Basilica of San Petronio, Bologna

Guiseppe Pisanu, Interior Minister of Italy, announced that security forces prevented two Islamic terrorist attacks, scheduled to occur directly prior to the upcoming Italian elections. One attack targeted the Milan subway system; the second was aimed at Bologna’s 14th century Basilica of San Petronio, whose circa 1415 fresco of The Last Judgement by Giovanni da Modena

visualizes an uncomplimentary final fate for the Prophet Mohammed: bound to a rock in Hell, being clawed by demons.

Mahound has been getting what’s coming to him in Bologna for nearly six centuries so far, whether his infatuated and fanatical disciples like it or not, and it seems that the artists of Christendom, in Italy at least (if not in Borders) will continue to be able to express their opinions of the prophet for some time to come.
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We previously published another image of the painting. And we too have consigned Mohammed to Hell (Ã la Dante and Gustave Doré), just go to our right column button links and click:

Ann Coulter in Woodstock

From Lloyd Grove‘s gossip column in the New York Daily News:

“Would you rather sleep with Ann Coulter or Dianne Feinstein?” Elle magazine (asked Alec Baldwin) in a raunchy interview.

“I gotta go with Feinstein,” Kim Basinger’s ex answers. “With Coulter, we’d have sex and I’d have to jump out the window. I wouldn’t even get dressed.”

Yesterday, Coulter told Lowdown: “That’s the only reason I can think of for wanting to have sex with Alec Baldwin.”

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Hat tip to LGF.

Article II, Section 1. The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.
— Constitution of the United States .
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I’m not going to repeat the big news story of the day, except to note that documents released today, in a filing by the defense in the I. Lewis Libby case, indicate that Scooter Libby had the president’s permission to release to the press information contained in a certain previously classified National Intelligence Estimate.

The Left was jumping for joy today. The ebullient Andrew Sullivan ran the story under the headline, BUSH NAILED.

One so hates to spoil the little rascals’ fun, but the left’s joy, and fondly imagined hope for future legal havoc based on all of this, rests on a fundamental misunderstanding of the US Constitution.

There is no such thing as classified information which the President of the United States could potentially be prosecuted for publishing on the front page of the New York Times.

The president is the chief executive, the head of the entire Executive Branch. The Executive Branch of the US Government has no power to do anything, but by the will of the president. If any document or information is classified, it is classified by presidential authority extended down a chain of command.

The only purpose for information to be classified is to assist the president in defending the United States and in implementing his own policies. In a circumstance in which it were to the advantage of the president to declassify some document, or piece of information, in order to defend his policies in domestic political debate, it is completely within the competence of the president to classify or declassify either at will. And it would not be in the least surprising, if a president delegated the same authority on some occasions, at least, to the vice president, or even to the vice president’s chief of staff.

There is a tradition at Caltech that a Spanish-American War cannon, the property of Fleming House (one of its student residental houses), is fired to mark a number of important events.

Twenty years ago, students from Caltech’s in-state rival Harvey Mudd stole the Fleming House cannon, gaining national news coverage, and undying glory, for their feat. The cannon was returned to Caltech after about two months.

It was anticipated that the current generation of Harvey Mudd students would try to repeat the theft of the Caltech Cannon on the 20th Anniversary of the original heist, but more enterprising rivals of Caltech from MIT struck first.

The cannon is in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the web-site of a bogus moving company, “Howe & Ser” triumphantly displays the cannon now sporting an MIT class ring.

Convicted terrorist Ilych Ramirez Sanchez, known world-wide as “Carlos the Jackal,” though serving a life sentence, was permitted by the enlightened government of France to give an interview in 2004 broadcast by French M6 television.

In that interview, Sanchez argued that his crimes were justified and that there were no innocent victims of terrorism. He also expressed satisfaction over the September 11 attacks in the United States and allegedly laughed that “the Great Satan got it up the arse.”

French prosecutors sought a fine of E20,000 ($34,022) for these remarks. But, at the end of the judicial proceedings, French courts only fined him E5000 ($8505), finding that his arguing that terrorism was justified did constitute a crime under French law, but his expressions of pleasure at the Al Qaeda attacks on the United States represented only a personal reaction, and were not justiciable.

Guardian – Telegraph (Australia) – Reuters

Andrew Sullivan (foreign transplant, defector from Conservatism, and spokesperson for a special perspective) gloatingly took the occasion of former House Majority Leader Tom Delay’s announcement to rub it in, titling his little screed “ding_dong” (the witch is dead) in archest friend-of-Dorothy style:

You know it’s bad for the GOP when National Review and Instapundit barely mention the big news of the day.

From some reason, whenever I read Andrew Sullivan, the famous scene in The Maltese Falcon in which Sam Spade gives Joel Cairo a lesson in manners has a tendency to spring to mind.

