Not A Friendly Reception

Instapundit notes this article at the Washington Times, which has Democratic liberal Senators Kennedy and Akaka facing some fire from our own troops...

Soldiers from Massachusetts and Hawaii who work at the U.S. military detention facility at U.S. Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, gave visiting home-state senators a piece of their mind last week.

Sens. Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat, and Daniel K. Akaka, Hawaii Democrat, met with several soldiers during a visit led by Armed Services Committee Chairman Sen. John W. Warner, Virginia Republican.

Pentagon officials said soldiers criticized the harsh comments made recently by Senate Democrats.

Sen. Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the Senate's No. 2 Democrat, last month invoked widespread military outrage when he compared Guantanamo to the prison labor systems used by communist tyrant Josef Stalin, Cambodia's Pol Pot and Adolf Hitler.

"They got stiff reactions from those home-state soldiers," one official told us. "The troops down there expressed their disdain for that kind of commentary, especially comparisons to the gulag."

A spokesman for Mr. Kennedy had no comment. A spokeswoman for Mr. Akaka confirmed that the senator met with soldiers from Hawaii but did not recall receiving any complaints during the meeting.

Both senators made no mention of the incident in press statements after the visit. Mr. Kennedy, in his statement, said that he is "impressed with the courtesies and professionalism of the men and women in our armed forces."

It might be helpful if Senator Kennedy gave Dick Durbin a copy of the same statement. Meanwhile, we have at least one person talking about the political ramifications certain Democrats might face if they're forced to face veterans as election opponents. Expect a lot of whining from such Democrats about people questioning these their patriotism, since they don't realize (1) questioning their judgment isn't the same thing, and (2) their defensiveness makes the rest of us actually wonder about their patriotism.

Important Update From The Supreme Court

Mickey Kaus notes the scariest fact to emerge thus far about Supreme Court nominee John Roberts -- he drives a PT Cruiser!

Hey, not all of us Harvard grads drive BMWs, you know.

The Best Response To The Stupid Question The Media Keeps Asking

The additional bombings in London (or attempted bombings, as they were) show the enemy's still trying to terrify the unshakeable Brits. Over at The Corner, K-Lo has posted the brilliant response of Australian Prime Minister John Howard, who was visiting England today, to the idiots wondering what the English did to bring such attacks on themselves...

Can I just say very directly, Paul, on the issue of the policies of my government and indeed the policies of the British and American governments on Iraq, that the first point of reference is that once a country allows its foreign policy to be determined by terrorism, it's given the game away, to use the vernacular. And no Australian government that I lead will ever have policies determined by terrorism or terrorist threats, and no self-respecting government of any political stripe in Australia would allow that to happen.

Can I remind you that the murder of 88 Australians in Bali took place before the operation in Iraq.

And I remind you that the 11th of September occurred before the operation in Iraq.

Can I also remind you that the very first occasion that bin Laden specifically referred to Australia was in the context of Australia's involvement in liberating the people of East Timor. Are people by implication suggesting we shouldn't have done that?

When a group claimed responsibility on the website for the attacks on the 7th of July, they talked about British policy not just in Iraq, but in Afghanistan. Are people suggesting we shouldn't be in Afghanistan?

When Sergio de Mello was murdered in Iraq -- a brave man, a distinguished international diplomat, a person immensely respected for his work in the United Nations -- when al Qaeda gloated about that, they referred specifically to the role that de Mello had carried out in East Timor because he was the United Nations administrator in East Timor.

Now I don't know the mind of the terrorists. By definition, you can't put yourself in the mind of a successful suicide bomber. I can only look at objective facts, and the objective facts are as I've cited. The objective evidence is that Australia was a terrorist target long before the operation in Iraq. And indeed, all the evidence, as distinct from the suppositions, suggests to me that this is about hatred of a way of life, this is about the perverted use of principles of the great world religion that, at its root, preaches peace and cooperation. And I think we lose sight of the challenge we have if we allow ourselves to see these attacks in the context of particular circumstances rather than the abuse through a perverted ideology of people and their murder.

I think most Americans realize this, as do most Brits and Aussies and Poles and Isrealis and a few others. Eventually, the rest of the world will catch up. Until then, let's raise a toast for the indomitable spirit of our English friends and the clear-headed words of the leader of Australia.

