Apparently, my hosting company had some issues today and the site was offline for some period of time today. Everything is up and running now - at least so far.
Blogosphere, Geek Stuff | Gaius Tuesday, 27 March , 2007 | 
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Chucky "Janus" Hagel, one of my very least favorite politicians in any party, decided that yesterday's talking head circuit was the best place to showcase his cluelessness and faulty understanding of the US Constitution. He started huffing and puffing about impeaching the president over policy differences on the Iraq war. Ed Morrisey cheerfully hands Chucky his head.
Only Senators completely ignorant of the Constitution would consider impeachment a viable option for dealing with policy differences between the executive and the legislature. The Constitution, in Article 2, Section 4, makes very plain the bases on which Congress can move to impeach a President:
The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.
It does not grant Congress the right to remove a President on policy grounds. In fact, the entire idea of the balance of powers is to ensure that policy differences get worked out by compromise and that Congress does not act out of a mob mentality. The founders made the branches co-equal for a reason, and that was to limit the power of both. Otherwise, they would have chosen the parliamentary model — they had the British system as an easy example to follow — and made Congress the arbiter of executive policy.
The folks betting against America are going too far. There will be a backlash - soon, I think. Hagel has backed the wrong horse and is digging himself a deeper hole every time he opens his mouth lately. He has effectively eliminated himself from consideration for the Republican nomination with his antics. Frankly, I don't think he's endearing himself to moderates either - people see through opportunism (see earlier post on Gorezilla). So if he is, as I suspect, trying to line up for an independent run, he's already toasted himself before he's even started.
Politics, War | Gaius Monday, 26 March , 2007 | Comments (5)
Scientists are astounded by the number of impact craters they have found on the largest moon of the planet Saturn. The Cassini probe has finished mapping by radar of about 10% of the surface of Titan.
And there aren't any craters to speak of.
Only three have been confirmed so far. With about twice that number of suspected craters that they are working to confirm. But all the other real estate in the solar system is heavily pockmarked with craters. Why is Titan so smooth? Scientists are suspecting that it may be a cosmic paving project that essentially fills in the holes rather rapidly after they are formed.
The trio of impact craters confirmed to date are named Menrva, Sinlap and Ksa and have diameters of 273 miles (440 kilometers), 50 miles (80 kilometers) and 17 miles (28 kilometers), respectively.
Titan’s thick nitrogen atmosphere hinders the formation of impact craters less than about 12 miles (20 kilometers) in diameter, because smaller space rocks burn up before they reach the surface. This is one reason the shrouded moon’s crater count is so modest.
As Cassini continues to map up to 30 percent of Titan’s surface at radar wavelengths the crater tally is set to grow.
“We've seen three craters on 10 percent of the surface, so we will probably find another 10 to 30. Maybe there are 30-100 in total, although we will need a follow-on mission to Titan to find and document them all,” Lorenz told SPACE.com.
Still, researchers consider the surface nearly pothole free when it should be on the road to ruin. Something yet to be determined must be keeping the crater count down.
Buried
Clues to Titan’s smooth finish can be seen in the presence of vast tracts of sand dunes, river channels and evidence for cryovolcanism visible in Cassini images.
It is likely that a combination of burial in sand, erosion by methane or obliteration by the cold hand of cryovolcanism is responsible for paving over the craters. Cassini has already spotted vague circular features among Titan’s sand dunes that may be evidence of craters undergoing burial.
Pinning down the rate of crater removal will be an important factor in dating the age of Titan’s surface features, including those craters that have survived.
”We have no way of knowing how recent the known craters are, although Menrva is old enough that it has a fairly eroded rim, cut by river channels,” Lorenz said.
Whoever is running that paving company up there could make a fortune here on earth. Just think of it: no more roadwork that goes on for generations! No more orange and white striped barrels or flashing signs. This could be huge if we unlock the secret!
Space | Gaius | Comments (1)
This is a very quiet but enormous success that the administration has managed to pull off. They have been able to choke off Iran's access to the world's financial institutions with a very low key campaign. In doing so, they have severely damaged Iran's ability to function in the modern world. There is virtually no foreign investment inside Iran right now. That is directly the fault of Mad Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and has greatly aided the US effort to cut off the flow of money to Tehran.
The U.S. campaign, developed by Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, emerged in part over U.S. frustration with the small incremental steps the U.N. Security Council was willing to take to contain the Islamic republic's nuclear program and support for extremism, U.S. officials say. The council voted Saturday to impose new sanctions on Tehran, including a ban on Iranian arms sales and a freeze on assets of 28 Iranian individuals and institutions.
