Afflicted North America from 8:00 PM last night to 10:00 AM this morning. The cause has not yet been identified.

But Popular Mechanics thinks it knows.

A recent USMC Challenge Coin

Hat tip to Rich Duff.

The Telegraph is commemorating Prince William’s break-up with his girl-friend, reportedly over class issues (the young lady was seen by the British Press chewing gum) with a quiz designed to identify your place in the British social system.

I found that I knew all the right answers, thus—in theory—entitling me to be Duke of Devonshire. But, if restricted to the facts, I’d have to settle for “having a coat of arms.”

American politics is often pretty embarassing, but the EU’s obliviousness to the understanding of Liberty achieved by the Enlightenment in America, and its contemptible readiness to surrender the rights of its unfortunate citizens to political correctness, does make one proud to be an American.

Laws that make denying or trivialising the Holocaust a criminal offence punishable by jail sentences will be introduced across the European Union, according to a proposal expecting to win backing from ministers Thursday.

Offenders will face up to three years in jail under the proposed legislation, which will also apply to inciting violence against ethnic, religious or national groups.

Diplomats in Brussels voiced confidence on Tuesday that the controversial plan, which has been the subject of heated debate for six years, will be endorsed by member states. However, the Baltic countries and Poland are still holding out for an inclusion of “Stalinist crimes” alongside the Holocaust in the text – a move that is being resisted by the majority of other EU countries.

The latest draft, seen by the Financial Times, will make it mandatory for all Union member states to punish public incitement “to violence or hatred directed against a group of persons or a member of such a group defined by reference to race, colour, religion, descent or national or ethnic origin”.

They will also have to criminalise “publicly condoning, denying or grossly trivialising crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes” when such statements incite hatred or violence against minorities.

Diplomats stressed the provision had been carefully worded to include only denial of the Holocaust – the Nazi mass murder of Jews during the second world war – and the genocide in Rwanda in 1994.

They also stressed that the wording was designed to avoid criminalising comical plays or films about the Holocaust such as the Italian comedian Roberto Benigni’s prize-winning Life is Beautiful . The text expressly upholds countries’ constitutional traditions relating to the freedom of expression.

Holocaust denial is already a criminal offence in several European countries, including Germany and Austria. It is not a specific crime in Britain, though UK officials said it could already be tackled under existing legislation.

In an attempt to assuage Turkish fears, several EU diplomats said the provisions would not penalise the denial of mass killing of Armenians by Ottoman troops in the aftermath of the 1915 collapse of the Ottoman empire. Turkey strongly rejects claims that this episode amounted to genocide.

The Daily Mail reports:

Polygamous husbands settling in Britain with multiple wives can claim extra benefits for their “harems” even though bigamy is a crime in the UK, it has emerged.

Opposition MPs are demanding an urgent change in the law, claiming that the Government is recognising and rewarding a custom which has no legal status and which is “alien” to this country’s cultural traditions.

Officials said yesterday a review was now under way into whether the state should continue to pay out income support, jobseeker’s allowance and housing and council tax benefits to ‘extra’ spouses.

Islamic law allows a man to take up to four wives, providing he can provide for them fairly and equally. But British law only ever recognises one spouse, while bigamy is punishable by up to seven years in jail.

However, if a husband and his wives arrive and settle in Britain having wed in a country where polygamy is legal, then the UK benefits system recognises his extra wives as dependents and pays them accordingly.

The Department of Work and Pensions admitted yesterday it had no figures on how many families are claiming for multiple wives.

ABC News reports that the Virginia Tech killer apparently acquired both of his weapons quite recently and perfectly legally.

Cho Seung-Hui bought his first gun, a 9 mm handgun, on March 13 and his second weapon, a 22 caliber handgun, within the last week, law enforcement officials tell ABCNews.com.

“This was no spur of the moment crime. He’s been thinking about this since at least the time he bought the first gun,” said former FBI agent Brad Garrett, an ABC News consultant.

Both guns were bought in Virginia, according to the officials.

Under Virginia law, state residents can only buy one handgun in any 30 day period, suggesting Cho bought his second weapon after April 13, or sometime over the weekend.

“He clearly spent some time figuring out how he was going to take care of business once classes began on Monday morning,” said Garrett.

The date of the first gun purchase will likely serve as the time of “some triggering mechanism that was very important” to Cho said Garrett, an expert on profiling murderers.

The article illustrates a Walther PPK, not a Glock.

There is still a great deal needing to be explained about all this.

Neither a 9mm nor a .22 represent the last word in lethality. So how is it possible for one 23-year-old student to shoot 47 people and actually kill 32 (totals from latest NY Times report)?

in 1999, four highly trained plainclothes members of an elite New York City crime squad fired 41 shots at Amadou Diallo hitting him with only 19 shots, most of which were not considered lethal by the coroner.

In another New York City shooting incident, this February, five police officers opened fire on Sean Bell who was driving away from his bachelor party. They fired 50 rounds and struck Bell only 4 times, although two passengers (who survived!) were hit respectively 4 times and 16 times by police fire.

So, how is that a 23-year-old Korean college student was able to so dramatically outperform police professionals in accomplishing lethal hits on human targets? He was obviously not using any more potent, or more intrinsically accurate, a weapon.

He apparently bought his first gun on March 13th. Where did he acquire such shooting skills?

Or is it possible that roughly 30 people obediently lined up and just stood there, so that one man could shoot them all in the back of the neck execution-style? I’d hate to think that was what happened.

Take an MSM holiday advises Sheldon Droby, at the Huffington Post:

If you want to get through the aftermath of the Virginia Tech massacre in a healthier way, don’t watch the news for about a week. If you did not need an anti-depressant before this event, you may have to start if you decide to listen, watch, or read the news. These vultures will do you in.

Spend a week with your family and hug them everyday to appreciate them. Take some time off from work and connect with the people you love. Go to the movies or a museum or do anything that interests you to divert your attention from the toxic doses of media poisoning that is about to follow. The MSM will spend endless hours talking about the “why did he do it” or “why did this happen” routines that they always go through. And the answer is there is no answer or rational explanation for this. Given the state of our society, I would ask why this does not happen more often here.

Yesterday’s tragedy is a daily event in many other places in the world.

Then, alas, he starts blaming Bush over Iraq, so I’d stop there, and not bother reading the whole thing.

Liviu Librescu, Professor of Engineering Science and Mechanics

Jerusalem Post:

a 76-year-old (Holocaust) survivor sacrificed his life to save his students in Monday’s shooting at Virginia Tech College that left 33 dead and over two dozen wounded.

Professor Liviu Librescu, 76, threw himself in front of the shooter when the man attempted to enter his classroom. The Israeli mechanics and engineering lecturer was shot to death, “but all the students lived – because of him,” Virginia Tech student Asael Arad – also an Israeli – told Army Radio.

Several of Librescu’s other students sent e-mails to his wife, Marlena, telling of how he had blocked the gunman’s way and saved their lives.

Read the whole thing.

Predictably, the European press is blaming the lack of a state monopoly of force for the killings at Virginia Tech. With characteristic incompetence, too, many of these European editorialists blame the expiration of the (so-called) Assault Weapon Ban, which, of course, had nothing whatsoever to do with events at Blacksburg.

The killer evidently used an ordinary 9mm Glock semi-automatic pistol and some kind of .22 pistol. There was no authentic, or even mislabeled, assault weapon involved.

In the strongest editorialized image of the day, German cable news broadcaster NTV flashed an image of the former head of the National Rifle Association, the US gun lobby: In other words, blame rifle-wielding Charlton Heston for the 33 dead.

The German Bild offers a typical example of the journalist’s failure to acquaint himself with the actual facts.

Now we will probably begin discussing the overly lax gun laws in the United States. There, buying a machine gun is often easier than getting a driver’s license.

He must be thinking of Iraq, not the United States. Americans have needed a costly federal license, involving lots of paperwork, since passage of the National Firearms Act of 1934, to own a fully automatic weapon, and a number of states do not allow private ownership of full-auto weapons, period.

A Marine Corps Drill Team performs at a basketball half-time.

