|link| Posted 1:42 PM by Brian Linse

Go see Matt Welch for a really timely quote from Michael Kelly.

|link| Posted 11:51 AM by Brian Linse

Can you believe that we almost had Robert H. Bork on the Supreme Court?! This in the NRO....

If there is a problem with Bush's order, it is the exemption of U.S. citizens from trials before military tribunals. Quirin held that Americans can be tried there, and it is clear that they should. The trial of American terrorists in criminal court would pose all the problems of trying foreign terrorists there: The prosecution would have to choose between safeguarding our intelligence capacity and trying the terrorist. The terrorists could well go free. Contrary to some heated reactions, military tribunals are well within our tradition. They are needed now more than ever.

As I read the first few words of this last paragraph, I thought Bork was going to say that the problem with the order was that it was too broad in including US alien residents! Any doubt that I may have had about whether or not Bork's rejection as a Supreme Court justice was largely partisan are gone. The Democrats saved us from a nightmare.

This guy is a freakin' monster.

|link| Posted 2:09 AM by Brian Linse

Anthony Lewis touches on the fundamental fault with the Bush Tribunal order. It is clearly drawn too broadly, and asks us to trust in the judgement of our elected officials to apply it in an effective and just manner. A history lesson is helpful here, and Lewis reminds us of some words from John Adams:

From the beginning, Americans have refused to rely on the graciousness of our leaders. We rely on legal rules. That is what John Adams meant when he said we have "a government of laws, and not of men."

The Framers of our Constitution thought its great protection against tyranny was the separation of the federal government's powers into three departments: executive, legislative, judicial. Each, they reasoned, would check abuse by the others.

There is the greatest danger of the Bush order. It was an act of executive fiat, imposed without even consulting Congress. And it seeks to exclude the courts entirely from a process that may fundamentally affect life and liberty.

The life and liberty, in fact, of 20 million non-citizen residents as the order is presently drawn. If the Bush Administration is only interested in subjecting ObL and his boys to secret justice, why not limit the order accordingly?

|link| Posted 1:34 AM by Brian Linse

I'm going to join the "Clone Wars" by citing an interesting piece by Michael Kinsley in the WP. Kinsley points out that the US government and the Bush administration position on In Vitro Fertilization is in conflict with the president's stated moral position on stem cell research:

It is impossible to imagine any president seriously attempting to prevent or discourage in vitro fertilization. It is too well established and, as Bush observed, has brought tremendous happiness to too many couples (and -- as he did not observe -- single folks as well). But as long as Bush leaves IVF uncriticized and unmolested, we need not take seriously his claims of moral seriousness about cloning and stem cells.

|link| Posted 1:18 AM by Brian Linse

Krauthammer is getting a little carried away over at the Washington Post. He's got some good advice for the next steps in the War on Terror, but he's a little foggy on the world we used to live in before September 11th:

The Taliban's collapse shattered two myths: Islamic invincibility and American weakness -- myths amplified over eight years by the Clinton administration's empty gestures and demonstrable impotence in the face of Islamic terror.

The two myths that he refers to seem to me to have been born and died since the WTC towers fell. Can anyone imagine an American president mobilizing this kind of effort without the horror of September 11th. Clinton would have been condemned by the entire nation if he had launched a war in response to the terrorism that occurred on his watch. I don't remember thinking much about Islamic fundamentalists before the attacks, and fears about the vulnerabilities of the West arose only as we contemplated the challenges that lay ahead.

I think there is a real danger now of getting too cocky.

|link| Posted 12:27 AM by Brian Linse

The first post of the day is a sad one. George Harrison is gone. BBC News has the report:

Harrison died at 1330 on Thursday at a friend's Los Angeles home according to his longtime friend Gavin De Becker.

"He died with one thought in mind - love one another," De Becker said.

De Becker said Harrison's wife, Olivia Harrison, and son Dhani, 24, were both with him when he died.


Good journey George.

|link| Posted 4:06 AM by Brian Linse

Well fuck me dead...

I just read my first hate mail since the ANBD blog began a few short weeks ago.

