Impending Signs Of The Apocalypse

They finally did it.

Indiana Moves to Daylight-Saving Time

...Sunday, when Indiana begins observing daylight-saving time statewide for the first time in more than 30 years.

The change, approved by lawmakers last year, makes Indiana the 48th state to observe daylight time; Hawaii and most of Arizona are the only holdouts.

But the shift, coupled with a U.S. Transportation Department decision allowing eight of the state's 92 counties to change to the Central time zone, has left many in this state confused and uneasy.

The Ferrari 275 GTB

What do you get when you combine one with the streets of Paris?

Something like this. (and no, don't try this at home, the filmaker got arrested)

On an August morning in 1978, French filmmaker Claude Lelouch mounted a gyro-stabilized camera to the bumper of a Ferrari 275 GTB and had a friend, a professional Formula 1 racer, drive at breakneck speed through the heart of Paris. The film was limited for technical reasons to 10 minutes; the course was from Porte Dauphine, through the Louvre, to the Basilica of Sacre Coeur. No streets were closed, for Lelouch was unable to obtain a permit. The driver completed the course in about 9 minutes, reaching nearly 140 MPH in some stretches. The footage reveals him running real red lights, nearly hitting real pedestrians, and driving the wrong way up real one-way streets. Upon showing the film in public for the first time, Lelouch was arrested. He has never revealed the identity of the driver, and the film went underground until a DVD release a few years ago.

(via Powerline)

McKinney To Be Arrested?

Apparently it is, in fact, still a crime, for an elected official, even Rep. Cynthia McKinney, to strike a police officer.

Capitol Hill police plan to issue an arrest warrant today for Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.).

The warrant is related to the incident Wednesday when McKinney allegedly slapped a Capitol Hill police officer.

Charges could range from assault on a police officer, which is a felony carrying a possible five year prison term, to simple assault, which is a misdeamenor.

McKinney has canceled a news conference that she had scheduled for this morning to discuss the incident.

McKinney issued a statement yesterday saying she "deeply regrets" the confrontation with the police officer.

The six-term congresswoman apparently struck a Capitol Police officer when he tried to stop her from entering a House office building without going through a metal detector. Members of Congress wear identifying lapel pins and routinely are waved into buildings without undergoing security checks. The officer apparently did not recognize McKinney, she said in a statement.

Asked on-camera Thursday by Channel 2 Action News whether she intended to apologize, McKinney refused to comment.

"I know that Capitol Hill Police are securing our safety, and I appreciate the work that they do. I have demonstrated my support for them in the past and I continue to support them now," she said in the statement on her Web site.

I like how in all the interviews everybody keeps saying that the officer "did not recognize her." How on earth does that then make it okay for her to hit the police officer?

Some people might even show their identification instead of, you know, throwing down and getting into a fight.

Yet Another Reason Why We Need A Viable Border Policy

Virgin Mary tombstones full of drugs

Thursday, March 30, 2006; Posted: 10:08 p.m. EST (03:08 GMT)

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Federal agents on Thursday said they had broken up a ring of drug smugglers who used tombstones featuring the Virgin Mary to move hundreds of pounds of cocaine into the United States from Mexico.

The Drug Enforcement Agency announced arrests of 12 people as part of an alleged conspiracy stretching from New York to Mexico City.

Four of those arrests came Thursday, one in Houston and three after an early morning raid on a warehouse in New York's Brooklyn borough.

At the warehouse, agents found bricks of cocaine packed inside tombstones, some decorated with figures of the Virgin Mary, the DEA said.

Last month, the DEA said it had arrested a separate group of suspected smugglers who surgically inserted drugs into puppies as part of another scheme.

These are the people sending drugs into this country. And they will use any means necessary to do it.

Mother Teresa "Jeopardizes Tolerance"

Who doesn't like Mother Teresa? She probably helped more people in a week than you or I ever will in our entire lifetime. She's recognized the world over as a great humanitarian. Okay, so the movie about her life that could potentially star Paris Hilton casts a bit of doubt onto the seriousness of the director, but who's to say that a miracle won't happen and Paris will see the light? Mother Teresa is in line for the sainthood you know.

Ah, and now we come to it. Mother Teresa was Catholic. And that's enough for Albanian Muslims to oppose the statue being built to honor her in her hometown.

Muslims in Albania's northern city of Shkoder are opposing plans to erect a statue to Mother Teresa, the ethnic Albanian Catholic nun in line for elevation to sainthood by the Vatican.

The dispute is unusual for Albania, where religion was banned for 27 years under the regime of dictator Enver Hoxha and where religious harmony and mixed marriages are the norm.

Seventy percent of the population are liberal Muslims, the rest are Christian Orthodox and Catholic.

But Muslim groups in Shkoder rejected the local council plan for a Teresa statue, saying it "would offend the feelings of Muslims."

"We do not want this statue to be erected in a public place because we see her as a religious figure," said Bashkim Bajraktari, Shkoder's mufti or Muslim religious leader.

"If there must be a statue, let it be in a Catholic space."

Several residents told Reuters they felt there was an underground effort to treat Shkoder as a Catholic town, ignoring its majority Muslim community.

Shkoder's Muslims recently protested against crosses being erected on prominent hilltops.

"These acts jeopardise tolerance. Frankly, we're trying hard to maintain religious harmony," said deputy mufti Arben Halluni.

Skender Drini, a Shkoder writer and former diplomat, conceded the statue plan may have come at an inappropriate time.

"(But) if you rise against Mother Teresa, you rise against your own humanism and patriotism," he said.

In a way, I shouldn't really be complaining about this. What you have is a majority Muslim town saying they'd just rather not have something in their public square. In a purely democratic sense, it does make sense. Majority rules.

But of interest to me are the arguments being used. "Jeopardizing tolerance" by establishing a statue honoring one of the greater women in history. This is not a Catholic Church, and they're not going to be putting out a booth to draw in converts. This is the town where she was born. And that's why the public location is of importance.

Still, if you go by the majority, they claim offense from the minority, and thus what they say goes. Interesting how it works in other parts of the world.

Of course that's not to say that the land won't be put to use, or that someone else won't be in line to be honored on that spot. In fact Reuters does manage to nail down a replacement figure that some locals wouldn't mind seeing instead.

...men in one Shkoder bar said they would prefer a monument to an Albanian fighter who blew himself up in order to avoid being captured by enemy Serbs, or even to two Ottoman-era pashas remembered fondly in Shkoder.

Albanian fighter huh? Who blew himself up? You wouldn't per chance be talking about a "freedom" fighter, would you Reuters?

ABC Reports...Nothing

And it took them two whole pages to do it. Not bad.

A new study released by two British scientists apparently "casts doubt"(!) on Jesus' crucifixion. What does that mean exactly? Does it mean it never happened?

Actually as it turns out, no. They're not even disputing that point. They spend two pages talking about how particularly brutal the Romans could be, and that they had all kinds of nasty things they could do to a person on the cross.

The new review of the causes of death in crucifixion has challenged established medical theories and the leading hypotheses of how Jesus died.

The authors, Mitchell and Matthew Masien, believe that the image of Christ on the cross - the way he is portrayed with arms nailed to the side - has never been substantiated as fact.

They do not attempt to dispute whether the crucifixion actually occurred, but they question whether subsequent drawings of Christ on the cross have been accurate.

Christ, according to the report, could have been crucified in any number of ways, all of which would have affected the causes of his death.

"Of the one case we are aware of, the heels of the male victim were nailed to the sides of the cross and there was no evidence of nail insertion through the wrist or forearm," Mitchell said. "Based on the evidence, we don't even know if the victim was upright, facing down, or in any other position."

They note that the few eyewitness descriptions available today of crucifixions in the first century A.D. show that the Romans had a broad and cruel imagination.

Yes, and so therefore, the options for death are endless. And, as they admit:

Archaeological evidence for crucifixion is rare, as most people were not buried following death," Mitchell said.

So what does all this mean? As ABC admits - nothing.

Where does all that leave us? It leaves us with a caution by two medical experts to not automatically assume that something happened in a certain way just because it is shown that way in a drawing.

Yes, or then again, maybe it did? Couldn't the story just as easily have been titled "New Study By Scientists Shows Jesus' Method Of Cruxifixion Possible".

Don't hold your breath for that headline though.

Remember Libya's Nuclear Program?

The one they gave up the very week Saddam was captured in Iraq?

The media takes great pains to hoist the "Nothing to see here!" flag over that entire divestment by Libya. For no other reason, it would appear, than to deny George Bush any success in the war on terror. Afghanistan, Taliban, al Qaeda, Iraq, Libya folds, AQ Khan network folds, more al Qaeda collapse.

If it's all connected, then Iraq was not a diversion, not a mistake, not a "lie". Especially, perhaps, if this new suspicion pans out, that Libya wasn't building the bomb for themselves. They might have been building it for Iraq.

The guys at Powerline are all over it, and coming up with some interesting stuff.

As we noted last night, one of the recently-released audio tapes from Saddam Hussein's office makes clear that by the mid 1990s, portions, at least, of Iraq's nuclear weapons program had been moved outside that country:

Sir, where was the Nuclear material transported to? A number of them were transported outside of Iraq.

The tape does not say where the nuclear materials went. But two readers have suggested that it was likely Libya. Norm Grant writes:

ISSA [International Strategic Studies Association] has been saying for years that Saddam's nuclear program was primarily located in Libya. You might want to go to strategicstudies.org and check out the January 30, 2004 Iraqi war report. I'm having a hard time pulling up a link.

ISSA has written that they have better human intel in Libya than our own CIA. ISSA believed that as many as 20,000 Iraqis were in Libya working on WMD and missile development.

Paul Linsay writes:

Regarding the nuclear program and the Iraqis who were working on it "somewhere." Remember when Quaddafi gave up his nuclear program in the aftermath of OIF? Initially, I was surprised to learn that Libya had a program and wondered how they could do it. They have a population of 6 million, a GDP of $30 billion, and a 75% literacy rate. For comparison, the state of Massachusetts also has a population of 6 million, a GDP of $120 billion, and the needed brainpower to build a nuclear weapon. But Massachusetts probably couldn't afford it since the cost is north of $20 billion and requires an industrial operation of at least 10,000 people. So where does Libya come by the needed people, knowledge, and money? Iraq! At the time Quadaffi said "Uncle", there were a few reports, which quickly disappeared, of large numbers of Iraqi nuclear scientists and technicians in Libya to run the program. This tape may be a link in the connection.

McKinney Goes Wild

Someone needs to find the video footage of this.

According to sources on Capitol Hill, U.S. Representative Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) punched a Capitol police officer on Wednesday afternoon after he mistakenly pursued her for failing to pass through a metal detector.

Members of Congress are not required to pass through metal detectors.

Sources say that the officer was at a position in the Longworth House Office Building, and neither recognized McKinney, nor saw her credentials as she went around the metal detector.

The officer called out, “Ma’am, Ma’am,” and walked after her in an attempt to stop her. When he caught McKinney, he grabbed her by the arm.

Witnesses say McKinney pulled her arm away, and with her cell phone in hand, punched the officer in the chest.

The Peeps Strike Back

It seems the St. Paul human rights director, Tyrone Terrill, by forcing the removal of the City Hall lobby Easter bunny display (lest it might offend someone, not that it actually offended someone, that it might offend someone) has in fact offended a whole lot of people.

The bunny display is down. But in it's place...Peeps. Armies of them.

Marshmallow Peeps have been multiplying outside City Hall as a symbol of protest over last week's decision to evict the Easter Bunny.

A handful of employees have placed the spongy chick- and rabbit-shaped candies around a City Hall statue of American Indians, along with two signs that temporarily rename the "Vision of Peace" statue as the "Vision of Peeps."

"From a building standpoint, no comment!" said a laughing Jolly Mangine, Ramsey County's director of property management. "We're just going to let it ride."

Just Born, the company that manufactures Peeps, issued a statement after being informed of the display.

"It is a shame that the Easter Bunny hopping through City Hall has caused such a disturbance. We are sure that the regal 'Vision of Peace' statue does not mind sharing a little glory and spring fever with us - the Peeps," the company said.

Now, as I eluded to before, this "war on Easter" is perhaps the dumbest thing since the "war on Christmas".

Obviously, bunnies and Peeps have little to do with the death and resurrection of Jesus, and I don't particularly identify with either as a religious icon, or even a snack. But somewhere along the way, the candy companies pulled a sneak attack and inserted that dang bunny into the holiday lexicon. And so now, unfortunately for the bunnies, they've become a casualty of war, as it's the "Easter" the paranoid PC peddlers are after.

Tyrone Terrill, the city's human rights director, asked that the decorations be removed. He has since said his only problem with the display involved the "Happy Easter" sign.

Of course now the problem is that while bunnies (and poor Santa) expect to get caught in the crossfire, and are trained for such warfare, Peeps are relative newcomers to this fight. They mean well, and I applaud their stand for their fallen candy comrade. But I fear for them. While they have the numbers of a major army, a mastery of weapons and hand-to-hand combat, and are quite receptive to battlefield triage, their marshmallow making is not resilient like the armored waxy coating the chocolate bunnies receive.

They can prevail but...if any were ever taken prisoner, and a proper analysis of their composition conducted...it could be disastrous.

Hurricane Damaged: Flooded, Unsalvageable

Sounds like a buy! Or so the officials of New Orleans are hoping.

Remember all those flooded out school buses that were just sitting around, well...flooded, after Katrina? Yes, the ones that sat in the putrid disease ridden waters for weeks. You know, these buses:


Apparently they are now for sale.

Starved for cash, the New Orleans school district is taking a long shot and hoping to sell its flooded, unsalvageable school buses on eBay.

Some submerged to their roofs in the black flood waters, the yellow school buses were widely photographed in the days after Hurricane Katrina and have become an icon of the city's devastated school system.

School officials acknowledge the sale of the buses on the Internet auction site may puzzle some people used to more traditional school fundraisers like bake sales.

"There's no shame in it. Not one bit," said school board president Phyllis Landrieu. "This is a new mechanism for selling things. I think it's very upbeat what we're doing."

The school district plans to put one bus up for sale on eBay this week. If it succeeds, more of the 259 ruined buses will be offered.

"It's an example of how bad the situation is that we would have to come up with this idea," said Richard White, schools spokesman.

The district plans to contract out its student transportation.

Here, look! They (or, someone selling something purported to be the Katrina buses on eBay - you have to watch yourself with pranksters you know) even point out the exact bus you'll be buying! Now that's what I call driving that extra mile.

So how much can the school district make from the buses? From the article, 259 ruined buses, the bidding on eBay is at a thousand so far (let's say they get two to three thousand per bus)...that comes to about $777,000 at the most.

Whereas according to the article, the district, out of a yearly budget of $430,000,000, is facing a budget shortfall of $111,000,000 and has outstanding debt, from before Katrina, of $264,000,000. That comes to $375,000,000.

