Bear Left

We here at Blue Crab Boulevard hate to keep being the bearers of bad news, but the animal uprising is simply too important to ignore. We've been warning about the bears being on the march the past few days, and now there is still more evidence. A grizzly bear has just escaped from a resort where he had been living for the second time in a few days.

GOLDEN, British Columbia - A freedom-loving grizzly bear named Boo smashed a heavy steel door and barreled through two electric fences to escape a second time from a resort near this south-central British Columbia town.

Boo was recaptured Friday, two weeks after breaking out of an artificial den at the Kicking Horse Mountain Resort, but escaped from tighter confinement within a day, resort spokesman Michael Dalzell said Tuesday.

"It's unbelievable," Dalzell said. "We thought there was no way, it was absolutely impossible, but he found a way. It was basically like breaking out of Fort Knox."

He said the bear bashed a nearly 400-pound steel door off its four bolts, destroyed an electrical box while tearing through two electric fences and scrambled over a 12-foot fence anchored with 2 feet of steel below ground.

"I think he just kept charging it (the door) and charging it until it broke off its bolts," Dalzell said. "Everything was completely trashed. We are dealing with a pretty smart and determined bear."

The search team that caught Boo on Friday went back to work Sunday morning but saw no sign of the grizzly after logging more than 50 hours in a helicopter.

Resort staff had planned to neuter Boo, but he got away first. Once he's located, authorities will decide whether to try to recapture him again, Dalzell said.

"Right now we are in the process of looking for him . . . we are not out to try to trap or tranquilize him," he said. "We are looking at all options. Obviously, we need to just really look at our program and figure this one out."

The bear has lived inside a 22-acre enclosure since his mother was illegally shot by a hunter in 2002. It's unclear if he could fend for himself and, being used to humans, would likely be a problem in the wild, experts said.

That is one motivated bear. Still, this is just more proof that the bears are trying to gather as part of the nefarious plot of the animals. Not that we wouldn't try to escape if we knew about what they had planned for us, too.

Seeing One Side

Norm Geras has a post that starts out detailing seven reports of atrocities committed in Iraq. Atrocities committed by terrorists on Iraqi civilians. He does this to introduce an opinion from the Guardian by columnist Gary Younge. Geras then proceeds to point out the problem with Younge's assessment.

That's just a small number of reports from June 2006. As is now all too well known, I could easily have added to them. (See here, for example, those links which are for incidents in Iraq.) But they suffice as a backdrop against which to highlight what I want to, which is an argument by Gary Younge from a couple of days ago. He's writing about 'the slew of alleged atrocities committed by the US military in Iraq', and in this context he says:

To treat even these few incidents as isolated chapters is to miss the broader, enduring narrative. For these are not the unfathomable offshoots of this war but the entirely foreseeable corollaries of it. This is what occupation is; this is what occupation does. There is nothing specifically American about it. Any nation that occupies another by force will meet resistance. For that resistance to be effective, it must have deep roots in local communities where opposition to the occupation is widespread. Unable to distinguish between insurgent and civilian, occupiers will regard all civilians as potential insurgents and all territory as enemy territory.

And he concludes:

If the wanton murder of civilians is what it takes to complete your mission, there is clearly something wrong with the mission.

Let me make it clear that my point in drawing attention to the reports with which I began is not to draw attention away from any atrocities that have been committed in Iraq by US soldiers. At Haditha and elsewhere, if there have been transgressions of the laws of war by American personnel, then they should be investigated and prosecuted. What is breathtaking about Younge's piece, however, is the structure of justifying advocacy it contains. He talks of the wanton murder of civilians in order to delegitimize the US occupation, while passing over the fact that, almost daily, wanton murder is being committed by forces opposed to the occupation, and as a way of defeating not only the occupation itself but also political arrangements democratically voted for by the Iraqi people. It's just as if this weren't happening or else had no troubling moral implications in Younge's head. No, on the other side of things, there is just 'resistance' - almost like a natural phenomenon, beyond right and wrong, good or evil. How come it doesn't occur to him that if 'the wanton murder of civilians' - week in and week out - is part of the resistance to occupation, then there is 'clearly something wrong' with this so-called resistance? And how come he doesn't then go on to ask what it would mean if this so-called resistance were to enjoy the triumph of bringing about a coalition withdrawal? How come there isn't a two-sided assessment of the aforesaid 'mission', informed by all those wanton murders with which I began? It seems that wanton murder in Iraq doesn't show up on Younge's radar unless it's Americans who are responsible for it. (Emphasis added.)

