Update: Amazon Kicks WikiLeaks Out of the Cloud

—Gabriel Malor

As expected:

WikiLeaks has been "ousted" from server space rented from the U.S.-based internet retailer Amazon.com, the website behind a massive disclosure of confidential U.S. documents announced Wednesday.

"WikiLeaks servers at Amazon ousted. Free speech the land of the free," the organization, which facilitates the anonymous leaking of secret information, posted on its Twitter page Wednesday evening. "Fine -- our $ are now spent to employ people in Europe."

I haven't seen an official statement from Amazon and several websites are speculating quite pedantically about which clauses of the Amazon AWS contract were invoked to kick WikiLeaks to the curb.

Strangely, Senator Lieberman is claiming credit for Amazon's decision to pull the plug:

U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee, said Amazon cut off WikiLeaks after inquiries from his aides. In a statement issued by his office, the Connecticut independent called on any other company hosting WikiLeaks to follow suit.

Um, okay?

WikiLeaks is now bemoaning the state of the First Amendment in the United States, having apparently no idea what the First Amendment actually contains.

Remember that Euro-contagion I warned you about last night? [Fritzworth]

—Open Blogger

That didn't take long:

The United States would be ready to support the extension of the European Financial Stability Facility via an extra commitment of money from the International Monetary Fund, a U.S. official told Reuters on Wednesday.
"There are a lot of people talking about that. I think the European Commission has talked about that," said the U.S. official, commenting on enlarging the 750 billion euro ($980 billion) EU/IMF European stability fund. "It is up to the Europeans. We will certainly support using the IMF in these circumstances."

As per the post last night, it's a matter of: do you let the countries fail or the banks fail? Hat tip to the Drudgester. ..fritz..

Oh Boy: Margaret Cho Swears, Swears That Sarah Palin Forced Her Daughter To Do DWTS

—Ace

Margaret Cho. I remember her on DTWS. I watched the first one. I think maybe we liveblogged it?

Anyway...

"I heard from someone who really should know (really should seriously know the dirt really really) that the only reason Bristol was on the show was because Sarah Palin forced her to do it," Bristol's onetime fellow contesant wrote on her blog yesterday, in an entry titled "Pistol Whipped."

"Sarah supposedly blames Bristol harshly and openly (in the circles that I heard it from) for not winning the election, and so she told Bristol she 'owed' it to her to do DWTS so that 'America would fall in love with her again' and make it possible for Sarah Palin to run in 2012 with America behind her all the way," Cho continued. "Instead of being supposedly 'handicapped' by the presence of her teen mom daughter, now Bristol is going to be an 'asset'�a celebrity beloved for her dancing."

Someone who should really really really know? And who you'd be talking to, a hyperpartisan idiot lefty? And who would seek out F-list "celebrities" to email?

You mean Levi Johnston, don't you? Why not just say so? Why the deception about who your source is, Fatty McLovehandles?

Okay, yeah, I do have to give Sarah Palin a limited pass on the personal stuff, given the unending personal, nasty attacks from the left.

You Know What I'd Like To See? The next time a "reporter" like Anderson Cooper mentions this sort of a rumor/claim against Palin, absent even a named source, under the guise of "just reporting what people are talking about," I want a conservative to embarrass him by demanding to explain why he feels free to report baseless claims against Palin like this, apart from ideological dishonesty, and why he won't mention other stuff people are "talking about," like Barack Obama's affair with Vera Baker.

Some Old Margaret Cho Jokes: from way back -- January 11, 2004, like the second week the blog existed.

Oh Good Lord: NASA's Big Announcement Tomorrow Is They Found Some Terrestrial Bacteria That Can Live In Arsenic

—Ace

Here's my problem:

1, they sure made this sound bigger, with all that "embargoed until Thursday" crap.

2, they are connecting this up with ETs by using it as evidence that life can take hold in very adverse conditions. But, like, didn't we already figure that? Evidence: The giant space slug in Empire Strikes Back. No, but really, we know stuff can live in the incredible pressures on the ocean's floor, or in magma vents, or in friggin' Antarctica; I think it's a good thing to know life can live with arsenic, but it's not exactly blowin' my paradigms of what is and what isn't possible.

So, here's the big secret.

Nasa scientists are set to announce that bacteria have been discovered that can survive in arsenic, an element previously thought too toxic to support life, it can be revealed.

In a press conference scheduled for tomorrow evening, researchers will unveil the discovery of the incredible microbe � which substitutes arsenic for phosphorus to sustain its growth � in a lake in California.

The remarkable discovery raises the prospect that life could exist on other planets which do not have phosphorus in the atmosphere, which had previously been thought vital for life to begin.

On that bit about phosphorus being necessary for life, this guy presented a paper making that case:

Phosphorus is a key element in biological systems, acting in cell replication as RNA and DNA, in cell structure as phospholipids, and in metabolism as ATP. Given its ubiquity in biochemistry, phosphorus was likely present in the origin or early evolution of life. I will discuss sources of phosphorus on the early earth, concentrating primarily on extraterrestrial sources of reduced oxidation state phosphorus compounds, and evidence that these sources were used by early biochemical systems. Additionally, I will show how these reduced oxidation state phosphorus compounds could act in prebiotic or early biochemical systems to generate both key biologic compounds and metabolic energy.

To which I can only say:

PWN3D, you stupid dick!

Just kidding.

In Which I Challenge Tom Friedman To A Debate

—DrewM.

Moron Nation, I need your help.

For far too long Tom Friedman has used his perch on the Op-Ed page of the NY Times to slap America and build up China. He must be confronted before he wins another Pulitzer for it.

I'm issuing a challenge to Friedman to debate me anytime, anywhere, but I'm going to need your help. We need to get him to see it and then badger him into accepting the challenge.

Why am I doing this? Because sometimes a really stupid and foolish gesture is required! Who is with me?

Here's the challenge:

Dear Mr. Friedman,

Let me say upfront, I�m not a fan (though I can be complimentary when it's deserved).

I�ve written several times in response to your recurring flirtations with the various advantages you see in China and the relative weaknesses of America. We have an honest and profound disagreement on these topics and quite frankly, I think they need to be aired. Am I, a part-time, hobbyist blogger the ideal candidate to take on a multiple Pulitzer Prize winner such as you? Honestly, only my mom, God love her, would say yes. Still, it comes down to the man willing to step into the arena and at the moment, that�s me.

What prompted this David to challenge an editorial Goliath such as you to a debate?

Your December 1, 2010 column which imagined a WikiLeak cable from the Chinese Embassy in DC to the home office in Beijing was just a bridge too far for me. Another blog post Fisking you simply wasn�t good enough to satisfy me. I, well someone, really needs to have a sit down debate complete with an audience to hash this out with you.

Just to make it fair, let me run through in bullet point form some of the issues I have with your latest column and where I think we could find interesting ground for a debate.

Livestream: The RNC Chairman Debate

—Ace

I think these are (some) the would-be challengers: Gentry Collins, Chris Healy, Saul Anuzis, and Ann Wagner. Michael Steele and Maria Coco (another candidate) aren't there.

So here are some of the guys running for the post, in a forum sponsored by FreedomWorks.

Oh No: Kathleen Parker Storms Off Set Of Parker/Spitzer

—Ace

Have to mention it.

We liveblogged the first show and it was pretty clear that Kathleen Parker 1, had nothing much to say except about her One Big Topic of Sarah Palin (and nothing new there, either), and, even if you're whoring for ratings, you can't talk about her every night, can you?, and 2, was a wallflower without any command of the studio and without the sort of aggressive confidence needed to be a broadcaster.

She wilted on stage. She was a ghost. A big nothing. As bad as the show was, I have to agree with (I think) S.E. Cupp who said that Spitzer seemed more like a natural broadcaster, someone firmly in his element of talkin' on TV bark-bark-bark.

Parker seemed like, well, a second-rate writer doing her best work with her keyboard (and not very good work there, either).

The NY Post claims she stormed off the set, angry about her second banana role.

Well, dear, you have to talk to be heard, don't you? This isn't third-grade math class. The teachers aren't there to spend extra effort trying to cajole the girls to raise their hands and answer questions.

You're a big girl now, aren't you? Either get off TV or start talking on TV but don't whine that the guy doing what he's supposed to do on TV (fill up the air with words) is doing his job properly.

You need to bring a little more to the table than "dead air," darlin'.

Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker actually stormed off the set of the "Parker Spitzer" show during a pre-taping a few weeks ago -- furious that her co-host is continually allowed to take charge of their nightly CNN chat-fest, the insiders said.

Although still fuming, Parker did return to wrap up the segment, they said.
But she's angry that the show's producers are allegedly doing nothing to play up her strengths on the ailing show, the sources said.

Her "strengths," from that first show I saw, seem to be limited to asking sorority-girl party-game questions of her guests, like "When did you lose your virginity?" She didn't ask that one -- but it was that type of irrelevant, let's-have-a-giggle-party sort of question.

She wants the show to have more of that sort of thing, I guess. Sure. That'll save the show. An aging den mother asking people what color underwear they hope they'll be wearing when they die. Ratings gold.

Some staffers said Spitzer -- the hard-charging, former state attorney general who resigned as governor in 2008 after admitting to patronizing prostitutes -- thrust himself up front and center right out of the gate, leaving Parker without a chance.

Right, he should have been a wallflower and quiet as a mouse to let the other wallflower get in her wallflower mumblings.

But other insiders said the Pulitzer Prize-winning Parker has only herself to blame.

While Parker -- a conservative, nationally syndicated newspaper journalist -- is widely respected, she's no TV personality, critics said.

She's also no conservative, NY Post.

