Peter Berkowitz, in the Wall Street Journal, describes a personal encounter with the hydrophobic Bush-hatred infecting America’s chattering classes.

This distinguishing feature of Bush hatred was brought home to me on a recent visit to Princeton University. I had been invited to appear on a panel to debate the ideas in Princeton professor and American Prospect editor Paul Starr’s excellent new book, “Freedom’s Power: The True Force of Liberalism.” To put in context Prof. Starr’s grounding of contemporary progressivism in the larger liberal tradition, I recounted to the Princeton audience an exchange at a dinner I hosted in Washington in June 2004 for several distinguished progressive scholars, journalists, and policy analysts.

To get the conversation rolling at that D.C. dinner—and perhaps mischievously—I wondered aloud whether Bush hatred had not made rational discussion of politics in Washington all but impossible. One guest responded in a loud, seething, in-your-face voice, “What’s irrational about hating George W. Bush?” His vehemence caused his fellow progressives to gather around and lean in, like kids on a playground who see a fight brewing.

Reluctant to see the dinner fall apart before drinks had been served, I sought to ease the tension. I said, gently, that I rarely found hatred a rational force in politics, but, who knows, perhaps this was a special case. And then I tried to change the subject.

But my dinner companion wouldn’t allow it. “No,” he said, angrily. “You started it. You make the case that it’s not rational to hate Bush.” I looked around the table for help. Instead, I found faces keen for my response. So, for several minutes, I held forth, suggesting that however wrongheaded or harmful to the national interest the president’s policies may have seemed to my progressive colleagues, hatred tended to cloud judgment, and therefore was a passion that a citizen should not be proud of being in the grips of and should avoid bringing to public debate. Propositions, one might have thought, that would not be controversial among intellectuals devoted to thinking and writing about politics.

But controversial they were. Finally, another guest, a man I had long admired, an incisive thinker and a political moderate, cleared his throat, and asked if he could interject. I welcomed his intervention, confident that he would ease the tension by lending his authority in support of the sole claim that I was defending, namely, that Bush hatred subverted sound thinking. He cleared his throat for a second time. Then, with all eyes on him, and measuring every word, he proclaimed, “I . . . hate . . . the . . . way . . . Bush . . . talks.”

Read the whole thing.

Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball report in Newsweek:

A former FBI agent who pleaded guilty Tuesday to fraudulently obtaining U.S. citizenship and then improperly accessing sensitive computer information about Hizbollah was working until about a year ago as a CIA spy assigned to Middle East operations, Newsweek has learned.

The stunning case of Nada Nadim Prouty, a 37-year-old Lebanese native who is related to a suspected Hizbollah money launderer, appears to raise a nightmarish question for U.S. intelligence agencies: Could one of the world’s most notorious terrorist groups have infiltrated the U.S. government?

“I’m beginning to think it’s possible that Hizbollah put a mole in our government,” said Richard Clarke, the former White House counter-terrorism chief under Presidents Clinton and, until 2002, Bush. “It’s mind-blowing.”

A U.S. official familiar with the case said Tuesday that the government’s investigation has uncovered no evidence so far that Prouty, who was employed by the CIA until last week, had compromised any undercover operations or passed along sensitive intelligence information to Hizbollah operatives. After joining the CIA in June 2003, Prouty was an undercover officer for the agency’s National Clandestine Service, the espionage division, working on Middle East-related cases. She was reassigned to a less sensitive position about a year ago, after she first came under suspicion, officials said.

Read the whole thing. It does not sound good at all.

John McCain: “That’s an excellent question.”

1:13 video

Hat tip to John Amato, who is shocked… shocked.
—————————————————
11/16: I just noticed that I had overlooked the link to “John Amato” above. Apologies to readers, and to Mr. Amato.

A user’s manual aimed at the female audience:

Example:

Advanced Nerd Tweakage

If you’re still reading, then I’m thinking that your nerd is worth keeping. Even though he’s apt to vanish for hours, has a strange sense of humor, doesn’t like you touching his stuff, and often doesn’t listen when you’re talking directly at him, he’s a keeper. Go figure.

My advice:

Map the things he’s bad at to the things he loves. You love to travel, but your nerd would prefer to hide in his cave for hours on end chasing The High. You need to convince him of two things. First, you need to convince him that you’re going to do your best to recreate his cave in his new surrounding. You’re going to create a quiet, dark place here he can orient himself and figure out which way the water flushes down the toilet. Traveling internationally? Carve out three days somewhere quiet at the beginning of the trip. Traveling across the US? How about letting him chill on the bed for a half-day before you drag him out to see the Golden Gate Bridge?

Second, and more importantly, you need to remind him about his insatiable appetite for information. You need to appeal to his deep love of discovering new content and help him understand that there may be no greater content fire hose than waking up in a hotel overlooking the Grand Canal in Venice where you don’t speak a word of Italian.

Needless to say, my wife passed this one on to me.

Andrew Sullivan’s profile-in-the-form-of-a-tongue-bath of Obama will delight cynical souls like myself who actually enjoy reading with one eyebrow arched very high.

Some excerpts:

Obama’s candidacy… is a potentially transformational one. Unlike any of the other candidates, he could take America—finally—past the debilitating, self-perpetuating family quarrel of the Baby Boom generation that has long engulfed all of us. So much has happened in America in the past seven years, let alone the past 40, that we can be forgiven for focusing on the present and the immediate future. But it is only when you take several large steps back into the long past that the full logic of an Obama presidency stares directly—and uncomfortably—at you. ...

How do we account for the bitter, brutal tone of American politics? The answer lies mainly with the biggest and most influential generation in America: the Baby Boomers. The divide is still—amazingly—between those who fought in Vietnam and those who didn’t, and between those who fought and dissented and those who fought but never dissented at all. By defining the contours of the Boomer generation, it lasted decades. And with time came a strange intensity. ...

Of the viable national candidates, only Obama and possibly McCain have the potential to bridge this widening partisan gulf. Polling reveals Obama to be the favored Democrat among Republicans. McCain’s bipartisan appeal has receded in recent years, especially with his enthusiastic embrace of the latest phase of the Iraq War. And his personal history can only reinforce the Vietnam divide. But Obama’s reach outside his own ranks remains striking. Why? It’s a good question: How has a black, urban liberal gained far stronger support among Republicans than the made-over moderate Clinton or the southern charmer Edwards? Perhaps because the Republicans and independents who are open to an Obama candidacy see his primary advantage in prosecuting the war on Islamist terrorism. It isn’t about his policies as such; it is about his person. They are prepared to set their own ideological preferences to one side in favor of what Obama offers America in a critical moment in our dealings with the rest of the world. The war today matters enormously. The war of the last generation? Not so much. If you are an American who yearns to finally get beyond the symbolic battles of the Boomer generation and face today’s actual problems, Obama may be your man. ...

Obama’s account of understanding his own racial experience seemed more like that of a gay teen discovering that he lives in two worlds simultaneously than that of a young African American confronting racism for the first time.

In short, Obama is the Magic Negro who will bring Charles Johnson and Glenn Greenwald to lie down together (as it were) in harmony and understanding, and to top it all off, just as Bill Clinton was imagined by Ton Morrison as “the first Black president,” Andrew Sullivan is ready to award Obama the honorary title of “the first queer president.” Hillary is not amused.

The Nantucket-Treweryn Beagles at Greenwood. A perfect autumn day.

Richard Armitage appeared on CNN to discuss his leaking Valerie Plame’s role in arranging Joe Wilson’s Niger junket.

First of all, it’s good to recall that Bob Novak revealed in September of 2006:

I want to set the record straight based on firsthand knowledge.

First, Armitage did not, as he now indicates, merely pass on something he had heard and that he ‘‘thought’’ might be so. Rather, he identified to me the CIA division where Mrs. Wilson worked, and said flatly that she recommended the mission to Niger by her husband, former Amb. Joseph Wilson.

Second, Armitage did not slip me this information as idle chitchat, as he now suggests. He made clear he considered it especially suited for my column.

CNN’s Wolf Blitzer confronted Armitage with a clip of Valerie Plame commenting on Armitage’s disclosure, and Armitage explains why he did not regard Valerie as covert:

VALERIE PLAME WILSON: Mr. Armitage did a very foolish thing. He has been around Washington for decades. He should know better. He’s a senior government official. Whether he knew where exactly I worked in the CIA, he had no rights to go talking to a reporter about where I worked. That was strictly off-limits.

BLITZER: Those are strong words from Valerie Plame Wilson.

ARMITAGE: They’re not words on which I disagree. I think it was extraordinarily foolish of me. There was no ill-intent on my part and I had never seen ever, in 43 years of having a security clearance, a covert operative’s name in a memo. The only reason I knew a “Mrs. Wilson,” not “Mrs. Plame,” worked at the agency was because I saw it in a memo. But I don’t disagree with her words to a large measure.

BLITZER: Normally in memos they don’t name covert operatives?

ARMITAGE: I have never seen one named.

BLITZER: And so you assumed she was, what, just an analyst over at the CIA?

ARMITAGE: Not only assumed it, that’s what the message said, that she was publicly chairing a meeting.

Jill Dekker

Daily Mail:

An EU expert on biological warfare has told how she fears ending up ‘dead in the woods’ like scientist Dr David Kelly after an alleged campaign of intimidation by members of MI6 and the CIA.

Jill Dekker, a bio-defence expert based in Brussels, has reported a string of sinister incidents – including the parking of a hearse outside her house – after making a speech critical of British and American policy in the Middle East.

Her claims are included in a new book by Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker which argues that Dr Kelly was murdered to silence his criticism of the grounds for going to war in Iraq. ...

She was placed under the protection of the Belgian government after reporting a series of sinister incidents earlier this year. ...

Dr Dekker says the ‘intimidation’ against her started in March, as she was flying to Florida to give a speech on Syria’s weapons programme to an intelligence summit. She says she was subjected to a ‘heavy-handed’ interrogation by a man she suspects of being a British intelligence operative.

She believes the speech made her powerful enemies because she argued that billions of dollars spent by the US government to develop a smallpox vaccine has been wasted because scientists – including British experts – have used a different viral strain to the one she believes is being developed in Damascus.

If this is true, it means governments would have no way of protecting the public against the use of the virus by terrorists or rogue states.

