Yeah, this is comforting:

Members of extremist groups have signed up as school bus drivers in the United States, counterterror officials said Friday, in a cautionary bulletin to police. An FBI spokesman said "parents and children have nothing to fear."

Asked about the alert notice, the FBI's Rich Kolko said "there are no threats, no plots and no history leading us to believe there is any reason for concern," although law enforcement agencies around the country were asked to watch out for kids' safety.

The bulletin, parts of which were read to The Associated Press, did not say how often foreign extremists have sought to acquire licenses to drive school buses, or where. It was sent Friday as part of what officials said was a routine FBI and Homeland Security Department advisory to local law enforcement.

Look, either extremists are a threat--hence the advisory--or they aren't. Informing law enforcement to watch out for known members of extremist groups driving school buses--I'll read this as terrorists until someone gives me good reason not to--and then telling parents not to worry is asinine.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 03:11 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Oh, the joys of being Greenwald!

In an entry to his blog on Salon.com yesterday, noted sock-puppeteer Glenn Ryan Ellers Wilson Thomas Ellensberg Greenwald attacked Charles Johnson, the face of the "pony-tailed jazz guitarist/web designer 9/11 liberal" stereotype so commonly associated with modern conservatism.

After briefly mention other denizens of the riech-wing establishment, Ellers Thomas chastised Johnson for comments left by frequent visitors in a post to Johnson's rather obscure blog about nauseated footballs.

Wrote Ryan Ellensberg:

But commenters at Little Green Footballs have not only expressed surprise, but outright support, for Mohammed's assassination plot against a former U.S. President. They are out in droves expressing sorrow that Al Qaeda did not have the opportunity to carry out its plot.

Let us first recall that LGF's Charles Johnson was one of the leaders of the Outrage Brigade driving the big "story" -- that made it into virtually every national media outlet -- of how anonymous HuffPost commenters expressed sorrow that the bombing in Afghanistan did not result in Dick Cheney's death. In her post that spawned the media coverage, Michelle Malkin touted Johnson's righteous condemnation that "this kind of sick, twisted thinking is everywhere in the 'progressive' blogosphere...And it's even sicker than it appears at first glance, because many of these freaks want to see Cheney dead so that he can't become president if someone assassinates President Bush."

Yet here are multiple comments from Johnson's standard, regular followers -- all of whom have to register as LGF users, a device Johnson uses to ban commenters of whom he disapproves -- expressing explicit support for Al Qaeda's plot against President Carter:

GREWTEG, the author of the best-selling How Would a Patriot Act? (who answered his own question by moving to another country) then provided screenshots of seven comments from six commenters, pulled from a comment thread presently 474 comments long. In the part-time Brazilian's defense, he probably completed his Salon.com entry several hours before his 10:14 AM posting time, meaning he was cherry-picking through a smaller, more representative number of comments, which at the time he completed his article was only made up of about 461 comments.

The comments, other than the 454 or so he ignored, are devastating.

The first two commenters, "buzzsawmonkey" (clearly a relative of manbearpig) and "blame canada" are in favor, at least rhetorically, of allowing Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to finish alleged assassination plots against former Presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter.

The next three commenters--well, two news ones, and manbearpig buzzsawmonkey again--repeat the theme.

Glenn Wilsonberg then states:

And more commenters than one can chronicle offered the "justification" for murdering Carter; it's the same "rationale" previously provided by John Hinderaker: namely, Carter is on the side of Islamic Terrorists:

He then posts the two he/they could chronicle.

Not content to cherry-pick these seven comments from roughly 461 as being representative of the commenters, GREWTEG then decides that since Johnson hasn't deleted these comments, that he must therefore, ipso facto, QED, E Pluribus Unum, and carte blache, agree with each and every one of them! (my bold below)

Can we crank up the outraged media stories? How long do you think it will be before we hear from Howard Kurtz with a front-page Washington Post story, Wolf Blitzer and Sean Hannity with dramatic television coverage? Having blog commenters cheer on the assassination plots of U.S. officials is big, big, big news, we recently learned.

