As if any more proof was needed...

...that the UN is a worthless, toothless organization:

Key U.N. Security Council members dropped the threat of sanctions against Syria on Monday in a last-minute effort to get all 15 nations to back a resolution demanding that Damascus cooperate with an investigation into the assassination of Lebanon's former prime minister.

The resolution had called for possible economic sanctions if Syria didn't comply, citing the U.N. Charter. But the new text dropped the reference to the charter, saying only that if Syria doesn't cooperation "the council, if necessary, could consider further action."

During negotiations that began Sunday night and continued early Monday morning, the five veto-wielding council members — the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France — also agreed to drop an appeal to Syria to renounce all support for terrorism

What part of "wiped off the map" don't you understand?

Iran's president addressed a conference call called "The World Without Zionism." Citing Ayatollah Khomeni, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that, "Israel must be wiped off the map."

This from a nation that is pursuing nuclear weapons.

Greg's Fly Baby

Memo to self - Furl this page.

Pulled Pork Busters

The only thing to say is, HEH. Indeed.

Who would Jesus Bomb?

Lileks went off on another screed this week, about an anti-war protestor with a sign reading, "Who would Jesus bomb?" It prompted my old buddy Pete from Detroit to write the following:

I get SO tired of these sanctimonious prigs. The OBVIOUS answer (and the point of the barb at W) is that Jesus was not a bombing kinda guy. And so it is. Were he to deal out vindication he'd be much more personal about it - the scene with the moneychangers in the temple being a classic example. Then again, there's the lesson of Sodom and Gommorah. Granted, that wasn't specifically Jesus, but it's hard to think of a nuke attack being described in biblical terms any more accurately.

We also know God takes a dim view of people who oppress Jews, their armies, and their sons (hello, Pharoh, the plagues weren'tenough? You had to drive the army into the sea?). So, from various perspectives, we have indications that the divinity has visited retribution on those who cheat the people in the name of 'religion' and convenience, (Oil for Food, anyone?), the sexually promiscious (Yasser, Saddam, his sons) and oppressive regiemes and their minions.

Also, more to the point the people he would certainly NOT bomb would be tourists at a disco, families in a pizza place, soldiers in theirbarracks (or on a boat), grandmothers on a bus, kids on a school bus or even actually IN the school. Those, I think, are the ones Jesus would not bomb.

Which side are these *sshats ON, anyway?

Cool!

News Map ht: Ken Hensley

Happy birthday, Your Excellency!

Baroness Maggie turns 80 today. (My Dad does the same shortly.)

A fitting tribute to the Great Lady is Mark Steyn's comments on Hugh Hewitt's show today (as transcribed at radioblogger.com). They contain a cautionary note for those U.S. conservatives carping about President Bush today:

And it shows the danger when you have...you know, great leaders are very rarely honored by their parties, because the parties are full of all the safe time servers. And that's what Mrs. Thatcher's Torry Party was. She was a bold, courageous leader. You see it now. Tony Blair in Britian, John Howard in Australia, and George W. Bush in the United States. And innumerable Eastern European leader that nobody knows the names of. These are all essentially Thatcherite leaders operating Thatcherite policies at home and abroad. And yet the one place where she didn't have a working majority in those few months in 1990, was her own political party.

(Emphasis mine.)

An idiot, but a dangerous idiot

On the eve of the first free, deomocratic constitutional referendum in the country's history, Michael Fisk says that Iraq has descended into anarchy.

I guess in his little enclave in the Green Zone he doesn't have access to Michael Yon or Arthur Chrenckoff.

What makes Fisk a dangerous idiot rather than simply an idiot is that people listen to him, thinking that he is speaking the truth. Not many people, and not powerful people, but generally loud people. And unfortunately, often a few loud people get noticed by many or powerful people.

A great, great speech

The President finally gave the speech he's been needing to give for a couple of years. This is why we're fighting, and what we're fighting for.

We put the fun in disfunctional

A quick shout-out to the members of my family that I finally got brave enough to tell about this blog. I know we disagree about many - ok, most - political, social, and religious issues, but I love you guys to the end of time. So break out the Maalox and keep reading.

