Date ►►► October 22, 2005
Zarqawi's Golden Parachute
Am I the only one who thinks like this? I hope not....
AP is carrying an item titled U.S.: Zarqawi's Terror Network Growing. The first thing that pops into the reader's head, of course, is that US officials are claiming that there are now more terrorists, that we're losing the war (I'm certain that was just the idea they intended to convey). The article claims no such thing, however, only that Musab Zarqawi is expanding his influence and contacts into other terrorist groups in other countries.
WASHINGTON (AP) - U.S. intelligence officials say Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has expanded his terrorism campaign in Iraq to extremists in two dozen terror groups scattered across almost 40 countries, creating a network that rivals Osama bin Laden's....
In figures not made public before, counterterrorism officials say that Zarqawi's network of contacts has grown dramatically since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and now includes associates in nearly 40 countries in the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Europe.
Those Muslim extremists are members of at least 24 groups, from Hezbollah in Lebanon to much smaller organizations in Indonesia.
Since this is the Associated Press, there is the obligatory swipe at President Bush and Secretary Rumsfeld, albeit subtlely:
He also is helped, said one U.S. intelligence official, by the fact that there is not a large, constant American military presence in Anbar, but rather pockets of forces that are bolstered during operations. Iraq's largely Shiite security forces do not want to go to the Sunni-dominated area, either.
Translation: an anonymous "intelligence official" says We're losing! We're history, man! Bush should have sent in a million soldiers, like we have argued all along -- except for the time we were arguing he shouldn't have gone in at all!
Naturally, those interviewed in the article, when they express an opinion at all, opine that this means his strength is growing.
In interviews, U.S. government officials said the threat to U.S. interests from al-Zarqawi compared with that from bin Laden, whom al-Zarqawi pledged his loyalty to one year ago....
Al-Zarqawi is now seen as the top general who is putting in place al-Qaida's long campaign to establish an Islamic society throughout the Middle East, with Iraq at its heart....
The persistence of their attacks and subsequent media exposure have made al-Zarqawi the public face of al-Qaida and the broader insurgency. He has become so central to al-Qaida's operations that some evidence suggests he is providing money to bin Laden.
But I have own theory, probably idiosyncratic: I think Zarqawi is setting up bolt holes, international affiliations to whom he can flee when he inevitably has to bug out of Iraq... just as Osama bin Laden and his cronies fled to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan when they were booted from Sudan. I suspect that Zarwawi, a streetwise thug who has murdered his way to being capo di tutti capos of the biggest mob in the Arab Middle East, sees the noose tightening around his neck, and he is preparing to escape to some other country... probably simply abandoning all his followers in Iraq except for his closest cadre.
But then, I always was an optimist. We shall soon see.
Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 22, 2005, at the time of 1:13 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
The 800 Pound Gorelick
I'm quite reluctant to run with this, considering the source -- actually, considering both the original and the reporting sources! -- but what the heck. Consider yourselves duly cautioned: objects in the mirror may be farther than they appear.
Newsmax.com alleges that Congressman Curt Weldon (R-PA) now alleges that the staffer who actually blocked the 9/11 Commission from hearing testimony about Able Danger was none other than Dieter Snell, one of the chief investigating lawyers on the commission and a former prosecutor of Ramzi Yousef for the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993 -- and that Snell, according to Weldon, was "the lead staffer for Jamie Gorelick." It's this last part that is a new claim, a supposed direct connection between Snell and Gorelick... and that is the part I cannot independently verify.
(I am guessing this is why Captain Ed has not yet commented on this: he is waiting for some verification of the central claim.)
It has been known for some time that it was Snell who did not pass along Navy Captain Scott Philpot's testimony to the commission; for example, consider these two postings on National Review Online's blog the Corner, two posts the same day (August 20th, 2005) by Andrew McCarthy:
This is a troublesome story, we don’t know all the facts, and I happen to know and be fond of Dieter Snell--the Commission staffer who did the interview of the naval intel officer [Scott Philpot] -- so if Snell found him unpersuasive, that carries a lot of weight with me. ("WANT TO REPHRASE THAT?," at 4:52 am)
As I've noted with respect to the former, we don't know enough about what happened, and the fact that someone as able as commission staffer Dieter Snell appears to have rejected the naval officer's information gives me cause for pause. ("THE POINT IS TRAINING AND FOCUS, NOT ASSOCIATIVE MEMORY," at 10:45 am)
But Weldon now claims that Dietrich Dieter Snell was "the lead staffer for Jamie Gorelick." Alas, I cannot find any definitive evidence that Snell was specifically working for Gorelick, as opposed simply to being the lead investigative staffer (or one of the leads) for the commission as a whole. Also, I'm not sure how much weight to give this even if true: I can't find any connection between Gorelick and Snell prior to the 9/11 Commission. If that is correct, then the mere fact that he was appointed her staffer -- if he actually was, that is -- wouldn't mean he would necessarily collaborate with her on some deep conspiracy to keep Able Danger out of the public eye in order to hide the damage caused by what I called "Jamie Gorelick's wall of separation between intelligence and law enforcement" back on Captain's Quarters.
Until I see much stronger evidence of some prior connection between Snell and Gorelick than the mere fact that he was an investigator on the commission that she (and many others) sat on, I'm not going to believe in a conspiracy arising between the two... despite the fact that Rep. Weldon has been right more often than wrong on this issue.
Commenters with knowledge of this specific question -- the actual connection, if any, between Snell and Gorelick -- are urged to share.
Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 22, 2005, at the time of 11:48 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Date ►►► October 21, 2005
It's Morning in Medicaid
How did this manage to slide by unnoticed? (Warning, you have to click past the advert.)
U.S. Gives Florida a Sweeping Right to Curb Medicaid
By Robert Pear
Published: October 20, 2005WASHINGTON, Oct. 19 - The Bush administration approved a sweeping Medicaid plan for Florida on Wednesday that limits spending for many of the 2.2 million beneficiaries there and gives private health plans new freedom to limit benefits.
The Florida program, likely to be a model for many other states, shifts from the traditional Medicaid "defined benefit" plan to a "defined contribution" plan, under which the state sets a ceiling on spending for each recipient.
