H

ere are some excerpts from reports posted on the Human Rights Watch Web site:

Human Rights Watch researchers have uncovered evidence that Russian aircraft dropped cluster bombs in populated areas in Georgia, killing at least 11 civilians and injuring dozens, Human Rights Watch said today. Human Rights Watch called upon Russia to immediately stop using cluster bombs, weapons so dangerous to civilians that more than 100 nations have agreed to ban their use. …

Human Rights Watch said Russian aircraft dropped RBK-250 cluster bombs, each containing 30 PTAB 2.5M submunitions, on the town of Ruisi in the Kareli district of Georgia on August 12, 2008. Three civilians were killed and five wounded in the attack. On the same day, a cluster strike in the center of the town of Gori killed at least eight civilians and injured dozens, Human Rights Watch said. Dutch journalist Stan Storimans was among the dead. Israeli journalist Zadok Yehezkeli was seriously wounded and evacuated to Israel for treatment after surgery in Tbilisi. An armored vehicle from the Reuters news agency was perforated with shrapnel from the attack. (source)

And:

When Human Rights Watch entered Tskhinvali on August 13, the city was largely deserted. Human Rights Watch researchers saw numerous apartment buildings and houses damaged by shelling. Some of them had been hit by rockets most likely fired from Grad launchers, weapons that should not be used in areas populated by civilians, as they cannot be directed at only military targets and are therefore inherently indiscriminate. Also, Human Rights Watch saw several buildings that bore traces of heavy ammunition as if fired from tanks at close range. There was some evidence of firing being directed into basements, locations where civilians frequently choose as a place of shelter. (source)

Where are the howls of outrage from the American left, who are so deeply offended whenever one of our precisely targeted bombs goes off target and despite all our care, some civilians are killed?

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T

ime will tell whether patriotism matters, because we are busy setting up the test case.

Our schools, our intelligentsia, our media and our publishers are all busy setting up patriotism as an inferior, baser alternative to internationalism, and are painting soldiers of valor as victims of war, striving to create a whole generation that will believe as they believe: That America is not worth fighting for.

Tom Sowell, in what just may be the most important read of this 4th of July, shows us how history is supposed to be used – to keep us from repeating it – in his Real Clear Politics essay, Does Patriotism Matter? He turns to France in the years following WWI, when the teachers unions and academia fought to destroy patriotism in favor of internationalism, and to paint soldiers – all soldiers, French and German – as equal victims of cruel, unjustifiable war.

At the outset of the [German] invasion [of France in WWII], both German and French generals assessed French military forces as more likely to gain victory, and virtually no one expected France to collapse like a house of cards — except Adolf Hitler, who had studied French society instead of French military forces.

Did patriotism matter? It mattered more than superior French tanks and planes.

Did the American Left learn anything from this experience? Of course not! History, to them, is made to be rewritten, not learned from. So we see on this 4th of July, displays of patriotism on the Left like this one, at Daily Kos:

The Declaration of Independence was the laundry list of grievances stating America’s case for freedom. Its accusations against the King ranged from egregious (“He has plundered our seas, burnt our towns and ravaged the lives of our people”) to the trifling (“Sometimes when he sees us at a party he acts like he doesn’t know us”). But proud men would not take up arms against the Crown solely because the King had “erected a multitude of new offices.” The authors of the Declaration knew they would also have to appeal to man’s higher nature, to stir men’s souls. They needed something with some zazz. Enter a hot-shot tobacco executive from Virginia, Thomas Jefferson.

His task would be to synthesize the unique brand message of America down to something that would captivate the hard to reach “12-28 ragtag militia” demographic, all the while not offending traditional “Butterchurn Moms.” His first attempt at a Preamble was:

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AMERICA. A is for All the tea they taxed. M is for the Minutemen they shellaxed…”
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It tested poorly. But his rewrite would be win-win:

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“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
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In a scant 35 words, Jefferson had given the nation the kind of positive brand identity that tendered moot the issue of whether or not we had to live up to its ideals. Still, knowing the inherent contradiction between their noble words and the reality of a slave-owning nation, Jefferson and the Founders wisely decided to strike from the Declaration of Independence the phrase “or your money back.”