"Her weaknesses are felt internally," a source said.

Anyway, she's whining to the show's executive producer that the format has to be changed to allow the quiet, uncomfortable-on-camera mumbler more of the spotlight. Like maybe she could do a cooking segment or something.

By the way, I am writing a big, super-long post. I'm not slacking. I'm just fixated on this one post.

Senate GOP Unanimously Pledges to Filibuster All Bills Until Dems Agree to Tax Cuts and a Budget

—Gabriel Malor

Excellent.

Senate Republicans are vowing to block all legislative business until Democrats hold votes on bills to extend the Bush-era tax cuts and keep the government funded through the new year.

In a letter signed by all 42 Republicans, Republicans warn they will filibuster any attempt to bring forward any bill besides those two measures. That could further complicate Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's desire to complete a laundry list of other bills in the final weeks of the 111th Congress.

It's not like the year-end tax hike is a surprise. It's only been sneaking up on us for most of a decade now. And it is the duty of Congress to pass a budget every year, so that isn't a surprise either. Nevertheless, the Democrats simply let these two critical issues slide because they were too hard.

Now we're running out of time, but the Democrats would rather pass out goodies to constituent groups. I'm impressed (and sadly, a little surprised) that the Senate GOP managed to pull together to tell Democrats that some things are actually more important.

More: Ed has details on a massive omnibus environmental bill that Reid promised his Senate buddies he'd move during the lame duck. Reid agreed to push the environmental bill on Monday night. Perhaps he was heartened by how easily he got Republicans on board his food safety bill?

Uh-Oh: XM-25 Anti-Cover Cybernetic Grenade Launcher Hits Afghanistan; Called "Revolutionary" and a "Game-Changer"

—Ace

Dri had this in the sidebar; I just read about it a bit on Hot Air.

Cover is of course critical in a firefight. Hunker down behind a berm, duck under a window's frame, peek out behind a corner -- your opponents will have a hell of a time hitting you.

I'm just making this crap up but I bet it's right -- 90% of the military's firefight tactics are about finding, exploiting, and defeating cover.

The XM-25 has a laser-rangefinder. The soldier using it points it at his target, and pushes a button to register that range. Then he adds in a + or - to note whether he wants the grenade to explode just before that distance or just after.

Then he fires a grenade, up to 2300 feet (longer than most carbine/AK-47 ranges), and a the gun instructs the grenade when to blow up.

Long story short: If a guy is hiding behind the cover of the corner of a brick building, point the gun at the corner, click in "+" (meaning, explode just beyond this distance), and aim just past the corner into the open air, and fire -- the grenade will launch and will detonate just as it passes the corner, killing the guy hiding behind it.

Which means that the most critical tactic in a firefight simply no longer exists for our enemies.

If it works as they're selling it -- and they are really selling it big, not lowering expectations -- it literally, I think, could end the war.

Because you can't have a war if all of the opposing forces are dead.

Lt. Col. Christopher Lehner, project manager for the semi-automatic, shoulder-fired weapon system for the U.S. Army's Program Executive Office Soldier, said that the XM25's capability alone is such a "game-changer" that it'll lead to new ways of fighting on the battlefield, beginning this month in Afghanistan.

"With this weapon system, we take away cover from [enemy targets] forever," Lehner told FoxNews.com on Wednesday. "Tactics are going to have to be rewritten. The only thing we can see [enemies] being able to do is run away."

I don't know if it's going to work quite as well as anticipated, but again, they are not taking a "hopeful" stance -- they seem convinced that this thing is just absolutely lethal.

One way to think about it, I guess, is in movies the heroes always get behind cover (and don't get shot) while the idiot villains' minions run out in the open (and get shot to shit). Basically this gun, if it works as well as they think it will work, turns opponents into idiot movie minions, with movie-like results.

Change In Tactics: Assuming this works as brilliantly as advertised:

In cases where our guys have planned an assault on stronghold, this weapon will only marginally improve our fighting power, because in those cases we already are bringing so many advantages to the table, like Spooky gunships and Apaches and mortars and rocket launchers. Even there, though, we'll kill a lot more guys, and have more surrenders, and have fewer escapees. Maybe a lot fewer, as those designated to stay behind and lay covering fire while the higher-ups escape will balk, given that their odds of surviving the encounter are a lot lower now.

Civilian casualties should decline, generally, since heavier, less descriminate explosive attacks will be less frequently needed. Plus the bad guys won't be firing as long (and they probably shoot up most of the civilians themselves with their poor fire discipline). This not only helps in that (cliche warning) hearts and minds thing but it increases our lethal potential: If we are more precise about killin' them that needs killin', we can take the shackles off and do more of it.

It will make ambush attacks on small patrols a much riskier proposition -- here it will have big impact. Unless the enemy is in force and thinks it can all but wipe out a patrol in the first barrage of gunfire, the enemy will know that attacking a patrol, even a small one, is essentially suicide. Such ambushes will be less common (and there will be many more enemy kills during the transition period).

Even snipers will have to change their tactics some -- they will have to learn to take one or two or maybe three shots, before fleeing and trying to blend into a civilian crowd. They will have to scoot very quickly after the shoot.

Cover isn't just a defensive advantage; it's an offensive advantage, too, as a guy who has some security in his position will generally take better-aimed shots and fire more aimed rounds (and not just stick his gun out and fire blindly, or just cower and hide). If the gun works as well as it's said to, enemy fighters won't just be defensively disadvantaged, but offensively too, as a lot more of their time and mind-share is devoted to mere survival.

The Taliban (and Al Qaeda in Iraq) will generally have to rely more on roadside bombs. They rely on that stuff a lot as it is, but we've gotten better at defeating these tactics; they will have to go back to that sort of thing mostly exclusively.

This could have an impressive effect on enemy morale, perhaps catastrophic. There is a big difference between going into battle with a belief that there is a 20% chance you'll be killed (or maimed) and going into battle with the belief that there is a 90% chance you will be killed (or maimed). A lot of fighters will balk once you get past the 60% mark.

I don't know if this thing works as well as advertised. And I don't want to get silly about it and claim a revolution. But there have been truly revolutionary weapons in the past (longbow, rifle) and those weapons did change the face of warfare (and make the early-adopters of such then-cutting-edge tech the masters of the battlefield). It does sound to me like a weapon that defeats, decisively, the chief defense against gunfire -- cover -- could very well be that sort of longbow/rifle revolutionary weapon.

Vid: Little bonus: the reporter is Rick "Manslaughter" Sanchez.

Jean objects to my overselling this:

The ability to compromise cover is a little oversold, visually identifying those situations will be hard. What this does in tactical terms is it significantly increases the probability of a hit beyond basic rifleman range for the untrained masses. No longer do you need that kid from Kentucky or Idaho on the DMR to engage at a extended ranges; it may also reduce the need to hump the mortar. It is also a direct fire weapon under local control - no need to ask higher to start pop stuff at 2K out. So it reduces training and strain on a limited set of personnel, cuts JAG time, shortens the C2 "span of control" and may reduce pack weight. All wins, if it works.

XBradTC agrees:

This!

I'm sure the XM25 will bring something to the fight. But really, ever since the M79 was introduced, we've had a fair ability to engage troops in defilade out to about 300-400m. This is a more accurate round, and an interesting technical achievement, but one of the very great difficulties in the fight is determining EXACTLY where the enemy is. Once you determine his position, killing isn't that hard, and hasn't been for a long time.

Well, point taken, and I respect that these guys are offering military-informed opinions, but so is the guy mentioned in the Fox article, and he thinks it will make a much bigger impact than Jean and XBradTC do.

"Rewriting tactics" and "the enemy will have no choice but to run away" are pretty big statements. Even discounting for this guy being in love with the product, it seems like the weapon will have more of an impact than Jean and XBradTC guess.

Old Top Ten: This weapon began as the under part of the over-under XM-8, a combined advanced assault rifle and grenade launcher. The advanced assault rifle part didn't work all that great, and it was heavy anyway to do the two-weapons-in-one thing, so they separated out the grenade launcher, which seemed to be working, and made it the stand-alone XM-25.

I did this Top Ten for the XM-8, back in the very early days of the blog.

(Actually, commenters seem to be telling me the XM-25 was not derived from the XM-8, but rather the XM-8 and the XM-25 together made up the OICW (objective infantry combat weapon or something). Anyway, look, this is an old top ten. It's about cool weapons.)

Meghan McCain: Sarah Palin Is Anti-Intellectual and Anti-Education For Using The Term "Blue Bloods"
PS: By The Way, I Had To Google The Meaning of "Blue Bloods" Because I Had Never Read This Extremely Common Term Before

—Ace

Blue bloods = the aristocracy, my poor sweet dumb babboo.

Read on as she Googles the term... and still gets it wrong.

Welcome to the echo chamber! This week's (or possibly month's) latest rhetorical talking point is "blue bloods." And guess what? In the way it has been used I am probably considered one and so is the entire Bush family, not to mention countless others.

"In the way it has been used" she "probably" would be considered one.

In the way it has been used, as opposed to... the way it's otherwise used?

Dearie, it's only used in one way. It means aristocracy. Not new money, old money (and "old money" in America usually means somewhat new money, in comparison to old money in Europe).

And who else would deliver such a catchy media talking point than, yes, Sarah Palin.

Um, anyone who ever heard the term before, which is 98% of us.

The reference to "blue bloods" was made after former President George H.W. Bush and his wife Barbara said in an interview that they thought Mitt Romney was essentially the man to watch in 2012, followed by an extra zinger from the notorious straight talking former first lady Barbara Bush who said she thinks "Sarah Palin should stay in Alaska." Sarah Palin responded on the Laura Ingraham radio show saying "of course they think that, the Bush's are blue bloods." I actually had to Google what the meaning of "blue bloods" was, although I could surmise that it was some kind of knock against education and coming from a family of some success. Yes, in essence that is what this statement meant.

