The Be Careful What You Wish For Department

I really had never even heard of Joe Lieberman before he became Al Gore's running mate. Throughout the 2000 election, I thought he was pretty much a lightweight, if I thought of him at all. The one real memory of his time as the candidate for VP was after the election when he went on television and (I thought at the time) whined that "Wouldn't it be awful if we conceded and found out later we had won?" (Shooting from memory here, but I'm pretty sure that's dead on what he said).

But over the past few years, I started to notice that, while I don't much care for some of his ideas, he has the one big idea right; America is something worth protecting, and we need to defend it. That makes Lieberman someone I can respect if not always agree with. Someone who puts his country ahead of his politics.

Enter the left wing of the left-wing party. They have decided that Lieberman must (politically) die. They want Lieberman out of office and have totally vilified him. They are promoting a Democratic primary challenge against him. It also looks like Lieberman has decided to fight back. He is refusing to rule out a run as an independent. Frankly, if he does, I think the voters who know him and have continued to elect him will elect him again (could be wrong here since I don't live there). Incumbents do have an enormous advantage in name recognition.

So, if the Democratic party turns against him and follows the lead of the folks on the far left, do you honestly think Lieberman will be happy about it? Do you think he will follow the party line if he wins? I do not get the impression that Lieberman is an idiot.

So, by all means, keep trying to kill Lieberman's career. Keep up the pressure from the "netroots". In the end, maybe you'll get what you wish for. Maybe Lieberman will be out of the Democratic Party.

But still a Senator.

UPDATE: It turns out that Sreamin' Howie Dean's brother is backing Lieberman's rival, using the organization Dean founded. Hmmmm.

Out. Of. The. Park.

Mark Steyn, illegal immigration, READ IT.

UPDATE: Powerline has a post up about coordinated demonstrations being planned for tomorrow. They need volunteers to capture video and photos. Sounds worthwhile.

BTW, pick any of the events planned and search the names of "coordinators". It is illuminating. A decent reporter out there should jump on this - it's potential Pulitzer stuff. I rather doubt any will though….

UPDATE: Boehner is starting to say that there is a real problem. He would appear to be breaking with Bush on this one.

UPDATE: Photos from Minnesota, courtesy of EckerNet.

UPDATE: No pictures from Random Numbers. His camera was smashed by thugs. As he puts it: "but had this been a mostly white anti-illegal-immigrant rally and I were a Latino covering it, it would have been in the headlines of the DaMN the following day on page one."

Every Once In A While

Things just seem to work out. Today, I took my youngest girl to the Sportsman's club where we are members. She really wanted to try out the new rifle she won last week. So she and I loaded everything into the car and drove down. When we got there, a squad was just starting a round of trap. We went in and signed in for trap and the rifle/pistol range. Then we went out and chatted with people, waiting for the next trap squad to start.

It was only a short wait and we headed\ed out to start a round. I was trying the new 12 gauger I won last week, while my daughter had her mother's old 20 gauger Savage. I haven't shot trap in probably ten years or more, so I didn't expect to do well. I didn't, I only shot an 11, my daughter shot a 10. But it was fun, and the new gun is really nice, points fast and feels good.

Then off to the rifle/pistol range. When we got there a man was teaching his wife to shoot a pistol, so we waited and chatted with the Range Safety Officer (RSO). Nice guy, quite young (by my standards, anyway). He made a few suggestions on how to check the scope alignment on the new H&R .243 Winchester we were going to try out. When it was our turn, my daughter got to try her new .22 and I shot a few magazines through my carry gun. Then it was time to try the new H&R.

The RSO put up a large paper target for me to get the gun sighted. The first shot (at 25 yards) was left of center, but close to the right elevation. Since he also used a .243 Win rifle, he said the elevation was about right, but it needed to come right to correct. Did all that, fired a few more, correcting each time and got it pretty close to center. Then we trooped over to the 100 yard range. I took a shot, we checked it. Perfectly centered and about 1-1/2 inches high. The RSO said that was dead on for 200 yards. He said the gun would be dead accurate from 100 to 300 now. So I went back and took another shot to confirm the sighting. We trooped back out to look where we had hit (no shooting scope, so we walked a lot).

We looked that target up and down, left and right. We could only see the one hole. I was stunned, I had had that thing centered, I thought. Then he peered really closely at the hole. It wasn't round, it was very slightly oval. He stood up and said, "Nice shooting," with a tinge of respect in his voice. My daughters eye's got a bit wide. Me, I was flat out floored. I could not make that shot again in a million years. Before anyone says I'm full of it, I hasten to add I was shooting from a sandbag rest on a bench, not freehand. Like a kid, I kept the target.