I Need To Be Friends With These Guys

K-Mac clues in to a story about a bachelor party that was a tad bit wilder than mine... as far as most people know...

Even by Wall Street's over-the-top standards, the March 2003 bachelor party for Thomas Bruderman, a onetime star trader for Fidelity Investments, was an event to remember.

The festivities began with a trip by private jet from Boston to a small airport outside New York City. There, the revelers picked up some Wall Street traders and at least two women who investigators suspect may have been paid for their attendance, say people familiar with the matter. The partygoers -- including the groom-to-be, who was getting ready to marry the daughter of former Tyco International Ltd. boss L. Dennis Kozlowski -- then continued to trendy South Beach in Miami. The fun included a stay at the ritzy Delano Hotel for some, a yacht cruise and entertainment by at least one dwarf hired for the occasion.

"Some people are just into lavish dwarf entertainment," says the 4-foot-2 Danny Black, a part-owner in Shortdwarf.com, an outfit that rents dwarfs for parties starting at $149 an hour. Mr. Black says he spent part of the weekend on the yacht and worked as a waiter on the Friday night at a high-end Miami eatery alongside what he called "regular size" people. "A good time was had by all," he said, declining to provide further details.

But what really made this a memorable party is that it is now a focus of an investigation into possibly improper gratuities from Wall Street trading firms eager to get Fidelity's business. The National Association of Securities Dealers and the Securities and Exchange Commission are examining which Wall Street firms kicked in money for the weekend party. So far, at least three firms have been embroiled in the investigation. Jefferies Group Inc. paid for the plane, SG Cowen & Co. paid for the yacht, and Lazard Capital Markets paid for some of the hotel rooms, according to people familiar with the matter.

Meanwhile, the party now figures into a broader criminal investigation by federal prosecutors. The U.S. attorney in Boston has impaneled a grand jury to determine whether some of the money flowing from brokerage firms to Fidelity was used to pay for prostitutes and drugs at the party and other events, according to people familiar with the matter. Among other things, investigators are trying to determine if Lazard paid for prostitutes at the bachelor party, the people say.

Spokespeople for Jefferies and Lazard declined to comment.

Among the guests on the boat: Mr. Bruderman's soon-to-be father-in-law, Mr. Kozlowski, then facing felony charges that he and a top lieutenant looted $150 million from Tyco to pay for their extravagant lifestyles. Mr. Bruderman's wedding to Sandra Kozlowski later that year on Massachusetts's Nantucket Island was on the eve of Mr. Kozlowski's first trial, which ended in a mistrial. His second trial ended in a conviction earlier this year. Scott DeSano, then Fidelity's influential head of stock trading, was an usher in Mr. Bruderman's wedding and attended part of the bachelor party.

I'm betting that this doesn't lead to good things for those involved. Which proves one immutable fact -- all bachelor parties should take place in Las Vegas. Well, that and you should never pay for dwarf entertainment with the corporate Amex card.

Musical Commentary

I don't usually discuss music here -- other than the annoying song posts-- but here's an issue of overriding importance -- what's the worst album cover ever? (hat tip: Andrew Sullivan).

I know my pick for best cover ever: Van Halen's 1984. When I was ten years old, I thought that was a hysterical image. Yes, I'm a complete degenerate.

Meanwhile, here's my favorite revelation ever. Looking at the Amazon page for Falko's Greatest Hits (the existence of this album is funny all by itself), we find that people who bought Falko's Greatest Hits also bought...

Murray Head - Greatest Hits [Resurgent] ~ Murray Head (Rate it)
The Different Story (World of Lust and Crime) ~ Peter Schilling (Rate it)
Bang: Greatest Hits ~ Frankie Goes to Hollywood (Rate it)
Der Kommissar [Collectables] ~ After the Fire (Rate it)
Falco 3 [IMPORT] ~ Falco (Rate it)
Einzelhaft [IMPORT] ~ Falco (Rate it)
Best of ~ Berlin (Rate it)
Forever Young ~ Alphaville (Rate it)

If they added in Tommy Tutone, Flock of Seagulls and Johnny Hates Jazz, we might have the greatest musical lineup ever. Or not.

Bush Makes a Good Choice

Instapundit has the roundup on the Roberts nomination. The pundits will weigh in, so let me throw in my two cents.

