A Question

The New York Times has a detailed article about the bombings in Bali.

The document offers a rare glimpse into the minds of the most cunning terrorist plotters and of the kind of meticulous planning that lies behind their operations. It also shows what even a small, local group with few resources can do, and the difficulty of thwarting their plans.

"It tells us that these guys tried to think of every contingency," said Sidney Jones, project director of the International Crisis Group's office in Jakarta, and one of the foremost authorities on terrorism in Southeast Asia. "Even when they're being hunted, they had the capacity to think through what had to be done right down to the second."

The 34-page document, titled "The Bali Project," was found on the computer of Azhari Husin, a Malaysian-born engineer educated in Australia and Britain who became a master bomb maker and was one of the most dangerous terrorists in Southeast Asia until he was killed in a shootout with the police last November.

The document was given to The New York Times by a person who requested anonymity because it had not been officially released. It was first reported on by Tempo, an English-language weekly newsmagazine here.

Mr. Azhari's co-planner was Mohammad Noordin Top, who has narrowly escaped capture several times and remains on the run, one of the most wanted men in Southeast Asia.

So, the question is: did the now destroyed money tracking program lead to these people being identified and tracked?

I think the public has a real right to know that, Mr. Keller.

The Stool Pigeons

Oh man, did Roger Simon just spank hell out of the Times Two. This is a true thing of beauty.

What fascinates me in all this is what a tin ear some of the major players in our media have to one of the most basic of all themes in American life – You don't truck with stoolies! You would think anyone who had a seen even a couple of movies from the glory days of Hollywood – the thirties and forties when the movie industry practically invented our national character – would know better. There's nothing more loathsome than a stoolie.

Now these stoolies are dressed in Brooks Brothers and even Armani suits and are employed by the CIA, the State Department, banks and the like, yet they are still stoolies. Worse – they are anonymous stoolies. We have almost no way of knowing the veracity of what they are saying and even less the motives for why they are saying it. But the Times and the Times insist that they have checked these people out, that they are not stoolies, but patriotic "whistle blowers."

Say what?

They are stoolies.

This is pure poetry, and needs to be read in it's entirety.

The thing is, Roger Simon is dead, spot on right here. This is exactly what the Times Two have done to themselves. They have destroyed their credibility by playing with informers. Politically motivated leakers. They can't say any crime was committed. They have proof – admitted proof – that the program was effective. But they willfully, wantonly and, I think, foolishly, exposed and destroyed the program. Saying it was well known and yet touting it as a closely held secret is nonsense and they can't honestly think anyone believes that spin.

I have had a rash of agenda-driven commenters trying to spin this using the same, tired talking points. The problem is, that with me at least, my upset with the Times Two has no political basis whatever. I am not motivated by agenda, and I think many of the bloggers who are upset by this are not, either. What the Times Two did, in absolute terms, not political terms, is a wrong. A bad thing for this country and for the people of this country. There simply was no good reason to shout this story out. None.

And the Times Two laid down with the leaking, stoolie dogs. Good luck with the fleas, boys.

Keller gone by the end of summer, Pinch Sulzberger gone at the next shareholders meeting. Sleep tight, boys. Although the fleas you got from the company you keep might be bothering you by now.

Mexican Presidential Race Too Close To Call

The Washington Post is reporting a virtual dead heat in the Mexican presidential election. This is based on exit polls, which I have almost zero faith in, anyway. Still it appears to be close.

Two leading newspaper exit polls said Felipe Calderon of the ruling party and Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the left-wing former mayor of Mexico City, were locked in such a tight battle that it was impossible to declare a winner.

Lopez Obrador's party said most exit polls showed him winning, adding to fears of election disputes and possible unrest in the hours and days ahead.

One exit poll from GEA-ISA said Calderon had a lead of 4 percentage points over Lopez Obrador, although it is not one of the most closely-watched polling firms and its pre-election polls never had Calderon trailing even when all others did.

The Federal Electoral Institute was expected to announce official results at around 11 p.m.

If it is unable to call a winner, Mexico could face days or weeks of legal wrangling and protests similar to the fight that followed the U.S. presidential election in 2000.

It is going to be a long night for a lot of people.

UPDATE: For example, Mark In Mexico is, for all intents and purposes, live blogging it. He is also saying it too close to call but notes some odd facts as well.

101st Blog Of The Day

Today, my ongoing mission to visit one member of the fighting 101st each day led me over to Blonde Sagacity. ALa has a bit of fashion advice that the hippies I posted about earlier today might want to listen to. There's also a nice comedy video from Mitch Hedberg.