Children under the age of 21 and pregnant women will be exempt from the limits.
Medicaid is, of course, the federal/state system for insuring the poor (Medicare insures the aged and the disabled). Traditional Medicaid is a classic "defined benefits" plan, where the state decides on the benefits and then shops for the cheapest way to pay for them; when such plans run into financial trouble, their only alternatives are to cut benefits or raise taxes, neither of which is politicall palatable.
Florida's new system is a "defined contribution" plan, joining a number of other states that have gotten federal wavers to shift from defined benefits to defined contributions or otherwise reform their broken Medicaid programs.
"Defined contribution" has long been considered the Holy Grail for libertarian and conservative analysts of programs like Medicare, urged by both the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation; it relies upon consumer choice to keep costs down. Cato writes:
Under the traditional defined benefits approach, an institutional purchaser such as an employer determines what range of services it will cover, then seeks or creates a plan that will provide those services for an acceptable price. It has become increasingly difficult to sustain a defined benefit system. A steady stream of emerging technologies requires an equally steady stream of decisions about which ones will be covered by the plan. Moreover, it has become nearly impossible to provide such benefits economically, in the face of rising health care inflation and increasingly impotent cost-cutting tools.
In contrast, under defined contribution, the employer determines up front how much it will spend for health care, then typically provides an array of options from which beneficiaries can choose (Wye River Group on Healthcare et al., Parrish 2001, Blumenthal 2001). Those options can assume various forms. In the oldest, most familiar version, the contribution essentially represents a voucher for a conventional health plan. The employer assembles a collection of plans from which employees can choose, and then defines its own contribution according to the least expensive of those plans.
Unlike a defined-benefits plan, under the new system, recipients will be able to select more expensive health-care plans than the state is willing to pay for, so long as the recipient picks up the rest of the tab. The recipient gets an expensive plan for little of his own money, and the state keeps its own costs down.
Florida is not the first state to make the transition, of course; but I believe they are the biggest. And while states like Vermont have pilot programs, Florida is actually implementing the changes system wide.
The new Florida plan also incorporates private medical care into the state Medicaid program:
Joan C. Alker, a senior researcher at the Health Policy Institute of Georgetown University, said: "Florida's proposal is one of the most far-reaching and radical proposals we've seen to restructure Medicaid. The federal government and the states now decide which benefits people get. Under the Florida plan, many of those decisions will be made by private health plans, out of public view"....
For each beneficiary, Florida will pay a monthly premium to a private plan. Insurance plans will be allowed to limit "the amount, duration and scope" of services in ways that current law does not permit.
The Florida plan includes many of the very same features that President Bush has proposed for national Medicaid. From the New York Times article:
- Recipients must select a private health-care "Medicaid" plan. If they do not, the state will automatically enroll them in a private plan of the state's choosing.
- Recipients can choose to completely opt out of the Medicaid system; in that case, Medicaid will partially subsidize the employee share of an employer-sponsored health-insurance program (the article doesn't say how this works with the self-employed). Such persons will still pay the same co-payments, and they will have the same deductables as other members of that same employer-sponsored health insurance.
- Recipients who enroll in weight-loss or stop-smoking programs will receive Medicaid subsidies to help pay for them.
- The state and feds will pool money to spend up to $1 billion per year on hospitals that treat a large number of indigent or uninsured patients.
President Bush has been flogging Medicaid reform since his first days in office, at least since August, 2001. But the administration has finally begun to focus like a laser beam (as Clinton used to say) on presenting a fleshed-out proposal... which likely will look a lot like the Florida program.
We certainly could do worse; we're doing worse right now! But with these reforms, most of the projections of massive future liabilities will melt away, because market forces will actually hold costs down -- for the same reason that Cadillacs don't cost a million dollars: too much competition. Perhaps a successful program in the fourth largest state in the United States will spur Congress finally to enact such reforms nationwide and encourage other states to follow suit.
Then Medicare could be reformed the same way; and the public-private partnerships in Medicare/Medicaid could remove some of the terror on the Left, allowing meaningful Social Security privatization before the entire system crashes and burns. Although privatization of "entitlement" programs is inherently conservative, it is not inherently anti-Leftist. They're only against it because conservatives favor it.
I expect only two of these (probably Medicaid and Medicare) to be enacted during Bush's presidency; but that in itself would be a stunning conservative domestic legacy, especially coupled with his tax cuts, with the Patriot Act and other criminal justice reforms, and (I still hope) general tort reform. As we begin to see the benefits of a free market in what was previously thought to be sanctified to dictatorial bureaucracy, anything could happen.
Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 21, 2005, at the time of 9:51 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
Date ►►► October 20, 2005
Right to Own Weapons...
Correction... this is a great day for litigation reform!
AP and all the nets are reporting a fantastic breakthrough -- in something that should have been a no-brainer. Congress has finally agreed that victims of criminal misuse of firearms cannot sue the gun manufacturer for damages (presumably for having the temerity to manufacture products that can potentially be misused). Bush is, of course, expected to sign the bill into law.
(In a startling corollary development, Congress also enacted legislation preventing victims of drunk drivers from suing Chevrolet and Toyota for building cars in the first place.)
The real intent is clear: unable to persuade American voters to vote to ban guns (perhaps due to that pesky Second Amendment), the Left decided to try to sue them out of existence by legally blaming gun manufacturers for the actions of criminals who buy, borrow, or steal guns to commit their crimes.
As A.E. Van Vogt wrote in "the Weapon Shops of Isher":
The right to own weapons is the right to be free.
Today, thankfully, America is the land of the freer.
Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 20, 2005, at the time of 4:14 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack
Do You Want Subpoenas With That?
Today is a very good day for litigation reform.
Responding to a swarm of bizarre and offensive lawsuits "on behalf of" fat kids -- lawsuits that seek damages from fast-food restaurants for daring to sell food other than carrot sticks and tossed chard salads -- the House of Representatives has (once again) passed a bill that would throw these outlandish suits out of court.