Bush snagged a slam-dunk confirmation, despite the usual moaning from liberal groups. Short of Roberts spitting in the face of Chuck Schumer, he will be a shoo-in, barring any unforseen background problems, which are unlikely since the guy just got put on the appellate bench two years ago. And if he wants to spit in Schumer's face... well, that would get some of the more luke-warm conservatives over to his side.

I also think Rehnquist will now hang on for at least one more year, because I think Roberts is the next Chief Justice. Roberts is a former Rehnquist clerk, and I've heard news reports that Rehnquist was lobbying behind the scenes for Roberts. If Rehnquist makes it through another year or two, Roberts could be bumped up, without being the lightning rod that Scalia or Thomas would be -- and Roberts is younger to boot.

I like Roberts for obvious reasons -- he's young, he's no Souter, he's Federalist Society, he's smart as they come and he's a fellow Harvard law grad. Anyone who comes out of HLS and is still a conservative can handle the supposedly moderating influence at the High Court.

No, he's not Scalia. Fred Barnes is right when he says that Roberts is a safe pick, but that doesn't make him the wrong pick. I also think it's a courageous choice, as Bill Kristol noted, because Bush didn't simply yield to conventional wisdom and place a woman on the high court to replace O'Connor. I'm not particularly concerned by the Ann Coulter press release on this one; just because Roberts has a stealthier profile does not mean he's going to be another Souter (as usual, though, Coulter gets the line of the day: "The only way a supreme court nominee could win the approval of NARAL and Planned Parenthood would be to actually perform an abortion during his confirmation hearing, live, on camera, and preferably a partial birth one." Bush should have nominated her for the spectacle of the hearings alone).

Would I have preferred someone else? Sure, on the list of realistic nominees, Luttig would have been my fist choice, and Jones might have been second. But Roberts finishes no lower than #3 on my list of top choices for appointment, and potentially ahead of Jones. In the end, we didn't get another Scalia. We did get another Rehnquist. That's pretty good for replacing O'Connor.

Now There's The Dishrag We Know

The other day, I managed to praise something written in the left-wing dishrag. Just to make certain that the world returns to its normal state of affairs, I wanted to post Don Luskin's latest takedown of Paul Krugman, a.k.a., America's favorite intellectually dishonest economist. Luskin's Krugman Truth Squad is always good reading, but especially in this case. Luskin notes Krugman's frustration with the fact that tax revenues have surged in response to the Bush tax cuts, and takes glee in hammering Krugman's lame assertions that the cuts are a disaster...

Krugman snarls,

The usual suspects on the right are already declaring victory over the deficit, and proclaiming vindication for the Laffer Curve — the claim that tax cuts pay for themselves, because they have such a miraculous effect on the economy that revenue actually goes up.

Count me — and anyone else who’s seen this chart — as among “the usual suspects.” And as long as we’re making cinematic allusions, let me add that I love the smell of tax revenues in the morning. Smells like victory.

The best Krugman can do is forecast that the explosion of revenues in the wake of the 2003 tax cuts won’t last. Why? For one thing, Krugman claims that “the economy as a whole is, if anything, doing worse than one would expect at this stage of an economic recovery.”

Again, consider reality. Since the recession bottom in the fourth quarter of 2001, real GDP has grown 12 percent. That beats the 11 percent growth over the comparable period in the previous economic recovery — the one that began on Bill Clinton’s watch, which Krugman once called an “economic miracle.”

Krugman also frets that the revenues flowing into the U.S. Treasury are the wrong kind. Not enough revenue growth, he complains, is coming from taxes “tied to the number of jobs and the average wage, such as payroll taxes and income taxes.”

Consider reality: Personal withheld tax revenues are up 7.3 percent compared to last year, and social insurance and retirement receipts are up 6.4 percent (source: U.S. Treasury). Yes, there’s been even greater growth in corporate tax revenues. But why are corporate revenues the wrong kind of revenues?

And yes, there’s been a surge in non-withheld personal income-tax revenues, which Krugman guesses is mostly from capital gains. Why are those the wrong kind of revenues? Perhaps because slashing the capital-gains tax rate was the signature of Bush’s 2003 cuts; a surge in those revenues proves just how vindicated the adherents of the Laffer curve really are.

