Memo to Mrs. Clinton: How to Deal with Pirates

Memoraundum for Mrs. Clinton, this how you deal with pirates, Associated Press:

NAIROBI, Kenya – The small white skiff approached the Italian cruise ship Melody after dinnertime as it sailed north of the Seychelles, the pirates firing wildly toward the 1,500 passengers and crew on board.

What the pirates didn’t expect was that, in the darkness, the crew would fire back.

Don’t take away the pirates cell phones.  Arm the ship’s crew.  Well done gentlemen.

• @jtlol Can someone explain to me how Perez Hilton’s nonsense is any different than that od andrew sullivan?  #
• Re: David Kellerman: Ron Brown, call your office, please #
• where is OwlGore today, anyway? #tcot #hhrs #
• @jaketapper That’s Cuban for ‘oops’ #
• @EdMorrissey I like your read on Frum/Harman Ed, but can’t get past the smell of a scapegoat operation on the part of WH #
• oh yeah… it’s bring your behavioral problem to work day. I forgot.  #
• and so the other bear says… ‘ now I remember… it’s red wine with hunter, white wine with fisherman…’…  #
• @PatrickRuffini A logical answer seems to be that terrorism in support of lefism is in our future.  #
• so obama jets cross country so he can give a speech in front of a winmill on the virtures of being green?  #
• @miles_smit Well, that whole boat thing was a government project, doomed from the get go.  in reply to miles_smit #
• @rpagesc Ever wonder why Obama chose Biden? To be sure he’d always be more popular than his VP. #TCOT in reply to rpagesc #
• If a guy has information that could save lives& Ucould get tht information by(gasp!) pouring water on his face& don’t, you’re usless #TCOT #
• @allahpundit: No Krugman isn’t an absolutist. He needs wiggle room when he gets caught.  #
• RT @JamesRivers: 4 Twools to Backup Your Followers on Twitter >> http://cli.gs/EnUgWS PLS RT #tcot #
• US Didn’t Know About Swine Flu Until a Week After Canada Did… Why? #TCOT http://bitsblog.theconservativereader.com/?p=19732 #
• Do We Need More of a Reason to Kick the UN Out of the US? #TCOT http://bitsblog.theconservativereader.com/?p=19726 #

One, I am taking the liberty of editing Patterico , just a wee bit:

Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State (and Dick and Lynn Cheney daughter) Liz Cheney rips Norah O’Donnell a new.

Two, I second Bill Kristol, Weekly Standard:

Of course, everyone’s first choice for president in 2012 is Dick Cheney. But Liz Cheney’s boffo performance yesterday in the lefties’ den, MSNBC, defending sensible interrogation policies in the war on terror, surely puts her in contention for the runner-up position.

Three, as to the McCain father and daughter tag team:  One is dumb and the other one is well a  blond.

O’Donnell should not feel too bad.  I recall that Lynn ripped Wolf Blitzer a new one as well.

It’s not just the tactic of using Republicans for bipartisan photo-ops, and then cutting them loose before partisan decisions, that irks Obama’s opponents. The new president wasted no time rushing forward with policies and legislation guaranteed to drive Republicans nuts. The first bill he signed into law was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act — a partisan hot-button that drew all of eight Republican supporters in the entire Congress. Then there was the swift reversal of Bush policies on abortion and embryonic-stem-cell research — issues dear to the Republican base

Sarah Palin, via Ben Smith, Politico.

James at OTB:

Manfred Nowak, the U.N.’s special rapporteur on torture, proclaimed yesterday that the United States must prosecute the lawyers who drew up the torture memos and that if we fail to do so it is the duty of other states to step in and bring charges.

In my New Atlanticist piece, “UN: United States Must Prosecute Torture Lawyers,” I wonder how the lawyers can be responsible but not President Bush and Attorney General Gonzales.

Well, worse, we’re now going to prosecute legal opinion?
But look, people, let’s get right down to it. We need to tell these morons to get it out of the sunshine. I mean, the UN? Com’on, people.

Ah, yes… the UN. The group that was so instrumental in making so many of its members rich under the table by way of the oil for food program.

The organization that was the provider of so many young bodies for U.N. diplomats with a sexual taste for children. People who, by the way, are still being protected by the U.N. instead of prosecuted.

The organization who has spent so much of its time defending oppressive dictatorships around the world, and has so little in the way of taste for freedom in those places where it can be found, for example the western world.

These are supposed to be the judge and jury of what we did in terms of terrorism, while it stood by and watched the whole thing happen?

Yeah, right. Why the bleep are we subjecting ourselves to THEIR judgment?

