did so for as many as 200 days a year in the 1960s. Fairbanks has not violated the standard the past two years; it did more than 100 days a year in the 1970s.
By contrast, Anchorage, Alaska and the southern California cities of Lynwood and Calexico have persistent carbon monoxide problems usually due to severe atmospheric conditions in which temperatures rise with altitude, the academy said.

The reduction in Denver is significant as the region has seen a huge increase in people relocating there.

Ted Russell, an engineering professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology who was the study chairman, said more reductions in carbon monoxide pollution can be expected as a result of EPA rules taking effect next year to reduce pollutants that form ozone, a precursor of smog.
“The same controls that affect hydrocarbons also tend to impact carbon monoxide,” he said.

Frank O’Donnell, executive director of the Clean Air Trust, an environmental advocacy group, said the story of carbon monoxide shows the success of tough regulations — and enforcing them.

The Clean Air Trust is no fan of Republicans or Bush. You sure don't see many instances where they are given a shot to slam the administration and don't.
.

Molly Ivins just can't come to grips with the fact that we ousted a oppressive dictator:

The Bush administration's granting contracts to rebuild Iraq to Dick Cheney's firm Halliburton and the Republican-connected Bechtel Group of San Francisco.

Has no one in this administration any sense of public relations? Have they any idea how this looks to the rest of the world, which was largely convinced that we invaded Iraq for the oil to begin with? Halliburton and Bechtel?

Have any of these people ever heard of the need to avoid the appearance of impropriety? Or are we just past that now, so cocky we don't even care?

We knew going in this was going to be the peace from hell, and so far the administration has made every misstep possible. Did it occur to no one that Rumsfeld's chosen puppet, Ahmad Chalabi -- a convicted embezzler, sentenced in absentia to 22 years in prison in Jordan -- might prove a bit sticky? Might even be perceived by the Arab world as a colossal insult?

Hey Molly, I don't believe I've heard Nanci Pelosi say anything about her home-town based corporation getting the contract. Bechtel also gave more money to Dems than Republicans. I guess he could've given the work to someone not considered "Big Business", but I really doubt a company like this could handle the work.

Bush will invite Abu Marzen, the man who could lead the Palestinians into their own country, is coming to America:

The internationally-brokered "road map" to Middle East peace will be unveiled as early as next week, once the new reform-minded Palestinian prime minister and his cabinet are confirmed, a U.S. official said Saturday.

Meanwhile, Israel Radio reported that the White House is planning to soon extend invitations to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian Prime Minister-designate Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen).

"The road map will be issued as soon as Abu Mazen is confirmed. It could be a just matter of days," the official based in the Middle East said.

Wouldn't it be amazing if Bush could end the Israeli/Palestinian conflict with something completely viable. His Nobel Peace Prize should be given to him shortly thereafter. I suspect that Bush's legacy will be one of peace once history looks back on these historic events.

Swapping music is not illegal:

The record industry has blamed its current recession on what it calls Internet music piracy. CD shipments fell 9 percent in 2002 compared with 2001, while online CD sales have dropped about 20 percent in the past year, according to Comscore Networks, which tracks Internet use.

Music companies have moved aggressively in the courts to target illegal song-swappers. Earlier this month, the music industry sued four college students that it alleged were running illegal song-swapping Web sites.

Grokster and Morpheus argued that song trading is only one use for their file-sharing systems, which also host legal activities. Suits designed to protect copyright were instead harming useful and important technology, the defendants argued.

In yesterday's decision, Wilson invoked the landmark 1984 Sony Betamax case, ruling that the defendants are "not significantly different" from companies that sell VCRs and photocopiers. In essence, he ruled that product makers are not responsible for what consumers do with the products

Newspapers adapted to the internet and have survived. The music industry must adapt as well or fail.

It's all America's fault according to Castro. I guess Israel is to far away to blame.

President Fidel Castro (news - web sites) defended on Friday the firing squad executions of three ferry hijackers as a deterrent to a mass exodus that he said the United States was seeking to provoke in communist-run Cuba.

The executions, which followed the arrests of 75 dissidents in the worst political repression in Cuba in decades, prompted an outpouring of criticism worldwide and lost Castro some close friends among left-wing intellectuals, such as Portuguese Nobel prize winning writer Jose Saramago and Uruguayan journalist and author Eduardo Galeano.

Notice Jimmy Carter, Nelson Mandela, and Oliver Stone didn't criticize.

But Castro blamed his longtime ideological enemy the United States for the hijackings, saying U.S authorities were tolerant of Cuban hijackers, granting bail to the six who forced a DC-3 airliner to fly 90 miles to Florida at knife-point.

It's always America's fault.

A Paratrooper died after saving a little Iraqi girls life:

A 25-year-old paratrooper severely injured when ordnance being returned to U.S. troops by a young Iraqi girl exploded, died Thursday.

Sgt. Troy Jenkins of Twentynine Palms, Calif., who was married and the father of two preschoolers, was credited with pushing other soldiers out of the way of the April 19 blast in Baghdad and with shielding the Iraqi girl.

"My boss says they will be putting him in for the Soldier's Medal, the Bronze Star, and the Purple Heart," said Master Sgt. Kelly Tyler, a Fort Campbell, Ky., spokeswoman. Sgt. Jenkins was based there as a member of the Army's 101st Airborne Division.

Sgt. Jenkins lost a leg and two fingers in the explosion, and his second leg was later amputated because shrapnel wounds were causing gangrene.

He shielded the girl from a grenade to save her life at the risk of his own. A true hero.

George Galloway, the MP from Scotland is gettting dragged across the coals by the Telegraph:

Associates of George Galloway earned £500,000 from the worldwide sale of Tony Benn's pre-war interview with Saddam Hussein.

The exclusive - Saddam's first interview with a Western figure for 12 years - was secured by Arab TV (ATV), a newly established satellite channel based in London.

The channel had been set up by Ron McKay, a Scottish journalist and long-term friend of Mr Galloway, and was financed by Fawaz Zureikat, the Jordanian businessman linked to the MP.

But ATV did not broadcast the footage itself. The channel never went on air and its offices in the West End are now closed and the telephone lines disconnected.

Based on all the other information presented, I tend to think this guy's career is coming to a screeching halt.

In fact, in the wake of the sudden disappearance of Saddam and his Baathist regime, the political and media vacuum in the Arab world is wider than ever, and it is now that Crown Prince Abdullah’s peace with reform program would not only fill the void that gapes in the center of the Arab world, but also fill it with something tangible and workable.

