Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Unacceptable.

The title says it all. I encourage you to contact your representatives. Our soldiers deserve better than some sort of Warsaw-Pact-esque industrial slum.


UPDATE: This article at CNN indicates that the 82nd, and the Army as a whole, has heard the concerns identified in this video, condemns the conditions, and has taken steps to rectify the situation. Good on them. I'll be interested to here where the disconnect occurred that allowed this to happen, but until then, I'm just pleased to see the Army is taking prompt action on the issue.

Thursday, April 10, 2008

I Couldn't Have Said It Better Myself

A Saudi cleric puts those silly freedom-of-religion-lovers in their place.  The best part is where he switches to English to say “too much,” and then tries to emphasize by saying “two-three much.”  Arabic does not have any way to express the word “too,” as in more than is good.  The closest word, israf, means unseemly extravagance.  There’s something delicious in the irony of hearing a man extolling his own education confuse “two” and “too.”

 

Extra credit: compare and contrast.

 

(via Hot Air)

Never Enough

In a stunning display of goalpost-moving, Congressional Democrats have declared Iraq’s $6.4 billion dollar budget surplus, fueled (pun intended) by soaring oil prices, to somehow be a point against Iraq.  If I can understand it, their complaint is budget surpluses are inherently bad.  What the Iraqis should have done, say they, is somehow anticipated the surge in the price of oil, and implemented all the preliminary steps of billions of dollars worth of public works projects before they actually had the money.  Or maybe they just don’t realize it actually takes a measurable period of time to spend that kind of money intelligently.

 

Meanwhile, Captain Obvious, apparently a political correspondent at CNN, regales us with this headline: “Officials: Petraeus unlikely to recommend troop cuts.”  Really?  A senior military commander, whose entire career depends on success in Iraq, isn’t going to suggest he can do his job with fewer troops???  Darn, and I thought we were playing Name that Tune.  “Senator, I think I can win that war with only 3 soldiers.”

 

Monday, April 7, 2008

Holocaust Ads by MTV

The folks at Hot Air suspect subliminal Bush Derangement Syndrome, I’m far more inclined to take them at face value. MTV has a, for lack of a better term, activism community site called MTV Think, which put together these ads to increase awareness of the Holocaust in younger demographics. Honestly, I can’t see how you could do a video on this motif any other way. Sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar. That having been said, I find myself in the odd position of congratulating MTV for doing something praiseworthy.






Thoughtcrime

To anyone who thinks 1984 is a great book, but overwrought and unrealistic, I present for your reading pleasure the wisdom of Illinois Rep. Monique Davis:

What you have to spew and spread is extremely dangerous, it’s dangerous … to the progression of this state. And it’s dangerous for our children to even know that your philosophy exists!

It is important, I think, to condemn the enemies of liberty, no matter where their views lie in relation to yours. It’s easy to champion free speech for those that agree with you – after all, you’re really championing your own beliefs. Your true opinion of liberty shows when you see someone whose beliefs you think are wrong, on every possible level, being silenced.

(via Volokh)

Thursday, April 3, 2008

Science Fiction = Future Science Fact

With a hat tip to the mighty Instapundit, I discover this article at Wired about what is, essentially, the world’s first use of Black IC. I suppose you have to get a little bit of the creepy along with the really, really cool.

Back to creepy though, I sincerely hope to hear about the apprehension and prosecution of these degenerates who think triggering a seizure is in any way whatsoever acceptable behavior.


Crossed Rubicons

I see, by way of Hot Air, this article, wherein Republicans mull freezing up the Senate unless Democrats accede to allowing Bush to appoint at least as many Judicial nominees as Clinton did in his last two years in office. I get a little anxious reading things like this. On one hand, my gut reaction applauds giving the Democrats a taste of their own medicine, in what amounts to a filibuster used against 6 years of filibustering. Still, the Democrats have used some very underhanded procedural tricks to get their way in recent times – from filibusters to recess sessions to fleeing their state. So far, Republicans have stayed largely aloof of such tactics. This is in part due to enjoying a majority status for the better part of the last 7 years, though I don’t see that as a barrier to loophole exploitation. The recess gaveling, after all, is a majority tactic, and if anything, demonstrates that the tactics the Democrats have used are less the desperate tools of an oppressed minority and more a testament to the fact that evil + creativity = power. And the GOP did refrain from the so-called “nuclear option,” if only barely.


Which brings me to the crux of my dilemma. Every time a “procedural loophole” like those mentioned above is used, it drifts farther out of the classification “loophole” and into that of “tradition.” Our government can function, marginally, under these conditions, but not indefinitely. What happens when the default action taken by either party upon Judicial nominee is filibuster? At best, recess appointments will undermine the intent of the Constitution; transforming a theoretical lifetime appointment into a one-year gig, where you don’t even have the luxury of campaigning for your re-election. On that note, what happens to the impartiality of the Judiciary when your continued tenure is directly dependent on the continued goodwill of the appointing party?