Here’s my prescription:
Ignore the United Nations, remove the United States from the United Nations and tell them to get their backsides out of Turtle Bay, in 30 days or less.

Preferably less.

Founding Bloggers:

Yesterday, we officially filed our DMCA counter-notice in the matter of CNN’s censorship of Founding Bloggers’ coverage of the Chicago Tax Day Tea Party. A copy of the counter-notice is available at Ben Sheffner’s blog Copyrights & Campaigns, where he’s been devoting much of his valuable energy toward documenting and publicizing what CNN has tried to do in this case.

In his current post on the story, Ben makes the following interesting point:

Founding Bloggers could also sue CNN. Section 512(f) of the DMCA allows the target of a takedown notice to seek damages, including costs and attorneys’ fees, against the sender for “knowingly materially misrepresent[ing] … that material or activity is infringing.” While such cases are difficult to win, one court has held that the sender must take into account fair use when deciding whether to issue a takedown notice. Founding Bloggers can also sue for a declaratory judgment, asking a court to issue an order stating that its video is a non-infringing fair use.

MUCH more to come.

I must say, these guys don’t lack for stones.

Sometimes, the world is a smaller place than we ever imagine it could be.

A few years ago, used to work at a bank as an information technology person. (Hence the nickname, ‘BitHead’. I’m a tech, by trade, usually working in some type of computer/technology position.)

 Unfortunately the department that I was attached to, closed, and my job was eliminated and I ended up moving on to other things. To this day however, I consider it the best job I ever had. At least, outside of my first love, which was always radio. Still, that’s been 20 years, now since I did that, so…(sigh)

Anyway,  in working at that job I discovered how small the world really is.  On a particular Saturday afternoon we had a situation in we were working out where all of the computers in the place needed to be touched for the purpose of installing a new piece of software that could not be installed remotely. Keep in mind; this was the early days of Windows NT with the new user interface. The usual operation on those kinds of “all hands” was that we would take one or two technicians and walk around with the install disks taking perhaps five or six hours to install what needed to be installed on every machine in the house. Usually around 450 machines.  Over my tenure at the bank I did this perhaps five times.

This one particular Saturday I happened to come across the desk of someone that I hadn’t met before, and in the process of doing this software installation, I happened to look at some of the pictures on the woman’s desk just to pass the time. One of the pictures stood out rather dramatically in my mind as being awfully familiar.  There was something about it that I knew but that I couldn’t identify. Essentially it was a picture of a dirt road and the fields and trees across the dirt road or it there were no buildings in the picture no permanent structures of any kind for that matter.

Let me back up a moment. In fact, let me back up somewhere on the order of 45 years.

When I was growing up my grandmother on my mother side bought a weekend place …what had been a farmhouse outside the little town of Dalton, New York. The house was on the order of 5 miles away from the nearest paved road. It was the most god-awful place to get to in the wintertime, and for that matter following spring time when the rains came. On several occasions snow prevented us from getting those last 5 miles to the house, and disappointed we ended up having to drive the 60 some odd miles back home without having made our visit.

Personally, I couldn’t understand for the life of me my grandmother’s attraction to the place, until later in life.. It was hot in the summer time with not a breeze to save yourself, it was unbearably cold in the winter time, and snow up to your armpits tended to be the rule of the day. TV reception was terrible at best. It was a long-distance phone call to the fire department. No, I’m not kidding. And yet despite all of this my grandmother who had a job in the city was making the 60 mile trek to the farm every weekend, and just about every weekend we make the same trip.

After having spent so much of my young life in this place, you can imagine that the features of the place had imprinted themselves on my brain, and some will tell you they’ve also implanted themselves on my personality. Be that as it may, there wasn’t much about this place I didn’t know.

My grandmother passed on some years before I took the job at the bank, and the place has been maintained until just recently by my uncle who also has a house on the property. After one final and sad foray into the house a couple of evenings after she died, I haven’t been in the place since. This despite the fact that I can run to the place in my mind to the square inch without any difficulty whatever. I knew that my Uncle had started renting a farmhouse out to help cover the expenses of running a fairly large piece of real estate, it was on, but I never met the people involved.  Somehow, I guess part of my reluctance to meet the people there involved my reluctance to think about that place being occupied by somebody other than my grandmother. Childish perhaps, but there is.

So, back to the bank. A few days later I had a trouble ticket that I responded to for the woman whose picture I had noticed. As we started talking and getting to know each other as I fixed the computer problem, I pointed out the picture to her. Without any other explanation are rattled off the address of my grandmother’s house.

