Ah, Those Frisky French Youths

Those French youths are at it again, burning buses, throwing Molotov cocktails at police and all. And the media are at it again too. The stories tend to blame estrangement and racial segregation and such. What you won't find anywhere is that these frisky French youths are muslims.
Only the most subtle hints as to the actual identity of the "youths" is to be found.

"The anniversary of the riots coincides with the conclusion of Ramadan, the month-long Muslim fasting period."

Now would it be Hindus, Zoroastrians or Rastafarians who celebrate Ramadan?
Or, perhaps someone else with a nearly 15 century history of violence against infidels and each other for that matter?

Does America Deserve to Lose?

When the question is phrased, “do the Republicans deserve to win in November,” then the answer should be, “no.” I am hard pressed to argue enthusiastically in favor of continued Republican governance. In truth the Republicans have done an abysmal job of running the country and any employee who performs so poorly should be fired. The only reason that such incompetence should be tolerated is that the only other applicant for the position can reliably be predicted to do an even lousier job.
The Republicans have held control of both houses of Congress for most of the last 12 years. For the last six years, we’ve even had a Republican president and he has had a Republican majority in both houses of Congress for the past four. The Supreme Court is evenly balanced. And still, I cannot buy a toilet that flushes properly. The discovery of a rare earthworm on the Palouse has farmers fearing for their livelihood because unbalanced environmental policies have not been corrected. Illegal aliens still stream across the border. Energy prices continue to rise because not nearly enough has been done to facilitate new productive capacity. When the FBI searched the office of Democrat William Jefferson as part of a corruption investigation, the House Republican leadership joined the Democrats in defending the rights of House members to practice corruption in the security of their Capital Hill offices. In reality, it is at times hard to conceive of more than one or two affirmative reasons to encourage a Republican vote.
Unfortunately, I can’t think of any argument in favor of the Democrats. What affirmative reason have the Democrats given us to vote for them? Asked another way, “do the Democrats deserve to win in November?”
Democrats have not exactly distinguished themselves as the loyal opposition. In fact, Democrats have only sniped at Republicans and have offered little if anything that resembles an agenda. Howard Dean himself said that Democrats are not obligated to present an agenda until they assume the reins of power themselves. Speaker of the House in waiting, Nancy Pelosi recently said, “I'm even hard put to say what our agenda will be when we win.”
From all appearances, the Democrats wish to assume power solely for the power itself and have elaborated no agenda for America. This contrasts sharply with Newt Gingrich’s “Contract With America” in 1994. Democrats have remained largely on the sidelines and permitted a sympathetic mainstream press do their dirty work for them.
There is little evidence that Democrats intend to take governance seriously. Take, for instance, the case of Alcee Hastings and Jane Harmon. Jane Harmon is a rich, liberal, California Democrat. She is also the ranking minority member on the House Intelligence Committee. Although liberal, she has taken her responsibilities seriously.
However, as part of a political payback, Nancy Pelosi has already decided to remove Jane Harman from the Intelligence Committee and replace her with Alcee Hastings. A Democratic majority in the House would make Alcee Hastings the chairman of the Intelligence Committee. In that role, he would have unfettered access to just about all of America’s secrets.
Those of us with long memories recall Alcee Hastings as a corrupt judge who was impeached by Congress for taking bribes. What sort of irresponsible leadership would put a demonstrably corruptible man like Alcee Hastings in charge of America’s most sensitive secrets? The answer is, the Democratic Party leadership.
For all of their ethical lapses, I cannot imagine that the Republican leadership could be so irresponsible and unserious that they would knowingly install so purchasable a man within easy reach of marketable secrets in time of war. This is especially important as our enemies are awash in oil money.
Another good reason not to trust the Democrats is their investment in defeat. Whatever one now thinks of the justification for the Iraq war, victory is essential. Recently, Saddam Hussein boasted that he would soon prevail over America. He knows this is election season and has been following the polls on his favorite network, al-CNN. What he and his terrorists could never win on the battlefield, they are winning on the evening news and, he hopes, at the ballot box.
The proper question should not be whether the Republicans deserve reelection, but whether or not the United States deserves the irresponsibility of the Democratic Party.

And She's Fat Too

John Spencer, Hillary Clinton's opponent in the upcoming Senate race is denying that he said she was ugly.
I'll say it. She's ugly. Just not as ugly as some other Democratic female senators.