Now, I'm not going to defend the deficit, because I think we could have an even lower one if the President had been more willing to wield the veto pen, or if the GOP Congress behaved the way a GOP Congress should. But Krugman's not attacking federal spending as much as he is the tax cuts -- as Luskin notes, Krugman wants to expand the size of the federal government to provide health care.

Krugman is a former Enron advisor. Maybe this explains the death of Enron.

Darwin Strikes Again

Maybe I can ride one of these in at my wedding...

A recent study has predicted that more male Asian elephants in China will be born without tusks because poaching of tusked elephants is reducing the gene pool, the China Daily reported Sunday.

The study, conducted in the Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture in southwest China's Yunnan province, where two-thirds of China's Asian elephants live, found that the tuskless phenomenon is spreading, the report said.

The tusk-free gene, which is found in between two and five percent of male Asian elephants, has increased to between five percent and 10 percent in elephants in China, according to Zhang Li, an associate professor of zoology at Beijing Normal University.

"This decrease in the number of elephants born with tusks shows the poaching pressure for ivory on the animal," said Zhang, whose research team has been studying elephants since 1999 at a reserve in Xishuangbanna.

Only male elephants have tusks, which are said to be a symbol of masculinity and a weapon to fight for territory. However, due to poaching for ivory, the elephants' pride has become a death sentence, the report said.

"The larger tusks the male elephant has, the more likely it will be shot by poachers," said Zhang. "Therefore, the ones without tusks survive, preserving the tuskless gene in the species."

That's the first time the male of any species will be looking for less size. This is by no means confirmed, but I just find it cool that evolution is actually reacting to human activity in a measurable way. Besides, how often do I get to quote a study from the Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture?

But Will I Still Get The Money In That Account?

Well, I guess all those e-mails will finally stop...

A Nigerian court has sentenced a woman to two and half years in jail after she pleaded guilty to fraud charges in the country's biggest e-mail scam case, the anti-fraud agency said on Saturday.

Amaka Anajemba, one of three suspects in a $242 million fraud involving a Brazilian bank, would return $48.5 million to the bank, hand over $5 million to the government and pay a fine of 2 million naira ($15,000), the agency said.

Scams have become so successful in Nigeria that anti-sleaze campaigners say swindling is one of the country's main foreign exchange earners after oil, natural gas and cocoa.

Anajemba's sentencing by a Lagos High Court on Friday is the first major conviction since the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) was established in 2003 to crack down on Nigeria's thriving networks of email fraudsters.

The agency said in a statement that the judgment was "a landmark achievement by EFCC in the fight against advance fee fraud, corruption and other related crimes."

Typically fraudsters send out junk e-mails around the world promising recipients a share in a fortune in return for an advance fee. Those who pay never receive the promised windfall.

I'm just surprised that some of these scams actually do originate in Nigeria.

John Kerry's Dream Comes True

Loyal reader RB sees the standards in our world falling apart with this news...

Before visiting the White House, Kate Darmody carefully planned her outfit. She bought a sundress from Ann Taylor. She put on a strand of white pearls.

And then she slipped on flip-flops to meet the president. So did about half of her teammates from the national championship Northwestern University women's lacrosse team, invited to the White House last Tuesday after a 21-0 season.

She didn't think twice about the footwear until she got an e-mail - in all capital letters -from her brother.

"YOU WORE FLIP-FLOPS TO THE WHITE HOUSE????!!!!" he wrote after checking out the picture on the team's website.

Aly Josephs' mother had the same reaction after seeing her daughter in the front row of the photo - the fifth person away from the president - wearing brown suede flip-flops with a skirt, sleeveless top and matching beaded jewelry.

"Don't even ask me about the flip-flops," her mother said when a reporter questioned her about the picture. "As somebody who is 52 years old, it mortified me. I don't go out of the house without pantyhose on."

Democrats should be happy -- we finally have a flip-flop in the White House.

Jokes aside, there is something somewhat disconcerting about it all -- personally, I have a little more pride in myself and would want to wear a shirt and tie to see the President, instead of a polo shirt and some sneakers. To each his own, however. With that being said, these young ladies are in for a rude awakeneing when they hit the working world... unless they're good looking, in which case they can get away with anything.