The legal theory appears to be that when kids and their parents are faced with the trauma of a hamburger, their brains literally shut down, and resistance is futile. They're assimilated into the McBorg. Toss in a bag of fries, and it may as well be a crime against humanity.
It has nothing to do with kids; these suits are being pushed by two groups: greedy parents who want simultaneously to get rich via life's lottery (as Rush Limbaugh called tort litigation) and find somebody to blame other than themselves for their kids being obese -- and professional pleasure haters, such as the Center for Science in the Public Interest, the group which brought you the shocking news that popcorn, pizza, chow mein, and burritos are fattening if indulged to excess.
Oh, and trial lawyers steaming off of their success at blaming "Big Tobacco" for smoking; all right, three groups.
"But of course this silly legislative effort has nothing to do with encouraging personal responsibility and everything to do with pleasing a powerful and politically connected industry," said Michael Jacobson, director of the Washington-based Center for Science in the Public Interest.
I reckon Mr. Jacobson believes the best way to "encourag[e] personal responsibility" is to blame Big Food for your stupid eating choices.
Alas, it's not a given that the Senate will follow suit. The House passed essentially the same bill last year, but the Senate failed to act. Maybe they just ran out of time, or maybe they just ran out of courage: I'll believe it when I believe it, when the McFood Protection Act of 2005 lands on President Bush's desk.
Then he can sign it with an ink-stained french fry.
Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 20, 2005, at the time of 4:12 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Hurricane Hugo
"Hurricane" Hugo Chavez is having another psychic fugue.
US planning invasion, says Chavez
Venezuela's President, Hugo Chavez, says he is in possession of intelligence showing that the United States plans to invade his country.
BBC News
October 20th, 2005In a BBC interview, Mr Chavez said the US was after his nation's oil, much as it had been after Iraq's.
But he stressed that any invasion would never be allowed to happen.
My first thought was, of course, "when was Hugo Chavez ever 'in possession of intelligence'" in the first place? But even making my way past that huge suspension of disbelief, I note that yet again, the American loony-Left is writing the script for Communist thugs and dictators around the world: why would we invade Venezuela? Why, to steal their oil, of course! Just as we did in Iraq.
Thank you, "Hurricane" Howard Dean.
If you have ever considered a career in forensic psychiatry and psychological profiling, you simply must read this article.
But worry not, Hugophiles; the Man has assurred us that if the United States were to attack Venezuela, the mighty al-Chavez Militia will repel us, driving us into the sea to drown like rats. Presumably just as the terrorists did in Iraq.
Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 20, 2005, at the time of 3:09 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Date ►►► October 19, 2005
Everybody's Gone Survey, SurveyUSA - Page 2
Daniel Weintraub notes in his Bee-blog, California Insider, that the leads enjoyed by Governor Schwarzenegger's five ballot initiatives for California' special election on November 8th have narrowed from their Olympian heights two weeks ago; but they are still considerably ahead.
According to SurveyUSA's latest poll, four of the five still hold commanding, double-digit leads; only Proposition 74's lead (reforming teacher tenure) has dropped into single digits, down to 8% from 11% two weeks ago.
Here are the current results:
Results of SurveyUSA Election Poll #7189
Filtering: 1,200 California adults were interviewed 10/15/05 - 10/17/05. Of them, 963 were registered voters. Of them, 609 were judged to be "likely" voters on Proposition 73. 613 were judged to be "likely" voters on Proposition 74. 609 were judged to be "likely" voters on Proposition 75. 594 were judged to be "likely" voters on Proposition 76. 600 were judged to be "likely" voters on Proposition 77. Crosstabs reflect "likely" voters. Voter interest in this election has increased: in an identical poll of 1,200 California adults 2 weeks ago, at most 529 voters were judged to be "likely" to vote on any question. No change was made to the way voters were filtered or the way questions were asked.
Questions on Propositions 73, 74, and 75 have a margin of error of 4.0%; questions on Propositions 76 and 77 have an MOE of 4.1%.
- Prop 73: 60 yes, 38 no (2% undecided) lead: +22
Parental Abortion Notification - Prop 74: 53 yes, 45 no (1% undecided) lead: +8
Teacher Tenure Reform - Prop 75: 56 yes, 42 no (2% undecided) lead: +14
Paycheck Protection - Prop 76: 54 yes, 41 no (5% undecided) lead: +13
Limit State Spending Growth - Prop 77: 54 yes, 41 no (5% undecided) lead: +13
Redistricting Reform
My own speculation is that much, if not all, of the movement comes from Democrats "coming home" to oppose the measures, following the many, many millions of dollars spent on attack ads by the teachers unions and other hard-left sources, ads that skirt as close to flatly lying as the FEC and FCC will allow. We'll see if the ads produced by the governator and the Cal-GOP ads that will debut next week can bring these waverers back into line.
Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 19, 2005, at the time of 6:17 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
This Bloody Teleconference Is Rigged!
The same Power Line post linked below also pointed me to a nice column from the brilliant and beautiful Michelle Malkin. On the subject of the president's teleconference with American and Iraqi troops anent preparations for the Iraqi elections, Malkin takes up the thread where Sachi and I left it here, here, and here. Perhaps now the MSM will begin to pay attention to the actual questions and answers, which show that it was no accident that the election ran as smoothly as it did.
She also blogged it here; alas, she didn't link Big Lizards -- can't have everything! Besides, her post came some hours before our third one, where we linked to Sgt. Ron Long.
Oops, maybe we should have linked to Michelle! (Actually, we independently read Sgt. Long's post.)
Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 19, 2005, at the time of 5:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
This Bloody Fight's Been Rigged!
Power Line tipped me to a fascinating article by Todd Manzi up at Human Events, provacatively titled "The Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy: Attack on Bill Bennett Was Staged." While Manzi makes some powerful points about the irresponsibility of the press, he ultimately fails the twin labors of Hercules he sets himself: either to prove that the dogpile on William Bennett was "staged," or to offer any practical suggestions for preventing such media mayhem in the future.
My response turned out to be 1,600 words... far too long for a blogpost. So it has become the second hissing of my semi-regular column, the Lizard's Tongue -- go thou, o wise, and read why I say Manzi did not deliver the knockout blow many think he has!
