Robin has compiled a link collection, which may be helpful for those trying to connect the dots.

Josh Stulman, “Our Greatest Hero”
(said by Yassir Arafat of Haj Amin Al-Husseini,
(pro-Nazi Mufti of Jerusalem)

The Collegian (the independent student newspaper at Penn State) reports that University authorities cancelled an exhibition of art by student Josh Stulman on the basis of the Pennsylvania State University’s infamous Policy AD42: Statement on Nondiscrimination and Harassment:

Three days before his 10-piece exhibit—Portraits of Terror—was scheduled to open at the Patterson Building, Stulman (senior-painting and anthropology) received an e-mail message from the School of Visual Arts that said his exhibit on images of terrorism “did not promote cultural diversity” or “opportunities for democratic dialogue” and the display would be cancelled.

The exhibit, Stulman said, which is based mainly on the conflict in Palestinian territories, raises questions concerning the destruction of Jewish religious shrines, anti-Semitic propaganda and cartoons in Palestinian newspapers, the disregard for rules of engagement and treatment of prisoners, and the indoctrination of youth into terrorist acts…

Charles Garoian, professor and director of the School of Visual Arts, said Stulman’s controversial images did not mesh with the university’s educational mission.

The decision to cancel the exhibit came after reviewing Penn State’s Policy AD42: Statement on Nondiscrimination and Harassment and Penn State’s Zero Tolerance Policy for Hate.”

The Centre Daily Times’s story today serves as a vehicle for an attempted whitewash.

An art student is claiming his work is being censored by Penn State because of its provocative images of terrorism, while school officials say the decision to cancel his exhibit is not content-related.

In an e-mail sent Friday to fifth-year student Josh Stulman, Charles Garoian, director of the School of Visual Arts, said the exhibit was pulled because it was sponsored by Penn State Hillel, making it a commercial work. The Patterson Gallery is dedicated to unsponsored class work. Garoian wrote in the e-mail that the exhibit would continue if the sponsorship is removed.

Hillel donating “$75 to $100 for a reception” suddenly magically transforms Mr. Stulman’s paintings into (non-exhibitable) commercial work? Right. Tell us another one, Professor Garoian.

Let’s hope Mr. Stulman’s parents know some hungry lawyers.
————————————————-

Volokh Conspiracy also reports.

The Scholars for Peace in the Middle East organization is desperately searching for a copy of the following article:

Garoian, C.R., “Fighting censorship in the art classroom.” School Arts: Inspiring Creativity in Teaching, Vol. 95, No. 14, December 1996 (with Albert A. Anderson).

If anyone can lay hands on a copy, please send it by fax it to: 717.561.9494, or email it to scholarsforpeace@aol.com or send it to: Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, c/o Susquehanna Institute, 624 Sandra Avenue, Harrisburg, PA 17109.

A small group of leftwing British journalists, university lecturers and bloggers who had grown disillusioned with their own side’s sympathy for terrorism, knee jerk anti-Americanism, and generally pathological outlook met in a London pub last year in order to discuss alternatives. That meeting resulted in discussions and debates which have ultimately produced The Euston Manifesto, an attempt at a redefinition of a political agenda for the Left, including a repudiation of some notably objectionable tendencies, and a reaffirmation of democratic and Enlightenment values.

This sort of thing, of course, is precisely what the American democrat would need to do to have any hope of ever winning a national election, but I tend to think the American left is incapable of standing up to its lunatic activist base.

MacRanger, I think, calls it right. The exposure of Mary O. McCarthy is just the beginning. The MSM is wasting all the ink it’s spilling this morning trying to establish a whistleblower defense. Ms. McCarthy is probably not going to jail. She has most likely already made a deal. It’s her associates in the Pouting Spooks Conspiracy who will be going up the river, with her testifyng against them.

..Mary’s discovery definitely came as a part of a tip, most likely on the promise of immunity, which I find most intriguing and amusing. Imagine a mole on the inside who is now spilling the beans on those leakers – such as Mary – who have been leaking stories over the last three years. Its going to be fun to watch the rats devour one another to save their own hides.

