Month: December 2009

Hey, Pete Stark’s (D) under an ethics investigation!

You know Pete: he’s that crazy Democrat who goes around threatening to throw journalists out the window when he doesn’t like the questions.  He’s also that crazy Democrat who’ll take over for Charlie Rangel at Ways & Means if Rangel ever has to answer for his ethics violations, which is probably not the least reason why the Democrats haven’t thrown Rangel out of a metaphorical window of his own.  Anyway, Pete’s getting investigated:  the Washington Times is guessing tax evasion, real estate where-does-he-actually-live edition.

Yes.  You’re all shocked that a Democratic politician wasn’t paying his taxes.

This got reported back in March, mind you.  And they’re getting around to checking it out now.  But no doubt the federal government will be much quicker about having that suspicious dark spot in your next X-ray properly assessed.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Saw Sherlock Holmes.

And to answer Ken Hite’s last question: it was a perfectly good movie that hit a lot of of his – and my – buttons on the way past.  I liked it; Guy Ritchie took Sherlock Holmes seriously, and contra Ken (slightly) I thought Jude Law was better than Russell Crowe would have been.  Setting looked very believable, local tech level ditto, Downey/Law’s interaction with each other very good, and they managed to make this current film without using too many elements that will be needed for the next film.

So go ahead and see it in matinee, and definitely see it when it hits DVD.

If at first you don’t succeed…

(Via Instapundit) There’s a lot of meat in this post about How The System Worked, but what struck/disquieted me was this almost-casual observation:

Al Qaeda seems to have a lot of respect for US border security screening.  That’s why it is trying to commit terrorist attacks on US soil without actually entering the US.  Since border measures were strengthened after 9/11, al Qaeda has tried three separate plots using the same basic technique — get on a transatlantic flight and blow it up before it lands and before the terrorists are put through our border screening process.  Every plot has failed.  But if this doesn’t remind you of the successive World Trade Center attacks, you’re not paying attention.  They’ve got a schtick, and they’re going to keep using it until it works.

You ever hear what the IRA once told the British? “We only have to be lucky once. You have to be lucky all the time.” That’s how terrorists think: stop them nineteen times and they’ll keep coming back for a twentieth bite at the apple.  That doesn’t mean that they can’t be deterred or suppressed; but you can’t do either by waiting for them to commit a crime and then arrest them all.  You do either by finding them and killing everybody who doesn’t surrender, and by detaining the ones who do so that you can interrogate them and get more intelligence about their compatriots still remaining alive and at liberty.

We don’t let cops do that in this country.  We don’t want cops to be able to do that in this country.  Given the way that the Left has indirectly encouraged this country’s growing acceptance of torture, one wonders why they seem so determined to also encourage the American people to think that it’s necessary to let cops be able to do that.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Sen. Chris Dodd (D): airport screenings for explosives doubleplusungood.

In fairness, that money was just sitting there, all fat, dumb and happy, and practically begging to be misappropriated to some domestic pork program.  Besides, how was Dodd supposed to know that international terrorists would come up with the novel idea of using explosives to try to blow up airplanes?

Now that our attention is focused on airline security measures thanks to the failed airline attack on Christmas Day, it’s worth mentioning that one Senator took money away from aviation security to line the pockets of constituency that supported his presidential campaign in a big way.

Back in July, Senator Chris Dodd, D-Conn., proposed an amendment reducing aviation security appropriations by $4.5 million in favor of firefighter grants — a notoriously inneffective program. In fact, the money was specifically “for screening operations and the amount for explosives detection systems.”

…oh, wait.

Via Jim Geraghty, who notes that the Senate in general signed off on the amendment (S.AMDT.1458 to H.R.2892; it was part of the Homeland Security appropriations bill).  This is fostering an atmosphere where you have the ability to read and assess bills before you sign them is so critically important…

…oh, wait.

Moe Lane Continue reading Sen. Chris Dodd (D): airport screenings for explosives doubleplusungood.

You know, 2009 was not a *bad* year…

…after all, my second child was born in it, which alone would make the year worthwhile.  But it’s a year that I would have otherwise fast-forwarded through if I had been given the opportunity.  I’ve been thinking about 2010 since November 5, 2008, and the only things that kept 2009 from being the Star Trek III of the decade were the NJ/VA state elections.  And now 2010 is almost here, and I have to switch gears.  It’s… odd.

Or else just ‘the deep breath before the plunge.’

Moe Lane

Christian activist detained in North Korea?

Very possibly.

North Korean authorities have said they have arrested a US man who crossed into their territory.

The North’s official KCNA news agency said the man had entered the country from China on 24 December. There is no official word on the man’s identity.

However there have been reports that Robert Park, a US Christian activist, recently crossed into North Korea.

See also VoA News, whose reporter Kurt Achin makes no real attempt to hide the fact that he considers deliberately walking into North Korea in order to spread the Gospel to be the act of a madman.  Which it may or may not be; but it’s certainly not the act of a coward.  Particularly when he’s also telling the North Korean regime to shut down the concentration camps that you, I, and Kurt Achin all know exist there – even if Achin’s hiding behind a convenient ‘they say.’

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

There’s a SF story in this.

Working with the below in terms of an artificial structure:

gravity_wells

…such as a ringworld or an Alderson disk suggests one heck of a setting.  Although working out the oddities of atmosphere, sunlight, and how much of that structure is habitable for anything resembling terrestrial life would be a: very complicated and b: far too easy to get wrong.  I get the feeling that this sort of thing was a lot easier to pull off in the days of Edgar Rice Burroughs.