The holiday weekend has given me a chance to, through DVD watching, reinforce the idea that Sports Night is quite possibly the best series to ever be cancelled.

In a war as diffuse and spread out as the current war on terrorism is there really such a thing as an assassination? When there's no defined fronts what exactly is the difference between an assassination and killed in action? When soldiers aimed at officers in WWII it wasn't assassination it was disrupting enemy operations. As long as their "generals" don't come within 10,000 miles of the battle field I see no problem with taking the battle field to them.

The Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard has a great, common sense response to a father's question about why his son was killed in the al Qaeda Bali attack.

Some highlights:

You asked me: "Why did [my] son die?" I don't have a perfect answer to that but I will do my best.

He died at the hands of a murderous group of Islamic fanatics who despise the liberal democratic, open life of Western nations, such as Australia. He died because there are people in the world who believe that indiscriminate violent murder is a justifiable political instrument.

I agree fully with you that Australia did the right thing with its intervention on behalf of East Timor. You will be aware that Osama bin Laden has twice identified that very act of Australia's as a reason for hostility to our country from his terror network. That surely does not mean that we were wrong to intervene in East Timor.

You are right in saying that boys of your son's age are always the ones to go to war. It has sadly ever been thus. That is why peaceful resolution of differences should always be sought.

Ignoring terrorism, however, will not make it disappear.

History is strewn with examples of countries not taking a stand on something in the hope that the problem would go away, only to find that, at an infinitely greater cost, that challenge must ultimately be confronted.

Or would "Attack of the clones" have been a better subject? Anyway, an Italian doctor says a cloned baby is due in January.

That's something you don't hear very often, especially from someone who voted for Gore.

An interesting theory. And if it were used as a jumping off point for fixing things I might support it, but it looks like it's mostly being used as an excuse for why blacks fail instead of a reason that can be overcome.

Egypt apparently sees Hamas as an alternative to the Palistinian Authority. I thought the point of finding someone other than Arafat to work with was to find someone who'd listen to common sense and reason, and could control the bombings. While I'll admit Hamas does the latter they come nowhere near the former.

...and Jacques Chirac reads a magazine. Just imagine the uproar if it had been Bush.

Andrew Sullivan has a good deconstruction of the supposed new Osama letter.

Forbes points out several well, let's call them not-so-factual idiosyncrasies in Michael Moore's film Bowling for Columbine:

TITLE: Moore titled the movie Bowling for Columbine because, he suggests, the two kids who shot up Columbine High in Littleton, Colo., went to a 6 a.m. bowling class on the day of the attack.
ACTUALLY: Cool story, but police say it's not true. They say the shooters skipped their bowling class that day.

MISSILES: Moore wonders whether kids at Columbine might be driven to violence because of the "weapons of mass destruction" made in Lockheed Martin's assembly plant in Littleton. Moore shows giant rockets being assembled.
ACTUALLY: Lockheed Martin's plant in Littleton doesn't make weapons. It makes space launch vehicles for TV satellites.

WELFARE: Moore places blame for a shooting by a child in Michigan on the work-to-welfare program that prevented the boy's mother from spending time with him.
ACTUALLY: Moore doesn't mention that mom had sent the boy to live in a house where her brother and a friend kept drugs and guns.

BANK: Moore says North Country Bank & Trust in Traverse City, Mich., offered a deal where, "if you opened an account, the bank would give you a gun." He walks into a branch and walks out with a gun.
ACTUALLY: Moore didn't just walk in off the street and get a gun. The transaction was staged for cameras. You have to buy a long-term CD, then go to a gun shop to pick up the weapon after a background check.

To the Bush twins as they turn 21, excerpted from the NY Daily News:

Burn the fake ID cards.

Go back to Austin's margarita palace, Chuy's, where the bartender called the cops on you. Tipping is optional.

Since you are a Bush, beware of pretzels.

Listen to advice from your family — except for cousin Noelle. Don't drink anything that comes in a fish bowl.

Every time dad uses the word "evil" in public, down a shot.

Swap nights in the Lincoln Bedroom for drinks on the house.

Leave the public hurling to your grandfather.

When the party's over, go cow-tipping in your own backyard. Secret Service agents aren't just third wheels — think of them as designated drivers!

This is the real war aim -- or it should be, if we're to have any chance of winning this thing: We have to change the hearts and minds of millions of Muslims, too many of whom are at best indifferent to great evil. "Changing" isn't the same as "winning the hearts and minds," which is multiculti codespeak for pre-emptively surrendering and agreeing not to disagree with them. For over a year now, nothing has been asked of Muslims, at home or abroad: you can be equivocal about bin Laden and an apologist for suicide bombers, and still get a photo-op with Dubya; you can be a member of a regime whose state TV stations and government-owned newspapers call for Muslims to kill all Jews and Christians, and you'll still get to kick your shoes off with George and Laura at the Crawford ranch.

