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June 30, 2008

Bogie hates Mondays




Posted by Mike Lief at 06:30 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

San Francisco: One big nuthouse

And I'm talking about their so-called law enforcement community.

Check out what the idiots are doing with their foreign, juvenile drug runners.

San Francisco juvenile probation officials - citing the city's immigrant sanctuary status - are protecting Honduran youths caught dealing crack cocaine from possible federal deportation and have given some offenders a city-paid flight home with carte blanche to return.

The city's practices recently prompted a federal criminal investigation into whether San Francisco has been systematically circumventing U.S. immigration law, according to officials with knowledge of the matter.

City officials say they are trying to balance their obligations under federal and state law with local court orders and San Francisco's policies aimed at protecting the rights of the young immigrants, who they say are often victims of exploitation.

[...]

Joseph Russoniello, the U.S. attorney in charge of the San Francisco area, said he was "flabbergasted that the taxpayers' money was being spent for the purpose of ferrying detainees home. You have to have a perfect storm of dumb moves to have it happen."

William Siffermann, chief of San Francisco's Juvenile Probation Department, said federal agents have never specifically told his office not to send immigrants back to their home countries, but that he has stopped the practice until differences between the city and immigration authorities are resolved.

He said the city's stance is that it does not have to report illegal immigrant minors to the federal government, even if they are found in Juvenile Court to have committed a crime.

"We are not obligated to," he said. "We are abiding by the sanctuary city ordinance."

[...]

Siffermann stressed that the city ships out juvenile offenders to their home countries only after all other rehabilitative efforts have failed, including probation, foster care and juvenile detention.

The strategy is appropriate, Siffermann said, because deporting young offenders would doom them from ever becoming productive residents of the United States.

"It might prevent them from obtaining citizenship," he said, denying them a chance to "take a different course."

So let me see if I understand this: the lunatics running the probation department don't want to report drug mules because to do so might make it difficult for the foreign crooks to become U.S. citizens.

Words fail me.

Honestly, I sat here, staring at the screen, not sure what to say.

What was it the fed said? Right, a "perfect storm of dumb."

Here's what I don't understand -- why haven't the feds cut off every last cent of federal funds flowing into that sanctuary cesspool? The feds were willing to blackmail states using the power of the pursestrings to raise the drinking age to 21; surely going after cities that block illegal immigration enforcement -- especially when the protected darlings are working for international drug cartels -- is a little more important than whether or not Johnny can have a beer before his 21st birthday.

Perfect storm of dumb, indeed.

Posted by Mike Lief at 06:13 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

June 28, 2008

We've got trouble!


Right here in River City! With a capital "T" that rhymes with "P" that stands for pool!

Robert Preston is a revelation in this number from the definitive version of Meredith Wilson's love note to the Iowa of his youth, The Music Man. Has anyone ever become a more convincing flim-flam man?

Wilson's lyrics, delivered with rat-a-tat precision by Preston in a career-defining role, are interesting for their unapologetic use of early 20th-century slang, some of which has survived into the 21st without need of translation. Yeah, sure, it's a sugar-coated view of life in an earlier time, but taken with a grain of salt, it's still a wistful look back at a long-gone time from a man who clearly loved growing up in a small town.

The play has been performed countless times in schools and remains popular today, although only with drama teachers with a fondness for Americana. And, yes, I was a part of the chorus in my school's production back in the early '70s.



Wilson was an interesting lyricist, relying upon rapid-fire delivery and rhythms to carry his songs, even eschewing traditional musical accompaniment, like in this number from the beginning of the film.

With a radiant Shirley Jones as Marian the Librarian (she was pregnant during filming), a cute carrot-topped kid with a speech impediment who went on to become a famous director (and the star of Happy Days, too), and the Barbershop Quartet harmonies of the Buffalo Bills, The Music Man is a terrific family film.

Well worth a rental.

Posted by Mike Lief at 09:35 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

June 27, 2008

Gloriously articulate idiots

I was listening to Slate.com's GabFest on XM Radio's POTUS '08 (channel 130) just a few minutes ago, apparently because I'm a glutton for punishment.

As I've mentioned before, they typically have some of their young, snooty writers shoot the breeze about the week in politics, giving us their ever-so-sophisticated take on things.

When I tuned in the discussion had turned to their dismay over Democrats "caving" to the Republicans on the latest FISA Bill, reauthorizing a variety of national security-related surveillance measures. One of the women -- legal "experts" Dahlia Lithwick or Emily Bazelon -- lamented that wiretapping doesn't seem to offend Democrats and couldn't understand why this was the case, especially since Americans seemed to have lost their supposed fondness for torture, now that habeas rights were being given to foreign terrorists (ACLU be praised!)

Host David Plotz responded that he wasn't bothered by wiretapping because he wasn't saying anything worth eavesdropping on, making the whole thing a tremendous waste of time and money -- missing the point that it's the needle in the haystack that the spooks are looking for, the lone conversation amongst billions that contains hints of an attack on the U.S., meaning, of course, that it's inevitable that innocuous talk will comprise most of what is being heard.

One of the females riposted with her dismay at the increasing levels of passive surveillance that people seeming willing to accept, pointing to England's vast number of CCTV cameras blanketing the U.K.

This is where it gets good.

She said that we're approaching "East German fascist" levels of surveillance, like that of the STASI.

"East German fascist."

Ahem.

The East Germans were Communists, not fascists -- although the Nazis were essentially a Socialist movement (see Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning).

But that's the point, isn't it? All things bad and oppressive are fascist, like Nazis and Republicans, Hitler and George Bush.

Communists and Socialists? Hell, they were just misunderstood, their violence and excesses merely aberrations caused by foreign fascist influences, like an infection or a malevolent conservative virus.

I think it's just perfect that the Slate moonbat couldn't bring herself to identify a repressive regime with the Left, rewriting history to convert East Germany from a Communist prison into the Fourth Reich.

Posted by Mike Lief at 08:35 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

June 26, 2008

Supreme Court gets one right and one very, very wrong.

The U.S. Supreme Court split 5-4 in two major decisions today and yesterday, holding that the Second Amendment protects an individual's right to keep and bear arms in District of Columbia v. Heller, with the four liberal justices (Breyer, Ginsburg, Souter and Stevens) dissenting, and that the death penalty is a violation of the 8th Amendment when the person facing execution merely raped a child, instead of murdering her, too, in Kennedy v. Louisiana (Breyer, Ginsburg, Suiter and Stevens joined by Kennedy in this one).

Time constraints will keep me from writing more for the moment, but let me leave you with this: Obama said that he was against yesterday's decision sparing the life of a man who raped his own step-daughter so savagely that he tore her vagina apart, then called a friend for advice on getting blood out of his rug, noting that his little girl "had become a woman."

But Obama also has said that he'd appoint justices like Ginsburg, Suiter, Stevens and Breyer, who found that protecting the pedophile rapist's "dignity" was more important that punishing him for his depraved crime.

And Obama opposed Alito and Roberts, and would have voted against Scalia and Thomas.

Which means, notwithstanding his protestations to the contrary, this anti-death penalty, pro-rapist decision is exactly the kind of thing we'd get from a court packed with Obama appointees.

Posted by Mike Lief at 07:20 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

June 25, 2008

Totally inappropriate family relationships

IDontLikeYouInThatWay.com is a scabrous, smutty, celebrity-obsessed gossip site, but the writing is often laugh-out-loud funny.

Like today's entry on a certain father and daughter who have a relationship best described as "icky."

A few months ago Hulk Hogan put suntan lotion in his hands and rubbed it out his 20 year old daughter's ass. He was even thoughtful enough to rub it in her ass crack. You remember that being creepy as hell, right? Yeah, apparently Brooke Hogan doesn't think so. US Magazine reports:

I know I'm a grown woman, but it's like he's touching an old car," the singer tells Us Weekly in its latest issue, on newsstands now. "He used to change my diaper!" she adds."

The last time I checked Brooke Hogan wasn't caught in a chemical spill that left her with T-Rex arms, so I'm gonna take a wild stab and say that she can put suntan lotion on her own ass. But she wants her dad to do it.

Her dad.

On her ass.

If my mom wanted to put suntan lotion on my ass, they'd have to cut off her hands and let a chick in a Hooters calendar wear them as gloves. Even then they'd have to put glitter on them or paint rainbows on them or something, because I'd still know, man. I'd still know.

The Hogans are seriously disturbed, but IDLYITW is darn near always good for a laugh -- provided you're not easily offended.