That is exactly the parameter that is being avoided by all the people who are decrying the American efforts in Iraq. This is not one-sided. There are truly bad elements on the other side who are doing their best to cause America to withdraw. How bad would it be in Iraq if the US does withdraw? Would it be better? I don't think it would. Geras doesn't think so, either.

Pump It Up!

I've been on tenterhooks
Ending in dirty looks,
Listening to the muzak,
Thinking 'bout this n that.
She said thats that.
I don't wanna chitter-chat.
Turn it down a little bit
Or turn it down flat.

Pump it up when you don't really need it.
Pump it up until you can feel it.

Down in the pleasure centre,
Hell bent or heaven sent,
Listen to the propaganda,
Listen to the latest slander.
Theres nothing underhand
That she wouldn't understand.

Pump it up until you can feel it.
Pump it up when you don't really need it.

(Elvis Costello, Pump It Up, 1978)

A former judge from Bristow, Oklahoma is on trial for allegedly having a somewhat unusual way to pass the time during those long, dreary trials. He is accused of amusing himself by, well, abusing himself.

With a plastic penis pump.

Former Judge Donald D. Thompson, a veteran of 23 years on the bench, is on trial on charges he used a penis pump on himself in the courtroom while sitting in judgment of others.

Over the past few days, the jurors have watched a defense attorney and a prosecutor pantomime masturbation. A doctor has lectured on the lengths the defendant was willing to go to enhance his sexual performance.

The white-handled sexual device sits before the jury box for hours at a time. Occasionally an attorney picks it up and squeezes the handle, demonstrating the "sh-sh" sound of air rushing through the contraption's plastic tubing.

The jurors sometimes exchange awkward looks and break into nervous laughter when the testimony takes a lurid turn.

Thompson, 59, is charged with four counts of indecent exposure, each punishable by up to 10 years in prison. If convicted, he would also have to register as a sex offender, and his $7,489.91-a-month pension would be in jeopardy.

Thompson's former court reporter, Lisa Foster, wiped away tears as she described tracing an unfamiliar "sh-sh" in the courtroom to her boss. She testified that between 2001 and 2003 she saw Thompson expose himself at least 15 times.

"I was really shocked and I was kind of scared because it was so bizarre," said Foster.

She testified that during a trial in 2002, she heard the pump during the emotional testimony of a murdered toddler's grandfather.

The grandfather "was getting real teary-eyed, and the judge was up there pumping on that pump," she said. "It was sickening."

The allegations came to light after a police officer who was in Thompson's court heard pumping sounds and took photos of the device during a break in the proceedings.

Thompson took the stand in his own defense, saying the device was a gag gift from a longtime friend with whom he had joked about erectile dysfunction. He said he kept the pump under the bench or in his office but didn't use it.

"In 20-20 hindsight, I should have thrown it away," he said.

We here at Blue Crab Boulevard do not recommend this technique for passing the time in a public place. On your own time, we don't really object, but we really don't want to hear about it, either.

(And the Elvis Costello lyrics are weirdly appropriate. How'd he do that? Never mind, we don't want to know that, either.)

Palestinian Suicide Watch

Media sources are reporting that the Palestinian group that kidnapped an 18-year old Israeli has announced his execution. The Popular Resistance Committee (PRC) supposedly made the announcement, but no confirmation has yet been received. Reports are in the Jerusalem Post and the AP.

J-Post: An unconfirmed report from the Popular Resistance Committees said early Thursday that it executed 18-year-old Eliyahu Asheri, an Israeli settler kidnapped earlier in the week in the West Bank.

The group, which has links to the ruling Hamas, had threatened to execute the Israeli if Israel did not halt its invasion of Gaza.

Earlier Wednesday, Israel's fears came true Wednesday when a spokesman for the PRC in the Gaza Strip revealed an authentic copy of missing teenager Asheri's identity card to the press, confirming claims that he had been kidnapped.

AP is also reporting that Israeli forces have captured many of the Palestinian cabinet members and lawmakers.

Hamas officials said more than 30 lawmakers have been arrested in the West Bank.

Palestinian security officials said Israeli forces detained the Palestinian deputy prime minister, Nasser Shaer, and three other Cabinet ministers, as well as four lawmakers in Ramallah. Several others were arrested in the town of Jenin, they said.

Israeli media reported a roundup of Hamas lawmakers in Jerusalem and other locations.

Also, the Hamas mayor of the West Bank town of Qalqiliya and his deputy were detained, security officials said.

This is an appallingly bad strategy for the Palestinians and will lead to even their staunchest apologists turning their backs on the Palestinians.

