Final Protective Fire

Wednesday, April 30, 2003

 

Phillipe De Croy of the Volokh Conspiracy explains exactly why the idea of using recess appointments to get around the Democrats' obstruction in judicial confirmations is a bad idea. In fact, as he explains, its exactly what the Democrats hope that President Bush will do.

Robin 9:48 AM

 

From this discussion of where and what "Mikes' Place", the target of the most recent homicide bombing by Palestinians, is - it appears that that bombing was aimed at Americans. Which leads to the question, why are we creating a "roadmap" to a state for the Palestinians? Charles Johnson shows an example here of the Palestinian Authority continuing to call for more terrorism, more war crimes, more death cult.

Robin 9:45 AM

Monday, April 28, 2003

 

Jonah Goldberg of NRO does a good job of puncturing Hollywood's more pompous utterings.

Robin 4:28 PM

Friday, April 25, 2003

 

Beyond the mere differences in ideology, what infuriates me the most about Paul Krugman is that he covers deliberate misrepresentation of economic principles in his columns with appeals to his supposed authority. There are several people who do a better job than I in explaining how Krugman is being intentionally dishonest, Donald Luskin caught him in a brazen one and explains how Krugman's attempt to squirm out of it only makes it more obvious how intentional the misrepresentations are.

Robin 9:09 AM

Thursday, April 24, 2003

 

The Dixie Chicks have demonstrated the insincerity of their "apology" with this silliness. Their stupid remarks could have been cleaned up with a simple apology. But they've demonstrated now that they are more interested in milking the victim status. That's it for me, they are on the permanent boycott list.
UPDATE:Jeff Javis points us to this young man's hilarious sendup.

Robin 1:47 PM

Wednesday, April 23, 2003

 

An interesting US Supreme Court opinion was published today. This opinion looks at first glance to be a boring question about whether or not the California Franchise Tax Board can be sued in Nevada state courts. But in reality it is a slightly more interesting question about the Full Faith and Credit clause of the US Constitution. This is the clause that gay rights activists have claimed would require all 50 states to recognize gay marriage if they succeed in getting one state to recognize it.

Unfortunately, its my opinion that the Supreme Court precedent in this area is against them. This case illustrates why, the case is about a person who, not liking the CFTB's attempt to get him to pay a disputed tax assessment, sued that board in Nevada. As the opinion begins: "We granted certiorari to resolve whether the Nevada Supreme Court's refusal to extend full faith and credit to California's statute immunizing its tax collection agency from suit violates Article IV, §1 of the Constitution. We conclude it does not, and we therefore affirm the judgment of the Nevada Supreme Court." The CFTB argues that California law makes them immune in Nevada. This is all the more amusing because the previous USSCt opinion in this area, Nevada v. Hall 440 U. S. 410 (1979), was when a California court ignored Nevada's soverign immunity statute in a negligence suit naming Nevada as a defendant in a matter arising from a traffic accident.

Today, a unanimous USSCt ruled, following that previous case, that Nevada is not obligated by the US Constitution to apply California law of soverign immunity in Nevada courts where it contradicts Nevada's own law. Its my belief that this illustrates the flaw in the claim that gay marriages would have to be recognized by other states. These cases about the Full Faith and Credit clause would mean, in my opinion, that a state that banned gay marriages within its own borders would not be required to recognize the validity of a marriage solemnicized under another state's law.

Robin 10:39 AM

Tuesday, April 22, 2003

 

Ronald Bailey writing for Reason provides a breath of "fresh air" in rebuttal to all the nonsense written by dishonest environmental groups.

Robin 8:58 PM

 

The subject of human-caused global warming is full of more deliberately dishonest junk science than you can imagine. If you are interested in learning more, I suggest starting with John Daly's site. If it weren't for the damaging policy proposals, proposals that would impact the health, and wealth of billions of people, this article discussing just how horribly bad the climate modeling is would be hilarious.