6:07 video

When I was a small boy, my father (who had served in the Marine Corps in WWII) would sometimes entertain me by performing the Manual of Arms, culminating in the same Queen Anne Salute you see performed here, in which the rifle is spun several times, smoothly returned to the position of Order Arms, and then to Parade Rest.

To celebrate Gay Pride Week at Yale (which for some unaccountable reason is apparently scheduled to last for 16 days: April 7-22), a group calling itself the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Cooperative desecrated the gate to Yale’s Cross Campus, between Berkeley and Calhoun Colleges,) by suspending from it a rainbow-colored Homosexual Political Movement flag, labeled in duct-tape “Yale Pride.”

That gate was erected many years ago in honor of the memory of Noah Porter (1811-1892), Professor of Moral Philosophy and 7th President of Yale College (1871-1886), a learned and distinguished man of high character, who is unlikely personally to have entertained a very positive opinion of sexual inversion and sodomy.

In the fashion of college life, some wag came along on Saturday night, and modified the offending flag’s lettering, causing it to make reference to a different member of the Seven Deadly Sins.

The Yale Daily News today is reporting indignantly about the “desecration” of that rubbishy flag, when it ought to be condemning the actual desecration of President Porter’s gate by its impertinent appropriation for use in the glorification of so unworthy and incongruous a cause.

Left-thinking reporter Cullen Macbeth is quick to condemn the untoward application of humor to any of the forces of political correctness’ sacred cows.

Other recent incidents include jokes published in a few campus periodicals that made fun of various minority groups, including Asian-Americans. Although such actions have been intended as humorous, they are still hurtful to many members of those groups.

And in a further note of inadvertent humor, the Yale Administation’s enforcer-in-chief of PC clocks in:

Dean of Student Affairs Betty Trachtenberg said she has not seen the defaced flag but is open to working with LGBT Co-op members if they approach her to talk about the issue. Taking down another group’s sign and altering it without informing anyone is a “cowardly” thing to do, she said.

“If somebody has some problem with what the gay pride people are doing, they have to come forward and talk about it openly and above-board,” Trachtenberg said. “Why they don’t want to identify themselves is beyond me.

Oh, come on, Betty, you’d rusticate or expel any undergraduate you caught making a gesture of dissent to one of your left-wing causes in a New York minute. And defying you, since you have the power and are by no means reluctant to use it, makes even so small a gesture as this a courageous thing to do.

Following the public execution of Don Imus for racially insensitive remarks last week, the ever-vigilant watchdogs of the media have found yet another speech crime worthy of international attention: a video of a German sergeant using uncomplimentary images of hostile urban African-Americans in training one of his soldiers in the use of a machine gun.

AP.

The existence of the video was first reported on the home page of the German news magazine Stern on Friday and excerpts were aired on the news television channel n-tv on Saturday.

According to Stern, the 90-second clip had been posted on a Web site used by soldiers to exchange private videos. A soldier who used the site alerted his superiors, the magazine reported. ...

The clip shows an instructor and a soldier in camouflage uniforms in a forest. The instructor tells the soldier, “You are in the Bronx. A black van is stopping in front of you. Three African-Americans are getting out and they are insulting your mother in the worst ways. ... Act.”

The soldier fires his machine gun several times and yells an obscenity several times in English. The instructor then tells the soldier to curse even louder.

1:32 video

that God hates cell phones.

Scientists claim radiation from handsets are to blame for mysterious ‘colony collapse’ of bees.

Quick, somebody call Al Gore.

AP:

JENNER, Calif.- Nibbles the elephant seal (Mirounga angustirostris) is defying his tame nickname by killing smaller seals, menacing a kayaker and chomping on a surfer and a dog on the northern California coast.

The 2,000-pound lone male is seen frequently at the Russian River outlet to the Pacific, and local marine recreational outlets are warning the public about the seal’s aggression.

On Easter Sunday, the seal grabbed an 80-pound pit bull and only let her go after he was attacked by the dog’s owner.

“I was throwing a stick in the water for the dog,” Angel Garcia said. The dog “started to shake when this torpedo thing launched itself out of the water and grabbed her.”

On Tuesday, Nibbles growled at a kayaker, scaring him out of the water, said Suki Waters of Water Treks, a kayaking tour company.

Surf shop worker Craig Henderson said the seal and local surfers share the same turf. “It is scary when he jumps in the water with you. He is huge, like a VW bug or something,” he said.

Brit Horn, a California State Parks lifeguard, said the seal has been seen killing smaller harbor seals. They’ve now moved to other areas along the Sonoma County coast.

The elephant seal is an adolescent who likely hangs out alone at the river mouth because he is too small to compete for females at elephant seal colonies, Horn said. Adults can grow to 14 feet long and 4,500 pounds.

In a sane world, someone would shoot that seal before he hurts somebody, but “Nibbles” is in California, land of the moonbat tree-huggers, so he can look forward to nibbling on whomever he wants.

It’s very short and has no sound track, so I was not going to blog it, but everyone who has seen it seems to love this video of a Japanese sword slicing through a plastic bottle. Sharp, isn’t it?

0:51 video

I really hate blogging this kind of cutsey-wutsey stuff, but still I suppose even the most hardened and cynical among us will like this hamster with his broccoli, so I feel obliged to pass this one along.

video

I could have done without the text comments though.

Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.

As usual by Anonymous:

Europeans heighten threat levels (Reuters: London, April 11, 2007, 0905 GMT)

The English are feeling the pinch in relation to recent terrorist threats and have raised their security level from “Miffed” to “Peeved.” Soon, though, security levels may be raised yet again to “Irritated” or even “A Bit Cross.” Londoners have not been “A Bit Cross” since the blitz began in 1940 and tea supplies all but ran out. Terrorists have been re-categorized from “Tiresome” to “A Bloody Nuisance.” The last time the British issued “A Bloody Nuisance” warning level was during the great fire of 1666.

Also, the French government announced yesterday that it has raised its terror alert level from “Run” to “Hide.” The only two higher levels in France are “Collaborate” and “Surrender.” The rise was precipitated by a recent fire that destroyed France’s white flag factory, effectively paralyzing the country’s military capability.

It’s not only the English and French who are on a heightened level of alert.

Italy has increased the alert level from “Shout Loudly and Excitedly” to “Elaborate Military Posturing.” Two more levels remain: “Ineffective Combat Operations” and “Change Sides.”

The Germans also increased their alert state from “Disdainful Arrogance” to “Dress in Uniform and Sing Marching Songs.” They also have two higher levels: “Invade a Neighbor” and “Lose.”

Belgians, on the other hand, are all on holiday as usual, and the only threat they are worried about is NATO pulling out of Brussels.

The Spanish are all excited to see their new submarines ready to deploy. These beautifully designed subs have glass bottoms so the new Spanish navy can get a really good look at the old Spanish navy.

French pop singer and social commentator Renaud performs a très witty tribute to David Brooks’ Bobos (Bourgeois Bohemians).

3:42 video

Comment on the songs appearance last August by Charles Bremner in the London Times.

