Ring 'em up!

Protein Wisdom on Barack Obama's patriotism speech:

Barry states

“Surely we can agree that no party or political philosophy has a monopoly on patriotism.”

Surely, I can disagree.

Surely, I can state categorically that any political philosophy that has as its core value some variation of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” is antithetical to American values and, therefore, unpatriotic.

Surely, I can state categorically that any political philosophy makes the “world’s” feelings a priority over American interests or sovereignty is antithetical to American values or survival and, therefore, unpatriotic.

Because dissent, especially from O! Enlightenment, is patriotic.

Cha-ching!

Confederate Yankee (h/t: Instapundit):

The Saddest Thing About Barack Obama's Available Military Expertise...

...is that though he has Wes Clark in his corner, the only person he knows with the experience of getting a bomb on target is Bill Ayers.

Cha-ching! Cha-ching!

(crossposted at Pro Cynic and Circle City Pundit)

Touch and go

I suppose that since I rip SCOTUS and our federal courts left and right for every decision they botch (Roper, Boumediene, Kennedy, etc.) I should compliment them when they get it right. And SCOTUS definitely got it right with Justice Scalia's majority opinion striking down D.C.'s ban on guns in the case of District of Columbia et al v. Heller.

Barely. 5-4.

The Second Amendment reads, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be
infringed.”

I'm no major gun nut. I own a few, but I have no problem with registering them or anything. Still, this seems kind of obvious. I have the right to own a gun. And yet four of the nine SCOTUS justices thought otherwise. You can easily guess who those four were -- Stevens, Breyer, Souter and Ginsburg.

Am I the only one who does not find this comforting?

Patterico:

5-4. Let that sink in, folks. Even though it was expected, it’s now official. Ponder it for a moment.

If the Democrats had appointed just one more Justice to the U.S. Supreme Court, there would be no individual right to possess firearms in the United States of America.

Glenn Reynolds:

I confess that I was one of the Second Amendment scholars who doubted that there were five votes on the high court to support an individual-right view of the Second Amendment.

I'm happy to be wrong about that, but there were only five such votes - demonstrating how narrow the margin was, and how out of touch the court is with the American public, which believes the Second Amendment protects an individual right to arms by a 3-1 margin.

If, as some have been calling for, we had a "Supreme Court that looks like America," this case wouldn't even have been close. Ordinary Americans have generally believed that the "right of the people to keep and bear arms" applied to, you know, the people.

It takes politicians, law professors (and, it turns out, four Supreme Court justices) to believe that a "right of the people" somehow actually doesn't belong to the people at all.

The individual rights-view finally won out, but just barely.

SayUncle:

In other news, 5-4 was bit too close for comfort in my opinion. I was figuring on 6-3 or 7-2, honestly. Sure, this quiz was pass/fail but we were only one heart attack away, my friends. I hate to say it but that one reason is why I’ll hold my nose, get good and hammered, and pull the lever for John McCain. And I’d have to shower after that too.

David Bernstein:

The Supreme Court's decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, upholding the Second Amendment right of individuals to own firearms, should finally lay to rest the widespread myth that the defining difference between liberal and conservative justices is that the former support "individual rights" and "civil liberties," while the latter routinely defer to government assertions of authority. The Heller dissent presents the remarkable spectacle of four liberal Supreme Court justices tying themselves into an intellectual knot to narrow the protections the Bill of Rights provides. Or perhaps it's not as remarkable as we've been led to think.

Randy Barnett:

Justice Scalia's opinion is the finest example of what is now called "original public meaning" jurisprudence ever adopted by the Supreme Court. This approach stands in sharp contrast to Justice John Paul Stevens's dissenting opinion that largely focused on "original intent" – the method that many historians employ to explain away the text of the Second Amendment by placing its words in what they call a "larger context." Although original-intent jurisprudence was discredited years ago among constitutional law professors, that has not stopped nonoriginalists from using "original intent" – or the original principles "underlying" the text – to negate its original public meaning.

Of course, the originalism of both Justices Scalia's and Stevens's opinions are in stark contrast with Justice Breyer's dissenting opinion, in which he advocates balancing an enumerated constitutional right against what some consider a pressing need to prohibit its exercise. Guess which wins out in the balancing? As Justice Scalia notes, this is not how we normally protect individual rights, and was certainly not how Justice Breyer protected the individual right of habeas corpus in the military tribunals case decided just two weeks ago.

So what larger lessons does Heller teach? First, the differing methods of interpretation employed by the majority and the dissent demonstrate why appointments to the Supreme Court are so important. In the future, we should be vetting Supreme Court nominees to see if they understand how Justice Scalia reasoned in Heller and if they are committed to doing the same.

We should also seek to get a majority of the Supreme Court to reconsider its previous decisions or "precedents" that are inconsistent with the original public meaning of the text. This shows why elections matter – especially presidential elections – and why we should vet our politicians to see if they appreciate how the Constitution ought to be interpreted.

Tom Maguire:

The same folks who can read the Constitution and Bill of Rights and find an unassailable right to abortion and gay marriage can't find a right to possession of a firearm.

Cha-ching!!!

Touch-and-go, to be sure, but given how imperial our federal judiciary has become -- for instance, Ninth Circuit rogue Stephen "I'll rule however I want; the Supreme Court can't catch 'em all" Reinhardt has done it again -- we'll take victories from our federal courts wherever we can get them.

On a further note, and as I have commented before, the legal ability to carry and use a gun might also be an equal protection issue. Megan McArdle seems to be picking up on that theme.

(Crossposted at Pro Cynic and Circle City Pundit)

History bits

Some fun stuff I've seen lately about history.

First, if you've ever wondered what was actually in those "pagoda masts" of Japanese battleships, here is a breakdown, using the battleship Fuso as an example.

Speaking of Japanese battleships, the Historic Naval Ships Association has audio of a of the US submarine Sealion attacking the Japanese battleship Kongo on November 21, 1944. Kongo took two torpedo hits that left her staggering; these injuries ultimately proved to be fatal as she sank some 60 miles north of Keelung, Formosa. Audio recordings of World War II submarine attacks are extremely rare, so to have such a famous attack on audio is very fortunate.

Finally, not of the World War II variety but back to Mycenaean Greece, a group of scholars believes they have dated the return of Odysseus from Homer's Odyssey. According to the Odyssey, Odysseus returned from the Trojan War -- after a fashion -- to find his house full of unwanted suitors trying to marry his wife, which would then allow them to take Odysseus' place as King of Ithaca. Odysseus slaughtered them all, with some help from his son Telemachos.

Using astronomical clues in the Odyssey, these scholars believe that Odysseus slaughtered the suitors on April 16, 1178 B.C. While this does not speak to the truth of the occurrences in the Odyssey, it does fit in well with the dating of the Trojan War (12th century B.C.) and its aftermath of civil unrest across Mycenaean Greece, strongly suggested not only by the Odyssey but by Aeschylus' Oresteia, in which Agamemnon was murdered by his wife Clytemnestra in a coup attempt for the Argive throne by Aegisthus.

Another proud moment

for your federal judiciary, in particular the Supreme Court: Kennedy v. Louisiana. Short story long: executing criminals who rape children is now unconstitutional.

UFB.

Once again, the prime mover and shaker in this decision is Justice Anthony Kennedy, who has become more erratic than Ted Kennedy on a Massachusetts bridge. With just about as much sympathy for crime victims. Michelle Malkin has the details of the heinous crime at issue in this case, committed by one Patrick Kennedy, no relation to the justice or, for that matter, the senator, at least as far as I know.

Note to lawyers, and, in particular, judges: "Evolving standards of decency" is not law. It is opinion. And it is opinion usually only held by judges, trial lawyers and leftist law faculty.

Andy McCarthy:

Even if you agree with their bottom line, do Justice Kennedy and the justices in Kennedy v. Louisiana have a clue about how offensive it is to write this line in rationalizing why a man who has savagely raped his eight-year-old step-daughter should not be executed by the humane process of lethal objection:

"Evolving standards of decency must embrace and express respect for the dignity of the person[.]"

And as for their "proportional" punishment argue, I think it's silly on its face — read the almost unreadable (because it's so excruciating) account of the rape and ask yourself whether it is really "disproportionate" to administer lethal-objection execution to a man who committed this type of barbaric a sexual assault on a child.

But let's give him that one for argument's sake. The Eighth Amendment talks about punishment that is cruel. First, punishment does not become cruel just because it's disproportionate. And second, are we really striving here for proportionality? If a crime is cruel — as it clearly was in this case — wouldn't a proportionate punishment also have to be cruel, and thus in violation of the Eighth Amendment?

Wouldn't it be refreshingly honest if activist justices just bluntly us: "We don't like the death penalty and we can stop it because there are five of us." Sure, it would be tyrannical, but at least it would be accurate, and not nearly as nauseating as what passes for reasoning in these cases.

Allahpundit:

The interpretive dilemma for “cruel and unusual punishment” is the same as for all constitutional clauses, except more starkly so: If you follow the originalist model here and define the term by using the Founding Fathers’ standards, then conceivably it’s constitutional to let prisoners be drawn and quartered. Rather than let the amendment process of Article V deal with that, though, the Court long ago decided that “cruel and unusual” should be determined according to society’s “evolving standards of decency.” How do they determine what those standards are? Simple. They use their own standards of decency, then go look for whatever data they can scrounge about social attitudes to make it seem like they’re taking the culture’s pulse. One might suggest, as Alito does, that a better gauge of society’s standards in a democracy are the actual laws that it passes — like, say, laws punishing child rape with death — but in that case, every duly enacted punishment would be constitutional per the Court’s test. So we’re stuck with this charade where the majority pretends that it’s divined some sort of National Ethos against executing child rapists and that it’s merely applying that Ethos instead of imposing its own judgment of what’s right and what’s not and dressing it up as the people’s will.

The irony (just one of many, like why, if this National Ethos exists, the Court doesn’t leave it to the public to pass a constitutional amendment formally recognizing it, or why, per Alito, the Court won’t acknowledge that it’s own prior rulings on the death penalty have prevented a true National Ethos from freely forming) is that America’s standards have actually evolved to be more sensitive to crimes committed against kids. Never has public awareness been greater of how abuse affects children psychologically, and virtually no one disputes that rape, let alone rape of a child, can be life-ruining. Look at the FLDS case, where the possibility of underaged girls being preyed on by men caused a national uproar. No wonder, then, that some states want to raise the penalty on a particularly vicious strain of child abuse. If Kennedy and his pals in the majority were honest about divining the National Ethos, they’d acknowledge that. But as I say, the “evolving standards” line is a scam in the same way that it’s a scam in other cases when the Court tries to divine international standards of opinion by citing statutes from European countries — but never from, say, Saudi Arabia or Iran. (Point being, they shouldn’t be citing foreign law at all.)

