Brett Favre

Would somebody please buy this poor man who's so obviously suffering under the weight of an extraordinary need for continuous attention a nice tutu? If I were Ted Thompson or Mike McCarthy, I'd tell him he's welcome to come back, but if he doesn't want to hold the clipboard on the sidelines for Aaron Rodgers, he'll have to play the starter role he craves in ballet slippers. Might cut down on the interceptions - if he can keep his O-line off his toes.

Sick

The *One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest* mentality, which argues that the mentally ill are an oppressed minority, evidently did some real harm at Virginia Tech - harm to the tune of 32 innocent people shot dead.

Apparently many people - laypeople at VA Tech (roommates, classmates, professors), mental health professionals, and a judge or magistrate - were well aware that this guy was sick.

It's not clear to me why an institution of higher learning should feel a need to keep a mentally ill person, who is sufficiently disinterested in learning to wear earphones during class and decline to reply to an instructor's questions, on their roster of students.

It's time to quit babying the vicious.

Pope

German pope says Africa's ills are due to European colonialism.

Pardon me while I chortle.

It's just as likely that the west's ills are due to the propensity of Africans to sell each other into slavery.

NYPD

Had Al Capone been named head of the NYPD, he probably could have reduced crime a bit, too.

The "NYPD kills groom on wedding day" story just keeps getting worse and worse, and it's not an historically isolated incident. It's as though New York's finest have grown into the image Al Sharpton disingenuously proposed in the Tawana Brawley case.

North Korean Nuke?

So, has North Korea successfully detonated the world's smallest nuclear weapon, blown up a kiloton of TNT to psych everyone out, or failed to detonate a larger nuclear weapon?

They sure look to me like the gang that couldn't shoot straight, after their recent missile imbroglio. Which is not to say that they couldn't wreak havok somewhere, if they're suicidal. I merely comment on the incompetence that ought to be expected from the form of government they employ.

I would suggest that the USA's next step be this: warn North Korean civilians to leave their cities.

Bob Casey of Pennsylvania

I had high hopes for Bob Casey Jr. of Pennsylvania, the Democratic candidate for US Senate running against Rick Santorum.

Then I actually watched Casey speak at the Catholic University of America (via a webcast).

This is the first time I've seen the younger Casey speak.

I could be characterized as a pro-life, New Deal democrat - I'd like to see Roe overturned, and I'd also like to see health care defined as a right, not a privelege.

I was tremendously disappointed by what I saw of Casey's speech. For one thing, he looked like he was reading a well-rehearsed speech written by a careful staff of pollers, rather than speaking from conviction as Rick Santorum does (and I am no lover of Santorum, but were I in PA, I just might vote for him, having seen Casey).

The younger Casey seemed eager to apologize for his pro-life stance, very unlike his father, who was so adamant that he was barred from speaking at a national convention. I'm afraid the younger Casey has learned the wrong lessons. Kinda like the younger Bush.

Politics in a true democracy stink to high heaven - people get what they deserve. And once again, the people of Pennsylvania get to choose between someone who's wishy-washy on life issues, but liberal, and someone who would be delighted to lower the minimum wage, but is strong on life issues.

I'm glad I don't have to vote in that contest, I think I'd like to vote "no, no".

War Crimes

George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, and most especially Alberto Gonzalez should be charged with war crimes. They are better than Eichmann in the sense that they have taken fewer lives. They are not much better than Eichmann in the sense that they are convinced that they are right, that their victims are wrong, and that the gap between right and wrong is so huge that no rules should apply to the way they treat the human beings they see as being in the wrong (and I think they correctly identify the parties who are in the wrong).

Slave Reparations

Tonight, these are the top stories on Agence France-Presse:

Election campaigning in the Democratic Republic of Congo has ended on a bloody note after four people died in rioting before the first multi-party vote in 46 years on Sunday.

An unknown gunman has shot and killed Somalia's constitutional and federal affairs minister in the provincial town of Baidoa, just a day the Somali government was plunged into crisis when 18 ministers quit over its policies.

Should taxpayers in the USA pay reparations to people who were brought from these places to the United States against their will (having been sold to slave traders by their fellow black Africans)? I think we should bill them.

Israel and the Palestinians

First paragraph of a Reuters article:

"Firing into the air, Fatah gunmen and police stormed Palestinian parliament buildings on Saturday in growing unrest after their long-dominant party's crushing election defeat by Hamas Islamists."

As I've said before, Israel is the only civilized nation in that part of the world.

Oregon and West Virginia

In Oregon, some celebrate the U.S. Supreme Court's refusal to overturn their physician assisted suicide law.

From West Virginia comes this Associated Press story, which I find deeply moving on many levels:

By VICKI SMITH
ASSOCIATED PRESS

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (AP) -

With a little help, the sole survivor of the Sago Mine disaster stood for the first time since the accident, and puckered his lips when his wife asked for a kiss, doctors said Friday. Randal McCloy Jr., 26, came out of a coma earlier this week.

"In this business of taking care of severe head injuries, little things make us happy," Dr. Julian Bailes said.

McCloy can make noises when doctors cover his breathing tube. Whether he will be able to speak when the tube is removed depends on the extent of the brain damage he suffered from carbon monoxide during his 41 hours trapped underground, Bailes said.

Twelve fellow miners died after the explosion Jan. 2.