Gunday Evening

I haven't done a Gunday in a really long time, so here's one for a really slow Sunday. Smith & Wesson SW40VE in .40S&W caliber.

Israel To Step Up Efforts To Free Kidnapped Soldier

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has directed the IDF to step up actions to free the kidnapped soldier, Gilad Shalit.

Coming just hours after an Israeli airstrike blasted offices of the Palestinian prime minister, Olmert's threat signaled the government was losing patience with diplomatic efforts to end the crisis and preparing for a possible escalation of its military offensive.

Israel shelled northern Gaza early Monday, slightly wounding one person in a house on the outskirts of the town of Beit Hanoun, Palestinians said. The military confirmed artillery was fired in the area.

The Israeli military said its aircraft also hit a building in Gaza City used by the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, a violent offshoot of moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas'  Fatah movement. There was no immediate word of casualties in the strike early Monday.

Israeli aircraft, gunboats and artillery have pounded Gaza since troops and tanks took up positions in the south of the coastal strip on Wednesday. The operation is aimed at pressuring Palestinians to free Cpl. Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier abducted a week ago. Five Palestinian fighters had been reported killed, four of them on Sunday.

Israel has been massing forces across from Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza. Olmert called off a planned invasion late last week, but there were signs that the military was ready to roll again.

Hamas-affiliated militants holding Shalit have offered to give Israel information about him in exchange for the release of hundreds of prisoners in Israeli jails, a deal Israel rejects.

"These are difficult days for Israel, but we have no intention of giving in to any form of blackmailing," Olmert said Sunday. "Everyone understands that giving in to terror today means an invitation to the next act of terrorism, and we will not act that way."

It looks like Hamas has the war it has been pushing for. Be careful what you wish for.

UPDATE: The Washington Post has more.

"We and the international community know that Gilad is being held by a bloodthirsty gang of terrorists who are causing us much suffering but who are mainly hurting the Palestinian population, which is bearing the results of this terrorist activity," Olmert said.

Shuttle Launch Scrubbed

Weather concerns again forced a cancellation of the launch of the Discovery. There is another launch attempt scheduled for Tuesday.

NASA decided to "stand down" Sunday in order to top off on-board supplies of liquid hydrogen, used as fuel in powering the shuttle's electric system during flight. The hydrogen, despite being cooled several hundred degrees below zero Fahrenheit, boils off as it sits in fuel cells on the launch pad.

By using Monday to reload hydrogen, engineers will be able to attempt launches both Tuesday, at 2:38p.m., and Wednesday, if necessary. Also, while bad weather is predicted for Monday, some improvement is expected Tuesday. At no time Sunday were the chances of launch rated any better than 30 per cent.

Shuttle officials have cautioned for a week that mid-summer afternoons in central Florida are generally rainy. NASA, however, must launch Discovery in the afternoon so it will be on course to intercept the space station yet remain in daylight after lift-off so cameras can photograph the external fuel tank when it is jettisoned half a world away. Damage caused by fragments of foam insulation from the external tank caused the shuttle Columbia to disintegrate over Texas in 2003, and have remained the program's chief concern ever since.

Discovery's 12-day mission to the international space station will focus on replenishing the station, repairing station machinery and testing new shuttle equipment. In addition, the shuttle will deliver European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Reiter to the station to join Commander Pavel Vinogradov and Flight Engineer Jeffrey Williams, bringing the station's complement back up to three for the first time since the Columbia disaster.

It’s Only Two Percent

NZ Bear does the math and asks, "So, who's for paving over Georgia?"

Fair question.

The other thing is, of course, what do you do when the sun isn't shining? No more late night television. No Leno or Letterman.

Joe Lieberman As A JFK Democrat?

I just spotted this op-ed from the Hartford Courant by Marshall Wittmann and Steven J. Nider, both affiliated with the Democratic Leadership Council. It makes a strong argument that someone like JFK, who was a "progressive" who also firmly believed in a strong defense, might not fair real well in today's Democratic party. Or at least in the Democratic party the so-called progressive elements of today would the party.

Kennedy himself was a hawkish, pro-growth progressive who certainly was not the darling of the liberals. In fact, in 1960, the true-blue liberals supported Hubert H. Humphrey or even longed for another run by Adlai Stevenson. However, compared with today's left, yesterday's liberals were downright centrist. Just consider the stirring words of JFK's inaugural address: "Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty."