[...]

The ultimate irony here is that they’re using an ad hoc metric — the “evolving standards” test that theoretically changes day by day (but only ever towards greater “progressivism”) — to institute what’s actually a fixed, bright-line rule. No death except as repayment for death, because if they allow capital punishment for child rape, what’s next? Capital punishment for violent assault? For larceny, a la 17th century England? Either is unlikely in the extreme, but partly because they don’t trust the public and partly because they know their own test is crap and don’t trust it to produce persuasive distinctions between child rape and some lesser crime in a future case, they’ve decided to simply take the issue off the table. That is to say, after paying lip service to letting the will of the people guide them and trusting the “evolution” of American culture to go the right way, the Court ends up with a diktat set in stone that’s aimed squarely at preventing the sheeple from executing people for petty crimes at some dark distant point down the road. Perfect.

Of course, if I had my way, we would have the death penalty for assault and larceny, as well as murder, rape, residential burglary, car theft, arson ... anything that hurts another, particularly since nothing else seems to deter property crimes, but the victims never truly get over them.

Was this judicial bootstrapping? Ramesh Ponnuru:

Justice Kennedy's opinion for the Court argues that there is a national consensus against executing child rapists, as evidenced by the fact that only six states have provisions for such executions. Justice Alito's dissent points out that one reason few states have such provisions is that in an earlier case, Coker, the Supreme Court had prohibited the imposition of the death penalty on the rapists of adult women—and called into doubt whether it would permit executions for anything other than murder. One act of activism thus provides a spurious legitimacy for another.

Ah, Justice Kennedy. Where SCOTUS once stood for rule of law, it now stands for rule by whim, thanks in large part to Justice Kennedy. Ed Whelan:

Given previous rulings like Roper v. Simmons (see This Week for March 1, 2005), Justice Kennedy’s opinion in Kennedy v. Louisiana was entirely predictable, but that doesn’t make it any less appalling as a matter of supposed constitutional law.

[...]

If I find time, I may focus more attention on Kennedy’s string of assertions. For now, I’ll just call attention to the facts that occasioned Kennedy’s pronouncement that “[e]volving standards of decency must embrace and express respect for the dignity of the person”—the person whose dignity is the object of his concern being the rapist, not the victim and not other future victims.

"Evolving standards of decency" now means "the whim of Justice Kennedy." Remember Roper v. Simmons, in which SCOTUS outlawed the death penalty for "minors" based in part on world public opinion and a "consensus" against the practice here in the U.S. Power Line's John Hindraker commented:

...Roper is troubling for reasons that go well beyond the majority's reliance on foreign opinion and practice. Just 16 years ago, in Stanford v. Kentucky, a different 5-to-4 majority held that it did not violate the 8th Amendment to execute juveniles aged 16 to 17. Roper overruled Stanford in what can only be seen as a naked flip-flop. In Roper, Justice Kennedy argued that the juvenile death penalty has become more "unusual" since 1989 because in the intervening years five states have switched from allowing to prohibiting the execution of juvenile offenders. But it is frankly absurd to argue that a practice that is approved by the legislatures and courts of 20 states is "unusual" within the meaning of the 8th Amendment. The fact that some states make a policy decision against juvenile execution through legislative enactment hardly implies that such a policy decision is Constitutionally mandated.

In reality, the difference between Stanford and Roper does not lie in the number of states that, at the relevant time, permitted the execution of juveniles--25 versus 20--but rather in the composition of the Supreme Court itself. What made the difference in the outcome was that Justice Kennedy changed his mind. In 1989 he voted with the majority, holding that execution of juveniles was not Constitutionally prohibited. Last week, he voted the opposite way. The Constitution didn't change; Anthony Kennedy did.

"Evolving standards of decency" is just code for "the whim of Justice Kennedy." No wonder public confidence in SCOTUS is cratering.

Is this how the Founding Fathers intended for our government to perform? How is the whim of a SCOTUS justice any different in legitimacy from the whim of the King of England?

(crossposted at Pro Cynic and Circle City Pundit)

Putting the ROMAN in ROMAN Catholic

Pope Benedict XVI is the warrior George W. Bush is not:

[...] Benedict's critics within the church regard him as a civilizational warrior as dangerous as the US president. Bush might denounce "Islamo-facism", but continues to believe that Islam is a "religion of peace". Muslims suspect that the pope wants to convert them, a threat they never have had to confront in Islam's 1,500-year history.

The May issue of the Jesuits' international monthly Popoli [1], for example, featured a blistering attack on Egyptian-born Italian journalist Magdi Allam, who this year converted from Islam to Roman Catholicism, and the circumstances of his conversion, by the prominent Italian Jesuit Father Paolo dall'Oglio, of the Deir Mar Musa monastery in Syria. By officiating at Allam's conversion, Father Dall'Oglio charted, Benedict confirmed Muslim suspicion that his campaign for freedom of religion and freedom of conscience is a "Trojan Horse" whose aim is to cause Islam to disintegrate.

[...]

Benedict XVI may preach against violence, but in his own fashion he takes a tougher stance than the American president. That surely is not the way it looks at first glance. Bush invaded an Arab country, while Benedict preaches reason to the Muslim world, receiving in the past few months Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah as well as delegations from Iran. He has agreed to a meeting with a group of 138 Muslim scholars at the Vatican in November. Why should Muslims fear Benedict?

For the first time, perhaps, since the time of Mohammed, large parts of the Islamic world are vulnerable to Christian efforts to convert them, for tens of millions of Muslims now dwell as minorities in predominantly Christian countries. The Muslim migration to Europe is a double-edged sword. Eventually this migration may lead to a Muslim Europe, but it also puts large numbers of Muslims within reach of Christian missionaries for the first time in history.

[...]

Muslims are in dialogue with a pope who evidently does not merely want to exchange pleasantries about coexistence, but to convert them. This no doubt will offend Muslim sensibilities, but Muslim leaders are well-advised to remain on good terms with Benedict XVI. Worse things await them. There are 100 million new Chinese Christians, and some of them speak of marching to Jerusalem - from the East. A website entitled Back to Jerusalem proclaims, "From the Great Wall of China through Central Asia along the silk roads, the Chinese house churches are called to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ all the way back to Jerusalem."

Islam is in danger for the first time since its founding. The evangelical Christianity to which George W Bush adheres and the emerging Asian church are competitors with whom it never had to reckon in the past. The European Church may be weak, but no weaker, perhaps, than in the 8th century after the depopulation of Europe and the fall of Rome. An evangelizing European Church might yet repopulate Europe with new Christians as it did more than a millennium ago.

Read the whole thing.

(h/t: Instapundit; crossposted at Pro Cynic and Circle City Pundit)

A few things of interest

that probably deserve more blog time than I have at the moment:

* Sarah Palin tells Congress to drill in ANWR. You gotta love this girl for VP.

* Mugabe's descent into madness (continued). Zimbabwe just gets worse and worse. And the UN has done ... nothing. Does the UN actually have a purpose? A noble purpose? ANY purpose?

* Kim Jong Il endorses Barack Obama. Is there any murderous anti-American tyrant who has not endorsed Barack Obama? Maybe it's because of his Winnie-the-Pooh foreign policy?

* New York Times outs Khalid Sheikh Muhammad interrogator. Far worse than Valerie Plame (who was not undercover under the statutory definition), this act not only constitutes treason, but puts the lives of the man and his family in danger. I suspect the man has a legal cause of action against the Times under the privacy torts. It maybe the only way to stop their perfidy.

* Is Section 8 destroying our neighborhoods? Even before this story, my answer would have been "yes."

(crossposted at Pro Cynic and Circle City Pundit)

You knew it was coming

Barack Obama plays the race card:

Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama said on Friday he expects Republicans to highlight the fact that he is black as part of an effort to make voters afraid of him.

“It is going to be very difficult for Republicans to run on their stewardship of the economy or their outstanding foreign policy,” Obama told a fundraiser in Jacksonville, Florida. “We know what kind of campaign they’re going to run. They’re going to try to make you afraid.

“They’re going to try to make you afraid of me. He’s young and inexperienced and he’s got a funny name. And did I mention he’s black?”

He said he was also set for Republicans to say “he’s got a feisty wife,” in trying to attack his wife Michelle.

Yes, here it is:

Rick Moran comments:

We expected it, of course. It is his greatest political weapon and he will use it again and again, shamelessly accusing the GOP of bringing up his race (even, as this proves, when they don’t) in order to deflect criticism away from he and his wife for anything they say or any associations in their past.

The press will let him get away with it because they are terrified of being accused of racism themselves.

What makes Obama’s race card such an effective weapon is that it is virtually impossible to accuse him of using it. He is the oppressed minority. You don’t question oppressed minorities in this country. Anything they define as racism is accepted almost without question. To do so is to prove your racism. Ergo, the perfect “Catch 22:” If the GOP denies Obama’s charges of “racism” and accuses him of using the race card, the blowback on the GOP will be “Who are you to question a black man when he says he’s been slimed by a racist smear?” – the subtext being that you are racist for questioning him.

The flip side of that is if the GOP says nothing, the charge goes unanswered and they are convicted in the court of public opinion as racist pigs.

Bee-utiful.

Let me just say to those doubters who may believe otherwise, take a walk through the comments section of this blog and others. See how many Obama advocates simply dismiss any opposition to their candidate as “racism.” It is this simple minded sophistry that the candidate will use in order to quiet opposition to his programs once he is elected as well.

Protein Wisdom:

One might have hoped that locking down the delegates necessary to secure the Democratic presidential nomination might have resulted in some personal growth. Instead, he is still nursing a grudge over all of the slights he thinks he received from Hillary Clinton and her supporters and remaking the Presidential seal in his campaign’s image, while thinking everyone is too stupid to notice.

But instead of stepping up to the gravity of his own historic achievement, it appears that Obama Barry O is going to stick with his gameplan of making any mention of his threadbare resume (and equally threadbare public accomplishments) or even his name grist for his mill of racial grievance.

Make no mistake: the man who admits he looks like Urkel is sounding about as post-racial as the Rev. Al Sharpton. Or about as post-racial as someone who spent the last 20 years under the spiritual tutelage of the race-baiting Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Fr. Michael Pfleger. Someone with that background ought to have some humility when it comes to dealing the race card, but he has chosen it as his opening gambit. If John McCain and the GOP allows someone who increasingly sounds like someone struggling to suppress his own prejudice to frame the general election in this manner, they will deserve to lose the election even more than they already do.