What? Doesn't your checkbook add up like that? Oh, come on, all the school district has to do is jack up the reserve on those babies, say to...a million apiece. Easy. They'll sell.

It's eBay!

You've Got A Dirty Mouth

@#&@$!

Apparently a lot of people are cursing more. So says a new f@?#! survey. In fact, fowl mouthed four letter misplaced modifiers are so prevelant in our society that a lot of people have had it. I mean, the results are so foul the Associated Press could barely even write about it!

Wondering specifically about the F-word? (For the record, we needed special dispensation from our bosses just to say 'F-word.') Thirty-two percent of men said they used it at least a few times a week, compared to 23 percent of women.

"That word doesn't even mean what it means anymore," says Larry Riley of Warren, Mich. "It has just become part of the culture." Riley admits to using the F-word a few times a week. And his wife? "She never swears."

A striking common note among those interviewed, swearers or not: They don't like it when people swear for no good reason.

Darla Ramirez, for example, says she hates hearing the F-word "when people are just having a plain old conversation." The 40-year-old housewife from Arlington, Texas, will hear "people talking about their F-ing car, or their F-ing job. I'll hear it walking down the street, or at the shopping mall, or at Wal-Mart.

"What they do it their own home is their business, but when I'm out I don't need to hear people talking trashy," Ramirez says. She admits to swearing about once a month _ but not the F-word.

And Donnell Neal of Madison Lake, Minn., notes how she'll hear the F- word used as a mere form of emphasis, as in: "That person scared the f--- out of me!" Neal, 26, who works with disabled adults, says she swears only in moments of extreme frustration, "like if someone cuts me off when I'm driving, or if I'm carrying something and someone shuts the door in my face." Even then, she says, she'll likely use "milder cuss words" _ and never at work.

Who shuts a door in someone's face when they're carrying something? That's just uncool.

Holy Ice-Picks Batman!

Looks like someone has a case of bad-B-movie-itis.

Sharon Stone, an actress who has blazed a trail of B-movie nakedness a mile wide (uhh...yeah, pun intended, sorry) for over a decade (starring in such soft core porn blockbusters films as Basic Instinct, The Specialist, that scintillating sanguinary plot-devoid tale Sliver, and the soon-to-bomb sequel Basic Instinct II) who recently traveled to the Middle East to solve the Israeli/Palestinian conflict...(yes...just let that one sink in...), has now come out to say that Hillary Clinton is too sexy to run for President. (h/t American Princess)

Stone, 48, who appears naked in a soon-to-be-released sequel to the provocative 1992 sex thriller Basic Instinct, said Senator Clinton had an intimidating sexuality that would cost her votes.

"I think Hillary Clinton is fantastic, but I think it is too soon for her to run (for president)," Stone said in the latest edition of Hollywood Life magazine.

"A woman should be past her sexuality when she runs. Hillary still has sexual power and I don't think people will accept that. It's too threatening."

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I'm sorry, I was laughing. Did you read to the bottom of the article? Susan Sarandon is also quoted in the piece. And I must say, it's rather disturbing.

"I find Hillary to be a great disappointment," Sarandon said.

I know, I almost spit my drink out. But then I saw that Ms. Sarandon was saying she was disappointed because Hillary voted for the Iraq war. So...everything is cool. The world is still spinning. But that was a close one.

Anyway, one has to wonder about Sharon Stone. Does she seriously believe Hillary is sexy? That men, and apparently women, fear her "sexual power"? Honestly, the only thing I'm fearing right now is that I won't be able to finish my drink as I keep laughing so hard. That and maybe Hillary finally perfected that dang evil cookie recipe she was peddling back when she was First Lady (oh yes, it is evil).

Or, perhaps, is it something a bit more? I mean, did this thing ever get off the ground? Perhaps Sharon is still jonesing for the part?

Card Resigns

Well, it's official. Andrew Card has resigned as White House chief of staff. Replaced by Josh Bolten.

White House chief of staff Andy Card has resigned and will be replaced by budget director Josh Bolten, an administration official said Tuesday, in a White House shake up that comes amid declining poll standings for President Bush.

Bush was expected to announce the change himself later Tuesday during a meeting with reporters in the Oval Office.

The move comes as Bush has been buffeted by increasing criticism of the drawn-out war in Iraq and as fellow Republicans have suggested pointedly that the president bring in new aides with fresh ideas and new energy.

Card came to Bush recently and suggested that he should step down from the job that he has held from the first day of Bush's presidency, said the administration official.

Bush decided during a weekend stay at Camp David, Md., to accept Card's resignation and to name Bolten as his replacement, said the source who spoke on condition of anonymity because he did not want to pre-empt the president.

Bolten is widely experienced in Washington, both on Capitol Hill as well as at the White House, where he was deputy chief of staff before becoming director of the Office of Management and Budget.

As my cynicism knows no bounds, anyone care to guess on the inevitable doom and gloom headline from the New York Times? My vote is for "House of Cards".

"24"

Tonight on 24 - Jack shoots Audrey in the thigh!

Actually, I have no idea, but considering last week's stunning revelation and the preview, it seems quite probable.

And why is such a thigh shooting (or according to the preview "a throttling") possible? Because Audrey is poised to join the long list of bad girls of the screen (actual bad girls, not the bad movie Bad Girls). Women like Nina Myers, all those evil Bond Girls, Dark Phoenix, Evil Willow (okay, so maybe Drucilla), Evil Francie, and Catherine Tramell (minus the ice-pick, and no, you don't need that link) all rolled into one.

Get ready, because Audrey Raines is apparently in cahoots with terrorists.

Yes, so that's why she's been so annoying. And, in light of the whole Season 4 "Jack tortured Audrey's husband, who was a terrorist, and then when said husband was having heart surgery Jack stopped the surgery to make the doctor save another terror suspect, so the husband died" thing, and Audrey said that she hated Jack, she may have actually been saying "no, I not only hate you, I hate this country and I'm going to sell secrets to terrorists." Or maybe she was in with the terrorists all along? Either way, rest assured Jack is going to get it out of her.

Anyway, last weeks episode (for previous weeks see here, here, and here) started off on a sad note, with the removal of Tony Almeida's body. May he rest in peace. He is now with Michelle in TV Heaven, so hopefully they're happy and are still watching the show.

Meanwhile, Chloe, doing what she does best, hacked away at Henderson's computer and found reference to Collette. Collette, who has so far had more on-screen time in her underwear than clothes, received a plot upgrade from "half-naked mystery woman" to "intelligence broker extraordinare". It also appears that she has the inside knowledge on Beirko, the leader of terror group...A B C D, also known as "The-latest-group-to-possess-the-canisters".

By the way, this season the themes are gas canisters, keycards and sub-basements. And Audrey is now evil. Actually, that's really about all you need to know and now you're caught up.

But okay, for those of you who want the long version of the plot...Collette, apparently not knowing the first rule of being a spy, used her real name for her hotel room. So CTU finds her. And the special teams, led by Curtis, prepare to move in. Jack, not having shot anyone in the thigh for at least an hour ready for a lead to avenge Tony's death (and Michelle's, and Edgar's, and all those poor extras) and save the world, volunteers to go along.

Now the President, not liking the fact that he's only had three major terrorist attacks and a high level assassination in one day, decides to start confiding in and taking advice from the First Lady. Now personally I think she's nuts I have no problem with the First Lady. She's a talented singer. But the fact remains, she has issues, namely the fact that she seems to have forgiven her husband awfully fast for leaving her for dead letting the terrorists blackmail the country, and that she now has feelings for Agent Pierce. And no, I will not make another insinuation about how this situation eerily mimics that darned Whitney Houston movie. Now if only the show writers would do the same thing...

Anyway, getting back to it. So the President, now listening to the VP and the First Lady, implements a curfew in L.A. He commands the military to block off the city and create essentially a quarantine zone. The media immediately calls the action illegal. And John Carpenter cries fowl yet again.

Meanwhile, the slow-motion death of CTU continues. Forty percent down, demoralized, dejected, and at the ever-worrisome "reduced operating effectiveness", they are clinging to the last few remaining cast members they have. And then, making matters worse, Ms. Hayes of Homeland Security arrives to begin a full absorption process. Yes, that's absorption, not adsorption. Though it is a sticky situation as well. And why? Because Ms. Hayes deputy, Miles Papazian (who thinks up these names?), took Chloe's keycard. (see, I told you, it's all about the keycards) And Chloe needs that card, because it's the only access she has to secure sections of the government net, and thus any assistance she can give to Jack.

Now, as the military locks down L.A. (in record time, I would say), and the VP is looking shiftier and shiftier, Agent Pierce gets a call from...Wayne Palmer. Wayne offers information, something secret that his brother knew. Of course, why Wayne didn't just call Jack Bauer is beyond me. Doesn't Wayne know that Jack is the star of the show? But anyway...Agent Pierce is cool. So we'll allow the writers this line of plotting for now.

Meanwhile, Collette is off doing...I don't know. Bad things, I suppose. She was on her way to meet with the terrorists, and to provide them with a schematic of some type of target, so they can kill 200,000 people. So yes, probably bad things.

But back over at CTU, those numbers and the terrorists matter little, because cross-jurisdictional-harmony has broken out, and...wait... No, a massive fight has broken out over operational control of CTU. Homeland wants it, but Buchanan is loathe to give up command and have his people absorbed by Homeland. Honestly, though, for an organization so badly damanged, it's a wonder Homeland wants CTU at all. I mean, it's the government, it's after 5 o'clock, just send them all home. Anyway, for some reason, Homeland wants CTU doing their dirty work under their wing.

Meanwhile, Jack and Curtis arrive at Collette's hotel, and end up confronting her boyfriend on the roof. Now in spite of the fact that during the stand-off it is discovered that the boyfriend, Stoller, works for German Intelligence, and in spite of the fact that the man will not cooperate with CTU and give up information about the terrorists, and in spite of the fact that Jack has not shot anyone in over an hour, Jack did not shoot the man, even in the thigh. Instead he offers a trade, a list of all suspected terrorists in the world (don't we give this out for free anyway?), for the information on the terrorists with the nerve gas. The man accepts, and Jack has Chloe get the information.

But wait, it wasn't so easy. Chloe, not having her keycard, had to create a diversion. Miles never had a chance, though, as spilled coffee on his trousers appeared to have the same mental effect as if he were doused with muratic acid. Needless to say, as Miles diverted, Chloe soon had her keycard back and got the list. Stoller, the German, agrees to trade Collette and info on the terrorists in return for the list. Homeland security, however, has other ideas. Unhappy that Jack has not returned to CTU to punch his timecard, Hayes and Jack get into a phone fight about who's terrorist is the bigger threat. Jack wins, obviously. And Homeland, and Collette (who they arrest at the airport), loses. Chloe also breathed a sign of relief, as Miles, that busybody, having recovered from his coffee trauma, had discovered Chloe's list-taking, and ratted her out. But now she was free again, to hack at will. Though actually, the last person to lose out was Stoller. Apparently he sold out his terrorist girlfriend for a James Phelps memory card, and the list went up in smoke.

Ha Hah!

Anyway, so in the twenty minutes that Jack was outsmarting working jointly with Homeland Security, CTU, and a foreign intelligence agent, the U.S. military established a quarantine zone around L.A. And Wayne Palmer, stuck at a roadblock, could not get through to Agent Pierce. But the VP hears of the incident...and soon Wayne is waved through the roadblock. Yes, the VP, the man who wanted martial law. Be afraid Wayne, be very afraid...because *dun dun duuuuuhhhh!* Commandos in full battle gear, complete with kidnapper van, show up in five minutes and try to kill him! Wayne turns into John Wayne though, because even though he is shot at by skilled professionals, is forced off the road and has a spectacular wreck, he is only wounded in the arm. Just a flesh wound, and so Wayne makes his escape into the woods.

Meanwhile, CTU is finally questioning Collette. They don't get anything out of her, and so then Jack goes to question Collette. Now apparently Collette has seen this show before, because she gave up almost immediately. Apparently thigh shooting just isn't her thing. And so for the President's autograph, she'll give up the terrorists and her source for the schematic.

The President, already on a roll from dealing with the terrorists earlier in the day, has his people pull out the ready-made "terrorist immunity" documents and signs away. And once Collette is satisfied that yes, she will survive at least until the next episode, she gives up the big one...Audrey Raines was her source, the person who sold her the schematic, the person who gave the next target to the terrorists.

Jack gets angry - nay - furious!

Audrey is really going to be in for it during the next episode. So we're all set for tonight, as the double-crossing, thigh shooting, keycarding, sub-basementing, canister bombing season continues!

Finally, Science Is Paying Off

Get ready for healthy bacon.

A microscopic worm may be the key to heart-friendly bacon.

Researchers hope they can improve the technique in pork and do the same in chickens and cows. In the process, they also want to better understand human disease.

Kang is one of 17 authors of the paper appearing Sunday in an online edition of the journal Nature Biotechnology.

Earlier experiments have succeeded in manipulating animals' fat content but most never made it out of the lab because of taste problems.

While boosting Omega-3s doesn‘t decrease the fat content in pigs, the fatty acids are also important to brain development and may reduce the risk of Alzheimer's disease, Alzheimer's disease and depression. The American Heart Association recommends at least two weekly servings of fish, particularly fatty fish like trout and salmon, which are naturally high in omega-3s.

And The Winner For "Best Intelligence Given In A Major War" Goes To...

Russia.


The picture showcasing the award Iraq presented to the Russian "non-government ex-military consultants" for assisting the Iraqi regime in their efforts against the United States, just before the war.

It's sad really. Not just that they were so pleased about it that someone would photograph a dang award ceremony, but because this information was actually known at the time. Yet no one seemed to care about that, or any of the tell-tale signs that maybe the reason Bush wasn't getting any help on Iraq was not because he was Bush, but because those other countries had a financial stake in leaving the regime the way it was.

Oil-For-Food was the key. It always was.

(via Gateway Pundit, who has the best round-up on this topic)

Illegal Immigration

So the numbers are in: about a half a million people rallied in downtown L.A. this weekend. All to protest the government wanting to make illegal immigration more illegal.

Thousands of immigration advocates marched through downtown Los Angeles in one of the largest demonstrations for any cause in recent U.S. history.

More than 500,000 protesters - demanding that Congress abandon attempts to make illegal immigration a felony and to build more walls along the border - surprised police who estimated the crowd size using aerial photographs and other techniques, police Cmdr. Louis Gray Jr. said.

Wearing white T-shirts to symbolize peace, the demonstrators chanted "Mexico!" "USA!" and "Si se puede," an old Mexican-American civil rights shout that means "Yes, we can."

In Denver, more than 50,000 people protested downtown Saturday, according to police who had expected only a few thousand. Phoenix was similarly surprised Friday when an estimated 20,000 people gathered for one of the biggest demonstrations in city history, and more than 10,000 marched in Milwaukee on Thursday.

