Glad To See A Nice Reasoned Debate By the Democrats

Powerline is one of many sites talking about the asinine actions of some left-of-center students at Columbia, who decided to disrupt a speech by Jim Gilchrist, the founder of the Minuteman Project and a guest who was invited to speak by the College Republicans. The New York Sun carries the best coverage...

On Wednesday evening, the gathering came to an untimely demise when, a minute into the remarks by the founder of the Minuteman Project, Jim Gilchrist, students stormed the stage, overturning tables and chairs and attacking Mr. Gilchrist and fellow Minutemen Marvin Stewart and Jerome Corsi. Having taken control of the stage, the students, led by the student chapter of the International Socialist Organization, unfurled a banner that read, in both Arabic and English, "Nobody is Illegal."

Although the hired security did little to prevent the students from shouting down or physically intimidating the invited guests, they escorted the Minutemen out, unharmed, through a back door.The protesters savored their victory before security ushered the audience out of the auditorium. Students jumped from the stage, chanting in Spanish and pumping their fists triumphantly. "These are racist individuals heading a project that terrorizes immigrants on the U.S.-Mexican border," a Columbia junior who took part in the protest, Ryan Fukumori, said. "They have no right to be able to speak here."

Okay, I've had it.

First of all, the schmuck quoted in the last paragraph doesn't seem to understand the nature of free speech (I feel sorry for whoever's paying for his education). I don't actually know much about the Minuteman Project, and I don't know what Gilcrhist was saying. Obviously, the folks in the audience who jumped on stage didn't like what he said. But their actions simply lead me to conclude that they don't have an effective counter to the reasoning of Gilchrist, whatever it is -- all they have is violence, noise and chaos. Believe it or not, such tactics don't usually persuade people that you're right. In America, we tend to have to put up with liars, crooks, racists, and people with annoying nasally voices, among other things. It's the nature of a free society,

Next, do these idiots really want to be unfurling a banner that's written partly in Arabic, for seemingly no reason whatsoever? Seriously, I don't understand what they're trying to say here. Then again, they're not really communicating so much as they are screaming and chanting.

Also, maybe it's just me, but it does seem awfully rude to do this to an invited guest. Perhaps they would have been better served asking to debate Gilchrist, instaed of acting like the thugs of political correctness run amok.

Ace and Michelle Malkin both have a video of the incident. You know, one of these days someone's going to pull a stunt like this at the wrong rally, where some of the GOP folks opt to fight back. And when it happens... well, let's just say I'd rather put my money on the party whose members hail from the Red States and support the Second Amendment.

Remind Me About This When John Kerry Runs Again

Loyal reader KS sends us this story, about a legal case that stinks on multiple levels...

Police in Poland have launched a nationwide hunt for a man who farted loudly when asked what he thought of the president.

Hubert Hoffman, 45, was charged with "contempt for the office of the head of state" for his actions after he was stopped by police in a routine check at a Warsaw railway station.

He complained that under President Lech Kaczynski and his twin brother Jaroslaw, the country was returning to a Communist style dictatorship.

When told to show more respect for the country's rulers, he farted loudly and was promptly arrested.

I think this is one case when dogs would be useful to hunt down a suspect. Being lawyers, two colleagues and I have already debated the validity of an affirmative defense based on the food consumed by the defendant -- yes, we are nerds.

Reasons I Don't Live in New Jersey

The Lord of Truth lets us in on the latest fiscal shenanigan from his current home state -- New Jersey is now taxing iTunes downloads. I'd say I was surprised, but we are talking about New Jersey.

Things I Didn't Really Need to Know

Thank God Al Gore invented the Internet, or I wouldn't know about this...

Deliberate masturbation during the month of Ramadan renders a fast invalid, Iranian Supreme Leader Sayyid Ali Khameini has ruled.

Khameini, who is Iran's most powerful political and religious figure, was asked on his website : "If somebody masturbates during the month of Ramadan but without any discharge, is his fasting invalidated?"

"If he do not intend masturbation and discharging semen and nothing is discharged, his fasting is correct even though he has done a h?ar?m (forbidden) act. But, if he intends masturbation or he knows that he usually discharges semen by this process and semen really comes out, it is a h?aram intentional breaking fasting," the Iranian leader said, posting the reply on his website.

