April 03, 2006

Dixie Check

Natalie Maines, this one's for you (Via Instapundit).

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:16 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Mainstream Media Math

This morning, a U.S. Air Force C-5 Galaxy reported problems after takeoff and crashed while trying to make an emergency landing at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. The plane broke into three large sections, with the nose and tail assembly separating from the fuselage. There are survivors, and perhaps miraculously, there are no confirmed fatalities at this time.

CNN's coverage of the crash provides us with this gem of information about the C-5:

The C-5 can carry 270,000 tons of cargo almost 2,500 miles on one load of fuel. The C-5's wingspan is 28 feet wider than a 747 and the military jet is 16 feet longer than the civilian airliner.

270,000 tons? Wow. That's impressive, especially when considering that the massive Iowa class battleships, at 887 feet, weigh less than 60,000 tons when fully loaded. Is CNN trying to say that a single C-5 can carry four battleships with room left over, or are the much-vaunted multiple layers of editorial oversight in the professional media not all it is cracked up to be?

Here's a hint, CNN: try 270,000 pounds, not 270,000 tons.

I report, you deride.

Correction: Dover is in Delaware, not Maryland. I blame daylight savings time for the error...

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 08:42 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Nuts in Texas

Tom Elia at the New Editor makes me wonder:

Who is more insane, the college professor who gave a speech calling for the destruction of humanity with the ebloa virus, or those in attendence who gave him a standing ovation?

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 06:06 AM | Comments (10) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

April 02, 2006

And What Was It Before?

The NY Times released an anonymous editorial Sunday titled, "The Endgame in Iraq." To read it is to understand why the Times is failing both financially and intellectually.

Iraq is becoming a country that America should be ashamed to support, let alone occupy.

And what was it before? A brutal dictatorship that ran rape rooms and torture centers, a thugocracy that twice invaded its neighbors and used chemical weapons against civilian and soldier alike.

The nation as a whole is sliding closer to open civil war. In its capital, thugs kidnap and torture innocent civilians with impunity, then murder them for their religious beliefs.

And what was it before? A country where the government itself kidnapped and murdered not dozens, but hundreds or thousands at a time. Does the Times simply prefer state-sanctioned mass murders to ad hoc slaughter?

The rights of women are evaporating.

And what were they before? Rape rooms, RAPE ROOMS were run by the government itself.

The head of the government is the ally of a radical anti-American cleric who leads a powerful private militia that is behind much of the sectarian terror.

And what was it before? The head of government ran what was once the fourth largest army in the world, not 10,000 ragtag thugs, and Saddam's "state security" murdered more civilians in "peacetime" that Iraq lost during the war and occupation combined.

The Bush administration will not acknowledge the desperate situation. But it is, at least, pushing in the right direction, trying to mobilize all possible leverage in a frantic effort to persuade the leading Shiite parties to embrace more inclusive policies and support a broad-based national government.

One vital goal is to persuade the Shiites to abort their disastrous nomination of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari. Mr. Jaafari is unable to form a broadly inclusive government and has made no serious effort to rein in police death squads. Even some Shiite leaders are now calling on him to step aside. If his nomination stands and is confirmed by Parliament, civil war will become much harder to head off. And from the American perspective, the Iraqi government will have become something that no parent should be asked to risk a soldier son or daughter to protect.

And what was it before? When at any time, was this war not a "desperate situation" for those reporting for the New York Times? Since before this war began, the Times has consistently prescribed clouds of doom for every lining of silver. The very fact that even Shiites are calling for al-Jaafari to step down is a measure many did not expect. Iraqis want peace, having seen enough death and destruction in the hands of the dictator the Times presumably would prefer to remain in power. It is hardly surprising that the Times would feel that no soldier should risk his life to fight in Iraq or Afghanistan. They didn't support this from the beginning and helped create this situation by giving the insurgency hope, so why should they change their approach now?

Unfortunately, after three years of policy blunders in Iraq, Washington may no longer have the political or military capital to prevail. That may be hard for Americans to understand, since it was the United States invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein and helped the Shiite majority to power. Some 140,000 American troops remain in Iraq, more than 2,000 American servicemen and servicewomen have died there so far and hundreds of billions of American dollars have been spent.

