Possibly the funniest man writing on the web…..

Scott Ott is right up there with the best. He frankly outdoes himself on this one.

The line that practically made me fall out of my seat:

“On C-Span, he’s limited to giving 8th-grade civics lessons to U.S.
Senators,” he said. “But on satellite radio, he could really explore the
subtleties of Constitutional law with an audience that could understand and
appreciate it.”

They say love is blind

Fortunately for this guy, so is hate……….

He couldn’t get out of the way?

The lede says it all:

An intrepid British oarsman’s bid to row round Antarctica ended after just 30
kilometres (20 miles) when he unexpectedly collided with the Falkland Islands,
British newspapers reported.

Unexpectedly collided. With the Falkland Islands. Bwahahahahaha. Excuse me a moment. I have to get some windex and clean up the monitor……

Uh oh. If events tend to occur in groups of three…..

This is the second one just today……

Cleanliness is next to……..

This is very amusing……

An open letter

To Whom It May Concern;

For many years now, I have watched in dismay as the level of civility has steadily declined in political speech. I have watched from the sidelines as the political debate became less and less about substantive issues and more and more about getting sound bites onto the evening news. We have reached a point where the party that lost the last election spends all of it’s time re-fighting that failed campaign instead of coming up with new ideas.

I watched in dismay a party once known for great ideas and leadership fell into mindless screeching hatred and non-stop attempts to create scandals. Even stooping so low as to embrace liars and forged documentation. Anything to gain power, right?

I watched in dismay as a party once known for steadiness and consistency slipped into the worst forms of pork-barrel vote-buying and egregious behavior with a sleazy lobbyist. Anything to keep power, right?

I see politicians who should know better make statements that are taken up by and repeated by the very people who would destroy this country. Making statements that encourage our nation’s enemies and present a portrait of a country in disarray, giving us an appearance of weakness, these are not good things for our nation.

I see employees of government agencies actively leaking secrets to an increasingly irresponsible media. These people are violating their oaths and our trust to further their own agendas at the expense of our nation’s international reputation. Media that is increasingly willing to twist, distort and outright fabricate evidence and even knowingly print classified information if that is what it takes to reach their goals.

Consider for a moment how we look to the rest of the world.

Nations that are at least nominally friendly with us see the party out of power screaming that the party in power stole high office. They see candidates for high office accusing the President of high crimes without presenting a shred of credible evidence. They see charges and counter charges flying back and forth while an out of control media paints a bleak picture of America. In other words, our friends see a nation in disarray.

Our enemies see politicians calling for a cut-and-run strategy after readily voting to go to war, like so many times in the past. They get sound bites from our own people that they can read back to the world. Our media seems to take enormous, almost gloating pleasure in transmitting those sound bites as rapidly as they can. In other words, they see a weak nation in disarray.

I, for one, am fed up with all of this. I ask you all, have you no shame? If you cannot put aside the worst forms of partisan bickering for the sake of our nation, YOU DO NOT deserve to hold national office. If you knowingly leak classified information, YOU DO NOT deserve a position of trust in our government. If you cannot act responsibly and report news honestly, YOU DO NOT deserve respect or an audience. Ask yourselves; are you on the list of the undeserving? If you are, you should be ashamed. You know who you are and you need to correct your behavior before you kill us all.

Sincerely,

Gaius

A call for an immediate correction

CNet should issue an immediate correction to a story that is getting a LOT of attention in various quarters.

See here and here for examples. (I made a number of comments on the first link and a couple on one of the sites Glenn Reynolds linked as well).

I spent a goodly amount of time on this yesterday trying to run it down. Mostly, I commented or emailed others since my little blog hasn’t exactly hit the bigtime on readership.

McCullagh’s article needs to be corrected ASAP to stop any further spread of incorrect information. If it is not corrected as soon as practical, both McCullagh’s and CNet’s credibility takes an enormous hit.

And someone really needs to clue in the ACLU if one of their spokespersons is so incapable of reading and understanding a statute. I mean, I’m not even a lawyer and I arrived at essentially the same conclusion as the folks at Volokh, without even having the benefit of understanding the relevant case law.

Update 1-11-2006: Instapundit has a link to an opinion by Eugene Volokh that raises some potential issues with the wording of the law. As I read his analysis there may or may not be concerns depending on how it is interpreted. I still believe the original article from CNet is factually incorrect and should be corrected however.

It’s a MAD world….

Ok, this is getting scary.

The Iranians cut the seals of the IAEA in front of the IAEA Inspectors. Nothing is done.

The President of the EU says: “that while he was “very concerned” about the recent developments, the time for international sanctions “has not yet arrived”.

The British foreign Minister says: “You’re pushing your luck”

When will it be time to actually do something? Other than make vague statements? When there are craters all over the Middle East and Europe?

The old Cold War doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) depended on the parties involved being fundamentally sane. I don’t think the Iranian leadership would qualify.

Talk about overkill…

Ok, so the guy is driving a tractor at a whopping 12 mph. This is a low-speed chase. The British cops needed “Six police cars and even a helicopter ” to round this guy up? A helicopter?

The mind boggles……

Warning: Network TV may be hazardous…

It may even bore a person to death…… But leaving the body for 2-1/2 years? Holy smoke.

Would you trust these guys?

This is just so ironic.

The funniest thing is that it happened at a party to mark the end of a fire awareness promotional event!

Everyone’s a critic…..

But some critics play rough!