Posted 12/27/2003 02:40:44 AM by Edward Driscoll
HEDGED IN BY THE LAW: Palo Alto is one of the more curious cities in the Bay Area. With its concentration of venture capital firms, it's a very wealthy community. But because of its leftist bent, its beautiful city streets have more than an average share of homeless people. But rather than try to reduce its problems with transients (as Rudy Giuliani successfully did with Manhattan in the mid-1990s), the Palo Alto police department are arresting middle-aged homeowners whose curbside hedges are more than two feet tall. Great PR move guys--just brilliant.

Posted 12/26/2003 06:29:58 PM by Edward Driscoll
YES VIRGINIA, There is a 'United' States of America.

Posted 12/26/2003 05:07:19 PM by Edward Driscoll
A CHURCHILLIAN CHRISTMAS? Not a bad analogy for this year's "Holiday That Dare Not Speak Its Name", actually.

Posted 12/26/2003 04:31:59 PM by Edward Driscoll
AS HEADS IS TAILS: In two recent statements, Howard Dean flip-flops radically on Osama Bin Laden's guilt.

Posted 12/26/2003 04:30:05 PM by Edward Driscoll
DECONSTRUCTING KWANZAA: Richard J. Rosendall of FrontPage magazine.com goes "Shopping for Roots". See also this Tony Snow piece from 1999. Incidentally, I wonder if Kwanzaa and its relatively recent creation was the inspiration for Seinfeld's "Festivus" episode.

Posted 12/26/2003 03:01:53 PM by Edward Driscoll
GOOD QUESTIONS: Charles Johnson asks, "Has our airport security improved so much that Islamic terrorbots think it’s safer to commandeer a foreign flight? Or are they more afraid of American passengers, filled with fury and visions of Flight 93, who will do whatever it takes to stop the hijackers?" Yet another reason to get more U.S. pilots armed, as well.

Posted 12/26/2003 02:59:01 PM by Edward Driscoll
JUST ASK WALT GARRISON: Jacob Sullum writes, "No one claims smokeless tobacco is completely safe, but it is indisputably safer than cigarettes—by a very wide margin. Obscuring this fact, as the public health establishment routinely does, leaves smokers with the impression that they have nothing to gain by switching to snuff, when the truth is that they can dramatically reduce their risks".

Posted 12/26/2003 02:49:22 AM by Edward Driscoll
STRONG EARTHQUAKE IN IRAN: Quake deaths could reach ten thousand. UPDATE: Reuters is reporting twenty thousand killed. ANOTHER UPDATE (Via InstaPundit): Jeff Jarvis has a round-up of additional links. Jarvis writes, "To all my newfound Iranian blogging friends: I hope you and your families are safe and secure". Amen. TINFOIL HAT UPDATE: This is just pathetic--but not all that surprising. But hey, the truth is out there! TINFOIL TURBAN UPDATE: "The Islamic Republic of Iran accepts all kinds of humanitarian aid from all countries and international organizations with the exception of the Zionist regime (Israel)."--Jahanbakhsh Khanjani, Iranian Interior Ministry spokesman.

Posted 12/26/2003 02:20:12 AM by Edward Driscoll
DOIN' THE CHA-CHA SLIDE: Writing about Howard Dean's use of the Internet in his campaigning, Arnold King of Tech Central Station writes, "Howard Dean is the left's Cha-Cha Slide. He did not create the parties that dance to his tune. He just replaced the Macarena". King fears the 'Net may turn America into Weimar Germany--I think it's too soon to judge the 'Net's impact on politics to come to such a depressing conclusion, but King's article is well worth reading.

Posted 12/26/2003 12:52:44 AM by Edward Driscoll
STEVEN DEN BESTE IS NOT HAPPY about how the French authorities handled the suspected terrorists on Air France's Christmas Eve flight to L.A. And I can't say I blame him.

Posted 12/26/2003 12:47:57 AM by Edward Driscoll
OH, XENU! Julian Sanchez writes that "Between Christmas, Chanukah, Solstice, and Kwanzaa, Scientologists may feel a bit left out". But not anymore! There's a new off-Broadway musical "based on the life of schlock sci-fi author cum Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard".

Posted 12/26/2003 12:32:48 AM by Edward Driscoll
DON'T LET OLIVER STONE see this. Hope everybody had as nice a Christmas as we did!

Posted 12/24/2003 11:50:55 PM by Edward Driscoll
GREAT CHRISTMAS CLASSICS: The Digital Bits looks at Christmas movies from the 30s and '40s on DVD. (I realize this is a bit late, but your local video store may be open late). Or stock-up on Friday (or from Amazon) for next year!

