The Interocitor

LA Times on City Corruption, Part 2

The Los Angeles Times has a long history of ignoring scandals in LA City and County government. Back when the Otis-Chandler clan ran things, it was often because they had a seat in the smoke-filled room. Nothing much has changed now that Chicago's Tribune Company calls the shots.

A few months back, the LA Daily News began a series on how the Airport, Harbor and Water&Power Commissioners steered contracts to those who had made political donations to Mayor Hahn. The Times said nothing for weeks. Only after the knives came out inside the Mayor's office, and appointees started resigning, did the Times take notice of the scandal. Even then, as in yesterday's item about the federal probe, or today's item on the latest version of Hahn's doomed LAX plan, it was mostly political fallout analysis and retrospective.

In the last two days, the Daily News has run headline articles on how the DWP and Mayor Hahn hid huge planned DWP rate increases from voters in 2002, while claiming that a vote for Valley secession would lead to huge rate increases. (There's an old joke in there someplace.)

The head of the Department of Water and Power said Thursday that Mayor James Hahn was told prior to the vote on San Fernando Valley cityhood that a major increase in water rates was needed and answered: "Not yet, not yet."

A second DWP official said former Deputy Mayor Troy Edwards -- a central player in the pay-to-play allegations growing out of anti-secession fund-raising -- and other top Los Angeles officials also knew of the rate hike plan by fall 2002 but wanted the information kept secret until after the looming secession vote.

The LA Times has nothing whatsoever -- not even "Briefly" -- on the issue. One has to think they read the other paper -- at least the headline -- so one just has to wonder why they are ignoring this story. But then ignoring LA scandals is a Times tradition. They will never be the paper they hope to be until they correct this -- the 3rd rate Daily News has them beat once again.

See also BoiFromTroy here and here.

LA Times on City Corruption

 

 

 

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DWP Lied to Prevent Valley Secession

According to the headline story in today's LA Daily News, the DWP deferred planned rate increase requests prior to the 2002 San Fernando Valley secession vote. Reason: one of the city's main arguments against sucession was that massive utility rate hikes would be required, both for the new city and for the rest of Los Angeles. It was felt that announcing that a 33% rate hike was coming anyway might blunt this message.

Los Angeles Department of Water and Power officials knew for years they would need a massive rate hike to finance a $2 billion capital program but kept it secret during the 2002 San Fernando Valley secession effort and misled the City Council during the current water rate debate, the Daily News has learned.

Only after an independent analysis demanded by Councilman Tony Cardenas disclosed Tuesday that the utility would need a 33 percent water rate hike over the next five years to pay for the construction work did utility officials acknowledge they had planned for a large increase for years.

By December 2002 -- one month after Valley secession was defeated, in part because of threats that residents would face far higher utility rates -- DWP officials were projecting the need for water rate hikes of up to 35 percent. DWP officials acknowledged Wednesday that they knew massive hikes would be needed throughout the secession campaign.

Cardenas, chairman of the Commerce, Energy & Natural Resources Committee, charged DWP officials, including Gerald Gewe, the assistant general manager for water, with being "disingenuous," and of withholding the truth. He said he'll demand that they answer at a public hearing.

Oddly, the LA Times, which opposed secession, has utterly no mention of this story.

Lincoln Lied, People Died

Victor David Hansen imagines Lincoln facing the Press during the 1864 campaign. My favorite:

Mr. Lincoln, would you please respond to General McClellan’s charges at the recent Chicago convention that with the establishment of the Emancipation Proclamation you misled this nation in the reasons you gave for this war. Is it not true, Mr. President, that you assured Americans that you have started this war to preserve the Union and protect federal property in the South? Yet now you claim that in fact our sons are dying to free slaves and provide equality to the Negro? What was the real reason, Mr. Lincoln, that you cooked up this war and got us into this mess, and why did you not tell us the full story when the shooting started?

(via Aaron)

Loretta Sanchez Nightmare: Kerry, Viet-Nam & Garden Grove

The LA Times reported today that the cities of Garden Grove and Westminster, home to large numbers of Vietnamese refugees, are at the brink of banning all city contact with the Communist regime in Viet-Nam -- to the point of not allowing police protection for such visitors, should they be so stupid as to come.