Oh, tickle me pinko. Or this, by Charles Karel Bouley at HuffPo:

I could write volumes about patriotism this July 4th. How many column inches in the last few weeks has been devoted to whether or not Barack Obama is patriotic enough, if a war record is on or off limits, and what the love of country truly means. Is anyone in government today truly patriotic?

I’m not I suppose. I don’t like the “Star Spangled Banner” as our national anthem. It’s too violent and too hard to sing for anyone except Whitney or Barbra or… get the point? I think “America The Beautiful” is a far better national anthem. So, I’m unpatriotic.

I question everything. I agree whole-heartedly with Gen. Wesley Clark about Sen. John McGoo’s war record and how just because you’re a POW doesn’t mean you’d make a good POTUS.

And I question our patriotism this July 4th. We, the People who should have seen this gas increase coming, who let a president bankrupt a nation once great, a failed war…Yes, I could rant and rave about that here for paragraphs and paragraphs.

He then links to a radio rant that is nothing but Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, of railing against the media for even questioning Obama’s patriotism – apparently an off-limits inquiry in a nation where patriots have died to protect free speech.

Contrast that with this, from 365 and a Wakeup, winner of this week’s Watcher’s Council contest:

In my first duty assignment I learned why our drill instructors focused so intently on hardening us. I needed that strength when we secured mass graves in Bosnia. I needed it when we faced refugee camps so crippled with famine that the fluid flow of the human body was reduced to hard, angular lines. And I needed that strength when we in countries where the only rules were the brutal laws of physics and ballistics. Exposure to these harsh realities could have broken our spirit, but there were joys to counterbalance the pain. Sometimes we would find it in the sing song lyrics of children chirping in high pitch squeals we couldn’t decipher. Other times we found our solace in the serenity our presence brought to areas where civilization had been stripped to its animal core. But mostly we found it in each other, and in the simple knowledge that our actions proved that life could triumph over death, if only for a moment.

Just because the Left wants to belittle and denigrate patriotism doesn’t mean we should allow it to; it doesn’t mean we can’t put up a spirited – patriotic – defense of it. We should, because if we don’t, we’ll sorrily find out the answer to the question posed in the headline of this post: Yes indeed, patriotism does matter. It matters very much.

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S

o Wesley Clark diminished John McCain’s war record, dismissing him as inexperienced. (Who is that pillar of experience you’re working for, General?) That’s nothing compared to where the howlers of the Left are taking it.

Salon’s War Room columnist, Alex Koppleman was able to keep the foam in his mouth:

I can appreciate the fact that Clark’s comments might seem intemperate, but the reaction is more than a little over the top.

First, there are no similarities between Clark’s remarks and the Swift boat attacks. Clark never said, and wouldn’t say, that McCain lied about his service, or won medals he hadn’t earned.

Second, did Clark say anything that was, you know, false? To be sure, McCain served heroically, and endured torture and abuse that I can hardly imagine as a POW. The nation will always owe him a debt of gratitude for what he endured. But Clark’s point is that this service, four decades ago, does not necessarily constitute a presidential qualification today. We don’t hear that often, but that doesn’t make it outrageous.

I could quibble and snark, but why bother when Koppleman represents a voice of reason compared to the real foaming fomenters of the loony Left. John Aravosis of the mis-named Americablog, please step forward:

Yes, we all know that John McCain was captured and tortured in Vietnam (McCain won’t let you forget). A lot of people don’t know, however, that McCain made a propaganda video for the enemy while he was in captivity. Putting that bit of disloyalty aside, what exactly is McCain’s military experience that prepares him for being commander in chief? It’s not like McCain rose to the level of general or something. He’s a vet. We get it. But simply being a vet, as laudable as it is, doesn’t really tell you much about someone’s qualifications for being commander in chief. If McCain is going to play the “I was tortured” card every five minutes as a justification for electing him president, then he shouldn’t throw a hissy fit any time any one asks to know more about his military experience. Getting shot down, tortured, and then doing propaganda for the enemy is not command experience. Again, it’s not nice to say say, but we’re not running for class president here. We deserve real answers, not emotional outbursts designed to quell the questions.