Posted by Mike Lief at 11:10 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Suffering for our genetic origins

http://magazine.uchicago.edu/0812/features/fish_out_of_water.shtml


Posted by Mike Lief at 10:48 PM

Global warming doomsayer wants heretics burned at stake

Honestly, this report is like something out of the middle ages.

James Hansen, one of the world's leading climate scientists, will today call for the chief executives of large fossil fuel companies to be put on trial for high crimes against humanity and nature, accusing them of actively spreading doubt about global warming in the same way that tobacco companies blurred the links between smoking and cancer.

Speaking before Congress again, he will accuse the chief executive officers of companies such as ExxonMobil and Peabody Energy of being fully aware of the disinformation about climate change they are spreading.

In an interview with the Guardian he said: "When you are in that kind of position, as the CEO of one the primary players who have been putting out misinformation even via organisations that affect what gets into school textbooks, then I think that's a crime."

He is also considering personally targeting members of Congress who have a poor track record on climate change in the coming November elections. He will campaign to have several of them unseated.

Yes, how dare anyone disagree with the high priests of the Church of Global Warming.

Heretics!

It brings to mind another episode wherein a religion demanded intellectual fealty, the science be damned.

By 1616 the attacks on Galileo had reached a head, and he went to Rome to try to persuade the Church authorities not to ban his ideas.

In the end, Cardinal Bellarmine, acting on directives from the Inquisition, delivered him an order not to "hold or defend" the idea that the Earth moves and the Sun stands still at the centre. The decree did not prevent Galileo from discussing heliocentrism hypothetically.

For the next several years Galileo stayed well away from the controversy. He revived his project of writing a book on the subject, encouraged by the election of Cardinal Barberini as Pope Urban VIII in 1623. Barberini was a friend and admirer of Galileo, and had opposed the condemnation of Galileo in 1616. The book, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, was published in 1632, with formal authorization from the Inquisition and papal permission.

However, the Pope was displeased by the tone and tenor of the arguments in Gallileo's book, feeling that he -- and the Church -- had been made the subject of ridicule, which bode ill for the scientist.

However, the Pope did not take the suspected public ridicule lightly, nor the blatant bias. Galileo had alienated one of his biggest and most powerful supporters, the Pope, and was called to Rome to defend his writings.

With the loss of many of his defenders in Rome because of Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, Galileo was ordered to stand trial on suspicion of heresy in 1633. The sentence of the Inquisition was in three essential parts:

Galileo was required to abjure the opinion that the Sun lies motionless at the centre of the universe, and that the Earth is not at its centre and moves; the idea that the Sun is stationary was condemned as "formally heretical." However, while there is no doubt that Pope Urban VIII and the vast majority of Church officials did not believe in heliocentrism, heliocentrism was never formally or officially condemned by the Catholic Church, except insofar as it held (for instance, in the formal condemnation of Galileo) that "The proposition that the sun is in the center of the world and immovable from its place is absurd, philosophically false, and formally heretical; because it is expressly contrary to Holy Scriptures", and the converse as to the Sun's not revolving around the Earth.[89]

He was ordered imprisoned; the sentence was later commuted to house arrest.

His offending Dialogue was banned; and in an action not announced at the trial, publication of any of his works was forbidden, including any he might write in the future.[90]

After a period with the friendly Ascanio Piccolomini (the Archbishop of Siena), Galileo was allowed to return to his villa at Arcetri near Florence, where he spent the remainder of his life under house arrest, and where he later became blind.

When will the fanatics who preach and proselytize the gospel that all the world's ills are born of humanity admit that their beliefs are based on faith, not fact, that "Global Warming" -- conveniently morphed into "Climate Change" to counter the inconvenient truth about recent cooling trends -- is a religion?

Seems to me that we're not far removed from putting modern day Gallileos' on trial for daring to disagree with Church of Global Warming -- for the crime of "actively spreading doubt about global warming" -- if fanatics like Hansen have their way.

And that's a bigger threat to intellectual freedom than anything advocated by mainstream American religions. Seems to me that it's the EcoWarriors who need an Enlightenment or Reformation. Where is their Martin Luther?

Posted by Mike Lief at 07:14 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Where in the world is Matt?


Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.


I started smiling right around the 2:50 mark. How 'bout you?

Posted by Mike Lief at 12:06 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

June 24, 2008

Do not borrow this guy's phone

Do not use his phone.jpg


Trust me, no matter how dire the circumstance, you absolutely, positively do not want to borrow this fella's cell phone.

Don't believe me?

Well, maybe you'll listen to the Smoking Gun.

Meet Jeffrey Barrier. The Ohio man allegedly used a cell phone camera to snap photos of a naked woman at a tanning salon Saturday and then hid the phone in his anus in a bid to thwart police.

Standing on a chair, Barrier, 41, took the photos at Cincinnati's Aloha Tanning, where a 35-year-old woman was "in the nude in a tanning room," according to a Hamilton County Municipal Court affidavit.

When cops later confronted Barrier, "he kept denying any involvement of the incident" and claimed to not have a camera.

However, a second search of the suspect turned up the camera. As noted in a Hamilton County Sheriff's Office report, Barrier "did hide evidence in his anus."

Barrier, pictured in the mug shot, was charged with disorderly conduct for taking the photos and obstructing official business for hampering a police investigation. Barrier, due in court today, is free on $1500 bond.

You can check out some of the police reports here.

Dude. Your parents must be so proud.

Posted by Mike Lief at 11:15 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

George Carlin

The comedian George Carlin died Sunday, and amidst all the glowing accolades for his free-speech routine about seven dirty words you can't say on TV, I found myself thinking, "When was the last time I thought Carlin was actually funny as opposed to just being angry?"

Turns out I wasn't the only one.

Stephen Green, aka VodkaPundit, had this to say:

It’s been nearly 30 years now since George Carlin was funny, other than a handful of somewhat amusing movie appearances. It will be said that he’ll be missed, but I’ve missed him for ages.

I think the last time I laughed out loud at one of Carlin's routines was back in the late '70s, so it seems that Green and I are on the same humor timeline.

Seems like Carlin suffered from that syndrome where comedians decide that making people laugh just isn't good enough.

"Why are you laughing? I'm talking social commentary, not jokes. Take me seriously, dammit!"

So, like Vodkapundit, I'm afraid I lost the Carlin I enjoyed a long, long time ago.

Condolences to his family.

Posted by Mike Lief at 07:27 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

June 23, 2008

Legal motion of the day

Click on image for larger version.


This in-your-face notice of appeal was filed by the defendant while in custody. I'm thinking this was probably one of those times when it would have been better to let your defense attorney do the talking.

Posted by Mike Lief at 07:11 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

June 21, 2008

Why the death penalty?

I'm not a big fan of the death penalty; as a conservative with an instinctive antipathy for governmental powers of life and death -- as well as a recognition that nothing made or administered by man is perfect -- arguments in favor of alternatives to the gallows draw my interest.

But then there are the crimes so heinous, so unbelievably cruel and depraved, that it becomes obvious to me that society ought not allow the killers to enjoy another sunset.

Setting aside for the moment cases with the "perfect" murder defendant (multiple eyewitnesses, a video of the killings, a full confession and conclusive physical evidence confirming the killer's guilt), what about the so-called run-of-the-mill capital cases, the ones where the jury is convinced beyond a reasonable doubt, without reaching the level of metaphysical certitude that supports 100 percent accuracy?

While public support for the death penalty in the United States has been rock solid for decades, death penalty opponents are fond of pointing to polls that show a majority of Americans supporting the abolition of capital punishment if there exists an iron-clad life sentence, without the possibility of a judge, politician or parole board deeming the convict worthy of parole.

But then stories like this hit the web, and I realize (again), that without the death penalty, there's simply nothing we can do to some people, no punishment the ACLU will allow, that will protect the innocent from men with murder in their hearts.

ATWATER, California — Officials say a guard has been stabbed to death by inmates at a federal prison in Central California.

Merced County Sheriff Mark Pazin says 22-year-old Jose Rivera was taken to a hospital with stab wounds Friday afternoon and declared dead a short time later.

The U.S. Penitentiary in Atwater says the officer was stabbed by two inmates with homemade weapons.

An autopsy is planned and the FBI is investigating.

The prison is in the San Joaquin Valley about 64 miles northwest of Fresno.

Why do I support the death penalty?

Because without it, the convicts who murdered Corrections Officer Jose Rivera would only get another life sentence -- and be free to kill again.