"We don't accept the communists anywhere," said Garden Grove activist Ky Ngo. "When we fled our homeland, we risked our lives to escape communism…. We want nothing to do with them."

Noting that the mere display of a Vietnamese flag in a video store in 1999 was enough to prompt a months-long demonstration, city officials say they hope to effectively deny sponsors of a Hanoi delegation any city cooperation — including police protection for visiting dignitaries, which would be necessary in a community where political friction often turns physical.

The article goes on to descibe various free speech issues and whatnot, but it avoids an interesting political question: The local Congresswoman is a Democrat who may have a problem with the presumtive Presidential nominee's lead coattails.

Alone among all possible Democratic Presidential candidates, John Kerry's position on the Viet-Nam war is crystal clear. He called the effort to defend Viet-Nam from Communism as a series of "war crimes", and did so on television. Surely there are clips. This will not play well in Little Saigon, given the numbers of new citizens there who bitterly regret the loss of their homeland. As the Times article reports, supporting the Vietnamese Communists is political death in Garden Grove -- too many people buried too many other people for it to be otherwise.

Garden Grove's congresswoman, Loretta Sanchez, has a district that is 15% Asian and 65% Hispanic, and includes much of the Orange County Vietnamese community. Since large numbers of these Hispanics are not currently citizens, the numbers are closer than that, although only a Hispanic candidate has a hope of winning. In 2002, Sanchez won re-election with 60% of the vote against another Hispanic-surnamed candidate. While she has advantage in name recognition and Democratic registration (48-34%), the district is not as lopsidely Democrat as some. Additionally, Garden Grove has 18,000 registered Democrats (a 42-39 Democrat split), some of whom are Vietnamese.

It will be interesting to see just how much distance Ms. Sanchez puts between herself and Senator Kerry, and how well President Bush is received when he comes to support Sanchez's (Hispanic) Republican opponent -- which he will surely do as Sanchez is a permanent resident of the Republican to-do list. This one could be a surprise, despite the gerrymander, if the Vietnamese community turns out en masse to reject Kerry.

Bad Idea of the Year Award

The first entry for the "First Annual Interocitor Bad Idea of the Year Award" goes to Britain's Dr Rachel Armstrong, who

said the US space agency Nasa was considering how to deal with the natural urges of astronauts travelling on long journeys such as a three-year trip to Mars, where the six-strong crew would be likely to include two women.

"Nasa is talking about the chemical sterilisation of astronauts on longer journeys," Dr Armstrong said, in a talk discussing the problems humanity may face in trying to reach the planets and, eventually, the stars. *

I can see the volunteers lining up for that one.

Heinlein discussed this problem to some extent in Stranger In A Strange Land, suggesting that married couples be given advantage in the selection process, as sex was unavoidable and all-male crews are unhealthy [and all-gay crews beg the question -ed]. Then again, the solution didn't turn out all that well for the crew of the Envoy. Accordingly, birth control would seem to be in order, as would be not naming any Mars-born offspring "Valentine Michael."

*p.s. NASA denies it is contemplating any such idea.

John Stossel on the Media

Cato's Letter (pdf) this quarter contains a fascinating essay by ABC News' John Stossel on the metastasized liberalism of the US media.

You’ve probably seen these books written by people on the left who claim that there is no liberal media. “Look at John Stossel,” they say, “that conservative who gets lots of airtime at ABC.” Where I live—the Upper West Side of Manhattan—people say “conservative” the way they say “child molester.” It’s the worst thing to be called.

I find the “conservative” label puzzling, because I don’t think I fit the conservative mold. I think consenting adults ought to be able to do anything that doesn’t hurt other people. I don’t understand why we have a drug war. I think homosexuality is perfectly natural. I think you ought to be allowed to burn a flag if that’s what you think you need to do to make a point. Anything that’s peaceful.

