Pat's blog

Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) has passed away at the age of 77. He served his country honorably in the Vietnam War and was the first Vietnam Vet to be elected to Congress. May he rest in peace.

UPDATE: More detailed obituary of Rep. Murtha's career and service to his country available here. In commenting, please follow our policy on not speaking ill of the dead.

And the Saints are marching in! Never really believed I would one day be able to talk about the Super Bowl Champions, the New Orleans Saints.

And what a great football game.

You have no idea what this means to the people of that city. This team just may manage to transform how New Orleans thinks of itself.

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. (John 3:16)

A new commandment I give to you, That you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you have love one to another. (John 13:34-35)

Merry Christmas, and God bless us, everyone.

Have you seen these "CBS Cares" public service announcements? You know, the ones where some B-list celebrity tells you should show your love for your girlfriend or wife by scheduling her for a pap smear? I'm almost scared to watch TV until this PSA run is over.

I've asked several women I know how they would react if their boyfriend unilaterally scheduled them for a pap smear. Short answer, from everybody: Run for the hills, fast, to avoid Mr. Creepy Controlling Guy.

Seriously, CBS. On what planet did this seem like a good idea? One, nobody wants to hear about pap smears during prime time TV. Two, it's just inappropriate for a guy to schedule intimate medical procedures (ANY medical procedures) for a woman. Among other things, it implies that she's incapable of doing so for herself, or that she's too stupid to know that she needs to have such things.

Watch this clip from the tonight show. Compare the amount of applause that William Shatner gets with the amount that Sarah Palin gets. I don't think that Tonight Show audiences are traditionally hot-beds of conservatism. She's got something. I'm not saying it's enough to get her elected President 4 years from now, but it's something, and those who underestimate her will look foolish in the end.

I haven't had a chance to watch it or read the transcript yet, but President Obama's speech accepting the Nobel Peace Prize seems to be getting fairly high marks in some unusual corners (though not universally so).

Discuss your own reactions.

Note to conservative pundits, the I/me counts of the President's addresses are getting tiresome. I agree he's more narcissistic than I would like, but the counts are meaningless without a comparative analysis to speeches by other presidents, and it distracts from more substantive criticisms.

I like Governor Palin, it's no secret. But she's certainly not always right, and I don't think she always focuses on the most important issues facing us.

I'm particularly disappointed with her answer to Politico's recent question about the legitimacy (or lack thereof) of the "birther" controversy. You can see her response, a somewhat non-committal answer affirming the right of the people to be interested in whatever they choose to be interested in. Here's what she should have said:

Look, the campaign's over. Barack Obama is the President of the United States. We have serious challenges facing us today, and fighting over his failure to release his original birth certificate is a waste of time and energy. We need to oppose the President's efforts to nationalize our health care, to put bureaucrats in charge of our doctors, to raise our taxes, to destroy our economy with draconian taxes on energy. Every second wasted squabbling over his refusal to authorize Hawaii to release his original birth certificate is a distraction that weakens our efforts to stop him from socializing our entire economy. Next question.

That answer would be honest, focused, politically acceptable to most of her target audience, and a call to more serious action. Responding as she did is little more than pandering to a lowest common denominator.

Dr. Seuss no doubt intended for young people of my generation to side with the Lorax, who speaks for the trees. But clearly the Once-ler was not without his fans, including the young lad who grew up to invent this machine:

This post will serve as the late-Thursday and all day Friday open thread.

H/T: SippicanCottage.

This is why I love Jon Stewart. Some conservatives find him too liberal or something, but I've generally found him to be an equal-opportunity pot-shot artist, making fun of anything and anybody that deserves to be made fun of. And he knows that he's just a comedian, and doesn't put on airs of importance and condescension. Here he is, taking on ACORN and the news organizations who are now spending far more money on hologram gimmicks than on actual news gathering.