Ford Post $5.8 Billion Loss - Dow Hits New Record

No, I don't understand it either.

Great Moments In Education

The nation's teachers pronounce themselves fully capable of teaching their pupils that Pluto is not a planet.

"Mickey Mouse has a cute dog," proclaimed one teacher.

Democrats In Favor of Brain Cancer

Why not? Is is so different from some of things they've said about George Bush?

How To Win An Election

George Bush, after 6 years of trying to change the tone in Washington has finally figured out that it's time to get tough.

President Bush yesterday said Democrats became the party of "doubt and defeat" during the fight against communism in the Cold War, and said it shows today in their calls for withdrawal from Iraq.
The president also said terrorists are trying to influence the debate in the United States by making images and video clips of their attacks on U.S. troops available to cable news networks "and opinion leaders throughout the West."
"The Democrat Party that has evolved from one that was confident in its capacity to help deal with the problems of the world to one that is doubting, today still has an approach of doubt and defeat," Mr. Bush said in a campaign speech to donors to the National Republican Senatorial Committee at the Mayflower Hotel near the White House.
He said that shift began in 1972, with the nomination of George McGovern to run for president, continued into President Jimmy Carter's administration and characterized Democrats during Republican President Ronald Reagan's administration.
"They'd gotten to the point where they didn't think that we could win," Mr. Bush said. "Many of their leaders fought the Reagan defense buildup; they fought his Strategic Defense Initiative; they opposed the liberation of Grenada; they didn't like America's support for freedom fighters resisting Soviet puppet regimes."
He contrasted that with Presidents John F. Kennedy and Harry S. Truman, who he said "understood the challenges of their time and were willing to confront those challenges with strong leadership."
Mr. Bush finds himself trying to rally support for the war in Iraq in the face of declining support for both the war and for his own presidency, and with congressional elections little more than two weeks away.
He also is facing more questions from inside his party, as well as from Democrats, over specific tactics and strategy during a violent month for both U.S. forces and Iraqi civilians.
In an interview with the Associated Press yesterday, Mr. Bush acknowledged "tough" times in Iraq, but said the United States is always changing tactics.
The president met yesterday with Gen. John Abizaid, commander of U.S. Central Command, and is scheduled today to hold a briefing with military commanders and top civilian officials.
Democrats said the current flare-up in violence means Mr. Bush's strategy is failing.
"The eruptive situation in Iraq reflects that we are reaping the ultimate results of perils of the amateur strategy formulated by our civilian leaders in the early phases of this conflict," said Rep. Ike Skelton of Missouri, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee.
Mr. Skelton, a respected Democratic voice on military matters, said there needs to be "a major change in strategy that will shift the military mission to the Iraqis, allowing for the redeployment over time of American forces, and that will pressure the Iraqi government to disarm the militias."
Meanwhile, the Democratic leadership in the House and Senate wrote a letter urging Mr. Bush to tell the Iraqis the U.S. commitment is not limitless.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld seemed to agree yesterday, saying in a briefing with reporters that U.S. officials are working with the Iraqi government to try to set a schedule for turning over responsibility for the country's security.
"It's their country, they're going to have to govern it, they're going to have to provide security for it, and they're going to have to do it sooner rather than later. And that means they've got to take pieces of it as we go along," Mr. Rumsfeld said.
Over the past two days, the Bush administration has argued that the increased violence is an attempt to influence U.S. opinion, particularly in the run-up to the midterm elections. Army Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, spokesman for the multinational force in Iraq, raised that possibility Thursday, as did White House spokesman Tony Snow.
And yesterday Mr. Bush said the terrorists exploit the press by filming their attacks and e-mailing images and video clips "to Middle Eastern cable networks like Al Jazeera, and opinion leaders throughout the West."
Mr. Snow later pointed to CNN as a network that "has shown pictures of snipers hitting Americans, which was used as a propaganda tool," as evidence of that claim.
But Mr. Snow said those videos are one-sided, and don't do justice to the state of the war.
"I'm sure the editors are savvy enough to know that when they get a video like this, it's designed less to give you a full and complete view of what's going on in the country than to create a sense of triumphalism for the killers of Americans," he said. "That's the intention of that. I think that's hard to dispute."

He Regrets That It Fizzled and That Everyone Knows It

Kim Jong Il says that he regrets his country's nuclear test.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il said Pyongyang didn't plan to carry out any more nuclear tests and expressed regret about the country's first-ever atomic detonation last week, a South Korean news agency reported Friday.