As many of you know, I've been dishing out abuse and insults to President Bush, his Christian girlfriends Heather and Dayna, pretty much all Muslims, Generalissimo Ashcroft, the States of Maryland and California, the entire country of France, BBC World, and many others...

So who do you think sends me my first hate mail?

AnaKitty.

Yup. AnaKitty, who appears to be a member of the Anorexic Nation website, wrote to take issue with my post about their disturbing "lifestyle choice" and web venture. If you can handle a glance at the site in question, you may agree with me that AnaKitty is likely a 57 year old, 287lb. scumbag sitting in a dirty little office surrounded by boxes of diet products and waiting for the orders to roll in from the seriously ill people he seeks to exploit. But in the event that "Kitty" is an actual anorectic, I implore her to seek help through this site.

I'm really hoping to hear from Heather and Dayna next.

|link| Posted 3:30 AM by Brian Linse

A great though slightly scary piece by my new favorite liberal William Safire titled "Enemy of My Enemy". Let us hope that his last preediction comes true:

In Iran as in Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Syria, local tyranny and global terror go hand in hand. That's why we should resist strange antiterrorist bedfellowship with Iran's tough-cop-nice-cop rulers. Iran is becoming ripe for democratic revolution. We should not ally ourselves with the cruel clerics whom secular Persian patriots will one day throw out.

|link| Posted 3:15 AM by Brian Linse

A great article by Michael Lynch in Reason which I am choosing to incorporate into my Islam Rant:

Western-style secular capitalism hasn’t failed Islam or the Middle East. It’s never really been tried. Just look at Turkey, a secular westernized country, 98 percent Muslim, with a per capita income considerably higher than some oil-exporting states.

Contrast this piece with another from the Palestinian Times quoted at length by Matt Welch:

America is the tormentor of my people. It is to me, as a Palestinian, what Nazi Germany was to the Jews. America is the all-powerful devil that spreads oppression and death in my neighbourhood. How can I not hate this “great Satan,” the evil empire? Does anyone expect people to love their tormentors?

These two views clearly map out the underlying reasons for the nightmare that is the Muslim Middle East. Secular Capitalism can be cruel and unjust, but until the people of these sad countries turn their moral indignation against their own totalitarian Islamic rulers, they truly have no hope for the future.

|link| Posted 2:19 AM by Brian Linse

Check out Talking Points Memo by Joshua Micah Marshall. He flags another source of future problems for the Bush administration:

There are three reasons the economy is moving back into deficits. The economic slowdown/recession, the totality of the effects of the 9/11 attacks, and the Bush tax cut.

Two of them are beyond our control: the business cycle and murderous terrorist attacks from abroad. One is a conscious and deliberate public policy decision. Policy is always the part of the equation we can change and manipulate. The vicissitudes of fortune are the ones we can't. In other words, the tax cut is the one decision we could have made differently. It's the one part of the equation that someone has to answer for.

If the War on Terror drags on for years as Bush himself predicts it will, and if we continue to suffer losses of our civil liberties along with the occasionally successful terrorist attack, and the Bush tax cut is perceived as contributing to a deficit economy, I don't think the president's smug swagger will be enough to gain him a second term.

A little early for a 2004 prediction, perhaps, but there it is...

|link| Posted 5:51 PM by Brian Linse

John Berger at Fuckedworld.com has a harsh post on the topic of what I have called the "New PC"... Patriotic Correctness:

We Don't Need No Education
The American Council of Trustees and Alumni issued a McCarthyesque report condemning "unpatriotic" statements made on college campuses in the wake of Sept. 11 — such as a call for "an end to the cycle of continued global violence." Whoa! Radical! The media wouldn't even have noticed this textual atrocity except for the fact that its title page features a quote from Lynn Cheney, a founding member of ACTA who coincidentally happens to be fucking the terminal heart patient who's actually running this country.
Institution: Higher education
Severity: 80
Points: 400

And then there's this...