She also believes that Iraq did have a biological weapons capacity which was all shipped to Syria before the outbreak of war.

She argues this was known, but was concealed from the public because the real purpose of the war was not to target weapons of mass destruction but to topple Saddam Hussein and gain a strategic foothold in the region.

When she returned to her home in Belgium after the speech she said she was subjected to an overt campaign of surveillance and harassment, including being continuously followed on foot and having cars parked outside her house with the headlights on.

On one occasion, she says she found a hearse parked outside her house with the drivers ‘staring straight ahead.’ When she approached, it sped off and she pursued it, taking photographs as evidence. ...

Last night, Mr Baker said he believed Dr Dekker could have made enemies by exposing a fallacy at the heart of military action against Iraq.

“If the war was really about WMD, then to be consistent we should also invade Syria,” he said.

“Otherwise, it suggests that it was more about giving Saddam a bloody nose.”

All this sounds a great deal like the usual leftwing Hollywood meme of the innocent person of integrity targeted by the sinister representatives of corrupt government trying to cover something up, but her contention that Saddam’s WMD were shipped to Syria is probably perfectly true, and I certainly agree that the Bush Administration’s failure to invade Syria as well in pursuit of those WMD is very puzzling.

This post falls into the “making a note of it… just for the record” category.

—this post is repeated annually—

WWI came to an end by an armistice arranged to occur at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918. The date and time, selected at a point in history when mens’ memories ran much longer, represented a compliment to St. Martin, patron saint of soldiers, and thus a tribute to the fighting men of both sides. The feast day of St. Martin, the Martinmas, had been for centuries a major landmark in the European calendar, a date on which leases expired, rents came due; and represented, in Northern Europe, a seasonal turning point after which cold weather and snow might be normally expected.

It fell about the Martinmas-time, when the snow lay on the borders…

From Robert Chambers, The Book of Days, 1869:

St. Martin, the son of a Roman military tribune, was born at Sabaria, in Hungary, about 316. From his earliest infancy, he was remarkable for mildness of disposition; yet he was obliged to become a soldier, a profession most uncongenial to his natural character. After several years’ service, he retired into solitude, from whence he was withdrawn, by being elected bishop of Tours, in the year 374.

The zeal and piety he displayed in this office were most exemplary. He converted the whole of his diocese to Christianity, overthrowing the ancient pagan temples, and erecting churches in their stead. From the great success of his pious endeavours, Martin has been styled the Apostle of the Gauls; and, being the first confessor to whom the Latin Church offered public prayers, he is distinguished as the father of that church. In remembrance of his original profession, he is also frequently denominated the Soldier Saint.

The principal legend, connected with St. Martin, forms the subject of our illustration, which represents the saint, when a soldier, dividing his cloak with a poor naked beggar, whom he found perishing with cold at the gate of Amiens. This cloak, being most miraculously preserved, long formed one of the holiest and most valued relics of France; when war was declared, it was carried before the French monarchs, as a sacred banner, and never failed to assure a certain victory. The oratory in which this cloak or cape—in French, chape—was preserved, acquired, in consequence, the name of chapelle, the person intrusted with its care being termed chapelain: and thus, according to Collin de Plancy, our English words chapel and chaplain are derived. The canons of St. Martin of Tours and St. Gratian had a lawsuit, for sixty years, about a sleeve of this cloak, each claiming it as their property. The Count Larochefoucalt, at last, put an end to the proceedings, by sacrilegiously committing the contested relic to the flames.

Another legend of St. Martin is connected with one of those literary curiosities termed a palindrome. Martin, having occasion to visit Rome, set out to perform the journey thither on foot. Satan, meeting him on the way, taunted the holy man for not using a conveyance more suitable to a bishop. In an instant the saint changed the Old Serpent into a mule, and jumping on its back, trotted comfortably along. Whenever the transformed demon slackened pace, Martin, by making the sign of the cross, urged it to full speed. At last, Satan utterly defeated, exclaimed:

Signa, te Signa: temere me tangis et angis:
Roma tibi subito motibus ibit amor.’

In English—

‘Cross, cross thyself: thou plaguest and vexest me without necessity;
for, owing to my exertions, thou wilt soon reach Rome, the object of thy wishes.’

The singularity of this distich, consists in its being palindromical—that is, the same, whether read backwards or forwards. Angis, the last word of the first line, when read backwards, forming signet, and the other words admitting of being reversed, in a similar manner.

The festival of St. Martin, happening at that season when the new wines of the year are drawn from the lees and tasted, when cattle are killed for winter food, and fat geese are in their prime, is held as a feast-day over most parts of Christendom. On the ancient clog almanacs, the day is marked by the figure of a goose; our bird of Michaelmas being, on the continent, sacrificed at Martinmas. In Scotland and the north of England, a fat ox is called a mart, clearly from Martinmas, the usual time when beeves are killed for winter use. In ‘Tusser’s Husbandry, we read:

When Easter comes, who knows not then,
That veal and bacon is the man?
And Martilmass beef doth bear good tack,
When country folic do dainties lack.’

Barnaby Googe’s translation of Neogeorgus, shews us how Martinmas was kept in Germany, towards the latter part of the fifteenth century

‘To belly chear, yet once again,

Doth Martin more incline,
Whom all the people worshippeth With roasted geese and wine.
Both all the day long, and the night, Now each man open makes
His vessels all, and of the must, Oft times, the last he takes,
Which holy Martin afterwards Alloweth to be wine,
Therefore they him, unto the skies, Extol with praise divine.’

A genial saint, like Martin, might naturally be expected to become popular in England; and there are no less than seven churches in London and Westminster, alone, dedicated to him. There is certainly more than a resemblance between the Vinalia of the Romans, and the Martinalia of the medieval period. Indeed, an old ecclesiastical calendar, quoted by Brand, expressly states under 11th November: ‘The Vinalia, a feast of the ancients, removed to this day. Bacchus in the figure of Martin.’ And thus, probably, it happened, that the beggars were taken from St. Martin, and placed under the protection of St. Giles; while the former became the patron saint of publicans, tavern-keepers, and other ‘dispensers of good eating and drinking. In the hall of the Vintners’ Company of London, paintings and statues of St. Martin and Bacchus reign amicably together side by side.

On the inauguration, as lord mayor, of Sir Samuel Dashwood, an honoured vintner, in 1702, the company had a grand processional pageant, the most conspicuous figure in which was their patron saint, Martin, arrayed, cap-Ã -pie, in a magnificent suit of polished armour; wearing a costly scarlet cloak, and mounted on a richly plumed and caparisoned white charger: two esquires, in rich liveries, walking at each side. Twenty satyrs danced before him, beating tambours, and preceded by ten halberdiers, with rural music. Ten Roman lictors, wearing silver helmets, and carrying axes and fasces, gave an air of classical dignity to the procession, and, with the satyrs, sustained the bacchanalian idea of the affair.

A multitude of beggars, ‘howling most lamentably,’ followed the warlike saint, till the procession stopped in St. Paul’s Churchyard. Then Martin, or his representative at least, drawing his sword, cut his rich scarlet cloak in many pieces, which he distributed among the beggars. This ceremony being duly and gravely performed, the lamentable howlings ceased, and the procession resumed its course to Guildhall, where Queen Anne graciously condescended to dine with the new lord mayor.

AP:

A wildlife biologist at Grand Canyon National Park likely died from the plague through his exposure to wild animals that can carry the disease, the National Park Service said Friday.

Eric York, 37, was found dead in his home Nov. 2. Following his death, about 30 people who came in contact with him were given antibiotics as a precaution.

While authorities were uncertain about how York became infected, officials said that the biologist was at a greater risk to the sometimes-fatal disease through his exposure to wild rodents and mountain lions.

Park Service officials initially said they suspected the plague or hantavirus, another sometimes-fatal disease endemic to the Southwest, because of York’s interests and hobbies.

Health officials in Arizona warned in September that the plague appeared to be on the rise and that more cases were likely after an Apache County woman was infected with the disease.

While Arizona health officials say the disease appears to be on the rise in the state, CDC spokeswoman Lola Russell said plague cases weren’t on the rise nationally.

Plague is transmitted primarily by fleas and direct contact with infected animals. When the disease causes pneumonia, it can be transmitted from an infected person to a non-infected person by airborne cough droplets.

Cases are treatable with antibiotics, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that up to 50 percent are fatal if the disease causes pneumonia. The Coconino County Medical Examiner has said York’s lungs were filled with fluid and his body showed signs of pneumonia.

The autopsy confirmed that the cause of death was bubonic plague. The disease is endemic to much of the Western United States.

The Daily Mail yesterday (10 Nov 2007) reported:

When the U.S. Navy deploys a battle fleet on exercises, it takes the security of its aircraft carriers very seriously indeed.

At least a dozen warships provide a physical guard while the technical wizardry of the world’s only military superpower offers an invisible shield to detect and deter any intruders.

That is the theory. Or, rather, was the theory.

American military chiefs have been left dumbstruck by an undetected Chinese submarine popping up at the heart of a recent Pacific exercise and close to the vast U.S.S. Kitty Hawk

– a 1,000ft supercarrier with 4,500 personnel on board.

By the time it surfaced the 160ft Song Class diesel-electric attack submarine is understood to have sailed within viable range for launching torpedoes or missiles at the carrier.

According to senior Nato officials the incident caused consternation in the U.S. Navy.

The Americans had no idea China’s fast-growing submarine fleet had reached such a level of sophistication, or that it posed such a threat.

One Nato figure said the effect was “as big a shock as the Russians launching Sputnik” – a reference to the Soviet Union’s first orbiting satellite in 1957 which marked the start of the space age.

The incident, which took place in the ocean between southern Japan and Taiwan, is a major embarrassment for the Pentagon.

The lone Chinese vessel slipped past at least a dozen other American warships which were supposed to protect the carrier from hostile aircraft or submarines.

And the rest of the costly defensive screen, which usually includes at least two U.S. submarines, was also apparently unable to detect it.

According to the Nato source, the encounter has forced a serious re-think of American and Nato naval strategy as commanders reconsider the level of threat from potentially hostile Chinese submarines.

It also led to tense diplomatic exchanges, with shaken American diplomats demanding to know why the submarine was “shadowing” the U.S. fleet while Beijing pleaded ignorance and dismissed the affair as coincidence.

