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June 28, 2006
Negroponte Needs To Face The Heat
Terri O'Brien at The American Thinker suggests evidence shows that John Negroponte is not really interested in stopping the hemorraging of classified information from his department. She thinks Negroponte should be fired, and replaced with...Steve Jobs.
I agree wholeheartedly with her first suggestion. And her second suggestion is certainly thought-provoking.
Posted at 11:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)June 27, 2006
Same Old Same Old In New Orleans
Things really are getting back to normal in New Orleans. A story in yesterday's Houston Chronicle details the return by the N.O. street gangs to their murderous turf wars--only now there's a lot less turf to battle over since large portions of the city are still uninhabitable:
[New Orleans resident Michelle] Smith and others in this slowly recovering city are dismayed that violent crime seems to be returning to normal faster than other aspects of life. But law enforcement veterans familiar with the city's historically high murder rate are not surprised."You have legacy African-American street criminals who are coming back and finding out that 75 percent of the city is uninhabitable," said James Bernazzani, special agent in charge of the FBI's New Orleans office. "They're now crowded together into areas least affected, or they're squatting in damaged areas that butt up against them, like Central City.
Comparing New Orleans murder rates is tricky because only about half of the city's pre-storm population has returned, but one thing hasn't changed. Even though the criminal justice system is just now getting back up to speed, a lot of Louisiana judges have returned to their disgraceful practice of releasing violent criminals almost as soon as the police capture them:
The system's weakest links today, he said, are judges in state courts who are notoriously lenient in releasing suspects.In late March, for instance, New Orleans narcotics officers arrested 33-year-old Brian Expose. In his house, they found 6 ounces of cocaine, two assault rifles, four pistols, a silencer and $189,000 in cash.
A judge released Expose on a personal recognizance bond. "He was out before the police finished counting the cash," said Bernazzani.
The "revolving door" is corrosive because it silences witnesses and encourages retaliation killings, [special agent in charge of the FBI's New Orleans office James] Bernazzani said. And it can nullify all the extra manpower on the street.
The criminal justice system in New Orleans was thoroughly broken before the storm, and it appears that it remains so.
Posted at 12:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)June 19, 2006
Memo To Democrats: How About Just One Little Bitty Idea?
David Horowitz and Peter Collier reunite to succinctly summarize the Democratic leaderships' (along with a good chunk of the remaining rank and file's) position on the war in Iraq (hat tip to Powerline):
Democrat leaders would have us believe that their present defeatism, which they labor cynically to present as statecraft, is a rueful acknowledgement of facts on the ground in Iraq. They wanted the U.S. to succeed, but because of Bush’s bellicose mendacity they were forced to reconsider their support. Yet Nancy Pelosi, the Woman Who Would be Speaker, attacked the war on April 13, 2003, the day American troops pulled down the statue to Saddam Hussein. It was but two months before the entire Democratic leadership was attacking the President for “lying” about Saddam’s effort to buy fissionable uranium in Niger. The war against the war had begun even in the first flush of success. Within a few months, Ted Kennedy was claiming, “The president’s war is revealed as mindless, needless, senseless and reckless.”Given such views as these—the Democrats’ version of bedrock principles—the difficulties the U.S. has experienced in Iraq have been for them a wish fulfilling fantasy. Their present position—America was foredoomed to fail—is just one short step away from Noam Chomsky’s position—America had it coming.
Empahsis mine. I couldn't agree more. On the Republicans' side you have George Bush imperfectly explaining good policy that is sometimes imperfectly executed. On the Democrats' side you have ponderous gasbags like John Kerry, Ted Kennedy and John Murtha who haven't made a sound, logical assertion in the last twenty years or so monotonously repeating a non-policy: "Just get out."
Seventeen years ago Collier and Horowitz' great book Destructive Generation: Second Thoughts About the Sixties gave me the first real inkling that the Democratic party was no longer the party my parents, and I, thought it was. My parents were too old, and their memories of FDR too indelible, to ever be persuaded; but I was. Collier and Horowitz' book is still quite relevant, and it will continue to be so as long the Democrats their attempt to conjure up another Sixties.
It ain't gonna happen.
June 18, 2006
A Perfect Test Subject
James S. Robbins has an excellent idea: if North Korea should happen to traverse the US's sovereign airspace while testing its new missile (it could possibly happen over Alaska), the US should take the opportunity to perform a test of its own--of the Airborne Laser system, for example.