As things stand, there are only three countries that are serious about the "war on terror": America, Britain and Australia. And, even within that shrunken rump of the West, there are fierce divisions: Australia's sissy press makes The Toronto Star look like, well, the National Post; it's doubtful whether Tony Blair speaks for more than 30% of his parliamentary party; and President Bush's resoluteness doesn't extend to his Secretary of State or even, during Ramadan, to himself. The longer this already too long period of phony war continues, the more likely it is that even these stalwarts will decay and Canadianize. I worry about the thin line on which our civilization depends. This last year has been too quiet. Next Ramadan, when the traditional calls for a bombing pause are issued, let's hope there's some bombing to pause.

Technically he doesn't say it, but if you can't pick up that Ted Rall is comparing Bush to Hitler in this column then your in trouble. Yeah, let's just ignore the fact that Bush isn't committing genocide, or occupying countries willy-nilly (Both things, I'd point out, that Saddam has done, or tried to do.). What's important is that Ted Rall try to convince you of his insane, paranoid, and just plain asinine conspiracy theory.

Absolutely shocked that the political parties might be trying to get around soft-money limits. Who would have thought?

More detailed info about the Miss World rioting.

The front-page article said: "What would (the prophet) Muhammad think? In all honesty, he would probably have chosen a wife from among them (the contestants)."

The paper, whose Kaduna offices were burnt, has been forced to print three apologies and faces punishment by authorities. It said the story went out in error, Reuters reported.

The government condemned the article which it says "without doubt exceeded the bounds of responsible journalism by making (a) provocative publication on the Holy Prophet."

Islamic fundamentalist groups had for months warned of protests against the Miss World pageant.

The fundamentalist Nigerian Muslim Umma, an umbrella group of Islamic clerics and scholars, has declared a "serious religious emergency" and issued a statement calling on the government to stop the pageant, Reuters reported.

Diana West has a piece over at the Washington Times about Bush's Islamic cheerleading.

Thanks to, among other things, the separation of church and state, it's not in the president's job description to be an Islamic scholar; but neither is it incumbent upon him to take up the pompom for old Islam. This seems particularly clear now that Mr. Bush has decided to weigh in on the blunt critiques of Islam offered by several conservative Christian leaders who have voiced their reactions (negative) to the violence at the core of Islam's unreconstructed traditions of jihad. Islam is violent, said one. Islam is evil, said another; and besides, said another, Mohammed was a pedophile. Historic truths or baseless slanders? If the president has his way, we'll never know. Such remarks "do not reflect the sentiments of my government or the sentiments of most Americans," Mr. Bush noted pointedly last week. "Ours is a country based upon tolerance . . . and we welcome people of all faiths in America. And we're not going to let the war on terror or terrorists cause us to change our values."

When people of your same faith can form a mob and kill 50 people just because the Miss World pageant is going on then I think it's time to take a serious look at your faith as a whole and think about what you and those who share your view can do to bring the radicals into the mainstream fold.

It would be nice to see some mainstream Islamic missionaries head over to Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East to counter the radical leaders. Assuming Islam really doesn't endorse the xenophobia and discrimination practiced so widely in the third world countries then the more enlightened members of Islam need to step up and bring their wayward brethren back into the fold.

A disturbing article by Michelle Malkin on Middle Eastern illegal aliens points out that there are over 115,000 people from the Middle East here illegally.

The Austrians are launching a toung-in-cheek copyright battle over Mickey Mouse after finding his likeness in a medieval fresco.

Hmmm, you'd think that Allah would disapprove more of 50 people dying in a riot than a newspaper saying Mohammed would have approved of a beauty pagent.

It occurs to me that while pointing out that not all of Islam is warlike is a good idea, the coining of the term "religion of peace" may have hurt more than it helped. People are offering up examples left and right under the title "religion of peace" trying to disprove that it really isn't when it isn't so much the religion that's messed up as the culture of the Middle East. The term just seems to be the "kick me" sign put on Islam's back by the Middle Eastern Islamic culture.

A totally repugnant article comparing America to the Nazis. Sometimes you just have to wonder what kind of whacked out world view these people come from that it's actually possible to think like that.

Bill Simmons of ESPN has a good column up on the women at Augusta controversy.

Tom Daschle in the NY Times:

If entertainment becomes so much a part of politics," he said, "and if that entertainment drives an emotional movement in this country among some people who don't know the difference between entertainment and politics and who are then so energized to go out and hurt somebody, that troubles me about where politics in America is going.

FBI officials are upset that the FBI isn't "more aggressive and single-minded in hunting terrorists" Do we really want them to be all that single-minded? There are still other crimes that the FBI should be handling, aren't there?

