Considerettes

Light (or, more likely, non-existent) blogging will ensue starting tomorrow for a week. The family and I are going to visit the nation’s capitol for Spring Break this year, so that’ll be a great time. Unfortunately, the hotels we’re staying at charge $10 for 24 hours of Internet access (on top of the huge price for the rooms and the charge for the privilege of parking in their garage…I get better amenities at the Hartsville, SC Comfort Inn). Thus I will be cut off from the net for the duration.

See you after Easter!

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Recently on the Public Radio program Open Source, Christopher Lydon did a show on Iraqi Kurdistan, or, as it’s PR campaign calls it, “the other Iraq”. You can listen to the show and read the show notes here on Radio Open Source. He interviewed Qubad Talabani, Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) Representative to the United States and son of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman, KRG Representative to the United Kingdom, and Peter Galbraith, former (and first) Ambassador to Croatia under Clinton, Senior Diplomatic Fellow at the Center for Arms Control, and Non-Proliferation Advisor to the KRG.

For some, it may be an eye-opening program. From the discussion of how Americans were indeed greeted as liberators, to the economic prosperity, to the lack of sectarian violence among the Sunni, Shia and Christian Kurds, this program should give pause to those saying we should get out of Iraq ASAP. In fact, both the Kurdish guests warned against a withdrawal too early. (Ambassador Galbraith, predictably, disagreed. More on that in a moment.)

The program was quite a departure from Lydon’s show’s usual fare. As is typical for public radio, the slate of guests is often slanted liberal, and many time 100% so. Lydon calls his show a “conversation”, but it usually is a monologue from the Left. To have a program extolling the good things that have come from the war (even if the host can’t bring himself to agree, insinuating that some of the responses sounded like “fantasy”) is equal time that has been sorely missing from the media at large. Kudos to Lydon and the PRI folks for finally, if really belatedly, bringing the news.

The cognitive dissonance was deafening when Peter Galbraith did disagree at the end of the show with the idea of staying in Iraq. Here were the very people he’s working to help asking for our continued help, and all he can do is shill for Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid (by name) and say that, as she does, we need to get out of there because the Iraqi experiment has failed.

I’d ask him, and anyone else who said that the war in Iraq was and is a failure; what do you say to the Kurds? Were they and all other Iraqis not worth the effort to get rid of Hussein and his terror supporting and practicing regime? Just because some may not be handling freedom as well as we’d hoped, should we have left them all to the designs of the Ba’athists? If you blame the US for the violence in the south, are you prepared to credit the US for the peace and prosperity in the north?

Technorati Tags: Iraq, Kurdistan, Radio Open Source, Christopher Lydon, Qubad Talabani, Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman, Peter Galbraith

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…and finds them toothless.

Iran isn’t backing down after a unanimous vote by the U.N. Security Council to impose sanctions, announcing Sunday that it will partially suspend cooperation with the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency and will be adjusting relations with those nations who voted for sanctions.

Iranian officials called the vote by the U.N. Security Council in response to Tehran’s refusal to stop enriching uranium “illegal and bullying.”

And the response was obviously not something the UN wanted. Imagine that.

In response to the vote, the Iranian Cabinet also decided to stop informing the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency of any new steps or decisions in its nuclear weapons program, Gholam Hossein Elham, a government spokesman said on state television.

Some folks say that Ahmadinejad is a bad apple and that his actions and his genocidal statements are just the way he gets attention, but this is the Cabinet making the UN look less than useless. In fact, other than the accompanying picture, Ahmadinejad doesn’t make an appearance in this story. The problems run far deeper than him.

Technorati Tags: Iran, United Nations, Manouchehr Mottaki

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Welcome to the age where encouraging abstinence until marriage is considered offensive. OK, truth be told, we’ve been in this age for quite some time now, except that the sentiment wasn’t quite as outspoken. Now that abstinence groups are being formed in places like Harvard and MIT, however, the ridicule is boiling over.

This article talks about the new group at Harvard, secular in nature, that is trying to promote abstinence on campus. Seniors Sarah Kinsella and Justin Murray started “True Love Revolution” in response to all the other overt encouragment of sex on campus, and to the white flag waved by the administration. In response, those oh-so-tolerant folks on the Left are outraged.

Some feminists, in particular, have criticized True Love Revolution’s message.