The days when the Arab world could just scream “Israel”, as if that one word were sufficient answer to every question about every problem that came its way — as though saying that one word could deflect all further inquiry — are over. The time for peaceful coexistence, internal reflection and healthy, progressive thinking has come.

A short quiz:

Was this editorial written in the:

A) Jerusalem Post
B) National Review
C) NY Times
D) None of the above

The Answer is D. It was written in the Arab News of all places. Maybe there truly is hope.

I wonder how much airbrushing was done here.

Pissin' off PETA:

Horses from Texas could end up on the dinner tables of foreign countries under a bill given preliminary approval by the House on Wednesday.

House Bill 1324 by Rep. Betty Brown, R-Terrell, would allow the nation's only two horse slaughterhouses -- both in North Texas -- to sell horse meat for human consumption outside of the United States.

I would like mine with the whip marks where the jockey's hit 'em.

Some people are bullish on the economy, and some are bearish. This, this, this, this, and this, put me in the former category.

Forgot this, and this.

File this in the "I couldn't give a shit less" file.

Tariq Aziz has turned himself in. He was about the only semi-sane one of the whole Baathist bunch.

Remember the talk about oil prices skyrocketing because of the war? Not.

U.S. light crude futures was down 75 cents at $25.90 a barrel, the lowest price since mid-November and down 15 percent this week alone. London benchmark Brent was 38 cents lower at $23.88 a barrel.

OPEC opened its taps to stop prices spiking during the U.S.-led war in Iraq, but is now trying to prevent crude dropping below its $25 target.

As far as I know, the $50 per barrel cries of the "experts" were a tad bit off.

Winnie Mandela, wife of the leftist hero, is a officially a felon:

Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, the ex-wife of former President Nelson Mandela, was convicted Thursday of theft and fraud involving $120,000.
Madikizela-Mandela - whose financial adviser, Addy Moolman, also was convicted - could be sentenced to 15 years in jail.

Nice. Nelson Mandela led a mostly bloody revolt in South Africa, aided by the US, which made put him in the same class as other great men. MLK, Ghandi, and Mandela will forever epitomize the great leaders that would bring about change. Why has Mandela turned against the US in recent years?

One last thing, game seven in the NHL first round playoffs and the Flyers are up 3-0. The Philly sports fan in me thinks we'll tank it, but maybe this is our...

The Onion skewers Hitchens:

Noted author, social critic, and political gadfly Christopher Hitchens was once again the focus of controversy Monday, when he was forcibly removed from Happy Trails trailer park following a drunken confrontation with Noreen Bodell, 39, his common-law wife of 14 years.

Responding to a domestic-disturbance call, police arrived at the couple's double-wide trailer at approximately 2:15 p.m. to find Hitchens and Bodell throwing dishes at each other. When the officers attempted to remove Hitchens from the premises, the leftist intellectual became physically and verbally abusive toward the officers, calling them "shitkickers," "bitches," and "effete liberal apologists for the atrocities of late-stage capitalism

Pretty funny, especially the COPS look; no shirt and carried out. By the way, Hitchens latest is as good as ever.

Perhaps the world may be coming around. Kristof (almost) admits the wrongness of his position. Now the French:

Natalie Lavarra is having second thoughts about her position on the Iraq war.
"I still think it was right of [French President Jacques] Chirac to say no to the war," says the secretary at a French pharmaceutical company in Paris. "But when I saw how happy the Iraqis were that Saddam was gone, I had to ask myself whether we didn't perhaps make a mistake."

As I recall Han Blix and the UN said that they needed months to locate the WMD throughout Iraq. Two questions come to mind. If we are locating them slowly but surely after the regime has been toppled, how long would it have taken Blix and his happy band of inspectors? When we do find them, does he think that we will make this information known without 100% confirmation? Why would he set himself up like this then?

The White House expressed confidence Tuesday that coalition forces would locate Iraq's weapons of mass destruction despite comments from chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix that the United States had attempted to discredit his team in the days leading up to the war.

"There's no question we remain confident that the (weapons of mass destruction) will be found. One of the things we all knew, and Hans Blix knew it, is what masters of deception the Iraqis are and how many years they had to perfect their deceptions," White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said during the afternoon briefing with reporters.

Fleischer responded to statements made by Blix during an interview with the British Broadcasting Corp., that in the days leading up the war the United States seized on his alleged failure to include details of a drone and cluster bomb found in Iraq in his oral presentations to the U.N. Security Council.

The tortue chambers, money, and freedom mean nothing to the UN. Being relevant seems to be their only goal.

It's good to see NOW back up their local members:

The National Organization for Women is sidestepping the uproar ignited when its Morris County chapter president opposed a double-murder charge in the Laci Peterson case.

NOW officials declined to comment Monday on statements made this weekend by Mavra Stark, "out of respect for (Peterson's) family and what they're going through," spokeswoman Rebecca Farmer said by telephone from Washington.

Farmer would not say whether NOW opposes fetal homicide statutes that exist in at least 23 states. The laws have been opposed by some pro-choice groups even though legal abortions are exempted from prosecution.

"Right now, the issue is connected to the case," Farmer said.

California's fetal homicide statute is the basis for a second murder charge against Scott Peterson, 30, of Modesto, who is accused of killing his wife when she was eight months pregnant.

Stark, who heads the Morris County NOW, spoke Monday with the national organization's vice president, Terry O'Neill. Stark said O'Neill told her that NOW "felt it wasn't the right thing to take a position right now" on either the Peterson case or fetal homicide statutes.

After her conversation with O'Neill and fielding a flood of critical phone calls and e-mails from across the nation, Stark modified her earlier comments about the widely publicized Peterson case.

"I was thinking out loud," said Stark, who had mused on Saturday that the double-murder charge could provide ammunition to the pro-life lobby.

The old "I was thinking out loud" defense. If you say something, own up to it and take the heat. You end up looking as stupid as Trent Lott on BET if you don't.

Gray Davis continues to destroy California:

Back from the holiday break, state lawmakers have a tall order as they are charged with coming up with a fiscal budget or the state could technically go completely broke.

In fact, financial conditions are such that the state controller could begin the budget process by issuing 'IOU's' to vendors doing business with the state.That notion of IOU's is not sitting too well with LA County Supervisor Zev Yarohslaviski who told KFWB that there is no existing budget and that issuing deferred payment notices to vendors is equivalent to a "handshake with a pauper."

