Threats Against Wisconsin Republicans Continue-- 20 Days and Counting

More civility. The New Tone, I suppose.

John Nolte at BigGovernment.com is keeping track of the threats and vandalism that continues in Wisconsin. Still no word from DC Dems calling for restraint, civility, or anything like that. I guess Obama can't figure a way to turn it into a pep rally yet.

From Nolte:

"Below, you’ll find a compilation of 20 days worth of the death threats, vandalism, and intimidation practiced by pro-union thugs opposed to Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s budget repair bill. Wisconsin is my home state. I lived there until I was 27 years-old in 1993 and most of my family, including my parents still live there. For that reason and because the issue of education and teachers unions has been a passion of mine for going on two decades, I’ve been following this story very, very closely. My original intent was to compile all of this earlier in the week, but after reading Lee Stranahan’s superb editorial I decided to wait and see if that might have some effect on the national and local Wisconsin media in moving them towards giving the ongoing violence, intimidation, vandalism, and overall thuggery occurring at the hands of union activists and their supporters, the coverage it needs and deserves.

"Not only should the local and national media be amplifying their coverage of this ongoing scandal because of the bar they themselves set with the Tea Party for what rises to the level of of racism, “predominantly white” protesters and troubling behavior — but in the wake of the tragic shootings in Tuscon you would think direct threats on elected officials would rate a little outrage. Well, obviously not when those threats come from the Left.

"Politics aside, what’s happening in Wisconsin is downright frightening because, as you’ll see below, these incidents are growing in number and intensity. Furthermore, other than the Right, no one is calling for calm or civility. The local media is, at best, wrist-flicking these incidents, Democratic legislators have not called for calm, President Obama is AWOL, and worst of all, Public Union employees not involved in the thuggish behavior taking place in their name, have been complicit with their silence.

"This is more than a disgrace, it’s dangerous. Conservative radio talk show hosts and Governor Walker can talk all they want, but I fear that until the media starts a campaign of shame by focusing on these incidents, and responsible pro-union types begin to police their own side, someone is eventually going to get hurt.

"What you’re going to read below is a startling compilation of what can only be described as thuggery. These examples are occurrences that have taken place only since the beginning of the month and do not include the equally disturbing incidents we’re hearing about outside of Wisconsin. Keep in mind, it’s more likely than not that I missed a few things."

Read the rest. It's tough to take, but it's important.

Japanese Earthquake News Links

For those interested in news about the Japanese earthquake and tsunami, below are some links to some major online Japanese newspapers published in English:

The Japan Times

Japan Today

Kyodo News

The Asahi Shimbun

The Daily Yomiuri Online

Local police are saying that the death toll will likely exceed 10,000.

Wohlstetter: Debunking the Defense of the TSA

Check out John C. Wohlstetter's "Eight Air-Security Myths" from the NRO. Read the whole thing , but here's some highlights.

"Two solid analysts, ex–Bush 43 speechwriter Marc Thiessen and Hudson Institute intelligence scholar Gabriel Schoenfeld, have published defenses of the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) controversial new scanning and patdown policies. They argue that TSA’s policy is a necessary reaction to the evolution of terrorism. Their analysis rests on eight air-security myths.

"1. The fact that there have been no attacks since 9/11 vindicates TSA.

"The logical fallacy here is known as post hoc, ergo propter hoc ('after this, therefore on account of this'). There is zero reason to credit TSA’s new tactics with anything save annoying unlucky travelers. We can see this by looking at incidents in which governments actually foiled terror plots. None of them involved TSA-style measures.

"Remember the 2006 ten-jetliner plot hatched at Heathrow? The 1995 'Bojinka' terror plot hatched by 1993 World Trade Center–bombing mastermind Ramzi Youssef? The 2006 plot was broken up by the Brits, and the Filipinos broke up the second. Neither used TSA’s methods. The Brits used shoe-leather investigating, phone taps, and intelligence from a Pakistani interrogation of one detainee. And in 1995, Youssef was interrogated by the Philippine government, and confessed.

"No other government uses the TSA scanners. No one — including the Israelis — uses intimate patdowns.

"2. The Christmas Bomber’s near-success requires scans.