Posted at 11:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)June 14, 2006
Giuliani Throws It Down
John Derbyshire highlights Rudy Giuliani's speech to a gathering hosted by the Manhattan Institute. Ryan Sager writes in the New York Post:
A small gathering in Mid town yesterday got a sneak peek at Rudy Giuliani's formula as he gears up for a likely 2008 presidential run. That formula: one-third leadership, one-third technocratic centrist and one-third radical conservative reformer.
Giuliani was there to speak on energy policy, and that he did--by strongly endorsing a renewed emphasis on nuclear power as part of a "diversified" energy policy. Sager:
Summing up U.S. energy policy since the 1970s, [Giuliani] was blunt: "We haven't done anything." We haven't drilled in Alaska. We haven't built oil refineries. We haven't ordered a nuclear power plant since 1978.We need to start doing these things, he said, to diversify. Energy independence, he said, is simply the "wrong paradigm," despite the idea's popularity in quarters of both the Left and the Right. Instead, in a global economy, "We have to diversify, that's our strength . . . You can be independent by being diversified."
But, as Sager notes, the real red meat for conservatives came in the after-talk questions: Rudy made no attempt to hide his enthusiasm for choice in public schooling:
As mayor, he said, he thought he could do for the schools what he did for the police department and other city agencies. But he learned he was wrong. The education bureaucracy and the teachers unions were too deeply entrenched. What's needed, he said, "is to go to a choice system and break up the monopoly."Even if they believe it, "most Democrats can't say to you what I just said," he told the crowd. "They're not allowed to."
Absolutely spot on. And Giuliani was not fearful of laying on the line for the country club Republicans who've never given a second's worth of thought to conservative political philosophy. Sager, again:
What's more, [Giuliani] said, there's not as much support even among Republicans for school choice as one might think. The GOP's electoral base is largely suburban, and suburban schools are doing just fine. [Ed - Actually suburban schools are not just fine, but we'll leave that aside for now...] Some suburban parents might even see school vouchers and other choice programs as a threat to their cushy status quo. These suburban Republicans simply aren't affected by what's happening to our urban schools."They're just not thinking of the good of the country in general," he said - taking a forceful swipe at the selfishness of a group of voters that he may soon be courting.
But he's not going to forget about choice, he said, because it's a civil-rights issue. He recalled when a private philanthropy offered low-income kids in New York City a chance at scholarships to private and parochial schools - a sort of private version of the public voucher program he'd like to see. There were 167,000 applications for a relative handful of spots. The rest of the kids were left stranded.
"I'll never forget that number," he said.
This is all very interesting. Giuliani is hitting on action issues that make sense, appeal to a wide spectrum (some Greens are beginning to awaken to the environmental benefits of safe nuclear power, and a lot inner city blacks are desperate for improved education) and enhance his reputation as a guy who actually does have a plan.
This speech, combined with John McCain's recent antics, has sharply focused the delineation between Giuliani and McCain. Giuliani is a former mayor of the nation's largest city and his performance on 9/11 continues to resonate. McCain looks like just another hide-bound presidential candidate from an insular, out-of-touch Senate.
June 13, 2006
Print Ballots In English!
Roger Clegg notes:
The Senate Judiciary Committee had hearings this morning on whether to renew Section 203 of the Voting Rights Act, which requires that many jurisdictions print ballots in one or more foreign languages. [...]Ted Kennedy’s big attempt to dramatize the need for foreign-language ballots badly backfired. Kennedy had a staffer hold up a big poster that reproduced an incredibly long and convoluted Colorado state ballot initiative. The point was supposed to be that such language would be incomprehensible to someone who didn’t speak English really, really well. But of course the Republicans and conservative witnesses—who included the Center for Equal Opportunity’s Linda Chavez and NRO contributor Peter Kirsanow—all pointed out that even someone who DID speak English really, really well would not be able to make heads or tails of it. The third anti-203 witness—U.S. English’s Mauro Mujica—pointed out that translating such language would be essentially impossible; besides, he added, Chilean Spanish would be very different from Puerto Rican Spanish, so which should the government pick? So Section 203 is no solution, in addition to being balkanizing, expensive, a facilitator of voter fraud, and unconstitutional.
Expensive, unconstitutional...and illegal.
Mr. Mujica's point is well taken, and it could be extended to Cantonese and Mandarin Chinese, etc & etc. Print the ballots in English, only. Learn English. Vote.