"Where's the light at the end of the tunnel and how will we redeem these IOU's?" Yarohslaviski said, adding that the controller's possible contingency plan is irresponsible.

Other critics call the idea a "job killer" and say it's ridiculous to essentially tell vendors 'We'll pay you later.'

I wonder if the good citizens residing in my former home state can send IOU's in lieu of taxes.

James Taranto takes a shot at Eric Alterman:

You can say this about the Arab News: You never know what you're going to find there. Sometimes it publishes unexpectedly good, insightful journalism, and then sometimes it peddles the worst anti-Semitic garbage. In the latter category is an essay called "Protocols of the Elders of Neocons"--a reference to the notorious anti-Semitic forgery "Protocols of the Elders of Zion"--by Hussein Shobokshi. Here's a sample:

Many of these same Jews joined Rumsfeld and Cheney in underselling the difficulty of the war, in what may have been a ruse designed to embroil America in a broad military conflagration that would help smite Israel's enemies. Did Perle, for instance, genuinely believe "support for Saddam, including within his military organization, will collapse at the first whiff of gunpowder"? Is Wolfowitz really so ignorant of history as to believe the Iraqis would welcome [Americans] as "their hoped-for liberators"?

Oh wait, sorry, that's not Shobokshi, it's Eric Alterman in The Nation. Here's Shobokshi:

While the neocons who have tried to legitimize and sugarcoat all their wicked and twisted policies by false accusations and pollgerized [sic] evidence, their true intentions remain the protection of Israel. Israel is the core problem of the main conflict in the Middle East. Any unjust and subjective solution to that issue will keep the Middle East a boiling pot with Sharon as its keeper, which is simply a joy to the neocons!

Nice.

ESPN has a great article about athletes and the military. Pat Tillman is a true hero:

A member of the elite Army Rangers, Tillman presumably is on the ground somewhere in the splintered country of Iraq. Deployed in early March along with the rest of the 75th Ranger Regiment, he and his comrades are working to liberate Iraq from the grip of Saddam Hussein.

Tillman, at 26 years old, left a three-year, $3.6 million contract on the table to enlist in the Army with his brother Kevin after the 2001 season. Tillman will make no more than $17,000 this year. He is believed to be the first NFL regular to leave the game for military service since World War II, when 1,000 players served and 23 were killed.

I love this quote:

Like Reynolds, Dennis Mannion has seen both sides. He is the associate head football coach at Choate Rosemary Hall, a prep school in Wallingford, Conn., and a former player at Notre Dame. He also won two Purple Hearts with the U.S. Marines for his heroic work in the 1967-68 Siege of Khe Sanh, in South Vietnam. Sixty of Mannion's fellow Marines died in that extended battle.

"I think there was such a backlash to those Hollywood a-- h----," Mannion said. "I mean, it took us three weeks to get it done over there and it takes, what, nine weeks to pick an 'American Idol' or vote somebody off the island? Maybe more people, athletes included, will decide to do their part.

"Saddam has been a tyrant, and we're the only people willing to deal with him. If Sean Penn loves him so much, let Saddam go live at his house."

And of course your idiot quote:

And while there has been an outpouring of support for the U.S. troops from athletes in all sports, no other high-profile professional athlete has followed Tillman's selfless example. In fact, former Cardinals teammate Simeon Rice, now a member of the Super Bowl champion-Tampa Bay Buccaneers, disparaged Tillman in an interview on Jim Rome's radio show last month.

"He really wasn't that good, not really," Rice said. "He was good enough to play in Arizona, [but] that's just like the XFL."

After several more promptings from Rome, Rice allowed, "I think it's very admirable, actually. You've got to give kudos to a guy like that because he did it for his own reasons. Maybe it's the Rambo movies, maybe it's Sylvester Stallone, Rocky, whatever compels him."

Simeon Rice would've done nothing for the Bucs this year, if not for Warren Sapp. The True pampered athlete, Simeon Rice.

Pfc Lynch has made an excellent recommendation:

Pfc. Jessica Lynch asked Thursday that people stop sending her gifts and instead make donations to military charities.

The family is also urging support for Army Emergency Relief, the American Red Cross, the Air Force Aid Society, the Navy and Marine Corps Aid Society and the USO.

Poland assisted us in the war and now we will assist them in building their defenses:

Poland signed a 3.5-billion-dollar contract to buy 48 Lockheed Martin F-16 fighter planes, marking a further strengthening of ties between the central European country and the United States.


Signed in the central city of Deblin in the presence of Polish Prime Minister Leszek Miller, the accord involves US promises of billions of dollars of investments.

"It's the contract of the century," Defence Minister Jerzy Szmajdzinski said at the signing ceremony.

Poland needs the planes to come up to the standards (news - web sites) of the NATO (news - web sites) military alliance which it joined in 1999.

Some EU countries, read France and Germany, aren't that happy:

Lockheed Martin snared the contract in December, beating bids from British-Swedish consortium BAE Systems-SAAB with its Jas-39 Gripen and France's Dassault Aviation with its Mirage 2000-5.

The deal drew criticism from European Union (news - web sites) countries that thought a member-in-waiting should have given its business to an EU company.

More veiled threats from Chirac and company. I think that the F-16's proved themselves to be excellent aircraft, where as the Mirage was no where to be found.

In a move of sheer brilliance, the Bush administration has awarded clean-up work in Iraq to Bechtel, based in Nanci Pelosi's backyard. I don't believe that Pelosi will have too much to say about it:

The government on Thursday awarded Bechtel Corp. a contract that could reach $680 million for helping rebuild Iraq's power, water and sewage systems and repairing airports and a seaport.

The U.S. Agency for International Development said the San Francisco engineering and construction company initially will receive $34.6 million. Bechtel could earn the larger figure over 18 months if Congress approves the funds.

However some Dems who didn't bring home the bacon are pissed:

One critic, Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, said the contract showed that "a troubling pattern is beginning to emerge, as some of the most powerful business interests in the country continue to receive these huge contracts without ... open, transparent bidding."

Wyden and others are sponsoring a bill that would require a public explanation of contracts awarded under a limited bidding process.

This is telling though:

The company and its workers contributed at least $277,050 to federal candidates and party committees in the last election cycle, about 57 percent to Democrats and 43 percent to Republicans, the center found.

That idiot Bush gets over on them again. How can the Dems complain about awarding the contract to a company based in the house Minority Leaders home city an which gives thousands more to the Democrats. Brilliant.