Doctors described McCloy as being within "moments if not hours from death" when he arrived at West Virginia University's Ruby Memorial Hospital on Jan. 4.

On Thursday, he was transferred to a rehabilitation center. He stood for the first time that day with help from medical aides, and later puckered his lips when his wife, Anna, asked for a kiss, said Dr. Russell Biundo, medical director at HealthSouth Mountain View hospital in Morgantown.

"There is definitely a better connection with her than anybody else," Biundo said. "What we all want is a connection so that when I say, `Lift one finger,' he does it. Boom, then we have a party."

When they're not busy protecting their right to kill unborn children...

your garden-variety core constituents of the Democratic party are planning to turn the annual White House Easter egg hunt into a teaching moment reflecting their sensitivity to children's needs. (or should that read, "their willingness to subject children to anything, including death"?)

Specter

President Bush just signed into law a bill making it a crime to annoy someone via the internet. We can thank Arlen Specter for prodding the priveleged boy President into this new Big Government initiative.

Now if we could just pass a law making it a crime for senators to annoy people by bloviating on national television....

Biden

If Joe Biden's bowels worked like his mouth, he'd be diagnosed with a life-threatening condition.

A Prayer for a Friend of Peace and Justice

If anyone ever writes a book with the title, "People Who Took Risks for Peace", unexpectedly (given his earlier history), Ariel Sharon must be one of the prominent chapters - one of the great stories of the struggles of the Middle East in the post-WWII era. Somehow, that part of the world seems to just suck down such lives like an alcoholic quaffing his first few beers, hardly even savoring the nuances of the courage and committment of this old fighter who stood up to the intransigent in the movement he'd helped start, in an effort to bring to a successful conclusion a just war to which he'd devoted his life. I pray that we have not seen the last of him.

Deficit Spending and Abortion

Let's give John Maynard Keynes his due, and grant that deficit spending by governments, during economic downturns, is a good, counter-cyclical thing. Now let's examine George W. Bush. He insists that the economy has been growing since he assumed office, and he's signed off on massive deficits every year. My take: this kind of spending will have one of two outcomes - either it leads to a debt which is not honored, which is theft, or it leads to the enjoyment of goods by this generation which will be paid for by future generations. I say it is akin to abortion which in most cases is a decision to live conveniently now at the expense of a child.

Murtha's Impact: An Unexpected Twist

Mickey Kaus recently posted fascinating comments from Charlie Cook suggesting that Rep. John Murtha's call for immediate U.S. withdrawal from Iraq actually served as a tipping point in favor of President Bush's policy. Cook says Murtha's high-profile remarks shifted focus away from recriminations over how we got where we are to questions about where we go from here.

All this is in striking contrast to the conventional wisdom at the time of Murtha's remarks. Right now Google turns up 68,000 hits on "Murtha 'tipping point'" and they're virtually all to the effect that Murtha's tipped the balance against the president. Prominent among them is this Howard Fineman piece in Newsweek which, in hindsight, just looks dead wrong.

A View

from the National Park Service webcam in Mt. Ranier National Park this afternoon (click on the image for a larger version).

The Y Chromosome and Procrastination

In a Reuters article noting that Christmas Eve retail sales in the USA were slower than expected, the general manager of Northpark Mall in Ridgeland, Mississippi makes a gem of an observation: "Our clientele has changed today to be more men."

Tony Dungy

What an unspeakable, unfathomable tragedy has befallen Tony Dungy in the loss of his son James just days before Christmas and weeks before his likely achievement of the pinnacle of success in the profession he has served so long, so honorably and so well.

Condolences can be addressed here.

Dungy is one of the class acts in American public life today. There aren't many like him.

President Bush Should Go to Congress

Trust in the beneficent intentions of the most powerful officials in government is not a secure foundation for liberty. I'm astonished that so few Americans on the right are now willing to concede the truth of this statement. I understand that some of them truly believe, and more of them are prepared to argue, that the very existence of our republic is threatened by Islamic terrorism. I understand that there are now, as there were not a century ago, nightmare scenarios according to which a few well-funded, well-organized miscreants could wreak unthinkable havoc on our people.

I differ with the "strong executive" conservatives concerning the procedures we, as a nation, ought to employ in assessing the risks and adjusting our civil liberties traditions in accordance with the assessment. I believe that congress should be involved in this process of evaluating the competing risks of retaining civil liberties traditions and remaining vulnerable to the potential of terrorists equipped with weapons of mass destruction, or risking domestic tyranny and enjoying security against threats from abroad. One of the pillars of our American way of life is faith that the truth is most likely to prevail in an unconstrained argument, and it is a pillar I am unwilling to surrender to Osama Bin Laden, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.

Our founding fathers never envisioned our present dilemma because, among other things, they never envisioned our nation going to war, and our president claiming the plenary range of "commander in chief" powers within our own borders, without a formal congressional declaration of war.

I believe it's in that spirit of our Constitution to argue that, if an executive unwilling to seek a formal declaration of war believes a new type of threat requires new limitations on traditional rights (read "the right of American citizens not to be searched without a warrant from a court", or "the right of Americans citizens imprisoned by their government to be charged, confront their accusers, and have their day in court"), the executive ought to be required to persuade the legislature to agree, before being empowered to proceed. Not to put too fine a point on it, it seems self-evident.