Harvard student Rebecca Singh said she was offended by a valentine the group sent to the dormitory mailboxes of all freshmen. It read: “Why wait? Because you’re worth it.”

“I think they thought that we might not be `ruined’ yet,” Singh said. “It’s a symptom of that culture we have that values a woman on her purity. It’s a relic.”

Yeah, who needs self-control, eh?

A little common sense, however, is seeing the light of day.

In the student paper, The Harvard Crimson, columnist Jessica C. Coggins praised the group’s low-key approach and scolded Harvard students for their “laughter at the virgin.” She said students on the campus, which has 6,700 undergraduates, should “find a different confidence booster than making fun of celibate peers.”

As usual, the administration gets it wrong.

Dr. David Rosenthal, director of Harvard health services, disputed the notion that the university promotes sex.

He said students mistakenly think everyone on campus is having sex. The National College Health Assessment Survey, which included Harvard and hundreds of other campuses, found that about 29 percent of students reported not having sex in the past school year. For the 71 percent who are having sex, it is crucial to promote safety, Rosenthal said.

“Some students may have a feeling that acknowledgment is condoning,” he said, “and it’s not.”

But it’s not just “acknowledgement”, as noted earlier in the article.

True Love Revolution members say the problem starts with the university. They say Harvard has implicitly led students to believe that having sex at college is a foregone conclusion by requiring incoming freshman to attend a seminar on date-rape that does not mention abstinence, by placing condoms in freshmen dorms, and by hosting racy lecturers. (Harvard students have also launched H-Bomb, a magazine featuring racy photos of undergraduates.)

Acknowledging is one thing. But this is encouraging. When you remove the consequences of bad decisions, you get more bad decisions. Shouldn’t take a university degree to understand that.

Technorati Tags: True Love Revolution, Sarah Kinsella, Justin Murray, Harvard, Dr. David Rosenthal

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In my hotel room watching the cable news morning shows (FNC’s “Fox & Friends” and CNN’s “American Morning”), I noticed that both were covering many of the same stories.

• The war in Iraq, specifically the new insurgent tactic of reducing suspicion by having kids in cars intended to be a car bomb.
• The issues surrounding the firing of the 8 US attorneys. Both networks had Democrats featured voicing their objections (Fox showed Chuck Shumer, CNN had Rahm Emmanuel).
• The recovery of the lost Boy Scout.

But as much as I looked for it (and I left CNN on longer to see if they would cover it), “American Morning” wouldn’t touch, as far as I could see, the upcoming testimony of Al Gore in front of Congress on global warming, specifically the unprecedented considerations and concessions being made for him and how he’s abusing them. I kept CNN on long enough to start hearing them repeat the same stories (how to eat healthy at Chinese restaurants), so they had plenty of time to deal with it.

If it’s legitimate to cover Democrats questioning why the President will only allow administration officials to testify without being under oath (and it is a legitimate question and a legitimate story), why ignore this other major story about a former Vice President testifying to Congress? Could it be because it doesn’t look good for Democrats or global warming alarmists when Gore ask for more time for his opening remarks than anyone else, and that he requested to submit the written version of those remarks 24 hours ahead of time instead of the customary 48, and that he hadn’t submitted them as of the morning of his appearance? (An update on the website linked notes that Gore finally submitted them just a minute before his testimony in the House and a few hours before his Senate appearance. Not in time to do any research on what he’ll be saying.)

Those, too, are legitimate questions about a legitimate story, but CNN, if they gave it any time, gave it the shortest of shrift at best. And while Fox is covering stories that look bad for both Democrats and Republicans, CNN isn’t. So who’s a shill for whom?

Technorati Tags: Fox News Channel, CNN, Al Gore, media bias

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Working with a client this week, so blogging will be light.

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When the public school system starts forcing kids to lie to their parents about what they’re being taught, you know it’s time to homeschool.

And when what they’re being taught is homosexual sensitivity training, you have to wonder why they feel they can’t be open and honest about it. Yeah, I know the presumed reason; that parent might object. But if parents are not allowed any say as to their children’s education, it’s no longer public education anymore, is it? It’s state education. (And I really hope this school district doesn’t ever complain about not enough parental involvement.)

Click here for a link to audio from Concerned Women for America, and click here for the WND news story.