Yet Shiite leaders have responded to Washington's pleas for inclusiveness with bristling hostility, personally vilifying Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and criticizing American military operations in the kind of harsh language previously heard only from Sunni leaders. Meanwhile, Moktada al-Sadr, the radically anti-American cleric and militia leader, has maneuvered himself into the position of kingmaker by providing decisive support for Mr. Jaafari's candidacy to remain prime minister.

A faction, one faction of Shiites lashed out after an elite Sunni-Shiite anti-terrorist unit took on the Madhi Army militia and destroyed one of its bases, and freed a kidnapped hostage without sustaining a single casualty. The Iraqi Army has quietly relegated al Qaeda in Iraq and the Sunni insurgency to near irrelevance.

Do you doubt this?

When is the last time you heard the name Zarqawi? When was the last major success of the insurgency against the Iraqi Army, much less the U.S. or British militaries?

al Qaeda and the remaining Sunni insurgency can still take lives and they may be able to do so far years, but they cannot win. With this threats behind them the Iraqi Army now turns to clearing out a just one corrupt Shiite faction and its Madhi Army milita allied with Iran. al-Sadr is no kingmaker. He has no great constituency outside of his slums, only poor political skills, and an alliance with Iran that has made him a legitimate military target. No one can play kingmaker from beyond the grave.

It was chilling to read Edward Wong's interview with the Iraqi prime minister in The Times last week, during which Mr. Jaafari sat in the palace where he now makes his home, complained about the Americans and predicted that the sectarian militias that are currently terrorizing Iraqi civilians could be incorporated into the army and police. The stories about innocent homeowners and storekeepers who are dragged from their screaming families and killed by those same militias are heartbreaking, as is the thought that the United States, in its hubris, helped bring all this to pass.

And what was it before? Under Saddam, Iraqis knew who it was who was dragging innocent people away in the middle of the night. Today, they at least stand a fighting chance.

As it now stands, the Army is increasingly able to handle its own areas of responsibility; predominately Shiite Army units successfully defended Sunni sections of Baghdad during "sectarian" fighting. This fact is something the Times prefers not to cover as it undermines their three-years-and-counting "all it lost" narrative, but this truth that is establishing trust all the same. With the Iraqi Army on legs that grow steadier day by day, the U.S and Iraqi Army forces like the ones that cleaned out the Madhi Army militia nest last week can now focus on weeding out militiamen. Things are bloody and fluid in Iraq, but perhaps not as dire as the Times predicts over and over again.

It is conceivable that the situation can still be turned around. Mr. Khalilzad should not back off. The kind of broadly inclusive government he is trying to bring about offers the only hope that Iraq can make a successful transition from the terrible mess it is in now to the democracy that we all hoped would emerge after Saddam Hussein's downfall. It is also the only way to redeem the blood that has been shed by Americans and Iraqis alike.

Conceivable? Most certainly. al Qaeda can take lives, but it is far past the point that it can win. The Sunni insurgency is quietly melting away as Iraqis take the lead in "clear, hold and build" operations, and Sunnis see that the government is operating in their best interests.

The biggest threat to Iraq's future at the moment is a lightly armed Madhi Army militia that is held together by a cult of personality surrounding Moktada al-Sadr and Iranian special forces soldiers.

The situation in Iraq is far from ideal, but individuals now have a say in their own future, which is something they have not had in decades. Iraq isn't what we want it to be now, but it is better than it was before, under Saddam. The Times, of course, decided their approach to this war before it began, and no Coalition success was too large to overlook, and no Coalition setback was too small to ignore. Don't expect their coverage to change. The Times coverage in Iraq is brutal, one-sided, and superficial.

But then, that's what it was before.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:38 PM | Comments (21) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

March 31, 2006

A Conventional Nuke

Sometimes the outright stupidity and shallowness of thinking in the general news media staggers me. But before I blast them, I need to start with myself, for getting so close initially, and then not putting 2+2 together.