She went a few shades whiter, almost at once. After she picked her job up off the floor, she immediately wanted to know how it was that I had so readily identified where the picture had been taken from, given there was no identifying marks in it that anyone else on earth would recognize.  And I, explaining, to her what I have just explained to you, began to get a little wistful.

It turns out that she and her husband were the ones who were renting my grandmother’s old house from my uncle. I haven’t seen her since I left the job a couple years ago. To be honest, I can’t even remember her name now though I have it written down. She proved, however, to be the nicest person that you would ever want to meet. She was somebody I enjoyed working with. I get the feeling that I would’ve enjoyed the company of her and her husband if I had managed to knock on their door and say hello.

It’s nice though, that the second chance came along, by what you might call a chance meeting.  Otherwise I would never have learned first-hand how small the world really can be.

Gotta love the leftard logic.  It somehow lowers our standing in the world to get Khalid Shaykh Muhammed’s hair wet, but having half a million children die in an acceptable price, from May 12, 1996:

Lesley Stahl on U.S. sanctions against Iraq: We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price–we think the price is worth it.

Hat tip:   Gateway Pundit

Now I do not accept Stahl’s assertion.   However Albright does and it is so noted..

Eric Cartman meets Bart Simpson and goes Palestinian? A political cartoon, not for the easily offended with both an edge and a blast, McClatcchy:

JERUSALEM — Ahmed and Salim appear to be typical teenage brothers.

They spend hours in front of their computer playing Wii and posting crude updates on Facebook. They jam with Guitar Hero and watch bad American sitcoms. They bicker and call each other names.

 Warning if Soth Park is too offensive for your, don’t go here, video:

If the video offends you, say why.

Arthur L. Dowdell, of 909 Pleasant Avenuel Auburn, AL 36832 is a bigot and a thief:

(AP) – AUBURN, Ala. (AP) ? Several Confederate flags placed on the graves of Civil War soldiers got pulled up by a black Auburn city councilman, who called them symbols of racism and hatred.

Mary Norman, president of Auburn Heritage Association, said she was at her family’s burial plot in Pine Hill Cemetery when Councilman Arthur Dowdell removed the small Confederate flag from her great-grandfather’s grave Thursday afternoon.

“He pulled up the flag, snapped it in two and put it in his car,” said Norman, who is white.

Call Mr. Dowdell at 334.524.2074  and tell him to return the property he stole.   Soldier who served with hnnor deserved to treated with honor.

As Bit rambled:

Ignored his advisors: About everyone, including his current CIA director begged Obama not to release those interrogation memos. Guess Soros trumps all that.

From R. Jeffrey Smith, Michael D. Shear and Walter Pincus Washington Post:

The aides also said they hope the memos’ release will focus public attention on the coldness and sterility of the legal justifications for abusive techniques, with Obama telling reporters in the Oval Office on Tuesday that the documents demonstrate that the nation lost its “moral bearings” in the Bush years.

A source familiar with White House views said Obama’s advisers are further convinced that letting the public know exactly what the past administration sanctioned will undermine what they see as former vice president Richard B. Cheney’s effort to “box Obama in” by claiming that the executive order heightened the risk of a terrorist attack.

In other words, the debate inside the Obama administration was intense and purely political.   The Obamatards are more worried about Dick Cheney than they are al Qaida.

It is interesting that while Cheney hunted quail with a scattergun and didn’t appear to have particularly good aim, he now changed to snipper and has two very specific documents in mind,Josh Gerstien, Politico, via :

Former Vice President Dick Cheney is asking the Obama administration to declassify two documents on intelligence obtained from the so-called enhanced interrogation program that critics have decried as torture, according to a copy of his request obtained by POLITICO.

The form filed with the National Archives’ Presidential Libraries section on March 31 of this year shows that Cheney asked for declassification review of the two items from a folder called “detainees” within “OVP Cheney immediate office files.” The titles of the memoranda or reports were blacked out for classification reasons, however, one memo sought was dated July 13, 2004, and totaled eight pages, and another dated June 1, 2005, totals 13 pages.

More, Allah Pundit, Hot Air:

[T]he only prominent Democrat left who wants to delve further into this subject is Pelosi, and after the beating she took yesterday for her “lame excuse,” expect her to have a change of heart too. Presumably the plan going forward is to let the matter drop and then, when Cheney gets his docs, to accuse him of trying to refight old battles from which the country’s moved on. Savor the irony.

Cheney is gotten inside of Obama’s OODA loop.    Obama can either release the two documents Cheney requested, proving Cheney right, or not release them, showing Cheney to beright.

