Court to Bloggers: Get Stuffed

Headline: "Troubling Precedent: NJ Court Says Bloggers Are Not Journalists."

The Garden State has a shield law for journalists, meaning the government cannot force reporters or opinion writers to reveal their sources. There is nothing more vigorously defended among journalists than the right to keep secret one’s anonymous sources in service of “the public’s right to know.” The decades-long secret identity of “Deep Throat” in The Washington Post’s Watergate exposés is the standard of that journalistic principle.

But a New Jersey state appellate court last weekruled that a woman named Shellee Hale is not a “real” journalist, but just a blogger, so is not protected by the state’s shield law.

The media's insistence of marginalizing blogging as any form of journalism is deeply rooted. I first wrote about this topic more than seven years ago in "Ambush journalism," detailing the time I was invited to appear on a Nashville radio and TV talk show and was the ambushee.

It seems Teddy Bart and Karlen Evins, the hosts, think that I bash the media on [my blog] site. Teddy told me so, but when I asked him to provide a citation, he couldn't. Karlen was very bothered that (heaven forfend!) non-journalists are able to go onto the internet and write whatever they want to with no accountability! Please pass the smelling salts, I might faint.

Personally, I remember this thing called the First Amendment, which I don't think applies only to journalists. When other people exercise it, it doesn't offend me.

There are at least two pertinent facts here:

Journalism is a job, not a profession. In fact, I have extensive formal journalism training, and I can tell you that there is no particular skill to it that is particularly difficult or unobtainable by average people.

There is no "accountability" of journalists in any meaningful sense. There is no equivalent of a bar exam for journalists. There is no licensing procedure for journalists. There is no minimum education level required, nor any particular special kind of training at all. Fill out an employment application, get hired at minimum wage or better, and presto, you're a journalist. Or just take a pad and pencil, call some folks on the phone and do some interviews, and you're a journalist, too.

I posted a long discussion of how no one can really define what a journlist is because there are simply no accepted standards of training, employment, certification nor accountability. Some of that post follows; I've found that many of the links I used are now dead so I removed them hence.

Don't throw the Code of Ethics of the Society of Professional Journalism at me, because first, no reporter has to join the SPJ unless his employer requires it and second, adherence to the code is entirely voluntary, anyway.

The code is nothing but an agreement by journalists (whatever they actually are) to follow these rules. There is no sanction for not doing so. I presume that the SPJ could revoke your membership in it for failing to follow the code, but you can still be a journalist if you want. Lawyers can be debarred, physicians can be de-licensed, and then neither can practice, but no mandatory sanctions of the like exist for journalists.

Nor should it. The only good answer to free speech with which you don't agree is more free speech. The First Amendment does not privilege "reporters." The First Amendment protects equally everyone's right to publish. News media outlets have no First Amendment rights that you and I or Joe Doaks does not have, nor do they have those rights more urgently.

There is only one real standard of journalistic accountability: the marketplace of ideas. People read or view or listen to sources that they deem reliable and credible (or entertaining, but we were talking about news and commentary). Glenn Reynolds gets 200,000 or so page views per day because people trust his record.

A typical MSM reporter insists that  journalists are "accountable" and bloggers are not. But this is untrue. In fact, bloggers are blessedly free from the very real constraint that tends to inhibit traditional media from pursuing stories: commercial pressures. Matt Welch wrote several years ago (link is now dead) that America's newspapers are catering almost exclusively to the well-to-do in search of advertising dollars, skewing their news coverage in order to achieve reader demographics that attract high-dollar advertisers. As the result,

"Daily newspapers have effectively dropped [coverage of] the bottom quintile or perhaps a third of the population," wrote communications professor Robert McChesney of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, in a chapter of the 2002 book Into the Buzzsaw.

Where is the accountability here? In the United States, media operations are commercial business ventures and that fact overwhelms almost everything else about them. I personally remember well a Time magazine reporter covering Operation Golden Pheasant in 1988. The reporter asked an 82d Airborne Division Spec. 4 some questions, but the trooper declined to answer. The reporter said he should give the interview. "I represent the American people," the reporter said. The Spec. 4 snorted, "No you represent Time-Life, Inc, a publicly held megabusiness." When even a 20-year-old trooper knows where a reporter's highest loyalty lies, it's time for some honesty from the reportage trade.

The only real legal accountability for journalists are libel laws, but those laws apply to bloggers just as much as traditional media.

The myth that journalism is a distinctive profession
Mediachannel.org asked the question, "What is a journalist?" and answered thus:

Most mainstream journalists don't acknowledge how their own ideologies (or the pressures of their employers) guide their work. Yet they are considered "real journalists" because of their insider status and where they stand in the pecking order of some media combine. However, note that in a world of so many diverse publications, multimedia outlets and Web sites, more and more people are defining themselves as journalists and in some instances even reinventing aspects of journalism, as with the Indy Media Centers. Outsiders have always fought to be recognized and validated. The late I. F. Stone, for one, virtually alone, went after the U.S. government's Vietnam polices with a small newsletter. History now considers him a media hero. A new Indian website is battling corruption by exposing it. "Private Eye," a satirical magazine in London, has long been an outlet for unsourced, anonymous insider dish 'n' dirt on the media business. It's not traditional "balanced" reporting but most journalists read it and love it. There are many more such examples.

Is Glenn Reynolds a journalist? I think so, but others may not, and there is no one out there who has the right to say either of us are wrong. Some states have attempted to define what a journalist is by law, but such efforts have very serious problems, not least of which is that the Supreme Court has always held that no citizen enjoys greater First Amendment protections than another. First Amendment protections and rights belong to individuals, not corporations. (See this story, also cited below, which points out, "The First Amendment, said the U.S. Supreme Court in 1972, 'does not relieve a newspaper reporter of the obligation that all citizens have to respond to a grand jury subpoena and answer questions relevant to a criminal investigation.'").

The Vanessa Leggett case is so confounding precisely because there is no accepted social or legal definition of what a journalist is. Philip Meyer, who holds the Knight Chair in Journalism at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, wrote of the Leggett case,

How, for example, could we define membership in the special group without starting down a slippery slope leading first to the licensing of journalists and ultimately to censorship? . . . One of Leggett's contributions could be a definition of a journalist as anyone who declares his or her intent to be one.

Bill Hobbs, who was a bona fide journalist by any definition, had lot more to say about this topic. Excerpt:

No media tool allows for more accountability and more-rapid correcting of error than weblogs. None. And blog articles - which, incidentally, tend to be commentary rather than straight news - are often better referenced than anything you'll read in your local daily. Bloggers won't just tell you what they think about something - they'll provide you links to the relevant source materials, and even links to other blogs that take a different point of view. Rev. Sensing quotes the SPJ "Code of Ethics" in its entirety - and links to it. What are the chances he would deliberately misquote it? Zero. He linked to it - you can read it for yourself. The Internet makes it easy to fact-check bloggers - which creates more pressure on bloggers to get their facts right.

Related: Whom does the First Amendment serve?

