advises a football song often sung at the little school in Cambridge.

Sunday’s New York Times suggests that Harvard’s desire to become competitive in Ivy League basketball recently may have been fierce enough to have produced violations of NCAA rules.

Harvard has never won an Ivy League title in men’s basketball and has not reached the N.C.A.A. tournament since 1946. This season, the team won only 8 of its first 28 games. Like all the universities in the Ivy League, Harvard does not award athletic scholarships.

Yet the group of six recruits expected to join the team next season is rated among the nation’s 25 best. This is partly because Harvard Coach Tommy Amaker, who starred at Duke and coached in the Big East and Big Ten conferences, has set his sights on top-flight recruits. It is also because Harvard is willing to consider players with a lower academic standing than previous staff members said they were allowed to. Harvard has also adopted aggressive recruiting tactics that skirt or, in some cases, may even violate National Collegiate Athletic Association rules.

Harvard’s efforts in basketball underscore the increasingly important role that success in high-profile sports plays at even the most elite universities. In the race to become competitive in basketball, Harvard’s new approach could tarnish the university’s sterling reputation.

Two athletes who said they had received letters from Harvard’s admissions office saying they would most likely be accepted have described tactics that may violate N.C.A.A. rules, including visits from a man who worked out with them shortly before he was hired by Harvard to be an assistant coach.

Read the whole thing.

Crab Fu 1:08 video

I don’t know that he had a practicable way to secure that cage to the truck bed, but I expect he wished he did.

Via Gwynnie.

The Telegraph has an amusing story on the rise of eco-snobbery.

What was it, this frisson that passed between the young woman behind the counter at Pret A Manger and me? It wasn’t flirtation, exactly. It was more conspiratorial than that. A knowing look. A social judgment shared.

As she asked me if I wanted a plastic bag for my two items – a (wild) salmon sandwich and a banana – the man at the head of the queue next to mine was asked the same question by another assistant. He had a sandwich and an apple. The point is, I said no. He said yes. That was when the look was exchanged.

That, I am ashamed to admit, was the moment I felt superior, if only by one degree, if only for a second. The man had committed a faux pas. He had transgressed an unwritten ethical code. He had fallen foul of the new morality, which actually, if you think about it, is also the new snobbery.

It is apparent everywhere. In a restaurant the other night our companions asked us if we wanted sparkling water or whether we were happy with a jug of tap. The clue to the correct answer was in the word “happy”. We went with the tap. It wasn’t that we were being cheap – but we probably were being a little smug. My wife and I are paid-up members of the enlightened middle classes, you see. Our consciousnesses have been raised. We are E, the modern equivalent of U.

Just as Nancy Mitford divided society into the upper classes and the aspiring middle classes – that is, into U and Non-U – so society is being divided into the environmentally aware and environmentally unaware, or E and Non-E. It satisfies a need we seem to have to judge one another.

Read the whole thing.

Today’s spoiled haute bourgeoisie extend aspirational self-affirmation far beyond mere careerism and materialistic consumption into realms of spiritual narcissicism and ethical pretension undreamt of by previous generations.

Spiegel Online:

A Lufthansa jet nearly crashed as it attempted a dramatic landing at Hamburg’s airport during a wind storm on Saturday. All 137 passengers arrived safely after a second landing attempt. German aviation experts say the near-disaster is unprecedented in Germany.

The powerful winter storm system “Emma” that swept across Central Europe this weekend nearly caused a massive air traffic disaster on Saturday in Hamburg. A Lufthansa (A320) jet struggled through 250 kilometer-per-hour (155 miles per hour) crosswinds on its approach into the Hamburg airport. After skidding dramatically across the runway in an aborted landing, the plane’s pilot opted to take off once again. …

Those few seconds were indescribable,” one passenger told German television station N-TV after arriving safely on the ground. A spokesman for Lufthansa told SPIEGEL ONLINE that some of the passengers were quite shaken by their turbulent experience. “Many did not handle it well,” said Wolfgang Weber. “Some were near tears.”

Weber said that the pilot, 39 year-old “Oliver A.”, executed the emergency ascent and re-landing with skill and heroic calm. The pilot told Weber that he had often trained in a flight simulator for conditions like those that besieged his Airbus jet on Saturday — training that he counted on as he guided the plane safely onto the runway on his second approach.

“A situation like that, where a gust of wind hits the plane right as it is landing, is one that our pilots train for time and again,” said Weber.

1:07 video

Hat tip to Dominique Poirier.