The Dutch are once again finding themselves in hot water over cartoons. A Muslim group, the Arab European League, placed on its website the cartoon shown to the right. It's certainly an offensive cartoon, no question about that. But the AEL should not be prosecuted for publishing the cartoon any more than certain segments of the Muslim world should have reacted in violence against the publication of the now-infamous "Mohammed cartoons." It was wrong of people to try to suppress the Danish newspaper cartoonists' free speech by committing acts of violence (and wrong of the cowards to self-censor in response), and it's equally wrong for the Dutch authorities to attempt to punish the AEL for its non-violent, written expression.

My policy is to republish "offensive" images which some are trying to censor through violence or state prosecution, regardless of whether I agree with the images or not. Holocaust deniers are a despicable bunch, generally, and there is a significant amount of anti-Semitism within groups such as the AEL. I don't trust the AEL's motives in publishing this cartoon. The AEL apparently had tried to have the Dutch cartoonists prosecuted for their drawings, clearly showing that they have no more respect for freedom of speech than the average government in the Islamic world. But they are right when they say that, if freedom of speech protects the Dutch cartoonists, it also protects AEL from publishing this offensive cartoon.

The Dutch prosecutors claim that their review of the Mohammed cartoons found that they were not offensive to Muslims as a whole and did not incite hatred or violence towards Muslims, but that their review of this cartoon found that it was offensive to Jews as a whole. While I can see some distinctions between this cartoon and the Mohammed ones, I don't see any that are or should be legally significant. It's all in the eye of the beholder, which is one of many reasons why we should not prosecute, nor commit violence against, people for the content of their speech or ideas. Condemn the AEL for promoting bigotry, sure, no problem. Prosecute them? That's wrong.

Former Congressman William "Dollar Bill" Jefferson has been convicted on 11 of 16 counts brought against him.

Jefferson, like many Louisiana politicians before him, has long used his various offices to promote first and foremost the personal interests of himself and his family, rather than the public good. While I take no joy in his conviction, I am relieved that he will likely now join former governor Edwin Edwards in federal prison, and I hope that his conviction will help deter others in my state and elsewhere from acting similarly.

Let me get this straight... it's vital that we not interfere with the internal affairs of Iran, when its citizens peaceably assemble to protest their government, and their government slaughters them. But when the Supreme Court and Congress of Honduras declare that their President has acted unlawfully by seeking to unconstitutionally extend his term, which would make him a dictator-for-life, essentially, then it's appropriate for the President of the United States to take a very public position on a complex point of Honduran constitutional law, calling the actions of the Supreme Court, Congress, and Army of Honduras "not legal" and a "coup"?

Only a blind man could fail to see that Zelaya was planning to rig a plebiscite to declare himself President-for-life. The Honduran constitution specifically prohibits that, and in fact declares that any person who even attempts to remove the 2-term limitation on Presidential office-holding immediately loses the right to his office. They've seen that happen before in other Latin American countries.

How is what President Obama has said anything other than supporting a potential dictator over the actual democratic institutions of Honduras? Say it's a complicated issue. Say the U.S. wants nothing more than a peaceful outcome. Say that the U.S. is concerned both by Zelayas' refusal to abide by the rulings of the Honduran Supreme Court as well as the actions of the Supreme Court, Congress, and the military. But don't pick THE WRONG SIDE and give them aid and comfort. If Germany had deposed Hitler in 1934, would we have worried about the legalities, or been grateful that a man clearly intent on becoming a dictator had been thwarted?

In discussing Arlen Specter's defection from the Republican party which has provided him with heavy support over the last couple of election cycles despite his frequent straying from the party line, I began discussing with Jim M other issues related to the problems facing the Republican Party. Simon's asked me to post that bit on the front page and, as he has been holding down the fort so much here, I figured I better do as he asks... ;-) I've edited this slightly from its original appearance here. You should really go read the entire conversation Jim and I had, which starts about here.

Certainly in the broader sense the electorate always gets what it deserves, by definition. The problem is, I don't think that, in a more utilitarian and less philosophical sense, the voters really have gotten what they wanted. They want a more reduced size of government, they want lower taxes for themselves, they want less government involvement in the economy (on the whole), but they haven't gotten that. They didn't put the GOP in power to deliver Medicare Part D. They didn't vote for Bush the first time because they wanted an adventurous foreign policy.