Blogs fill oldline journalism with dread

Tennessean columnist Tim Chavez wrote in 2004 that, "My industry is one of the few businesses in which the customer is always wrong."

We Will Remember

It's been a year or so, reckoning by the Jewish calendar, that Noam Levi was killed in a West Bank fire fight. I blogged about it here. This week, family, neighbors, friends, and Noam's brothers and sisters at arms gathered on the hillside above Mitzpe Netofa to mark the first anniversary of his death with the unveiling of his headstone.


In the late afternoon, as the sun's rays bent long and straight, several hundred people gathered to pray, cry, and remember the young man in all of his different identities--son, brother, role model, sarge, company medic, jokester, philosopher, seer of visions, and, most of all, friend. His presence is very much alive.


After leading the assembly in prayer and psalms, his father, Rabbi David Levi, recited the Mourner's Kaddish, the Prayer of Sanctification of God's Majesty and Justice. All the while, soldiers circulated throughout the throng giving bottled water to the thirsty and support to the elderly and the grieving.



It was more than just a memorial service. It was a gathering; a mark of passage for Noam's Boys who grieve mightly the loss of their brother and friend. Son Shmuel had called me earlier in the day to arrange his pick up. He'd been out with his pre-military Mechinah orienteering and had arranged to leave the exercise to attend the services. His rabbeim gave him their blessings. So, I picked Shmueli up on the road to Megiddo and we went together.


For superstitious reasons, I stayed outside the graveyard, but Shmuel entered, standing at the back with the soldiers. When the service graveside broke up, he was surrounded by his friends from the village, Noam's Boys. They greeted each other but there was something missing; more specifically, there was something present that I had never seen before among these 17, 18, and 19 year old men. There was an acknowledgement that now it was their turn to serve: they were moving into Harm's Way before the Heavenly Judge--there was no way to know where they will be at this time next year.

War is coming to this Land--again. It's in the air. Here, the degrees of separation from the front are measured as one or two. The links to those who remember those who have paid the highest price is no more than an additional unit. Everyone gathered here knows that that price is paid in blood.

From there, the throng gathered outside the Levis's house in the village below. In Noam's name, a pathway with benches and private nooks for private conversation had been constructed. We gathered under the trees, looking southward towards Jerusalem. David once told me that when he arrived in Israel, he took one look at the view from here and knew this is where he was meant to live his life.

Here we listened to Noam's friends talk about how much he had done for them and it meant for them to have known him. Many of them are still in the service; others have left.

And then David stepped forward to speak. As is tradition, David had spent the year learning one of the tractates of the Talmud in Noam's memory and honor.



David had learned Tractate Sukkah. To sum up his year of learning, he read a section of the Talmud that he had learned.

There were once two Cushites who attended on [King] Solomon, and these were Elihoreph and Ahyah, the sons of Shisha, scribes, of Solomon.

One day Solomon observed that the Angel of Death was sad. Why, he said to him, art thou sad? Because, he answered him, they have demanded from me the two Cushites who sit here.

[Solomon thereupon] gave them [the two scribes] in charge of the spirits and sent them to the district of Luz [a city wherein the residents never die]. When, however, they reached the district of Luz they died.

On the following day he [Solomon] observed that the Angel of Death was in cheerful spirits. Why, he said to him, art thou cheerful? To the place, the other replied, where they expected them from me, thither didst thou send them!

Solomon thereupon uttered the saying, A man's feet are responsible for him; they lead him to the place where he is wanted.

[Tractate Sukkah 53a]

May God smile upon you, beloved Noam, and grant you peace. Amen.

"Blogoscabbing!"

Why a blogger turned down an offer to write online for the Washington Post: it would have made him a blogoscabber, which sounds like a a pretty good reason to me.

Nazi Arizonans plotting mass murder!

Kudos to Dennis Kneale of CNBC for his column, "Obama is a Bully." He refers to the chief executive's chastisement of Arizona's recently-enacted bill making illegal immigration a violation of Arizona law on top of already being a violation of federal law. The new law "makes it a state crime to be in Arizona illegally and requires police and other law-enforcement agents to check documents of people they reasonably suspect to be illegal."

Kneale says of President Obama's quick-on-the-trigger criticism of the law,

Will someone please rein in our relentlessly hectoring President? ...

The President called the measure “misguided” and all but labeled it un-American. He even ordered the Department of Justice, before the ink on this bill-signing has even dried, to examine the civil-rights “implications” of the new law. Seems like the courts and rights groups could handle that once any problem actually emerges.

Can you remember any other modern President, wagging a finger from on high, so directly and bitterly criticizing a new law passed by any state?

This is hubris at best and ignorance of the Constitution at worst. The U.S. was founded in part on the precept of states’ rights as an important counterweight to a rapacious federal government. Thus a President must step softly here, questioning gently but avoiding rancor and browbeating.

But Kneale's kudos are retracted because he tiresomely hastens to add,

The new state law itself is disturbing, even detestable, and I don’t like it. It forces immigrants to carry with them proof of their legal status and lets cops demand to see the “papers” of anyone (read: any foreign-looking person) to make sure he didn’t sneak into the country. It smacks of Nazis in the Jewish ghetto in Poland.

The Warsaw ghetto under the Nazis? You can never go wrong criticizing the "right" by calling them Nazis. With this one claim, Kneale weakens his argument considerably, maybe fatally, for this single paragraph marks Kneale as an unserious person. Here is the history of the Warsaw ghetto as related by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Between July 22 and September 12, 1942, the German authorities deported or murdered around 300,000 Jews in the Warsaw ghetto. SS and police units deported 265,000 Jews to the Treblinka killing center and 11,580 to forced-labor camps. The Germans and their auxiliaries murdered more than 10,000 Jews in the Warsaw ghetto during the deportation operations. The German authorities granted only 35,000 Jews permission to remain in the ghetto, while more than 20,000 Jews remained in the ghetto in hiding. For the at least 55,000-60,000 Jews remaining in the Warsaw ghetto, deportation seemed inevitable.

Yes, that's exactly the kind of thing that the Arizona legislature and governor have in mind for illegal aliens! We wonder nothing except where they will hide the hundreds of thousands of bodies.

Here is the horror that Kneale says is coming soon to an Arizona town near you:

As Warsaw, 1942, so will be Phoenix, 2010, now that the Nazi

- and let's face it, what other kind is there? - have come to power there. You betcha!

Update: Let me get this straight: Kneale says the president has overstepped his boundaries because states have rights, dadgummit, and the prez needs to lay off because he crossing the federalist-principle line. But one of the rights a state has is the right to be Nazis! Is that what Kneale really means? Because that is what he is saying.

States have rights? Who knew? I thought that issue was rather decisively settled by this guy.

Blogger sucks again

Some time this week, Blogger decided to force users to use Google's Picasa photo-management software to upload photos from their hard drive. Heretofore, clicking the photo icon simply brought up a window where you just browsed to the directory holding the photo, selected it and up it went. Or you could select to  hotlink to the URL of a web-based photo, but that swipes bandwidth from the other site and is generally unethical.