No, that is not "in essence" what this statement meant. It has nothing to do with education (although the rich, of course, do send their kids to Ivy League schools or, lately, since Ivy League schools are harder to get into just based on cash-money background, into expensive private schools like Bennington. But that's an incident of wealth.)

The term means "old money aristocracy," period.

"Blue blood" has a variety of tones to it. Blue bloods think of it as a good term. Often it's used in a purely descriptive, neutral way -- people are objectively "blue bloods." Same as saying they're wealthy. Not really open to much debate.

And sometimes it's used derisively, as in "entitled little beer-empire princesses who supposedly go into Columbia based on nothing but academic potential (wink, wink) and yet never read a single book in which the very common term 'blue blood' was used."

What is that common put-down of Sarah Palin? Oh yes: "She doesn't know what she doesn't know." Meghan McCain obviously doesn't know what she doesn't know, or she'd be too embarrassed to note that she had to Google a term that is not only common, but is part of any educated (or semi-educated) person's active vocabulary.

This isn't some obscure term like, I don't know, petit bourgeoisie. (Which isn't all that obscure, either.) I mean: Come on.

The rap on "blue bloods" is that they rule by happenstance of lucky birth with little objective, personal qualification or merit or accomplishment to recommend them.

Sort of like an entitled beer empire princess who presumes to be a professional writer and political analyst but still has to Google terms from a seventh-grade vocabulary list.

Oh, but she's not done. She's still complaining about this term which she never heard before in her entire life.

Families that work hard and achieve a long line of successful people are "blue bloods" and thus, she implied the opinions of said people are jaded and elitist, even if that family lineage has a long history of public service and leadership within Republican Party.

Yes, Meghan, families that work hard and create a long line of successful wealthy descendants are "blue bloods." Note the distinction here: Your family -- that is, people not you -- worked hard and had success. They were successful, whereas you are merely rich.

But Meghan's not done.

Of course, Sarah Palin is also living the American dream, albeit a different one without the help of any kind of family lineage. She has a successful career that probably most Americans would want by earning millions for her reality show, appearances on Fox, and getting paid to go places and speak her mind. Both of these narratives exemplify why this country is still as Ronald Reagan famously put it "a shining city upon a hill." America is a place where people can create their own success so their children can have more opportunities than they did. Neither the Bush family's success nor Sarah Palin's are relevant to the political conversation regarding who is best suited to be the next GOP leader. Both stories are simply the American dream and taking issue with one kind of path towards success versus another is very dangerous. Lest we forget, Sarah Palin herself is now a multi-millionaire.

In this incoherent passage, this supposedly Columbia-educated paid professional author argues, I think, that "some people earn it themselves through their own sweat and toil, some people have it handed to them as an infant for no better reason than winning the birth lottery, who's to say which is a prouder tradition?"

Um, one doesn't have to be an anti-aristocratic extremist to say the former is better, Meghan. McCain here equates her own "success" and "accomplishment" -- which principally consists of, um, surviving the birthing process -- with Sarah Palin's.

I'm not a particular fan of Sarah Palin's anymore but, you know: F A I L.

Okay, one more thing: Meghan McCain is an idiot, and has had everything handed to her, and is such an idiot she never even realized there was a word for this. So, in other words, she just discovered, within the past week, that there is an entirely new (to her) personal insult that applies to her.

This of course accounts for her hysterical, defensive whining, and attempting to equate the accomplishments of J.P. Morgan with his great-grandson J.P. "Johnny Chugs" Morgan, one man who built a banking empire, and one man who knows all the rules to Mexican.

So this is all very personal to her.

Will she admit that? No, of course not, she has to claim her hysterical ignorance is all in the service of country or something.

I take particular issue with the "blue blood" rhetoric because in case Republicans haven't realized, we are still losing a public relations battle. Instead of sitting around and opining about who is too much of an elitist or a "blue blood" within our own party, our leaders need to start educating this country about the shortcomings of the Obama administration and why smaller government is a fundamentally more effective way of governing.

Right, you're screaming like an infant because you're worried that this exciting neologism "blue blood" may distract from the effort to thwart Obama. Okay.

By the way, for what it's worth: I know playing the "elitist" card (and the "blue blood" variation) is like catnip to some people, and it explains everything (that is, politics is for some less about specific policy outcomes and more about a generalized assertion of primacy over the "elite"), but I'm really tired of it myself, and am especially tired of Sarah Palin's use of it to explain practically everything, and explain away every knock on her.

That is, every knock on her is dismissed as "elitist" impulse, which frankly fails to address the real reasons often offered for doubting her capacity to serve as president. Which is the point. By constantly claiming that all (and I do mean all) criticism of her is essentially illegitimate as it is born of nothing but "elitist" disdain for the common man (or woman), she never actually has to rebut such criticisms.

I'm really not digging what I find to be a crudely reductivist, single-dimensional model of politics that many have seized on (Palin most prominently), that politics currently consists of almost nothing at all but "elitists" vs. the common.

What about ideas? Why is every dispute being turned into a personal one, a dispute in which the power of ideas matter far less than the personal credentials of the person offering the idea?

Do the elite engage in the fallacy of the argument to authority, offering their status as the credentialed elite as a reason to support their ideas? Yes, they do. But what bothers me about this whole damn anti-elitist panic is that it replacing one appeal to authority with another appeal to authority which is nearly as odious, and actually a bit more when you add in the hypocrisy factor.

The old appeal to authority is rotten and horrible, you should not credit anyone who says "listen to me because I hail from the credentialed elite;" that's why we need to replace it with a new appeal to authority: "Listen to me because I hail from the striving low-to-middle class."

What?

I do not see the great benefit of replacing one regime of sneering dismissiveness based on happenstance of birth with an opposite regime of sneering dismissiveness based on happenstance of birth.

Well that's not entirely true-- I do find the latter regime, Palin's preferred regime, preferable to the former. I would rather that regime of sneering dismisiveness to the older one. But I don't much like either.

And another thing I'll just put out there: I rarely post on Sarah Palin anymore because everything with her seems excessively personal. Do we have arguments about ideas when it comes to Sarah Palin? No, we only have arguments about her as a person. It's like high school. Political "coverage" consists largely of hit-trolling by engaging in the never-ending and childish reportage of "This person talked smack about Sarah Palin" and "Sarah Palin dissed this person right back!"

To some limited extent, this isn't Palin's fault, but her critics on the left (and in the nastier corners of the supposedly-"civil" "moderate" wing of the Republican Party, like Frumj and Scarborough) who personalize every attack on Palin.

On the other hand, I have to say that Palin is largely responding in personal terms, which I find less than presidential. It's all this "elitist" sort of stuff -- you call me a name, I'll call you a name -- and there just doesn't seem to be a criticism that Palin can let go unanswered. So while I'd like my presidential nominee to be an expert on one field of government policy or maybe a couple, I am finding that Palin is creating her own personal field of expertise which consists chiefly of defending the good name of Sarah Palin and snarking her critics.

I don't really care about this "expertise." At all. And I am just tired of this never-ending, highly-personal high-school sort of smack-talk and disses.

From both sides, yeah. I've always been pissed off that the left, and Palin's supposedly more conservative critics too, have engaged in this sort of childish personal taunting. But now I've really had as much I can take of it from Team Palin, too.

This isn't the Delgrassi Junior High or even the Godfather. Not everything is about personal status and standing. Politics isn't just about people. When it descends to just being about nothing but people and personalities, it ceases to be politics, and become simply a different form of Extra/TMZ/Perez Hilton celebrity gossip show.

I know Palin didn't start this. But if I, personally, am ever going to be able to support Palin, I need her to stop this, and start addressing policy questions in policy terms -- not personal terms -- and put away her go-to "I Win" cards of "elitist" and the like.

Federal Food Safety Act a Civics Lesson for Harry Reid?

—Gabriel Malor

Yesterday, the dummies in the Senate, including 14 Republicans, voted to pass the "FDA Food Safety Modernization Act", a bill that will raise the price of food.

Today, Majority Leader Reid and his retarded fellows are getting a lesson in civics:

A food safety bill that has burned up precious days of the Senate�s lame-duck session appears headed back to the chamber because Democrats violated a constitutional provision requiring that tax provisions originate in the House.

By pre-empting the House�s tax-writing authority, Senate Democrats appear to have touched off a power struggle with members of their own party in the House. The Senate passed the bill Tuesday, sending it to the House, but House Democrats are expected to use a procedure known as �blue slipping� to block the bill, according to House and Senate GOP aides.

The bill included several "fees" (aka "taxes") on businesses to pay for new federal food inspectors and other bureaucratic expansion. Roll Call speculates that Reid will have to drop the bill until next year, since Republicans led by Senator Coburn won't agree to change the lame duck schedule now.

One word of caution: the source for this story appears to be Republican staffers in the House and the Senate, who expect House Democrats to not let the Senate usurp the House's constitutional prerogative. Let's just say my expectation that House Democrats will "do the right thing" is not very high. It could happen, but I'm not going to put big money on it.

Update: Just so you know who the 14 Republican retards who voted for this thing are:

Alexander (R-TN)
Brown (R-MA)
Burr (R-NC)
Collins (R-ME)
Enzi (R-WY)
Grassley (R-IA)
Gregg (R-NH)
Johanns (R-NE)
Kirk (R-IL)
LeMieux (R-FL)
Lugar (R-IN)
Murkowski (R-AK)
Snowe (R-ME)
Vitter (R-LA)

Idiots.