Robin 10:10 AM

Monday, April 21, 2003

 

The revelation of evidence that British MP Galloway has actually been in the pay of Iraq is just astonishing. Not merely the fact of the payoffs but Galloway's apparent belief that he can just deny the evidence is unbelievable. Not being knowledgeable of the applicable law in Britain, I'm wondering what the punishment would be for this crime ... and of course whether or not Blair has the guts to prosecute. Courtesy of Little Green Footballs.

Robin 9:26 PM

 

This is an interesting report from NYT about an unnamed Iraqi scientist leading US forces closer to the real fate of Iraq's WMD programs.

Robin 12:38 AM

Saturday, April 19, 2003

 

If you are still looking for Germany's motive for obstruction leading up to the Iraq war, the Daily Telegraph has some data for you on the links between Iraqi intelligence and German intelligence services and offers of sweetheart deals for Germany in exchange for their obstruction.

Robin 8:29 PM

Friday, April 18, 2003

 

Christopher Hitchins gives us his reaction that a Halliburton subsidiary got a contract in Iraq. I'll summarize and translate to American english: "Well, duh".

Robin 3:17 PM

 

Its amusing how blatant the campaign finance fraud already is, here's an example of John Edwards' campaign already getting caught up in a brazenly open violation by its donors. Link shamelessly stolen from Crooowblog.

Robin 9:35 AM

Thursday, April 17, 2003

 

And here, in his piece on the ACLU's misleading ads about the PATRIOT Act, Orin Kerr says something that I've been saying in the past ... you must judge if he says it "better" than I have.

Robin 3:18 PM

 

Once again, Clayton Cramer says something better than I do. Blast him.

Robin 3:16 PM

 

Among some warbloggers there has been a theme of how President Bush is supposedly astonishingly brilliant in the diplomatic maneuvering that led up to the Iraq war. Now I've been overall a fan of the work that the Bush administration has done with respect to the War on Terror since September 11, 2001, but I'm more of the opinion that its been a combination of good work, improvisation, and some amazingly stupid moves on the part of France ( as even they seem to be recognizing), Germany and Russia. However, I'm actually starting to buy into the theme when I read of the resistance of the Axis of Weasels to removing the UN sanctions on Iraq immediately. The call by President Bush for an immediate end to the sanctions was one of those "win-win" moves that is far more subtle than it first appears. France, Germany and Russia are now making even more plain the complete immorality of their position on Iraq, by showing their desire to continue the punishment of Iraq for the purpose ( real or merely impugned ) of desiring to continue to oppose the United States.

Robin 1:34 PM

 

The supposed "looting" of Iraq's antiquities is looking less and less like a mob of looters and more like a well-planned inside job.

Robin 11:36 AM

 

Claudia Winkler of the Weekly Standard exposes yet another invention of the anti-Bush, "anti-war" crowd, this time a silly smear job on Colin Powell.

Robin 11:28 AM

Wednesday, April 16, 2003

 

On Page 2, Jim Caple proposes a new career for Al-Sahhaf. Shamelessly stolen from Charles Murtaugh.

Robin 5:25 PM

Tuesday, April 15, 2003

 

Bill Herbert found that the argument that the International Criminal Court would be used as a political venue against American foriegn policy is already being proven out.

Robin 3:47 PM

Sunday, April 13, 2003

 

Clayton Cramer shares my disgust at the news that Sean Penn has a concealed weapons permit from Marin County.

Robin 1:42 PM

Saturday, April 12, 2003

 

Hugh Hewitt on his radio program Friday afternoon was in a high dander about this attempt by CNN's Eason Jordan to cover CNN's dishonest ass on its Iraq coverage as described by Jim Glassman. The next time someone attacks Fox News for being biased, I'm just going to say "At least Fox News hasn't covered up any murderers lately". Glenn Reynolds has his take here, calling it worse than a journalistic "Enron" pointing out that Jordan has completely compromised CNN with his lies.

What Reynolds and Glassman don't mention was that the stories - that CNN thought were so important to cover that they were willing to compromise themselves - were anti-US propaganda pieces by the Iraq government about how horrible the UN sanctions supposedly were.