Instapundit has Michael Kelly's last article. Man, I looked forward to Wednesday mornings to read his work. David Bloom was also laid to rest. Young kids for both of them, too.

People who should just be shot the day they are convicted.

LGF's Charles Johnson seems upset the baby wipes are not evident:

It’s been a while since we got a glimpse of Arafat’s inner sanctum. The scenario is depressingly unchanged, so much so that I’m beginning to suspect it’s actually an exhibit at Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum.

Towering stack of unfinished paperwork (red binder not visible this time): check.

Bizarre religious fetish objects (cross and Dome of the Rock paperweight, nowhere near any papers): check.

Facial tissues in designer floral print box: check.

Baby wipes: missing in action.

Odd food-like substances on paper plates: check.

World’s oldest terrorist: check.

Clueless unelected EUroweenie bureaucrat sucking up to world’s oldest terrorist: check.

I feel bad about just linking to one item so read it all.

The Mad Aussie has some info on the anti-war idiotarians who defaced the Sidney Opera House.

Lileks writes about All in the Family, Sanford and Son, and Brit Hume, but not about...well go read him.

James Taranto is always interesting. Take five minutes a day and read him.

Old Europe can never live up to it's responsibilities:

Switzerland has blocked access to government archives relating to the country’s ties with apartheid-era South Africa.

The head of the Swiss research programme into apartheid-era links says the move will limit his ability to properly probe Switzerland’s relationship with the white regime in Pretoria.

A finance ministry statement, issued on Thursday, said the temporary decision had been taken in order to protect Swiss companies facing class action suits in the United States.

Before anyone argues that the US should pay reparations, I would counter that slavery was never federal government sponsored. The 3/5 person language was, but that has since been repaid.

CNN has had a bad week, month, and year.

That's it. I will stop watching anything with Sandy Duncan in it. Wait, who's Sandy Duncan?

In a telephone interview from New York about her appearance, Duncan didn't shy away from expressing opinion about war and world politics:

"I tend to be more of a liberal, and at this point in global history, war is just not a feasible option. I just wish men would quit thinking they could just duke it out with each other.

Us men just like to duke it out at every opportunity. If I use the phrase "duke it out" again on my blog, shoot me.

"I don't have all the facts, and who knows what's really the truth, but I don't really respect his (Bush's) way of dealing with this situation. It would have been great to have someone really, really smart in that office, and someone who is globally aware.

"Maybe there are some facts that we don't know -- or are we being manipulated by some factors other than those they have told us about?"

Bush is so stupid that he gained the Senate and held the House, passed a tax cut, and has an approval rating of over 70%. As for being globally aware, well, I know he knows where Baghdad is and he seemed to be able to take out more than empty tents in Afghanistan.

Perhaps Sandy, you are really, really an idiot and are looking to boost your career back to those ratings busting levels it had once attained.

I can't believe I just "Fisked" Sandy Duncan.

In the words of Seinfeld, "not that there's anything wrong with that".

Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein has been caught with his pants down -- literally. A shocking 1968 porn film has surfaced, in which the flamboyant strongman appears performing raunchy homosexual acts!

The image quality of the grainy 16mm film, uncovered by the Kuwaiti secret police, is poor -- but experts who've taken a close look at the hairy-chested actor are "100 percent certain" it is a younger, trimmer Saddam.

Celebrity worshippers are getting their collective hackles up again:

It's been a good long while since I've had a sit-down with the US Constitution, but if my junior high school memories serve me correctly, I don't recall the Bill of Rights guaranteeing free speech only to those who espouse one particular opinion. Yet that seems to be the disturbing interpretation preferred by those encouraging a backlash against some celebrities who have been outspoken opponents of the US-led war against Iraq.

The Bill of Rights does not grant free speech rights to those that espouse one particular view. It gives everyone the right to say pretty much what they wish. However, if a celeb says something that someone disagrees with, that person reserves the right to not purchase the product the celeb is peddling or the movie they star in. How many products would you buy from Haliburton Renee?
By the way here is the Constitution if you want to refresh your memory.

The Dixie Chicks saw their album sales drop and radio stations refuse to play their Grammy-winning CD, ''Home,'' after member Natalie Maines told a London audience last month that she was ''ashamed'' that President George W. Bush hailed from her home state of Texas. Though Maines apologized, some have promised boycotts when the Dixie Chicks' concert tour kicks off in Greenville, S.C., next month

That's the funny thing about America post-Clinton. If you say something stupid, an apology no longer makes it OK again. Remember how it was the Right who pushed Trent Lott out?

A conservative website has published a list of more than 100 actors, musicians, and filmmakers who, it claims, ''use their celebrity status to push their anti-Bush/anti-American beliefs on the rest of the world.'' According to the site, these celebrities are named ''so our readers can boycott them if they wish.'' One of those singled out is Janeane Garofalo. The passionately antiwar actress and comedian has become the target of a campaign to convince ABC to drop plans for a proposed series starring her.

Then last week, the National Baseball Hall of Fame canceled a 15th anniversary tribute to the much-loved film ''Bull Durham'' because two of its stars, Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon, have been openly candid in their opposition to the war.

''Given the track record of Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon, and the timing -- with our troops committed in Iraq -- a strong possibility existed that they could have used The Hall of Fame as a backdrop for their views,'' Dale Petroskey, the Cooperstown shrine's president, said in a statement. While acknowledging the actors' right to ''express their opinions,'' Petroskey said the hall ''is not the proper venue for highly charged expressions, whatever they may be.''

In a letter to Robbins, Petroskey said, ''We believe your very public criticism of President Bush at this important -- and sensitive -- time in our nation's history helps undermine the U.S. position, which ultimately could put our troops in even more danger. As an institution, we stand behind our President and our troops in this conflict.''

Again, they have the right to say as they wish, but the consequences must be a part of that. The Hall of Fame chose to not be associated with people who do not share their views. As a Neocon Male, how welcome would I be at a NOW meeting or an NAACP conference?

What Petroskey, a former assistant press secretary in the Reagan administration, clearly does not stand behind is free speech for those who dare fall on the other side of his ideological fence.

He chided Robbins and Sarandon (who was also recently booted as keynote speaker at a United Way event in Florida because of her political views), urging them to ''speak and act responsibly,'' given the public platform they enjoy due to their celebrity. But what exactly does Petroskey mean, and who is he to decide what constitutes acting and speaking responsibly? It is doubtful that if Robbins and Sarandon had been pro-war, their invitation to Cooperstown would have been rescinded.