My own theory is that the religious right was hijacked and terribly manipulated by folks like Tom DeLay. That wing of the GOP, the wing which basically tore up the Contract with America, wanted power for its own sake, and it was inevitable that they would create the same problems that plagued the power-blinded Dan Rostenkowski Democrats. Folks like Specter (and Snowe and Collins) never pointed their finger at that manipulation. Instead, they railed against the well-intentioned religious voters back home. That was stupid. Very poor messaging.

I agree that nobody so far seems to have stepped up to the plate to provide some leadership to help focus and shape the anger shown in the tea parties (note that "nobody" includes the supposedly wonderful moderate Republicans like Specter, Snowe, and Collins). I don't know of any new Reagans tirelessly working the inner workings of the party to gain support for a new conservative movement (note that Reagan spent most of his adult life doing just that; he wasn't a Schwarzenegger who just showed up one day to turn in his "movie star" hat and run for office).

But part of the problem, I continue to maintain, is that the importance of the party has been weakened too much by several decades of campaign finance reform (as well as some unhelpful over-zealotry by hard-core single-issue folks who took over some party machinery in both parties). As you suggest, party membership is much less important in many elections today, not just because of the voters, but because the party itself is more limited in how it can directly assist the candidate. A stronger party organization would, I believe, lead to better, more centrist policy making.

Why? Well, right now campaign finance caps force political donations to be distributed more broadly. A guy who wants to give $1 million in a campaign cycle can't just write one big check to one candidate or to the party. Instead, he's got to give some money here and some money there, $5,000 to this PAC, another $2,500 to some other PAC, etc., etc., etc. This naturally causes the creation of more and more PACs to compete for those dollars. Would the Club for Growth get as many donations without these artificial limits, or would the party machinery itself have a better chance at getting the dollars? I think the party itself would have a strong leg up in getting those donations. In turn, that means that the party would want to craft as broad an appeal as possible (without violating core principles), in order to attract as much money as possible. Thus, it would impose some moderation by its control over doling out those funds. But today, money flows to Club for Growth and other single-issue organizations, which raise more money by being more ideologically pure.

Back when the appointment of Roland Burris to replace President Obama in the Senate was all the news (you know, back before the Illinois legislature had time to finish impeaching him), I suggested that Harry Reid and the Democratic Caucus in the Senate had adopted a fool-hardy approach. Rather than announce they would never seat an appointee of ex-Gov. Blagojevich, I said, they should have announced that because of the clear evidence that Blagojevich had tried to sell the seat, that any appointment would be closely scrutinized by the appropriate Senate committee, and a thorough investigation held to ensure that the specific appointment of Burris was corruption-free.

While there is no evidence (as of yet) that Sen. Burris is corrupt or paid anything for his seat, there is now evidence that he was hit up for campaign contributions by Blagojevich's brother.

Worse, for Burris: he failed to disclose the solicitation while being questioned under oath by the House impeachment panel investigating Burris. On Feb. 5, 3 weeks after being sworn in as Senator, Burris filed an affidavit with the House panel disclosing the approach from Blagojevich's brother.

Burris is apparently taking the position that he wasn't asked the right questions, and filed the affidavit after reading the transcript of his testimony. He says that reading the transcript made him aware that "[t]here were several facts that I was not given the opportunity to make during my testimony."

The Chicago Sun-Times article disclosing the affidavit filing reports that Burris had previously denied having been approached by anybody from the "Blagojevich camp" regarding the Senate seat.

Burris continues to assert that he did not pay for the Senate seat, and there is at this point no evidence to directly contradict that assertion.

But it sure would have been nice if there hadn't been such a rush to seat him. The people of Illinois deserve better.

H/T: Patterico

As I've remarked before, I avoid plunging into the depths of despair by remembering that few, if any, of our political and cultural battles are new. Most of them we've been fighting for a very long time, indeed.

Do we fight the Islamic Fundamentalists with tooth and nail, or do we try to "understand" our enemies, negotiate with them, sweet-talk them over to our side? That's a pretty big issue we're squabbling over right now. Various factions of Western civilization have been doing so for at least the past 60 years now.