Is that conservative? Real conservatives would be insulted. But that’s what they call me. They call me conservative because I believe in capitalism and free markets. But what’s conservative about free markets? They are chaotic. You never know what’s going to happen next. Yet capitalism is hated in the Upper West Side, and in newsrooms where I have worked.

So what is it about capitalism that brings out all this hatred? There are certainly ugly parts to it, but fundamentally it’s just commerce. We all benefit from that. It is odd that people hate their employers, who pay them, but they love the government, which takes a third of their pay and then wastes it. But they do.

I saw the effect on my colleagues when I embraced freedom and free markets. A St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist actually asked me, “When did you go over to the dark side?” I guess she didn’t like my answers because she never ran the article. But there was a big change in my career. I started as a consumer reporter, criticizing business. And I got wonderful press. Newsday said, “Stossel’s investigations of the unjust are models.” The Daily News quoted a CBS official who proudly said, “No one has offended more people than John Stossel.” They liked it that I was offending people. When I was criticizing business, I won lots of awards. One year I got so many Emmys that another acceptee thanked me in his speech, saying, “I want to thank John Stossel for not having an entry in this category.”

I don’t win Emmys anymore. It just stopped. And the reason is that I wised up. I realized that the real bad guys were not business. Yes, there are scams like Enron. In a $10 trillion economy, you are going to have some Enrons. But it was the markets, not the government, that figured Enron out, and Enron’s management is not laughing all the way to the bank. Compare that to government scams. When the government messes up, they go to Congress and say: “Sorry, it didn’t work. We need more money.” And Congress gives it to them.

As they say, read the whole thing.

If only...

Baldilocks, whom I met for the first time yesterday, passes along this quote from our mutual Congresswoman.

“I have to march because my mother could not have an abortion.”

   -Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-Calif) at Anti-Bush Pro-Abortion Rally Sunday, April 25.

Another thing on my to-do list when I finish my time machine...

NY Times on self-rightousness

The NY Times lambastes Bush for not making airlines institute racial profiling after the "secret memo" on bin Laden, prior to 9/11. Yes, really. From their April 12, 2004 editorial:

No reasonable American blames Mr. Bush for the terrorist attacks, but that's a long way from thinking there was no other conceivable action he could have taken to prevent them. He could, for instance, have left his vacation in Texas after receiving that briefing memo entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." and rushed back to the White House, assembled all his top advisers and demanded to know what, in particular, was being done to screen airline passengers to make sure people who fit the airlines' threat profiles were being prevented from boarding American planes. Even that sort of prescient response would probably have been too little to head off the disaster. But those what-if questions should haunt the president as they haunt the nation. In all probability, they do and it is only the demands of his re-election campaign that are guiding Mr. Bush's public stance of utter, uncomplicated self-righteousness.

So, Bush's failure to predict 9/11, and refusal to ban young Arab "threat profiles" from boarding aircraft is "self-righteous." If so, what do you call this piece of post-9/11 advice from their March 12, 2003 editorial?

[The Transportation Security Administration] is developing a sophisticated screening system designed to identify travelers who may pose a terrorist threat. It is a worthy goal--one ordered up by Congress--but the creation of a highly intrusive federal surveillance program raises serious privacy and due process concerns, which the government needs to address in a forthright manner.

I'd call it rather myopic hindsight, myself. Compaining about Bush not doing something before the threat was clear, but objecting to him doing it later, when it was, might be ironic, biased and objectvely stupid, but far be it from me to call the NY Times "self-righteous."

(thanks to the Weekly Standard Scrapbook) (subscription required)

Chernobyl: A photo essay

A young Russian woman took her motorcycle, camera, and a pass arranged by her physicist father, and went for a ride through the Chernobyl exclusion zone. Here is her report ... powerful images. (via Dean Esmay)

Racism and Gun Control

I rarely link to something I see on Instapundit (on the coals-to-Newcastle principle) but today's item about the racist roots of gun control is something I've wanted to investigate for some time. Glenn links to two papers (by the same authors) who assert that the "collective rights" interpretation of the 2nd Amendment has its roots in Jim Crow. The first paper talks about how Southern gun control aimed at disarming blacks to prevent their defending themselves against "Southern Redemption" (i.e. the Ku Klux Klan):