North Korea, however, kept up its bellicose rhetoric as more than 100,000 people gathered Friday in Pyongyang's central Kim Il Sung square to "hail the success of the historic nuclear test," according to the North's official media.

Kim told Chinese State Councilor Tang Jiaxuan that "we have no plans for additional nuclear tests," Yonhap news agency reported, citing an unnamed diplomatic source in Beijing.

Kim also told the Chinese that "he is sorry about the nuclear test," the mass-circulation Chosun Ilbo daily reported, citing a diplomatic source in China.

A Place Where the Rule of Law Still Rules

Perhaps now we will learn the composition of those “undesirable social elements” whom the Pullman Alliance for Responsible Development (PARD) so fears, now that Whitman County Superior Court Judge David Frazier found that the anti-development cabal failed to make a convincing case against Wal-Mart in his court. That a Wal-Mart might attract such low lifes to Pullman was one of the arguments dismissed by the hearing examiner who first heard PARD’s appeal against Wal-Mart in the first place and found that PARD had no case. Dissatisfied with democracy and due process, PARD sued in Superior Court and initially found a sympathetic ear in Frazier.
This last week however, Frazier ruled that, after holding the process up in his court for months, there were insufficient grounds to overturn the hearing examiner’s ruling. The tone of his decision, or at least the fragments reported by the media, imply that he personally disapproved of Wal-Mart, but lacked the evidence and therefore the authority to inflict his wishes from the bench.
Now that’s nice to hear. Not only because I believe that a Wal-Mart will contribute to the economic well being of Pullman, but it was also refreshing to hear that a judge limited his ruling to the narrow confines of the authority that the law grants his office. Unfortunately, that is not always the case.
In a little over two weeks, Washington voters will have the opportunity to unseat a very powerful judge who does not acknowledge that her office has limits to its power. She has, in fact, awarded herself the power to rule by fiat when the Washington State Legislature fails to keep up with her liberalism. Earlier this year, she voted to overturn marriage as we know it. She also voted to award custody of a child to a lesbian even though the woman was neither the child’s biological or adoptive parent. She has gained notoriety for her seeming hostility to the concept of private property rights, and in doing so has become a darling of the green weenie lobby.
"The Legislature is really behind the times socially," Washington State Supreme Court Justice Susan Owens recently told the Yakima Herald, defending her predisposition to invent laws that the legislature has not yet gained the enlightenment to pass.
No doubt the company she keeps at the tofu and organic papaya juice parties she certainly attends helps keep her social evolution well ahead of the legislature’s, or yours or mine.
Susan Owens’ judicial legislation provoked such intense opposition during the primary election that governor Christine Gregoire proposed that judicial elections be insulated from the sort of unmanaged debate that was once considered an essential element of a healthy democracy. Gregoire thinks that public financing was the answer. Of course public financing means that parties aggrieved by Ms. Owens’ judicial activism will never be allowed to seriously challenge her reelection, which is precisely the point.
Fortunately, Pullman remains a socially un-evolved backwater where laws are enacted by votes and judges do not consider it their anointed duty to lead the way socially. As such, we will probably have a Wal-Mart in Pullman.
“PARD disagrees with the hearing examiner and, by extension, Judge Frazier in their narrow interpretation of city and state codes,” PARD spokesman, T.V. Reed complained. “But the larger issue is clear: Pullman’s laws do not give citizens real choice about the nature and degree of development.”
Wrong. The larger issue is that the law has given Pullman citizens a voice and their will was reflected in the approvals that Wal-Mart has received every step of the way. The city council and the democratically enacted laws that manage development were all observed. PARD sought to thwart the will of the people and subvert the laws enacted by their elected representatives. The problem is that PARDners cocoon with other PARDners and assume, like Susan Owens, that they are in tune with everyone else because everyone in their cocoon thinks the same way that they do.
Meanwhile, Wal-Mart will soon accomplish what liberal politicians have not been able to do – deliver low cost prescription medicine to those who otherwise could not afford it. In doing so, they have forced other retailers to follow along. Why go to Canada or Mexico, when you can go to Pullman?