No more. Now you can still hotlink, but if you want to upload a photo off your hard drive, you can select only photos under Picasa's management. No Picasa, no upload. No doubt Google will claim that this feature is more user friendly, but it's not. It is Google friendly, that's for sure.

I do not want to use Picasa. So now I have to upload my graphics files to my server, then hotlink to them inside blogger.

"Well, Sensing" (you may well ask), "why have you not been hosting your blog on your hosting service all along?" Well, I did that before and the host, Bluehost, had a data-protection system as useful as a screen door on a submarine.

Besides, you used to be able to compose on Blogger and FTP to your own host. But Blogger just dumped that feature, too. If you have your own URL for your blog you can tell Blogger to use it instead of XXX.blogspot.com, but the content still resides on Blogger. So former FTPers got this email today:

You are receiving this e-mail because one or more of your blogs at Blogger.com are set up to publish via FTP. Earlier this year we announced a planned shut-down of FTP support on Blogger Buzz (the official Blogger blog), and that deadline of May 1st is quickly approaching. This is the second and final email reminder to migrate your FTP blog from your current URL to a Blogger-managed URL (either a Custom Domain or a Blogspot URL).

Ah well, I should have accepted the invitation to join Pajamas Media when they were first starting up . . . .

Update: Well, as of the morning after (29 April) the photo upload is back to how it was before. I don't know why Blogger changed it back but I am glad they did. Hope it stays that way.

And yet it is simple compared to government health care

MailOnline: "'When we understand that slide, we'll have won the war," said Gen. Stanley McChrystal. He meant this slide:

Free Hulu to go bye-bye?

Well, not exactly, but the buzz is that Hulu may start subscription plan. If you want to watch a TV episode more than five episodes back, you'll have to subscribe.

The subscription plan, dubbed Hulu Plus, would not affect those who regularly catch up with recent episodes of their favorite shows on the Hulu.com website. But anyone who wanted to watch episodes older than the latest five free (advertising-supported) episodes would have to pony up $10 per month, the report says.

And if that isn't bad enough, "Hulu to remove ‘Daily Show,’ ‘Colbert Report’."

Hulu announced Tuesday that Comedy Centralwas pulling its shows from the site beginning March 10. Both "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report consistently rank among Hulu's most watched programs. ...

In a blog post on Hulu, Andy Forssell, senior vice president of content and distribution at Hulu, offered a "fond farewell" to the Comedy Central shows, lamenting their exit.

"In the past 21 months, we've had very strong results for both Hulu and Comedy Central, in terms of the views and revenue we've generated," said Forssell. "After a series of discussions with the team at Comedy Central, though, we ultimately were unable to secure the rights to extend these shows for a much longer period of time."

Services on the side

I posted in March about how the financial featherbeds for government workers gives government workers a new motto: "It's good to be king!" in which I observed,

The result is that government employees are setting government policy in a virtual mode: they do what unions do, collective bargaining, to force job security and benefits.

Fred Barnes provides confirmation:

In San Luis Obispo, California, the county spends more than five times more on pensions than it does on prosecuting criminals, the Sacramento Bee reported. Pensions are 11.2 percent of the budget. “The old joke is that General Motors is just a health insurance company that makes cars on the side,” county supervisor Adam Hill said. “My concern is that the county government is becoming a pension provider that provides government services on the side.” ...

The lofty pay scales and benefits for government workers—as compared with those in the private sector—suggest the idea of “public service” isn’t what it used to be. Once, taking a government job meant a sacrifice in pay and benefits. No more. Most bureaucrats have secure, recession-proof jobs with automatic salary increases, paid leave, and lavish benefits, notably in retirement. And they get to retire earlier than private sector workers.

Take it away, Mel!

Well darn it, it's not my fault!

Ann Althouse takes Marc Ambinder to task for making "an argument about the unfairness of obesity, an argument designed to justify new government policies and spending. Ambinder is disconnecting obesity from individual responsibility and tying it to race and disparities in wealth."

They're both wrong! Now we know that it's not my fault I carry excess avoirdupois! And have a bad memory! It's all genetic!

CHICAGO (Reuters) – A variant of an obesity gene carried by more than a third of the U.S. population also reduces brain volume, raising carriers' risk of Alzheimer's disease, U.S. researchers said on Monday

Fortunately, I am one of the lucky few whose elephantine body is completely transformed by a good hot shower into splendidicity! For proof, go to the jump.

Heh - I told you so!

Friend of the earth!

Yesterday, in my post about the potential affects on global warming of Iceland's volcano, I observed that global warming activists,

... should be happy that airlines have shut down because jet planes spew massive amounts of greenhouse gases into the upper atmosphere. No airlines flying, no such emissions, cooler earth!

Well, that didn't take long: "Green groups point to ash cloud silver lining."

LONDON/OSLO, April 21 (Reuters) - Iceland's erupting volcano has spewed plenty of ash but far less greenhouse gas than Europe's grounded aircraft would have generated.

Carbon dioxide emissions totalled 150,000 tonnes a day in the early days of the eruption, according to Durham University. That compares with 510,000 tonnes per day emitted when planes are flying as normal over the continent.

Hallelujah, Amen!

Alas, the cloud is still around the silver lining because "more cars and buses were on the roads to help stranded travellers and the volcano is emitting a nasty cocktail of toxins."

You just can't win these days.

Is Constitutional government now seditious?

Daniel and I have been piling up posts over the past three or four days and we tend to write long, so I refer here back to my post about Time mag's Joe Klein, who went on the Chris Matthews Show Sunday and "all but accused" Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin of sedition. Guest host John Heilemann added Rush Limbaugh to the short list.

Of course, the real guilt here is that of Klein's "seditious ignorance" of the law. So if you missed why, here it is. Klein and Heilemann think that merely criticizing the government is seditious.

So Richard Fernandez's observation about the Tea Party movement is apt:

But perhaps the most unremarked thing about the Tea Parties is that they’re not calling for a repeal of the Constitution but for its enforcement. They are the complete opposite of what Clinton thinks they are; an affirmation, not a call to create “a different country” that Clinton congratulates himself in attaining. And that may be an advantage. If the world descends into a prolonged and tectonic crisis, the one clear advantage that America will have going into it is a clear and widely shared sense of the legitimacy of its foundational principles. That may not seem like much, but if a crisis impends a widely shared sense of legitimacy will be among the most precious things in a planet gone awry.

Ladies and gentlemen, the ship of state is sailing straight toward the vertical falls of financial ruin. They are not not far off; some say we're already heading over.

This fact has united disparate sets of people in the still-amorphous Tea Party movement. Even Washington Post columnist Robert McCartney, who attended the April 15 Tea Party rally at the Washington Monument, wrote,

Although united in their hostility to big government, the protesters were ideologically varied. ... Many expressed nuanced positions.

And what unites them?

I found that I agreed heartily with the tea partiers on what is perhaps their single biggest concern: that America's swelling government debt seriously threatens our long-term prosperity.

He also found no evidence of seditious intent.

Judging by some portrayals of the tea party, one would think it posed a threat to the community.