On les appelle bourgeois bohêmes
Ou bien bobos pour les intimes
Dans les chanson d’Vincent Delerm
On les retrouve à chaque rime
Ils sont une nouvelle classe
Après les bourges et les prolos
Pas loin des beaufs, quoique plus classe
Je vais vous en dresser le tableau
Sont un peu artistes c’est déjà ça
Mais leur passion c’est leur boulot
Dans l’informatique, les médias
Sont fier d’payer beaucoup d’impôts

Les bobos, les bobos
Les bobos, les bobos

Ils vivent dans les beaux quartiers
ou en banlieue mais dans un loft
Ateliers d’artistes branchés,
Bien plus tendance que l’avenue Foch
ont des enfants bien élevés,
qui ont lu le Petit Prince à 6 ans
Qui vont dans des écoles privées
Privées de racaille, je me comprends

ils fument un joint de temps en temps,
font leurs courses dans les marchés bios
Roulent en 4×4, mais l’plus souvent,
préfèrent s’déplacer à vélo

Les bobos, les bobos
Les bobos, les bobos

Ils lisent Houellebecq ou philippe Djian,
Les Inrocks et Télérama,
Leur livre de chevet c’est surand
Près du catalogue Ikea.
Ils aiment les restos japonais et le cinéma coréen
passent leurs vacances au cap Ferrat
La côte d’azur, franchement ça craint
Ils regardent surtout ARTE
Canal plus, c’est pour les blaireaux
Sauf pour les matchs du PSG
et d’temps en temps un p’tit porno

Les bobos, les bobos
Les bobos, les bobos

Ils écoutent sur leur chaîne hi fi
France-info toute la journée
Alain Bashung Françoise Hardy
Et forcement Gérard Manset
Ils aiment Desproges sans même savoir
que Desproges les détestait
Bedos et Jean Marie Bigard,
même s’ils ont honte de l’avouer
Ils aiment Jack Lang et Sarkozy
Mais votent toujours Ecolo
Ils adorent le Maire de Paris,
Ardisson et son pote Marco

Les bobos, les bobos
Les bobos, les bobos

La femme se fringue chez Diesel
Lui c’est Armani ou Kenzo
Pour leur cachemire toujours nickel
Zadig & Voltaire je dis bravo
Ils fréquentent beaucoup les musées,
les galeries d’art, les vieux bistrots
boivent de la manzana glacée en écoutant Manu chao
Ma plume est un peu assassine
Pour ces gens que je n’aime pas trop
par certains côtés, j’imagine…
Que j’fais aussi partie du lot

Les bobos, les bobos
Les bobos, les bobos

(translation by Frank Dobbs:)

They call them bourgeois bohemians
But their close friends call them bobos
You find them in every rhyme
In the songs of Vincent Delerm
They are a new class
After the mids and the prolos
Like the rednecks, but with more class,
I will set up their picture for you.
They are a little bit artistic by this time
But their passion is their job
In MIS or the media
They’re proud they pay so many taxes.

They live in the best neighborhoods,
Or in the suburbs, but in a loft,
Workshop of an artists’ commune,
Is much more likely than on the Avenue Foch
have children well brought up
who read the Petit Prince when they were six,
who go to private schools,
deprived of “scum,” I understand

They smoke a joint from time to time
And then work out in health food stores
They drive an SUV, but much prefer
To make their round on bicycles.

They read Houellebecq ou Philippe Djian,
Les Inrocks et Télérama
Their bedtime reading is Surand
Next to the IKEA catalog.
They like Japanese joints and Korean films
They spend their vacations at Cap Ferrat
The Riviera gives them the willies.
They mostly watch ARTE
Canal Plus is for the armadillos (lit. badgers)
Except for the occasional PSG matches
And, from time to time, a little porno.

They listen on their hi-fi system
To France-Info all day long
Alain Bashung Françoise Hardy
And of course Gérard Manset
They love Desproges but unaware
That Desproges could not stand them
Bedos and Jean Marie Bigard,
Even if they can’t admit it
They love Jack Lang and Sarkozy
But always vote Green
They adore the Mayor of Paris
Ardisson and his pal Marco.

She dolls up at Diesel
He at Armani or Kenzo
For cashmere its always Nickel
I say hurray for Zadig and Voltaire
They frequent the museums
Art galleries and old bistrots,
They drink iced manzana
While listening to Manu Chao
My pen I fear has taken aim
At these guys I don’t like so well
In certain ways, I must suspect
It is my lot to be like them.

Hat tip to Frank A. Dobbs.

Veterinarian Chang Po-yu reached through the bars to administer an additional shot of sedative, or to remove some tranquilizer darts from the hide of a Nile crocodile (Crocodylus niloticus) in the Shoushan Zoo located in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, depending on which account you read, when the insufficiently-sedated saurian turned and bit off Dr. Chang’s arm.

Reports in the Asian papers say that police were summoned, and the offending reptile was permanently sedated by two shots from an officer’s sidearm.

Western press reports claim that zookeepers merely fired two shot which either missed, or bounced harmlessly off old smiley’s neck. The shots proved sufficiently alarming, however, to persuade the grinning beast to drop his prize and beat a retreat.

The BBC even reports the croc is doing well, and is enjoying its 15 minutes of celebrity.

I personally suspect that the Oriental papers are telling the truth, and that crocodile has departed for the big swamp in the sky.

Taipei Times

National Geographic News

Whatever happended to the croc, the poor veterinarian’s arm was recovered, and doctors were able to re-attach it after a 6-7 hour operation.

In Germany, trompe d’oiel advertising on delivery trucks is used to atttract the attention of consumers.

But Japanese girls attract other kinds of attention with skirts silkscreened with trompe d’oeil images of lady’s undergarments.

Hat tips to Karen Myers and Frank Dobbs.

0:56 video.

The design may save your finger, but it looks like you have to replace the blade and the safety mechanism if you accidentally trigger it.

The comedy magician duo apply their customary skepticism to the myths of Gun Control.

28:00 video

Hat tip to Glenn Reynolds.

Brent Baker, at Newsbusters, reports that the left sees the Imus Affair as the model for further media lynchings. Watch out, Rush Limbaugh!

Keith Olbermann opened his Wednesday MSNBC show by displaying video of Rush Limbaugh on screen as he smeared conservative talk radio as “racist,” asking, “Why have none from the racist right been protested, boycotted or fired?” He then delighted Thursday night when guest Sam Seder, of the far-left Air America Radio, predicted “the next time Limbaugh slips up, which I think is inevitable, I think you’re going to see this sort of same type of reaction.” A pleased Olbermann exclaimed: “It’s the best thing I’ve heard in a couple of days. From your lips to God’s ears!” Olbermann had asked Seder: “How does Rush Limbaugh or Michael Savage get away with worse than what Don Imus said?”

With “SELECTIVE OUTRAGE: Imus Was Not Alone” on screen, Olbermann teased Wednesday’s Countdown by wondering: “Where’s the other outrage? Rush Limbaugh calls Barack Obama ‘Halfrican-American.’ Michael Savage says the Voting Rights Act means ‘a chad in every crack house.’ Neal Boortz says Cynthia McKinney looks like a ‘ghetto-slut.’ Why have none from the racist right been protested, boycotted or fired?” He soon cued up race-hustler Jesse Jackson: “Why are there not efforts to remove them from the air?”

Olbermann’s crusade to remove conservatives from the air matched the spin forwarded Tuesday night on CNN’s Paula Zahn Now, as recounted in Matthew Balan’s NewsBusters post. Zahn set up an April 10 taped piece: ”Conservative Rush Limbaugh, who has offended just about every minority group, drew special criticism for attacking actor Michael J. Fox.” After regurgitating that controversy, Zahn moved to the very same quote highlighted by Olbermann: “Limbaugh later apologized. But the criticism for that low blow hasn’t stopped him from lashing out at presidential hopeful, Barack Obama, calling him ‘Halfrican.’” Viewers then heard audio of Limbaugh: “Barack Obama has picked up another endorsement, Halfrican-American actress Halle Berry. As a Halfrican-American, I am honored to have Ms. Berry’s support, as well as the support of other Halfrican-Americans.” Zahn proceeded to highlight the same Boortz comment about McKinney as Olbermann would do 24 hours later.

And, sure enough, leftwing Media Matters is today calling for further bloodletting with a list of alleged speech crimes by Glenn Beck, Neal Boortz, Bill O’Reilly, Michael Savage, Michael Smerconish, John Gibson, and Rush Limbaugh.

Howie Carr kicks the I-Man when he’s down, noting how quickly Don Imus’ latter-day liberal friends deserted him in his hour of need.

Poor I-man, kicked down the stairs like a Bob Gamere, abandoned by the Beautiful People he served so faithfully these past few decades. We won’t be MSNBC’ing the senile old crackhead anymore. No more summer party invitations from his media enablers in the Hamptons. Henceforth, he is a nobody on Nantucket.

Wherever will we get our fix of Doris Kearns Goodwin now?

And what’s the over-under on how many days until trophy-wife Deirdre walks out forever?

Don Imus – $10-million dollar salary, 10-cent brain. From the penthouse to the outhouse. ...

