Full Disclosure - Bring on the press revelations. By Christopher Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens writes well as usual in his column for Slate Full Disclosure - Bring on the press revelations. While Hitchens defends the freedom of the press, he objects to comparisons between disclosure of Valerie Plame's supposed covert identity and genuine secrets during wartime.

Garry Kasparov reminds us that the Russian dalliance with freedom is nearing an end What's Bad for Putin Is Best for Russians - New York Times

I especially enjoyed his inclusion of a quotation by Winston Churchill in the opening paragraph, "However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results."

OpinionJournal.com hits the nail on the head with Kimberley Strassel's article, Get Your Priorities Right. The bottom line: solve the most urgent problems, like HIV/AIDS, first. Solve the least urgent problems, like global warming, last.

Personally, I trust that technology will in due course solve both our energy and global warming problems if allowed to do so by government.

Thanks to Doc Searls, I now know where the Floyds were in 1881 http://www.spatial-literacy.org/UCLnames/Map.aspx?name=FLOYD&year=1881&altyear=1998&country=GB&type=name

Here's the link to conduct your own search.

Egad! Will wonders never cease! The Washington Post prints an editorial that--gasp--correctly states that "The inconvenient truth is that if we don't solve the engineering problem, we're helpless." Global Warming's Real Inconvenient Truth

Gaia lovers will find it inconvenient indeed to continue to deny that the world's population is going to increase regardless of the increasingly shrill, dire warnings they issue. Politics have no place in this discussion. Instead, sober planning to provide for quality of life for that future population as well as responsible husbandry of resources are the paths to accommodate the inevitable without devolving to war over resources.

After seeing Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and countless unmanned launches since I was a young lad awakened by my parents to watch them, I've never forgotten the sense of awe I first felt when watching Alan Sheppard's first flight. Godspeed to the crew of Shuttle Discovery: Florida Today: Space


Nice job on the photo, Reuters.

Blogging while recovering from back surgery hasn't dulled Captain's Quarters ability to connect the dots.

This photo looks more and more like the real thing every day.













Thanks to Jacques Itch for maintaining the photo on his site.

The anti-American New York Times takes somewhat less jaundiced look at the ethanol fever, and raises some interesting questions. For Good or Ill, Boom in Ethanol Reshapes Economy of Heartland

One key issue not discussed in the article in the Times is Ethanol's demand for water: "Resources becoming a concern, with new facilities requiring millions of gallons".

I know we're supposed to have World Cup fever despite the rioting fans. For those fans of rugby who feel left out, here's a post at Little Green Footballs that will make you laugh--and cry: The Scrum of the Incredibly Strange Fully Garbed Iranian Female Rugby Trainees

The revelations in the "drive by media" that we are using the law to connect to dots on terrorist activities--that would be called treason if we had the guts to use the term properly today--are instructive to the terrorists on our capabilities if not entirely revealing about the scope of our methods and means. Michelle Malkin posts a nice set of "blabbermouth posters" modernized to illustrate the costs of aiding the enemy. How about a nice big glass of.

Steve McIntyre at Climate Audit has an excellent post with even more interesting commentary on the release of the National Academy of Science's report,"Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years": NAS Panel Report
The comments in the post go on for days--more than 500 entries! After reading them, go to the home page for more recent entries on this very worthwhile site.

Steve is dead-bang right. So is the ordinary citizen who recalls that Greenland once produced abundant grapes and wine in the middle of the last millenium. So is the common man who asks, after reading the headlines that scream "Study says Earth's temp at 400-year high" thinks, "Wow, so before the industrial age really kicked in, the world was warmer than it is now. I wonder what caused that? And, what else aren't they telling us?"

One of the commenters linked to another useful site on the CO2 debate.

The NAS panel report can be found here.

Tom Evslin, my old friend from the late 80s when I was at Apple and he was CEO of Solutions, Inc., is right as usual when he takes on the question of Korea's nuclear capable long range missle capability: Fractals of Change: What To Do About North Korea

Connie Chung makes absolutely, positively her last gig...notable, if not memorable YouTube - memories

I would love to have been a fly on the wall to hear the discussion among the group that pulls together names for seasonal hurricanes--still no "black" hurricane names, by the way--when they picked "Alberto". Were they admiring "Crazy Al", or more likely, poking fun at him?