The original Act of 1893 was passed when there was a great influx of negro laborers in this State drawn here for the purpose of working in turpentine and lumber camps.... [T]he Act was passed for the purpose of disarming the negro laborers and to thereby reduce the unlawful homicides that were prevalent in turpentine and saw-mill camps and to give the white citizens in sparsely settled areas a better feeling of security. The statute was never intended to be applied to the white population.... [I]t is a safe guess to assume that more than 80% of the white men living in the rural sections of Florida have violated this statute.... [T]here has never been, within my knowledge, any effort to enforce the provisions of this statute as to white people, because it has been generally conceded to be in contravention of the Constitution and non-enforceable if contested.
  [Florida Supreme Court, 1941]

The period of Reconstruction and later Redemption was marked by racial violence in a way that the period of slavery was not. Violence on the part of the Ku Klux Klan and other nightriding terrorists were instruments of the oppression of the former slaves and of the maintenance of the Southern way of life. The right to bear arms had been intended by the champions of the freedmen as a hedge against oppression by their former masters, and the right had in fact functioned to this end. White Southerners recognized this, and both the authorities and nightriders sought to confiscate arms from those blacks who had them and often to kill or otherwise cow those who would not give them up. The Arkansas legislature had made clear that restrictions on those weapons that were not useful in war were constitutionally valid. With Haile, they had combined to render safe the high quality, expensive, military issue handguns that many former Confederate soldiers still maintained but that were often out of financial reach for cash poor freedmen.

The second paper goes more to the general African-American experience: The "collective rights" interpretation of the 2nd Amendment excluded blacks and immigrants from posessing guns, as they were not accepted into "the militia." This can be viewed in the light of the steady American attempt to regulate and control the civil rights of "undesirable classes", and disarming the underclass was a necessary part of this control:

One year after the ratification of the Second Amendment and the Bill of Rights [1792], Congress passed legislation that reaffirmed the notion of the militia of the whole and explicitly introduced a racial component into the national deliberations on the subject of the militia. The Uniform Militia Act called for the enrollment of every free, able-bodied white male citizen between the ages of eighteen and forty-five into the militia....The 1792 statute restricting militia enrollment to white men was one of the earliest federal statutes to make a racial distinction....

The willingness of blacks to use firearms to protect their rights, their lives, and their property, alongside their ability to do so successfully when acting collectively, renders many gun control statutes, particularly of Southern origin, all the more worthy of condemnation. This is especially so in view of the purpose of these statutes, which, like that of the gun control statutes of the black codes, was to disarm blacks.

I'd be interested in any links anyone has to this subject, particularly state court rulings around the 1880-1920 period in which the "collective rights" or "militia" interpretation of the 2nd Amendment was discussed.

LA Times on "US v Reynolds"

In 1953, it seems, the US Supreme Court set the basic precedent for executive control of classified documents in legal proceedings. In United States v Reynolds, an appeal of a default judgement alleging Air Force negligence in the death of 3 civilian contradctors, the Supremes decided that a great deal of deference was due the government when it claimed National Security justification for withholding documents, and that in some cases (including Reynolds) they could deny the District Court judge access, preventing judicial review of the claim.

Problem is, says the LA Times in the first of 2 parts (and this earlier 3-part article in the South Jersey Courier-Post), the government was lying. There were no secrets -- the government just wanted to avoid liability for several civilian deaths. While, after Reynolds, the US did pay damages in a settlement, they never accepted blame for the accident, and they maintain to this day that there were valid national sercurity reasons for withholding the (now declassfied) accident report.

Last year, the widows filed an unusual motion, based on the declassified documents, with the Supreme Court asking them to reconsider their "error", and asserting that the declassified documents had no national security information. This is interesting, as every national security case since has used Reynolds as precedent, right up to 3 Patriot Act cases now before the court.

The Times article today lists all the reasons why the government was a pack of liars and thieves, out to create absolute secrecy rights for the Cold War executive branch. The ba*tards!

