January 24, 2005

T-Minus 3 Weeks for Valentine's Day

If you guys are anything like me, you tend to forget about holiday's until the very last minute, leaving yourself to scramble for the lame, last-second cards and presents nobody else wanted.

As something of a public service annoucement for you (and a shameless plug for my advertisers), I've decide that I'd drop in a short reminder post to you every Monday leading up to Valentine's to keep you out of trouble, and potentially make you a hero in the eyes of your spouse or that "special someone."

While I'm sure I can sell Frederick's of Hollywood stuff to the guys, I have it on good authority that something from PajamaGram tends to be a bit better received by most of the ladies.

In addition to that, a lot of folks like Valetines' sweets, and TastyGram has a pretty good reputation for being able to satisfy that need.

Another gift that scores well among ladies of all ages are the bears from the Vermont Teddy Bear Company.

So consider yourself warned, and
don't wait till the last second guys, I'd hate to see you in the dog house.

We now return you to your regularly-scheduled conservative political blogging.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:20 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 210 words, total size 2 kb.

January 23, 2005

Milblogger Wins Silver Star

1st Lt. Neil Prakesh of ARMOR GEDDON (and Syracuse, NY) was recently presented a Silver Star for action in Ba'quabah, Iraq.

Congratulations, Avenger Red Six.

(hat tip LGF)

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:11 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 36 words, total size 1 kb.

January 22, 2005

New York Blizzard Live-Blogging

Look! The first snowflake!

And another...

And another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another--oh look, a squirrel--and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another--hey, a plow truck--and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another...

For some applications, live-blogging is overrated.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 07:17 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 82 words, total size 1 kb.

January 20, 2005

"America Is Divided By Jerks."

P.J. O Rourke's An Alternative Inaugural Address
(hat tip: The Ebb & Flow Institute)

MY FELLOW AMERICANS, I had intended to reach out to all of you and bring a divided nation together. But I changed my mind. America isn't divided by political ethos or ethnic origin. America isn't divided by region or religion. America is divided by jerks. Who wants to bring a bunch of jerks together with the rest of us? Let them stew in Berkeley, Boston, and Ann Arbor.

The media say that I won the election on the strength of moral values. If the other fellow had become president, would the media have said that he won the election on the strength of immoral values? For once the media would have been right.
Read the whole thing.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 03:54 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 140 words, total size 2 kb.

Some Animals Are Moore Equal

I love the smell of hypocrisy in the morning, it smells like... bacon.

Yes, the fat frying this morning belongs to none other than Michael Moore.

Moore, who disingenuously challenged America's gun culture and history with his now customary use of inaccurate, contradictory and confused information in Bowling for Columbine, just had his bodyguard arrested for attempting to illegally carry a handgun onto a flight at JFK Airport in New York.


Moore now joins gun-grabbers Chuck Schumer and Ted Kennedy,Dianne Feinstien, Barbara Boxer, and many more that belong to the liberal culture that tells us, "do as I say, not as I do."

"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others," was the proclamation by the pigs of Orwell's classic Animal Farm.

It looks like Michael Moore is one pig who took that lesson to heart.

Update: You've got to L-O-V-E synergy. I also just won the weekly photo caption contest at Slant Point. The winning comment? You have to see it for yourself.

Update 2: Hello, Instapundit readers! Be sure to look around the site and bookmark it (CRTL+B, Mom) if you like it. Also check out my advertisers so I can afford a new gun of my own. Thanks!


Update 3: Readers are expanding the list of those that apparently feel they are "more equal than others."

"Tongueboy" reports
late columnist and rabid gun control advocate, Carl Rowan, managed to shoot a trespasser with his unregistered gun.

"Brad" adds that California State Senator Don Perata (D) has a CCW for a Beretta 92F 9mm an identical copy of the military M9. Most of you would recognize the 92F/M9 as pistol carried by Mel Gibson's character in the Lethal Weapon series and Bruce Willis' in the Diehard series. Yippie-ki-yea, Don.


I'm sure more qualify. Keep them coming.

The "I'm a Bad Capitalist" Update: I forgot to ask my visitors to check out the Confederate Yankee Store for "Luck Fiberals" Merchandise and my new "Unlike Liberals" bumper sticker.

The "Fox News Must Have Hired Mary Mapes" Update.
Apparently, Fox News really screwed up this story, but Moore's hypocrisy still stands. As Moorewatch reader Rann Aridon says:

"Just because the guy wasn't in the process of guarding Moore at the time doesn't detract from the fact that Moore still employs bodyguards armed with the very weapons he wants to deny the "common people" he claims to represent."