UPDATE: Others: Assorted Babble, All Things Beautiful, Riehl World View, Praire Pundit, Gateway Pundit, Liberty and Justice, Israel Matzav, Flopping Aces, Daily Pundit, Obligatory Anecdotes,

101st Blog Of The Day

Today my ongoing mission to visit one member of the fighting 101st led me over to Don Singleton. Don's been kind enough to link here now and then. Don has a commentary up about Barack Obama's statements that the Democrats need to court evangelicals. And quite a lot of other stuff as well.

I’ll Bet That Was Fun

Israeli jets made a low-level (and presumably high speed) pass over the summer residence of Bashar Assad, the president of Syria.

Israeli warplanes buzzed the summer residence of Syrian President Bashar Assad early Wednesday, military officials said, in a message aimed at pressuring the Syrian leader to win the release of a captured Israeli soldier.

The officials said on condition of anonymity that the fighter jets flew over Assad's palace in a low-altitude overnight raid near the Mediterranean port city of Latakia in northwestern Syria. Israeli television reports said four planes were involved, and Assad was home at the time.

The flight caused "noise" on the ground, the military officials said on condition of anonymity, according to military guidelines.

The officials said Assad was targeted because of the "direct link" between Syria and Hamas, the Palestinian militant group holding Cpl. Gilad Shalit, 19, in the Gaza Strip. Syria hosts Khaled Meshaal, Hamas' exiled supreme leader.

There was no immediate reaction from Syria.

Apparently, the Israelis have done this before, the last time windows were shattered in the palace. No word on whether Bashar needed to change his underwear.

UPDATE: Mark In Mexico on messages.

“Wow, that’s terrific bass”!

A classic line from a classic skit, Saturday Night Live, Dan Ackroyd and the Bass-o-Matic. Now that was a funny moment. But there are a couple of guys not laughing about bass right now. It seems two Kentucky men have been indicted for cheating.

In a bass tournament or two.

Marshall and Lyon county grand juries on Tuesday indicted Dwayne E. Nesmith, 43, of Island, and Brian K. Thomas, 31, of Dawson Springs on nine counts of theft by deception of over $300 in Marshall County, one count of complicity to commit theft by deception of over $300 and one count of attempted theft by deception of over $300 in Lyon County.

An investigation of the pair started April 30, when the men allegedly stashed five live bass in a fish basket in the water, then picked them up to weigh in at the Relay for Life Buddy Bass Tournament at the Lake Barkley State Resort Park, state police said.

Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources Sgt. Bill Snow said someone reported the bass, which were marked with clippings in their fins.

Nesmith and Thomas were witnessed picking up the fish early on the morning of April 30, then putting their catch in the boat, Snow said.

The pair appears to have done this in several tournaments, netting thousands in cash and a $30,000 bass boat.

I don't think they'll be watching anything that reminds them of bass for a while.

200,000 Evacuated In Pennsylvania

Torrential rains have forced authorities to order the evacuation of 200,000 people in the Wilkes-Barre area as the Susquehanna River rose to record levels.

Thousands more were ordered to leave their homes in New Jersey, New York and Maryland. Across the region, rescue helicopters plucked residents from rooftops as rivers and streams surged over their banks, washed out roads and bridges and cut off villages.

Wilkes-Barre, a northeastern Pennsylvania city that was devastated by flooding in 1972 by the remnants of Hurricane Agnes, is protected by levees. But county officials said the Susquehanna was expected to crest just a few feet from the tops of the 41-foot floodwalls.

Luzerne County Commissioner Todd Vonderheid said officials worried about the stability of the levees because the water was expected to press up against them for 48 hours.

"It is honestly precautionary," Vonderheid said. "We have great faith the levees are going to hold."

It's been awfully wet in the Northeast these past few days.

Harsh Assessment

All the desperate spinning of the media and the left will not undo the damage that the New York Times has done to the US effort to collect data that tracks terrorist's financial transfers. That's not the vast right wing conspiracy talking. That's the chairman of the 9/11 commission Thomas Kean.

Byron York interviewed Thomas Kean, the 9/11 Commission chairman, on the revelation of the covert terror-finance intelligence operation in the New York Times last week. Kean tells the National Review's White House correspondent that he tried to talk Bill Keller out of publishing the story, and pronounces the program dead as a result of Keller's decision:

Thomas Kean, the co-chairman of the September 11 Commission, was briefed several weeks ago about the Treasury Department’s terrorist-finance program, and after the session, Kean says, “I came away with the idea that this was a good program, one that was legal, one that was not violating anybody’s civil liberties…and something the U.S. government should be doing to make us safer.”