"All the banks we've talked to are reducing significantly their exposure to Iranian business," said Stuart Levey, Treasury's undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence. "It's been a universal response. They all recognize the risks — some because of what we've told them and some on their own. You don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to see the dangers."
The new campaign particularly targets financial transactions involving the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is now a major economic force beyond its long-standing role in procuring arms and military materiel. Companies tied to the elite unit and its commanders have been awarded government contracts such as airport management and construction of the Tehran subway. The practice has increased since the 2005 election of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, U.S. officials say. The Revolutionary Guard — of which Ahmadinejad is a former member — is part of the hard-line leader's constituency.
"The Revolutionary Guard's control and influence in the Iranian economy is growing exponentially under the regime of Ahmadinejad," Levey said in a speech in Dubai this month.
The campaign differs from formal international sanctions — and has proved able to win wider backing — because it targets Iran's behavior rather than seeking to change its government. "This is not an exercise of power," Levey said in the interview. "People go along with you if it's conduct-based rather than a political gesture."
Iranian importers are particularly feeling the pinch, with many having to pay for commodities in advance when a year ago they could rely on a revolving line of credit, said Patrick Clawson, a former World Bank official now at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. The scope of Iran's vulnerability has been a surprise to U.S. officials, he added.
This is exactly what caused Russia to suddenly stop work on the reactor they have been building. One suspects that this also had something to do with the Iranians reverting to their old hostage-taking behavior that they started their regime with. Their violation of Iraqi territory to grab 15 British sailors and marines begins to look like a real act of desperation.
Iran | Gaius | Comments (1)
I mentioned that I suspected Al Gore actually hurt the cause of global warming true believers right after his Oscar win. Roger Simon points to a poll that indicates that a very large number of Americans feel the same way. Only a very small percentage of Americans, less than 25%, think Gore is an expert on the subject at all. The American public is a lot smarter than politicians often give them credit for.
I have long suspected that Al Gore hurt the very cause - anthropogenic global warming - he is famous for espousing. Now I have some evidence of that in a new Rasmussen Poll saying only 24% percent of Americans consider the former veep a global warming expert. Furthermore, "just 36% of Americans say that Gore knows what he is talking about when it comes to the environment and Global Warming. [caps theirs]"
Gore's problem may stem from the attitude inherent in his remark before a Congressional Committee quoted further down in the Rasmussen article: "Global Warming is 'not a partisan issue; it's a moral issue.'" Wrong, Al. It's neither. It's a scientific issue.
And, considering the Rasmussen Poll, most of us apparently know it.
When I first viewed Gore's Oscar-winning movie, it was that very thing that immediately occurred to me: why am I listening to a politician talk about this? Why not a scientist or scientists? You could cut the inauthenticity of the whole enterprise with a knife, starting with pseudo-self-deprecating joke about his near presidential victory to the recitation of facts that seemed to support his cause (but perhaps didn't, we later learned). The documentary form, of course, allows for these kinds of distortions. How many serious scientific arguments can you fit in an eighty minute film? How deep can you go? Not very far. So someone must select. And with selection comes unscientific bias.
Between Gore's quasi-religious televangelism on the subject and his rank hypocrisy in his own gargantuan energy use, people are not buying what he is selling. This is particularly funny in light of the continued fantasies of Gore attempting another run at the Presidency. But by all means, do carry on, Gorezilla. Then maybe after your hysteria is discredited enough, we can start talking about real issues and real solutions. (Which do not include making the likes of Gore rich off phony carbon offset money-from-nothing shell games.)
Environment, Junk Science, Left Wing, Uncategorized | Gaius | Comments Off
Michael Goodwin, writing in the New York Daily News, throws several buckets of cold water on the fantasies about Al Gore running for president again. He points out that these fantasies that surface now and again these days are dangerous for the Democrats for a number of very good reasons.
Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are first and second in national party polls for good reason: Clinton has the track record, money, field operation and star power and Obama has the energy, charisma and freshness. It escapes me how Gore would be more attractive than either or both in a general election.
One poll had Gore at 14%, in third place, ahead of John Edwards. That seems pretty good for a guy not running, until you remember that 14% is about where Newt Gingrich is among Republicans, and nobody thinks he's going to be President.