As we all know – or should know – since before and especially during the 2004 election cycle leaks were coming out at a fast and furious pace. It was if the State Department and the CIA had suddenly become a 24 hour news service, leaking information specifically designed to undermine the Bush administration, the war effort, and ulitmately was intended to defeat the President’s reelection effort.

We now know that McCarthy was a hire of Sandy Burglar, a Clintonista, and a heavy contributor to failed Presidential candidate John Kerry. In addition she worked out of the IG’s office of the CIA who would have directly worked on the referral to the JD of the Valerie Plame Game. As the Agency is a small sorority, I immediately wonder just how close she was and is to Valerie Plame.

As I noted from the beginning of the Plame Game, the story was never about Joe Wilson’s boondoggle to Niger per-se, but about an elaborate coup by a group of rogue ops to undermine the President of the United States in war time. This is much more than just the leak of CIA prisons – a story which in itself is false, but about the oldest type of war waged and which the CIA is expert at. That being toppling Governments by misinformation propaganda designed to sow discord among the people. Thus the Plame Game was and continues to be a ruse – a paper tiger- a fact that Fitzgerald and his bungling prosecution continually reminds us of.

Interesting. The designer apparently was prevously an engineer for Barrett. Sounds pretty cool, if it actually works, but none of this material notes that this is strictly a vehicular-carried weapon.

Imagine a gun with no recoil, no sound, no heat, no gunpowder, no visible firing signature (muzzle flash), and no stoppages or jams of any kind. Now imagine that this gun could fire .308 caliber and .50 caliber metal projectiles accurately at up to 8,000 fps (feet-per-second), featured an infinitely variable/programmable cyclic rate-of-fire (as high as 120,000 rounds-per-minute), and were capable of laying down a 360-degree field of fire. What if you could mount this weapon on any military Humvee (HMMWV), any helicopter/gunship, any armored personnel carrier (APC), and any other vehicle for which the technology were applicable?

That would really be something, wouldn’t it? Some of you might be wondering, “how big would it be”, or “how much would it weigh”? Others might want to know what it’s ammunition capacity would be. These are all good questions, assuming of course that a weapon like this were actually possible.

According to its inventor, not only is it possible, it’s already happened. An updated version of the weapon will be available soon. It will arrive in the form of a tactically-configured pre-production anti-personnel weapon firing .308 caliber projectiles (accurately) at 2,500-3000 fps, at a variable/programmable cyclic rate of 5,000-120,000 rpm (rounds-per-minute). The weapon’s designer/inventor has informed DefRev that future versions of the weapon will be capable of achieving projectile velocities in the 5,000-8,000 fps range with no difficulty. The technology already exists.

The weapon itself is called the DREAD, or Multiple Projectile Delivery System (MPDS), and it may just be the most revolutionary infantry weapon system concept that DefenseReview has EVER come across.

The DREAD Weapon System is the brainchild of weapons designer/inventor Charles St. George. It will be 40 inches long, 32 inches wide, and 3 inches high (20 inches high with the pintel swivel mount). It will be comprised of only 30 component parts, and will have an empty weight of only 28 pounds. That’s right, 28 pounds. The weapon will be capable of rotating 360 degrees and enjoy the same elevation and declination capabilities of any conventional vehicle-mounted gun/weapon.

The first generation DREAD (production version), derived from the tactically-configured pre-production weapon, will most likely be a ground vehicle-mounted anti-personnel weapon. Military Humvees (HMMWV’s) and other ground vehicles (including Chevy Suburbans) equipped with the DREAD will enjoy magazine capacities of at least 50,000 rounds of .308 Cal., or 10,000 rounds of .50 Cal. ammo.

But, what is the DREAD, really? How does it work? In a sentence, the DREAD is an electrically-powered centrifuge weapon, or centrifuge “gun”. So, instead of using self-contained cartridges containing powdered propellant (gunpowder), the DREAD’s ammunition will be .308 and .50 caliber round metal balls (steel, tungsten, tungsten carbide, ceramic-coated tungsten, etc…) that will be literally spun out of the weapon at speeds as high as 8000 fps (give or take a few hundred feet-per-second) at rather extreme rpm’s, striking their targets with overwhelming and devastating firepower. We’re talking about total target saturation, here. All this, of course, makes the DREAD revolutionary in the literal sense, as well as the conceptual one.

video—Be patient, it takes over a minute to download.