And again.

And again.

Until they grew bored with spilling blood.

If nothing else, the death penalty prevents killers from killing again, which is -- or at least ought to be -- enough.

My condolences to Officer Rivera's family, friends and colleagues.

Posted by Mike Lief at 09:39 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Anthem for guys

Posted by Mike Lief at 08:44 AM

Alcohol


Brad Paisley at the Grand Ole Opry performing his hit "Alcohol," sung from the libation's perspective.

As with darn near all of Paisley's songs, the lyrics are witty, tell a story and bring a smile to the listener's face.

Just some of the reasons why I find myself enjoying country music more and more.

Keep reading for the lyrics to "Alcohol."

I Can Make Anybody Pretty
I Can Make You Believe Any Lie
I Can Make You Pick A Fight
With Somebody Twice Your Size

I Been Known To Cause A Few Break Ups
I Been Known To Cause A Few Births
I Can Make You New Friends
Or Get You Fired From Work

[1st Chorus]
And Since The Day I Left Milwaukee
Lynchburg And Bordeaux France
Been Making The Bars Lots Of Big Money
And Helping White People Dance
I Got You In Trouble In High School
But College, Now That Was A Ball
You Had Some Of The Best Times
You'll Never Remember With Me
Alcohol
Alcohol

I Got Blamed At Your Wedding Reception
For Your Best Man's Embarrassing Speech
And Also For Those
Naked Pictures Of You At The Beach

I've Influenced Kings And World Leaders
I Helped Hemmingway Write Like He Did
And I'll Bet You A Drink Or Two That I Can Make You
Put That Lampshade On Your Head

[2nd Chorus]
'cause Since The Day I Left Milwaukee
Lynchburg And Bordeaux France
Been Making A Fool Out Of Folks Just Like You
And Helping White People Dance
I'm Medicine And I Am Poison
I Can Help You Up Or Make You Fall
You Had Some Of The Best Times
You'll Never Remember With Me
Alcohol
Alcohol

Posted by Mike Lief at 08:32 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

June 20, 2008

No love

Thinking about seeing Mike Meyer's new flick, The Love Guru?

Slate's Dana Stevens hopes you'll reconsider.

There are good movies.

There are bad movies.

There are movies so bad they're good (though, strangely, not the reverse).

And once in a while there is a movie so bad that it takes you to a place beyond good and evil and abandons you there, shivering and alone.

Watching The Love Guru (Paramount Pictures) is a spiritual experience of a sort, but not the sort that its creator and star, Mike Myers, intended. This tale of a guru who brings joy to all who meet him is the most joy-draining 88 minutes I've ever spent outside a hospital waiting room. In the course of those long minutes, Myers leads you on a journey deep inside himself, to the source from whence his comedy springs—and it's about as much fun as a tour of someone's large intestine.

I'm not surprised; the coming attraction -- which often contains the funniest parts of the flick -- is about as laugh-inducing as a root canal.

Makes me pine for So I Married an Axe Murderer:

Heed! Pants! Noooow!

It makes sense if you've ever put your enormous Sputnik-sized head on your gigantic pillow and cried yourself to sleep.

Do yourself a favor, skip the Guru and check out Murderer, if for no other reason than the scenes with his parents.

Posted by Mike Lief at 07:38 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Section 8 will kill ya'

The July/August edition of The Atlantic features an article that explains why it is that big cities saw violent crime level off across the nation, while mid-size American cities suffered an explosion of homicides.

Guess what?

It has a lot to do with a certain social program much beloved by the Left.

An eye-opening article.

Check it out.

Posted by Mike Lief at 07:20 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

June 18, 2008

Supremely foolish


It's been a week since the U.S. Supreme Court issued what may be the single most dangerous, unjustified -- and intellectually dishonest -- decision in the history of the American judiciary, when five justices ruled that unlawful combatants, captured on the battlefield, are entitled not only to more rights than POWs receive under the Geneva Conventions, not only more rights than members of the U.S. military, not only more rights than illegal aliens in the United States, but to the same rights as American citizens.

Former Justice Department official John Yoo has this to say in today's Wall Street Journal.

Last week's Supreme Court decision in Boumediene v. Bush has been painted as a stinging rebuke of the administration's antiterrorism policies. From the celebrations on most U.S. editorial pages, one might think that the court had stopped a dictator from trampling civil liberties. Boumediene did anything but. The 5-4 ruling is judicial imperialism of the highest order.

Boumediene should finally put to rest the popular myth that right-wing conservatives dominate the Supreme Court. Academics used to complain about the Rehnquist Court's "activism" for striking down minor federal laws on issues such as whether states are immune from damage lawsuits, or if Congress could ban handguns in school. Justice Anthony Kennedy -- joined by the liberal bloc of Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer -- saves his claims of judicial supremacy for the truly momentous: striking down a wartime statute, agreed upon by the president and large majorities of Congress, while hostilities are ongoing, no less.

First out the window went precedent. Under the writ of habeas corpus, Americans (and aliens on our territory) can challenge the legality of their detentions before a federal judge. Until Boumediene, the Supreme Court had never allowed an alien who was captured fighting against the U.S. to use our courts to challenge his detention.

In World War II, no civilian court reviewed the thousands of German prisoners housed in the U.S. Federal judges never heard cases from the Confederate prisoners of war held during the Civil War. In a trilogy of cases decided at the end of World War II, the Supreme Court agreed that the writ did not benefit enemy aliens held outside the U.S. In the months after the 9/11 attacks, we in the Justice Department relied on the Supreme Court's word when we evaluated Guantanamo Bay as a place to hold al Qaeda terrorists.

The Boumediene five also ignored the Constitution's structure, which grants all war decisions to the president and Congress. In 2004 and 2006, the Court tried to extend its reach to al Qaeda terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay. It was overruled twice by Congress, which has the power to define the jurisdiction of the federal courts. Congress established its own procedures for the appeal of detentions.

Incredibly, these five Justices have now defied the considered judgment of the president and Congress for a third time, all to grant captured al Qaeda terrorists the exact same rights as American citizens to a day in civilian court.

Judicial modesty, respect for the executive and legislative branches, and pure common sense weren't concerns here either. The Court refused to wait and see how Congress's 2006 procedures for the review of enemy combatant cases work. Congress gave Guantanamo Bay prisoners more rights than any prisoners of war, in any war, ever. The justices violated the classic rule of self-restraint by deciding an issue not yet before them.

Judicial micromanagement will now intrude into the conduct of war. Federal courts will jury-rig a process whose every rule second-guesses our soldiers and intelligence agents in the field. A judge's view on how much "proof" is needed to find that a "suspect" is a terrorist will become the standard applied on the battlefield. Soldiers will have to gather "evidence," which will have to be safeguarded until a court hearing, take statements from "witnesses," and probably provide some kind of Miranda-style warning upon capture. No doubt lawyers will swarm to provide representation for new prisoners.

So our fighting men and women now must add C.S.I. duties to that of capturing or killing the enemy. Nor will this be the end of it. Under Boumediene's claim of judicial supremacy, it is only a hop, skip and a jump from judges second-guessing whether someone is an enemy to second-guessing whether a soldier should have aimed and fired at him.

[...]

Just as there is always the chance of a mistaken detention, there is also the probability that we will release the wrong man. As Justice Antonin Scalia's dissenting opinion notes, at least 30 detainees released from Guantanamo Bay -- with the military, not the courts, making the call -- have returned to Afghanistan and Iraq battlefields.

The Michael Ramirez cartoon at the top of this post is not mere hyperbole; former Gitmo inmates have indeed returned to the fight and killed Americans. Many, many more will do so, thanks to this decision.

It's hard to overstate just how damaging this opinion is, not just to our nation, but the system of checks and balances put in place by the Framers. The Imperial Judiciary is supposed to be anything but, the weakest of the three branches of government, its members unelected and answerable to no one.

Rather, it is the Congress and the Executive branches which are tasked with legislating and fighting wars, their political fates held in the hands of the People.

The biggest loser -- apart from the Americans who will be needlessly slaughtered as a result of this gift to the jihadis -- is the Supreme Court itself, for nothing anyone can say or do can do more damage to its reputation and standing with the American People than what the Justices have done to themselves.

Posted by Mike Lief at 07:19 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

June 17, 2008

No warm fuzzies here for conservatives


Larry Correia doesn't have a warm, fuzzy feeling about the upcoming election. He does a pretty good job summing up why conservatives are less than thrilled with their choices, calling it a ballot where the voters get to choose between a conservative Democrat and a Marxist.