To see links to all the Lizard's Tongue columns (all two of them), check here.
Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 19, 2005, at the time of 4:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Summary of Judge Robert Bork's Hit Piece On Bush
Apres moi, le deluge!
"Slouching Towards Miers," Robert H. Bork, Wall Street Journal, October 19th, 2005; hat tip Hugh Hewitt. (Registration required to view Bork piece, but not subscription, I believe.)
Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 19, 2005, at the time of 7:38 AM | Comments (9) | TrackBack
ab Hugh's Universal Rules of Intelligence
Thinking about the many intelligence failures -- the collapse of the Shah of Iran, the failure to find "large stockpiles" of WMD in Iraq, the tragic case of Brazilian electrician Jean Charles de Menezes, shot to death in London by police who mistook him for a suicide bomber -- and about the many intelligence successes (all those terrible terrorist attacks that didn't occur on American soil because they were thwarted -- suggests some rules of intelligence and analysis that we should always keep in mind:
1. The Law of Imperfect Precognition: Sometimes there is no "right choice." Throw the dice.
2. The Law of Imperfect Postcognition: Not even hindsight is ever really 20-20.
3. The Law of Colliding Interests: Five different people can each make a rational decision and still wind up in a melee.
4. The Law of the Onion: There is always another layer of analysis that contradicts everything you've already concluded. At some point, you just have to stop.
5. The Law of Models: There is a real reality out there, whether you can see it or not. And it will bite.
Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 19, 2005, at the time of 7:32 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Date ►►► October 18, 2005
Soldiers' Answers Weren't Scripted
When we wrote about the so-called "staged" teleconference between the president, ten American soldiers, and one Iraqi soldier, we introduced Sgt. Ron Long, who actually participated in the conference. We e-mailed Sgt. Long to ask if the soldiers themselves actually wrote their own answers, or if the answers were supplied by (or even edited by) the White House.
Sgt. Long did not respond personally, but he answered the same question in his blog. The blogpost quotes a fellow soldier from the 278th Regimental Combat Team, Lt. Gregg Murphy, who was interviewed by the Chattanooga Times Free Press. Murphy was chosen for the Tikrit teleconference because he had spent the last three months leading an Iraqi army training program near the Iranian border. The article is titled "Soldiers' questions weren't scripted, participant says," by Edward Lee Pitts.
"We wanted to give President Bush a no-kidding assessment of what we have all been working 14- (to) 18-hour days on for the last 11 months," said Lt. Gregg Murphy, of Chattanooga. "We gave him the God’s honest truth as we know it."
Although the soldiers themselves gathered before the teleconference to "brainstorm" what questions President Bush was likely to ask and how best and most accurately they could answer, there was no coercion, suggestion, or even editing by administration personnel.
[Lt. Murphy] said the only guidance the solders received was to avoid using military jargon that would confuse the general public and to write out bullet points to keep their comments concise and clear. Lt. Murphy said writing out key points kept the soldiers from being nervous.
"[Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Allison Barber] did not orchestrate the interview," Lt. Murphy said of the Defense Department employee. "We were nervous, and she put us at ease. Nothing more."
As for the reharsal, Lt. Murphy has this to say:
[T]he military rehearses all the time. "We do that so that when we actually have to execute, there isn’t any confusion," he said. "Rehearsing is why we are so good at what we do."
This should be the final refutation of the initial knee-jerk and entirely predictable -- scripted, if you will -- response by the Associated Press, reprinted in the Washington Post, that smarmily implied (without quite saying) that the soldiers were either too dumb or too intimidated by the president to give honest answers, and that the White House had scripted the entire event.
On the one hand, you can believe the nod-and-a-wink insinuations of a reporter whose only connection to the teleconference is that he saw some of the rehearsal inadvertently broadcast -- footage that does not show even one single reported instance of the White House altering a soldier's answer. Or you can believe the straightforward words of two of the actual participants in the teleconference, a lieutenant and a sergeant who have each spent many months fighting in Iraq (the latter as a combat medic) and are still there on the ground, dealing with Iraqi citizens, Coalition forces, and terrorists on a day-to-day basis.
It's your choice.
Hatched by Sachi on this day, October 18, 2005, at the time of 3:25 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
Date ►►► October 17, 2005
US Seizes al-Qaeda Webmaster, Hacks al-Qaeda Website
The US military captured Abu Dijana, a top propaganda agent for Al-Qaeda in Iraq. Abu Dijana was the Webmaster of a "members-only" website called Al-Qaeda in Iraq. He was responsible for blogging the day-to-day operations of al-Qaeda, such as bombing American convoys, Iraqi police, or citizens exiting from a mosque.
Abu Dijana was so efficient that, within minutes of some brutal act of terrorism, Al-Qaeda in Iraq would take credit on the website, posting video clips and triumphant boast-posts. Intelligence officers and major American media regularly used the site to make official determinations of responsibility.
In one typical case, just three hours after an attack, the site showed video of a man identified as the suicide bomber Abu Musab al-Iraqi, who says, "I have dreamed about this moment. I am sure if my family is watching this they will be more proud of me."
Musab's words are followed by a video of a car he is said to be driving, blowing up in the midst of an American convoy. The incident is replayed again and again with more of Musab's speech superimposed over the ball of flames and smoke rising above the U.S. convoy. "Thank God this day I went to kill many crusaders." His declaration ends, "Today I will be in heaven."
Not only are the attacks themselves coordinated, so is the recording of them. Abu Dijana gathered information of impending attacks and provided equipment to his cell members to record attacks. After each attack, the collected photographs and video were swiftly uploaded to the website.
The most obvious purpose of the website is to webcast terrorist attacks as a propaganda tool, but al-Qaeda also uses the site to recruit volunteers for more suicide bombings and intimidate local citizens. Al-Qaeda members use the site as a communication system as well, to coordinate attacks, train the recruits, and just to report the daily dish for jihadists. It's so popular, it's a wonder they don't have SiteMeter and a listing in the TTLB Ecosystem.
That's why the "al-Qaida in Iraq" site, available to members only, features highly detailed tutorials on bomb-making, strategy for assassinations, and even a workshop on hacking into secret American government Web sites. The Web site claims it has 4,000 members.
