I’ll be offline most of the weekend for some home improvement projects!!

See you Monday.

Ed Morissey makes some really poignant observations about the fact that Soros funded Lynne Stewart’s defense.

Form the NRO we read:

Billionaire financier George Soros, whose opposition to President Bush’s conduct of the war on terror caused him to pour millions of dollars into the effort to defeat the president, made a substantial donation to the defense fund for radical lawyer Lynne Stewart, who last week was found guilty of giving aid to Islamic terrorists.

According to records filed with the Internal Revenue Service, Soros’s foundation, the Open Society Institute, or OSI, gave $20,000 in September 2002 to the Lynne Stewart Defense Committee.

And Captain Ed reacts with:

It’s fair to characterize Soros as the single most important contributor to the Democratic effort in 2004, and all signs point towards his continued kingmaking for future campaigns.

His support of a convicted terrorist enabler, however, may well wind up making his largesse more of a liability than an asset for a political party already seen as fatally soft on terror. How will Howard Dean make the case to the American people that the Democrats can keep the country safe when his majority stockholder fights to keep terrorists and their messengers out of prison and on television, giving orders out to the lunatics via talk-show interviews?

Maybe the US is not quite as bad as she indicated last year?

It’s like rain on your wedding day
It’s a free ride when you’ve already paid
It’s the good advice that you just didn’t take
Who would’ve thought… it figures
Mr. Play It Safe was afraid to fly
He packed his suitcase and kissed his kids goodbye
He waited his whole damn life to take that flight
And as the plane crashed down he thought
Well isn’t this nice…
And isn’t it ironic… don’t you think?

At first I thought this had to be a joke.

Reporterette, Black Five and Michelle Malkin all have posts about this. Here’s the Fox News story by David Asman and a link to Scott Ritter’s new Al Jazeera column.

Asman writes:

Not all Marines take pride in the work of their brothers.

Take Scott Ritter (search), a former Marine and United Nations weapons inspector, who has turned into a critic of just about anything the U.S. does in Iraq. Now he’s writing for Al-Jazeera’s Web site, which seems like a perfect home for his defeatist rhetoric.

Chris Nolan, the token liberal at CPAC (sitting next to LaShawn), has this to say about the attendees.

But they’re very nice and well-mannered. They’re also very young. If you’re thinking conservatives are a bunch of old coots longing for the days of black-and-white TV, women staying home and minorities in their places, think again.

This is a young crowd. Young as in youthful. “I just took whatever they gave me for graduation,” says the nice young man sitting across from me. He’s talking about his laptop. It’s a contrast to the post-election Democracy Rising party I attended in Berkeley a few months ago. That room was filled with grey hair in part, of course, because hair colorists are an unknown species in that little town. This room – this convention by contrast – is filled with fresh young earnest faces. And lots of blondes.

This isn’t just a digression on cosmetics. Young faces look ahead. Not back.

Lots more CPAC blogging here.

From the AP:

The State Affairs Committee unanimously approved HB1249, which would make it a felony to do abortions if Roe v. Wade, the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion, is overturned. The bill would allow exceptions in cases where a pregnant woman’s life is at risk.

But what jumped out at me was this quote by Planned Parenthood spokesperson Kate Looby.

Kate Looby of Planned Parenthood said the bill is one of the most extreme measures she has seen. The measure would tie physicians’ hands and ignore women’s ability to make decisions for themselves, she said.

“Making abortion illegal never has and never will stop women from having abortions,” Looby said, urging the committee to reject the bill. [emphasis mine]

By this logic, nothing should be illegal. Let’s substitute a few other activities.

Making murder illegal never has and never will stop people from murdering.

Making theft illegal never has and never will stop people from stealing.

Making speeding illegal never has and never will stop people from speeding.

I wonder if Kate Looby would want to legalize all of these things.

UPDATE (2/22): Looks like I got a commenter riled up with the post above. In one comment, I have been called the following: clever boots, unimportant, stupid, smarmy little bugger, a punter, shallow, angry, and close-minded. Oh, and apparently I engage in “silly little name calling episodes.” :-)

I honestly do not see how that comment in any way adds to a constructive dialogue or in the least bit actually has rational disagreement with my point that “By this logic, nothing should be illegal.” But I figured I would at least point out the irony in calling me names while saying that I’m engaged in name calling (which, as I review the original post, I’m having trouble finding an instance of).

