Duke (non) Rape Case Not Over

Yes, this case drags on and on and on. How much time do the new prosecutors need to look at the evidence? It needs to be OVER. Every minute that passes means more anguish on the part of the real victims.

When it comes to justice, Mike Nifong wants it swift and fair, for him. Here’s a money quote by him highlighted over at Liestoppers:

“I wish everyone would withhold judgment until they hear the evidence, as well as my response.” Nifong 2/9/07

And he’s not the only one who’s feebly attempting to salvage himself, his reputation and his good name. That ship has sailed. Those silly Group of 88 just can’t put a sock in it and do themselves in worse. KC Johnson, the tireless blogger, again illuminates their follies:

In their increasingly desperate attempt to redeem their reputations, the Group of 88 has succeeded only in digging themselves a bigger hole. The latest example came in an article published yesterday in Diverse, in which Group members rationalized their actions in a way that appeared detached from reality.

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Can Lubiano seriously contend that in the two weeks before the ad’s appearance, black students were told to “shut up,” or that the most extreme critics of the team among African-American faculty members did not dominate campus discourse? I’m not sure which option is more frightening: that a tenured Duke professor would intentionally mislead a reporter; or that a tenured Duke professor would make a statement that appears to have no basis in reality.

Yes, she can contend that. Remember the Ninth Commandment? Sheesh, Charles, get with it:

Thou shalt lie, slander and obfuscate in order to serve the greater good. Most people don’t know what is good for them and must be taught the “truth” even if lies must be told to do it.

And yes, political correctness is a mental illness when taken to it’s logical conclusion, but to the minds of believers it is completely rational. KC Johnson also has more of the elitist rationalizations coming from Duke faculty members.

Lacrosse returns to Duke and a writer for ESPN mocks it as no big deal. I’m not sure if the writer ever was an athlete himself, but if he is any sort of competitor and hasn’t spent his entire life as an observer rather than a participant, he’d show more sympathy I would think. Or do false accusations only matter when the accused is black? You know, this acknowledgment that the lacrosse players are innocent, but they are still white, privileged, thuggish jerks is maddening. Bomani Jones illustrates how massaging the facts can leave the perception that the lacrosse players got away with something and deserved the suspended season and everything else they all got. Liestoppers doesn’t let him get away with it:

For the duration of the Hoax, it has been convenient for their detractors to use each and every instance of misbehavior by any one of the team to condemn the indicted players and to fuel the Hoax. Now that a bit of joy is shared by the team and their supporters, it appears that it becomes convenient for their detractors to separate the indicted and the not indicted. While now it may be helpful to those who desire to continue heaping hurt on the lacrosse team to separate them from the three primary victims of the Hoax, one thing hasn’t changed. Misrepresentation of petty misbehavior by some will continue to be used to smear them all.

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Jones continues:

“While the cancellation of the season may have been premature, plenty came to light when they left the field. Too much to be ignored.

“The ad hoc committee commissioned by Duke president Richard Brodhead and Academic Council Chair Paul Haagen found that lacrosse players were involved in 36 separate disciplinary incidents in the last three academic years, including destruction of property on campus, public urination and numerous alcohol-related incidents.”

While the ad hoc committee that Jones refers to did find that the lacrosse team was involved in numerous alcohol related incidents (including the conveniently omitted suspicion of throwing water, playing of a drinking game, and multiple instances of making noise), they characterized such mischief as:

“… their conduct has not been different in character than the conduct of the typical Duke student who abuses alcohol. Their reported conduct has not involved fighting, sexual assault or harassment, or racist behavior. Moreover, even the people who have complained about their alcohol-related misconduct often add that the students are respectful…”

Further, the committee Jones selectively refers to in his attempt to paint the team as a collection of sinful thugs also found:

“The members of the Duke Lacrosse team have been academically and athletically responsible students. In general, faculty who have had lacrosse players in their classes have not experienced disciplinary problems with the players. Over the last five years, however, many lacrosse players increasingly have been socially irresponsible consumers of alcohol. Their extensive record of repetitive misconduct should have alarmed administrators responsible for student discipline.”

“By all accounts, the lacrosse players are a cohesive, hard working, disciplined, and respectful athletic team. Their behavior on trips is described as exemplary. Players clean the team bus before disembarking. Airline personnel have complimented them for their behavior. They observe curfews. They obey the team’s no alcohol rule before games.11 They are respectful of people who serve the team, including bus drivers, airline personnel, trainers, the equipment manager, the team manager, and the groundskeeper.”