But the most interesting thing about Imus’ sudden demise is how few of the assorted coatholders, front-runners, bumkissers and drive-by pundits who called in every morning could be bothered to stand up for the I-man in his moment of need.

These liberals may be good company at a cocktail party in Vail, but you wouldn’t want to share a foxhole with them. When the I-man’s phone didn’t ring, he knew it was Joe Lieberman. Or maybe Frank Rich.

Until his idiotic flameout, Don Imus was the nearest thing the liberals ever had to a success story in talk radio. He worshipped John Kerry. He fawned over Maureen Dowd. He cursed the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. After Saddam was executed, Imus joked with a local plagiarist about how Dick Cheney would handle himself on the gallows.

Who knew Imus would walk the Green Mile before Karl Rove?

The I-man thought he was one of the Beautiful People, but in the end it turned out like one of those Bob Dylan songs he used to play going into the breaks. ...

All his new so-called friends ran away and hid on him. Think about that unctuous NBC rumpswab David Gregory. Wednesday night, he went on MSNBC looking like his dog just got run over. But by yesterday morning, Gregory was back on top of his game. He apologized to Jesse Jackson for ever having gone on the Imus show.

But Gregory just did what was expected of him. When the going gets tough, the tough – hey, come back here!

The Beautiful People spent all week stampeding to the microphone to announce, as one female from Time magazine said yesterday, that they won’t be appearing on the Imus Show anymore.

No kidding, honey. Nobody will ever be appearing on the Imus show again, not even Imus.

How many regular-people talk-show listeners did Imus have at the end? Not many, would be my guess. Didn’t notice any truck-drivers blowing their horns in support, did you?

It couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy. ...

Too bad Imus “outgrew” all the people who used to listen to him on WNBC. Basically, he forgot who brung him to the dance.

Barney Frank – another target of Bernie McGuirk’s barbs – used to say that, as a politician, your base isn’t the people who will stand behind you when you’re right, but the people who will stand behind you when you’re wrong.

In the end, Imus had no one who would stand behind him, period. That’s why he won’t be down for breakfast.

And what can you say except, There’s no fool like an old fool.

Michael S. Malone explains in the Wall Street Journal.

Napster, founded in 1999, was a pioneer in what would be called peer-to-peer file sharing. What made the company so popular with users was that it specialized in the new MP3 music files, it had an appealing user interface, and best of all, the music was free.

It was the last that drove established music artists and record companies nearly insane. It began with the lawsuit by Metallica, followed soon after by Dr. Dre, then Madonna, and culminated in 2001 when A&M Records was granted a preliminary injunction stopping Napster from allowing downloads of any of its artists.

By then, Napster officially had more than 26 million users, but may in fact have had twice that many. Just as important, Napster—and those imitators that tried to copy its success by working the corners of the law—had set off a social revolution. By the time the music industry began to contain the damage, tens of millions of songs had already been downloaded, and a generation of college and high-school kids had come to expect the free exchange of free music.

What the music industry did next was a case study in bad strategy, bad marketing and bad public relations. Not only did the industry crush Napster and any other company that followed in its path, but it also criminalized its own customers. We all got to watch as federal agents arrested college kids, music lovers and even a poor little girl living in the ghetto.

Needless to say, this program of applied troglodytics only managed to drive music downloading further underground, turn America’s children into small-time crooks, and make popular musicians and their record companies—those famous celebrants of maverick and transgressive behavior—look like the worst kind of freedom-crushing rich plutocrats. ...

For the next two years, until 2003, the music industry pursued the single dumbest strategy possible in the digital age: It tried to stop the progress of technology and deny users access to a new and more powerful industry standard. Instead, the major record labels dithered, unable to settle upon a single download standard, distribution system or pricing scheme. Instead, they devoted their energy to attempting to undermine each other. ...

Then in rode Steve Jobs to the rescue.

When Apple Computer first introduced the iPod in 2001 it had given tacit approval to illegal downloading with its notorious “Rip, Mix, Burn” advertising campaign. But as the iPod quickly became one of the most successful consumer electronics products in history—100 million units sold as of Sunday—it became obvious that the company couldn’t depend on content either from the underground or from a fractious, delusional music industry.

Thus, the Apple iTunes Music Store, which opened online four years ago this month. Only a technologist with the Hollywood cachet of Steve Jobs could have ever gotten the major players of the music industry together and, better yet, convinced them to agree to a single download and pricing standard. In doing so, Mr. Jobs very likely saved the music industry, which was on the brink of seeing its entire revenue model destroyed by the black market. Instead, at 99 cents per song, iTunes gave music lovers a means to escape illegality at a reasonable price.

Needless to say, it has worked brilliantly. With more than 2.5 billion songs sold by iTunes, Apple, with 80% of all music download revenues as well as nearly 75% of the devices sold to play those tunes, has deservedly been a huge beneficiary of this agreement. But the music industry, by being forced to actually accept a new industry standard and an attendant pricing structure, has arguably benefited even more.

But to get the music moguls around the table Steve Jobs had to make a Faustian bargain. The paranoid record execs, fearful of illegal copies, demanded that every iTune sold had to be freighted with Digital Rights Management (DRM) anti-piracy software. In practice, this meant that iTunes music could only be played on Apple iPods.

The need for absolute proprietary control over both hardware and software has always been Mr. Jobs’s Achilles heel. Twenty years ago that philosophy cost Apple Computer a similar dominance in personal computers against an army of competitors working under a common, “open” system. So one can imagine Apple’s CEO readily accepting the music industry’s demand for DRM, knowing that it would give Apple instant ownership of the online music business. ...

By all appearances, the Big Four, which control 70% of the world’s music, were unmoved by Mr. Jobs’s appeal. And then, last week, a breakthrough: Apple announced that it had reached agreement with Britain’s EMI to sell the latter’s music archives (which includes the Beatles) without DRM. Thirty cents more, but twice the sound quality—the first mass-market improvement in music fidelity since the death of the LP. A fair exchange. Good for EMI.

Is this a turning point in the story of digital music? Will the other Big Three follow suit? One can only hope so. The music moguls trusted Steve Jobs once and he saved them. It’s time for them to trust him again.

A New York Time Styly article by Alec Williams discusses a perceived link between certain automotive choices and sexual orientation.

Cars are no more straight or gay than cellphones, office chairs or weed whackers. But in recent years that truism has not stopped a perception among some motorists that certain cars can, in the right context, be statements about a driver’s sexual orientation.

Ramone Johnson is a gay journalist and former Saturn engineer who compiles an annual “Top 10 Gay Cars” list for About.com, which is owned by The New York Times Company. Mr. Johnson said that “traditionally we are used to being defined by others.” Driving a stylish car can be a way of “taking control back” and saying “this is who I am,” he said.

Mr. Johnson maintains that “soft lines” and a “vibrant personality” — say like those on a Volkswagen New Beetle — are typical attributes of a gay man’s car, and fashion-forward red gauges and other styling cues, for example, make the Pontiac G6 more of a gay car than its sibling, the Grand Am, because the features express a taste for freedom and fun.

Neither automobile manufacturers nor dealers compile statistics on the sexual orientation of buyers.

Frank Markus, who is gay and the technical director for Motor Trend magazine, said auto companies tend to associate gay consumers with higher disposable incomes since fewer have children (one reason many are free to opt for less practical cars, like two-seaters or convertibles, as well). Tellingly, when the American Family Association, a conservative Christian group, pressured the Ford Motor Company to pull advertising from gay publications like The Advocate in 2005, the ads were for Land Rover and Jaguar, two high-end brands owned by Ford.

Subaru has been the most prominent company to embrace the gay market. As long ago as 2000, the automaker created advertising campaigns around Martina Navratilova, the gay tennis star, and also used a sales slogan that was a subtle gay-rights message: “It’s not a choice. It’s the way we’re built.” Little wonder that many lesbians refer to their Outbacks as “Lesbarus.”

Read the whole thing.

John Dillin, in the Christian Science Monitor, points out that America wins when we undertake total war, while recent exercises in conditional war have had very uneven success.