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:50 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 410 words, total size 5 kb.

January 19, 2005

My Blue States Conservatives Article Is Up

My guest-blogging article Can the Declaration be Drafted? is up over at The Blue State Conservatives.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 01:48 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 30 words, total size 1 kb.

Rice Confirmation Mini-Roundup

Like most of you, I have better things to do with my day than watch the Secretary of State confirmation hearings (such as my job, or alphabetizing my socks). Still, the news clips shown last night on the various cable news outlets all seemed to show what we expected going into the hearings, namely that Dr. Rice would be calm, professional and the epitome of the word "classy," while Senate Democrats would be anything but that.

At least one blogger has the real story, but don't expect to find much resembling insightful commentary from the left. The deep analysis from the reality-challenged community focuses on how Rice was "grilled like Mahi-Mahi in Miami" and how Barbara Boxer was a hero for stooping to petty personal attacks. Yet librals can't figure out why moderates grow more disgusted with them every day.

Mini-Roundup

  • Instapunk reports on Kerry's near-meltdown during the hearings
  • Sisu captures a couple of soundbites and draws an interesting visual comparison
  • LGF reader Model4 catches Barbara Boxer lying through her teeth
  • Blogs For Bush catches it as well

  • Jimme at Blue State Conservatives dissects the day's events with specific focus on Dodd's obsession with the torture issue and how Rice may have missed a chance to knock it out of the park
  • Polipundit suggests Dr. Rice's future job after her tenure as Secretary of State
  • La Shawn Barber takes dead aim
  • Patterico puts the homestate screws to Boxer's "reality-based" comments
  • The Ebb & Flow Institute has excerpts from the transcripts
  • Spoons at The Spoons Experience says Boxer, Biden and Dodd were gratuitously picking fights they know they can't win
More later as it develops.

Feel free to post additional relevant links in the comments.


Update:
  • Kevin McCollough has the complete transcript of the Rice/Boxer exchange (Kevin was also nice enough to provide a link to this thread for his radio audience, which I appreciate)
  • La Shawn Barber has a roundup at the bottom of her thread I must have missed the first time around, that includes blogger voices I'd missed.
  • As a side note, Technorati.com seems to be having technical problems this morning, making the blogosphere a bit of a challenge to check for more updates.
Update 2:

  • Roger L. Simon compliments Kerry on his impeccable Arabic.
  • Mark at Weapons of Mass Discussion evicerates Kerry and Boxer for their grandstanding
  • Acidman of Gut Rumbles adds Biden to the malarkey-slinging list
  • The confirmation hearings spur Cobb's thinking of how Republicans can pick up minority voters
  • Weapon of Choice goes beyond the confirmation to opine about the kind of SecState Rice might be.My advice for Iran? Duck.
  • Just for kicks, The Kool Aid Report is caught Fisking the Crap out of Barbara Boxer.
  • Slant Point brings up the disturbing possibility that compared to Boxer, other liberals might seem same by contrast.

Not surprisingly, The Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted 16-2 to confirm Dr. Rice, the holdouts being Senators Boxer and John "I voted for her, before I voted against her" Kerry.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:35 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 502 words, total size 7 kb.

January 18, 2005

Carnival of the Commies

From Tigerhawk we have the Carnival of the Commies, which he intends to be:

"a periodic review of the best and most representative work on the left side of the blogosphere. We will read the blogs you hate so you don't have to, and find within them the stories from the Left that you should know about. Why should you be reading them? Your reasons might range from a laudible desire to understand the other guy to simply knowing your enemy. In any case, this post will link to points of view that don't often make it into our own echo chamber."
Great content, and lots of it.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 03:11 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 116 words, total size 1 kb.

Kos He Can


I thought this guy looked familiar (source: al KozJazerra TV)

Wretchard at Belmont Club is reporting that some representatives of certain news services are in the paid service of terrorist organizations.

Neither Daily "F Them" Kos nor al Jazeera have issued a denial at this time.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 01:11 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 52 words, total size 1 kb.

Hersh's Syrup has Useful if Bitter Taste

Roger L. Simon is dead on.

Seymour Hersh is apparently after the Bush Administration again, but it seems the President he has consistently misunderestimated has made Hersh into a useful idiot sending a warning to Iran.

Has anyone determined how much this one cost us?