“He won’t let you forget” … “play the ‘I was tortured’ card every five minutes” – You know, it’s hard to avoid McCain projecting his experience as a prisoner of war every time you see him. Not being able to lift his arms because of Viet Cong torture kind of does that. The worst injury Aravosis has probably ever experienced is a bruised ego.

As to the charges of the torture film (Where is it, by the way? Try to find it on YouTube.), Aravosis seems to miss the point that those who didn’t comply with VC demands to go on camera didn’t survive to run for president. They died – horribly – on the spot, which is why the military no longer requires captive soldiers to disclose no more than “name, rank and serial number.”

Rick Moran at Rightwing Nuthouse writes on Aravosis and his vile dig:

QUESTION: Why did John McCain make a propaganda film for the enemy?

ANSWER: Because if you didn’t, the enemy would torture you until you died.

Those “agrarian reformers” and “peace loving socialists” that Aravosis’ ideological brethren were calling the the North Vietnamese back then were not very nice people. Every single prisoner who fell into their hands endured unspeakable degradation and torture until they cooperated. Aravosis makes it sound as if giving in to pain is a character defect. He cannot imagine in his safe little world – a world that allows him to peep into Republican bedroom windows to catch his political foes in a homosexual act and then out them against their will – the kind of mind numbing, excruciating, pain that causes grown men to cry like children and call out for their mother.

Besides running Americablog, one of the foulest and loathsome of the leftyblogs, what claim to moral superiority over McCain does Aravosis have?

Well, let’s see, he founded Stop Dr. Laura because he wanted to shut down her first amendment rights to discuss the downside of homosexuality. He organized Matthew Shepard Online Resources to turn an event that had nothing to do about homosexuality into a celebration of bias against straight people. And, as Moran linked, he loves to destroy people who would just as soon be private about their sex lives.

Lying, homo-totalitarian slimeball that he is, Aravosis has pretty much disqualified himself from participating in any discussion of qualifications for president … except Obama’s qualifications, of course. As a Constitution-trampling agent for “social change,” he’s just the guy to speak in support of the socialist organizer from Chicago.

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Leftyblogger Attaturk at Firedoglake is hot and bothered this morning:

The Chinese are apparently taking a supervisory role in overseeing their investment.

U.S. military personnel at Guantanamo Bay allegedly softened up detainees at the request of Chinese intelligence officials who had come to the island facility to interrogate the men — or they allowed the Chinese to dole out the treatment themselves, according to claims in a new government report.

Buried in a Department of Justice report released Tuesday are new allegations about a 2002 arrangement between the United States and China, which allowed Chinese intelligence to visit Guantanamo and interrogate Chinese Uighurs held there.

According to the report by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine, an FBI agent reported a detainee belonging to China’s ethnic Uighur minority and a Uighur translator told him Uighur detainees were kept awake for long periods, deprived of food and forced to endure cold for hours on end, just prior to questioning by Chinese interrogators.

Susan Manning, a lawyer who represents several Uighurs still held at Guantanamo, said Tuesday the allegations are all too familiar.

U.S. personnel “are engaging in abusive tactics on behalf of the Chinese,” she said Tuesday. When Uighur detainees refused to talk to Chinese interrogators in 2002, U.S. military personnel put them in solitary confinement as punishment, she said.

“Why are we doing China’s dirty work?” Manning said. “Surely we’re better than that.”

Let’s forget for the moment that lawyers for Guantanamo detainees are the worst of the hardcore left and are about as believable as Bill confronting a blue dress. And let’s forget that the report is reporting on what it knows little about. Did we soften them up (i.e., keep them awake for a bit) or did we let the Chinese do it? Dunno. And let’s forget that what these dolts call torture is just routine interrogation. Just watch an episode of Law and Order.

What rankles me about Attaturk and Manning is this: They are abuse biggots and terror deniers. They never wrote, I’m sure, about similar behavior by Chinese in their interrogations of Christians. Didn’t matter to them.