"We construct your schools. We cook your food," rapper Jorge Ruiz said after performing at a Dallas rally that drew 1,500. "We are the motor of this nation, but people don't see us. Blacks and whites, they had their revolution. They had their Martin Luther King. Now it is time for us."

Actually, I welcome the marches. Because I think the main problem for a lot of America is that people don't realize what a huge problem illegal immigration is.

My family is an immigrant family. A lot of families are immigrant families. In fact, if your ancestors weren't chasing reindeer herds across the land bridge spanning Russia and Alaska, chances are your family is also an immigrant family. But immigrated from where? We all had to start somewhere, so does that mean we can all lay claim then to one spot on earth? Or is there a historical demarcation line, where one culture becomes the native, the other the immigrant?

As with any society that forms and lasts, and generates a culture of traditions and norms and language and thus becomes "native", there are always going to be people coming from somewhere else who want to be a part of that society. And historically the geographic lines separating the immigrant from the native, or the way the immigrant then became the native, were drawn by three factors: conquerors, climate and births. And there isn't a spot on this planet that hasn't succumbed to all three at some point or another.

But immigration is a part of the world. Some societies attempt to stop it. If you go to France, you cannot become French. But France itself will soon no longer be French, as immigrants are having more children than the "natives". And some societies restrict immigration all together.

America doesn't do that. Here in America, anyone can be an American. That's the beauty of coming to this country. It is a nation of immigrants. And while there has been strife upon strife as our country has grown over the years, on the whole it has grown in the right direction. America is pretty much the freest nation on earth.

And that's a very good thing. Immigration is a good thing. But what is going on today in America with illegal immigration is not a good thing. Are we a society of laws or not? Are we a nation or not? Are we proud to be Americans or not? Sounds like a few rather simple questions to me, but yet they've risen to shake the very idea of sovereignty and the political landscape. Because there are millions of people in America illegally.

Again...There are millions of people in America illegally.

They have no identification, pay no taxes, and they do not vote. Do they like this country? I don't know. I suppose so, as they're here, but obviously they are here to work or to escape some form of persecution. But those are reasons of self-preservation and self-fulfillment, not out of the goodness of anyone's heart. I'm very happy they want to better themselves, and I'm glad America can provide refuge for the persecuted. Now who are you?

One protestor was quoted as saying "When did you ever see a Mexican blow up the World Trade Center? Who do you think built the World Trade Center?" said David Gonzalez, 22, who marched in Los Angeles with a sign that read, "I'm in my homeland."

I'm very happy for him. I wish him well, and I thank him for not blowing up the Word Trade Center, and hopefully not the new one either. But I question his facts on who built the World Trade center. Last I checked the undisputed historical kings of working on high rise buildings were Native Americans. But regardless, what does it matter who built the World Trade Center? Were they paid for their work? Did they build it out of the goodness of their heart? Did the bank that fronted the cash? Did the company that contracted it? No, none of them did. It was for money, and profit and the furtherance of the economic engine - so as to make more profit. And that has absolutely nothing to do with being in this country legally.

I take offense towards anyone saying they "demand" the right to live in this country. There is no such right. There is no "right" to a lot of things in this life. If some other nation wants to try to conquer us, and establish their right to live here, they can try. But in America, while we strive to welcome everyone, to be a melting pot of cultures, races, rich and poor, strong and weak, and do it with sense of pride, we also do it while following the law, because that's what America is all about. What we don't do, and what we cannot allow, is the continued erosion of our laws and our national goodwill. America is not here for the taking. And this situation is out of control.

A lot of people say (and to any who balk at this and yell "straw man!", tough. You know "they" say it, because you've heard it) "oh, well, illegal immigrants provide cheap labor. Everything you own would be more expensive if we kicked them out".

Firstly, I dispute that claim. Goods may become more expensive. A new home may cost more. But the strain on law enforcement, hospitals, and other government services would lessen, and also taxes from wages would rise, thereby costing cities and state's less (whether or not they blow it on something wasteful, well...that's another issue). Besides, nobody short of extremists is seriously advocating kicking anybody out anywhere.

But to have real immigration into this country we must have order. We must have cultures wanting to be a part of this country, and respecting the laws of the land, and employers who respect the laws as well.

Otherwise we have nations within nations, underground cultures, virtual indentured servants, cultures without any allegiance to this country, cultures with allegiance to this country who are afraid of being deported - and thus susceptible to being taken advantage of, embitterment, resentment, ideas of entitlement, added strains on government resources, a lack of honesty, disregard for the law (by our own elected officials), and the erosion of goodwill.

Any nation, even America, cannot survive under this strain forever.

Uhh...Sean, Put The Doll Down...

This is just one of those "TMI-You need help-What kind of a moron does this?" stories that you'd really just rather not hear or even know about. So that's why I'm putting it here for you to read.

Sean Penn Has Ann Coulter Voodoo Doll

...Page Six details the latest press to come his way: 'IT's a good thing for Ann Coulter that Sean Penn doesn't know voodoo. Penn has a plastic Barbie-like doll of the right-wing pundit that he likes to torture on occasion.

"We violate her," the ornery actor tells The New Yorker about his mini-Coulter. "There are cigarette burns in some funny places. She's a pure snake-oil salesman. She doesn't believe a word she says." Coulter mentioned Penn's father, blacklisted director Leo Penn, in her book, "Treason."'...

I'm not really one to accuse anybody of being nuts, because I'm sure there's a perfectly good psychological explanation for taking a doll that has a likeness of someone you hate and torturing it...

However, it might be a good idea for someone to do some type of Barbie doll Intervention on this guy.

Thomas Sowell

I don't know any other way to say it: this man knows his stuff.

I try to read his articles any chance I get, but out of the thirty or so books he's written, I've only read one, The Quest for Cosmic Justice. An amazingly brilliant read about how often the quest for justice and equality can directly lead to injustice and inequality.

The WSJ OpinionJournal has an interesting interview with Mr. Sowell on their weekend page.

Mr. Sowell's unorthodox views on racial matters have made him our foremost "black conservative," but the modifier sells him way short. He is one of the country's leading social commentators--without qualification. And his scholarship is not only voluminous but wide-ranging, covering everything from education and law to political philosophy, migration and the history of ideas. His primary discipline, however, is economics, specifically the history of economic thought, the subject in which he earned his doctorate from the University of Chicago in 1968 under Milton Friedman and George Stigler. It is the subject he taught at Cornell, UCLA, Amherst, Brandeis and elsewhere during an academic career in the 1960s and '70s. And it is the subject of his most recent book, "On Classical Economics," which Yale has just published.

And this is a very insightful assessment of free-market economics, academic responsibility and the art of teaching.

Free-market economics, a legacy of the classical school, is thought of as an old conservative doctrine. But Mr. Sowell explains that it was in fact one of the most revolutionary concepts to emerge in the history of ideas. Moreover, "the thinking of the classical economist was not only a radical break from landmark intellectual figures like Plato and Machiavelli but also from mainstream thinking to this day." The notion of a self-equilibrating system--the market economy--meant a reduced role for intellectuals and politicians, he says. "And even today many still haven't accepted that their superior wisdom might be superfluous, if not damaging."

Mr. Sowell may be an unabashed free-market adherent, but he's proud to say that Professor Sowell left his personal views out of the classroom. In his 2000 memoir, "A Personal Odyssey," he relates an episode in which some students approached him after taking his graduate seminar on Marxian theory. They expressed appreciation for the course but added, "We still don't know what your opinion is on Marxism." He took it as an unintended compliment.

"My job was to teach them economics, not teach them what I happen to believe," says Mr. Sowell, who adds that efforts by some today to counterbalance the prevailing liberalism in academia with more right-wing instructors is not only an exercise in futility but a disservice to students. "Even if you succeed in propagandizing the students while they're students, it doesn't tell you much [about how they'll turn out]. I suspect that over half [of the conservatives at the Hoover Institution] were on the left in their 20s. More important, though, let's assume for the sake of argument that, whatever you're propagandizing them with on the left or right, every conclusion you teach them is correct. It's only a matter of time before all those conclusions are obsolete because entirely different issues are going to arise over the lifetimes of these students. And so, if you haven't taught them how to weigh one argument against another, you haven't taught them anything."

I recommend reading the entire interview.

Phony America?

So allow me to be the last to comment on the three alarm fire over at "Red America".

A major disappointment. There's really no other way to say it. The charge of plagiarism against Ben Domenech is pretty serious, and in light of the evidence (see Michelle Malkin's assessment here, Editor&Publisher re-cap here), rather solid.

In the publishing world, plagiarism is a serious no-no. Writing is your skill, it's your paycheck. And if you're taking words from someone else, you're stealing to get that paycheck. It means you have chosen to live a lie, to take someone else's effort and genius and pass it off as your own.

Taking into consideration the totality of Ben's work, one really has to ask the question why? He's obviously not untalented. But then again, the people who potentially had their work lifted were not untalented either. And as Calvin Coolidge once said, "...unrewarded genius is almost a proverb..." He was talking about perseverance being the key to success, but by perseverance he implied you should do it of your own accord.

Unfortunately, it's a sad fact of our world that one of the ways to persevere is to scramble up a pile of people to get to the top instead of doing the work yourself. But if that's all you are capable of, standing on someone else's back, then what good are you? What use are you? What are you adding to the cause? - aside from mastery of Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V.

I'm glad to see that Ben has stepped down. Hopefully the Post can salvage the blog. But this is bad for all of us, bloggers, the Washington Post, and conservatives. It just plays into a stereotype that no one needed to further, at a time when credibility, for pretty much everyone, is at an all time low.

Friends, The War Has Started

St. Paul City Office Boots Easter Bunny

ST. PAUL, Minn. - The Easter Bunny has been sent packing at St. Paul City Hall.

A toy rabbit, pastel-colored eggs and a sign with the words "Happy Easter" were removed from the lobby of the City Council offices, because of concerns they might offend non-Christians.

A council secretary had put up the decorations. They were not bought with city money.

St. Paul's human rights director, Tyrone Terrill, asked that the decorations be removed, saying they could be offensive to non-Christians.

The sad display of the "War On Christmas" was only a taste of the insanity about to ensue. And if you think I'm kidding, just wait till the "abuse against Peeps" stories begin.

Shocking. Just shocking.

ABC Makes Me Laugh

Exposed by Drudge:

ABC NEWS EXEC: 'BUSH MAKES ME SICK'; E-MAIL REVEALED

**Exclusive**

A top producer at ABC NEWS declared "Bush makes me sick" in an email obtained by the DRUDGE REPORT.

John Green, currently executive producer of the weekend edition of GOOD MORNING AMERICA, unloaded on the president in an ABC company email obtained by the DRUDGE REPORT.

"If he uses the 'mixed messages' line one more time, I'm going to puke," Green complained.

The blunt comments by Green, along with other emails obtained by the DRUDGE REPORT, further reveal the inner workings of the nation's news outlets.

A friend of Green's at ABC says Green is mortified by the email. "John feels so badly about this email. He is a straight shooter and great producer who is always fair. That said, he deeply regrets the sentiment expressed in the email and the embarrassment it causes ABC News."

Wow, if he felt so badly about it then why send out a company email? Those things have a weird way of immortalizing your thoughts, and traveling all over the dang place.

So don't puke now, John, but you're sending "mixed messages."

Osama And Saddam, Sittin In A Tree ... A.B.C. Saysthere'snothingtosee...

For your viewing pleasure, an assortment of documents from the Iraqi document treasure trove that's been locked in limbo for three years. I haven't gone sifting around in them yet, but ABC has. And what they've come up with is mighty interesting.

Although "interesting" is about as far as ABC is willing to go with it. I mean, just because Osama's people met with Saddam and both sides sought out operational relationships and wanted to bomb places together, there's no need to go running off a cliff and declaring that Bush was right. Obviously, that type of admission would require both Osama and Saddam to hold a press conference, preferably at the podium in the White House, and field questions from Helen Thomas and David Gregory, or perhaps even a reporter for ABC. And the two of them would both submit, under oath, after fully disclosing any amount of Halliburton stock options they retained, that "yes" they were indeed seeking a partnership and it all would have succeeded if it weren't for those damned meddling kids - and Bush and his administration.

But alas, no such thing is likely to occur. So we'll just have to discount the "Bush isn't off the hook yet!" hysteria of the (oddly included) editor's statements as we wade through these reports:

Note: Document titles were added by ABC News.

"Osama Bin Laden Contact With Iraq"

A newly released pre-war Iraqi document indicates that an official representative of Saddam Hussein's government met with Osama bin Laden in Sudan on February 19, 1995 after approval by Saddam Hussein. Bin Laden asked that Iraq broadcast the lectures of Suleiman al Ouda, a radical Saudi preacher, and suggested "carrying out joint operations against foreign forces" in Saudi Arabia. According to the document, Saddam's presidency was informed of the details of the meeting on March 4, 1995 and Saddam agreed to dedicate a program for them on the radio. The document states that further "development of the relationship and cooperation between the two parties to be left according to what's open (in the future) based on dialogue and agreement on other ways of cooperation." The Sudanese were informed about the agreement to dedicate the program on the radio.

The report then states that "Saudi opposition figure" bin Laden had to leave Sudan in July 1996 after it was accused of harboring terrorists. It says information indicated he was in Afghanistan. "The relationship with him is still through the Sudanese. We're currently working on activating this relationship through a new channel in light of his current location," it states.

(Editor's Note: This document is handwritten and has no official seal. Although contacts between bin Laden and the Iraqis have been reported in the 9/11 Commission report and elsewhere, (e.g. the 9/11 report states "Bin Ladn himself met with a senior Iraqi intelligence officer in Khartoum in late 1994 or early 1995) this document indicates the contacts were approved personally by Saddam Hussein.

It also indicates the discussions were substantive, in particular that bin Laden was proposing an operational relationship, and that the Iraqis were, at a minimum, interested in exploring a potential relationship and prepared to show good faith by broadcasting the speeches of al Ouda, the radical cleric who was also a bin Laden mentor.

The document does not establish that the two parties did in fact enter into an operational relationship. Given that the document claims bin Laden was proposing to the Iraqis that they conduct "joint operations against foreign forces" in Saudi Arabia, it is interesting to note that eight months after the meeting — on November 13, 1995 — terrorists attacked Saudi National Guard Headquarters in Riyadh, killing 5 U.S. military advisors. The militants later confessed on Saudi TV to having been trained by Osama bin Laden.)

I included the Editor's note as it is ABC's intent to clarify their position. But their hand-wringing is rather extensive, as you can see, so I've only included the first document analysis in this post.

I highly encourage you to read the full documents and the rest of the article. Because as ABC even admits, a lot of these connections were suspected and at times even confirmed, the information documented in the 9/11 Commission report. The document release now can only strengthen our understanding of those connections.

And it's about time.

Poor Saddam...

Always misunderstood. Always picked on. Always hounded by those awful, terrible, no good, very bad Americans.

At least, that's the world according to the Associated Press.