Baldilocks says it best:

Most people couldn't care less about your name and your color, Senator Obama. They fear being lead by you because you have no substantive legislative record, you're a chronic liar and, after explicitly stating that you choose your friends carefully, you have repeatedly and systematically made friends with people who hate this country.

You would "bridge the divide," Senator, by burning that bridge.

(crossposted at Pro Cynic and Circle City Pundit)

"Our federal courts, in a picture" or "Boumediene, in a picture"

(from Hoosier Pundit; crossposted at Pro Cynic and Circle City Pundit)

News of the Obvious: Santorini destroyed Minoan civilization

I respect scientists and the scientific method, but I do wonder if science isn't sometimes so enamored with itself that it refuses to look at obvious explanations.

I just watched my TiVo'd version of Secrets of the Dead. This episode dealt with Minoan civilization on Crete and the "mysterious" disappearance of the Minoan civilization around 1600 BC. (Note: I said 1600 BC, not BCE. Political correctness has no place in history.) The "Minoans" are so named because according to Greek myth one of their kings was King Minos.

Minos wasn't a particularly nice king. The Minoans were a powerful presence in the Mediterranean, centered on Crete, with the strongest navy in the eastern Mediterranean and strong commercial connections. According to myth, Minos received tribute from Athens in the form of youths. These he released into a dark labyrinth that was the home of the Minotaur,a creature who was half-man and half-bull. The "tribute" would never be seen again. Archaeology has found a lower-level of the so-called Minoan palace at Knossos that might well fit the description of the labyrinth. Archaeology has also found imagery of elaborate bull shows that may have involved human sacrifice, and evidence of cannibalism among the Minoans.

Even with all their power and might, the Minoan civilization disappeared around 1600 BC. Their cities and palaces were, after a period of abandonment, later reoccupied, but by Mycenaeans from the Greek mainland.

Science has always found the Minoan civilization to be mysterious. Even their writing, known as Linear A, was only recently deciphered. But nothing was more of an enigma than the end of the Minoan civilization.

The fall of the Minoans was a very controversial subject, with several theories put forth:

A. invasion by Mycenaeans, which occurred hundreds of years after the Minoans disappeared;
B. fire;
C. a massive volcanic eruption, arguably the largest in human history, that occurred only 70 miles from Crete at roughly the same time the Minoans disappeared; and
D. climatological changes, of which there is no evidence.

Gosh. They all seem so plausible. I wonder which one could it be. It couldn't be that science would ignore the elephant in the room, could it?

Satellite image of the Greek islands of Santorini. Called Thera or Kalliste in earlier times, the island was home to a large Minoan settlement at Akrotiri. Santorini was largely destroyed by a volcanic eruption around 1600 BC that left a collapsed caldera ringed by an island group. The dark island in the center is made entirely of still-smoldering ash. The Santorini eruption, ten times larger than the famous eruption at Krakatau in 1883 and possibly the largest in human history, sent a massive tsunami over a hundred feet high that destroyed the Minoan civilization on Crete, 70 miles to the south. The eruption may also have spawned the legend of Atlantis and the Biblical plagues of Egypt.

The solution is, in fact, that elephant, as proven in this episode of Secrets of the Dead. The elephant is the island of Santorini, about 70 miles north of Crete. In about 1600 BC, the island, then called Thera or Kalliste, suffered what may be the largest volcanic eruption in human history, at least ten times the power of the eruption at Krakatau (Krakatoa) in 1883. The eruption literally blew the island apart,s ending an ash cloud 25 miles into the ski, that later collapsed on itself and sent forth a pyroclastic front, magnifying the explosive power of the volcano and creating a tsunami over a hundred feet high -- a tsunami that slammed into Minoan Crete at hundreds of miles per hour.

The ashfall from the eruption, though it darkened their sky, did not harm the Minoans too much. But the tsunami was devastating. Secrets of the Dead showed what might be called an "aggregate" layer -- a layer of rock, diet, crushed building debris and human bones. This aggregate layer was found at most of Minoan Cretes's northern ports and even cities hundreds of feet above sea level. These cities were destroyed. Tens of thousands of people died. Likely, the Minoans' naval and commercial fleets were largely destroyed as well. Secrets of the Dead showed the scientific process behind the proof. In probably nothing more than a few minutes' time, Minoan civilization was destroyed by Santorini.

The effects of Santorini were felt far and wide. Most of the ports and naval assets in the Aegean were destroyed. The exceptions were the Mycenaeans, whose fleet was kept at Corinth, on the opposite coast from Santorini. They would fill the void left by the Minoans.

The carefully laid out Minoan settlement at Akrotiri on Santorini was completely destroyed, its population wiped out. The Santorini eruption, the destruction of Akrotiri and the swallowing of part of Crete by the sea may all have been garbled together into the legend of Atlantis, which originated in Egypt, a longtime trading partner of the Minoans.

And as for Egypt, the plagues of the Biblical Book of Exodus -- darkness, fleeing animals, hail of fire, even the parting of the Red Sea -- for the most part are very, very consistent with the effects of a volcanic eruption. Volcanic ash from the Santorini eruption was thought to have been found in the Nile delta. Scientists now say the dating of that volcanic ash is incorrect, which begs the obvious question of from what other volcano would Egypt get such ash.

The obvious. So often ignored by science, as in this case. The Santorini eruption, so large, so close in time and space to the end of Minoan Crete, was the obvious culprit. Yet science chose to downplay its significance. Anthropogenic global warming has far less of a scientific basis than the Santorini eruption ever did. Secrets of the Dead presented the Santorini eruption as a major revelation, and perhaps it was -- to science. People like me who read up on this stuff had it figured out a long time ago.

Now, we have the scientific proof. For that, science should be applauded, and, to be sure, Santorini was only a theory until it had scientific proof to back it up, proof which science has provided. For which it should be applauded.

But it should be ridiculed for ignoring the obvious, as it often does.

Loyalty has its rewards, but not at Ohio State

Although I graduated from the IU School of Law, I have allowed my membership in its alumni association to lapse. it was a place for me to get my JD. It never had any control or even any place in my heart. As far as colleges go, my heart has always been ruled by Ohio State. I have spent most of my life in Indiana, but I am originally from Ohio, as are both my parents, and we all got our undergrad degrees from Ohio State (my parents got their graduate degrees from there as well). My parents and I consider ourselves Buckeyes through and through, bleed scarlet and gray and all that. We have always been loyal to Ohio State.

That loyalty is being put to the test.

Ohio State has had some rough times recently, whether it was the odious, arrogant and insulting regime of President Karen Holbrook, political correctness (which was mostly absent when I was in school) tightening its grip on campus to an embarrassing degree, or struggling in three national title games (two in football and one in basketball). Now it's even worse.

For Ohio State, going to football games is mandatory. Actually, at Ohio State, football is not a game, it is a war, and we go to the stadium to do our part in battle, as does the band, the cheerleaders and, indeed, the team. Ohio State football games are always sold out, their TV rating are always in the stratosphere, and their radio affiliation is in such demand that the university can dictate terms of coverage.

The big benefit of joining the alumni association after college was that you get tickets to one football game each year. It used to be that seniority could get you season tickets, but they kept pushing up the seniority requirements that it became impossible to get season tickets that way. The games were assigned based on your last name, but the quality of seats you got was based on your seniority. Every two years there was a lottery for tickets to the Michigan game, which, though they never admitted it, was based somewhat on seniority. Not perfect, but that was billed as the major benefit of joining the alumni association, and one reason why it became one of the largest in the country.

This was back when the Ohio Stadium seated only 95,000. Now it seats 105,000, but they have tightened the allowances for alumni at football games.

First, the prime seats at Ohio Stadium were turned into club seats, whose holders behave like typical club seat holders -- they don't cheer, barely pay attention to the game or wear the team colors and are too busy making business deals. Their apathy is obvious -- because Ohio State has the best marching band in the country, it has always been an unwritten rule that you do not leave for halftime. Ever. But the club seat always holders do. Gotta make those business deals. Now the marching band performs the halftime show to the opposite side of the stadium. For obvious reasons, they will never admit that is the reason for switching sides, but the rest of us can put two and two together.

Actually, the students got screwed most out of that deal, with first the freshmen being shut out of Ohio State football and later limits placed on which games students could attend. But worse was to come.

And now it has: the Ohio State athletic department has put the screws to the alumni. No longer will membership in the alumni association guarantee you to tickets to one football game per season. What they themselves had billed as THE major benefit for joining the alumni association has been wiped out.

Instead, everyone is put into a lottery. For tickets to one game each year. No benefits to seniority, and no guarantee that you'll get tickets at all. Someone who graduated last year might get tickets to the Michigan game while a 30-year alum gets nothing. Even better, alumni are now going to be shoehorned into the non-conference games.

As a result, this year, I was offered tickets to our game with Ohio University. My parents, 30-year alums, were offered tickets to the game with Youngstown State.

Ooooohhhhh. Pinch me.

(Yes, I know that USC is a non-conference home game next year. I'm betting we'll be screwed out of that.)

The university is billing this as a way to get more young people into the game. Except, conveniently minimized in statements by Ohio State and overlooked by the media, they are taking away 17,000 alumni tickets to every game. And those aren't going to the students. They're going to rich donors.

Nice.

The alumni are screaming bloody murder, but somehow that is not getting coverage in the alumni magazine. Or in the media. Ohio State does not care about us.

The only thing that will get their attention is a reduction in alumni donations, which may happen. Someone may have a breach of contract action here, because those (expensive) alumni memberships were sold based on getting football tickets.

In the meantime, our loyalty to Ohio State is not being rewarded, but rejected.

Top ten reasons

to blame Democrats for soaring gasoline prices, by William Tate.

I'm not so sure I agree with his No. 2 reason: "Speculation." Clinton signed the measure, but it was in line with a Republican Congress' hopes for deregulation of the energy industry, which had disastrous results. But everything else Tate says here is spot on.

(h/t: Conservative Grapevine; crossposted at Pro Cynic and Circle City Pundit)

"What do you want?"

That was the question most famously by Ed Wasser's character Morden on Babylon 5. A seemingly simple question that no one could answer to the satisfaction of Morden's, uh, shadowy associates, with one tragic exception.

I can't help but ask the same questions of conservatives this day. "Conservatism" has never been about any one thing per se, but has found its philosophical bearings in issues of security, economics and social affairs. The fault lines of modern conservatism are thus defined -- you have security conservatives, fiscal conservatives and social conservatives. Generally, no candidate fits even two such categories, let alone all three, so the result has been an alliance has always been uneasy at best.