Don't worry, I'm sure Kos will think of something.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:47 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 68 words, total size 1 kb.

January 17, 2005

Harvard President: Women Are Stupid



The smug smile above belongs to the soon ex-President of Harvard University, Lawrence Summers, who said that women,
lack "natural ability" in some fields, essentially opining that women were too stupid to excel at math and science careers.

Summers has already been criticized because the number of job offers to women has dropped each year of his presidency, and he suggested that instead of math and science jobs, that women should get bigger breasts and strip insteadÂ… or maybe I'm getting him confused with someone else.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 05:05 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 96 words, total size 1 kb.

A Complete Blank

Sorry.

It has been a long weekend and I've got a hellacious set of deadlines this week, so my mind isn't on blogging right now. I have exactly nothing of interest to say at the moment, other than the fact I'll be working tonight on my guest blogging article for
The Blue State Conservatives which will be posted later in the week.

You should check them out if you haven't already, thy have some interesting, and frankly disturbing, content up today.

Also check out the guys at The New Editor if you haven't yet.

Iowahawk calls them,
"Powerline with a little Tex-Mex flava." Not a bad analogy, as they are another tight group blog with good commentary and talent for ferretting out interesting stories.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:18 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 130 words, total size 1 kb.

January 15, 2005

Signs of Intelligent Life

I just wanted to let others know that there is intelligent life up here beyond the Manson-Nixon Line, other than yours truly.

Two blue state conservative sites I've recently run across in the last few weeks are The Blue State Conservatives and Slant Point.

The Blue State Conservatives are a brand-spanking new group blog that launched just over a week ago, and looks like it is going to be a lot more than just your normal political blog, as it already has a post up entitled NFL criminals your children can idolize.

You won't get that kind of coverage anywhere else, kids.

I also have it on the highest authority that in addition to the regular stable of bloggers they are filling out, they have also lined up at least one excellent guest blogger to provide occasional commentary. Gee,
I wonder who that could be...

Slant Point is based in NYC, and has managed to thrive as a hub of conservative blogging in the middle of liberal lunacy. Slant Point also has one of the few blogrolls of NYC-area bloggers I've run across.

Besides, Scott Sala, blogger-in-residence, has pictures of himself posing with both Ed Koch and Curtis Sliwa. Top that, Instapundit!

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 01:02 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 210 words, total size 2 kb.

January 14, 2005

All Your Dreams Come True

I so hope this will come to pass.

The New York Post is reporting that not only is Kerry considering another presidential bid, but Tipper says Al Gore is considering an 2008 run.

As a blogger, all I can say in response is: "Please?" It will be great to have the guy who created the Internet (yeah, I know) running against the man who re-invented the flip-flop in the Democratic Primaries.

And if they become running mates, Gore could keep Kerry's cornicopia of plans in his lockbox.

Yes, I am salivating.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 01:14 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 101 words, total size 1 kb.

Punjis for Peace

I'd like to take a few minutes of your time to talk about a modest proposal for stopping illegal immigration.

It is simple in design, cost-effective to implement, and best of all, it nearly pays for itself.

As we all know, illegal immigration to the United States is growing problem. According to a recent Bear Sterns report(PDF), there may be as many as 20 million illegal aliens in the United States. These illegals are taking between 4-6 million jobs that used to belong to American workers, essentially outsourcing American jobs within America. This is a travesty.

In addition to taking American jobs, uninsured illegals are driving up healthcare costs for the American taxpayer, which hurts legal immigrants and native-born American citizens alike, and costs the nation billions of healthcare dollars. Los Angeles hospitals alone are losing more than $350 million each year on illegal aliens. These dollar figures do not begin to account for the law enforcement bill caused by illegals, who are each and every one a criminal, and occasionally terrorist sympathizers to boot. These illegal aliens are crippling the American economy.

It is time we cripple them back.


President Bush calls for changes on the status of illegal aliens, and proposes making them legal workers. I'm sorry Mr. President, but simply making them taxable doesn't address the issue, and may even encouage more illegal immigration.

I don't see where plans sponsored by either political party will halt the flow of illegals blatantly sponsored by certain banana republics looking to sponge off money flowing southward from jobs that should be rightfully held by hard-working Americans.

No we need strong, decisive action, and I think I have the answer in a simple economical solution.

Punji stick pits.

