Something Was Bugging Her

An Athens, Alabama woman received a phone call at work from a neighbor. The helpful call was to alert the woman that her husband was, well, entertaining another woman at their apartment. Aren't small towns wonderful?

So the woman, 26 year old Cornelia Cottrell Smith, went home and found her husband in a, shall we say, compromising position. Athen's finest pick up the narrative from there:

"She came in and caught her husband with another woman and she grabbed a can of Raid and went at it," said another officer, Capt. Marty Bruce. "She hit the husband in the back of the head with it and then turned on the woman and also hit her in the head."

Cornelia wielded the can so effectively that both of the lovers were cut up. The woman required stitches. Cornelia was charged with domestic violence and released on $1,000 bail. 

Oh, and the husband the husband didn't require medical attention. Yet.

Murder Most Fowl

Boo Boo the chicken, who we first wrote about 'waaaaaay back in February (approximately five centuries in blog years) is dead. Boo Boo was the chicken who was saved from drowning by mouth-to-beak resuscitation when her owners found her floating beak down in a pond.

The owners say it was seizures that did her in. But as we darkly hinted at back then, we were not at all convinced it was an accident in the first place. We suspected fowl play. Now we're really suspicious. Who offed the bird to keep her from telling the whole sordid truth? We demand answers. We demand justice.

Oh, and a drumstick would be nice.

An Oxymoron

Liberal thought. Dennis Prager has a brilliant dissection of exactly what has been going wrong for the Democrats since the late 1960's. A descent from thinking about issues into feeling about issues.

One-word put-downs of opponents' ideas and motives were substituted for thoughtful rebuttal. Though liberals regard themselves as intellectual — their views, after all, are those of nearly all university professors — liberal thought has almost died. Instead of feeling the need to thoughtfully consider an idea, most liberal minds today work on automatic. One-word reactions to most issues are the liberal norm.

This is easy to demonstrate.

Here is a list of terms liberals apply to virtually every idea or action with which they differ:

Racist
Sexist
Homophobic
Islamophobic
Imperialist
Bigoted
Intolerant

And here is the list of one-word descriptions of what liberals are for:

Peace
Fairness
Tolerance
The poor
The disenfranchised
The environment

These two lists serve contemporary liberals in at least three ways.

First, they attack the motives of non-liberals and thereby morally dismiss the non-liberal person.

Second, these words make it easy to be a liberal — essentially all one needs to do is to memorize this brief list and apply the right term to any idea or policy. That is one reason young people are more likely to be liberal — they have not had the time or inclination to think issues through, but they know they oppose racism, imperialism and bigotry, and that they are for peace, tolerance and the environment.

Third, they make the liberal feel good about himself — by opposing conservative ideas and policies, he is automatically opposing racism, bigotry, imperialism, etc.

This happens here in my comments all the time. It happens with comment sections for a lot of people who are right-of-center on any issue. This exactly echoes something I have been thinking about lately. One only has to look at the McCain/New School incident to see feeling triumphing over thought.

There is a steep price paid for the liberal one-wording of complex ideas — the decline of liberal thought. But with more and more Americans graduating college and therefore taught the liberal list of one-word reactions instead of critical thinking, many liberals do not see any pressing need to think through issues. They therefore do not believe they have paid any price at all.

But American society is paying a steep price. Every car that has a bumper sticker declaring "War is not the answer" powerfully testifies to the intellectual decline of the well educated and to the devolution of "liberal thought" into an oxymoron.

I think that's about right. I think the tendency to act on feeling rather than thought gets progressively worse the further out to the left you go.

Immigration Reform Bills

An article in the Washington Post points out that reconciling the House and Senate versions of the immigration reform bills will be difficult. Blue Crab Boulevard has always maintained that the political reality is that if a fence is built and security at the border is made stronger, many other compromises can be reached. So if the Senate is truly serious about their measure, they need to immediately yield on controlling the border and take a tough stance. Almost everything else will fall into place. If the Senate negotiators do not take that stance, this is going to be a long nasty process with no guarantee of a successful outcome.