Welcome, one and all to the most intense nightly read on the ‘sphere: The ever more popular BitsBlog Nightly Ramble

This is the Garden Store Edition

• When government rises, true charity falls: This blog has pointed out for years, that when taxes go up, ostensibly to support social services programs, actually charity giving suffers.  So it is no shock to find that the immediate effect of Obama’s enforced ‘volunteering’ for teens is that Youth volunteering is falling for first time since 9/11…
• Liar, Liar: No shock, either, to find that Nancy Pelosi is lying through her teeth about not being briefed on water boarding.  I’d like to see her under oath on this stuff, but with Democrats in charge, it ain’t gonna happen.
• ZZZZZZ: Well,, perhaps she was asleep, like Obama’s Financial advisor, Larry Summers, yesterday.   I wonder if she’ll cop to that, though,
• You Dirty Rattner:  Kaus is still chasing the bit with Rattner. You gotta wonder if the cause of her recent problems isn’t the person on the other end of Obama’s Souped up Blackberry.
• Sugar Daddy George: And who would that be? Why, George Soros, of course. 
  

  Subject: Accountability for torture
  Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 16:25:06 -0400
  From: George Soros [email protected]
  Reply-To: [email protected]
  To:Dear Friends and Colleagues:

  This morning a coalition of human rights groups and other organizations launched an appeal to the President to establish a commission of inquiry to examine and report publicly on America’s use of torture in the period since September 11, 2001. Please sign the petition and forward this email to your friends, family, and colleagues.

  (Site URL Redacted)

  Regards,

  Michael Vachon

  Office of George Soros

  It would certainly explain very well indeed, Obama’s flipflop on prosecutions we all saw this week.

• Ignored his advisors: About everyone, including his current CIA director begged Obama not to release those interrogation memos. Guess Soros trumps all that.
• No demands for Napalitano’s head?  Why, I wonder didn’t it get brought up as we were told it would?  Gotta wonder if there isn’t’ something going on under the surface on this.  Rex Murphy, up at the CBC, meanwhile,  has a great bit up on her:
  

  What is Barack Obama doing appointing someone to head Homeland Security, who, eight years after the attacks, does not even now know where the hijackers came from and how they got into their country? Here, it’s not her ignorance about Canada which should be troubling. It’s her ignorance of the most publicized event in modern American history. How can anyone be head of Homeland Security and not know the history of the 19 men who killed nearly 3,000 Americans?

  Remember that from my perch here in Western NY, I’m within earshot of every major market in Eastern Canada. It’s a bit of an understatement to say that the Canadians are PISSED. Rightly so.  We’ve had many years of a peaceful productive and warm relationship with Canada. Obama promised us change, right? Apparently he’s delivered. Canada now is angry with us. I suppose it’s no good asking them to add some troops to fight the forthcoming war in Pakistan?  Ah, not to worry. The Taliban are such nice people.

•   A limited love of liberty:  An interesting post from John Leo,  who says the ACLU has lost it’s way.  He draws conclusions we reached a long time ago, but it’s worth a read.
• Message to Megan McCain: Go Away.  Take that worthless old man of yours, with you.
• You like me… you really like me… A nod to RWN who has a list of “Five Blogs I Like”. Interestingly, BitsBlog is actually ON that list. (Snicker) As I told him yesterday, I really don’t link him as much as I should, despite his being on my regular reading bookmarks.
• Another one?  Obama’s saying he’s going to do another prime time press conference.  Of course the TV nets will lose something on the high side of  $10MUSD. I wonder… how many of these before the networks grow the stones to say: “Look, we’re really not that into you”.

Editor’s note: this is cross posted from The Conservative Reader, where good buddy Art Smith holds court. I asked him to report back to us, and this was the result, posted at his place on the 22nd. George Pataki is a former NY govenor and spurred some interest on the national news with this appearence. I thought I’d pass on Art’s comments since he was there. -E

I attended the event this evening and while George did not make any comments that sounded like “Hey, I want to be your next President”, this was definitely seemed like a pre-exploratory event. He had some great comments about the current state of affairs, and took questions which I also think he answered well. Some in New York (see comments on this post) have speculated about him running for other posts in that state, others have suggested he could be a possible contender for President in 2012. Even if he does not run for anything, he certainly provides a strong sense of some of the things the GOP needs to do to take back the People’s Government.

There were about 90 people at the event tonight, including a number of Republican/Conservative activists that I’ve gotten to know, former Iowa Governor Terry Branstad, Joseph Heuertz (and other leaders) of the Drake College Republicans, John Bloom, Polk County Republican Chair (along with probably a dozen members of the Polk County Republican Central Committee, one of the sponsors of the event), Steve Rathje, David Van Ahn, Kim Schmett, Ed Failor Jr. (Iowans for Tax Relief), Craig Robinson (The Iowa Republican) and probably a dozen other folks I’m either forgetting or should know.