"The underwear bomber who nearly ruined America’s 2009 Christmas flying season used PETN, an explosive that is difficult to detect even with the new scanning machines. (So are twelve-inch razor blades, apparently.) What was easily detectable by the U.S. was the bomber’s dad’s visiting our embassy in Lagos, Nigeria, and warning us about his son — several times. Israeli experts tell us that most of their security is applied before a traveler reaches the airport. Kids and lawmakers likely do not get stuck on Israeli no-fly lists.

"3. Each method terrorists use requires a targeted response.

"Because terrorists have hidden stuff in their underwear, we must pat them down. So when terrorists use body cavities to conceal things, as surely they will, will TSA attempt to search everyone’s orifices? Not a chance: Americans will not stand for anything like this. Which is why the excuses for today’s patdown molestations are so infuriating and phony.
We need to catch people before they bring down planes. But we do not do this by making flying, already a grim business since 9/11, a humiliating ordeal. Making travelers cringe gives terrorists a victory even without bringing a plane down.

"4. The U.S.’s air-travel volume precludes TSA from using Israel’s methods.

"Yes, America is bigger than Israel, is home to 45 times as many people, and has 75 times as many flights travel through its airspace every day. But America also has vastly more resources to draw upon; its per capita flight total is less than twice Israel’s.

[...]

"8. Americans won’t tolerate profiling.

"Does anyone really believe that Americans, if given a choice between intimate patdowns and Israel-style interviews, would choose being groped?

"The bottom line is that Israel’s methods work. Instead of having ill-trained TSA agents search for bad things, have well-trained agents search for bad people. Profile by behavior and circumstance (cash ticket, one-way trip, etc.), and leave most of us alone. Compile accurate no-fly lists. Heed credible warnings. Ignore political correctness.

"Instead, Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano reportedly has two more Bright Ideas: unionizing TSA employees and special reduced screening for Muslims in traditional garb. The former, rejected when the Department of Homeland Security was established, would make it harder to fire incompetent employees. The latter would have the unintended impact of so enraging most Americans that they will insist lawmakers make TSA apply uniform rules.

"Israel’s skies have been friendly for 42 years. Not a bad record. We should learn from it."

The most infuriating part of this whole TSA crud is that it's all theater. These measures would not have prevented many past terrorist attacks and it's unlikely to prevent future ones. Instead it's all vaudeville, a show for the American people so the Government can say "Look we're doing something! We're groping you and scanning you for your own protection!"

Added New Links! Kristin's Mishmash and Nickie Goomba

I thought I'd better update my Blog List. I've been really bad about that for the last several months.

First there's Kristin's Mishmash. Check out her blog. Right now she's blogging about a petition making the rounds that would ban lead from ammunition and fishing sinkers. Such crap in Washington now...

Second is the Nickie Goomba site. Very funny stuff. Right now there's a caption contest for a picture of a trenchcoated Putin contemplating a rock. "If they they knew... I am the Batman."

Also put up links to Israel National News and The Jerusalem Post.

All are now listed on the Blog List to the left. Check them out, especially Goomba and Kristin's Mishmash.

Added New Link: Big Peace!

Just added Andrew Breitbart's newest site Big Peace to the Blog List. This site will apparently deal with national security issues and is edited by Hoover Institution Research Fellow Peter Schweizer.

Check it out!

Interrogating Terrorists and the Attacks these Interrogations Prevented

Check out this article in the National Review "Meet the Real Jack Bauers" by Marc A. Thiessen (h/t Michelle Malkin). Click on the link for the enlightening article.

From the article:

"The public view of interrogations had been shaped by the fictional Bauer, who captures a terrorist and proceeds to torture him — holding down his head in a bathtub full of water, using a Taser to shock him, lopping off his fingers with a cigar cutter — while screaming questions until the terrorist finally breaks and gives up the location of the nuclear bomb that is about to go off.

"For some critics of U.S. interrogation policy, this is not fiction, but a depiction of reality. In Newsweek, Dahlia Lithwick has written that 'high-ranking lawyers in the Bush administration erected an entire torture policy around the fictional edifice of Jack Bauer.' And Philippe Sands, author of the book Torture Team, has written that the show has been the 'midwife' for torture’s 'actual use on real, living human beings.' None of this is true.

"Unlike these critics, I have had the chance to actually meet the real Jack Bauers — the CIA officials who questioned Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other senior terrorist leaders and got them to reveal their plans for new terrorist attacks. They explained to my why their approach has nothing in common with the methods used by Bauer on the fictional 24.

[...]

