Current Events

Check out the Global Incident Map, showing all the most recent terrorist events worldwide. It's fascinating.

Check out this Chuck Norris political endorsement. I love it, it is hilarious.

Amazing photos of Anak Krakatau, the "Son of Krakatoa" erupting.

Read this, then read the referenced material, and decide for yourself.

The Saudis bailed out his peanut farm in 1976. The infamous BCCI and Saudi billionaire Gaith Pharaon actually helped with the startup funding of the Carter Center. Carter himself is quoted fulsomely thanking Sheik Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan, the long time ruler of the UAE, for donating half a million dollars. From what is known Carter has received tens of millions of dollars from Arab and Islamic sources. And that, argues Dershowitz, is behind the former President's tireless campaigning against Israel. He says so in the most brutal and accusatory terms: "Carter ... has been bought and paid for by anti-Israel Arab and Islamic money."

Check out the DREAD, a small arms (Humvee-mountable) weapon that looks like an alien landing device. It is capable of engaging multiple enemies simultaneously in 360 degrees, has no muzzle flash and (theoretically) no jamming parts, and no recoil. The DREAD is "capable of cranking out 120,000 rounds per minute of .308 and .50 caliber round metal balls at 8000 feet per second (ft/s). To give you some perspective, the M-16 rifle delivers its ammunition at 3200 ft/s, and can shoot a mere 900 rounds per minute". The amount of kinetic energy delivered on impact would be terrific, and the only good defenses I can imagine would be inordinately thick armoring or some kind of strong magnetic field generation (via: Gizmodo).

I think the departments of Veterans Affairs and Defense may be stretching it a bit with The Epic of Gilgamesh: Clinical Practice Guidelines for Post-Deployment Health Evaluation and Management, where Gilgamesh comes back from war with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and his friend comes back with Gulf War Syndrome (via Boing Boing).

We'll be trying out the First Night in Leesburg celebration this year... I've been there before, and it is a fun family-friendly celebration. Happy New Year everyone!

AOL and Loudoun Schools have the Christmas Countdown up again this year.  It's always nice to see.

I really don't think I am ready for this... "10 is the new 15 as kids grow up faster"

Via Commonwealth Conservative

I have to say that this letter from Sen. McCain to Sen. Obama is possibly the most hilarious use of irony in a political contest I have seen since Sen. Proxmire. The beginning paragraph:

I would like to apologize to you for assuming that your private assurances to me regarding your desire to cooperate in our efforts to negotiate bipartisan lobbying reform legislation were sincere. When you approached me and insisted that despite your leadership’s preference to use the issue to gain a political advantage in the 2006 elections, you were personally committed to achieving a result that would reflect credit on the entire Senate and offer the country a better example of political leadership, I concluded your professed concern for the institution and the public interest was genuine and admirable. Thank you for disabusing me of such notions with your letter to me dated February 2, 2006, which explained your decision to withdraw from our bipartisan discussions. I’m embarrassed to admit that after all these years in politics I failed to interpret your previous assurances as typical rhetorical gloss routinely used in politics to make self-interested partisan posturing appear more noble. Again, sorry for the confusion, but please be assured I won’t make the same mistake again.

I have been catching up on the riots and protests over the cartoons published in a Danish newspaper ridiculing Mohammad, and the paroxysm of protest and anger that has followed in the Muslim world. I honestly don't think that these cartoons are the point; the real reason for these eruptions is that the Muslim world is angry, in

Instapundit quotes a Muslim reader who writes, "It doesn't matter, I'm told. It literally means nothing to them, because in their world, everything should revolve around them and their culture, and God made the world for Muslim Arabs to control." Now, Iran has decided to rename Danish pastries "Mohammedan" pastry. And in the stupidest stunt yet, they're burning Swiss flags outside Danish embassies.

A common argument is that Christians often react like Muslims, for example when they protested "The Last Temptation of Christ. But if that is the case, why are people not burning down the art expo in Madrid where there is a sculpture of Jesus holding a Phoenix missile? Certaintly not because of the Vatican, who takes the side of the mobs by declaring that the right to freedom of expression does not include the right to offend the religious feelings of the faithful.

There are definitely some in the Muslim world who haven't lost their sanity; muslim blogger Big Pharaoh has some frank advice for his peers.

Brit Hume puts it perfectly when he says, "And it is a disgrace not least because of the obvious, howling double standard involved here. The really great sins are ignored. And this trivia is protested." Mark Steyn hits it on the head too (via lgf):

Thus, NBC is celebrating Easter this year with a special edition of the gay sitcom "Will & Grace," in which a Christian conservative cooking-show host, played by the popular singing slattern Britney Spears, offers seasonal recipes -- "Cruci-fixin's." On the other hand, the same network, in its coverage of the global riots over the Danish cartoons, has declined to show any of the offending artwork out of "respect" for the Muslim faith.

Which means out of respect for their ability to locate the executive vice president's home in the suburbs and firebomb his garage.

BusinessWeek has an article on the deflation of the Loudoun County housing bubble (via SST). Best line in the article:But the article does say that Loudoun has strong fundamentals: good schools and job growth. I think that real estate, while suffering a momentary deflation, will continue to be a good investment here.

I have not written about the appointment of Judge John Roberts to fill the supreme court opening created by Sandra Day O'Connor yet, partially because I have not yet developed an opinion of the man. What I do have an opinion about is the process President Bush used in the selection of Judge Roberts. Althouse writes about how the White House isglad it had Souter-phobia in the selection of Roberts, and well they should - it does no one a service when a candidate of any stripe turns out to be a chameleon, their true beliefs veiled.

Everyone is playing the politics of this. Drudge is reporting Hillary will support Roberts (hat tip: Hans). And Captain Ed reports on the efforts of some Democrats to delay the nomination by going on a fishing expedition.

But I can not say that I have any particular faith that this would be a good justice of the Supreme Court other than my fundamental faith in President Bush's personell skills. I'd prefer to have more than that to go on, but I won't second-guess the president.

Writing in Q & O, Dale Franks asks a very interesting question: would the successful overturning of Roe v. Wade be the end of the Republican ascendancy? The thesis of the argument is, "Once Roe disappears, the GOP loses the lever they've had for the last thirty years to manipulate an increasingly important constituency, the Religious Right."

I disagree with Mr. Franks' thesis on a number of points. First off, "Roe is the settled law of the land," as Justice Roberts so eloquently put it. Except in presidental races, Roe does not bring out a substantial number of voters because there is no risk that a gubernatorial race will have a significant impact on abortion policy. In fact, a great many more of these elections would become highly relevant to those with strong abortion morals. The Religious Right would have to hit every election hard to contain the spread of permissive abortion laws, every time. That means they would already be at the polls on election day, and could easily throw the lever for Brownback for President while they vote for their local guarantor of abortion stringence.

This would no doubt lead to a dilution of the organs of those who are stringently anti-abortion in the national political debate. Again, however, the fact that Roe is settled has led to a lack of cohesion on the part of these groups. The Moral Majority is no more, and there is no currently comparable group.

I believe it would be a wash, nationally. What it would do is remove abortion as an issue, which would generally relieve some of the tendentiousness and avarice in the partisan politics in Washington.

...at least until Congress attempted to re-regulate abortion, probably under some perverted view of the Commerce Clause.