The Curmudgeonly Clerk offers up a great analysis of the 9th Circuit's reversal rate.

Deborah Orin has a great editorial today in the NY Post. A key comment:

"It's worth remembering, as critics revive their Vietnam quagmire comparisons, that over 57,000 U.S. troops died in Vietnam and so far the U.S. death toll in Iraq is 308, fewer than the 343 firemen who were killed on 9/11.
Every death is a tragedy. But that doesn't make the war a failure. In fact, it is a success. "

With the way BIG Media is covering Iraq, you'd think we had lost thousands of troops already. Quagmire, Quagmire, Quagmire...

More on Clark's speech in today's Wall Street Journal. The WSJ make a salient point:

"Mr. Clark was asked about those remarks at yesterday's Democratic debate, and he replied that the country had made 'an incredible journey' since September 2001 and that Mr. Bush had 'recklessly cut taxes' and 'recklessly took us into Iraq.' We'd say the retired general has made a rather astonishing journey himself, and the public will have to judge the sincerity of his conversion. "

Makes a stong case that one should question the General's motives.

Drudge nails Clark:

"I'm very glad we've got the great team in office, men like Colin Powell, Don Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice... people I know very well - our president George W. Bush. We need them there."

Well Clark does this mean you'll drop out now?

More college campus PC nonsense here. SMU shuts down a College Republican bake sale in which race is determinate of price. Sounds a lot like how SMU allocates its admissions. What is really disturbing is that the school is limiting free speech (conservative free speech) because of "safety" concerns:

'This was not an issue about free speech,' Tim Moore, director of the SMU student center, said in a story for Thursday's edition of The Dallas Morning News. 'It was really an issue where we had a hostile environment being created.'

Imagine the ways this arguement could be used to limit free speech.

The 9th Circuit, sitting en banc, was uninous in AFFIRMING the district court's denial of an injunction halting the CA recall for October. This means it will go ahead as scheduled. Some key points to:

• Plaintiffs allege that punch-card machines result in an average combined “residual
  vote rate” of 2.23%. Residual votes consist of “overvotes” (ballots disqualified
  because they are read by the machine as containing more than one vote on a single candidate contest or initiative issue) and “undervotes” (ballots read by the machine as not containing a vote). While residual votes may be caused by factors other than machine error — including a voter’s affirmative choice not to vote on any particular candidate or initiative — plaintiffs allege that the residual vote rate of punch-card machines is, on average, twice that experienced when other voting technologies are used. (Yep, the ACLU wants to block all democracy because by their own estimate, only 98% of people can vote sucessfully...)
• There is no doubt that the right to vote is fundamental, but a federal court cannot lightly interfere with or enjoin a state election. The decision to enjoin an impending election is so serious that the Supreme Court has allowed elections to go forward even in the face of an undisputed constitutional violation.
• "...the precise equal protection claim raised here...is one over which reasonable jurists may differ....local entities, in the exercise of their expertise, may develop different systems for implementing elections.”
• Interference with impending elections is extraordinary and interference with an election after voting has begun is unprecedented (Hundreds of thousands of absentee votes have already been cast)
• If the election is postponed, citizens who have already cast a vote will effectively be told that the vote does not count and that they must vote again.
• We are reluctant to intercede in ballot timing of the initiatives, an electoral matter that falls within the province of the state to determine.

Read the opinion here.

Iran to Scale Back Cooperation With U.N. Guess they see more value in having a nuclear cpabilty than the friendship of the U.N. Hard to fault the logic, even if it means we're going to have to attack them soon. Oh well, one less crazy Arab terror incubator is a good thing.
Maybe Jimmy Carter can lead this one...Oh wait, never mind.

Professor Eugene Volokh offers his thoughts on the Pregerson's ethical breach.:

"Nonetheless, whether or not this should be the rule, so long as it is the rule it seems to me that judges should follow it...Absent some such extraordinary moral or legal need, if you're a judge and you don't like the rule, complain about it, or even sue to change it; don't just break it."

Wonder if Professor Tribe might care to share his views on this...yeah, I might be wondering a long time.

Getting to know Gen. Wes Clark--the man the Demo's want to run for President. A sample:

"U.S. diplomats warned Clark not to go to Bosnian Serb military headquarters to meet Mladic, considered by U.S. intelligence as the mastermind of the Srebrenica massacre of Muslim civilians (and still at large, sought by NATO peacekeeping forces). Besides the exchange of hats, they drank wine together, and Mladic gave Clark a bottle of brandy and a pistol.

This was what U.S. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke's team seeking peace in Yugoslavia tried to avoid by instituting the 'Clark Rule': whenever the general is found talking alone to a Serb, Croat or Muslim, make sure an American civilian official rushes to his side. It produced some comic opera dashes by diplomats. "

Look for more "Clarkisms" to come.