For reasons of security, each new member of the site must be approved by a committee of existing members. "It's full of intelligence information and the enemy might use it against us," one member said. With as many as 1,500 members logging on in a single day, the Web site is also an effective security tool for al-Qaida. When its operatives get word of an impending U.S. raid, it puts out flash security warnings to fighters who might be targets.
Evidently this precaution was not sufficient: the webmaster, Abu Dijana himself, was caught in just such a raid.
There are more unsecured websites in Iraq. Americans are closely monitoring such sites and hacking them for information gathering. Not only are we winning the war on land, sea, and air, we're beating them like a dozen eggs in the blogosphere, as well!
Hatched by Sachi on this day, October 17, 2005, at the time of 9:26 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Paycheck Protection Initiative Endorsed By -- the Los Angeles Times?!
In an astonishing burst of good sense, decency, and even courage, the Los Angeles Times has actually endorsed Proposition 75, the initiative that would ban public-employee unions from using member dues for political purposes without the prior written consent of the member. This according to the ever-reliable Daniel Weintraub at the Sacramento Bee, whose Bee-blog, California Insider, is a daily must-read at Big Lizards central.
Weintraub links to the LA Times editorial:
IN 1998, THIS PAGE OPPOSED Proposition 226, the so-called paycheck-protection measure that sought to bar labor unions from spending a member's dues for political activities in the absence of that member's consent. We considered that initiative a disingenuous "good government" move aimed at diminishing the voice of only one side on public policy debates, and we would oppose such a proposition again if it were on this year's ballot.
But contrary to some of the arguments being mustered both for and against Proposition 75, this election's version of "paycheck protection" is significantly different than Proposition 226: It applies only to public employee unions. We support this more narrowly tailored initiative primarily as a means of lessening the power of public employee unions in Sacramento, but also as a way of reinforcing the right of union members to insist that their hard-earned income not be diverted to political causes they don't endorse.
Ah, the world, which had been wobbling on its axis, has steadied itself: the Times supports the initiative, but for a silly and contradictory reason! They support, among other things, "the right of union members to insist that their hard-earned income not be diverted to political causes they don't endorse." But they nevertheless opposed Prop. 226, which would have upheld "the right of union members to insist that their hard-earned income not be diverted to political causes they don't endorse."
So evidently, they only support the right of public employees to be free of such odious misuse of their paychecks!
(The Times cites the thoroughly discredited canard that a similar restriction on private-employee unions would be wrong because corporations would still be able to contribute money without asking shareholders. But this is absurd: shareholders can register their disapproval by dumping their stock; I dumped my Disney stock some time ago because I despised the politics Michael Eiser was funding, and I suffered no financial setback. But absent such an initiative, the only way for an employee, public or private, to stop his union money going to causes he loathes would be to quit his job and go on the dole.
(There already is a law, on paper, "allowing" members to specifically tell the union not to use their dues for politicking; but union thugs have a habit of "hatting" and beating anyone who tries to use it.)
The Times supports the First-Amendment rights of conservatives, but only in a limited fashion... and only because even politcos like Antonio Villaraigosa despise the teachers unions.
Sanity is restored. I am glad to have the Times on my side for a change, but at least I don't have to rethink the fundamental nature of reality!
Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 17, 2005, at the time of 8:38 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
US Air Raid Kills 70 Terrorists
On Sunday, several different military operations involving U.S. warplanes, helicopters, and ground troops (both American and Iraqi) killed a total of 70 terrorists.
An American F-15 spotted a group of terrorists burying a roadside bomb in Ramadi; the Eagle dropped a single bomb, killing twenty. Subsequently, according to Reuters:
Another 50 militants were killed in a series of separate strikes, the statement added, saying military commanders had no indications of any U.S. or civilian casualties in the operation.
The military said separately that 18 insurgents had been killed in three separate clashes elsewhere in western Iraq.
Iraq's Defense Ministry said separately U.S. and Iraqi troops had killed 12 insurgents south of Baghdad on Sunday.
The Reuters article is poorly enough written that it's impossible to say whether the thirty deaths detailed above are part of the fifty mentioned earlier, or whether a total of 100 jihadis, not seventy, were killed.
Of course, being the MSM, they had to throw in this kicker:
However, Ramadi police Lieutenant Karim Salim said 20 of those killed were civilians, including some children as young as 11. Doctors in the city had made a similar assessment on Sunday.
I wonder how exactly a doctor can look at a patient brought to a hospital -- alive or dead -- and determine that he was a "civilian?" And what kind of civilian? A terrorist who isn't a member of the armed forces is a civilian, even if he is still a terrorist.
As far as the children who may have died, that is, of course, a despicable evil. But those deaths are the full responsibility of the jihadis who hide among children to fight, using them as human shields. God may have mercy on them, but America should not.
Hatched by Sachi on this day, October 17, 2005, at the time of 7:50 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
While You Were Sleeping
Taking a page from Patterico, this post inaugurates a new series: since we get a lot fewer visitors over the weekend (people being busier with "RL"), each Monday I will try to post a brief recap of what we posted on Saturday and Sunday, capsule descriptions plus links, of course. And I'll keep this up as long as I remember to do so. So here goes!
Two posts on Saturday, October 15th:
- Earle-y to Bed -- and Stay There: a stunning new development in the Tom DeLay case! It turns out that Ronnie Earle's office, which based its second indictment upon a single, critical document, does not actually have that document. When challenged to produce it in court, they handed over a different document instead -- and claimed it was "factually similar" to the real one!
- Bush's Teleconference: the Actual Q&A: in all the excitement over whether the answers given by the soldiers in President Bush's teleconference were scripted or were their own words was the much more interesting news of the answers themselves... and Sachi thinks this bit of misdirection may have been purposeful on the part of the Associated Press, the Washington Post, and other MSM sources. Get the lowdown on the high drama of how the American presence created such a smooth and violence-free election in Iraq.
Sunday was exceptionally full with the KRLA Talkfest in the afternoon (I already told you about that) and a play in the evening, so blogging was light (by "light," I actually mean "nonexistent;" but it sounded better the other way). So that's all you missed last weekend... happy reading!
Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 17, 2005, at the time of 7:23 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
What I Would Ask Strict Constructionists
(Or whatever they choose to call themselves.)
Would it be unconstitutional for a state legislature to enact a law banning all vaccination within the state?
If one did, would any court at any level be allowed, under your judicial philosophy, to overturn such an insane act? Would Congress be constitutionally allowed to do so, under any element of the grant of rights in Article I, Section 8?
If your answer to either of these is Yes, doesn't that entail some level of judicial activism... in a good cause, of course? And if the answer is No and No, those kids just gotta die of polio, diptheria, and typoid fever... then doesn't the whole philosophy of governance fail the most basic test of preserving the citizenry's life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness?
I was inspired by Dennis Prager's remark at the KRLA Talkfest yesterday that "purists can ruin great movements." I believe that absolute blind purity of essence in even a movement such as originalism (by whatever name) is destructive of the very goals it was designed to foster.
Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 17, 2005, at the time of 6:30 PM | Comments (15) | TrackBack
What I Would Ask Miers
Here's a burning question that I would ask Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers, were I a senator... not because I think she would be bad on this issue, but because the Court has been bad in the past:
Miss Miers; within your judicial philosophy, is there ever a valid situation in which foreign law or jurisprudence -- that has never been formally recognized by treaty with the U.S. -- can nevertheless trump the United States Constitution or American federal or state legislation in American courts?
All right, a lawyer would phrase it more bulletproof, but that's the gist. The Supreme Court -- in particular Justices Breyer and Kennedy, I think -- say Yes, lots of situations. I say No, never.
What does Miers say? For that matter, what does Roberts say?
Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 17, 2005, at the time of 6:16 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
A Tale of Two Whistles
The first whistle we all remember: Joseph Wilson, the proven serial liar who was sent by the CIA to investigate claims that Iraq attempted to purchase yellowcake Uranium from Niger, returned to report that indeed this was likely true -- but then wrote a completely fabricated article for the New York Times on July 6th, 2003, in which, in order to politically damage President Bush, Wilson flatly lied about his own findings.
Yet despite the exposure of these lies by a unanimous, bipartisan Senate committee investigation, Wilson continues to be lionized by the press and by the Michael Moore/MoveOn mob; more to the point, he remains free to wander about, instead of sitting in solemn silence in a dull, dank dock -- and wasn't even fined.
But turn now to a different whistle which blew its tune in a very different concert hall.
According to the Telegraph, a whistleblower who warned of a serious (potentially deadly) cabin-pressure design flaw in the new Airbus A380 now faces not only financial ruin but possible jail time, first because of a criminal lawsuit filed against him by his former employer and also for violating a gag order by talking about his own criminal case.
Joseph Mangan thought he was doing Airbus a favour when he warned of a small but potentially lethal fault in the new A380 super-jumbo, the biggest and most costly passenger jet ever built.
Instead, Europe's aviation giant rubbished his claims, and now he faces ruin, a morass of legal problems, and - soon - an Austrian prison. Mr Mangan is counting the days at his Vienna flat across the street from Schonbrünn Palace, wondering whether the bailiffs or the police will knock first.
Mangan, an American aerospace engineer, was brought in to head up the aerospace team at TTTech Computertechnik, an Austrian company that makes some of the components used in the A380. The A380 is the pride of Europe. It is intended to carry more than 850 passengers and fly at altitudes of 42,000 (flight level 420) -- the Boeing 747, by contrast, carries up to 524 passengers, typically at FL 350 with similar range and speed. Much is riding on the success of the A380, "the symbol of what Europe can achieve," according to French President Jacques Chirac; not only the pride of the EU but also its economic prospects depend upon a successful and timely launch of the huge airliner.
Mangan claims that his team was under tremendous pressure to meet deadline when they decided to change the specifications for the outflow valve control system. Rather than the more usual arrangement of three different systems for safety redundancy, they chose to use four identical valves.
The problem is that if an event occurs that causes one of the valves to fail, the other three may simultaneously fail for the same reason. In that case, the cabin would experience sudden catastrophic loss of air pressure. Since irreparable brain damage can occur after four minutes without oxygen, and since it takes two and a half minutes to descend from 420 to 250 (where ambient air is breathable), the flight crew would have to notice the problem and begin the descent within ninety seconds -- and among the first symptoms are inattentiveness, poor judgment, and loss of motor coordination (as I can attest from personal experience).
Any delay could result in neural damage or even death among hundreds of passengers and crew... and could even result in the aircraft crashing, if the pilots pass out: loss of cabin air pressure is considered a primary cause of a crash of a Boeing 737 over Greece this last August.
Once TTTech changed to the new valve design, they were obliged to report that change to the testing agencies, who might have to begin certification all over again. Mangan charges that the team failed to get the new design recertified, which could have taken as long as two years; the A380 was already six months behind schedule and $1.8 billion over budget. Instead, Mangan alleges,
TTTech falsely classified its micro-chip as a simple "off-the-shelf" product already used in car valves in order to except it from elaborate testing rules, he claimed. This would breach both EU and US law on aircraft regulation. "I refused to sign off on the test results, but TTTech went ahead anyway," he claimed. The key papers relate to the TTPOS operating system and were allegedly dated August 24 2004.
A number of agencies appear to have accepted or seriously considered Mangan's charge, which he first made in September 2004; he first raised the issue with the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), the EU equivalent of the Federal Aviation Administration here in the United States.
[O]fficials at the air safety watchdog EASA said they took the concerns "extremely seriously". An EASA source told the Telegraph that the agency was "able to confirm certain statements by Mr Mangan".
A probe - conducted by the French authorities for EASA - allegedly found that TTTech was "not in conformity" with safety rules and had failed to carry out the proper tests. The key microchip was deemed "not acceptable". EASA instructed Airbus to sort out the problem before the final certification of the A380 next year. It is unclear whether this has now been done. EASA has refused to comment publicly on the details of the dispute, prompting concerns at the European Parliament. Eva Lichtenberger, an Austrian Green MEP, wrote an "urgent" letter to the agency last month demanding "prompt and extensive information on the matter".