Pofarmer asks over on Tom Maguire’s JOM:

The Fitzgerald investigation has been handled as an ivestigation of the administration and not like a “leak” investigation from the get go. Ergo, we know who the leaker is, but there’s no charges.

Fitz is from Chicago, which is highly Democratic.

So, what I want to know.

Who reccommended Fitz at the beginning of the chain?

Is Fitz just a useful idiot, or is something a little more/less sinister involved.

On October 3, 2003, George W. Bush nominated James Comey, United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, to the post of Deputy Attorney General. Comey was unanimously confirmed by the Senate on December 9, 2003.

New York Magazine profile of Comey.

George W. Bush chose one of the worst grandstanding prosecutors in the country, a Reinhold Niebuhr-quoting, statist liberal, who had recently sent Martha Stewart to prison “for lying” about a crime which was never proven to have occurred, to the Number 2 position in his Justice Department.

This unsound and unprincipled appointment would have the gravest consequences. The failure of the Bush Administration to safeguard the rights of Martha Stewart, and other victims of Comey’s over-reaching, opportunistic, and bullying prosecutions, would ultimately backfire on the administration itself.

It is known that by March 2004 Comey was quarreling with the White House over surveillance. Here is one leftwing account, describing the circumstances of one policy battle, and the application by Bush of an uncomplimentary nickname to Comey:

In March 2004, John Ashcroft was in the hospital with a serious pancreatic condition. At Justice, Comey, Ashcroft’s No. 2, was acting as attorney general…. (Jack) Goldsmith (head of the Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel) raised with Comey serious questions about the secret eavesdropping program, according to two sources familiar with the episode. He was joined by a former OLC lawyer, Patrick Philbin, who had become national-security aide to the deputy attorney general. Comey backed them up. The White House was told: no reauthorization.

The angry reaction bubbled up all the way to the Oval Office. President Bush, with his penchant for put-down nicknames, had begun referring to Comey as “Cuomey” or “Cuomo,” apparently after former New York governor Mario Cuomo, who was notorious for his Hamlet-like indecision over whether to seek the Democratic presidential nomination in the 1980s. A high-level delegation—White House Counsel Gonzales and chief of staff Andy Card—visited Ashcroft in the hospital to appeal Comey’s refusal. In pain and on medication, Ashcroft stood by his No. 2.

But, even before he was confirmed by the Senate, Mr. Comey had taken advantage of John Ashcroft’s remarkably scrupulous personal recusal to appoint as Special Council, Patrick Fitzgerald, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois.

Fitzgerald would, of course, prove to be a prosecutor strongly reminiscent of Comey himself, preening for an admiring press, while lodging perjury charges against a trophy-class target based on contradictory witness accounts, having found no evidence to support the theory that any crime was ever committed in the first place.

Relations between Comey and the White House worsened after June 2004, when Comey (with Justice department associates Goldsmith and Philbin) held a not-for-attribution background press briefing to announce that the Justice Department was disavowing the August 2002 so-called “Torture memo” written by Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee. Wrangling over new definitions of permissible forms of interrogation continued through December.

A leftwing view of conflicts between Justice Department liberals and the White House appeared in Newsweek.

In April 2005, James Comey announced that he would be resigning later that year. He was quickly hired as General Counsel and a Senior Vice President by Lockheed Martin.

Mary McCarthy’s ties to the Clinton Administration and Kerry campaign (and via Beers implicitly to the Pouting Spooks VIPS organization) were identified by Rick Ballard of YARGB (writing at Just One Minute):

National Security Advisor Samuel R. Berger announced today the appointment of Mary O’Neil McCarthy as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Intelligence Programs. Mrs. McCarthy succeeds Rand Beers.

Hat tip to AJStrata.

The New York Times reports:

Public records show that Ms. McCarthy contributed $2,000 in 2004 to the presidential campaign of John Kerry, the Democratic nominee.

UPDATE

Tom Maguire finds the Times’s report just a bit short of complete:

However, per public records at Open Secrets, we can easily find the $2,000 donation to Kerry, a $5,000 donation by Mary O. McCarthy to the Ohio DNC, a $2,000 donation by a Michael J McCarthy from the same address (Husband, brother, bro-in-law, dad? I’ll guess hubby), and a $500 donation to Barbara Mikulski, all in 2004.

