:: ::

:: MAX BLACK ::

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." --C.S. Lewis

"The Swiss pocket knife of conservative thought on the web..." - Eli Kardrakian

"Bookmark Max and dump your subscription to the newspaper; if you don't have a birdcage you really don't need it anyway..." - Shirley St. James

:: Friday, December 24, 2004 ::

Christmas; Ploegsteert forest, northern Flanders

"Soldiers from both sides came out of their holes to stretch their legs and to fraternize between the trenches in no-mans-land--a pleasant situation."

David's Medienkritik has the english translation of this famous WWI Christmas story.

The wife and I are off to sunny Florida for a few days of R&R so blogging will be light. Merry Christmas to all!

:: Max 6:44 AM [+] ::
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Rewind--What they said in 2004

"Not one person knew of Australia's involvement [in Iraq]." -- Tim Dunlop encounters stunning ignorance at a Democrat fund raiser in Washington

"The angriest man at the convention turns out to be a Democrat: who'd have thunk. He's brutal. He's hammering Kerry like a blacksmith; if Kerry was a horseshoe he'd be thinner than aluminum foil." -- James Lileks on Zell Miller

"To have Negroes occupying us is a particular humiliation. Sometimes we aborted a mission because there were no Negroes." -- Abu Mujahed, one of Michael Moore's brave Iraqi minutemen

Tim Blair has a HUGE post on the most memorable Quotes of 2004--bookmark it for future reference [>]

:: Max 10:04 PM [+] ::
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Home of the freeish, land of the megabloggers:

"I have to try and speed up my business ventures and get out as soon as I can afford to do so. I shall try to be out of Britain and have my primary residence in the USA by 2007 at the latest to avoid being forced to submit to this intolerable imposition... and I shall be taking my wealth generating assets with me. I cannot say I am looking forward to winters in New Hampshire but I do not really see that I have much choice anymore. I do not see the United States as a paragon of civil liberties (to put it mildly), but at least it is a place in which the battle can be fought within the last bastion of the Anglosphere's culture of liberty.

Damn it."

Amen. Get out while you still can, Perry. Maybe we should all pitch in and get him a little housewarming gift.

:: Max 8:37 PM [+] ::
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MA-IA-HII! MA-IA-HUU!

It's all the rage over at The Corner [>]

Update: Dragostea Din Tei, the translation [>]

:: Max 1:40 PM [+] ::
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No, we're Americans actually...

"My mother and I exchanged a few words in our native Russian, whereupon the German gentleman inquired amicably, "Russisch?" I explained that we did, in fact, come from Russia originally, but had lived in the United States for nearly 25 years and were now American."

"The man's demeanor changed visibly. After a glum silence, he remarked sourly as we were leaving the elevator, "America is always starting wars everywhere in the world. It's not good for people.""

"I was so shocked that the most obvious comeback did not occur to me until a couple of minutes later, when he was out of sight: "You mean, like World War II?""

No Pasaran has more Ameriphobia if you can stomach it [>]

:: Max 1:13 PM [+] ::
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"blogging is so 2004"

"In the new media, however, a clever blog can spring up overnight and get 100,000 readers in a day. That number can quickly fall to zero if the blogger gets a terminal case of the stupids...."

"In a sense, blogging is so 2004. The next big thing will be videoblogs. You can fit a rudimentary TV studio in a suitcase -- a laptop, a camcorder, a few cables, and a nearby Starbucks with Wi-Fi you can leech onto to upload your reports. This too will be good. One hundred thousand pairs of eyes looking high and low, versus CBS' staring monocular orb. We'll all turn to the nets to see what they think we should think. And then we'll hit the blogs for the rest of the story."

Emphasis mine (I think it's a great line)--Jarvis has more [>]

:: Max 1:04 PM [+] ::
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Motorcycle Diaries Reviewed

Che's iconic cover is blown in this excellent essay by Anthony Daniels (via Powerline).

:: Max 8:29 AM [+] ::
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The Tobasco Challenge via Countercolumn:

"At this point, I retired to my corner of the riverbank. I realized I had lost any credibility with my men. It was over. Until someone challenged me to chug a quart of Tobasco Sauce in less than a minute. I knew my reputation depended on it. I grabbed the bottle, ripped off the squirt cap with my knife and drank. It went down no problem. Then after about a minute, it felt like someone stabbed me in the stomach with a knife. I doubled over and couldnt stand up. My throat wouldnt stop burning. Suddenly, I puked up the whole quart and most of it went out my nose. That burned pretty bad. Every time I wretched, globs of Tobasco whipped back in long strings right into my eye. It was horrible. That burned even worse. It's 6 hours later and I'm back at Fob Scunion. I am still burping up Tabasco and it makes me quiver. Just writing this blog has made me gag twice in memory."