And by the way... where do you find brown suede flip-flops?

McCain Likes Boobs

There's a lot of things about John McCain that aggravates me. This cracks me up...

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., is defending his cameo appearance in "Wedding Crashers," the sexy comedy the Drudge Report called a "boob raunch fest."

"In Washington, I work with boobs every day," joked McCain during an appearance on NBC's "Tonight Show with Jay Leno."

McCain was responding to Leno, who noted Matt Drudge ran a headline last week screaming that the Republican was starring in a "boob raunch fest."

Hey, that's what I used to call the Clinton White House.

Why We Are Better

The man who calls himself Cicero sends me this story, which points up the difference between Western civilization and the barbarian bastards who bombed London last week...

Plans by an alliance of rightwing extremists and football hooligans to exact "revenge" on Muslims after last week's bomb attacks are being monitored by police.
The Guardian has learned that extremists are keen to cause widespread fear and injury with attacks on mosques and high-profile "anti-Muslim" events in the capital.

Football hooligans communicating over the internet have spoken of the need to put aside partisan support for teams and unite against Muslims. Hooligans from West Ham, Millwall, Crystal Palace and Arsenal are among those seeking to establish common cause.

As part of wider plans to generate a backlash, rightwing groups such as the Nationalist Alliance and the National Front are said to be planning marches. Extremists hope to hold a march along Victoria Embankment in London tomorrow.
It is also known that many mosques have received bomb threats since the attacks.

Attempts by the right to make capital out of the tragedy have created a powderkeg. Already extremist Islamist websites have told Muslims to be ready to retaliate.

Remember when Palestinian terrorists holed up inside a mosque to hide from Isreali soldiers, yet the Isrealis respected the shrine? Or how about the so-called "insurent" terrorists who operated out of Muslim holy places by shooting soldiers and civilians in Iraq? And now, it's secular Western authorities who seek to protect Muslim shrines from right-wing extremists. The exteremists on both sides defame Islam, but which is worse? I'd argue it's those who defile Islam while pretending to practice it. But in the end, that's an argument that Muslims themselves must make, and purge from their ranks those insult their religion through murder and violence. Here's hoping they do.

There are times when you realize that Westerners have more respect for the holy shrines of Islam than the Muslim extermists do. This is one of them.

The Wedding Update

This wedding update is not brought to you by MTV's Jackass -- for reasons only the wedding party will understand.

11 days to go...

A few random notes, because I'm too tired for much else.

The boxes of gifts are now blocking the big-screen TV. If I had time to watch TV, I'd be aggravated.

And I'm still trying to understand whether the stores get paid for stuffing boxes with paper. I know this stuff is fragile, but I could drop these boxes off the top of the Washington Monument and not break anything. In fact, that might be a fun game.

I've now seen the menu, but we missed out on the tasting, because the hotel now charges for a tasting. I feel gypped.

A drink would be good right about now.

Is it a bad thing that the planning for the wedding is making me not want to watch "Wedding Crashers?"

Our photographer last week explained that he will be putting together our album as the story that he will tell about our wedding. I'm not saying another word.

Speaking of which, how many grooms actually look at the video or pictures more than once, voluntarily? Just asking.

In fact, I really wish the videographer would let us have a commentary track for our video. Preferably with the groomsmen on commentary.

More later.

No Need To Say Anything

The Lord of Truth sends us a story that... well, let's just say we aren't surprised...

It may be fun to stay at the Y.M.C.A, but spending time in j-a-i-l is likely no walk in the park, even for a macho man.

Victor Edward Willis, the original policeman and lead singer from the Village People, had a chance to find out firsthand this week after he was arrested when police discovered a gun and drugs in his car during a traffic stop in Daly City, California.

Willis was was arrested late Monday after police turned up a loaded .45, crack cocaine and drug paraphernalia while searching his convertible Corvette.

Though it was not clear what prompted the traffic stop, it turned out that Willis was wanted on a $15,000 felony warrant for possession of narcotics, which prompted his arrest and the search of his car.

The former Village Person did not have a valid driver's license or any form of identification and initially tried to lie to police about his name and address, before switching tactics and informing them that he was a founding member of the over-the-top disco band, police said.

I'm guessing the writer enjoyed using the words "former Village Person." This should be highly disturbing to any person who ever dressed up as a member of the Village People for Halloween. Not that I know anyone who ever did that.