Exasperated, besieged by global pressure, Saddam Hussein and top aides searched for ways in the 1990s to prove to the world they'd given up banned weapons.

"We don't have anything hidden!" the frustrated Iraqi president interjected at one meeting, transcripts show.

At another, in 1996, Saddam wondered whether U.N. inspectors would "roam Iraq for 50 years" in a pointless hunt for weapons of mass destruction. "When is this going to end?" he asked.

It ended in 2004, when U.S. experts, after an exhaustive investigation, confirmed what the men in those meetings were saying: that Iraq had eliminated its weapons of mass destruction long ago, a finding that discredited the Bush administration's stated rationale for invading Iraq in 2003 — to locate WMD.

I'm curious... And why were those inspectors still in Iraq in 1996? Could it be because a defector from Saddam's inner circle blew the lid off their reconstituted nuclear program? Could it be because Saddam was still attempting to hide and secret things away? Could it be because, as the Associated Press has to admit later in the article:

A 1997 document from Iraqi intelligence instructed agencies to keep confidential files away from U.N. teams, and to remove "any forbidden equipment."

Since it's now acknowledged the Iraqis had ended the arms programs by then, the directive may have been aimed at securing stray pieces of equipment, and preserving some secrets from Iraq's 1980s work on chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.

Saddam's inner circle entertained notions of reviving the programs someday, the newly released documents show. "The factories will remain in our brains," one unidentified participant told Saddam at a meeting, apparently in the early 1990s.

Again with the "ended the arms programs by then". And why? Becauase they were discovered. That's why.

And let's not forget what else started up in and around 1997: The Oil-For-Food program. Potentially the biggest financial scandal in the history of the world. And all so Saddam could buy his way out of the penalty box.

Saddam gassed his own people, he had no qualms about using chemical weapons during war, he wanted a nuclear bomb, he had secret programs to create more WMD (and I'm glad he was a moron and couldn't get it done), he enslaved his own people for the sake of money, he killed hundreds of thousands of political and ethnic enemies, he invaded Kuwait because no one would raise the price of oil and he dared the world to "cross that line".

Nice try, Associated Press. But Saddam was one bad dude. He was a danger to the free world, and he dared us to call his bluff. And we blew him out of the water.

And that is the lesson to the rest of the world's dictators. Because I have news for liberals. It's not Bush's rhetoric that empowers them. It's your lack of will to stand up for the principles of democracy and freedom in a way that doesn't only involve talking, talking and yet more talking. Dictators, who really do rule with impunity in their own little worlds, don't fear you if you have no willpower to fight for what you believe in, or the will to raise a finger against them, and they are going to do their utmost to bully you.

And that is what Iran is doing. That is what North Korea is doing. And that is what Hugo Chavez is doing. They are waiting for your weakness to prevail.

And that is what Saddam was doing before the U.S. took care of it.

Do We Really Need To Know This?

Eva Longoria Gives Loving Props to Beau

LOS ANGELES - Eva Longoria, desperate to set the record straight, took to the entertainment-news shows Tuesday to tell the world that her beau, NBA star Tony Parker, is aces in the bedroom.

File it under Too Much Information, but Longoria told "Extra" and "Access Hollywood" that "when the lights are out, he's the teacher," ... and "I'm the student," she added to "Extra."

Whatever happened to decency, dignity, grace? Why do they have to go telling the world? Why can't they just behave like normal celebrities and complain about a "stolen" sex tape?

Men, The Internet Can Be A Dangerous Place

You never know who you'll meet. So be very, very careful.

You have been warned. Now return to your regularly scheduled browsing.

Trouble In Paradise

First Brad and Jennifer, then Nick and Jessica. Now...it seems CNN and Gallup are calling it quits.

According to the post, CEO Gallup Jim Clifton wrote to employees: "We have chosen not to renew our contract with CNN. We have had a great relationship with CNN, but it is not the right alignment for our future. .... CNN has far fewer viewers than it did in the past, and we feel that our brand was getting lost and diluted," Clifton continued. "...We have only about 200,000 viewers during our CNN segments."

Ouch.

Well, in response to news, CNN SVP Laurie Goldberg e-mailed a statement to the Hotline. Clifton's statements "are not only unprofessional but in every respect untrue." Clifton told CNN pres. Jim Walton "that the reason that Gallup wanted to end their partnership was that the CNN brand was so dominant that Gallup wasn't getting the attention for the polls that they wanted."

More Goldberg: "We want to make it clear that the decision to not renew our polling arrangement had to do with Gallup's desire to produce their own broadcasts and not about CNN viewership figures. In fact, Gallup had negotiated with us for four months in an effort to extend the partnership. While we appreciate that Gallup does not wish to have any broadcasting partner for the future, I must note that CEO Jim Clifton's excuse to his employees for ending the relationship has no basis in fact. It shows ignorance of not only our viewership figures but of the reach and value of the CNN brand."

This relationship has been on the rocks for a while now. But I think this may be the last straw.

Why the incompatibility? CNN/Gallup seemed made for one another. American Princess has a pretty good theory. But I wonder if that's the only reason? The added revelation that Gallup is renewing it's contract with USA Today creates a new twist in this tawdry affair. If I may, a paraphrased version of the break-up...

Gallup: We're ready!
CNN: We're not.
Gallup: We've been waiting for four months!
CNN: We're hot and we're worth the wait.
Gallup: Nuh-uh.
CNN: Yeah-huh.
Gallup *shows Nielson ratings*: You need to eat something. Your ratings make you look like Lindsay Lohan.
CNN: No! You said you loved us! You said everyone loved us! Your polls are a lie!! And we're going to tell the world!
*music... somber look from Gallup...angry stare from CNN...the door opens...USA Today enters*
CNN *gasps*: You!
*music rises...USA Today smiles...fade to commercial*

A trashy tone, admittedly, but this is cable news and polling we're talking about. Neither of which, it seems, has anything to do with reality anymore.

The Simmering Sourpuss

Mark this day. Because for once, I agree with something an Associated Press writer says: Chloe is cool.

In spite of herself, Chloe O'Brian has charmed the "24" audience. Her job on the Fox thriller (which airs Mondays at 9 p.m. EST) is that of Senior Analyst at the Counter-Terrorist Unit, and she's a whiz, lording over her keyboard with data-slinging deftness as the nation's well-being hangs in the balance.

Each 24-episode season tracks a single day's crisis in real time, hour by hour, as agent Jack Bauer (series star Kiefer Sutherland) summons Chloe's high-tech assistance, then runs with it.

Jack (breathless from an L.A. rooftop): "Listen to me — I have a thumb drive! I need you to data-mine the files!"

Chloe (in a sure-why-not tone at her CTU console): "Upload the drive to my socket. Access code 5J55J."

But Chloe, played by Mary Lynn Rajskub, is much more than a glorified computer nerd.

She's also petulant, snippy and a simmering sourpuss. An acquired taste she may be, but Chloe's very social gracelessness during three seasons of "24" has won her an unlikely viewer following.

A large measure of Chloe's appeal is due to Rajskub, whose unenviable challenge is to humanize a character defined by her scowl and techno-jargon. And she does. Convincingly.

So it's all the more bracing to find that, spared from Chloe's pressures and chronic funk, Rajskub is: pretty, funny, freewheeling to talk with; endowed with a plummy chuckle and a quirky take on life. And though single at the moment ("My psychic told me I would have problems in relationships in this lifetime," she reports with a laugh), she's upbeat: "I'm gonna keep trying."

Of course, knowing "24", she may not make it through the next hour. Actually, probably two hours at least.

Next week is all about Audrey. And Jack. And thigh shooting.

Remember Valerie Plame?

As I suspected, it seems that the only way anyone is ever going to get to the bottom of the Valerie Plame leak case is to start putting people on the witness stand. But as it turns out, the person fighting hardest to keep this from happening may be Patrick Fitzgerald. And why?

Because this case is a farce. And the Libby legal team is prepping to do the real investigating and expose who the leaker actually was.

Democrats? Why aren't you cheering? Oh yeah, because the real case is much less glamorous, much less invidious, and much less...well...important, that what the media led the country to believe. And what it appears Libby's people hope the case will do is expose the lies, and paint a truer picture of the events going on at the time Robert Novak's article blew a hole in the world. As Byron York explains:

In an extraordinary 35-page motion filed with Judge Reggie Walton late Friday, Libby's lawyers lay the groundwork for a plan to use his perjury trial as a way to find what happened in the CIA leak affair. After all, just what is it that Libby is accused of lying about? Why was it that all the conversations in question were taking place? Who said what to whom? If Libby's lawyers persuade Judge Walton to order Fitzgerald to turn over some of the reams of information he has gathered in the case, we might finally found out — most likely over the prosecutor's vigorous objections — what actually happened in the CIA leak case.

Libby's motion is, formally, a request for documents relating to the expected testimony of an imposing roster of current and former government officials likely to be called as witnesses in the trial. In the motion, they are listed together (at least publicly) for the first time:

1. Richard Armitage, former Deputy Secretary of State
2. Ari Fleischer, former White House Press Secretary
3. Marc Grossman, former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs
4. Stephen Hadley, former Deputy National Security Advisor
5. Bill Harlow, former CIA Spokesman
6. Colin Powell, former Secretary of State
7. Karl Rove, Deputy Chief of Staff to the President
8. George Tenet, former Director of Central Intelligence
9. The CIA Briefer referred to in paragraph 11 of the indictment (Craig Schmall, Peter Clement or Matt Barrett)
10. The Senior CIA Official referred to in paragraph 7 of the indictment, who may be either Robert Grenier or John McLaughlin
11. Joseph Wilson
12. Valerie Plame Wilson

[Libby's lawyers also say they expect Vice President Cheney to testify, but his name is not on the list because Fitzgerald has already turned over documents from Cheney's office, and thus Libby is not requesting any new evidence from that source.]

Note the last two witnesses on the list. Interesting to see how this case unfolds now that Libby's lawyers will have a shot at them, under oath.

Don't Panic

But this doesn't look good. (Via Kate O'Beirne at The Corner)

Just spoke to an experienced GOP analyst who is fretting that the Democrats have a real chance of picking up 3 to 4 seats this November. He sees Ohio, PA and RI as "gone," noting that Chafee has three chances to lose it for Republicans - the primary, the general, and should he be re-elected when he refuses to support a Republican majority leader. He thinks that both MT (Burns has Abramoff troubles) and MO (with Talent trailing for months) are really "tough" for the GOP. He allows that winning a sixth seat looks difficult at the moment because there would have to be an upset in either TN or AZ. GOP opportunities? MN, WA, and NE.

Aye-ya-yie...

Sarah Connor's Revenge

Stanford professor hopes to mimic the brain on a chip

..."When I tried to figure out how computers worked, I was disgusted," Boahen said. "I thought it was totally brute force. I felt there had to be a more elegant way to do this."

When Boahen came to the United States for his undergraduate education at Johns Hopkins University, he discovered a better way: neural network computing, or adaptive computational models that change the way they work as they are fed new information. Neural network computing inspired the fictional SkyNet computer in the Terminator science-fiction movies. Fortunately, its real-world cousins lack a sociopathic demeanor and capabilities...

...His goal is to eventually create a silicon computer that works as efficiently as the human brain. According to Boahen, the brain is capable of performing 10 quadrillion (that's 1016) "calculations," or synaptic events, per second using only 10 watts of power. At this rate, he says, a computer as powerful as the human brain would require 1 gigawatt of power.

"If we are able to figure out how these neurons organize themselves, it's going to provide a solution we need down the road to build more powerful computers," said Boahen...

Woman With Perfect Memory Baffles Scientists

March 20, 2006 -- James McGaugh is one of the world's leading experts on how the human memory system works. But these days, he admits he's stumped.

McGaugh's journey through an intellectual purgatory began six years ago when a woman now known only as AJ wrote him a letter detailing her astonishing ability to remember with remarkable clarity even trivial events that happened decades ago.

Give her any date, she said, and she could recall the day of the week, usually what the weather was like on that day, personal details of her life at that time, and major news events that occurred on that date.

Like any good scientist, McGaugh was initially skeptical. But not anymore.

"This is real," he says.

Prison Break

Michelle Malkin likes Prison Break better than "24".

hmm...Prison Break is okay...but I bet she'd like "24" a whole lot more if she read my show re-caps (here, here, and here).

Prep For Tonight's Episode Of "24"

Okay! To re-cap from last weeks death-defying episode! (for previous re-caps, see here and here)

The situation is this: Terrorists, group A, B, C, and apparently now D are connected to and are perpetrating a plot involving the theft and use of chemical weapons on the United States. Initially it appeared the target was Russia, but the show being what it is, Jack Bauer being who he is, the President being who he is, the First Lady being who she is, Jack's cell phone being what it is, Chloe being who she is, Audrey being what she is, Mcgill being who he is, the terrorists being who they are, Kim (Lord help us all) being on the planet, the death toll being what it is, the fans being who they are, and the show writers being who they are and doing what they do...*draws breath*...the plot has taken a few bumps and scrapes since the first hour of the season.

But that's okay. Because we love. this. show.

Now, last week, as the show began, our heroes were in a bit of a quandary. Terrorists had released some of the nerve gas into the air vent at CTU. A ton of extras and a ton of actor, who appears bitter had the weirdest interview I've ever read (dude, just let it go), died. However Jack, Chloe, Audrey, Kim and Barry were holed up inside a science-resistant computer room and stayed alive. McGill, Tony and a few more extras were scattered about the building.

As the Chemical Response Team (CRT) made it's way through traffic, the President contemplated shutting down CTU and initiating marshal law. Tony Almeida, recovered from his surgery, was going insane from grief ready to track down the terrorists who murdered his wife. The terrorists, for their part, finally showed back up again, and were quite pleased with themselves for neutralizing CTU.

Unfortunately for them, they have not yet realized that - as they tried, and failed, to kill her - they have now angered the First Lady.

Meanwhile, Barry (Yes, Barry. Look, he has a speaking role, but the Kim-Effect should come into play shortly, so we'll just quickly highlight.) confronted Jack and told him that his daughter is nuts that he is a doctor (of some sort), and he can help calm Kim and the others through the crisis. Jack shot Barry in the thigh whispered something to Barry, and then Barry shut his trap.

But then! - Crisis! The seals to the computer lab door began to fail! They knew this because Chloe had been monitoring the seal deterioration on her computer, and the orchestra trapped in the room with them kept playing scary TV character panic/death music. Chloe then attempted to use her computer to slow down the seal deterioration (Yeah, I know. Look, I'm just chronicling what happened. Direct all letters about adherence to The Standard Model here) But the effort to stop the gas was only partially successful.

Jack then leaves the room, holding his breath so as not to inhale the nerve agent (Who knew it was that simple?) Honestly I forgot how he got out of the room without letting the nerve agent in. I was laughing hysterically a bit fascinated by the whole "I'll just hold my breath and the deadly, corrosive nerve agent won't get me" thing. But then again, Jack is a Superhero^TM* , dang it, and he can do that sort of thing.