We would have had a larger group, but the Iowa General Assembly was in session this evening (I hope they actually got something done).

The organization that put on the event was America Future Fund. They tout themselves as the conservative answer to moveon.org, and they did an excellent job of arranging this event (future lectures in the series are planned for other locations in Iowa… more info here as it becomes available). The group is headquartered here in Iowa, and I believe they were active in 18 states during the 2008 election. The Communications Director, Tim Albrecht, runs The Bean Walker, an Iowa version of the Drudge Report. I’ve gotten to know him over the past few months, and he seems like a pretty sharp guy. I think this group is worth a close look.

I’m definitely looking forward to future lecture events. Regardless of where Pataki is headed, this was a good start to getting conservatives motivated and energized for the 2010 elections.

Clarice Feldman at Pajamas Media nails it cleanly:

As the president released the memos, C.I.A. Director Leon Panetta sent a letter to his agents:

In releasing these memos, the men and women of the CIA have assurances from both myself, and from Attorney General Holder, that we will protect all who acted reasonably [emphasis supplied] and relied upon legal advice from the Department of Justice that their actions were lawful. The attorney General has assured me that these individuals will not be prosecuted and that the government will stand by them.

This can hardly be of much comfort to those agents who realize that the government is now in the hands of those who’d sacrifice whole cities for some naïve notion of a moral high ground, which will make our enemies love us and cease their aggression. Such men are not likely to feel the need to worry much about the lives and safety of those who were tasked to save us and did so honorably and within the bounds of the law when the threat appeared more immediate.

Clarice focuses on the issue of the release of those documents, and calls them a dumb move. She then goes about repeatedly backing her conclusion with comments to that effect from various sources. IN this, also, she’s quite correct.

That said, however, this issue goes far deeper to the issue of harsh interrogation, itself. Consider the line again:

the government is now in the hands of those who’d sacrifice whole cities for some naïve notion of a moral high ground,

Exactly so. Somehow, the willingly chancing the lives of millions as opposed to pouring water on the face of a few to save those millions, doesn’t strike me as very moral.

It becomes less of a morality issue when as Clarice observes:

Former CIA Director Porter Goss has been unreservedly critical of Obama’s decision:

Porter Goss, former CIA director and past chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, blasted the Obama administration for releasing Justice Department memos on harsh interrogation techniques. “For the first time in my experience we’ve crossed the red line of properly protecting our national security in order to gain partisan political advantage,” Goss said in an interview.

History shows us that in the end, the far left will use whatever lever it can to maintain power, even up to and including riding the cusp of a moral issue they’d not give a whit about were it they in power.

I submit that the ongoing nature of the events around the world will show one of two things, and very soon indeed, particularly in Iran or Afghanistan; or more likely, Pakistan: Either our security, as weakened as it has been will be tragically exposed as such by another 9/11 type incident… or Obama will, as he has on other war on terror matter, adopt the Bush policies he’s made so much noise about.  For our sake, let’s hope it’s the latter.

Dave Schuler at OTB:

Germany is concerned about the Taliban fighters nearing Pakistan’s Islamabad capital:

BERLIN, April 24 (Reuters) – Germany expressed concern on Friday at the advance of Taliban fighters towards Pakistan’s capital and urged the government in Islamabad to take decisive action to ensure the security situation did not deteriorate.

Taliban militants have pushed closer to the capital in recent days, vowing to impose their strict version of Islam across the nuclear-armed Muslim state.

Earlier this month, Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari signed a regulation imposing Islamic law in the northwestern Swat valley as part of a deal to end Taliban violence.

“We are following developments in Pakistan very closely and believe like our partners, that the advance of the Taliban … is worrying,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Andreas Peschke told reporters.

Peschke said the Taliban was still far from the capital and warned against overdramatising the situation, but added: “Nevertheless, the infiltration of armed fighters is at odds with the truce agreed with the militants. This is a situation that has to fill us with concern.”

It’s difficult for me to put into words my feelings about Germany’s concern. I wonder if Germany’s concern will be sufficient for the Germans actually to do something about the situation?

I tend to agree with Schuler, here. Nothing like showing up late to the party, is there?

Interestingly, Germany was the hero of the American left a short while ago because they were so insistant on opposing Bush Defense policies as regards AQ, the Taliban and so on. The noises we’re hearing now is a Germany who is starting to recognize that barring a miricle, the cost of that opposition is that they’ve screwed themselves out of an extended life expectancy.