Amazon + WikiLeaks = One Seriously Bad Public Relations Problem

—Genghis

Not sure as to the freshness date of this as these things move quickly, but here was the situation as of last night and as reported by Seattle station KIRO:

�ISSAQUAH, Wash. -- An Issaquah grandmother of two American soldiers said she's outraged at Amazon for providing web hosting to WikiLeaks, the organization that has leaked thousands of classified government documents. Nadine Gulit had two grandsons deploy to Iraq and founded Operation Support Our Troops. She isn't very diplomatic about Amazon helping out WikiLeaks. "That shocked me and it surprises me that Amazon went that route," she said.�

And how did this come to be?

�WikiLeaks came under fresh criticism recently for publicizing 250,000 confidential diplomatic cables that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said endangered innocent lives. Hours before WikiLeaks published those cables, it was hacked and moved its home page to Amazon's servers for what some believe were security reasons.�

Emphasis mine. Let that last sentence sink in for a moment. I�m told that irony has a somewhat sweet, yet salty, flavor. Similar to chocolate-covered pretzels maybe?

An interesting, and probably accurate point (at least to some degree) is made in the article:

University of Washington communications professor Phil Howard wasn't surprised by WikiLeaks' move and concurred that it was likely made to avoid further hacks. He said he thought Amazon's participation might reflect an internet ideology. "This case is evidence that Amazon still has that kind of libertarian information-must-be-free ethic," he said.

Perhaps, but a public relations crisis manager quoted later in the article notes that it seems bizarre for Amazon to do something like this, particularly during the holiday shopping season. As for Grandma Gulit? Let�s just say she�s a little pissed off about the whole affair.

No statement yet from Amazon, at least that I can find.

Interpol Issues Red Notice for WikiLeaks Wanker

—Gabriel Malor

A "Red Notice" is Interpol's way of notifying participating countries that a warrant has been issued and that the issuing country is seeking extradition.

This Red Notice relates to the rape and sexual harassment investigations that started in August.

Assange's details were also added to Interpol's worldwide wanted list. Dated 30 November, the entry reads: "sex crimes" and says the warrant has been issued by the international public prosecution office in Gothenburg, Sweden. "If you have any information contact your national or local police." It reads: "Wanted: Assange, Julian Paul," and gives his birthplace as Townsville, Australia.

Assange is supposedly in a "secret location" outside London.

Top Headline Comments 12-1-10

—Gabriel Malor

December? Already? Ack.

Overnight Open Thread

—Maetenloch

Good evening all.

LEGO� STAR WARS�: BOMBAD BOUNTY

Even with Jar-Jar and hand-less Lego people I'd still much rather watch 120 minutes of this than any of Lucas' three prequels.

28 Days Later: Some Elections Are Still Undecided
But so far they seem to be following the usual pattern that when elections go into recounts, the Democrat always wins.

9/11 Artifacts
Nine years later there's still no memorial or replacement towers at ground zero. But artifacts from that day are currently being stored at Hangar 17 at JFK Airport for an eventual National September 11 Memorial and Museum.

Keith Olberman's Latest 'Worst Person in the World': Bristol Palin
Really? I guess actual decency isn't part of that whole 'return to decency' thing.

Feel Like Watching The Original Star Trek Series Right Now?
Then go here.

The Top 10 Female Celebrities Whose Careers Are Based on Enlarged Glandular Tissue
Sometimes a few pounds of fat in the right places can propel you from future Mrs. Key Grip to movie star.

Study: Women More Attracted to Men with Stubble and Hairy Chests and Backs
Wait wasn't there a study like two years ago that said the exact opposite?! Now that my 15 month process of full-body laser epilation is nearly complete I suddenly find out that it was all for naught. I want my money and hair back!

So How Do You Detect Secret Nuclear Reactors?
Well one way is to look for the copious antineutrinos they produce. And the easiest way to detect these may just be to sink a supertanker full of linearalkylbenzene off the coast.

The Ultimate in Vintage Wear: Jackets Made From Car Upholstery
From classic cars and selling for just $1200. Of course annoying hipsters consider 1960's Dodge Dart jackets to be the most authentic.

Woman Accused of Filling Butts With Bathroom Caulk
Okay important safety tip moron/moronettes - if a model approaches you in a beauty salon and offers to 'pump up your booty' at a bargain price, just say no. Even if she wears a white jacket and seems 'pretty sure' about what she's doing. Plus choosy butt-pumpers always go with genuine GE Silicone II or Synthol.

Attention Xmas Shoppers! Check Out The $6800 Speaker Cable on Amazon
And embedded in one of its reviews is a nice little science fiction story.

We live underground. We speak with our hands. We wear the earplugs all our lives.

PLEASE! You must listen! We cannot maintain the link for long... I will type as fast as I can.

DO NOT USE THE CABLES!

We were fools, fools to develop such a thing! Sound was never meant to be this clear, this pure, this... accurate. For a few short days, we marveled. Then the... whispers... began.

And guess what product shoppers also viewed? Why this Male Testicular Exam Model. Such a deal at $151.01 and it gets 5 stars.

The Yahoo AoSHQ group. You know the way.

Tonight's post brought to you by preparedness:

Notice: Posted by permission of AceCorp LLC. Please e-mail overnight open thread tips to maetenloch at gmail. Otherwise send tips to Ace.

Close it up

Euro-contagion spreads [Fritzworth]

—Open Blogger

It's 2:40 am Wednesday morning here in Paris, and I'm wide awake -- not because of jet lag, but because I came down ill with a 24-hr bug on Monday night and slept most of Tuesday. The good news is that I'll get more euros when I withdraw cash from the friendly neighborhood ATM in the morning:

Investors dismissed European leaders' latest attempt to restore market calm, raising doubts about whether governments can rebuild confidence in the region's common currency amid signs that the debt crisis is creeping deeper into the Continent.
The euro fell to a 10-week low, and was below $1.30 in late New York trading. Bond markets across Europe's vulnerable fringe sank, as the "risk premium" investors demand for lending to Spain and Italy hit record highs. Standard & Poor's said after European markets closed it is considering a downgrade on Portugal's credit rating, citing economic pressures and increased risks to the government's creditworthiness.

The eurozone was, for the most part, a collectivist pipe dream fueled by grand intentions -- the classic liberal fallacy of "if we just mean well, it will all work out." Megan McArdle, a libertarian economist, suspects the euro, as a currency, may not survive. More disturbingly, McArdle -- no alarmist or ideologue -- has real concerns about what lies ahead for all of us:

Europe cannot let its banks fail, but it also can't divert public pensions to line the pockets of bankers. Yet it may well have to do one or the other. I am also expecting finance to win. Forget whether Germany has the political will to bail out the PIIGS: does either the EU, or the ECB, actually have the means to bail out all five? If Spain topples, that is what it will come to.


This is starting to throw off more echoes of the Great Depression, where you have a sequence of crises, each touched off by the ones that came before, like dominos falling into some diabolic design. Europe and America thought they'd seen the worst of things by the end of 1930, only to be knocked back down even harder by the contagion of the Creditanstalt crisis. In the US, the crisis ultimately triggered a string of bank failures worse than those sparked by the initial stock market crash, and the worst two years of the Great Depression were 1932-3.

Hey, if I can't sleep, there's no reason why you should get to. ..fritz..

The Post-Apocalyptic Thanksgiving Feast NFL Week 12 Pickem Results

—Dave In Texas

You're making your football picks, and you wanna land your football picks in solid double digits. You not only look at the spread, you look at the f'n win/loss records.

What are you lookin at?

Do you need me to get Vinny Falcone to show you the Vegas line?

Well do you?

joltin' j's 99
Quarreyman 98
Iowa Amy 98
Reggie Bush's Birth Cert 97
Commando Pete 96
Bruin 22 96

The Guys Get Shirts

Ben 87
DrewM 85
CDR M 81
Russ from Winterset 77
DiT 76

Full value for your money. Also could somebody please give me some intelligent f'n answers?

Put me some knowledge.

Also, because you haz been good, and I'm not at work.

Close it up

The Don't Ask, Don't Tell Report

—Gabriel Malor

After nine months of study, including the largest ever survey of troops on a personnel matter, the DOD working group instituted to review the law known as Don't Ask, Don't Tell has released its results and recommendations.

It's actually too long and complicated to summarize all of it, but I will highlight a few things that caught my eye because they repeatedly come up in comments here when DADT is discussed. (You can get a fair overview of the more general findings from Allah.)

First, in the recommendations portion of the report, the working group found that sexual orientation should not be placed alongside race, color, religion, sex, and national origin, as a class eligible for various diversity programs, tracking initiatives, and complaint resolution processes. It noted that such special treatment would itself cause problems. Instead, complaints of discrimination, if they occur, "should be dealt with through existing mechanisms�primarily the chain of command�available for complaints not involving race, color, sex, religion, or national origin."

Second, the study found that among those opposed to repeal, one of the most-repeated concerns was "open" service:

Repeatedly, we heard Service members express the view that �open� homosexuality would lead to widespread and overt displays of effeminacy among men, homosexual promiscuity, harassment and unwelcome advances within units, invasions of personal privacy, and an overall erosion of standards of conduct, unit cohesion, and morality. Based on our review, however, we conclude that these concerns about gay and lesbian Service members who are permitted to be �open� about their sexual orientation are exaggerated, and not consistent with the reported experiences of many Service members.