That said, McCain is still 1000 times better than Obama. Yes, McCain sucks by most conservative standards. But still pick any single issue and McCain is better than Obama. And I don’t know if that says just how stupid we Republicans were this time around, or just how extremely far left Obama is.

And then he starts to sound angry and bitter.

Correia actually manages to hit all the major issues in short order, without letting the Stupid Party (aka, the Republicans) off the hook.

Check it out.

Posted by Mike Lief at 06:56 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Hail Nino, defender slayer of the activist dragon

Justin Levine considers Justice Antonin Scalia's take on judicial activism to be spot on -- dubbing Scalia the primary defender against the problem -- and Levine offers this concise statement of the problem:

The initial test for judicial activism can be summed up in a fairly straightforward manner:

1. Does the outcome derive directly from the text of the law (statute or Constitution).

2. Is the interpretation of the text reasonable.

Point # 1 explored - [Apart from well known and accepted common law going back hundreds of years] Courts should be able to cite the specific text of the law, and draw conclusions directly from it without the need for additional steps. When the Supreme Court decides a case primarily by further interpreting one of its own past decisions rather than the text of the (Congressional, state or Constitutional) law, chances are that it is in activist mode. Supreme Court decisions are interpretations of the law - but that is very different from the law itself. Once you start basing outcomes on past judicial decisions instead of directly from the law’s text itself, you become stuck with an interpretation of an interpretation - becoming further and further removed from the law’s base and causing distortions in it.

Point # 2 explored - The interpretation of the law’s text must be reasonable. How does one have an ‘unreasonable’ interpretation of the text? By interpreting it either too narrowly to give the law any practical effect, or too broadly such that it deprives it of any practical meaning.

A popular example of interpreting text too broadly was the infamous Kelo decision that interpreted the phrase ‘public use’ so broadly as to be practically meaningless. (Many proponents of judicial activism still decried the Kelo decision due to its practical outcome, but they regretfully did so for the wrong reasons, thus helping to ensure that similarly flawed decisions will likely continue in the future).

Levine ends by quoting from Scalia's dissent in Dada v. Mukasey, wherein Nino savages the majority for making it up as they go, arrogating to themselves power and authority they don't properly hold -- but for the fact that they say they do.

I'd say the single biggest threat to the continued viability of the American system, the three separate-but-equal branches of government paradigm, is the weakness (read: cowardice) of the Executive and Legislative branches, who meekly stand by and await their marching orders from the black-robed judicial masters, surrendering to them more and more control with every benighted ruling.

Posted by Mike Lief at 06:35 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

June 16, 2008

Lufthansa keeps vintage birds flying

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121357457537975947.html?mod=hpp_us_inside_today

HAMBURG, Germany -- After inspecting the latest addition to Lufthansa's fleet, veteran airplane mechanic Jürgen Rohwer braced himself for hard work ahead.

"This is the most complicated aircraft we could get," said the silver-haired 67-year-old engineer, studying pictures of cockpit controls and wiring at the headquarters of Deutsche Lufthansa AG's maintenance unit here.

But Mr. Rohwer isn't working on a cutting-edge Airbus or Boeing jetliner. The task at hand demands far more ingenuity: resurrecting a grounded Eisenhower-era Lockheed propeller plane.

Lufthansa flies some of the world's newest jetliners. But it also has a unique sideline rebuilding and flying antique aircraft. Enthusiasts wait months and pay €259 ($400) for a bumpy hourlong ride on a 1936 Junkers-52 propeller plane that Lufthansa bought in 1986. The 16-seat Ju-52 is so delicate that engineers rebuild it each winter to ensure safety.


Work is starting now on the Lockheed 1649A Super Constellation "Starliner," which Mr. Rohwer's bosses bought at a bankruptcy auction in Maine last December. They hope to start flying it in 2010.

Lufthansa, whose jetliner operations are profitable, can afford its costly projects partly because active and retired employees volunteer to reconstruct, maintain and fly the old planes. In a country that produces some of the world's finest cars, sleekest home appliances and most-precise industrial tools, mechanical savviness is a badge of honor.

Capt. Georg Spieth, 51, is one of 20 top Lufthansa pilots who fly the Ju-52 in their spare time. "We're quite lucky to do this," he said before taking it up recently. "There's a really long list of captains waiting to fly it."

Capt. Spieth's wife, Ingrid, volunteers as the plane's flight attendant.

Maintenance Crew

Mr. Rohwer, whose two sons are Lufthansa mechanics, was selected from dozens of volunteers to help resuscitate the Starliner. In addition to decades of work modernizing jetliner cockpits for Lufthansa, the old-timer has a special qualification: He served on crews maintaining Lufthansa's Starliners in the 1960s.

Back then, Lufthansa marketed the Starliner as its "Super Star." A Starliner flew the longest-duration scheduled flight ever, a 23-hour-19-minute trip from London to San Francisco -- a hop jetliners now cover in less than half the time.

Lufthansa's standard Starliner flew 86 passengers, but a swankier version carried 30 highfliers in luxury. Some slept in beds, behind curtains. Newfangled in-flight entertainment included tape players and loudspeakers.

Onboard Chef

An onboard chef, squeezed into a small kitchen, whipped up meals to suit passengers' whims. German delicacies served included potato pancakes, "a dish highly appreciated and frequently requested by passengers," according to Lufthansa's corporate history.

The Starliner, introduced in 1956, was the last of many Constellation versions Lockheed built over 16 years. Each had increasingly elaborate equipment such as autopilot systems, hydraulic pumps and windscreen defrosters.

The complicated four-engine Starliner had lots of problems, Mr. Rohwer recalls. The plane's massive 3,000-horsepower engines -- designed for optimal performance high in the sky -- overheated regularly on the ground. The plane's violent vibration snapped wires. Spark plugs crusted over. Starliners frequently returned to the airfield shortly after takeoff because of technical difficulties. None of the planes ever crashed.

"We had lots of trouble with that aircraft," recalled Mr. Rohwer, who joined Lufthansa in 1957 at age 16 and retired from the airline's maintenance arm, Lufthansa Technik, two years ago.

"Some people say this was the best three-engine plane ever, because one engine was always out," chuckled Mr. Rohwer.

Starliners last flew in the 1970s, but the iconic plane continued attracting fans. In the 1980s, Maurice Roundy, a 63-year-old pilot, aircraft mechanic and airfield manager in Auburn, Maine, bought three Starliners for their scrap value. He started rebuilding them, but after spending $500,000 of his own money on the effort, he ran out of cash and last year filed for bankruptcy-court protection.

"I think the airplanes owned me," said Mr. Roundy, who paid his debts by getting rid of the planes.

Headed to Auction

When Lufthansa Technik Chief Executive August Henningsen heard that three Starliners would go under the gavel, he jumped into action. After inspecting the planes last November in Maine and Florida, Mr. Henningsen sent his deputies to the auction in December. Slowed by a Maine snowstorm, they arrived just in time to land the three planes for a bid of $745,000.50.

Lufthansa now plans to fully restore one Starliner in Auburn, using parts cannibalized from the other two.

To prepare, Mr. Rohwer spent two weeks in January in Auburn and at the offices of Lockheed Martin Corp. in Texas. Lockheed archivists found 11,000 boxes of the plane's engineering drawings, certification documents and maintenance records that Mr. Rohwer and his colleagues will use for their work.

Mr. Rohwer, a private pilot who builds model steam trains for fun, will handle the Starliner's cockpit. To get the plane certified by air-safety regulators in the U.S. and Europe, Lufthansa will install modern flight controls, as it has done on the Junkers.

New Control Panel

For safety's sake, Mr. Rohwer must include similar consoles, dials and switches as a giant Boeing 747 has on its flight deck. To cram them into the Starliner's far smaller space, Mr. Rohwer says he will use a handful of digital screens that can replicate dozens of different control panels.

Since the Starliner sits an ocean away in Maine, Mr. Rohwer's team will first install equipment in a cockpit mock-up in Hamburg. Then they'll ship that to Maine and rewire it directly to cables and hydraulic pumps that other engineers are refurbishing.

While the cockpit will glow with modern electronics, the passenger cabin will evoke a bygone era. Walls will be covered in beige leather. The large round windows will have fabric curtains.

"The cabin will look like the 1950s -- but with seat belts," promises Bernhard Conrad, who is running the project and also is chairman of the Lufthansa nonprofit foundation that owns the old planes.