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“Finally, the lacrosse program has a 100% graduation rate. Alumni of the program apparently contribute to the community after college. We received letters of support for the team from two recently graduated former players who are presently serving in Iraq. A remarkable number of alumni are volunteer coaches for their local lacrosse teams. Many are employed in prestigious positions in business, law, and medicine. As evidenced by their support of the current team, alumni of the lacrosse program and their families are fiercely loyal to each other, to the lacrosse program, and to Duke.”

And, if Jones had ever been an athlete, he’d know that this sort of high-lighted behavior is typical of college–forget lacrosse. Ugh. Why would he want to still paint the lacrosse team in a bad light after all the group has gone through?

As usual, there is much more over at Johnson’s site and Liestoppers. This travesty marches on and on and on. On a positive note, Mike Nifong has become the What’s-Wrong-With-Certain-Prosecutors Mascot. “Nifonged” has become a verb. Maybe this case will help to stop miscarriages of justice in the future.

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Walter Reed Information

For troops. Against rats. For balance. Against MSM. Dan Collins at Protein Wisdom has more.

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Iraq: It’s Personal

One of our patients has a son in Fallujah right now. Please pray not only for the soldiers, but the parents, too. The parents, wives, girlfriends, sacrifice so much.

For the record, this young man has the smarts and talents to be anything. He chose to serve. He is college educated. We are proud of him and grateful for his service.

He’s not the only hero. There are thousands and each man and woman has a family, a friend, a loved one who misses them.

Blue Crab Boulevard has a son over there and has this on oil revenue sharing in Iraq.

And here are some letters from Iraq via Instapundit.

Living with snipers in Fallujah and Ramadi.

Week Two of the Surge in Iraq. Here’s what’s going on.

Mystery weapons are being found in Iraq.

StrategyPage has a story about how Arabic is finally! being learned by U.S. forces. I think the U.S. better have all sorts of language experts given the cozy relationships between Russia, Iran, China, and nefarious regimes everywhere. Good thing about Hugo Chavez: we’ve got Spanish speaking Americans out the wazzoo!

Mrs. Greyhawk has some great links about what’s going on in Iraq today. This one, by a soldier in Fallujah is particularly good and with pictures, too.

And if you haven’t been checking out Victory Caucus, you should be. I love this quote by Winston Churchill: An appeaser is someone who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last. Those damned crocs, they just never get filled up.

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Global Warming: "It’s A Moral Issue"–UPDATED, More Updates Scroll Down

Update Note: This material is almost impossible to parody. There is no extreme too extreme when reading these philosophies.
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Ah, it is so very loverly when leftist progressives speak in hushed passionate tones and wax religious about moral strictures meant for the little people. At the Academy Awards last night, I didn’t have to worry about missing church, the whole evening was one long (boring) sermon. To give credit where credit is due: these people do know how to dress for Gaia. She must be so honored by their opulent devotion.

In case anyone has been confused by the secular humanist dogma, Evangelist Gore clarified, “Global Warming isn’t a political issue. It’s a moral one.” Let me reiterate the commandments for you:

1. Thou shalt not believe in God but shall believe in Gaia and have no other gods before Her. She is the Goddess who brought you from the earth.*
2. Thou shalt worship Gaia in all her forms: Trees, animals, plants. Thou shalt be a vegetarian or better, a vegan, to prove thou devote thou’s life to Gaia and shall recycle, reuse and renew and stop producing carbon (die) or else be smitten by Gaia’s global warming and die anyway.
3. Thou shalt not question Gaia’s scientific dogma. Gaia will punish dissent and reward (with government money) adherents.
4. Remember Earth Day and keep it holy. Every day is earth day
5. Honor Al Gore and your betters, that your days may be long upon the land they allow you to till lest the collective seize what’s yours for the greater good.
6. Thou shalt not “murder” a mother’s life by making her carry a fetus that proves inconvenient. Abortion is moral. Thou shalt abort every fetus that is imperfect to minimize Gaia’s resources spent on genetically “unpreferred” life-forms unless the “unpreferred” is homosexual which is actually good for Gaia as less resources will be consumed because no progeny will result.
7. Thou shalt engage in any kind of sexual relations, at any age, with any one as long as one uses the holy sacrament: the condom. All choices are absolved with condoms.
8. Thou shalt steal from those who have more than you because it is not fair and shalt call it progressive taxation. Rich people are evil and must be stopped.
9. Thou shalt lie, slander and obfuscate in order to serve the greater good. Most people don’t know what is good for them and must be taught the “truth” even if lies must be told to do it.
10. Thy neighbor’s house is thine house, thy neighbor’s wife and husband is thine, thy neighbor’s anything-you-want is thine. No need to covet. Take what is thine and enjoy!