Had this chain of events happened in the U.S., the FAA would immediately have frozen deployment of the aircraft until the issue was investigated. Several agencies would have gotten themselves involved and there might even have been hearings in the Aviation subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. (In fact, such hearings might still be a good idea before A380s are allowed to fly in the United States.)
Instead, the response in the European Union was markedly different. TTTech filed a lawsuit alleging both civil and criminal defamation under Austrian law, and the judge in the case issued a gag order, which Mangan says prohibited him from talking even to the EASA or other aviation safety officials. While the trial drags on, the A380 is nearing debut -- without any changes, corrections, or retesting done on the valve system, Mangan says.
This violates my duty to the public. People could die on that plane if they don't fix the problem," he said.
TTTech denies that there is any problem and denies that any of its elements covered up or failed to disclose any significant design changes. They say that Mangan has inflicted "severe damage" to their corporate reputation by making unsubstantiated claims about safety problems. They refer to him as disgruntled, say he never fit into the team, and that he is motivated by revenge.
There seems little interest within the European political community in helping Mangan defend against the criminal charge or even to evaluate his claims, despite support from the EASA. He is bankrupt, was fined $180,000 (which he could not pay) for violating the gag order, faces a year in jail for that violation -- and still faces the possibility of even more time in jail or prison for speaking out in the first place, even before the gag order.
Too bad. If only he had thought to embed his charges inside a diatribe against George Bush, as Joe Wilson did, the EU would hail him as a Hero of the People.
Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 17, 2005, at the time of 5:44 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Der Beste of Der Krapp
Way back in the dim mists of antiquity, before many of you were more than a gleam in your parents' eyes -- I refer to the dark hell of the Carter 70s -- Brad Linaweaver began a column about the best of the worst movies ever made, the "golden turkeys," as Harry and Michael Medved dubbed them. Brad called his column Der Krapp.
While occasional columns have been reprinted here and there, and he even wrote a retro column in the 1990s, at no time for the last twenty-five or more years has the entire run of Der Krapp been collected: if you missed them in their original magazine, fanzine, and advertising-circular venue, you were just SOL.
But no longer! Brad, who is of course a partner in this very website, has turned over publication of (eventually) every, last Der Krapp column right here on Big Lizards. To read the first "boxed set" of seventeen columns right now (confusingly numbered 1 through 16 with two number 11's), just click on the Movies button in the navigation bar up top (if you can't work the graphic nav bar, use the text-based equivalent at the top of the sidebar on the right hand side, above).
Or else just click here. In either case, just follow the links!
(Yes, amazing... some non-blog content on Big Lizards!)
Some of the topics Brad covers:
- The rise and tragic fall of Bela Lugosi!
- The exquisite agony of Robot Monster!
- A complete rundown of Japanese giant-monster and space cinema (and some of them are very run-down indeed!)
- The gore-fest vulgarities of Hershell Gordon Lewis!
In other words, it's like Mystery Science Theater 3000 -- except done by somebody who actually likes movies!
I cannot recommend it enough, and not through lack of trying, either. You'll laugh! You'll cry! You'll cringe! But best of all, you'll increment our page views through the roof!
As Bela said, chomping on his stogie, "Some of these brains wouldn't be missed."
P.S. Check out the nifty drop-down menu, by which you can jump immediately to any piece of Krapp that you desire!
Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 17, 2005, at the time of 4:39 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
A Feast of Talk, and the Law of Barriers
Yesterday, Sachi and I attended the KRLA Talkfest at the Alex Theater in Glendale. Glendale is the home of (oddly enough) KRLA, the local conservative talk-radio station; KRLA carries Dennis Prager, Michael Medved, Hugh Hewitt, and Mike Gallagher... and they returned the favor Sunday by carrying the show at the Alex.
I had previously met Hugh and Dennis -- though of course Hugh stared blankly at me when I reintroduced myself to him. He recognized Big Lizards, though... so now you know that the way to a Hugh's heart is through a blog. He made the rather outlandish claim that he's been reading Big Lizards, which I took as a charitable white lie, an example of the kindness for which he is renowned in myth and legend.
Larry Marino, who has substituted for each of these gentlemen, was also present as the MC; Sachi had imagined a much older gentleman, but I had envisioned him as about eighteen; so if you average us out, our age estimate was right on the money. The format was simple: Larry would ask questions, and the quadrumvirate would pontificate for several minutes, lolling back on their stools and making lordly pronouncements. It was of course enthralling, though I longed to leap onto the stage and join the talkers (flashbacks of my days on panels at science-fiction conventions!)
Hugh directed every blogger present to go home and, when he blogged about this event, to include the following words: " ."
It was actually quite a humorous jape; but being the ornery cuss that I am, I instantly vowed not to quote it... so if you want to find out what the joke was, you'll have to read another blogger's take.
The questions were political and topical, like a tube of Cortizone cream. The best exchange occured over what to do about illegal immigration, and the disputants -- the two Mikes -- battled passionately. Gallagher's simplistic formulation, that we should just "send them all home," met with resounding applause; but Medved utterly stymied him by asking a simple question: how exactly did Gallagher propose doing so?
I pause for a moment. Return with us now to the thrilling days of yesteryear, shortly after the Pentagon and WTC attacks and our overthrow of the Taliban. Bill O'Reilly (I believe) had Phil Donohue as a guest [Sachi believes it could have been Dennis Miller, rather than Bill O'Reilly]. Donohue obstinantly rejected the Afghanistan War, insisting instead that what we really ought to do was just "go right in there and get bin Laden."
The subsequent exchange bordered on the surreal:
O'Reilly: Get him how?
Donohue: Just go right in there and get him.
O'Reilly: But how? How physically would you do it?
Donohue: I would just go right in there.
O'Reilly: Into Afghanistan? When it was still run by the Taliban?
Donohue: Yup... just go right in and get him.
O'Reilly: But how do you get bin Laden? He's surrounded by thousands of al-Qaeda terrorists and tens of thousands of Taliban troops!