The Gore Fantasy is an example of the Democratic ritual of eating their own, of indulging in bickering and second-guessing until defeat has been secured. The habit was on full display in Friday's House vote on ending the war in Iraq. Despite promises to bring the troops home and blistering attacks on the GOP "culture of corruption," Speaker Nancy Pelosi's team openly bought votes by promising tens of millions of dollars in wasteful subsidies for dairy farmers, spinach producers and peanut businesses. Hard-line liberals were fighting ultrahard-line liberals.
After all that, the bill, which continues war funding even as it requires withdrawal by September 2008, got the barest possible majority, 218 votes. It will not pass the Senate and, even if it does, Bush would veto it. That means Dems eventually will have to vote for a "clean" funding bill or be guilty of defunding our troops in battle. If Friday's vote was victory, it's hard to imagine what defeat would look like.
A Gore candidacy would be extremely amusing for a lot of people. Because it would be exactly like playing Whack-A-Mole. But Gore could not win the general election. The Democrats, I think, are in real trouble as a result of the vote in the House on Friday as it is. An attempt by Gore to run again would sink the entire party in short order.
On second thought, run, Al, run!
A Maine man is engaged in a battle of wits with a mouse. So far, the mouse is well ahead on points. After the man captured the mouse - on three separate occasions, mind you - the mouse was able to escape unharmed. After the last daring breakout, the mouse also took along a souvenir.
(Bill) Exner, 68, said he and his wife Shirley scoured his bedroom after the dentures disappeared from his night stand.
"We moved the bed, moved the dressers and the night stand and tore the closet apart," he said. "I said, 'I knew that little stinker stole my teeth' — I just knew it."
They found a small opening in a wall where they suspected the mouse was coming and going, and their daughter's fiance, Eric Holt, stepped in to help.
"He brought a crowbar and hammer and he sawed off a section of wood and pulled up the molding and everything," Exner said. "It was quite a job."
They retrieved the dentures, and Holt suggested his future father-in-law boil them in peroxide and whatever else he could find for to disinfect it.
So, to retrieve the teeth, they had to demolish part of their home. Offhand, it appears to be time to take a completely different approach to the problem. We'd suggest that the couple try adopting the ravaging rodent before it ransacks again. Just start feeding it pet food.
There is a story in the Washington Post this morning about the hunt for our very favorite mythical creature in the whole world. Well, except for mermaids. But the complete waste of time, money and effort hunt for the extinct Ivory-Billed Woodpecker has expanded into Texas! But they must be planning for success; they brought kayaks again!
Campbell and a pair of companions in similar kayaks have been on a tedious winter-long canvass of Texas' famed Big Thicket, an often impenetrable jungle of swamps choked with thorny vines and prodigious pine and cedar trees, in pursuit of the ivory-billed woodpecker.
The bird, at 20 inches with a nearly three-foot wingspan, is the third-largest woodpecker in the world and the biggest woodpecker north of Mexico.
The first sighting in generations was made by Gene Sparling in Arkansas on Feb. 11, 2004, and has spawned interest across the South. Biologists converged on the Arkansas bayou area of the sighting and subsequently captured a 4-second video of what they said was an ivory-billed. Just this month, however, a Scottish scientist, in a British biology journal article, said identification of the bird from the video couldn't be certain.
The last East Texas sighting of an ivory-billed was more than a century ago _ in 1904.
"There's a lot of doubters out there that this bird does exist," said Campbell, from Emmaus, Pa. "I believe it exists."
It is nice to have something to believe in, isn't it? We suggest switching to a hunt for the Easter Bunny. You could use your kayak and get candy if the hunt is successful, too. Bonus! Seriously, folks, this is starting to border on a Bigfoot fixation at this point. The only "proof" of a sighting is heavily questions and the "sighting" was used to block a Federal project. Occam's Razor says this is a hoax. Go for the Easter Bunny. The chow is better.
The Times of London is reporting that some folks associated with Mad Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have announced that the 15 British Sailors that were captured by Iran - in Iraqi territorial waters - may be tried for espionage.
FIFTEEN British sailors and marines arrested by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards off the coast of Iraq may be charged with spying.
A website run by associates of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, reported last night that the Britons would be put before a court and indicted.
Referring to them as “insurgents”, the site concluded: “If it is proven that they deliberately entered Iranian territory, they will be charged with espionage. If that is proven, they can expect a very serious penalty since according to Iranian law, espionage is one of the most serious offences.”
The warning followed claims by Iranian officials that the British navy personnel had been taken to Tehran, the capital, to explain their “aggressive action” in entering Iranian waters. British officials insist the servicemen were in Iraqi waters when they were held.
