Huge Operation

The Associated Press is headlining its latest article on the two whales who swam up the Sacramento River this way: Lost whales at center of huge operation. The article goes on to describe the attempts at rescuing the animals, the critics of the rescue attempts as going about it wrongly and a brief - very brief - mention of people who are questioning why we are interfering at all in this.

RIO VISTA, Calif. - Everyone seems to have a suggestion to get two wayward whales lingering in the Sacramento River to swim 70 miles back to the Pacific Ocean.

One suggested towing life-sized replicas of orcas behind the whales to scare the recalcitrant mother humpback and her calf. Another proposed placing a giant magnet downriver, since humpbacks are thought to navigate by an internal compass that can sense magnetic north.

While rescuers have not tried the hundreds of suggestions they have received via e-mail — most of which are unfeasible — they acknowledge that they are running out of ideas.

"This is very much a work in progress," said Trevor Spradlin, a marine mammal biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration working at the rescue scene.

Two weeks after the whales were first spotted in fresh water, the giant mammals' behavior remained a mystery, even to scientists.

Biologists hastily drew up plans to spray the whales with fire hoses Friday after nearly a week of pipe-banging and whale recordings failed. Scientists used recordings to nudge a male humpback dubbed Humphrey out of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta in 1985.

The pair got stranded after marking an apparent wrong turn earlier this month and heading upstream until they reached the Port of Sacramento and could go no farther. They turned around on their own Sunday, and swam some 20 miles downriver to the Rio Vista Bridge.

The central problem facing scientists trying to engineer new whale-herding techniques is that, while gentle coaxing has proved ineffective, they fear anything too forceful might make the situation worse. Nets pose a threat of entanglement, biologists said.

Any method that induces panic could separate the whales or send them fleeing, increasing the danger they could become stranded in the mud among the delta's labyrinthine network of sloughs, they said.

During the week, rescuers grew concerned that some of the tactics they tried may have been too stressful for the duo. Some onlookers complained that scientists should stop interfering with the whales and allow them to follow their natural instincts.

Look, I have a lot of fun with the whole animal uprising shtick around here, but I suspect most readers realize I genuinely like animals. But we simply cannot rescue every, single misguided animal in the world. Stories like this are a big deal for the media - they can get readers by chronicling the efforts to save the creature in question. But seriously, what is the price tag for something like this kind of effort? How many other worthy projects will be cut or curtailed as a result of an attempt - probably quite futile at this point - to save these two animals. Yes, I know whales are popular in the press and in the imagination of people, but how many others will die as a result of spending all the available funds on these two? The flip side of wanting increased "natural" wildlife is that Mother Nature is, quite frankly, pretty nasty. She kills animals off with abandon at regular intervals - and sometimes at random. If you love the cute, cuddly whales in their natural state, you'll have to accept that cute, cuddly whales sometimes die very nasty deaths in the wild regardless of your delicate sensibilities. And we cannot possibly save every, single one every, single time. It doesn't work that way.

Condemned To Relive The Present

George Santayana famously said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.". Two juxtaposed articles from a single issue of the Daily Mail shows that there are those who cannot see what is happening right at this very moment as a cautionary tale when they announce their plans. First up, a group is attempting to raise funds to get a Concorde jet liner back into service. The Concorde, an iconic supersonic civilian jet airliner, was retired from service in 2003 after 27 years in service (not 34 as the article states - they are counting from first flight, not from commercial service). There were never very many of them, only 20 were built.

Sir Richard Branson is supporting an ambitious project to return Concorde to the skies.

A group founded by former pilots and executives involved with the supersonic plane has identified one which they claim could fly again within three years.

If they succeed in buying it, Sir Richard will give £1million to the £10-£15million scheme.

The plan is the brainchild of Club Concorde, whose board members worked on the plane, which last flew in 2003 after 34 years of service.

Ben Lord of "Save Concorde", a partner in the project, said: "We have the backing of 30,000 supporters and are in talks with major investors.

They want a Concorde that is currently housed at a French museum - good luck with that. (As for Branson, he's attached his name strictly as a means of generating more self-promotion. If he really wanted one in operation, he owns an airline and has more than enough resources to buy one of his very own and get it flying. But self-promotion is what Branson does.) But really, if they read today's other article from the same newspaper (they appear literally next to each other online), maybe they'd have second thoughts. It seems that the anniversary ceremonies for the Falklands war will not have the presence of an Avro Vulcan bomber doing a fly-by. Because they haven't managed to get the airplane restored yet despite being badly behind schedule and wildly over original budget.