Please note that their are caveats, sub-rules, regulations and various legal minutiae that must be followed in order to please Gaia and her faithful overlords. It is nearly impossible to comply with all the rules, the rules change and the rules are completely at whim of said overlords. It is your job to comply anyway and please thine masters.

Subsections include but are not limited to:

• Electric cars–going further on less
• Alternative energy sources that do not obscure one’s ocean view
• The morality of jumbo/private jets
• Mandatory vaccinations for future sexy ladies
• Pornography benefits to women and children
• Tax shelters outside the US of A for the betters
• Second hand smoke
• No guns for Gaia
• Family size (managing one child around career obligations)
• Abortion as birth control, on demand
• Designer babies
• Polygamy: the new family choice
• Fake fur
• Black is better: how racial preferences make equality
• Illegal aliens are neither illegal nor alien, border security is evil
• Rationalizing energy usage in 20,000 s.f. mansions
• Rationalizing watering lawns in deserts for the greater good
• Living on trusts and never paying taxes
• Rules for man-boy love
• Womynly superiority
• Divorce good for everyone
• Against ageism, racism, obesism, misogynism, everything but orgasms
• Eliminating violent, ground-acquisition sports
• Eliminating young, rich, white, privileged males on college campuses
• Eliminating old, white, paternalistic, literary has-beens on college campuses
• Eliminating war and valuing the loving hearts of all people, including Islamofascist terrorists, except neo-con fascist, rethugligan bushmchimpyhaliburtan fxxkers who pollute Gaia and must be eliminated

There are more rules. The list is very, very long. But you get the idea. I’ll add links to this later, but for now, bask in the glory that is Gaia.

Update II: More on Evangelist Gore’s Gaia abuse and defense of said abuse. Gaia does like the bad boys. Captain Ed calls him the Goracle and says:

Okay, before we start really throwing the hypocrisy label at The Goracle of Global Warming, we should take care not to hit ourselves with it first. Most CQ readers are free-market thinkers. There’s nothing wrong with Gore using that kind of energy if he’s willing to pay for it. A mansion would use a lot more energy than a normal single-family dwelling; I’m sure that Bill Gates’ electrical bills dwarf what Gore’s paying for his Tennessee juice. My objection to his level of consumption would only be that he’s driving prices up with his large demand.

That being said, the fact that his energy use increased so dramatically after the release of his documentary makes him look a little ridiculous. After all, he’s on the road more now, and energy use should decrease, although his family may not travel with him much. Besides, as we saw at the Oscars last night, Gore wants the rest of us to downsize and conserve rather than just treat energy like any other market — and Gore is obviously not doing that for himself.

Also, as Glenn Reynolds points out, you don’t have to care about global warming to be against burning fossil fuels. Or from my perspective: you don’t have to make environmentalism and global warming a religion to care for the environment. And just to be clear, I do care about the environment and want to have clean air, water, for all. I eat organic and try to consume less energy (though I do love my SUV). It’s the celebrity pious holier-than-thouness while hardly practicing the religious tenets themselves, that irritates me.

Update III: The Anchoress gets in on the act and points out the person who IS friendly to the environment. You’ll never guess, so I’ll just tell you: President Bush. His ranch in Crawford is a model for all people. The Anchoress writes The Goracle’s response:

There, you stupid right-wingers – Gore has bought his indulgences, so his soul is green and pristine and he will still go to ecology heaven. Whew. Thank goodness! Now the rest of you, just buy your indulgences and you can pollute all you want – it all evens out! Can’t you figure that out, yet? And that means, btw, that really is no emergency, after all. But there are good things you can and probably should do. And if you don’t start doing them soon…you’ll be made to.

She also says:

If the information on Gore’s usage is true, I take a page from others who say Gore can use all the energy he can afford to pay for. If it’s not, we’ll soon know (See Gore’s response in the Update). But my concern isn’t how much the fella uses; I don’t buy into the whole “sky is falling” narrative, so I don’t care…what I am more interested in is the enduring double-standard of the press and the left.

I think it’s an amusing double-standard. Gore gasses away about the environment while he and his friends use private jets to go from huge, air-conditioned home to home, and he is heaped with accolades and good press, while Bush says little about the environment but lives the green-creed in Midland and gets only negative press. On every issue.

Amen, Sister Anchoress and we don’t even go to church together. Ha!

Update IV: And don’t forget, this isn’t about money, it’s about Gaia! USA Today headline blares Scientists to UN: “Tens of Billions” Needed to Combat Global Warming!!

Update V: There are even heretics to the Global Warming Gaia Religion.