The penalty for espionage in Iran is death. However, similar accusations of spying were made when eight British servicemen were detained in the same area in 2004. They were paraded blindfolded on television but did not appear in court and were freed after three nights in detention.
As Ed Morrisey points out this morning, this is a clear and blatant violation of the Geneva Conventions. Period. The Western left screeches and shouts about America and Israel supposedly violating the conventions even when the conventions clearly state that the terrorists that both nations are fighting are illegal combatants and therefore excluded from protection under the conventions. Where is the same screeching level of outrage over a very clear violation of the rules by the nation of Iran against legally uniformed armed forces of a Western nation?
Damn. Those crickets are loud.
Iran | Gaius | Comments (3)
This is what the Portland Newspaper was revolted by in the editorial I linked earlier. Go watch it. Listen to the chants the people are performing. More importantly, look at the completely acquiescent crowd watching this. Bring a barf bag.
These are the people who attend anti-war demonstrations. Nice choice of associates.
Nancy Pelosi and John "Unindicted Co-conspirator" Murtha may have won the battle to get their bill through the House of Representatives, but in the process, they may have lost their media support. Today, the Chicago Tribune joins the chorus of negative commentary that the Washington Post started yesterday.
The House plan puts pressure in the wrong place: on U.S. military commanders. It sets up a series of benchmarks and timetables. Even if President Bush certifies that the Iraqis are making sufficient progress, U.S. combat troops would be redeployed by Sept. 1, 2008, at the latest.
We fervently hope that U.S. combat troops have completed their mission by that date. But the House plan starts to tie the hands of American commanders just when the troop surge seems to be showing the first tentative signs of working.
The 218-212 vote on the House plan showed the deep divide in Congress on this issue. The bill likely won't survive intact in the Senate, which is set to debate a plan for a squishier deadline for withdrawing troops. Even if the House plan did pass the Senate, Bush has vowed to veto it.
A stalemate between the president and Congress on a spending bill of this magnitude–about $124 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan–is not without dangers. Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned that failure to pass the bill soon "will have a genuinely adverse effect on the readiness of the Army." He said it would force the Army to delay training of units and halt repair of vital equipment. Bush said Friday that if the spending bill is not signed into law by April 15, troops and their families "will face significant disruptions."
The politicians who abandoned their principles to vote for this bill, whether their votes were bought and paid for with pork or whether they were strong-armed by the leadership, are the ones who will end up paying for this. Without media cover, there will be fallout from this bill. By leading the party too far to the left, Pelosi has set herself up for a fall. Others who followed her lead will also find media coverage has turned on them. The media in this country is slanted very, very heavily toward the Democratic party. But I rather suspect they are much more supportive of the centrist Democrats than the far left. Pelosi has veered too far left this time.
Media, Politics, War | Gaius | Comments (8)
When even a newspaper that is against the war in Iraq cannot stomach the antics of the "anti-war" protesters, you know there is a real problem. The newspaper in question, the Portland Tribune, tries to have it both ways by denouncing the actions of what it calls the few, while lauding the majority of protesters. What they fail to do is show that one single person in the majority actually objected to the antics of the few. One gets the impression that nobody did so at the time at all.
But then there was a smaller group of demonstrators — if they can even be called that — who engaged in numerous actions that violated the sensibilities of ordinary people and damaged the very cause the activists claimed to endorse.
This splinter group of protesters showed its support for “peace” by burning a U.S. soldier in effigy. It exhibited its supposedly pacifist nature by knocking a police officer off his bike — an action that brought out the police riot squad.
Perhaps the most disturbing scene of the afternoon, however, involved the man who pulled down his pants in front of women and children and defecated on a burning U.S. flag. This disgusting act actually elicited cheers from some members of the crowd, but we hope that the emotion it produces in the community is one of revulsion.
Offensive behavior does not advance peace and justice in the world. Rather, it undermines the moral message of peace demonstrators. It leads people to believe that it’s not possible to be both patriotic and opposed to the war in Iraq.
If the goal of peace demonstrators is to influence public opinion and encourage an end to the war, the activists must connect with their fellow citizens — not repel them.
This behavior on the part of anti-war demonstrators is not at all unusual. They are getting worse as they grow bolder, however. The burning of the effigy exactly shows the mindset of the anti-war crowd's strongest supporters. Read the comments that follow the editorial. One of the very earliest hints that it must be an evil right wing conspiracy to discredit the anti-war crowd. As someone points out farther down, there isn't any need to do that. The left can discredit themselves without any help whatsoever. I think this editorial proves that.