Eat Your Heart Out, Matt Lauer and Brooke Shields

This website deserves more hits. Really.

I Praise Something In the New York Times... and The World Doesn't End

I rarely, if ever, praise the left-wing dishrag. But John Tierney's efforts in Saturday's column on the Plame affair are worthy of acclaim...

The closest parallel is the moment in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" when members of a mob eager to burn a witch are asked by the wise Sir Bedevere how they know she's a witch.

"Well, she turned me into a newt," the villager played by John Cleese says.

"A newt?" Sir Bedevere asks, looking puzzled.

"I got better," he explains.

"Burn her anyway!" another villager shouts.

That's what has happened since this scandal began so promisingly two summers ago. At first it looked like an outrageous crime harming innocent victims: a brave whistle-blower was smeared by a vicious White House politico who committed a felony by exposing the whistle-blower's wife as an undercover officer, endangering her and her contacts in the field.

But if you consider the facts today, you may feel like Sir Bedevere. Where's the newt? What did the witch actually do?

...For now, though, it looks as if this scandal is about a spy who was not endangered, a whistle-blower who did not blow the whistle and was not smeared, and a White House official who has not been fired for a felony that he did not commit. And so far the only victim is a reporter who did not write a story about it.

More people are coming to this conclusion. Over at the Belgravia Dispatch, Gregory Djerejian takes Josh Marshall and the rest of the portside bloggers to task for their willfully sloppy reporting in search of a scandal. John Podesta, Clinton's former White House Chief of Staff, now claims that the scandal is about the "war in Iraq" and not, apparently, a criminal matter (hat tip: Instapundit). I'm glad no one's debated the war in Iraq before. I think the Democrats who want to debate the war in Iraq are missing the tack here --debate the current conduct of the war, rather than the decision to go to war. This guy might have the right idea -- the Wilson/Plame affair is irrelevant to truly helpful criticism of the war and solving problems.

Of course, most of today's Democratic Party doesn't know anything about constructive criticism and solving problems. They prefer shrill denunciations of the other side and an obstructionist defense of the status quo.

Waiting...

The Eagles start training camp in less than two weeks. The Road to Detroit, and Super Bowl XL, begins now.

We Haven't Changed -- and We Don't Need To Change

Andrew Sullivan's taken up the issue of America condoning and authorizing torture and abuse of detainees, to the point where it's almost a tad obsessive. I admire him for taking a strong stand on the issue. While I am at best uncomfortable with the use of torture for interrogation, I also have a much different threshhold than Sullivan for what constitutes torture. But that's not the issue at this time. Sullivan has been rather disappointed (or so it appears) that most Americans seem rather blase to the idea of alleged terrorists being subject to coercive treatment and even torture, and said "America is not the America it once was." Stephen Green does a good job refuting this position...

I don't begrudge Sullivan his opinion. It's his, and I've watched him ably create and defend it. However, when he claims that our rough treatment of rough characters "is not the America it once was," he's displaying an almost-willful misunderstanding of America's wartime mores. In WWII, German POWs were accorded proper respect. Those few Japanese who surrendered were largely not.

Why the difference? Germany declared war on us before attacking; Japan didn't. When a German soldier showed the white flag, he usually meant it; a Japanese solider usually didn't. Germany treated American POWs according to the Geneva Conventions. Japan treated American POWs to the Bataan Death March.

Today we're faced with an enemy who never signed onto the Geneva Conventions. An enemy who hides in plain clothes among civilians, who wages war against civilians, and who began this war with a surprise attack.

While reading that last paragraph, maybe your mind wandered. Maybe your brain recoiled, and was haunted by questions. "Do we live perfectly by the Geneva Conventions?" "Don't our soldiers sometimes hide in civilian homes?" "Weren't we asking to be attacked?" "Didn't they attack us by the only means at their disposal?"

If you asked yourself those things, you're certainly no Jacksonian.

But millions of Americans - probably a wartime majority - do hold by Jackson's traditions. We try to play fair, and mostly we succeed. But we will not play fair with those who refuse to honor the rules of the game. In fact, we think it speaks pretty well of us that those Gitmo prisoners are being treated as well as they are.