– Omar Bradley, an American general in World War II, observed: “In war there is no second prize for the runner-up.” In a similar vein, the legendary Gen. Douglas MacArthur cautioned his fellow Americans: “It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.”

Despite such warnings, America’s political leaders today – in both the White House and Congress – have waged the war in Iraq as if defeat were acceptable. One wonders why.

Although the United States has sustained more than 3,000 battle deaths and has spent billions of dollars in Iraq, the nation’s overall fight against Saddam Hussein and his successors has been marked by hesitation and half-steps.

That’s how wars are lost. ...

Clearly the US could win the war in Iraq if it wished. It is, after all, a superpower. Perhaps a moral ambiguity about this war makes Washington hesitate. The leaders in Washington, for reasons only they fully understand, have chosen to fight a limited war with shifting goals.

History does not look kindly on such limited wars by the US.

Since WWII, the US has fought four large but conditional wars. Korea was a stalemate; Vietnam was a loss. The first Persian Gulf War was the only clear victory. Iraq II hangs in the balance. ...

If this fight is worth doing, if America truly has an unquestionable moral imperative to win, then wage it with everything you’ve got. Otherwise, why is America there?

Read the whole thing.

Japanese television shows can be very amusing. Here is an excerpt from a game show in which contestants compete in contests simulating the supposed athletic and acrobatic of Ninja Warriors. Makoto Nagano, a 34 year old fisherman, turns in a spectacular performance.

9:03 video

John O’Sullivan describes the increasingly critical response to Britain’s humiliation.

if the Brits noticed the Iranian insult, they might have to do something about it themselves (or in company with the United States). They were saved from this awful possibility by the Iranian release of their captives. For a single day there was an outburst of national rejoicing. Newspapers and television showed the military captives, clutching their “gift” bags, alongside a smiling Iranian president under headlines of relief and celebration.

Why did it remind me of Princess Diana’s funeral? It seemed that Brits, once a tough-minded nation marked by self-control, had been transformed into touchy-feely devotees of a loose and self-forgiving emotionalism.

Then the mood changed.

This change was helped along by the murder that day of four British soldiers, two of them women, by a roadside bomb in Basra. Prime Minister Tony Blair cited them as victims of the same terrorism that had held the 15 Brits hostage. On the following day the Daily Mail put their photographs on the front page under the headline “Heroes,” relegating the 15 to the inside pages and a lesser status.

Suddenly the earlier mood of rejoicing seemed cheap and self-delusional. The leading military commentator, Sir Max Hastings, wrote an influential article—“Heads Must Roll”—arguing that the episode had been a mixture of military incompetence and national humiliation.

Others took up his theme, calling for a naval Board of Enquiry. Hard questions began to be asked: Why had the helicopter protecting them flown away when Iranian military vessels were nearby? Why had the British commander not asked other vessels under his command, including U.S. ships, to intervene? Why had the 15 cooperated so readily with Iranians?

Britain’s Ministry of Defense, under siege, retaliated in an ingenious way: It exempted the 15 captives from the usual restriction on service personnel selling their stories to the media—only to have to backtrack after an outcry against it. Doubtless the defense ministry had reckoned that their tales of being subjected to psychological warfare and forced to sleep in tiny cells would play well with a British public in an emotional state. But the Dianification of Britain had not gone quite that far.

There was a firestorm of criticism. Families of the dead soldiers criticized the payments—some as high as $200,000. Not all the 15 agreed to sell their stories. One said the idea was undignified. And while this reaction was building, the Iranians released footage of the 15 captives playing table tennis and tucking into hearty dinners.

No one likes this. Commentators in the media and the blogosphere make pointed comparisons with previous British (and American) captives who resisted more resolutely. But they have difficulty in explaining exactly why the 15 should have behaved in a more manly way. After all, isn’t this how post-imperial Sensitive Man is supposed to behave?

The crisis has held up a mirror to the new post-imperial and Dianified Britain—and the Brits don’t like their own reflection.

Read the whole thing.

Former RN Officer Toby Harnden observes that the behavior of some British Naval personnel recently was a bit less that England traditionally expects.

In case you missed it, let me give you the highlights of what our brave sailors had to say. Leading Seaman Faye Turney opted for The Sun and ITN (“I chose The Sun because it is the Forces’ paper. You are always on our side. I trust you.” – Oh, nothing to do with the reported check for the sum of £100,000 then?)

Little Operator Maintainer Arthur Batchelor, 20, nicknamed “Mr Bean by his dastardly captors, was bought by The Mirror for an “undisclosed sum”. Good thing the Iranians didn’t think of offering them cash – who knows what they’d have done.

Readers, if you were brought up on tales of Horatio Nelson and Winston Churchill, if you believe Britain is still Great and should be feared in the world, then steel yourself.

Read the whole thing... and weep.

Newt Gingrich joins the ranks of what I consider unacceptable 2008 GOP candidates (along with Giuliani and McCain), selling out to climate scare conformism in what-was-supposed-to-be a debate with that skunk John Forbes Kerry.

video

Bye, Newt! If you’re stupid enough to believe in Anthropogenic Global Warming, or cynical enough to pretend to, you are a representative of the kind of politics Goldwater conservatives like myself have been opposing since the early 1960s.

Principle counts. I’d rather lose with Barry than win with Nixon. It is better to lose today, as Karl Hess observed, fighting for “a cause which will triumph,” than to compromise and surrender.

Another triumphant leftist account of Gingrich’s betrayal.

This debate was one of the more enjoyable ones on this subject that I have seen. It was made that way in large part because Kerry and Gingrich did not spend time with pointless arguments over whether global warming was occuring and whether it was caused by humans.

I’m sure the moonbat enjoyed it.

James Lileks reports surprising evidence of vertebrate life in Europe.

As surveys go, its results were rather surprising: A majority of Europeans would support deterring Iran’s nuclear program by military force. It’s not quite as drastic as Quakers demanding plowshares be converted to swords, but it’s close.

We’re not looking at a large, clamorous, martial majority, though — 52 percent approved of military action. Eight percent had no opinion, possibly because they were busy packing for the state-mandated three-month vacation and didn’t want to be bothered.

Forty percent disagreed that Iran should be deterred by military means, and frankly, that seems low. The European spirit, bled white by two ghastly, self-inflicted bloodbaths, has settled into the warm, milky bath of passive decline. One gets the sense that most Europeans would disapprove of military action to fight off alien invaders. Hey, everyone has a colonial phase. Who are we to point fingers, let alone guns?

Read the whole thing.

The poll was conducted by the think tank Open Europe.

And was reported here, in Macedonia. Somehow I missed reading about this one in the Times or Post.

Yesterday, I followed up a link from Glenn Reynolds and discovered that the conventional Volokh Conspiracy url: www.volokh.com was working just fine again.

Last month, it was impossible to access that eminent legal blog using that address from several East Coast computers. My theory was that someone with a grudge against that blog had distributed a Trojan which overwrote that address in the Hosts File. I was planning to edit my Registry one of these days to fix the problem, but then Glenn Reynolds mentioned hearing about the problem, and identified an alternative working URL: www.Volokh.Powerblogs.com, eliminating the need to go to all that trouble.

I’m glad the issue is gone, but I wish I knew what really happened.

Richard Lindzen, Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at MIT, responds to climate change alarmism in Newsweek.

Judging from the media in recent months, the debate over global warming is now over. There has been a net warming of the earth over the last century and a half, and our greenhouse gas emissions are contributing at some level. Both of these statements are almost certainly true. What of it? Recently many people have said that the earth is facing a crisis requiring urgent action. This statement has nothing to do with science. There is no compelling evidence that the warming trend we’ve seen will amount to anything close to catastrophe. What most commentators—and many scientists—seem to miss is that the only thing we can say with certainly about climate is that it changes. The earth is always warming or cooling by as much as a few tenths of a degree a year; periods of constant average temperatures are rare. Looking back on the earth’s climate history, it’s apparent that there’s no such thing as an optimal temperature—a climate at which everything is just right. The current alarm rests on the false assumption not only that we live in a perfect world, temperature-wise, but also that our warming forecasts for the year 2040 are somehow more reliable than the weatherman’s forecast for next week. ...