Analysts believe Beijing was sending a message to America and the West demonstrating its rapidly-growing military capability to threaten foreign powers which try to interfere in its “backyard”.

The People’s Liberation Army Navy’s submarine fleet includes at least two nuclear-missile launching vessels.

Its 13 Song Class submarines are extremely quiet and difficult to detect when running on electric motors.

Commodore Stephen Saunders, editor of Jane’s Fighting Ships, and a former Royal Navy anti-submarine specialist, said the U.S. had paid relatively little attention to this form of warfare since the end of the Cold War.

He said: “It was certainly a wake-up call for the Americans.

“It would tie in with what we see the Chinese trying to do, which appears to be to deter the Americans from interfering or operating in their backyard, particularly in relation to Taiwan.”

What is particularly interesting is that a nearly identical incident occurred one year ago 26 October 2006 involving a Chinese Song-class submarine and the same U.S.S. Kitty Hawk.

Also discussed by Spook86.

Photo hopefully not taken from Chinese submarine

Thomas F. Madden in his New Concise History of the Crusades:

For a thousand years after the death of the Prophet, the Dar al-Islam, the Islamic world, continued to wage jihad successfully against the Dar al-harb, the abode of war. In that time Muslim armies conquered three-quarters of the Christian world, despite the efforts of generations of crusaders to halt or turn back the relentless advance. An impartial observer at the time might well have concluded that Christendom was a doomed remnant of the ancient Roman Empire, destined to be supplanted by the more youthful and energetic religion and culture of Islam. Yet that observer would have been wrong. Within Europe new ideas were brewing that would have dramatic and unprecedented repercussions not just in the Mediterranean, but across the entire world. Born out of a unique blend of faith, reason, individualism, and entrepreneurialism, those ideas produced a rapid increase in scientific experimentation with immediately practical applications. These included such world-changing devices as the printing press, gunpowder weaponry, and ocean-going vessels. By the seventeenth century European wealth and power was growing exponentially. Europeans were entering a new and unprecedented age.

It is one of the most remarkable events in history that the Latin West, an internally divided region seemingly on the brink of conquest by a powerful empire, suddenly burst forth with amazing new energy, neutralizing its enemies and expanding across the globe. Amazingly, the specter of advancing Muslim armies, which for centuries had posed such danger, no longer constituted a serious threat. Indeed, as the gaze of Europeans spanned new global horizons, they soon forgot that such a threat had existed at all. The Muslim world was no longer viewed as a dread enemy, but simply one more backward culture. From that perspective the medieval crusades seemed distant and unnecessary—a discarded artifact from the childhood of a civilization.

Matthew J. Frank discusses the interesting question of whether Republicans should trust the former New York mayor’s recent “conversions.”

“Isn’t it better that I tell you what I really believe instead of pretending to change all of my positions to fit the prevailing wind?”

So asked Rudy Giuliani at the “Values Voter Summit,” on October 20. It’s a powerful rhetorical question. Simultaneously Giuliani declared that flip-flopping and pandering are beneath him, and intimated that he is superior to his leading rival, Mitt Romney, who is famous for having changed his mind on the subject of abortion rights. I’m no waffler, no quick-change artist when I face a different constituency, says Rudy. “I believe trust is more important than 100% agreement.” And so Hizzoner has made trust the currency of his campaign, and he links trust to consistency: I’m the same guy yesterday, today, tomorrow, and the day after that.

By now you get the picture. Mayor Giuliani’s latter-day assurances on the abortion issue are thin and insubstantial, and appear to be made to endure for just as long as it takes to get the Republican nomination. So far I believe the phrase “right to life” has never passed his lips, and I’m not sure it can. It’s hard to imagine Giuliani as the party’s nominee even continuing to talk about the abortion issue after he achieves that status, if he could get away with it.

But would he get away with it? Giuliani’s pandering in all directions on this issue, his evident lack of a guiding moral or legal principle on the issue, is tailor-made for attack by Hillary Clinton’s campaign. We can hear her now in a head-to-head debate: “Which is it, mayor? Do your ideal ‘strict constructionist’ judges strike down a woman’s right to choose, or not? Which do you want to see happen? Where are you on this issue?” Does Rudy then betray a career-long support of abortion rights — or the platform of his party — or stick bumptiously to his well-rehearsed mantra of “don’t-care strict constructionism”? Surely the Democrats are already relishing the opportunity they’ll have to make him dance even faster.

Why do we worry about the flip-flopper or the panderer in political campaigns? Because we wonder whom to trust, to be sure. But also because we want our own party’s candidates to be as invulnerable as possible to attack by the opposition party. A lot of pro-lifers want desperately to trust Rudy Giuliani, and are willing to put the fate of the right-to-life cause in his hands because they believe he’s the man who can beat Hillary Clinton. But even if that trust is wisely given (a big if indeed), on this issue, compared to almost anyone else in the GOP field — Mitt Romney most certainly included — Rudy Giuliani is the most vulnerable candidate the Republicans could make their standard-bearer.

I don’t myself care much about the abortion issue. (I’m not really planning on having any personally.) But I care a great deal about Gun Control, on which issue Giuliani’s record is utterly abysmal, and Hizzoner’s recent supposed conversion on the subject does not impress me in the least. If they nominate Giuliani, I’ll be voting Third Party.

The New York Times chronicles the frightening encounters of today’s typical urban wussies with THE COUNTRY.

When Evan Gotlib and his fiancée, Lindsey Pollack, bought a three-bedroom cottage surrounded by pine trees in rural Sharon, Conn., they couldn’t wait to flee their cramped Manhattan studio on weekends to spend their days dozing in a hammock and barbecuing on their brand new 42,000 B.T.U., 60-burger-capacity Weber grill.

But being city people, they did what anyone looking to “get away from it all” would do first, before they even spent the night: they paid $3,000 for a home-security system complete with motion detectors, a one-touch intercom that connects to fire and police dispatchers and an emergency hand-held remote-control device they could leave on the bedside table at night. “I know it sounds ridiculous now that I talk about it, but I just feel safer sleeping with the remote control,” Mr. Gotlib, a 32-year-old corporate sales director for Time Inc. Media Group, confessed, “because those deer are aggressive.”

For many urban sophisticates who trade the big city’s drunken crowds, blaring sirens and claustrophobic living spaces for bucolic second homes on weekends, the very solitude of mountains and forests that drew them in the first place can turn into a nerve-jangling — and sometimes costly — source of anxiety. As much as they adore their country houses, these harried homebodies quail at the thought of stepping out into the pitch-black night or meeting some wild animal or armed local in the woods.

Often their attempts at assuaging those fears are met with disbelief and ridicule from their more well-adjusted family members and friends.

“New York thinking applied to nature equals paranoia,” said Augusten Burroughs, the author of the memoir “Running with Scissors,” from his country house on the outskirts of Amherst, Mass., which he and his partner, Dennis Pilsits, built three years ago. Since then, Mr. Burroughs, 42, has poured several book advances into what he calls his “prison in the trees” in an effort to defend his rustic outpost “from nature in all its malicious glory.” This includes installing an $8,000 lightning protection system and spending $2,000 on various military-grade “tactical illumination devices” — flashlights — and even a pair of night-vision goggles, thanks to some terrifying encounters with nocturnal neighbors.

Late one recent night, Mr. Burroughs had gone out to check the mailbox when he saw two green, glittering eyes, triangular ears “and the general impression of height” in the shadows. When the creature began to walk toward him, Mr. Burroughs ran into the garage, fearing for his life. “Our skinny, gym-polished urban bodies are no match for anything that scratches its back on a tree,” he said. “Whatever it was, it was both curious and unafraid — two traits one does not admire in wildlife when one is alone in the dark.”..

That hyper-vigilance is a normal reaction to the fear induced by the darkness and silence of the country, said Dr. Julie Holland, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the New York University School of Medicine, who owns a weekend home in Pawling, N.Y. “In the city, the street lights are on at 3 in the morning, and you have this sense that if you call the police or the front desk of your luxury high-rise someone will help you,” she said. “There is something inherently unnatural and vulnerable about humans being in social isolation, because out there no one can hear you scream.”

It took Dr. Holland and her husband, Jeremy Wolff, a photographer, a while to get over that anxiety. Even so, encounters with armed hunters are always unsettling, even for a seasoned second-home owner. After disturbing a camouflaged fellow in a tree during a family hike last autumn, Mr. Wolf wrote a letter to the hunting club that leases the land beside his, asking members to “please make sure your bullets don’t cross my property lines.”

And then there was the time he came across a shooting range on his neighbor’s land. So does Mr. Wolff, 48, think there is a difference between himself and the people who live in the country full time?

“I feel I’m more of an intellectual artist and they’re kind of machine people,” he said. “Everyone has their own backhoe up there, and their kids have A.T.V.’s and motorboats. And they all have guns, which scares me.”

Read the whole thing, and laugh.

Hat tip to Steve Bodio.

Daily Mail:

Teachers at a primary school have been ordered to dress up as Muslims to promote multi-culturalism.

The West Midlands school is belatedly celebrating the Muslim festival of Eid and told its pupils and teachers to don traditional Muslim dress for the day.

All 257 pupils, most of whom are Christians, and 41 teachers – two of whom are Muslims – dressed up.

A morning assembly was held to mark the event and an afternoon party was strictly for women only, because Muslim husbands object to wives mixing with other men.

Sally Bloomer, head of Rufford primary school in Lye, West Midlands, told The Sun: “I have not heard of any complaints. It’s all part of a diversity project to promote multi-culturalism.”

But a relative of one of the staff reportedly said: “Who would put their job on the line? They have been told they have to embrace the day to show their diversity. But they are not all happy.”

The British National Party’s Home Affairs correspondent observes

I imagine that Rufford Primary School in Lye in the West Midlands will be one of schools that are not going to celebrate a traditional Christmas this year.

Via Red Planet Cartoons and Death By 1000 Papercuts.

Founded November 10, 1775.
———————————————
Maj. Gen. John A. Lejeune’s Birthday Message

RPS ORDERS
No. 47 (Series 1921)
HEADQUARTERS U.S. MARINE CORPS
Washington, November 1, 1921

759. The following will be read to the command on the 10th of November, 1921, and hereafter on the 10th of November of every year. Should the order not be received by the 10th of November, 1921, it will be read upon receipt.