That's from the executive summary. If you dig into the report you find a marked difference between the conduct anticipated by troops who say they have never served alongside a gay or lesbian person and the troops who say they already have. The report also found that when Service members who had already served with (or believed they served with) a gay or lesbian person 92% stated that their unit's "ability to work together, was "very good," "good" or "neither good nor poor." Hence the conclusion of the study that fears of "open" service are exaggerated.

Nevertheless, to alleviate these concerns, the working group recommends training to remind troops and leaders that standards of conduct already exist which regulate inappropriate dress and appearance; acts of violence, harassment, and disrespect; and (in the Marines) public displays of affection. The working group also recommends that the Services review their standards of conduct to make sure they are sexual-orientation neutral and applied that way. Finally, the working group reminds commanders that they already have myriad tools to punish and remedy inappropriate conduct.

Third, I was struck by this particular statistic:

The survey results also reveal, within warfighting units, negative predictions about serving alongside gays decrease when in �intense combat situations.� In response to question 71a, for example, 67% of those in Marine combat arms units predict working alongside a gay man or lesbian will have a negative effect on their unit�s effectiveness in completing its mission �in a field environment or out at sea.� By contrast, in response to the same question, but during �an intense combat situation,� the percentage drops to 48%.21 See section VII. While 48% indicates a significant level of concern, the near 20-point difference in these two environments reflects that, in a combat situation, the warfighter appreciates that differences with those within his unit become less important than defeating the common enemy.

Fourth, the working group study is adamant that creating separate housing, bathroom, and shower facilities for gays and lesbians will stigmatize gays in the service (and also oddly require gays and lesbians to disclose their sexuality, something the report finds most do not want to do). The report goes so far as to refer to this idea, mentioned by many Service members during the review and publicly speculated on by Marine Commandant Gen. Amos, as "separate but equal" and flatly rejects it.

Finally, though it does not appear within the report, the whole study is premised on the idea that the DOD will have some time to implement training to minimize the risk of disruption. Sec. Gates has repeated over and over during the past month that it would be better for DOD to have some control over the process than to cede that control to the courts. He repeated that argument during the announcement today:

He said a sudden, court-issued mandate would significantly increase the risk of disruption.

"Given the present circumstances, those that choose not to act legislatively are rolling the dice that this policy will not be abruptly overturned by the courts," Gates told reporters.

He noted that the version of DADT repeal that has already passed the House and that is currently pending in the Senate contains a delay provision under which repeal actually occurs only after certification of the President, the Secretary of Defense, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. It therefore gives the military the time to prepare that the working group found necessary.

Uh-Oh: Age-Related Disease Reversed In Mice?

—Ace

Hmmmm...

We wanted to know: If you could flip the telomerase switch on and restore telomeres in animals with entrenched age-related disease, what would happen? Would it slow down aging, stabilize it, or even reverse it? It was akin to a Ponce de Le�n [the Spanish explorer looking for the Fountain of Youth] effect. When we flipped the telomerase switch on and looked a month later, the brains had largely returned to normal.

One of the most amazing changes was in the animals' testes, which were essentially barren as aging caused the death and elimination of sperm cells. When we restored telomerase, the testes produced new sperm cells, and the animals' fecundity was improved - their mates gave birth to larger litters.

Why the "uh-oh" in the headline? I don't know. Just seems so big, possibly, it deserves an uh-oh.

Cantor: We'll Be Including The Most Popular Basic Bits of ObamaCare When We Propose Our New Health Care Reform

—Ace

I have dreaded posting this because I know it will be bait for me to get into arguments with people, which I just don't want to do. So I won't.

I'll just note my belief that the odds of defeating ObamaCare politically will go up significantly if there's some kind of more-attractive but less-intrusive replacement on the horizon. Conservatives have seized, kind of oddly, on ObamaCare's keep-kids-on-your-insurance-'till-they're-26 provision, but I think it's too popular to get rid of, and trying to get rid of it will threaten the more important goal of getting rid of socialized medicine.

The other part is also popular -- no barring coverage for those with pre-existing conditions -- but it's also extremely costly and without any good way to implement it. The problem is, of course, that you can't have free riders skipping insurance all their lives until the day they're diagnosed with a costly illness, then signing up and paying what healthy people pay.

I don't know how you get around this -- you either have to force people to buy insurance, which is of course a no-go (and might in fact get ObamaCare struck down by the courts), or you... no idea. You just subsidize their game-the-system behavior.

You could make people pay very high premiums indeed if they do this, penalizing the game-the-system types, but in the end, you can't penalize them enough to make this an unattractive proposition.

Politico Spins: Politico wrote its article suggesting that parts of ObamaCare would be "retained," according Eric Cantor. I always knew that was false-- a false way to put it. Cantor wants to replace ObamaCare, repeal it, then propose a new reform; Politico tries to suggest that ObamaCare would be "retained." No, no.

Anyway, I knew Politico was lying about that part of it from the get-go and declined to follow their spin. However, Eric Cantor is proposing that two popular parts of ObamaCare be part of the replacement bill; that part's true.

Politico updated to note its initial lie:

Editor's note: This article was changed at 1:57 p.m.. The Hill incorrectly reported in the initial version that Cantor wants to keep certain provisions of the healthcare law intact. The article was revised to emphasize that Cantor and House Republicans are pursuing a full repeal of healthcare reform while addressing issues in the law, such as pre-existing conditions and allowing young people to stay on their parents' insurance plan, in their replacement bill. Both provisions are in current law, but Republicans would deal with them differently than Democrats did in the bill that passed earlier this year.

I changed a word in my own headline to further distance myself from Politico's spin.

Honestly, on this one, I wasn't fooled. I just sort of assumed Politico was deliberately distorting Cantor's words and read past that.

"This Is Why The American People Have Thrown You Out of Power!"

—Ace

In a way, yes. Refusing to even recognize opposing voices in debate? Yep, that was definitely part of it.

In case you're curious as I was, Laura Richardson was alas not personally thrown out of power. How sweet that would have been-- to be able to say, "And that's why you personally were fired."

She ran for reelection in California's 37th (Long Beach, Compton) and easily beat challenger Star Parker.

And if you like that, you'll like UK Independence Party (euro-skeptic) Nigel Farage take the euro-fanatics to task, asking them, "Just who in the hell do you think you are?"

Dirty Hobo Gets Probation For Sexually Violating Dog

—Ace

WikiLeaks just released this long-suppressed intelligence supporting my unending war on shiftless drifters.

At the time of his arrest, Strickland was "found with two dogs, including the victim, and pornographic material in his possession," according to the city prosecutors.

That pornographic material? Snausage Lovers.

The Upside of WikiLeaks: Russia Next?

—Ace

Actually, I believe Assange is a coward who only wishes to preen as a dangerous rebel with states that will not kill him (such as America), and thus capitalize on unearned status -- he likes to play the hunted revolutionary without having to actually be hunted.

When it comes to a state that will in fact kill him, he will fold like a cheap suit. (I realize that makes no sense.)

So I doubt that Captain Ed's belief that Assange is about to provoke the wrong enemy is correct.

I doubt it will happen, I can't help but wanting this dump to occur:

National security officials say that the National Security Agency, the U.S. government�s eavesdropping agency, has already picked up tell-tale electronic evidence that WikiLeaks is under close surveillance by the Russian FSB, that country�s domestic spy network, out of fear in Moscow that WikiLeaks is prepared to release damaging personal information about Kremlin leaders.

�We may not have been able to stop WikiLeaks so far, and it�s been frustrating,� a U.S. law-enforcement official tells The Daily Beast. �The Russians play by different rules.� He said that if WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange, follow through on threats to post highly embarrassing information about the Russian government and what is assumed to be massive corruption among its leaders, �the Russians will be ruthless in stopping WikiLeaks.�

Although these leaks have been damaging to foreign policy -- especially in Yemen, where a cooperate government was just outed as dishonestly claiming it wasn't cooperative -- there are some upsides.

Revelations about Iran and North Korea should not have been suppressed from the American public. We are entitled to know, roughly, what enemy nations are doing, and how great a danger they pose. In the case of Iran and North Korea, America's official word tends to strongly understate how much danger these states pose.

This is one of the greatest powers of the presidency -- the president may decide what is and what is not a foreign policy threat or crisis. If he wishes to take action against such a state, he outs the information about it (as we did in the case of Iraq).

On the other hand, if he doesn't wish to act, he also doesn't want the public clamoring for action he has no intention of carrying through on, so he simply suppresses information about how much of a threat a nation poses. This doesn't make the threat go away -- it only takes it off the front pages. It removes the threat only from the public debate.

George W. Bush suppressed information about how truly bad-behaving North Korea was, because he was not ready to kick that particular hornet's nest, and Obama has continued doing so.

In this case, WikiLeaks has outed information we should have known all along -- that North Korea is providing advanced missiles to Iran, for example. The reason to withhold this information had little to do with protecting America's foreign policy interest; it had instead to do protecting the current and past administrations' political interest.

No president wants it talked about in the press that there's a pressing foreign threat that he intends to studiously ignore, and that the nation's real policy regarding that threat is to cross fingers and hope for the best.

Assange is a rotten bastard who deserves a bad end. I'm not claiming he's the hero he preens as or anything close to it. He's a villain. But administrations do typically attempt to "manage foreign policy" not by actually managing it, but primarily by managing public opinion about their policy (or lack thereof), and they do so by hiding information from the public.

That's an improper use of the classification system. It's not letting Assange off the hook to say that Obama shouldn't be hiding evidence of Iran's and North Korea's bad behavior from the public just to keep us in the dark about it and keep his poll ratings from dropping another 3 or 4 points.

The ironic thing is that Assange has outed more information about the bad behavior of hostile foreign states than about his true enemy, America. But perhaps that's predictable, since America is a well-behaved state. Perhaps a little too well-behaved for its own good.