The recent primary season for the GOP exposed those fault lines in unusually harsh terms. You had security conservatives in John McCain and Rudolf Giuliani, but they are moderate fiscally and social liberals. You had the fiscal conservative in Mitt Romney, who was a moderate in terms of social issues and security. You had Mike Huckabee, who was a social conservative but very liberal on security and fiscal issues. Fred Thompson established himself as a security conservative, but was more liberal on fiscal and social issues than is generally believed. Ron Paul was a fiscal conservative, but is all over the place on social issues and is an isolationist (and a naive one at that) in terms of security.

Thus, in many respects, the candidates were almost mutually exclusive. That John McCain ended up with the nomination should come as no surprise. The image the public has of his positions fits the general position of the public -- they want security, they don't care about government spending in general except to the extent it affects their taxes and as a general rule they don't care about abortion or gay marriage. Maybe my assessment is skewed, however, since those are the views that I hold.

McCain is not a perfect candidate by any means. I, for one, have let him have it on issues of illegal immigration, global warming and drilling. And I am far from the only one. So imagine how happy I was to find out that McCain is beginning to see the light, even if it may be only out of political expediency, on drilling:

With the price of gasoline surging past $4 a gallon in many parts of the country, Senator John McCain called today for the lifting of the federal moratorium on offshore oil drilling for states that want to permit it.
He said that he also favors giving states incentives to allow exploration, part of an energy proposal that he said would be “very helpful in the short term for resolving our energy crisis.”
Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, said the impact of high fuel prices was hitting Americans, not only at the pump, but also in the form of rising food prices and threats of inflation.
“We must embark on a national mission to eliminate our dependence on foreign oil and reduce greenhouse gases through the development of alternate energy sources,” Mr. McCain said, adding that he continues to support a summer gas tax holiday.

Mr. McCain has a mixed record on the issue in the Senate. In 2001 and 2006, he voted in favor of offshore oil drilling in Florida, but in 2003 he voted against it in Florida and other states. Mr. McCain has consistently opposed drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Not perfect, but a good start. A very good start.

Reason for some celebrating? Not for some. Michelle Malkin:

Now, he’s announced he wants to lift the offshore drilling moratorium and will give an energy speech tomorrow. He was for it before he was against it before he was for it again. Positively Kerryesque[...]

McCain supporters say I should give credit to McCain for changing his mind.

Well, I certainly give him credit for whiplash-inducing political expediency.

Now, I do not know Michelle Malkin personally, but I like what I've seen of her on TV and in her writing. I don't agree with her on everything, but I usually do. She is a sharp thinker and persuasuive writer. I have nothing but the highest respect for her and her work.

But I must ask her: WHAT DO YOU WANT?

I don't know that McCain changed his mond on offshore drilling out of political expediency, and neither does Michelle. (I don't even know if he changed it at all, since he has been fairly consistent about giving the choice of drilling back to the states.) He may just have seen the crisis that is the price of gasoline today in America and decided we couldn't afford his type of environmentalism right now. But for the sake of argument, let's assume it's out of political expediency.

So what?

The policy is sound. So what if the motives for adopting it are political? It is a sound policy, one that people like Malkin support. I would think that rather than bashing McCain for publicly adopting it, they would encourage him to go further and re-examine his positions with other oil-related issues.

But, no. They just bash McCain some more. All stick, no carrot.

McCain has somehow survived the primary season while being bashed by the fiscal cons and social cons, highlighting the sharp differences among the three groups of conservatives. Some of that criticism has been warranted (illegal immigration, drilling), others not so much (judges), still others people do not care about (McCain-Feingold). At worst, McCain at least is paying lip service to coming around on one issue.

What is the point of McCain listening to conservatives -- he does have a 95% rating, you know -- and adopting their positions with which he may have disagreed in the past if this is the "reward" for doing so?

Like Morden asked: what do you want?

(crossposted at Pro Cynic and Circle City Pundit)

Heh

That's all I can say to this blurb from Power Line:

Republicans are jumping on Barack Obama for his statement about the Presidential campaign at a fundraiser last night, "If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun." The McCain campaign said it was good to see Obama abandoning his opposition to the manufacture, sale or possession of handguns, but concluded:

[W]e're having second thoughts about our proposed series of town halls.

(crossposted at Pro Cynic and Circle City Pundit)

Boumediene and afterwards

The fallout continues from the disastrous and legally indefensible SCOTUS decision in Boumediene v. Bush.

John McCain (via Hot Air):

John McCain today slammed the US Supreme Court ruling that terrorist detainees at Guantanamo Bay have a constitutional right to challenge their detention in civilian courts.
At a town hall meeting in Pemberton, N.J., McCain called it “one of the worst decisions in the history of this country.”
While McCain reminded voters that he has worked to prevent the torture of terrorism suspects, he also argued against giving those rights to enemy combatants who are not US citizens. ….
“There are some bad people down there,” he said, adding that the first obligation of the government is to ensure the nation’s safety. “This decision will harm our ability to do that.”
McCain also warned that the courts will be “flooded” with habeas corpus petitions, delaying the adjudication of the cases.

Remember that John McCain is one of those who wants to close Gitmo, and even he can't stomach this decision.

Fred Thompson:

Upon reading the opinion in Boumediene v Bush, one must conclude that the majority knew where they wanted to go and simply had to figure out how to get there. The trip was not a pretty one. How could it be when the justices seemingly wrote a map based on ideas cherry picked from over 400 years of established law and backfilled with justifications to create a new right for alien combatants that Americans themselves do not enjoy?

[...]

[T]hey for the first time in our nation’s history, conferred a Constitutional right of habeas corpus on alien enemies detained abroad by our military forces in the course of an ongoing war – a broader right than has been given to our own citizens. The court majority did so acknowledging that they could find no precedent to confer such a right to alien enemies not within sovereign U.S. territory

The majority had simply decided that prior courts had denied such rulings based on “practical considerations.” In other words in prior cases and prior wars it had just been too inconvenient to bestow the right of habeas corpus upon non-citizens in foreign jurisdictions. So, by focusing on what they saw as “practical” instead of those pesky court precedents based upon the issues of citizenship and foreign territory … and the Constitution … the majority reached the conclusion they wanted to, since what is practical is subjective. One can only ponder the state of our nation directed by the subjective instead of the Constitution.

As Chief Justice Roberts pointed out in his dissent, the court strikes down as inadequate the most generous set of protections ever afforded aliens detained by this country as enemy combatants.

Marty Lederman (via Westhawk via a certain Nordic Russian Eastern Roman Mercenary Praetorian Guard commenter):

[T]he court strongly implies that if, as in this case, the government chooses a foreign detention facility for the very purpose of avoiding judicial review (or perhaps even if the military retains a prisoner at a battlefield locale for the same reason), the court will not look kindly upon such efforts. As I noted below, I believe the single most important sentence in the opinion might be this one: "The test for determining the scope of [the Suspension Clause] must not be subject to manipulation by those whose power it is designed to restrain." The political branches will not be permitted "to govern without legal constraint" or to "have the power to switch the Constitution on or off at will."

Westhawk offers its own analysis:

Justice Kennedy and the majority took the Court into this messy territory out of anger over Guantanamo. What angered the Court was the Bush administration’s deliberate attempt to cut out the U.S. judiciary through the Guantanamo gambit. Since then, five justices on the court have found it necessary to battle back against that Executive effrontery, even if it meant trashing centuries of constitutional precedent.

This does not make me confident in the soundness of the reasoning of the court's decision. It makes Boumediene sound more like a fit of pique. "How dare they try to avoid our review! We're the Supreme Court! We're appointed forever!!! We can review ANYTHING!!!"

Where to go from here? Westhawk considers the possibilities:

There is a reason why the Founders placed the supervision of military operations with a unitary Executive. Justice Kennedy and four of his colleagues have forgotten why.

In the years ahead, how will the U.S. military respond to the course the Court is on?

1) No more prisoner transfers to Guantanamo.

2) The U.S. military will need to maintain detention facilities in combat zones, the nearer to the fighting, the better.

3) The U.S. government will find it helpful to have such facilities be jointly governed with officials of the host country. Prisoners held in such a manner would be suspects of crimes against the host country’s laws, in addition to whatever crimes the U.S. government would allege.

4) The course the Court has taken will affect decisions made by U.S. battlefield commanders. Tactical commanders have the discretion (for now!) to use laser-guided bomb and missile strikes as an alternative to more risky direct action raids. The use of heavier firepower does not necessarily destroy all useful intelligence. As an example, the Colombian army heavily bombed the FARC camp in Ecuador and killed the senior FARC leaders present. But the Colombian still recovered a trove of intelligence, including computers that linked Hugo Chavez to the FARC.

5) In his dissent from yesterday’s ruling, Justice Scalia explains why, under the Court’s current predilections, it will be very difficult to get convictions against terror suspects in U.S. federal court. Does this provide any incentive for U.S. special operating forces to risk direct action raiding in order to make live captures? Osama bin Laden may die of either old age in a Pakistani cave or of blast and fragment injuries. But not of old age in a U.S. federal prison.

Lederman:

Would habeas rights extend to alien detainees held in foreign locations other than Guantanamo? That is to say, can the military avoid the impact of Boumediene simply by detaining or transferring all alleged alien enemy combatants to a different facility, such as at Bagram?

Short answer: No.

But that doesn't mean that habeas will be available wherever and whenever the military detains alleged combatants.

It will not be available, for instance, in the first few days or weeks of detention at a facility close to a field of battle or in "an active theater of war." The military must be given deference to utilize "reasonable screening and initial detention," even if only "under lawful and proper conditions of confinement and treatment and "for a reasonable period of time."

More broadly, the court suggests that habeas rights will be circumscribed, perhaps even denied, if and where the government demonstrates that such proceedings would "divert the attention of military personnel from other pressing tasks," or where the government presents "credible" arguments that the proceedings would "compromise[]" a "military mission." Moreover, the court suggests that habeas rights would be more limited or dubious where adjudicating the petition "would cause friction with the host government."

Andy McCarthy has a very good article on the subject:

Long ago, our lawmakers enacted a statutory scheme to control pretrial detention in federal criminal cases. It is codified at Section 3142 of Title 18, United States Code. In cases involving the most serious charges and defendants with the most vicious criminal histories, Congress has directed courts to grant the government a presumption in favor of detention. In detention hearings, furthermore, the law permits the parties to proceed by offering hearsay and attorney proffers of evidence; the presentation of witnesses is rare, and needn’t be allowed at all. In addition, a court considering detention is entitled to rely on any information developed in other proceedings — including on the fact that a grand jury has found probable cause that the defendant committed the alleged crime.