Anyway, so Jack got a sense of the surroundings and then found an uncontaminated room - or actually, I think Chloe uncontaminated it for him (With her computer, duh. It can do anything, except follow any known science, or get her, Kim and Audrey out of that room, apparently.) Jack reported in, and said that the only person who could save them all was McGill. However, if McGill chose to save everyone, he would go to his death. It was the ultimate dilemma.

McGill...Audrey. McGill...Audrey. McGill...Audrey. McGill...Audrey.

All I can say is, Audrey would have died if not for Kim. The Kim-Effect is only in effect if Kim herself is out of danger. As Audrey and Kim were in such close proximity, Audrey ended up living to die another day. And lest any of you think I'm exaggerating Kim's...well, Kim-ness...during the heart-to-heart Kim had with Chloe, Kim actually admitted being at the center of some pretty bad luck.

So McGill and some extra, who was actually wearing a red shirt (those wacky writers couldn't resist the joke), died. And the crisis at CTU ended.

Meanwhile, the President was still contemplating marshal law emergency peacekeeping for the Los Angeles area. Homeland Security made some recommendations, a couple bureaucrats pushed for marshal law, Mike thought it was a big mistake, and then the First Lady put in her two cents. The First Lady favored marshal law - as long as the President doesn't use it for political reasons, I think (Did anybody understand what the hell she was talking about?).

Anyway, so while the President contended with all of that, somewhere else in the world, a hooker/spy/assassin/government agent/terrorist/half-naked-female-plot-stirrer finished up ...something...with a client/target/mark/person of interest/terrorist/government agent/half-naked-male-plot-stirrer and answered her cell phone. Assume that either one or both of them are bad news, because we're going under the assumption that when you hit a lull, throw in a hooker or a dead body. And lord knows, at this point the plot needed another shake up.

Now Jack, having escaped the gas attack, was ready to start thigh shooting questioning terrorists again. And his plan was to start with Henderson. However, Tony, trapped in the room with Henderson, the man tied to his wife's death, lost all will to live. And he decided that what he really wanted to do was to kill Henderson. But Tony had apparently never seen a John Carpenter film, because as his conscience reared it's ugly head, he hesitated in killing Henderson - thereby enabling Henderson to spring his trap and turn the weapon on Tony. Sadly, Tony Almeida died.

Jack Bauer cried. And that about wrapped up the hour.

So what's in store for "24" tonight? Haven't the foggiest. But really, it's not a question of if another major character will eventually die on the show, or who Jack will shoot, but the how and why of it. Death on "24" is almost a badge of honor. And knowing that a major character will probably die makes all the plot twists and turns and the outlandish antics that much more suspenseful.

Though we're still upset they killed off Michelle. Why did they do it? Why?!

Okay...we're fine now. Bring on the next hour.

UPDATE: Terribly sorry folks. It appears that one of the hyperlinks was NOT what the text header title appeared to be. The offending link has been removed. Again, sincerest apologies. And please, in the future, everyone feel free to email or comment should any links go bad. Thanks.

Hundreds Say The World Will End

All weekend I've been looking at headlines like these:

Iraq War Enters 4th Year With More Deaths

Thousands Around Globe Call for End of War

Americans protest across country against US-led war in Iraq

Fourth year with more deaths? Wow, how about "War Enters 4th Year With New Government", "Saddam On Trial", "Free Elections" - you know, something positive. I mean, we're entering Monday here in America with tens of thousands of deaths, assaults, drug overdoses, abuses, speeding tickets - where are those articles? And I'm not making light of death either. But it's a frame of mind, a mentality that constant death and destruction creates. Is life worth living or not? Are our efforts every day worth something or not? Is it worth it to be free or not? Or are deaths, anywhere in the world, merely arbitrary, meaningless from one to the next, unless of course they can be used to browbeat the U.S. into doing something, or to shame the U.S. into complacency, into giving up (because after all, nothing is worth dying for Halliburton...or, at least that's what the media and critics say the war is about)

"Thousands around the world are calling for an end to the war". hmm...there's about 6.5 billion people on this planet. And thousands protested. Thousands...

"Americans protest!" I wonder how many Iraqis were protesting? How many Iraqis took to the streets and said "We hate you America. Let us live in peace with the terrorists." I'm just curious, because the Associated Press didn't say. At least not in the headline - which is pretty much all that a lot of people read.

So are you getting a picture of the psychology at work here? It's all doom and gloom. All death and destruction. There is no reason for it, the senseless "occupation", the violence, the war. And without reason there is only vanity, and hubris, and arrogance, and stupidity. And that is what a lot of people take away from these stories.

And lest you think the Associated Press stopped there, just wait, there's more! Over at The Unalienable Right, they chronicled Jennifer Loven's latest Bush attack ad, masquerading as a hard news piece.

Bush Using Straw-Man Arguments in Speeches

By JENNIFER LOVEN, Associated Press Writer Sat Mar 18, 12:52 PM ET

WASHINGTON - "Some look at the challenges in Iraq and conclude that the war is lost and not worth another dime or another day,"President Bush said recently.

Another time he said, "Some say that if you're Muslim you can't be free."

"There are some really decent people," the president said earlier this year, "who believe that the federal government ought to be the decider of health care ... for all people."

Of course, hardly anyone in mainstream political debate has made such assertions.

Really? Hardly anyone? Mainstream? Ahhhh...now I get it. Jennifer has created a "straw man"! How stupid of me to not see that she's being funny and using the same tactics she decries in her article. Obviously, when she says "hardly anyone" she really means people like John Kerry, Rep. Murtha, Ted Kennedy, Howard Dean, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, most of the major news organizations, etc., etc...

...When the president starts a sentence with "some say" or offers up what "some in Washington" believe, as he is doing more often these days, a rhetorical retort almost assuredly follows.
....

He typically then says he "strongly disagrees" — conveniently knocking down a straw man of his own making.

Bush routinely is criticized for dressing up events with a too-rosy glow. But experts in political speech say the straw man device, in which the president makes himself appear entirely reasonable by contrast to supposed "critics," is just as problematic.

Because the "some" often go unnamed, Bush can argue that his statements are true in an era of blogs and talk radio.

Oh cool. She's accusing the President, backed by the "armies" of blogs and talk radio, of doing exactly what she just did - attack the stance of an enemy by knocking down an anonymous assertion. Of course, the difference is, Ms. Loven is supposed to be writing a news article. You know: who, what, when, where, why, how... But when Bush speaks, he is typically responding to weeks and weeks, if not months, of boiler plate criticism and criminal accusations from row upon row upon row of heavily hyped and much interviewed Senators, Representatives, DNC talking heads, Cindy Sheehan, Jesse Jackson, Jimmy Carter, most of the major networks and print media, possibly Hugo Chavez (if he needs a headline), the president of Iran, and that North Korean guy, the frustrated movie director.

And the reason why the President of the United States does not call out every stinking Senator and Congressperson, every Cindy Sheehan, every Hugo Chavez, and every "journalist" like Jennifer Loven, for mischaracterizing, misrepresenting, misreporting, concocting, selectively reporting, questioning his honor, and really just acting like a mouthpiece for the DNC, is because he is a better man than any of them. In fact, I've never seen the President single a person out for attacks unless he absolutely had to, and even then he was respectful of the other person's right to disagree. He's a better man than I, that's all I can say. Yet, the Associated Press attack continues.

...Bush has caricatured the other side for years, trying to tilt legislative debates in his favor or score election-season points with voters.

Not long after taking office in 2001, Bush pushed for a new education testing law and began portraying skeptics as opposed to holding schools accountable.

The chief opposition, however, had nothing to do with the merits of measuring performance, but rather the cost and intrusiveness of the proposal.

Chief opposition? And who put forward the opposition? I mean, Jennifer must know specifically, otherwise she wouldn't have had a problem with the way Bush constructed his argument - because she is refuting it in the exact same way.

...Campaigning for Republican candidates in the 2002 midterm elections, the president sought to use the congressional debate over a new Homeland Security Department against Democrats.

He told at least two audiences that some senators opposing him were "not interested in the security of the American people." In reality, Democrats balked not at creating the department, which Bush himself first opposed, but at letting agency workers go without the usual civil service protections.

In reality? What reality is that? Exactly what are "usual civil service protections"? Ohhhh...it's a government union. And Bush, being Republican, and of sound mind, didn't want another government union. Why? Because the union would then have control over our national security responses, and heaven help you if you needed to replace somebody with more capable personnel. Democrats (yes, just about all of them), wanted either no Homeland Security, or the entire government package, with full civil service immunity. Sorry, Jennifer, that means Democrats were co-opting America's security for union protections.

...Running for re-election against Sen. John Kerry in 2004, Bush frequently used some version of this line to paint his Democratic opponent as weaker in the fight against terrorism: "My opponent and others believe this matter is a matter of intelligence and law enforcement."

The assertion was called a mischaracterization of Kerry's views even by a Republican, Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record) of Arizona.

"Even by"...did you catch that? That's Jennifer's way of couching yet another "straw man" under the media dreamboat John McCain. She is using the icon of McCain to create a distraction. John Kerry's own words (referred to by Bush as "my opponent"...no straw men in this speech) convict him of saying that very thing. (h/t Powerline)

Continuing on:

...Straw men have made more frequent appearances in recent months, often on national security — once Bush's strong suit with the public but at the center of some of his difficulties today. Under fire for a domestic eavesdropping program, a ports-management deal and the rising violence in Iraq, Bush now sees his approval ratings hovering around the lowest of his presidency.

Said Jamieson [Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania], "You would expect people to do that as they feel more threatened."

Last fall, the rhetorical tool became popular with Bush when the debate heated up over when troops would return from Iraq. "Some say perhaps we ought to just pull out of Iraq," he told GOP supporters in October, echoing similar lines from other speeches. "That is foolhardy policy."

Yet even the speediest plan, as advocated by only a few Democrats, suggested not an immediate drawdown, but one over six months. Most Democrats were not even arguing for a specific troop withdrawal timetable.

So basically Ms. Loven has just accused the President of being afraid because his poll numbers have dropped, and that's why he is churning out the "straw man fear rhetoric" pap she is so breathlessly trying to tell us about. Interesting...David Gregory was making similar accusations just the other day.

Okay, glossing over the high crimes and misdemeanors accusation(which is what using a war to boost poll numbers is), she then attempts to re-write history by saying Democrats are not suggesting a troop pullout. That's funny, what was that vote that Murtha wanted? Immediate withdrawal?

...Recently defending his decision to allow the National Security Agency to monitor without subpoenas the international communications of Americans suspected of terrorist ties, Bush has suggested that those who question the program underestimate the terrorist threat.

"There's some in America who say, 'Well, this can't be true there are still people willing to attack,'" Bush said during a January visit to the NSA.

The president has relied on straw men, too, on the topics of taxes and trade, issues he hopes will work against Democrats in this fall's congressional elections.

Usually without targeting Democrats specifically, Bush has suggested they are big-spenders who want to raise taxes, because most oppose extending some of his earlier tax cuts, and protectionists who do not want to open global markets to American goods, when most oppose free-trade deals that lack protections for labor and the environment.

Okay, finally, the end of this mindless article. But unfortunately, not the end of the Associated Press' biased reporting, and seemingly agenda-driven articles.

Democrats are saying "Bush lied" with no proof, no indictment, no trial, no jury, no conviction, no nothing except their own Bush hatred. Yet you'll see no AP report analyzing that, no talk about making unfounded accusations, no attempt to investigate the facts.

This is not journalism. And it's certainly not fitting for public consumption as a hard news article. If a reporter wants to be a Democrat, fine. If a reporter is part of a family connected to financing John Kerry, fine.

But it's too bad though, that "some" think that on top of that the only way they can win is to push their agenda off as news.

So This Is What George Clooney Meant

Never ones to shy away from the big issues of the day, especially if it involves exploiting the grief, breakdown, manipulation, projection, moonbattery, insanity and downright disgusting behavior of someone who's fifteen minutes ran out about an hour ago, Hollywood is swooping in with a movie about Cindy Sheehan.

After stops for protests in New Orleans and Washington, D.C., she will breakfast in Manhattan with actress Susan Sarandon, who is set to portray her in a biopic movie. A crew will film Sheehan for a weekly reality series on the Sundance Channel. Her letters to President Bush inspired "Peace Mom," a one-woman monologue show in London. A memoir is due to her publisher April 1.

And she hopes to reschedule a trip to address the European Union, postponed, she says, because of injuries when she was arrested yet again and jailed earlier this month on charges of blocking entrance to the U.S. Mission to the United Nations.

A year ago, when The Chronicle's Insight section profiled the Sheehan family, Cindy was a rather anonymous Vacaville mom, shaken by the fact that her son has been killed by an ambush halfway across the globe. Six months later, when she pitched a tent outside President Bush's Texas ranch and demanded he explain the "noble cause" for which Casey was sacrificed, her plaintive cry seized the moment in America. By injecting aching humanity into the political debate, she catalyzed public opinion against the war.

Early during those muggy August days in Crawford -- when Bush balked at meeting with her and instead went biking, saying it was important that he "go on with my life" -- her credibility was at its peak.

It has since fallen, in the eyes of some. Whether that's attributable to the fierce and sometimes false attacks of right-wing media or to her own complicity in over-exposure isn't clear. But by the end of her "Camp Casey" protest, polls showed as many Americans viewed her unfavorably as favorably.

Yes, the fact that she's aligned herself with Code Pink, the very people who contribute money to the terrorists who killed her son, is a bit unappealing. Okay, so buddying up with Hugo Chavez and telling George Bush to get the troops out of "occupied New Orleans" betrayed her as a raving moonbat.

Nice to see Hollywood living up to it's label though, basically a bunch of children who attack anyone who makes them face up to the hard decisions in life.

Saddam Tied To Terror Groups...Again

Yet more of those "non-existent" terrorist ties between Saddam and al Qaeda keep popping up. Stephen Hayes at The Weekly Standard provides the latest highlights, now about Saddam's ties to Abu Sayyaf (a sister group to al Qaeda in the Phillipines), and to the bin Laden led resistence groups in Saudi Arabia.

A SECOND internal Iraqi file obtained by The Weekly Standard concerns relations between Iraqi Intelligence and Saudi opposition groups. The document was apparently compiled at some point after January 1997, judging by the most recent date in the text, and discusses four Saudi opposition groups: the Committee for Defense of Legitimate Rights, the Reform and Advice Committee (Osama bin Laden), People of al Jazeera Union Organization, and the Saudi Hezbollah.

The New York Times first reported on the existence of this file on June 25, 2004. "American officials described the document as an internal report by the Iraqi intelligence service detailing efforts to seek cooperation with several Saudi opposition groups, including Mr. bin Laden's organization, before al Qaeda had become a full-fledged terrorist organization." According to the Times, a Pentagon task force "concluded that the document 'appeared authentic,' and that it 'corroborates and expands on previous reporting' about contacts between Iraqi intelligence and Mr. bin Laden in Sudan, according to the task force's analysis."