Kean tells National Review Online that the New York Times’s decision to expose the terrorist finance effort — Kean called Times executive editor Bill Keller in an attempt to persuade him not to publish — has done terrible damage to the program. "I think it's over," Kean says. "Terrorists read the newspapers. Once the program became known, then obviously the terrorists were not going to use these methods any more." …

“That’s the way it is in this war,” says Kean. “There are a number of programs we are using to try to disrupt terrorist activities, and you never know which one is going to be successful. We knew that this one already had been.”

Captain Ed continues on from there and looks at the fundamentally unserious EU and their sudden opposition to the program. So it is dead now and all the self-serving platitudes from the New York Times' editor will not bring it back.

The leaker(s) must be found and punished. Frankly, Bill Keller should be unemployed.

UPDATE: Others: Patterico, Rantings Profs, Sundries Shack, Roger Simon, Newsbusters, The Glittering Eye, Sweetness and Light, A Blog For All, Liberty And Justice, The Real Ugly American,

UPDATE: Tom Maguire has yet more on this subject.

Oh Drat. All That Posturing For Nothing.

Early reports of an amnesty offer in Iraq included some speculation that the plan might pardon terrorists who had killed Americans. This allowed a lot of Democratic politicians to suddenly demonstrate their support for the troops by making stern pronouncements against such a thing. (While still trying to undermine support and endangering the troops by espousing cut and run policies). I even had a few links and comments here that criticized my calling Harry Reid's comments posturing at the time.

But it turn out all that posturing was for nothing anyway.

BAGHDAD, June 27 — Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki vowed Tuesday that no one who has killed Americans or Iraqis would be pardoned under his government's national reconciliation plan.

"The fighter who did not kill anyone will be included in the amnesty, but the fighter who killed someone will not be," Maliki said in his first interview with Western print reporters since he became prime minister last month. "This is an international commitment, an ethical commitment: Whoever kills is not included in amnesty."

Sitting at the head of a polished wood conference table, beneath a framed Koranic verse — "Consult with others and when you reach a decision, trust in God" — Maliki spoke for nearly an hour about the need to build up the Iraqi army before U.S. and other foreign forces could withdraw, his desire to disband violent militias and the terms of his two-day-old reconciliation plan.

They'll have to find some other thing to posture about, I guess.

It’s The 60’s All Over Again

According to Screamin' Howie Dean, we're about to enter the 60's again.

(CNSNews.com) - America is about to revisit one of the most turbulent decades in its history, Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean told a religious conference in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday. "We're about to enter the '60s again," Dean said, but he was not referring to the Vietnam War or racial tensions.

Dean said he is looking for "the age of enlightenment led by religious figures who want to greet Americans with a moral, uplifting vision."

"The problem is when we hit that '60s spot again, which I am optimistic we're about to hit, we have to make sure that we don't make the same mistakes," Dean added.

Anger over the Vietnam War and the country's escalating racial tensions made the late 1960s one of the most painful eras in American history. Republican Richard Nixon was elected president in 1968, following the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Sen. Robert Kennedy, as well as the riot-marred Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

Later in his speech Tuesday, Dean appeared to backtrack. "I'm not asking to go back to the '60s; we made some mistakes in the '60s," he said. "If you look at how we did public housing, we essentially created ghettoes for poor people" instead of using today's method of mixed-income housing.

Another mistake Democrats made in the '60s, Dean acknowledged, was that "we did give things away for free, and that's a huge mistake because that does create a culture of dependence, and that's not good for anybody, either," he noted, a reference to the Great Society welfare programs created by Democratic President Lyndon Johnson in the mid-1960s.

"Those mistakes were not the downfall of our program," Dean added. "They helped a lot more people than they hurt. But we can do better and we will do better and our time is coming."

Howie is definitely stuck in the 60's. So are far too many of his fellow travelers. They remember the days of their youth with the rose-colored glasses of what they wished for and dreamed rather than the stark reality of what did happen. Rising crime rates, declining cities, alarming drug use rates, divisive politics, riots and a host of other problems. What they remember is youthful enthusiasm and idealism. Which sadly, led nowhere.

But they sure want another chance to give it a whirl. Somehow, aging boomers in tie-dye seems so unattractive.

The Way Too Much Fun Ships

The cruise ship company Carnival uses the slogan "The Fun Ships". But the Australian branch of the P&O cruise line has the way too much fun ships. In fact, the fun turned deadly.