With Senate passage appearing likely, focus is shifting to negotiations with the House, expected to begin next month. The immigration issue fractures both parties, especially in the House, along unfamiliar lines, and it is far from clear whether House leaders can craft a compromise acceptable to majorities in both chambers.

House Majority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) told reporters yesterday: "You all know how far apart these two bills are, and how far apart the American people's opinions are. So trying to find a pathway that is acceptable to the House and Senate is going to be very difficult."

Chief Deputy House Whip Eric I. Cantor (R-Va.) said that if a compromise is to win House approval, "it needs to be about border security first." House members might accept some form of pathway to legality for illegal immigrants, he said, but only if it is preceded by clear evidence that tighter border restrictions are beginning to work.

Rep. Ray LaHood (R-Ill.), who supports the Senate version, said finding a workable House-Senate accord will be a challenge. "Whether the speaker and majority leader can pull that rabbit out of the hat is the $64 billion question," he said. "I think if the president puts his full weight behind it, he can get it. But it's a big pull."

Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), a prominent House conservative, called for a bill largely similar to the House version, adding a guest-worker program. But Pence's plan would require all illegal immigrants in the United States to be deported, a move most senators reject.

The Senate debate has mobilized groups opposed to legalizing illegal immigrants. Black conservatives and activists formed an 11-member coalition yesterday called Choose Black America, saying competition for jobs and housing with immigrants have worsened living and working conditions for blacks.

Security first or this will be very ugly.

Constitutional Issues

A number of senior Republicans in the Congress have complained that the search of Representative Jefferson's offices violated constitutional protections of the legislature from the executive branch. This one is likely going to end up in the Supreme Court from the look of it. Regardless of the outcome of that battle, when and if it occurs, the Democrats have an enormous problem on their hands right now.

In a news conference Monday, Jefferson repeated his denial of any wrongdoing and vowed to seek reelection in November. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) worked through intermediaries last night to try to persuade Jefferson to temporarily step aside as a member of the Ways and Means Committee, according to Democratic aides.

This will not be taken well by average voters, whether the Democratic party is able to see that or not. The naked politics of demanding "accountability" from the President while playing nice with fellow party members who keep large sums of cash in the freezer, looks very bad indeed.

I think the Democrats really blew it on this one and it's likely too late to fix the damage.

UPDATE: From the Big Lizards - That WILL leave a mark.

UPDATE: Raw Story reports Pelosi has asked Jefferson to step down from the Ways and Means committee. He has refused. They have copies of the correspondence.

UPDATE: Apparently Dennis Hastert isn't very good at thinking this one through.

Setting Borders

President Bush offered conditional support for Israel's unilateral actions in setting it's own borders.

With concern rising over Iran's nuclear program, Mr. Bush reconfirmed the United States commitment to defend Israel against attack, and said that he, too, wanted to exhaust all diplomatic options before discussing any military attack.

"Our primary objective is to solve this problem diplomatically," Mr. Bush said.

Mr. Bush and Mr. Olmert spoke at a joint news conference at the White House after a meeting here, their first since Mr. Olmert became prime minister. The two men said they also planned to meet later in the White House residence, without their advisers.

Mr. Bush praised Mr. Olmert's "bold ideas" for another unilateral Israeli withdrawal from occupied territory. But he said a negotiated agreement "best serves Israelis and Palestinians and the cause of peace."

The Palestinians are rapidly running out of negotiating room here. If Hamas does not meet the conditions required to make talks possible, the Israelis will simply set the borders and walk away. Since it does not appear that Hamas can make the necessary steps, this is almost completely a done deal.

Arafat screwed the Palestinian people repeatedly. Hamas is about to destroy any real chance for them.

Dissent Must Be Stifled

In a nightmarish, Rovian plot to suppress free speech, dissent must be crushed. The board members must never speak of disagreements. Nobody must know what goes on in the secret meetings. A cloak of darkness must be drawn tight over the proceedings of the most secretive administration in history. Dissent cannot be tolerated and will be rooted out. Leakers will be exposed and persecuted.