Posted 12/24/2003 11:08:15 PM by Edward Driscoll

MERRY CHRISTMAS! Blogging will be sporadic tonight and tomorrow. Have a great Christmas, folks!

Posted 12/24/2003 10:00:57 AM by Edward Driscoll
FROM THE HOME OFFICE IN REDMOND, WA: "Researchers Outline Microsoft's Top 10 Challenges For 2004".

Posted 12/24/2003 09:34:32 AM by Edward Driscoll
KILL BILL: As that phrase all the cool kids are saying these days goes...heh.

Posted 12/24/2003 09:01:37 AM by Edward Driscoll
HAPPY FESTIVUS: "NYC Schools Given Lumps of Coal for Banning Nativity Scenes".

Posted 12/24/2003 01:34:20 AM by Edward Driscoll
FLIP-FLOPPING ROSIE: Here's Rosie O'Donnell from October, 2001:

Talkshow host and ardent Democratic activist Rosie O'Donnell stunned Los Angeles radio listeners Thursday morning by declaring she's changed her opinion of President Bush. "I love him now!" O'Donnell told KRLA-AM's Dennis Prager. O'Donnell said she even got to Yankee Stadium an hour early for a World Series game so that she could videotape Bush! 'I brought a videocamera and my six year old son and no security so that my son could see the president," said O'Donnell. "We left at 6 o'clock in order to do that. And since September 11, I have had nothing but accolades for the job he has done for this nation... I am in full support of the President." O'Donnell added: "Honey, I love him now! He is our President. We are at war."

And here's Rosie O'Donnell, December 11, 2003:

"The country was really taken over. It was a coup. This man was not elected, he sits in the White House and he's declaring war. That's a coup d'etat. America should be in the streets picketing. And our boys and our girls, our teenagers and 20- year-olds, are off there killing people. And war begets war.

Rosie, a coup d'etat is a brief and bloodless revolution. Essentially, our government has one every four to eight years, as a new administration replaces the old one, bringing new people and new ideas, without firing a shot. You're a passionate supporter of gays and lesbians in America--why not share a little sympathy for their counterparts in the Middle East? Contrast Rosie's "BUSH SUX" cliches to this carefully nuanced essay by Paul Varnell, from Gay City News.com, which I found at the top of a Google search using "Gays, Iraq, Hussein". It's from February, shortly before we began to liberate Iraq:

Saddam Hussein's one-party dictatorship severely oppresses gays and lesbians. As British gay activist Peter Tatchell points out, two years ago Hussein decreed homosexuality a capital crime. Doing so was either a further effort to control the lives of his subjects or one of his many recent efforts to display zealous support for Islam. Eliminating Hussein and installing a more secular, pluralist regime would benefit Iraqi gays. * * * To the extent gay progressives vocally oppose the war in order to ensure heterosexual progressive support for gay equality, that sounds like exactly as good a reason for all the rest of us to vocally support the war--to show moderate and conservative Americans that gays share many of their fundamental values and have the general interests of the country at heart. After all, the underlying benefit the Iraqi war will be the pressure on neighboring Arab states to moderate and modernize, reducing their tendency to tolerate, support, or generate fundamentalist terrorism.

Mr. Varnell gets it. You sounded like you did for a moment in the fall of 2001, Rosie. What changed?

Posted 12/23/2003 08:20:11 PM by Edward Driscoll
SELF-SABOTAGE? Interesting theory about Dean by Roger L. Simon:

It may be that deep down Dean does not want to be elected. I know that sounds like an outrageous comment, especially since he is so obviously ambitious, but some of his behavior would seem to indicate self-sabotage. In this reading, which I am coming to believe, what Dean really wants is to win the nomination (he'll get probably get that) and then go down in flames. This way he gets to feel he's "right" without the terrible responsibility of governing, which I think only part of him wants.

Simon believe he's guilty of "cheapjack analysis here", but I think there's a real validity to his hypothesis.

Posted 12/23/2003 06:30:14 PM by Edward Driscoll
MERRY CHRISTMAS, SADDAM! From the 1-22 Battalion of the U.S. Fourth Infantry Division. (Bet that photo's driving the folks at Reuters absolutely nuts.)

Posted 12/23/2003 01:53:49 PM by Edward Driscoll
IMPORTANT SAFETY TIP FOR THE HOLIDAY SEASON: Friends don't give friends pan & scan DVDs.

Posted 12/23/2003 01:46:26 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE PAUL KRUGMAN-JOHN McCAIN CONNECTION, as discovered by Jonah Goldberg. I think it's a fair analogy, myself.