Molech must be pleased

Netherlands legalizes killing babies (Donald Sensing).

Like the death of a parent, you know it's coming, you see it coming, it's not really a surprise, but you're still stunned when it happens.

Maranatha!

She blinded me .. with SCIENCE!

When I get around to putting a blogroll on this thing, Mark Shea and Patrick O'Hannigan are gonna be on it.

Missing the point on Miers

UPDATED - the original was WAY too long and rambling.

Half the conservative world is up in arms over Harriet. "How do we know she's a real conservative? How do we know she's a strict constructionist?" they cry.

It's blindingly obvious to me - she's an evangelical Christian.

Harriet Miers has attended and been active in an Evangelical church for decades. Social moderate-conservatism is in the water, the air. (You'll also find some extremely strong social conservatives, but fewer in Evangelical than in Fundamentalist churches.)

Many of Miers's critics grudgingly accept that she's probably a social conservative. But they're unsure about her stance on the interpretation of the Constitution. Again, her faith-based worldview informs this.

Evangelicals study the Bible, trying to discern the writer's original intent. "What's the 'therefore' there for?" There are wide-ranging arguments over how to interpret many passages (most a result of different ways to translate the original languages and discussions over cultural and historical context), but the bottom line is, "What does the Bible SAY?" We let the text speak for itself, and take the most plain meaning possible.

I'm not worried about Harriet Miers rewriting the Constitution.

Note: I wrote this BEFORE I saw the post on Captain's Quarters or the WSJ article talking about this very issue. Great minds think alike, eh? :-)

Be mindful of the consequences of errors in your work

NASA said today that the likely cause of the PAL-ramp foam coming off Discovery's tank was workers damaging it either by cutting it while working nearby, or leaning against it and cracking it. The loose blanket under the window had shoddy stitching. The bits sticking out on the belly tiles were improperly glued.

The shuttle is the most complex machine ever built - over one million pieces, each one delivered and assembled under government contract by the lowest bidder.

I used to think that was funny.

More signs of the impending end

Jeb Bush is piggybacking on Disney's marketing of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe to get school children to read the C.S. Lewis classic for his statewide reading initiative.

Hide your children.

Seriously, it'd be great to have some organized protests. Then we can put The Narnia Chronicles on the "read a banned book" table at the public library.

Great minds think alike

I'm delighted that Hugh, Beldar, and Thomas Lifson all share my point of view that Harriet Miers is a very shrewd choice.

The vocal red-meat red-staters need to understand that this President thinks and acts strategically, not tactically. They might have preferred a nominee that would generate a nuclear war on the floor of the Senate, but even if the Byrd option were imposed (and I frankly don't think Frist has the spine to pull the trigger) and cloture forced, it would be a Pyrrhic victory. It might have the base whoopin' and hollerin, but the vast majority of voters would be turned off.

This way, the President gets a solid conservative whose views are personally known to him and keeps his powder dry until Stevens retires after the 2006 elections.

As my kid's sensei says, the best way to win a fight is to avoid it.

What is Web 2.0? - definition from examples

John Hagel has a thoughtful post on what Web 2.0 is. Up to this point, it's been a concept with lots of examples, but without a definition. Hagel provides a definition and goes through each word of the definition in exegetical fashion to show why it fits.

Good stuff on many levels, not the least of which is providing a worked example of developing a list of attributes from a set of prototype examples.

Miers for SCOTUS

I'm puzzled, too, but I suspect there is more going on than meets the eye.

As Counsel, Miers has worked with the President. Bush has gotten to know her, to know her views. They are certainly not very different from his own.

Miers has no judicial record, and a thin record was the one bit of damp ammo the Democrats had on Roberts. That and the 'Texas Mafia' line (Miers and Laura Bush were classmates, I've read) may be all they have on Miers as well. We'll find out soon enough. No record and a charge of cronyism may be enough to sink the nomination. In which case, one might assume that Bush did the political calculus, and has another nominee in the wings.

Bush isn't running for re-election. His poll numbers are pretty much meaningless. But with cries of dismay coming from the right, the opposition simply isn't going to be energized, except for the terminal-BDS crew.

Crazy like a fox? I hope so.