"They began by clarifying precisely how the program actually worked. While 24 depicts violent scenes where interrogators inflict severe pain to get time-sensitive intelligence on terrorist dangers, in the real world, they told me, this is not how interrogations take place.

"They explained, for example, that there is a difference between 'interrogation' and 'de-briefing.' Interrogation is not how we got information from the terrorists; it is the process by which we overcome the terrorists’ resistance and secure their cooperation — sometimes with the help of enhanced interrogation techniques.

"Once the terrorist agreed to cooperate, I was told, the interrogation stopped and 'de-briefing' began, as the terrorists were questioned by CIA analysts, using non-aggressive techniques to extract information that could help disrupt attacks.

"The interrogation process was usually brief, they said. According to declassified documents, on average 'the actual use of interrogation techniques covers a period of three to seven days, but can vary upwards to 15 days based on the resilience' of the terrorist in custody.

"Most detainees, they told me, did not undergo it at all. Two-thirds of those brought into the CIA program did not require the use of any enhanced interrogation techniques. Just the experience of being brought into CIA custody — the 'capture shock,' arrival at a sterile location, the isolation, the fact that they did not know where they were, and that no one else knew they were there — was enough to convince most of them to cooperate."

The results of all this? It's described later in the article:

"Information from detainees in CIA custody led to the capture of a cell of Southeast Asian terrorists which had been tasked by KSM to hijack a passenger jet and fly it into the Library Tower in Los Angeles.

"Information from detainees in CIA custody led to the capture of Ramzi Bin al-Shibh, KSM’s right-hand-man in the 9/11 attacks, just as he was finalizing plans for a plot to hijack airplanes in Europe and fly them into Heathrow airport and buildings in downtown London.

"Information from detainees in CIA custody led to the capture of Ammar al-Baluchi and Walid bin Attash, just as they were completing plans to replicate the destruction of our embassies in East Africa by blowing up the U.S. consulate and Western residences in Karachi, Pakistan.

"Information from detainees in CIA custody led to the disruption of an al-Qaeda plot to blow up the U.S. Marine camp in Djibouti, in an attack that could have rivaled the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut.

"Information from detainees in CIA custody helped break up an al-Qaeda cell that was developing anthrax for terrorist attacks inside the United States.

"In addition to helping break up these specific terrorist cells and plots, CIA questioning provided our intelligence community with an unparalleled body of information about al-Qaeda — giving U.S. officials a picture of the terrorist organization as seen from the inside, at a time when we knew almost nothing about the enemy who had attacked us on 9/11.

"In addition, CIA detainees helped identify some 86 individuals whom al-Qaeda deemed suitable for Western operations — most of whom we had never heard of before. According to the intelligence community, about half of these individuals were subsequently tracked down and taken off the battlefield. Without CIA questioning, many of these terrorists could still be unknown to us and at large — and may well have carried out attacks against the West by now.Until the program was temporarily suspended in 2006, well over half of the information our government had about al-Qaeda — how it operates, how it moves money, how it communicates, how it recruits operatives, how it picks targets, how it plans and carries out attacks — came from the interrogation of terrorists in CIA custody.

[...]

"Harry and Sam [pseudonyms of two of the CIA interrogators] told me that the agency believed without the program the terrorists would have succeeded in striking our country again. Harry put it bluntly: 'It is the reason we have not had another 9/11.'"

And Obama wants to give these terrorists the Constitutional rights of American citizens and put on trial to ease the Left's conscience. Brilliant.

Apparently Thiessen has written a book about this subject Courting Disaster. I haven't read it, but it could certainly prove to be very interesting, and a contrast to the common perception of the CIA and its interrogations and de-briefings. Look it for it.

New Link Added! Breitbart's Big Journalism

Andrew Breitbart's Big Journalism is now up-- it seems with less fanfare than Big Government. Anyway, I've now got a link to it set up in the Blog List.

Check it out. Right now there's an interesting post on the AP selling Coakley as an "historic candidate." Hmm.

MSNBC's Maddow Denies Climategate and Doesn't Want to Fight "People Who Refuse to Acknowledge Reality"

A headline from newsbusters.org: "Rachel Maddow Insists Climategate Is 'All Made Up,' Conservatives 'Refuse to Acknowledge Reality.'" HEH.