Here, one of the largest right-wing blog communities which pretends to be opposed to Al Qaeda is expressing support for Al Qaeda murder plots against former U.S. Presidents. The significance is overwhelming and self-evident, and many American journalists have shown how commendably eager they are to transcend partisan differences and rise up in righteous condemnation against this sort of "sick" bile.

And, several important factors distinguish this story from the HuffPost story, making it more meaningful. Unlike Huffington Post, which deleted the comments in question, Johnson has left them on his blog. Even more significantly, Johnson actively and regularly deletes comments he does not like, which lends some credibility to the notion that he approves of these comments, or at least does not find them sufficiently offensive to delete them, the way he does with scores of other comments.

Ah-Hah!

Take that reich-wingers!

Because Johnson does not censor each and every comment on his blog, he is therefore guilty of copious amounts of non-censorship, clearly a hanging crime under the Brazilian-American Sockpuppet Speech Act of 1798.

As we well know, responsible citizenship requires copious amounts of censorship, from censoring the networks allowed to carry debates, to stipulating acceptable public appearances by public servants.

By allowing comments on his blog that may not match his own views, Johnson clearly goes beyond the boundaries of acceptable discourse.

What does he think this is, a free country?

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:35 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Charles Krauthammer has a brutal column up in today's Washington Post called Diagnosis Cheney, focusing on a hit piece by Michelle Cottle in the liberal New Republic. The thrust of Cottle's article, apparently, is an attempt to diagnose the Vice President as being mentally ill because of his history of cardiac disease.

Krauthammer, a real psychiatrist in addition to being a political columnist, guts the "evidence" provided by Cottle, evidence that is so flimsy that any coherent layman would readily recognize as political, and not psychiatric in nature.

Well, that isn't exactly true. Krauthammer does amusingly suggest that the 1,900 word New Republic article may reveal an underlying syndrome from which Cottle may be suffering.

I was at first inclined to pass off Cottle's piece as a weird put-on -- when people become particularly deranged about this administration, it's hard to tell -- but her earnest and lengthy piling on of medical research about dementia and cardiovascular disease suggests that she is quite serious.

And supremely silly. Such silliness has a pedigree, mind you. It is in the great tradition of the 1964 poll of psychiatrists that found Barry Goldwater clinically paranoid. Goldwater having become over the years the liberals' favorite conservative (because of his libertarianism), nary a word is heard today about him being mentally ill or about that shameful election-year misuse of medical authority by the psychiatrists who responded to the poll. The disease they saw in Goldwater was, in fact, deviation from liberalism, which remains today so incomprehensible to some that it must be explained by resort to arterial plaques and cardiac ejection fractions.

If there's a diagnosis to be made here, it is this: yet another case of the one other syndrome I have been credited with identifying, a condition that addles the brain of otherwise normal journalists and can strike without warning -- Bush Derangement Syndrome, Cheney Variant.

If memeorandum.com is correct, there has thus far been three blog entries posted on the Krauthammer column, with conservative responses provided by Betsy Newmark and Sister Toldjah to date, with an post by liberal Don Q at TPM Cafe be the only attempt at a liberal response thus far.

And an amusing post it is, with Don trotting out another long-running platitude in rebuttal to Krauthammer, one that can best be summarized as, "because of the hypocrisy!" (copyright Jeff Goldstein):

From Don Q:

But you know, psycho- I mean psychiatrist-columnist Krauthammer himself likes to conduct remote diagnoses. Back in May 2004, Al Gore called on Rumsfeld and Tenet to resign, and criticized the conduct of the war in Iraq.

And our buddy Krauthammer, on Fox News with Brit Hume, said that Al Gore was "off his lithium." Lithium, of course, is used to treat heavy mental conditions like bipolar disorder.

Don't you see the obvious brilliance of Don Q? Krauthammer is a hypocrite because, he, too, made a long-distance diagnosis!

But Don Q's analysis really isn't that intelligent, is it?

Whether you look at this example, or others that he cites, Don purposefully conflates Krauthammer's flippant metaphorical comments as a political columnist into being serious psychiatric evaluations, which they clearly and decidedly are not meant to be.