Sometimes, we even wonder if maybe we've gone a little too soft - if maybe we shouldn't be taking prisoners at all.

I'm with Green right now. I'm not worried about us losing our humanity yet. I'm more worried about being too compassionate to our enemies. Winning the war and playing by the rules of civilization are not always mutually exclusive, but I'm more worried about the former than the latter.

And Some of Them Can't Even Act

Victor Davis Hanson wants to know why Hollywood actors seem to enjoy jumping on liberal bandwagons so often...

What's so disturbing about our leftist celebrities lecturing us on what has gone wrong after September 11? Nothing, as long as we realize why they do it.

Entertainers wrongly assume their fame, money and influence arise from broad knowledge rather than natural talent, looks or mastery of a narrow skill.

In fact, what do a talented Richard Gere, Robert Redford and Madonna all have in common besides loudly blasting the current administration? They either dropped out of, or never started, college. Cher may think George Bush is "stupid," but she -- not he -- didn't finish high school.

If these apparent autodidacts are without degrees, aren't they at least well informed? Not always. Right before the Iraqi war, Barbra Streisand issued an angry statement assuring us Saddam Hussein was the dictator of Iran.

Hanson has plenty more, but I found myself disagreeing with one thing. The title of the article was "Elegant Nonsense". I don't think much of the tripe served up by the acting elite is elegant.

An Honest Appraisal

This is an intriguing and well-written piece from an Englishman living in New York. the guy definitely tilts to the left, but his willingness to re-examine his own preceonceptions is admirable. Here's a couple great excerpts...

So, after 12 months of living in New York is it any surprise that Israel starts to look a little less evil? And that Europe starts to look a little more parochial? That the US starts to look a little more like it is trying to solve some of the world’s problems, and that it is doing so despite the sometimes unfair criticism of its allies? If in England it always looked like the US was the playground bully. Then from the US it looks a lot more like an embattled headteacher in a problem school.

...On September 11, I thought I knew the reasons why the attacks had taken place. And it was not my fault. Moreover, it was somebody else’s fault – the US’s – and they were reaping what they had sown. But in the past 12 months I have slowly come to understand that the wordview I held was tainted by a media that sees the problems in the world (dictatorship in Iraq, authoritarianism/terrorism in the Middle East, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, global warming) as being the fault of the United States. All of this from a country and a continent that seems to have done little itself to try to redress the balance in a world which it has corrupted/manipulated to a gargantuan degree during the past 100 years.

“We know that,” comes the cry. “But the US has the power to do so much good and yet it chooses to do the opposite.”

Really? Should the US have stayed out of Kosovo? Should it have stayed out of Afghanistan and Iraq? Should it leave North Korea and Iran to their own devices? Is it the US alone that has not done enough to stop the killing in Darfur? Or is Britain, Europe, Africa, just as much to blame? Why are we not rushing headlong into Zimbabwe to get rid of Robert Mugabe? Is it worse to do something? Or is it worse to do nothing?

At this moment, I am proud to be a citizen of a country that has done more than most to help the US get rid of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein. And I think that it would do other Europeans some good to think again about what their countries have achieved, if anything, to try to stem the tide of dictatorships and terrorism around the world. They should wonder whether they are really asking themselves the hard questions. Or whether they are shrugging their shoulders and blaming America because that is what they have been brought up to do.

(hat tip: Andrew Sullivan). I don't agree with everything this guy wrote, but I still admire it. And his brand of liberal thought, where support for our war aims in Iraq is unequivocal, would be worth teaching to plenty of folks in our country.

Another American Hero

Can anyone on this planet explain why this story hasn't gotten more coverage? A U.S. Army medic is wounded by a terrorist sniper in Iraq (note: people who support and participate with groups blowing up civilians indiscriminently do not deserve the moniker of "insurgent") gets up, takes cover, has his fellow soldiers track down the sniper, then snaps the cuffs on the guy... before administering medical aid to help the guy who tried to kill him (hat tip: Instapundit). For crying out loud, they have video.

Just reading this story makes you proud to be associated with a country that produces soldiers like this. Yes, the tale of heroism is rather extraordinary -- but the character of the overwhelming majority of people we send into combat comes closer to Private Tschiderer then the buffoons at Abu Ghraib. It would be nice to see him get the same headlines they did.