I don't know if this is all that reassuring to Muslim youth -- basically, they can masturbate as long as they don't intend to do so, and as long as they don't succeed. Somehow, I just picture this leading to a lot more unbridled rage. Maybe this is part of the Iranian master plan.

The Foley Mess

The Foley scandal is probably going to kill the GOP's chances of retaining the House. That's just a guess on my part, but the GOP base isn't going to feel too ready to run out to the polls anyway, and this certainly doesn't help.

Forgetting the political issues for a second, let's consider something important here. Basically, we have a Congressman, a person in power, abusing that power in order to... well, other than making inappropriate advances toward someone who may or may not have been of age, I don't know what Foley has done. It's not criminal, so far as I can tell. Just disgusting and unseemly. And he damn well should resign.

But therein lies the problem. Maybe it's just the fact that I live in DC, or that I'm a bit of a cynic, but I tend to believe that this goes back to what famed Louisiana pol Edwin Edwards once said: "The only way I can lose this election is if I'm caught in bed with either a dead girl or a live boy." Part of me is glad Foley got caught, but I would feel a hell of a lot better if (a) I knew that we also had the same level of concern about Congressmen opting to make passes at young women who work on Capitol Hill, particularly married Congressmen, and (b) the same people would muster the same outrage if this was a Democrat.

And yes, while the age of the person matters, the page who received the infamous IMs was 17 going on 18 when he received them. I can't defend the conduct, but I do know that plenty of past male politicians, including one former President of the United States, decided it was okay to actually engage in sexual relations with women that age or just a shade older than that. One Democrat actually kept getting re-elected after admitting to actually having sex with a 17 year old male page. We put up with a lot of this crap from our politicians, mostly because the people involved keep their mouths shut and the press looks away too often. I'm not asking for a Congress filled with saint-like people, but a little more character in the halls of power would be a good thing.

Back to politics... It's not like the House leadership has had me thrilled for the last few years anyway. Most of me shudders at the thought of Nancy Pelosi two heartbeats away from the Presidency, but the opportunity for jokes about her for two solid years does lighten the mood.

Of course, the Dems are now stumbling with their response to the matter. Making stuff up for a campaign commercial is particularly problematic in the Internet age, as Petty Wetterling, who's running as a Democrat in Minnesota's Sixth Congressional District, is claiming the GOP leaders covered up the molestation of children by Foley. If she believes sending sexually explicit IMs is molestation, then she probably doesn't understand the law. Jim Geraghty says it beautifully...

Here's what gets me: Who's the advertising strategist who looked at the current circumstances - Foley's repulsive messages, his resignation only after getting caught, the sense that Hastert and other GOP leaders should have been more on the ball and picked up on the problem quicker - and said, "eh, these circumstances aren't good enough"?

Who said, when they put together this ad, "we had better say that he was molesting pages"?

Who said, when they wrote the script, "we had better accuse them of admitting a coverup"?

The Democrats have been handed the ugliest and most notorious GOP scandal in decades on a silver platter. They've got a gale-force wind at their back. All they've got to say is two simple messages: 1) "We're appalled." 2) "This won't happen on our watch." That's it. That's all it takes to capitalize on the Foley scandal.

And yet somehow, the very first ad from the Democrats that addresses this issue feels a need to... well, lie. To stretch the charges beyond anything resembling the facts as we know them.

All that Michele Bachmann, Wetterling's opponent, has to do is put up an ad accusing Wetterling of "lying" and "playing politics when we ought to be focused on protecting young people." And it would work, because it's accurate.

Geraghty's right, but no one's accusing the Democrats of actually having a plan or knowing what to do with good fortune. In fact, if Tom Maguire has it right, the Dems are about to make a major mistake. their colleagues in the press are already proceeding, based on last night's news on CBS. This of course assumes (a) anyone watches CBS, and (b) anyone considers a broadcast helmed by Katie Couric to be news.

Isn't it great? We have a set of incompetent people running Congress, and our choice to replace them is another set of incompetents. I'd say we need to go look for term limits or a stiff drink.

The Sinatra Group

I have no comment. None. But if you figure out which one I am, it's not my fault.

YouTube Gives In To Political Correctness

Michelle Malkin believes YouTube is caving in to censorship, presumably as a result of complaints from Islamic groups and users regarding material they find offensive. I tend to agree, and it's aggravating to me, since I think YouTube is a fantastic service.