Far from showing Krauthammer to be a hypocrite, his post merely goes to show that Don Q lacks the basic mental agility to note that Krauthammer's political commentary and his psychiatric practice are two distinct facets of an accomplished multi-dimensional life. To accomplish his political goals, Don Q purposefully ignores reality to promote his agenda, which amusingly enough, is precisely what Krauthammer catches Cottle doing.

Perhaps this suggests that Don Q should quit tilting at columnists, and see a professional to diagnose his own condition, which seems to be Bush Derangement Syndrome—Krauthammer Variant.

I jest, of course.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:37 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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As you've probably come to understand by now, reporters that don't understand the subject matter they write about really irritate me. Enter the Associated Press' Kim Gamel (my bold):

The U.S. military said the attack against the Americans began when a bomb went off as a U.S. unit was returning from a search operation, Moments later, a second bomb exploded, killing the four and wounding two other soldiers.

A demolition team that searched the site after the attack found an explosively formed projectile, a type of high-tech bomb the U.S. military believes is being supplied by Iran in support of Shiite militias. The device was detonated by the team.

This is an explosively formed projectile:

It is a spent bullet, an expended hunk of metal, no longer a threat.

What Gamel meant to write that they detonated an explosively formed penetrator, one of these:

This is a live explosive device, and a very dangerous one. This is what EOD team destroyed, not the inert slug of metal as Gamel misreported.

It's rather disappointing that we can't trust a professional war reporter for the world's largest news organization to get such important distinctions correct, but a disappointment that is now hardly surprising.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:20 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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It matters little to me who is in power at the time, but we need to have a unified national voice, and that means the offical federal government representatives, whoever they are at the time, should be the only ones negotiating with foreign powers on behalf of the United States. Period.

I'm not sure that what Howard Dean admits to is illegal, but to my layman's eye, his actions seem dangerously close (h/t phin).

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 02:48 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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Ali Reza Asghari, the former Iranian deputy defense minister and General who is thought to have defected after years of spying on the Iranian government, is one of six Iranians cited in an international arrest warrant that may be issued by Interpol later this month for the 1994 bombing of a Buenos Aires Jewish Center that took 85 lives.

The six concerned are Imad Fayez Mughniyah, Ali Fallahijan, Mohsen Rabbani, Ahmad Reza Asghari, Ahmad Vahidi and Mohsen Rezai.

Applications for the arrest of Ali Akbar Velayati and Hadi Soleimanpour, as well as Mr Rafsanjani, were rejected.

No-one has ever been convicted of the 1994 bombing - the worst terror attack in Argentine history - and the government has admitted failures in its initial investigation.

Last year it said it believed Iran ordered the attack, and militant group Hezbollah carried it out.

Asghari is though to have been instrumental in founding Hezbollah in the 1980s, and was a key liasion between Hezbollah and the Iranian government.

The "Mr Rafsanjani" referenced in the article is former Iranian President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 01:12 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Ah... Lebanon in April.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:29 PM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
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So says Patterico:

These e-mails confirm my conclusion from yesterday: the media is manufacturing a phony scandal out of these firings, and piggybacking it onto the genuine scandal of the Justice DepartmentÂ’s misleading testimony to Congress about the responsibility for the firings. If these e-mails are given a fair reading, they support the idea that U.S. Attorneys were pushed out largely for legitimate reasons relating to the performance of the USAs in question.

It is starting to sound like this furor here is probably more hype than substance. Not that this will placate or convince the more rabid denizens on the far left, mind you, who hold the Bush Adminstration personally responsible for 9/11, global warming, and cooties.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:56 AM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
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I can't for the life of me figure out why someone thought John Edwards was worthy of even a fake anthrax attack, but all the same, it happened yesterday at his campaign headquarters in Chapel Hill:

The white powder in an envelope discovered Wednesday at the national headquarters of Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards did not contain anthrax.
The campaign office was reopening today, Deputy Campaign Manager Jonathan Prince said.

“The test results of the white powdery substance received yesterday have come back negative, and the authorities have informed us that it is safe to return to the office," Prince said in a statement this morning.