Carbon emissions are still measured in parts per million, and not very many at that. Instead of spending incredible amounts of money to reduce already diminishing carbon emissions (except in the developing world, including perpetual coal mine fires in China), if we're really at a tipping point, among the prudent, good government acts we could take including having the government buy back land from all coastal property owners up to a certain point above sea level and prohibiting development in at risk areas so that we can adapt to the crisis until it can be studied and solved without bankrupting the industrial or the developing world. Repeating "Crazy Al's" mantra, "See, see, another hurricane--I told you!" solves nothing except dramatizing the inability of government to address the undesired outcome of global warming.

Of course, the Hollywood elite supports "Crazy Al" --that is, unless their expensive beachfront property was condemned. They would probably support a "cut and run" strategy that still offered them dibs on the "new" beachfront property--wherever that may be.

The Dutch built dikes to hold back the sea instead of living with flooding. They did not tell farmers and villagers to stop farming and trading. There are endless examples of man's ability to adapt to nature. Unless we start to hear policy proposals that deal with adaptation to global warming, all we're hearing is more hot air.

FOXNews.com - Terror Links to Saddam's Inner Circle - International News | News of the World | Middle East News | Europe News

The poorly exploited captured trove of documents from Saddam's regime slowly gives up its secrets. FOXNews.com: Terror Links to Saddam's Inner Circle

So, UBL and friends were meeting with Saddam's inner circle in 1999? Interesting if you put aside your "Bush lied!" sign and read the article carefully.

James Lileks uses his Newhouse column to take us through the fevered logic that infuses the far left's reaction to the aborted attack by home grown Islamic terrorists on...Canada.

David Harsany at the DenverPost.com calls for us to "Chill out over global warming"--quite rightly, according to Colorado State University's Bill Gray and Roger Pielke Sr. at the University of Colorado.

From Mr. Harsany's column, "Gray is perhaps the world's foremost hurricane expert. His Tropical Storm Forecast sets the standard. Yet, his criticism of the global warming 'hoax' makes him an outcast."

Why is the politicization of science so unashamedly tolerated by the left of its enviro-wackos? Is the temptation to embrace self-hate so appealing that it extends to the success of the industrial world and the educational establishment that it seems bent on radicalizing if not destroying? The global warming debate is far from over, and it is far too soon to prescribe solutions to a problem that is simply not well understood.

The Wall Street Journal's OpinionJournal.com section runs an editorial by "Krazy Kofi" Annan who claims that illegal immigration is a form of "migration". That's it--we're not being invaded by people who have no legal right to be here; we're just hosting innocuous migrants, like a flock of birds.

Every nation-state since the Treaty of Westphalia has retained the right to defend its borders and set rules on citizenship for those who would wish to settle permanently. No thinking person can possibly confuse the waves of uneducated, unskilled immigrants--and who knows how many "OTMs"--with a harmless flock of birds. Americans are awakening to the real invasion, not a migration, that is underway in America. Mr. Annan is right to say that America has always been a refuge for those fleeing oppression or who wish to bring their skills and abilities to an entrepreneurial society that doesn't prohibit advancement like some in Europe, Asia and Africa. We're tired of being taken for a free ride, though, by those who would enter without permission.

Think of the current wave of "America for Americans" as the second coming of "welfare reform" and you'll be closer to understanding the roots of the movement.

The Seattle Public School District unintentionally makes the best argument ever put forward in favor of school choice Planning ahead is considered racist?

The first few sentences of the column, by Andrew J. Coulson, are astonishing:

"Are you salting away a little money for your retirement? Trying to plan for your kids' education? If so, Seattle Public Schools seems to think you're a racist."

"According to the district's official Web site, 'having a future time orientation' (academese for having long-term goals) is among the 'aspects of society that overtly and covertly attribute value and normality to white people and Whiteness, and devalue, stereotype and label people of color.'"

Unbelievable. Read the whole thing, then start saving your money to send your children to private school or to home school them.

The Christian Science Monitor publishes an intriguinging proposal by Philip Gold calling for an independent agency to be created that would decide on the sites that could be explored for oil in the domestic U.S. and then, as in the case of the process outlined in the Base Closure and Realignment Act, allow Congress to approve all selected sites or disapprove all sites, without amendment. Consider responsible drilling on US soil

NW News publishes an editorial by Toby Nixon Brightwater stinks, and it's not the sewage you're smelling

I met Toby when I was the AppleTalk Evangelist at Apple from '87 to '90. I was pleased to find that he had preceeded me to the Northwest when I arrived at Microsoft in '94. He's still there, splitting time on his work on networking and communications with his responsibilities as the Republican representative for the 45th Legislative District, which includes my new home town. I look forward to voting for him again.