If the official rhetoric is to be believed, America went to Iraq, in part, to upend a brutal regime notoriously intolerant of dissenting views. In the midst of this, we have these self-appointed arbiters of Americanism who wrap themselves in the flag and wield their version of patriotism like a club against those who hold views at odds with their own.

Ahhh, he's a Reaganite. Now I get it. Again Renee, maybe you need me to type a little slower. Their rights are not being violated; they have not been restricted from appearing at public function. How would I have been accepted here? I'm sure they would've sat back and listened to my point of view without booing me off the stage.

This has gone beyond whether big-mouth, know-nothing celebrities should be hogging precious airtime that could otherwise be filled with yet another pontificating retired general. This is about the strange turn in the post-Sept. 11 national psyche that equates opposing war with opposing US troops and that brands healthy dissent as tantamount to treason. And it's about punishing those deemed to be traitors, whether it's steamrolling Dixie Chicks CDs, campaigning to keep Garofalo off a TV show, or, as some have done, e-mailing death threats to longtime political activist Martin Sheen, star of NBC's ''The West Wing.''

To dissent is not to commit treason. The only time I've heard treason was in the NY Sun, and they were rightly lambasted. Especially by Conservatives.

As the United States prepares to guide Iraq toward democracy and a new political future, it must not slip back into its own dark past of McCarthyism, which ruined dozens of lives and careers in the 1950s. The Bill of Rights guarantees free speech to everyone, including celebrities who flash peace signs at awards shows or release music denouncing war. And to believe otherwise, or contend that their dissent is dangerous, may be the most treasonous, anti-American act of all.

The McCarthyism card has been pulled. Was McCarthyism worse than what this atrocity commited by that great Dem icon FDR? I think not.

I feel sorry that they kid was injured but take some personal responsibility for your actions Dad.

The Village Voice slams the Howell Raines:

Loyalty and performance were put to the test between July and October 2002, when Raines killed several stories by Golden and fellow reporter David Kocieniewski. For months, the two had been pursuing allegations of influence peddling by former New Jersey senator Robert Torricelli, who was running for re-election. The New York Observer reported last week that Raines felt the pieces he spiked had been "reckless."

Times insiders tell another story: They say editors asked Raines to spell out his complaints about the spiked pieces, but he declined, citing only his aversion to "piling on" or to giving prosecutors too much credence. After all, the Justice Department had declined to press charges, and the Senate only gave the senator a severe reprimand. But the spiked stories included a jailhouse interview with Torricelli's accuser, David Chang, and an inventory of the evidence investigators had collected to corroborate Chang's claims that he gave Torricelli gifts in exchange for political favors. One source claims that Landman lobbied hard for the spiked pieces and felt undercut when they did not run.

Asked if Golden's work was "reckless," Landman told the Voice, "I think Tim's a great reporter. His stuff on Torricelli held up brilliantly. There's nothing reckless about it." He declined to comment on internal disputes. Golden and Kocieniewski declined to comment.

Even though the Times won only one Pulitzer, they are making a gaggle of money. As long as circulation is up, Raines goes nowhere.

Gray Davis is in deep trouble and he still has three years left:

With California's budget crisis deepening, 24 percent of registered California voters approve of the second-term Democrat's job performance, while 65 percent disapprove, according to a Field Poll released Monday.

A 24% approval rating? I bet more people would approve of Saddam as Governor. I can't believe that Bill Simon couldn't beat this clown.

Al Davis is an idiot. I hope he loses this lawsuit and the judge makes him pay attorney fees for the other side.

"The Raiders were lied to," attorney Roger Dreyer said on the opening day of the team's $1.1 billion fraud trial against the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Corp., the now-defunct Arthur Anderson accounting firm and Dublin businessman Edwin DeSilva, who led efforts to lure the Raiders back after 12 years in Los Angeles.

The result, he said, is that the team is tied to a situation in Oakland characterized by under-capacity crowds, TV blackouts and sagging revenues.

But an attorney for the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Corp. dismissed claims that the team was misled. Attorney James Brosnahan said legendary team owner Al Davis and other Raiders officials were fully apprised of a ticket-sales shortfall before they agreed to return.

Al definitely knew that sale were slow, he punked L.A. and deserves every bad thing to happen to him. Win a Superbowl this decade Al and maybe people will attend raider games.

Update: The idiocy of Davis never stops:

The Oakland Raiders have asked a judge to prevent the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Carolina Panthers from wearing their uniforms for games in California because they violate the Raiders' trademark rights.

The Raiders claim Tampa Bay's pirate logo is too similar to Oakland's. And the Raiders object to the Panthers' uniforms because two colors -- silver and black -- match those of the Raiders.

The left turns on its own:

TALK about pathetic.

Last week, anti-war protesters were reduced to picketing KQED -- that's right, San Francisco's left-leaning PBS television and radio station. Protesters accused the station of "deliberately limiting voices of reason, dissent and resistance."

"We're being picketed," a stunned KQED employee and former Vietnam war protester gasped over the phone last week, unsure of whether to laugh or cry

Ha! They didn't get the quagmire they had hoped for and now they're pissed at everyone.

American ingenuity at its finest:

In a 21st century twist to beating swords into ploughshares, U.S. Marine chemical warfare experts have been adapting their gear to provide a little luxury for war-weary troops camped out in Baghdad -- hot showers.

With fears of an attack by chemical or biological weapons subsiding, Marine specialists have turned pipes designed to wash down contaminated tanks into an outdoor steam room, giving soldiers their first shower in almost a month.

Jets of warm water spurt from overhead pipes in a polythene tent -- giving eight Marines at a time one minute to get wet, one minute to lather themselves with soap, and one minute to rinse.

The US is playing hardball with Assad Jr:

RUMSFELD SAID at the daily Pentagon briefing that coalition forces shut down the oil pipeline, but that he was not sure whether it was the only pipeline to Syria and couldn’t say whether oil is still flowing between Iraq and Syria.
There are allegations that Syria has been receiving up to 200,000 barrels of oil per day through the pipeline — in violation of U.N. sanctions against Iraq.
Oil traders and U.S. officials say that a complete cut-off of Iraqi oil to Syria, which is believed to meet about one-third of Syria’s oil needs, would send a strong message to Damascus. The country’s economy is in trouble, with gross domestic product growth barely keeping up with population growth.

Assad has to be scared shitless. He has a Turkey to the north, israel to the south and west, and Iraq to the east. Two democracies and a newly liberated country with a couple thousand confident troops in his neighborhood. I don't think he has the heart to challenge us to much.