The good news: South Park's Cartoon Wars clips are still available. In fact, here's the ending of Part II right now...

Are You Ready For Some Football?

It's that time again -- it's Dallas week in Philly. And this year's even more special than most, since America's (least) favorite team will come to the City of Brotherly Love bringing along the wacky circus known as T.O. Land.

The media coverage should be slightly more than insane, since the four letter network Jeff Garcia once dubbed "ESTO" plans to run a weeklong series where Michael Irvin interviews T.O. about how it feels to follow in Michael's footsteps as an All-Pro wide receiver and petulant prick (and Mike can probably spend some time tutoring T.O. on how to (ab)use drugs without that pesky overdosing problem). By the way, for the Christmas re-match in Dallas, we hear ESPN Sunday Countdown will air a tour of Dallas area strip clubs guided by Irvin.

Seriously, has anyone considered the fact that pumping up this game is probably going to lead to bad things? Wait, I'm sure they have, and they don't care. Look, there's not a sports populace more embittered than the one in my hometown, and people persist in rubbing our noses in it. The Phillies just missed the playoffs in part because an umpire couldn't see a home run bounce off a foul pole. The Sixers spent the summer trying to trade their most popular player and icon, failed miserably, and are returning basically the same squad that's failed to make the playoffs twice in three years. The Flyers look like they're not particularly well-suited for the new NHL, which isn't surprising since Bob Clarke still seems to want to rebuild championship teams from the 1970's. And as a city, we haven't won a title in 23 years (21 if you're a Villanova alum like myself). Even horses affiliated with Philly can't close the deal.

And instead we get tormented by sports networks. Fox is probably sending Troy Aikman to do the game this weekend. I actually think Aikman is among the best of a sad crop of game analysts doing football right now (somebody please explain why Dick Vermeil is not doing games right now, and whether Joe Theismann's hair is the only reason he has the MNF gig ahead of Ron Jaworski), but this is like waving raw meat in front of snarling hyenas that haven't eaten in a week. The Fox studio show will probably be done from field level at the Linc, which means one more chance for someone to hurl a snowball at Jimmy Johnson (and you're an idiot if you think Philadelphia doesn't have fans creative enough to pack a snowball on a mild fall day with no snow). I'm actually wondering if someone will ask Joe Buck, who's also announcing the Yankee playoff games, whether he can make a determination if the Cowboys or Yankees represent the Anti-christ. I've never been able to make a concrete determination as to which team Satan loves more.

Loyal reader KS sends us this link, where the guys at Kissing Suzy Kolber are running a thread suggesting what fans can throw at the field. The post is funny, but if you want to capture the mood of Eagles fans, try this line in the comments...

The solution here is rather obvious.

Pill bottle, sans prescription label, filled with nickels. It accomplishes everything that we Philly fans are looking for -- a great visual with the pill bottle, the weight and maiming potential of a bettery, and a minimal personal expense (let's face it, who wants to throw 20 quarters away?).

And you're a little off on the obliviousness / stupidity of Philadelphia fans. Sure, we're stupid, but due to the lack of championship validation, our felonious jackassery is all we have and there's an unspoken, drunken undercurrent to Philadelphia fans that makes us want to perpetuate our awful reputation.

So there. Suck it, Terrell.

The Inquirer also tells us what we'll see at the Linc Sunday, including an interview with a drunken fan after Monday night's win over the Packers...

Dallas week had officially begun and, with it, the promise of a homecoming that should be filmed by Martin Scorsese rather than Steve Sabol.

"Ooh, it's going to be bad. I mean bad," the man in the hat said. "There are a bunch of people I know who are dressing up as pills, and their girlfriends are going to be sitting next to them dressed up as nurses."

That's just in case you were worried things might be understated on Sunday when Terrell Owens, the man who went from out patterns to outpatient last week, returns to Philadelphia.

Someone asked Dallas coach Bill Parcells if he expected this week to be a circus as the Cowboys prepare for the trip and then make landfall among a populace dressed like 200-pound gelatin capsules.

"Well, what do you think it was around here last week?" Parcells said, which was probably the best question asked at his news conference.