How Sweet It Is
How did I miss this? Last week, bleeding heart liberal columnist William Safire attacked the Bush administration's plan to try some terrorists under military tribunals, rather than through a conventional court process. Obviously, this left-wing Commie is out to undermine the United States and should be rounded up and shot along with his pinko "comrades" — like Alan Dershowitz and the ACLU.
Institution: Solidarity among rabid right-wingers
Severity: 100
Points: 250

This guy makes me seem like a nice dude!

|link| Posted 5:34 PM by Brian Linse

Kathy Kinsley of War Blog: On the Third Hand makes a great point in line with my earlier Heather and Dayna post:

What bothers me most about this is that I suspect they would not have been feted by President Bush had they been arrested for teaching Buddhism or Hinduism. We might have rescued them, but they would have gotten a well-deserved lecture about breaking laws of countries they were in.

Will Vehrs makes a couple of good points in QausiPundit:

Before their escape, I thought it was interesting that President Bush did not make any wartime judgements based on the fact that the Taliban held them prisoner, i.e., no negotiating or off-target areas. I have a little trouble with the argument that Taliban rules about passing out a Bible or video should be respected.

I agree that Bush was wise not to appear to change his strategy because these women were being held, but I don't think anyone is suggesting that Taliban laws should have been respected. Acknowleged however, might have been a good idea. My problem with these girls is simply that they acted foolishly, and after putting their own lives and the lives of US soldiers in danger they're talking about going back!

However well meaning, they acted (and in the heady glare of the media spotlight are acting) recklessly.

|link| Posted 9:56 AM by Brian Linse

Important War on Terror headline in the Ironic Times.

France Will Deploy Aircraft Carrier

"Will serve as "floating boulevard" for American, British troops, with boutiques, cafés, rude waiters."

|link| Posted 9:21 AM by Brian Linse

CNN reports that CIA officer Mike Spann was killed at the uprising in Mazar-e Sharif. No details as of yet.

|link| Posted 5:43 AM by Brian Linse

I just looked up at the tube and saw one of the media darling Christian missionaries who were held by the Taliban talking about wanting to go back to Afghanistan! Now these girls obviously "ain't right", and I'm sure they mean no harm, but do they not recognize that US soldiers risked their lives to chopper them out of that fucked up hell hole?

And why do the media seem to be so happily offering them airtime to proselytize while never asking a few obvious questions like, "What the hell were you thinking?"
I say we take up a collection to send Heather and Dayna back to Kabul. But when next they decide to burn their burkas to flag down a few Marines, they'd better hope that Jesus is piloting the chopper...

|link| Posted 2:46 AM by Brian Linse

In the unlikely event that anyone reading this hasn't read KEN LAYNE in the last 24 hours, go there now...

|link| Posted 7:10 AM by Brian Linse

Ok, look. I live in Los Angeles, so I'm used to the occasional wacky city or state law popping up from time to time. Yeah, I have to suffer some ridicule from my east coast friends, but hey, you know... the weather's really nice.

I wonder what reasonable citizens of Maryland will have to endure when news of a proposed ban of smoking in your own home gets around. Check out Jacob Sullum in Reason for the details.

Hey, any day that this kind of shit doesn't start in California is a good day.

|link| Posted 6:56 AM by Brian Linse

"What If Then Was Now" asks John Ziegler in an amusing piece in the JWR. He imagines famous headlines from historical conflicts in the media environment of today. This one is my favorite:

Hitler Dead.
But what took so long and what do we do now?

|link| Posted 6:20 AM by Brian Linse

I was planning on flirting with Natalie Solent by e-mail today, but I think I'll wait a day or two. I dropped by her blog, and... man is she pissed!

It seems they have some clueless socialist ninnie over there by the name of Roy Hattersley who really got up Natalie's sleeve with a piece in the Guardian. Her take down of this guy is great reading. It almost makes me wish we had a few real socialists to fuck with over here.... almost.

|link| Posted 5:06 PM by Brian Linse

I'm looking at a Washington Post picture of President Bush chilling at the white house with two religious fanatics while I'm listening to Gary Bauer on Crossfire whingeing about a moral crisis. Bush is photographed with the delusional Christian missionaries who were held by the Taliban, and Bauer is hot under the collar about cloning.

Fuck.

Doesn't the president have more important things to do?

Shouldn't Gary Bauer be at a bible study class preaching to the converted?