Robert Sentry takes down Matt Miller better than I did.(I would show you if I could link to my archives)

Where is the left when it comes to Cuba? I've asked this question on many occasions and still haven't gotten an answer:

Three men convicted of hijacking a passenger ferry last week were executed by firing squad Friday, a swift response by Fidel Castro's government to a recent string of hijackings to the United States.

The executions coincided with a crackdown and stiff prison sentences for scores of the government's most vocal critics -- reflecting a new determination by Cuba to squash perceived threats to its socialist system.

A court sentenced the men Tuesday after finding them guilty of "very grave acts of terrorism," said a statement read on state television.

The cases were appealed to both Cuba's Supreme Tribunal and the governing Council of State, and all the sentences were upheld. "At dawn today the sanctions were applied," the statement said.

Convicted on Tuesday, executed on Friday. What does former President Carter have to say? Susan Sarandon? Barbara Walters? Nothing, nothing, and nothing.

Tony Blair will be on the Simpsons:

TONY Blair took a gamble yesterday by recording an episode of The Simpsons while Britain is still at war.

But he reckons it will pay off.

Downing Street sources insisted last night that Simpsons fan Mr Blair, who watches the anarchic animation with his children, agreed to appear in the show months ago.

In the words of Mr. Burns; excellent.

To blatantly steal from James Taranto, You don't say:

Police said Friday that the fact that a body that washed up on a Wilmette beach had two left thumbs could help them identify the man.

"It's definitely going to help us in figuring out who he is," Wilmette Police Cmdr. Kyle Perkins said Friday.

A black man is banned from performing as a white man who made his living stealing music from black men.

AN ELVIS impersonator on Friday told how he was turned down for a slot on Stars In Their Eyes — because he is black.


Colbert Hamilton, 31, said TV bosses insisted only a white man could do justice taking off The King of rock ’n’ roll.

He has been impersonating Elvis in pubs and clubs for three years after a pal asked him to do it as a joke.

Why did FOX kick everyones ass in the ratings during the most covered news event in ten years?

Specifically, the FOX News Channel seems to be the network of choice, taking fourteen of the top fifteen slots in the latest cable ratings (week ending April 6).

Tuesday's edition of The Fox Report with Shepard Smith was the most-watched programme, managing 6.43 million viewers. Last week's chart topper The O'Reilly Factor had all five of its editions placed in the top ten, ranging from 6.16 million at number two to 5.41 million at number seven.

Hannity and Colmes managed entries at 8 and 12, whilst Fox and Friends Saturday placed at 9 and 15.

Maybe it's the fact that FOX did focus on the troops and didn't second guess every decision as CNN did. If 70% of US citizens support this war, I surmise that they chose to get the story from a source that didn't constantly question the war plan. FOX is forever getting sniped because they have pro-American coverage. I wouldn't go as far as saying it's jingoistic, but it is definitely pro-American. I believe that's why I watched. You felt that you were getting all the coverage without the blatant anti-war undertone that CNN as a whole, and Aaron Brown in particular, exuded every night. I also give kudos to Lester Holt on MSNBC. He just reported the events in a professional way that left Brian Williams in the dust.

Leave it our elected officials to say stupid things:

The relatively quick fall of Baghdad shows that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was a "paper tiger" rather than a major threat to world peace, Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa said Thursday.

"What we were told and what you saw in the press last fall and earlier this year is that he had a massive war machine," said Harkin, the most outspoken critic of the war in Iraq among members of the Iowa congressional delegation.

"It looks now like this was just a Third World country - there were people fighting with tennis shoes on, on the Iraqi side," Harkin told reporters. "I don't know what else we're going to find, but they didn't fly even one airplane in the air. They had almost nothing.

Perhaps Mr. Harkin would like to tell the soldiers who were involved in firefights with these "paper tigers" that they were no threat. Maybe he can even tell the families of the dead and wounded that they were not so brave because the men they fought against wore tennis shoes and were third world.

And of course Nanci Pelosi (Idiotarian-CA) had this to say:

"I have absolutely no regret about my vote on this war," she told reporters at her weekly briefing yesterday, saying the same questions still remain: "The cost in human lives. The cost to our budget, probably $100 billion. We could have probably brought down that statue for a lot less. The cost to our economy. But the most important question at this time, now that we're toward the end of it, is what is the cost to the war on terrorism?"

Are you saying, Rep. Pelosi, that we should not have used as many JDAMs and Tomahawks to soften up Iraqi resistance? That we should have just attacked them on the cheap? We might have suffered a thousand or more casualties, but the costs would have been under $50 billion.

Tim Blair, whose archive links, as well as mine aren't working, has lots of good stuff. Check it all out.

Stephen Green found this little nugget on Pave France:

Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that France, Germany and Russia can initially best contribute to the reconstruction of Iraq by the forgiveness of outstanding debt between both Iraq and France, Iraq and Germany, and Iraq and Russia.

Tom Cole from the great state of Oklahoma sponsored this resolution. God, I hope it passes.

I have not linked to the Vodka Man in recent days so go catch-up. Start with this.

I know I'm late on this, but work and other stuff precluded blogging last night. The CNN revelations concerning Iraq are pretty damning. Why a major global news operation did not report this, is unbelievable:

Over the last dozen years I made 13 trips to Baghdad to lobby the government to keep CNN's Baghdad bureau open and to arrange interviews with Iraqi leaders. Each time I visited, I became more distressed by what I saw and heard — awful things that could not be reported because doing so would have jeopardized the lives of Iraqis, particularly those on our Baghdad staff.

For example, in the mid-1990's one of our Iraqi cameramen was abducted. For weeks he was beaten and subjected to electroshock torture in the basement of a secret police headquarters because he refused to confirm the government's ludicrous suspicion that I was the Central Intelligence Agency's Iraq station chief. CNN had been in Baghdad long enough to know that telling the world about the torture of one of its employees would almost certainly have gotten him killed and put his family and co-workers at grave risk.

The guy was tortured for weeks and CNN did nothing. They did not report anything about this and missed the opportunity to pull back the rock that hid the atrocities Saddam and his followers committed. Shameful.

We also had to worry that our reporting might endanger Iraqis not on our payroll. I knew that CNN could not report that Saddam Hussein's eldest son, Uday, told me in 1995 that he intended to assassinate two of his brothers-in-law who had defected and also the man giving them asylum, King Hussein of Jordan. If we had gone with the story, I was sure he would have responded by killing the Iraqi translator who was the only other participant in the meeting. After all, secret police thugs brutalized even senior officials of the Information Ministry, just to keep them in line (one such official has long been missing all his fingernails).

