AMIT VARMA LOOKS AT THE INDIAN GOVERNMENT, and thinks he’s living inside a Nigerian scam email.
Archive for 2007
August 16, 2007
IT’S TIME FOR THEM TO GO: More Ted Stevens troubles: “The FBI is investigating the National Science Foundation’s award of $170 million in contracts to the oil field services company that oversaw renovations on U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens’ home, McClatchy Newspapers has learned. . . . The disclosure provides further evidence of the degree to which the investigation of public corruption in the Alaska legislature has widened to include at least two of the state’s three members of Congress. Alaska’s sole congressman, U.S. Rep. Don Young, is also under investigation for his ties to Veco.”
I don’t know how much there is to this story, but Stevens’ questionable dealings continue to mount, and Young isn’t looking much better. If the GOP is smart, they’ll be encouraged to retire in time to run somebody obviously non-criminal in the next election.
RALPH PETERS ON CONGRESS AND PETRAEUS:
Those dead and maimed Yazidis were just props: The intended audience was Congress.
Al Qaeda has been badly battered. It’s lost top leaders and thousands of cadres. Even more painful for the Islamists, they’ve lost ground among the people of Iraq, including former allies. Iraqis got a good taste of al Qaeda. Now they’re spitting it out.
The foreign terrorists slaughtering the innocent recognize that their only remaining hope of pulling off a come-from-way-behind win is to convince your senator and your congressman or -woman that it’s politically expedient to hand a default victory to a defeated al Qaeda.
Read the whole thing. And check out this call to action from Blackfive, too.
RADLEY BALKO ON “The government’s morally dubious use of drug informants:”
Late last month, the House Judiciary Committee held hearings on the death of the Kathryn Johnston, the 92-year-old Atlanta woman killed by police during a November 2006 drug raid on her home.
Johnston died when she mistook a team of narcotics officers for criminal intruders. When the police broke down her door, she met them with an old pistol. They opened fire, and killed her.
A subsequent investigation revealed that the entire chain of events up to and shortly after Johnston’s death were beset with lies, planted evidence, and cover-up on the part of the narcotics cops. They fabricated an imaginary informant to get the search warrant for Ms. Johnston’s home. They planted evidence on a convicted felon, arrested him, then let him off in exchange for his tip—which he made up from whole cloth—that they’d find drugs in Ms. Johnston’s house.
When they realized their mistake, they then tried to portray an innocent old woman as a drug dealer. They planted marijuana in Ms. Johnston’s basement while she lay handcuffed and bleeding on the floor.
More investigation revealed that this kind of behavior wasn’t aberrant, but common among narcotics officers in the Atlanta Police Department. Police Chief Richard Pennington eventually dismissed or reassigned the entire narcotics division of the APD.
What came out at the hearings investigating Kathryn Johnston’s death was even more disturbing.
Read the whole thing. And there’s a followup post here.
YOUR HOMELAND SECURITY TAX DOLLARS AT WORK: “A criminal investigations report says several U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services employees are accused of aiding Islamic extremists with identification fraud and of exploiting the visa system for personal gain.”
THIS RESEARCH WON’T SURPRISE MANY BLOG-READERS:
The average newspaper should expand by a factor of 50 the amount of space given to corrections if Scott R. Maier’s research is any guide.
Maier, an associate professor at the University of Oregon’s School of Journalism and Communication, describes in a forthcoming research paper his findings that fewer than 2 percent of factually flawed articles are corrected at dailies.
Read the whole thing.
MYSTERY RESEARCH: Michelle Malkin asks Ellen Goodman a question, but doesn’t get a much of an answer.
DANIEL HENNINGER on the death of “diversity” as an ideology.
THEY TOLD ME THAT IF GEORGE W. BUSH WERE REELECTED, people who disagreed with the dominant religion would risk criminal charges. And they were right.
A PEDAL-POWERED AIR CANNON: Doesn’t everybody need one?
PATRICK HYNES criticizes “identity group conservatism.”
August 15, 2007
PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Some pork pushback for the piggish Alaska delegation:
For the last 15 summers, Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) has hosted his state’s political heavyweights at a down-home pig roast fundraiser. But this August, pigs of a different kind snorted back at him.
About 75 protesters, crying “Oink! Oink!†and “FBI! FBI!†gave Young, Alaska’s two senators and their supporters a shockingly poor reception at last week’s fundraiser. When Young held a public picnic on Monday, the protesters were back, wearing swine masks and waving angry signs.
More than 3,600 miles from the Capitol, one thing is clear: Young and Sen. Ted Stevens (R) are in political as well as legal jeopardy. . . . Polls released this week suggested that Democrats may have a leg up. The Hays Research Group in Anchorage found Stevens with a 44 percent positive rating in the state and showed Republican Gov. Sarah Palin trouncing Stevens by 23 percentage points in a hypothetical Senate primary next year.
To coin a phrase, it is time for him to go.
A LOOK AT India as a great nuclear power.
HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATH OF BOOKS: Glenn Derene looks at the future of e-publishing.
DOWN MEMORY LANE with Bill Keller and the liberal hawks.
A LOOK AT the battle over the war narrative.
EDITOR & PUBLISHER: General Petraeus is polling well.
7.5 EARTHQUAKE IN PERU.
UPDATE: A tsunami warning for Hawaii.
I SAY CALL HIM “HERMAN,” OR I’LL START BLOWING SHIT UP: “A Roman Catholic Bishop in the Netherlands has proposed people of all faiths refer to God as Allah to foster understanding, stoking an already heated debate on religious tolerance in a country with one million Muslims.”
UPDATE: Mess with lunch, and risk beheading.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Less sarcasm, but no more enthusiasm, from Professor Bainbridge.
WELL, THEY CAN’T ALL BE AS HAPPY AS ME — but why are middle-aged men depressed?
BILL QUICK IS NOT IMPRESSED with Wikipedia: “Can’t you people get anything right?”
BUSH ON the Zombie threat.
It’s always about the zombies.
STOP THE PRESSES: A Baghdad Diarist who isn’t a miserable phony.
THOSE GLOBAL WARMING DENIALISTS at Newsweek.