Bush was earlier (rather disingenuously I thought) spewing his outrage over today's amazing scientific breakthrough, so he's had a busy day appeasing his religious right constituency. What a day.

I find myself longing for a Defense briefing by Rumsfeld so I'm gonna take a break and smoke a cigar.

|link| Posted 2:43 PM by Brian Linse

Do you cringe every time President Bush falls back on that 'ol "Evil Doers" description of our current Muslim fundamentalist terrorist Islamist enemies?

Well so do the folks at Fuckedworld.com, where they've developed the H.P. Lovecraft "Evil-O-Matic" synonym generator.

|link| Posted 9:51 AM by Brian Linse

Matt Welch has a great piece in Reason today. Much analysis has been flung around about how the September 11th attacks and their aftermath have changed the political Left, but Matt is interested in the Right:

Outside the Beltway, a more interesting question will be how September 11 affects social conservatives. Confronted by religious fundamentalism at its most murderous extreme, even many god-fearing right-wingers no longer seem to have the stomach for the harsher battles of the Culture War, and are doing unto Pat Robertson what Hitchens did unto Chomsky.

This is a great piece that reminds me of just how deeply these events will influence our lives.

|link| Posted 12:21 AM by Brian Linse

William Safire follows up with Kangaroo Courts, a piece in the NY Times.

Spain, which caught and charged eight men for complicity in the Sept. 11 attacks, last week balked at turning over the suspects to a U.S. tribunal ordered to ignore rights normally accorded alien defendants. Other members of the European Union holding suspects that might help us break Al Qaeda may also refuse extradition. Presumably Secretary of State Colin Powell was left out of the Ashcroft try- 'em-and-fry-'em loop.

As hard as the suporters of Bush's tribunals try to intimidate with "Patriotic Correctness", the facts and history are against them. Combined with the rest of the administration's moves toward secrecy, primarily Bush's executive order to suppress presidential records, there is ample reason to be worried.

|link| Posted 3:07 PM by Brian Linse

The Washington Times, while not my favorite source for much of anything, has a great piece today in line with my on going Islam rant. A few interesting stats:

"All but one of the world's remaining military regimes are in Muslim countries. With the exception of Turkey and Bangladesh, there are no real elections in any Muslim country. Of the current 30 active conflicts in the world no fewer than 28 concern Muslim governments and/or communities. Two-thirds of the world's political prisoners are held in Muslim countries, which also carry out 80 percent of all executions each year."

The piece also includes lots of historical bits, and a facinating existentialist analysis. I hope this theme gathers momentum in a few more reputable publications in the future.

via Reductio ad Absurdum

|link| Posted 1:08 PM by Brian Linse

Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds lost his father in law to cancer last night. ANBD sends it's sympathy to Glenn and his family.

|link| Posted 6:10 PM by Brian Linse

I guess this was predictable, but this NYT article, Spain Sets Hurdle for Extraditions shows another level of complications resulting from the Bush tribunal plans. Too bad we need europeans to remind us that a just result without a just process is not justice.

|link| Posted 4:42 AM by Brian Linse

More on my Islam rant:

Charles Krauthammer also seems to wonder why the muslim leaders in America have been The Silent Imams. Any bets on who the first Bush Administration official to take up this view will be? I AintHoldinMyBreath...

|link| Posted 4:19 AM by Brian Linse

Tape will be rolling for a serious session in Heaven. Jazz producer Norman Granz has died at the age of 83. May he have a smooth trip to the other side...

|link| Posted 1:07 AM by Brian Linse

Mind Over What Matters' Jay Zilber joins the ranks of those not afraid of telling it like it is in this new PC (Patriotically Correct) media atmosphere:

As for last week's Doonesbury flap -- for all the controversey it has generated -- the worst thing I can say about the 11/18 Sunday strip was that Garry Trudeau delivered an atypically unsubtle and graceless broadside which was, nevertheless, fundamentally true. Who seriously doesn't believe that the Bushies are using their short-term popularity to swiftly ram through as much of their unpopular right-wing agenda as possible?)

To Jay's comment I would only add that all politicians are opportunistic, and it could be argued that they must be so. To have expected the president not to try and pull this shit would have been naive.