Still, I felt I had a moral obligation to warn Jordan's monarch, and I did so the next day. King Hussein dismissed the threat as a madman's rant. A few months later Uday lured the brothers-in-law back to Baghdad; they were soon killed.

Did they warn anyone in the US government? Why not? Why did they not report any of this in the days leading up to the current conflict?

Then there were the events that were not unreported but that nonetheless still haunt me. A 31-year-old Kuwaiti woman, Asrar Qabandi, was captured by Iraqi secret police occupying her country in 1990 for "crimes," one of which included speaking with CNN on the phone. They beat her daily for two months, forcing her father to watch. In January 1991, on the eve of the American-led offensive, they smashed her skull and tore her body apart limb by limb. A plastic bag containing her body parts was left on the doorstep of her family's home.

I felt awful having these stories bottled up inside me. Now that Saddam Hussein's regime is gone, I suspect we will hear many, many more gut-wrenching tales from Iraqis about the decades of torment. At last, these stories can be told freely.

They could have been told freely at any time. The act of not reporting this before because CNN may have jeopardized its reporting in Iraq is dishonest and morally bankrupt.

Remember the shooting at the El Al counter in L.A.? You know, the one where an Egyptian shot people because he was a little crazy. It wasn't terrorism shouted anti-Semites. Well, yes it was.

The investigation developed information that he openly supported the killings of civilians in order to advance the Palestinian cause," McLaughlin said.

He said Hadayet bought the weapons used in the attack just weeks before the shooting, closed his bank accounts and sent his family overseas. He walked into the terminal with a .45-caliber semiautomatic Glock pistol, a 9 mm handgun and a six-inch knife.

The two people killed were Yaakov "Jacob" Aminov, 46, and Victoria Hen, 25, who worked behind the counter. Several other people were injured.

Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center said he believed all along the shooting was a terrorist attack and was satisfied the Department of Justice ruled it one.

"It's an attack on Americans because there's no way he could determine that only Jews travel on El Al," Hier said. "He was out to commit a terrorist attack to make a point and threaten Americans. ... (It) caused tremendous panic around the country. People didn't travel and they didn't go to the airport."

The finding also contradicts the notion that Hadayet acted for personal reasons or because he was despondent over financial problems, said Hier, leader of the Jewish human rights organization.

The spin begins with a furious assault of stupidity:

With that indelible image of Saddam's toppling statue forever banishing the doubts of the armchair generals, and with the amazing achievements of the United States armed forces coming into sharper relief, it's time for all honest observers - and especially conservatives - to confront a simple fact:

The remarkable feats in Iraq are being performed by Bill Clinton's military.

I guess that if we are to take this line of reasoning, the recession we are mired in is the "Clinton Recession". It did start before he was out of office.

This should be obvious to anyone not blinded by ideology or partisanship. We've been told repeatedly how much more lethal and accurate our forces are in 2003 than they were in 1991 - so much so that we needed only 250,000 troops to drive to Baghdad and change the regime, as opposed to the 500,000 we sent merely to oust Saddam from Kuwait in Gulf War I. Something like 90 percent of the bombs and missiles we use are "precision guided" today, versus roughly 10 percent back in 1991. The catalogue of how today's military is smarter, faster and better than it was back during Desert Storm is a credit to U.S. ingenuity and a source of national pride.

Hmm. Let's see. Between 1992 and 2003, the person who was president for the bulk of that time was... Bill Clinton. It's true that President Bush has been throwing money at the Pentagon since Sept. 11, but defense planners will tell you that none of the impressive leaps in our military capability have taken place suddenly in the last 18 months.

No they could not. We waited to go into Afghanistan because we weren't ready and we waited to go into Iraq because we weren't ready. We had the weapons mostly because the Republican House ensured that we would have proper weapons if they were needed. Why did we not use the proper weapons in Somalia?

No, much as it must incense Rush Limbaugh and Tom DeLay, we are liberating Iraq with Bill Clinton's military. The same Bill Clinton, of course, who, as conservative myth has it, "gutted" and "hollowed out" our fighting forces - that is, when he wasn't busy shredding the moral fabric of the country, his first priority.

What should we make of this fact?

The main truth it underscores is how divorced the defense debate is from real life. The myth that Democrats are "weak on defense" and the GOP is "strong" is one that Democratic strategists have struggled with for years.

As far as I know Rush has never been elected to any office, but that's beside the fact. I was in the military when both Bush and Clinton were in office. Clintons first act to bolster the military was to push for ending the gay-ban. He folded because the military establishment fought him as they did on every other issue. If you consider "Don't ask, don't tell" a victory for Clinton with regards to the military, you are delusional. As for the Dems being weak on defense, two words: Jimmy Carter.

The reality is that Bill Clinton's defense budgets roughly tracked the blueprint left by then-defense secretary Dick Cheney in 1992. Clinton insisted the Pentagon maintain a Cold War budget even without a Cold War to protect his party's right flank. For the same reason, Al Gore called for bigger defense budgets during the 2000 campaign than did George W. Bush - a fact that almost no one recalls. Gore needed to "prove" his "toughness" on defense with dollars. Bush didn't have to - as a Republican, he was simply more trusted on the issue.

The difference between Gore/Clinton and Bush is that Gore/Clinton didn't trust the military as Bush does. The military knows what it needs to procure and Bush has given them the authority to get it.

The problem that Rumsfeld ran into was that the military was so used to doing as they wished and not listening to a thing Clinton or Cohen said, that to finally have a man in charge who said no to their plans
caused some friction.

That reform agenda is for another day - for now, it's time to celebrate the extraordinary courage and accomplishments of our troops. To be sure, the risks and dangers they face in Iraq aren't over - and America's responsibility to help Iraqis build their own future has only begun.

Still, this milestone is indisputably historic.



The obligatory support the troops, blah, blah, blah...

Yes, Tommy Franks and Donald Rumsfeld and their teams deserve enormous credit, and President Bush's steely resolve may give even Jacques Chirac a secret shiver of apres-war doubt.

But all the same, I hope all honest Americans - and I know that includes you, Rush and Tom - join me in toasting the unrivaled capabilities of the military that Bill Clinton handed off to his successor.

The only thing Clinton handed off was a legacy of scandal, abuse of power, a lawsuit against one of the very companies that allowed him to enjoy a great economy, and Osama bin-Laden still at large.