And the Uighurs? They’re de facto heroes to these folks, no questions asked. I’ve written human rights pieces on the Uighurs myself, but let’s remember, they’re an Islamic people from China’s Western frontier.

Some of them are simply an abused minority, just wanting to practice their religion in peace, but prevented by the omnipresent Beijing Thumb all China is under. But some of them are Islamist jihadists intent on stoning adulteresses, beheading homosexuals and apostates, replacing China’s rule of law (such as it is) with Sharia, and converting all of China by the sword. In other words, they are one and the same with al-Qaeda and those darlings of the Firedoglake set, Hamas and Hezbollah.

This is the global war on terror and I think it’s safe to assume that anyone held in Guantanamo is a soldier on the wrong side of that war, not some hapless Muslim who just wants to pray towards Mecca five times a day. And because they are swine of that nature, it’s not just fine but smart to have the Chinese drop by and find out what’s up with them.

This is a case where the Uighurs should praise Allah because they’re in Guantanamo. If they were captured in China, far from the watchful eyes of American military personnel, they no doubt would have suffered a far worse interrogation. This story could have been written from the “lucky detainees” angle except for one little niggle: That would go against all in the Left’s warped worldview.

Do you doubt it? Just check out this comment on Attaturk’s post:

Things are going well in bushdom. Now they can say that they are not the only ones that torture use enhanced interrogation techniques “see other people do it to so can it be all that bad”.

Will it ever end? No, not without impeachment so maybe we should impeach that f***ing pelosi madwoman as she is the classic enabler.

I swear that clinton2 is only still mucking about as a distraction from all the bull***t coming out of Washington. She is in the pay of the MIC and is doing their dirty work for them. Business as usual. [Profanity edited by C-SM]

Paranoid, hateful, distrusting. Your American Left has reported for duty in fine form today.

hat-tip: memeorandum

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I recently had a run of exceptionally rude comments from Navigator, a Brit who has a decidedly anti-American POV, which is fine if it’s well articulated, but this is the kind of revisionist junk he spewed:

News flash – America didnt [sic] join WW1 and 2 out of any sort of altruistic inclination.

Remember Japan? India and Burma is on the other side of that front. British Indian troops fought on the other front in Indo- China to help rescue you guys or have you forgotten that part of the story?

No, I hadn’t really forgotten and I can give credit, not sneering abuse. Neither had I forgotten the truly decisive battles we waged Island-hopping the Pacific. Midway, Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima. Rescue us? Interesting way of looking at it.

I answered his claims that America is swill in world opinion by asking why Italy and France moved towards us in their last elections, and he answered in part:

[Y]ou’re showing your ignorance and arrogance by thinking the world revolves around the US once again. Naples (thats in Italy) is buried in garbage, unemplyment [sic] is high and economic growth in Italy is restricted to the cities. In short, domestic crisis. Berlesconi is a businessman so for dosmestic interests he has been re-elected.

All I’d said is the Berlesconi is more aligned with Bush than he is with England’s pathetic government, which is hardly grounds for accusing me of thinking the world revolves around the US. But tell me a nation it revolves around more. The failure of the Italian economy is emblematic of the failure of the Euro-Socialist mega-state, a government model England has embraced and America, thank God, has thus far been able to reject.

I could go on, but why subject you? I only bring Navigator up because I thought of him when I read this in the Times of London (a name, by the way, he insulted me for using, claiming it was the Times of Great Britain):

Young women are daring to wear jeans, soldiers listen to pop music on their mobile phones and bands are performing at wedding parties again.

All across Iraq’s second city life is improving, a month after Iraqi troops began a surprise crackdown on the black-clad gangs who were allowed to flourish under the British military.

That was not written by an American reporter who thinks the world revolves around the US. It was written by a Brit about a country a big chunk of the world (including us) used to revolve around.

I have a small idea what happened in Basra and why the British command failed to adapt to the situation as well as we did, but I have a much better understanding of why the British crown failed here: arrogance, inflexibility, greed and outmoded military tactics.