If only there were video and audio of this indecipherable blabber Nancy Pelosi Speaks - The New Editor

"The microphone is on the table" might become as famous for its strange context as "What's the frequency, Kenneth?"

Pete du Pont offers a well reasoned argument against global warming histeria in his monthly column for the WSJ OpinionJournal - Outside the Box

I haven't heard any discussion of a point that ocurred to me after reading this article. If man is such an important cause of global warming, and if industrial activity must be curtailed in order to bring the threat down, then what has happened during periods of lower industrial activity--major recessions, war, etc.?

The Wall Street Journal prints a piece today by Peter Wehner, deputy assistant to the president and director of the White House's Office of Strategic Initiatives. It's a must read for anyone who is repeatedly drawn back into debate over the rationale for the Iraq war. OpinionJournal - Featured Article

All sorts of grandiose tributes expressed in architecture to a truly failed system. Unrealised Moscow

H/T Digg

Damninteresing.com covers exciting developments that portend advances in stem cell research without the ethical dilemmas involved in the use of embryos: extraction of stem cells from menstrual blood and human spermatogonial cells (from testicular tissue) in the post, New Sources for Stem Cells

Speaking for myself, I favor the former.

Ann Althouse points to a fun story about the power that unionized California janitors have to prevent graduates from being further indoctrinated by Democratic party apparachniks My Way News - Dean Cancels Berkeley Graduation Speech

If this doesn't make one skeptical of government-run "free" health care, nothing will. In a Dentist Shortage, British (Ouch) Do It Themselves - New York Times

The reviews for "United 93" keep coming in. Instapundit.com - excerpts a few reviewers whose impressions I share. I wholeheartedly recommend the film to every adult American of any political stripe. I was profoundly affected by the experience of watching the movie, and reminded of my feelings on that day of infamy.

The Angry Left attacks one of the blogosphere's best, causing many, many supporters to rally to her side.

Click the picture of this intelligent, articulate woman to read more about it.

My old friend Tom Evslin has a great blog. His post on global warming is just like him: thoughtful, practical and based on facts, not fancy. Fractals of Change: Global Warming ? Too Important for Junk Science

Another story not covered by the main stream media Kyoto: An Open Letter to the European Governments and the European Commission The Brussels Journal

A great quote from the article, “If, back in the mid-1990s, we knew what we know today about climate, Kyoto would almost certainly not exist, because we would have concluded it was not necessary.”

The Captain's Quarters blog calls it "case closed" on the question of Saddam's links to terrorism and attacks against the US prior to 9/11.

ABC News: Did Russian Ambassador Give Saddam the U.S. War Plan?

Despite ABC's disclaimers, these documents certainly make the President's case for war far stronger. ABC News: Did Russian Ambassador Give Saddam the U.S. War Plan?

John D Barrow, a professor of mathematics at Cambridge University, writes in the UK's telegraph:

"In all the science we pursue we are used to seeing progress. Our first attempts to grasp the laws of nature are often incomplete. So, in our religious conceptions of the Universe, we also use approximations and analogies to have some grasp of ultimate things. They are not the whole truth but this does not stop them being a part of the truth: a shadow that is cast in a limiting situation of some simplicity."

"Our scientific picture of the Universe has revealed how blinkered and conservative our outlook has often been, how self-serving our interim picture, how mundane our expectations, and how parochial our attempts to find or deny the links between scientific and religious approaches to the nature of the Universe."

As the man says, read the whole thing. Telegraph Opinion Astronomy illuminates the glory of God

Many say that this is the greatest blog post ever: Tom McMahon: What I Have Learned In 15 Years

I think that it is one of the greatest pieces of real advice ever published. Anywhere.

The Media Mob: Oprah on Frey: "I Was Wrong" - NYO

"I apologize, I was wrong," Ms. Winfrey said, about her support of author James Frey. She also said, "I regret my phone call to Larry King," referring to her live phone call to the talk show host, in which she blamed the publishing industry for not disclaiming the memoir. "The truth matters," Ms. Winfrey said, and: "My judgement was clouded."

The Media Mob: Oprah on Frey: "I Was Wrong" - NYO

Wow--what a turnabout. The order of the universe has been thrown into chaos. Next we'll read widespread reports that cats are going for walks on leash--even in the rain--and dogs are ignoring thrown balls and their food.

