Reported in several places today:
A judge sets bail for a 12-year-old developmentally disabled boy charged with firing a gun at $250,000, shocking prosecutors who only asked for $5,000 bail.During the boy’s arraignment on a juvenile weapons possession charge, Judge Paul D. Lewis says he’s lost patience with youth violence after 23-years on the juvenile bench.
Do people actually think this way????
Is it not true that yesterday’s sad mistake has already solved the problem it represents? In fact, a further good has been created: as ordinary persons change their behavior and drop the bulky clothing and unnecessary running, the real terrorists will stand out more. Indeed, if anyone ever behaves like Jean Charles de Menezes again, the presumption that he is a terrorist will be so overwhelmingly strong that the police really must kill him.
Bill Clinton tells New York magazine that he desperately wishes that the FBI had been able to "prove" that Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda had masterminded the bombing of the USS Cole in October 2000 so that he could have attacked Afghanistan instead of George Bush (Newsmax also reports this here):
"I desperately wish that I had been president when the FBI and CIA finally confirmed, officially, that bin Laden was responsible for the attack on the U.S.S. Cole," Clinton tells New York magazine this week. "Then we could have launched an attack on Afghanistan early."
"I don’t know if it would have prevented 9/11," he added. "But it certainly would have complicated it.” ...
"I always thought that bin Laden was a bigger threat than the Bush administration did."
Clinton has tried on more than one occasion to adapt history to make his eight-year turn in the White House something more than a paean to lost time while Islamofascists gained ground. This particular effort fails miserably, mostly due to the efforts of the 9/11 Commission, which detailed exactly when the FBI and CIA made their determination that al-Qaeda had executed the attack on the Cole. On pages 192-3, the report shows that Clinton still had two months left in his presidency when that determination was made:
On November 11, the Yemenis provided the FBI with new information from the interrogations of Badawi and Quso, including descriptions of individuals from whom the detainees had received operational direction. One of them was Khallad, who was described as having lost his leg. The detainees said that Khallad helped direct the Cole operation from Afghanistan or Pakistan. The Yemenis (correctly) judged that the man described as Khallad was Tawfiq bin Attash.
An FBI special agent recognized the name Khallad and connected this news with information from an important al Qaeda source who had been meeting regularly with CIA and FBI officers.The source had called Khallad Bin Ladin’s “run boy,” and described him as having lost one leg in an explosives accident at a training camp a few years earlier.To confirm the identification, the FBI agent asked the Yemenis for their photo of Khallad.The Yemenis provided the photo on November 22, reaffirming their view that Khallad had been an intermediary between the plotters and Bin Ladin. (In a meeting with U.S. officials a few weeks later, on December 16, the source identified Khallad from the Yemeni photograph.)
Clinton's insistence on "proof" refers to a legal certainty that demonstrates his continuing fecklessness on the war that Islamists had declared on the West years earlier. In fact, he already had "proof" that al-Qaeda and bin Laden had masterminded earlier attacks on US interests, especially the twin Embassy bombings in Africa in 1998. One reason that the FBI knew of Khallad was because they had established Khallad as one of the terrorists who helped plan and execute those attacks.
Besides, take a second look at the wording used by the consummate lawyer in his assertion to Jennifer Senior. He would have "launched an attack". That is what he did after the embassy bombings; in the words of his successor, Clinton launched a two-million dollar missile at a ten-dollar tent and hit a camel in the butt. Did it disrupt anything else that al-Qaeda had planned? Not at all.
The long record of gross ineffectiveness based on the faulty premise that terrorism required indictments and civil trials created the Clinton legacy on al-Qaeda, not a lack of opportunities. Clinton's whine about "proof" demonstrates that very clearly. He had all the "proof" he needed to order military action in November 2000 to retaliate against bin Laden and the Taliban for sheltering him and chose not to do so. His attempt now to recast himself as a terrorism hawk who had the misfortune of bad timing makes him even more pathetic than ever.
Posted by Captain Ed at August 16, 2005 06:01 AM http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/005226.php
Interesting assertions in this article.
President Bush is now pushing for "tort reform," claiming that lawsuits are hurting the economy. Contrary to popular belief, since 1975 the number of lawsuits has declined. Government data show that the median jury verdict for punitive damages was only $37,000, significantly less than the $65,000 median award in 1992.Although corporate America is complaining about how lawsuits are "hurting the economy" the vast majority of lawsuits are brought by corporations, not individuals. Moreover, judges dismiss corporate lawsuits as frivolous 69% more often than the lawsuits brought by individuals.
October 13, 2004.John Kerry stooped to the lowest of the low with the shameless, invasive line that will be played over and over again on the news in the next 24 hours:And I think if you were to talk to Dick Cheney's daughter, who is a lesbian, she would tell you that she's being who she was, she's being who she was born as.
Um, has John Kerry talked to Dick Cheney's daughter? Has John Edwards? Has Mary Beth Cahill, who called Mary Cheney "fair game" on Fox News Channel after tonight's debate? If they haven't talked to her, they should shut up, leave her alone, and defend their incoherent position on gay marriage without hiding behind the vice president's daughter.