[snip]

A woman working in Edwards' campaign office in Southern Village found the powder at 4 p.m. as she opened mail for the former senator. She immediately threw the white legal-size envelope into a nearby mail bin and rushed to wash her hands, said Jane Cousins, a spokeswoman for the Chapel Hill police.

Police were called to the office at 410 Market St. in the mix of offices, shops and homes in the southern Chapel Hill community. Federal, county and regional investigators were called to assist.

By late Wednesday, the envelope had been taken to the parking lot of the Chapel Hill Police Department several miles away on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.

White powder in letters has been associated with anthrax since an attack in 2001 killed five people and sickened 17. The substance was mailed to lawmakers on Capitol Hill and members of the news media in New York and Florida just weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The Edwards campaign worker did not know to whom the envelope was addressed or where it was from, investigators said. Chapel Hill police said they didn't know whether there was any written message in the envelope.

To date, IÂ’ve seen no mention of this story outside of the local media or in the larger blogs. I guess a fake anthrax attack on Edwards just isnÂ’t worth commenting on.

I've written the several of the law enforcement agencies investigating this incident to see if they could provide further information about the attack. Specifically, I've asked if there was a note or letter in the envelope communicating a possible motive for the attack, and I've also asked whether the letter came through the U.S. Mail or a courier service, such as FedEx or UPS. I also asked if the letter bore a postmark or originating address that might indicate where the letter was mailed from.

I'll update this post if they respond.

Update: The FBI has responded:

The FBI is conducting a federal investigation regarding the suspicious letter sent to the office of John Edwards. We are investigating for any potential WMD issues/violations, and due to its ongoing status, no further comments are being provided at this time.

This is a joint, cooperative investigation between the FBI, Chapel Hill Police Department, Chapel Hill Fire Department, and the Orange County Public Health Department.

I imagine that the other agencies involved will also refuse comment while the investigation is on-going.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:19 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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I have very little to add to what has already been said about Mohammed's confession, and think Jules Crittenden covers my disgust with Mohammed's self-aggrandizing quite well:

ItÂ’s all a matter of language and perspective. WeÂ’re really just the same. Until you remember that virtually all his intended targets in the Twin Towers were civilians. Every one of his intended targets in Bali and Mombasa was an innocent vacationer. All his targets on all those airplanes. It is inequivocably murder carried out not to achieve any military objective, rather for whatever political or symply psychological advantage and economic damage might be achieved by terror and chaos. He did it to impress people. He wraps himself in history and distortion and calls it war. It is revolting, and it is bullshit, but it is his right. He is allowed to speak and say whatever he wants in advance of the judgments that await him. And we can look at this vile filth, and consider it for what it is worth.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 08:33 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Now, if they can only capture the three of them that are still on the run, they might be able to carry out the sentence:

Jordan's military court on Thursday sentenced to death four Iraqi al-Qaida militants charged with terror attacks on Jordanians in Iraq. Of the four, only one is in custody while the other three remain at large and were tried in absentia.

The court also handed down sentences to 10 others in the case also at large and believed to be in hiding in Iraq ranging from 15 years in jail with hard labor to life imprisonment.

The group's alleged mastermind, Ziad Khalaf Raja al-Karbouly, was charged with leading the group of 14 in plotting attacks on trucks with Jordanian license plates on Iraqi roads to murder those on board.

As things continue to fall apart for al Qaeda in Iraq, I find that the execution of these death sentences are quite likely, whether or not these men ever see a Jordanian jail first.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 07:45 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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This won't endear her to the netroots, but then, what could? For those Democrats that have a toe in reality, however, Hillary just showed that she may be the first grown-up running for the Democratic Presidential nomination. Well, almost:

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton foresees a “remaining military as well as political mission” in Iraq, and says that if elected president, she would keep a reduced but significant military force there to fight Al Qaeda, deter Iranian aggression, protect the Kurds and possibly support the Iraqi military.