Last night I mocked the U.S. military's plan to test a 700-ton bomb in the Nevada desert. I noted that no plane every built could come close to delivering a conventional bomb even a third that size. I wrote it off as a blustering response to Iran's refusal to stop uranium enrichment, but not the test of a serious munition.

I suggested, "If the Pentagon wants to send a real message to the Iranians, they could test a B61-11. I think the folks in Las Vegas and Tehran would be much more impressed with the show."

It wasn't until over 12 hours later that I figured out that something very similar to that might be the point of the test.

The 700-ton bomb will use close to 600-tons of a special mixture of ammonium nitrate-based explosives.

According to Global Security.org, the B61 Mod 11 thermonuclear bomb has a W-61 EPW (earth penetrating warhead) that ranges in yield from 360-kiloton strategic bomb down, if Nuclear Weapon Archive.org is correct, to a tactical penetrator with a yield as low as .3 kilotons. If I'm doing my math correctly, a 0.3 Kt weapon is the theoretical equivalent of 300 tons yield in a convention explosive under certain conditions.

Could the 700-ton bomb test be a surrogate for the shockwave effect of a low-yield .3 Kt B61-11 nuclear warhead?

Neither the Washington Post nor Reuters, nor any other news agency seems to have caught on to this possibility. Then again, they haven't figured out yet that this massive bomb being tested could never get airborne, so this shouldn't be a surprise.

We appear to be running a "nukeless" nuclear test of the kind of ground-penetrating and literally ground-breaking bomb we may be forced to use again Iran. The "empty threat" I mocked yesterday isn't very funny anymore.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 03:25 PM | Comments (11) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Cut Her Some Slack... For Now

Freed hostage Jill Carroll is being bad-mouthed by some, but after spending three months as a hostage to a group that murdered her translator right in front of her I, like Rusty, am willing to cut her some slack. She's seen a lot of things that none of us ever will, and endured mental stresses none of us will likely ever have to face, so I can excuse the anti-Americanism she expressed in captivity. I suggest that her comments both before and after her ordeal should be viewed through the new prism of her recent experience.

Remind me, however… what were Eason Jordan's excuses for coddling terrorists?

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:33 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Signs are There

I guess we can consider this indicative of Democratic competence in their "cut-and-run-and-gun" national insecurity program.

This campaign the DNC is running on is going to generate a lot of votes. Republican votes.

Ian at Expose the Left has the video.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:18 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Iranian Stealth Missile

This is interesting. We talk of 700-ton bombs that will never get off the ground (an M-1 Abrams main battle tank, by comparison weighs 65 tons), and the very next day, the Iranians counter in the bluster war with this:

Iran successfully test-fired a locally made missile with the ability to carry a warhead and avoid radar, the airforce chief of the elite Revolutionary Guards said Friday.

"Today, a remarkable goal of the Islamic Republic of Iran's defence forces was realized with the successful test-firing of a new missile with greater technical and tactical capabilities than those previously produced," Gen. Hossein Salami said on state-run television.

The missile, while locally made, is of American design.

I'd translate the last part about “greater technical and tactical capabilities” to mean they're now using B4-4 rocket engines instead of their earlier designs using A8-3s.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 07:39 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

New Orleans: Out of Time?

As they say, timing is everything:

A full recovery in New Orleans could take 25 years as homeowners, businesses and tourists are coaxed back to the city devastated by Hurricane Katrina, the Bush administration's Gulf Coast recovery coordinator said Thursday.
"We kind of want it to happen overnight, or I do, but it's going to take some time," White House coordinator Don Powell said in an interview with Associated Press reporters and editors. "This could be five to 25 years for it all to fit into place."

Powell added: "It's been a bottom-up process and it's complex."

Well, the "bottom" part is right. Guess where New Orleans will be in the next half-century or so?

Give yourself two points if you correctly answered "The Gulf of Mexico."

The original (snark-free) version of this Louisiana wetlands projection comes courtesy of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and is used at LSU's Louisiana Energy & Environmental
Resource & Information Center (LEERIC) in this article.

