Author: Fuzzy Curmudgeon

The flag at the top of the main index is the First Navy Jack, which the Secretary of the Navy has ordered to be flown from all U.S. warships for the duration of the War on Terrorism. You can read a copy of the official announcement at FoundingFathers.Info.
Link via Best of the Web.

I missed this yesterday — Charles Krauthammer’s “Year One: We Didn’t Change At All”
Great piece.

BOTW also notes an article on EUObserver.com that suggests ex-French President Valery Giscard d’Estaing is reading up on the making of the US Constitution.
Since Giscard is the President of the Convention on EU Future, this may be interesting to watch; that would make him kind of like the George Washington of our Constitutional Convention.
Tellingly, the article is entitled “Giscard Suspected of Taking Interest in USA System” and includes the line “Members of the European Parliament suspect Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, president of the Convention on EU future, of taking too much interest in the American institutional system, with a view to introducing it in the European Union.” Nah, this will be fun to watch; our own Constitutional Convention had no authority to write a Constitution at all, but was convened to repair the Articles of Confederation. And my goodness, did the fur fly over that…there were threats to secede all over the place, primarily from New England…
I wonder if M. Giscard was reading “Miracle at Philadelphia” by Catherine Drinker Bowen, which is quite possibly the best — or at the very least, most accessible — single-volume account of the Convention ever written…
You could look it up.

Via Best of the Web, take a look at this, noting the scare quotes and the tag line: “Human rights around the world have been a casualty of the U.S. ‘war on terror’ since September 11.”
Disgusting. News services are supposed to report the news, not editorialize, unless they specifically state that they are editorializing. Reuters is going to have a big “black eye” from their biased, opinionated “reporting” before this is all over.

is still alive and well at Harvard. I give you Professor Neil Ignatiev, who wishes to “abolish[] the white race”.
Just as there is nothing worse for Jews than a self-hating Jew, there is nothing worse for whites than a self-hating white man.

Radley Balko has it exactly right. Excluding Social Security, paycheck withholding is the biggest scam ever perpetrated on the American people.

Seems Colin Powell was not received politely yesterday at the Global Summit:

Repeatedly interrupted by jeers and protests, Secretary of State Colin Powell defended the United States’ environmental record and its efforts to help the poor in the developing world Wednesday, the closing day of the World Summit.

I guess I should be Secretary of State (or maybe I shouldn’t), because the first time it happened I would have stopped, looked at the hecklers, and said, “You know, folks, the United States can take its ball and go home any time. And you lose big time if we do.” Instead:

As Powell spoke, delegates from non-governmental groups in the audience repeatedly interrupted him, shouting “Shame on Bush.” Two people held up a banner reading, “Betrayed by governments.” At least two people were removed by security.

Sounds like it wasn’t enough.

Powell looked annoyed, answering back “I have now heard you,” at one point, then soldiering ahead with his speech.

Too moderate. Chew their ass, for chrissake, Colin! Weren’t you a general once? Surely you were an NCO on the way up.

South African Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, who was chairing the session, yelled at the hecklers to stop and called the outbursts “totally unacceptable.”

Duh. Well, at least one of the freeloaders woke up and smelled the “what happens if the US takes its ball and goes home” coffee.

The boos and jeers began when Powell criticized the government of Zimbabwe for exacerbating the food crisis in that country and pushing “millions of people to the brink of starvation.”

Heil Mugabe.

[]Sen. Bob Brown from Australia’s Greens party lambasted the energy compromise.
“The wealthy nations have their heads in the sand,” he said. “The world’s being let down. The interests of the next generation have been appallingly disenfranchised.”

Hmm. Maybe in the Third World, where most of their leaders have disenfranchised them by stealing their foreign aid, murdering them, and starving them to death.
And besides that, how exactly do you disenfranchise “interests”? “Interests” are intangible. A franchise extends to people, not to intangibles. Learn to speak your own language, you left-wing Aussie blowhard.

Read and weep.

and in full flower:

Today we are back at the WFC. Our new office in our old building looks down on a 16-acre pit several stories deep. During our first stint in this place–from May 1996 to September 2001–we would occasionally look over at the World Trade Center and try to imagine what it was like when a bomb went off there in February 1993. Now we look at the enormous hole in the ground and try to remember what it was like a year ago, when two homely yet majestic buildings still stood on the site.
Then, to put things in perspective, we look at a map of the Muslim world and imagine what it will be like when the dictators are gone and the countries they now rule have joined the civilized world. If this strikes you as fancifully optimistic, look at a map of Germany, Italy, Japan or even Russia and remember what those countries used to be like.

Bravo! Welcome back, Mr. Taranto.

At least according to Jonathan Last.
I’m surprised that Fox didn’t take up this idea and flog it to death. Seems like it would be a natural for them. It would certainly beat hell out of those interminable helicopter car chases and Amber Alerts.