No, really. David Isby over at the Washington Times explains how and why the possible war in Iraq has more to do with weapons of mass destruction than oil prices.

The Chinese are fighting to get westerners to stop referring to Mount Everest as Mount Everest and instead refer to it as Mount Qomolangma.

"British colonialists raped the sacred mountain of the Tibetans by giving it a false name," said the report. "Until today the world is still persistently humiliating Mt Qomolangma with English-language hegemonism."

I've gotta hand it to the 3 Omaha firefighters who turned down a promotion because they only recieved it because they were a minority. You have to admire somebody who wants to get by on their own merits.

Stephen Hayes brings up something I've thought for a long time... why not have the Super Bowl in the cold? Just how many Super Bowls can you have in New Orleans? I'm all for making Super Bowl watching a little less comfortable. Football isn't a game of comfort, and I don't see why the biggest game of the year should have perfect conditions. It may make marketing and festivities easier, but wouldn't you want your sport's biggest showcase to properly display what the sport is all about?

Jonah Goldberg with another column on our freedom and the fallacy of slippery slope arguments.

How can you take any article that starts out the following way seriously?

Suppose there was such a thing as a time machine. Suppose all the bad-guy Germans of the 1930s and 1940s -- the Gestapo, the Brownshirts, the Blackshirts -- were fed into the time machine and emerged as modern-day Americans. Suppose they all still held the beliefs they had when they died.

So my question is, Which political party would they support now, Democratic or Republican?

Not an SUV apparently.

From the Washington Times:

According to a senior Senate leadership source, the election results were barely in before Mr. Jeffords' office put out feelers to his former party's leaders. The message? That the Vermonter would be happy to caucus with the GOP — so long as he retained his committee chairmanship. Republican leaders rightly rolled their eyes.

Man steals car in order to get to court to face car theft charges.

A reviewer for the Star-Telegram is deeply offended that the Radio City Christmas Spectacular actually contains religious elements.

...to lure spectators of all faiths (and non-faiths) with the promise of an entertaining holiday revue, and then to ambush them with Christian theology, is dated and borderline offensive, especially at a time when understanding of other cultures and beliefs is more important than ever....

The government is reviewing all aid to the Arab world. It would be nice if a more strategic way could be found to give aid so the Arab people can see how much we help them.

Strange news out of Romania: New father tries to briber nurseto replace his daughter with a boy.

Three Estonian women brought into this country illegally and essentially enslaved are being deported. These women thought they were coming to the United States to legally work but things went bad.

The Estonian women say their first mistake was trusting Alexandre Grunichev, the Russian who brought them to America to work for him. They say they responded to his newspaper ads offering jobs in the United States.

The ads promised a place to live, a good wage and a visa that would allow them to work legally.

Instead, they say, they were housed in an apartment with 10 other immigrants and were required to work up to 12 hours a day cleaning homes and hotels for about $5.50 an hour.

They say they met with two INS agents, Tom Perryman and Lisa Teal, who promised they could stay in America if they helped with the investigation. Their American friend, Beulah Duddey, has given a sworn statement on the Estonians' behalf, saying she heard the agents promise the women "they would be able to remain in the country (and) get their green cards."

"They said, `You got to help us and we'll help you,'" Ms. Ene said.

What more could we ask of them?

The Bengals constantly suck and won't live up to it. At the beginning of next season there wouldn't be a single returning coach if it were a just world. This team just needs a purge of the entire management.

Charles Krauthammer with a good piece over at The Weekly Standard on the delusions of American Liberals; mostly revolving around how the American people couldn't possibly agree with the evil Republicans so they must be getting duped. The People couldn't possibly disagree with Liberals of course so they must just be easily duped dunces.

Saddam can't afford to feed his own people because of our dastardly embargo, but he can afford to pay Muammar Gaddafi $3.5 billion? Yeah, all the deaths from starvation are obviously America's fault.

American RealPolitik links to the Washington post about whether DNC insiders want Gore to run in 2004. The spread for/against is 35% for, 48% against.

Good piece by Douglas MacKinnon over at sunspot.net.

The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies has released a survey that clearly demonstrates that black voters are not only much less satisfied with the Democratic Party than they were in years past but are leaving it in not insignificant numbers. The survey found that 63 percent of African-Americans identified themselves as Democrats. While still a large number, it is down 11 percent from just two years ago.

The survey also reports that 10 percent of black voters consider themselves Republicans. A small number, to be sure, but that number is up 6 percent from two years ago. No matter how you slice it, that is a trend that is proving very worrisome to the Democratic leadership.

...

The one issue the survey found that was driving young blacks away from the Democratic Party is an issue I know well -- school vouchers. A majority of African-Americans want them for their children, and the Democratic Party and teacher's unions are against them.

Somebody hacked into Saddam's e-mail box.