Mind you, that is in civilian criminal proceedings where the defendant is presumed innocent. We have long permitted lengthy periods of incarceration without trial, much less conviction, and this system has repeatedly been upheld in the face of all manner of constitutional challenge.

Obviously, being held as an alien enemy combatant in a terrorist war against the United States is a far more serious matter than even the drug and violent crimes (to say nothing of flight risks posed by foreign defendants) that routinely result in civilian pretrial detention. Thus, Congress could quickly enact a statute requiring the district courts in combatant habeas cases to afford the commander-in-chief a presumption mandating detention. That is, if the government established a rational basis for believing the detainee was an enemy combatant, he would be ordered detained unless the detainee proved beyond a reasonable doubt that he was not an enemy combatant.

Congress could provide for the presentation of evidence by hearsay, proffer, and affidavit — with a directive that the court may not compel the government (particularly, the military and intelligence community) to produce witnesses for testimony in court. It could provide for classified intelligence to be presented to the judge ex parte, with only a non-classified summary provided to the combatant. It could require the court to give deference during wartime to the conclusion of combatant status review tribunals already conducted by the military (allowing judges to disregard those conclusions only upon a showing that the conclusion was irrational — the same standard that compels federal appeals courts, in every single civilian criminal case, to refrain from disturbing a trial court’s findings of fact).

To promote efficiency, since the issues in these cases are likely to be repetitive, Congress could also direct that all petitions be filed in the District of Columbia, with all appeals to the D.C. Circuit and, ultimately, the Supreme Court. Though I would prefer to see the cases directed to a specialized court, it is not practical to expect one could be designed in the short-term. We need a solution that can be implemented tomorrow.

If Congress were to enact such a law, patterned on the pretrial detention statute but properly imposing greater burdens on petitioners who are alleged to be wartime enemies rather than mere criminals, the result would be that only the most egregious miscarriage of justice would result in a finding that a detainee was not an enemy combatant. That is as it should be — especially given that (a) alien enemy combatants have never before been afforded such rights and (b) only four years ago, in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, the Supreme Court itself said judicial deference to the commander-in-chief was due even if an alleged combatant was an American citizen.

We must, naturally, anticipate that the federal courts will find the occasional, egregious miscarriage of justice. Thus Congress should also provide for what would happen to such a combatant. In short, he should be detained until he can be either repatriated to his native country or sent to a country of our choosing which is willing to receive him; under no circumstances should he be released into the United States.

Read the whole thing. But also consider this ominous note from Power Line:

[W]hat the Court's majority overturned was not a decree by the Bush administration, it was a statute that was passed by large majorities in both the House and the Senate in 2006. The Military Commissions Act passed the Senate on a 65-34 vote, with Democratic Senators Carper, Landrieu, Lautenberg, Lieberman, Menendez, Nelson (Neb.), Nelson (Fla.), Pryor, Rockefeller, Salazar and Stabenow voting with the Republicans. Likewise, in the House 34 Democrats joined with 219 Republicans to pass the statute. In Obama's view, were all of these Democrats part of an attempt to "create a legal black hole at Guantanamo?" Evidently so.

This incident should remind us why Obama is regarded as the most liberal member of the Senate, a back-bencher who, unlike many of his colleagues, virtually never reaches across the aisle to cooperate with Republicans on any issue, large or small.

(crossposted at Pro Cynic and Circle City Pundit)

I do not want anyone to believe

that I am unhealthily fixated on the oil price issue. So in order to make myself seem more well-rounded, I present several randomly-selected pictures that have nothing to do with oil prices and the negative impact of modern environmentalism thereon.

Here is the friendly xenomorph from Alien (actually, in this case Aliens), mugging for the camera.


Here is my favorite actress, the lovely and talented Emily Deschanel from Bones, who probably disagrees with me on oil prices (Dang it! I wasn't going to talk about that, was I ...)


Here is a rare picture of the aircraft carrier USS Hornet, from the stern of the heavy cruiser Northampton, while she was trying to tow the disabled carrier during the battle of the Santa Cruz Islands in 1942. It didn't work out so well.



(crossposted at Pro Cynic and Circle City Pundit)

Rude and obvious

James Lileks has his own masterfully written take on oil prices. Italicization in original:

I feel as if Bizarro World is slowly leaking into ours, and one day we will see Superman and note he has that ugly grey faceted skin, and wonder when that happened. Well, we just didn’t pay attention to the signs. In Bizarro World, illegal foreign combatants are granted constitutional rights; in Bizarro World, people react to high gas prices and energy shortfalls by refusing to boost domestic capacity. You have John McCain nixing ANWAR drilling and lending his sonorous monotone to cap-and-trade; you have Obama noting that gas prices rose too quickly, which presumably means he would have favored a gradual rise to ninety-buck-a-tank fill-ups; you have Speaker Pelosi vamping on the popular memes:

1. We have oil men in the White House. Perhaps she meant to imply that they’re more concerned with their old industry connections than the consumer, the rate of inflation, the impact on the economy, their legacy, and the health and status of the United States. Goes without saying, I guess. It is a hardy perennial. Remember, there are three men in Texas who have a lever that controls the price of oil, and they should be brought in for a stern grilling before Congress. On an unrelated note: Hugo Chavez is a puckish figure whose appeal to the downtrodden is understandable, given American meddling in the region; Iranian state oil production is irrelevant to everything, Saudi Arabia can only be discussed in context to its ties to the Bush family, and Mexico's oil industry is off-limits as well, lest it somehow bolster the arguments of xenophobic racists who oppose unlimited immigration. Pay no attention to the oligarchs behind the curtain. Look at the cartoon figure with the ten-gallon hat and the steer-horns on his stretch Cadillac. Boo! Hiss! Goldstein!

2. We have 2 percent of the reserves and use 25 percent of the reserves. Perhaps she meant to imply that the oil should be distributed across the globe by population, and the most dynamic, elastic, productive economies should be starved to satisfy some happy hand-holding UN-approved kumbaya concept of transnational fairness, and YOU should be putting gas into a bottle and sending it to Zimbabwe. As I’ve said before: it’s as if a world government was formed 20 years ago, and the United States has not only failed to live up to its moral obligations, it has actively thwarted and disregarded the law. We’ve seceded. Internationally speaking, we’re Dixie.

3. We cannot drill our way out of this. We cannot, in other words, deal with shortages by increasing the supply. Presumably because it wouldn’t have an immediate effect? Well, then, there’s no point doing anything about global warming today or tomorrow, is there. Because it won’t forestall the inevitable day when we run out. Granted. So why eat today? You’ll be dead eventually. Because it won’t be enough in the end to depress prices enough. Yes, three-buck-a-gallon gas, five-buck-a-gallon: six of one, nine dozen of the other, especially if you’re being limo’d everywhere. Because we have oilmen in the White House boo hiss. Well: let’s look at who’s making out bandit-wise. According to this page, the profit in California on a gallon of gas is 51 cents – which includes, for some bizarre reason, “refinery costs.” Only government can make a chart that lumps costs into profits into the same wad. Total California taxes and fees: 52 cents. Add the Federal tax, and it’s 60 cents.

Let’s go back to that “refinery costs and profits” part: the site defines it thus:

The costs associated with refining and terminal operations, crude oil processing, oxygenate additives, product shipment and storage, oil spill fees, depreciation, purchases of gasoline to cover refinery shortages, brand advertising, and profits.

If you’re lumping profit in with the costs associated with government mandates, like oxygenate additives, well – it’s almost as if they’re trying to separate profits from costs to make the former look bigger.

And there’s another category:

Distribution Costs, Marketing Costs, and Profits: The costs associated with the distribution from terminals to stations and retailing of gasoline, including but not limited to: franchise fees, and/or rents, wages, utilities, supplies, equipment maintenance, environmental fees, licenses, permitting fees, credit card fees, insurance, depreciation, advertising, and profit.

So I’m guessing the profit isn’t 51 cents. But whatever it is, it’s too much! I’ve heard some people yearn for a windfall profits tax that would reinvest the money in alternative energy, or rebate it back to the consumer. Fine. Apply that to your business. Here’s the acceptable profit level. You don’t get to make any more than that. If you do, the state will confiscate the property and divide it among your competitors, or give it back to your customers. Have a nice day. But oil is different. It’s necessary! So is food. Farmers are doing well. Let us therefore set the acceptable level for corn farmers, take away the excess profits, invest it new forms of sweeteners or biofuels farmers cannot yet produce, and give people rebates for Splenda to compensate for the price of high fructose corn syrup.

It’s not that we cannot produce any more oil; you suspect that some are motivated by the belief, perverse as it sounds, that we should not. We should not drill 50 miles off shore on the chance someone in Malibu takes a hot-air balloon up 1000 feet and uses a telephoto lens to scan the horizon for oil platforms. Also, there are ecological concerns. (The ocean is a wee place, easily disturbed.) There’s something else that may well be my imagination, but I can’t quite shake the feeling: high gas prices and shortages of oil make some people feel good. This is the way it has to be. Oil is bad. Cars are bad. Cars make suburbs possible. Suburbs are the antithesis of the way we should live, which is stacked upon one another in dense blocks tied together by happy whirring trains. So some guy who drives to work alone has to spend more money for the privilege of being alone in his car listening to hate radio?

Good.

Yes, I know, projection and demonizaton and oversimplification. But this is true: there’s a side of the domestic political structure that opposes expansion of domestic energy production, be it drilling or nukes or more refineries.

The long-term upside seems indistinct, and the short-term downside seems rude and obvious.

(h/t: Instapundit; crossposted at Pro Cynic and Circle City Pundit)

The Exeter has been found

This is cool:

The cruiser HMS Exeter, best known for its valiant role in the Battle of the River Plate when it hunted down the pride of the German navy, the Admiral Graf Spee, was located by divers searching the Java Sea.

The British vessel was sunk on March 1, 1942, when, with two escorts, the destroyer HMS Encounter and the American destroyer Pope, it was intercepted by nine Japanese warships.

All three Allied ships were lost in the action. The wreck of Encounter, which had passed up a chance to escape by turning back in a brave but futile attempt to protect Exeter, has also now been located.

The two warships were found in Indonesian waters, at a depth of about 200ft, 90 miles north of Bawean Island, and 60 miles from the sinking position given by Exeter's captain, Oliver Gordon, in a book written after the war.

Exeter's discovery follows a six-year search and means the last of the Second World War's most celebrated warships sunk in the conflict has now been located.