Ann Coulter’s column today is about the Ward Churchill thing. She’s got an interesting discussion of the “free speech red herring” as it relates to government as employer.

If you haven’t been following The Brad Blog’s sleuthing into the generic nuke plant satellite photos, check it out.

Jay Tea has some thoughts on the USA today article that came out yesterday.

Here’s a bit of the article.

“At the time my children were raised, we were suffering from a misguided notion that healthy self-esteem results from something extrinsic that tells you you are a good person,” says Betsy Brown Braun, a child development specialist in Pacific Palisades, Calif., and the mother of 26-year-old triplets.

It wasn’t limited to the West Coast. Raising self-esteem became a national concern, and educators thought it could help raise academic achievement.

But schools got sidetracked into worrying more about feelings, says Charles Sykes in Dumbing Down Our Kids: Why American Children Feel Good About Themselves But Can’t Read, Write, or Add. “Self-esteem has virtually become an official ideology,” he writes.

And Jay’s reaction:

USA Today has an article about a study that the big push towards boosting children’s self-esteem of the 80’s wasn’t such a good idea, after all. Apparently now that those kids are growing up and finding out that not everyone will blow sunshine up their butts and praise them to the high heavens. Reality is crashing in on their tender little egos, and it’s proving very painful.

Ever since I first heard about this notion, I’ve thought it was insane. Protecting children from criticism and failure and judgment while they’re children simply renders them unable to deal with it when they’re adults, and makes it a far harsher lesson.

And on a somewhat related note, Ambra Nykola points readers to this WND article:

A master’s student at a New York college was kicked out of the graduate education program because of what officials claim was a “mismatch” between his personal beliefs and the goals of the program.

According to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, or FIRE, a nonprofit group, the trouble began when Le Moyne College master’s student Scott McConnell wrote a paper that advocated “strong discipline and hard work” in the classroom and an environment that allows “corporal punishment.”

I think they really should have been a bit more considerate of the self-esteem and feelings of Scott McConnell before they kicked him out.

Hop over to Nykola.com and participate in the caption contest she’s got going for this picture of Al Sharpton and Terry McAuliffe.

If this Michael Gunther is actually remorseful, he is doing something very honorable. Some would say it’s a publicity stunt, but I would like to believe the best. He has a pretty good point, if he actually murdered someone, the right thing to do is to confess and accept the consequences for his actions rather than trying to dodge responsibility. In a strange sort of way, my hat is off to this confessing murderer.

Update on this story at SF Gate. InCom Corp has pulled out of the RFID badges on kids deal they had going on at Brittain Elementary School.

The grade school that required students to wear radio frequency identification badges that can track their every move has ended the program because the company that developed the technology pulled out.

And I can see why, if this is the implementation.

The school had already disabled the scanners above classroom doors and was not disciplining students who didn’t wear the badges.

Looks like Sean Hannity has stirred a hornets nest over at Free Republic with his comments from yesterday.

Sean Hannity is promoting his message board and in part compares it to Free Republic. He then tells a story about how years ago he used to follow the Freepers, but left the board (and everyone he knows left it as well) because of “childish, immature personal attacks.” He then alludes that the Freepers have a “propensity to eat their own” and is adamant that his bulletin board will not be taken over by “fringe people” I.E. the Freepers.

Wizbang’s Kevin Aylward says he will give Hannity a chance to respond at CPAC today if Sean’s around.

Pundit Guy concurs with Sean and says “The freepers are freakin nuts.”

Pam’s House Blend has a list of actual Freeper quotes. Nice stuff. And she suggests their new “beacon of democracy” is Michael Savage (author of The Enemy Within).

UPDATE: More reactions rolling in. OTB says:

While “fringe” is an overused word, I would have to concur with Hannity and PunditGuy that FR qualifies, at least in the conversational sense of the word.