(1) On November 10, 1775, a Corps of Marines was created by a resolution of Continental Congress. Since that date many thousand men have borne the name “Marine”. In memory of them it is fitting that we who are Marines should commemorate the birthday of our corps by calling to mind the glories of its long and illustrious history.

(2) The record of our corps is one which will bear comparison with that of the most famous military organizations in the world’s history. During 90 of the 146 years of its existence the Marine Corps has been in action against the Nation’s foes. From the Battle of Trenton to the Argonne, Marines have won foremost honors in war, and is the long eras of tranquility at home, generation after generation of Marines have grown gray in war in both hemispheres and in every corner of the seven seas, that our country and its citizens might enjoy peace and security.

(3) In every battle and skirmish since the birth of our corps, Marines have acquitted themselves with the greatest distinction, winning new honors on each occasion until the term “Marine” has come to signify all that is highest in military efficiency and soldierly virtue.

(4) This high name of distinction and soldierly repute we who are Marines today have received from those who preceded us in the corps. With it we have also received from them the eternal spirit which has animated our corps from generation to generation and has been the distinguishing mark of the Marines in every age. So long as that spirit continues to flourish Marines will be found equal to every emergency in the future as they have been in the past, and the men of our Nation will regard us as worthy successors to the long line of illustrious men who have served as “Soldiers of the Sea” since the founding of the Corps.

JOHN A. LEJEUNE,
Major General Commandant
——————————————————-

The Magic of “a Few Good Men”
——————————————————-

A story: The Old Corps

Tun Tavern, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania November 10th 1775 Captains Nicholas and Mullens, having been tasked by the 2nd Continental Congress to form 2 battalions of Marines, set up the Corps’ first recruiting station in the tavern. The first likely prospect was, in typical recruiters fashion, promised a “life of high adventure in service to Country and Corps”. And, as an extra bonus: If he enlisted now he would receive a free tankard of ale…. The recruit gladly accepted the challenge and, receiving the free tankard of ale, was told to wait at the corner table for orders. The first Marine sat quietly at the table sipping the ale when he was joined by another young man, who had two tankards of ale. The first Marine looked at the lad and asked where he had gotten the two tankards of ale? The lad replied that he had just joined this new outfit called the Continental Marines, and as an enlistment bonus was given two tankards of ale. The first Marine took a long hard look at the second Marine and said, ” it wasn’t like that in the old Corps”

Vin Suprynowicz remembers the Autumn of 1942, when one Marine and one Navy ship changed the course of WWII.

One Hill, One Marine:

World War Two is generally calculated from Hitler’s invasion of Poland in 1939. But that’s a eurocentric view. The Japanese had been limbering up their muscles in Korea and Manchuria as early as 1931, and in China by 1934. By 1942 they’d devastated every major Pacific military force or stronghold of the great pre-war powers: Britain, Holland, France, and the United States. The bulk of America’s proud Pacific fleet lay beached or rusting on the floor of Pearl Harbor. A few aircraft carriers and submarines remained, though as Mitchell Paige and his 30-odd men were sent out to establish their last, thin defensive line on that ridge southwest of the tiny American bridgehead on Guadalcanal on Oct. 25, he would not have been much encouraged to know how those remaining American aircraft carriers were faring offshore. ...

As Paige — then a platoon sergeant — and his riflemen set about carefully emplacing their four water-cooled Brownings, it’s unlikely anyone thought they were about to provide the definitive answer to that most desperate of questions: How many able-bodied U.S. Marines does it take to hold a hill against 2,000 desperate and motivated attackers?

The Japanese Army had not failed in an attempt to seize any major objective since the Russo-Japanese War of 1905. Their commanders certainly did not expect the war to be lost on some God-forsaken jungle ridge manned by one thin line of Yanks in khaki in October of 1942. ...

..the American forces had so little to work with that Paige’s men would have only the four 30-caliber Brownings to defend the one ridge through which the Japanese opted to launch their final assault against Henderson Field, that fateful night of Oct. 25.

By the time the night was over, “The 29th (Japanese) Infantry Regiment has lost 553 killed or missing and 479 wounded among its 2,554 men,” historian Lippman reports. “The 16th (Japanese) Regiment’s losses are uncounted, but the 164th’s burial parties handle 975 Japanese bodies. ... The American estimate of 2,200 Japanese dead is probably too low.”

Among the 90 American dead and wounded that night were all the men in Mitchell Paige’s platoon. Every one. As the night wore on, Paige moved up and down his line, pulling his dead and wounded comrades back into their foxholes and firing a few bursts from each of the four Brownings in turn, convincing the Japanese forces down the hill that the positions were still manned.

The citation for Paige’s Congressional Medal of Honor picks up the tale: “When the enemy broke through the line directly in front of his position, P/Sgt. Paige, commanding a machinegun section with fearless determination, continued to direct the fire of his gunners until all his men were either killed or wounded. Alone, against the deadly hail of Japanese shells, he fought with his gun and when it was destroyed, took over another, moving from gun to gun, never ceasing his withering fire.”

In the end, Sgt. Paige picked up the last of the 40-pound, belt-fed Brownings — the same design which John Moses Browning famously fired for a continuous 25 minutes until it ran out of ammunition at its first U.S. Army trial — and did something for which the weapon was never designed. Sgt. Paige walked down the hill toward the place where he could hear the last Japanese survivors rallying to move around his flank, the gun cradled under his arm, firing as he went.

The weapon did not fail.

Coming up at dawn, battalion executive officer Major Odell M. Conoley first discovered the answer to our question: How many able-bodied Marines does it take to hold a hill against two regiments of motivated, combat-hardened infantrymen who have never known defeat?

On a hill where the bodies were piled like cordwood, Mitchell Paige alone sat upright behind his 30-caliber Browning, waiting to see what the dawn would bring.

One hill: one Marine.

Admiral Bull Halsey himself broke a stern War College edict — the one against committing capital ships in restricted waters. Gambling the future of the cut-off troops on Guadalcanal on one final roll of the dice, Halsey dispatched into the Slot his two remaining fast battleships, the USS South Dakota and the USS Washington, escorted by the only four destroyers with enough fuel in their bunkers to get them there and back.

In command of the 28-knot battlewagons was the right man at the right pla4ce, gunnery expert Rear Adm. Willis A. “Ching Chong China” Lee. Lee’s flag flew aboard the Washington, in turn commanded by Captain Glenn Davis.

Lee was a nut for gunnery drills. “He tested every gunnery-book rule with exercises,” Lippman writes, “and ordered gunnery drills under odd conditions — turret firing with relief crews, anything that might simulate the freakishness of battle.”

As it turned out, the American destroyers need not have worried about carrying enough fuel to get home. By 11 p.m. on Nov. 13, outnumbered better than three-to-one by a massive Japanese task force driving down from the northwest, every one of the four American destroyers had been shot up, sunk, or set aflame, while the South Dakota — known throughout the fleet as a jinx ship — managed to damage some lesser Japanese vessels but continued to be plagued with electrical and fire control problems.

“Washington was now the only intact ship left in the force,” Lippman writes. “In fact, at that moment Washington was the entire U.S. Pacific Fleet. She was the only barrier between (Admiral) Kondo’s ships and Guadalcanal. If this one ship did not stop 14 Japanese ships right then and there, America might lose the war. ...

On Washington’s bridge, Lieutenant Ray Hunter still had the conn. He had just heard that South Dakota had gone off the air and had seen (destroyers) Walke and Preston “blow sky high.” Dead ahead lay their burning wreckage, while hundreds of men were swimming in the water and Japanese ships were racing in.

“Hunter had to do something. The course he took now could decide the war. ‘Come left,’ he said, and Washington straightened out on a course parallel to the one on which she (had been) steaming. Washington’s rudder change put the burning destroyers between her and the enemy, preventing her from being silhouetted by their fires.

“The move made the Japanese momentarily cease fire. Lacking radar, they could not spot Washington behind the fires. ...

“Meanwhile, Washington raced through burning seas. Everyone could see dozens of men in the water clinging to floating wreckage. Flag Lieutenant Raymond Thompson said, “Seeing that burning, sinking ship as it passed so close aboard, and realizing that there was nothing I, or anyone, could do about it, was a devastating experience.’

“Commander Ayrault, Washington’s executive officer, clambered down ladders, ran to Bart Stoodley’s damage-control post, and ordered Stoodley to cut loose life rafts. That saved a lot of lives. But the men in the water had some fight left in them. One was heard to scream, ‘Get after them, Washington!’ ”

Sacrificing their ships by maneuvering into the path of torpedoes intended for the Washington, the captains of the American destroyers had given China Lee one final chance. The Washington was fast, undamaged, and bristling with 16-inch guns. And, thanks to Lt. Hunter’s course change, she was also now invisible to the enemy.

Blinded by the smoke and flames, the Japanese battleship Kirishima turned on her searchlights, illuminating the helpless South Dakota, and opened fire. Finally, standing out in the darkness, Lee and Davis could positively identify an enemy target.

The Washington’s main batteries opened fire at 12 midnight precisely. Her new SG radar fire control system worked perfectly. Between midnight and 12:07 a.m., Nov. 14, the “last ship in the U.S. Pacific Fleet” stunned the battleship Kirishima with 75, 16-inch shells. For those aboard the Kirishima, it rained steel.

In seven minutes, the Japanese battleship was reduced to a funeral pyre. She went down at 3:25 a.m., the first enemy sunk by an American battleship since the Spanish-American War. Stunned, the remaining Japanese ships withdrew. Within days, Yamamoto and his staff reviewed their mounting losses and recommended the unthinkable to the emperor — withdrawal from Guadalcanal.

But who remembers, today, how close-run a thing it was — the ridge held by a single Marine, the battle won by the last American ship?

In the autumn of 1942.

Via the Barrister.

Earlier “Ching” Lee posting.

George Friedman of Stratfor suggests that Western readers get past the simplistic sloganeering of the Western bien pensant press, and look at the realities of the situation in Pakistan in the light of History.