From the post by Tim Graham:

"MADDOW: [...] There are a lot of interesting ways to talk about the right way to respond to that, but instead, it‘s Climate-gate, it‘s all made up. Following the Republican framing into nonsense land and we‘ve ended up talking about stuff that is not real instead of talking about policy. I want to have policy fights. I don‘t want to be fighting with people who refuse to acknowledge reality."

So Maddow doesn't want to have fight over global policy? Is that it? Oh, wait... No she wants to have a fight over it with only her side's "facts" in undeniable evidence. I understand. Does anybody still wonder why MSNBC's ratings are so low?

Just this quick link here for now. I'm doing some research and working on a pretty long blog post at the moment. I'll have it up either today or tomorrow and then will take a break for a few days to make up on some time lost for my fiction writing. Thanks.

Added New Link! Donald Douglas' American Power

I've added a link on the Blog List to American Power. Far too late I suppose, but in the world of blogging linkages the phrase "better late than never" is often true.

Right now there's a ton of pictures up as well as a particularly interesting link to the story regarding Jodie Evans, Code Pink, and a visit to the White House following Code Pink's sit down with Hamas (complete with letter to Obama).

Check it out.

New Link Added! Annotated Margins

Check out fellow Oregonian Mike McLaren's Annotated Margins.

It's not a political blog. And, so as not offend, I'll use Cut & Paste McLaren's own words as his blog description:

"The words of this blog abide in silence, waiting for the one or fewer people with time to kill at work who, accessing the internet, seek a diversion from the mundane nine-to-five thrum. Or perhaps of the six and half billion people on this planet, you made a sudden click and unwittingly arrived at this particular arrangement of a-b-c’s, deciding that these words will sufficiently put you to sleep. If these words do not meet your expectation, I apologize. Do not let these words offend. This blog exists simply because: an orange is how it tastes, and life is what we think, so to know the meaning of an orange, one must know the taste of the orange. To know life, one must know the nature of thought; writing is a way to taste thought. Making thoughts public should make one mindful of the words written."

And I also must add my apologies for not linking to his blog sooner.

UPDATE: For some reason I was unable to get a link to the blog listed on My Blog List. Again my apologies. It's up now.

Added New Links! Musings and Their Meanings & Another Black Conservative

Just added a couple of links.

Musings and Their Meanings had some impressive posts on the HR 3962 scuffle and made me link.

Another Black Conservative had an amusing but dead-on post titled "Michael Steele: White Republicans Are Afraid of Me."

My favorite lines: "Memo To Michael: If you are trying to get brothers and sisters to join the Republican Party, you have to stop agreeing with the stereotypes black liberals have of Republicans!

"As a black conservative who has probably met as many white Republicans and conservatives as Michael Steele has, I have not met any who cower in fear of me, especially when they know we share the same political beliefs. On the other hand, I have encountered TONS of white liberals who DEMAND to know why I am a conservative. Talk about racist, what are black people only allowed to have one political view?"

I had to read more after that post and had to link after reading those posts.

Check them out. They're both worth some perusing time.

Baucus Bill Does not Exist

The CBO did not actually review the "Baucus Bill" because the bill has not been written. Jacobson over at Legal Insurrection was nice enough and calm enough to point this out.

From Jacobson, "The internet is alive with the sound of people analyzing the CBO's 'scoring' of the Max Baucus aka Senate Finance Committee Health Care Bill. Before everyone gets too deeply into their thoughts, please keep in mind the following (get ready, all CAPS, bold, indented signifies a really important concept):

"THERE IS NO BAUCUS BILL.

"The CBO scored the concepts described by the Baucus Committee. There is no legislative text. None. Baucus and his Democratic colleagues refused to reduce their concepts to actual legislation prior to a vote. Here is the CBO's disclaimer:

"'CBO and JCT’s analysis is preliminary in large part because the Chairman’s mark, as amended, has not yet been embodied in legislative language.'

"The Baucus Concepts are disastrous, but that's for another post. For this post, let me get across a simple concept: THERE IS NO BAUCUS BILL.

"Your esteemed Senators on the Senate Finance Committee will not be voting on legislation because THERE IS NO BAUCUS BILL."

I don't think things can be put much clearer than how Jacobson put it.

Pundit & Pundette, in their own post, have this quote from CBO Director Elmendorf "The Chairman’s mark, as amended, has not yet been converted into legislative language. The review of such language could lead to significant changes in the estimates of the proposal’s effects on the federal budget and insurance coverage."