The Telegraph reports:

A senior lieutenant to Osama bin Laden has told US interrogators that the al-Qa’eda leader’s big mouth was a security liability.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed also complained that the schemes bin Laden approved lacked destructive ambition….

..Mohammed, held in American custody at an unknown location since his capture in Pakistan three years ago, portrays himself as a brilliant terrorist manager.

Throughout the discussion, he is almost contemptuous of the wealthy bin Laden, who held the purse strings.

According to Mohammed, bin Laden lacked inspiration and vision. The Saudi failed to understand the basic security requirements of terrorist plots, such as keeping silent about impending attacks. Mohammed cites bin Laden’s decision to inform a group of visitors to his Afghan headquarters that he was about to launch a major attack on American interests.

Then he told trainee terrorists at the al-Farooq training camp “to pray for the success of a major operation involving 20 martyrs”.

Mohammed and a fellow terrorist manager, Mohammed Atef, who was later killed in an American air attack, were so concerned that they asked bin Laden to shut up.

The men “were concerned about this lack of discretion and urged bin Laden not to make additional comments about the plot”.

Mayor Thomas D’Alesandro, Jr. in backseat of car with daughter Nancy and wife Nancy. Photo from 1948. Courtesy of the D’Alesandro family via the Baltimore Sun.

When the democrats retake the majority of the House of Representatives, San Francisco’s own Nancy Pelosi will be Speaker.

Last Sunday’s Chronicle‘s puff piece describes Nancy Pelosi’s carefully constructed network of political obligation, inadvertently revealing the essence of how it’s all supposed to work:

Pelosi’s prowess for building this type of political power stretches back to the dynasty built by her father at a time when political capital came in the form of favors, not campaign cash.

Her father, Tommy D’Alesandro Jr., was a New Deal Democrat who served five terms in Congress and three as mayor of Baltimore. He enlisted his seven children in building the “favor file” that served as the core of his political machine.

Neighbors who were short on food, out of work or otherwise down on their luck would knock on the door at all hours, and whoever’s turn it was to staff the front office would help them find food, work or whatever they needed.

“During the leaner years, we had in our back room the equivalent of a soup kitchen,” said Pelosi’s brother, Tommy D’Alesandro III, who also eventually served a term as Baltimore mayor. “It was dealing with human nature in the raw. Any kind of problem, we were there.”

Family members would note the name of the constituent and the services rendered on yellow legal paper to be transferred to the favor file, a box of index cards.

The cards were pulled into service when it was time to organize for the next election.

Recalled D’Alesandro: “We’d call people up and say, ‘Mrs. So-and-So, we did this favor for you and now my father is running for re-election. We’d like to borrow your car to get people out to vote’ or ‘you can come lick stamps’ or ‘you can organize a coffee klatch.’ ”

Fifty years later, Pelosi’s staff keeps her modern day equivalent of the favor file in a political data base program in the headquarters of the Democratic Congressional Committee. It’s a list of 29,432 loyal donors that Pelosi has built one personal contact at a time.

This is the democrat model for life in America. Nancy Pelosi lives in the grand mansion atop Pacific Heights, and the rest of us come, desperate and hat in hand, to the back door, begging for a job, a favor, or maybe for just a meal. Lady Bountiful Pelosi comes to the door, graciously dispenses to us our alms, and our names are duly recorded in the great card file. Now we owe our livelihood, our personal independence, our vote, unspecified other future services to be arranged, and possibly our immortal souls, to the party machine. Nancy Pelosi is royalty. The rest of us are serfs.

Crewmen passing 40mm rounds on board US Navy ship in 1945

Robert Colla (a Ventura, California Adult Education instructor) came across what must have been a WWII-era 40mm Bofors Anti-Aircraft round “years ago” while hunting, brought it home as a souvenir, and proceeded to use it as a paperweight.

On Monday the Ventura County Star reports, Mr. Colla brought that paperweight down on an insect he found crawling across his desk with disastrous results.

Well-deserved congratulations are in order to Edward Morrissey of Captain’s Quarters who has just been named 2005 Blogger of the Year by This Week Magazine. The previous year’s honorees were the authors of Power-Line, so Mr. Morrissey is joining some very distinguished company. Paul Mingeroff was present to pass the torch, and added his own congratulations.

A 37 year old Briton has shattered all previously known records of indulgence by seeking treatment after doing an alleged 40,000 hits of MDA (Ecstasy, to you) in the course of the last nine years. The poor fellow “suffers from severe physical and mental health side-effects, including extreme memory problems, paranoia, hallucinations and depression. He also suffers from painful muscle rigidity around his neck and jaw which often prevents him from opening his mouth.” But he also smoked so much dope, it’s pretty hard to tell what it was that messed him up.

Published in the Philadelhia Daily News, from John A. Lucas, a lawyer in Knoxville, Tenn., who is a West Point graduate and was an infantry platoon leader in Vietnam, where he earned four Bronze Stars.

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Hat tip to Brylun at YARGB.