Spook86 draws upon an insider’s understanding to put McCarthy’s rank & career in perspective:

Ms. McCarthy had been an agency employee for 22 years at the time of her dismissal. She had strong ties to the Clinton Administration; disgraced former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger (of “Secrets Down My Pants” fame) engineered her appointment as Special Assistant to the President for Intelligence Programs in 1998. Before that, she held a similar post at the National Intelligence Council (NIC), and previously served as National Intelligence Officer (NIO) for Warning (1994-1996), and the Deputy NIO for Warning (1991-1994).

You’ll note that many media accounts describe the leaker as an “analyst,” suggesting that she was, at best, a mid-level staffer. That was hardly the case; few analysts make the jump from a regional desk at Langley to the White House. A “National Intelligence Officer” is the equivalent of a four-star general in the military, or a cardinal in the Catholic Church. There are only a handful of NIOs in the intelligence community; they are in charge of intelligence community efforts in a particular area. As a senior officer for Warning, Ms. McCarthy was tasked, essentially, with preventing future Pearl Harbors. Observers will note that McCarthy’s tenure in that role coincided with early strikes by Islamofacists against the United States, including the first World Trade Center bombing, and the Khobar Towers attack. It could be argued that Ms. McCarthy’s performance in the warning directorate was mediocre, at best—but it clearly didn’t affect her rise in a Democratic Administration.

Equally interesting is her meteoric rise within the intelligence community. According to her bio, she joined the CIA as an analyst in 1984. Within seven years, she had rise to a Deputy NIO position, and reached full NIO status by 1994. To reach that level, she literally catapulted over dozens of more senior officers—and I’m guessing that her political connections didn’t hurt. By comparison, I know a current NIO, with a resume and academic credentials more impressive than Ms. McCarthy’s, who reached the position after more than 20 years of extraordinarily distinguished service. McCarthy’s rapid advancement speaks volumes about how the Clinton Administration did business, and sheds new light on the intelligence failures that set the stage for 9-11. We can only wonder how many other political hacks climbed the intel food chain under Clinton—and remain in place to this day…

.. I also detect the whiff of sour grapes in her motivation for leaking information to the Post. At the time she talked with reporter Dana Priest, Ms. McCarthy was apparently working in the CIA Inspector General’s Office. The agency, citing the Privacy Act, hasn’t divulged her pay grade or title at the time of her firing, but it seems certain that she was not at the NIO level. After the rarefied air of the Clinton White House, McCarthy had been banished to a relative backwater at Langley, and she was likely upset by the apparent demotion.

Let me state at the outset that the officer in question, Mary McCarthy, is an old acquaintance. I hasten to add that I do not consider her a friend. She was my immediate boss in 1988-89 and was instrumental in my decision to leave the CIA and take a job at the State Department’s Office of Counter Terrorism. Mary, in my experience, was a terrible manager. I left the CIA in 1989 despite having received two exceptional performance awards during my last eight months on the job because I could not stand working under her.

But Johnson is ready to perform some pretty demanding intellectual acrobatics to defend her:

I am struck by the irony that Mary McCarthy may have been fired for blowing the whistle and ensuring that the truth about an abuse was told to the American people. There is something potentially honorable in that action; particularly when you consider that George Bush authorized Scooter Libby to leak misleading information for the purpose of deceiving the American people about the grounds for going to war in Iraq. While I’m neither a fan nor friend of Mary’s, she may have done a service for her country.

Mary McCarthy

A variety of news sources are reporting that Mary McCarthy, a veteran CIA officer employed by the agency’s Inspector General’s Office has been identified as having illegallly given classified information to Washington Post reporter Dana Priest.

McCarthy, previously an employee of the NSA and currently nearing retirement, failed a polygraph test. She then admitted to more than a dozen unauthorized meetings with Priest, at which she supplied a variety of classified information, not all the content of which has so far been identified. It is clear, however, that it was McCarthy who provided the classified information leading to the Washington Post’s published reports of secret prisons in Eastern Europe, for which Priest received a 2006 Pulitzer Prize.