:: Max 10:49 AM [+] ::
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Sins of Omission

Tim Blair rightly points out that the Iraqi bloggers Mohammed and Omar of Iraq the Model have received virtually no MSM recognition for their historic visit with W. It's a fair observation but c'mon Tim, who really cares? Nobody is paying any serious attention to MSM anymore so the point seems kinda moot, doesn't it?

Note to Larry King: Remember to get yet another "groundbreaking" interview with "the most interesting person of the year" Michael Moore (he's sooo hot).

:: Max 11:58 PM [+] ::
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"trading liberty for security does not work"

These simple words of wisdom brought to you by TechnoFlak's Alice Marshall.

Whisper it in my ear once more, Alice:

"trading liberty for security does not work"

Thanks darlin', I needed that.

:: Max 11:42 PM [+] ::
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You can take the USSR out of the Russian but you can't take the Russian out of the USSR

Or something like that:

"President Vladimir Putin signed a bill Sunday to end the election of governors by popular vote, while more than 1,000 opposition activists converged on Constitution Day to denounce what they called his increasingly authoritarian rule.

Maybe some creative individual should slip a little Dioxine into Putin's Beluga caviar.

:: Max 11:21 PM [+] ::
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EFF and ACLU file Friend of the Court brief in CA Supreme Court case involving political free speech (and by extension, bloggers)

This is important folks; if this sh*t ever hits the wrong fan, you'll pray to your God the ACLU had won this battle:

"If the court finds in favor of the plaintiffs, the implications for free speech online are far-reaching. Bloggers could be held liable when they quote other people's writing, and website owners could be held liable for what people say in message boards on their sites. The end result is that many people would simply cease to publish or host websites. In its brief, EFF argues that "the specter of civil liability chills the speech" of Internet service providers and users, and will inevitably lead to "protective self-censorship."

I don't think the plaintiffs have a shot at this but, good Lord, if they win....?!

A word about the ACLU:

Many conservatives automatically condemn the ACLU and I'm not exactly sure why. I'm not a knee-jerk ACLU basher--much of what they do is good--like this case. Yeah, it seems they're always meddling with harmless institutions like the Boy Scouts of America, but overall, and if you really examine their work (and the legal precedence involved), the ACLU serves an important function. Are they ideological? Probably, but I don't feel particularly harmed when they sue to have the granite monument with the ten commandments removed from court-house lawn. It's a court-house (for Christsakes) paid for by ALL the people in the community--Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, Pagans, et. al.; the Courthouse is not a Christian Church. I have a rather old, beat-up, doggy-eared leather-bound family Bible close at hand; I don't feel any more secure in my convictions to have the ten-commandments shoved in my face every time I go to the Courthouse to pay a parking ticket (in fact, it kind of offends me because it implies the municiple jurisdiction is somehow moral--a debatable proposition at best).
I know some of you may disagree with my position on the ACLU, but I don't envision them as the Devil incarnate as some pundits do.

I do, however, wish they would spend less time beating up on the Boy Scouts and Santa Clause and tackle weightier issues LIKE THIS.

:: Max 10:16 PM [+] ::
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Jerry Springer makes run at talk radio

Tom over at the Media Drop is reporting the shameless trash-tv icon and delegate to the Democrat National Convention has a new Cincinnati based talk-radio show. Tom says this might be Springers 'spring-board' into big-time politics. Really, this is exactly the secret weapon the Dems need to resurrect the party: Congressman Jerry Springer! (it's perfect!).

:: Max 9:40 PM [+] ::
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Euro Blogging

I just did a long overdue cleanup on the blogroll--the election links were getting a little stale and I kinda felt like I was leaving the Christmas lights up way too long. In any case, TechCentral's Marc Johnson has done a nice little piece on european bloggers so I decided to replace the old 'election' blog-roll with a new European section with links to some of the blogs highlighted in the TC column. In so doing I stumbled upon this classic blog post from "The Sexy Scourgers of Spanish Socialism" Iberian Notes--Cataloonies vs Spain-in-the-ass:

"A Spain-in-the-Ass is a radical, obsessed Spanish nationalist, the equivalent of a Cataloony. Moderate Spanish nationalists do not fall into this category any more than moderate Catalan nationalists fall into the Cataloony category. A good test for determining who is a radical nationalist and who is a moderate is George Orwell's. Orwell said, more or less, that a radical nationalist is a person who looks at every issue through the prism of his national group and especially obsesses over the relative prestige of his group. Radical nationalists tend to be very big on symbolism, by the way, said old George. He went on to define the word "patriot" as someone who loves his country and its culture but has no desire to force his ways on other people. I would call Orwell's "patriot" a moderate nationalist. And I would call people who try to tell other people what language they must speak radical nationalists--i.e. Cataloonies and Spains-in-the-Ass."