..."We understand that it's not about one person coming in here, but it's about that whole football team," Andy Reid said yesterday, broaching the subject himself before someone else could bring it up. "There's nothing more that Coach Parcells would like than us to worry about one player coming in here when he knows he has 22 good ones. We're focusing on the whole team across the board."

That's a solid approach and one quarterback Donovan McNabb apparently shares.

"It's a division game," McNabb said after Monday's contest. "We need it. We look forward to the challenge. Anything else, I personally don't care."

Well, what did you expect? McNabb put up with his fill of nonsense from Owens ("I'm not the one who got tired in the Super Bowl"), but knows there's no percentage in rekindling the fire. That would be - you'll pardon the expression - a prescription for failure.

So he won't say, "I'm not the one who got tired just before the EMTs arrived," or anything of the sort, and we should just accept it. All the entertainment value in this contest will probably come from the people pouring beer into the little mouth holes of their pill costumes, which is probably not recommended by the Food and Drug Administration.

Here's the thing -- this is the type of game we inevitably lose. We're Philly -- as Bill Simmons noted recently, we're now so resigned to defeat that we start getting depressed and drunk long before big games end (okay, the drunk part is not surprising). Even worse, I'll be stuck watching the bulk of the game in an airport bar in Texas, which precludes my ability to make nasty jokes about Michael Irvin's neck, Barry Switzer's coaching, Michael Irvin's mink coat, Barry Switzer's carry-on luggage, Michael Irvin's female friends, Troy Aikman's personal life (not that there's anything wrong with that), Michael Irvin's analysis on ESPN, Emmitt Smith's dancing, Michael Irvin's cocaine, Jimmy Johnson's hair, Michel Irvin's "interviews" with T.O., Jerry Jones' plastic surgeon, and Michael Irvin. No, I'm not trying to encourage my fellow Eagles fans to think about and comment on these things. That's not my style at all.

My advice to Cowboys fans, assuming any of them can read -- don't wear any Dallas regalia to the Linc Sunday. It may not be the Vet, but many of the same people will be there... and besides, it's never a good idea to walk through a parking lot of hostile people with food products readily available. Of course, no one's ever accused Cowboys fans of being intelligent. And yes, I have friends who are Cowboy fans, but I try to judge a man by his entire character, not just his weak desire to abandon his hometown team and jump on the bandwagon of a relentlessly over-promoted football team. These people's souls can still be redeemed... probably.

All in all, it should be an entertaining Sunday. I'm looking forward to it, if we can survive the coverage during the week.

Commercial Flashback of the Day

God bless YouTube, which allows us the chance to see all the commercials we remember from childhood.

Jason Alexander just finished hosting "A Capital Fourth" this year. Other than that, however, he's been stuck bombing in sitcom roles ever since "Seinfeld" ended (and since A Capital Fourth featured Michael Bolton, one could argue it was truly a bomb as well). Maybe he can go back to his commercial career.

After all, the McDLT was a huge hit, wasn't it? Okay, maybe not, but maybe the sandwich just died thanks to McDonald's phasing out the strofoam containers due to environmental concerns -- thereby leaving us with no opportunity to keep the cool cool and the hot hot. in the meantime, let's flashback...

Busting Earmarks

Senators Coburn and Obama have a nice editorial in the Examiner touting the “Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act,” the just-passed bill that creates a search engine and database of federal spending. They make the point that this a first step, but an important one...

Giving taxpayers the ability to track more than $1 trillion in government contract and grant spending — including earmarks — by congressional district and keyword search opens the federal budget to the scrutiny Jefferson had in mind. The Federal Election Commission’s Web site has long given us information about which interests are contributing to which lawmakers, but this Web site can help us connect those dots one step further by detailing whether those lawmakers are repaying those interests with our tax dollars.

Our intent, though, is not to merely to guard against Abramoff-like acts of corruption, but to help taxpayers expose corruptions in our priorities, from Hurricane Katrina contracting abuse to self-interested pet projects.

In the Internet age, making this information available online should be automatic, which is why a vast array of interest groups, bloggers and commentators from both ends of the political spectrum joined forces to put public pressure on Congress when the bill was stalled.

Based on the following news, it's clear we need to keep working...