Here's Noel Coward, mocking those who thought we should "play nice" with the WWII-era Germans (he calls them "excessive humanitarians" -- what a perfect name!).

The conservative movement desperately needs to build-up its own camp of like-minded comedians, writers, and parodists. I don't think we'll see the likes of Noel Coward again, but we need more of his modern-day equivalents.

Da plane has finally come to take Mr. Roarke to the ultimate Fantasy Island. Richardo Montalbán has passed away at age 88. His Fantasy Island co-star, Hervé Villechaize, passed away in 1993.

Rest in peace, Mr. Montalbán, and thanks for entertaining us for so many years.

P.S. On the lighter side, the universe may now be once again safe for Capt. Kirk, Mr. Spock, and Commander Chekov.

You can watch full episodes of Fantasy Island via Hulu.com at IMDB.com.

President-elect Obama has a grandmother and other relatives who live in Kenya. He's not terribly close to them, because he wasn't close with his father and they lived on another continent, but still, they're relatives (some by blood, some by marriage or African tradition). They live in Kenya, which, as small African nations go, is relatively stable. Certainly it is in far better shape (and a much closer ally of the U.S.) than its neighbors, Somalia, Ethiopia, and Uganda. But it's still a small African nation suffering from some political instability, and which earlier this year had a spate of politically-related violence which caused the U.S. to temporarily withdraw our Peace Corps personnel.

So here's my question. What's the plan for when a relative of the President of the United States is kidnapped by some thugs in Kenya? Hopefully, nobody would be that stupid, but there's a lot of bad guys in that part of the world, and they've been known to do a lot of things which we would consider stupid. Our government excels at drawing up contingency plans, so what's the plan for that one?

On the one hand, such an action is an attack not just on the individual, but on the United States itself, because the person is being targeted specifically because they are related to our President, and their intent (presumably) would be to affect his actions, affect the policy of the United States of America. We cannot tolerate such an attack.

On the other hand, Sen. Obama's relatives (many of them, at least) are not American citizens, and the attack would not be on American soil. We may have very little jurisdiction (if any), and would be entirely dependent on the Kenyan government to invite our assistance.

We could also not afford to capitulate to their demands, but the image of terrorists beheading an Obama relative would be a powerful image to terrorists, who revel when they can show the impotence of America to stop them. Meanwhile, President Obama surely has some emotional attachment to such family members and would thus have a personal, emotional connection to the events, which would call into question his objectivity.

So would President Obama do a Bartlett and invoke the 25th Amendment? I would hope not, frankly (and not just because "Acting President Biden" scares the crap out of me), because that would give terrorists an enormous amount of power over our country, the ability to force a change in leadership during a crisis.

I think it's important to make clear in advance that President Obama would not step aside in such an event, and that the United States government would, while providing any assistance requested by a foreign goverment, consider that a Kenyan crime to be handled by the Kenyan authorities. We have long had a policy of not negotiating with terrorists, and we should continue that policy, even if that results in the terrorists killing their hostages. Doing anything else would encourage the terrorists and help them meet their objectives.

And, we're back! Many thanks to Drupal expert Randy Fay, who did great and fast work to upgrade the site from Drupal 4.7 to the latest version, 6.6. I'll be spending the next few days revamping the look and feel of the site, but the database is solid now. Post anything you like; it'll stay here.

Feel free to leave suggestions for the look and feel in the comments here.

I'm going to be trying to upgrade our software today, so the site may look funky for a time or be temporarily inaccessible. It may look a little odd for the next couple of days as I customize the built-in templates. Thank you for your patience.

What are you doing blog surfing on Thanksgiving? There's turkey to eat! There's family members to annoy and be annoyed by! Go! Shoo, shoo!

Still here? Well, Happy Thanksgiving to you! I've recently been reminded just how quickly life can give you new problems that make your old problems seem like blessings by comparison. Life can change, or end, in just 5 seconds. Cherish what you have, while you have it.

Many thanks to all of you who have visited our blog over the past year. We've enjoyed hosting you, and hope you will come back often.