Instead of spending billions of dollars and thousands of additional man-hours on patrolling the border, we can simply line suspected border crossing areas with thousands of hidden pits filled with sharp sticks covered in human waste. Then simply send out bi-weekly patrols to pick up any survivors that haven't succumbed to infection or the desert heat, and take them to the border, where we will unceremoniously dump them back into Mexico where they belong.

Once there, Mexican authorities must cover the costs of debriding week-old gangrenous wounds caused by their lack of respect for U.S. sovereignty. I'm no medical expert, but the medical costs associated with treating thousands of these cases each month should encourage Mexican authorities close up their side of the border tighter than a nun's thighs in no time at all.

In addition, after a few illegals return home from Mexican hospitals minus a foot or two, the prevalence of cripples in their neighborhoods might open up space in the internal Mexican job market for those that are still healthy, while encouraging potential illegals to stay and better their own economies instead of literally risking life and limb.

Once Mexico strengthens its border security and Mexicans are willing to work at crappy jobs in their own country instead of ours, relations between our two nations can improve. That thought alone should be inspiring.

Punjis for Peace. Punjis for Prosperity.

Indeed.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:24 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 526 words, total size 5 kb.

January 13, 2005

Jailed for Lawyer Jokes

A little bit of local news from MSNBC.com:

Did you hear the one about the two guys arrested for telling lawyer jokes?

It happened this week to the founders of a group called Americans for Legal Reform, who were waiting in line to get into a Long Island courthouse.

"How do you tell when a lawyer is lying?" Harvey Kash reportedly asked Carl Lanzisera.

"His lips are moving," they said in unison.

While some waiting to get into the courthouse giggled, a lawyer farther up the line Monday was not laughing.

He told them to pipe down, and when they did not, the lawyer reported the pair to court personnel, who charged them with disorderly conduct, a misdemeanor.
Yep, jailed for jokes that a nearby thin-skinned John Edwards-type didn't much care for. I would add that he apparently wasn't a very good lawyer either; the "good ones" (according to the lawyer mentioned below) have special security passes and don't have to wait in line with the peons.

I actually heard these guys (well, one of them) on the radio this morning when they made an appearance to explain their story and get legal representation from the liberal lawyer/talk show host I love to hate, Ron Kuby. While I disagree with Ron on the vast majority of his politics, he is a hell of a lawyer, and I'm glad he's taking on this one... for free.

Of course, this arrest should never have happened, which makes the fact that the two guys arrested were with a judicial reform advocacy group all the more ironic.

Note: Despite what the caption says, the name of the dog in the Ron Kuby link above is Lily, not Commie. "Commie" just describes Kuby's political stance.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 01:00 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 297 words, total size 2 kb.

January 12, 2005

WNBC News Jumps The Gun

I have always been a staunch Second Amendment advocate.

I think we would benefit as a society from a national concealed carry law. I am a proponent of reinvigorating high school and college shooting programs, and feel that what the media labels as assault weapons are exactly the kinds of firearms the Founding Fathers intended us to have as I noted in a previous article.

But as strongly pro-gun as I am, I have finally found a specifically horrific firearm/ammo system whose ban I wholeheartedly support once I saw it pre-pitched for broadcast Wednesday evening (01/11/05) at 5:00 PM on WNBC News, New York.

Once you saw the pitch, how could you not?

"It" is the Fabrique Nationale Five seveN, a handgun that fires the relatively new 5.7x28mm cartridge. One kind of ammunition for this firearm is SS190, ammunition that looks like scaled-down 5.56mm NATO rounds and boosts the 2.02 gram (31 grains) pointed steel and aluminum core bullet to the muzzle velocity of 650 meters per second (ca. 2130 fps) from the pistol barrel.

It isn't a hunting handgun like a .454 Casull or .475 Linebaugh that penetrates armor as a side effect, but a weapon specifically built from the ground up to penetrate helmets and body armor to kill the person inside when using the SS190 ammunition. As law enforcement officers are the only Americans who typically wear body armor, this weapon/ammunition combination in civilian hands functions only as a "cop killer." Right?

We would be fools to allow this monstrosity of gun and ammo to be for sale on New York streets, or streets anywhere else. The nerve of these people! Got your righteous indignation up? Freshened your torch and sharpened your pitch fork?

Great!


Come with me and burn down WNBC News, because this weapon/ammo combination is not now, nor has ever been, available to the public.

You heard me right: this firearm/ammunition combination is not for sale at any price, to any civilian in the United States.