It was supposed to be the star of the show, its unmistakable shape thundering over Buckingham Palace as a powerful, poignant reminder of the Falklands War 25 years ago.

But despite a round-the-clock effort to get Britain's last remaining Vulcan bomber airworthy for the anniversary flypast, the desperately disappointed restoration team were forced to admit yesterday that they would almost certainly miss the deadline.

The absence of Vulcan XH558 will be a major disappointment to the thousands of Falklands veterans and members of the public expected at the June 17 event.

Vulcans played a pivotal role in the recapture of the islands. In the first surprise attack of the 1982 conflict, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher sent Vulcans to bomb Stanley airfield from Ascension Island in the mid-Atlantic.

The raids were a remarkable achievement - with a round trip of 8,000 miles, they were, at the time, the longest-distance bombing missions ever carried out.

Engineers have spent eight years and £5million trying to make the last surviving Vulcan airworthy, but after being dogged by technical and financial setbacks, have had to concede that it is unlikely to be ready for the flypast.

Project director Robert Pleming said: "We were held up in January by discovery of corrosion in the undercarriage and on the wing edge, which added £300,000 to the project.

And keep in mind that this aircraft is only meant to participate in air shows - not carry passengers. I love old airplanes and visit air and space museums whenever I can. But the numbers of flying antique aircraft are not at all that high in real terms, nor are they really practical except to give a sense of history.

Standard Tactics

Politics in this country has never been a sport for weaklings. It has, historically, been very rough, sometimes more openly vicious, sometimes less out in the open - but just as bad behind the scenes. To play the game, you have to be able to be ruthless. But in my lifetime the worst descent into open viciousness happened when Bill Clinton came onto the political scene. During the nineties, the politics of personal destruction became routine instead of the exception. It has not improved since Clinton left office.

So it comes as no surprise at all that the Hillary Clinton camp has gone onto the personal destruction attack on two books critical of her. The campaign, along with fellow travelers in the well-funded political left, have gone on a very nasty, very personal series of attacks on the books and on the authors. It promises to get worse.

Here's how you kill a book: 

First, see to it that it emerges into the public eye on the Friday of a holiday weekend. 

Then, express ostentatious boredom at its contents. 

Then, attack. 

Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson declined to comment on the question of whether the campaign leaked to The Washington Post a copy of one of two forthcoming biographies of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. And though there’s no confirmation that the Clinton campaign leaked either book, there is at least some circumstantial evidence that points that way.

“The only people who have an interest in putting it out on a Friday before Memorial Day are the Clinton folks,” said Chris Lehane, a veteran of Clinton White House damage control. 

The use on Clinton’s website of passages from one book also appeared to confirm that the campaign had a copy of the book in its possession. 

Meanwhile Philippe Reines, Clinton’s spokesman, drew chuckles inside the Beltway for his canned response to the books: “Is it possible to be quoted yawning?” 

But the campaign's precise reaction contradicted its showy lack of interest, particularly in one of the two books: “Her Way,” by former New York Times reporter Jeff Gerth and current Timesman Don Van Natta Jr. 

At 8:41 p.m. on Thursday, before The Washington Post story had appeared, Media Matters for America, a democratic-leaning group whose founders are close to the New York Democrat senator's presidential  campaign, launched a dense 2,713-word attack on one of the book’s authors, Gerth. The reporter has been loathed by some Clinton supporters since he was the first national journalist to write about the Whitewater affair in 1992, an investigation that unpredictably would lead to Clinton's impeachment six years later. (Media Matters spokesman Karl Frisch didn't respond immediately to the question of whether his group had coordinated with the Clinton campaign.) 

At 1:24 p.m. Friday, the campaign went on the attack. Clinton research director Judd Legum posted a blog item on Clinton’s website claiming that “the book's central premise has already been debunked.” 

The premise in question: that the Clintons long plotted a two-decade path for both of them to the White House. A source quoted in The Washington Post, the historian Taylor Branch, disputed Gerth’s and Van Natta’s report that he had that notion.

Note the typical tactic: announce firmly that the "central premise" has been debunked. State this with finality without actually debunking anything. It's a preemptive strike to shut off discussion. Then issue a strong, very personal attack through proxies on the author. The thing is, as the Politico notes, Hillary has done precisely the same thing on an earlier book. This is a standard tactic. It will get worse for Gerth - the proxy attacks will be coming hard and fast and will increasingly play fast and loose with the facts. There will be an enormous amount of noise and smoke generated in order to crush the book and its authors.