In a half-hour interview on Tuesday in her Senate office, Mrs. Clinton said the scaled-down American military force that she would maintain in Iraq after taking office would stay off the streets in Baghdad and would no longer try to protect Iraqis from sectarian violence — even if it descended into ethnic cleansing.

It is good to see that Hillary recognized the need to help support the Iraqi government, but her statement about not protecting Iraqis from sectarian violence, "even if it descended into ethnic cleansing," is troubling.

If "President Hillary" is serious that she would take no action in the event of an attempted genocide, then her behavior would verge upon criminal. If, however, Clinton is merely issuing "tough love" to encourage Sunni, Shia, and Kurd to work together, then her pronouncement makes far more practical sense.

It will be interesting to see how or if the other Democratic candidates will try to shift their positions as they watch Hilliary outmanuver them to the electable middle.

Update: Captain Ed critiques Clinton's statement more harshly.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:19 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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Abortion e-cards. Great.

Allah asked a good question... What about all the upbeat cards?

My contribution:

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 01:22 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I owe the French an apology. Until now, I thought that France was the only nation capable of losing a war that they were not fighting.

According to YNET News, yet another senior Iranian officer has gone missing:

Three weeks ago the Iranian armed forces command in Teheran lost contact with a senior officer who had been serving in Iraq with the al-Quds unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, according to a senior Iranian official cited in the Wednesday edition of the London-based Arabic daily al-Sharq al-Awsat.

The Iranian source said that it is still unclear why contact with the officer, Colonel Amir Muhammad Shirazi, was lost. "It is possible that the American forces in Iraq arrested him along with a group of 13 Iranian military and intelligence officials," he said, adding that this is just one of the scenarios being investigated by Tehran.

Of course, this begs the question, "What was a senior Iranian al-Quds force commander doing in Iraq if he wasn't supporting the insurgency?" Don't expect the NY Times to dig too deeply into the existence of Colonel Amir Muhammad Shirazi, much less his disappearance.

The article also claims that another Iranian colonel was sentenced to death by an Iranian court for collaborating with American forces in the war Iran is not waging in Iraq, and that "dozens" of Iranian officers have also defected.

These allegations should be taken with a shaker of salt until they can be confirmed, but if these allegations are correct, Iran is hemorrhaging both intelligence and operatives at an alarming rate.

Update: This is too rich.

I picked up a link from Salon.com's Blog Report, and now instead of discussing the disappearing Iranian officers that were the subject of the post, I have Salon's liberal readers attempting to defend the 20th Century accomplishments of the French military.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:23 AM | Comments (14) | Add Comment
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While I've tried to keep up with my reading on the subject, you might note that I haven't posted yet on the U.S. Attorney's story. Quite frankly, it has me confused over whether it is really important or not, but I feel somewhat better this morning when I discovered (via Ann Althouse blogging at Instapundit), that the far more capable legal mind of Orin Kerr is also unsure:

On a more serious note, I haven't written about the U.S. Attorney's story because I'm having a hard time figuring out just how big a deal it is. Parts of it are obviously very troubling: I was very disturbed to learn of the Domenici calls, for example. More broadly, I have longrunning objections to the extent to which DOJ is under White House control, objections that this story helps bring to the fore (although my objections are based on my views of sound policy, not on law).

At the same time, several parts of the story seem overblown. U.S. Attorneys are political appointees who serve at the pleasure of the President, and the press seems to overlook that in a lot of its reporting. Also, I know one or two of the Administration figures named in some of the stories, and based on my knowledge of them and their character (although no secret details of the story — I have not spoken with anyone about it) I have a feeling that they're getting a bad rap.

So in the end I don't quite know where I come out based on what we know. Without knowing where I come out, I don't feel I have much helpful to add. I realize that this may mean I am missing a big story. Perhaps this will prove to be a simply huge scandal, and in time it will seem odd that we weren't all blogging about it. But I don't know what I'm supposed to do when I read a story and I'm not sure what to make of it.

Quite frankly, I don't think we know what we don't know in regards to this issue, and I think that some of the political posturing we're seeing, such as Senator Chuck Shumer's statement, "This has become as serious as it gets" is merely that--posturing.