Eastern Europe freezes in killer cold - Yahoo! News UK

The Left continues to pose like a Turkey in the rain, part 1,138:

Eastern Europe freezes in killer cold - Yahoo! News UK: "'You'd have to go back at least 10 years, sometimes 20 years, to find such sharp colds,' said Patrick Galois, a meteorologist with Meteo-France."

Al Gored's new book on Global Warming, accompanied by a documentary that will be screened at Sundance, comes out soon. He gave a speech on global warming during a severe cold snap in NY last year. To quote Bugs, "What a bunch of Maroons."

Evidently, I'm an Audi TT! Not what I'd hoped for, but it'll do while I'm saving for that M6...

You're not the fastest, nor the most nimble, but you're cute and you have style. You're not intensely competitive, but when you pass by, everyone turns to look.

Take the Which Sports Car Are You? quiz.

Returning Abramoff cash 'taints' tribes, Murray says

Instapundit said it best, "You can't make this stuff up." Returning Abramoff cash 'taints' tribes, Murray says

Reason online covers a forthcoming (1/20/06) special on ABC TV's 20/20 that reports on the shocking state of education in the USA, compared to, not Japan, but...BelgiumStupid in America: Why your kids are probably dumber than Belgians

Like most of what he writes, Fred has some intelligent thougts regarding intelligent design.

There he goes again. Stephen F. Hayes of the Weekly Standard actually bothers to do some reporting on what Saddam was actually doing before the war. Only about 2.5% of Saddam's trove (millions) of documents that were captured during the war have been translated, and probably an even lower percentage have been read and reported on by the press. What sobering truths remain to be found? If only the government actually cared about getting the truth about Saddam out "in Saddam's own words". Saddam's Terror Training Camps

Without a doubt, this is one of the best blonde jokes ever. Hat tip: Transterrestrial Musings and GeekPress

A tremendously effective repudiation of the moral equivalence and ignorance of history shown in "Munich" RealClearPolitics: Munich Stands for Appeasement by Kate Wright

The Wall Street Journal takes the junior Senator from WA out to the woodshed and administers a bit of education in the free market. OpinionJournal: It's Your Money

From the AP : Some saw biodiesel problems coming

Another icon of the envirowacko movement toppled.

Jerusalem Post | Breaking News from Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish World

From the Jerusalem Post: a great fisking of the Graz, Austria vs. "the Austrian Oak" kerfuffle.

The Seattle PI headline surprisingly admits, "Secret court modified wiretap requests
Intervention may have led Bush to bypass panel"

More requests were modified and denied under President Bush's administration than any other in the FISA court's 26 year-long history.

Ethanol may go the way of the Dodo in Denver. The air is cleaner--who knew!

Thanks to the great PowerLine blog for linking to this article in which a veteran of the CIA during the Reagan Administration raises two very interesting questions for George Tenet.

Instapundit does a good job of rounding up an excellent list of those who in turn have collected current and past posts on the anniversary of 9/11/01.

Never forget.

I blame the President. CNN.com - Solar flare affects communications, disruptions possible - Sep 8, 2005: "'This flare, the fourth largest in the last 15 years, erupted just as the ... sunspot cluster was rotating onto the visible disk of the sun,' said Larry Combs, solar forecaster at the center."

"But overall, the Bush administration's funding requests for the key New Orleans flood-control projects for the past five years were slightly higher than the Clinton administration's for its past five years." From the Washington Post: Money Flowed to Questionable Projects:

A "Du-oh!" moment for the global warming doomsayers.

I can hear them now, "Stop the earth! The dirt is causing global warming!"

From MoltenThought.com via The Corner: an excellent if slightly snarky upbraiding of the media's failure to understand much other than how to pile on in the politicization of the Katrina crisis.

Update: more in the same vein here.

David Frum does a good job of defending the Administration's response to Katrina's impact in New Orleans from some of the bizarre, self-contradicting charges leveled by the looniest on the left. David Frum's Diary on National Review Online

David does an excellent job, and leaves little to add. I would like to point out this post for additional information and links to still more data, a time line of events, and legal analysis of where the responsibilities and powers of the state and local governments end and those of the Administration's begin.

Ingenious Shell finds economical Shale oil.

This is excellent news if it holds up in commercial scale testing.

From BreitBart.com: Chief Justice Rehnquist Dies at Home.