Check the blogroll on your left--there's lots more where this came from.

:: Max 3:07 PM [+] ::
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Libertarianism on rise in Spain?

Samizdata has a first-hand report:

"Gabriel, interestingly, preferred to focus on the achievements of two individuals: Jesus Huerta de Soto, and Federico Jimenez Losantos. Huerta is the key scholar, and Jimenez is a key media performer, and both are men of "contageous enthusiasm", a phrase Gabriel used several times."

"He also mentioned the vital role that the Internet has played in this story. Again, summarising brutally, whereas the Communists owned the old media, the libertarians own the Internet, to the point where the Communists are getting seriously worried."

"Gabriel mentioned two internet sites in particular, liberalismo.org (scholarship) and Libertad Digital (current affairs). Both have astronomical hit rates, of the order of a million a month (sorry but I am bad at numbers). When those Communists type any Spanish 'issue' into their search engines, time and time again, the first few hits are libertarian analyses. No wonder they are so anxious, and have been saying that something ought to be done about controlling the Internet."

How odd--the Spanish communists and CBS apparently hold similar positions on political speech in the internet age.

Sort of related in a round-a-bout kinda way: Don't miss this surprising post about Syrian college students over at Instapundit.

:: Max 11:50 AM [+] ::
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Naked Guy Update

For those of you who weren't tuned into CNN Thursday night, you might have missed this little Cooper/Oppenheim exchange; transcript brought to you by Wonkette:

OPPENHEIM: [...] And they now they have 60 detectives working on this case right now, trying to get a better idea of what might have caused Nathan Gale to kill a heavy metal icon and three others as well.

Anderson, back to you.

COOPER: It's hard to pay attention, because there was a naked guy behind you. But appreciate it. Thanks very much, Keith. Quite a vigil there.

Yes, Mr. Cooper, quite a vigil.

:: Max 7:51 PM [+] ::
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Middleclass leaving Netherlands "in droves"

"People no longer know what to expect from each other. There are so many rules, but nobody sticks to them. They just do as they want. They just execute people on the streets, it's shocking when you see this for the first time," she said. "We've become so tolerant that everybody thinks they can fight their own wars here. Van Gogh is killed, and then people throw bombs at mosques and churches. It's escalating because the police and the state aren't doing anything about it.

"There's a feeling of injustice that if you do things right, if you work hard and pay your taxes, you're punished, and those who don't are rewarded. People can come and live here illegally and get payments. How is that possible?"

Looks kinda like the ghost of Christmas Future to me. France is next.

Thank Shot-in The Dark for the heads-up.

:: Max 7:16 PM [+] ::
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Iraq the Model in America--Mohammed speaks for millions (via Jeff Jarvis):

Mohammed now says: [blogging is] "from person to person, from heart to heart. I did not have any trouble understanding people thousands of miles away from me in spite of language and distance.... We share many things. Media try to show only the differences between groups and countries but really human beings have many, many things to share.... Here in blogging, I learn from my readers.... I think through blogging we can spread love more than we can spread hate. I started blogging because I saw through the media that they just want to spread hate... I have a different story and many Iraqi people agree with me.

Asked why they called their blog Iraq The Model, they said, "Iraq will be a model for the Middle East region and the world...."

Are you listening MSM?

:: Max 5:26 PM [+] ::
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CBS applauds the impending regulation of blogs:

"Beginning next year, the F.E.C. will institute new rules on the restricted uses of the Internet as it relates to political speech."

Rather's fingers are still burning from the hot "memos" used by CBS in an attempt to affect the outcome of the 2004 Presidential election and it has the temerity to post this handwringing piece on blogs on their website?!
Note to Dan Rather and Mary Mapes: The blogs are here to stay--the same cannot necessarily be said of CBS News (or you two for that matter).