Commentators on MSNBC and elsewhere have called the movement racist and likened it to the Klan. ...

Nevertheless, on the whole, they struck me as passionate conservatives dedicated to working within the system rather than dangerous militia types or a revival of the Ku Klux Klan. ...

None was clamoring for civil disobedience, much less armed revolt.

"Someone said in the Revolutionary War, they fired bullets. This time, we're firing politicians," said Clinton Lee, 28, a wedding photographer from Tampa wearing a Thomas Jefferson T-shirt.

Disclaimer: not all the quotes above appear in the same order as in McCartney's op-ed.

The recently enacted healthcare law is a symptom of a deep disease in the federal government, and though it was unanimously opposed by the Republicans in Congress, by no means are the Republicans asymptomatic. Government officials see themselves as our masters rather than our servants. They are making us subjects rather than citizens. What makes this bill the perfect storm to evoke protests is not merely its arrogance, not merely its practically incalculable costs, but its merger of financial insolvency with incorrigible nanny-statism.

Victor Davis Hanson can read the politico-financial tea leaves.

The truth — even if right now we were to go ahead with a return to the Clinton tax tables, raise the caps on income subject to Social Security taxes, have the states keep increasing their sales and income taxes, and apply new Obama surcharges on health care—is that we are still going broke.

Do the math: $12 trillion is a lot of debt ($40,000 for each of us, $200,000 for a family of five starting out in the world—like a second home mortgage in other words). $20 trillion in just eight more years is doom (like two family vacation homes to pay for without the vacation homes to vacation to).

What the great majority of Americans want is Constitutional government - a government with limited powers, guaranteeing and preserving rather than defining the rights of the people, and one that doesn't spend money worse than a drunken sailor.

If that is sedition, then then so be it.

Get ready for global cooling!

To no one's surprise who hasn't been in a coma the last year or so, the US State Dept. has made "unequivocal and primarily human-induced" global warming a platform for conduct of America's foreign affairs. So get ready for more attempts to enter into treaties or international accordances that bring evermore of the way we live under government control.

The outcomes of climate modeling cannot be used to do anything except what is being done with them - promote statist control of ever-expanding slices of national economies to conform to a transnationalist ideology.

If climate science could be used to do anything else, it would already be happening. But have you ever heard of any report of climate science's findings not in connection with expanding the power of the state or trans-state organs?

But there's a problem - two of them, in fact.

This is the first one.

We know that Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano has shut down airline travel across Europe and even some in Newfoundland. And it hasn't stopped spewing - a new ash cloud is heading toward Britain.

Air travel, though, is not the issue of this post. Global warming is, but of course the State Dept. should be happy that airlines have shut down because jet planes spew massive amounts of greenhouse gases into the upper atmosphere. No airlines flying, no such emissions, cooler earth!

Heh, and let's move on. The problem is that there are 34 other, named volcanoes in Iceland. There are volcanoes around most of the world, of course, but right now Iceland's are erupting. And New Scientist warns we should, "Get ready for decades of Icelandic fireworks."

Volcanologists say the fireworks exploding from the Eyjafjallajökull volcano on Iceland, which is responsible for the ash cloud that is grounding all commercial flights across northern Europe, may become a familiar sight. Increased rumblings under Iceland over the past decade suggest that the area is entering a more active phase, with more eruptions and the potential for some very large bangs.

"Volcanic activity on Iceland appears to follow a periodicity of around 50 to 80 years. The increase in activity over the past 10 years suggests we might be entering a more active phase with more eruptions," says Thorvaldur Thordarson, an expert on Icelandic volcanoes at the University of Edinburgh, UK. By contrast, the latter half of the 20th century was unusually quiet. ...

Judging by recent volcanic and earthquake activity, Thordarson and his colleagues believe that Iceland is entering its next active phase and estimate it will last for 60 years or so, peaking between 2030 and 2040.

Meanwhile, a scientific debate is intensifying over How humanity survived its darkest hour - the eruption of a super-volcano in Sumatra 74,000 years ago.

Previous computer models of the eruption had suggested the event was truly cataclysmic - very nearly a doomsday for early humankind. With calculations based on the assumption that Toba belched out 100 times more aerosols than the 1991 eruption of mount Pinatubo in the Philippines, and scaling the environmental effects accordingly, the models suggested global temperatures dropped by about 10 °C following the blast. This supports the idea of a decade-long "volcanic winter" and widespread catastrophe ... .

This theory is under criticism, not because it is claimed by some scientists to be wrong, but overstated. These scientists are saying that instead of emitting 100 times more aerosols than Pinatubo, it was "only" 50 times. What is at issue is,

... the precise cooling effect of the sulphur dioxide released by the explosion. During smaller eruptions, like that of mount Pinatubo, most of the released sulphur dioxide reacts with hydroxide (OH) ions from water molecules in the atmosphere to form particles of sulphate - a highly reflective substance that bounces sunlight back into space before it can warm the Earth.

But the vulcanologists say that a super volcano simply blows out too much sulphur dioxide for it all to react with the relatively limited supply of hydroxide. So instead of dropping global temps by 10 degrees, the challengers of the existing theory say that temps dropped by only 2.5 (both in Centigrade). "This new view is highly contentious," since defenders of the current theory say enough water was lofted into the stratosphere to react with the sulphur dioxides.

Well, the Iceland eruption is no super volcano, thank the Lord, but the cooling effects of volcano on global temps is well understood. Usually, cooling effects are fairly localized rather than global, but "local" can encompass huge geographic areas. Then there was,

TAMBORA (1815) -- Thirty years later, in 1815, the eruption of Mt. Tambora, Indonesia, resulted in an extremely cold spring and summer in 1816, which became known as the year without a summer. The Tambora eruption is believed to be the largest of the last ten thousand years. New England and Europe were hit exceptionally hard. Snowfalls and frost occurred in June, July and August and all but the hardiest grains were destroyed. Destruction of the corn crop forced farmers to slaughter their animals. Soup kitchens were opened to feed the hungry. Sea ice migrated across Atlantic shipping lanes, and alpine glaciers advanced down mountain slopes to exceptionally low elevations.

There is no sign - yet - that Iceland's volcanoes are causing anything like that. But if we have decades of similar volcano activity ahead, global effects (cooling, that is) will certainly follow.

But wait, there's more! Quiet sun puts Europe on ice. It's bad enough that Europe's atmosphere will be full of volcanic emissions, but now Europeans are being told to,

BRACE yourself for more winters like the last one, northern Europe. Freezing conditions could become more likely: winter temperatures may even plummet to depths last seen at the end of the 17th century, a time known as the Little Ice Age. That's the message from a new study that identifies a compelling link between solar activity and winter temperatures in northern Europe.

The research finds that low solar activity promotes the formation of giant kinks in the jet stream. These kinks can block warm westerly winds from reaching Europe, while allowing in winds from Arctic Siberia. When this happens in winter, northern Europe freezes, even though other, comparable regions of the globe may be experiencing unusually mild conditions. ...