The latest news on the administration? Nope. The ACLU.

The American Civil Liberties Union is weighing new standards that would discourage its board members from publicly criticizing the organization's policies and internal administration.

"Where an individual director disagrees with a board position on matters of civil liberties policy, the director should refrain from publicly highlighting the fact of such disagreement," the committee that compiled the standards wrote in its proposals.

"Directors should remember that there is always a material prospect that public airing of the disagreement will affect the A.C.L.U. adversely in terms of public support and fund-raising," the proposals state.

Where are the high principles? Where are the absolutist standards? Where's the love?

"For the national board to consider promulgating a gag order on its members — I can't think of anything more contrary to the reason the A.C.L.U. exists," Mr. Hentoff added.

The proposals say that "a director may publicly disagree with an A.C.L.U. policy position, but may not criticize the A.C.L.U. board or staff." But Wendy Kaminer, a board member and a public critic of some decisions made by the organization's leadership, said that was a distinction without a difference.

Honestly, I thought this was a hoax. It's too funny to be real, right? Right?

Yeah, right.

Welcome to the brave, new ACLU.

UPDATE: Others are also seeing a problem here. Jeff Goldstein, The Sandbox, Jawa Report, Dr. Sanity, Captain's Quarters and Stop The ACLU.

This Tells You Something

The Senate Intelligence Committee strongly endorsed Michael Hayden to be the head of the CIA. Four Democrats joined all eight Republicans to vote for the candidate. The only no votes came from Russ Feingold, Even Bayh and Ron Wyden. Now, truthfully, I have no idea who Wyden is or why he voted no, but the other two are widely regarded as contenders for the Democratic nomination for President.

Whether this will penetrate the fog in some people's minds or not, this should make it pretty clear that the NSA program(s) that have generated such enormous amounts of punditry and screaming headlines are, almost certainly, legal. Not one Democrat would have joined the majority otherwise. Much too dangerous to be associated with it. Feingold and Bayh, however cannot, under any circumstances, be seen by the netroots as having endorsed the program that the left loves to hate.

So all the screaming and yelling over the NSA program comes down to a vote where the people responsible for the oversight are comfortable with the man who set up and ran the program(s).

Udate On Iraqi Government Taking Control Of Security

Although I posted about British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and their joint news conference here, this report on the same event from the Washington Post deserves a look. Most of the coverage of the press conference is the same. There are a couple of fascinating details in the article that weren't in the Guardian piece, though.

The Arab League also extended diplomatic overtures to the new Iraqi government, saying it would send its first political delegation to the country since the fall of longtime ruler Saddam Hussein. The group would work with "all sides" — including insurgent groups, presumably — in advance of a conference on reconciliation, according to Mukhtar Lamani, the league's envoy to Iraq.

So the new government has started to receive diplomatic ties. Even though the Arab League still tries to legitimize the holdouts, I suspect that is lip service. Then comes this:

The explosions left the ground covered with broken glass, shrapnel and bodies. Flames licked the two cars, now blackened hulks of twisted steel. Angry crowds, accompanied by Mahdi Army members waving assault rifles, came to protest what had happened.

"We will show them terrorism today," they chanted.

The Mahdi Army was also out in force in the Shiite holy city of Najaf on Monday night when two mortar shells landed near the residence of Moqtada al-Sadr, the Shiite cleric who leads the militia. The shells hit 300 yards away, on a front yard used as a parking lot, but the attack prompted hundreds of armed supporters to gather at Sadr's house. Police commandos filled the streets, ready for a confrontation that never happened.

Bad news: Militias are still out in public. Good news: They have turned against the insurgency completely. And they are not trying to attack the government forces.

I think these two things show the very real progress.

The Disturbing Face Of American Empire

Iowahawk has the real MacBeth. No, not the one that English guy wrote about a long, long time ago when people dressed weird. And talked funny. No, he has the real truth, the gestalt as it were. And a very, very disturbing picture, too.

UPDATE: You can just feel the love over at QandO, where there is a very thorough roundup about this cretin.