Having met with unexpected resistance, the Dems are putting "health reform" through the back door and packaging it as though it was going through the front. This process in described in detail here.

Do not allow this expensive and intrusive garbage to be rammed down our throats. Call your congressmen and senators. Let them know that we are noticing and we will not forget this when elections come back around.

Obama and the Dalai Lama

Check out this post by Quite Rightly over at Bread upon the Waters. It is very interesting.

Obama has recently snubbed the Dalai Lama, postponing a meeting until after Obama meets with the Chinese.

From the Washington Post article by John Pomfret, "In an attempt to gain favor with China, the United States pressured Tibetan representatives to postpone a meeting between the Dalai Lama and President Obama until after Obama's summit with his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao, scheduled for next month, according to diplomats, government officials and other sources familiar with the talks.

"For the first time since 1991, the Tibetan spiritual leader will visit Washington this week and not meet with the president. Since 1991, he has been here 10 times. Most times the meetings have been 'drop-in' visits at the White House. The last time he was here, in 2007, however, George W. Bush became the first sitting president to meet with him publicly, at a ceremony at the Capitol in which he awarded the Dalai Lama the Congressional Gold Medal, Congress's highest civilian award.

"The U.S. decision to postpone the meeting appears to be part of a strategy to improve ties with China that also includes soft-pedaling criticism of China's human rights and financial policies as well as backing efforts to elevate China's position in international institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund. Obama administration officials have termed the new policy 'strategic reassurance,' which entails the U.S. government taking steps to convince China that it is not out to contain the emerging Asian power."

Quite Rightly makes a rather astute comparison of the Dalai Lama and Obama in his post. "When it comes to earning admiration and respect, some public figures have a whole lot more seniority than others. Compare, for example, two heads of state: the American President, Barack Hussein Obama, and Tibet's 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso.

"One is a babe in the woods when it comes to the realities of international politics and, possibly as a consequence, seems never to miss an opportunity to apologize for his people and their culture. The other has the most cruelly delivered knowledge of the consequences of the deadly ferocity of international quests for power and, possibly as a consequence, never misses an opportunity to advocate for his people and their culture.

"President Obama first showed up on the public scene when was elected to his state senate in 1996 under dubious circumstances and with the strong support of ACORN. In his time in the Illinois state senate, he was protective of gang members, prisoners, and ex-cons but not of lawful possession of weapons. He pushed for lower taxes for the poor and for higher taxes for the businesses that create jobs, making fewer poor people. He liked choice when it came to abortion and the use of human embryos for research, but didn't like choice when it came to parents sending their kids to non-government schools. He wrote two books about himself. In these days of soaring national debt and unemployment, the rest is not yet history.

"The Dalai Lama, on the other hand, first showed up on the scene in 1937, when a search party of Tibetan monks identified him as the 14th re-incarnation of Avalokiteśvara, who is venerated by Buddhists as the Bodhisattva of Compassion. (A bodhisattva is an enlightened being who willingly postpones entrance into Nirvana [heaven] to stay behind to help humanity.) Of course, if you are among the many believers who revere the Dalai Lama as the reincarnation of the 13 previous Dalai Lamas, his first birthday as Dalai Lama occurred in the year 1391, giving him more than average accumulated life experience. Since 1959, he has received over 84 awards including the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize. He has written more than 72 books on Tibetan Buddhism, non-violence, inter-religious understanding, universal responsibility, and compassion."

Remember when the Dalai Lama said non-violence cannot tackle terrorism? From the indianexpress.com "The Dalai Lama, a lifelong champion of non-violence candidly stated that terrorism cannot be tackled by applying the principle of ahimsa because the minds of terrorists are closed.

"'It is difficult to deal with terrorism through non-violence,' the Tibetan spiritual leader said delivering the Madhavrao Scindia Memorial Lecture here.

"He termed terrorism as the worst kind of violence which is not carried by a few mad people but by those who are very brilliant and educated.

"'They (terrorists) are very brilliant and educated...but a strong ill feeling is bred in them. Their minds are closed,' the Dalai Lama said.

"He said the only way to tackle terrorism is through prevention.

"The head of the Tibetan government-in-exile left the audience stunned when he said 'I love President George W Bush.' He went on to add how he and the US President instantly struck a chord in their first meeting unlike politicians who take a while to develop close ties."