The British withdrawal created a state called Pakistan, but no nation by that name. What bound its residents together was the Muslim faith—albeit one that had many forms. As in India—indeed, as in the Muslim world at the time of Pakistan’s founding—there existed a strong secularist movement that focused on economic development and cultural modernization more than on traditional Islamic values. This secularist tendency had two roots: one in the British education of many of the Pakistani elite and the second in Turkish founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who pioneered secularism in the Islamic world.

Pakistan, therefore, began as a state in crisis. What remained of British rule was a parliamentary democracy that might have worked in a relatively unified nation—not one that was split along ethnic lines and also along the great divide of the 20th century: secular versus religious. Hence, the parliamentary system broke down early on—about four years after Pakistan’s creation in 1947. British-trained civilian bureaucrats ran the country with the help of the army until 1958, when the army booted out the bureaucrats and took over.

Therefore, if Pakistan was a state trying to create a nation, then the primary instrument of the state was the army. This is not uniquely Pakistani by any means, nor is it unprincipled. The point that Ataturk made—one that was championed in the Arab world by Egypt’s Gamal Abdul Nasser and in Iran by Reza Pahlavi—was that the creation of a modern state in a traditional and divided nation required a modern army as the facilitator. An army, in the modern sense, is by definition technocratic and disciplined. The army, rather than simply an instrument of the state, therefore, becomes the guarantor of the state. In this line of thinking, a military coup can preserve a constitution against anti-constitutional traditionalists. ...

Although the British tradition of parliamentary government fell apart in Pakistan, one institution the Britons left behind grew stronger: the Pakistani army. The army—along with India’s army—was forged by the British and modeled on their army. It was perhaps the most modern institution in both countries, and the best organized and effective instrument of the state. As long as the army remained united and loyal to the concept of Pakistan, the centrifugal forces could not tear the country apart.

Musharraf’s behavior must be viewed in this context. Pakistan is a country that not only is deeply divided, but also has the real capacity to tear itself apart. It is losing control of the mountainous regions to the indigenous tribes. The army is the only institution that transcends all of these ethnic differences and has the potential to restore order in the mountain regions and maintain state control elsewhere.

Liberals like Paul Krugman deny that there is any such thing as Islamofascism.

There isn’t actually any such thing as Islamofascism — it’s not an ideology; it’s a figment of the neocon imagination. The term came into vogue only because it was a way for Iraq hawks to gloss over the awkward transition from pursuing Osama bin Laden, who attacked America, to Saddam Hussein, who didn’t.

Raymond Ibrahim, editor of the Al Qaeda Reader, a collection of texts and documents produced by the leaders of the Islamic extremist movement, compares the statements and positions of Al Qaeda to Hitler’s Mein Kampf.

Ibrahim:

How is The Al Qaeda Reader similar to Mein Kampf? A single sentence from the introduction of the 1999 edition of Mein Kampf, published by Mariner Books, goes a long way in answering this question: “He [Hitler] had made his ultimate goals clear in Mein Kampf as early as 1926: rearmament, the abolition of democracy, territorial expansion, eugenics, the ‘elimination’ of the ‘Jewish threat’” (Mein Kampf, xv).

The Al Qaeda Reader dwells on, if not obsesses over, four of these same five “ultimate goals” of Hitler—everything but eugenics, which is a temporal byproduct of 19th century pseudo-scientific racial theories. But al-Qaeda’s writings certainly dwell on dealing with the “Jewish threat,” overthrowing the “pagan religion” of democracy, both territorial re-conquests (from Palestine to Andalusia) and territorial expansion (to the whole world), as well as rearmament. Even more telling, the “fascistic” tone of Mein Kampf—ridicule and contempt for modernity and peace, praise for heroism and martyrdom, condemnation of promiscuity and lax mores—saturates The Al Qaeda Reader. Indeed, that there are many similarities is best represented by the fact that the German words “mein kampf” translate to “jihad-i”—or, “my jihad”—in Arabic.

Read the whole thing.

Houston Chronicle:

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court will discuss gun control today in a private conference that soon could explode publicly.

Behind closed doors, the nine justices will consider taking a case that challenges the District of Columbia’s stringent handgun ban. Their ultimate decision will shape how far other cities and states can go with their own gun restrictions.

“If the court decides to take this up, it’s very likely it will end up being the most important Second Amendment case in history,” said Dennis Henigan, the legal director for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

Henigan predicted “it’s more likely than not” that the necessary four justices will vote to consider the case. The court will announce its decision Tuesday, and oral arguments could be heard next year.

Lawyers are swarming.

Texas, Florida and 11 other states weighed in on behalf of gun owners who are challenging D.C.’s strict gun laws. New York and three other states want the gun restrictions upheld. Pediatricians filed a brief supporting the ban. A Northern California gun dealer, Russell Nordyke, filed a brief opposing it. ..

The Second Amendment says, “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

Gun-control advocates say this means that the government can limit firearms ownership as part of its power to regulate the militia. Gun ownership is cast as a collective right, with the government organizing armed citizens to protect homeland security.

“The Second Amendment permits reasonable regulation of firearms to protect public safety and does not guarantee individuals the absolute right to own the weapons of their choice,” New York and the three other states declared in an amicus brief.

Gun-control critics contend that the well-regulated militia is beside the point, and say the Constitution protects an individual’s right to possess guns.

Last March, a divided appellate court panel sided with the individual-rights interpretation and threw out the D.C. ban.

The ruling clashed with other appellate courts, creating the kind of appellate-circuit split that the Supreme Court likes to resolve. The ruling obviously stung D.C. officials, but it perplexed gun-control advocates.

If D.C. officials tried to salvage their gun-control law by appealing to the Supreme Court — as they then did — they could give the court’s conservative majority a chance to undermine gun-control laws nationwide.

On the one hand, the movement of legal scholarship in recent decades towards acknowledgment of the real meaning of the Second Amendment based on the historical content of the political theory of the period and numerous statements by the framers argues that Supreme Court consideration would necessarily recall the Second Amendment fully from exile, and produce nationwide enforcement of an individual right to keep and bear arms.

But, on the other hand, realism notes that the consequence of overturning every form of state and local gun prohibition, and very possibly the National Firearms Act of 1934 which effectively prohibited private possession of fully-automatic weapons are bound to seem highly unpalatable to most justices. Moreover, these days, intensely combative, ideologically charged decisions have a strong tendency to result in 5-4 decisions, turning upon the (commonly European-informed) private moral intuitions of Justice Anthony Kennedy.

On the whole, given the opportunity of having the fate of an important but widely disputed, Constitutional right decided, potentially for many decades, effectively by Justice Kennedy alone, I’d rather wait for a different Court.

Al Gore has declined to debate Global Warming skeptics, so Junk Science brings the debate to him by presenting replies from a number of prominent scientific climate skeptics in this 8:52 video.

The same Junk Science is also offering a $125,000 prize to anyone who can prove, in a scientific manner, that humans are causing harmful global warming.

John Coleman, meteorologist and founder of the Weather Channel, denounces Global Warming in no uncertain terms. He’s right, too.

It is the greatest scam in history. I am amazed, appalled and highly offended by it. Global Warming; It is a SCAM. Some dastardly scientists with environmental and political motives manipulated long term scientific data to create in allusion of rapid global warming. Other scientists of the same environmental whacko type jumped into the circle to support and broaden the “research” to further enhance the totally slanted, bogus global warming claims. Their friends in government steered huge research grants their way to keep the movement going. Soon they claimed to be a consensus.

Environmental extremists, notable politicians among them, then teamed up with movie, media and other liberal, environmentalist journalists to create this wild “scientific” scenario of the civilization threatening environmental consequences from Global Warming unless we adhere to their radical agenda. Now their ridiculous manipulated science has been accepted as fact and become a cornerstone issue for CNN, CBS, NBC, the Democratic Political Party, the Governor of California, school teachers and, in many cases, well informed but very gullible environmental conscientious citizens. Only one reporter at ABC has been allowed to counter the Global Warming frenzy with one 15 minutes documentary segment.

I do not oppose environmentalism. I do not oppose the political positions of either party. However, Global Warming, ie Climate Change, is not about environmentalism or politics. It is not a religion. It is not something you “believe in.” It is science; the science of meteorology. This is my field of life-long expertise. And I am telling you Global Warming is a non-event, a manufactured crisis and a total scam. I say this knowing you probably won’t believe a me, a mere TV weatherman, challenging a Nobel Prize, Academy Award and Emmy Award winning former Vice President of United States. So be it.

I have read dozens of scientific papers. I have talked with numerous scientists. I have studied. I have thought about it. I know I am correct. There is no run away climate change. The impact of humans on climate is not catastrophic. Our planet is not in peril. I am incensed by the incredible media glamour, the politically correct silliness and rude dismissal of counter arguments by the high priest of Global Warming.

In time, a decade or two, the outrageous scam will be obvious. As the temperature rises, polar ice cap melting, coastal flooding and super storm pattern all fail to occur as predicted everyone will come to realize we have been duped. The sky is not falling. And, natural cycles and drifts in climate are as much if not more responsible for any climate changes underway. I strongly believe that the next twenty years are equally as likely to see a cooling trend as they are to see a warming trend.

Christians and Muslims, placing a cross atop the St. John’s Church in Baghdad. They had taken the cross from storage and a man washed it before carrying it up to the dome.

Michael Yon today provides symbolic evidence of progress in Iraq: a Christian church re-opens, the cross is restored to its dome with Muslim help.

A Muslim man had invited the American soldiers from “Chosen” Company 2-12 Cavalry to the church, where I videotaped as Muslims and Christians worked and rejoiced at the reopening of St John’s, an occasion all viewed as a sign of hope.

The Iraqis asked me to convey a message of thanks to the American people. ” Thank you, thank you,” the people were saying. One man said, “Thank you for peace.” Another man, a Muslim, said “All the people, all the people in Iraq, Muslim and Christian, is brother.” The men and women were holding bells, and for the first time in memory freedom rang over the ravaged land between two rivers.

What are the democrats doing with their Congressional majority? Are they modifying the tax system to eliminate the Alternative Minimum Tax trap which is soon going to be nailing middle-class Americans? No. Are they taking steps to prevent the impending bankruptcy of Social Security? No. Are they considering making individual health insurance policies tax deductable? No.

They’re too busy arguing about impeaching Dick Cheney and deciding on whether Rep. Barney Frank’s new Employment Non-Discrimination Act ought to include not only the homosexual but also the transgendered.