Hey, I wonder if I just coined a new phrase with"Patriotically Correct"? Anyone heard it before?

|link| Posted 3:01 PM by Brian Linse

OUCH!

This is a really cold one, but Uthant.com gets a good dig in against those in the media who feel the need to use the term "terrorist" with restraint, or in the case of BBC World, not at all...

|link| Posted 12:24 PM by Brian Linse

In an article in Slate, David Plotz takes up this question of US moral obligations in the surrender of Taliban and foreign combantants to the Northern Alliance.

There is no wiggle room in international law or the law of war: If Osama Bin Laden himself threw down his weapon and threw up his hands, the capturing troops would be required to let him live. If the Northern Alliance does slaughter surrendering soldiers, it would be a war crime.


Plotz's take on the situation is correct in a purely academic sense, but it is naive in the context of the historical realities of the conflict. The war between the NA and the Taliban is a civil war, and should the victors (presumably the Northern Alliance) choose to execute foreign prisoners, it shouldn't be a question of international law. In terms of the moral question, I don't think the deterrent value of such executions is in question, and the history of the region makes it an action that should suprise no one.

|link| Posted 11:33 AM by Brian Linse

From psychotic marxists to lucky Irishmen, Natalie Solent has been very busy blogging the last couple of days. I wish I could hook my browser to her and follow her around for a day. I encourage my friends and readers to check her out every day.

|link| Posted 11:06 AM by Brian Linse

Happy Thanksgiving to all in North America.

|link| Posted 5:51 PM by Brian Linse

Michael Kinsley takes media critics to task and points out some obvious hipocracy in a great WP comment column.

|link| Posted 4:03 AM by Brian Linse

Another great piece from JWR. This one from Jack Kemp of all people, criticizes Bush on his handling of the Palestinian State issue.


Bush violated some old taboos when he said it was America's "vision" that there be a Palestinian state and called that state Palestine. These audacious nudges on the lever of power were calculated risks that must be balanced with equal and opposing applications of leverage against the Palestinians and the Muslim world in general.

Bush articulated his "vision" only days after Osama bin Laden claimed that America's support of Israel justified his massacre of thousands of innocent civilians, and Palestinians literally danced in the street celebrating those barbarous acts of war.

The president's statement was, at best, "untimely" because it gives the appearance of rewarding supporters of terrorism. The comments jolted Israeli sensibilities and led Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to warn that Israel would not play Czechoslovakia at Munich, for which he later apologized.

It would now behoove the president to insist that Yasser Arafat and other Muslim leaders also discard their false taboos that stand in the way of peace in the Middle East and throughout the Muslim world.


I was floored when I heard the President make those remarks. As foolish as Sharon's response may have been, he was right.

|link| Posted 3:45 AM by Brian Linse

The light of day does seem to be dawning on some of the dark and evil realities of Islam around the world. Check out the JWR where Stanley Crouch has a great piece on the slave heritage of Islamic Africa.

Yessa formed his organization in 1995 along with Boubacar Messaoud, another who was born a slave in Mauritania. Messaoud is still in his country working against slavery, where it is supposedly illegal. It has, in fact, been outlawed three times since 1905 but continues to thrive. Muslim slaves, the audience was told, are taught that if they disobey their masters, they won't go to paradise when they die.


Even though I'm obviously obsessed on this whole issue of the need to honestly look at the shameful history of Islam, I hadn't thought of this angle.

|link| Posted 1:17 PM by Brian Linse

I was contemplating how I would express my true feelings about today's ceremony in honor of RFK, and then I checked in to Fuckedworld.com where John Berger says it all...

What's In A Name?
Imagine you're Attorney General John Ashcroft, trying to come up with something good to say about Robert F. Kennedy. "He was unafraid to call his enemy evil," Ashcroft growled at a ceremony renaming the U.S. Justice Building in honor of his predecessor. Later on, Ashcroft was scheduled to attend the dedication of the Martin Luther King Jr. Secret Detention Camp For Suspected Terrorists at an undisclosed location.

And the funniest part is that I feel compelled to remind everyone that the above is a joke... isn't it?

|link| Posted 1:15 AM by Brian Linse

The Times reports the continuing debate over the proposed Emergency Anti-Terrorism Bill in the UK.