It is worth noting that Shumer is cited in this same Dana Milbank column as being "the Democrats' point man in the Valerie Plame investigation," an investigation which found no illegal activity is the release of Plame's name, and only convicted Lewis Libby for lying about his involvement. Hot air is one of Shumer's specialties.

Another person with legal experience, prosecutor Patrick Frey, notes that the White House released emails related to the case that apparently show that the White House had good reason for firing many of the prosecutors, including failures to prosecute drug cases, failure to prosecute illegal immigrants, failure to investigate charges of voter fraud, and failures to carry out Administration policies. Many Presidential Administrations have fired all U.S. Attorneys when they came to power, including the Clinton Administration, for no reason other than pure politics. That the Bush Administration fired these Attorneys for cause seems, well, refreshing, if that is indeed what occurred.

The scandal, such as it is, seems to revolve around Attorney General Gonzales' inept handling of what should have been a minor issue at best.

Is there any fire to go with this smoke?

Again, we may not know what we do not know, but of what we have seen presented thus far, the Democratic cry of scandal seems based on very thin evidence.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:52 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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It appears that James Cameron's claim to have found the tomb and ossuaries of Jesus Christ and his family, which were never taken seriously by biblical scholars, may have resulted from an inabilty to properly read and translate the Greek writing on at least one ossuary.

The film and book suggest that a first-century ossuary found in a south Jerusalem cave in 1980 contained the remains of Jesus, contradicting the Christian belief that he was resurrected and ascended to heaven. Ossuaries are stone boxes used at the time to store the bones of the dead.

The filmmakers also suggest that Mary Magdalene was buried in the tomb, that she and Jesus were married, and that an ossuary labeled "Judah son of Jesus" belonged to their son.

The scholars who analyzed the Greek inscription on one of the ossuaries after its discovery read it as "Mariamene e Mara," meaning "Mary the teacher" or "Mary the master."

Before the movie was screened, Jacobovici said that particular inscription provided crucial support for his claim. The name Mariamene is rare, and in some early Christian texts it is believed to refer to Mary Magdalene.

But having analyzed the inscription, Pfann published a detailed article on his university's Web site asserting that it doesn't read "Mariamene" at all.

The inscription, Pfann said, is made up of two names inscribed by two different hands: the first, "Mariame," was inscribed in a formal Greek script, and later, when the bones of another woman were added to the box, another scribe using a different cursive script added the words "kai Mara," meaning "and Mara." Mara is a different form of the name Martha.

According to Pfann's reading, the ossuary did not house the bones of "Mary the teacher," but rather of two women, "Mary and Martha."

"In view of the above, there is no longer any reason to be tempted to link this ossuary ... to Mary Magdalene or any other person in biblical, non-biblical or church tradition," Pfann wrote.

In the interest of telling a good story, Pfann said, the documentary engaged in some "fudging" of the facts.

Okay, an inability to read and an apparent willingness to deceive.

Somehow, I doubt anyone is all that surprised.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 08:03 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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1 There is no historical evidence that Jesus and the two Maries continued living in Palestine while there is convincing evidence that they traveled to India. The fist detailed research was published a hundred years ago by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1835-190 in his book Jesus in India (www.alislam.org, www.tombofjesus dot com) referring to many ancient sources. Graves of Jesus is well known in Srinagar India and that of one Mary in Murree in Pakistan.

Posted by: Syed Sajid Ahmad at March 14, 2007 11:43 AM (j+83b)

2 CY, I agree completely with two posts in a row! (Pace "don't ask/don't tell" and now this about bonehead Cameron). What's the world coming to?

Posted by: Lex Steele at March 14, 2007 12:24 PM (7IB7k)

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Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, infuriated many yesterday when he said in an interview that he thought homosexual behavior was immoral, and likened it to adultery:

Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Monday that he supports the Pentagon's "don't ask, don't tell" ban on gays serving in the military because homosexual acts "are immoral," akin to a member of the armed forces conducting an adulterous affair with the spouse of another service member.