I wonder if Obama will ever learn that people can be highly educated, intelligent, completely wrong and ruthlessly violent, or that you can't negotiate toothlessly with rogue terrorist states, or that you shouldn't sell out allies and principles for the sake of softening your deficit spending for universal(ly bad) health care, green energy nonsense, and other pipe dreams for your Great Leap Forward. I doubt it.

I have previously posted about Obama's tendency to sell out, ignore and otherwise wrong America's allies. Israel, Liberia, Britain, Poland, Colombia, Thailand, the Czech Republic, Japan, (likely) Taiwan, are but a few American allies which have suffered significantly or undergone internal upset due to the Obama administration's disinterest or outright hostility. Honduras has been sold out for the sake of negligible popularity, and the emerging government of Iraq is being sacrificed to Taliban's revival and Iran's nuclear ambitions. When Obama goes before the UN and naively declares that no one country can dominate another and that America will no longer act unilaterally, I wonder if he understands (or cares) that this essentially is a betrayal of our allies' trust.

Berkeley Chancellor and Vice Chancellor Call for Fed Bailout Money

Robert J. Birgeneau and Frank D. Yeary, the chancellor and vice chancellor of UC Berkeley, wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post Sunday entitled "Rescuing Our Public Universities" (h/t to Instapundit and TaxProf Blog).

Birgeneau and Yeary write: "Our private and public research and teaching universities have contributed greatly to American prosperity. Public universities by definition teach large numbers of students and substantially help shape our nation. The top 10 publics have more than 350,000 undergraduate students. By comparison, the eight Ivies educate less than a sixth of that number. Public universities with strong state support have an admirable cross-section of ethnically and economically diverse students. In essence, their student bodies look like America. They are the conduits into mainstream society for a huge number of highly talented people from financially disadvantaged backgrounds, as well as the key to the American dream of an increasingly better life for the middle class.

"Yet over several decades there has been a material and progressive disinvestment by states in higher education. The economic crisis has made this a countrywide phenomenon, with devastating cuts in some states, including California. Historically acclaimed public institutions are struggling to remain true to their mission as tuitions rise and in-state students from middle- and low-income families are displaced by out-of-state students from higher socioeconomic brackets who pay steeper fees. While America is fortunate to have many great private universities, we do not need to add to the list by privatizing Berkeley, Illinois, Rutgers, etc. On the contrary, we need to keep our public research and teaching universities excellent and accessible to the vast majority of Americans.

"Given the precarious condition of state finances, we propose that President Obama emulate President Lincoln by creating a 21st-century version of the Morrill Act.

"Specifically, the federal government should create a hybrid model in which a limited number of our great public research and teaching universities receive basic operating support from the federal government and their respective state governments. Washington might initially choose a representative set of schools, perhaps based on their research achievements, their success in graduating students, commitment to public service and their record in having a student body that is broadly representative of society.

"Washington would provide sufficient additional funding for operations and student support to ensure broad access and continued excellence at these universities. A portion of these resources would ensure that out-of-state and in-state students pay the same tuition and have access to the same financial aid packages. The combined federal-state funding must be sufficient for these universities to maintain their preeminence as well as charge moderate fees to all U.S. citizens and permanent residents."

Excuse me while I wretch.

Why is the response of financially strapped state schools to beg the federal government to raise taxes to pay for their costs? Does it even occur to them to re-examine their spending?

Every public college campus I have been on (I'm not sure how many, but many more than twenty-five across the Pacific Northwest, California, Southwest and out into Texas) has been in the midst of expanding their campuses. All of them. Always a building project-- never an exception. Paying young athletes to play for their school (even in a relatively unheralded sport like women's volleyball at CSUN) is so common that reports and investigations of malfeasance have become little more than scripted vaudevillian routines.

Before Birgeneau and Yeary come crawling on their hands and knees, begging eloquently to the great Obama (mentioned in the article-- though shouldn't they be begging to the American people?) for more money, they should take time to look over their own school's budget. They don't mention doing that in their article. Nothing like "Even after a careful examination of our budgets, we can find no way to significantly reduce our budgets without an unacceptable decrease in the quality of our education, high wages, and our name-brand sports teams." They didn't even make the pretense of softening their hard-sell with that sort of lie.

Added New Blog! Carol's Closet

I've added a new link to the Blog List: Carol's Closet.

