I heard once that the GOP was a political party, but apparently that’s in the past; today’s GOP doesn’t have the will to fight a fight just for the politics of it all.

Bush and Swiftboat Veterans for Truth contributor Sam Fox did not have the votes to be confirmed as ambassador to Belgium, so the Cowardly Elephant simply withdrew the nomination. There’s words for that: Cut and run. Surrender.

But instead of defending Fox and his political contributions, the GOP soapbox had no one on it, leaving John Kerry to say unchallenged:

“Sam Fox had every opportunity to disavow the politics of personal destruction and to embrace the truth. He chose not to. The White House made the right decision to withdraw the nomination. I hope this signals a new day in political discourse.”

I hope it signals a new day, too, a day when someone like Sam Fox would be turned loose on a committee, with the full support of GOP committee members, so that the confirmation hearing could be turned into a hearing on the truth of the Swiftboat allegations.

Even though the Swiftboat claims of Kerry’s mousey war record are well documented, even though Kerry’s version has little support among Swiftboat veterans, even though Kerry could prove his case (supposedly) by simply releasing his military records, which he has steadfastly refused to do, the GOP walked away from this fight.

Dems and Libs who howled that the Dixie Chicks were “‘censored”‘ when people stopped buying their records are strangely silent when Sam Fox’s free political speech is censored by Dem Senators who think it’s perfectly OK to politically lynch an upstanding citizen over his legal campaign contributions.

Is there a Republican in the house? Someone with a spine? Please?

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Nicholson said that in 1940, after the fall of France to the Nazis. Fortunately, Britain had a Churchill who had a different idea of how England should respond to the global threat of the day.

Arthur Herman, who recently authored the book “To Rule the Waves: How the British Navy Shaped the Modern World,” shares the quote in a column today in the NYPost about the coming fall of the British Navy.

By this time next year, the once-vaunted Royal Navy will be about the size of the Belgian Navy, while its officers face a five-year moratorium on all promotions.

Tony Blair’s undoing of the British Namy is inconsequential to us. We have the globe’s only blue water navy and no one, not even the Chinese, is even considering duplicating our naval reach and firepower. But it is certainly a sign that we, and only we, are the planetary police and peace-keepers.

We can expect a nudge and a hand from other nations as we try to deal with the Saddams and Osamas of the world, but in a world where the proud Royal Navy is now approaching the Belgium’s navy in size, it’s going to be one us and everyone else them. And that means that those who dislike an activist America — Europeans and Democrats — will dislike us more and more.

Look at the Dem candidates and who do you see, Harold Nicholson or Winston Churchill? Uh-huh.

Hat-tip: Real Clear Politics

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Immigration, diversity, tolerance and gun control are failing again — this time in South London and in a very shocking way. How shocking? This shocking:

Scores of worried parents are buying body armour for their children in a desperate attempt to keep them safe as street violence escalates.

A firm that supplies stab- and bullet-proof vests to government agencies around the world has sold 60 jackets, at a cost of between £300 to £425, to concerned parents who have flooded the company with inquiries after several murders of teenagers on London streets.

The company has received more than 100 calls from parents in the capital over the past few weeks. The company, VestGuard UK, usually gets one or two calls of this type per year.

The fatal stabbings of Adam Regis, killed three days after 16-year-old Kodjo Yenga, are the latest in a series of violent incidents involving teenagers in recent months. (Times of London)

The violence isn’t limited to the capitol:

Mike Todd, the Chief Constable of Greater Manchester, said: “We have got 14 and 15-year-old kids walking around in body armour. And we have 13-year-olds where, when we do house searches, we find Section 1 firearms in their houses because they are being used to hold them”

South London is poor London, immigrant London, housing project London. One of its schools was recognized recently as being the country’s most diverse — with 71 languages spoken there.
It’s been tough for longer than any current resident has been alive — South London’s streets once were littered with the bodies of Jack the Ripper’s victims.

But today’s kids are more violent, more likely to punch a kid down, then stomp on his head. Gangs and graffiti and guns rule the streets, and the Labor government is hamstrung with PC platitudes and an unwillingness to give police the numbers and authority needed to clamp down on the situation.