The annual Department of Defense appropriations bill is, by far, the single largest spending measure that Congress will pass this year. Every year, this enormous bill is a virtual treasure-trove in which members squirrel away pork projects to bring home to voters. While TCS will not complete a full analysis of this bill for a little while, the FY07 bill is clearly on its way to match or break the record earmark levels of the FY06 bill, which included 2,837 parochial and politically motivated earmarks worth $11.2 billion dollars. The RDT&E (Research, Development, Test and Evaluation) section of the bill contains 2,012 earmarks, comparing closely to the 2,070 earmarks in the same section of the FY06 bill.

Ironically, the first spending bill passed after the heralded and praised earmark transparency bill doesn't have a single lawmaker owning up to an earmark. All of the bill's $433.6 billion in spending has sailed through the new rule's wide-open loopholes. The only acknowledgement of the change is a small mention at the end of the conference report stating that no provisions meet the earmark criteria. Even the bill writers didn't say the bill didn't contain earmarks, just that none meet the definition outlined in the rule change.

Simply put, earmarking defense dollars dilutes the effectiveness of defense spending. Instead of funding programs relative to their necessity for national security, lawmakers are focused on protecting their local district's jobs and parochial pork. Programs should be funded relative to their national security merits, not the political muscle of the lawmaker supporting them.

(hat tip: Greyhawk at Mudville Gazette) what are some of these crucial national security earmarks, you ask? The left-wing dishrag notes a couple of them here...

Among the earmarks identified by Taxpayers for Common Sense were $1.7 million for photon research in upstate New York, care of Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Charles E. Schumer, both Democrats, and $1.2 million for prostate cancer research involving DNA, a pet cause of Senator Ted Stevens, Republican of Alaska, who is chairman of the military spending subcommittee and once suffered from the disease.

Unless the photon research yields torpedos capable of taking out Iran, or the prostate cancer research is focused on giving Ahmadinijad a pain in the ass, I'm not sure how this is related to national security.

What Annoying Song is Stuck in My Head Today?

If I need to suffer with a song stuck in my head, why shouldn't you have to do the same? Sometimes they're good, most times they're bad... but no matter what, they make you suffer. So I like to share the suffering whenever it happens.

My colleague ST decided, for God only knows what reason, to send me this video a week back. I think I'm glad I never saw this video before -- it might have scared me as a child. And who names a group "Baltimora"? Did they misspell the name on the marquee the first time these guys got a gig? Or did the city of Baltimore sue to prevent the use of the name? These are things I need to know.

Anyway, here's Baltimora's video for Tarzan Boy. You're welcome.

Technology Resolves Another Dispute

Well, there's one mystery solved...

High-tech detective work apparently has found the missing "a" in one of the most famous phrases ever spoken.

Astronaut Neil Armstrong's first words from the surface of the moon on July 20, 1969, now can be confidently recast, according to the research, as, "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind."

It is the more dramatic and grammatically correct phrasing that Armstrong, now 76, has often said was the version he transmitted to NASA's Mission Control for broadcast to worldwide television.

With the technology of the 1960s, however, his global audience heard his comment without the "a," making it "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" — a phrase that technically gave the same meaning of humankind to "man" and "mankind."

The discrepancy has been widely debated for years by historians, academics and fans of space travel, with the "a" sometimes appearing in parentheses in government documents and Armstrong being listed on unofficial Web sites as being guilty of a momentous flub.

The missing one-letter word was found this month in a software analysis of Armstrong's famous phrase by Peter Shann Ford, a Sydney, Australia-based computer programmer. Ford's company, Control Bionics, specializes in helping physically handicapped people use their nerve impulses to communicate through computers.

On Thursday, Ford and Auburn University historian James R. Hansen, Armstrong's authorized biographer, presented the findings to Armstrong and others in a meeting at the Smithsonian Institution's Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. They repeated the presentation at NASA's Washington headquarters, which has long backed Armstrong's version of the phrasing.

"I have reviewed the data and Peter Ford's analysis of it and I find the technology interesting and useful," Armstrong said in a statement. "I also find his conclusion persuasive. Persuasive is the appropriate word."

According to Ford, Armstrong spoke, "One small step for a man ..." in a total of 35 milliseconds, 10 times too fast for the "a" to be audible.

The "a" was transmitted, though, and can be verified in an analysis using a Canadian sound editing software called GoldWave , Ford said.

(hat tip: Vodkapundit) this is pretty cool -- short of building a time machine, this was probably the easist way to go. I'm just upset that the other major legend about the moon landing isn't true.