A good piece over at the Washington Times on Nancy Pelosi's voting record.

Kudos to Human Rights Watch on their condemnation of Prof. Aghajari's death sentence.

Zimbabwe's dictator outlaws yelling at his car.

It almost happened.

Regardless of how they carry out their attacks, they give the world a reason to oppose them simply by their religious radicalism. Say what you will about how the US has treated the rest of the world, at least we don't require that they believe in the same god as us and worship that god in the same way.

"You know, they say people get the government they deserve, but I don't recall knife-raping any retarded nuns."

Balint Vazsonyi (a name I'd probably misspell even if I cut and pasted it) has an important piece over at The Washington Times about Nancy Pelosi and her ties to Socialist International.

If Nancy Pelosi thinks her brand of catholicism is conservative I'd like to see what she considers a liberal catholic.

Hate crime police raid 150 homes.

Warning, disturbing content ahead. A history of Michael Jackson's nose.

The Iraquis might just try to decieve the inspectors?! You've got to be kidding, they'd never do something like that, would they?!

...but I just can't bring myself to link to the Michael Jackson photo that's floating around, it's just too horrifying. :)

I mentioned last week an Iranian Scholar sentenced to death for supposedly insulting Muhammad. Said scholar is now refusing his appeal and daring the government to kill him.

In his letter, Aghajari said, "I should have died when I lost my leg defending my country (during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war) but I've lived two decades more ... If the death verdict is true, let them carry it out, and if it is wrong, then judiciary needs to work on its shortcomings," Nikbakht told a news conference in Tehran.

On the plus side, university students are taking to the streets and President Khatami says the sentence "never should have been issued at all."

Andrew Sullivan has the best response to the Iraqi letter to the UN that I've seen so far...

Whatever else it is, it surely isn't the product of a serious government with actual policies and actual members. It's the note that might be wriiten by a psychopath - full of inane self-grandeur, stupid threats, excessive Unabomber-style rhetoric and any number of Nazi-like references to the "Zionist entity."

William Safire brings to light some aspects of the Homeland Security Bill that, if true are quite troubling.(Sorry, registration is once again required for the link)

Every purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine subscription you buy and medical prescription you fill, every Web site you visit and e-mail you send or receive, every academic grade you receive, every bank deposit you make, every trip you book and every event you attend — all these transactions and communications will go into what the Defense Department describes as "a virtual, centralized grand database."

To this computerized dossier on your private life from commercial sources, add every piece of information that government has about you — passport application, driver's license and bridge toll records, judicial and divorce records, complaints from nosy neighbors to the F.B.I., your lifetime paper trail plus the latest hidden camera surveillance — and you have the supersnoop's dream: a "Total Information Awareness" about every U.S. citizen.

The attack on John Poindexter that follows though does kind of lead me to wonder about the veracity of the above. If untrue it would me nice to see it rebutted by someone more knowledgeable about the bill than I.

This piece(Registration required) by Amir Taheri does a good job of explaining just how delusional Saddam is, at least in regards to his role as the Arabic Leader. How it managed to make it in the NY Times I don't know.

Great, an Arabic journalist who seems to possess some common sense finally makes it onto the radar and it's only because his common sense views have gotten him fired from the London-based Al-Hayat(Owned by Saudi Prince Khaled bin Sultan).

A couple of the best paragraphs:

"Turkey is today in its best situation. When Ataturk declared secularism in 1924 and abolished the caliphate, Turkey was only 4% literate; today, 95% of Turks are literate. Turkey will become a truly civilized and truly democratic country by joining the European Union (EU). Nevertheless, we have not left barbarity behind us. We are barbarians. Saddam Hussein declares that he won [the elections] by 100% - that is, no one died that day, no one had the flu that day [and was unable to vote]. This is a scandal. You must shake off this dirt..."

...[H]ost Sami Hadad accused Lakhdhar of wanting women to go out naked into the street, or in bikinis. In response, Lakhdhar said: "Women in the world do not go out into the street naked. I want the Muslim woman to be like the Chinese woman, the Indian woman, the Senegalese, the European, American and Russian women. Why do we act with racism against ourselves and claim that this is appropriate for them but not for us? I was recently in Egypt and students told me that I promote secularism, and that secularism is very good for Europe, but not for us. I told them that this is self-racism..."

I think the part about self-racism is quite telling. You generally only hear of the resistance to secularism in terms of it being against Allah's will and that if they "abandoned" Islam they'd go to hell. The idea that some don't seem to see a problem with European secularism at the very least raises some interesting questions about the real basis for the widespread support for Islam in the Middle East. Is it simply the hard-line governments keeping the people in line, or as Lakhdar suggests is it self-racism, or is it perhaps something else?

Thanks of course to Posted by Rob Bernard at 11:11 AM in War/Terrorism/Middle East