Via LGF [>]

Update: Powerline's John Hinderaker has posted on the matter:

"The public is not at risk from those who are obviously and aggressively partisan, but who fail to reveal all aspects of that partisanship. The public is greatly at risk, however, from media outlets who purport to be neutral and reliable, but who trade on the respect they are accorded as fair and nonpartisan sources of information to advance an unstated agenda."

Precisely.

:: Max 1:10 PM [+] ::
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Friday Highlights

Powerline points to a killer NR column by Donald Luskin who manhandles PEST victim, NYT "economist" Paul Krugman and it seems like everybody is linking to Chrenkoff's commentary on the UN: "The coalition of the crooked and unfree?" Chrenkoff punctuates the title of the post with the obligatory "?"--I think it's unquestionable that the UN truly is the "coalition of the crooked and unfree" but I'm less generous than the typically evenhanded Chrenkoff.

Over at Spleenville, Tim Blair has the low-down on Mohammed and Omar of Iraq the Model who met with 'POTUS'--unbelievable--bloggers in the Whitehouse and the SS didn't even search their pockets!

Update: Scott Burgess is suprised to find out that, yes indeed, they do make eyewear for chickens!

:: Max 10:56 AM [+] ::
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"We are a sector in crisis," said Jean-Michel Lemetayer, the head of France's main farmer union, urging the state to bail out an industry awash in a sea of Chablis and Bordeaux.

Please - I insist - have a little more French whine [>]

:: Max 3:30 PM [+] ::
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Mouse and Frog Battle

Powerline and The Corner are both getting a little snitty over the Whizbang "Best Blog" awards. Many years ago, when two great mathematicians were arguing over a philosophical point regarding infinity, they appealed to Einstein for intervention. Einstein remarked that he had no interest in intervening in a "mouse and frog battle".

When I wake up in the morning, (and before I go to bed, and when I take a break around noon) I go to Drudge for breaking news and then, I immediately click over to either Powerline, The Corner or Instapundit (in no particular order) because I know they are all very good news and opinion resources, maintained by very intelligent and thoughtful individuals with a wide range of professional experience. In all honesty, these blogs, in conjunction with other web resources such as RealClearPolitics, and the Opinion Journal have become serious contenders in the race to replace newspapers and the nightly news. But let's get real here: the individual who invented hyperlinks deserves the real award, for were it not for him (or her or them or Al Gore), none of this would be possible.

I have fairly well ignored the "best of" blog awards because, as Einstein remarked of the battle between two great mathematical geniuses, it's simply a "frog and mouse battle" that has little impact on the weightier issues at hand--and besides--it's becoming increasingly tedious to continue to trip over all the shameless vote blegging on all contender's blogs.

Looking back over recent history, and considering bizarre phenomenon such as RatherGate, one can only conclude that the blogosphere has become an indespensible media tool that millions of humans--from Baghdad to Kansas City--rely for the dissemination of facts and propagation of memes. Every link in the chain, every node in the matrix is critical for the system to work--just ask "Buckhead".

:: Max 1:07 PM [+] ::
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Nanosoft Microsoft: Late to the Party

BoingBoing testdrives the Microsoft blog tool with predictable results. The National Debate has it [>]

Gates really is out of touch--note to Bill: IBM

:: Max 9:16 PM [+] ::
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Uh Oh--forgot to take my meds.

"Hi, my name is Rachel, and my telephone number is... I wanted to tell you that you're evil, horrible people. You're awful people. You represent horrible ideas. God hates you and he wants to kill your children. You should all burn in hell. Bye."

Rachel Buchman, 25, a (former) reporter with public radio station WHYY-FM (90.9)

Can't we all just, get along?

OTLM has the low-down with ample links to the original source(s) [>]

:: Max 7:10 PM [+] ::
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XXX

Our favorite skanky-ho blogger Wonkette digs this one out of the cyberslime. From an apparently genuine CraigsList posting from Democrat glutton for--ummm--punishment:

Anyone up for some political sex play?

I'm a very good looking and intelligent white male looking for a Republican couple to dominate and humiliate me. Make me blow him while you tell me what a bunch of losers Democrats are. Make me clean her up after you're done with her while she tells me how much better Republicans are in the sack.

I'm picky about who I play with and I expect you to be too. I'm very good looking, discreet, STD/HIV free, non-smoker, down to earth, and I'm for real -- YOU BE THE SAME.

I will provide pictures and further description once I know you're for real. I promise you won't be disappointed.

Male/Female couples only please -- and please be real Republicans. Phonies and trolls will be ignored.