Posted 12/23/2003 11:32:22 AM by Edward Driscoll
REMEMBERING THE LOWS OF 2003: Brent Bozell writes:

Fifty years from now, school children may learn that 2003 was the year President Bush liberated Iraq, creating a prosperous powerhouse of democratic capitalism in the Middle East. We don't know how it will turn out, of course. But we know one thing: the first draft of history out of our national media came from the angry left, furious at the exercise of American power and solicitous of the dictator now in the dock. The worst media eruptions of 2003 are now collected in the Media Research Center’s annual greatest-misses collection known as the Best of Notable Quotables. Forty-six judges selected the ugliest of the ugly, lest we forget how ridiculous our media elite can be.

The list is available here. But remember...there's no media bias!

Posted 12/23/2003 11:14:49 AM by Edward Driscoll
THE RUNNER STUMBLES: Dean lies about the role of his brother's involvement in Vietnam, and the New York Times picks up on it, meaning there's a slight chance that the rest of the media will as well. (Maybe.) Either way, this should be interesting to watch. UPDATE: NRO's "The Corner" has more on Dean and his late brother. Start here and scroll up.

Posted 12/23/2003 12:07:24 AM by Edward Driscoll
"DEAR TIME WARNER": Charles Johnson writes:

Am I the only one who thinks it's more than a little weird that TIME Magazine names "The American Soldier" as their "Person of the Year," only days after publishing a story by a TIME reporter who's hangin' out with the mujahideen trying to kill that same "Person of the Year?"

No, he's not. And be sure to read Johnson's comments section as well. As commenter #4 wrote, "Someone was saying the other day about the Time "WE GOT HIM!" cover that suddenly it's 'we'? How convenient." Pick a side boys, so the readers know where you stand.

Posted 12/22/2003 10:59:00 PM by Edward Driscoll
MENTAL THERAPY: Brett Favre's father passed away suddenly on Sunday. So what does Favre do for therapy on Monday? Pass the daylights out of the Oakland Raiders on Monday Night Football, for a final score of 41 to 7. As Rich Eisen said on the NFL Channel after the game, when Favre dons his yellow blazer at Canton, they'll be talking about this game.

Posted 12/22/2003 10:20:56 PM by Edward Driscoll
"SAVOR IT", Mona Charen writes:

Adolf Hitler deprived the Allies of the satisfaction of executing him. Josef Stalin died in his bed. Pol Pot died of natural causes. But Saddam Hussein, that vicious, depraved worm of a man, was plucked from his rathole. Ah the great warrior. The author of the Mother of All Battles. The man who claimed he would drive the "invaders" from Iraq. The man who forced thousands of Iraqis to sacrifice their lives so he could continue his squalid and luxurious spree in his many palaces. This modern-day Saladin (another of his conceits) didn't even have the courage to kill himself in the end, but submitted meekly, with an offer to "negotiate."

Read the whole thing.

Posted 12/22/2003 06:30:31 PM by Edward Driscoll
SISTER CITIES: Dean's World has a modest proposal to help fight terrorism. I like it, myself.

Posted 12/22/2003 04:08:51 PM by Edward Driscoll
SOLSTICE SWOON: Dolphins out of playoffs even earlier this year, the first time since 1989 the team missed the postseason in consecutive seasons. Could head coach Dave Wannstedt get the axe?

Posted 12/22/2003 03:34:48 PM by Edward Driscoll
HEARST CASTLE APPARENTLY UNDAMAGED:

Hearst Castle reported no obvious damage and no injuries, said Roy Stearns, spokesman for the state Department of Parks and Recreation. A crew was to go over its 150 rooms in detail; the only damage found immediately was a blown transformer at a campground, Stearns said. The castle is particularly popular this time of year because it is decorated with the Hearst Christmas ornaments. "People come from far and wide to see that, because it's pretty spectacular," Stearns said.

Posted 12/22/2003 03:30:25 PM by Edward Driscoll
EARTHQUAKE UPDATE: At least three dead in the city of Paso Robles, California. Minor damage to Vanderberg Air Force Base. Pacific Gas & Electric, said about 40,000 customers were without power after the quake triggered rockslides that brought down power lines near San Luis Obispo, but no damage was reported at PG&E's Diablo Canyon nuclear plant, about 100 miles from the epicenter. Buildings in San Jose and other parts of Silicon Valley swayed. In San Francisco, the upper floors of the 20-story federal courthouse swayed for about 30 seconds.