A Place Where the Rule of Law Still Rules

Perhaps now we will learn the composition of those “undesirable social elements” whom the Pullman Alliance for Responsible Development (PARD) so fears, now that Whitman County Superior Court Judge David Frazier found that the anti-development cabal failed to make a convincing case against Wal-Mart in his court. That a Wal-Mart might attract such low lifes to Pullman was one of the arguments dismissed by the hearing examiner who first heard PARD’s appeal against Wal-Mart in the first place and found that PARD had no case. Dissatisfied with democracy and due process, PARD sued in Superior Court and initially found a sympathetic ear in Frazier.
This last week however, Frazier ruled that, after holding the process up in his court for months, there were insufficient grounds to overturn the hearing examiner’s ruling. The tone of his decision, or at least the fragments reported by the media, imply that he personally disapproved of Wal-Mart, but lacked the evidence and therefore the authority to inflict his wishes from the bench.
Now that’s nice to hear. Not only because I believe that a Wal-Mart will contribute to the economic well being of Pullman, but it was also refreshing to hear that a judge limited his ruling to the narrow confines of the authority that the law grants his office. Unfortunately, that is not always the case.
In a little over two weeks, Washington voters will have the opportunity to unseat a very powerful judge who does not acknowledge that her office has limits to its power. She has, in fact, awarded herself the power to rule by fiat when the Washington State Legislature fails to keep up with her liberalism. Earlier this year, she voted to overturn marriage as we know it. She also voted to award custody of a child to a lesbian even though the woman was neither the child’s biological or adoptive parent. She has gained notoriety for her seeming hostility to the concept of private property rights, and in doing so has become a darling of the green weenie lobby.
"The Legislature is really behind the times socially," Washington State Supreme Court Justice Susan Owens recently told the Yakima Herald, defending her predisposition to invent laws that the legislature has not yet gained the enlightenment to pass.
No doubt the company she keeps at the tofu and organic papaya juice parties she certainly attends helps keep her social evolution well ahead of the legislature’s, or yours or mine.
Susan Owens’ judicial legislation provoked such intense opposition during the primary election that governor Christine Gregoire proposed that judicial elections be insulated from the sort of unmanaged debate that was once considered an essential element of a healthy democracy. Gregoire thinks that public financing was the answer. Of course public financing means that parties aggrieved by Ms. Owens’ judicial activism will never be allowed to seriously challenge her reelection, which is precisely the point.
Fortunately, Pullman remains a socially un-evolved backwater where laws are enacted by votes and judges do not consider it their anointed duty to lead the way socially. As such, we will probably have a Wal-Mart in Pullman.
“PARD disagrees with the hearing examiner and, by extension, Judge Frazier in their narrow interpretation of city and state codes,” PARD spokesman, T.V. Reed complained. “But the larger issue is clear: Pullman’s laws do not give citizens real choice about the nature and degree of development.”
Wrong. The larger issue is that the law has given Pullman citizens a voice and their will was reflected in the approvals that Wal-Mart has received every step of the way. The city council and the democratically enacted laws that manage development were all observed. PARD sought to thwart the will of the people and subvert the laws enacted by their elected representatives. The problem is that PARDners cocoon with other PARDners and assume, like Susan Owens, that they are in tune with everyone else because everyone in their cocoon thinks the same way that they do.
Meanwhile, Wal-Mart will soon accomplish what liberal politicians have not been able to do – deliver low cost prescription medicine to those who otherwise could not afford it. In doing so, they have forced other retailers to follow along. Why go to Canada or Mexico, when you can go to Pullman?

Except That He's Kinda Dead

Ken Lay is a free man.

Hillary is a Liar

Bloggers and talk radio listeners have known known this for years. The New York Times has finally figured it out.

For more than a decade, one piece of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s informal biography has been that she was named for Sir Edmund Hillary, the conqueror of Mount Everest. The story was even recounted in Bill Clinton’s autobiography.

But yesterday, Mrs. Clinton’s campaign said she was not named for Sir Edmund after all.

Saddam Predicts that Democrats Will Win in November

Liberation is at hand!

"The hour of liberation is at hand, God willing, but remember that your near-term goal is confined to freeing your country from the forces of occupation and their followers and not be preoccupied with settling scores or deviate from your goal," Saddam said.

Not a Tree Hugger, Not an America Hater

At last, someone who is actually doing something that will contribute to lasting peace wins the Nobel Peace Prize.

Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus and his Grameen Bank won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for their pioneering use of tiny, seemingly insignificant loans — microcredit — to lift millions out of poverty. Through Yunus's efforts and those of the bank he founded, poor people around the world, especially women, have been able to buy cows, a few chickens or the cell phone they desperately needed to get ahead.