The case is now under review by the Justice Department, and an indictment is expected.

NBC —AP

CSIS bio (both photo & bio have been removed):

Prior to joining CSIS in August 2001, Mary O. McCarthy was a senior policy adviser to the CIA’s deputy director for science and technology. Until July 2001, she served as special assistant to the president and senior director for intelligence programs on the National Security Council (NSC) Staff, under both Presidents Clinton and Bush. From 1991 until her appointment to the NSC, McCarthy served on the National Intelligence Council. She began her government service as an analyst, then manager, in CIA’s Directorate of Intelligence, holding positions in both African and Latin American analysis. From 1979 to 1984 she was employed by BERI, S.A., conducting financial, operational, and political risk assessments for multinational companies and banks. Previously she had taught at the University of Minnesota and was director of the Social Science Data Archive at Yale University. McCarthy has a B.A. and M.A. in history from Michigan State University, an M.A. in library science from the University of Minnesota, and a Ph.D. in history from the University of Minnesota. She is the author of Social Change and the Growth of British Power in the Gold Coast (University Press of America, 1983).

Yesterday was the natal anniversary of renowned Spanish (and Catalan) artist Joan Miró, born April 20, 1893 in Barcelona, and Google (in what I would consider a gracious tribute) modified its logo into an homage to Miró.

Google had, in the past, similiarly saluted Salvador Dali, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and such occasions as Valentine’s Day.

Google’s gesture might possibly have some very modest economic impact, enhancing the value of that artist’s work through such a widely-viewed public acknowledgement of his fame and artistic stature, but it obviously did not make Google one plug nickel. Rather than accepting this one-day tribute, however, in the spirit in which it was offered, some grasping Miró heir, who had stumbled upon the Miró-ified logo, notified the Artists Rights Society, a group representing some 40,000 artists (and their estates). The pettyfoggers and beancounters at the ARS leapt into action, demanding that Google remove the logo, which incorporated some elements from the artist’s (copyrighted) images:

It’s a distortion of the original works and in that respect it violates the moral rights of the artist,’’ said Theodore Feder, president of Artists Rights Society. “There are underlying copyrights to the works of Miró, and they are putting it up without having the rights.’‘

So, if an Internet company, like Google, wishes to pay homage (for one day) to an historic figure in the world of Art, it is not enough that Google donates its time, creative work, and publishing space, it should also donate the time of its executives and attorneys to enter into correspondence, negotiations, the drafting of legal agreements, and possibly pay a fee for the privilege of saying: “Happy Birthday, Joan Miró?”

Preposterous. This kind of dog-in-the-manger punctilio over non-economic use of cultural references is crass, absurd, and culturally impoverishing.

John Paczkowski is a brilliant reporter on Technology, but I think he is completely wrong on this one.

From Free Republic (where readers sometimes post these kinds of letters from the front):

To Everyone,

I just wanted to let you all know that I’m still doing well and have been blessed with the Lord’s protection every day. I finally got back to the ‘rear’ where I could get on the computer to email everyone. I don’t have a lot of these opportunities, so if I get a second while I’m out operating, I’ll write what I can and save it for when I can email it.

That’s what I’ve written below – an Easter weekend message. I hope you enjoy the update and I hope you enjoyed your Easter!

To everyone,

I am writing to wish you a wonderful Easter weekend (a bit late). It’s about 0300 the day after Easter right now and I’ve got a few minutes to write an email to all of you to update you. I’m writing this email on my “Toughbook” computer, one of the ones we bring out to conduct tactical communications and planning….it’s a really awesome piece of gear. Yep, I’m “outside the wire” right now, typing up an email to send later! Hard to believe isn’t it? Well, I haven’t had more than a few minutes to eat, or sleep over the past four days, so this is my first breather to be able to write, and I know that as soon as we get back “inside the wire” we’ll be prepping to turn around and come right back out…so that’s why I’m writing you an email from out here.

