ED DRISCOLL: “I haven’t seen a hate-filled man praised in such fulsome language since…well, since last month.”
Archive for 2007
October 19, 2007
RON ROSENBAUM looks at paranoia, planning, and NSPD-51. He’s right to downplay the paranoia, but I suspect he’s also right to observe that “If you ask me, setting aside any paranoid fantasies, it is clear on the most basic level—read it yourself—that NSPD-51 is the creation of irresponsible incompetents, bulls in the china shop of our constitutional framework. It is a recipe for disaster.”
We’ve had a series of continuity-of-government plans, more or less like this one, over the past 50 years or so. They’ve pretty much all been lousy. Congress doesn’t seem to want to get too involved in this process, and I don’t think it attracts the best minds in the Executive Branch either.
THE PRICE OF PORK is moving higher.
A RADICAL PROPOSAL FOR GOOGLE: “Offer a dividend to stockholders.”
POLICE AS HOME INVADERS: “The family of that girl who shot at a SWAT officer during a pre-dawn raid on her home is saying she thought it was a burglar and not police. Hard not to give that claim some credence. When police start using the same tactics as violent home invaders, how do you tell the difference?”
ENVIRONMENTAL HYPOCRISY UPDATE: Ted Kennedy, et al. have managed to block the Cape Wind project. I’m taking this to mean that there’s no actual greenhouse crisis, but someone should ask Al Gore what he thinks.
I guess these TV ads weren’t enough.
NOBEL PEACE PRIZE COMMITTEE disbands.
SOME KAUS-STYLE ANECDOTAGE ON IMMIGRATION: You don’t seem to see as many Mexicans around Knoxville as a few months ago, and I noticed that the landscaping outfit that does the common areas in my neighborhood — whose workers were all Mexican as recently as this summer — became kind of scarce for a few weeks and is now back with workers who are all quite obviously non-Mexican. Could this be related to the jailing of a local businessman for immigration violations? Probably. It suggests that even modest enforcement efforts might have a real impact. [One observation? Is that enough to mean anything? — ed. It’s Kaus’s First Law of Punditry — “Always generalize from personal experience.” Okay, so long as it’s Kaus-approved. –ed.]
A VICTORY ON PORK: Well, we deserve a few.
All three locations, along with scores of others scattered throughout some of the poorest Chinese neighborhoods in Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx, have been swept by an extraordinary impulse to shower money on one particular presidential candidate — Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Dishwashers, waiters and others whose jobs and dilapidated home addresses seem to make them unpromising targets for political fundraisers are pouring $1,000 and $2,000 contributions into Clinton’s campaign treasury. In April, a single fundraiser in an area long known for its gritty urban poverty yielded a whopping $380,000. When Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) ran for president in 2004, he received $24,000 from Chinatown. . . .
The Times examined the cases of more than 150 donors who provided checks to Clinton after fundraising events geared to the Chinese community. One-third of those donors could not be found using property, telephone or business records. Most have not registered to vote, according to public records.
And several dozen were described in financial reports as holding jobs — including dishwasher, server or chef — that would normally make it difficult to donate amounts ranging from $500 to the legal maximum of $2,300 per election. . . . Like many who traveled this path, most of the Chinese reported as contributing to Clinton’s campaign have never voted. Many speak little or no English. Some seem to lead such ephemeral lives that neighbors say they’ve never heard of them.
I guess it’s just a testament to how strong their faith in Hillary is.
ATRIOS WRITES: “Unlike Ann Coulter, I’m no constitutional scholar, but I have been a wee bit puzzled why the prohibition on ex post facto laws would’t prevent this telecom immunity bullshit.”
The answer is that only criminal, not civil, action is prohibited under the ex post facto prohibition. (Don’t feel bad, Atrios — James Madison himself was confused on this at one point and was corrected, if I recall correctly, by James Iredell at the constitutional convention). In addition, ex post facto is about penalties, not amnesties. Congress is not prohibited from blocking civil actions by statute, particularly where there’s a national security angle. This goes back at least to Dames & Moore v. Regan, which involved the Iranian hostage settlement, and really dates back to cases in the 1930s dealing with claims against the Bolshevik government in Russia on behalf of Tsarist-era creditors, etc. One might regard this as giving the President too much power over domestic legal actions as part of “foreign affairs” activity — I regard it that way, actually* — but it doesn’t represent any sort of new departure.
* To my mind, a statute barring a previously valid legal claim that has actually been filed comes close to a taking, as well, but that goes beyond the scope of this post.
