Blogworthies XLVIII

Because The Blog from the Core simply can't cover everything.

Noteworthy entries @ No Left Turns, Mudville Gazette, Error Theory, Power Line, Santificarnos, The Remedy, Power Line (again), Hoystory.com, Belmont Club, Mystery Pollster, cut on the bias, Flos Carmeli, The Diplomad, A Western Heart, Catholic Analysis, PalmTree Pundit, JunkYardBlog, Michelle Malkin, Yourish.com, Rightwingsparkle, Power Line (yet again), TigerHawk, BlackFive, and Armavirumque.

News Flash for Specter: Cabinet Officers Are Not Independent @ No Left Turns:

There is much that could be and that has already been said by others about Alberto Gonzales’s confirmation hearings for the postion of U.S. Attorney General. The hearings gave us a first glimpse of Senator Arlen Specter as Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and, while he has been largely praised for his handling of the hearing, he committed an embarassing constitutional error....

Torture Test @ Mudville Gazette:

Abu Ghraib is but a stone's throw from where I now type these words, and it's ugliness is more than skin deep. It's a very real place, and an undesirable home to criminals and those whose duty it is to guard them. But to many it's an abstract image, a debate point to be used against opponents like garlic to frighten vampires, a boogy man to frighten children. They inject that ward into any writing they do on certain topics in an attempt to frame the discussion around what is unquestionably now the immediate mind's eye association most people in the world make with the word "torture" — the horrendous photos from the notorious prison....

Take this simple 10 question quiz. The answers follow (no fair peeking). There are no trick questions, and no opinion questions. Just the facts, ma'am, just the facts. But perhaps not those you'll find on the editorial pages of your local paper....

Divorcing principle from necessity: the two minds of Keifer Sutherland @ Error Theory:

Charlie Rose did a fascinating interview with Keifer Sutherland tonite. Sutherland directs the terror-fighting drama 24 hrs, where he also plays the lead character, Jack Bauer. Sutherland is a good actor, and comes across as plenty smart, but there is a consistent inconsistency in his viewpoints. Rose shows a clip where Jack Bauer shoots a smug, uncooperative terrorist prisoner in the femur to extract information. He presses his pistol to the terrorist's other femur and the terrorist, no longer smug, gives up his target. “Do I agree with it? No,” says Sutherland, “but Jack Bauer uses his experience, his knowledge of the stakes and the time, his instinct about what will work, and this is what he does. Later, in a quiet time, he wonders if God will forgive him, and his answer to himself is ‘no’.” (I’m paraphrasing.) ....

Have you heard the news? @ Power Line:

All over the world fans of Elvis Presley are preparing to celebrate the seventieth anniversary of his birth this coming Saturday: "Elvis fans all shook up for 70th birthday bash." The linked Reuters story notes that the festivities are expected to occur with particular enthusiasm in Blackpool, England, which will host a three-day convention this weekend aimed at finding Europe's best Elvis impersonator. What's all the fuss about?

Fifty years ago this past July 5, Elvis Presley, Scotty Moore, and Bill Black convened at the small Sun Records recording studio in Memphis. Elvis was all of 19 years old, working full time as a truck driver for Crown Electric. Scotty and Bill had day jobs as well, but they also worked as professional musicians in the Starlite Wranglers, a local country and western group....

Strange as it seems... this poster is spreading a message of hate @ Santificarnos:

This is the poster for the Spanish Bishops program against same-sex unions....

Walter Williams Gets It Half Right @ The Remedy:

Libertarian economist (and occasional substitute for Rush Limbaugh) Walter Williams reminds us that America is not a pure democracy but a representative republic. Unfortunately, he does not explain how the powers of the government, particularly Congress, are to be restrained much beyond mere admonition, nor does he make clear what are the differences between a democracy and a republic. His fundamental logical error consists in posing the issue as one of "either-or", instead of drawing upon the more subtle understanding of the constitutional framers....

Journalism In Decline @ Power Line:

Corey Pein of the Columbia Journalism Review sent us an email yesterday, with a link to his article in that magazine on the fake 60 Minutes documents. "You may be interested in this," he wrote. We were interested, all right, but we're sorry to report that the article is astonishingly bad....

On journalism @ Hoystory.com:

When you typically ask a professional journalist why they decided to get into that profession, the answer you all too often get is something related to changing the world or helping the downtrodden. (See Coleman, Nick.)

I'm an anomaly. I got into journalism because I love to write. Have I gotten excited when I uncovered a good story? Yes. But I never saw it as part of my job to write news articles to advance an agenda — liberal or conservative....

The Grand Inquisitor @ Belmont Club:

At one level the debate over the use of torture in the War on Terror is moot. The United States military has a long operational history of forgoing possible practical advantages in favor of upholding certain national values. The most obvious modern example are rules of engagement in the use of fires. During the recently concluded assault on Fallujah and in current operations in Iraq, military restrictions on the use of firepower around mosques or populated areas are enforced with the foreknowledge that such steps will result in statistically higher casualties to troops. This practice follows long historical precedent. The policy of precision daylight bombing during World War 2; the tendency toward 'No First Strike' during the Cold War and even the restriction on political assassinations in the Carter years are all examples of unilateral renunciations of military advantage....