Back in September I interviewed the former chair of a Coastal and Marine Studies Department, and asked him the following question:

1. Are estimates that the continued rate of wetland loss in Louisiana will place New Orleans on or in the Gulf of Mexico in the 2050-2090 time frame accurate?

He responded:

The estimates are probably accurate. There are three main factors: Global sea level rise, delta subsidence, Mississippi River sedimentation. Sea level is rising, the delta is sinking and the river is depositing much less sediment on the delta now than in the past (for multiple reasons).

In other words, by the time New Orleans can recover from Hurricane Katrina, it may do so just in time to disappear under the waves of the Gulf of Mexico forever.

I don't have any problems with spending our tax dollars to rebuild New Orleans, I just don't think it wise to rebuild the city in the same nearly indefensible location.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:59 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Big Nothing

On the day that Iran stated it would not halt uranium enrichment, the U.S. military made what some are interpreting as a thinly-veilled threat:

The US military plans to detonate a 700 tonne explosive charge in a test called "Divine Strake" that will send a mushroom cloud over Las Vegas, a senior defense official said.

"I don't want to sound glib here but it is the first time in Nevada that you'll see a mushroom cloud over Las Vegas since we stopped testing nuclear weapons," said James Tegnelia, head of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency.

Tegnelia said the test was part of a US effort to develop weapons capable of destroying deeply buried bunkers housing nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.

"We have several very large penetrators we're developing," he told defense reporters.

"We also have -- are you ready for this - a 700-tonne explosively formed charge that we're going to be putting in a tunnel in Nevada," he said.

Not to put too fine a point on it, this would be one of the most pathetic messages we've ever sent, as it is by far the emptiest threat we can make. To put it plainly (or perhaps planely), this bomb project could never get off the ground.

Literally.

According to the article, this bomb weighs "700 tonnes." It doesn't exactly specify if this is 700 long tons ( 2,240 lbs/ton, or a total of 1,588,000 lbs) or 700 short tons (2,000 lbs/ton, or a total of 1,400,000 lbs), but in the end the key detail is that no airplane on earth can carry such a payload.

The massive American C5 Galaxy carries a payload of 240,000 lbs. The world's largest cargo airplane is the Antonov An-225, which carries a maximum payload of "just" 551,150 lbs.

This is an empty threat, as the Iranians surely know.

If the Pentagon wants to send a real message to the Iranians, they could test a B61-11. I think the folks in Las Vegas and Tehran would be much more impressed with the show.

Update: a closer look reveals that the 700-lb bomb may be a surrogate for a low yield B61-11.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:33 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

March 29, 2006

Fact or Fiction?

In news related to the five FISA court judge's testimony, competing articles today by Eric Lichtblau of the New York Times and Brian DeBose of the Washington Times paint radically different pictures of the judge's testimony today, with Lichtblau's article making it appear that the five judges were siding against the president, and DeBose stating that the judges said Bush's executive order was legal. Obviously, one is wrong, and possibly being deceptive. The "verdict" from the lawyers of Powerline:

Having reviewed the transcript, I conclude that the Washington Times' characterization was fair, but arguably overstated. The New York Times, however, badly misled its readers...

...New York Times reporter Eric Lichtblau has a considerable career investment (and, I suspect, an ideological investment as well) in the idea that the NSA program is illegal. It would seem that Lichtblau's preconceptions and biases prevented him from accurately reporting what happened in the Judiciary Committee hearing yesterday. His suggestion that the main thrust of the judges' testimony was to "voice skepticism about the president's constitutional authority" is simply wrong; in fact, I can't find a single line in more than 100 pages of transcript that supports Lichtblau's reporting.

Eric Litchblau seems to have either lost his objectivity on this story so completely that he cannot even report facts, or he has made the conscious decision to misrepresent the story to the point of outright fabrication.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:55 PM | Comments (13) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Full of Sound and Fury

...Signifying nothing.