AJStrata watches the map of Virginia change from red to purple, and wonders when the GOP is going to wise up and realize that Nativism has always been a losing political strategy in the United States.

We have had GOP Congressman in my areas of Northern Virginia for as long as I can remember, and now we don’t. It is not just the Iraq war. Northern VA has an enormous (and sometimes troublesome) immigrant population from below our southern border. But the area has people from all over the world, given the work done in downtown DC. So immigration and diversity of cultures and traditions is the norm overall. Herndon, one of the most visible flash points in the illegal immigration issue, is now possibly a very democrat place.

So how is being hardlined on long term immigrants benefitting the GOP here? We all agree we need to boot the criminals ASAP, get the rest background checked and processed into the above-the-table economy, and restrict all future immigration to be truly temporary and enforceable. Conservatives implode (and get nasty and testy) when we discuss the option of having long term, crime free immigrants pay fines and stay. Seems to be some sort of emotional issue with some. But I can see the results. Democrats win.

Democrats just took away decades-long GOP seats in areas of VA rife with illegal immigrants. If the GOP hardline won’t work here it won’t work in a lot of places. Not all, but too many to consider a governing majority. The problem is the long term illegals are interwoven into our society. They are neighbors or friends and teammates of our kids. They sit next to us in Church (OK, they would if I attended church). They are not usually or obviously criminals.

The GOP is attacking and maligning friends and neighbors to too many people who will vote against such posturing and are in sufficient numbers to move 5-8% of the vote and tip seats into Democrat hands. 5-8% of the population is not a large number, but when they switch sides or are repulsed away from one side that shift in voting can be like a political earth quake.

The same lemming-like strategy of political self-destruction worked marvelously in California. In Ronald Reagan’s day, California was a Republican bastion. Today, the largest block of electoral votes in the country can be relied upon to belong to the democrats and California sends two democrat senators to Washington. All because the GOP chose to make illegal immigration its key issue, thoroughly alienating working-class Hispanic voters.

Valerie Plame’s pal Larry Johnson posts a letter from “a group of distinguished intelligence and military officers, diplomats, and law enforcement professionals” to the Senate Judiciary Committee “strongly urging that (they) not send Mukasey’s nomination to the full Senate before he makes clear his view on waterboarding.”

If anyone ever cared to investigate who was involved in leaking national security information to the New York Times and Washington Post, I’d suggest waterboarding some of the people on this list of signatories.

Brent Cavan
Intelligence Analyst, Directorate of Intelligence, CIA

Ray Close
Directorate of Operations, CIA for 26 years—22 of them overseas; former Chief of Station, Saudi Arabia

Ed Costello
Counter-espionage, FBI

Michael Dennehy
Supervisory Special Agent for 32 years, FBI; U.S. Marine Corps for three years

Rosemary Dew
Supervisory Special Agent, Counterterrorism, FBI

Philip Giraldi
Operations officer and counter-terrorist specialist, Directorate of Operations, CIA

Michael Grimaldi
Intelligence Analyst, Directorate of Intelligence, CIA; Federal law enforcement officer

Mel Goodman
Division Chief, Directorate of Intelligence, CIA; Professor, National Defense University; Senior Fellow, Center for International Policy

Larry Johnson
Intelligence analysis and operations officer, CIA; Deputy Director, Office of Counter Terrorism, Department of State

Richard Kovar
Executive Assistant to the Deputy Director for Intelligence, CIA: Editor, Studies In Intelligence

Charlotte Lang
Supervisory Special Agent, FBI

W. Patrick Lang
U.S. Army Colonel, Special Forces, Vietnam; Professor, U.S. Military Academy, West Point; Defense Intelligence Officer for Middle East, Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA); founding director, Defense HUMINT Service

Lynne Larkin
Operations Officer, Directorate of Operations, CIA; counterintelligence; coordination among intelligence and crime prevention agencies; CIA policy coordination staff ensuring adherence to law in operations

Steve Lee
Intelligence Analyst for terrorism, Directorate of Intelligence, CIA

Jon S. Lipsky
Supervisory Special Agent, FBI

David MacMichael
Senior Estimates Officer, National Intelligence Council, CIA; History professor; Veteran, U.S. Marines (Korea)

Tom Maertens
Foreign Service Officer and Intelligence Analyst, Department of State; Deputy Coordinator for Counter-terrorism, Department of State; National Security Council (NSC) Director for Non-Proliferation

James Marcinkowski
Operations Officer, Directorate of Operations, CIA by way of U.S. Navy

Mary McCarthy
National Intelligence Officer for Warning; Senior Director for Intelligence Programs, National Security Council

Ray McGovern
Intelligence Analyst, Directorate of Intelligence, CIA; morning briefer, The President’s Daily Brief; chair of National Intelligence Estimates; Co-founder, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

Sam Provance
U.S. Army Intelligence Analyst, Germany and Iraq (Abu Ghraib); Whistleblower

Coleen Rowley
Special Agent and attorney, FBI; Whistleblower on the negligence that facilitated the attacks of 9/11.

Joseph Wilson
Foreign Service Officer, U.S. Ambassador and Director of Africa, National Security Council.

Valerie Plame Wilson
Operations Officer, Directorate of Operations

BBC:

US scientists say an animal found in Texas is not the chupacabra – or goat-sucker – of American myth, but a coyote with a hair loss problem.
DNA tests on the carcass found at a ranch south-east of San Antonio yielded a virtually identical match to coyote DNA, biologist Mike Forstner said.

The coyote was one of three found dead by rancher Phylis Canion this summer.

Central American myth has long spoken of a vampire-like creature that slays livestock by sucking out their blood.

The chupacabra is said to attack its victims at night, leaving a trail of carcasses with their throats torn out.

Mr Forstner said that he himself had assumed the creature brought in for testing at Texas State University was a domestic dog but “the DNA sequence is a virtually identical match to DNA from the coyote”.

Ms Canion and some of her neighbours discovered the 40-pound (18-kg) carcasses of three of the animals over four days in July outside her ranch in Cuero, 90 miles (145km) south-east of San Antonio.

She said she had saved the head of one of them to get it properly tested.

Additional hide samples have been taken to try to determine the cause of the animal’s hair loss, Mr Forstner said.

Original story.

Peggy Noonan rightly identifies the skepticism of ordinary Americans as a key obstacle to Hillary’s 2008 ambitions.

For a few years now I’ve thought the problem for the Democrats in general but for Mrs. Clinton in particular is not that America is against tax increases. They’ve seen eight years of big spending, of wars, of spiraling entitlements. They’ve driven by the mansions of the megarich and have no sympathy for hedge fund/movie producer/cosmetics empire heirs. They sense the system is rigged toward the heavily protected. They sense this because they’re not stupid.

The problem for Mrs. Clinton is not that people sense she will raise taxes. It’s that they don’t think she’ll raise them on the real and truly rich. The rich are her friends. They contribute to her, dine with her, have access to her. They have an army of accountants. They’re protected even from her.

But she can stick it to others, and in the way of modern liberalism for roughly half a century now, one suspects she’ll define affluence down. That she would hike taxes on people who make $150,000 a year.

But those “rich”—people who make $200,000 and have two kids and a mortgage and pay local and state taxes in, say, New Jersey—they don’t see themselves as rich. Because they’re not. They’re already carrying too much of the freight.

Followup: The Financial Times observes the even the democrats have begun to recognize the truth. Though democrats love class warfare, they’re really shooting at themselves.

A legislative proposal that was once on the fast track is suddenly dead. The Senate will not consider a plan to extract billions in extra taxes from megamillionaire hedge fund managers.

The decision by Senate majority leader Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat, surprised many Washington insiders, who saw the plan as appealing to the spirit of class warfare that infuses the Democratic party. Liberal disappointment in Mr Reid was palpable at media outlets such as USA Today, where an editorial chastised: “The Democrats, who control Congress and claim to represent the middle and lower classes, ought to be embarrassed.”

Far from embarrassing, this episode may reflect a dawning Democratic awareness of whom they really represent. For the demographic reality is that, in America, the Democratic party is the new “party of the rich”. More and more Democrats represent areas with a high concentration of wealthy households. Using Internal Revenue Service data, the Heritage Foundation identified two categories of taxpayers – single filers with incomes of more than $100,000 and married filers with incomes of more than $200,000 – and combined them to discern where the wealthiest Americans live and who represents them.

Democrats now control the majority of the nation’s wealthiest congressional jurisdictions. More than half of the wealthiest households are concentrated in the 18 states where Democrats control both Senate seats.

Acceptable in Fort Collins: A display called “Source of Life”

WorldNetDaily:

A special task force in a Colorado city has recommended banning red and green lights at the Christmas holiday because they fall among the items that are too religious for the city to sponsor.

“Some symbols, even though the Supreme Court has declared that in many contexts they are secular symbols, often still send a message to some members of the community that they and their traditions are not valued and not wanted. We don’t want to send that message,” Seth Anthony, a spokesman for the committee, told the Fort Collins, Colo., Coloradoan.

He said the recommended language does not specifically address Christmas trees by name, but the consensus was that they would not fall within acceptable decorations.

What will be allowed are white lights and “secular” symbols not associated “with any particular holiday” such as icicles, unadorned greenery and snowflakes, the task force said.

The group was made up of members of the city’s business and religious communities as well as representatives from some community groups. Members met for months to review the existing holiday display policy, which allowed white as well as multi-colored lights and wreaths and garlands.

In previous years, there also was a Christmas tree at the city’s Oak Street Plaza.

A vote on the proposal will be coming up before the city council on Nov. 20, officials said.

“As far as I’m concerned, the group ended up in a very fair place in which primarily secular symbols will be used on city property,” task force member Saul Hopper told the newspaper.

The existing holiday display rules were adopted in 2006 after a rabbi requested that the city display a menorah.

The only apparent exception to the completely secular rule would be at the Fort Collins Museum, where a “multicultural display” of symbols and objects would be collected to represent Diwali, Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, and Christmas among others.

“I expect criticism from people who feel like we are taking Christmas away. And I expect we will get criticism from people who think educational display endorses religions,” Anthony said. “(But) to the extent we can, recognizing that offending no one will be impossible, we want to be inclusive.”

City officials touted their own efforts.