Donohue: Right in there. There's no need to kill all those innocent people! We just go right in and get him.
O'Reilly: How many soldiers do you send?
Donohue: I said we didn't need to go to war.
O'Reilly: But how do you get him?
Donohue: Bill, I would just go right in there and get him!
We skip forward four years to yesterday's KRLA Talkfest once more. Karl Marx's wonderful rumination on historical cycles perfectly describes the verbal tennis match between Medved and Gallagher: "History always repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, and the second time as farce." (Karl Marx, the Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.) But somehow, a repetition of the O'Reilly-Donohue dialog must have skulked past unnoticed, because Gallagher's repeated refrain of "I would just kick them all out" was surely more farcical than tragic! No matter how Medved tried to pin him down on specifics, Gallagher simply kept repeating the phrase over and over, like an audio clip trapped in an infinite loop.
Hugh finally interrupted, playing referee, and offered his own point, which he amplified later during audience Q&A, that it was in fact possible to get all the illegal aliens out of the United States... but only if Congress imposed upon corporate officers a fine so massive or prison time so lengthy that none of them would hire any illegal aliens ever (or possibly any legal ones, either).
Alas, such a draconian "solution" would impact the American economy so drastically that it would throw us into a recession that would fling far more Americans into unemployment that could possibly be displaced by the illegal population itself. In other words, the economic version of exsanguination, a "cure" more deadly than the disease.
However, Hugh added a codicil to the effect that whatever we decide to do about the illegales, the solution must include "building a wall." I take that as synecdoche for strengthening border security in general, which may include a wall (or fence) but also signficantly increasing the Border Patrol, strengthening punishments for aiding and abetting illegal entry or hiring illegals, and so forth.
Here is where I most wished to enter the fray. I longed to quote ab Hugh's Law of Barriers:
There is no wall, no matter how high or thick, that can be secured against a million peasants with pitchforks trying to knock it down.
Before any wall can be built, no matter how metaphorical, we first must sharply reduce the number of pitchforks. The only way to stop people from trying to batter down your wall is to build them a gate. We must drastically reform our entire immigration system to make it much easier for honest, decent, hard-working foreigners of good moral character to enter, work, earn money, and then either stay or leave as they choose.
There are many advantages: first, there is no controversy among economists... we need those migrant workers to pick strawberries and other agricultural crops. We need them to program our computers, clean our buildings, and build our sun decks.
Besides the purely economic need, America needs a constant influx of new blood, new ways of thinking, and new cultures... so long as the immigrants themselves are forced to assimilate. This is a point that Dennis Prager stressed with a great deal of vim (and volume). In a very literal sense, America was built by immigrants, but immigrants who had every intention of becoming Americans -- not living as Poles, Russians, Chinese, or Mexicans in exile.
Our schools should indoctinate both the children of immigrants and the native born in what it means to be an American -- and why the immigrants left their home countries in the first place. Our civic, cultural, and religious institutions should echo, not fight this message. And the government should not merely encourage but require assimilation as a necessary condition to continued guest-worker privileges.
Nobody not born here has the "right" to live here; but we need immigration as much as the immigrants need a country of greatness and opportunity: ours is a symbiosis of spirit... so long as we honor both sides of this voluntarily chosen social contract.
Finally, we cannot, like France, live securely with a permanent fifth column within the city walls. We must completely absorb these people, and that means citizenship. Now, there is a higgledy-piggledy collection of contradictory and opaque immigration laws that nobody is able to follow, not even immigration attorneys -- or the bureaucrats at the INS.
These must be swept away and replaced by a compact, crystaline progression of steps by which a desirable immigrant who truly wants to become an American can traverse the path from guest to citizen. He should be able to check off the steps one by one, like a pawn advancing to the last row, where he finally stands and takes the oath. But the progression should also allow immigration officials to swiftly identify those who do not belong here and swiftly deport them before they have a chance to hurt us
Thus every immigrant, whether guest or nascent naturalized citizen, will be an integral part of the community... in contrast to the European model, where immigrants are virtually indentured servants forced into degraded slums that breed treachery and terrorism. Ask the ghost of Theo Van Gogh.
It may seem we have wandered far afield, but in fact, this was the most significant exchange of the show, which all by itself earned the price of admission ($45 ea. for the good seats). So let me finish my thought.
Security must be of paramount concern at all levels of the immigration cycle:
- Those who apply must undergo a records and fingerprint/DNA check, just to make sure they're not already wanted.
- We must develop a "Smart Green Card" encoded with biometrics (fingerprints, face scan) and an immigration number; whenever an immigrant is arrested or convicted -- or receives welfare, requires a Child Protective Services intervention, or is found to be addicted to drugs or alcohol -- that fact is appended to his file; negative events such as these accrue "minus points" on the path to citizenship or even continued guest privileges (make it appealable, in case there are mitigating circumstances). Likewise, positive events -- charitable works, continuing education, professional accreditation, honorable service in the United States military, and suchlike -- earn positive points.
- You make a gate, and everyone who crosses the border at any of the gates must pass through automated booths that require insertion of the Smart Card; they scan his face and palm print, and if everything checks out, the front doors open in a second or two, admitting the guest. If the immigrants "point total" falls below the security/desirability threshold, the side door opens instead, and he can explain himself to the friendly Border Patrol agents.
- And with such automatic access to the front door for the law-abiding, anyone trying to cross the border anywhere else can be assumed to be up to no good and treated accordingly. As I said in an earlier post on another blog, if a business allows easy access during business hours through the front door, then anyone entering through the window at night can reasonably be considered a burglar.
Since studies show that 90%+ of all illegal immigrants are not, in fact, criminals in any other aspect than that (and related crimes, such as obtaining false documentation), regularizing and automating the traffic of otherwise law-abiding immigrants would reduce the illegal traffic to a small fraction of what it is today: your wall will no longer need to keep out a million determined immigrants each year, but only a few thousand of the most dangerous... and that, as Israel is proving today, is imminently possible.
The rest of Talkfest was interesting but of less moment than this argument, which is surely one of the two most critical fissures within the conservative community (the other being excess spending, of course).
Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 17, 2005, at the time of 4:18 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
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