I love Great Britain. I have enjoyed my visits there immensely, we love Incredible Wife’s Aston, and their culture and history are indelibly intertwined with ours. It’s a shame they also have a rude, bull-headed leftist minority full of bile and anger — but hey, that’s just another similarity between our two great nations.

Navigator would do his nation a much greater service if he would redirect his rancor against the EU, because that is the real threat to his country, not us. It threatens to homogenize Europe into a tasteless, over-regulated, PC shell of what it once was.

In closing, the Brits have re-engaged in Basra, and we all thank them for their improved effort and assistance in the recent fighting. But the victory there is the Iraqis’ — and if people like Navigator would remove their blinders and see the results of victory, perhaps they would understand that what we are fighting for is worth it.

(A note to Navigator: As a service to my readers, who prefer discourse to barroom brawls, I have blocked you from posting comments [I think I have, anyway]. You are free to send me any comments via email; my address is near the top of the right column.)

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Patrick farmed some very fine paragraphs yesterday in a post called Avian Chorus, an essay on the unspoken liberal emotion: missing George Bush.

Hard to wrap your mind around that? Yeah … then mix in themes from The Eagles and five stages of grief popularized by psychiatrist Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, and you’ve got an essay that’s definitely not Wasted Time. Excerpt:

You know I’ve always been a dreamer (spent my life running ‘round), and it’s so hard to change—can’t seem to settle down. But the dreams I’ve seen lately keep turning out the same, perhaps because even Barack Obama’s optimism depends entirely on George W. Bush.

Think about “Change you can believe in.” If that slogan works at all, it works only through implied contrast with the kind of change you can’t believe in even after it happens. The once and future progressive conceit about being part of a “reality-based community” is officially on vacation (or standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona), because the election year directive is to embrace only what you choose to believe, while ignoring the rest of the real as much as possible. Without the magnifying glass of George W. Bush to focus his sunshine, Obama would simply revert to form as a glib politician of thin experience and questionable judgment. Accordingly, his campaign is little more than a valentine to denial, which of course is stage one in how people grieve.

Patrick’s no New Kid in Town, so you can Try and Love Try Again to get your thoughts so nicely organized and well written, but in The Long Run, I Can’t Tell You Why, but the Paragraph Farmer’s writing gives you that Peaceful Easy Feeling, so you can just Take It Easy and enjoy some fine writing.

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The lengths the Left will go to create anti-American drivel …

Bear with me. A few days back, the blog Gusts of Popular Feeling ran a post The General Sherman Sails Again, that told the story of a US war ship converted to a merchant trader (the namesake of the post), that was sunk in North Korea’s Taedonggang River in Pyongyang in 1866, with the loss of all on board.

Current (revisionist to the max) NoKo history marks the start of modern (oxymoron, anyone?) history to the event, and says Li’l Kim’s great-granddaddy led the mob that attacked the ship (although that’s probably fabricated).

Gusts of Popular Feeling was moved to re-tell this pretty much forgotten story because the cap of Taedonggang Beer supposedly bears the image of the General Sherman, causing the author to ask:

Does Taedonggang have the honor of being the world’s only anti-American beer?

Honor?! Sheesh.

Move forward three days to today, when Andrew Leonard, author of Salon’s How the World Works Column, captured this little tale to launch a screed about imperialist America and its many sins. He starts with the history, which is more interesting than the thinking of his brain:

But then… While digging around for more details on the General Sherman, I found “The Opening of Korea by Commodore Shufeldt,” published in Political Science Quarterly in 1910, in which author Charles Oscar Paullin tells the tale of how Korea was forced out of its cave and into the family of nations. The opening few pages recount the aftermath of the General Sherman incident — in 1871, Rear-Admiral John Rodgers and the American minister to China, Frederick Low, led “a flotilla of five steamships, carrying 85 guns and 1235 men” for the purpose of establishing “peaceful relations with Korea.”