Mike Lockwood at the University of Reading in the UK began his investigation because these past two relatively cold British winters coincided with a lapse in the sun's activity more profound than anything seen for a century. ... Lockwood and his colleagues took average winter temperatures from the Central England Temperature dataset, which extends back to 1659, and compared it with records of highs and lows in solar activity. They found that during years of low solar activity, winters in the UK were far more likely to be colder than average. "There is less than a 1 per cent probability that the result was obtained by chance," says Lockwood ... .

Solar activity, especially sunspots, is a major influence of earth's temperatures. A quiet sun combined with decades of volcanic activity in Iceland is going to make Europe a lot colder and for much greater parts of the year than presently. I predict that global temps will fall as well, though not as much as Europe's. (However, I am not making a scientific prediction, just an inference, really.)

Then what will the State Dept. do? That Mother nature, what a joker!

Update: Related:

Threat of new, larger Icelandic eruption looms

REYKJAVIK, Iceland -- For all the worldwide chaos that Iceland's volcano has already created, it may just be the opening act.

Seems a neighboring volcano, Katla, could be awakened by the present tremors. And Katla is covered by a 500-meter-thick glacier, a ready-made source of hydroxides. Katla has exploded every 80 years or so; the last time was 1918.

How to speak Icelandic

Just don't imitate on-air reporters!



(I can't say the word, either...)

Expanding the entitlement mentality

Fortunately, this hasn't happened here (yet?).

The European Union has declared travelling a human right, and is launching a scheme to subsidize vacations with taxpayers' dollars for those too poor to afford their own trips.

Antonio Tajani, the European Union commissioner for enterprise and industry, proposed a strategy that could cost European taxpayers hundreds of millions of euros a year, The Times of London reports.

"Travelling for tourism today is a right. The way we spend our holidays is a formidable indicator of our quality of life," Mr. Tajani told a group of ministers at The European Tourism Stakeholders Conference in Madrid on April 15. Mr. Tajani was appointed to his post by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

The plan -- just who gets to enjoy the travel package has yet to be determined -- would see taxpayers footing some of the vacation bill for seniors, youths between the ages of 18 and 25, disabled people, and families facing "difficult social, financial or personal" circumstances. The disabled and elderly can also be accompanied by one other person. The EU and its taxpayers are slated to fund 30% of the cost of these tours ... .

With Greece in economic collapse because of uncontrollable entitlements, you'd think that the EU's leaders would be reading some tea leaves. But no: when all you know is corporatist socialism, you are on an unending quest to extend the tentacles of the statist octopus. And what better way to do so without protest than to fund the leisure of the proles?

Related:

The entitlement mentality knows no boundaries

The end of entitlements

Of Rome and Persia

Diarmaid MacCulloch, Professor of the History of the Church and Fellow of St. Cross College in the University of Oxford, has a neat piece in the Wall Street Journal on the five best books of blasphemy. At the top of the list is none other than the Talmud.

Is it offensive to include the Talmud on this list? Of course— but the point about blasphemy is that one person's revered sacred book is another one's blasphemous text, precisely because of its solemn claims about ultimate matters. This huge collection of rabbinic sayings and commentary was accumulated over at least four centuries after the final destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in A.D. 70. (I recommend the 35-volume first English translation of the most commonly used Talmud, known as the Babylonian version, edited by the British rabbinical scholar Isidore Epstein.) Medieval European Christians frequently burned the Talmud in public, decrying its supposed abuse of Jesus, but the real reason was that these volumes captured the rich variety of Jewish identity—the laughter of the wise as well as their most profound meditations.

Talmudic literature, often referred to as the Oral Torah, began to be written down about the same time the Gospels were and for the same reason. Rome had decided to impose its Pax Romana on the Jews. The Jews were not happy about that and rebelled. The Romans were not happy about that and moved to crush the rebellion first in the Galilee, then destroying the Temple in Jerusalem, and then stamping out the last throes at Masada.

But the Jews continued their resistance and after a series of uprisings and humiliations of Roman garrisons, Rome's iron fist came down on all forms of Jewish religious and social expression--including those Jewish dissidents who followed Jesus. Fearing that the Oral Torah would be destroyed (Rome was killing off rabbis who taught in public), a convention of sorts was called in the Galilee to write down the Oral Torah. This took thirty years and another 350 years to complete the commentary. The result is Talmud.

Unlike a Greek or Roman philosophical work, the Talmud is pretty much holigraphic--any place you start is pretty much okay since within a short period of study, the thread of Talmud will begin to range over the entire work. The redactors of the Talmud pretty much ensured that to understand any one single piece, the reader is going to have to range far and wide.

As Professor MacCulloch suggests, the Talmud has a range of tones, from law to theology to practical science to metaphysical speculation. Since its inception, however, it has also kept a watchful eye on how the larger political fortunes of nation states fair relative to each other and with the Jewish people. In this, it is not always politically correct. No wonder the Church actively censored its contents searching for and excising sections that were not flattering to its doctrines and treatment of Jews.

Virtually all aspects of Jewish life and thought are covered in the Talmud--holy days, theology, philosophy, laws governing interpersonal relations within the Jewish community, and relations between Jews and non-Jews. Interestingly, the last topic has extensions to the current political situation that the modern state of Israel faces globally.

The Tractate Avodah Zarah, which deals with how to interact with idol worshippers, begins with an interesting apocolyptic story about the End of Days. At the time this section was written, Rome and Persia were locked in a massive war over territorial rights and imperial expansion. They were the super powers of the day and each showed little patience with their Jewish subjects. Times were tough for the Jews living in The Land, as well as those living in Bavel, or Babylonia. What follows is the English translation of the Soncino Talmud, as suggested by Professor MacCulloch.

R. Hanina b. Papa some say R. Simlai expounded [the foregoing verse] thus:

In times to come, the Holy One, blessed be He, will take a scroll of the Law in His embrace and proclaim: "Let him who has occupied himself herewith, come and take his reward."

Thereupon all the nations will crowd together in confusion, as it is said: “All the nations are gathered together” (Isaiah XLIII, 9). The Holy One, blessed be He, will then say to them: Come not before Me in confusion, but let each nation come in with its scribes; as it is said, “and let the peoples be gathered together” (Isaiah XLIII, 9).

Thereupon the Kingdom of Edom will enter first before Him. Why first? Because they are the most important. From where do we know they are so important? Because it is written, ‘And he shall devour the whole earth and shall tread it down and break it in pieces’ (Daniel VII, 23). Rabbi Yochanan says that this refers to Rome, whose power is known to the whole world.

The Holy One, blessed be He, will then say to them: “Wherewith have you occupied yourselves?”

They will reply, “O Lord of the Universe, we have established many market-places, we have erected many baths, we have accumulated much gold and silver, and all this we did only for the sake of Israel, that they might [have leisure] for occupying themselves with the study of the Torah.

The Holy One, blessed be He, will say in reply: “You foolish ones among peoples, all that which you have done, you have only done to satisfy your own desires. You have established marketplaces to place courtesans therein; baths, to revel in them; [as to the distribution of] silver and gold, that is mine, as it is written, ‘Mine is the silver and Mine is the gold, says the Lord of Hosts’ (Haggai II, 8). Are there any among you who have been declaring this? And this is naught else than the Torah, as it is said, ‘And this is the Law which Moses set before the children of Israel’ (Deuteronomy IV, 44).”

