First question up from Specter was about the right to privacy and Roe. You can watch it live on C-Span now.

UPDATE: Lots of bloggers are on the scene in Washington, including Suitably Flip, Captain’s Quarters, Blogs for Bush, GOP Bloggers, Power Line, and The Political Teen. (H/T Michelle Malkin for the collection of some of the links).

UPDATE 2: Political Pitbull is also liveblogging. And Senator Frist just spoke with Scott Johnson. “He acknowledges that the committee vote can be delayed and the ultimate vote filibustered. He states, however, that he has an “absolute commitment” to get Judge Alito an up or down vote on the floor of the Senate.”

Fed up with politicians undermining the U.S., soldiers begin taking up the battle here at home. In recent so-called town hall meetings stacked with moveon.org types brave soldiers have begun taking the fight to U.S. politicians who are supporting the terrorists and attempting to demoralize the troops and the American people.

Michelle Malkin has the story…

General Wagner at a town hall meeting of Democrat Reps Moran and Murtha:

I visit Walter Reed [Army Hospital] and talk to the young soldiers with their legs blown off. I know you do, too. I can’t find one in a dozen that don’t believe that they are fighting for a noble cause and are fighting to go back. And I think it’s a disgrace when members of our Congress –just as they did in 1975 when they sold out the south Vietnamese–are selling out our soldiers today in Iraq!

You can see the complete video here.

At another town hall meeting held by the same pro-terrorist duo Sergeant Mark Seavey takes to the mike (via the Mudville Gazette)…

“Yes sir my name is Mark Seavey and I just want to thank you for coming up here. Until about a month ago I was Sgt Mark Seavey infantry squad leader, I returned from Afghanistan. My question to you, (applause)

“Like yourself I dropped out of college two years ago to volunteer to go to Afghanistan, and I went and I came back. If I didn’t have a herniated disk now I would volunteer to go to Iraq in a second with my troops, three of which have already volunteered to go to Iraq. I keep hearing you say how you talk to the troops and the troops are demoralized, and I really resent that characterization. (applause) The morale of the troops that I talk to is phenomenal, which is why my troops are volunteering to go back, despite the hardships they had to endure in Afghanistan.

“And Congressman Moran, 200 of your constituents just returned from Afghanistan. We never got a letter from you; we never got a visit from you. You didn’t come to our homecoming. The only thing we got from any of our elected officials was one letter from the governor of this state thanking us for our service in Iraq, when we were in Afghanistan. That’s reprehensible. I don’t know who you two are talking to but the morale of the troops is very high.”

It’s good to see our troops taking the battle to those here at home who seek to harm our country . Way to go. Organize yourselves and go to it. We need you.

And thanks for all you’ve done and will do.

It’s just like in the movies. But this time it was a woman with a minivan backing over a fire hydrant.

Via the Sun Valley News, Monga Bay.com and Eureka Alert, comes a fascinating story about a study funded by NASA, National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship, and the National Science Foundation.

The group used an atmosphere-ocean coupled climate model known as GISS Model E-R to simulate the climate impact of a massive freshwater flood into the North Atlantic that happened about 8,200 years ago after the end of the last Ice Age. As retreating glaciers opened a route for two ancient meltwater lakes known as Agassiz and Ojibway to suddenly and catastrophically drain from the middle of the North American continent.

At approximately the same time, climate records show that the Earth experienced its last abrupt climate shift. Scientists believe that the massive freshwater pulse interfered with the ocean’s overturning circulation, which distributes heat around the globe. According to the record of what are known as climate proxies, average air temperatures apparently dropped fell as much as several degrees in some areas of the Northern Hemisphere.

Climate researchers use these proxies–chemical signals locked in minerals and ice bubbles as well as pollen and other biological indicators–as indirect measures of temperature and precipitation patterns in the distant past. Because GISS Model E-R incorporates the response of these proxies in its output, the authors of the PNAS study were able to compare their results directly to the historical record.

Lori-Kate Nessim is a United States citizen who moved to Israel and got married. She obtained dual citizenship in Israel. She and her husband David had two children (who also have dual US/Israeli citizenship), after which time there was a necessary separation (about which I will not go into detail), though there was still hope that the relationship would be restored and so they did not yet pursue divorce.

David gave her permission, in writing, to take her children to the United States for an extended period of time, as this is where her family and her entire support network are located. Over time, he talked of making the arrangement permanent, planning to complete a divorce and ship her her belongings. He verbally agreed that she could keep the children in the United States indefinitely.

