Monday, January 30, 2006

Monday Meanderings

You ARE clicking on the “Carnival of the Insanities” logo in the sidebar every Sunday, aren’t you? (It’s that little image of the famous Munch painting, “The Scream.”) What? You’re not? Well, then, you’ve missed stuff like James Lileks’ “Simple rules for making a fool of yourself on the Internet.” Some of the work-up before giving us the rules:
Ever since Bush imposed martial law and shot the cast of "The View" -- sorry, since Bush won the last election, hard-left nuttery seems more mainstream. Bob Dole did not post on bulletin boards that claimed Bill Clinton would soon use FEMA to herd everyone into U.N.-run camps where everyone would get Mark of the Beast bar codes on their necks. John Kerry, on the other hand, has posted at the Daily Kos, whose neck-vein-popping contributors seem to think Bush spends his nights getting hammered and ordering Halliburton to poison Iraqi water so he can get kickbacks from the Pepto-Bismol Crime Syndicate.
Debra Burlingame is a former attorney and the sister of Charles F. "Chic" Burlingame III, the pilot of American Airlines flight 77, which was crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001. She writes an impassioned op-ed on the PATRIOT Act in today’s WSJ Opinion Journal titled “Our Right to Security; Al Qaeda, not the FBI, is the greater threat to America.” Excerpt:
We now have the ability to put remote control cameras on the surface of Mars. Why should we allow enemies to annihilate us simply because we lack the clarity or resolve to strike a reasonable balance between a healthy skepticism of government power and the need to take proactive measures to protect ourselves from such threats? The mantra of civil-liberties hard-liners is to "question authority"--even when it is coming to our rescue--then blame that same authority when, hamstrung by civil liberties laws, it fails to save us. The old laws that would prevent FBI agents from stopping the next al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi were built on the bedrock of a 35-year history of dark, defeating mistrust. More Americans should not die because the peace-at-any-cost fringe and antigovernment paranoids still fighting the ghost of Nixon hate George Bush more than they fear al Qaeda. Ask the American people what they want. They will say that they want the commander in chief to use all reasonable means to catch the people who are trying to rain terror on our cities. Those who cite the soaring principle of individual liberty do not appear to appreciate that our enemies are not seeking to destroy individuals, but whole populations.
The PATRIOT Act expires in five days. This editorial, written by a woman who knows and understands the magnitude of what’s at stake, couldn’t be more timely. I, for one, am not confident this essential legislation will be renewed in a timely manner, if at all. One can only hope.

And meanwhile… The Senate “debate” on Judge Alito drones on. I’ve been watching C-SPAN2 off and on all morning and it’s (the debate) more of the same. The Republicans and the Democrats are trading debate time off amongst themselves, an hour at a time. I’ve heard the same arguments, from BOTH sides, over and over, ad nauseaum. My feelings? Vote, already! The cloture vote is scheduled for later today, I WILL watch that vote. The Left hasn’t given up on the filibuster fight, haranguing the faithful to call, fax, or send messages via carrier pigeon to their senators to give the American public a “full, open, public debate on Alito.” Yeah, right. Here’s what The Boston Globe thinks of that idea:
In Massachusetts, old liberals never die.

They just keep tilting at windmills.

At the last minute, Senator John Kerry called for a filibuster to stop the Supreme Court nomination of Samuel A. Alito Jr. Senator Edward M. Kennedy joined the fight.

The initial reaction from fellow Democrats was tepid. Tepid it should remain.

Alito is conservative. But radical? The Democrats failed to make the case during hearings which proved only one thing beyond a reasonable doubt: their own boorishness.
You can’t get anymore Blue-State than The Globe, now, can you? Kerry and his friends on the far-left fringe are simply posturing. And that's a good thing, because it's a beautiful illustration of just how incompetent and unfit for leadership they truly are.

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