Mr. Rohwer says he isn't interested in flying on the Starliner. He'd rather just hear the engines' low rumble as the plane cruises slowly by.

"The most unusual thing is the sound," recalls the mechanic. "It's much more interesting than being onboard."

Posted by Mike Lief at 12:42 AM

The Gitmo Nightmare

The Weekly Standard's Matthew Continetti gets it right in The Gitmo Nightmare.

It's hard to summarize a decision as long and complicated as the Supreme Court's 5-4 ruling last week in Boumediene v. Bush. But we can try. Unprecedented. Reckless. Harmful. Breathtakingly condescending.

The Court, in an opinion written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, ruled that non-citizens captured abroad and held in a military installation overseas--the remaining 270 or so inmates at the terrorist prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba--have the same constitutional right as U.S. citizens to challenge their detention in court. Furthermore, the current procedures by which a detainee's status is reviewed--procedures fashioned in good faith and at the Court's behest by a bipartisan congressional majority in consultation with the commander in chief during a time of war--are unconstitutional.

The upshot is the prisoners at Camp Delta can now file habeas corpus petitions in U.S. district courts seeking reprieve. Hence lawyers, judges, and leftwing interest groups will have real influence over the conduct of the war on terror. Call it the Gitmo nightmare.

As it happens, some of the most effective arguments against Boumediene come from the decision itself. For example, Justice Kennedy wrote that in cases involving terrorist detention, "proper deference must be accorded to the political branches." Then he overrode them.

Kennedy further noted that "unlike the President and some designated Members of Congress, neither the Members of this Court nor most federal judges begin the day with briefings that may describe new and serious threats to our Nation and its people." They had better start, because the courts are about to be flooded with
petitions to release terrorists sworn to America's destruction.

He also wrote that now the "political branches can engage in a genuine debate about how best to preserve constitutional values while protecting the Nation from terrorism." But that is precisely what Congress and the president were doing when they passed legislation laying out a process for detainee review, one that in fact addressed concerns previously raised by the Court. The Court now says this process is inadequate. What would be adequate? Kennedy's answer: I'll get back to you on that.

In his opinion, Kennedy conceded that "before today the Court has never held that non-citizens detained by our Government in territory over which another country maintains de jure sovereignty have any rights under our Constitution." Inventing rights seems to be what some of today's Supreme Court justices do best. In 1950 the Court ruled in Johnson v. Eisentrager that foreign nationals held in a military prison on foreign soil (in that case, Germany) had no habeas rights. But, without overruling Eisentrager, Kennedy said the Guantánamo detainees are different from the German prisoners 58 years ago.

Why? Kennedy wrote that Eisentrager had a unique set of "practical considerations," and the United States did not have "de facto" sovereignty over Germany as it does over Guantánamo Bay. That territory, "while technically not part of the United States, is under the complete and total control of our Government." But these slippery distinctions only raise more questions. Doesn't the United States government exercise "complete and total control" over its military and intelligence facilities worldwide? If so, what's to stop foreign combatants held in those locations from asserting their habeas rights?

And what precise form will these habeas hearings take? What standards of judgment are the courts to apply? Will plaintiffs' attorneys be allowed to go venue shopping and file their petitions in the most liberal courts in the nation? Will they conduct discovery? Will they recall soldiers and intelligence agents from the field to testify? What happens when the available evidence does not satisfy judges who are used to adjudicating under the exclusionary rule? Will the cases be thrown out? Will the detainees be freed, able to return to the battlefield? That, after all, is what some 30 released detainees seem already to have done.
The Supreme Court does not worry about such things. Instead it piously reminded the people that "the laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times." No kidding. Has anyone ever argued otherwise?

Kennedy's sanctimony points to the ultimate tragedy of the Boumediene mess. In their visceral, myopic hatred of President Bush, liberals will see the ruling as a blow to the president and not the broad, foolish, and dangerous judicial power grab it is. The New York Times's editorialists wrote that "compliant Republicans and frightened Democrats" allowed Bush to deny foreign enemy combatants during wartime "the protections of justice, democracy and plain human decency."

Give us a break. One day soon Bush will be gone. But thanks to the Court, we'll still all be living the Gitmo nightmare.

Posted by Mike Lief at 12:38 AM

Well, that explains a lot

Judge loves killer commie.jpg


Meet Ohio Judge James Burge, who attracted the attention of the national media last week.

ELYRIA, Ohio (AP) — A judge in Ohio says the state's method of putting prisoners to death is unconstitutional because two of three drugs used in the lethal injection process can cause pain.

Lorain County Common Pleas Judge James Burge said Tuesday the state's lethal injection procedure doesn't provide the quick and painless death required by Ohio law.

Burge said Ohio must stop allowing a combination of drugs and focus instead on a single, anesthetic drug.

The ruling is likely be appealed to the Ohio Supreme Court.

He's pictured in his chambers, speaking to the press about the case. Don't take my word for it. The caption, running beneath the photo taken by Associated Press photographer Tony Dejak, says:

Lourain County Common Pleas Judge James Burge speaks in his office in Lorain, Ohio as posters of Che Guevara and Barack Obama hang on his wall.

So, to recap, this judge has chosen to decorate his chambers with huge posters of a dedicated Marxist, a radical who dedicated his life to changing society, avoiding the drudgery of a 9-to-5 job.

And he's also got a poster of Che Guevara, too.

Snark aside, it's awesome that the mental midget decries the death penalty while exalting a man responsible for the execution of thousands of Cubans, many of them by his own hand. Guevara even shot a teenager in the head, pumping a bullet into his brain for stealing food.

As Humberto Fontova wrote:

A Cuban prosecutor of the time who quickly defected in horror and disgust named Jose Vilasuso estimates that Che signed 400 death warrants the first few months of his command in La Cabana. A Basque priest named Iaki de Aspiazu, who was often on hand to perform confessions and last rites, says Che personally ordered 700 executions by firing squad during the period. Cuban journalist Luis Ortega, who knew Che as early as 1954, writes in his book Yo Soy El Che! that Guevara sent 1,897 men to the firing squad.

In his book Che Guevara: A Biography, Daniel James writes that Che himself admitted to ordering "several thousand" executions during the first year of the Castro regime. Felix Rodriguez, the Cuban-American CIA operative who helped track him down in Bolivia and was the last person to question him, says that Che during his final talk, admitted to "a couple thousand" executions. But he shrugged them off as all being of "imperialist spies and CIA agents."

The rest of Fontova's article is worth reading, as a reminder of who Guevara really was.

But it also speaks to the profound stupidity of this so-called judge, who fashions himself a defender of human rights while working beneath the watchful gaze of a mass murdering Communist.

Perfect.

Posted by Mike Lief at 12:06 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

June 15, 2008

Sunset over the Ventura Keys


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M. Night Shyamalan's latest horror

My sister mentioned to me over our Father's Day brunch that she was thinking of seeing M. Night Shyamalan's new flick, The Happening. I told her that I'd heard the film was stupefyingly awful; she said she'd catch it on DVD.

Shyamalan, who once upon a time made the entertaining Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, has apparently descended into creative madness. Or mundaneness. Or hackdom.

WIth that in mind, here's the beginning of a savage review.

Shyamalan's latest movie, The Happening, is not merely bad. It is an astonishment, so idiotic in conception and inept in execution that, after seeing it, one almost wonders whether it was real or imagined. It's the kind of movie you want to laugh about with friends, swapping favorite moments of inanity: "Do you remember the part when Mark Wahlberg ... ?" "God, yes. And what about that scene where the wind ... ?"

The problem, of course, is that to have such a conversation, you'd normally have to see the movie, which I believe is an unreasonably high price to pay just to make fun of it. So rather than write a conventional review explaining why you should or shouldn't see The Happening (trust me, you shouldn't), I'm offering an alternative: A dozen and a half of the most mind-bendingly ridiculous elements of the film, which will enable you to marvel at its anti-genius without sacrificing (and I don't use that term lightly) 90 minutes of your life. As this is intended to be an alternative to seeing the actual film it is, of course, overflowing with spoilers. Those who still intend to see the film despite my warnings should probably stop reading now ....

Read the whole thing.

Posted by Mike Lief at 09:48 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Okay, so they're not all crapweasels

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June 14, 2008

President Kennedy

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121331916222970351.html?mod=opinion_main_review_and_outlooks


Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy isn't known for his judicial modesty. But for sheer willfulness, yesterday's 5-4 majority opinion in Boumediene v. Bush may earn him a historic place among the likes of Harry Blackmun. In a stroke, he and four other unelected Justices have declared their war-making supremacy over both Congress and the White House.