Technorati Tags: education, homeschool, homosexuality, Concerned Women for America

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I passed a milestone yesterday; the previous post was my 2000th. I told a UPI reporter back in 2003, “I’m not that prolific” regarding the thought of posting something every single day to the blog. Guess I got over that, eh?

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It’s only getting worse.

A German appeals court has not only affirmed a lower court’s decision that ripped a 15-year-old homeschooler from her family and subjected her to a forced stay in a psychiatric hospital because she is homeschooled, but also ordered her parents to be given psychiatric evaluations, an international rights organization says.

The government psychologists, who had previously diagnosed Melissa Busekros with “schoolphobia”, would now get a shot at labelling the parents. What’s more, the court ignored the fact that the parents have been willing to accept a government compromise.

The appeals court ruling came despite the fact that all three of the lawyers representing Melissa Busekros clearly stated in their request to the court the family had accepted a compromise offered by a lower court for her to return home under government supervision.

“In spite of [that] … the appeals court held that the family refused the court’s initial compromise to let Melissa become an outpatient,” Thornton said.

Read the whole thing for details, and to get caught up if you hadn’t seen this before.

Technorati Tags: education, homeschool, Germany, Melissa Busekros

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Of all the childish tantrums and manufactured outrage that have come from the Democrats, this has surely got to be near the top. First it was John Edwards, then the Nevada State Democratic Party pulled out completely from the debate they themselves set up to be hosted by Fox News. The far left essentially owns the Democrats now, as it was pressure from the like of MoveOn.org that nixed the debate.

Not content with the charge that Fox leans right (which I’ll grant, but what are CNN and the NY Times; centrist?), they had to make up a reason that might actually carry some weight with the folks who do watch Fox. The supposed reason that “proved” Fox was a right-wing shill were comments by Roger Ailes.

But [state party chair Tom] Collins and [Senate Majority Leader Harry] Reid wrote that comments on Thursday by FOX News Chairman and CEO Roger Ailes, when he jokingly compared Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, the junior senator from Illinois, to Osama bin Laden, “went too far,” and prompted Nevada Democrats to end the partnership.

“We cannot, as good Democrats, put our party in a position to defend such comments,” the letter said. “In light of his comments, we have concluded that it is not possible to hold a presidential debate that will focus on our candidates and are therefore cancelling our August debate. We take no pleasure in this, but it is the only course of action.”

And what was this awful comment, comparing Barack Obama to a terrorist?

And it is true that Barack Obama is on the move. I don’t know if it’s true that President Bush called Musharraf and said, ‘Why can’t we catch this guy?’

For cryin’ out loud, this is a joke about George W. Bush! See here for the entire transcript so you can see it in context. If they’re going to boycott Fox for that kind of a remark, are they going to boycott Leno and Letterman for the very same jokes? For the state party leader and the Senate Majority Leader to engage in such blatant partisan lying says a lot about their party and a lot more about those who are fooled by such rhetoric.

And we’re not done with the lies. On the John Edwards site, on the page trying to drum up campaign money over this manufactured controversy (hmm, maybe this was the whole idea in the first place), his headline is “Fox Attacks”. In it, Edwards castigates Ailes for putting forth the perfectly reasonable idea that this sets a bad precedent.

Fox has already started striking backat John for saying no. (There’s a surprise - Fox attacking a Democrat.) Last night, Roger Ailes - the life-long Republican operative who is now Chairman of Fox News Channel - said that any candidate “who believes he can blacklist any news organization is making a terrible mistake” and “is impeding freedom of speech and free press.”

The Left is so ready to yell “McCarthyism!” and “the stifling of dissent!” if their ideas don’t get the publicity they want, and yet here they are dismissing what is a very reasonable concern about McCarthy-like tests for news organizations to pass if they’ll be allowed to air Democrats. The irony is that they’re trying to accuse Fox of not covering Democrats while ensuring that they can’t. What kind of tortured logic is that?

One more thing: the article is called “Fox Attacks” and there is an accompanying graphic, a screenshot of a website. The screenshot is captioned by the Edwards site “Fair and Balanced?” and “You Decide. They’ll Retort.” And the screenshot is of, not the Fox News site, the Drudge Report, with a headline that the Edwards folks considers biased. Talk about bait-and-switch and misdirection. Conflating the two is simply dishonest, but Edwards contributors are just eating it up.

This is a new low for Democrats.