They will then depart crushed in spirit.

On the departure of the Kingdom of Rome, Persia will step forth. Why is Persia next? Because they are next in importance. And how do we know this? Because it is written, ‘And behold another beast, a second like to a bear’ (Daniel VII, 5). Rabbi Yosef learned that this refers to the Persians, who eat and drink greedily like the bear, are fleshly like the bear, have shaggy hair like the bear, and are restless like the bear.

The Holy One, blessed be He, will ask of them: “Wherewith have you occupied yourselves?”

They will reply, “Sovereign of the Universe, we have built many bridges, we have captured many cities, we have waged many wars, and all this for the sake of Israel, that they might engage in the study of the Torah.”

Then the Holy One, blessed be He, will say to them: “You foolish ones among peoples, you have built bridges in order to extract toll, you have subdued cities, so as to impose forced labor. As to waging war, I am the Lord of battles, as it is said, ‘The Lord is a man of war’ (Exodus XV, 3). Are there any amongst you who have been declaring this? This means naught else than the Torah, as it is said, ‘And this is the Law which Moses set before the Children of Israel’ (Deuteronomy IV, 44).

They, too, will then depart crushed in spirit.

But why should the Persians, having seen that the Romans achieved nothing, step forward at all? They will say to themselves, ‘The Romans have destroyed the Temple, whereas we have built it’ (Referring to Cyrus's edict. Ezra I, 2).

And so will every nation fare in turn.

So, what does this have to do with Idol Worship, or Avodah Zarah? The Rabbis answer--everything! Anything that comes between the person and God is Avodah Zarah--Anger, Pride, Hatred, Licentiousness, Mockery. The underlying Bible text to this section of the Talmud is the Book of Daniel. In this tract of consolation, the Rabbis are reminding the reader of the transitory nature of rulers and their designs.

Rome and Persia are gone. In their place, after 1700 years have come other states with other claims of regional and world domination. Interestingly, the two leading contenders, Iran and the US, seem hell-bent on either marginalizing or destroying the Jewish "resistance" to their demands and snarls. Ironically, the leaders of both nations profess monotheism but they are clearly in the thrall of pride, passion, and anger.

I once overheard a famous older rap star talking to some young promoters on the A-Train northbound from 59th Street to 125th Street about how the other younger rap stars were filled with posturing and noice. "For them," he said, "it's all about EGO--Easing God Out." Well, you can't get a better definition of Idol Worship than that.

The American Eagle and the Persian Bear might do well to remember exactly Who is in charge, because it isn't them.

Joe Klein's seditious hyperbole

I'm not saying Joe Klein of Time Mag is being seditious. I'm saying that he doesn't know what he's talking about - but that's right up there with "dog bites man" for news value.

Klein thinks that disagreeing with the government through the exercise of First Amendment rights is sedition.

On NBC's April 18 "The Chris Matthews Show," Time columnist Joe Klein all but accused former GOP vice-presidential nominee and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, along with Fox News host Glenn Beck of sedition.

"I did a little bit of research just before this show - it's on this little napkin here. I looked up the definition of sedition which is conduct or language inciting rebellion against the authority of the state. And a lot of these statements, especially the ones coming from people like Glenn Beck and to a certain extent Sarah Palin, rub right up close to being seditious."

As Klein pointed out, the legal definition of sedition is "a revolt or an incitement to revolt against established authority." And, sedition has been declared a felony in Supreme Court opinions, thus making Klein's national television accusation a fairly serious one, one of which New York magazine's John Heilemann agreed with. However, Heilemann added conservative talker Rush Limbaugh to that list.

"... on this little napkin here" seems about as deep as Klein ever gets. But of course, Klein is wrong. Sedition is in fact illegal under Title 18, US Code, which Klein could have found online as easily as I did if only Klein was as interested in accuracy as I am. Here's the title's main page. Drilling down, we read how US law, rather than Joe Klein, defines sedition. First, "§ 2384. Seditious conspiracy," in its entirety (my italics) is this:

If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.

I challenge Joe Klein or any of his ideological allies to point one single sentence of Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck or  Rush Limbaugh that advocates any of these actions. Frankly, I don't listen to Beck (tried twice, couldn't handle it), occasionally listen to Rush and I've already posted my opinion of Palin. But the legal requirement for seditious conspiracy requires that these persons advocate overthrowing or destroying by force the US government. And the conspiracy must be directed at the government itself, not just a selection of enactments of the Congress or policies of the administration.

Next is § 2385. Advocating overthrow of Government, my italics:

Whoever knowingly or willfully advocates, abets, advises, or teaches the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying the government of the United States or the government of any State, Territory, District or Possession thereof, or the government of any political subdivision therein, by force or violence, or by the assassination of any officer of any such government; or

Whoever, with intent to cause the overthrow or destruction of any such government, prints, publishes, edits, issues, circulates, sells, distributes, or publicly displays any written or printed matter advocating, advising, or teaching the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying any government in the United States by force or violence, or attempts to do so; or

Whoever organizes or helps or attempts to organize any society, group, or assembly of persons who teach, advocate, or encourage the overthrow or destruction of any such government by force or violence; or becomes or is a member of, or affiliates with, any such society, group, or assembly of persons, knowing the purposes thereof—

Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both, and shall be ineligible for employment by the United States or any department or agency thereof, for the five years next following his conviction.

If two or more persons conspire to commit any offense named in this section, each shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both, and shall be ineligible for employment by the United States or any department or agency thereof, for the five years next following his conviction.

As used in this section, the terms “organizes” and “organize”, with respect to any society, group, or assembly of persons, include the recruiting of new members, the forming of new units, and the regrouping or expansion of existing clubs, classes, and other units of such society, group, or assembly of persons

Are you seeing a pattern here? Do Klein or his host know that absent the design to "overthrow or destroy" the government "by force or violence" there is no sedition? All I have ever heard, or heard of, these figures urge is for the electorate to vote in new members of Congress this fall. But to Klein, that's sedition.

Back in 2003, the present Secretary of State said this:






But no more. Why? 'Tis simple. Just see Bill Clinton's latest tirade against his party's opposition this week in a speech marking the 15th anniversary of the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building by Timothy McVeigh. Clinton again attempted to connect - without any evidence whatsoever - conservative talk radio and internet sites with the 1995 bombing. But W. James Antle III sees through the ruse:

Protest against a Republican-run federal government, no matter how intemperate, is patriotic. Protest against Democratic-controlled government leads inexorably Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing. No matter how anfractuous the logic, the fact that such protest is now widespread is what has Clinton seriously disturbed.