The comments to the Times tell a lot about why this is happening:

What do we expect? In a society that is too politically correct to allow schools to discipline pupils and insists they are adults by droning on about their rights and exposing them to adult material…of course they think they can do whatever they want. The police always advise “Don’t get involved” does anone really want to live in a society like that? Get Involved… Tom, London

This is a direct result of an open borders policy that has fundamentally changed British society – as it’s changing industrialized societies around the globe. The flow of cheap Third World labor is wonderful for Big Business. They profit as their nations balkanize into competing ethnic zones. Stories such as this are typical of an area where competing ethnic groups live. This is not in the interest of Western people. Michael, Spain

As a labour supporter it pains me to say the following, it is now time for labour to go, it’s not that people are putting body armour on their children, it’s the fact people are thinking about it that says this country is becoming, like America, an unsafe place to live. That is so easily down the the capitalistic animal survival approach, what happened to socialism Blair? Mikey, Birmingham

Summing it up nicely is Mike Jones from Hampshire:

What on earth is happening to this country!!! It comes to something when you have to dress your children in body armour to go to school. All these liberal minded idiots who control the country with their human rights this and that have an awful lot to answer for but then again, they are up in their ivory towers a world away from crime and violence so why should they care?

Sadly, the violence that’s wracking England and causing parents to buy body armor for their children is a small blood spatter compared to what goes on in America — the legacy of a seed planted by FDR, fertilized by LBJ and nurtured today by the Dem leadership, abetted by a GOP that’s too weak-kneed to stand up to them.

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From Baghdad, we get this good news:

The US military has captured the leaders of a car-bombing ring blamed for killing hundreds of Iraqis.

The news came as the departing US ambassador said Americans are in ongoing talks with insurgent representatives to try to persuade them to turn against al-Qaeda.

The US command said one of the car-bombers, Haitham al-Shimari, was suspected in the “planning and execution of the majority of car bombs which have killed hundreds of Iraqi citizens in Sadr City,” a Shi’ite enclave of Baghdad.

Another, identified as Haidar al-Jafar, was second-in-command of a cell that killed some 900 “innocent” [!!] Iraqis and wounded almost 2,000, the military said. Three other men believed connected to that cell also were in custody.

The suspected bombers were rounded up last week by American forces during continuing security sweeps in Azamiyah, the Sunni stronghold in northern Baghdad, the military statement said. (Sydney Morning Herald)

Don’t get me started on those quotes around the word innocent. When someone is killed at the market or mosque when a car bomb explodes, what is he or she guilty of, being Iraqi? It’s a disgusting edit of an otherwise uplifting story of the ongoing success of the Surge.

Meanwhile, in DC:

Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), a longtime Bush critic, issued one of his strongest condemnations of the war over the weekend. “We essentially are ruining our National Guard. We are destroying our Army. We’re destroying our Marine Corps,” he told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. “We can’t sustain this. . . . I will not accept the status quo.” (WaPo)

Hagel and his “Surrender at Any Cost” cohorts haven’t noticed the recent change in status of the status quo: We’re kicking butt and they’re losing big. He shouldn’t accept the status quo; he should accept the new reality, but Senators are a little like love — they never have to say they’re sorry … even when they’re positions are.

Hat-tip: memeorandum

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A couple months ago, I got out of federal jury duty at the Ronald Reagan federal courthouse in Santa Ana because the trial, anticipated to take 8 weeks, would be too financially harmful to our company. Now I wonder … would I have been on this jury?

China’s efforts to use spying to gain U.S. military technology will get a close look during the trial of a Chinese-born defense contractor set to begin today near Los Angeles.

Chi Mak, an electrical engineer who worked on some of the U.S. Navy’s most sensitive high-tech weapons, goes on trial in a federal court in Santa Ana, Calif., on charges of conspiracy to export U.S. defense secrets to China, possession of property in aid of a foreign government and failure to register as a foreign agent. …

Officials said that in 2001, Chi Mak gave his brother key details of the Navy’s SPY-1 phased array radar, the heart of the Aegis battle management system used on almost all Navy warships. Tai Mak, a Phoenix Television engineer, was described by officials as a courier who passed the technology to China.

Chi Mak also was involved in developing the Navy’s Quiet Electric Drive, a stealth-related technology for the next generation of warships. (WashTimes)

That’s a trial I would love to be on. Then I’d write a jury member tell-all book about it!

Don’t count on TV trucks to be ringing the courthouse during this trial. No sex. No blood. No celebrities. Nothing important here, folks, just our national security. Indeed, today’s OC Register is mum on the trial — and only ran a couple stories over the long run-up to today.

C-SM readers will recall that 43% of California employees with graduate degrees are immigrants. Many of them are working in research facilities and for military contractors throughout the state, and it’s a good bet there are more Chi Maks out there, feeding the Chinese, or the Russians, or the Iranians with information they should not have.