The bottom line is that we see once again that outright lying - as shown by Peter Arnett disgusting past at CNN during the first Gulf War and that "Tailwind" fiasco - are an integral part of CNN culture and have been for a decade and a half.

Robin 7:20 AM

Wednesday, April 09, 2003

 

Its pretty wild to find this in the Guardian suggesting that the death of two journalists at the Palestine Hotel wasn't due to American fire.

Robin 9:59 PM

Monday, April 07, 2003

 

Orin Kerr of the Volokh Conspiracy gives us this analysis of the PATRIOT Act's Internet surveillance provisions. He discusses it here on their blog. Meanwhile, Clayton thinks that the librarians are overreacting.

Robin 4:03 PM

 

This story is starting to sound like a real find of chemical weapons and their delivery systems - ready to go.

Robin 10:44 AM

Sunday, April 06, 2003

 

I think that this story explains that on-again, off-again report of the British capturing a high-ranking Iraqi general. As well as the report at one time that the Iraqi 51st Division was surrendering en masse. Note that I suspect that the details in this story are not all "correct" either.

Robin 10:55 PM

 

Drudge has a story about Hillary's book not showing up at the publisher's yet. I assume no one is surprised? I certainly think that it isn't possible for her to produce a saleable book as what she would like to write would be as unpublishable as the Iraqi Information Minister's latest press release.

Robin 10:53 PM

 

I haven't been blogging much on the details of the war for a couple of reasons. The best one of course is that Katzman and Telenko at Winds of Change have been doing so much better at it than I would ( like this great piece ).
The second is that so often my comments have been obsoleted within minutes of my attempt to post them.
However, tonight we appear to be making a serious push into Baghdad itself. I wanted to post a short note to the effect that Gen. Tommy Franks has delighted me during the last month or so with his ability to surprise me. He has demonstrated an astonishingly adaptable tactical and operational toolkit in this war. Exactly what Gen. Franks' plan for taking Baghdad is, I still cannot discern from the dispositions and maneuvers. I thought that the mechanized version of a "drive-by" by the 3rd Infantry Division a few days ago was a brilliant way to both probe Baghdad and demonstrate mastery of the city without leaving US troops exposed to Iraqi attacks in the city. Dunnigan's map is already obsolete and I'm anxious to read of the SpecOps actions that are taking place in Baghdad once the war is over.
There is the possibility of resistance firming up but I'm getting more confident that we'll see a sudden collapse of the Iraqi regime in days or hours.

Robin 10:44 PM

 

I couldn't resist some lighter material, so I found this at Joanne Jacobs fine blog. I was able to defeat Joanne's cavier-eating librarian monkey with ease:

Robin is a Fruit-Eating Pirate Monkey ...with a Battle Rating of 9.1 To see if your Food-Eating Battle Monkey can defeat Robin, enter your name:

Robin 3:15 PM

 

Dave Kopel lists the long litany of misrepresentations and intentional lies in Bowling for Columbine, a film that won an Oscar despite not qualifying for the documentary category.

Robin 12:37 AM

Friday, April 04, 2003

 

Steve found some denizens of DU showing what complete slime they are. Hey, Democrats, there is the real face of your party.

Robin 11:32 PM

 

Michael Kelly's death while reporting with the 3rd Infantry Division greatly saddens me. My condolences to his family, friends and colleagues at Atlantic Monthly. I'll greatly miss his insightful columns.

Robin 3:01 PM

Wednesday, April 02, 2003

 

Winds of Change gives us this wonderful exchange between a war protestor and an older woman.

Robin 11:12 PM

Tuesday, April 01, 2003

 

I'm looking forward to learning more about the rescue of PFC Lynch, but one thing is clear. This is going to be a story that the Rangers and SEAL's involved will be dining out on for a decade. And no doubt deservedly so.

Robin 8:53 PM

 

I don't know how long it will last, but today at least don't miss Misha's personal transformation.

Robin 4:09 PM