A warmer climate could prove to be more beneficial than the one we have now. Much of the alarm over climate change is based on ignorance of what is normal for weather and climate.
Many of the most alarming studies rely on long-range predictions using inherently untrustworthy climate models, similar to those that cannot accurately forecast the weather a week from now. ...

Modelers claim to have simulated the warming and cooling that occurred before 1976 by choosing among various guesses as to what effect poorly observed volcanoes and unmeasured output from the sun have had. These factors, they claim, don’t explain the warming of about 0.4 degrees C between 1976 and 1998. Climate modelers assume the cause must be greenhouse-gas emissions because they have no other explanation. This is a poor substitute for evidence, and simulation hardly constitutes explanation. Ten years ago climate modelers also couldn’t account for the warming that occurred from about 1050 to 1300. They tried to expunge the medieval warm period from the observational record—an effort that is now generally discredited. The models have also severely underestimated short-term variability El Niño and the Intraseasonal Oscillation. Such phenomena illustrate the ability of the complex and turbulent climate system to vary significantly with no external cause whatever, and to do so over many years, even centuries.

Is there any point in pretending that CO2 increases will be catastrophic? Or could they be modest and on balance beneficial? India has warmed during the second half of the 20th century, and agricultural output has increased greatly. Infectious diseases like malaria are a matter not so much of temperature as poverty and public-health policies (like eliminating DDT). Exposure to cold is generally found to be both more dangerous and less comfortable.

Moreover, actions taken thus far to reduce emissions have already had negative consequences without improving our ability to adapt to climate change. An emphasis on ethanol, for instance, has led to angry protests against corn-price increases in Mexico, and forest clearing and habitat destruction in Southeast Asia. Carbon caps are likely to lead to increased prices, as well as corruption associated with permit trading. (Enron was a leading lobbyist for Kyoto because it had hoped to capitalize on emissions trading.) The alleged solutions have more potential for catastrophe than the putative problem. The conclusion of the late climate scientist Roger Revelle—Al Gore’s supposed mentor—is worth pondering: the evidence for global warming thus far doesn’t warrant any action unless it is justifiable on grounds that have nothing to do with climate.

Read the whole thing.

73-year-old Leon Enfield in action

No one knows for sure if the sport of tilting at the ring, a form of jousting emphasizing accurate placement of the lancepoint, survived in Maryland and Virginia from the times of the first settlements as a relic of the Middle Ages, or whether the sport was revived in the 19th century through the influence of the historical novels of Sir Walter Scott.

The sport was significantly revived after WWII. In 1950, a Maryland State Association was organized, and in 1962 the Maryland General Assembly designated jousting as Maryland’s state sport.

Sunday’s Washington Post Magazine published an admiring article.

Maryland Jousting Tournament Association

Pennsylvania Jousting Club

National Jousting Association

Anime JDZ - How’d I get those bangs? And why are my eyes that weird color? Doesn’t look like a proper Bishōnen to me.

Ever wonder what you’d look like young, old, Caucasian, African, Oriental, an anime hero, or a member of the opposite sex, insert a photo image of yourself at this University of St. Andrews Perception Laboratory site, and morph away

Hat tip to Karen L. Myers, and GMSV, where she found it.

250 mph, $185,000 Y2K motorcycle built by MTT for the 2004 film Torque.

Malibu Times reports a vexing case featuring unseemly conflict between the rights of the owner of a piece of astronomically expensive California private property and science.

The discovery of a Clovis spearhead, believed to be thousands of years old, at a local home construction site has the homeowner and an archeologist at odds on what should be done with the site. The property owner wants to finish her home and move in, the archeologist wants to preserve the site, called Farpoint, and be allowed to conduct further research.

In September of 2005, Gary Stickel was the archeologist of record at the Farpoint site, then being developed by the private homeowner, and hired to oversee excavation at what was known as an “architecturally sensitive site.”

“Other objects, scrapers and micro-tools, had been found on the property,” Stickel said. “So we knew it was a culturally sensitive site. Then we found the spear point.”

The approximately 8-inch long, stone spear point is a tool produced by the Clovis people, believed to be the first human inhabitants of the Americas.

Not only does that date the piece to more than 11,000 years ago, the site of its location is the farthest point west in North America that the Clovis tribes can be traced, thus the designation “Farpoint.”

Dennis Stanford, director of the Paleoindian/Paleoecology Program at the Smithsonian Institute, in a written affidavit that authenticated the spearhead, said “... until the discovery of the Clovis occupation level at the Farpoint site, no “in situ” Clovis age sites are known along the West Coast of the Americas.”

The property owner, who is not identified to protect her privacy and the integrity of the archeologically sensitive site, has been cooperative through the last few years of research, but is ready to occupy her new house. And, Stickel said, she has shut down any further excavation.

Read the whole thing.

Wikipedia: Clovis point article.

If that Clovis Point is a legitimate artifact, and was not simply planted by an enterprising neighbor who prefered the site undeveloped, then there is a significant public interest in investigating, possibly in preserving, the site. But satisfying that public interest is indubitably a taking, and if the public wants to dig in that land, or to own that land, it ought to pay for it, not simply pass some regulations.

The latest JibJab video takes a poke at contemporary news coverage.

Shane Danielson argues that Zhang Yimou’s Chinese martial arts films should be viewed as successors to the Hollywood musicals, featuring the same massive budgets, and similar attractive men and women performing show-stopping ensemble numbers against aesthetically-gilded backgrounds.

He makes the case for his perspective in this essay occasioned by the release of Curse of the Golden Flower (Man cheng jin dai huang jin jia -2006).

trailers

Rightwing Prof guest-authoring at Maggie’s Farm has a tribute to West Virginia including discussion of the structure of Appalachian clans, ancestors (he had a really sound great grandmother),

I remember my grandfather saying that the one time she had to be hospitalized, he had to arrange the insurance behind her back because she believed insurance was government aid and she didn’t believe in it. She threw away every Social Security check she got in the mail, which even my very conservative, very Republican grandfather though was crazy.

his youth, and snake-handling preachers.
——————————
I grew up in the mountains of Northeastern Pennsylvania, and for more than a decade my wife and I have had a second home in Central Pennsylvania, another hot bed of Scots Irish culture. The locals hurry out to restaurants on September 29th to eat goose. The Michaelmas goose tradition survives there. Just about any statement is commonly appended with a secondary affirmative phrase, “so it is.”

These days, we’re living atop the Blue Ridge, which is so narrow that the combined county and state line meanders in a serpentine line along the ridge top, defined simply by the vagaries of the watershed line. Our house is in Loudoun County, Virginia, but our back yard (and pool) is in Jefferson County, West Virginia.

So exploring West Virginia, which I’ve otherwise only seen briefly in the vicinity of Wheeling on Interstate 70, is definitely on our personal agenda. There must be brook trout in those mountains somewhere. Rightwing Prof’s native soil seems to be just about as far west in West Virginia as you can get.

Jules Crittenden wonders: why bother anymore?

I don’t know about you, but I’m about ready to pack it in.

I placed my own life on the line in this cause, and know others who have died for it.

The assault on Baghdad on April 7, 2003, was not my first combat action, but that day I went expecting to die and leave my children orphans. I did it because I thought it was worth something. Other young men and women were willing to die, and if I died with them, my wife knew what to tell our kids: “This is how you live your life. Doing the most that you can do. Moving forward. Standing up for what you believe in. Standing with others. Recognizing it can cost you your life.”

But America doesn’t want this anymore, the pollsters and the opposition pols tell us.

The Speaker of the House of Representatives is unilaterally treating with the enemy, providing our enemy an opportunity to divide and conquer. She is doing so in a manner unprecedented in American history. In the past, partisanship didn’t always stop at the water’s edge, it sometimes waded in. But until now it never took such a humiliating bath as the one we’ve just witnessed.

