Oh Boy....

I don't know how I missed this one.

I tell you. It hurt my heart to read it.

I Spy.

First Modern Case of Spy Actually Placed Inside of White House

"Both the FBI and CIA are calling it the first case of espionage in the White House in modern history.

Officials tell ABC News the alleged spy worked undetected at the White House for almost three years. Leandro Aragoncillo, 46, was a U.S. Marine most recently assigned to the staff of Vice President Dick Cheney.

Espionage Case Breaches the White House
Death with Dignity or Criminal Act?
Person of the Week: Complete Coverage
"I don't know of a case where the vetting broke down before and resulted in a spy being in the White House," said Richard Clarke, a former White House advisor who is now an ABC News consultant.

Federal investigators say Aragoncillo, a naturalized citizen from the Philippines, used his top secret clearance to steal classified intelligence documents from White House computers.

In 2000, Aragoncillo worked on the staff of then-Vice President Al Gore."

via Ace

Wow. Weird, huh? Most of what he stole was sent through e-mail too. Kind of make it easy to sneak out.

My doggy is having a birthday! 4 yrs old! Sweetest dog ever!!! His name is Shaq and he is a lab mix and I adore him.

I got to get me some of these babies. LED lights light the toes of the slippers. Am I the only one who thinks that is just too cool? via boing boing

Nagin. Nagin. Nagin.......

Wizbang discovers buses that were on dry land and with an open escape route to get the New Orleans people out of the Super Dome.

This just gets more and more pathetic.

Question for Readers.

I am taking my daughter to New York for her birthday. I want to stay in the Theatre district. It has been awhile since I have been there and I can't even remember the hotels I stayed at before. If you know of any good ones or if you live in NYC or know others who do, could you leave a suggestion in the comment section. I would appreciate any restaurant suggestions too. Nothing fancy for food! Just good food! Anywhere in NYC.

Thanks Guys!

*note: If any of my family or friends are reading this, DON'T mention it to my daughter! It's a surprise!

Irrational 101

Christopher Hitchens is so awesome in making us understand Islam fanatcism. Regarding the recent Bali bombing, he has this:

"Indonesia is a mainly Muslim society, whose government takes a stern line against the war in Iraq and even Afghanistan. Its people, who are astonishingly hospitable to all foreigners, depend in millions of cases on tourism to make the difference between indigence and the minimum wage. Its elections feature Muslim political parties, many of them quite austere in their propaganda. Why on earth, then, would a fundamentalist group wish to bring discredit upon itself and ruin upon its neighbors by resorting to random slaughter?

Never make the mistake of asking for rationality here. And never underestimate the power of theocratic propaganda. The fanatics look at the population of Bali and its foreign visitors and they see a load of Hindus selling drinks—often involving the presence of unchaperoned girls—to a load of Christians. That in itself is excuse enough for mayhem."

He ends with this, but got read the whole thing. It's good.

"So, what did Indonesia do to deserve this, or bring it on itself? How will the slaughter in Bali improve the lot of the Palestinians? Those who look for the connection will be doomed to ask increasingly stupid questions and to be content with increasingly wicked answers."

Cotillion Girls Gone Wild!!!

Beth at My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy is looking for some blogger babes (of the MALE persuasion!) It's sorta turning the table on the male bloggers who post babe pictures in the middle of their hard news (no pun intended!). Wizbang is famous for it. Anyway, go see Beth if you want to be objectified....;-)

News on Oklahoma bomber.

WorldNetDaily is reporting this:

"An Oklahoma University student who killed himself by detonating a bomb strapped to his body outside a packed stadium over the weekend was a "suicide bomber" in possession of "Islamic jihad" materials, according to a new report." via Reaganites Unite!

His name was Joel Henry Hinrichs IIII. I was afraid that this might be the case when I heard about it. I am also surprised that this has not happened before. Thank God he didn't hurt anyone. I'd like to know when and how he converted. I would also like to know more about the Islamic Society of Norman, which was near his apartment.

John Hawkins isn't the only one who has a favorites list.

Here is John over at Rightwingnews:

"It has been a little more than 3 months since the last time I ranked my favorite 40 blogs, so I thought it was about time to do it again, for the last time in 2005.

Do keep in mind that as the quarter has progressed, some blogs have of course moved up and others have dropped, based on how often I visit them, how much I like what I see when I get there, how often the blogs are updated, etc., etc. As per usual, do keep in mind that these sort of lists changes frequently over time based on a variety of factors. So if your blog didn't get included, it's no big deal -- it could be on the list next time."

'As per usual,' could he be any more arrogant? I mean really. Everyone who reads my blog knows that I never criticize other blogs, but I just have to make an exception here. I didn't really know enough about RWN to form an opinion until one the Cotillion girls, Ilyka decided to quit blogging as a chick and come back as man (cyber speaking) and she thought John had shown a lot of bias in not linking more women bloggers. His recent list of 40 looks like it has only about two chicks, so I'm thinking maybe she was right. But I kinda think that it's really about sucking up to John. When I posted on Ilyka when she quit blogging as a chick, Hawkins quoted me out of context and when I e-mailed him about it, he just brushed me off and didn't correct himself. Does that sound familiar????