By the Way: A spy-type did write to me yesterday, to say that yes, intelligence agents already do prepare multiple versions of their reports in different levels of sensitivity.

The problem, this guy noted, is simply that this idiot private Manning was an intelligence analyst, which he never should have been (indeed, he shouldn't have been in the military at all), and thus had access to secret documents in raw form as part of his job.

Another problem that was noted is that we make too many things secret, which then has a bad effect: Because so many things are secret (or top secret, or above that), many people wind up not being able to do their jobs without secret (or better) clearance, so we grant them that clearance, and inadvertently wind up giving them access to stuff that's unnecessary to do their jobs as well as a lot more sensitive. His suggestion was to make fewer things secret (just make them classified) so that we can give the less-dangerous classified clearance to more people and the more-dangerous secret clearance to fewer people.

Atlantic Writer: Democrats Are As Pure As The Driven Snow And Republicans Are Nothing But Ruthless And Opportunistic Thugs

—DrewM.

Normally the best thing to do with anyone who writes for the company that employs Linda �Report all lies against the regime� Douglas and Andrew �Show me the afterbirth� Sullivan is to ignore them. Sometimes though one of them writes something so ridiculous it�s necessary to call them out on their BS. This James Fallows post is one such time.

Fallows was responding to Ross Douthat�s contention that conservative anger about the TSA now and not under Bush is part of the ebb and flow of politics�you let things slide when your guy does it but get outraged when �they� do it. Fallows thinks this is unfair to Democrats and liberals and that only Republicans and conservatives are guilty of this particular sin.

Stop laughing, he really seems to think this.

The TSA case, on which Douthat builds his column, is in fact quite a poor illustration -- rather, a good illustration for a different point. There are many instances of the partisan dynamic working in one direction here. That is, conservatives and Republicans who had no problem with strong-arm security measures back in the Bush 43 days but are upset now. Charles Krauthammer is the classic example: forthrightly defending torture as, in limited circumstances, a necessary tool against terrorism, yet now outraged about "touching my junk" as a symbol of the intrusive state.

This is such a delicious example of liberal �thinking�. Fallows� example doesn�t demonstrate Krauthammer�s lack of principles. What that paragraph does is demonstrate that Fallows and many other liberals simply can�t differentiate between how the US government should and is required to treat its own citizens on American soil and how it may deal with non-citizen, enemies outside the jurisdiction of the United States.

Fallows is free to make the case that people in line to get on an airplane and enemy combatants captured in a war with Islamic fundamentalists but he doesn�t get to steal that base and simply say people who don�t agree with him are intellectually inconsistent and opportunistic.

It would be bad enough if Fallows stopped there but he didn�t.

So: it's nice and fair-sounding to say that the party-first principle applies to all sides in today's political debate. Like it would be nice and fair-sounding to say that Democrats and Republicans alike in Congress are contributing to obstructionism and party-bloc voting. Or that Fox News and NPR have equal-and-offsetting political agendas in covering the news. But it looks to me as if we're mostly talking about the way one side operates. Recognizing that is part of facing the reality of today's politics.

Democrats aren�t �guilty� of �party-bloc voting�? Has he checked the Senate roll-calls on the vote for the so-called �stimulus� bill? Or health care reform? Or the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act? Can he find one Democrat who voted against either of Obama�s Supreme Court nominees?

Fallows is right about one thing...for the last two years Democrats haven�t been �guilty� of �obstructionism�. How could they obstruct anything when they control the White House, the Senate and the House?

On the other hand, I do seem to recall a fair bit of Democratic �obstructionism� when George W. Bush was trying to get some judges on various courts of appeal or when Bush wanted to pass the free trade agreement with one of our most important allies in South American, Colombia.

I�m sure if I spent more than 5 minutes thinking about it I could come up with dozens of other examples where Democrats obstructed Bush�s agenda (Social Security reform pops to mind) but in Fallows world, nothing like that ever happened.

I can�t get worked up about the opportunism of politicians, like the proverbial scorpion, it�s their nature. While I enjoy tweaking liberals like Fallows and their rose colored glasses, I don�t get worked up over their idiocy�it is after all just their nature.

Added: I forgot to include this bit of news from today's meeting between Obama and Republican congressional leaders.

Senior admin official tells CNN the President did tell Repubs behind closed doors he failed to reach out enough in 1st 2 yrs

Ah, you see Obama didn't reach out to Republicans for two years for a very simple reason...he didn't need them. They simply didn't matter given the overwhelming numbers Democrats had in both houses. Now however the situation is different and Obama will act differently or at least will give lip service to it when it's politically helpful.

It's almost as if Obama lied about his interest in bi-partisanship and is now acting differently simply out of political expediency. I'm shocked!

I eagerly await Fallows taking Obama to task for this. Or you know, not.

Hmmm: NASA Sets Press Conference To Announce Something Or Other Having To Do With Search For Extraterrestrial Life

—Ace

This Thursday, at 1 pm CST, which is of course 2 pm for the East Coast.

NASA has scheduled a press conference in Washington Thursday to discuss an astrobiology finding that will affect the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life.

Astrobiology is the study of the origin, evolution, distribution and future of life in the universe.

WikiLeaks is reporting that Hillary Clinton already described the newly-discovered space protein in unflattering terms and also directed NASA employees to look into its pornography rental history.

Thanks to Circa.

NASA Now In The Viral Marketing Business? Sharkman posted this trailer for a Marines vs. Alien Invader movie due out in March.

Pretty good effects.

Deficit Reduction Plan Unlikely To Garner Votes Necessary To Force a Vote In Congress

—Ace

Yet another blue ribbon panel that accomplishes nothing.

Well, it accomplished what it was intended to -- to give Obama six months (or whatever) of free time during which he could duck questions on an important issue by saying "Let the panel do its work." That's the point of all these commissions. To buy time, to avoid the decisions they're supposedly their to make.

To force a vote in Congress, 14 of the 18 members of the commission (containing six former members of Congress and twelve serving members) would have to vote in favor of one plan, and no one expects that to happen.

On FoxNews Sunday this week, Bill Kristol was more sanguine, happy that the commission was at least producing some ideas that were receiving some consideration and debate, surprised that a former Clinton official (not part of this commission) proposed a major change to Medicare that was similar to Paul Ryan's approach. (Rivkin's big idea was to reform Medicare from defined-contribution to defined-benefit, which is a key change to protect its solvency.)

I don't know how similar that is to Ryan's idea, apart from that defined-benefit thing, as Ryan is proposing that each Medicare recipient be given an $11,000 (per year) voucher to purchase private insurance. Rivkin's plan would, I imagine, keep Medicare a government program. But Kristol was taking his victories where he could find them.

It's something of a victory that Obama is proposing a federal pay freeze. What we need is a federal pay cut (5% for starters) and a hiring freeze combined with workforce reduction, but Obama was at least spurred to move in our direction. But what he proposes is plainly inadequate.

Scientists get cells to switch types/tasks directly, thus avoiding the whole
inefficient/costly/not very fruitful embryonic stem cell nonsense/rabbit hole.

—Purple Avenger

As Joe Biden would say, this is a "big effing deal".

Scientists are reporting early success at transforming one kind of specialized cell into another, a feat of biological alchemy that doctors may someday perform inside a patient�s body to restore health...

...That�s a futuristic idea, but researchers are enthusiastic about the potential for the new direct-conversion approach.

When you can work directly with an afflicted individual's cells and DNA to get a result, all the political drama on both sides is reduced to arguments about as abstract/meaningless to Joe SixPack as those positing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

Oklahoma Anti-Sharia Law Update

—Gabriel Malor

Yesterday afternoon, the U.S. District Court judge granted a preliminary injunction that enjoins the State of Oklahoma from certifying the election results in State Question 755, the "Save Our State Amendment." SQ 755 would ban Oklahoma courts from using international or Sharia law in making decisions. It passed with 70% of the vote.

From the decision (PDF):

This order addresses issues that go to the very foundation of our country, our Constitution, and particularly, the Bill of Rights. Throughout the course of our country�s history, the will of the �majority� has on occasion conflicted with the constitutional rights of individuals, an occurrence which our founders foresaw and provided for through the Bill of Rights. As the United States Supreme Court has stated:

The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One�s right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.

W. Va. State Bd. of Educ. v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624, 638 (1943).

[...]

Having carefully reviewed the briefs on this issue, and having heard the evidence and arguments presented at the hearing, the Court finds that entry of a preliminary injunction enjoining defendants from certifying the election results for State Question 755 would not be adverse to the public interest. While the public has an interest in the will of the voters being carried out, for the reasons set forth above, the Court finds that the public has a more profound and long-term interest in upholding an individual�s constitutional rights.

The preliminary injunction will be in force until the judge rules on the merits of the lawsuit, but having already analyzed the constitutional issues, I don't suppose that will take too long and we know which way it will shake out.

My own view is that the judge's order seriously misconstrues the law of standing, which requires a litigant to have a sufficient injury which can be redressed by the court. The court essentially bought the CAIR plaintiff's argument that the Oklahoma amendment would interfere with his free exercise of religion. She credited, among other dubious ideas, the plaintiff's testimony that Sharia law is not law, but rather a religious practice.

As I mentioned on the Pat Campbell Radio Show, if it were true that Sharia law is a religious practice and not law then the First and Fourteenth Amendments would already prevent Oklahoma courts (and all other state courts) from using it. The plaintiff's argument contradicts what he claims is a goal of his lawsuit: to have his will probated under Sharia law. Nevertheless, Judge Miles-LaGrange ate it up.