Birds Do It, Bees Do It

Queer nature.

With documentation of gay or lesbian behavior among giraffes, penguins, parrots, beetles, whales and dozens of other creatures, the Oslo Natural History Museum concludes human homosexuality cannot be viewed as "unnatural."

"We may have opinions on a lot of things, but one thing is clear -- homosexuality is found throughout the animal kingdom, it is not against nature," an exhibit statement said.

Okay, then the next time somebody shows up with a 6 legged frog, I don't want to hear anything about it being "unnatural" and a consequence of pollution or ozone depletion.

Don't Know Nothin' 'Bout History

I got up last Sunday morning, turned on ESPN, and realized something. Sports reporters are easily the smartest journalists in all of the news media. I learned from sport reporters that it has been 6 years since the Yankees won a World Series. It has been 22 years since the Detroit Tigers’ last World Series victory and 17 years have elapsed since the Oakland A’s last won. Before the first pitch of every season, Chicago Cubs fans are reminded that their team has not won a World Series since the Bronze Age. Until two years ago, Boston Red Sox fans were forced to endure a similar indignity.
What does this all mean? It means that, only in sports journalism, does history exist. For that matter, only in sports journalism does context exist. In front page and evening news journalism, events occur in complete isolation from any historical context.
A couple of weeks ago, the Democrats’ long anticipated October Surprise was unveiled and Mark Foley, an obscure Republican from Florida, abruptly resigned his seat in the United States House or Representatives and since then, the whole affair became a national campaign issue. Before that, I had never even heard of Mark Foley. But now, when I pick up a newspaper or turn on the news I am told that the Mark Foley episode is hurting Republicans across the country. I have to scratch my head and wonder why this should have any consequences for anyone but Mark Foley.
Somehow, this has become a no-win situation for Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert. I have never seen his appointment calendar, but I strongly suspect that it is crowded with more urgent business than chasing down rumors of phone sex – particularly as no laws seem to have been broken. The boys to whom Foley sent naughty notes were all of the legal age of consent. I have no doubt that if Hastert had moved more forcefully to get Foley to clean up his act, he’d find himself accused of homophobia.
As for historical context and how sexual indulgence should reflect upon a political party, we have the recent history of an ex-president who not only had sex with an intern in his office but lied about it too. We then had the spectacle of the president’s entire party saying that the sex was nobody’s business and lying about it, committing perjury, suborning perjury and intimidating witnesses were okay too.
But one should not even make too much of that, except to note that not one Republican has defended Foley.
No, if you want to see what malfeasance has to say about a political party, you need to look at a story that has gotten almost no attention at all, but should. In Maryland, Republican lieutenant governor Michael Steele is running for Senate against representative Ben Cardin for the seat left open when Paul Sarbanes announced his intention to retire.
Even before the primary, Democrats targeted Steele primarily because he is black and any significant erosion of the black vote could cost the Democrats this seat. So, two staffers from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which operated out of New York Senator Charles Schumer’s office, illegally stole Michael Steele’s identity to gain access to his credit records. This is of particular interest as Senator Schumer has made identity protection one of his signature political issues.
Now what tells you more about a political party – the sexual proclivities of one member, or a concerted opposition research effort that allegedly culminated in a felony?
Before you answer, consider this. Once the malefactors were exposed to the public and the press, they were fired. Good start. However, when last I looked into the case (some months ago I confess), the Democratic Party was paying two lawyers $500 per hour to defend the staffers. Can anyone show me a single receipt showing that the Republican Party is helping Foley out at all?
Oddly, the story I just told you is generally not considered news. You haven’t heard it, right? New Yorkers who rely upon the New York Times as their sole source of news will have no idea that the senior senator from their state was involved in these dirty tricks. The Gray Lady published one small blurb, but never mentioned that Schumer’s office was involved.
If only this were a sports story....

It Only Took 1500 Years For Europeans To Figure it Out

Islam is an intolerant religion.

"You saw what happened with the pope," said Patrick Goeman, 43, the owner of Raga, a funky wine bar in central Antwerp, half an hour outside Brussels. "He said Islam is an aggressive religion. And the next day they kill a nun somewhere and make his point.

"Rationality is gone."

Goeman is hardly an extremist. In fact, he organized a protest last week in which 20 bars and restaurants closed on the night when a far-right party with an anti-Muslim message held a rally nearby.