Most disquiet among Conservative MPs was directed at plans to create a criminal offence of incitement to religious hatred.
John Gummer (C, Suffolk Coastal) asked if it might lead to the prosecution of the Rev Ian Paisley, leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, for calling the Pope “the Antichrist”.

Hey, at least their Government is debating!

|link| Posted 12:10 AM by Brian Linse

Read this brief but persuasive argument against the military tribunals proposed by the Bush administration. Jacob Sullum is fast becoming one of my favorite columnists on a variety of issues, and Reason Online is the place to find him along with a lot of other great content. Sullum quotes a dissenting opinion by Justice Murphy in a famous WWII case:

"The Fifth Amendment guarantee of due process of law applies to 'any person' who is accused of a crime by the Federal Government or any of its agencies," he wrote. "No exception is made as to those who are accused of war crimes or as to those who possess the status of an enemy belligerent. Indeed, such an exception would be contrary to the whole philosophy of human rights."

While we are certainly engaged in a "war", it is a war where our moral standing is made more important than ever before by the horror of the events that started it, and by the consequences of loosing sight of the values that we fight to defend.

|link| Posted 11:29 AM by Brian Linse

Gotta disagree with Instapundit again...

Spinsanity recaps quite nicely, I think, the chain of events that led to President Clinton's Georgetown speech being so distorted by certain reporters and pundits. The Spinsanity site has all the necessary links to investigate and make up your own mind. Check it out here. The part of the Instapundit's rebuttal that strikes me as particularly wacked is the following...

"No U.S. political figure who made remarks of this sort about any racial, ethnic, or national group -- well, national group besides American -- would get one one-hundredth the understanding that Clinton's defenders think he deserves here. Certainly Jerry Falwell -- whose stupid remarks weren't all that different from Clinton's taken in context -- didn't get much slack. He didn't deserve it. Neither does Clinton."

I think Insta needs to re-read both Clinton's speech and Falwell's remarks. Context is everything, and Clinton was speaking to a University audience. Falwell was on TV peddling his sick and twisted "faith." Instapundit is a prolific blogger, and I worship his site, but I just don't think he took enough time to think this one through. President Clinton's remarks were delivered in a positive and hopeful context. Falwell, as usual, spoke in a context of negativity and hate.

|link| Posted 3:46 AM by Brian Linse

A follow up to the UK debate cited in my earlier post. Check out The Guardian's report.

|link| Posted 3:18 AM by Brian Linse

Vice President Rice?

Instapundit thinks that the Republicans should consider Condi Rice as a VP running mate for GW in '04. What's he smokin'?

"Think about it: the biggest weakness of women candidates is that people fear they wouldn't make tough wartime leaders. That isn't likely to be an issue with Rice. She's enormously smart, she is a good public speaker (and improving steadily), and she's very popular within the Republican party."

I don't agree that the biggest weakness for women candidates is the wartime leader issue. I think it's just that alot of American males would unforntunately not be ready for a female VP or Prez. And would'nt there be branches of the Republican constituency that might have a problem with a black woman? ( ...look awayyyy Dixieland")

I wish that Glenn's scenario had even a slight chance, but alas, I think it's a little naive. If the Repubs can get their heads out of their asses for a moment, they'll offer Mayor Rudy the VP slot in '04 with the idea of running him for prez in '08. I predict that President Bush will need a hero by his side to get re-upped, and since Rudy seems to have no interest in the NY Governor job he should be available.

I like Rudy alot, but I'd still vote for the Democrat...

|link| Posted 10:09 PM by Brian Linse

This guy tells it like it is. The Orlando Sentinel has an amazing comment piece this Sunday. I only wish our leaders were as honest and courageous as M.A. Muqtedar Khan:

"The Israeli occupation of Palestine is perhaps central to Muslim grievance against the West. While acknowledging that, I must remind you that Israel treats its one million Arab citizens with greater respect and dignity than most Arab nations treat their citizens. Today Palestinian refugees can settle and become citizens of the United States, but in spite of all the rhetoric of the Arab world and Quranic injunctions (24:22), no Muslim country except Jordan extends this support to them."