Classic Macbeth to be sure, but in this instance, the "nothing" has turned out to be claims from Democrats, libertarians, and some weak-willed Republicans that President Bush's executive order that authorized the creation of a terrorist intercept program by the National Security Agency is in some way illegal.

Yesterday, five FISA judges testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee about this very program:

FEINSTEIN: Thank you very much. Now, I want to clear something up. Judge Kornblum spoke about Congress' power to pass laws to allow the president to carry out domestic electronic surveillance. And we know that FISA is the exclusive means of so doing. Is such a law, that provides both the authority and the rules for carrying out that authority — are those rules then binding on the president?

[U.S. District Judge Allan] KORNBLUM: No president has ever agreed to that.

When the FISA statute was passed in 1978, it was not perfect harmony. The intelligence agencies were very reluctant to get involved in going to court. That reluctance changed over a short period of time, two or three years, when they realized they could do so much more than they'd ever done before without...

FEINSTEIN: What do you think, as a judge?

KORNBLUM: I think — as a magistrate judge, not a district judge — that a president would be remiss in exercising his constitutional authority to say that, "I surrender all of my power to a statute." And, frankly, I doubt that Congress in a statute can take away the president's authority — not his inherent authority but his necessary and — I forget the constitutional — his necessary and proper authority.

FEINSTEIN: I'd like to go down the line, if I could, Judge, please. Judge Baker?

[U.S. District Judge Harold] BAKER: Well, I'm going to pass to my colleagues, since I answered before. I don't believe a president would surrender his power, either.

FEINSTEIN: So you don't believe a president would be bound by the rules and regulations of a statute. Is that what you're saying?

BAKER: No, I don't believe that. A president...

FEINSTEIN: That's my question.

BAKER: No, I thought you were talking about the decision…

FEINSTEIN: No, I'm talking about FISA and is a president bound by the rules and regulations of FISA?

BAKER: If it's held constitutional and it's passed, I suppose he is, like everyone else: He's under the law, too.

FEINSTEIN: Judge?

[U.S. District Judge Stanley] BROTMAN (?): I would feel the same way.

FEINSTEIN: Judge Keenan?

[U.S. District Judge John] KEENAN: Certainly the president is subject to the law. But by the same token, in emergency situations, as happened in the spring of 1861, if you remember — and we all do — President Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus and got in a big argument with Chief Justice Taney, but the writ was suspended.

KEENAN: And some of you probably have read the book late Chief Justice Rehnquist wrote, "All the Laws But One." Because in his inaugural speech — not his inaugural speech, but his speech on July 4th, 1861, President Lincoln said, essentially, "Should we follow all the laws and have them all broken, because of one?"

FEINSTEIN: Judge?

(UNKNOWN) [probably U.S. District Judge William Stafford]: Senator, everyone is bound by the law, but I don't believe, with all due respect, that even an act of Congress can limit the president's power under the necessary and proper clause under the Constitution.

And it's hard for me to go further on the question that you pose, but I would think that (inaudible) power is defined in the Constitution, and while he's bound to obey the law, I don't believe that the law can change that.

While a full transcript of the five judge's testimony is not yet available, Spruill notes that all five—his word was "each"—of the five judges seems to hold that the President's argument that he has the inherent Constitutional authority to conduct warrantless wiretapping.

This is consistent with the FISA Court of Review's findings in In re: Sealed Case when the Court recognized "the President's inherent constitutional authority to conduct warrantless foreign intelligence surveillance."

These judges seem to agree with the exact point I made in December:

Every President from the dawn of international wire communications well over 100 years ago until 1978 assumed this right, and the courts have always deferred to this particular power inherent to the Presidency. This is supported by case law and precedent, and is summed up in the five-page Department of Justice briefing (PDF) delivered last week. In short, the Department of Justice seems willing to make the case that Bush was well within his constitutional powers. If anything, Congress may have exceeded their constitutional powers in passing FISA.