This makes total sense if you think about it. Hey--don't laugh--it even made Wonkette a little dampish [>]

[OK, Kim, pick up the ball and run with it]

:: Max 6:37 PM [+] ::
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"The entire press run for the November issue of the Yale Free Press, a conservative publication, has been stolen. Stealing of publications that challenge the prevailing campus orthodoxies--for the purpose of preventing them from being read--has, of course, become common on America's campuses. The perpetrators are usually people who consider themselves to be "progressives."

Based on the linked article, it doesn't sound like the Yale administration is being very aggressive in investigating this crime."

Virtual book-burning, a general quashing of free-speech, and intellectual dishonesty fairly oozes from these "institutions of higher learning" and it begs the question--what are they so afraid of? Photon Courier has it [>]

:: Max 6:25 PM [+] ::
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Leveraging the NOAA Forecast Database

Wired is reporting that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is offering the public access to its massive weather database in XML format--data that your local weatherman uses for his nightly weather report. Hey--you paid for it so shouldn't you have direct access? I've included it on the Prairiefire Blogroll under the Weather heading to your left.

:: Max 2:39 PM [+] ::
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It's Jarvis vs Goliath and guess who's winning:

"I am honored to officially stand between the FCC and the First Amendment, even if only in a minor supporting role.

Fox added an important observation -- as Mediaweek did yesterday -- about the tactics of the Bozell complaint factory: "Only one complainant professed even to have watched the program." Exactly. The FCC does nothing to confirm that these alleged complaints come from citizens or that they watched the show. Bozell apparently pays lackeys to ferret out "filth" and then uses his cult members and his FCC bitches to do is bidding. And media follow right along without asking the right questions.

Also, I never reported the audience size for this allegedly indecent show before. Fox says that 5.1 million households watched (which means more viewers than that). So it's 5.1 million vs. 3.

Whose community standards is the FCC enforcing? Not my community's."

Here's more from the giant-killer himself [>]

:: Max 1:26 PM [+] ::
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Blogging is a major new social, political, and economic phenomenon. It is a fresh and striking exemplification of Friedrich Hayek's thesis that knowledge is widely distributed among people and that the challenge to society is to create mechanisms for pooling that knowledge. The powerful mechanism that was the focus of Hayek's work, as as of economists generally, is the price system (the market). The newest mechanism is the "blogosphere." There are 4 million blogs. The internet enables the instantaneous pooling (and hence correction, refinement, and amplification) of the ideas and opinions, facts and images, reportage and scholarship, generated by bloggers.

Becker-Posner Blog [NEW!] via Pejmanesque

:: Max 7:54 PM [+] ::
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French Soldier Surrenders After Threat

--headline, Associated Press, Dec. 6

:: Max 7:46 PM [+] ::
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Wonkette says Dick Gephart talks like a girl:

What else have you been buying?

I did get an iPod. Oh, I love it. It's the best thing that ever happened to me.

What are you listening to -- political speeches?

The collected speeches of Newt Gingrich. That would be NO. I like Josh Groban. I like Tony Bennett. I like Nelly. He's from St. Louis. He's a very good rapper. I like Eminem. I have his album.

What a dick...here's the NYT source [>]

:: Max 7:31 PM [+] ::
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Remember the guy who attacked Chaney at the Repulican National Convention?

"A federal court in Manhattan agreed Wednesday to drop the charges against Thomas Frampton '06 in threemonths' time, provided that Frampton does not commit any additional offenses in the intervening period.

Powerline's got all the revolting details [>]

[wonder how much his rich daddy had to fork over to get him off--and who was bribed--anybody got a clue?]

:: Max 7:15 PM [+] ::
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Winds of Change tackles military minutae with their first installment of Milstuff For Dummys: the size of the military, and how it's put together.

[I keep asking myself why MSM doesn't do interesting stuff like this--no wonder they have to lie about their circulation stats.]

:: Max 7:01 PM [+] ::
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DLC calling for UN reformation?!

"Unfortunately, the United Nations' credibility has been steadily eroded by its own misdeeds, with a burgeoning scandal over its incompetent and sometimes corrupt management of the Iraq oil-for-food program being the most damaging example. Last week it was reported that the son of U.N. secretary general Kofi Annan received a series of payments from a Swiss firm that won a lucrative contract under the oil-for-food program. This development has fed growing doubts that the United Nations will be able to own up to its problems or reform its operations so long as Annan remains at the helm."

Note to DLC: It's been known for at least six months that Kojo Annan, Koffi's son was chowing down on the Oil-For-Food gravy train--and you are just now finding out? Yikes.