This piece is a must read.

|link| Posted 5:42 AM by Brian Linse

Holy Shit!

Maybe I've been leading a sheltered internet life, or just spending too much time reading Glenn Reynolds, but a piece in The Times of London has my jaw hanging open with the "look of the fish."

THE “Annas” are on the march. Up to 100,000 militant anorexics, who claim that their shrinking body shapes are “lifestyle choices” rather than symptoms of a dangerous illness, are setting up a $1m fund to fight legal attempts to stop them winning new converts to their cause.

At first I thought maybe I was logged on to The Onion by mistake, and even after I read the entire piece I wasn't sure it was serious. But a quick trip to Google led me to the following Pro-Anorexia website. Be warned, this is seriously weird shit. Thankfully, the folks at SCaRED are on to them, and provide a warning for parents.

I am a hard core First Amendment Boy, but I plan to write letters to the webmaster and the companies who advertise on the site to express my Freedom not to ever let them get their hands on a penny of my money. Fuck these guys!

|link| Posted 4:37 AM by Brian Linse

Shortly after the September 11th Terrorist attacks, my friend Kinky Friedman was visiting Los Angeles to promote his new book. As we sat at Canter's Deli late one night, the Kinkster predicted that President Bush would turn out to be the next Truman. At the time, I thought Kinky had smoked one too many Cuban cigars, but now The Times of London seems to be of the same mind:

"That Mr Bush might shape the international system for decades to come will strike many, especially in this continent, as paradoxical. In addition to his seemingly anorexic electoral mandate, he had no experience of or interest in global affairs before securing the presidency. His intellectual qualities have hardly been the subject of universal admiration. It is worth remembering in this context that both the President who shaped US policy at the outset of the Cold War, Harry Truman, and the President who ensured the demise of that order, Ronald Reagan, endured a similar degree of ridicule. As Truman put it: “The presidency makes the President”."

While I admit that President Bush can't actually be as stoopid as he sometimes appears to be, I still maintain that he is not bright enough to deserve the office he holds. But as Clint Eastwood said in Unforgiven "Deserve's got nothin' to do with it"

|link| Posted 3:49 AM by Brian Linse

Pat Buchanan steps up and pees into President Bush's Cheerios with this cold assessment of the political challenges that will be faced in "Phase II" of the US war on terror:

"Now comes the hard part. Bush must soon post the goals for phase two of the War on Terror, a decision that could split apart his unified country or shatter his war coalition. For America's foreign policy elites are not united on phase two. As in the great battle between FDR and the America First of 1940-41, they are already separating into a War Party and a Peace Party."

Buchanan is, of course, a wack-job, and his politics give Draconians a bad name, but he is also extremely intelligent and well informed on the political right-wing. I'd say that winning military campaigns will seem like a cake walk compared to the political battles on the horizon...

|link| Posted 9:31 AM by Brian Linse

The Onion reports on the latest US/French dispute:

PARIS—With talks collapsing at the 11th hour, Franco-American relations hit an all-time low Monday, casting the future of Spaghetti-Os-brand canned pasta in serious doubt.

Uh-Ohhh...

|link| Posted 9:07 AM by Brian Linse

A sobering point in Libertarian Samizdata:

As we see the situation shift not by the day but by the hour, it is important that people look not just at Mazar-i-Sharif, Kunduz, Kabul and Khandahar, but also at nuclear Pakistan: what happens in Islamabad, Karachi, Rawalpindi and Quetta will certainly end up being far more important in the long run.

Many reasons to celebrate today (Rot in Hell Mohammed Atef), but we still have a long and dangerous road to travel...

|link| Posted 8:32 AM by Brian Linse

The first ANBD "Cold Fish Award" has just been announced!

Fucking Larry Kudlow tells us that he just bought a Purple Label Ralph Lauren Jacket for $1,200.00, marked down from $2,600.00. This example of "disinflation" tells 'ol Larry that the economy is getting better...

"Not only does this development mean that more cars and apparel will be sold, it will also aid in the transition from an economic downturn to an economic recovery. Prices play a huge role in this adjustment. Price-cutting forces cost-cutting, which leads to a rise in productivity. Lean and mean is back."