Responding to a question about a Clinton-era policy that is coming under renewed scrutiny amid fears of future U.S. troop shortages, Pace said the Pentagon should not "condone" immoral behavior by allowing gay soldiers to serve openly. He said his views were based on his personal "upbringing," in which he was taught that certain types of conduct are immoral.

As you may imagine, all the usual suspects were there to quickly condemn Pace's comments, including one liberal blogger that hoped to organized a petition drive to have him fired. To date, Pace refuses to apologize.

I've got very mixed feelings about this particular story.

I personally dislike "don't ask, don't tell."

The official military position, as I understand it, is that they don't want openly gay soldiers serving in the military because it could cause dissention in the ranks. As openly gay soldiers have served in armies worldwide for thousands of years--including our Greek friends portrayed in the now-playing "300"--I find that argument especially weak, if not insulting to our soldiers. Are proponents of "don't ask, don't tell" trying to convince us that our military men and women are so fickle, mentally weak and easily rattled that the mere presence of openly gay soldiers in the ranks is enough to topple our military, or at the very least, reduce its combat effectiveness? If so, our top generals must be far more afraid of Cirque du Soleil than al Qaeda.

No, I think that "don't ask, don't tell" comes down to anti-gay bigotry in our military, which is notoriously conservative (and I mean socially, not politically, though that probably applies as well). The policy implemented during the Clinton Administration was a mistake then, and continues to be a mistake now, causing the military to lose potential applicants that are intelligent, skilled, and otherwise exemplary material, solely on the basis of sexual preference. We have lost good soldiers because of this, as well as intelligence assets, including Arab linguists that are already in short supply. "Don't ask, don't tell" is hurting the War against Islamic terrorism in very measurable ways.

But for all that is wrong with the policy, I'm even more appalled by the hysterical responses of some of those who have taken issue with Pace's comments. Apparently, Pace's opinion is too much to handle for some oppressively self-righteous gay advocates, including one that is calling for Pace to resign, and another, John Aravosis, that shrieks so shrilly that it only reinforces the stereotype that some in the military have against allowing gays to serve. Apparently, these blogger-advocates are quite content to exercise their freedom of speech, while attempting to punish Pace for exercising his. What they advocate is nothing less than censorship, pure and simple, and in a hysterically cartoonish way at that.

If John Aravosis, Pam Spaulding, etc want to help convince our military that allowing gay and lesbian soldiers to serve openly is in our nation's best interests, then by all means, they should help develop a compelling case to prove to Congress and the military that is policy is outdated and counterproductive. If advocates truly want gay and lesbian Americans to have the opportunity to serve their country, then they should fight for that right with logic, reason, and intelligence.

Instead, they attempt to claim victim status once again, and hope to shame Pace into retracting his comments, or force his resignation. Quite simply, they hurt their cause with a call for censorship instead of reasoned debate.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 03:14 PM | Comments (15) | Add Comment
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Please understand that this is meant purely as a snub by the floundering liberal radio network.

On the other hand, if the state Republican chairmen of Iowa, Nevada, South Carolina, or New Hampshire accept the offer, Air America can revel in something entirely new on a liberal talk radio network... listeners.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:41 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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If you read either Left Behind from last week or The United Left of Defeat from yesterday, then this editorial from the Washington Post today might sound very familiar:

The only constituency House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ignored in her plan for amending President Bush's supplemental war funding bill are the people of the country that U.S. troops are fighting to stabilize. The Democratic proposal doesn't attempt to answer the question of why August 2008 is the right moment for the Iraqi government to lose all support from U.S. combat units. It doesn't hint at what might happen if American forces were to leave at the end of this year -- a development that would be triggered by the Iraqi government's weakness. It doesn't explain how continued U.S. interests in Iraq, which holds the world's second-largest oil reserves and a substantial cadre of al-Qaeda militants, would be protected after 2008; in fact, it may prohibit U.S. forces from returning once they leave.

In short, the Democratic proposal to be taken up this week is an attempt to impose detailed management on a war without regard for the war itself. Will Iraq collapse into unrestrained civil conflict with "massive civilian casualties," as the U.S. intelligence community predicts in the event of a rapid withdrawal? Will al-Qaeda establish a powerful new base for launching attacks on the United States and its allies? Will there be a regional war that sucks in Iraqi neighbors such as Saudi Arabia or Turkey? The House legislation is indifferent: Whether or not any of those events happened, U.S. forces would be gone.