Expect the Tenth Circuit to spit this one back.

Top Headline Comments 11-30-10

—Gabriel Malor

What do you mean THEY cut the power? How can they cut the power, man?

Overnight Open Thread

—Maetenloch

Remembering Leslie Nielsen and Police Squad

After Airplane! but before the Naked Gun movies Nielsen starred in a short-lived Abrahams/Zucker TV series called Police Squad. It only ran for 6 episodes in 1982 before being cancelled but it was so popular on videotape that it was eventually made into the Naked Gun movies. So here's a little taste of what was one of the funniest, shortest TV series ever.

And in case you were wondering how Nielsen got cast in Airplane! in the first place, well this is how:

According to Hollywood legend, the Zucker brothers and Abrams wanted Nielsen for Airplane!, but wondered if he would take the job--skewering the type of character that had been his bread-and-butter for decades. They invited him to lunch at a Mexican restaurant in Hollywood; a farting contest ensued and the producers knew they had their man.

And here's Nielsen's screen test for Ben Hur:

Wha - too good for jackal hunting?

Hauser's Law: Why 19% of GDP is the Most Government Can Expect
Someone - I forget who -mentioned this in the comments a few nights back and I meant to follow up on it. Hauser's Law is an observation by Stanford professor Kurt Hauser that no matter what the top marginal tax rate is on individuals, the government's actual tax revenue always tends to hover around 19% of GDP.

Which is why Obama's plans to boost tax rates on the 'rich' are unlikely to actually bring in any more tax revenue. When marginal rates go high people just devote more time and money to sheltering their income instead of more productive investment. The government would be better off lowering tax rates and taking 19% of a larger pie. But that might let a rich person to get more than a poor person - and so no Democrat will ever vote for that.

The 'Sexiest Man Alive' Over the Years
Luckily the years tend to be kinder to men. Well except maybe Val Kilmer.

Where the Unibrow Reigns
While women in the West spend money and time to get rid of their unibrows, in Tajikistan they're considered fashionable. So much so that unibrow-impaired women there actually use an herbal paste to fake them. Hmm there might be some money in international eyebrow arbitrage.

Why Gold Is the Perfect Element For Money
Here chemical engineer, Sanat Kumar, goes through the periodic table and explains why gold was pretty much the only logical choice for metal-based money. Silver and platinum were all contenders but silver tarnishes and platinum's melting point is too high for primitive furnaces. So gold it had to be.

FML - Finding Out Bio-mom is a Bearded Hermaphrodite
Or what Richard Lorenc calls last month.

Russian Sniper Rifles
Here's a collection of photos of Russian sniper rifles from WWII to now. Of course many of these are what US forces would consider to be sharpshooter rifles rather than true sniper models. Below is the Rusky version of the Barrett .50 caliber.

Sleeping Kitteh, Hidden Kitten
Yep, it's kittens all the way down.

The Yahoo AoSHQ group. Bla bla bla. And don't forget about the Job Bank.

Tonight's post brought to you by videodiscs:

Notice: Posted by permission of AceCorp LLC. Please e-mail overnight open thread tips to maetenloch at gmail. Otherwise send tips to Ace.

Close it up

Wikileaks Revelation: Obama's Middle East Experts Don't Really Understand Middle East, Arabs

—Maetenloch

Omri Ceren over at Big Peace points out that one of the revelations from Wikileaks is confirmation on how badly Obama and his advisers misunderstood the actual views of Arab leaders.

It's been a long tradition among the Arab countries to publicly blame all of their ills on Israel and the unresolved Palestinian-Jewish conflict. Of course this is mostly propaganda aimed at deflecting their own people's anger away from their repressive governments - in private the Arab rulers are far more concerned about the Iranian threat than Israel or the conditions of the benighted Palestinian people.

And the Arab leaders like Saudi Arabia�s King Abdullah just assumed that the Obama administration was sophisticated enough to understand that this was all public posturing purely for domestic consumption. But when Obama came visiting in June 2009 on his way to give his Cairo speech, they found out how wrong they were. And the trip was something of a disaster:

Under this theory King Abdullah expected to talk about militarily confronting Iran, and he couldn�t believe it when Obama kept reciting bromides about the earth-shattering importance of the Israeli/Arab conflict and his enthusiasm for solving it. That was a regular public topic between the two � Obama�s first talk with Abdullah focused on Gaza and the President later emphasized his abiding support for Saudi Arabia�s �Israel Has To Commit Suicide� plan � but the King kind of thought he was dealing with a serious person who could separate spectacle from policy. Instead he got the equivalent of an International Relations graduate student enamored with pseudo-sophisticated �insights� he�d gleaned from Arab media outlets. Ergo, meltdown.

So not only did Obama and his vaunted middle east policy experts get this wrong, but they seem to have learned nothing from this brush with reality since then. What's worse than having a naive, foolish view of the world? Well how about having a naive, foolish view of the world and then thanks to Wikileaks having it made public for all to see. Even the hapless Jimmy Carter didn't have to deal with that.

Rumor Confirmed: Obama Traded Missile Shield for Russian Help With Iran That Never Appeared

—Gabriel Malor

In May 2009, rumors surfaced that President Obama was planning to leave several European countries exposed to Russian ambition if Russia would agree to help keep nukes out of Iran.

Rumors confirmed: according to the Wikileaks cables, Obama proposed a trade -- he would cancel the Polish missile shield if Russia would support sanctions for Iran.

The whistle blowing web site, publishing diplomatic cables and other documents via The New York Times, the Guardian (UK) and other media outlets, show that George Bush�s anti-missile shield plan to station 10 interceptor rockets in Poland not far from the Kaliningrad (Russia) border and a radar system in the Czech Republic was seen as an obstacle by Washington in getting tougher sanctions against Iran�s nuclear ambitions.

The diplomatic cables show that the US believes that Iran has already received missiles from North Korea which could threaten western Europe.

The missile shield was officially canceled in September 2009. Shortly thereafter President Obama met with President Medvedev who came out of the meeting conceding "in some cases, sanctions are inevitable."

A diplomatic victory for Obama? Not remotely. Less than a month later, Russia reversed itself and declared that "[t]hreats, sanctions and threats of pressure in the current situation, we are convinced, would be counterproductive." After the US and the EU imposed tough penalties on Iran in September of this year, Russia immediately condemned the sanctions regime and started finding ways to undermine it.

Obama sold out our allies to Russia for a bill of goods.

Thanks to Ben.

Then & Now: NYT On Publishing Illegally Obtained WikiLeaks Reports and Illegally Obtained ClimateGate Data

—Ace

Here's what the NYT had to say during ClimateGate:

�The documents appear to have been acquired illegally and contain all manner of private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye, so they won�t be posted here.� Andrew Revkin, Environment Editor, New York Times Nov 20, 2009.

That sentence almost invents new punctuation used to denote sniffing and chin-elevating.

Here's what they say today:

�The articles published today and in coming days are based on thousands of United States embassy cables, the daily reports from the field intended for the eyes of senior policy makers in Washington. The New York Times and a number of publications in Europe were given access to the material several weeks ago and agreed to begin publication of articles based on the cables online on Sunday. The Times believes that the documents serve an important public interest, illuminating the goals, successes, compromises and frustrations of American diplomacy in a way that other accounts cannot match.� New York Times editorial 29/11/2010

What a difference an ideology makes.

James Darymple calls this ideological bias. I'm thinking that's not a strong enough term. That's kind of a so-what sort of thing. Everyone's ideologically biased.

The Times is ideologically biased, for starters. But what they really are -- and all the media is -- is dishonest in service of leftist ideology.

I realize that's what we generally mean when we say "bias," but maybe we should start spelling it out for those who haven't gotten the message. Bias sounds like a penny-ante charge. Dishonesty doesn't, and we need to make clear what the charges against the MFM are.

Obama: Now That I've Run The Federal Payroll Up To Historic Levels,, Let's Freeze Their Pay

—DrewM.

Awww....the poor non-defense federal employees aren't going to get their scheduled raises for two years. My heart bleeds.

Bowing to growing budget concerns and months of Republican political pressure on federal pay and benefits, President Obama today announced he would stop pay increases for most of the two million people who work for the federal government.

The freeze applies to all Executive Branch workers -- including civilian employees of the Defense Department, but does not apply to military personnel, government contractors, postal workers, members of Congress, Congressional staffers, or federal court judges and workers.

"Getting this deficit under control is going to require some broad sacrifices and that sacrifice must be shared by the employees of the federal government," Obama said in a speech Monday afternoon explaining the decision. He added, "I did not reach this decision easily, this is not a line item on a federal ledger, these are people's lives."

The decision will save about 30 Billion over the next 5 years.

Here's my thought...not good enough. Not even close.

Obama has run up the size of the federal workforce to historic levels. There are now more federal employees making more than $150,000/year than ever before and all we are doing is eliminating some raises?

That's not even a good start.

Incoming Speaker Boehner says okay but now let's do something more important.

�I welcome President Obama�s announcement, and hope he will build on it by embracing much-needed steps to reduce both the size and the cost of government, including the net federal hiring freeze Republicans propose in our Pledge to America. Without a hiring freeze, a pay freeze won�t do much to rein in a federal bureaucracy that added hundreds of thousands of employees to its payroll over the last two years while the private sector shed millions of jobs.