I'm listening to Rumsfeld answering questions. The administration could have been vindicated, and scored a propaganda coup on numerous occasions by declaring the suspected WMD were confirmed. He just said that we are sending the samples to numerous countries to ensure that we won't look as though we were covering something up later. Great move.

A Liberal gets it.

An interesting new approach to treating Alzheimers:

A shunt implanted in the skull of a patient with Alzheimer's could be the first treatment that actually fixes what's broken in the brain rather than simply masking symptoms of the debilitating disease.

The device, called a CogniShunt, stops proteins suspected of causing the dementia associated with Alzheimer's from reaching the brain.

I don't know anyone with this disease but I've seen enough to know that it's devastating. I hope this holds promise.

Gerhard is warning us about "repetition" of the Iraqi War:

He called for a quickest transition of power in Iraq to a democratically elected government, while describing the debate in the United States on partition of the reconstruction contracts in Iraq as "macabre".

�@�@He said efforts must now be made to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe in Iraq.

�@�@However, Schroeder did not rule out the possibility of Germany's participation in a UN-led peace-keeping mission in Iraq, saying that his country would never shun offering help.

Read: making money with no work. Schroeder is a piece of work.

The Japanese are screaming for the head of a WMD terrorist:

Angry families of people who died in the 1995 Tokyo subway gassings carried out by AUM-Shinrikyo cult members heaped abuse at cult guru Shoko Asahara and demanded the death sentence for him Thursday at the 253rd hearing of his trial.

The guy has had 253 trials? Another hundred or so should be enough to execute him.

We have some work ahead of us. Homicide bombings will continue, albit, I believe for a short time once we get some kind of control over the Iraqi populace. I just heard on MSNBC that a baby born in Iraq today was named George.

Our favorite amigo Fidel cracked down on dissidents to protect Socialism and because the US was backing these horrrible people:

Perez Roque also denied criticism the crackdown was timed so the world's attention would be focused on the Iraq war.

"This decision was taken before the war on Iraq," Perez Roque said.

The sentences have been condemned by governments and human rights groups around the world.

I have heard nothing from the major networks and page 10 stories in the papers. What does Jimmy Carter think? A Nobel Laureate could not stand back and allow this to happen, could he?

New York City police were collecting information about the political leanings of protesters they arrest. They have now stopped this horrendous practice:

New York City police this week ended a practice of questioning arrested anti-war demonstrators about their political affiliations and are destroying a database containing the information, officials said Thursday.

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said he had been unaware of the practice but that it was stopped after civil libertarians complained that it violated the Constitution

I agree with the civil liberatarians. Political affiliation has nothing to do with the reason for the arrest and is not pertinent to the case. Besides, who has to ask about the politics of an anti-war protester, we all know they're Baath Party.

One thing you should never do to your girlfriend.

The Allies take out the Iraqi Navy in one shot:

This was Saddam Hussein's presidential yacht, a symbol of the Iraqi dictator's ostentatious lifestyle.

It has been reduced to just a shell of its former self.

Coalition forces bombed the German-built vessel in air strikes on the southern port of Basra, but witnesses say it remains "unsinkable

Nice boat.

Not much tonight, just a Fisking of Fisk.

The Americans "liberated" Baghdad yesterday, destroyed the centre of Saddam Hussein's quarter-century of brutal dictatorial power but brought behind them an army of looters who unleashed upon the ancient city a reign of pillage and anarchy. It was a day that began with shellfire and air strikes and blood-bloated hospitals and ended with the ritual destruction of the dictator's statues. The mobs shrieked their delight. Men who, for 25 years, had grovellingly obeyed Saddam's most humble secret policeman turned into giants, bellowing their hatred of the Iraqi leader as his vast and monstrous statues thundered to the ground.

OK, typical Fisk. People who have not breathed free air in a generation must stop and think about the "blood-bloated hospitals". Maybe they think that the sacrifice of their fellow country-men (and women) may well be worth the freedom.

"It is the beginning of our new freedom," an Iraqi shopkeeper shouted at me. Then he paused, and asked: "What do the Americans want from us now?' The great Lebanese poet Kalil Gibran once wrote that he pitied the nation that welcomed its tyrants with trumpetings and dismissed them with hootings of derision. And the people of Baghdad performed this same deadly ritual yesterday, forgetting that they – or their parents – had behaved in identical fashion when the Arab Socialist Baath Party destroyed the previous dictatorship of Iraq's generals and princes. Forgetting, too, that the "liberators" were a new and alien and all-powerful occupying force with neither culture nor language nor race nor religion to unite them with Iraq.

Again Fisk goes to the "I-was-told-so-I'll-relate-even-though-you-can't-disprove-it" man on the street comments. Notice he also did not quote Mr. Gibran directly. I was unable to find the quote he referred to. The difference, Bob, between us and the Baath Party is that we will leave after democracy is established.

In Al-Fardus (Paradise) Square, US Marines helped a crowd of youths pull down the gaunt and massive statue of Saddam by roping it to an armoured personnel carrier. It toppled menacingly forward from its plinth to hang lengthways above the ground, right arm still raised in fraternal greetings to the Iraqi people.

I don't recall the first thought of that statue as "gaunt". I also don't think, as I believe the Iraqis I saw today, believe that that arm raised was "fraternal".

It was a symbolic moment in more ways than one. I stood behind the first man to seize a hatchet and smash at the imposing grey marble plinth. But within seconds, the marble had fallen away to reveal a foundation of cheap bricks and badly cracked cement. That's what the Americans always guessed Saddam's regime was made of, although they did their best – in the late Seventies and early Eighties – to arm him and service his economy and offer him political support, to turn him into the very dictator he became.

In one sense, therefore, America – occupying the capital of an Arab nation for the first time in its history – was helping to destroy what it had spent so much time and money creating. Saddam was "our" man and yesterday, metaphorically at least, we annihilated him. Hence the importance of all those statue- bashing mobs, of all that looting and theft.

We supported Saddam for one simple reason, since Fisk is comfortable with old Arabic sayings, "the enemy of my enemy is my friend". We were dealing with a nation that was a neighbor of Saddam whom held our citizens. Just like us cozying to Pakistan. I especially like the way he alludes to the way we treat our "friends". The veiled reference to what he believes we'll do to the UK is not so veiled.

Ahh, never mind. I have too much to do to finish this rubbish. Read it yourself and Fisk him in your head.

It was a heady day. It's not over though.