Carol's a Floridian who's got a number of interesting posts up-- some background on Roman Polanski, a post on Charlie Crist, some nice words about Marco Rubio, and more. Go check it out.

Thanks, and my apologies to Carolyn Tackett for not linking back sooner.

*NOTE: I try to be very liberal about linking to people who link to me, but sometimes I miss someone out there (hey, this "interweb" place is all big 'n' stuff). If you have a link to this blog and I don't have you on this blog's Blog List, then leave a comment somewhere and I'll very likely link back.

New Link Added! FreeThemm.com

I've added a new link to the Blog List. FreeThemm.com is a sight dedicated to Marzieh Amirizadeh Esmaeilabad, and Miss Maryam Rustampoor, two women imprisoned in Iran without charge since March 5, 2009. Like too many others, they currently languish in Iran's notorious Evin Prison where they are reportedly in poor health.

The reasons for their imprisonment is difficult to ascertain. The government offers some vague label of "anti-government activists," while those demanding their release assert it is because both women are Christian.

Whatever the truth (the government of Iran does actively discriminate and intimidate non-Muslims), these two women are like many other prisoners in Iran, held with neither formal charge nor trial.

Visit this sight, do research on your own, but don't simply ignore Miss Rustampoor and Miss Esmaeilabad.

My thanks and h/t to Quite Rightly at Bread Upon the Waters for keeping up with this story, and humanizing it, for many weeks now.

Added New Link: Andrew Breitbart's "Big Government"

From the makers of BigHollywood comes this brand new website. Here it is: BigGovernment.com-- also available on the Blog List.

Right now they're headlining a story about an indie undercover investigation of Baltimore's ACORN office. It's a bit distressing. Check it out.

Added New Link! "Black and Red" Now on the Blog List

Check out the blog Black and Red by J. Thomas Hunter. Right now he's in the middle of a series on posts regarding the GOP connecting with racial minorities and the challenges and issues that are faced. It's very interesting so far and recommended reading.

Added New Blog! Check Out "A Conservative Teacher"

I've just added a new blog to the Blog List. Check out A Conservative Teacher and especially the most recent entry regarding grade school social studies projects (h/t Pundit and Pundette).

I've been concerned about the highly partisan nature of universities and colleges for some time now, but partisan politics at the elementry level (when student are just beginning to lay down the foundations of their beliefs) could be a far more serious problem. After all, college students are supposed to be well-practiced and educated critical thinkers, right?

More Apologies and Links Regarding Congressional Health Care "Reform"

Again, I have to apologize for not getting out more on the Senate's HELP Committee health care reform bill as promised. I've been running about mindlessly trying to get my half-written novel back off my crashed hard drive. It now appears that I'll have to send it out and have the drive disassembled in a clean room at a rather substantial cost... Ah, well...

In the meantime, William A. Jacobson at Legal Insurrection has some excellent information about the health care bills including:

"Provisions in the Senate HELP Committee draft bill creating rules and regulations governing food disclosures at fast food restaurants and in vending machines."

The creation of massive and intrusive bureaucracies.

The IRS playing "a key role in monitoring and enforcing health care mandates against individual taxpayers."

The sudden tax on your "mere existence."

The provision that the "IRS To Decide Amount of Taxation."

And here is Jacobson's own suggestions of throwing the bills completely away.

All his posts are concise and presented with evidence and citation. Highly recommended. Check it out.

Quite Rightly at Bread upon the Waters has some chilling statistics on the survival rates of cancer in the US as compared to Britain. Here's a spoiler-- the US is the top 3 in the survival rates and Britain hovers about 20.

A quote from the Sunday Times in Quite Rightly's post: "For example, a woman with breast cancer is 88% more likely to die within five years of diagnosis in Britain than in America. A man with prostate cancer is six times as likely to die within five years in Britain than in America. For various types of colon and rectal cancers, both men and women are 40% more likely to die in Britain than in America within five years of diagnosis." Check out the post. It has highly important information (both my parents are cancer survivors, as are two aunts, an uncle, and three good friends).

Again, I hope to get more on the Senate HELP Committee bill up when I can, but the distractions from my professional life are a little acute right now (i.e. I'm going insane, feeling sharp pains behind my eyes, and am incredibly mad at myself for not backing up the data-- foolish and novice mistake). Check these out and I'll be back, hopefully, within a week.

Thanks.