But Kevin McCullough has a bit of a different take:

But it is my feeling that Sean is making enmity where it is not needed… If he took some time, backed up a bit, he would discover that Freepers and Bloggers both would be quite generous to his new site and the new “messageboard” feature that he was pumping in the audio bite. That’s part of what bloggers do, generously link and share traffic - based on the idea that the more people who distribute information - the more the public is armed to make informed choices. Blogs are not about crowing over how “BIG” your site is. Bloggers know who is big, and they know better than you do…

UPDATE 2: Pundit Guy has been doing some legwork, trying to get in touch with Hannity, and attempting to post on Free Republic. Check this out:

UPDATE: I registered and posted a message on the topic stating that I was attempting to get in touch with Sean Hannity and would report his comments if I did. Ten minutes later…BAM! My post was removed and I was promptly banned from Free Republic. What’s up with that?

UPDATE 3: Bill, the Pundit Guy, has posted a brief synopsis of Hannity’s radio response today. Check it out.

Hyscience has posted a summary of the press conference held by Randall Terry yesterday at Woodside Hospice.

He’s also got some pictures and links to the AP story, of which he comments:

Not a lot of sizzle here. Like I said before, Terri’s bloggers have a lot of work to do. We need to do what we are doing which is organizing the largest telephone and email campaign this ole country’s seen in a very long time. And we need to advertise in the St Petersburg times as a collective of over 100 bloggers and their readers - the message that Terri is alive now and she doesn’t deserve to sit in a room with no stimulation or connections to those who love her until she is starved and dehydrated to death in a death camp in the middle of and under the protection of a political beast called the Pinellas county court system.

Check out Peggy Noonan’s column today. Here’s the intro:

“Salivating morons.” “Scalp hunters.” “Moon howlers.” “Trophy hunters.” “Sons of Sen. McCarthy.” “Rabid.” “Blogswarm.” “These pseudo-journalist lynch mob people.”

This is excellent invective. It must come from bloggers. But wait, it was the mainstream media and their maidservants in the elite journalism reviews, and they were talking about bloggers!

Those MSMers have gone wild, I tell you! The tendentious language, the low insults. It’s the Wild Wild West out there. We may have to consider legislation.

When you hear name-calling like what we’ve been hearing from the elite media this week, you know someone must be doing something right. The hysterical edge makes you wonder if writers for newspapers and magazines and professors in J-schools don’t have a serious case of freedom envy.

Oh, and speaking of legislation, here’s an interesting bit from Powerline.

When introducing his new legislation to overhaul the US FOIA, Senator John Cornyn mentioned bloggers:

It’s only natural that government leaders want recognition for their successes, but not their failures. But we as a healthy democracy need to know the good, the bad and the ugly. The news media is of course the main way people get information about government. The media pushes government entities, and elected officials and bureaucrats and agencies to release information that the people have a right to know, occasionally exposing waste, fraud and abuse. And hopefully, more often than that, letting the American people know what a good job their public officials are doing. But we’ve also seen in recent years the expansion of other outlets for sharing information outside of the mainstream media – to online communities, discussion groups, and blogs.

Tapscott adds:

I’ve had numerous conversations in recent months with Sen. Cornyn’s Judiciary Committee staffers responsible for developing the FOIA reform package and found them instantly receptive to and thoroughly understanding the role of blogs in the news and public policy debate processes. This is reflected in the proposal and will be important as bloggers become more frequent and adept users of the FOIA to break news and to advance the public policy discussion and debate.

UPDATE: Blogger Grumpy Old Man contrasts this with the WSJ’s Monday editorial, which Hugh Hewitt commented extensively on the other day.

From FrontPage magazine:

A prominent Islamic apologist named Jamal Badawi, renowned as a “moderate Muslim,” has offered one million dollars to anyone who can find references in the Qur’an that condone “religious war, or jihad.”

And then Robert Spencer goes on to cite quite a few passages in the Qur’an … you decide for yourself.

(via Lucianne)

Some interesting developments in the Oil for Food scandal came out yesterday.

The Senate Governmental Affairs Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations released documents alleging that the inspector for Saybolt, a Dutch company hired to monitor approved Iraqi oil shipments from 1996 to 2003, enabled Saddam’s regime to sell $9 million worth of oil outside the program.