As usual, ScrappleFace nails it.

Technorati Tags: John Edwards, Fox News, Nevada, presidential election, Harry Reid, Roger Ailes, MoveOn.org

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The FBI improperly and, in some cases, illegally used the USA Patriot Act to secretly obtain personal information about people in the United States, a Justice Department audit concluded Friday. And for three years the FBI has underreported to Congress how often it forced businesses to turn over the customer data, the audit found. FBI agents sometimes demanded the data without proper authorization, according to the 126-page audit by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine. At other times, the audit found, the FBI improperly obtained telephone records in non-emergency circumstances. The audit blames agent error and shoddy record-keeping for the bulk of the problems and did not find any indication of criminal misconduct. Still, “we believe the improper or illegal uses we found involve serious misuses of national security letter authorities,” the audit concludes.

This information was discovered, not by a lawsuit, not by a test case, but by an internal audit. Those who would take this as proof that the Patriot Act should be repealed would be jumping the gun, throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and a number of other cliches. The government, in revealing this, shows that it can indeed police itself to some degree, even regarding as sensitive a subject as national security.

FBI Director Robert S. Mueller called Fine’s audit “a fair and objective review of the FBI’s use of a proven and useful investigative tool.” The finding “of deficiencies in our processes is unacceptable,” Mueller said in a statement. “We strive to exercise our authorities consistent with the privacy protections and civil liberties that we are sworn to uphold,” Mueller said. “Anything less will not be tolerated. While we’ve already taken some steps to address these shortcomings, I am ordering additional corrective measures to be taken immediately.”

If you think that the Patriot Act should be repealed because it is being misused, you’d best hope that same standard isn’t used against every other government program and department. You couldn’t get a budget passed on that. (As an aside, this is one of the big reasons smaller-government conservatives believe what they do. Too much power and money flowing around Washington is bound to result in waste and misuse.) This is troubling, if non-specific:

Fine’s annual review is required by Congress, over the objections of the Bush administration.

It’s not mentioned what those objections are in the article. However, given how the liberals and the media enjoy outing legal secret programs, you can sort of understand why the administration would have some issues with this. Still, I think the audit is a good idea. (As an aside, where’s all the outrage from the liberals and the media about the outing of legal anti-terrorism measures, instead of the outing of a CIA employee who had a desk job at Langley?) (As an aside, notice how the phrase “the liberals and the media” just seems to keep coming up?) Gotta agree with these guys, though.

Senators outraged over the conclusions signaled they would provide tougher oversight of the FBI _ and perhaps limit its power. “The report indicates abuse of the authority” Congress gave the FBI, said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. “You cannot have people act as free agents on something where they’re going to be delving into your privacy.” The committee’s top Republican, Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter, said the FBI appears to have “badly misused national security letters.” The senator said, “This is, regrettably, part of an ongoing process where the federal authorities are not really sensitive to privacy and go far beyond what we have authorized.”

The FBI is just asking for further reigning in. If they don’t watch it, these folks will have their way:

The American Civil Liberties Union said the audit proves Congress must amend the Patriot Act to require judicial approval anytime the FBI wants access to sensitive personal information. “The Attorney General and the FBI are part of the problem and they cannot be trusted to be part of the solution,” said Anthony D. Romero, the ACLU’s executive director.

What’s interesting is that John Kerry, while campaigning for President, suggested that terrorism should be a law enforcement issue. Isn’t the FBI considered law enforcement? A little irony there.

Technorati Tags: Patriot Act, FBI, Justice Department, Glenn Fine, Robert Mueller, Patrick Leahy, Arlen Specter, ACLU

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Violence in Baghdad has decreased significantly recently.

BAGHDAD — The U.S. Army has reported a sharp decrease in insurgency attacks in Baghdad.

In the week of Feb. 24 to March 2, officials said, insurgency strikes and suicide bombings dropped for the fourth consecutive week in Baghdad. They linked this to the steady increase of security patrols in the city.

Emphasis mine, to note where one could replace those words with “surge”.

The army said violence has decreased by 80 percent in the most insurgency-ridden areas of Baghdad. Officials said Shi’ite and Sunni insurgents have been overwhelmed by the current joint Iraqi-U.S. operation in the Iraqi capital.

It’s working.