If WNBC News had bothered to Google the Five seveN, they might have run across the very prominent information that this specific ammunition and weapon combination is available for government and law enforcement sales only. The Five seveN, itself is perfectly legal to own, but only with the slower, lighter SS192 practice/duty ammunition that in not armor penetrating.

Even in armor-piercing SS190 form, this ammunition is thought to be less lethal than most existing handgun ammunition, and has not convinced experts that it has any more stopping power than the anemic .22 Magnum rimfire, and weaker than 95% of handgun designs currently on the market.

So much for the myth of the magical cop-killer. I guess this myth will go the way of the plastic gun invisible to x-rays.


Remind me again who the professional journalists are?

Post-Broadcast Update
WNBC News, to their credit, did a better job with their story than I was prepared to give them credit for initially. They acknowledged that the SS190 ammunition was not for sale to the public, and were able to show that the SS192 practice/duty ammunition was able to pierce a piece of body armor they selected in an uncontrolled environment.

WNBC News showed footage of a law enforcement officer firing a three-shot group from a Five seveN loaded with SS192 ammunition into a ballistic vest on an indoor firing range at a distance I estimated to be about seven yards.

There was definite penetration of the ballistic material, but their demonstration raised as many questions as it answered, at least in my mind.

What was the age, classification, and integrity of the vest in the demonstration?
How old was this vest? Was it recent, using the most modern ballistic materials, or was it an older vest made with less advanced technologies than are used in the average body armor of today's police officers? Was it obsolete?

What was the classification of this vest? I know that no body armor is truly "bulletproof," and that there are various levels of protection, from vests rated at a relatively low Level 2 that will stop edged-weapon attacks and some low-to-mid-powered pistol bullets, to Level 4 armor that will stop direct, multiple hits from 7.62 rifle rounds. What was the rating of the vest in question? I have seen body armor before, and quite frankly, the armor used for the demonstration looked flimsy, at least on television.

What was the structural integrity of this vest prior to the demonstration? The demonstration claimed to fire three rounds from the Five SeveN followed by one round from a low pressure .45 ACP, but the vest appeared to have as many as six impact points prior to firing the .45 ACP round. Multiple bullet strikes can diminish the ability of the vest to stop following rounds, and therefore if there were previous rounds fired into this vest, it could have weakened it significantly.

In short, if WNBC News used an older early model ballistic vest with lower level protection, and/or a vest that had been previously compromised by multiple bullet impacts, then they ran what is essentially a rigged test with severely compromised validity.

The fact that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms approved both the Five seven and it's SS192 cartridge indicates that the experts who evaluate these firearms and their cartridges before allowing their sale and import, obviously disagree with WNBC News as to the armor-piercing abilities of this handgun and its ammunition. To me, their rigorous testing and expertise is just a bit more believable than an uncontrolled impromptu demonstration performed with questionable methodology and materials.

In addition, WNBC News made no comment at all as to the miniscule size of the actual bullet and its lethality, or "stopping power," preferring instead just to focus on its velocity. Folks, ask any real gun guy you know and ask them if they'd rather be shot by the Five seveN's 5.7mm bullet, which some experts compare to a .22 magnum, or the nearly hundred year-old .45 ACP cartridge. The vast majority will take their chances with the over-hyped mousegun that is the Five seveN. It is highly hyped, but unproven.

WNBC News managed to pull off a more sophisticated smoke and mirrors act than most news channels do in their anti-gun stories, but in the end, it is still just seems to be smoke and mirrors.

NYPD Update: I noticed this weekend that this site is getting some traffic from a law enforcement message board discussing the Five SeveN. I would like to point out that while the Five SeveN has much more velocity and lower recoil than any other duty-sized semiauto that I can recall, there are at least three half-century-old inexpensive pistol/ammo combos that I can think of right off the top of my head that can defeat many kinds of body armor, though for your safety, I will not mention them here.

My advice to the brave men in law enforcement is to simply follow your training; even a lowly .22 short can kill you if it hits you in the right spot. So don't get shot (Gee thanks, C.Y. we wouldn't have thought of that on our own!).

Get expert opinions from firearms guys in the BATF, FBI, and the firearms and ballistic armor industry before you make policy changes and leave the hype (positive or negative) to the news guys, the brass, and the bloggers.

Final (hopefully) update: The Five SeveN was built from the ground up as an anti-armor sidearm and ammunition combination.

While I do not advocate infringing upon the Second Amendment, I would note that the BATF is the organization responsible for determining whether a firearm an caliber of ammunition are available to the public.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 03:05 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 1299 words, total size 10 kb.