USS Benfold (DDG 65) Guided Missile Destroyer

If you are the US Navy, whom do you make a signalman on a destroyer going potentially into harm’s way in the Persian Gulf? Why Hassan Abu-Jihaad, of course!

But, I suppose, excluding someone from a high security assignment just because he has converted to Islam and was calling himself “father of Jihad” would be profiling, and we can’t possibly do anything so politically incorrect.

AP:

U.S. Navy commanders were wary as their ships headed to the Persian Gulf in the months after a terrorist ambush in 2000 killed 17 sailors aboard the USS Cole.

Passing the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow, busy shipping lane that often invited challenges from Iran, was never easy. Ship commanders decided to travel quickly at night after conducting a drill. Sailors took up machine gun positions and shut valves and hatches to limit damage in case of attack.

“We really weren’t sure what to expect,” said Lt. Commander Jay Wylie, who was on board the USS Benfold.

No one expected to find a threat from within.

But federal authorities say there was. A Benfold signalman, Hassan Abu-Jihaad, had provided suspected terrorist supporters in London with sensitive details of when U.S. ships would pass through the strait and their vulnerability to attack, prosecutors say.

Testimony last week in Abu-Jihaad’s trial has provided a window into the fears of top Navy officials after an explosives-laden boat rammed the Cole as it refueled in a Yemen harbor. It also revealed how heightened vigilance after Sept. 11 triggered an investigation that began in Connecticut and expanded to London before Abu-Jihaad and others were arrested.

Abu-Jihaad, 32, of Phoenix, has pleaded not guilty to federal charges alleging he provided material support to terrorists and disclosed classified national defense information.

Prosecutors rested their case Friday. Abu-Jihaad does not plan to take the stand Monday when his attorneys call one witness before closing arguments.

Abu-Jihaad, an American born Muslim convert, changed his name from Paul Hall in 1997. A year later, he was granted security clearance that gave him access to secrets, according to Navy officials.

Abu-Jihaad was one of the first sailors Petty Officer Josh Kelly met when he boarded the Benfold. Abu-Jihaad was chatty about where the ship was headed, Kelly says.

“We always wonder where we were going,” Kelly testified, noting the stress of life at sea.

But advance movements were a closely guarded secret. Dennis Amador, a quartermaster and Abu-Jihaad’s supervisor, told his wife where he was in code.

“We in the Navy are taught from the minute we come in that loose lips sink ships,” he said.

Those details were kept locked in a safe with a red sticker marked secret. But when the charts and travel plans were laid out, Abu-Jihaad could see them in his job as a signalman, Navy officials say.

The Benfold and other ships left San Diego in March 2001. Their first stop was Hawaii, where the sailors were treated to a luau feast.

As the ship headed toward the Middle East, Abu-Jihaad began to send e-mails to Azzam Publications, a Web site that authorities say provided money and equipment to terrorists.

While the Cole was the worst nightmare for commanders, Abu-Jihaad called it a martyrdom operation in one of his e-mails to Azzam and praised “the men who have brong (sic) honor … in the lands of jihad Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya, etc.”

Abu-Jihaad signed the e-mail: “A brother serving a kuffar nation,” meaning nonbeliever or infidel, according to testimony. He also ordered graphic videos from Azzam that depicted Muslim fighters in Chechnya and Bosnia.

The Collins Report is probably quite right about the eventual outcome.

Putting Caliph Barack Blessing Osama’s numbers in perspective

The media ignore this, but the Democrats are headed for reruns of 1972 and 1984. During both years they were euphoric about their chances.

In 1972 George McGovern was to be the final triumph of the left in its war against the war in Viet Nam. They thought had mainstreamed socialism “Power to the people! Comes to mind.”

Noted political morons like Jim Bouton, Warren Beatty, Dick Gregory, and Ron Kovic worked at the grassroots to sell socialism masked as peace and justice. Isn’t always?

McGovern took the worse beating in American history up to that point.

The irony is that we Republicans, too, will be repeating history. Just as in 1972, we will probably defeat an exotic extremist from the democrat party’s leftist fringe, but we will be electing a liberal Republican who will proceed to compile a long record of personal accomplishment consisting of doing exactly what our democrat opponents want. I believe he will also, just like Nixon, make fatal political mistakes and leave office providing the democrat’s with a virtual blank check for winning the next election.

Peter Kirsanov of National Review has some suggestions for questions for Barack Obama, if the press ever get off its collective knees and begins investigating his candidacy, instead of merely worshipping him.