Biff, Boff, Bam

Remember the tacky graphics that flashed on screen during fight scenes in the old Batman television series starring Adam West and Burt Ward? Somehow, something like that should illustrate this story. A seven term US Congressman from New Jersey, Rodney Frelinghuysen, who is 61 years old, felt a young thug steal his wallet. Frelinghuysen turned around, chased the 18-year old down and held him for police.

Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen, a New Jersey Republican, was walking in the area when a group of young men came up behind him. Frelinghuysen felt someone grab at his wallet and when he turned, the would-be robber took off, WRC TV report.

Frelinghuysen, 61, gave chase and caught the suspect a short distance away. Two passing police officers saw the chase and arrested the 18-year-old suspect, the report said.

Frelinghuysen, a seven-term congressman, was not immediately reachable for comment.

Asked about the incident, a police spokesman confirmed that "something like that occurred tonight in Georgetown."

Holy foot chase, Batman.

On The Count-Your-Blessings Front

Five people are dead and at least one more is missing in a series of savage storms that have hit Texas.

DALLAS - Forecasters predicted more heavy thunderstorms in the Plains over the holiday weekend after two days of storms and flooding that left five people dead and one missing in central Texas.

Dozens of people were plucked from rising waters on Friday, and Gov. Rick Perry activated National Guard troops to be deployed in Waco, Austin and San Antonio for the weekend.

Near Fredericksburg, authorities were looking for a man whose sport utility vehicle was swept away during storms that have dumped about 8 inches of rain in the area since Thursday.

Lt. Jim Judd of the Gillespie County sheriff's office said about 30 people spent Friday looking for Edgar Garcia, 22, who called his mother after he drove around a barricade blocking a swollen creek and got stuck.

Three people died in Killeen, police said. The bodies of two brothers, ages 5 and 6, were found early Friday in a submerged SUV. The boys were riding with their mother and two siblings Thursday when their vehicle was wiped off the road into a gully.

Rescuers saved the mother and two siblings, but the swift-moving water rose too quickly for rescuers to help the boys trapped inside, said Garland Potvin, a Bell County justice of the peace.

Elsewhere in Killeen, the body of a 20-year-old man caught in rushing water was found lodged along a culvert, Potvin said.

Outside Copperas Cove, a husband and wife died late Thursday after attempting to cross floodwaters in their vehicle, said Bill Price, a Coryell County justice of the peace.

My family and I flew through Dallas-Fort Worth airport yesterday. There was more than a little concern that our flight might not take off due to worsening weather. American Airlines was frankly trying to get as many flights out as they could before an advancing storm front hit the area - ours was one of those. They shifted us to a new gate shortly before the flight as they shuffled things to get flights out quickly. We took off just as rain began to lash the airport, in fact, about forty minutes later than originally planned, but ahead of the main body of the storms.

Message To Mookie

Just hours after Moqtada al Sadr slithered back over the border from Iran into Iraq, US forces sent him a telegram. They raided his main stronghold in Sadr City, captured a high level suspect there and killed five of his stormtroopers in airstrikes following the raid when they saw them organizing a counterattack on American convoys. They also killed Mookie's main thug in Basra as a postscript.

U.S. and Iraqi forces called in the air strikes after a raid in which they captured a "suspected terrorist cell leader," the U.S. military said in statement.

The statement claimed the captured man was "the suspected leader in a secret cell terrorist network known for facilitating the transport of weapons and explosively formed penetrators, or EFPs, from Iran to Iraq, as well as bringing militants from Iraq to Iran for terrorist training."

EFP's are deadly roadside bombs that hurl a fist-size slug of molten copper that penetrates armor, a weapon that has been highly effective against American forces over the past year.

The militia fighters were killed in air strikes on nine cars that were seen positioning themselves to attack American forces after the raid, the military said.

Al-Sadr's reappearance in the fourth month of the U.S.-Iraqi security crackdown on Baghdad and environs was expected to complicate the mission to crack down on violence and broker political compromise in the country.

Hours after the cleric spoke in at a key Shiite shrine in Kufa, about 100 miles south of Baghdad, the notorious leader of al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia in the city of Basra was killed in a shootout as British and Iraq troops tried to arrest him, police and the British military said, further inflaming tensions in the Shiite areas of southern Iraq.

I suspect Mookie might want to head back to his pals in Iran. It looks like he'll be attracting more and more greeting cards as he tries to regain control of his "Mahdi Army". That is the real reason many analysts believe prompted Mookie to leave Iran - the Mahdi boys were falling apart and the organization splintering. Mookie wanted to regain control before he became irrelevant. Which give US forces a chance to make him a crater, instead. Candy-gram, Mr. Mookie.