June 12, 2006
And Another Thing...
After reading some of the comments to Seth Swirksy's post, I have one fervent wish:
Would someone please enlighten those stupid assholes on the Left on the difference between an exit poll and an actual recorded vote?
Posted at 10:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)Another One Sees The Light
Seth Swirsky at the Huffington Post is the latest Leftie to see the light (via AJStrata). Even though he voted for Al Gore in 2000, he watched in dismay his party determinedly self-destructed as the 2004 election cycle ground on:
The Left got nuttier, more extreme, less contributory to the public debate, more obsessed with their nemesis Bush -- and it drove me further away. What Democrat could support Al Gore's '04 choice for President, Howard Dean, when Dean didn't dismiss the suggestion that George W. Bush had something to do with the 9/11 attacks? Or when the second most powerful Senate Democrat, Dick Durbin, thought our behavior at the detention center in Guantanamo was equivalent to Bergen Belsen and the Soviet gulags? Or when Senator Kennedy equated the unfortunate but small incident at Abu Ghraib with Saddam's 40-year record of mass murder, rape rooms, and mass graves saying, "Saddam's torture chambers have reopened under new management, U.S. management"? What Democrat could not applaud the fact that President had, in fact, kept us safe for what's going on 5 years? What Democrat -- even those who opposed the decision to go into Iraq -- wouldn't applaud the fact that tens of millions of previously brutalized people had the hope of freedom before them?
I wonder how many more thoughtful Democrats like Seth Swirsky left their party over the weekend, when Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid addressed the Daily Kos clan?
Posted at 10:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)June 10, 2006
Bolton Continues To Roast the Farcical UN
Rick Moran has an excellent summation of John Bolton's red-hot reply to UN lackey Mark Malloch Brown, the British Deputy UN Secretary-General, who made a sneering speech that implied that the average American doesn't properly understand the UN. From the Times:
Before Mr Bolton arrived in London, Kofi Annan, the UN chief, tried to play down the controversy. “I think the message that was intended is that the US needs the UN, and the UN needs the US, and we need to support each other,” Mr Annan said.
The US needs the UN? For what, exactly?
George Bush won the last election by about 52%. Presumably those millions who comprise the 52% don't give a rat's ass about UN approval on any issue. Of the remaining 48%, maybe 35% will oppose any US international action, UN approved or not. So that leaves about 13% of the voting population who cares whether we have UN "permission" to conduct foreign policy.
The numbers are just guesses, of course, but the principle is sound. The UN is the ultimate definition of an unaccountable, corrupt and power-mad bureaucratic institution, and it has zero cause to claim any moral high ground over the US on international policy. Bolton is on a hot streak that would make Joe DiMaggio proud.
June 08, 2006
Zarqawi Is Dead
Murderous jihadi Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi has been killed by a precision US air strike. "Good riddance to bad rubbish."
I hope they release the targeting camera video.
This will not end the violence immediately, but the pooh-poohing by the usual suspects is laughable. Charismatic leaders--even brutal depraved inhuman ones like Zarqawi--don't grow on trees.
*** UPDATE 2 *** Power Line Video has a longer clip that shows the second bomb.
*** UPDATE *** Here's the strike video. Thanks to Michelle Malkin and Hot Air. (Centcom's server was swamped.)
Posted at 09:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)June 07, 2006
Immigration: Career-Maker For Tancredo?
Andy McCarthy sums up my feelings exactly:
I've supported President Bush. But on this issue he might as well be named Carter or Clinton. I think he has been wrong on immigration from jump-street. He was supported by conservatives despite his inclinations on immigration because he was strong in other areas and the opposition was Gore and Kerry. In fact, if immigration were the only issue of concern, we'd tactically be better off with a Democrat in the White House. President Clinton would never have had the nerve to try something this ambitiously bad, because he was smart enough to know the people who now seem open to compromise because they worry about embarrassing a Republican president would be only too happy with a decisive rout if the very same monstrosity were identified as a "Democrat bill."In any event, I personally will never trust that the hidden details of this bill are anything but worse than the better known, big-picture items that alarm me. President Bush and the Republicans in the Senate have given me no reason to think otherwise. And I sense that a lot of people on our side of the street feel the same way I do — and will not be moved or comforted by a compromise that demonstrates the vaunted "ability to govern."
Emphases mine. I would never consider not voting for Bush, as long as the Dems keep fielding malicious buffoons like Gore and Kerry. I continue to strongly support GWB on the GWO-Islamofascism because I believe the missteps that have been made in the war--though serious--are procedural as opposed to conceptual.