Those Leaked PDFs @ Mystery Pollster:

About those newly leaked exit poll numbers....

Where the family tree doesn't branch @ cut on the bias:

Much is made of the marryin' cousin syndrome supposedly rife in the South. I've seen some of it, although not much and usually not very close kin. But still, there are some twisty kinships that result from living in an area with a limited number of families over a long period of time - my grandfather's niece married my grandmother's brother, so my dad is at the same time their children's first cousin and first cousin once removed. I'm their first cousin once removed and first cousin twice removed. Confused yet? Me too. But the niece and the brother, while creating an interesting exercise in tracking kinship, were not themselves related. At least that we know of....

The Gracious Art of Detachment @ Flos Carmeli:

.... In the past, I have written of detachment and sometimes I have to keep a clear focus on the fact that detachment is not an end in itself, but a means to the only End worthy of consideration. But here, for me, there was a breath of the truth, another confirmation of what I know instinctively. Detachment is not the rejection of created things, but the proper valuing of created things in subordination to the love of the Creator of All. In this proper alignment of values, created things become all the more wonderful and real because we can allow them to be without having to have some sort of control over them or possession of them....

More UNreality... But the Dutch Get It @ The Diplomad:

Well, dear friends, we're now into the tenth day of the tsunami crisis and in this battered corner of Asia, the UN is nowhere to be seen — unless you count at meetings, in five-star hotels, and holding press conferences....

Reuters Values People @ A Western Heart:

How much they value you merely depends on who you are, and where your killers are from. Take this title, for instance: ....

Is Polarization Really So Undesirable? @ Catholic Analysis:

One of the oft-repeated wails that you will here from "high-minded" commentators is the mournful proclamation that we are a "polarized" nation. It is regularly assumed that polarization is a great evil and must be eliminated. But the problem with this negative view of polarization is that our current polarization is indeed based on genuine disagreement about what is true and real. On one side, some think, for example, that legal abortion and gay marriage are obvious goods. They cannot understand the madness of those who oppose such inevitable progressive principles. On the other side, are those like most readers of this site who view legal abortion and gay marriage as true madness because these practices contradict reality....

Why I Homeschool: Reason #2507 @ PalmTree Pundit:

Today's cover story in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin is just one more reason why I homeschool my kids....

So You Want To Start A Blog @ JunkYardBlog:

How's that for a boring title? It might be the most boring title ever. Wait — it isn't. I remember once perusing the stacks at a library in Waxahachie, Texas. A buddy of mine worked there, always had to be there before the crack of dawn, so a bunch of us used to slip up to his house late at night and tap on his window to wake him up. We didn't want anything in particular — just enough of a chat to keep him up for a while and make sure he'd feel like crap the next day. Then sometimes we'd actually go to the library to see our handiwork. Baggy eyes and a slow gait meant we'd accomplished our admittedly limited goal. Good times....

20 Million Illegal Aliens? @ Michelle Malkin:

Barron's has an important lead article out today on "the underground economy".... According to Robert Justich, a senior managing director at Bear Stearns Asset Management in New York, current estimates of the illegal alien population (most news articles cite the old 8 to 13 million figure) are too low. He puts the figure at 18 million to 20 million.

The article's author, Jim McTague, notes some devastating consequences of the failure to enforce our immigration laws — and he does so with a bluntness that is unusual for the usually open-borders-friendly business press: ....

Memogate: The experts and the amateurs @ Yourish.com:

Corey Pein of the Columbia Journalism Review made many errors in his article about the bogus National Guard memos, but I'm going to deal only with my field of expertise, and discuss the typographic issues behind the exposure of the documents as fraudulent....

Blacks and the ghetto and gay issue @ Rightwingsparkle:

Comedian Bill Cosby continued his one-man crusade to improve the futures of young African-Americans talking to America's black community....

A Follow-Up on Vietnam and Iraq @ Power Line:

Twice during the last week, Deacon commented on an article by Phillip Carter and Owen West in Slate, in which they drew a comparison between Iraq and Vietnam, arguing in particular that American casualties in Fallujah were comparable to those sustained in the three-week long battle for Hue.

I can't speak for Deacon, but, especially given that the Carter/Owen piece appeared in Slate, I assumed that the authors were trying to tar the Iraq war (unfairly, as Deacon argued), with the "Vietnam" brush. Thus, I was surprised and gratified when we got this email today from Owen West: ....

Flyspecking The New York Times @ TigerHawk:

The New York Times has a fairly ignorant error in a graph on the front page of its business section today....

Every Care Package Is Important @ BlackFive:

Wendy is a Marine Mom who's son is Iraq right now. Below is an email to her friends about the care packages they have been sending to Iraq: ....

Susan Sontag: a Prediction @ Armavirumque:

When a friend called me this morning [Tue. Dec. 28] with the news that Susan Sontag had died at the age 71, just about the first thing I thought was, "well, we'll have a huge, hagiographical, front-page obituary tomorrow in The New York Times." Check to see if I am correct....

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sat. 01/08/05 09:16:25 AM
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