Back to Joe Klein's belief that mere speech opposing policies of the government is actually sedition. In fact, here is the text of the relevant Congressional enactment that was in fact signed into law by the president:

SECTION 3. Whoever, when the United States is at war, shall willfully make or convey false reports or false statements with intent to interfere with the operation or success of the military or naval forces of the United States, or to promote the success of its enemies, or shall willfully make or convey false reports, or false statements, ...or incite insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty, in the military or naval forces of the United States, or shall willfully obstruct ...the recruiting or enlistment service of the United States, or ...shall willfully utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States, or the Constitution of the United States, or the military or naval forces of the United States ...or shall willfully display the flag of any foreign enemy, or shall willfully ...urge, incite, or advocate any curtailment of production ...or advocate, teach, defend, or suggest the doing of any of the acts or things in this section enumerated and whoever shall by word or act support or favor the cause of any country with which the United States is at war or by word or act oppose the cause of the United States therein, shall be punished by a fine of not more than $10,000 or imprisonment for not more than 20 years, or both. (cite)

This was enacted in 1918 as an amendment to the Espionage Act of 1917. The amendment, above, has become known as the Sedition Act. Who controlled the Congress in those years? Of which party was President Woodrow Wilson? Democrat and Democrat.

More than 2,000 prosecutions occurred under the original and amended Espionage Act, the most famous of which was that of Socialist spokesman and draft opponent, Eugene V. Debs, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Both the Espionage Act and the Sedition Act were repealed in 1921.

And who took office in 1921? That would be Warren G. Harding, Republican, who also pardoned Debs. But 89 years after this tyrannical act was repealed, Joe Klein seems to think that equating mere speech with felonious sedition is the way things ought to be. The more things change, etc.

Related:

"Distrust, Discontent, Anger and Partisan Rancor"

By almost every conceivable measure Americans are less positive and more critical of government these days. A new Pew Research Center survey finds a perfect storm of conditions associated with distrust of government – a dismal economy, an unhappy public, bitter partisan-based backlash, and epic discontent with Congress and elected officials.

Rather than an activist government to deal with the nation’s top problems, the public now wants government reformed and growing numbers want its power curtailed. With the exception of greater regulation of major financial institutions, there is less of an appetite for government solutions to the nation’s problems – including more government control over the economy – than there was when Barack Obama first took office.

"An alarming outbreak of 'regime' amnesia" - the hypocrisy of Klein's host, John Heilemann, who said that Limbaugh was seditious for referring to the "Obama regime." But (my italics),

In the January 19, 2009 issue of New York, Heilemann wrote that Barack Obama had no particular expertise in economics, "So it's ironic, to say the least, that the first defining moment of the Obama regime happens to revolve around matters macroeconomic -- dealing not just with a nasty and potentially prolonged downturn, but with a wrenching, epochal crisis of capitalism on a global scale."

And that wasn't the only time.

Update: Glenn Reynolds asks, "Remember when protest was patriotic?"

Management by Crisis redux

I am just now getting around to reading Jonah Goldbergs's Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning. I am reading the Kindle version on my iPod Touch. I was struck by Goldberg's quotation of "former New Republic journalist T.J. Flynn." The New Republic was then, as now, left of center. But then, so was Roosevelt. Even so, Flynn opposed FDR's New Deal. Goldberg quotes one of his criticism's of the New Deal:

It is born in crisis, lives on crises, and cannot survive the era of crisis. By the very law of its nature it must create for itself, if it is to survive, fresh crises from year to year. Mussolini came to power in the postwar crisis and became himself a crisis in Italain life. ... And our future is charted out upon the same turbulent road of permanent crisis.

This appears at index location 2900-25. In March of last year I wrote that, "Crisis is the Health of the State, especially of the US government since 2001, and most intensively since January 20 of this year. ... We are now living in a permanent state of emergency, according to our Washington overlords."

I followed that up a couple of weeks later by observing that, "Washington does not do crisis management. It does management by crisis."

Then In July I expanded Nick Gillespie's and Matt Welch's admonition that,

bama has mistaken his personal popularity for a national predilection toward emergency-driven central planning. He doesn't get that Americans prefer the slower process of building political consensus based on reality, and at least a semblance of rational deliberation rather than one sky-is-falling legislative session after another.

I have never excluded the Bush administration from this same criticism. As Welch and Gillespie go on to say,

Bush learned the hard way that running government as a perpetual crisis machine leads to bad policy and public fatigue. Obama's insistence on taking advantage of a crisis to push through every item on the progressive checklist right now is threatening to complete that cycle within his first year.

We've been had for so long by so many that we have come to think it is the norm. Whether we will - or can - wake up in time to save what's left of the American ideal is still an open question.

Maybe I should run for president on the same platform as Warren Harding: "Return to Normalcy." Of course, things didn't turn out well for Harding - his cabinet was full of crooks. But his domestic agenda was good for the country, mainly because he set about dismantling the repressive organs of the Wilson administration. (Goldberg makes a compelling case that Woodrow Wilson, whom Benito Mussolini openly admired, was the world's first fascist national leader. The claim is of course somewhat controversial.)

But one thing that recurs over and over when leaders, of whatever stripe, try to expand the power of government over individuals is the theme of looming catastrophe that must be by immediate action. War provides such opportunities in surplus, and even Abraham Lincoln suppressed individual liberties to accomplish his aims.

And if a crisis does not present itself, then one must be created. George Will writing about the Democrats' push for a European-style Value Added Tax (my italics):

A VAT will be rationalized as necessary to restore fiscal equilibrium. But without ending the income tax, a VAT would be just a gargantuan instrument for further subjugating Americans to government.

Believing that a crisis is a useful thing to create, the Obama administration -- which understands that, for liberalism, worse is better -- has deliberately aggravated the fiscal shambles that the Great Recession accelerated.

First the administration dug the hole and now they insist that ever more dirt must be exacted from us to fill it back in. It's a crisis! Will continues:

In the context of this concatenation of troubles, the administration's highest priority was to put an enormous new health care entitlement on the welfare state's rickety scaffolding. Why? Because the liberals' lunge to maximize government's growth depends on quickly creating a crisis that can be called a threat to the entitlement menu, and to the currency as a store of value. Then the public can be panicked into accepting the addition of a VAT to the existing menu of taxes.

The creation of crises is the natural, wholly predictable result of governing from a "fierce urgency of now" mentality. And we have not seen the last of it.

Hamastan rockets

Daniel Jackson posted of his "Plan for Hamastan" (aka, Gaza), which is to become fabulously prosperous by displacing Beirut ( or the remains thereof) as the eastern Med's number one playground of European getaways. This is more than possible because Gaza's beaches are the best in the whole eastern Med.

But instead Hamas, the death cult fascists (literally) who rules Gaza much prefers to keep Gazans in abject poverty and ignorance because that proves effective enough in sucking down Euros and dollars. According to the US State Dept., "The Palestinians are the largest per capita recipients of foreign aid worldwide." So who needs resort hotels in Gaza to get foreign capital?

It's not like investors haven't tried to get the resort business going in Gaza already. In 2008, such a hotel opened. But before long:

Unknown militants stormed a Gaza Strip beach resort early Wednesday and burned it down after handcuffing three security guards, witnesses and security sources said.

The militants siezed three computers from the Ebad al-Rahman resort and fled, the sources added.