Link courtesy Kathleen J. Lopez

:: Max 6:45 PM [+] ::
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Speaking of "raw ground pancreas"...

"...I can't imagine the State presuming ownership of my innards..."

These imortal words brought to you by Florida Cracker [>]

:: Max 5:50 PM [+] ::
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The Orange Revolution: I'm in.

:: Max 5:43 PM [+] ::
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Mr. Blacker:

Thanks for your response to my Friday Daily Ablution post.

As some of my readers were kind enough to point out, the "man with a successful weblog" to whom you referred in your Friday column is a former Supreme Court clerk, currently a UCLA law professor and an acknowledged expert on free speech/press issues - a status which would appear to gives his views on the subject more credence than those of "those arts graduates who couldn’t get into the BBC," as one commenter put it.

Indeed, your readers are forced into one of two conclusons - either that you didn't bother to find out who the "man with a successful weblog" was, or that you deliberately withheld this very pertinent information from your readers.

While neither of these conclusions does much to support your contention that publishing "news and views" should be left to professional journalists like yourself, many of my readers remain curious as to whether you were simply too lazy to do two minutes of research, or whether you're guilty of dishonesty through omission.

Which is it?

I'm convinced Scott Burgess is a genius--sure hope Santa is reading his blog.

Related: JustOneMinute analyzes a slipshod column by "professional journalist" Katherine Seelye of the NY Times.

:: Max 5:12 PM [+] ::
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"...Peter Piper picked a peetered-out protest process..."

(you'll die laughing)

:: Max 4:30 PM [+] ::
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"Many large cities have permanent execution grounds, but in smaller cities it is difficult to carry out death sentences, so this is why we have these mobile execution units."

Blogs of War is loaded--just keep scrolling [>]

:: Max 4:14 PM [+] ::
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Theo van Gogh Update

The Observer has an excellent, must-read, two-part recap of the barbaric murder of documentary filmaker Theo van Gogh.

Link courtesy Tim Blair [>]

:: Max 4:08 PM [+] ::
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Super Search

LexisNexis search is now available to normal mortals, the unwashed masses and the pajamahadeen. Although it still ain't exactly free, LexisNexis AlaCarte is a pay-per-hit search- service which allows you accesses the massive LexisNexis database of "more than 3.8 billion documents from over 20,000 sources of news, public records, and government information, including top newspapers, magazines, and transcripts, company and industry reports, deed records, liens, zip demographics, state and federal legislation, and intellectual property. The information goes as far back as 1968."

The initial search is free but it'll cost you $3.00 to retrieve a hit. I've included a link to LexisNexis Alacarte under the "Search" heading on the PrairieFire blogroll on the left. Here's a Poynteronline article on this new research tool.

Link courtesy Roger L. Simon [>]

:: Max 7:55 AM [+] ::
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This is Rich

NYT's Frank Rich demonsrates--unequivocally--why the left is sooo out of touch. Hey Frank--Nascarism is a disease of the left--not of the right.

Here's the proof via Drudge [>]

Geez...they really don't get it...

:: Max 10:07 PM [+] ::
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Skyrocketing Property Taxes

"We don't go out to eat, we don't go to theaters, we don't travel a lot," says Mrs. Brockman, who worked as a operating-room nurse for 40 years. "You have to give up your pleasures that you have worked all your life to do," she says, suggesting that it might be appropriate for the community to give some kind of tax credit to them for all the years they have faithfully paid their taxes.

Mayor Dave Cieslewicz, an unabashed liberal, is sympathetic to their plight. "We've moved away from progressive forms of taxation to more regressive," he says. "This is of great concern to me that the tax structure is less fair."

This classical liberal hogwash is brought to you by the Drudge Report [>]

:: Max 3:40 PM [+] ::
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The voice of--umm--moderation?!

A 'moderate' Muslim cleric, Sheik Al-Qaradhawi, has some thoughts on, well, wife-beating:

"It is said there that one of the methods of treatments is, "And beat them." This is not obligatory, but it is permitted and it does not suit all wives. All Koranic commentators agree on this. Beating does not benefit all wives, but it is suitable for some."

Modern Islam; building a bridge to the 7th century...(link courtesy Andrew Stuttaford at The Corner)

:: Max 3:26 PM [+] ::
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Friends of Iraq

Well, 'tis the season you know.

BrainShavings via the Corner

:: Max 3:20 PM [+] ::
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One Year and Fity-Two Duane Allman Pics?

Florida Cracker hits a major milestone today--join in the celebration [>]

:: Max 8:50 PM [+] ::
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