Examinations of the wreck have provided historians with vital new insights into the ship's final battle, one of the war's least known naval encounters.

The divers, for instance, found many of its guns were at low elevation, indicating how close in the Japanese ships had got, and the extent to which Exeter was encircled and outgunned.

They also discovered the extent of the damage to the ship, testimony not only to the ferocity of fire it faced in its final moments but also to its remarkable resilience and ability to withstand enemy attacks that had served it well in its monumental battle against the Graf Spee earlier in the war.

In December 1939, Exeter had been part of the "hunting group" of three Allied warships that cornered the larger, more powerful Graf Spee off the coast of South America.

Exeter took the brunt of Graf Spee's salvoes, drawing fire away from the cruiser Ajax and the New Zealand cruiser Achilles, which were fitted with less armour.

More than 60 of Exeter's crew were killed and 33 wounded as it was hit more than 100 times in 22 minutes. After sustaining serious damage, Exeter was forced to withdraw.

However, one of its shells was able to exact some retribution. So while Exeter limped to the Falkland Islands for repairs, the damaged Graf Spee, unable to outrun its pursuers, headed into the neutral Uruguayan port of Montevideo.

Misled by the British about the number of ships now waiting, the Graf Spee's captain, Hans Langsdorff, scuttled his ship outside the harbour. Its sinking was an important propaganda success for Britain and the country's first victory of the war.

It also removed a lethal threat to the Allies' merchant ships and allowed warships to be deployed elsewhere.

Exeter underwent an extensive refit and was later sent to the Far East.

On February 27, 1942, it was badly damaged in the Battle of the Java Sea, the largest surface engagement since Jutland in the First World War. It was ordered to a friendly port for repairs with its two escorts, but they were intercepted by a much larger Japanese fleet.

In the ensuing action, called the Second Battle of Java, Exeter was damaged by gunfire and a torpedo. It lost power and was finally scuttled by its crew.

From HMS Exeter, about 50 were killed, while 650 were made prisoners of war. Of these, 152 would die in Japanese PoW camps. About eight of HMS Encounter's crew were killed, and 149 were made prisoner, of whom 38 would die in captivity. The wreck of the Pope, on which one crew member was killed, has yet to be found.

As you know, the 1942 Netherlands East Indies Campaign has always been one of my favorite historical topics. if you think the Iraq War was bad you haven't read about early World War II in the Pacific. Defeat after defeat after defeat for the US, British, Australians and Dutch.

At some point, I will do a major post on the Battle of the Java Sea and its aftermath, but I will try to give you a sense of what happened to the Exeter.

The Allies (who had combined their forces in what was called the American, British, Ducth and Australian Command -- ABDACOM) had made a last ditch attempt to stop the Japanese invasion of the last holdout island in the Netherlands East Indies -- Java. The result was the Battle of the Java Sea on February 27, 1942, a disastrous defeat for the Allies. There was no saving Java now. The best the Allies could hope for was to salvage their few remaining forces and escape the Malay Barrier. Easier said than done, becauee the Japanese were closing off the routes out of the Indies.

The Exeter had escaped the Battle of the Java Sea with serious engine damage; the tide of battle turned against the Allies when the Exeter took a hit in her engine room from the Japanese heavy cruiser Haguro that reduced her speed to 12 knots. She had made her way to the Dutch port of Soerabaja (Surabaya). But her engines could not be made entirely operable; her top speed would be 23 knots.

The Allied command grouped Exeter with another survivor of the Jave Sea battle, the British destroyer Encounter, and the US destroyer Pope, who had missed the battle due to a breakdown in her boilers. (In the Dutch East Indies Campaign, the Allies were snakebit by an unusually large number of operational acccidents and serious mechanical breakdowns.)

Their orders were to loiter in the Java Sea south of Borneo and make a dash through the Sunda Strait on the western end of Java towards the Indian Ocean and freedom. It wasn't a very good plan, but the alternative was going through the Bali or Bandoeng/Lombok straits east of Java. Both bodies of water were thought to be too shallow for the Exeter and too close to Japanese airfields.

But loitering in the Java Sea with complete Japanese command of the air was hardly better. The Exeter and her group were spotted on the morning of March 1. Japanese Admiral Takagi Takeo, the victor of the Battle of the Java Sea (almost in spite of himself), was west of the Exeter's position and moved to intercept with his heavy cruisers Nachi and Haguro and two destroyers. Takagi was concerned about his ammunition supply, mostly depleted during the previous day's battle, so he kept watch with float planes while calling for reinforcements.

Those reinforcements came in the form of the heavy cruisers Ashigara and Myoko and two destroyers. Once O.L. Gordon, the captain of the Exeter and OTC for the Allied force, saw the two new cruisers, he reversed course to the east. Ashigara and Myoko gave chase on a converging course. Nachi and Haguro did likewise, assuming a converging course from the south. Both groups of Japanese cruisers looking to pinch the fleeing Allied ships, and with the Exeter limited to 23 knots, the Japanese slowly gained ground.

Outgunned, the Allies tried to fight back. Pope and Encounter expended their torpedoes trying to drive off their tormentors. Exeter tried to fight them off with her main armament, but her gun director was damaged, making aiming difficult, and her gunfire was ineffective. Finally, the Japanese scored a hit on Exeter's engine room (again) that resulted in an almost complete loss of power.

With her speed reduced to 4 knots, escape was hopeless. Gordon ordered his escorting destroyers to flee. The Exeter was surrounded by the Japanese, who kept up a relentless pounding with gunfire. The Exeter's wreck, with the low elevation of the guns, confirmed just how close the Japanese were, and how the Exeter's 8-inch rifles were engaged in a direct fire shootout as the end approached. With the situation hopeless, Gordon ordered the cruiser scuttled. The flood walves were opened just before the Japanese hit Exeter with a finishing torpedo.

A rather famous photograph symbolic of the dreary Allied fortunes in early 1942: British cruiser Exeter sinking in the Java Sea on March 1, 1942. Taken from a Japanese float plane.

Encounter, who was was very close by during this whole, um, encounter, didn't get too far, and she too succumbed to fire from the Ashigara and Myoko.The ordeal of the Pope, further away from the Exeter than Encounter, was heart-breaking.Under the able seamanship of her CO, W.C. Blinn, the Pope made a game attempt at escape to the east. Ashigara and Myoko gave chase. Normally, even an old destroyer like the Pope would have a good chance to outrunning a cruiser, but the Pope had a few issues.

The destroyer was old, of World War I vintage, and didn't really even look like the destroyers of the World War II era, with her four stacks and lack of armor for her main guns. The pace of the actions in the Indies, the lack of repair facilities and constant Japanese air raids had denied essential maintenance to the Allied ships, which came with a steep price. For Pope, part of that price had come when she sprung a leak in her hot well, which provided feed water to her boilers. She had to stay in Soerabaja to repair the leak, under threat of Japanese air raids, and was unable to join the Allied forces in time for the Java sea battle. More breakdowns would come.

Takagi's request for reinforcements also netted him some additional air power. His cruiser float planes -- the decisive factor in the Battle of the Java Sea -- kept tabs on the Pope and directed gunfire from the Ashigara and Myoko. But now these float planes were joined by seaplanes from the tender Chitose and even bombers from the light carrier Ryujo.

Pope's flight was hampered when a firewall collapsed, necessitating shutdown of one of her boilers. Chitose's aicraft took to bombing the destroyer. The Pope tried to fend off this new threat, but her lone 3-inch antiaircraft gun failed, leaving only her less effective machine guns.

Still, Pope's maneuvering and antiaircraft fire was not ineffective. Chitose's planes did not score a hit on the Pope with their bombs, but they might as well have.

One bomb exploded close off the port side. The concussion ruptured the Pope's hull and caused flooding. Worse, the concussion also knocked the port propeller shaft out of line, the extreme vibration necessitating its shutdown. Pope's speed was cut in half and she became sluggish to the helm.

Aircraft from the Ryujo made their bombing attack, but expert handling by Blinn resulted in the Pope not sustaining any hits, in spite of her gravely weakened state. But the flooding continued -- damage control could not contain it without cutting speed further, which would enable the Ashigara and Myoko to overtake the destroyer easily. As it was, with her speed cut in half, the two cruisers were already gaining.

Seeing that the Pope could not be saved, Blinn ordered the destroyer scuttled. The flood valves were opened and two demolition charges set. As the crew abandoned ship, the Ashigara and Myoko arrived and took the Pope under shellfire.

The US destroyer Pope sinking by the stern in the Java Sea March 1, 1942 under gunfire from the Japanese cruisers Ashigara and Myoko. Note the four stacks, characteristic of the World War I-era class of destroyers of which Pope was a member. Taken from the Japanese cruiser Ashigara, who filmed the action.

The Pope sank at 2:10 pm, the last Allied ship sunk in the Java Sea. As the story states, the wreck of the Pope has not yet been located.

America Under President Jeff Cox

Doing nothing about oil prices

Via Power Line, House Majority Whip Roy Blunt put together a chart detailing the differences in oil policy between the Democrats and the Republicans:


Looks pretty cut-and-dried. But will they actually do anything to lower these outrageous prices?

Nope.

The Wall Street Journal:

Anyone wondering why U.S. energy policy is so dysfunctional need only review Congress's recent antics. Members have debated ideas ranging from suing OPEC to the Senate's carbon tax-and-regulation monstrosity, to a windfall profits tax on oil companies, to new punishments for "price gouging" – everything except expanding domestic energy supplies.

Amid $135 oil, it ought to be an easy, bipartisan victory to lift the political restrictions on energy exploration and production. Record-high fuel costs are hitting consumers and business like a huge tax increase. Yet the U.S. remains one of the only countries in the world that chooses as a matter of policy to lock up its natural resources. The Chinese think we're insane and self-destructive, while the Saudis laugh all the way to the bank.

[...]

Democrats are going to have to grow up. The oil-rich areas they want to leave untouched are accessible with minimal environmental disturbance, thanks to modern technology. Hurricanes Katrina and Rita flattened terminals across the Gulf of Mexico but didn't cause a single oil spill. As for anticarbon theology, oil will be indispensable over the next half-century and probably longer, like it or not. Airplanes will never fly on woodchips, and you won't be able to charge your car with a windmill for some time, if ever.

Public anger over fuel prices could hardly come at a worse time for the GOP, since voters tend to blame a flagging economy on the party that occupies the White House. But the opportunity is to offer a reform alternative to Barack Obama and the high-price energy status quo he embraces. It looks like the public is increasingly ready for . . . change. In a May Gallup poll, 57% favored "allowing drilling in U.S. coastal and wilderness areas now off limits." Just 20% blamed the increase in gas prices on Big Oil, like Mr. Obama does.