Sen. Barack Obama has received the most fawning media coverage of any serious presidential contender in memory. Although several news stories in the past week have suggested that the press is now poised to demand greater specificity and pierce the senator’s vaporous rhetoric, he continues to float along on a stump platform consisting mostly of hope, unity, and leadership.

Should members of the media bestir themselves from their full swoon, they may feel obliged to offer the public a more concrete version of this candidate.

To that end, the media may commence by posing the many questions Senator Obama has not adequately addressed. Here are a few they might consider.

1. You’ve stated that as president you’d transcend the sharp partisanship that pervades Washington, but you favor a rapid pullout from Iraq, plan significant tax increases, oppose any and all restrictions on abortions, and favor Supreme Court justices in the mold of Stephen Breyer — positions strongly opposed by most Republicans. Accordingly, on which of these issues would you be willing to compromise, and to what extent? Which Democrats do you think would give a little, and how would you convince them? How would you get interest groups and donors to go along? …

6. Stephen Moore calculates that your tax increases would result in a 52.2 percent income and payroll tax. Moore also states that your estate tax would be 55 percent, the dividends tax 39.6 percent, and the capital gains rate 28 percent. Do you dispute these numbers? If so, please provide your respective rates.

7. You admit that you won’t extend the Bush tax cuts. What’s the highest personal-income-tax rate you’d support? …

10. Which of the following, do you maintain, poses the greatest threat to America? Please list in descending order of danger: Global warming, lack of health insurance, radical Islamic terrorism, loss of manufacturing jobs, and nationalist Russia. As president, to which threat would you devote the most energy and resources?

Complete article.

Barack Obama is going to end America’s racial nightmare and take us beyond the divisions of the past is the promise. But, as Brit Hume reports, the Obama campaign’s behavior differs considerably from the rhetoric.

Some African-American superdelegates who support Hillary Clinton are reporting threats and intimidation from people wanting them to switch to Barack Obama.

Pressure on black superdelegates has intensified since civil rights icon John Lewis switched his allegiance from Clinton to Obama earlier this week.

Missouri Congressman Emanuel Cleaver II tells The Politico some superdelegates are receiving what he called nasty letters and phone calls, along with threats that they’ll now be opposed by other Democrats in reelection bids. Cleaver says some even report being called an “Uncle Tom.” Adding — “This is the politics of the 1950’s. A lot of members are experiencing a lot of ugly stuff. They’re not going to talk about it, but it’s happening.”

California Congresswoman Diane Watson reports she also has received threatening mail — but says she would rather lose her seat than violate her principles. She says she cannot switch her vote simply because Obama is black.

Jack Nicholson is supporting Hillary Clinton and has pitched in to support her campaign with this 1:18 video featuring excerpts from his own films.

The New York Times quotes authorities explaining that a short period of colder weather doesn’t mean anything. It really takes two decades of slightly warmer weather to establish firm understanding of the direction and processes at work in climate cycles of warming and cooling operating on a Geologic time-scale.

Many scientists also say that the cool spell in no way undermines the enormous body of evidence pointing to a warming world with disrupted weather patterns, less ice and rising seas should heat-trapping greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels and forests continue to accumulate in the air.

“The current downturn is not very unusual,” said Carl Mears, a scientist at Remote Sensing Systems, a private research group in Santa Rosa, Calif., that has been using satellite data to track global temperature and whose findings have been held out as reliable by a variety of climate experts. He pointed to similar drops in 1988, 1991-92, and 1998, but with a long-term warming trend clear nonetheless.

“Temperatures are very likely to recover after the La Niña event is over,” he said. …

Climate skeptics typically take a few small pieces of the puzzle to debunk global warming, and ignore the whole picture that the larger science community sees by looking at all the pieces,” said Ignatius G. Rigor, a climate scientist at the Polar Science Center of the University of Washington in Seattle.

Victor Davis Hanson explains the democrats’ fundamental disconnect with the ordinary American voter.

The forgotten American listens to Hillary and Barack and thinks all these promises are nice and well and good, but figures that they expect someone like herself to pay for all those programs for all those who chose to live life differently than she did—for whom in most cases there was as much or more chances than she had. She wants to pay taxes and help, but shrugs that those who receive think it’s never enough—resentment, not gratitude is their more appropriate response for government help. And she assumes that Hillary and Barak (sic), given what they make, don’t much care whether they pay a few thousand dollars more in their own taxes, and that they, like a John Edwards or John Kerry or Al Gore or Ted Kennedy, are rich enough to feel everyone else’s pain but her own.

Read the whole thing.