In the current political environment, some on the left would view those words as indicative of a Manichaean, unilateralist, militarist war hawk. Yet that memorable phrase was uttered by a progressive Democrat committed to defend America against a totalitarian adversary.

Since the Vietnam war, liberalism has shifted leftward, particularly on the use of force and on the social issues that emerged in the 1970s. Today, we are confronted by another totalitarian foe, in the form of radical jihadism, and there is a need for progressive leadership that can forcefully defend America and our values.

Joe Lieberman, more than any other national Democrat, represents the JFK tradition in the national Democratic Party. Like so many others of his generation, including former President Bill Clinton, Lieberman came of age politically with the 1960 election of John F. Kennedy.

I'm not a particularly big admirer of JFK because of a number of issues, but he did have several good points and he stood firm on the Cuban missile crisis – which probably did the most good in his all-too-brief presidency. Still, I can see why Wittmann and Nider are making the analogy. I've been saying all along that Lieberman is a solid Democrat even if he doesn't meet the Koz Kidz' standard.

That tradition is now being challenged by the left in the Democratic party. Driven by a motley coalition of left-wing bloggers and the MoveOn.org crowd, a serious primary challenge has been launched against Lieberman. However, if Lieberman is defeated, a disastrous message would be sent to the nation that centrist hawks are unwelcome in the Democratic Party.

The Connecticut Senate primary is nothing short of a battle for the soul of the Democratic Party. That is why outside left-wing groups have converged on this state.

By any standard, Joe Lieberman is a progressive. What his leftist critics do not realize, or have ignored, is that Lieberman bravely stood up for civil rights long before many of them were born. In 1963, a young Lieberman went to Mississippi to assist in the effort to register African American voters.

The very soul of the party is exactly what this is about. Frankly, if the leftmost elements succeed in knocking Lieberman out of politics, in the long run the Democrats as a whole will – and should – lose as a party.

I think that's starting to scare the core of the party, too.

A Tribute

Alexandra von Maltzan from All Things Beautiful posts a moving tribute to her father on this, the 14th anniversary of his death.

“All The Makings For A Bubble”

Says one stockbroker about a rush to invest in "green" companies, particularly alternate energy suppliers.

High oil prices, climate change and insecure supplies have sparked an explosion of companies seeking money to develop ways to ease the looming energy crisis.

However, some fear backers of growth firms on London's junior exchange, the Alternative Investment Market (AIM), could lose their shirts.

"It has all the makings for a bubble," said Keith Woolcock, director at Westhall Capital, a London-based stockbroker. "It could take a while to pop because we are in the very early stage."

Like Google and Microsoft, a handful of tiny companies could grow into profitable global players, he added.

"There's going to be a lot of investors who get burned, there's going to be a lot of investors who are going to make an extremely large amount of money," Woolcock said.

Spotting a winner is hard in a sector that sees profit in anything from pig manure and trapped mine gas to the oil of the tropical jatropha tree and the humble plastic recycling box.

"There are a lot of pitfalls," said Craig Pennington, global energy portfolio manager at Schroders, the asset manager. "There are a lot of losing money opportunities. I would definitely urge caution."

Even companies with a good idea have no guarantee of success of beating established firms with big research budgets.

"You have to have some degree of confidence that you're backing the VHS of alternative energy and you're not backing the Betamax," Pennington said, referring to Sony's defeat in the 1980s battle for the home video market.

The real warning here of course is that a lot of this "renewable" power is incremental in nature. It is not the revolutionary change needed to seriously effect how electricity is generated. Financial experts are warning that if governments get behind nuclear power, many, if not most, of these ventures will fail or be marginal performers at best.

Its chief executive Cameron Davies said the risk of investing in growing companies in the green sector is outweighed the growth potential.

He played down talk of the next Google emerging from the sector as "far-fetched."

"The thought of a company coming along with a magic idea is pretty unlikely," he said. "It's more evolution than revolution."

With green issues high on the political agenda, smaller firms could attract more investment.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair said this month that it was an "absolute necessity" to confront climate change, while President Bush said in February that "America is addicted to oil."

The green sector may lose its admirers if politicians look to nuclear power or if oil prices fall.

"Long-term prospects are pretty compelling, but for mainstream investors it's too high-risk," said Mark Hinton, research analyst at the financial advisers Bestinvest.

Norwich Union, which has a "green" fund run by Morley Fund Management, said last month demand for cleaner fuels would rise, but investors should be cautious.