On June 1 a flotilla from the fleet, while engaged in surveying the river, was unexpectedly fired upon by a Korean fort. The fire of the natives was returned, and a fight took place in which the Americans lost two wounded and the Koreans twenty wounded and many more killed. After a careful consideration of this incident, Low and Rodgers decided that the prestige of the United States would be impaired unless the injury to its flag were avenged or an apology tendered by the Korean government. Through one of his secretaries Low explained to an officer of the local prefecture that sufficient time would be allowed for an apology before any further steps were taken. While deeply regretting the firing on the flotilla, the officer defended the action of the forts, on the grounds that the Korean laws prohibited foreigners to pass a barrier of defense. He sent a present of chickens, bullocks and eggs to Rodgers, who declined to accept it.

The king refused to apologize.

It is sufficient to say that the Americans performed their allotted task with great thoroughness. Five forts were captured or destroyed; fifty flags and four hundred and eighty-one pieces of ordnance were taken, and twenty Koreans were made prisoners. In the principal engagement the loss of the natives were three hundred and fifty men killed and wounded, more than half of them being killed; the loss of the Americans was three killed and ten wounded…

And he concludes with … brace yourself for the inevitable foul stench of America-hatred:

Is the term “imperialist robbers” too strong to describe such behavior? Maybe not. And as a reminder that the terms of trade agreements between nations often depends on who owns the biggest battleships, even a beer bottle-cap can be effective.

America the imperialist … worked then, works now, right? Forget that we don’t have colonies … doesn’t matter. Forget that trade agreements lift up the nations we make them with, improving lives, not enslaving them … doesn’t matter, either.

Well, besides the obvious historical and political errors in Leonard’s analysis, there’s this little problem:

Here’s the now-notorious beer cap:

And here’s a NoKo stamp showing a bridge across the Taedonggang River:

Oops. We’ve got a flawed launching point for the screed — it’s a bridge not a boat. But that’s not what makes the screed flawed. Leonard and his lefties will go back in time — to the Crusades if necessary — to find a way to paint a dreary, evil picture of America, while ignoring all the good we do today.

Is NoKo a better place for standing up to America? Would the people — the people, who are supposed to be the concern of the left — be living longer, healthier, happier lives if Li’l Kim and his father had stopped being Commie-dictators and tried to do for their people what America tries to do for the people for the world?

Don’t bother the Left with such questions; let them see bridges as Yankee ships, terrorists as insurgents, and progress as anti-Progressive.

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Even those at the peak of leftist commentary, like Glenn Greenwald, can sense that there’s something wrong with the hypocrisy of (soon to be ex?) Gov. Eliot Spitzer:

That hypocrisy precludes me from having any real personal sympathy for Spitzer, and no reasonable person could defend him from charges of rank hypocrisy.

But that doesn’t mean he shouldn’t get a good, secularist, amoralist defense:

But how can his alleged behavior — paying another adult roughly $1,000 per hour to travel from New York to Washington to meet him for sex — possibly justify resignation, let alone criminal prosecution, conviction and imprisonment? Independent of the issue of his hypocrisy — which is an issue meriting attention and political criticism but not criminal prosecution — what possible business is it of anyone’s, let alone the state’s, what he or anyone else does in their private lives with other consenting adults?

Indeed, one of Greenwald’s commenters, DCLaw1, takes it a step further, with nodding heads all around:

I have always found it very curious that one of the following, but not the other, is illegal:

(a) Two people have sex, one of them gets paid for it;

(b) Two (or more) people have sex, all of them get paid for it, and it is videotaped and sold to third parties as a commodity.

I have yet to hear a convincing argument why this difference makes any actual sense.

In that, DCLaw1 is absolutely right. They ought to throw the porn stars, directors, producers, gaffers, editors and best boys in the slammer, too. There was a day, before Free Speech got naked, when that would have been what people like then-DA Spitzer did to earn their keep.

Whoa. The heads just stopped nodding.

But the Left has much bigger fish to fry than simple morality in the Spitzer case. As Scott Horton writes in Harpers:

It looks like the Bush Justice Department just bagged themselves another Democratic Governor.

Horton has a figure, undocumented, that under Bush’s Justice Department, 5.6 times more cases were opened against Dems than Republicans.