This summer, we had the politics of the Supreme Court, the politics of the Iraq war, the politics of Katrina, and now a doubling of Supreme Court politics. What else?

The terrible disaster caused by Hurricane Katrina has been politicized far too early and far too much. Whether it will have an effect on the President's popularity or not is still an open question. However, his public pronouncements haven't exactly been his most uplifting and inspiring speeches, and that's coming from a dyed-in-the-wool Republican. While the gulf coastal area was declared a federal disaster area two days before Katrina reached land, and certain resources were pre-positioned, it is clear that inadequate attention was paid to the details. It almost seems as though local officials and much of the affected populace hoped for the best rather than planned for the worst.

It would seem that the overall execution of the rescue, relocation, and care giving aspects of the operation are starting to turn around and provide necessary relief and stability. There is plenty of time in coming months and weeks to assess the timeline of the disaster in terms of successes and failures. Still, Louisiana's state and local governments seem to be guilty of gross incompetence, as detailed here.

Another sign of the coming apocalypse courtesy of BREITBART.COM

"Hard" scientists become ideological poli-scientist

I can’t add anything that this post http://www.wesleyjsmith.com/blog/2005/08/intellectual-stalinism-of-science.html says about this story http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/18/AR2005081801680_pf.html except to say, “well said”.

It's not science, it's "Scientism". Secondhand Smoke: Intellectual Stalinism of Science Establishment Revealed

I love this story. Steel from the World Trade Center used to construct the USS New York

A member of the CCSP Committee resigns over climate change politics Climate Science ? Resignation from the CCSP Committee ?Temperature Trends in the Lower Atmosphere-Steps for Understanding and Reconciling Differences?

Britain's House of Lords discloses that the Kyoto Treaty is a "failed accompli". Money quote from the UK's Telegraph: "Hard though it may be for the hair-shirt brigade and the Royal Society to accept, there's an awful possibility that the Americans were right all along. The Kyoto accord looks like yesterday's approach to yesterday's conception of tomorrow's problem." Perhaps now Europe will come clean about climate change

This is astonishing. If the public can turn its attention from Tom Cruise's meltdown, the fate of a lost girl in Aruba, and a President exercising his prerogative to appoint an ambassador to a long vacant post, they will witness a life or death drama is about to unfold in space that is unequaled since Apollo 13. NASA to Conduct Spacewalk to Mend Shuttle

Ah, summer. The summertime heat stifles many people, making them lethargic and unable to work, or even think with all their faculties intact. That description applies in triplicate to the Democratic partisans and their allies in the media who continue to try to make a scandal out of the Plame Game. They've succeeded like the pistol in the movie "The Mexican" in creating a scandal that backfires on them.

Here's a link to two posts at National Review's website that summarizes what we know of Joe Wilson's tattered reputation and what has been learned after the recent set of Sunday talk shows. Keep scrolling to read the second; both are worth your time.

Hmmm. Japan unveils "robot suit" that enhances human power - Yahoo! News

Does this mean that we're closer to this?

WSJ: French Land in New Jersey; Charge Fails

The Wall Street Journal brings us the story of hapless French military aircraft forced to land in NJ. What's worse, one of the pilots apparently maxed out his credit card.

"Low on fuel and struggling in bad weather, nine French fighter jets and a radar plane couldn't return to their aircraft carrier during maneuvers with the Canadian military and landed at the Atlantic City International Airport in New Jersey instead. The Federal Aviation Administration helped the jets land, and French marines and translators were sent to the airport to help the pilots, Philadelphia TV station WPVI reported. The U.S. State Department also got involved when one of the French pilots had his credit card rejected when he tried to buy fuel, the TV station reported. The FAA couldn't confirm the failed credit-card transaction."

A fascinating footnote to the Deep Throat saga that was finally concluded today. The American Spectator

What's good for General Electric isn't good for the USA. TCS: Tech Central Station - General Rent Seeker

A new debate is about to begin: militarizing space, or anticipating future threats? New York Times: Air Force Seeks Bush's Approval for Space Arms

Kofi's selective recollections during the Oil-for-Food scandal investigations seem awfully convenient, and highly questionable. My Way News: Annan Failed to Disclose Key Contacts

Winds of Change links to a story exposing pro-global warming bias at noted scientific journals Science and Nature. I'm shocked, shocked I tell you--not. Winds of Change.NET: "It's All Over for Science"