You’re probably wondering how I have power to run a laptop. We have power converters in our humvees that we run extension cords from, and just start the trucks every so often. This powers our computers, a single light for my platoon “ROC” – Recon Operations Center, and various radio equipment. Of course, we can operate without power, but it makes everything easier. Without going into great detail on our tactics, I’ll explain where I am. I’m currently in the house of an Iraqi family. Yes, it’s a shame, but we have to kick them out of their houses for periods of time in order to have a secure place to operate. Most of them know the deal by now, so it’s not too hard. I’m provided with lots of cash to compensate and I usually leave the place much cleaner than we found it and with some money waiting for the owner. We quickly turn a house into a defensive position and can operate out of it for long periods of time if required. If you’re wondering what the conditions are like I’ll paint a picture. This is the house of a self proclaimed doctor. There are pills and needles everywhere and rotten food all over the house. We consolidate as much of the crap as we can and move it into an area where we set up a “portable-crapper” – a collapsible toilet seat and a bunch of trash bags. That’s the same place we store all our “piss bottles.” You see, we don’t go outside unless we need to, and we’re in full gear ready for a fight. We keep cans of Lysol around and lots of hand sanitizer to keep disease down, but it’s hard when you’re sleeping on the floor of an Iraqi house and you’re dragging in animal feces on your boots, etc. No telling what kinds of diseases the occupants had when you kicked them out either. ( I guess that’s why we get so many shots all the time.) The Iraqis have electricity off and on for a few hours a day, so we shut off the breakers (if we can find them) to prevent lights from coming on, etc. Of course, there is no A/C, etc. This place where we live, once we’ve hardened it, is called our “firm base.”

Life in the “Firm Base” – once again, without getting into the details that I don’t want the bad guys knowing, I’ll fill you in on a common day. My platoon rotates Marines through guarding the firm base, conducting patrols, and being ready as part of the “QRF – quick reaction force.” As you can see, rest is not in the schedule. For a very small platoon (can’t talk numbers over email) to accomplish all of this, is pretty difficult. Rest occurs when you’re on QRF….if you don’t have to react to something. I spend most of my time in my ROC, receiving and passing on information, analyzing information, and planning offensive and defensive actions. At times I will get out to visit local sheiks or people to gather information from, usually in the middle of the night. My Marines usually get about 4-6 hours of sleep in a 24 hour period, but it’s usually 2 to 3 hours at a time. Depending on how much offensive or defensive action is taking place, I may get between one hour and 6 hours of sleep per 24 hours, never at more than 2 to 3 hour lengths. It can get tiring, but you get used to it.

So far, I’ve been impressed with my platoon and their level of motivation and competence. Already they have been tested under fire and have performed well. I literally have to reel them in when we’re engaged in a firefight, which is much better than having to tell someone to stop ducking and shoot back. The enemy has taken notice to my boys’ aggression as well, and have lately scaled back on their overt action against us. The first time they hit us it was with multiple machine guns at close range and they were quickly overwhelmed. Fortunately for us, after their first few inaccurate bursts, they had to fight the rest of the time by sticking the barrels around the corner and firing – which is generally inaccurate. Unfortunately for us, that makes them hard to hit. I was mad when we couldn’t find any blood, but understood that we did the best we could.

The people we’re fighting here are truly evil people. Many of them have lost every bit of humanity that a normal person possesses. They habitually kidnap and execute Iraqis for reasons varying from religious differences, to robbery, to vicious retribution for helping give us information, etc. This makes it very difficult to find these bad guys because they have such a grip on the people. (Although one platoon did recently rescue a hostage who was surely about to be killed – talk about a good feeling…KNOWING you saved someone’s life!) As for the bad guys, imagine the MOB operating without the threat of any law enforcement and with every weapon and explosive they want at their disposal and the financial and moral assistance of fundamentalists and probably even other governments from around the globe. It’s a tough fight, but we’re winning. It’s just slow. As tired as I am of living the dirty life of an infantryman and having to constantly worry about the safety of my Marines, I still know that I’m doing exactly what I’m supposed to be doing in ridding the world of these evil people. If these people weren’t here trying to kill us, they’d be figuring out a way to get over to American and kill us there. The proliferation of the ideals that these people dedicate themselves to, present as great a threat to the world as those of Hitler. It’s too bad many people don’t realize that and the same Marines have to return time and again to the same places to kill these people instead of an entire generation standing up to fight evil. I can’t complain though, because even if there aren’t lines at the recruiting stations, at least we’re getting all the stuff we need out here and we know we have the support of the majority of the population back home. That makes all the difference in the world!