We are facing, among our myriad enemies, an old one. And we have just, with a once-stalwart, now-wavering ally’s help, reaffirmed the validity of Iran’s terrorist policies. Taking hostages apparently will not only go unpunished, it will be rewarded. Propaganda coups, humiliation and the release of a suspected Iranian agent. Fifteen Royal Navy swabs and Royal Marines who were taken without a fight are deemed more important than tens of thousands of combat troops, British and American, fighting and dying every day. Tell me, before I turn my back on this, that Iran has not yet received its final answer in this matter.

Because I’m looking at all this and saying, maybe it is time to pack it in. Forget the phased withdrawal plan, just get out. Iraq and the Middle East be damned. Nothing new about living with genocide, when it’s happening at a convenient distance. We managed to pretend as a nation we didn’t have Southeast Asia’s blood on our hands after we bolted from there. We can do it again.

Iraq may become a base for terrorists who want to attack us. That will be George Bush’s fault, and we’ll deal with them as we should have all along. As a police problem.

Iran’s mad mullahs may come to dominate the Middle East and develop their nuclear weapons, but there’s not really much we can do about that. Not without someone getting hurt.

Maybe it’s time to pack it in on our pretensions of world leadership entirely.

Let’s relinquish the seat on the United Nations Security Council and join the European Union. Europe does so many things so much better than us, anyway. Socialized medicine, cradle-to-grave welfare, maintaining good relations with despotic regimes, avoiding responsibility and being admired for it.

Anyway, Europe will need somewhere to flee to as it crumbles, and our great oceans provide a great illusion of security. EU membership will expedite that. If it opens the third-world floodgates and requires us to honor Sharia law, well, it will take time before those things destroy us the way they are destroying Europe. Not our generation’s problem, is it?

Read the whole thing.

Mark Steyn suggests that the defense of Britain might well be better handled by its football fans than by its government.

Watching Tottenham Hotspur fans taking on the Spanish constabulary at a European soccer match the other night, I found myself idly speculating on what might have happened had those Iranian kidnappers made the mistake of seizing 15 hard-boiled football yobs who hadn’t got the Blair memo about not escalating the situation.

Instead, as we know, the mullahs were fortunate enough to take hostage 15 Royal Navy sailors and Royal Marines. Which were which was hard to say upon their release. The Queen’s Navee had been demobbed. The token gal was dressed up as an Islamic woman and the 14 men had been kitted out in Ahmadinejad leisurewear. Which is not just a ghastly fashion faux pas but a breach of the increasingly one-way Geneva Conventions. But they smiled and they waved. Wave, Britannia! Britannia, waive the rules! ...

The Associated Press reported the story as follows: ‘’Analysis: Hope For More Iran Compromises.’’

Well, if by ‘’compromise’’ you mean Tehran didn’t put them up for a show trial and behead them, you might have a point. With this encouraging development, we might persuade them to wipe only half of Israel off the map, or even nuke some sparsely occupied corner of the Yukon instead. With the momentum of this “compromise” driving events, all manner of diplomatic triumphs are possible.

Tony Blair was at pains to point out that the hostages were released ‘’without any deal, without any negotiation, without any side agreement of any nature.’’ But he’s missing (or artfully sidestepping) the point: Tehran didn’t want a deal. It wanted the humbling of the Great Satan’s principal ally. And it got it. Very easily. And it paid no price for it. And it has tested in useful ways the empty pretensions of the U.N., the EU and also NATO, whose second largest fleet is now a laughingstock in a part of the world where it helps to be taken seriously. ...

Even if there is more going on than meets the eye, what meets the eye is so profoundly damaging to the credibility of great nations that no amount of lethal special ops could compensate for it. Power is only as great as the perception of power. The Iranians understand that they can’t beat America or Britain in tank battles or air strikes so they choose other battlefields on which to hit them. That’s why the behavior of the captives gives great cause for concern: There’s no point training guys to be tough fighting men of the Royal Marines when you’re in a bloody little scrap in Sierra Leone (as they were a couple of years ago) if you allow them to crumple on TV in front of the entire world.

So in 2007 the men of the Royal Navy can be kidnapped and “the strong arm of England” (in Lord Palmerston’s phrase) goes all limp-wristed and threatens to go to the U.N. and talk about drafting a Security Council resolution. Backstage, meanwhile, deals are done: An Iranian “diplomat” (a k a Mister Terror Kingpin) suddenly resurfaces in Tehran after having been reported in American detention, his release purely coincidental, we’re told. But it’s the kind of coincidence that ensures more of your men will be kidnapped and ransomed in the years ahead. And, just to remind the world who makes the rules, six more British subjects were killed in southern Iraq even at the moment of the hostages’ release. The Iranians have exposed America’s strongest ally as the soft underbelly of the Great Satan.

The most noticeable feature of the last two weeks has been the massive shrug by the British public. Some observers attributed this to the unpopularity of the Iraq war: Those nice mullahs wouldn’t be pulling this stuff if Blair hadn’t got mixed up with that crazy Texas moron. But it seems to me a more profound malaise has gripped them—the enervating fatalism of too many people in what is still a semi-serious nation with one of the world’s biggest militaries up against an insignificant basket-case …Looking at the reaction to this incident by the United States, European Union, United Nations et al., Iran will conclude that the transnational consensus will never muster the will to constrain its nuclear ambitions.

Europeans and more and more Americans believe they can live in a world with all the benefits of global prosperity and none of the messy obligations necessary to maintain it. And so they cruise around war zones like floating NGOs. Iran called their bluff, and televised it to the world. In the end, every great power is as great as its credibility, and the only consolation after these last two weeks is that Britain doesn’t have much more left to lose.

Read the whole thing.

The Telegraph reports:

Hardliners in the Iranian regime have warned that the seizure of British naval personnel demonstrates that they can make trouble for the West whenever they want to and do so with impunity.

The bullish reaction from Teheran will reinforce the fears of western diplomats and military officials that more kidnap attempts may be planned.

The British handling of the crisis has been regarded with some concern in Washington, and a Pentagon defence official told The Sunday Telegraph: “The fear now is that this could be the first of many. If the Brits don’t change their rules of engagement, the Iranians could take more hostages almost at will.

“Iran has come out of this looking reasonable. If I were the Iranians, I would keep playing the same game. They have very successfully muddied the waters and bought themselves some more time. And in parts of the Middle East they will be seen as the good guys. They could do it time and again if they wanted to.”

Americans also expressed dismay that the British had suspended boarding operations in the Gulf while its tactics are reassessed.

“Iran has got what it wants. They have secured free passage for smuggling weapons into Iraq without a fight,” one US defence department official said.

It is also clear that the Iranian government believes that the outcome has strengthened its position over such contentious issues as its nuclear programme. Hardliners within the regime have been lining up to crow about Britain’s humiliation, and indicated that the operation was planned.

Iran’s ability to humiliate the West, recover captured agents provocateur, and break Western blockades at will, simply by repeating its well-known tactic of hostage-taking is good news for the hard-liners in Iran. But not everything is black, those British naval personnel hostages will all be permitted to sell their stories to the media and make a bundle.

Amanda Byrd photo.

Australian Television debunks the above photo in this 3:43 video

Newsbusters story.

The Department of Defense has created a web site honoring heroes of the War on Terror.

Here is the story behind one Distinguished Flying Cross award.

The A-10 Warthog may be one of the slowest, ugliest planes in the Air Force, but it’s the best friend a soldier or Marine could have in a close fight. And it’s the last thing an enemy ever wants to see – especially if the pilot’s call sign stands for “Killer Chick.”

On April 7, 2003, then-Capt. Campbell and her flight lead responded to a call for air support in downtown Baghdad, where an elite unit of the Iraqi Republican Guard had U.S. forces pinned against the Tigris River. Campbell and her wingman faced bad weather before they dove out of the sky and devastated the enemy with rockets and the Warthog’s feared 30mm Gatling gun. After successfully hitting their targets, the pilots turned back toward base – and that’s when Campbell’s jet was rocked by a large explosion, and immediately began pulling to the left and toward the ground. With numerous caution lights flashing, the one that worried Campbell the most was the hydraulic lights. A quick check confirmed her suspicions: Her hydraulic system had been fried. She would later discover that one of her engines was badly damaged and the fuselage was riddled with hundreds of bullet holes.