Even after passing FISA, Carter himself did not feel strictly bound by it, nor has any President since, from Reagan, to George H. W. Bush, Clinton, to George W. Bush. They have all asserted (and over the past two weeks, their DoJ attorneys have as well) that the Office of the Presidency has the Constitutional authority to authorize warrantless intercepts of foreign intelligence. This power has been assumed by every president of the modern age before them, dating back, presumably to the Great Eastern's success in 1866 of laying the first successful transatlantic telegraph cable. From Johnson, then, through Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, Cleveland, Harrison, Cleveland (again), McKinley, Teddy Roosevelt, and Taft, through Wilson, Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, to FDR and on to Truman, Eisenhower, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford and into the Carter administration, the Presidency has had the inherent and unchallenged power to conduct warrantless surveillance of foreign powers for national security reasons.

This is a simple, unassailable fact, not matter how loudly demagogues shriek.

FISA is a case of Congress infringing upon the inherent power of the executive branch, and if it comes up as a direct constitutional challenge, FISA will most likely be struck down as Congress infringing upon the constitutional authority of the executive branch to perform foreign intelligence functions.

Statutory law cannot override the President's constitutional powers and duties; only a constitutional amendment has that power. Neither FISA nor other current statutory proposals in the Senate can infringe upon the President's Article II powers.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:55 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Cut-And-Run-And-Gun

The new, "aggressive" 2006 Democratic platform advocates shifting 140,000 American soldiers out of Iraq to attack a nuclear-armed nominal ally to capture a figurehead dialysis patient that Harry Reid already thinks is dead.

More. Please.

Note: Bad link fixed.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:16 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Handcuffs, Not Kid Gloves

The Washington Times editorial on illegal immigration by Tony Blankley this morning really set me off (h/t Drudge), especially this part:

...The senators should remember that they are American senators, not Roman proconsuls. Nor is the chairman of the Judiciary Committee some latter-day Praetor Maximus.

But if they would be dictators, it would be nice if they could at least be wise (until such time as the people can electorally forcefully project with a violent pedal thrust their regrettable backsides out of town). It was gut-wrenching (which in my case is a substantial event) to watch the senators prattle on in their idle ignorance concerning the manifold economic benefits that will accrue to the body politic if we can just cram a few million more uneducated illegals into the country. ( I guess ignorance loves company.) Beyond the Senate last week, in a remarkable example of intellectual integrity (in the face of the editorial positions of their newspapers) the chief economic columnists for the New York Times and The Washington Post — Paul Krugman and Robert Samuelson, respectively — laid out the sad facts regarding the economics of the matter. Senators, congressmen and Mr. President, please take note.

Regarding the Senate's and the president's guest-worker proposals, The Post's Robert Samuelson writes: "Gosh, they're all bad ideas ... We'd be importing poverty. This isn't because these immigrants aren't hardworking, many are. Nor is it because they don't assimilate, many do. But they generally don't go home, assimilation is slow and the ranks of the poor are constantly replenished ... [It] is a conscious policy of creating poverty in the United States while relieving it in Mexico ... The most lunatic notion is that admitting more poor Latino workers would ease the labor market strains of retiring baby boomers ? Far from softening the social problems of an aging society, more poor immigrants might aggravate them by pitting older retirees against younger Hispanics for limited government benefits ... [Moreover], [i]t's a myth that the U.S. economy 'needs' more poor immigrants.

[my bold, not in original - ed.]

It does not help that a small but growing number have no intention to assimilate, as shone in these disturbing images captured yesterday noted on both the left and the right.

It also inspired my to contact my Senators, Richard Burr (R) and Elizabeth Dole (R), to whom I sent the following email:

Dear Senator,

It is with a great deal of concern, and even anger that I write to you this morning, regarding the subject of illegal immigration before us this day.

According to an article this morning in the Washington Times:

Gallup Poll (March 27) finds 80 percent of the public wants the federal government to get tougher on illegal immigration. A Quinnipiac University Poll (March 3) finds 62 percent oppose making it easier for illegals to become citizens (72 percent in that poll don't even want illegals to be permitted to have driver's licenses). Time Magazine's recent poll (Jan. 24-26) found 75 percent favor "major penalties" on employers of illegals, 70 percent believe illegals increase the likelihood of terrorism and 57 percent would use military force at the Mexican-American border.