Boumediene concerns habeas corpus – the right of Americans to challenge detention by the government. Justice Kennedy has now extended that right to non-American enemy combatants captured abroad trying to kill Americans in the war on terror. We can say with confident horror that more Americans are likely to die as a result.

An Algerian native, Lakhdar Boumediene was detained by U.S. troops in Bosnia in January 2002 and is currently held at Guantanamo Bay. The U.S. military heard the case for Boumediene's detention in 2004, and in the years since he has never appealed the finding that he is an enemy combatant, although he could under federal law. Instead, his lawyers asserted his "right" – as an alien held outside the United States – to a habeas hearing before a U.S. federal judge.

Justice Kennedy's opinion is remarkable in its sweeping disregard for the decisions of both political branches. In a pair of 2006 laws – the Detainee Treatment Act and the Military Commissions Act – Congress and the President had worked out painstaking and good-faith rules for handling enemy combatants during wartime. These rules came in response to previous Supreme Court decisions demanding such procedural care, and they are the most extensive ever granted to prisoners of war.

Yet as Justice Antonin Scalia notes in dissent, "Turns out" the same Justices "were just kidding." Mr. Kennedy now deems those efforts inadequate, based on only the most cursory analysis. As Chief Justice John Roberts makes clear in his dissent, the majority seems to dislike these procedures merely because a judge did not sanctify them. In their place, Justice Kennedy decrees that district court judges should derive their own ad hoc standards for judging habeas petitions. Make it up as you go!

Justice Kennedy declines even to consider what those standards should be, or how they would protect national security over classified information or the sources and methods that led to the detentions. Eventually, as the lower courts work their will amid endless litigation, perhaps President Kennedy will vouchsafe more details in some future case. In the meantime, the likelihood grows that our soldiers will prematurely release combatants who will kill more Americans.

To reach yesterday's decision, Justice Kennedy also had to dissemble about Justice Robert Jackson's famous 1950 decision in Johnson v. Eisentrager. In that case, German nationals had been tried and convicted by military commissions for providing aid to the Japanese after Germany's surrender in World War II. Justice Jackson ruled that non-Americans held in a prison in the American occupation zone in Germany did not warrant habeas corpus. But rather than overrule Eisentrager, Mr. Kennedy misinterprets it to pretend that it was based on mere "procedural" concerns. This is plainly dishonest.

By the logic of Boumediene, members of al Qaeda will now be able to challenge their status in court in a way that uniformed military officers of a legitimate army cannot. And Justice Scalia points out that this was not a right afforded even to the 400,000 prisoners of war detained on American soil during World War II. It is difficult to understand why any terrorist held anywhere in the world – whether at Camp Cropper in Iraq or Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan – won't now have the same right to have their appeals heard in an American court.

Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution contains the so-called Suspension Clause, which says: "The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it." Justice Kennedy makes much of the fact that we are not currently under "invasion or rebellion." But he ignores that these exceptions don't include war abroad because the Framers never contemplated that a non-citizen, captured overseas and held outside the U.S., could claim the same right.

Justice Kennedy's opinion is full of self-applause about his defense of the "great Writ," and no doubt it will be widely praised as a triumph for civil liberties. But we hope it is not a tragedy for civil liberties in the long run. If there is another attack on U.S. soil – perhaps one enabled by a terrorist released under the Kennedy rules – the public demand for security will trample the Constitutional delicacies of Boumediene. Just last month, a former Gitmo detainee killed a group of Iraqi soldiers when he blew himself up in Mosul. And he was someone the military thought it was safe to release.

Justice Jackson once famously observed that the Constitution is "not a suicide pact." About Anthony Kennedy's Constitution, we're not so sure.

Posted by Mike Lief at 08:49 AM

June 13, 2008

Safer wheels for diabetics

Car diabetes monitor.jpg


People suffering from Juvenile-Onset Diabetes have to contend with closely monitoring their blood sugar levels; when they fall too far, a coma is in the offing, which is especially disastrous when behind the wheel of a car.

However, an innovative bit of technology looks like it will provide an early warning for diabetic drivers.

At this year's ADA scientific session at Moscone Center in San Francisco, Medtronic Diabetes unveiled its new M-POWERED car, a Lincoln sedan equipped with a system that wirelessly incorporates a patient's continuous glucose monitor with a dashboard to make driving safer for those who can go from 120 to 60 mg/dl within a matter of seconds.

The only problem I can see is that the system's in a Lincoln.

Still, great idea, don't you think?

Posted by Mike Lief at 07:05 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

For the boss who fancies himself a mix between Darth Vader and Old Scratch


To be perfectly honest, if I walked into a job interview and found my prospective employer sitting at -- er -- in this thing, I'd expect that there was a contract to be signed in blood and a soul traded for some sort of wild benefits package.

According to the gadget gurus at Gizmodo, this thing is for real.

Behold the Greatest Workstation of All Time: the Emperor. I mean, come on, anything that looks like it can control a turbolaser battery or fire a giant anti-matter death ray must be the greatest workstation of all time, period. But according to Patrick Laflamme Duval—business developer for manufacturer Novelquest—the name is not a Star Wars nod, but a reference to the emperor scorpion's tail:

At the press of a button, the Emperor’s tail section (the large articulated arm that holds the monitors) rises to allow the user to be seated, then lowers back into position the three monitors at the perfect height and angle for perfect viewing comfort.

The Emperor has three large monitors for a panoramic view, THX Dolby surround sound, air filtering, light therapy (so you can get a tan without having to go out under the sun,) webcam, battery backup, and other niceties. It can be built to order with a desktop Mac or PC, as well as the biggest docking station ever for laptops. If you want one, you will have to go rob a bank—price is not listed yet, but we can imagine lots of zeros in it—and wait for the release date: July 2008.

If you think this reflects the inner you -- shudder -- or you just want to scare the bejabbers out of your pathetic underlings, check it out here.

Posted by Mike Lief at 05:47 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

June 12, 2008

Congress: Quick! Let's do nothing about gas prices!

A proposal to tap more than 80 billion barrels of oil in American waters was deep-sixed along partisan lines yesterday.

A House subcommittee on Wednesday rejected a Republican-led effort to open up more U.S. coastal waters to oil exploration.

Rep. John Peterson, R-Pa., spearheaded the effort. His proposal would open up U.S. waters between 50 and 200 miles off shore for drilling. The first 50 miles off shore would be left alone.

But the plan failed Wednesday on a 9-6, party-line vote in a House appropriations subcommittee, which was considering the proposal as part of an Interior Department spending package.

With record oil prices and gas prices projected to hover around the $4 mark for the rest of the summer, Republicans have ratcheted up their efforts to open up oil exploration along U.S. coastline. But the long-sought change has so far been unsuccessful.

Most offshore oil production and exploration has been banned since a federal law passed in 1981.

[...]

According to Peterson's office, the U.S. Minerals Management Service estimates that 86 billion barrels of oil and 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas can be found along the U.S. outer continental shelf, the area affected by the ban.

Peterson is not alone in his desire to open up the shelf. An effort to unlock the resources has been underway in Congress in recent years, and several interest groups are backing the effort, too.

"Tapping America's huge reserve of deep ocean energy helps us fight terrorism and increases our domestic energy supply, which will help put downward pressure on gasoline prices," Greg Schnacke, President of Americans for American Energy, said in a news release, adding: "With Americans suffering at the gas pump and with higher energy bills, it's a no-brainer that the OCS should be developed."

But the Democrats disagree, insisting that increasing domestic production of oil and natural gas is not going to ease the pain at the pump.

I guess the mysterious theory of supply and demand doesn't resonate with the Dems. Instead they want us to accept the higher prices as an incentive to switch quickly to cars powered by rainbows and self-esteem.

Hugh Hewitt comments:

The U.S. uses about 20 million barrels a day. 86 billion barrels of new reserves would dent the price of gas at the pump and provide more time for alternative fuels and new technologies to continue to advance.

Here's a Congressional Research Service report on off-shore reserves. The ones the Dems refuse to explore or exploit.

The Dems don't care. Obama doesn't care. The "change" they are bringing is $6 a gallon gas.

Vote to stay home in a dark, hot house. Vote Obama.

It's a perfect solution -- blame the GOP for high gas prices and do nothing about bringing the price down, because, of course, that would only help the Republicans.