What is missing, and presumably will be mentioned tomorrow is that the Supreme Court rejected the petition on June 23, 2003, and that there was indeed one secret that was evident from the accident report: The B-29 SuperFortress didn't work very well and could not be relied upon in a major war. Considering that the entire US deterrent at that time was the B-29's ability to deliver atom bombs, it's not inconceivable that someone thought this should be kept quiet. After all, Stalin was still living, had forces massed to invade Western Europe, and had quite a few bombs himself by the early 50's. A bit more than the liberal cant of paranoia and McCarthyism.

Perhaps the Times will mention that tomorrow. Talk about "the jump"!! But I'm not counting on it.

Original 1913 Tax Form

For those of you struggling today with your federal taxes, here's a picture of the original 1913 form 1040. Proving once again that no one's life, liberty or property is safe while the legislature is in session.

XRLQ Celebrates April 15th

XRLQ offers this contest in celebration of April 15th. Like Drudge, he hides his true purpose behind misleading headlines.

Why Johnny can't get a job?

Joanne Jacobs, my favorite edublogger, reports on US educational pipeline drop-out rates.

If you talk to a class of ninth graders, nearly all will say they want to go to college. But nationwide, only 18 percent will earn a two-year college degree within three years of leaving high school, or a four-year degree within six years. Only 68 percent of students who start high school earn a diploma, says a study of K-16 success rates by the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education. The study uses data from the National Center for Education Statistics. About 59 percent of graduates -- 40 percent of the original ninth grade class -- go directly from high school to college. By sophomore year, one third have dropped out, leaving 27 percent of the original ninth graders still enrolled.

The results are summarized in this graph. Apparently, 32 percent of US 9th graders drop out of high school, and only 18 percent get a college degree. Some states are far worse than others, with Massachusetts having the highest college graduate rate (29%) and a better than-average drop-out rate (24%), but New Jesey has the lowest drop-out rate by far at 10%, although they also have the worst college drop-out rate (36%), with another 30% never making the transition. Wonder what's up with that?

Over half of South Carolina 9th graders never get a high school diploma, with Florida (47%) and New York (43%) only slightly worse. Comparing New York's high drop-out rate with New Jersey's strange statistics, one can only conclude that graduating from a New Jersey high school reuires little more than breathing and half-way decent attendance.

For California, the numbers are high-school drop-out (30%), diploma but no college (32%), college drop-out (18%) and college degree (19%), pretty much in the middle of the pack.

Fatal US Hijackings before 9/11

Much is made about pre-9/11 reports of al Qaeda's plans to hijack US airliners, and the Clinton and Bush administrations' lack of response. Hindsight is wonderful, but the fact is that US airport security was excellent before 9/11 -- so good that there had only been one fatal US hijacking between 1970 and 2001.

7 December 1987; Pacific Southwest Airlines BAe146-200; near San Luis Obispo, CA: A recently fired USAir employee used his invalidated credentials to board the aircraft with a pistol and apparently killed his former manager and both pilots (USAir had recently purchased PSA). All five crew members and the 37 other passengers were killed.

Additionally, there had been exactly 3 fatal hijackings involving US carriers overseas (Rome, Athens and Karachi) in that period. So, even foreign security of US carriers was pretty good regarding hijackings, and Rome and Athens, at least, were unlikely to see a repeat.

Even on 9/11 the hijackers brought no item on board that was not allowed -- and those items today would be unlikely to result in a successful hijacking. Fifty passengers beat 5 box cutters every time IF the passengers recognize the danger.

So it's completely unsurprising that Bush's response to rumors of al Qaeda hijackings was muted, and with the FBI claiming "70 investigations" into al Qaeda cells, didn't seem like such an imminent threat, to coin a phrase. Everybody, including you and me, thought that US hijackings were a thing of the past.

And guess what: we think that way again.

Mouth-breather alert

Joanne Jacobs reports that San Francisco State is proposing to tighten its budget by closing the University's School of Engineering, while keeping all the wacko special study programs, such as "The Institute on Sexuality, Social Inequality and Health". The full story is here at SF Gate:

What gives? Does Corrigan think that if he puts the screws to students who spend their days and nights studying, he won't have to endure protests that would surely follow if he proposed cutting courses in majors in which the students already know everything, and hence have the leisure time to engage in political protest?