UPDATE: A related item. I wouldn’t call $25,000 “newly flush with cash” — especially for a Rockefeller — but the graphic is suggestive.
DON’T BUY GAS FROM THIS ASS: An anti-Hugo Chavez billboard in Florida Alabama. My mistake, and I should’ve known better — I used to vacation at Fort Morgan, which isn’t far from Bay Minette.
BILL GATES, ON MALARIA, WRITES:
An Audacious Goal
This week in Seattle, an extraordinary group of people – scientists, policymakers, and advocates – came together for three days to discuss what can be done to stop malaria. Melinda and I issued a challenge to those attending the meeting. We asked them to begin charting a course to eradicate malaria – not just to control or reduce it, but to work toward a time when no one on earth is infected with malaria, and no mosquitoes carry the disease.
Today, malaria kills more than one million people every year, most of them children in Africa. ThatÂ’s the equivalent of losing every student in the New York City public school system in one year.
We know that eradicating malaria is an audacious goal. But advances in science and medicine, new political commitments, and the dedication of people like you have given the world an historic opportunity to conquer malaria. It won’t be easy and it won’t happen quickly, but I’m optimistic that we can make this disease history.
At the forum in Seattle, Melinda and I called on the U.S. presidential candidates to commit to expand the President’s Malaria Initiative, a great program started by President Bush. I hope you will join us in asking all of the candidates to make this pledge and keep the fight against malaria on the national agenda.
I am confident that together, we can produce the energy, compassion, and commitment needed to win the fight against malaria.
-Bill Gates
Also posted here. They asked me to crosspost because malaria has been a longstanding InstaPundit issue.
“STRONG PROOF” of water on Mars.
IN THE MAIL: Heather MacDonald, Victor Davis Hanson, and Steven Malanga’s The Immigration Solution: A Better Plan Than Today’s. Merely going for “a better plan than today’s” is setting the bar pretty low, of course . . . .
DANNY GLOVER on winning bloggers and influencing the people.
JURY REACHES VERDICT IN HOLY LAND FOUNDATION TERROR TRIAL:
After 19 days of deliberations, the jury in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing trial returned a verdict Thursday afternoon. But it will be Monday before the defendants find out their fate.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Paul Stickney said during a hastily called hearing Thursday that the jury’s decisions on the complex case will remain sealed until Monday morning, when the case’s presiding judge, U.S. District Judge A. Joe Fish, returns to town. . . .
The five Holy Land defendants, all but one a U.S. citizen, were accused of raising more than $12 million and wiring it to Palestinian charity committees, who prosecutors say were controlled by a illegal terrorist group, Hamas.
Read the whole thing.
SOME INTERESTING poll results from Afghanistan: “In a poll of Afghans conducted by Environics Research on behalf of The Globe and Mail, the CBC and La Presse, respondents expressed optimism about the future, strong support for the government of President Hamid Karzai and appreciation for the work being done by NATO countries in improving security.”
I’m surprised this hasn’t gotten more attention.
UPDATE: Montreal reader Greg Gransden emails: “What’s ironic about these numbers is that they essentially contradict virtually all of the CBC’s own reporting over the past few years, which has been relentlessly downbeat and negative. We keep hearing that Afghans are disappointed and frustrated with the Canadian air effort, that they perceive Canadian soldiers as occupiers and that they’re disillusioned with the Karzai government. Now the CBC’s own opinion poll shows this meme to be completely false. And the CBC’s not the only MSM outlet that’s been pushing this narrative… I suspect that’s why we’re not hearing more about it.”
DANIEL SOLOVE’S NEW BOOK, The Future of Reputation, is now out, and he’s put the first chapter online for free.
MICKEY KAUS: “Why did a Republican almost win a special Congressional election in a strongly Democratic Massachusetts district? Kos and Josh Marshall seem baffled.” But Mickey thinks he’s found the explanation.
KRAUTHAMMER’S RAZOR: “I doubt that stupidity is a sufficient explanation in this case.”
A DISCUSSION OF REBECCA AGUILAR AND JOURNALISTIC ETHICS at Breitbart TV. They’ve also got some of the footage that KDFW has managed to get pulled from YouTube.
UPDATE: Aguilar responds: “I’m sorry you took my story the wrong way.”
GREAT MOMENTS IN airport security.
THOUGHTS ON THE “FAIRNESS DOCTRINE,” at Investor’s Business Daily.
IF YOU MISSED IT ON XM SATELLITE RADIO LAST NIGHT, you can now hear the latest Pajamas Media radio show online.