Was Einstein right when he first said what he postulated, or when he said what he postulated was wrong? We may be getting closer to the answer, or we may not...Fermilab - Press Releases

Another liberal newsman eats his words, and leaves his job amidst a cloud of self-inflicted controversy. AP: Eason Jordan resigns from CNN

Drudge reports another tale of necessity being the mother of invention. Ananova - Man peed way out of avalanche

The Diplomad writes, "Fight Global Warming: Turn on the A/C & Open the Windows" and in doing so provides as fine a fisking on the muddle-headed thinking that is evident in "the independent report [that] was made by the Institute for Public Policy Research in Britain, the Center for American Progress in the United States and the Australia Institute" on global warming as I've seen in a long time.

The New York Post Online Edition comments on the glacial pace of government action even in the face of crisis. A person is granted citizenship 3 1/2 years after his death during 9/11. Many of the obvious steps to increase government data quality and hence awareness of threats have yet to be taken.

We have lost one of the greats. He went out the way everyone dreams of going, on top, and leaving them begging for more.

There's no one like him.

Godspeed, Johnny.

Johnny Carson, 30-year king of late night TV, dead at 79

"The global warming danger threshold for the world is clearly marked for the first time in an international report to be published tomorrow -- and the bad news is, the world has nearly reached it already."

What a shock.

Why, if there was plenty of time to act, the pace of grant approvals to these bilious idiots for new studies would slow down. The gullible might take time to think about dire predictions of global warming in light of blizzard conditions across the US--hey, don't believe your eyes, believe the doomsayers!

What a bunch of malarkey. The UK Independent: "Countdown to global catastrophe"

On this day of the President's inauguration, nothing can be said, or will be said, better than this.

Both Drudge and InstaPundit link to this excellent story by the WaPo's Howard Fineman about the rise and fall of the Mainstream Media in its recent guise as a political party and king maker. MSNBC - The 'Media Party' is over

While I would prefer not to speak ill of the dead, it is hard to find the good in someone who claimed to influence opinion and culture while holding the views that follow below.

'An early and passionate opponent of the Vietnam War, Sontag was both admired and reviled for her political convictions. In a 1967 Partisan Review symposium, she wrote that "America was founded on a genocide, on the unquestioned assumption of the right of white Europeans to exterminate a resident, technologically backward, colored population in order to take over the continent."

In her rage and gloom and growing despair, she concluded that "the truth is that Mozart, Pascal, Boolean algebra, Shakespeare, parliamentary government, baroque churches, Newton, the emancipation of women, Kant, Marx, Balanchine ballets, et al., don't redeem what this particular civilization has wrought upon the world. The white race is the cancer of human history; it is the white race and it alone — its ideologies and inventions — which eradicates autonomous civilizations wherever it spreads, which has upset the ecological balance of the planet, which now threatens the very existence of life itself."

Considering herself neither a journalist nor an activist, Sontag felt an obligation as "a citizen of the American empire" to accept an invitation to visit Hanoi at the height of the American bombing campaign in May 1968. A two-week visit resulted in a fervent essay seeking to understand Vietnamese resistance to American power.

Critics excoriated her for what they regarded as a naive sentimentalization of Vietnamese communism. Author Paul Hollander, for one, called Sontag a "political pilgrim," bent on denigrating Western liberal pluralism in favor of venerating foreign revolutions.

That same year, Sontag also visited Cuba, after which she wrote an essay for Ramparts magazine calling for a sympathetic understanding of the Cuban Revolution. Two years later, however, she joined Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa and other writers in publicly protesting the regime's harsh treatment of Heberto Padilla, one of the country's leading poets. She also denounced dictator Fidel Castro's punitive policies toward homosexuals.

Ever the iconoclast, Sontag had a knack for annoying both the right and the left. In 1982, in a meeting in Town Hall in New York to protest the suppression of Solidarity in Poland, she declared that communism was fascism with a human face. She was unsparing in her criticism of much of the left's refusal to take seriously the exiles and dissidents and murdered victims of Stalin's terror and the tyranny communism imposed wherever it had triumphed.

Ten years later, almost alone among American intellectuals, she would called for vigorous Western — and American — intervention in the Balkans to halt the siege of Sarajevo and to stop Serbian aggression in Bosnia and Kosovo. Her solidarity with the citizens of Sarajevo prompted her to make more than a dozen trips to the besieged city.