Or, as other academicians have suggested, is this proposal Corrigan's ham- handed way of suggesting the dumbest cut imaginable in order to scare some funding out of Sacramento?

If so, Corrigan is only hurting his own institution. Word is that Team Arnold sent out the message to California college administrators that institutions willing to cut waste in these tight times would be rewarded. Corrigan's gambit sends the opposite message -- that some schools are willing to cut academic meat, while sparing junk-food scholarship.

Corrigan's idea for saving $2.5 million -- in the face of a $14 million gap -- and shortchanging 700 engineering students led me to the S.F. State Web site to take a look at some of the university's other programs -- the ones Corrigan apparently doesn't want to eliminate.

Hmmmm. Raza Studies. Recreational and Leisure Studies. Women Studies.

My fave: The Institute on Sexuality, Social Inequality and Health.

Question: How does a university that does things like this retain accreditation?

Energy Crisis Solved!

According to the LA Times, in a front page caption (and again in the associated story) a set of geothermal plants in Northern California produces 1 million megawatts of power.

This is great news. Who would have thought that you could replace 1000 nuclear power plants -- enough energy to power all the homes in the United States, five times over -- with a handful of geothermal plants? Of course, the locals are complaining that the plants are causing the ground to settle a bit, but that's little wonder as 1 million megawatts is the same as setting off a Hiroshima bomb every 45 seconds.

But if it's in the Times, it must be truth. I mean, they fact-check and edit and all that stuff, right?

UPDATE: The Times printed a correction this morning stating that the output of the 22 geothermal plants was a combined 1000 megawatts -- the typical output of a large nuclear reactor -- which is probably high, but believable.

So, Who is al-Sadr, Anyway?

From "Iraq at a Glance" comes this description of the illustrious Muqtada al-Sadr:

That angry dumb and silly boy is not respected by many religious leaders here in Iraq and consider him as a child , he don’t have the right to be a religious leader and he don’t have any ‘logical and legislative Islamic studies’ regarding Islam and ‘Sharia’..

Second.. that foolish boy has many thieves following him.. why? Do you know that neighborhood ‘ Althawra’ or ‘ Al-Sadr city’ in Baghdad? This is the worst place in Iraq.. yes .. all Iraqis hate that place and never ever reach there.. More than 75% of this neighborhood are thieves and murders .. they are responsible for the looting and robbery acts last year.. and of course due to their rapid and uncontrolled reproduction ( just like the rabbits) ,they have many relatives in some neighborhoods in Iraq, so when they felt that Muqtada is so permissive and may encourage such robberies; they followed him.. they love him.. they feel that he’s one of them and his laws are very compatible with their disgusting thoughts and mean goals..

Now we have a silly angry boy and thieves..

The third point .. many idiots still remember his father and they feel that he continues his father’s message in Islam.. the crowds are always around that boy listening to his words that incite and urge them to disobey whatever the GC and CPA say..

Now we have a silly angry boy, thieves and idiots..!

Hammorabi says much the same, noting also that his support comes largely from the Mullocracy in Iran:

The above mentioned adolescent deserves no word, but the recent events forced me to write about. MS is simply an ignorant mentally retarded weird adolescent man surrounded by dirty people like him. He thinks that he inherited his father who believed to be killed by SH. MS is a timid man. He dear to utter one word if Saddam is there. Timid people use their voices if they feel that they are safe and keep silent when threatened.

MS money comes mostly from Iran and from the successor of his father Kadhem AL Hairi in Iran and may be other groups. Very recently an important officer from the Iranian Intelligence services defected from Iran and mentioned that the Iranian Intelligent Security had established many secret bases inside Iraq. How many bases of these support or linked to MS?