Today's OpinionJournal makes a key point about the recall; namely that Justice Pregerson has commited an ethical violation. To wit:

"'You know who's on the panel, right? Do you think it's going to have much of a chance of surviving? I wouldn't bet on it,' he tells the Los Angeles Times in an interview. He also defends the ruling. 'Judge Paez, Judge Thomas and I--we did the right thing,' Pregerson said. 'We're there to protect people's rights under the equal protection clause of the Constitution, no matter who's involved, and a lot of people don't like it. That's their problem, not mine.'

Well, since when do judges go around giving interviews about cases pending before their courts? Actually, they're not supposed to...it's a violation of the Code of Conduct for United States Judges, which provides in Canon 3, Section A(6):

'A judge should avoid public comment on the merits of a pending or impending action, requiring similar restraint by court personnel subject to the judge's direction and control. This proscription does not extend to public statements made in the course of the judge's official duties, to the explanation of court procedures, or to a scholarly presentation made for purposes of legal education.'"

Maybe he should have read the 9th Circuit Fact Sheet here, which states:

5. Due to codes of ethics restrictions, judges are unable to discuss the merits of the case.

Time to bring a tired old lib up on some ethics violations.

Here is the listing of the 9th circuit 11 member en banc panel to re-hear the recall issue. Funny, the descriptions would have you believe that not a one of them is a liberal.

More on the enemy from within...Islamic Chaplain is Charged as Spy. Reminds me of another of our Islamic soldiers, the one who fragged the command tent in Kuwait. Nice to see that the military has been keeping an eye on "our" forces. Stark reminder that even some of our own are against us.

Attention Californians!
As a Floridian, I have the following advise on your upcoming recall election:

Thank you.

InstaPundit Glenn Reynolds takes on Big Media's biased reporting with this compilation of what is going right in Iraq but not reported. He kicks some serious ass. Read the whole thing, especially the Lileks bit:

"I’ve read enough editorials from various papers from this period to reinforce something I’ve long suspected: the reason many editorialists hate this war is because they don’t feel it’s theirs.
If Clinton had risen to the occasion, wiped out al-Qaida, sent Marines to kick down the statues and put bullets in those filthy sons’ brainpans, this would be the most noble effort of our time. We would hear clear echoes of JFK’s call to bear any burden. FDR, Truman, Marshall Plan, forbearance, patience — the editorial pages of the land would absolutely brim with encouragement and optimism every damn day, because the good fight was being waged, and the right people were waging it." (Lileks)

Or this bit on why Big Media is failing to take on France:

"...the French are essentially at war with us, trying to regain influence in the region... TotalFinaElf, Alcatel and the scores of French companies who coined money working for the Hussein regime for decades. As long as Paul Bremer is in charge, it won’t happen. France needs someone it can bribe and sign dodgy deals with. The UN can deliver that. The US won’t.” Journalists are supposed to pride themselves in noticing the self-interest behind what people tell them. Why have they missed this? Because they’re biased, butt-covering, lazy, hysterical, and Euro-envying. That’s my guess, anyway. (emphasis added)

Ouch!

Michael Barone provides this timely reminder that we cannot, and should not, expect that our efforts in Iraq will be a success overnight. He also points out the error in the "news" standard applied by BIG Media Inc., one where:

"It is news when there is a fatal accident at Disneyland and not news when there is not. But Iraq is not Disneyland. In a country that is occupied after decades of a brutal dictatorship, good news is news."

Not that the reporting standard is likely to change unless and until a Democrat gets elected president again.

Drudge has this interesting reminder of former General Clark's military accumen. It's okay to pick a groundless fight with Russia, but a morally warranted fight with Iraq, heavens no! The 10th dwarf will certainly be a good source of additional Democratic primary comic relief.

The 9th Circus appearantly has a few cooler heads left. They reportedly have agreed to hear motion for an en banc review of the recall postponement. Seems that en banc review is coming up more and more under the Big Top. Maybe it's just because the quality of decisions coming from San Francisco are becoming increasingly shrill and left-of-center.

Again, maybe it's time for Congress to split the court; such massive reponsibilty has never before been so misused.

Looks like it's 10 little dwarves now! Wesley Clark to Seek White House. Should be a Bush landslide.

More on the 9th Circus punch card ballot BS. Eugene Volokh asks a question the Justices should have, were they not blinded by partisan political antics:

"Assuming that punch card ballots are generally less reliable than the alternatives, why should we think that using punch card ballots in several counties in Oct. 2003 would be less reliable than using the alternatives for the fist time in those counties in Mar. 2004?"

A question nobody in California's Democrat party and ACLU (as is if there were a difference) cares to answer.

Remember, this is about assuring a large Democrat turnout for the Recall. By postponing the election until the regular primaries, Democrats are sure to draw out more of their partisans who might otherwise be uniterested in lending "legitimacy." the 9th Circus just handed Gray Davis a HUGE politica favor, one which was no doubt solicited by Clinton on his recent visit to CA.

I couldn't agree more with this article. It is time to split the 9th Circus into at least two circuits. This should be a Bush campaign issue.

Look! We at Big Media conglomerated have devised a clever WTO protest, complete with angry protestors.
Oops. Nothing to see here behind the curtain. Fear the Wizard of Cancun. There is nothing to see behind the curtain.