His worry is shared by centrists across Europe disturbed that any criticism of Islam or Muslim immigration provokes threats of violence.

The Ad You Should See on TV, But Won't

Too true.

Screw Them

Iranians are upset.

What Mohammed Hath Wrought

Washington Liberals Offensive Against Free Speech

Liberals either do not trust the substance of their philosophy or they do not place much faith the little people to digest political debate and vote appropriately. Otherwise, liberals would embrace free speech and encourage debate. Instead, liberals have recently marshaled their force and do all they can to stifle free speech and silence critics to wit: McCain-Feingold. Lamenting the efforts by alliances of politically engaged individuals, known to liberals and cheap populists as “special interest groups,” to persuade Washington’s voters to cast ballots against the Democrats’ candidates, the governor of this once great state has proposed insulating her judicial allies from the judgment of the voters.
During this most recent campaign, citizens who held passionate opinions for or against certain prominent Washington Supreme Court justices invested unusual sums of money into either their defeat or reelection. And that has some dangerously powerful politicians considering how to put an end to all this conversation before it actually has an impact on an election or something.
"The only reasonable conclusion you can draw from those facts is that the entities — the corporations, trade associations, unions — have taken control of the election process," Public Disclosure Commissioner Mike Connelly complained. "By the simple volume of the money being spent, they have taken over ... pre-empted if you will, the voters and individual citizens."
Now I cannot imagine that there is anything wrong with the more passionate citizens exerting a greater influence on an election than the average voter. The passionate partisan is the guy who stands on a street corner trying to get signatures on a petition. It is the passionate citizen who donates his time and his car to get-out-the-vote efforts. Certainly these players have a greater influence on elections that other citizens. Should their efforts be controlled as well?
The average voter doesn’t even know who sits on the Supreme Court. He doesn’t know the outcome of most cases that the court hears or contemplates the consequences of those votes. Until and unless a “special interest group” gets involved, the average voter will see nothing but a vanilla and white bread campaign with essentially no public debate of the issues at stake.
The problem, as Washington’s Democrats see it is that these interest groups can legally speak their mind independent of campaigns. As such, these groups are not bound by laws that restrict how much money a candidate may attract from any one source. This extra-legal status allows these groups to exercise something that we once took for granted – freedom of speech. They can use their own freely given money to advocate for or against anything they want. And to Gregoire and the Public Disclosure Commission, such liberties are corrosive to democracy.
"Candidly, I'm very concerned about the amount of money that is going into judicial races," said the governor who supposedly took an oath to uphold constitutions and the like. "Is there a different and better way? ... I don't think this is healthy for the citizenry or healthy at all for the court. I'd like to hold our court in the highest regard."
She worries that someday, someone might "buy a seat" and undermine public confidence in the judiciary. I doubt that many people have all that much confidence in the judiciary as it is.
Governor Gregoire argues that public financing is the answer. But of course, what she intends is bait and switch. It’s not putting taxpayer money into campaigns that interests her. Her real intent here is to keep uninvited and undesirable people from putting their own money into election campaigns.
What she and the Public Disclosure Commissioners have in mind was made abundantly clear in the manner in which the left went after talk radio in Seattle. Talk radio hosts John Carlson and Kirby Wilbur used their soapbox on KVI radio to advocate in favor of an initiative that would have rolled back a 9.5 cent increase in the gasoline tax. The left had Carlson and Kirby’s speech declared illegal campaign contributions. Why newspaper editorials and for that matter, their slanted news coverage are exempt defies understanding.
I suppose that it will take an attack on the mainstream media’s free speech before we can expect them to oppose such speech management. But of course, by not standing up for everyone’s free speech, the would lack the moral authority to defend their own.

"I didn't like him that well."

So says the man who's obligated to pay Alex Rodriquez a quarter of a billion dollars.

I wonder sometimes if Alex Rodriquez will go down historically as a sort of reverse curse of the Babe.

Remember, Seattle won 116 games in their first season after losing Rodriguez to free agency. And the team that signed him got a lot worse. Once Texas traded Rodriquez to the New York Yankees, the team started getting better.

And the Yankees, after getting Rodriguez executed the most memorable post season collapse in Major League Baseball history, blowing a 3-0 ALCS lead to the Boston Red Sox.