�Today�s action is a clear indication that the Pledge to America, which lays out concrete steps to cut spending and reduce the size of government, is the right plan to address the people�s priorities. Republicans and Democrats don�t have to wait until January to cut spending and stop all the tax hikes. We can � and should � start right now.�

Again...no good enough. Start firing people. Start closing down programs, offices and whole agencies. Yes, even then, it's a drop in the ocean without entitlement reform. But here's my thing...I'm not as concerned about balancing the budget as an end. To me it's about shrinking the reach and influence of government in and over our lives. It might be possible to devise some strategy to balance the budget and save entitlements at their current levels or near there and that would be a disaster.. A balanced budget (at a much lower percentage of GDP) is simply a pleasant by-product of getting the government back in the box it belongs in. Do that and let free people take care of their own business.

We're No Better Than The Terrorists Or Something: Iranian Nuke Scientist Killed In Sneak Bomb Attack

—Ace

Seems like some kind of sticky bomb -- men on motorcycles drove by and slapped the bombs on the scientists' car windows. In two separate attacks, one nuke scientist was killed, another seriously injured.

Iranians were quick to deny Americans any credit, pinning it on Israel.

I sure would like to think my government was capable of stuff like this. Or had the balls to do it. But I don't.

Interesting Bit From WikiLeaks Dump: Bombing Iran Isn�t Just Some Neo-Con Wet Dream

—DrewM.

Liberals love to talk about how nutty neo-cons only want to bomb Iran to save their masters in Israel or something. Well, that little talking point took a big hit yesterday, unless the King of Saudi Arabia is really Jewish or something.

There was little surprising in Mr. Barak�s implicit threat that Israel might attack Iran�s nuclear facilities. As a pressure tactic, Israeli officials have been setting such deadlines, and extending them, for years. But six months later it was an Arab leader, the king of Bahrain, who provides the base for the American Fifth Fleet, telling the Americans that the Iranian nuclear program �must be stopped,� according to another cable. �The danger of letting it go on is greater than the danger of stopping it,� he said.

His plea was shared by many of America�s Arab allies, including the powerful King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, who according to another cable repeatedly implored Washington to �cut off the head of the snake� while there was still time.

The fact that Gulf state Arabs aren�t thrilled with the idea of the Persians in Iran having nukes and want to see their ambitions checked isn�t new to anyone who has paid the least bit of attention to this stuff for going on 10 years now. Of course, that eliminates most rank and file Democrats and every leftist who thinks the US is simply trying to gin up a war with Iran for fun and Halliburton profits.

If you�re looking for some of the highlights of the WikiLeaks dump, scroll around this Twitter feed, there�s information both news worthy and gossipy.

Overall, it seem this is something that will be forgotten quickly for the most part. There doesn�t seem to be much that�s shocking or we didn�t know (or at least strongly suspect). Yes, some of the personal characterizations are embarrassing but it�s not like every government (or hell any group of people) don�t talk more candidly in private than they do in public. People will get over it.

The real damage is that future sources of information may be reluctant to come forward in the future for fear of becoming an inadvertent star in some future mass leak. In a lot of places in the world that will lead to far worse things than some embarrassment.

Along those lines Congressman Peter King (R-NY) and currently the ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee, is urging Attorney General Holder to charge Assange with a crime and for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to designate WikiLeaks as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.

From the letter to Clinton�

We know terrorist organizations have been mining the leaked Afghan documents for information to use against us and this Iraq leak is more than four times as large. By disclosing such sensitive information, WikiLeaks continues to put at risk the lives of our troops, their coalition partners and those Iraqis and Afghans working with us.

The WikiLeaks releases provide valuable information and insights to FTOs throughout the world on U.S. military and diplomatic sources and methods and allow our enemies to better prepare for future U.S. and allied military, intelligence, and law enforcement operations targeting them. In addition, the leaks allow nation-states such as Russia, China, and Iran access to information regarding how the United States collects, analyzes, and produces intelligence products.

WikiLeaks presents a clear and present danger to the national security of the United States. I strongly urge you to work within the Administration to use every offensive capability of the U.S. government to prevent further damaging releases by WikiLeaks.

Maybe I�m just a cynic but I doubt this administration is going to do anything of the sort. In fairness, the Bush administration didn�t come down on officials who leaked information to the NY Times, the Washington Post or other outlets either. Funny how they get a pass but your average airline passenger gets a virtual strip search or groped for having the temerity to want to go home for Thanksgiving.

(Thanks to Baseballcrank for the King link)

Minor Fire Set At Mosque Where Portland Terrorist Worshipped So We're the Real Terrorists Or Something

—Ace

A few points.

Genghis speculates that this fire might actually have been set by a member of the Religion of Peace -- certainly it's possible. That sort of thing happens a lot. Aggrieved minority stages "hate crime" to garner sympathy... and license.

No evidence that that's what happened, but then, no evidence really running in any direction, so I'm not crossing that one out.

Muslims at the mosque, meanwhile, are worried about... terrorism.

"I've prayed for my family and friends, because obviously if someone was deliberate to do this, what's to stop them from coming to our homes and our schools?" said Mohamed Alyagouri, a 31-year-old father of two, who worships at the center. "I'm afraid for my children getting harassed from their teachers, maybe from their friends."

Welcome to the party, pal. I don't like terrorism directed at anyone but I do appreciated pointed irony.

One point that can't be forgotten is that there's a pretty decent chance that his fellow worshippers actually tipped the FBI to his hot talk of terrorism.

A little more irony: Portland is one of those jackass liberal cities that resisted Bush's anti-terrorism efforts to save America or something.

In 2005, leaders in Portland, Oregon, angry at the Bush administration's conduct of the war on terror, voted not to allow city law enforcement officers to participate in a key anti-terror initiative, the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force. On Friday, that task force helped prevent what could have been a horrific terrorist attack in Portland. Now city officials say they might re-think their participation in the task force -- because Barack Obama is in the White House.

...

In the Mohamud case, it appears that Portland's anti-law enforcement stand might actually have influenced Mohamud's decision to undertake an attack in the city. According to the FBI affidavit, the undercover agents asked whether he worried that law enforcement would stop him. "In Portland?" Mohamud replied. "Not really. They don't see it as a place where anything will happen. People say, you know, why, anybody want to do something in Portland, you know, it's on the west coast, it's in Oregon, and Oregon's, like you know, nobody ever thinks about it."

Among the wisest bits of advice for liberals Bush offered was Just because you're not interested in terrorism doesn't mean terrorists aren't interested in you.

Of course, they ignore it. They're so lovey-dovey and hippy-dippy no terrorist would ever consider bombing their precious little hug-huddles.

Three Million People Have Access To Data Manning Leaked?

—Ace

Captain Ed plucks out this telling detail from a Guardian report:

More than 3 million US government personnel and soldiers, many extremely junior, are cleared to have potential access to this material, even though the cables contain the identities of foreign informants, often sensitive contacts in dictatorial regimes. Some are marked "protect" or "strictly protect".

...

Asked why such sensitive material was posted on a network accessible to thousands of government employees, the state department spokesman told the Guardian: "The 9/11 attacks and their aftermath revealed gaps in intra-governmental information sharing. Since the attacks of 9/11, the US government has taken significant steps to facilitate information sharing. These efforts were focused on giving diplomatic, military, law enforcement and intelligence specialists quicker and easier access to more data to more effectively do their jobs."

This seems crazy, but the government really only has two options: Either be overly restrictive with sensitive information, denying important information out of bureaucratic inertia to people who could use it for good purposes, or be overly free with sensitive information, putting it into the hands of any jackass with a Lada Gaga CD-RW and a grudge.

The obvious answer -- redact everything proper and set up rational and effective protocols about who can see precisely what and for what reasons -- really isn't an answer. All that evaluation of what's too sensitive to be shared takes human intelligence, and an awful lot of it, a lot of people making a lot of decisions which then have to be approved by their supervisors. That regime leads to pretty much everything being classified and not shared, which was the default status of this all before 9/11, because if you're a lower-level bureaucrat tasked with such a routine, repetitive task, the safest move you can make, in terms of your career and CYA-ism, is just to mark everything as Tip-Top Secret.

On top of that, the huge number of people thus required to process all this information and choose the appropriate classification levels and need-to-know protocols becomes the next big security risk, since each of these people could leak their little treasure trove, if they wanted. And they would all be sort of low-level, marginal sort of employees, not professional spymasters, because do you want your top professional spy-guys out collecting and analyzing information or do you want them sitting in a cubicle in a huge room making routine classification decisions?

The only way this can work is if each person who sends a report creates three or four different versions of the same report. The first, the unexpurgated version, only for higher ups; the alternate versions, one scrubbed and one seriously scrubbed. Each person would be responsible then for classifying and redacting his own report, which makes sense, 1, because it's pretty easy to scrub your own report (and takes about five or ten minutes of additional work) and 2, because the person writing the report is in the best position to judge what's truly sensitive and what can be freely disseminated.

The raw versions of the reports wouldn't even be digitally accessible. Only someone specifically asking for the raw version would get it, and only after whoever is entrusted with that version decides the person asking needs the information.

It also makes sense because then you don't have a huge bureaucracy of low-level people making these decisions, but the professionals who collect information making a decision they're uniquely qualified to make.

This probably seems pretty obvious, like duh, so obvious I'm a little worried that a spy-type is going to say in the comments Ace you cloth-eared dunce that's precisely what we do!, but I don't think people are doing that-- because if they were, only the scrubbed version of these reports should have been accessible by Private Manning, by and large (allowing for the occasional slip-up), and obviously that's not the case.

Could it be this easy? Am I missing something?

Oh: And hi again! I've missed you.

Top Headline Comments 11-29-10

—Gabriel Malor

Where's the kaboom? There was supposed to be an earth-shattering kaboom!

The Walking Dead: Episode 5 "Wildfire"

—Russ from Winterset

OK, pretty eventful episode this week. Let's go right to the "spoilers"