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Hat tip to John Ray.

The New York Times reports that the process of bringing pouting spooks to justice for disclosing vital National Security programs to journalists in an effort to gain partisan political advantage is finally underway.

A federal grand jury has begun investigating the leak of classified information about intelligence programs to the press and has subpoenaed a former National Security Agency employee who claims to have witnessed illegal activity while working at the agency.

The former employee, Russell D. Tice, 44, of Linthicum, Md., said two F.B.I. agents approached on Wednesday and handed him the subpoena, which requires him to testify next Wednesday before a grand jury in Alexandria, Va.

The subpoena, which Mr. Tice made public on Friday, says the investigation covers “possible violation of federal criminal laws involving the unauthorized disclosure of classified information.” It specifically mentions the Espionage Act.

Tice was still spouting combative complaints about “persecution of whistle-blowers.” We’ll see if Tice keeps up that sort of talk after he’s read the charges on his indictment, and is aware of just what kind of sentences he is facing.

Background on Tice here.

Two old Yale Political Union debaters clashed at Senate hearings on John Bolton’s confirmation as UN Ambassador.

And John Bolton. former Conservative Party Chairman, Yale Class of 1970, got the better of John Kerry, former Liberal Party Chairman, Yale Class of 1966.

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BREAKING NEWS

AP reports that the government of Lebanon has announced Hezbollah’s acceptance of a peace proposal:

Hezbollah politicians, while expressing reservations, have joined their critics in the government in agreeing to a peace package that includes strengthening an international force in south Lebanon and disarming the guerrillas, the government said.

Israel should finish the job.

Captain Ed quotes the translation of captured Iraqi document No. ISGQ-2005-00022470:

On Moharram 10th (Arabic calendar) [14 March 2003], prior to US/allied invasion to Iraq, fifty (50) Iraqi trucks entered Syria as convoys (or groups), I met some the drivers of those trucks, they got no idea about the content of their trucks.
The loads basically came from some where in Baghdad, Iraqi intelligence were escorting the loads. During their tripe, those truck drivers were stopped and asked frequently by the intelligence officers about whether or not they got any idea about the content of their loads, the divers replied “we have no idea”, then the officers would say “thank you”.

Upon their arrival to Deayr Ezoor city/ Syria, the drivers were ordered to get down, elements from Syrian intelligence got into the trucks, they took the trucks to big barracks for downloading.

After that; Iraqi drivers got their trucks back, they got $200 as a reward.

The drivers told me that it was their second time to bring such secret shipment; the first shipment was Moharram 1st.

The definite account of the high school reunion. The author’s was held in Fargo.

As wine ages better than beer, so did the women look better than the men. Sometimes the intervening years appeared to have absolutely no effect whatsoever, and you wonder what Black arts had been employed to keep them looking so astonishingly youthful. Then you run into the Class Stoner, who was missing most of the up-front teeth and had facial lines of a sun-baked octogenarian crone, and you realize the truth: of course, they cast a spell on him back in high school, and feast on his life essence. At least he seems okay with that.

Excessive CO2 emissions must have impacted Pluto. Quick, let’s send Al Gore to investigate.

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This is a good one.

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Chris Anderson web-site.

Fjordman argues that the left’s swooning capitulation to Islamic demands for suppression of free speech constitutes the greatest erosion of democratic practice in the world’s advanced democracies since WW2.

The less control the authorities have with Muslims, the more control they want to exercise over non-Muslims. As problems in Europe get worse, which they will, the EU will move in an increasingly repressive direction until it either becomes a true, totalitarian entity or falls apart. This strange mix of powerful censorship of public debate, yet little control over public law and order, has by some been labelled anarcho-tyranny.

While Islamic groups in Britain openly brag about how they are going to subdue the country by violent means or call for beheading those insulting Islam, Bryan Cork, 49, of Carlisle, Cumbria, in the Lake District, was sentenced to six months in jail for standing outside a mosque shouting, “Proud to be British,” and “Go back to where you came from.” One British court ruled that even use of the word “immigrant” as an insult could amount to proof of racial hostility.

In Belgium, a Turkish-born Catholic priest, Père Samuel, has been prosecuted for “incitement to racist hatred” by the Belgian Centre for Equal Opportunities and Opposition to Racism (CEOOR), because of a remark he made in a 2002 television interview…

Writer Oriana Fallaci has been indicted by a judge in her native Italy for “vilification” of Islam, because of a book she wrote called The Force of Reason.

I would shoot my own mother if she went in coveys and had a good strong flight.

-Ernest Hemingway, Letter to Robert M. Coates, 5 November, 1932, in Hemingway and the Mechanism of Fame, Matthew J. Bruccoli (ed.) 2006.

Dr. Demarche, at Austin Bay, identifies the problems attendant upon responses by states to attacks by non-state entities.

Israel is not at war with the state of Lebanon; it is at war with a “non-state actor” in the parlance (Hezbollah), which happens to be in Lebanon. This is a fairly new concept in the era of the modern state. Barbarians, for example, may have besieged ancient Rome, but at the time the “state” was a minority. Today the state system is firmly entrenched, and the “barbarians” are largely within. My question is this, now what?

Groups such as al Qaeda, Hezbollah and others cross borders at will, their memberships are ideologically homogeneous, but diverse in nationality. Efforts to destroy these organizations are bound to cross multiple borders, as we have already seen, something for which international law and the so-called international community (which supported Israel’s withdrawal from the very territories that are now the launch points for cross border attacks by terrorists) are woefully unprepared. Should you have any doubt of this I offer the talks in Rome this week as proof. Those engaged in finding a solution to the current state of affairs should keep one thought in the back of their minds: this will not be the last time the world will have to face such an event.

Traditional methods of sanction appear to be non-applicable to entities such as these- how do states sanction organizations that transcend borders and are privately funded? No mechanism exists to hold non-state actors accountable for their actions, even though they now have the potential to cause the same, or even greater, level of destruction than do many states.

Global policy maker must shift their thinking. Al Qaeda, Hezbollah and the like are not organizations that can be “contained”, they do not field armies that can be squared off against and defeated. In a way they are reminiscent of Mao’s idea that “the people are like water and the army is like fish”, but these fish swim in every sea. The current battle may rage in Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah, but the bottom line is that this is a battle between a state and a non-state actor, and the world is not prepared to deal with this new reality, even today. Let’s hope those working to settle the current battle keep their eyes on this bigger picture, too.