The most provocative aspect of the document is the discussion of efforts to seek cooperation between Iraqi Intelligence and the Saudi opposition group run by bin Laden, known to the Iraqis as the "Reform and Advice Committee." The translation of that section appears below.

We moved towards the committee by doing the following:
A. During the visit of the Sudanese Dr. Ibrahim al-Sanusi to Iraq and his meeting with Mr. Uday Saddam Hussein, on December 13, 1994, in the presence of the respectable, Mr. Director of the Intelligence Service, he [Dr. al-Sanusi] pointed out that the opposing Osama bin Laden, residing in Sudan, is reserved and afraid to be depicted by his enemies as an agent of Iraq. We prepared to meet him in Sudan (The Honorable Presidency was informed of the results of the meeting in our letter 782 on December 17, 1994).
B. An approval to meet with opposer Osama bin Laden by the Intelligence Services was given by the Honorable Presidency in its letter 138, dated January 11, 1995 (attachment 6). He [bin Laden] was met by the previous general director of M4 in Sudan and in the presence of the Sudanese, Ibrahim al-Sanusi, on February 19, 1995. We discussed with him his organization. He requested the broadcast of the speeches of Sheikh Sulayman al-Uda (who has influence within Saudi Arabia and outside due to being a well known religious and influential personality) and to designate a program for them through the broadcast directed inside Iraq, and to perform joint operations against the foreign forces in the land of Hijaz. (The Honorable Presidency was informed of the details of the meeting in our letter 370 on March 4, 1995, attachment 7.)
C. The approval was received from the Leader, Mr. President, may God keep him, to designate a program for them through the directed broadcast. We were left to develop the relationship and the cooperation between the two sides to see what other doors of cooperation and agreement open up. The Sudanese side was informed of the Honorable Presidency's agreement above, through the representative of the Respectable Director of Intelligence Services, our Ambassador in Khartoum.
D. Due to the recent situation of Sudan and being accused of supporting and embracing of terrorism, an agreement with the opposing Saudi Osama bin Laden was reached. The agreement required him to leave Sudan to another area. He left Khartoum in July 1996. The information we have indicates that he is currently in Afghanistan. The relationship with him is ongoing through the Sudanese side. Currently we are working to invigorate this relationship through a new channel in light of his present location.

(It should be noted that the documents given to The Weekly Standard did not include the attachments, letters to and from Saddam Hussein about the status of the Iraq-al Qaeda relationship. And the last sentence differs slightly from the version provided to the New York Times. In the Weekly Standard document, Iraq is seeking to "invigorate" its relationship with al Qaeda; in the Times translation, Iraq is seeking to "continue" that relationship.)

Another passage of the Iraq-Saudi opposition memo details the relationship between the Iraqi regime and the Committee for Defense of Legitimate Rights (CDLR), founded by Dr. Muhammad Abdallah al-Massari. Once again, Dr. Ibrahim al-Sanusi, the senior Sudanese government official, was a key liaison between the two sides. Al-Massari is widely regarded as an ideological mouthpiece for al Qaeda, a designation he does little to dispute. His radio station broadcasts al Qaeda propaganda, and his website features the rantings of prominent jihadists. He has lived in London for more than a decade. The Iraqi Intelligence memo recounts two meetings involving Dr. al-Sanusi and CDLR representatives in 1994 and reports that al-Massari requested assistance from the Iraqi regime for a trip to Iraq.

Mr. Hayes covers quite a bit of territory. I highly recommend reading his entire article.

Raise Your Hand If You Think This Is Nuts

First teachers were stopped from failing a child for a semester. Next it was giving bad grades - and then it was giving grades at all. Of course red pens went right out the window, replaced with purple and pink and other friendly colors. And discipline...wait wasn't that word removed from the dictionary?...

No bother. Because now, even the poor students who have actually gone to class to learn...imagine that!...are now being told to not raise their hand in class.

School daze: The head of the Jo Richardson comprehensive school in Dagenham, England, prohibits students from raising their hands in class, according to a January Daily Telegraph report, to keep those not called on from feeling ''victimi[zed].''

Have we gone completely insane?

Chia Google

They're celebrating St. Patrick's Day! Or, they've been afflicted with some type of clover fungus.

You decide.

This Has To Be A Crime

PORTLAND, Ore., March 16 (UPI) -- A $59 million jail featuring art and flat screen TVs in Portland, Ore., has been sitting unused for more than a year as the city can't afford to open it.

The Wapato Facility took two years to construct and can house 525 inmates at a cost of $20 million per year, which would please Multnomah County Sheriff Bernie Giusto to no end.

But the county says it doesn't have that kind of money, and expects to be in the hole at least $32 million next year.

The county spent more than $600,000 on art for the jail, including a sculpture out front by the circular driveway. There are 30-foot vaulted ceilings and private showers.

Inflation It Is

Now this is cool. Inflation (the Universe expansion, not the economic nightmare) has always been a cool theory. Now it appears the astrophysicists think it more probable than not.

Physicists announced Thursday that they now have the smoking gun that shows the universe went through extremely rapid expansion in the moments after the big bang, growing from the size of a marble to a volume larger than all of observable space in less than a trillion-trillionth of a second.

The discovery — which involves an analysis of variations in the brightness of microwave radiation — is the first direct evidence to support the two-decade-old theory that the universe went through what is called inflation.

It also helps explain how matter eventually clumped together into planets, stars and galaxies in a universe that began as a remarkably smooth, superhot soup.

"It's giving us our first clues about how inflation took place," said Michael Turner, assistant director for mathematics and physical sciences at the
National Science Foundation. "This is absolutely amazing."

Brian Greene, a Columbia University physicist, said: "The observations are spectacular and the conclusions are stunning."

Researchers found the evidence for inflation by looking at a faint glow that permeates the universe. That glow, known as the cosmic microwave background, was produced when the universe was about 300,000 years old — long after inflation had done its work.
....

The new analysis looked at variations in the microwave background over smaller patches of sky — only billions of light-years across, instead of hundreds of billions.

Without inflation, the brightness variations over small patches of the sky would be the same as those observed over larger areas of the heavens. But the researchers found considerable differences in the brightness variations.

"The data favors inflation," said Charles Bennett, a Johns Hopkins University physicist who announced the discovery. He was joined by two Princeton colleagues, Lyman Page and David Spergel, who also contributed to the research.

Bennett added: "It amazes me that we can say anything at all about what transpired in the first trillionth of a second of the universe."

The physicists said small lumps in the microwave background began during inflation. Those lumps eventually coalesced into stars, galaxies and planets.

Clooney Criticizes Dems For Not Speaking Out...

...yet now he says he did not speak out!

"Miss Huffington's blog is purposefully misleading and I have asked her to clarify the facts.

I stand by my statements but I did not write this blog. With my permission Miss Huffington compiled it from interviews with Larry King and The Guardian. What she most certainly did not get my permission to do is to combine only my answers in a blog that misleads the reader into thinking that I wrote this piece. These are not my writings - they are answers to questions and there is a huge difference."

In the pulled-from-interviews quotes, Clooney criticizes the Democrats' failure to speak out about the Iraq invasion out of fear of being criticized for being unpatriotic.

Ha. Oh, the irony. Okay, George, you did not write that blog entry (which, in all honesty, raises my opinion of you slightly); you answered questions.

And those answers are still ridiculous.

Haven't These People Ever Read "The Andromeda Strain"?!

Nothing good will come of this.

"Supercomputer Builds A Virus"

Michael Crichton must be crawling the walls right now.

Today: Free Coffee At Starbucks

Just FYI for you coffee lovers out there.

Starbucks will host its first-ever National Coffee Break, inviting customers in for a complimentary cup of freshly brewed coffee, on March 15 from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. In more than 7,500 stores, partners (employees) will pour tall (12-ounce) cups of coffee for surprised customers and delighted commuters.

Apparently some locations started early this morning though, and the employees were calling it National Coffee Day. A bit of a stretch from the "National Coffee Break", but...they're Starbucks. I suppose creating a national holiday is not beyond their power.

Anyway, enjoy.

The Document Flood

It seems that in short order, the millions of documents and digital media captured in Iraq after the fall of Saddam are about to be released to the public.

The Bush administration has decided to release most of the documents captured in post-war Afghanistan and Iraq. The details of the document release are still being worked out, according to officials with knowledge of the discussions. Those details are critical. At issue are things like the timeframe for releasing the documents, the mechanism for scrubbing documents for sensitive information, and most important, the criteria for withholding documents from the public. But some of the captured files should be available to the public and journalists within weeks if not days.

President George W. Bush has made clear in recent weeks his displeasure with the delays in getting the information out to the American public. On February 16, one day after ABC News broadcast excerpts of recordings featuring Saddam Hussein and his war cabinet, Bush met with congressional Republicans and several senior national security officials and said three times that the documents should be released. "This stuff ought to be out," he told National Security Adviser, Stephen Hadley. "Put this stuff out." It seems Bush will soon get his wish.

Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.), who has been steadfast in his resolve to see these documents released, said today that "this is a bold decision in favor of openness that will go a long way towards improving our understanding of prewar Iraq . . . By placing these documents online and allowing the public the opportunity to review them, we can cut years off the time it will take to gain knowledge from this potential treasure trove of information."

No kidding. Why the Bush administration did not release this information immediately after going into Iraq is beyond me. Arguments I've heard range from "the media might cherry-pick information for their agenda" to "it's ancient history; who cares?"

Yet, here we are, years later, and the media didn't even need documents to cherry-pick - they just grabbed the CIA leaker of their choice and crafted their own story about Halliburton's conquest and Plame's name and pre-war Uranium and Iraq's ties to terrorists, etc., etc...

But documents, scrubbed for sensitive leads, and released to the public, would have gone a long way towards smiting the fantasies of politically motivated Democrats and the New York Times. And as Stephen Hayes writes, the documents, even if containing no obvious smoking guns, will certainly remove the Democratic canard that Iraq was some paper tiger and posed no threat.

"Even if an order had come down to delete any sensitive data, only the most security conscious bother to go through the time and trouble of erasing digital data in a fashion that would defeat forensic recovery. With the U.S. Army rapidly approaching, the probability that scientists and officers took the appropriate steps to destroy incriminating data drops precipitously. That U.S. military and intelligence forces were able to obtain so much digital media from Iraqi citizens or the few government facilities that were not looted further supports this theory."

Tanji adds: "Interviews and interrogations of former regime leaders can produce meaningful results, but even under the best circumstances, long after the fact, human memory is fallible. A more accurate depiction of pre-war Iraq was put down on paper and in computer files at the time."

No one can say with any certainty what will come from the document release. Intelligence officials with knowledge of the exploitation process estimate that less than 4 percent of the overall document collection has been fully exploited. It's reasonable to assume that documents in the collection will provide support to both supporters of the war in Iraq and critics. Summaries of the exploited materials, listed in a U.S. government database known as HARMONY, suggest that the new material will at least complicate the overly simplified conventional wisdom that the former Iraqi regime posed no real threat.

I think of it as the Miracle on 34th Street response. The media and Democrats don't believe Bush went into Iraq in good faith? - that Iraq posed no threat? Okay fine. Get the documents, all two and a half million of them, and walk them into the New York Times offices. And then take the scanned copies and post them all over the Internet. We can make wallpapers out of them. Anything and everything. Post it all.

Because it's not ancient history; it's insight into the mind of Saddam, and the totalitarian regime he perpetrated. And cherry-picking documents, to mischaracterize or misrepresent, only works with secret information, such as with the NSA program. Public information, something that everyone can get their hands on and analyze, cannot be cherry-picked in any permanent way, because the method for obfuscation (that something must remain classified) is removed. The New York Times can't leak it, can't choice-quote it, can't find a source to have "concerns" over it, and can't hide it or publish on their own timetable.

And the Bush administration should have realized that sooner.

Tonight on "24"

Okay, so to re-cap from last week's two hour extravaganza (for previous hours, see here):

According to my extensive and painstakingly prepared briefing notes and "24" file archive, last week the show regained a few characters and lost a whole heck of a lot of people, and now it appears our intrepid heroes are trapped inside the CTU computer center and have a bit of a mess on their hands.

While Jack was off searching for Henderson, Tony Almeida came back into the picture. Awakening from his early morning brain surgery, it appears his healing factor has given way to psychosis, super strength, scarring, and the deadening of all pain and drug affects. He's been up and about, mourning the loss of Michelle, and demanding to get back in the show till at least the end of the season.

Meanwhile, the terrorist attack on the Russian President has failed. The First Lady is safe, if a tad disheveled, thanks in no small part to the coolest Secret Service agent around, Agent Pierce. The President, relieved himself that the First Lady and the others are safe, now has to contend with the terrorist reprisal for inflicting his wife upon them. Oh, and he will also be sleeping on the couch for some time, as he did leave the First Lady to die at the hands of terrorists. But, this is a minor plot point. Though if Mike does not keep a good distance between Agent Pierce and the First Lady, he might have to brief the President as to what is going on.

Anyway, McGill, who had been running CTU a bit more stringently than his predecessor, has been sitting in a jail cell since his crack-up, fretting over his missing keycard. His drug addict sister (now dead), and her drug addict boyfriend (also now dead), attempted to sell the keycard. But the terrorist buyer had apparently left his wallet at home, and so he decided to pay in bullets instead.

Meanwhile, the terrorists have moved from gassing malls to gassing hospitals. Agent Curtis was on the case, along with a thousand government contractors few helpers, to diffuse the bomb and shoot the terrorists. No thigh shooting however, and so the terrorists died before they could be tortured interrogated.

Jack, however, confronting Henderson and his wife, did do some thigh shooting, in an effort to get the encryption password and information about the terrorist plans. But torturing Henderson's wife was taking too long, so they hauled Henderson in for drugs and possibly something worse.

And then lo, the seventh seal was broken, and the gates of Hell opened Kim Bauer returned to CTU. Then she opened her mouth, and the demons of hell tried in vain to put the seals back, and call off the apocalypse, because her whiney tirade of anger at her not-dead father was perhaps the worst dialogue in the history of television.

Not to pick nits or anything. I'm just saying...

Of course, true to the Kim-Effect, bad things just start to happen. The President, upon advice from a bureaucrat, is now contemplating marshal law in L.A. Because obviously after the nuclear attack from three years back, the viral attack from two years back, and the nuclear reactor meltdowns and the nuclear missile threat from the year before, hearing that non-contagious, non-communicative, non-corrosive, non-flammable, odorous, colorful, and pretty much canister contained (unless there's an air vent, or Kim Bauer, nearby) nerve gas on the loose, is going to send people into a rioting, rampaging, animal panic (never mind the fact that most people would also realize that by congregating in large crowds, they would offer up a ready-made target) But anyway...