If anything, the WaPo editorial is more targeted in exposing the cynical nature of the "slow bleed" Democrats. Not only does this Executioner's Congress not care about the fate of the Iraqi people or the larger Sunni-Shia regional war that may result from their craven political acts, they also want their genocidal proposals implemented in time to benfit them politically. I know that I alluded to this, but this editorial takes them head-on in their defeatism.

I said it yesterday, and will reiterate it again today:

On a fundamental level, leftists are no longer Americans first. They nakedly place their partisan political objectives above those of the nation as a whole. Blinded by internal domestic politics they fail, perhaps purposefully, to account for how their actions vindicate the long-term strategic goals of Islamic terrorists and undermine the credibility of the United States on the world stage. They rank partisan politics above national interests. They are the United Left of Defeat; their stated agenda and goals shows clearly that they view the long-term health and well-being of United States of America—and the success of the state of Iraq, and the larger War against Islamic Terrorism—as secondary issues to their own continued quest for more political power.

Their primary and overriding interest of the Left is their own political success and vindication. They have created a belief system around the thought that if the United States is successful in helping the Iraqi people emerge from this conflict as a more-or-less stable parliamentary democracy, that the war would be a victory for George Bush and the neo-conservative movement.

They are incapable of seeing it as a victory for the Iraqi people, whom they have made abundantly clear though their choices of rhetoric and proposed legislation, are secondary citizens of the world, at best. They refuse to acknowledge the possibility of a victory in Iraq as being good for the United States, the Iraqi people, or the world at large. They have chosen sides, and they do not side with the best interests of our country, or that of other free nations.

I never thought I would live to see a day where a substantial portion of the American poltical establishment placed party politics above national security.

Sadly, that day has clearly arrived, as even the national media are beginning to pickup.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:01 AM | Comments (13) | Add Comment
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At least he'll aways have his Oscar, even if his documentary isn't supported by the data:

"I donÂ’t want to pick on Al Gore," Don J. Easterbrook, an emeritus professor of geology at Western Washington University, told hundreds of experts at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America. "But there are a lot of inaccuracies in the statements we are seeing, and we have to temper that with real data."

Mr. Gore, in an e-mail exchange about the critics, said his work made "the most important and salient points" about climate change, if not "some nuances and distinctions" scientists might want. "The degree of scientific consensus on global warming has never been stronger," he said, adding, "I am trying to communicate the essence of it in the lay language that I understand."

Although Mr. Gore is not a scientist, he does rely heavily on the authority of science in "An Inconvenient Truth," which is why scientists are sensitive to its details and claims.

Criticisms of Mr. Gore have come not only from conservative groups and prominent skeptics of catastrophic warming, but also from rank-and-file scientists like Dr. Easterbook, who told his peers that he had no political ax to grind. A few see natural variation as more central to global warming than heat-trapping gases. Many appear to occupy a middle ground in the climate debate, seeing human activity as a serious threat but challenging what they call the extremism of both skeptics and zealots.

Kevin Vranes, a climatologist at the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado, said he sensed a growing backlash against exaggeration. While praising Mr. Gore for "getting the message out," Dr. Vranes questioned whether his presentations were "overselling our certainty about knowing the future."

Typically, the concern is not over the existence of climate change, or the idea that the human production of heat-trapping gases is partly or largely to blame for the globe's recent warming. The question is whether Mr. Gore has gone beyond the scientific evidence.

"He's a very polarizing figure in the science community," said Roger A. Pielke Jr., an environmental scientist who is a colleague of Dr. Vranes at the University of Colorado center. "Very quickly, these discussions turn from the issue to the person, and become a referendum on Mr. Gore."

Gore's fellow global warming co-religionists will most likely discount the attempt to inject actual science into the global warming debate. As we well know, science and faith do not always go hand-in-hand.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 08:38 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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