Technorati Tags: Baghdad, Iraq, surge, insurgency

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While the contest is on, I’ve added a graphic on the side that links to the Public Radio Talent Quest. The contest doesn’t start until April 16th, but I just found out about it from Podcasting News and I think I’m going to give it a shot. So might as well help promote it.

It’s open to anyone, so there’s nothing special about me. I have done some radio, back in college, and I’ve always enjoyed the radio entertainer. Not just the DJ who give you title and artist during the song’s intro, but someone who can really entertain you. I’ve always enjoyed Paul Harvey’s “The Rest of the Story” feature, and growing up, when we’d be taking long trips in the car, we’d listen to the (last shot) revival of old time radio programs, the CBS Radio Mystery Theater hosted by E. G. Marshall. I imagine I come by it naturally. My dad, before becoming a minister in The Salvation Army, was a radio DJ in New Jersey during the 40s and has quite the announcer’s voice. I’ve been told over the years that I, too, have a voice for radio. Well, if I do, it’s partly due to the luck of the gene pool, and partly from listening to some of the best. (Thank you, Jack Bogut, for the couple years I spent in Pittsburgh listening to you on KDKA.)

Anyway, if anything comes of my entry, I’ll mention it here. (Which means this may be my only post on the subject. >grin<)

Technorati Tags: public radio, Paul Harvey, E. G. Marshall, Jack Bogut, CBS Radio Mystery Theater

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At least if you watch the Fox News Channel. John Edwards will simply not tolerate any group that will not tow the liberal line.

Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards won’t participate in a debate co-hosted by Fox News and the Nevada Democratic Party, his campaign said, as party officials tried to settle a dustup over their partnership with the cable network.

Edwards’ campaign said the involvement of Fox News, which is often accused by liberals of having a conservative bias, was part of the decision to pass on the Aug. 14 debate in Reno.

“There were a number of factors and Fox was one of those.”

Far-left blogs have been pushing for this,and Edwards has caved. The Left has set yet another lower standard. Unless you can name a Republican that has ever skipped a major debate based solely on the slant of the network carrying it. That may be difficult, even considering, for example, CBS’s “myopic zeal” against Republicans. Edwards will take his ball and go home unless you’re slanted his way.

This says as much about the media as it does about Edwards. He knows the networks who are in bed with him, and you don’t get access if you aren’t. Oh, that liberal media.

Technorati Tags: John Edwards, Fox News, Nevada, presidential election

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After the election, I noted that some right-of-center pundits were saying that while the Democrats won big in the election, conservative values won big as well. No, that’s not a contradiction. I said that the actions of the Democrats has been a great misreading of the election results which, as had been noted by others, was the election of more moderate Democrats, not the leftist kind.

Today comes proof of it. Blue Dog Democrats are asserting their power.

When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi faced scorn from fellow Democrats during a recent closed-door meeting for not moving more aggressively on Iraq, it was conservative Blue Dogs _ her ideological opposites _ who rose to defend her.

The unlikely support reflected an emerging dynamic in the House, where the 43 right-of-center fiscal hawks are increasingly asserting their power, working to moderate the policies and image of a party with a liberal base and leaders to match.

The coalition’s name is a play on yellow dog Democrats, an epithet that came into being in the 1920s to describe party loyalists in the South who, it was said, would vote for a yellow dog if it ran on the Democratic ticket. Democrats who said their moderate to conservative views had been “choked blue” by the party’s liberal flank started referring to themselves as blue dogs and formed their group after Republicans swept control of the House in 1994.

With Democrats in charge again, the Blue Dogs have played a key role in halting an emerging plan to place strict conditions on war funding. Their revolt helped beat back that proposal, by Pelosi ally John Murtha, D-Pa. Leaders are now considering a watered-down version.

These moderate Democrats push fiscal responsibility and are putting the brakes on the Pelosi/Murtha wing who are charting a course for Iraqi killing fields. As much as the anti-war crowd would hope for it, and as much as the Democrat leadership talks it, support for cut-and-run is weak. Further, fiscal irresponsibility (from either party) is not what the election was about, either. The last election was indeed a referendum on how Republicans have been running the government, and while the public doesn’t like how the war has gone, they elected more Democrats who don’t want to just bail out post haste. Any suggestion otherwise is to blindly ignore those very election results they continue to trumpet.

Technorati Tags: Nancy Pelosi, John Murtha, Blue Dog Democrats

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