Campbell quickly switched to manual inversion, allowing her to fly her Warthog under mechanical control.

She then had a decision: try to fly 300 miles back to base, or parachute into hostile territory. This was dicey terrain, so she decided she had to make the flight. Despite the heavily damaged aircraft and terrible weather – including massive dust storms – “Killer Chick” persevered. With the help of a seasoned pilot on her wing, Campbell landed safely back at base – fully prepared to take to the skies again and unleash the Warthog, as well as her moniker, on any opposing forces.

Major Campbell’s DFC award citation:

Captain Kim N. Campbell is awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for heroism while participating in aerial flight as an A/OA-10 fighter pilot, 75th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron, 332d Expeditionary Operations Group, 332d Air Expeditionary Wing at Ahmed Al Jaber Air Base, Kuwait on 7 April 2003. On that date, at North Baghdad Bridge, Iraq, flying as Yard 06, Captain Campbell’s professional skill and airmanship directly contributed to the successful close air support of ground forces from the 3d Infantry Division and recovery of an A-10 with heavy battle damage. While ingressing her original target area, Captain Campbell was diverted to a troops-in-contact situation where enemy forces had positioned themselves within 400 meters of the advancing friendly forces and were successfully preventing the lead elements of the 3d Infantry Division from crossing the North Baghdad Bridge. Unable to eliminate the enemy without severe losses, the ground forward air controller had requested immediate close air support. After a quick situation update and target area study, Captain Campbell expertly employed 2.75 inch high explosive rockets on the enemy position that had been threatening the advancing forces, scoring a direct hit and silencing the opposition. During her recovery from the weapons delivery pass, a surface-to-air missile impacted the tail of Captain Campbell’s aircraft. Immediately taking corrective action, she isolated the hydraulic systems and placed the A-10 into the manual reversion flight control mode of flight and prepared for the long and tenuous return flight to Kuwait. Captain Campbell’s aviation prowess and coolness under pressure directly contributed to the successful comletion of the critical mission and recovery of a valuable combat aircraft. The outstanding heroism and selfless devotion to duty displayed by Captain Campbell reflect great credit upon herself and the United States Air Force.

Air Force News story.

Arianna Huffington has an interesting, and oh, so valid criticism of all of the contenders for the democrat party nomination.

There is a major disconnect in the 2008 Democratic race for the White House.

While all the top candidates are vying for the black and Latino vote, they are completely ignoring one of the most pressing issues affecting those constituencies: the failed War on Drugs, a war that has morphed into a war on people of color.

Consider this: according to a 2006 ACLU report, African Americans make up 15 percent of drug users, but account for 37 percent of those arrested on drug charges, 59 percent of those convicted, and 74 percent of all drug offenders sentenced to prison. Or consider this: America has 260,000 people in state prisons on nonviolent drug charges; 183,200 (more than 70 percent) are black or Latino.

Such facts and figures have been bandied about for years. But what to do about the legion of nonviolent—predominantly minority—drug offenders has long been an electrified third-rail in American politics, a subject to be avoided at all costs by our political leaders, who fear being incinerated on contact for being soft on crime.

Supporting ending Prohibition did not win Al Smith the election in 1928, but Smith’s politics certainly played a key role in the national political realignment which swept FDR into power and gave the democrat party political dominance from 1932 to 1966.

I think Arianna is on to something.

The Anchoress has written a moving tribute to President Bush, titled The President of All the People, which views his failures to respond more vigorously and effectively to his opponents as explicable in religious terms.

Who knows? Maybe she’s more correct than most of the rest of us as to what really makes George W. Bush tick.

Don Surber shows a wonderful picture of President Bush, helping Democrat Sen. Robert Byrd walk as they gather to confer a congressional Gold Medal to the Tuskegee airmen who served in World War II.

Sen. Robert Byrd is, of course, ... as partisan a Democrat as one may find. In the picture, Bush holds Byrd’s hand with great gentleness and compassion, in no way demeaning Bryd or taking away his dignity. But you can see that he is firmly grasping the old man’s hand; Bush is concentrating entirely on serving him safely to his seat.

Surber says that the picture didn’t get picked up by many papers and suggests that it’s because the press is reluctant to remind people that President Bush is an utterly decent, humane and gentlemanly man. Nothing good is permitted to be shown of President Bush, these days. Doesn’t fit the “Bush is evil and moronic” template. I more than suspect that Surber is correct.

It’s been that way for a while, actually. I recall that a year after 9/11, President Bush’s poll numbers were still in the stratosphere; they were very high heading into Iraq. They were still pretty high during the “cedar revolutions” and the “orange revolutions” – the so-called “Arab Springtime” during which time Democracy seemed to be threatening to break out all over the world. It was all happening under Bush’s watch, and Bush was dancing with these folks as they demonstrated their hopefulness.

That was only in two years ago, in May, 2005. Feels like half an age, doesn’t it? ...

President Bush drives us crazy. We want him to fight back. He won’t. We want him to “save” himself. He won’t. He won’t “save” his presidency, either. He won’t “save” his party. He won’t “save” his legacy.

President Bush is doing what is unthinkable – he is staying true to the task laid out before him, to serve all the people. He is remaining faithful to that and he is counting on his God to do the rest, as his God has promised.

Read the whole thing.

Hat tip to Terrye.

The New York Sun reports:

American and Iraqi officials are working out a plan to allow Iranian diplomats access to five Iranians captured in Iraq in January by American forces as a possible prelude to their release.

The plan dovetails with Secretary of State Rice’s announcement that she would be open to direct talks with the Iranian foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, this month at a scheduled meeting in Baghdad of officials from Iraq and neighboring countries. It also follows the release of 15 British sailors captured by Iran last month, an arrangement both America and Britain have insisted did not yield concessions from the West.

Despite their assurances, contradictory details are emerging. Yesterday, a spokesman for the National Security Council, Gordon Johndroe, told reporters that America is negotiating a process with the Iraqi government that could lead to the release of the five Iranians, captured in the northern Iraqi city of Irbil by American forces on the morning of January 11, hours after President Bush announced a new Iraq strategy to combat the Iranian and Syrian networks in Iraq.

“Well, that’s an ongoing process,” Mr. Johndroe said. “We’re going to work that with the Iraqis to see what the next steps are, determining what course of justice should be carried out to deal with — to deal with, frankly, what we believe were activities harmful to innocent Iraqis, as well as coalition forces.”

Also, as The New York Sun reported yesterday, the White House took part in the decision this week to release the second secretary of the Iranian Embassy in Baghdad, Jalal Sharafi, who was being held in an Iraqi- and American-administered facility. Mr. Sharafi arrived in Iran on Tuesday, the day before President Ahmadinejad said he would release the 15 British sailors. ...

the five Iranians in American custody are particularly dangerous. The administration official described them as “paymasters” and “terrorism coaches.”

Watch for face-saving temporizing, then a transfer of the Irbil five to “Iraqi custody,” followed promptly by their release.

Is it any wonder that representatives of old-fashioned cultures in the Middle East which prize honor despise the governments of Western democracies?

NY Post:

England expects that every man will do his duty,” said Admiral Lord Nelson off Cape Trafalgar in October 1805. ...

We strain to imagine what the old sea dog would have made of that sorry gaggle of British sailors and Marines – waving and smiling, decked out in cheesy duds and clutching swagbags stuffed with goodies from the mullahs: books, candies, pistachio nuts and even a bud vase or two.

How sweet.

Which is probably the best that can be said of their 13 days in Iranian custody. If there has ever in history been a faster, more humiliating submission to Stockholm Syndrome, we’re unaware of it.

No doubt, being plucked out of one’s rubber raft at gunpoint and passed into an Iranian captivity of uncertain duration was a harrowing experience.

But aren’t British service personnel trained for this sort of thing?

Well, actually, that’s a secret.

“We’re not releasing the details of the training any of the services go through under those conditions,” said a Defense Ministry spokesman, “because if we do that, then it would make it easier to interrogate them.”

Easier than what, we wonder.

Read the whole thing.