Meanwhile, in the sub-basement (and incidentally, we have discovered that the sub-basement and the keycard hold the secrets to deciphering the plot this season), terrorists use McGill's keycard to access CTU - because that's what all terrorists who have access to government facilities from CTU to the White House would do - and conducted a gas attack on the center. The staff at CTU, pre-occupied with a sudden bout of brain drain from Kim Bauer's proximity, did not notice the trap until it was sprung. Chloe initiated a lockdown, and there were klaxons, but as the terrorist had access to the sub-basement (re: the plot), he was immune.

He was not immune to Jack Bauer, however, and soon died from a shot to the thigh (and heart). Yet Jack could not stop the gas attack, and as the episode came to a close, death and mayhem ensued.

Nearly 40% of CTU was wiped out. Edgar died. And of those remaining that did not escape the building, they are trapped in various rooms around the complex, sealed in with apparently no means of escape.

Previews for tonight elude to a sacrifice that must be made for our heroes to escape. One would assume that means a volunteer would end up dying for the sake of saving everyone else. Hopefully the writers and producers for the show take my subliminal cues.

Or if not, then one hopes they would just have Audrey test the hallway air, and then let Kim lead the way out of the building, as I'm sure it would then be perfectly safe.

But, alas, I'm not a writer for the show. Yet...

They Invented Chess, You Know

3 A form of chess was played in ancient India but the game was developed into the form we know it today in Persia. From there it spread westward to Europe - where it was introduced by the Moors in Spain in the 10th century - and eastward as far as Japan. The word rook comes from the Persian rukh, which means chariot.

From an article listing twenty of the most influential Muslim inventions.

The Real Father Dowling Mysteries

Don't ask me why, but I saw this story and that campy little TV show with Tom Bosley as the sleuthing priest and Tracy Nelson as his nun sidekick popped into my head. And sure enough, the article itself referenced it.

Sister Mary, from Ireland, recalled putting her purse on top of her desk last Friday after returning to the office. She went in another room as a homeless man came in asking for food. The secretary left to get him food, but when the women returned, they realized Sister Mary's wallet was missing. So was the man.

Father Uko, from Nigeria, saw the man through a window and told Sister Mary to go ask him to return it.

"Something got into me," she said, "and I did."

In a scene that could have come straight from "Father Dowling Mysteries," a 1989-1991 television series about a crime-solving nun and priest, the clergy gave chase.

The man ran from the 17th Street church to 24th Avenue, with Father Uko and Sister Mary in hot pursuit, "half-walking, half-running. I told Father Uko, 'We're going to lose him.' I told him to go back to the church and get his car."

Father Uko soon drove up to the man and Sister Mary caught up. She asked for her wallet, but the man turned and ran. A teacher from a nearby Methodist church drove into a construction site and pointed to the suspect. Police arrived and took over.

Nice catch.

Although with the foot chase this is more like a cross between "Father Dowling" and "Cops". Makes me wonder if such a reality show pairing might last today. They've got every other reality show out there, why not this?

The "Father Dowling" sleuths could team up with the "Cops" camera crew, and these nuns, and then maybe these nuns as well...perhaps with a new theme song...

Okay, so maybe that's not such a good idea then. It was sounding less like "Cops" and turning into something more along the lines of that Keira Knightley "true story" bounty hunter movie. And no offense to the bounty hunting profession (or Keira), but on TV bounty hunters never seemed to mix well with priests - Catholic or otherwise. At least not that I saw.

I mean didn't they always have bounty hunters after him?

Even Their Creator Thinks They're Evil

Office cubicles.

Robert Oppenheimer agonized over building the A-bomb. Alfred Nobel got queasy about creating dynamite. Robert Propst invented nothing so destructive. Yet before he died in 2000, he lamented his unwitting contribution to what he called "monolithic insanity."

Propst is the father of the cubicle. More than 30 years after he unleashed it on the world, we are still trying to get out of the box. The cubicle has been called many things in its long and terrible reign. But what it has lacked in beauty and amenity, it has made up for in crabgrass-like persistence.

Reviled by workers, demonized by designers, disowned by its very creator, it still claims the largest share of office furniture sales--$3 billion or so a year--and has outlived every "office of the future" meant to replace it. It is the Fidel Castro of office furniture.

I'm Curious If Their Ratings Will Outdo Air America

It seems that even prostitutes are getting in on the talk radio gig. Apparently they're not even going to advertise their services, but have shows about health care, rights, racism and the dignity of the oldest profession.

Prostitutes in the Brazilian city of Salvador are starting up their own radio station.

The Association of Prostitutes of Bahia state has won government permission for the project, enabling FM station Radio Zona to start broadcasting in the second half of the year, project coordinator Sandro Correia said on Thursday.

"We are not going to apologize for prostitution but we are going to struggle for the dignity of the profession," Correia told Reuters.

The aim was not to attract women to the business. The station will feature programs about the trade but will also discuss issues such as human rights, social questions, and sexual abuse, Correia said.

"The idea is that we have diverse programs that look at health issues,
AIDS prevention, and racism, for example," he said.

Working girls and media professionals such as Correia will staff the station and will give prostitutes training in an alternative job. Funding will come from association funds, advertising and sponsorship.

Somehow I doubt they'll confront the issue of the sex trade and child prostitution, both of which are prevalent in Brazil - if the U.N. reports are to be believed (and they should know, as the U.N. is embroiled in several sex trade scandals as well) - and the thing that drives them, namely the draw of Brazil as one of the world's hot spots for sex tourism.

It's All About The Coffee Cup

Pretty interesting developments in the quest for the stable fusion reactor.

A particle accelerator at Sandia National Laboratories has heated a swarm of charged particles to a record 2 billion degrees Kelvin, a temperature beyond that of a star's interior.

Scientists working with Sandia's Z machine said the feat also revealed a new phenomenon that could eventually make future nuclear fusion power plants smaller and cheaper to operate than if the plants relied on previously known physics.
....

Sandia's Z machine, housed in a warehouse-sized laboratory, is designed to generate tremendous amounts of energy. It normally passes 20 million amps of electrical current through a cluster of tungsten wires about the size of a spool of thread. The massive electrical pulse instantly vaporizes the wires into a cloud of charged, superhot particles known as plasma.

At the same time, the Z machine compresses the plasma in a powerful magnetic field. Almost instantly, the particles smash together in a collision that can emit temperatures in the millions of degrees.

Sandia boosted the Z machine's output into the billions of degrees in part by substituting steel wires around a larger, coffee cup-sized core. Increasing the size of the core increased the distance the ions traveled, giving them more time to gain velocity and therefore energy.

But the larger core did not account for all the heat generated in the collision. It also could not explain why the plasma particles did not stop moving once they collided with one another - for about 10 billionths of a second, some unknown energy caused them to keep pushing back against the magnetic field.

Fusion is a very attractive energy source, but highly unstable and hard to contain. I'm curious to see if they can pull off a few more breakthroughs.

China's Wild Wild West

It seems the lion tamers in China have their hands full, as the World Wide Web is transforming society in ways their Internet thought police haven't yet figured out how to combat.

By some estimates, there are more than 30,000 people patrolling the Web in China, helping to form one of the world's far-reaching Internet filtering systems.

But while China's huge Internet police force is busy deleting annoying phrases like "free speech" and "human rights" from online bulletin boards, specialists say that Wild West capitalism has moved from the real economy in China to the virtual one.

Indeed, the unchecked freedoms that exist on the Web, analysts say, are perhaps unwittingly ushering in an age of startling social change. The Web in China is a thriving marketplace for everyone, including scam artists, snake oil salesmen and hard-core criminals who are only too eager to turn consumers into victims.

Chinese entrepreneurs who started out brazenly selling downloadable pirated music and movies from online storefronts have extended their product lines--peddling drugs and sex, stolen cars, firearms and even organs for transplanting.

Much of this is happening because Internet use has grown so fast, with 110 million Web surfers in China, second only to the United States. Last year, online revenue--which the government defines more broadly than it is in the United States--was valued at $69 billion, up around 58 percent from the year before, according to a survey by the China Internet Development Research Center.

By 2010, Wall Street analysts say China could have the world's leading online commerce, with revenue coming from advertising, e-commerce and subscription fees, as well as illicit services.

The authorities have vowed to crack down on illegal Web sites and say that more than 2,000 sex and gambling sites have been shut down in recent years. But new sites are eluding them every day.

"It's a wild place," Xiao Qiang, director of the China Internet Project at the graduate journalism school of the University of California, Berkeley, said of China's Web. "Outside of politics, China is as free as anywhere. You can find porn just about anywhere on the Internet."

On any of China's leading search engines, enter sensitive political terms like "Tiananmen Square" or "Falun Gong," and the computer is likely to crash or simply offer a list of censored Web sites. But terms like "hot sex" or "illegal drugs" take users to dozens of links to Web sites allowing them to download sex videos, gain entry to online sports gambling dens or even make purchases of heroin. The scams are flourishing.

And how is this possible in such a police state? - one that even enlists the help of Google?

Most of the sites are forbidden by law. On paper, the government's Internet regulations forbid the display of any information that damages state security, harms the dignity of the state, promotes pornography and gambling, or "spreads evil cults" and "feudal superstitions."

How does all this get by the Internet patrols in a country where violators risk 3 to 10 years in prison, or in some cases even the death penalty? Analysts say that the growth in the Internet has simply created too many sites to patrol. In contrast, there are too few incentives to close down sites, particularly when government-owned Internet service providers, telecommunications companies and even state-run Web sites are making big profits from them.

"The Chinese government launches campaigns on the Internet to crack down on pornography or the sale of illegal goods once or twice a year, but this is not an efficient way," Lu at the China Internet Network Information Center said.

What is successful is online entertainment. Baidu.com, a Google-like search engine, has a daily poll of the top 10 most beautiful women. Sina.com publishes a popular celebrity blog by the actress and director Xu Jinglei.

A social networking Web site, 51.com, opened last August, and months later its owner, a Shanghai-based private company, said the site had more than three million registered users, mostly 15 to 25, who create personalized Web pages and meet online. "Most Internet services are about entertainment," said Pang Shengdong, 29, who founded 51.com. "What do people do every day other than make money? They entertain themselves."

Richard Ji, an Internet analyst at Morgan Stanley, said traffic in this country was dominated by young singles, many of them searching for games, dates, entertainment and community. A recent survey found that nearly 38 percent of the nation's Internet users search for entertainment on the Web. The growing enthusiasm for the Internet in China is one reason some of the biggest Internet and technology companies, like Microsoft, Yahoo and Google, are eager to have a presence here, even if it means submitting to China's stringent censorship rules.

In the view of Dali L. Yang, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago: "It's truly remarkable. This is fundamentally a social revolution."

On the one hand I say good for the Chinese, thwarting the thought police. On the other, it's sad that the biggest inroads are being made with porn and drugs.

The Reason Why We Went Into Space

Obviously.

That and the car on the moon. I mean if you can drive across it and play eighteen holes on it, you've pretty much conquered it.

Right?

Yeah, We're Just Soooo Evil

That apparently some prisoners at Guantanamo don't want to leave.

In the case of one group of prisoners, Muslims from western China known as Uighurs, the U.S. has struggled to find a solution.

A military tribunal has determined that five are "no longer enemy combatants" and can be released from Guantanamo Bay. The U.S. agrees they could face persecution back in China but so far has not found a third country to take them.

For now, the Uighurs are being kept at Camp Iguana, a privileged section of the prison with televisions, stereos and a view of the Caribbean.

A Uighur told a military tribunal that he feared going back to China so much, he considered trying to convince the panel that he was guilty, according to a hearing transcript.

"If I am sent back to China, they will torture me really bad," said the man, whose name did not appear in the transcript. "They will use dogs. They will pull out my nails."

So, I'm just curious...Newsweek? Where arrrrrreeee yoooooooouu? Got your pen out? Anybody typing away? This must be at least, oh, a tenth as interesting as a (false) story about a soldier pissing on a Koran, right? Prisoners falsifying testimony so they can be found guilty and remain in U.S. custody in Guantanamo.

It seems...newsworthy. But maybe that's just me.

What The Heck Is McMurtry Whining About?

People are prejudiced against rural films?

BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN co-writer LARRY MCMURTRY believes urban drama CRASH beat his film to the Best Picture Award, because Academy members discriminate against rural stories. The writer, who has been involved with four Oscar nominated films including THE LAST PICTURE SHOW and TERMS OF ENDEARMENT, claims Crash won because it was set in Los Angeles - where most Academy voters live. He explains, "The three rural films (I was involved with) lost. The one urban film, Terms of Endearment, won. "Members of the Academy are mostly urban people. Crash was a hometown movie."

Yeah, maybe your story was crap? Maybe Crash was a pretty good picture?

I can't see how he can even scream prejudice against rural films - I mean they have Brokeback legos, for crying out loud. Once you're immortalized with legos, what else is there in life? Seriously, I hate defending Hollywood, but I don't think anyone in Hollywood has a problem except McMurtry.

It's sad to see him falling into this kind of complaining too, because his epic Lonesome Dove is probably one of the best westerns ever written. Still a favorite of mine.

So come on, Larry, just write good stuff. A rural theme is not a problem for Hollywood...don't make me start lauding Unforgiven or Gone With The Wind.

24

The following is a recap of this season of 24

When we last saw Jack Bauer, he had gone into hiding, faking his own death, in an effort to evade an international incident with China and to prevent his own assassination by paranoid crazies within the U.S. government.

However, at the start of this season, terrorists, in coordination with their mysterious boss who had a thing for TVs, assassinated David Palmer, former President of the United States and top notch Allstate Insurance spokesperson. While it was unclear if Palmer actually had TV show death coverage, what is clear is that this act, and the attempted assassination of the small cadre of CTU agents who knew Jack Bauer was alive, was enough to draw Jack out from his undisclosed location and prompt him to start shooting everybody investigating Palmer's murder. Typically Jack can be counted on to wound his assailants or any escaping terrorists by shooting them in the thigh. It's more humane, and it also allows Jack the opportunity to then torture question the terrorists for information, should the need arise. That is of course unless Jack needs those terrorists in order to get to other terrorists, and at that point all bets are off (but possibly death and decapitation could be involved). However, this season Jack has been a bit careless, shooting to kill for the most part. Though to be fair, he's rusty, having been on the run for months and months, and he did also have to confront David Palmer's killer.

But as things stand right now, on the good guys' side, for this season, after the terrorists assassinated everybody, we're left with Jack, Chloe O'Brian, Audrey Raines, Tony Almeida (who should be along shortly; he was having brain surgery earlier in the day from his assassination and bombing related injuries, but he has an amazing healing factor), Edgar, McGill, that CTU strike team guy Curtis who arrested McGill, Mike Novick, the First Lady, Secret Service agent Pierce (who just secured his place as the coolest near-main actor the show has ever had, for blowing up the terrorist with the flame-thrower), and President Logan (though he's only good about half the time, he whines and pees his pants a lot; PPHP, short for President-pees-his-pants, is now his new acronym). Oh, and last but not least, we have Jack's cell phone, which has an official body count of two terrorists all to it's own.