“I am really delighted to see us taking this step,” Mayor Doug Hutchinson said when the task force was being assembled. “I think Fort Collins is a great city, and I think great cities are inclusionary.”

“Inclusionary” obviously means including Jewish holiday symbols, Hindu holiday symbols, and made-up holiday (Kwanzaa) symbols, but excluding traditional Christian holiday symbols.

Nick Rivera debunks Hizzoner’s campaign narrative.

It’s among the most well-known and often-implemented strategies in the universe of presidential politics: appeal to the party’s base during the primaries and tack back towards the center during the run-up to the general election. This process doesn’t necessarily dictate that the presidential candidate “flip-flop” on any of his or her positions. He or she merely emphasizes one set of policies for the partisans who will be voting in the presidential primaries and then, several months later, emphasizes a different set of policies for the American electorate at large.

However, in recent years, a somewhat different tactic has emerged as a favorite among presidential candidates: the art of flip-flopping by presidential candidates who staked out positions that were popular when running for statewide office but became politically inconvenient when faced with appealing to the party base in the run up to presidential primaries. ...

In yet another example of a politician advocating one position while running for state or local office and a completely different one upon running for president, Rudy Giuliani has decided that he now supports a very strict interpretation of the Second Amendment. While Giuliani’s critics have been quick to point out Giuliani’s sudden change of heart with regards to gun control, Giuliani’s defenders have argued that Giuliani’s positions are consistent with the principle of federalism—arguing that while he may have supported strict gun control laws for New York City, he believes that individual states have the right to reject such gun control laws.

Unfortunately for Giuliani and his supporters, Giuliani’s current “federalist” interpretation of the Second Amendment directly contradicts his gun control record as mayor of New York…

Read the whole thing.

Reuters:

Saudi Arabia executed on Friday an Egyptian man convicted of “sorcery”, desecrating the Muslim holy book and adultery, the official news agency said.

The Saudi Press Agency said Mustafa Ibrahim was put to death in Riyadh in a controversial case which has drawn criticism from rights activists.

It said Ibrahim had been accused by another foreign resident of practicing magic in order to separate him from his wife and said evidence had been found in his home, including books on black magic, a candle with an incantation “to summon devils” and “foul-smelling herbs”.

“He confessed to adultery with a woman and desecrating the Koran by placing it in the bathroom,” the agency said.

Saudi media first reported the case in April, saying mosque worshippers had complained that a pharmacist in the northern desert town of Arar had placed copies of the Koran in washrooms. No accusation of adultery was mentioned at the time.

Clerics of Saudi Arabia’s austere form of Islam, known as Wahhabism, take accusations of sorcery seriously and recently held a conference in Riyadh on how to combat it.

J.R. Dunn, at American Thinker, discusses the Left’s successful propaganda campaign on so-called “Torture.” The Left controls the narrative in matters of this kind by using a combination of its domination of the MSM and emotionalism to shout down dissent.

Torture” is one of many current topics of significance that have been abandoned to the left. Leftist commentators have been allowed to set the terms, make the definitions, and generally run the argument without much in the way of serious opposition or debate.

No small number of elements of the War on Terror have suffered the same treatment. An offhand list would include profiling, wiretapping, border security, and rendition. All have been hijacked and turned into battering rams to support a particular left-wing interpretation of the War on Terror. The GOP has been unable to respond for a number of reasons: they’ve been blindsided, have been busy fending off corruption investigations, or simply couldn’t or wouldn’t defend certain obvious positions. As a result, the left has been able to peddle its version of events with near impunity.

“Torture” is probably the most egregious of these cases. That’s the explanation for the sneer quotes. Because, quite simply, in much of the debate over “torture”, we’re not talking about actual torture at all. We’re talking about rough treatment, harshness, or coercion.

The American left has defined these upward until they mean the same thing as torture, all as a part of their efforts to undermine the War on Terror in general. The core of this stance is the assertion that a slap on the head, several days without sleep, or hearing Rage Against the Machine played at full volume is fully the equivalent of torture in the classic sense. (Well… maybe we should reconsider that last….)

Of course, it’s no such thing. Torture is easily defined as physical assault carried out over a prolonged period against a victim under complete control and holding the possibility of permanent physical or psychic damage. Official legal terminology contains the proviso that torture consists of acts that “revolt the conscience” We can also add, by way of Dashiell Hammett, that such actions must have “threat of death behind them”. If they contain these elements, they are torture. If not, they’re something less. Not necessarily something justifiable or commendable, but not torture either. (Another method of judging these actions is to ask whether the activity would excite an individual like Mengele or Yezhov.)

The left has succeeded, through a relentless media campaign (is there any other kind?) in obscuring this distinction. According to the latest criteria, torture is anything unpleasant that occurs to a prisoner while in American custody. (Overseas it’s different. It’s very, very difficult—almost impossible, in fact—for any developing or left-of-center regime to commit torture, no matter what they do to their prisoners. Unless, as in the rendition uproar, the U.S. is somehow involved.)

Read the whole thing.

Joel Stein wrote up a pre-fabricated all-purpose Ann Coulter column, including parenthetical spaces where Ann Coulter herself could supply the necessary inflammatory mot juste. He then sent it to her, and—sure enough—Ann Coulter obligingly filled in the blanks.

Liberals Are Wusses

By Ann Coulter

Can liberals really be that easily offended? Are their beliefs so fragile, their emotions so unstable, their [body part, plural] EYELASHES so [adjective] PRETTY, that my offhand remarks threaten to destroy their entire belief system?

Maybe this is because liberals don’t have a solid belief system. They don’t believe in the Bible. They don’t believe in the Constitution (you know, that piece of paper that Bill Clinton thought was for cleaning up [something messy] DEMOCRATS’ POSITION ON NATIONAL SECURITY after he [verb, past tense] JITTERBUGGED. And they don’t believe in [book] “JONATHAN LIVINGSTON SEAGULL.” So instead they believe in whatever feels good, whether that is engaging in [physical therapy] PILATES in the Oval Office, putting [noun] PUPPIES up their [body part] FINGERNAILS or spending [large sum of money] $1 ZILLION on [beauty regimen] FACE-WASHING like [lack of manliness] LIBERAL [male democrat] HILLARY CLINTON did when he visited [European city] LUXEMBOURG.

They may have no idea about good and evil—how could a group that hates [morally unimpeachable act] FEEDING THE POOR, thinks it’s a crime to place the Ten Commandments in [place] BOISE, IDAHO, and defines marriage as a union between two [noun, plural] BABY SEALS?—but they sure are good at telling people what you shouldn’t say. And what they don’t want said is anything that resembles truth. So they’re disgusted when I point out that the [Indian tribe] NAVAJO practice of celebrating [something gross] DEMOCRATS’ POSITION ON ABORTION is endangering our children, or the fact that [percentage] 20% of [immigrant group] LATVIANS commit [horrendous crime] INCOME TAX within [number] SEVEN days of coming to our country illegally by [mode of transportation] GULFSTREAM JET.

When I was on [obscure cable news show] ANYTHING ON MSNBC, I mentioned to fellow guest [grumpy old white man] WALTER CRONKITE that, scientifically, men are [any number] 47 times more likely to accomplish [an incredible feat] A LIBERAL LISTENING POLITELY TO AN OPPOSING POINT OF VIEW than women, who should stay at home and focus on [obsolete chore] BUTTER CHURNING. When [New York Times columnist] FRANK RICH heard this, he bored himself writing [large number] A KAZILLION words about it, referring to me as a skinny, blond [adjective] PEPPY [animal] BEAGLE. The point here is that he called me skinny and blond.

So let the Democrats be offended by me. I consider their every objection a testament to my righteousness. After all, this is a party that’s about to choose [democratic presidential candidate] B. HUSSEIN OBAMA as their nominee—a person whose chief of staff is [made-up name] JOHN DOE, who spoke at rallies cosponsored by the [radical liberal group] WEATHERMEN protesting the [beloved institution] FOX NEWS CHANNEL, in which members [violent action] THROAT-SLIT the [beloved symbol] AMERICAN FLAG and supported guilty [cop killer who’s first name is Mumia] MUMIA ABU JAMAL. So while my Godless, liberal detractors are in hell with the [non-Christian group] MASONS, [ethnic group] ALEUTS, [occupation, plural] DOCTORS and [deceased Democrat] MIKE GRAVEL, I’ll be in heaven dying my hair and not eating. Because the one person I haven’t offended is God. And [a conservative or book publisher] RUSH LIMBAUGH.

Kevin Drum mockingly proposes that readers pick the five “All-time Wingnuttiest” ( i.e. the worst from a leftist perspective) blog posts from his own list of fourteen nominees.

Inevitably, he includes some not-especially-interesting (Gotcha!) Iraq War posts:

Glenn Reynolds

and Steven Den Beste
(Cut and paste the link to read the post: http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2003/03/Itsthewaiting.shtml),

some a bit too eccentric:

Pam Geller proving that she can’t sing—though she does dance well—,

Ann Althouse obsessing over Jessica Valenti’s breasts),

and a few not really here or there, but curiously enough he actually does nominate some real winners, some important conservative blog posts of unusual merit and long term interest:

Bill Whittle (after Katrina): “Tribes”
Despite its embarrassing public display of warrior selfidentification, Whittle’s Tribes is a truly classic post which says something fundamental, real, and important.

Lee Siegel: “The Origins of Blogofascism”
-This one is a landmark post in the history of the blogosphere, identifying a serious problem and pathology.

Ben Domenech: “Pachyderms in the Mist”
-Don’t listen to him at your peril, democrats.

Kim du Toit: “The Pussification of the Western Male”
-Sure it’s a rant, but it’s a fine rant.

Michelle Malkin: “The Defeatocrats Cheer”
-Michelle Malkin is very cute, and she can cheerlead.

But, in his effort to pick the all-time greats, Kevin Drum did manage to overlook the single most important blog post of all-time:

Charles Johnson: Bush Guard Documents: Forged

And, undeservedly I thought, he overlooked my own:
Gone to Live on a Farm

The Daily Mail offers a glimpse into what kind of policies Labour may have in store for Britain in future.

Christmas should be downgraded in favour of festivals from other religions to improve race relations, says an explosive report.