And the rest of us, too.

Posted by Mike Lief at 06:49 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

June 11, 2008

Man, some guys have all the luck

As long as I'm on a warbird binge, check out this first-person account of what it's like to fly a P-51 Mustang at a school where a whole slew of bombers and fighters were available for would-be aces to learn to fly.

Then head over here, to read many more flight reviews of rare and historic birds.

Posted by Mike Lief at 11:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

B-17 ball turret

Did you ever wonder what it was like to fold yourself into the ball turret on a B-17 bomber, watching Nazi-occupied Europe pass by beneath your feet, twin .50 cal. machine guns on either side as you spun about trying to get German fighters in your sights before they sent your plane spiraling toward the ground far below?

No?

Well, being both an aviation nut and an amateur World War II historian, the thought has crossed my mind more than once. As a matter of fact, I can remember crawling inside a B-17 ball turret when I was a kid at Travel Town, the outdoor train museum in L.A.'s Griffith Park.

Thanks to the folks at the Collings Foundation -- and their restored B-17 -- take a gander at some video shot from the gunner's position, suspended from the belly of the bomber.


Posted by Mike Lief at 11:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Tech to save fighter jocks

The increasing level of automation in avionics presents some serious problems for pilots in a battlefield environment. When a Soviet Foxbat jet fighter fell into American hands during the Cold War -- thanks to a defecting pilot -- Western engineers were salivating over getting a peek at one of the fastest and deadliest aircraft in the world.

The initial anticipation soon gave way to catcalls and Bronx cheers from the experts, who found the jet filled with yesterday's technology, from cable-and-pulley controls to vacuum tubes in the radios and radar. Their derision soon faded into silence when they realized what the Soviets had done: designed an airplane that was built to withstand the electronics-frying blast of EMP (electromagnetic pulse), the by-product of nuclear explosions.

While much of NATO's gear would be rendered inoperative by the high-voltage surges induced by the explosion of nuclear bombs, the Soviets had decided to use World War II-era components that were nearly impervious to the effects of EMP.

Sure, the Americans shielded equipment as best they could from the EMP, but questions always remained as to how well it would protect the vital gear. The fear was that America's hi-tech aircraft might drop out of the skies like Thanksgiving Turkeys if the balloon ever went up.

On the other hand, advanced electronics and computers are needed to render many of the latest designs airworthy. Designed to be inherently aerodynamically unstable, only a computer could generate the nearly-instantaneous control inputs necessary to keep these 21st century birds flying, making thousands of corrections every minute in response to both the pilot's input and the speed and attitude of the plane.

The technological wizards at DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration) have taken it to the next level, producing a control unit so sophisticated that it will allow a pilot to keep a plane in the air, even after it's had a wing shot clean off.

One of the problems -- outside of the obvious -- with a significantly damaged aircraft is that pilots often over-react and add to the situation. In other words, when a plane gets nailed by something like a missile, the person at the wheel panics.

DARPA and Athena's Damage Tolerance and Autonomous Landing Solution adds a full flight automation and backup system that uses a plane's internal inertial navigation system and GPS systems to land safely by automatically adjusting to the new configuration -- a physics computation that a human is in no condition to deal with during such a crisis.

In a recent unmanned flight test, Rockwell Collins showed off the tech with a scaled-model F-18 in which nearly half a wing is blown off and then landing the plane safely. Hit the link to watch the strangely calming video.

I suspect that even an ace like Chuck Yeager would welcome this kind of help in an aerial knife fight -- provided the nukes don't fry the gizmo.

Posted by Mike Lief at 10:35 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Sitting atop the solution


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Vegans = Child Abusers

In an effort to teach their children that eating animals is bad -- very, very bad! -- vegans are starting to inflict physical harm on the kids.

A girl of 12 brought up by her parents on a strict vegan diet has been admitted to hospital with a degenerative bone condition said to have left her with the spine of an 80-year-old.

Doctors are under pressure to report the couple, from Glasgow, to police and social workers amid concerns her health and welfare may have been neglected in pursuit of their beliefs.

The youngster, fed on a strict meat- and dairy-free diet from birth, is being treated at the city’s Royal Hospital for Sick Children. She is said to have a severe form of rickets and to have suffered a number of fractured bones. The condition is caused by a lack of vitamin D, which is needed to absorb calcium and is found in liver, oily fish and dairy produce.

Dr Faisal Ahmed, the consultant treating the child, said he believed the dangers of forcing children to follow a strict vegan diet needed to be highlighted. “Something like this needs publicity,” he said. However, he refused to blame the parents, who are understood to be well-known figures in Glasgow’s vegan community: “We shouldn’t name and shame. Mum feels guilty about the whole thing and feels bad about it.”

Kim Du Toit thinks:

“Mum” (and “Dad") should instead be scourged in the public square until the skin is stripped from their skinny vegan asses.

I can't say that I disagree.

These people make me sick. They truly seem to care more about animals than people -- even their own children.

Posted by Mike Lief at 07:42 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Why do they hate poor people?


GOP House Whip Roy Blunt put together a chart comparing and contrasting the effect Democratic and Republican proposals had on the price of gas. Guess which one puts -- and leaves -- more money back in your pockets?

Blunt's office offers this explanation of how they got here from there:

Methodology: Retail gasoline prices are the result of literally hundreds of factors including crude oil supply, global demand, refinery capacity, regulation, taxes, weather, the value of the dollar, etc. Therefore it is impossible to say with certainty what one individual action will do to the overall price. However, based on what we know about the impact of crude oil supply and prices it is possible to develop some potential ranges of impact on gasoline prices for certain policy changes.

For example, using the methodology employed by Speaker Pelosi and House Democrats that suspending shipments into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (between 40-77,000 barrels of oil a day) would reduce gas prices by at least 5 cents, bringing ANWR online (at least one million barrels of oil a day) could impact gasoline prices by between 70 cents and $1.60.

Given that gas prices, like sales taxes, are considered regressive (i.e., they hurt those with little money first), I have to ask a question: Why do Congressional Democrats hate poor people? And the middle class, too?

Okay, maybe I'm being a bit facetious, but not unreasonably so. As I pointed out Sunday -- not withstanding their carping, whining and whingeing about the GOP's supposed inability to do something, anything about oil prices -- the Congressional Democrats have done nothing about the price of gas ... other than vote against a series of Republican proposals that would, in fact, make oil cheaper.

And, as much as it pains me to admit it, the GOP is actually right about something, probably because the votes on the energy bills didn't include any limitations on pork-barrel spending.

Still, there is a clear difference between the political parties: The Democrats want to blame the GOP for doing nothing -- and making sure nothing gets done.

Via Power Line.

Posted by Mike Lief at 07:08 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

June 08, 2008

Well it's about time

Finally! A candidate I can support!

Posted by Mike Lief at 05:54 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Modern "Art" and Higher "Education"

Why do so many Americans despise Modern "Art"?

Why do growing numbers of Americans question the value of a liberal arts college education?

An answer to both questions is to be found on one campus, thanks to the idiots at a once-distinuished institution of higher learning.

New York’s Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art is hosting an exhibition of "the best" of student art, which features works by Felipe Baeza, one of which:

shows a man with his pants pulled down with a crucifix extended from his rectum. Under the painting it says, “el dia que me converti catolico,” or “The day I became a Catholic.” There is a similar piece which substitutes a Rosary for the crucifix; another shows a man with his pants down and an angel holding two Rosaries with a penis attached to each of them; there is also a halo hovering over a naked man with an erection.

To give you a sense of what Cooper Union used to be, the historic role it played in presidential politics, take a look at who founded the school, and the -- what do you call it? -- standards it's administration and faculty once seemed to have:

The Cooper Union was founded in 1859 by American industrialist Peter Cooper, who was a prolific inventor and a successful entrepreneur. Peter Cooper was a workingman's son who had less than a year of formal schooling. Yet he went on to become an industrialist and an inventor; it was Peter Cooper who designed and built America's first steam railroad engine. Cooper made his fortune with a glue factory and an iron foundry. Later, he turned his entrepreneurial skills to successful ventures in real estate, insurance, railroads and telegraphy. He even once ran for President.

[...]

Originally intended to be called simply "the Union," the Cooper Union began with adult education in night classes on the subjects of applied sciences and architectural drawing, as well as day classes for women on the subjects of photography, telegraphy, typewriting and shorthand (in what was called the College's Female School of Design).