"(Smaller) companies have yet to be profitable and are exposed to uncertainty over government policy," said Dr Peter Michaelis, manager of the Norwich UK Ethical fund.

Downside Of Hamdan

Mark Steyn points out what really should be obvious to any serious person at this point. The Geneva Conventions were never intended to be used in the way the US Supreme Court used them in the Hamdan decision.

There are several ways to fight a war. On the one hand, you can put on a uniform, climb into a tank, rumble across a field and fire on the other fellows' tank. On the other, you can find a 12-year-old girl, persuade her to try on your new suicide-bomber belt and send her waddling off into the nearest pizza parlor.

The Geneva Conventions were designed to encourage the former and discourage the latter. The thinking behind them was that, if one had to have wars, it's best if they're fought by soldiers and armies. In return for having a rank and serial number and dressing the part, you'll be treated as a lawful combatant should you fall into the hands of the other side. There'll always be a bit of skulking around in street garb among civilian populations, but the idea was to ensure that it would not be rewarded –that there would, in fact, be a downside for going that route.

The U.S. Supreme Court has now blown a hole in the animating principle behind the Geneva Conventions by choosing to elevate an enemy that disdains the laws of war in order to facilitate the bombing of civilian targets and the beheading of individuals. The argument made by Justice John Paul Stevens is an Alice-In-Jihadland ruling that stands the Conventions on their head in order to give words the precise opposite of their plain meaning and intent. The same kind of inspired jurisprudence conjuring trick that detected in the emanations of the penumbra how the Framers of the U..S Constitution cannily anticipated a need for partial-birth abortion and gay marriage has now effectively found a right to jihad — or, if you're a female suicide bomber about to board an Israeli bus, a woman's right to Jews.

The old-school wars were Britain vs. Germany, Japan vs. Russia, that sort of thing. But we don't hold those as often as we once did, so, for the new school of warfare, Justice Stevens and his chums took refuge in Geneva's Common Article Three, which begins as follows:

In the case of armed conflict not of an international character occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties . . .

The "High Contracting Parties" are nation states that are signatories to the treaties: America, Belgium, Fiji, Peru and so on. So what might an "armed conflict not of an international character" mean? Well, it refers mostly to civil wars and internal conflicts — say, when the Northern Wackistani Liberation Army takes on the Southern Wackistani Patriotic Front. As a cursory glance at Rwanda, Sudan or the Balkans shows, these are some of the most depraved slaughterfests. But the aim of the article is the same as that for your full-scale France vs. Prussia fixture: to persuade the parties to wage war in a ''civilized'' manner.

And what did the Supreme Court do? They decided first that Afghanistan was a signatory to the Conventions and thus the various ructions were ''occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties.'' They then decided that it was an ''armed conflict'' and not only that — here it comes, folks — but it was an ''armed conflict not of an international character.''

And therein lies the problem with Hamdan. In granting Geneva Convention status to members of al Qaeda engaged in terrorism against targets all over the world, the Supreme Court has, in effect legitimized that organization. There is an urgent need to revise the Geneva Conventions to cover the kind of conflict that was never envisaged by it's authors.

Illegal Yoga?

A Yoga guru, dubbed "Yoga's Bad Boy" by the industry, has been charged with operating a studio without a permit and several fire code violations. Officials held a press conference to announce this.

A press conference for code violations? Seems a bit of an overreach even by LA standards.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Los Angeles prosecutors charged "hot yoga" guru Bikram Choudhury with operating a yoga studio without a permit and other violations that could land the controversial instructor in jail.

Choudhury, his landlord American Sunroof Corp. and company president Christian Prechter were each charged on Thursday with 10 criminal counts including operating without a certificate, overcrowding the yoga studio and not maintaining emergency exits. Each faces a maximum sentence of six months in jail for each count, and/or a $1,000 fine.

The yoga master's attorney, Victor Sherman, called the charges little more than a publicity stunt.

Patterico doesn't have anything on this. Aren't there more important things to worry about in LA?

Times Two Talk Tough

Editor and Publisher notes that the New York Times is going on the offensive to defend it's decision to publish details of a secret program to track money. While both downplaying the significance of the program and trying to shift the focus of the criticism aimed at the Times.

NEW YORK For the Sunday edition, Barney Caleme, public editor for The New York Times, tackles the latest hot-wired controversy, and concludes, "My close look convinced me that Bill Keller, the executive editor, was correct in deciding that Times readers deserved to read about the banking-data surveillance program. And the growing indications that this and other financial monitoring operations were hardly a secret to the terrorist world minimizes the possibility that the article made America less safe."

