Author: Fuzzy Curmudgeon

pretty much for the reasons I suggested myself last week. Michael Scardaville writes in NRO:

Even if they wanted to, TIA employees simply won’t have time to monitor who plays football pools, who has asthma, who surfs what websites, or even who deals cocaine or steals cars. They’ll begin with intelligence reports about people already suspected of terrorism, according to Ted Senator, project director of a component of TIA.

Read the whole thing.
My biggest question is about denying access to the database for unscrupulous purposes, and frankly I hope Oracle — IMHO one of the most unscrupulous companies around — has absolutely nothing to do with this project.

More specifically, it’s time to start dropping planeloads of M-16s and millions of rounds of ammo for them into Iran. At least that’s my opinion after reading Michael Ledeen today.
Take Iran now. Then take Iraq with Iranian allies. Iran is ready for democracy if any country in the region is.
Faster, God damn it!

Lawrence Henry on the difference between TNR and NR readers. Based on the ads in the magazines…
Only goes to show that NR readers have more fun. Which I’ve always suspected.

…the Doctrinaire One has posted her schedule for the next semester.
I heartily approve. Especially the American Diplomatic History (always one of my favorites). And I’d like to take the Western Thought class myself, even though I’m long past the college scene. But Rachel, dear, don’t bother trying to double in history and polisci. The political scientists don’t want conservatives in their midst. Just take the history major and run.

…we present for your approval my alma mater, Indiana University.
There’s really not a whole lot to be said about this other than, “Fer criminy sakes, morons, get over it; it happened, it’s over, it’s done, get back to education.” You’re a public university, anyone can walk onto your campus (in fact you’ve got non-students in Dunn Meadow protesting the war on terrorism in violation of your own rules that the Meadow can only be used by students and nobody is allowed to camp there overnight), and the film crew was invited into the dorm by a resident. Quitcherbitchin’.

Look. The colonial powers went in, created a certain amount of infrastructure, and made at least some attempt to uplift native populations to a civilized level. In essence, they were foster parents to a bunch of native children, and Mom and Dad did their best to teach the kids to be adults.
Fifty years later, after colonialism is deemed a dead policy and the Western powers have all pulled out, it looks like the natives have lapsed back into childhood.
Exactly what was so bad about colonialism, again?
And another thought…the newspaper that started all this with the stupid Muhammad reference was a Muslim newspaper, so naturally the combatants are…Muslims and Christians? How did the Christians get dragged in?
Children indeed. Feral children who need a knee or two to be put over and spanked.

Here’s a perfect example of why zero tolerance rules are bullshit.
(Via Best of the Web.)

EPA is easing new, more restrictive clean air rules on power plants and so forth.
This actually makes sense. There is a rule of thumb in engineering that says that the closer you get to perfection, the harder it is to make any progress. In other words, the last 10% of the job probably costs as much or more than the first 90% did. (I think there is a name for this rule, somebody’s Law, but I can’t remember it offhand.) And this was going to be very expensive.
The fact of the matter is that the US is not the problem in world air pollution. The Third World (including China) is the problem. And it’s in our best interest to help Third World countries that still burn copious amounts of “dirty” fuel to upgrade their economies so they don’t have to do that anymore, if we really want to do something about worldwide clean air.

Service may be interrupted for a while.
UPDATE: Oh. That was easy.
UPDATE2: Wow. There’s a search CGI now. See the SEARCH THIS BLOG link at the right…

You have to love it when a Canadian official calls our President a moron. It sort of takes one to know one, especially where the Canadian government (not its people) are concerned.
On the other hand our State Department doesn’t exactly have a handle on the language.

In Washington, a State Department official whose area of responsibility includes Canada said he hadn’t heard about the remark. In any event, he said: “We have no intention of going anywhere near it with a 10-foot pole.”

OK…so what do you have an intention of going near it with? A five-foot Japanese?
[SUDDEN THOUGHT: Send that 10-foot Pole to Indianapolis, we can use him on the Pacers.]