Then in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Sontag offered a bold and singular perspective in the New Yorker. "Where is the acknowledgment that this was not a 'cowardly' attack on 'civilization' or 'liberty' or 'humanity' or 'the free world' but an attack on the world's self-proclaimed superpower, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions?" She added, "In the matter of courage (a morally neutral virtue): Whatever may be said of the perpetrators of Tuesday's slaughter, they were not cowards."

She was pilloried by bloggers and pundits, who accused her of anti-Americanism.

Sontag had never been so public as she became over the next three years, publishing steadily, speaking constantly and receiving numerous international awards, including Israel's Jerusalem Prize, Spain's Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts, and Germany's Friedenspreis (Peace Prize). Upon accepting the prize from Jerusalem's mayor, Ehud Olmert, Sontag said of Israel's policies toward the Palestinians: "I believe the doctrine of collective responsibility as a rationale for collective punishments [is] never justified, militarily or ethically. And I mean of course the disproportionate use of firepower against civilians."'

Newsday.com: Author Susan Sontag Dies

Thanks to Instapundit, here's a link to an excellent piece on the new face of Marxism: a movement that depends on uneducated masses to become "useful idiots" and the symbols for liberal mythology like the nobility of the "indigenous peoples" of the earth.The Diplomad: Not Your Father's Marxism . . .

Someone should ask the Principal of this pathetic excuse for an educational instituition the name of the "Holiday" that the party was celebrating. And the Democrats wonder why they are rejected again and again by traditional values voters. Hampton Union Local News: Boy in a Santa suit asked to quit dance

If Kyoto was about idealistic goals and overblown predictions of doom--like the Y2K scare--then the aftermath of the Buenos Aires Climate Change Conference may be marked by a return to more reasonable approaches that don't require global agreement on apocalyptic industrial retrenchment for minimal gain. In short, a rejection of EU-backed policies in favor of technology-based solutions enforced by bilateral agreements--led by the U.S., Italy, China and other pro-growth Asian countries. Tech Central Station: The Kyoto Protocol is Dead

Oh, sure. NOW they tell us!! Times Online UK: Laptops used on the lap may be bad for more than a man's eyesight.

The "Dem" in question is that scurrilous, uncouth cad, Terry McAuliffe. What he said isn't shocking so much--given his past performances--as it is amazing that he can still find reporters willing to listen and print what he says. He's the most spectacularly ineffective head of the DNC ever. UPI: Dem uses Pearl Harbor to slam GOP

With all his ability and his superb resume, you'd think he would aspire to something far beyond Roger Ebert's job. Film critic Powell pans formulaic James Bond plots

Boston.com / News / Boston Globe / Opinion / Op-ed / An election day secret

An interesting twist on why the President won, and the daunting problem facing the Democratic Party. Boston.com / News / Boston Globe: An election day secret

All the pundits were wrong. Washington is the Florida of 2004. Sound Politics: Full state hand job here we come!

If hand counts are more accurate than machine counts, then why aren't hand counts used in the first place? Why have machine readable ballots at all? The answer, of course, is that hand recounts aren't more accurate. They introduce errors, and opportunities for fraud.

This fiasco now comes down to litigation--the Democrats will try to get rejected ballots reinstated--and who has the most and best qualified observers during the recount process.

Update: Here's a story from the Seattle Times that has a little more detail.

I don't know, but I'm willing to bet, that many of the election officials that the Democrats are calling incompetent in their lawsuit are themselves Democrats, as was the case in Florida in 2000. What a mess.

This is so, so wrong. Wizbang shows an ass getting his lit.

Stop the presses. Barry Bonds is busted for 'roids. BONDS' TESTIMONY / Giants star told grand jury he used clear substance, cream provided by trainer Greg Anderson, but believed they were flaxseed oil and arthritis balm

Apparently, my old home town TV station--WMAZ in Macon, GA--broadcast the penultimate Ken Jennings episode on "Jeopardy!" last week. A station engineer accidentally played one of the show's tapes out of order. He'll take game show records for $2.5 million

By the way, the call letters "WMAZ" originally stood for "Watch Macon Achieve Zenith".

A story that won't make the front page of any newspaper in America. Mount St. Helens is [Washington] State's Top Polluter

The Unnecessary Nuisance on the Hudson begins to take steps toward reform of the Security Council.The New York Times: U.N. Calls for an Updated Council

Old Europe discovers that China wants their lunch money, and every other meal as well. Telegraph: EU spells out trade threat from China