The resort opened this summer and is located close to Hamas' internal security headquarters.

So the rockets have ruled. I visited Sederot in 2007 on the same day the town was struck by six Hamas rockets. See my post here. For now, the rocket threat has abated from Gaza. But absolutely no one thinks that Hamas has no rockets any more. They are merely biding their time.

Until what? Well, now that Hezbollah in Lebanon has received long-range, surface-to-surface SCUD missiles from Syria, whatever the wait might be for could come at any time. Hezbollah and Hamas are both Iranian clients.

Hizbullah sources confirmed on Thursday that the group had received a shipment of Scud missiles from Syria, the Kuwaiti paper Al-Rai reported.

But the missiles were old and unusable, according to the sources. Hizbullah also accused Israel of blowing the incident out of proportion to provoke a media ruckus.

“Our organization has many surface-to-surface missiles spread across all of Lebanon, in case Israel attacks the country again,” the Hizbullah sources said.

So Israel's deadly enemies together now have missiles that place every man, woman and child in Israel within range. But don't worry, Daniel! Hezbollah promises that the SCUDs are "old and unusable!" You can sleep well!

A Plan for Hamastan

A friend of mine suggested I drive down to Sderot to photograph the yellow flowers in bloom--after all, he said, there are lots of big fields all over the place. I drove all over and found lots of wheat fields ready for harvest but no yellow flowers.


Then on the way back, I found a field with some dandelions in bloom; while not exactly a field of yellow flowers, I crossed the highway to get closer.


Taking in the scene was staggering since before me was the entire panorama of Northern Hamastan all the way to Ashkelon. Here's the map of the view.


Now, sometimes looking at a map, chart, or sat-image just doesn't do it--you really need to see the lay of the land in order to get the big picture. So, with a few amendations, to the panorama, it is possible to get a nice neat summary of what truly ails Hamastan other than sheer lunacy.


Imagine a giant vacuum cleaner over on the left of the picture ready to suck up everything around it. On the right is a smaller appliance, say a bread maker. In between them is the electrical plant. The electrical plant is in Israel. Can't do a lot these days without plugging something into the wall for some good old AC/DC. There's not a lot of press about the Rotenberg Power Plant and yet it's the linch pin on which everything pivots.

Now, Hamastan faces an interesting choice. Should it continue to toke on its hookha stoking their kerosene breath of revolution, or, perhaps get out while the getting is good. Unlike the West Bank territories, Hamastan has several bankable assets.

First, it owns some of the most incredible waterfront in the world. With Beirut totally out of commission, Middle East and European jet-setters do not have anymore beaches in the region. With all of their inexpensive, unemployed labor, hotel business costs will be really low.

Second, most of their really off the wall criminals, aka "freedom fighters", are currently in Israeli jails. This is an important cost saving device given that if they were roaming about the streets of Hamastan, they'd just have to be arrested anyway.

Third, they hold real Euros in the back with their eternal French citizen hostage--Sgt. Shalit. But they don't have an outlet to run their machine.

So, I offer, free of charge (I do have the complete plan in the top drawer of my desk should it be needed), the following advice.

Guys, it's simple. When the shooting starts this summer, Hamastan is going to become a parking lot. Israel has bigger fish to catch than waste time with you. You don't have the skills to fight professionals and this time, they already know where you have set your so-called traps. There is no need to wait. Talk to your buddies in Paris. The Sarge should be worth a couple of billion Euros in cash and prizes.

Here's what you need to do. Trade the Sarge for a power plant, a new harbor, EU loans to rebuild your waterfront, and a proper border with the Egyptians and the Israelis. Cut the West Bank loose and establish a freeport, tax-free Cayman Island style country. You'll make billions straight up without having to rip off the US taxpayers or steal the UN dry. Okay, it's not as fun and a bit more work; but, it safe.

So, guys, take the money and run while the getting is good. It's a good deal but it won't last forever. And forget about those guys in Israeli jails. When you go public, you don't want the mess and the bad press dealing with them as only you guys can. Know what I mean?
Anyway, it's just a thought.

At The Wall

At the Wall, you can pray with a group or by yourself.



"With all your sons" (Deuteronomy 17:17)


By yourself


With a distant cousin


During a break in your routine



Collect your thoughts

Leave a message

Open your heart; talk to God.

The Wall.

Holding The Line

Arutz Sheva tonight reports that 83% of Israelis support Netanyahu and reject the hint of a US imposed peace.

Israeli Jews overwhelmingly oppose, by a 83-8 percent margin, an imposed peace, according to the poll, conducted by Brain Base (Maagar Mohot) for Independent Media Review Analysis (IMRA).

The results also pull out the rug from any possible intentions by the Obama administration to try to topple the Netanyahu government in favor of a Kadima-Labor coalition. It shows strong support for Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s opposition to President Obama’s demands to stop building for Jews in Jerusalem.

Seventy percent of the respondents said that Prime Minister Netanyahu should not agree to American demands to indefinitely stop building for Jews in parts of Jerusalem that the United States does not recognize as being under Israeli sovereignty.

More significantly, respondents who intend to vote for Labor and Kadima were split 40-40 on the issue of a building freeze, with the remainder on the fence. A building freeze not being backed by even a majority among supporters from the less nationalist parties gives the American government little hope for a change in Israeli policies.

This is hardly surprising. So, it does not look like Rahm is going to get to rule Israel from the White House.

Hammer. Nail. Bang.

As usual, Mark Steyn nails it: "Obama's nuke summit dangerously delusional."

Taxicabs are no fun!

Okay, I did post almost seven years ago on how Parisian taxicabs wrecked the world, but I just don't see how taxis are ruining this man's fun.

Although, really, how much fun can it be to be, well, him?

Racist NBC reporter

Racist NBC News reporter Kelly 'Donnell cannot understand how a black man could possibly take part in a "Tea Party" rally, so she asks him  whether he has ever felt uncomfortable at the rally.



Don't agree that O'Donnell's question was racist? Just imagine that this was a white man attending a rally where almost everyone else was black. The question's implication would be that a white man surrounded by black men and women should feel comfortable - and clearly, that would be a racist implication.

A commenter on the RCP site nails it this way: "I don't think she would ask a white person if they felt a little uncomfortable sitting in the Ebineezer Baptist Church in Atlanta during the King holiday celebration. I love the way the liberal media trys to create the news."

Of course she wouldn't ask that.

O'Donnell's literally thoughtless question simply reveals her reflexive adherence to identity politics. Rather than ask Mr. Postell what brings him to participate, she instead challenges that he is there at all. She denies Mr. Postell the right to think for himself, to make his own way and determine his own course.

Apparently, Mr. Postell recognizes identity politics when he sees it - and I'm guessing he's seen plenty. Note well his answer: "These are my people." That is to say, "my people" are those who adhere to my values, who support me in my strivings, whose goals for this nation are the same as mine.

Someone - it's really hard these days to remember who - once said that he dreamed of a day when people would "not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." Mr. Postell is living that dream. Ms. O'Donnell can't even understand it.