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Polls So Very Droll

If you believe the press and polls, everyone, including Republicans now, hate George W. Bush. To me, that conventional wisdom seemed unwise. If people like me backed Bush, but felt he wasn’t pushing hard enough, aggressively enough and were asked poorly worded questions–either too broad or too narrow to really be accurate then the President’s ratings could very well be in the tank, but it didn’t explain the stubborn resistance of most Americans to defunding the war in Iraq. How can people hate the Commander in Chief and simultaneously want his command funded?

Given that context, this news makes sense:

The poll also shows that rank-and-file Republicans have higher regard for the president than they do Republicans in Congress. They gave GOP lawmakers a 63% job-approval rating, 13 points below Bush’s. And 72% of Republicans do not think Bush made a mistake sending U.S. troops to Iraq.

So if congressional Republicans figure the key to re-election in 2008 is taking a hard line against Bush on Iraq, they could be dead wrong. They might lure some independents, but they risk alienating their GOP base. To win, you need solid support from your base plus independents, not independents alone.

Additionally, I’ve noted before the silly framing of the Republican candidates as “weak” while the Democrats are ripe with fruity choices. Well, they are and they aren’t. The Democrats have as many or more problems with the election as the front-running Republicans right now, but don’t tell the media that. Newsbusters Warren Todd Huston point’s to the Boston Globe’s Robert Kuttner’s love (or is it lust) proclaimed for all things Democrat:

Kuttner… again in his show of non-love… then ridiculously equates Obama as someone on the level of a Martin Luther King, Jr. or a Vaclav Havel. And, reaching for the height of absurdity, he then imagines Obama to be just like Thomas Jefferson. Yet, any perusal of these three men’s lives would show far more accomplishment, that they are men of far more consequence than Obama’s life has yet revealed. Obama appears as but a mere dabbler in achievement compared to Kuttner’s three men of history.

No, Kuttner hasn’t fallen in love with Obama at all. You can REALLY tell that!

The syrup virtually drips from his pen.

Finally, Kuttner ends his piece with this laugher:

I could be wrong, of course. John Edwards, with his authentic populism, would also make a formidable nominee. Clinton, despite her flaws, has always done better than her detractors predict.

“Authentic populism”? John Edwards!? The man who owns HOW many palatial homes is an example of “authentic populism”?

In the same Boston Globe piece, the Republican candidates get savaged. Of course, they do! Just like everyone, EVERYONE, hates the President, the hopes for the next Presidential election are lost, LOST, I tell you!

The press believes that if they keep telling a big enough lie long enough, everyone will believe them. On Iraq, it seems that their drumbeats of doom have worked. But that is only because Americans hate the ambivalence of a war like this. With the Presidential election, two years out even, the press may be mis-playing their hand. It’s a long time before people vote and you know that short attention span the press counts on when it comes to the dull-witted masses? Well, that sword cuts both ways.

Not that the press could lose much more credibility, but don’t they realize that this agenda pushing is obvious? Ditto, Hollywood.

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Housing Crunch Hurts the Poor

I don’t know much about economics, but this post from Maxed Out Mama makes a lot of sense. It’s disturbing. She talks about an average American trying to build a life when the housing market is so devaluing on the backs of bank malfeasance:

He’s not in trouble on paying the loan – it’s just that it’s not worth it to him, because the more he pays down the more the house drops in value, and he can’t save otherwise because he’s using all his spare cash to pay the mortgage. The neighborhood is unlikely to get better and provide a safe environment for his family. The entire housing bubble was created by the idea that paying a high percentage of your income for a home would create a financial cushion for your future.

This is how the little guys get hurt. His income is probably around $50,000, and even though he’s reaching the point where his principal paydown rate is rising, on that income he really can’t save AND pay an amortized mortgage of around $207,000 originally. There is a reason for the old ratios – violating them causes insecurity and financial instability. His PITI to Gross Monthly Income ratio is about at 35-36%, when it should be no higher than 30%. So he’s locked into working 50-60 hours a week, not getting ahead in any way, and feeling extremely financially insecure – and he is. He’s been in the house for 4-1/2 years, and by now by all usual economic rules his payments in comparison to his earned income should have have dropped enough to provide him some margin even if the house value didn’t increase – but that hasn’t happened either.

Go read it all. She ends with this:

When people such as these cannot prosper, in the end the nation cannot prosper. Jeremiah:

Like cages full of birds,
their houses are full of deceit;
they have become rich and powerful

28 and have grown fat and sleek.
Their evil deeds have no limit;
they do not plead the case of the fatherless to win it,
they do not defend the rights of the poor.

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All Over Rover: From Academy Awards to the Academy

LaShawn Barber talks about parental primacy when it comes to educating our children who believe it’s not “cool to be smart”. I’d like to point out that it isn’t just in the black community that this phenomenon inhibits potential. Great, positive story!