Labour’s favourite think-tank says that because it would be hard to “expunge” Christmas from the national calendar, ‘even-handedness’ means public organisations must start giving other religions equal footing.

The leaked findings of its investigation into identity, citizenship and community cohesion also propose:

• “Birth ceremonies”, at which state and parents agree to “work in partnership” to bring up children

• Action to “ensure access” for ethnic minorities to “largely white” countryside

• An overhaul of Britain’s “imperial” honours system

• Bishops being thrown out of the House of Lords

• An end to “sectarian” religious education

• Flying flags other than the Union Jack.

The report by the Institute for Public Policy Research was commissioned when Nick Pearce, now head of public policy at Downing Street, was its director.

IPPR has shaped many Labour policies, including ID cards, bin taxes and road pricing.

The report robustly defends multiculturalism – the idea that different communities should not be forced to integrate but should be allowed to maintain their own culture and identities.

2:00 video —Hmm, this video has disappeared from Google!

Well, OK, it can still be found here: link

The United States has conducted for several years a ridiculous, melodramatic, and embarrassing debate about the supposed “torture” of murderous terrorist prisoners. Most of the controversial methods of brutality denounced by many of the blogosphere’s most prominent sissies in alliance with the high-minded mahatmas of the mainstream media, obligatory standing, shaking, and face slaps, were punishments routinely doled out in the elementary school I attended by nuns.

The most controversial, of course, was a technique not actually favored by the Sisters of St Casimir (presumably because it would have been too messy), i.e. water-boarding, a form of negative reinforcement in which a supine prisoner has a cloth or a piece of cellophane placed over his face and then gets water poured over it.

Water-boarding has been variously imagined and discussed in the media. Initial reports pretty much equated water-boarding on the scale of man’s inhumanity to man with the rack-and-pincers or the death of a thousand cuts. So terrible was the simulated experience of drowning, press reports breathlessly observed, that the fiercest and most fanatical jihadi could be reduced to a quivering pile of jelly in a matter of minutes, eager to tell interrogators all he knew. The terrible Khalid Sheikh Mohammed allegedly won the admiration of interrogators by holding out for two and a half minutes.

A recent journalistic stunt in which Kaj Larsen paid two former SERE instructors $800 to waterboard him for 24 minutes tends to undermine that earlier perspective.

10:03 video

Larsen is obviously far from the toughest hombre who ever came down the pike, and he not only endured being waterboarded voluntarily for a lot longer than Khalid Sheik Mohammed, he is seen laughing at its conclusion. Kaj Larsen’s exercise in moral instruction also backfires by revealing to everyone that US military personnel routinely experience waterboarding during SERE training.

And now, after considerable national, international, and Senatorial fuss, we learn that only three al-Qaeda terrorists were ever waterboarded, no waterboarding has occurred since 2003, and that the CIA banned waterboarding some time ago.

What all this demonstrates is that contemporary bourgeois life in Western societies is so safe and so non-violent that a profound physical cowardice, an exaggerated fear of violence inflicted by others upon one’s person, is a common characteristic of members of the Western intelligentsia. That cowardice becomes for many an incapacitating phobia, which impairs their judgement and destroys all sense of proportion.

The Edwards campaign takes a well-aimed shot at Hillary.

1:23 video

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) issued a press release on October 30 denouncing a mandatory program reeducating students in politically correct thinking.

The following day much of the conservative portion of the Blogosphere, including this blog, reported and commented on the story.

And, yesterday, November 1, Patrick Harker, president of the University of Delaware, announced the cessation of the thought-reform program.

The University of Delaware strives for an environment in which all people feel welcome to learn, and which supports intellectual curiosity, critical thinking, free inquiry and respect for the views and values of an increasingly diverse population. The University is committed to the education of students as citizens, scholars and professionals and their preparation to contribute creatively and with integrity to a global society. The purpose of the residence life educational program is to support these commitments.

While I believe that recent press accounts misrepresent the purpose of the residential life program at the University of Delaware, there are questions about its practices that must be addressed and there are reasons for concern that the actual purpose is not being fulfilled. It is not feasible to evaluate these issues without a full and broad-based review.

Upon the recommendation of Vice President for Student Life Michael Gilbert and Director of Residence Life Kathleen Kerr, I have directed that the program be stopped immediately. No further activities under the current framework will be conducted.

Vice President Gilbert will work with the University Faculty Senate and others to determine the proper means by which residence life programs may support the intellectual, cultural and ethical development of our students.

The major argument in the recent democrat candidates debate was New York Governor Spitzer’s plan to issue driver’s licenses to illegal aliens, not who would be quickest to declare defeat and withdraw from Iraq.

The democrats may be too late. Andrew Bolt declares that the war in Iraq has been won, and he believes that he can show that it was worth it.

There is a reason Iraq has almost disappeared as an election issue.

Here it is: The battle is actually over. Iraq has been won. ...

Just 27 American soldiers were killed in action in Iraq in October – the lowest monthly figure since March last year. (This is a provisional figure and may alter over the next week.)

The number of Iraqi civilians killed last month – mostly by Islamist and fascist terrorists – was around 760, according to Iraqi Government sources.

That is still tragically high, but the monthly toll has plummeted since January’s grim total of 1990.

What measures of success do critics of Iraq’s liberation now demand?

Violence is falling fast. Al Qaida has been crippled.

The Shiites, Kurds and Marsh Arabs no longer face genocide.

What’s more, the country has stayed unified. The majority now rules.

Despite that, minority Sunni leaders are co-operating in government with Shiite ones.

There is no civil war. The Kurds have not broken away. Iran has not turned Iraq into its puppet.

And the country’s institutions are getting stronger. The Iraqi army is now at full strength, at least in numbers.

The country has a vigorous media. A democratic constitution has been adopted and backed by a popular vote.

Election after election has Iraqis turning up in their millions.

Add it all up. Iraq not only remains a democracy, but shows no sign of collapse.

I repeat: the battle for a free Iraq has been won. ...

But if Iraq is “won”, why are so many Iraqis still dying?

Because some of the killers are just criminals, or are trying to kill their way to a piece of the action, or are – inevitably after so much cruelty and oppression – settling scores.

Others are agents of Iran, which wants to make America pay and Iraq obey.

And more – and the worst – are fanatics who just want to kill for their creed, and are killing Iraqis as they are killing Pakistanis, Algerians, Egyptians, Israelis and anyone else in the way of their jihad.

Iraq remains an ugly place, with lethal hatreds, yet none of these killers are winning and Iraq will not fall to them.

Consider: Iraq’s official estimate of civilian deaths from violence is now about 25 a day.

In South Africa, with twice the population, the official murder toll is 52 a day. That’s a rate of killing equal to Iraq’s.

Do you think those murders will topple South Africa?

And does anyone say of South Africa that these killings just prove freedom was not worth it? ...

Add them all up, and even by the most conservative count you see Saddam did not just threaten the West, but cost the lives of more than 100 Muslims a day, every day, for the 24 years of his barbaric rule.

That’s four times more than are being killed in Iraq today, often by Saddam’s heirs and Saddam’s like.

Was Iraq worth it? Yes. It stands, it stays, and the winning of Iraq was worth it, indeed.

radio broadcast

This kind of seriousness and honesty, his rising above cheap partisanship like this, represents a side of Senator Schumer I’ve never seen before.

via Glenn Reynolds.

Ron Rosenbaum writes at PJM:

So I was down in DC this past weekend and happened to run into a well-connected media person, who told me flatly, unequivocally that “everyone knows” The LA Times was sitting on a story, all wrapped up and ready to go about what is a potentially devastating sexual scandal involving a leading Presidential candidate. “Everyone knows” meaning everyone in the DC mainstream media political reporting world. “Sitting on it” because the paper couldn’t decide the complex ethics of whether and when to run it. The way I heard it they’d had it for a while but don’t know what to do. The person who told me )not an LAT person) knows I write and didn’t say “don’t write about this”.

Mickey Kaus follows:

Rosenbaum’s Political Physics: Do you ever sense there is some large mass of dark matter, an unseen Scandal Star, the gravitational pull of which is warping the coverage of what seems, on the surface, a pretty dull presidential race? I do. So does Ron Rosenbaum. I thought the Dark Star was the Edwards affair allegation. But Rosenbaum says “everyone in the elite Mainstream media” knows about another juicy scandal that the LAT is supposedly sitting on. I guess this is proof that I’m not in the elite, because I don’t know what he’s talking about. ... My vestigial Limbaugh gland tells me it must involve a Democrat, or else the Times would have found a reason to print it. ... P.S.: If it’s just Richardson, that will be very disappointing.

Luke Ford has a guess. And Atlas Shrugged is thinking along the same lines (with picture). And Big Head says it’s quite true.

Observer profile of Huma Abedin

August Vogue picture

The Daily – Nirali:

I’m not sure Hillary could walk out the door without Huma.”—Mandy Grunwald, Clinton advisor.

“Huma does make the trains run on time.”—Bob Barnett, the Clinton’s longtime personal lawyer.

“I don’t know if it’s a chicken-or-the-egg thing—Hillary affecting Huma or the other way around—but together they work.”—Mary Steenburgen, longtime Hillary friend and actress.

Can’t one just imagine all the things that could come out in a Giuliani vs. Hillary election campaign?

Michael Yon has a bit of a landmark item today:

Al Qaeda in Iraq is defeated,” according to Sheik Omar Jabouri, spokesman for the Iraqi Islamic Party and a member of the widespread and influential Jabouri Tribe. Speaking through an interpreter at a 31 October meeting at the Iraqi Islamic Party headquarters in downtown Baghdad, Sheik Omar said that al Qaeda had been “defeated mentally, and therefore is defeated physically,” referring to how clear it has become that the terrorist group’s tactics have backfired. Operatives who could once disappear back into the crowd after committing an increasingly atrocious attack no longer find safe haven among the Iraqis who live in the southern part of Baghdad. They are being hunted down and killed. Or, if they are lucky, captured by Americans. ...

During the meeting, another member of the Iraqi Islamic Party said that al Qaeda has changed its strategy now that fomenting civil war between Sunni and Shia has backfired. Al Qaeda has shifted targets, now trying to generate friction between tribes. This time, however, the tribes are onto the game early, and they are not playing.

It is beginning to be possible to wonder if defeat is still attainable by the American left.