But I think this doesn't hold for the President's position on immigration: I believe his obvious lack of commitment to serious border control belies a fundamental attitude that will undermine any solution that he supports.
Meanwhile, Tom Tancredo is making news. Bill Quick highlights an interesting report in Human Events:
Rep. Tom Tancredo's get-tough-first attitude on immigration reform is having a positive impact on his possible presidential run in 2008. The Colorado Republican won tonight's GOP straw poll in Macomb County, Mich., located in the Detroit metro area.Tancredo took about 18% of the vote of 325 votes cast at the Lincoln Day Dinner. Although it was only a plurality on a fractured GOP ballot, Tancredo beat out GOP heavyweights Rudy Giuliani, Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
And note the update:
UPDATE -- June 6: I just computed the figures from the monthly HUMAN EVENTS straw poll and, sure enough, Tancredo slightly edged out Condi Rice with 18.7% of the vote compared to her 18.3%. This is a huge boost from the month before when he placed third (12.4%) behind Rice (21.5%) and Sen. George Allen (18.6%).
I don't know what this really says about Tancredo's chances as a presidential candidate--but I do know what it says about how well the White House and the Senate are monitoring the wishes of a whole lot of Americans.
Posted at 11:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)June 06, 2006
Summertime, And The Blogging Is Light
Blogging has been light, obviously, and it will continue to be so--probably through the rest of the summer. I'm not burned out on blogging per se, but the Republican handling of the immigration issue--specifically the lack of focus shown by GWB and his administration (see here and here)--has sapped my enthusiasm for blogging, a little. (And the House Repuplicans' stupid reaction to the FBI raid in the Jefferson case didn't help, either). It's hard enough to answer the liberal/Left, from the outrageous intellectual dishonesty to the thoughful and thought-provoking challenges.
I've found myself expending far too much mental energy arguing against my own party's position; with all the events, tasks and appointments of a busy summer schedule I just don't have time for Alberto Gonzales's nonsense.
Posted at 10:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)June 03, 2006
A New Identity For $300
In today's Houston Chronicle:
Dealer in bogus IDs scoffs at crackdownNew technology thwarts efforts to find and arrest document dealers
LOS ANGELES - Luis Hernandez laughs as he sells fake driver's licenses and Social Security cards to illegal immigrants near a park known for shady deals.
The joke, to him and others like him, is the government's promise to put people like him out of business with a tamperproof national ID card.
"One way or another, we'll always find a way," said Hernandez, 35, who is part of a complex counterfeiting network around MacArthur Park, where authentic-looking IDs are available for as little as $150.
AP writer Peter Prengaman goes on to detail how most of Hernandez's clients are illegal immigrants who need working papers, and for a price of $300 or so they can obtain a package that contains not only a driver's license, but also a Social Security card and green card.
Such a deal.
"We are not trying to do anything bad," said Sergio Guitierrez, 35, an illegal immigrant from Mexico who sells IDs. "Immigrants just need to work."
Maybe the Treasury Department needs to take some time out from redesigning our currency and get to work on some of these documents. Of course, the most foolproof document in the world is worthless unless someone is actually verifying them as a means of enforcing our existing immigration and labor laws.
Meanwhile, Vicente Fox's good buddy has turned his attention to more relevant topics.
June 02, 2006
Let's Be Clear About Our Motives, Shall We?
Rick Moran at Right Wing Nuthouse illuminates an important point about the developing reaction to the Haditha affair:
Haditha has handed our foreign enemies a propaganda victory. Why does the domestic left have to assist them in this? The answer to that question is simple; because both the insurgents in Iraq who are killing Americans and our domestic left have the exact same agenda; the defeat of the United States in Iraq.
To my knowledge, no one from the right side of the blogosphere has come close to excusing these guys' actions--if for no other reason than we don't yet know exactly what their actions were. But the Left doesn't care about fairness, or perspective, or context: everything points back to GWB. Hysteria and emotion rule.
Will the Left succeed in establishing Haditha as a metaphor for US involvement in Iraq? It think the odds are better than even that it will--the lever of the mainstream media acting will act with the fulcrum provided by the Left to amplify the actions of a few. Remember, the Abu Ghraib photos were taken over the space of a single weekend by just a few soldiers.
Thanks to Academic Elephant for the heads up.
Posted at 09:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)