An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll (March 10-13) found 59 percent opposing a guest-worker proposal, and 71 percent would more likely vote for a congressional candidate who would tighten immigration controls.
An IQ Research poll (March 10) found 92 percent saying that securing the U.S. border should be a top priority of the White House and Congress.

And yet those of you in the Senate, including 73 percent of Republicans, support guest worker legislation, rewarding those that would break the law, repeating polices that have failed miserably in the past.

This must not stand. Immigration must be legal. Amnesty is not an option. Illegals must leave this country, and return legally. Employers who hire illegals must be heavily fined. Illegal immigrants must be charged as felons. We must have our southern border sealed with fences and walls to enforce legal immigration, and prevent illegal immigration.

I am but one voice of many, but mine is a loud voice, getting louder, with more than 60,000 influential readers coming to my conservative political blog (http://confederateyankee.mu.nu) last month alone.

I will use that digital pulpit to highlight the fact that you specifically voted against the will of North Carolina's Republican voters. I will questions your motives. I will question your reasoning. I will examine your other legislation. I will examine your connection to lobbyists. And I will do so relentlessly.

America is a land of immigrants. Immigration is good for America's soul. But this immigration must be legal, and every immigrant must come here legally, without exception.

Those of us who can legally vote, including legal immigrants, will have it no other way.

Sincerely,

As I stated in my email to the good senators, I'm completely behind the concept of immigration, but it must be legal immigration.

Those who break our laws should be treated with handcuffs, not kid gloves.

Update: The hihg school students who ran up the Mexican flag at Montebello HS (cluelessly but appropriately running the American flag in the "in distress" upside down position) were not from Montebello HS, but nearby El Rancho High School and both "a board member and the acting administrator of the El Rancho High School were present" according to Ward Brewer, who called Montebello and El Rancho high schools in running this story down.

It sounds to me like a couple of folks need to be fired from El Rancho.

Another reader who claims to be from the area states that many of the students and families of students from El Rancho are *gasp* illegals, though I have no way of verifying this.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:50 AM | Comments (32) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

For Sale...

School Buses
Slightly damp, a total of 259. Previously used as a symbol of incompetence. Works great as anchors and fish attractors. Ask for Ray.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 07:30 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

March 28, 2006

This Cult Smells Fishy...

According to Michelle Malkin, British Muslims are carping about a pair of fish they claim are inscribed with the names of Allah and Mohammed, calling it a miracle. Frightening as it all may seem, this "miracle" just goes to reinforce the truth of the being they once called the Arafish.

Certain dhimmi liberals of course, are falling for this hook, line and sinker, and are all too willing to pander to fish-fascinated fanatics here in the United States.

Some are willing to praise the Allah fish:

Some are so intent on capturing votes that they are willing to go the extra mile to look like the Allah fish:

Not surprisingly, they're all famous bottom feeders, doncha know.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 02:25 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Those Tools At The Times

For those of you who have read this NY Times article about captured Iraqi war documents being placed on the web, you'll note that the Times did not deem to give Ray Robinson, the blogger interviewed in the article, a link to his blog, nor did they bother to give you his entire background. Ray Robinson worked for the Defense Intelligence Agency as a member of the Iraq Survey Group that collected and in-processed this documentation when it was captured. He isn't just a blogger, but a person with some hands-on expertise.

Too bad that the Times couldn't be bothered to provide a link or give his bona fides.

I guess that would go against their "bloggers are hacks, and we're so accurate" meme, wouldn't it?

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:09 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Flailing Fukuyama

One can only hope that the truth brigade of the liberal blogosphere that so effectively curtailed the career of Ben Domenech will maintain their high standards of integrity in the pursuit of accuracy, and be among the first to call for the head of famous ex-neocon Francis Fukuyama.