Mean is the operative word here. Alot of people are being laid off behind this "cost-cutting". But at least "Supply Side" Kudlow gets a break on his Purple Label jackets.

Asshole.

|link| Posted 7:33 AM by Brian Linse

While John Ashcroft is inciting monkey rage all across the political spectrum here in the US by opportunistically rolling back civil liberties, our friends in the UK are dealing with a few issues of their own. Check out this comment piece in The Guardian:

"Any challenge or criticism of a person's race will almost certainly, as such, be offensive, as well as unjustifiable.

Religion, by contrast, whilst something many are born into, is ultimately a function of choice.

It is a collection of adopted concepts which, in a democratic society, are as open to challenge and criticism as any other system of beliefs. Religion in this context has far more in common with politics, than with race. "


Some interesting ideas here about religion as a legitimate target of criticism. I'm still digesting this one, but it seems that there could be a thread in here that might apply to racial (read: religious) profiling of Muslims. These free speech things sometimes cut both ways...

|link| Posted 7:23 AM by Brian Linse

Here's an article from Reason Online that's amusing in a sick sorta way. I must have missed the Sara Jane Olsen trial story, (if it was even covered in any significant way) but this angle on the Bad Timing curse of violent radicals is worth a read.

|link| Posted 5:29 PM by Brian Linse

Natalie Solent has a really great blog going over there in GB. Just in case you thought that clueless idealism was the exclusive domain of US flakes like Alice Walker, check out Natalie's post of a letter to the editor in Pakistan's Dawn Magazine. How do you find this stuff Natalie?

|link| Posted 7:13 AM by Brian Linse

As much as the Guardian and the NY Times can piss me off sometimes, the BBC World Service gets the award for media shithead of the day. Check out this unbelievable report in the Guardian. Do they not realize that they are implying the possibility of legitimate political motivation for terrorism? Is this some misguided deputy editor's fuck up, or could it represent the view from the top at BBC World?

|link| Posted 4:44 AM by Brian Linse

Mickey Kaus gets to the meat of the Florida Recount story via the Orlando Sentinal. Check him in Slate, or at Kausfiles. The disturbing thing for me is the feeling that the outcome of the election would have been "accidental" had it gone either way. The Gore team should seek work in the fast food industry, or maybe they could get jobs in airport security...

|link| Posted 5:27 AM by Brian Linse

Well It's Florida Recount time again! Jeffery Toobin and Candy Crowley have already been at it on CNN this morning, and it looks like it's going to be a long fucking day. As the AP reports, Gore would have won with a statewide recount, but not with the recount that his incompetent legal team was asking for. These are the simple facts, and while it just no longer matters as a legal issue, (Bush IS our legal and constitutional president) it does make one wonder...

No doubt we shall all be dizzy from the spin today.

|link| Posted 5:14 AM by Brian Linse

When the InstaPundit's first post for the day begins "SOME DICKHEADS STOLE THE PENISES..." you know it's going to be an interesting day. I love it when Glenn wakes up with an attitude.

|link| Posted 3:45 AM by Brian Linse

President Bush (I still have trouble putting those two words together) is trying to sneak one by while we're not looking. Executive order 13233 is gonna bite ol' Dubya in the butt come 2004. John Dean knows a little bit about Presidential secrecy... "While secrecy is necessary to fight a war, it is not necessary to run the country. I can assure you from firsthand experience that a President acting secretly usually does not have the best interest of Americans in mind. It is his own personal interest that is on his mind instead." Check out his take at FindLaw.

|link| Posted 2:36 AM by Brian Linse

The first blog that I discovered... InstaPundit is addictive!

|link| Posted 8:34 PM by Brian Linse

I guess Salman Rushdie is the guy with the least to loose when it comes to speaking freely about Islam. Check out his article in The Guardian. When U.S. politicians and pundits muster up the moral courage to tell it like it is, we may find western muslims forced to address the shameful realities of their religious dogma.

|link| Posted 6:06 PM by Brian Linse

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Social, cultural, and political ramblings.