On the bad guys' side we have terrorists with Russian accents, more terrorists with Swedish accents, their boss (or now former boss) the TV salesman, and Walt Cummings, and yet again more terrorists (in helicopters this time, again with bad Russian accents, and we're hoping that that's the top; any higher echelons and we'll need a new show to put them on, and some form of bar chart).

Now it seems that this season, the plot, so far as we know, involves the terrorists trying to strike out at Russia, and to also derail a new anti-terrorism treaty between the U.S. and Russia. To do this, the terrorists, those that haven't killed one another yet, plan on using canisters filled with nerve gas. These canisters were conveniently located at the airport, removed during a staged terrorist terminal take-over, and then brought to the container loading area at the sea port.

Despite the efforts of the valiant team at CTU to stop the terrorists, the terrorists have outpaced them at every turn. First the terrorists escaped with the canisters. Then, when their plan to escape the U.S. was thwarted, they opened one canister in a shopping mall, and then after that, resorting to Plan B C D, they blackmailed President Logan into giving away the secret route that the Russian President was using to make his way to the airport.

CTU, under new management for a while, seemed to be getting weighed down by a few new guidlines, and began to lose effectiveness. Only the ever-vigilant team of Audrey, Chloe and Edgar, were unswayed by McGill's threats and firings, and continued to help Jack despite all orders to ignore common sense.

Jack, for his part, has killed his way up the terrorist chain of command and received a data card from Nathanson, the TV salesman/terrorist/mole. Nathanson died, however, after the next group of terrorists - the ones with helicopters - didn't shoot him in the thigh. But with the new data card, which was DoD encoded, Jack discovered that his former mentor, Christopher Henderson, the agent who recruited him into CTU, is the head of a company, Omicron, which owns Terra-Dyne, which manufactured the nerve gas the terrorists acquired. Jack confronted his former mentor, but the taser Henderson put to his neck must have blurred his thigh-shooting judgment, as Henderson, after apologizing and pretending to be smooth and un-Robocop-like, schnookered Jack into a bunker below ground, supposedly where the nerve gas was produced. He left Jack for dead, with a small bomb as a parting gift.

Meanwhile, the First Lady, being of sound mind and body, attempted to force the President to resist the terrorist blackmail, putting herself in harms way by riding with the Russian president and his wife to the airport. The President, having the heart of a lion, of course not only gave in to the terrorist demands, but decided to sacrifice his wife as well - for the good of the world, of course.

And so as last weeks episode ended, all hell broke loose.

CTU, thanks to a last minute plot addition Edgar'’s genius with large number theory and NSA chatter, reasoned out the terrorist strike on the motorcade, and alerted the Secret Service. Government agents and terrorists fought it out in the street, and after a few rockets and a flame thrower exchange, the government agents thwarted the terrorists'’ plans yet again. Jack survived the bomb, but lost Henderson, though he now knows that his former mentor is involved with terrorists. McGill had his much-anticipated breakdown, and Curtis removed him from command, thank God. But yet...all is not well in the world...

The terrorists, on our third group now, still have the canisters, the plot is a tad loose, no one has figured out a way to kill fire Audrey yet, and according to the previews from last week - this week marks the beginning of the apocalypse Kim Bauer returns.

So prepare yourself for, well...

M101: The Pinwheel Galaxy

The Hubble space telescope has done it again. Check this out, the most detailed view of a spiral galaxy ever photographed.

The giant spiral disk of stars, dust, and gas is 170,000 light-years across or nearly twice the diameter of our galaxy, the Milky Way. M101 is estimated to contain at least one trillion stars. Approximately 100 billion of these stars could be like our Sun in terms of temperature and lifetime.

The galaxy's spiral arms are sprinkled with large regions of star-forming nebulae. These nebulae are areas of intense star formation within giant molecular hydrogen clouds. Brilliant young clusters of hot, blue, newborn stars trace out the spiral arms. The disk of M101 is so thin that Hubble easily sees many more distant galaxies lying behind the galaxy.

M101 (also nicknamed the Pinwheel Galaxy) lies in the northern circumpolar constellation, Ursa Major (The Great Bear), at a distance of 25 million light-years from Earth. Therefore, we are seeing the galaxy as it looked 25 million years ago — when the light we're receiving from it now was emitted by its stars — at the beginning of Earth's Miocene Period, when mammals flourished and the Mastodon first appeared on Earth. The galaxy fills a region in the sky equal to one-fifth the area of the full moon.

Pretty darned cool. And if you click the link, NASA has more wallpaper-sized shots for your computer and for printing.

What's In A Brain?

Apparently not much, if you're writing a love letter to Hillary Clinton in the guise of...well, quite frankly the freakiest study by a "respectable" newspaper I've seen conducted in a while - the "Hillary" Photoshop make-over.

As the inaugural study in the Washington Post-Political Communication Lab collaboration, we studied attraction to familiar faces. A considerable body of research in social psychology derived from the classic studies of Stanford psychologist Robert Zajonc demonstrates that people evaluate objects they have encountered previously more favorably than novel objects, even when they do not consciously recognize the previously-encountered objects. In other words, "mere exposure" is sufficient to increase an object's likeability.

We are interested in the question because in the political arena, there is ample evidence of a familiarity bias in voting behavior. The fact that incumbents habitually win re-election by convincing margins may be attributable, in part, to the higher level of recognition of the incumbent's name and face.

Of course, having ten times as much cash, the ability to grandstand in front of TV cameras while you hold hearings and press conferences, comment on world events, national events, local events, for decades on end, and use said events to characterize yourself as both the guarantor and savior of your voters' views, concerns and safety, the power to create laws that further your voters' (okay, special interests') loyalties, and the wherewithal to get your voters to the polls, kinda gives you a bit of a leg up as well. But I suppose that's for another study.

Anyway, the Post goes off on a tangent that belies reason, saying that merely the resemblance of a known political figure is enough to sway a person to vote for a candidate (Say, for example that a women running for office "looked"” like Hillary Clinton. That would be enough to sway the vote). And the Post sought to prove this by morphing the faces of several well known politicians (namely Hillary Clinton and John McCain) together with some not-so-known ones.

Now, I'm not going to accuse the Post of stacking the deck here, but I mean, come on, Hillary, hot as she is... ... ...may be more than mortal men can handle (Don't deny it...).

Okay, so maybe posting that was almost more than I could handle (if you clicked the links, I'm sorry). But going with the Post's sampling, needless to say, the results of all this Photoshop mating was, well, ridiculous. And unfortunately for Representatives Ed Case and Mary Bono, they ended up bearing the brunt of this Post circus act (Austin Powers saying, "See, look here. She's a man, baby!!" comes to mind).

Have a look for yourself (warning, pictures not safe for...anyone really) if you don't believe me.

Of course the Post is quite proud of their little creations, and has data galore to back up their study, and lots of neat little charts on the adjoining page. And they spell out all their reasoning and hopes. So certainly there is some method to their madness.

I said "some" method, so everyone just calm down.

Look, it's no secret that people do seek out familiar items, objects, people and places. And we all have mannerisms we continually repeat, daily routines that we don't even think about (What do you do first in the morning, after, you know, "Karl Rove chip recharging" and an oil change - comb your hair or brush your teeth? Why? Who cares?), what have you, that manifest as part of the natural human desire for control and comfort within our environment. We go with what we know, most of the time without even thinking about it. What we know is safer, ready made, we don't have to think as much because we know what to expect, or, at least, we're more comfortable accepting the risks (Do you feel safer driving a car or taking a plane, and which is actually safer?).

Obviously we do try new things, all the time, but our subconscious desire to be "in control" rather drives us to a lot of choices that ease our path through life and causes us to resist change more often than we'd care to admit.

But I don't see the connection they make to likeability. Just because you identify with something, why does that mean you like it? Upon what basis does someone find something familiar favorable?

And how does this transfer over into voting for an incumbent? I mean, Ted Kennedy is still around. But is it his breathtaking physique that does it for you? If you saw his build in another politician would you race to vote for them? Is the "memory" of Kennedy your subliminal messenger? I'd wager no (And you must be mad if you actually clicked on those links. You knew what was waiting for you on the other side.). No, most likely it's his name, his stature and iconic qualities, media fawning, and how he performs for his state that keeps him going (though obviously not his driving ability) decade after decade.

Yet the Post reports that in their lab experiments, the Clinton Frankenstein-ing of politicians created a noticeable favoritism in the respondents, whereas the McCain morphing did not. They can offer no explanation as to why, and then they admit their study is essentially useless (more on that later). So of course, with that admission, that means we're going to criticise it and give our theory.

First of all, the pictures they came up with are downright hideous.

Apologies to everyone involved, but there's really no other way to say it. Seriously, the only "“morphing" between two people that will ever work is if they have a child together. Adding John McCain's image to Rep. Case only hardened his features more, and poor Mary Bono, well...the Post should be ashamed. Senator Clinton, on the other hand, diva that she is, provided a softening effect to Rep. Case, and essentially an unchanged effect to Rep. Bono. Think of the two senators as a Photoshopping filter, because that'’s what Clinton and McCain became for this experiment. So in reality this is really boiling down to looks, the looks of the Photoshopped creations - not even real people.

And do people base their vote on looks? Hopefully not, but if you're so undecided that you've waited till the last second to pick a side, any reason you give would hardly surprise me. But with regards to this study, does any of this even matter?

As the Post admits: no.

...given the limited amount of information they encountered about the candidate, most people stated that they were unable to evaluate the candidate.

So what you had was a sample of respondents who had little information to go on other than a face, and most of the ones that did respond were fairly apathetic about the entire process anyway. And on top of that, even if the familiar aspects of Clinton did somehow cause a warm fuzzy in the study group, who exactly comprised this study group again?...

...why do we observe the effect for Senator Clinton, but not for Mayor Giuliani or Senator McCain who are just as recognizable as the senator? One obvious possibility is the partisan composition of the sample; Democrats outnumber Republicans by more than 4:1. If we had a larger sampling of Republicans perhaps we would find similar effects for McCain or Giuliani. But even when we limit the analysis to the Republicans, the degree of similarity to Giuliani or McCain does nothing for Vaughan's support, suggesting there's something special about Hillary Clinton.

No, it does not suggest something special about Hillary Clinton. What this study suggests is only what the study tested, which is that a group of apathetic voters, comprised mainly of Democrats, might find a candidate with fairer complexion more favorable on a snap-judgment basis. Substitute in John Kerry or heck even Bill Clinton (still wildly popular amongst Democrats and interns, moreso than Hillary) for Senator McCain and I'd wager that they'd get the same results. Anything beyond that assessment is a combination of a flawed study and wishful thinking by the Post.

Besides, if anyone was actually "seeing Hillary" in these candidates and decided to vote for them based solely upon that, I'd highly recommend giving them a blood test. We all know the remains of those evil cookies are in there somewhere.

What? If the Post can do it, so can I.

Paris Hilton Wants The Mother Teresa Role

Everybody, hang on to something! The world is spinning off it's axis! This story, from weeks ago, about Malayalam director T. Rajeevnath courting Paris Hilton for the role of Mother Teresa in his upcoming movie about her life, is still going strong.

Paris Hilton is thrilled to be playing Mother Teresa in an upcoming biopic.

The hotel heiress has been approached by award-winning director T Rajeevnath, who is convinced that she will be a huge success.

"My agents in California have contacted Paris Hilton. I think she'll be a hit," he explained.

"The preliminary script has been readied. And the proceeds of the film would go to the Missionaries of Charity. By June this year, the groundwork for the film would be complete and I propose to begin shooting in West Bengal and several foreign countries in early 2007."

Hilton explained, "It's such an honour. I'm so excited. I really want to learn more about this amazing woman, so that's what I'm doing in a few months."

In preparation for the role, Paris is apparently joining the Order of Mother Teresa missionaries, and will travel around Bangalore and Calcutta to care for the sick.

Un-be-lievable...

Massachusetts Doesn't Fool Around

The cream donut has it's day.

PART I. ADMINISTRATION OF THE GOVERNMENT

TITLE I. JURISDICTION AND EMBLEMS OF THE COMMONWEALTH, THE GENERAL COURT, STATUTES AND PUBLIC DOCUMENTS

CHAPTER 2. ARMS, GREAT SEAL AND OTHER EMBLEMS OF THE COMMONWEALTH

Chapter 2: Section 51. Donut of commonwealth

Section 51. The Boston Cream Donut shall be the official donut of the commonwealth.

Ted Kennedy is behind this. And the powerful donut lobby. Somehow, someway...


(h/t: Dave Barry)

The Wrecked Ferrari Enzo Story Revs Up

The L.A. Times headline to the follow-up story about the insane Ferrari wreck in Malibu last week says it all: The Plot Thickens. And boy, they ain't kidding.

The mystery deepened Monday in the case of the puzzling crash last week of a $1-million Ferrari Enzo on Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu.

Sheriff's detectives said Monday that they believe a gun's magazine discovered near the wreckage is connected to the crash, and they plan to interview an unnamed person who they believe was in the car with Swedish game machine entrepreneur Stefan Eriksson.

The crash has also garnered the attention of a leading Scottish bank, which has informed sheriff's investigators that it may own the destroyed car. At the same time, detectives are trying to figure out why another exotic car in Eriksson's extensive collection, a Mercedes SLR, was listed as stolen by Scotland Yard in London, said Sheriff's Sgt. Phil Brooks.

The totaled Ferrari was one of two Enzos that Eriksson brought into the United States from England along with the Mercedes SLR, Brooks said. But detectives concluded that the totaled vehicle did not have appropriate papers and was not "street legal" for driving in California, he said.

Detectives have been trying for nearly a week to sort out what exactly happened last Tuesday morning when Eriksson's Enzo — one of only 400 ever made — smashed into a telephone pole, totaling the car. Eriksson told deputies that he was the passenger and that a man he knew only as "Dietrich" was behind the wheel. But detectives have been openly skeptical of the story, noting that Eriksson had a bloody lip and that the only blood they found in the car was on the driver's-side air bag.

They're still looking for the guy, Dietrich, though I'm curious why they think the magazine might be his, unless his name is on it. But then, if that were so, his address would be on it too.

I bet they've got his place staked out right now.

In fact...Dietrich? - if you're holed up in an internet cafe somewhere because you can't go home on account of the police having your place staked out, and you've been searching around online for information about the accident, and you happened across my blog - my only messege to you is - quit stalking me! No seriously, you're a bonehead for wrecking that car!

At 162 mph!

...Brooks said Monday, the car was traveling 162 mph when it crashed, far faster than the 120 mph originally believed. The Ferrari, with just a few inches of undercarriage clearance, hit a bump at a crest in the road, sending the vehicle airborne and into the power pole, Brooks said.

Now that must have been a sight.