Perhaps the thing that makes the most difference is the prayers of everyone back home. I thank you for your prayers and I know that’s why my Marines have been kept safe so far. This past Easter weekend has been a time of lots of little miracles, and I’m sure that they’re do to all of the prayers from all of you back home. Personally, I look forward to future Easter weekends when I can watch kids running around hunting for Easter eggs instead of big kids running around hunting bad guys and looking for IEDs! In the meantime, I appreciate all your prayers, so that we can bring all these big kids home safe!

If you’re wondering what kinds of stuff we’d like to have out here, I’ll tell you that it’s different than the last two deployments. In the past we needed socks and batteries, and razors, and stuff that we couldn’t get out in Afghanistan or in the city of Fallujah. Well, because we’re stationed in a large camp this time (for the short periods of time that we’re actually in it) we have access to pretty much everything we need. Things that are great to have though, are those types of snacks from back home that you don’t get in your supply system and that don’t come in MREs. Some of these are: beef jerky (any kind), packs of tuna (esp. the different flavored kind!), sunflower seeds (There’s a really good “Jim Beam / BBQ” flavored variety out there!), protein bars or protein powder, multi-vitamins, cashews, dried fruit / trail mix, etc. You can see that this list is pretty healthy – we’re all out here trying not to let our bodies get too skinny and nasty while we’re out running around in the heat. We’ve got a set of 25 lb dumbbells my guys stole from the base gym – that’s our platoon’s workout equipment….that and a deck of cards (you do the amount of pushups for the numeric value of each card, for ½ a deck or a whole deck each day). It’s kind of funny how when you go to war, it’s all the non-infantry people who come home looking like studs (or completely fat) and all the infantry guys and Recon guys who come home like skinny little weaklings.

There’s a certain amount of jealousy that we who leave the wire have for those people, every now and then….only every now and then. You see, the big fancy bases around Iraq and Afghanistan are referred to as a “Forward Operating Bases” or “FOBs” and throughout this theater of operations, the infantry have come to name the two types of people who occupy these FOBs – “FOBBITS” and “FOB GOBLINS.”

You see, a FOBBIT is a person who is a happy little being, who is completely content, knowing that every day he’ll get up, take a hot shower, go to the chow hall where he’ll request eggs over easy, or maybe an omelet with whatever he wants, or maybe anything from a wide array of donuts, pancakes, waffles, fruit, yogurt, and pretty much anything he could ever hope for in a chow hall. He’ll eat that food with a grin, knowing that if he wants, he can have any variety of Baskin Robins ice cream for dessert after every meal! Then he’ll go to work in an air conditioned trailer for however many hours his schedule says, and then go back to the nice chow hall, the nice hot shower, and the tidy little air conditioned FOBBIT-den that is his home, where he’ll get his scheduled FOBBIT beauty rest. His gut will never churn with fear nor very rarely from diarrhea. Yes, the FOBBIT lives the good life, and almost always, he lives. Perhaps he is the smartest of us all!

Now, the FOB GOBLIN is a different being. He is the guy who might be an infantryman, might be a “meat eater” of sorts, but for some reason, his current billet puts him in a position where he must endure all of the luxuries of the FOBBIT, when all he wants to do is get outside the wire and bring death to his nation’s enemies. For this sad state of existence, he is forever frustrated and jealous of both the FOBBIT and the guys who live outside the wire. This is perhaps the worst condition one might face….yes, the FOB GOBLIN gets a certain amount of sympathy from his brother meat eaters who get outside the wire.

So, as I close this email, I thank the Lord to have placed me in the privileged position of being one who lives outside the wire, letting me live the life of the FOBBIT for maybe a day or two every few weeks, and never relegating me to the frustration of the FOB GOBLIN. I thank you for the daily support and prayers you provide that give us our daily miracles and make our lives outside the wire as safe as they can be. I hope that you enjoy an email update every now and then and I hope to have a few more opportunities to write in the coming weeks and months.