Federal prosecutors will no doubt present a good case based on lots of evidence gathered since Chi Mak came onto their radar screen. But that’s hardly the point here, is it?

Because so many of our research jobs are going to people from other countries, our government needs to step up its monitoring of these people to catch the spies before they can pass on secrets as valuable as Aegis battle management systems and quiet drives for warships. Will that mean stepping on their rights? You bet.

Step away. No more Chi Maks!

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I took the WSJ’s advice and typed “James Hansen NASA” into Ask this morning (they said to Google it, but I use Google as little as possible because of its corporate politics) and promptly got 83,400 hits.

Not bad for NASA’s resident Warmie hawk, who claims he’s been “silenced” by the Bush administration.

Here’s one of the more popular hits:

Censorship Is Alleged at NOAA
Scientists Afraid to Speak Out, NASA Climate Expert Reports

By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 11, 2006; A07

NEW YORK, Feb. 10 — James E. Hansen, the NASA climate scientist who sparked an uproar last month by accusing the Bush administration of keeping scientific information from reaching the public, said Friday that officials at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are also muzzling researchers who study global warming.

Hansen, speaking in a panel discussion about science and the environment before a packed audience at the New School university, said that while he hopes his own agency will soon adopt a more open policy, NOAA insists on having “a minder” monitor its scientists when they discuss their findings with journalists.

“It seems more like Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union than the United States,” said Hansen, prompting a round of applause from the audience. He added that while NOAA officials said they maintain the policy for their scientists’ protection, “if you buy that one please see me at the break, because there’s a bridge down the street I’d like to sell you.”

He didn’t exactly call George Bush a Nazi (or a Commie), but you get the point. Poor, poor persecuted Warmie. Evil Big-Oil dominated GOP White House. It’s a sure laugh-line with any college audience now days.

But wait … I thought he said he was censored, yet here he is, a government employee, likening his government to nasty old enemies. What kind of censorship is that? Could Dr. James Hansen just be a government crybaby? A guy who’s sucking on government’s teat while kicking it in the stomach?

That’s what the WSJ editorial writers think:

The story came to a head last week at a hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, in which Mr. Hansen testified that “for the sake of the taxpayers” he “shouldn’t be required to parrot some company line.” He complains that in December 2005 he was told by NASA bureaucrats that he would have to obtain official clearance before granting press interviews, giving public lectures or posting articles on the Web. More heinous still, a 23-year-old NASA spokesman rejected a request by National Public Radio to interview Mr. Hansen.

That would seem to make the climate scientist something of a martyr for truth, which in his case means the imminence of global warming doom. But as Republican Congressman Darrell Issa observed, the climate scientist managed to give 15 interviews that same month, and that’s just a fraction of the 1,400 interviews he’s granted in recent years. There’s also the fact that all NASA scientists are required to obtain official permission before speaking to the press, a detail Mr. Hansen shrugs off as beneath his dignity.

Another little fact that gets in the way of Hansen’s martyrdom is this: The NASA guy who rejected his NPR interview request got fired, while Hansen’s still drawing a federal paycheck.

Hansen is an alarmist, one of the elite group of climatological Tartot card readers who claim we have a 10-year window to “take decisive action” with this millenias-old cycle of warming, or the planet will face sure catastrophe.

While that’s surely false (as the media certainly won’t remind us ten years from last September, when he said it), it’s not something I’d censor him over. But if that’s the way he thinks, you’d be justified thinking that he’s a bit tightly wound up on this whole global warming thing and just might have some sort of persecution complex.

But that’s just me. It’s not most of the 83,400 others who turned up on Ask, mostly to hang on his words and sit at his feet. Such is the sorry state of the global warming debate.

Oh, I forgot. The debate is over.

Gee. If it’s over, you’d think they’d stop censoring him.

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Here’s a minimalist addition to Bookworm’s excellent piece today questioning Hill’s push for socialized medicine … oops, a national healthcare program.

This post isn’t about medicine, socialized or otherwise, it’s about changing lightbulbs in the Western European social democracy known as Britain, courtesy of Best of the Web:

London’s Sunday Telegraph, meanwhile, reports that “BBC staff have been stopped from replacing lightbulbs because of concerns for their health and safety”:

Instead, the corporation is paying up to £10 for each replacement bulb to be fitted.

The situation came to light when Louise Wordsworth, a learning project manager with the BBC, complained.

“I called up to ask for a new lightbulb for my desk lamp and was told that this would cost £10,” she wrote in a letter to Ariel, the corporation’s magazine.