Question. How many journalists does it take to make a protest?

(via InstaPundit)

This is the Democrat's frontrunner to be President of the United States???

"There is a war going on in the Middle East, and members of Hamas are soldiers in that war."

First he says that the U.S. may soon no longer be the world's preeminent power, and now this. I really hope he gets the nomination. Seems perfectly suited to lead the Party of the Jackass.
(via FOXNews.com)

Worth repeating:

"For all of the Left's ranting over the failures of the war on terrorism, here is what they themselves have failed to acknowledge: the liberation of two dictatorships in as many years; the largest restructuring of government since WWII with the creation of the Department of Homeland Security; the dismantling of al-Qa'ida as a centrally organized, cohesive fighting force; the capture of 42 of the 55 most-wanted Saddamite Ba'athists; the severance of diplomatic ties with Palestinian terrorist Yasser Arafat; the significant efforts aimed at containing North Korean and Iranian nuclear proliferation; the counterinsurgency operations against Islamic terrorists in the Philippines; and early successes in the development of an ICBM shield for the U.S. and its allies. Clearly, these results are nothing to scoff at -- even if you are a candidate in the '04 Democrat presidential primary."

(Via The Federalist)

Check out this site for a chilling memorial to 9/11. These are the pictures that made you angry 2 years ago. These are the pictures that should continue to make you angry every single day until the wolrd is rid of the scourge of Islamic terrorism.

Fuck France, Fuck Germany.

Per usual, Victor David Hanson gets it right:

"Here at home questions were raised in the last two years that would have been equally inconceivable on September 10, 2001. Do images of those fighting on the peaks of Afghanistan or in the desert of Iraq, when juxtaposed to the rallies on our elite campuses, suggest that a populist military is doing a better or worse job than our privileged universities in training our youth to be educated, well-spoken, and rational? Is Marin County's Johnny Walker Lindh, seeking to find himself among the Taliban, or Middle America's Johnny Span dying to protect us from the primordial henchmen of Afghanistan, a metaphor for us all, so increasingly at a crossroads at the millennium?

...and when a Norman Mailer or Michael Moore and a host of writers and actors in the aftermath of 9/11 have uttered such atrocities after 3,000 vanished, what has happened to our intelligentsia and artists, so much the beneficiaries of the very wealth and leisure of the American engine they sneer at? Did they, like our brave firemen and police in New York and Marines in Iraq, show themselves in the hour of our need to be even better than we thought them — or was it instead to be abjectly worse?

...Can these entertainers at least have the honesty to repeat their convictions, not to airbrush their websites or to send out press aides for damage control, but instead defiantly rip into the inquiring postfacto reporter with, "Yes, I said that. No, I was not misquoted. And, yes, I believe that America is very sick."? Then we would at least know that they dislike the American system rather than being pampered blowhards and college dropouts who sound off to paparazzi after a bad day or drink only to whimper back when told their invective might cost them some dough.

...In our current feeding hysteria that diminishes astounding success to quagmire or worse, what disinterested observer would ever believe that in just 24 months we have liberated 50 million people, destroyed the odious Taliban and Saddam Hussein, and routed 60% of the al Qaeda leadership — all at the cost of less than 300 American dead? It is almost as if the more amazing our accomplishments, the more we must deprecate them." (emphasis mine)

Today is a very good day to take stock of what we have accomplished. When you look objectively, not as a political partisan, but as an American citizen, how can you help but be proud.

Tomorrow will be a long day, long in the sense that we will be bombarded by the media with images of the events of 2 years ago. Sanitized images, politically correct images, child-friendly images. Not reality. We will not see much of this:

It offends our sensibilties to witness these "jumpers", people faced with a harrowing choice--slowly and painfully burn to death, or exercise the dignity of choice in the certain final moments of your life.

Esquire mag has this article about the search for the identity of this still unknown man, murdered by TERRORISTS. Not freedom fighters, not victims of U.S. foreign policy, not a civil rights conspiracy by the Bush Administration, but MURDERED, but Islamic terrorists of Arab abstraction, the majority of which hailed from Saudi Arabia. We honor this unknown man when we never forget that fact.

Contrast the reactions of our society to that of the Islamic world. We are shocked and offended to witness a suicide, even when an act dignified in the exercise of choice v. immolation. The terrorists of Islamistan embrace suicide, especially if it can be used in the furtherance of religious murder of innocents. We are right look at these images with horror. We are right when we look at the Islamic terrorist as an abberation.

We have a long way to go in this fight against terror, and I thank God everyday that we have a President who is up to the challenge. God bless our brave soldiers, the families of those lost in this war.

May God continue to bless the United States of America.
(Hat tip to Powerline)

Sometimes, you just have to say no:

"Consequently, the government cannot, consistent with the interest of national security, comply with the court's order' of Aug. 29. "

The Moussaoui case is a rther strong re-inforcement of why terrorism cases should not go through the normal criminal system. The Administration should to push for enemy combatant trials.