This comes a day after Keller and Los Angeles Times Editor Dean Baquet co-authored an op-ed, appearing in both papers, defending the publication of articles in the two papers.

Also Sunday, Times' columnist Frank Rich produces a tough-talking defense. Here are a couple of excerpts:

"No sooner were the flag burners hustled offstage than a new traitor was unveiled for the Fourth: the press. Public enemy No. 1 is The New York Times, which was accused of a 'disgraceful' compromise of national security (by President Bush) and treason (by Representative Peter King of New York and the Coulter amen chorus). The Times's offense was to publish a front-page article about a comprehensive American effort to track terrorists with the aid of a Belgian consortium, Swift, which serves as a clearinghouse for some 7,800 financial institutions in 200 countries.

"It was a solid piece of journalism. But if you want to learn the truly dirty secrets of how our government prosecutes this war, the story of how it vilified The Times is more damning than anything in the article that caused the uproar….

"Representative King, so eager to label others treasonous, has humiliating headlines of his own to counteract: he's the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee who has so little clout and bureaucratic aptitude that he couldn't stop the government led by his own party from stripping New York City, in his home state, of 40 percent of its counterterrorism funding. If there's another terrorist attack, he may be the last person in New York who should accuse others, as he did The Times on the House floor on Thursday, of having blood 'on their hands.'

In other words, pay no attention to what we did – look! Over there!

It is disingenuous at best to keep pointing to the attempt to ban flag burning as a Republican effort when Hillary Clinton and Harry Reid were also in favor of it. Rich knows that. He also knows that there is no organized attack on the press as a whole. The criticism is directed at his employer (secondarily at the LA Times). But in an attempt to have it both ways, the program wasn't really secret, but it's use is a dirty little secret.

Bull. I really am beginning to detect a whiff of desperation on the part of the Times Two. I think they know they screwed this one up big time. Trying to "reframe" the issue is a classic sign that they know they are in deep water.

Once again: Keller gone by end of summer, Pinch gone at the next shareholder meeting.

UPDATE: Bruce Kesler has thoughts on this as well.

Hippie Infestations!

An annual Hippie gathering in the Routt National Forest in Colorado is again under pressure from Federal Forest Service officers as well as state police and county sheriff's deputies. The founder of the annual gathering of the group, known as the Rainbow Family wants to organize a Federal lawsuit over the crackdown.

Barry Adams, known in the Rainbow Family as Barry Plunker, told a council circle at the first day of this year's weeklong gathering at Routt National Forest that federal pressure has gone too far.

Dozens of Forest Service officers, county deputies and Colorado State Patrol officers are manning checkpoints and patrolling camps as thousands of hippies flood the forest about 30 miles north of Steamboat Springs.

Under federal rules, any gathering of more than 74 people in a national forest requires a permit. Officials have said that in a fire, the narrow dirt access road would become clogged and campers would be trapped.

The clash between Rainbows and federal officers at national parks has become such an annual tradition that the Forest Service in 1998 established a national response team to deal with the group. Members defying federal orders typically are issued citations for camping illegally.

Rainbows say this year federal officers are issuing hundreds of citations and set up a makeshift federal courthouse nearby.

"There's only one way to stop these people and that's to take them on, legally," Adams told about 100 Rainbows at the council circle.

Rainbows say they have no leaders to request permits, and they shouldn't have to beg to express a constitutional right to freely assemble.

The Forest Service estimated that by Friday night about 6,000 tie-dyed hippies were camping in makeshift villages. That number swelled dramatically Saturday, the first official day of the gathering. An updated official estimate was not available.

Rainbows formed drum circles, exchanged beads, batik and crystals, and lined up at communal kitchens for meals. Everything is free, from meals to yoga classes to massage. Hugs are doled out at every turn and members greet each other by saying, "Welcome home."

Adams/Plunker, who is 61 years old, is apparently a real, live original hippie. There is no indication of how many of the people gathering are genuine hippie specimens and how many are newly minted. The mental image of a sea of tie-dye bearing the aroma of Ben-Gay rather than incense comes to mind, though. Frankly, the hippies don't seem to appreciate the fact that the authorities have a genuine concern here. A fire would be a disaster given the limited access.

Nonetheless, Blue Crab Boulevard, always ready to help with good advice, has the solution for the Forest Service! It's quite simple; all they have to do is install a few scarecrows.

Feel free to mail in the consulting fee!