“On telling them I’d buy and replace the bulb myself (bought for the bargain price of £1 for two bulbs) I was told that it was against health and safety regulations. So guess how many BBC colleagues it finally took to change a lightbulb (risking life and limb to do so)?”

We’ll bite, how many?

The member of staff left in the dark would need to find a clerk to get a reference number so that the repair could be paid for, then report the fault to a helpline. An electrician would ask the store manager for the part and install the bulb, making a total of five people.

Five people to change a light bulb. More than three years to get surgery to put you out of intolerable pain. That’s Socialism for you. Disrespectful of the individual in every way possible.

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Hillary logged in today on the federal attorney filing, saying we must not draw parallels between her hubby’s federal attorney firing spree and the Bush Admin’s firing of eight attorneys:

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton on Monday dismissed any comparison between the firing last fall of eight U.S. attorneys with the replacement of 93 U.S. attorneys when her husband became president in 1993.

“That’s a traditional prerogative of an incoming president,” Clinton said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Once U.S. attorneys are confirmed, they should be given broad latitude to enforce the law as they see fit, she said.

“I think one of the hallmarks of our democracy is we have a devotion to the rule of law,” Clinton said.

ASK THE FOLLOW-UP QUESTION YOU BOZO! What about the 30 federal attorneys your hubby fired during the course of his administration, after the traditional preprogative, Hil?

Here’s a sound clip of Laura Ingraham and Sen. Specter from this morning when Laura raises the “other 30,” and here’s a link to a discussion of the same on Sweetness and Light.

This is second-grade math, not rocket science. Clinton fired 93, and over the course of his term hired 123. Subtract the little number from the big number and you see that Clinton & Reno had 30 additional vacancies to fill as his term progressed — vacancies made as almost a third of his original 93 were shown the door.

Why were they shown the door? We don’t know. No one in the media or Congress made a big deal of it when it happened under Bill’s watch.

Note to the politically naive: This is not Bill’s watch.

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The most famous spouse of a cancer victim met with 40 members of the media in San Francisco today. That’s him in the photo, sporting a yellow “Livestrong” wristband.

John Edwards told the reporters he just didn’t know how voters will react to his decision to press on with the campaign despite his wife’s illness.

“I miss her. I miss her. …

I think [the political impact of the decision to stay in] is unknowable. We believe that the way to conduct your life, private and personal, is openly and honestly and that’s the reason we disclosed the facts. We felt people needed to know. How it will affect the campaign, that probably depends on how America responds. I think this is uncharted territory.” (source)

I also think the territory is uncharted, and for good reason: It’s marginally OK to run for office if you have cancer, but it’s not the least bit OK to subject a spouse who’s suffering from incurable disease to the separation, stress, emotions and fatigue that comes with campaigning.

Edwards obviously has been hoping a lot of females will vote for His Cuteness, and now I think we can chart that particularly interesting piece of territory. Most women now will see their ex-husbands in Edwards: A man who talked a good talk, but just isn’t capable of living up to it in his actions.

If he really misses her, if he really cares for her and for their children — and any woman would hope he does — he would be with them, not on the campaign trail. File the papers, sweetheart, and find yourself another candidate.

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It’s the next big thing from the dot-com realm — blogging via mobile phone, brought to you by a company called Twitter:

Silicon Valley is abuzz over a new mini-blogging service for mobile phones that some predict will be a mass-market hit with the reach of a YouTube or MySpace.

Over the past two weeks, Twitter has attracted the sort of hyperbole the Valley reserves for its next internet darling – though such self-reinforcing adulationalso led to dotcom mania. …

“This is the first application that people have got excited about since Flickr came out,” said Ross Mayfield, a Valley entrepreneur, comparing it to a popular photo-sharing site bought by Yahoo in 2005. “I don’t think it will be the next YouTube – but I do think it will gain wide adoption,” he said.

Users of Twitter post short messages – up to 140 characters – that can be viewed either on a website or on mobile phones. “Twitter probably wouldn’t have existed before blogging, when people learned to be more transparent,” Mr Mayfield added.

Though launched publicly last summer, use of Twitter started to take off in the middle of March after it was adopted by tech­nology bloggers attending the South by Southwest conference in Texas. (MSNBC)

Twitter’s a great name for the product, despite the risky nickname alluded to in my headline. The 140-word limit would be a challenge even for short attention span posters like me — but in this new “share all” world we live in, teenage twits may be Twittering about their lives even more than they are today with MySpace and YouTube.

I’m not sure that means civilization and humankind will advance.

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