NOTE:

About 8 hours after I typed this message, we got attacked again and were fortunate enough to get one of the bad guys. He (or someone else helped him) got into a car and got away, but probably didn’t live too long judging by the blood trail. We were blessed again, as one of my Marines (one of my very few Catholic Marines) was actually praying while standing guard and had the first round of the firefight pass 8 inches from his head and lodge in the wall behind him. Those guardian angels have been working hard for us. We appreciate all your prayers that have been keeping us safe. I miss everyone and hope to be able to write to you all again next time I get back “inside the wire.” If you would like to write back, please do so, eventually I will be able to read it and hopefully have a chance to write back.

Semper Fi,

(name withheld)

Albert Scott Crossfield was born October 2, 1921 in Berkeley, California. He served as a Navy fighter pilot and flight instructor in WWII, and was a graduate of the University of Washington, earning a bachelor’s degree in 1949 and a master’s degree in 1950, both in aeronautical engineering. In 1950, he was hired by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics’ High-Speed Flight Station at Edwards Air Force Base, California, as an aeronautical research pilot.

Crossfield was one of a handful of test pilots whose achievements in supersonic flight made history in the 1950s. On November 20, 1953, he became the first man to pilot an aircraft at Mach 2, reaching a speed of 1,291 mph in the Douglas D-558-II Skyrocket.

Crossfield miraculously survived two engine explosions: one on the ground which destroyed the plane around him, another at high altitude which resulted in a crash landing.

The 84 year old Crossfield died in a plane crash in north Georgia Wednesday night, having been caught in a major thunder storm while flying home in a small Cessna from Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama, where he had been delivering a talk.

Washington Post

I don’t know about you, but I certainly enjoy a good “grenade in the washing machine” video.

Every day I like to go for a long walk. Lately I have been driving over to this neighborhood that is a hell of a lot nicer than mine and walking about 2.5 miles. In the process of walking, there is always something to see in the way of wildlife.

She barely made it home to blog about it. And now she is vowing vengeance.

According to Information Week, a trio of Dutch researchers are watching the Blogosphere as a whole, tracking its emotional state, and correlating the changes to external events.

The three from the NWO (Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research) have produced a program, dubbed “MoodViews,” that spots trends in attitudes, if not in latitudes, of more than two million bloggers, and thus, they say, of the overall “mood patterns” of the Web.

“The clearly measurable responses to worldwide events suggest that these instruments pick up the global mood,” Maarten de Rijke, a professor at the Universiteit van Amsterdam and part of its Intelligent Systems Lab, said in a statement. Colleagues Gilad Mishne and Krisztian Balog work with de Rijke on the project.

Each day, MoodViews reviews 150,000 blog entries for target words and LiveJournal mood indicator tags, then categorize them into one or more of 30 to 40 different moods, ranging from “cranky” and “confused” to “horny” and “hopeful.”

The results are published daily as a series of graphs at the MoodViews site.

Careful, there has been been a significant spike in CRAZY over the last 24 hours. (My guess is that this represents leftwing anger at Michelle Malkin, but I have not yet investigated.)

Anne Applebaum Y ‘86 marvels at the vehemence of opposition to windmills, and concludes that there is no pleasing the Environmental left.

The problem plaguing new energy developments is no longer NIMBYism, the “Not-In-My-Back-Yard” movement. The problem now, as one wind-power executive puts it, is BANANAism: “Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything.” The anti-wind brigade, fierce though it is, pales beside the opposition to liquid natural gas terminals, and would fade entirely beside the mass movement that will oppose a new nuclear power plant. Indeed, the founders of Cape Wind say they embarked on the project in part because public antipathy prevents most other utility investments in New England.

Still, energy projects don’t even have to be viable to spark opposition: Already, there are activists gearing up to fight the nascent biofuel industry, on the grounds that fields of switch grass or cornstalks needed to produce ethanol will replace rainforests and bucolic country landscapes. Soon the nonexistent “hydrogen economy” will doubtless be under attack as well. There’s a lot of earnest, even bipartisan talk nowadays about the need for clean, emissions-free energy. But are we really ready, politically, to build any new energy sources at all?

My solution:

They have so much energy for venting indignation and organizing and opposing. If we could only find a way to get our moonbat activists to run in treadmills like hamsters, they would probably be able to supply the electricity for at least a handful of states all by their demented little selves.