Recent weeks have seen some GOP stirrings on Capitol Hill, but John McCain has so far refused to jettison his green posturings, such as his belief in carbon caps and his animus against offshore development. A good reason for a rethink would be $4 gas. At present, it is charitable to call Mr. McCain's energy ideas incoherent, and it may cost him the election.

We're all doomed.
(Crossposted on Pro Cynic and Circle City Pundit)

Another proud moment

for your federal courts. Boumediene v. Bush. What a disgrace.

Mark Levin:

While I am still reviewing the 5-4 decision written by Anthony Kennedy, apparently giving GITMO detainees access to our civilian courts, at the outset I am left to wonder whether all POWs will now have access to our civilian courts? After all, you would think lawful enemy combatants have a better claim in this regard than unlawful enemy combatants. And if POWs have access to our civilian courts, how do our courts plan to handle the thousands, if not tens of thousands of cases, that will be brought to them in future conflicts?

It has been the objective of the left-wing bar to fight aspects of this war in our courtrooms, where it knew it would have a decent chance at victory. So complete is the Court's disregard for the Constitution and even its own precedent now that anything is possible. And what was once considered inconceivable is now compelled by the Constitution, or so five justices have ruled. I fear for my country. I really do. And AP, among others, reports this story as a defeat for "the Bush administration." Really? I see it as a defeat for the nation.

Former prosecutor Andy McCarthy:

I was going out the door this morning when I learned about the Supreme Court ruling — that the American people had lost to radical Islam, 5 to 4.

Roger Kimball:

Justice Kennedy and his left-liberal confreres have gone far in converting the constitution into a suicide pact. Today’s decision is historic. Please, remember the men and women who signed on to it: Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David Souter John Paul Stevens, and Kennedy. Remember their names. They have just made you, your family, and your country more vulnerable to attack by theocratic fanatics bent on the destruction of Western civilization.

Justice Kennedy’s opinion will appeal to all of the sophisticated “why-can’t-we-all-just-get-along” spokesmen for peace and comity who crowd the parliaments of the EU and, in the Democratic Party of the United States, are vibrating with anticipation at an Obombamanic attack on the U.S. in November. (Please pardon the unorthodox spelling.) Personally, I believe that the instinct for self-preservation is sufficiently alive and well enough among most voters to prevent the dégringolade that an Obama administration would mean for this country. Most people, I have to believe, do not want to see themselves taxed into penury. They do not relish the prospect choking the engine of prosperity with stupid bureaucratic over-regulation. They object to the erosion of individual liberty in the name of political correctness. They rebel at the sentimental invocation of “change” when it is nothing more than an empty epithet designed to reinforce the prerogatives of a big-government, anti-freedom elite.

Michelle Malkin:

What’s that sound? The thunder of left-wing lawyers and Gitmo detainees jumping up and down for joy at the Supreme Court’s ruling this morning. Brace yourselves. Dissenting Justice Antonin Scalia warns that the ruling “will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed” and concludes “The Nation will live to regret what the Court has done today. I dissent.”

Chief Justice John Roberts says the rule of law and the American people have lost out–and with this ruling, we “lose a bit more control over the conduct of this Nation’s foreign policy to unelected, politically unaccountable judges.”

Power Line:

It was predictable in the sense that the majority opinion extrapolates on the Court's war-on-terror jurisprudence. Stepping back a bit, however, the decision appears bizarre. I am not an expert in the applicable law and tentatively offer the following observations, subject to correction, without getting into the fine points of habeas doctrine debated in the Court's opinions in the case.

1. What Warren Court liberals did for the common American criminal, the Court's current liberals are in the process of doing for foreign terrorists captured or held by American forces around the world.

2. The extension of constitutional rights to detainees at Guantanamo is premised on the government's de facto sovereignty over the territory. The Court leaves the concept of de facto control open for further development in the future on a case-by-case basis. The Court has opened the floodgates to a vast and untoward expansion of federal jurisdiction on behalf of foreign terrorists.

3. In setting up the detention facility at Guantanamo, the Bush administration reasonably relied on the Court's decision in Johnson v. Eisentrager. In Eisentrager the Court held that nonresident enemy aliens have no right to seek relief in the federal courts in wartime. The Court does not expressly overrule Eisentrager in Boumediene, but Boumediene cannot fairly be reconciled with Eisentrager. The distinctions drawn by the majority between Eisentrager and Boumediene in part IV of Justice Kennedy's opinion are remarkably unpersuasive. The unpersuasiveness of this crucial part of the opinion shows the Court, rather than the Bush administration, to be acting arbitrarily.

4. The Court treats the difficulties created by its assertion of federal jurisdiction onto areas other than battlefield with a blasé carelessness that is shocking. "[C}ivilian courts and the Armed Forces have functioned along side each other at various points in our history," Justice Kennedy writers. "The Government presents no credible arguments that the military mission at Guantanamo would be compromised if habeas courts had jurisdiciton to hear the detainees' claims." No problem!

5. Justice Kennedy concedes: "It is true that before today the Court has never held that noncitizens detained by our Government in territory over which another country maintains de jure sovereignty have any rights under our Constitution. But the case before us lacks any hisotorical parallel." Why? Because the war "is already among the longest wars in American history." Why is that relevant? In past wars, were the Court's wartime decisions premature? Should they have been held in abeyance so that the duration of the conflict could be ascertained? The Court of course does not even explore the issue.

6. "The detainees, moreover, are held in a territory that, while technically not part of the United States, is under the complete and total control of our Government." The concept of "complete and total control" is left open for future development by the Court. As Justice Scalia notes in dissent, "it clears a wide path for the Court to travers in the years to come."

7. The Court's decision leaves the government with options to avoid the federal courts. Congress has the power under the Constitution to suspend the privilege of habeas corpus in cases of rebellion or invasion (but one is unsure whether that too is subject to judicial review). The military may be able to hold detainees abroad in territory that leaves less argument about the de facto control of the United States. The government may turn the detainees over to foreign countries for interrogation or detention.

8. Other of the Court's opionions in the recent past have imported foreign law into American constitutional law for the purported benefit of American citizens. Boumediene reverses the process, exporting American constitutional law to territory arguably under the de facto control of the United States for the benefit of foreign terrorists.

9. Justice Scalia notes in his dissent that the Court's decision is difficult to reconcile with American history as well as its own precedent:: "The category of prisoner comparable to these detainees are not the Eisentrager criminal defendants, but the more than 400,000 prisoners of war detained in the United States alone during World War II. Not a single one was accorded the right to have his detention validated by a habeas corpus action in federal court—and that despite the fact that they were present on U. S. soil."

10. Boumediene works a vast expansion of the wartime power of the federal courts and, ultimately, of five members of the Supreme Court. It vastly contracts the power of the elected branches of government to provide for the common defense. With respect to the executive in particular, Hamilton's comments in Federalist 69 are suggestive in this context: "Of all the cares or concerns of government, the direction of war most peculiarly demands those qualities which distinguish the exercise of power by a single hand. The direction of war implies the direction of the common strength; and the power of directing and employing the common strength, forms a usual and essential part in the definition of the executive authority." We will have occasion to regret the Court's handiwork in Boumediene for years to come.

UFB. And inexcusable.

At some point, we are going to get a court decision that is simply so outrageous and not based in law that the executive will simply reply with, "You've made your ruling. Now enforce it." With the people loudly supporting such a move. And the courts will only have themselves to blame. You abuse it, it you lose it. And they have abused it here.

(Crossposted on Pro Cynic and Circle City Pundit)

Where have I been?

Here:


To paraphrase Harry Doyle, in case you haven't noticed -- and judging by the attendance you haven't -- the Pirates have won a few games here and there and are threatening to climb out of the cellar.

I love it when ... something ... comes together ...

There are some rather curious things concerning Pakistan right about now. Potentially good. Possibly related.

First (via The Corner) there was a suspicious missile strike inside the tribal regions of Pakistan. Unfortunately, it was not a nuclear missile, but rather from an Imperial probe droid ... er, Predator.

(Wouldn't it be great if we actually had Imperial probe droids? And wouldn't it be great if they brought beer? Really great beer, like Keystone and Keystone Light ...)

No other details available on this strike, but this was not the only recent missile strike in the area, either. That the Pakistani government is mentioning this at all is rather interesting by itself.

Meanwhile, in Iraq (via Hot Air), the Iraqi sheik whose militia helped the US drive al Qaida out of Anbar province is offering to go to the Afghan-Pakistani border areas that are thought to be home to Usama bin Laden and help turn the natives against him.

Like I said, curious. I can't definitively say what it all means, if anything, or if these events are connected.

(crossposted at Pro Cynic and Circle City Pundit)

And now for something completely different

Anybody want to watch Jeremy (not Kelly) Clarkson demolish a Toytoa Prius?

Literally?



Really, now, the Toyota Prius has become the automotive industry's version of the bicyclist. First, it is a horrible car, defined by the three "U's" -- unsafe, underpowered and ugly. You can usually find them on freeways driving well under the posted speed limit, often in the left lane, with the drivers having a smug look on their faces.

(And before all y'all give me a lecture on speeding and gas mileage, going at 55 mph with my 6-speed manual transmission keeps me in a high fifth gear at 1900 rpm, where speeding up to 65 enables me to shift to a low sixth at 1400 rpm. Short story long: I use less gas at 65 than I do at 55. So these sanctimonious degenerates actually cost me in gas mileage.)

Which is the real problem with the Prius. It is not so much a car -- it fails too miserably at that task to qualify -- as it is a statement, a statement that "By driving this ugly POS with an engine that makes a Lawn Boy look like a Lamborghini, I care more about the environment than you do, therefore I am a better person than you are."

Which is pretty much the same thing you get from bicyclists you see on city streets and even major thoroughfares, which to bicyclists means they don't have to abide by normal traffic laws. Running red lights, weaving in and out of cars and intentionally obstructing traffic is the norm.

Add a motor to that bike, and you get a motorcycle. But add two more wheels and you get a Prius. Notice I did not say add a motor and two wheels and you get a Prius, because the average motorcycle has more power than a Prius. So does the average moped ... ATV ... scooter ...

My problem with Clarkson's review here is that he does not go far enough. Why stop at a machine gun? The Prius was still recognizable. I was thinking more along the lines of a rocket-propelled grenade ... German 88 mm anti-aircraft gun ... 18.1 inch sanshikidan shell from the battleship Musashi ...