MS may have a connection to the assassination of Majeed Khoei and may be others. His arrest by Iraqi police not coalition forces and put him into an Iraqi court should have been done before allowing him to organise groups of somehow trained people for at least demonstrations and outlaws. What is happening is some thing bigger than a one adolescent man. It is a push may be by outside forces. Not to forget the Arab media which inflate MS as a leader like their own inflated leaders? MS is nothing but a manic obsessed man.

Solution: To quote from "Wrong is Right": K-I-double-L him. And anyone standing near him.

The view from Iraq

Over at Healing Iraq Zeyad has a long report on the insurrection and a message for America:

Sadr's aide and head of his office in Najaf, Qays Al-Khaz'ali, has declared the latest looting and killing spree going on in several Iraqi southern cities as an Intifada against the occupation. Speaking on behalf of Muqtada, he stated that they will certainly not calm down any soon because the Quran orders them not to[.]

Anyway, it seems that fighting is ongoing in Sadr city, northeast of Baghdad. A total of 110 Iraqis and 19 coalition soldiers killed in the last 12 hours according to Al-Jazeera, which I have never witnessed being any more hateful and provocative until this day. They keep displaying headlines like 'Occupation forces target more women and children in Sadr city' or 'Resistance in Fallujah forces occupation forces to withdraw from locations'.

No one knows where it is all heading. If this uprising is not crushed immediately and those militia not captured then there is no hope at all. If you even consider negotiations or appeasement, then we are all doomed.

As they say, read the whole thing.

UPDATE: And Salem Pax is blogging once again. He seems to have rediscovered the reasons why the US is in Iraq:

You have to be careful about what you say about al-Sadir. Their hands reach every where and you don't want to be on their shit list. Every body, even the GC is very careful how they formulate their sentences and how they describe Sadir's Militias. They are thugs, thugs thugs. There you have it.

And then there's this thorough dissing of al Jazeera over at Hammorabi:

While writing these lines I am watching the fu*king TV of Al Jazeera which inflame the situation as if the whole world going into a 4th world war! They send the Wahabi journalist Ahmed Mansor who is a very poisonous man. He broadcast from Fullojah and he just injected his poison describing GWB to face the same fate of his father. The other one interviewed is a retired general from Egypt who is another poison injector. We always pointed out and again we repeat here that the Arab Al Jazeera and Al Arabyiah are poisnous channels have a negative influence on the Iraqi ordinary man and unfortunately no one applied any pressure on them or the government which support them. They need a serious and real warning or better shut them off.

Bias? What bias? No bias here!

Sometimes the unconcious bias of a paper just leaps out and grabs your attention. I'm positive the editors of the LA Times didn't think twice about their headline "Partisan Vote Advances Bush Judge Nominee" describing the Senate Judiciary Committee's most recent party-line vote. But the story actually describes something quite different:

All 10 Republicans on the panel voted in favor of William G. Myers III, a longtime lawyer for the mining and cattle industries, while all nine Democrats voted against him — setting the stage for a filibuster when the nomination reaches the Senate floor. The timing of that vote has not been set.

In the last three years, the Senate has confirmed more than 170 of President Bush's judicial nominees. In six instances, however, Democratic lawmakers have blocked the nominations from coming to a floor vote. Each time a filibuster was successful, all of the committee Democrats had voted against the nominee.

Nearly every prominent environmental group in the nation, including Earthjustice, the Sierra Club and the National Wildlife Federation, is opposed to the nomination.

Surely a headline like "Court Nominee Advances Despite Partisan Opposition" or "Another Judicial Nominee Faces Party-Line Filibuster" would have been a more accurate choice, as it was the opposition that was politically driven, not the approval.

Makes too much sense

Dan Weintraub asks:

[W]hy should the states be sending all this gas tax money to Washington so that Congress and the transportation bureaucracy can then send it back, with restrictions and after taking their cut. Wouldn't it make a lot more sense to lower the gas tax to whatever level is needed to finish and maintain the interstate highways, then let the individual states decide whether they want to use their own money to build light rail or add an extra lane to the highway from the suburbs to downtown?

I sure don't have an answer except that it makes too much sense to do it that way, and doing that would fail to fund someone's kingdom in the DoT.