He would like us to think that these are all high profile political cases, but he offers us no data to prove it. In fact, he says, “Indeed, a study of the cases out of Alabama shows clearly that even cases opened against Republicans are in fact only part of a broader pattern of going after Democrats.”

Let me hazard a guess here. More drug dealers and pimps are Dems than Republicans. Are we being told to elect Clinton or Obama so the purveyors of crack and whores, and crack whores for that matter, will face less prosecution?

And stop me if I’m reaching here, but in watching The Godfather, I never got the sense that anyone in the Corleone circle of influence was a big man in the GOP elite.

Of course, we know from ABC that it was suspicious fund transfers that got Spitzer in trouble, not hooking up with hookers, and we know that it was a bank that initially reported him to the feds, not Karl Rove.

Are we being told to vote for Obama or Hillary so suspicious fund transfers are to be ignored? Hmmm. Maybe.

That seems to be Firedoglake’s POV, given the questions asked there:

1. Why would the bank tell the IRS and not Spitzer himself if there was a suspicious transfer?

I believe it’s this troubling thing called the law.

2. What is the USA doing prosecuting a prostitution case?

Her point, of course, is that the local DA, not the feds, should be prosecuting it. Certainly that’s a harken back to the Clinton admin, whose Justice Department was notoriously soft on sex crimes. But look at the facts: A person from New York was doing business on a large scale with a prostitution ring in DC. Federal jurisdiction, baby.

3. Mike Garcia is a Chertoff crony.

She’s following this case a lot closer than I am, but please … cronyism? Cronyism, thy name is politics. The Dems are all over cronyism during the Bush Admin. It must be because they were exhausted containing their outrage during eight years of Clinton cronyism. This rings of 9/11 Truther Whacko garbage.

4. How did Spitzer’s name get leaked to the media, and who did it? Didn’t happen to Dave Vitter.

The answer is Karl Rove, of course! Why ask? And if we’re so concerned about such questions, Jane, who leaked the FISA surveillance story to the media?

5. Why did Mike Bloomberg suddenly start talking about running for governor recently?

Could it be because he decided not to run for president? Spitzer is 18 months into his term … about time to fire up an opposition campaign, ya think?

6. The Mann Act? Are you kidding?

People who don’t like prostitution being prosecuted don’t like the Mann Act and are always harping about it being a political tool more than a prosecuting tool. But it was written to provide the tool for prosecuting interstate prostitution. I kid you not.

7. Spitzer’s been in the line of fire of the GOP hit squad for a while.

Technically, that’s not a question. But here’s one for you, Jane: What high profile, ambitious Republican has not been in the Dems’ line of fire for a while?

Eliot Spitzer’s fall is a great personal tragedy and his family has the misfortune of it also being a great political spectacle. By turning his crime and fall into a rant against prostitution laws, Bush, old laws, the GOP, Chertoff and goodness knows what else, the Left is doing their man no favors.

But I’d rather watch their ranting than Spitzer himself, any day.

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Kicking Some Ashcroft

Speaking to a large group of home-state Republicans in Missouri yesterday, former AG John Ashcroft defended the president’s surveillance efforts:

“The president of the United States has been among the most respectful of all leaders ever engaged in the responsibility of fighting for freedom,” Ashcroft said, and has been “most respectful in terms of respecting the civil liberties and rights of individuals while engaged in the important task of fighting for freedom.”

Ashcroft said Woodrow Wilson monitored “all calls into and outside the United States” in World War I, while Franklin Delano Roosevelt had “all traffic coming into and going out of the United States” monitored in World War II.

Wilson’s and Roosevelt’s policies are a matter of historical record, and they were more intrusive than the more pin-pointed policies technology allows Bush to pursue. I have no doubt that Wilson and Roosevelt would have done the same, if they had the technologies available to them, because presidents tend to believe in the Constitution.

Nevertheless, that didn’t stop the BDS crew at Think Progress:

Dirty Hippy: Down is up. Black is white. The surge is working…… Heckuva job. ****heads…….

Ralph the Wonder Lama: Oh yeah, Hitler

Bullsmith: Ashcroft, like Bush, spits on the Bill of Rights when he spews such obvious falsehoods about such important issues.