…

Coleman named Armando Carlos Oliveira, 46, a Portuguese national, as the rogue inspector who received a $105,819 payment, about 2 percent of the value of the oil smuggled in two illicit shipments in 2001.

Captain Ed observes that $100,000 is sort of cheap, in relative terms.

Also, it appears Benan Sevan may have his diplomatic immunity stripped, if Norm Coleman has his way.

Coleman also wants diplomatic immunity lifted on Benon Sevan, the former director of the now-defunct $67 billion program, which allowed Iraq to sell oil in order to buy goods that would alleviate the impact of 1990 trade sanctions.

Sevan is listed in Iraqi documents as having received oil allocations, which were then lifted by a small Panama-registered trading firm.

And a bit more direct:

Senator Norm Coleman, chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs investigations subcommittee, said the documents, presented at a hearing in Washington, suggest that Benon Sevan did not just serve as an intermediary in Iraqi oil sales, as investigators have alleged, but personally received valuable oil allocations.

Subcommittee staff say Sevan may have earned up to £635,000.

“As a former prosecutor, I believe that clear and direct evidence establishes probable cause that Benon Sevan broke the law,” Coleman said. Sevan has diplomatic immunity.

Check out this bit of research from Corante. It seems the AP is syndicating some sarcastic commentary and calling it a blog.

AP have obviously and spectacularly failed to understand what ’syndication’ means in the blog sense or what a blog actually is. And what’s worse, the entries I’ve read so far are just not very good. Whilst it’s true that I have read drivel less interesting in my years as a blogger, this poor copy of Wonkette is written by someone who is supposedly a professional writer and it really should be better.

AP have a long, long way to go before they can claim membership of the blogosphere. Firstly, they need a blog. Secondly, they need a blogger who can write interesting and compelling posts. Thirdly, they need to engage with the blogosphere directly, on a first person basis, not try to latch on to the buzz through the intermediaries of news sites like Yahoo.

Hat tip: Wizbang.

More mockery from Common Sense Journalism.

The story on Yahoo about its Bad Language blog made me almost spit up my lunch.

Some excerpts:

If you’re confused on what a smog — as our granny called it — is or how it fits into The Associated Press’ infrastructure, think of it like this: The AP is the all-knowing yet crotchety robe-clad Sanford and we’re his wiseass but totally lovable Son, hocking junk you could probably live without.

From inside our cardboard box at the AP World Headquarters, we’ll do stuff like fill you in on Bad News, tell you about the latest Bad Habits, ask stupid questions in Bad Interviews, bitch during Bad Reviews, chase celebrities on Bad Trips and present anything and everything we deem Just Plain Bad.

No one is safe from BL. (That’s right. We got initials.)

Oohhh, it’s got initials.

This from the AP, whose corporate culture makes the New York Times look like a scandal sheet, makes a proctologists convention look like a swinging singles weekend.

I admire what Tom Curley is trying to do at the venerable news organization to bring it into the multimedia times — and to save it from becoming irrelevant. I admire the people I worked with and still know there. They do a helluva job.

But AP as hip? I have some initials, too: B.S.

Today’s “creationism isn’t science because you can’t test it with an experiment” is brought to you by the Cecil County Public School Board.

Story here:

The board approved the text with the stipulation that Cecil County Public Schools administrators agree to discuss, with the state board of education, a science curriculum change that would allow local teachers to present origin-of-life theories in the classroom.

Board members also asked that the school system’s media specialist provide students who have questions about mankind’s conception with materials that also present conflicts in Darwin’s evolution theories.

The board’s decision to approve the text came after a public hearing during which four locals asked them to approve the book, while one man said evolution has been proven wrong and should not be taught in schools.

Vaughan Ellerton of Zion, a chemist for 40 years, rejected board member William Herold’s request for “intelligent design” - the theory that Earth is so complex it must have been created by a higher being - to be recognized in school science classrooms. “Creationism, or intelligent design, if you prefer the term, is not science because it is impossible to test by experiment,” Ellerton said. “It has no place in a science course.” [Emphasis mine]