Anyway, I certaintly don't care what an ego driven blogger thinks. But I thought I might give you my favorite blogs. Since I think my opinion counts just about as much as John's does.

I don't have the time I use to read all the blogs I like everyday, but the following I hardly ever miss. I notice that a few of mine are not on John's list. Not because they aren't fantastic, because clearly they are, but because he got in some little tiff with them at some point and that was that.

For intelligent news commentary and up to minute stuff it doesn't get any better than Little Green Footballs, Powerline, and Wizbang.

For everything I said above PLUS naughty hilarious fun, it doesn't get any better than Protein Wisdom.

Beautiful Atrocities is also one of the funniest blogs out there, but he seems to have gotten a life.

If one wasn't married and the other wasn't gay, I might be cyber stalking them both. That is how great they write.

Another funny guy with great commentary is the one I probably link the most...Ace of SpadesHQ

Garfield Ridge is pretty funny too.

I LOVE in your face conservative women and no one does that better than My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy and Darleen's place and Knowledge is Power. (SondaK is naughty hilarious as well)

For intelligent thoughtful conservative babe commentary I just love Reasoned Audacity.

The girl who reminds me most of myself is NotADesperateHousewife.

The Poliburo Dikit is where I go when I want to argue with a RINO, there and The World Wide Rant.

And the premier milblog out there is Mudville.

Richard Landes, writing for Solomonia, describes one of the results of bias in the media in how "The Media Gets the "Intifada" Wrong"

"The AP caption, repeated by the NYT, identifies the bloodied civilian as a Palestinian, the policeman brandishing a club – implicitly the author of the youth’s wounds – as an Israeli, and the location as the Temple Mount. I guess one out of three IDs isn’t bad for AP when it comes to the Middle East conflict, although the thrust of the errors literally transforms the meaning of the photo. What the AP did with this caption is to impose upon it the firm expectations of their Politically Correct Paradigm: since the Palestinians are the David and Israel the Goliath, then a bloodied civilian near an Israeli with a club must be the soldier’s victim. And since Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount the day before had provoked Palestinian rage to which the Israelis had responded with deadly force, the injuries must have been inflicted on the Temple Mount.

What happened differs radically. The victim, Tuvya Grossman, was an American seminary student in Jerusalem whose taxi-driver went through an Arab neighborhood of Jerusalem where rioting crowds dragged him from the car, beat and stabbed him nearly to death. He managed to escape and reach the place where this Israeli soldier protected him from his pursuers. This story here actually illustrates the Jihad Paradigm, not the Politically Correct Paradigm.

Palestinians, whipped into a rage by false rumors that Sharon had desecrated the al-Aqsa mosque, broke into wild rioting, which Israelis, as much as possible, constrained with non-lethal weapons (like this baton). The Jewish civilian here is the victim, and the Israeli David, scantily armed, stands up to the Palestinian mob...
...his subsequent retraction, and a successful lawsuit against both AP and the French paper Libération, had little impact on those who wanted to believe in Israeli villainy.

As in the case of the poison accusations of 1983, Palestinian and Arab media, like the Egyptian Government and their Post Colonial Paradigm supporters, have continued to use the picture as part of their Palestinian victim narrative. To this day, Tuvya Grossman's picture adorns a poster calling on everyone in the world to boycott Coca Cola in order to stop Israelis from killing Palestinians.

No picture better illustrates the mood of the media at the outbreak of the intifada. "Already already listening" as Werner Erhardt might have put it. The storyboard was up, they just needed the material to start pinning to it. On September 29, it was Tuvya Grossman. The next day, it was Muhamed al Durah."

via Dean's World

Every day I find more proof that I can't believe hardly anything I read from the press.

You Have to Love........

The Protest Warriors.

h/t BigDog

No Worries.

It seems no one is really happy over Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court. Some are concerned about her past political contributions to Democrats, but she has given to Republicans as well. It is not unusual for law firms to pass the hat, so to speak, for all candidates. I don't think that tells us much. David Frum has worked with her and says she is "a lovely person: intelligent, honest, capable, loyal, discreet, dedicated ... I could pile on the praise all morning." He is just concerned that there is no proof that she is a legal conservative.

Well, isn't that the point??? Bush is forced to put up stealth candidates because the Democrats will tear into anyone who has a record on their "sacred" abortion rights and other "hot button" issues. David Frum also makes the case that there were far more qualified candidates to choose from.

I don't blame Bush at all for these choices. I also just don't buy that she is not a conservative. Does anyone really believe that Bush doesn't know how the candidates he chooses feels about the "hot button" issues??? Of course he knows. And given how he feels about these issues, I don't think for one minute that he would nominate someone who didn't feel as strongly as he does.

No worries.

I stumbled onto this blog, tower of the sun, and found a post where the guy had contacted the Principal of his son's school and the school district, upset over a "religious" flyer sent home from school. He explains that when the Principal called him back:

"The Principle also offered to make sure that both of our sons do not receive any religious materials in the future. We explained that this option was nothing more than an "opt out" policy and that was not sufficient. It is not just about our child, it is about a breech of rights of all students."