August 8, 2005.I can't imagine Army Spc. Casey Sheehan would stand for his mother's crazy accusations that he was murdered by his commander-in-chief, rather than the Iraqi terrorists who ambushed his convoy. I can't imagine Army Spc. Casey Sheehan would stand for a bunch of strangers glomming onto his mother's crusade and using him to undermine the war effort as they shouted "W killed her son" in front of countless TV cameras.
And these lawyers can sleep at night how, exactly?
Foreign citizens who change planes at airports in the United States can legally be seized, detained without charges, deprived of access to a lawyer or the courts, and even denied basic necessities like food, lawyers for the government said in Brooklyn federal court yesterday.
Tucker Carlson is a dick.
TC: I have answered all your questions, unlike you, I am a busy man and have things to do but I know if I hang up you are going to send out a fundraising letter saying that I hung up on you…JP: Just answer my two questions.
TC: I am not hanging up. I am returning the handset to the cradle…
From the Huffington Post:
Four-star General Kevin Byrnes, the third most senior of the Army’s 11 four-star generals, was sacked over allegations that he had an extramarital affair. Meanwhile, Lt. General Ricardo Sanchez, the senior commander in Iraq during the Abu Ghraib torture and abuse scandal, is being considered for promotion to, yep, four-star general.Talk about your utterly perverted priorities.
Now, it long ago became clear that the Bushies inhabit a bizarro, topsy-turvy universe -- a place where being utterly wrong about slam-dunk WMD earns you a Medal of Freedom, dismissing a "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in U.S." memo earns you a promotion to Secretary of State, signing off on torture makes you AG material, another 123 American soldiers being blown up is the mark of an enemy in its "last throes", and outing an undercover CIA agent (and then lying about it) merits a vote of confidence instead of a pink slip.
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/emmetttyrrell/et20050804.shtml
The Decade of Illusions
Emmett Tyrrell
August 4, 2005
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- It is now becoming ever clearer that the last decade of the 20th century could go down in history as the Decade of Illusions. There was the tech bubble whose detumescence was predicted by some of the very same engineering geniuses who had created the technological marvels that it was based on, for instance, Bob Metcalfe, inventor of Ethernet and a major force in the creation of the Internet. He predicted the bubble's burst almost to the day.
Another of the illusions of the 1990s was that with the fall of communism barbarism vanished. The world would be safe. Our military budget could be trimmed. All that was necessary to deal with those quaint Islamic zanies across the sea was an occasional cruise missile sent their way, preferably when our aggrieved president was about to appear before a grand jury or be impeached. There was also the illusion that a chief executive's lies were harmless and perhaps even a private matter.
Now some of the liars of the decade have been sentenced to long stretches in the calaboose. Their lies conduced to corporate collapse and the loss of millions to investors and to pension funds. This week with the suspension of Rafael Palmeiro from Major League Baseball, many of the baseball records racked up in the 1990s are suspected of being illusory. Quite probably many of them were the product of illegal steroid use. The baseball heroes of the 1990s simply lied about their performances. What other revelations will be coming from the Decade of Illusions?
Palmeiro flunked a drug test sometime in recent months, though he continued to thrill his Baltimore Orioles fans before his positive test for steroids was made public. On July 15, fans and teammates celebrated his 3,000th hit with gaudy fanfare. Major League Baseball took out newspaper ads congratulating him, though it is reported that league officials were aware he had tested positive for steroids. Palmeiro graciously accepted all the laudations. How could he do this while knowing that officials were wise to him?
In the 1990s, we called this "compartmentalizing." It was approved by journalists and public figures alike. President Bill Clinton executed his presidential tasks exuberantly day in and day out while retaining subpoenaed documents from prosecutors, coaching witnesses to deceive and lying brazenly to his staff and the public. He compartmentalized, and to this day, there are public figures who admire his sang-froid. They would agree with John Harris' assessment of him in Harris' recent encomium, "The Survivor," as being one of "the two most important political figures of their generation" -- the other being, who else, Hillary.
One of Clinton's most memorable statements that will ring down from the Decade of Illusions is: "I want you to listen to me. I'm going to say this again. I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky." The Boy President said that glaring into the cameras on national television and pointing his finger for emphasis. Later he failed his drug test or rather his DNA test. Yet he is still arguing that the statement is somehow true.
Palmeiro is one of Clinton's finest students. Under oath before a Congressional Committee on March 17, he declared: "I have never used steroids. Period. I do not know how to say it more clearly than that. Never." He too glared and pointed his finger emphatically. Now that he is suspended after that failed test, he argues with Clintonian indefatigability: "I have never intentionally used steroids. Never. Ever. Period." The New York Times reports that the steroid he tested positive for is stanozolol. It is unimaginable that an adult would not know that he was taking it. Use of it in 1988 cost Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson his Olympic gold medal.
Tom Knott, the superb sports writer for The Washington Times, suspects that Palmeiro's hitting feats owe something to his teaming up with Jose Canseco in the Decade of Illusions. Knott further seems to suspect that many of the home-run marvels of the 1990s were fueled by steroids. Think of it -- a whole decade of baseball records thrown into a twilight of doubt because the rules were compartmentalized. Slowly but steadily, those who cast doubt on the marvels of that decade are being vindicated.
This is too good to be true:
Read all the posts.....
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