When we got home my daughter couldn't wait to show her Mom the target. Then she showed her brother who's jaw actually dropped - funny as heck to see. I know she's going to tell her friends, too. Which will just give them another reason to be terrified of me! In a few days, nobody will remember that I did that and life will go on.

But I think maybe, just maybe, my little girl is going to think her Daddy is wonderful for a little while longer.

Washington Post Gets It Right

In an unsigned editorial in today's Washington Post, the latest storm and fury about the President "leaking" material is addressed pretty well. Although calling the handling of the leak clumsy, they also note that it was done for good reasons. All the revisionist, 20/20 hindsight aside, it was the strongest evidence the administration had at the time. They also point out that much of what Bush's fiercest critics believe is simply wrong. Joseph Wilson is a liar, and they call him on it.

The affair concerns, once again, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV and his absurdly over-examined visit to the African country of Niger in 2002. Each time the case surfaces, opponents of the war in Iraq use it to raise a different set of charges, so it's worth recalling the previous iterations. Mr. Wilson originally claimed in a 2003 New York Times op-ed and in conversations with numerous reporters that he had debunked a report that Iraq was seeking to purchase uranium from Niger and that Mr. Bush's subsequent inclusion of that allegation in his State of the Union address showed that he had deliberately "twisted" intelligence "to exaggerate the Iraq threat." The material that Mr. Bush ordered declassified established, as have several subsequent investigations, that Mr. Wilson was the one guilty of twisting the truth. In fact, his report supported the conclusion that Iraq had sought uranium. (Emphasis added)

WaPo's conclusion:

As Mr. Fitzgerald pointed out at the time of Mr. Libby's indictment last fall, none of this is particularly relevant to the question of whether the grounds for war in Iraq were sound or bogus. It's unfortunate that those who seek to prove the latter would now claim that Mr. Bush did something wrong by releasing for public review some of the intelligence he used in making his most momentous decision.

This is, I think, enough for reasonable people to let this matter go. Though I rather doubt a lot of people will.

UPDATE: Captain Ed has some interesting information up about this as well.

UPDATE: Gateway Pundit has an astonishingly complete roundup of Joe Wilson's lies. There's a lot of links there, folks. 

UPDATE: Christopher Hitchens, obviously no fan of the Bush administration (since he's, like, suing it) has put out an article that demolishes the "Bush Lied" meme about Niger and Iraq's attempt to buy uranium. Joe Wilson looks worse and worse. I would suspect that the left would be better served to kick Wilson and his bull to the curb than to keep trying to ride this horse. I have to say, I admire a man so principled that he will defend someone he is taking legal action against when the other party is being wrongfully accused. Kudos. Mr. Hitchens.

All Fall Down

There is a persistent story that the children's nursery rhyme "Ring Around The Rosie" isn't a sweet innocent bit of doggerel. The story is that the poem is actually about the black plague. The 'pocket full of posies' is supposed to signify the carrying of pleasant smelling flowers in hopes of warding off the disease, etc. The last line, 'we all fall down' means that at the end, the plague takes you anyway.

Pretty depressing, isn't it?

Snopes doesn't buy into that particular theory of the meaning of the rhyme, and has a lengthy debunking that has been up on their website for a long time. The story, however, persists. I just saw it repeated on a new show on the Discovery channel. The persistence of of some urban legends is astonishing.

Right now there is an absolute frenzy going on in the blogospere and in the MSM over the latest Scandal Of The Week™ that will bring the administration down. It is, of course just the latest in a long, long, long string of these things and will likely end up as the others have - nowhere. But let's say the angry left gets it's way and they bring down the President. What then? Why President Cheney is sworn in. Then the angry left will go after Cheney in hopes of bringing him down too (but it's getting close to the next election by then, probably not enough time). But they will continue attacking, regardless. All real progress will come to a standstill, congress will not be able to get any worthwhile legislation passed.

And in the end will accomplish what? The one absolute guaranteed outcome is quite simple: They will have ensured that the next President WILL be subjected to the exact same treatment. In other words they will have ensured that no President of the United States will ever be able to govern effectively. They will have turned the electoral process on it's ear and made any election subject to endless revision. They will have established the tyranny of the mob.

And we will all fall down.