Go check out the world’s oldest blogger: Olive Riley. Amazing! Thanks to beloved liberal reader Khelly for the link.

Jeff Goldstein writes about internet anonymity. Evidently, a community college professor was outed. When is it fair to blow a blogger’s cover? I think I agree with him. He speaks of cyberterrorism:

To extend the cyberterrorist analogy a bit further: if you don’t want to sign onto the Geneva Convention or follow its dictates? Then I don’t feel any obligation to recognize the protections you claim it provides when it suits your needs to. Which is not to say that I won’t do so. Just that I am not required, by any moral calculus, to do so—and so you violate the terms of the framework at your own risk.

The internet shouldn’t be a more dangerous place to do business than the real world, but anonymity makes for wildness. Like the old west, I believe that many of the most interesting and challenging intellectual endeavors and opportunity are happening on the internet. The egalitarian nature and the ability to communicate with experts and to receive their opinions is exciting. But there is also a barbaric quality to some internet bloggers and posters where crass, base discourse gets mistaken for cunning, bold argument. It is neither. I do believe time will temper some of the more uncivil tongues. At least I hope it will. The internet isn’t a mindless connection of bits and bytes. There are people on the other end. I wish everyone could remember this.

Betsy likes the movie Amazing Grace for what it teaches about politics and slavery.

Speaking of movies……… And for an Oscar result that surprises absolutely no one, An Inconvenient Truth wins for Best Documentary. I would be surprised with any other result. Happily, though, Martin Scorsese
finally wins an Oscar. He’s certainly deserving. And didn’t Helen Mirren look absolutely gorgeous? She is the very definition of aging gracefully. I wish J-Lo and Nicole Kidman would take a hint. A taut face looks weird. It will look weirder as the women get older. Doesn’t anyone want to express their emotions anymore? It seems that expression would be a job requirement for actors, but whatever. And one more note: Jack Nicholson looks perpetually like the child with his hand in the cookie jar. We should all enjoy our career so much. He seems so ebullient and like he’s keeping a secret. His lack of affectation and and sweet enthusiasm makes for fun watching. I do like him with some hair though. Gah!

Wishing you a great week!

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Flu

The flu and good blogging are mutually exclusive, I’ve come to believe. For the last month, what I thought was some weird virus–cyclical fever, aches and pains, headache, and personality changes that include grumpiness, whining and general malcontent–turned out to be the flu.

It all makes sense now. My husband and then each successive kid got sick every seven days. But I was deceived by the common cold at the beginning of the cycle. So my one son, who I had thought started this is just now getting the flu. Nice.

Before yesterday, I had been out of the house for a total of two and 1/2 hours over three weeks. Thankfully, the sun started to shine last week and I could air out the house.

Anyway, I’ve had more spelling errors, typos, problems with tenses, it’s kinda embarrassing. I need an editor. As an explanation, you should know that I haven’t blogged without a child either literally on me or “on me” for the past month. It won’t change in the next week or two since the flu has one more kid to go through.

Why can’t everyone get the flu all at the same time? Why msut ti eb tht evry kd gets’ it one aftre anothre?

Mistery four teh ages’.

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Abortion & Presidential Candidates

In a perfect world, every baby conceived would have his or her right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness honored. In a perfect world….

In the real world, a bad Supreme Court decision finds imaginary rights and prevents the states the freedom to make law. Roe and abortion hang like guillotines over the necks of Republican candidates. Mitt Romney, I think, will lose his political head about this issue. His sudden pro-Life flip is politically expedient and unprincipled. Maybe conservatives will give him a pass for this. Somehow, I doubt it.

Rudy Guiliani has taken a different tack. This one elucidated by Rand Simberg:

“I have stated a personal belief in a woman’s right to choose. But I also have a strong belief in judges who follow the Constitution. I admire George Bush’s choice of Supreme Court judges–Roberts and Alito. I wish that I’d made them myself, and I hope to have an opportunity to make similar, and (if that’s possible) even better ones, who will interpret the Constitution in the manner intended, and not make new law out of old parchment, no matter how worthy the goal. While I personally favor a woman’s right to choose, I think that Roe v. Wade was a mistake, and that this should be a matter for the states to determine. You can be sure that, if elected, this will be the criterion that I use to select judicial nominees, rather than a desire for a particular outcome that I happen to personally favor.”

This is an intellectually honest position. It gives power to the people, where the power belongs. I think people, even conservatives will buy it. Do you?

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Mysterious Car Crash in Iran

Gateway Pundit has more.

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