January 11, 2005

Hung Up On Socks

Patterico runs with the Sandy Berger Story:

The New York Post reports:

The criminal probe into why former Bill Clinton aide Sandy Berger illegally sneaked top-secret documents out of the National Archives - possibly in his socks - has heated up and is now before a federal grand jury, The Post has learned.
Well, I guess it's technically true. It's also "possible" the documents were shoved up his rectum. But there's no real evidence of either.

Unless I'm missing something, there has never been any but the most tangential hint of evidence that Berger took documents out of the room in his socks. Wild-eyed Bob Somerby explained back in July 2004.

The Post doesn't do itself any favors with such reporting.


As I noted in his comments section, how Berger smuggled out the documents doesn't matter as much as the fact that he did, and that he destroyed some of them.

If Berger goes to jail for his crimes as he should, then there will be ample opportunity to discuss what is entering and leaving selected Berger orifices.

If you really want too.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 01:09 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 191 words, total size 2 kb.

Return to Sandy Burglar

[Welcome Instapundit readers! Enjoy the article, and if you like what you see, please read some of the other articles here at Confederate Yankee, and consider bookmarking or blog-rolling the site, or picking up the RSS or Atom feeds. Also consider visiting the Confederate Yankee Store. Thanks!]

When the "graywash" CBS investigation of Rathergate was finally released yesterday, I like many others, had my say on the matter. The general consensus in the blogosphere seems to be that of dissatisfaction. I doubt we have heard the last of Rathergate, however, as external investigations are almost certain into the apparent coordination between the Democratic National Committee and CBS News. You can read more punditry on the subject in Bill's roundup at INDC Journal and more blogger reactions at Blogs for Bush.


But as the title of this thread indicates, The CBS/DNC Rathergate connection is not the only potentially explosive allegation of election illegalities involving the 2004 Democratic run at the White House. Sandy Berger, the corpulent Clinton Aide with sticky fingers and document-swallowing clothes, has been the subject of interviews by the FBI and federal prosecutors as reported today in the New York Post (hat tip: Instapundit).

For those of you who don't remember, John Kerry advisor and former Clinton national security advisor Berger was caught sneaking Code Word (Code Word is the highest level of secrecy, above Top Secret) government documents-as many as 50-out of a secure area of the National Archives. These documents, apparently relating to how the Clinton administration's handling of terrorism matters prior to 9/11, were being "vetted" by Berger for the 9/11 Commission investigation. Berger was subsequently forced to resign from the Kerry campaign because of the scandal.

In Berger World, "vetting" apparently means stuffing beyond Top Secret documents in your suit pockets, down your pants, down your socks, or any other available hiding place and taking them to unsecured, unprotected locations, such as his home or office, where at least some of these documents (presumably the most damning) were destroyed.

Far from being swept under the rug, the Berger investigation seems primed for a federal grand jury. Among the documents Berger removed from the archives all five or six drafts of a critique of the government's response to the millennium terrorism threat. This was no trivial matter.

The interesting thing about this investigation is not his guilt or innocence; Berger has already confessed to at least some of the crimes he could be charged with. No, the interesting point in this developing story is going to be how equal powerful political figures are treated under the law when compared to the common man, which could foreshadow how seriously an investigation is persued in any illegal coordination between CBS News and the DNC in the Rathergate scandal.

Berger claims that he knew he was violating the law when he took the documents, but also said July 19, 2004 that he "made an honest mistake." Apparently, Sandy Burglar has a hard time believing even himself.

Hopefully he'll have the time to contemplate this if he goes to a federal penitentiary as is appropriate for those admittedly who steal, alter, or destroy our nation secrets.

Update: I almost forgot to include this classic Cox and Forkum take on the matter from last summer, which has more text links in the commentary under the cartoon.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:41 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 517 words, total size 5 kb.

January 10, 2005

A Liberal Born Every Minute


Proof that P.T. Barnum was right when he said, "There's a sucker liberal born every minute."

As Tim Blair quickly notes, they apparently haven't heard of the invention of something called a "remote control."

Maybe it is really is better (for the gene pool) that we let these brilliant folks keep practicing abortion.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 01:52 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 63 words, total size 1 kb.

<< Page 2 of 3 >>
80kb generated in CPU 0.0266, elapsed 0.1098 seconds.
51 queries taking 0.0938 seconds, 186 records returned.
Powered by Minx 1.1.6c-pink.