SYDNEY (AFP) - Passengers on P and O Cruises who engage in "excessive behaviour" will be removed from the ship, the company's Australian branch said, after it emerged that nudity, streaking and sex in public were common on one luxury liner.

The announcement comes as coroners investigate the death of an Australian woman, who died from an overdose of the date rape drug gamma-hydroxybutyrate less than 24 hours after boarding P and O's Pacific Sky ship in September 2002.

A former night manager on the liner told the inquest on Monday that as many as 20 people would be seen running around the ship naked every night.

Asked if nudity, streaking and sex in public were common during her more than 10 years working on board cruise ships, manager Kathleen Ann Taylor said: "All the time".

P and O Cruises Australia said that from now on, unruly passengers would be disembarked at the next port of call and would not be refunded their fare.

"We accept that in the past the conduct of a small minority of our passengers and crew has clearly been unacceptable and our response on occasion has been inadequate," the company said in a statement.

"This does not represent our company's values and therefore, with immediate effect, we have introduced a policy to take strict action against excessive behaviour."

There's having fun, then there's being obnoxious. In the case of anyone who uses date rape drugs, there should be a very, very harsh punishment for the perpetrator.

If You Still Need Proof

That terrorists read American media reports, here it is. The AP reports that "insurgents" are offering to lay down their weapons if US forces set a two-year deadline for withdrawal.

The demand is part of a broad offer from the groups, who operate north of Baghdad in the heavily Sunni Arab provinces of Salahuddin and Diyala. Although much of the fighting has been to the west, those provinces have become increasingly violent and the attacks there have regularly crippled oil and commerce routes.

The groups do not include the powerful Islamic Army in Iraq, Muhammad Army and the Mujahedeen Shura Council, the umbrella label for eight militant groups including al-Qaida in Iraq. But the new offer comes at a time when Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government is reaching out to militant Sunnis, including a new amnesty plan for insurgent fighters.

Al-Maliki, in remarks broadcast on national television Wednesday, did not issue an outright rejection of the timetable demand but said it was unrealistic because he could not be certain when the Iraqi army and police would be strong enough to assume full responsibility for the country's security.

Eight of the 11 insurgent groups banded together to approach al-Maliki's government under the name of The 1920 Revolution Brigade. All 11, however, have issued identical demands, said the insurgent representatives and government officials.

So, why are the terrorists channeling John "Cool Hat Luke" Kerry? Simple, they know it will get American media attention. And it is doing so, isn't it?

Really Smooth Move

As nearly as I can figure, the various Palestinian factions have hit upon the one sure-fire operational plan that will virtually eliminate any sympathy they may have had in the world. They have decided on a kidnapping campaign and are grabbing students and old men in addition to the soldier.

A source claiming to be from the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, affiliated with Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah group, announced Wednesday afternoon that the group is holding a 60-year-old man from Rishon Lezion.

Police have confirmed that a 62-year-old man from Rishon LeZion has been missing for two days.

In a tragic representation of various sectors of the Israeli public, terrorists apparently now hold three Israelis: a senior citizen civilian resident of pre-1967 Israel, an IDF soldier and a resident of the Shomron.

Hours earlier, another kidnapping scare took place. Police scrambled to locate a girl in the Migdal HaEmek region who called her mother from her cellular phone saying she may have accidentally gotten into a vehicle she realized too late was driven by PA Arabs. The phone suddenly went dead.

Less than an hour later, after checkpoints had been set up in the region and police put on high alert, the alert was cancelled when the girl walked in the front door of her home – with a dead cellular phone battery and apologies to her family.

This is a sure loser for the Palestinians.

New Security Requirements

Too late, but better than nothing. The Office of Management and Budget has given all Federal agencies 45 days to comply with new guidelines for computer data security.

To comply with the new policy, agencies will have to encrypt all data on laptop or handheld computers unless the data are classified as "non-sensitive" by an agency's deputy director. Agency employees also would need two-factor authentication — a password plus a physical device such as a key card — to reach a work database through a remote connection, which must be automatically severed after 30 minutes of inactivity.

Finally, agencies would have to begin keeping detailed records of any information downloaded from databases that hold sensitive information, and verify that those records are deleted within 90 days unless their use is still required.

OMB said agencies are expected to have the measures in place within 45 days, and that it would work with agency inspectors general to ensure compliance. It stopped short of calling the changes "requirements," choosing instead to label them "recommendations" that were intended "to compensate for the protections offered by the physical security controls when information is removed from, or accessed from outside of the agency location."

This should have been done a long time ago, but I'm glad they are at least doing something about this.