Posted 12/22/2003 11:34:39 AM by Edward Driscoll
WHEN IRWIN ALLEN MEETS CITIZEN KANE: There was an earthquake, 6.5 on the Richter scale, at about 11:15 in San Simeon (home of the Hearst Castle). I typically blog out of my home office in a San Jose suburb 130 miles or so away, and I definitely felt it. My office chair began to feel like it was pivoting on the joint that connects the wheels to the bottom of the chair, and then I noticed the Venetian blinds swaying a bit back and forth. Here's a map of the epicenter, as well as details of the quake. UPDATE: Drudge has the police gumball on, and links to this report. ANOTHER UPDATE: Police gumball off, but he's doing continuous updates. Blogger's being a bit hinkey, but it was like that before the quake, when I uploaded the post below. A THOUGHT: Hey, this Internet thing seems to be holding up pretty good. Of course, it was designed to handle much bigger bangs than this one. ANOTHER OTHER UPDATE: Here's a report from the AP wire.

Posted 12/22/2003 11:10:18 AM by Edward Driscoll
CIA TOLD CLINTONS ABOUT IRAQ AL-QAEDA TIES as early as 1996, according to Stephen F. Hayes of The Weekly Standard, who also includes quotes from a news report run by ABC:

The al Shifa [pharmaceutical plant] in Sudan was largely destroyed after being hit by six Tomahawk missiles. John McWethy, national security correspondent for ABC News, reported the story on August 25, 1998:

Before the pharmaceutical plant was reduced to rubble by American cruise missiles, the CIA was secretly gathering evidence that ended up putting the facility on America's target list. Intelligence sources say their agents clandestinely gathered soil samples outside the plant and found, quote, "strong evidence" of a chemical compound called EMPTA, a compound that has only one known purpose, to make VX nerve gas.

Then, the connection:

The U.S. had been suspicious for months, partly because of Osama bin Laden's financial ties, but also because of strong connections to Iraq. Sources say the U.S. had intercepted phone calls from the plant to a man in Iraq who runs that country's chemical weapons program.

As Hayes writes, "Democrats who before the war discounted the possibility of any connection between Iraq and al Qaeda have largely fallen silent". As well they should.

Posted 12/22/2003 12:52:39 AM by Edward Driscoll
CAPTURE OF SADDAM BRINGS "CLOSURE" to retired Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf.

Posted 12/22/2003 12:28:56 AM by Edward Driscoll
MARK STEYN: "A good week, I would say, for cowboy ''unilateralists.' "

Posted 12/21/2003 09:38:09 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE GHOSTS OF TECHNO-CHRISTMAS PAST, and present, as explored by Ralph Kinney Bennett, of Tech Central Station.

Posted 12/21/2003 04:11:18 PM by Edward Driscoll
"A MAN OUTSIDE": Scott W. Johnson looks at the Minneapolis Star Tribune's permissive attitude towards, and lax reporting about transients. Johnson asks the tough questions of the Strib that once, a long time ago, newspapermen used to ask of their interview subjects. UPDATE: Johnson also has a hard-hitting editorial in the Strib today, reminding Walter Mondale that, given the administration he served in, criticizing George Bush's foreign policy might not be such a good idea.

Posted 12/21/2003 03:44:34 PM by Edward Driscoll
OSAMA BIN BOGUS: "Busted", writes Glenn Reynolds.

Posted 12/21/2003 03:25:30 PM by Edward Driscoll
CLARK DROPS AN S-BOMB, live on C-SPAN, a couple of weeks after Kerry used the F-word in an interview with Rolling Stone. Personally, I like to see a much more careful and nuanced use of language amongst would-be presidents. And let's face it: a crude, cowboy-like use of profanity isn't likely to go over well with a crowd that favors a more metrosexual approach to presidential discourse.

Posted 12/21/2003 03:07:15 PM by Edward Driscoll
TINA BROWN ON WEDNESDAY:

It had been a particularly obnoxious week for a crowd that favors a more metrosexual approach to foreign relations.

Steven Den Beste, today:

In the wake of the capture of Saddam Hussein and a very broad roundup of other insurgents, those who have been hoping for American failure have now been blindsided with another hammer blow: Qaddafi announced that Libya would abandon all its secret programs to develop WMDs and would cooperate with international verification efforts. What makes this even worse is that this is a purely diplomatic achievement, not a military one.

(Emphasis mine.) So will Tina and her cocktail party crowd admit that maybe, just maybe, they were wrong about Bush and his team?

Posted 12/21/2003 01:55:43 PM by Edward Driscoll
ONE YEAR TO THE DAY since Bill Parcells interest in coaching the Dallas Cowboys became public, they're in the playoffs for the first time since 1999, and have a winning record for the first time since 1998. Parcells becomes the only head coach to lead four different teams into the playoffs. Here are the rest of the NFL playoff scenarios.