Unqualified Offerings

American V, streaming on MySpace NOW. It’s the posthumous death-country you need.

IOZ is right about more than just the specific issue of storm insurance in Florida. Florida is a textbook example of government stupidity on the environment. Government collects money from people that don’t stress Florida’s ecology to pay other people to do that very thing. The government sees to it that we pay extra for […]

Well, that was a mess.
Not altogether bad, mind you. In fact, it had some very good qualities. The “stalker” angle that some have noted works in conjunction with some touches that succeed in (purposefully) making Superman a little scary, a little bit the Stranger. There’s one very good line as Clark and Lois finish this […]

Interestingly, last year Arnaud de Borchgrave found it worth his time to publish an op-ed about those menacing Wahabist mosques. (Through Benador Associates yet!) This week, in his article on the Miami Seven, he writes,
Since 9/11, the FBI has been plagued not only by costly computer interface glitches, but also by a shortage of agents […]

A bunch of bleeding-heart liberalism from well-known pinko simp Arnaud de Borchgrave, who writes about the Seas of David group:
The indictment stretched credulity. It had all the earmarks of an overzealous FBI informant creating crime by conditioning impressionable poor blacks looking for a cause against a system they had grown to hate. It’s not rocket […]

A local Miami news program gets footage of the inside of Narseal Batiste’s warehouse. It all proves nothing one way or the other. Richard Cohen and Matthew Yglesias take the Administration to task for hyping the arrests. Matt writes
Obviously, one of the things terrorism is supposed to do is, well, terrorize people. The actual risk […]

Scott Bullock of the Castle Coalition surveys the state of eminent-domain abuse on the first anniversary of the Kelo decision.

If politics is show business for ugly people, what the hell is blogging? NOT one of the questions I answered for a brief Bloggasm interview.

I won’t waste any time “refuting”The war for moral superiority” by Diana West. It does that job quite nicely on its own. Somehow in West’s panicky and bitter brain condemning “Abu Ghraib, Haditha, CIA interrogations or Guantanamo Bay” becomes evidence of “perpetually adolescent non-judgmentalism” since what could be more “non-judgmental” than judging things? For West, […]

Nation Breaking

A Big Budget Anti-Suicide Bombing PSA.
Intended for viewing on Iraqi satellite TV:
Onlookers were later asked to stand back as the pyrotechnic crew blew up a poor old Yugo coupe and stunt men and women, padded under their Arab garb, were thrust into the air with ropes and pulleys to simulate the impact of a bomb […]

Interesting IHT article on the attempt to retake Ramadi running in parallel with the more hyped efforts in Baghdad.

Thomas Nephew’s not the only one who found himself wondering “Whatever happened to accused spy Susan Lindauer?” as he read about the Seas of David case. But he’s the one who actually did some work on the question. His update is fascinating and worrisome stuff. Lindauer is in the process of discovering that being declared […]

Beating; punching with fists; use of truncheons; kicking; slamming against walls; stretching or suspension (to tear ligaments or muscles to cause asphyxia); external electric shocks; forcing prisoners to abase and to urinate on themselves; forced masturbation; forced renunciation of religion; false confessions or accusations; applying urine and feces to prisoners; making verbal threats to a […]

Tomorrow the deal by which McClatchy Newspapers buys out Knight-Ridder will close. Knight-Ridder has been the only Establishment Media Enterprise (EMETM) to acquit itself with consistent honor in the GWOT era, so I worry. The Herald piece suggests that “not much” is likely to change for the first couple of years. May it be so.

Larry Cohler-Esses has brief but jam-packed chronicle of the serial mendacities of Amir “Dress Code” Taheri. The provable lies stretch back to at least 1989, and implicate his patroness as well. She herself responds with the Bedwetter Creed:
“As much as being accurate is important, in the end it’s important to side with what’s right. What’s […]

Jennifer at Feral Genius has your creepy oedipal media phenomenon of the week. Okay, of human history. I think if my mom e-mailed me pretending to be a sixteen-year-old girl named “Candy Sweetness” and then wanted to put us all on television about it I would catch The Gay superdoublequick.

It’s storming so hard around my area Angry Liberal Bloggers must be responsible.

The Miami Herald and Chicago Tribune offer quickie profiles of the Miami Seven, especially Chicago transplant Narseal Batiste, proprietor of Azteca Stucco and Masonry and accused terrorist hopeful. It’s a story of downwardly mobile losers a step - at most - ahead of the repo man. It’s all merely pathetic until you recall John Allen […]

Brooke Oberwetter names her price for waging Jihad. Meanwhile, Hammer of Truth espies a strategery.
There’s absolutely a reality show in all this: America’s Next Terrorist!

Christopher Allbritton publishes an English-language summary of the Iraq reconciliation proposal, with brief comments.