After she has lived here for fifteen months (her oldest son is five and her youngest is about 17 months) her husband filed a suit using the Hague Convention to force her to bring the children back to Israel. She contends that he lied to the judge about what he told her, and she has witnesses (albeit, friendly ones) who agree. The court battle basically became a “he said / she said” and Lori-Kate was unable to prove with preponderance of the evidence that he was lying on the stand. In November, Judge William T. Lawrence, of the Southern District of Indiana, ruled that Lori-Kate needed to take the children back to Israel, as they have jurisdiction under the Hague Convention rules on child abduction. The deadline for her travel is January 31st, 2006.

So now we have a situation where two children who are United States citizens and a mother who is a United States citizen, are being forced to leave this country for Israel without regard to the safety or welfare of the children (as this consideration is outside of the scope of the judge’s jurisdiction).

In representing the left-behind parent in a Hague proceeding, it is necessary to keep the court focused on the narrow issues that the Convention requires an applicant to establish and the narrow defenses that a respondent can assert. Whenever the hearing strays into any areas that might be considered as constituting an analysis of the child’s best interests, the applicant should vehemently object.

She is going to pursue further custody action and eventually relocation action to attempt to be permitted by the Israeli courts to bring her United States citizen children home to the United States, but the problem now is money. She does not have a job in Israel, she does not have money (either for living or for legal defense), and her family has nearly exhausted their borrowing power in the defense of her case so far. If you have any interest in this case, either as a blogger or member of the press who would like to know more details, or as an individual who would like to donate, your support would be most welcome by this family who is hurting. The defense in Israel is estimated to cost close to $30,000 and take nearly a year to complete.

As an aside: this is oddly reminiscent of the Elian Gonzalez case, except in this case the children’s mother is alive and a U.S. citizen. Even though Cuba is not a signatory to the Hague Convention, had it been, it would have required that Elian be sent back to Cuba for the custody dispute resolution. The question in this case comes down basically to habitual residence, and the judge deemed that the five year old boy, who has lived in the United States for 15 months, and the 17 month old boy, who has lived here nearly all of his short life, had their habitual residence in Israel and therefore the custody battle should take place there.

The Hague Convention is a civil legal mechanism available to parents seeking the return of, or access to, their child. As a civil law mechanism, the parents, not the governments, are parties to the legal action.

The countries that are party to the Convention have agreed that a child who is habitually resident in one party country, and who has been removed to or retained in another party country in violation of the left-behind parent’’s custodial rights, shall be promptly returned to the country of habitual residence. The Convention can also help parents exercise visitation rights abroad.

There is a treaty obligation to return an abducted child below the age of 16 if application is made within one year from the date of the wrongful removal or retention, unless one of the exceptions to return apply. If the application for return is made after one year, the court may use its discretion to decide that the child has become resettled in his or her new country and refuse return of the child.

In the grand scheme of things, she would like to change the way the system works to afford greater protection under the Hague Convention to children who are United States citizens, but primarily right now it’s about the money to be able to fight for her children. A fund has been set up to assist Lori-Kate in her quest to bring her children back to the United States, and if you would like to donate via PayPal, the email address is: preloka[at]yahoo[dot]com.

UPDATE: The case number is 1:05-cv-01155-WTL-LJM and was handled by William T. Lawrence, United States Magistrate Judge in the Southern District of Indiana.

The AP has the definitive proof.

Michael Leeden in NRO wrote an article yesterday entitled “One Moment in Time.” Hidden in plain site at the end of the second paragraph, he writes the following:

This historical moment is not easy to understand, since we are in transition from a relatively stable world, dominated by a handful of major powers, to something we cannot yet define, since it is up to us to shape it. It seems clear, however, that there is a greater rapidity of change, accompanied — inevitably — by the passing of the leaders of the old order. This is particularly clear in the Middle East, where seven key figures have been struck down in the past six years: King Hussein of Jordan in February, 1999. King Hassan of Morocco in July of the same year. Syrian dictator Hafez al Assad in June of 2000. Yasser Arafat of the PLO in April, 2004. King Fahd of Saudi Arabia in May of last year. Ariel Sharon of Israel was incapacitated by a stroke in early January. And, according to Iranians I trust, Osama bin Laden finally departed this world in mid-December. The al Qaeda leader died of kidney failure and was buried in Iran, where he had spent most of his time since the destruction of al Qaeda in Afghanistan. The Iranians who reported this note that this year’s message in conjunction with the Muslim Haj came from his number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, for the first time.

It seems that no one believes the story this time around either.