The first lefty to post a comment included “the surge is working” as one of Bush’s lies. He was corrected a bit later by Frank M, noting that it working. That generated:

Crap, just when I thought we might have some peace a poster like Frank MORON shows up. **** off ******.

Some things never change.

A Little More Lefty Looniness

Surely you’ve read of Toledo mayor Carty Finkbeiner’s action against the Marines — denying them permission to conduct urban warfare training after the troops had ridden for four hours from their base in Michigan to Toledo. Here’s the story, if you haven’t.

So what’s the lead-off commenter on the link above got to say about this sorry state of events? Here’s what Neo Conned opines:

Urban Warfare training in preparation for who, the American populous? Good for the mayor- training s/b on on the bases/facilities.

Just another example to acclimate us to a military dictatorship. Oooooh, Al Qaeda gonna get ya- oh i forgot there is no such animal, just false flags prepping us for Haliburton camps.

Military dictatorship? No al-Qaeda? I guess Dennis Kucinich isn’t the only certifiable loon to come out of Northern Ohio.

Microsoft (And Curvy)

Isabel Vogel was hired by Microsoft in Germany a few years back — surprising her because she was a woman with children. Says Spiegel:

She knew that making it this far was already a victory. Despite her stellar background, she wouldn’t have stood at a chance at most other companies.

For all its European enlightenment — so exalted by the Left — Germany isn’t as enlightened as America, and it takes companies like Microsoft to show them the errors of their way by hiring people like Vogel and letting her:

She has served as a shining example for other young women in the company since then — and as evidence to her employer that its woman-friendly personnel strategy is working. “If we don’t manage to recruit women now, we’ll be facing massive problems in less than five years,” says Achim Berg, the general manager of Microsoft Germany, referring to the challenges of a shrinking population in Germany.

Ah, enlightened Europe! Stop having babies, resist hiring women, keep up the old face … and let the Muslims procreate, subject their women to serf-like bondage while mocking America all the while.

Speaking Of Power Women …

In the last week, not one, not two but three books have been published in France charting the romance of president Nicolas Sarkozy and Carla Bruni — and there’s some pretty good scuttlebutt about Carla’s butt and how very effectively she’s used it, like this:

The authors quote Bruni telling a friend that although she would not vote for him, she had “the hots” for Sarkozy during the election campaign last year. The former top model, whose conquests included Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton, the rock stars, and Donald Trump, the American property billionaire, told another friend before meeting Sarkozy: “I want a man with nuclear power.”

Whoa … that puts foreign affairs in a whole new light, eh?

The Next Greenie Gotta-Have-It

What could be greener?

Just strap on your own knee-powered power generator, take a walk, and generate the juice for your next cell phone call, GPS query for the locale of the day’s global warming demonstration or electronic nose-hair trimming session!

This prototype unit, described in Science Daily, weighs 3.5 pounds and generates a bit more power than it takes to crank it while walking. Figure the units will become lighter and more efficient as good ol’ Yankee ingenuity is applied to them, and they may become Greenie as in Army Green.

It’s easy to see soldiers being issued these, so after a day of maneuvers, they’ve got a plug-in device to power their equipment. Pretty cool.

In The Interest Of Accuracy

Here’s an actual correction that should help clarify the newspaper’s relationship to Mark Steyn:

The Ottawa Citizen and Southam News wish to apologize for our apology to Mark Steyn, published Oct. 22. In correcting the incorrect statements about Mr. Steyn published Oct. 15, we incorrectly published the incorrect correction. We accept and regret that our original regrets were unacceptable and we apologize to Mr. Steyn for any distress caused by our previous apology.

Glad we got that all straightened out. (Source)

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What is the Left without whining?

So, with the surge showing success, the National Journal has to search for something to whine about and has found it:

But there’s a snag. While the military as a whole is ramping down, its most politically sensitive component — the citizen-soldiers of the Army National Guard — is ramping up.

Dang it! People who signed up knowing what they were signing up for are getting what they signed up for. Oh, the humanity!

Hat-tip: Real Clear Politics

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