Fukuyama's life-altering revelation that caused him to turn away from neoconservatism was supposedly triggered by a speech calling the Iraq war "a virtually unqualified success." It turns out Fukuyama's story was instead the unqualified fabrication, according to the man who gave the speech, Charles Krauthammer, who calls Fukuyama out:

I happen to know something about this story, as I was the speaker whose 2004 Irving Kristol lecture to the American Enterprise Institute Fukuyama has now brought to prominence. I can therefore testify that Fukuyama's claim that I attributed "virtually unqualified success" to the war is a fabrication.

A convenient fabrication -- it gives him a foil and the story drama -- but a foolish one because it can be checked. The speech was given at the Washington Hilton before a full house, carried live on C-SPAN and then published by the American Enterprise Institute under its title "Democratic Realism: An American Foreign Policy for a Unipolar World." (It can be read at http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.19912,filter.all/pub_detail.asp.) As indicated by the title, the speech was not about Iraq. It was a fairly theoretical critique of the four schools of American foreign policy: isolationism, liberal internationalism, realism and neoconservatism. The only successes I attributed to the Iraq war were two, and both self-evident: (1) that it had deposed Saddam Hussein and (2) that this had made other dictators think twice about the price of acquiring nuclear weapons, as evidenced by the fact that Moammar Gaddafi had turned over his secret nuclear program for dismantling just months after Hussein's fall (in fact, on the very week of Hussein's capture).

It's all right there in black and white pixels, with an easily followed link to a copy of the speech above. Fukuyama misrepresented the content of Krauthammer's speech as being something else, which certainly as vile as misrepresenting the content of the speech as his own.

I'm sure the intrepid truth squad of the far left - at Firedoglake, Media Matters, the Daily Kos, and others - will press Fukuyama for a full accounting for his transgressions with the same righteous fury they unleashed last week in their relentless pursuit of truth.

Seriously.

Any minute now.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:40 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

March 27, 2006

What They Saved

News is now breaking in the trial of the so-called "20th hijacker" Zacarias Moussaoui that Moussaoui and shoe bomber Richard Reid were supposed to hijack a fifth plane on 9/11 and fly it into the White House.

Via Breitbart:

Al-Qaida conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui testified Monday that he and would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid were supposed to hijack a fifth airplane on Sept. 11, 2001, and fly it into the White House.

Moussaoui's testimony on his own behalf stunned the courtroom as he disclosed details he had never revealed before. It was in stark contrast to Moussaoui's previous statements in which he said the White House attack was to come later if the United States refused to release a radical Egyptian sheik imprisoned on earlier terrorist convictions.

Quite frankly, it is hard to trust anything Zacarias Moussaoui has to say, but if he is telling the truth that his target was the White House, it might provide an answer to the question of Flight 93's target that September morning.

It has long been suspected that the hijackers on Flight 93 were likely targeting either the Capitol Building or the White House. As Moussaoui was arrested just one month before the attacks, it seems likely that the other the terror cells would stick with their original targets instead of trying to retarget shortly before the attack. If Moussaoui's statement it true that his target was the White House, then it would seem likely that the terrorists on Flight 93 had the Capitol Building as their target.

We know that the heroes of Flight 93 prevented an attack on a Washington target when they stormed the cockpit over Pennsylvania that September morning. If Moussaoui is correct, we now have a reason to suspect exactly what it was they saved.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 01:48 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Bush Lied, Yadda Yadda Yadda

The NY Times has a huge non-story today, where it was found that President Bush and Prime Minister Blair did not wait until the week before the invasion of Iraq to do their war planning.

When presented in that context, of course, it really is a non-story, other than the fact that the document provides some interesting historical context of the kind of commentary that goes on between leaders in a run-up to a conflict.

Ed Morrissey says pretty much what I would say about the matter, summing it up:

In short, the Times presents us with a memo that shows the US and UK understanding that Saddam would not cooperate with the UN nor voluntarily disarm or step aside; history proved them correct on all those assertions. Given those as reality, the two nations prepared for war. If the Times finds this surprising, it demonstrates their cluelessness all the more.

I suspect it isn't cluelessness as much as it is political opportunism by the Times, which has consistently covered this conflict in a way that makes al Jazeera unnecessary.

Bush Lied, People Died. I think I've heard that before.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 08:49 AM | Comments (12) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

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