The Toyota Prius is automotive terrorism. Destroying it is a good thing that should not only be encouraged, but savored.

Because if the Prius becomes our only option for driving, then we have failed as a civilization. Then we might as well just give this country back to the Indians.

(h/t: Ace)

Just because

Emily Deschanel.

Yes, I just watched my TiVo'd season finale of Bones.

Worse than nothing

Like I said yesterday, our elected leaders continue to do everything to block development of new sources of oil in this country:

You'd think this would be oil shale's moment.

You'd think with gas prices topping $4 and consumers crying uncle, Congress would be moving fast to spur development of a domestic oil resource so vast - 800 billion barrels of recoverable oil shale in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming alone - it could eventually rival the oil fields of Saudi Arabia.

You'd think politicians would be tripping over themselves to arrange photo-ops with Harold Vinegar (whom I profiled in Fortune last November), the brilliant, Brooklyn-born chief scientist at Royal Dutch Shell whose research cracked the code on how to efficiently and cleanly convert oil shale - a rock-like fossil fuel known to geologists as kerogen - into light crude oil.

You'd think all of this, but you'd be wrong.

Last month, the U.S. Senate's Appropriations Committee voted 15-14 to kill a bill that would have ended a one-year moratorium on enacting rules for oil shale development on federal lands (which is where the best oil shale is located). Most maddening of all - at least to someone like myself not steeped in the wacky ways of Washington - the swing vote on the appropriations committee, U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., voted with the majority even though she actually opposes the moratorium.

"Sen. Salazar asked me to vote no. I did so at his request," Landrieu told The Rocky Mountain News. A Landrieu staffer contacted by Fortune doesn't dispute this, but notes that Landrieu did propose a compromise which Republicans rejected.

Arghh!

She was speaking of U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., who has emerged as the Senate's leading oil shale opponent. Salazar inserted the aforementioned moratorium into an omnibus spending bill last December, and in May he proposed a new bill that would extend the moratorium another year.

Salazar's efforts have essentially pulled the rug out from under Shell (RDSA) and other oil companies which have invested many, many millions into oil shale research since the passage of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which established the original framework for commercial leasing of oil shale lands. (Last year, oil shale represented Shell's single biggest R&D expenditure.)

Salazar says he's simply trying to slow things down in order to ensure environmental considerations don't get trampled in the rush to turn western Colorado into a new Prudhoe Bay. But, ironically, his bid to extend the moratorium comes at a time when his fellow Senate Democrats have been blasting Big Oil for not reinvesting enough of their profits into developing new sources of energy.

My own response to Sen. Salazar is not printable in a family blog, but Little Miss Attila has hew own response: No blood for oil. No sweat and tears, either.

Salazar's position is absolutely inexcusable. I've already seen some speculation on the Internet that Salazar is on the take from the Saudis, much like former POTUS Clinton was from Indonesian coal interests. No proof, but you have to wonder.

In the meantime, I suggest calculating all the money you are spending on gasoline and sending a bill for it to Ken Salazar. No reason you should have to pay for his despicable actions.


Of course, we can also sign the petition:



(crossposted at Pro Cynic and Circle City Pundit)

"We're all doomed."

That's the trademark line for my favorite character from Baldur's Gate, Xan. Everyone is going into battle saying things like "Charge!" or "Go get 'em" or even "Butt-kicking for goodness" trying to get the adrenaline going for battle. But the elven wizard Xan chimes in a hopeless tone of voice with "We're all doomed."

I mention this because I cannot remember ever feeling such a sense of dread, of hopelessness as to the future. And I sense it among the electorate as well. The big reason?

Energy prices. Mainly gasoline, but also natural gas and electricity.

After a short pause, a barrel of crude oil spiked to $138 on Friday, causing the Dow to drop 400 points. No end in sight to the rising prices. A gallon of regular unleaded is going for about $3.99 in the Indianapolis area.

People can't afford these gas prices. I go out and I see fewer cars on the roads, fewer people in restaurants, fewer people shopping. I've seen parents trade their own children in for gasoline. I've seen prostitutes sell their services for gasoline,. I've seen carjackers stop cars at intersections and siphon the gas out at gunpoint. I've even seen people sell their own bodily organs for gasoline.

OK, not all of that last paragraph is entirely accurate, but the price of gasoline is the number one issue for Americans today.

And what are our elected leaders going to do about it?

Nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

Well, that's not entirely accurate, either. They are going to do worse than nothing.

Gasoline prices are high for a number of reasons. The plunge in value of the dollar is one factor not to be underestimated (as I have in the past) but the primary reason gas prices are so high is the high cost of crude oil. Speculation has helped drive the cost to these new heights, but a big part of that speculation comes from the risk associated with crude oil -- most of it comes from the most unstable regions of the world. The latest spike came from a thinly-veiled threat by Israel to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities.

Another cause of the high gasoline prices is the lack of spare refining capacity. We haven't built a new refinery in this country in thirty years. We've gotten used to price spikes during the spring and fall as the existing refineries switch between winter and summer blends. We no longer have adequate refining capacity in this country and must import refined gasoline.

Of course, we could tap our own crude oil deposits. We could build new refineries to
help alleviate this problem, but, well, I'll let Gateway Pundit explain:

So why is America NOT energy independent?
Because, over the past 30 years:

Democrats have blocked the development of new sources of petroleum.
Democrats have blocked drilling in ANWR.
Democrats have blocked drilling off the coast of Florida.
Democrats have blocked drilling off of the east coast.
Democrats have blocked drilling off of the west coast.
Democrats have blocked drilling off the Alaskan coast.
Democrats have blocked building oil refineries.
Democrats have blocked clean nuclear energy production.
Democrats have blocked clean coal production.

Democrats sold out to environmentalists.
Democrats set up "No Zones" where they will not allow drilling or development:


(Republican Senator Craig put together these maps)
As Americans pay more for gas than ever under this Congress--
Democrats continue to vote against drilling and oil exploration.

Instead, Democrats believe taxing and suing oil companies will somehow bring down gas prices.

And, democrats do this as Cuba and China drill off our shores.


Democrats like to attack evil American oil companies and block them from drilling off our coasts. It doesn't seem to bother them when China starts drilling for oil in these same areas 50 miles from Key West.

America may have enough reserves to be the #1 oil producer in the world...
But it isn't.
You can thank the Democrats.

And it just keeps getting better and better.

Democrats in Congress have moved to block use of Colorado oil sands, because refining it is "too dirty." Democrats have also attempted to block the use of Canadian oil sands, with partial success.

Dems have blocked drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, on the ground that it might slightly inconvenience rats with antlers (otherwise known as porcupine caribou), for fifteen years now. They keep saying that it would take ten years for the oil from ANWR to reach market. Do the math.

Some estimates of the Bakken formation in Montana and North Dakota state that the formation contains some 400 billion barrels of oil. The joke is that a Barack Obama presidency would result in the formation being declared a national monument with a resulting ban on drilling. Think that's a joke? Remember what Bill Clinton did to the largest source of clean coal in the US in southern Utah -- he declared it a national monument, in part to help a campaign donor from Indonesia.


(cartoon from Red Planet)

One could think that the solution to this problem of the Dems blocking energy independence would be to elect Republicans. Except the Republicans has years to fix this problem with they had both houses and POTUS and did nothing.

Worse, GOP POTUS nominee John McCain agrees with these Dem positions. He opposes drilling in ANWR (though he would leave the drilling issue up to the states) and supports a cap-and-trade system for emissions, with a resulting disastrous increase in energy prices, to combat the nonexistent problem of anthropogenic global warming ... er, "climate change." He will do nothing

So, we have no choice. No one who promises to actually do something to help us out of this mess with gasoline. Might as well buy the T-shirt now.


Because it is so true.

We can still try to send them a message:


Unfortunately, this is another case where our elected leaders are out of touch with the needs of the people. Like illegal immigration, gas prices represent an issue where our elected leaders are willfully ignoring the wishes and needs of the people. They pursue their environmental agenda -- the cap-and-trade was barely stopped on Friday, but no one doubts it will pass with the new POTUS -- over our explicit objections and to our tremendous detriment

They just want to feel like they are good for the environment. We're suffering, but they aren't (see, e.g. Al Gore). They never will. They are too powerful and have too much money. They want to make themselves feel good on our backs.

And we can do nothing about it.

(crossposted at Pro Cynic and Circle City Pundit)

Latest addiction

Lego Indiana Jones.

BTW -- I finished Assassin's Creed. A good game, but strange. And the ending is more confusing than Obama's foreign policy.

Still in it

My Flightless Antarctic Birds Playing Hockey, already down three games to one in the Stanley Cup Finals to the Detroit Red Wings (who are playing at a Hall-of-Fame level), blow a 2-0 lead in Game 5 and go down to the 3-2 in the third period. With the season less than a minute from ending, the Pens in desperation pull goalie Marc-Andre Fleury to insert the sixth attacker. Somehow, Maxine Talbot scores the tying goal with less than 30 second left in the game.

One overtime period follows. Then a second, in which Petr Sykora promises to a reporter that he will score the game-winning goal. WTF?

The Pens get a power play when Rob Scuderi takes a high stick early in the third overtime. Injured Sergei Gonchar limps put onto the ice to quarterback the power play, ineffective all night without him. Not this time, where his passing leads to the game-winning goal, a slapshot that goes short side by a screened Chris Osgood, scored by ... Petr Sykora.

Wow!

We may lose this series -- you have to see this Red Wings team to understand -- but my battered Penguins stood toe-to-toe with the Wings in Joe Louis Arena and came out on top.

Whatever happens, My Flightless Antarctic Birds Playing Hockey, I am proud of you and will wear your colors anywhere, anytime, as real fans are supposed to.

A failure to excommunicate

Time for a little Jeopardy. Remember your answer must be in the form of a question. Take your pick, Pro Cynic.

I'll take "Racist preachers" for $200, Alex.

Your answer is "What we have here is a failure to excommunicate." What say you, Pro Cynic?

Who is Michael Pfleger?

Correct.

And, no, I will not call him by his title "Father." He is not worthy of the title. Time for my ROMAN Catholic Church to go ROMAN on him. Turn him over to the legions, or at least defrock this degenerate.

(crossposted at Pro Cynic and Circle City Pundit)

SHOWTIME!

Unfortunately, my beloved Cleveland Cavaliers were knocked out of the NBA playoffs by the degenerate Boston Celtics. But my longtime (from the early 1980's) second team, is still in, and they have a good history against the green thugs. America's Team:

It seems so simple

Yet so may cannot seem to understand it. We must make them understand:


The new campaign is from American Solutions.