Left Wing, News, War | Gaius | Comments (2)
Some schoolchildren in Cranberry, Pennsylvania got a heck of a surprise a few days ago. While waiting for the bus, they discovered an unusual object. The discovery touched off a criminal investigation and a flurry of police activity completely unrelated to doughnuts. It isn't every day you find one of these at the bus stop.
CRANBERRY, Pa. - A fingertip found at a bus stop by schoolchildren, touching off a police investigation, was claimed Friday by a man who injured his hand in a snowblower accident. The man contacted Cranberry police Friday, a day after the children found it.
Police said the man told them the accident happened about two weeks ago when he was trying to clear a snowblower. He didn't bother to look for the finger; he just went to the hospital for treatment, said police Lt. Jeff Schueler.
We are trying to confirm that he told officers to keep the tip.
A court in Brazil has convicted a 52-year old woman in Brazil's most notorious "battered spouse" case ever. Rosanita Nery dos Santos tried very hard to convince the court that the murder of her husband was justified by years of humiliation at the husband's hands. So where's the "battered" part, you ask? Oh, that's easy.
She battered - and fried - her husband's dismembered body.
SAO PAULO, Brazil - A Brazilian housewife was convicted and sentenced to 19 years in prison Friday for killing her husband, chopping his body into small pieces and frying it. Rosanita Nery dos Santos, 52, drugged her husband in his sleep, then stabbed him to death two years ago in Salvador, about 900 miles northeast of Sao Paulo, said police spokesman Idmar Bonfim.
She then hacked Jose Raimundo Soares dos Santos' body into more than 100 pieces, which she boiled and fried before hiding in plastic bags beneath a staircase in her house, Bonfim said. He said police discovered the body parts after receiving an anonymous phone call.
The court was convinced it was either a black magic ritual of some sort or possibly a scheme to collect the life insurance the husband had. But dos Santos said armed intruders killed her husband then forced her to dismember and fry the remains. If she had a real smart lawyer, she might have been able to convince the court that it was a gang of armed chickens avenging years of abuse by Colonel Sanders. Which leads to one obvious and unanswered question about all of this:
What kind of side dish do you order with the battered spouse?
The vote of the 218 politicians in the House of Representatives yesterday proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that some have forgotten what support for the troops in time of war means. Despite all the promises before the vote that funds would never be cut off for troops in the field, the Pelosi-Murtha bill that passed by the slimmest of margins yesterday effectively does exactly that. And the situation will get worse in a short time as funds run out and the pork-laden abomination that the House passed goes exactly nowhere in terms of actually becoming a law. The Senate will not pass their version of the bill. They will not be able to invoke cloture. Pelosi and Murtha, along with 216 other members of the House may have forgotten how to support the troops.
WASHINGTON - Laura Brown, a mother with a son who fought in the Iraq war, is trying to improve conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center — one laptop computer at a time.
The 50-year-old from Cody, Wyo., was chatting on the Internet with the mother of a wounded soldier two years ago when the mother mentioned she had to print out her son's e-mails and take them to him at Walter Reed because there weren't enough laptop computers to go around.
Brown, whose own son had recently returned safely from the war, thought the solution to that problem seemed incredibly easy.
"It just kind of hit me," she said. "If one person needed one, then there's others. … I mean, my son had e-mail in Iraq. I was really stunned."
So Brown formed a group, Laptops for the Wounded, to raise money for the cause.
Since its fundraising effort began in November 2005, Brown's organization has donated 27 computers to military hospitals around the country — 24 of them to Walter Reed.
On Friday, Brown flew to Washington to deliver 10 donated laptops to the hospital in person.
Those computers, which were upgraded and refitted with new equipment, included Web cameras so soldiers could lay eyes on their families from afar.
"She basically just made it her mission," said Lisa Ramdass, a case manager at the hospital who has been working with Brown to coordinate the donations.
Ramdass said the laptops are used for more than e-mail. One soldier who worked with a donated laptop couldn't speak, and was able to communicate with his family and his doctors by typing on the computer. Others who have eye injuries use the laptops to watch movies or television up close.
This is one woman who has not forgotten or turned her back on the troops. This is not Operation Valour-IT, which this site and many others have and continue to support. This is one woman's efforts to help. This is the website for Laptops for the Wounded.
Politics, Support the Troops, War | Gaius | Comments Off
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