Interview With a Terrorist

Part 3

Interview With A Terrorist

Part two

I asked him that very question: what are the detainees like? Stashiu said:

For many of them, think Ted Bundy. Educated, charming, and without conscience for those they consider infidels. Some are truly ill and were taken advantage of because of it. For example, one routinely asked us for an explosive suicide vest so he could assassinate Osama Bin Laden or George Bush for us, whoever he could find first (he was completely serious).

Interview With a Terrorist

Actually, an interview with an Army major who spent time with the terrorists at Guantanamo.

With apologies to Anne Rice.

Iran Knows Its Frenchmen

Way back when Jacques Chirac "served" France is a less prominent role, he negotiated a deal with Saddam Hussein that would have provided the dictator with enough weapons grade uranium to build several bombs.

So, it's no surprise that Iran has offered to entrust France to enrich its uranium.

A top Iranian nuclear official proposed Tuesday that France create a consortium to enrich Iran's uranium, saying that could satisfy international demands for outside oversight of Tehran's nuclear program.

Mohammad Saeedi, deputy chief of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, made the proposal in an interview with French radio in Tehran, suggesting that France's state-controlled nuclear company and one of its subsidiaries be partners in the consortium. He did not specify what form Iran's participation should take.

"To be able to arrive at a solution, we have just had an idea. We propose that France create a consortium for the production in Iran of enriched uranium," Saeedi told France-Info in the interview broadcast Tuesday.

"France, through the companies Eurodif and Areva, could control in a tangible way our enrichment activities," he added.

France is the world's most nuclear energy-dependent country, relying on atomic reactors for about 75 percent of its electricity, and it has several leading nuclear manufacturers, including state-controlled Areva.

Eurodif is a branch of Areva that was created in the 1970s by France with support from Belgium, Spain, Italy — and Iran.

A French Foreign Ministry spokesman would not comment on Saeedi's proposal. Speaking on customary condition of anonymity, he said "the important thing" for France is the result of talks between Iranian nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana.

The five permanent U.N. Security Council members and Germany are in a standoff with Iran over its enrichment program, which Tehran insists is aimed at producing electricity but which many nations fear is aimed at making nuclear weapons.

Larijani was to hold talks Tuesday in Tehran with the head of Russia's Security Council. Immediate sanctions, favored by the U.S. and Britain, have been resisted by France, to some extent, and by Russia and China — both major commercial partners of Iran.

Georges Le Guelte, a nuclear expert at France's Institute for International and Strategic Research, called Saeedi's announcement "a diversion tactic."

He said the international community was unlikely to agree to such a deal because the enrichment would still take place on Iranian territory.

"This is something that would be almost as dangerous as leaving the Iranians to do it alone," he said. "The day that (Iran's president) thinks the international situation would permit, he will show Areva and Eurodif the door and say, 'Now I will take care of the plant.'"

There was no mention of the proposal in any Iranian media, and the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran declined to comment.

Areva spokesman Charles Hufnagel expressed surprise at Saeedi's announcement.

"We are not involved in any negotiations" about a possible consortium for enriching Iranian uranium, he said. He added that any discussions involving nuclear cooperation with Iran would be at the government level because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Hufnagel said it was too early to comment on whether Areva would be ready in principle to lead such a consortium.

Iran's participation in Eurodif was reduced after the 1979 revolution, and now Iran has a "purely financial" stake of about 11 percent through a joint French-Iranian company called Sofidif, Hufnagel said.

Eurodif's plant in Pierrelate in southeast France produces about a quarter of the world's enriched uranium, for use in nuclear reactors in several countries.

Tehran says it has 50 tons of UF-6 gas, which can be turned into enriched uranium, in Eurodif's plant in France but has not been allowed to use it.

Saeedi gave no other details of his proposal, and it was not clear when he made his comments to France-Info.

France, a veto-wielding member of the Security Council, is among countries pushing to stop Iran's nuclear activities.

Iran ignored a U.N. Security Council deadline in August to suspend uranium enrichment or face possible sanctions.

Saeedi's proposal echoed a similar idea involving Russia. Moscow had sought to defuse the dispute with Iran by offering to conduct all of Iran's enrichment on Russian soil, but Tehran has refused.

Russia is building the Islamic republic's first nuclear power plant in the southern port of Bushehr under an $800 million contract. Moscow says it has worked out a deal with Iran for all of Bushehr's spent fuel to be sent to Russia, eliminating the possibility that Iran could reprocess it for weapons.