Here (scroll down to 2nd post) he is explaining his position to criticism that he is anti-religious. He says,"You make it sound like I am anti-religion. Far from it. I am anti- forced religion."

What is this horrid "forcing of religion" on this child ?? What sort of sneaky claw of evangelist propaganda was FORCED? (Well, it was actually just put with a bunch of of take home flyers like all schools shove in our kid's folder every week) I'm betting the kid would never have even seen it if his parents hadn't pointed it out. I know my kids never look at them. But that isn't the point! Of course! It is the fact that they were practically making this kid do an alter call! A forced Baptism was just a matter of time.

But anyway, the flyer that was obviously demanding this kid's soul is the one you see above. That's right. The cute orange flyer for a "pumpkin festival." With proceeds to the poor and all that. Truly awful stuff. The kid will be damaged for life. He will question all his parent's beliefs (or non-beliefs)

*sigh*

The only religion I see endorsed here is maybe Charlie Brown's "The Great Pumpkin" faith. What a joke all this is. I feel sorry for the teachers, Principals, and school districts that have to put up with this crap from nutty parents like this. The flyer doesn't even mention GOD, for God's sake!

If a flyer came home from my son's school with a fun run for a Synagogue, I certainly wouldn't care. I get flyers all the time that are promoting "humanist" values. You don't see me running crying to the Principal.

It's just stupid. Poor kid. Now he will probably get all kind of grief.

The Screen of Ignorance.

Charles Murray has an excellent article at WSJ.com on the re-discovery of the underclass in the aftermath of Katrina.

He talks about the root of the problem of the underclass, which is pretty much what I wrote before on race, but he said it much better and with all those good statistics that the left leaners love so much:

"Why has the proportion of unsocialized young males risen so relentlessly? In large part, I would argue, because the proportion of young males who have grown up without fathers has also risen relentlessly. The indicator here is the illegitimacy ratio--the percentage of live births that occur to single women. It was a minuscule 4% in the early 1950s, and it has risen substantially in every subsequent decade. The ratio reached the 25% milestone in 1988 and the 33% milestone in 1999. As of 2003, the figure was 35%--of all births, including whites. The black illegitimacy ratio in 2003 was 68%. By way of comparison: The illegitimacy ratio that caused Daniel Patrick Moynihan to proclaim the breakdown of the black family in the early 1960s was 24%."

Murray makes clear that any and all govt. programs to help the underclass have been tried and they have failed. The interesting part of the article to me is how he pointed out that Katrina simply knocked down a screen between the poor and the middle class that the middle class had erected. We had created enclaves away from the poor.

This is so true. People are comfortable if they don't have to see the problem. We can pretend that it really isn't there. But Murray's last paragraph saddens me greatly. Because I know that it is all too true:

"Hurricane Katrina temporarily blew away the screens that we have erected to keep the underclass out of sight and out of mind. We are now to be treated to a flurry of government efforts from politicians who are shocked, shocked, by what they saw. What comes next is depressingly predictable. Five years from now, the official evaluations will report that there were no statistically significant differences between the subsequent lives of people who got the government help and the lives of people in a control group. Newspapers will not carry that story, because no one will be interested any longer. No one will be interested because we will have long since replaced the screens, and long since forgotten."

via Ace.

I stole this from Patterico's Pontifications This is the actual front page of the LA Times for Sept. 3oth. Which makes it appear as if the world has ended with Robert's confirmation. Maybe the LA Times thinks that it has? (Those are actually images of the California fires.)

Heh.

Disturbing...

Tammy Bruce has this:

"The CDC announced just today that small amounts of a highly infectious bacteria that causes "rabbit fever" was found in Washington DC on the Mall after last weekend's anti-war protests.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said several government environmental air monitors in the Mall area detected low levels of Francisella tularensis bacteria that cause Tularemia, commonly known as rabbit fever, on September 24-25...The CDC said it issued an alert on Friday night as a precaution so medical personnel were aware of the situation and could report any suspected cases...Symptoms of the disease, which an infected person would have begun experiencing no earlier than on Monday, include: sudden fever, chills, headaches, conjunctivitis, diarrhea, muscle aches, joint pain, dry cough and progressive weakness...The CDC also said the bacteria can be used as a weapon if made into an aerosol that could be inhaled...

This story should be of particular note because of the obvious and continual meltdown of American leftists. Left-wing rhetoric before, during, and after the 2004 election exposed an increasing pathological violent hatred of the president and of America in general. Even today, Little Green Footballs exposed the extent of the left's inevitable meltdown with a post from a leftist blog actually advocating terrorism and murder."

UPDATE: We may be seeing the first effects of this infectious bacteria here. (scroll down just a tad)

via Don't Go Into The Light.

This simply must be captioned......

Thou Shalt Not Appropriate.

Nola.com has an AP story about New Orlean's Police looking into officers looting after Katrina. a Police spokesman "rejected the term "looting," but said authorities were investigating "the possibility of appropriation of non-essential items during the height of Katrina, from businesses."

Alrighty then.

via LST.