Discrimination based on race, religion, or sex was expressly prohibited.

[...]

Those free classes—a landmark in American history and the prototype for what is now called continuing education—have evolved into three distinguished schools that make up The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art: the School of Art, the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture and the Albert Nerken School of Engineering.

Peter Cooper's dream was to give talented young people the one privilege he lacked—a good education. He also wanted to make possible the development of talent that otherwise would have gone undiscovered. His dream—providing an education "equal to the best"—has come true. Since 1859, the Cooper Union has educated thousands of artists, architects and engineers, many of them leaders in their fields.

On February 27, 1860, the school's Great Hall became the site of a historic address by Abraham Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln's dramatic speech opposed Stephen A. Douglas on the question of federal power to regulate and limit the spread of slavery to the federal territories and new States. Widely reported in the press and reprinted throughout the North in pamphlet form, the speech galvanized support for Lincoln and contributed to his gaining the Party's nomination for the Presidency. It is now referred to as the Cooper Union Address.

Cooper Union's Great Hall was also the site of the school's inauguration whose primary address was given by Mark Twain.

Since then, the Great Hall has served as a platform for many historic addresses by American Presidents Grant, Cleveland, Taft, Theodore Roosevelt, [and] Woodrow Wilson

From Abraham Lincoln to a symbol of Christianity stuck up someone's ass.

What a perfect summary of the decline of both higher education and art.

Posted by Mike Lief at 09:13 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Fox News Sunday: Energy policy

The McCain and Obama campaigns have sent two surrogates to discuss the candidates' respective strategies for winning the presidential election, and they're currently dodging and weaving on energy policy.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a Republican, responds to charges from Democratic Obama backer Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, that the U.S. has had no energy policy for the last eight years. Pawlenty reels off a series of proposals, none of which lodge in my brain because I'm so aghast at the sheer temerity of the riposte.

Chris Wallace says what I'm shouting at my TV (Hey! How'd he do that?), pointing out that McCain's as liberal on this issue as his opponent: McCain opposes drilling in ANWR, would leave it up to the states whether we'd drill for oil off their coasts (No drilling for you!), and is pressing for an economy-crippling 60-percent reduction in carbon emissions based upon nothing more than speculative junk science.

So, Wallace's point is well made: Neither candidate has a clue about energy policy. A pox on both their houses, right?

Not so fast, Buster. I'm still pointing the finger of blame at the Democrats for our current energy woes. Allow me a moment to explain.

I've been feeling the pain at the gas pumps lately, especially because my new truck runs on diesel, which has hit – and passed – the five-dollar mark in Southern California. As I watch the numbers climb – Ding!Ding!Ding! – into the three digits (a hundred bucks to fill up?!) my ire turns toward the feckless crapweasels responsible: Democratic congresscritters.

Yeah, I know, you think I’m letting the Stupid Party (aka, the GOP) off the hook again, but the problem is that, without denying for a moment that the Republicans are indeed the Stupid Party – and also a party filled with countless feckless crapweasels, too – it’s the Democrats who have done everything they can to keep us suckling on the foreign-oil teat that they claim to hate, as well as jacking up the price of gas.

The folks over at Power Line explain how the Dems have been getting off easy.

For several decades, the Democratic Party has pursued policies designed to drive up the cost of petroleum, and therefore gas at the pump. Remarkably, the Democrats don't seem to have taken much of a political hit from the current spike in gas prices. Probably that's because most people don't realize how different the two parties' energy policies have been.

Congressman Roy Blunt put together these data to highlight the differences between House Republicans and House Democrats on energy policy:

ANWR Exploration
House Republicans: 91% Supported
House Democrats: 86% Opposed

Coal-to-Liquid
House Republicans: 97% Supported
House Democrats: 78% Opposed

Oil Shale Exploration
House Republicans: 90% Supported
House Democrats: 86% Opposed

Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) Exploration
House Republicans: 81% Supported
House Democrats: 83% Opposed

Refinery Increased Capacity
House Republicans: 97% Supported
House Democrats: 96% Opposed

SUMMARY

91% of House Republicans have historically voted to increase the production of American-made oil and gas.

86% of House Democrats have historically voted against increasing the production of American-made oil and gas.

Supply and demand make the world go ‘round. As nations like China and India increase their rates of industrialization – and their standards of living – domestic oil consumption increases. More people around the world are demanding access to petroleum-based products, and this increased demand is resulting in higher prices because the supply is not keeping up.

Unless and until we increase our domestic drilling and refining capacity, we’re going to be whipsawed by this international market.

The very proposals that the GOP backed – and that the Dems defeated – would have resulted in lower prices at the pump for Americans.

So, who deserves the blame for your pain?

It ain’t the GOP.

And the McCain campaign should be able to use these votes to beat this particular argument back.

Except for the uncomfortable fact that McCain probably voted with the Democrats on every one of these proposals.

Man, I really don't want to vote for this guy.

Feh.

Posted by Mike Lief at 08:12 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

June 06, 2008

Remembering D-Day

GIs from Company E, 16th Infantry, 1st Infantry Division, are amongst the first Americans to set foot on Hitler's Festung Europa in the early morning hours of June 6, 1944. The waiting German troops greeted them with a hail of steel, MG-42 machine guns mowing down men with their distinctive "ripping-cloth" buzz. (Click on image for larger version.)


Having left the relative -- and illusory --safety of the landing craft, GIs from the 16th Infantry Regiment begin the maddeningly slow slog toward the beach, as the German defenders hit them with mortars and machine gun fire.


Men from the 16th Infantry Regiment try to find protection from the German machine gunners, hiding for a few moments behind anti-tank obstacles placed on Omaha Beach as part of Field Marshall Erwin Rommel's plan to keep the Allies from establishing a beachhead on the Normandy coast.


Photographer Frank Capa lay in the surf of the Easy Red Sector of Omaha Beach, snapping pictures from the furthest edge of the American assault, capturing the frenzied rush to get ashore and stop being a sitting duck in the surf. Capa's photos were rushed back to London, where the majority were destroyed in an accident in the lab. Only a few survived, comprising the most compelling images of the D-Day landings taken on the American beaches.


A wounded GI is helped ashore at Omaha Beach my some of his fellow soldiers. Note the still-inflated life preserver on the soldier to his left. (Click on image for larger version.)


An Army medic moves down the beach providing aid to the wounded, as exhausted troops huddle against the base of chalk cliffs, protected for the moment from the barrage of incoming German fire. (Click on image for larger version.)


Less than 24 hours earlier the same GIs had marched through the streets of seaside English towns, on the way to the docks where they'd board the troop transports for the ride across the English Channel to the Normandy coast. It's impossible not to wonder how many of these men made it off the beach the next morning. (Click on image for larger version.)


General Dwight Eisenhower issued this proclamation to the men before they set sail for France. He also wrote another letter to the American people, in case of a catastrophic defeat, accepting blame for the loss. The success of the invasion was not taken for granted by Ike. (Click on image for larger version.)

Posted by Mike Lief at 06:36 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

June 04, 2008

The Dems are making a huge -- and welcome -- error

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William Bennett has this pungent bit of punditry on the headlong rush to anoint Obama the savior and presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party.

This is an astounding moment in American politics. You cannot credibly say the Clintons are a political dynasty the way, say, the Kennedys or Bushs are. But I think one has to say the Clinton rule of the Democratic party has been dynastic.

Bill Clinton is the only Democrat to have served two terms as president in two generations, the only Democrat to twice beat Republican nominees for president and his wife is a two term U.S. senator who will likely be in the Senate for years to come.

Bill Clinton has been rated one of — if not THE — most popular person in the world, and yet Clinton rule in American politics ends tonight. Whatever it was the Republicans and so many independents did not like about the Clintons, we’ve learned the Democrats have had enough as well.

And thus the Democratic party is about to nominate a far left candidate in the tradition of George McGovern, albeit without McGovern’s military and political record.

The Democratic party is about to nominate a far-left candidate in the tradition of Michael Dukakis, albeit without Dukakis’s executive experience as governor.

The Democratic party is about to nominate a far left candidate in the tradition of John Kerry, albeit without Kerry’s record of years of service in the Senate.

The Democratic party is about to nominate an unvetted candidate in the tradition of Jimmy Carter, albeit without Jimmy Carter’s religious integrity as he spoke about it in 1976.

Questions about all these attributes (from foreign policy expertise to executive experience to senatorial experience to judgment about foreign leaders to the instructors he has had in his cultural values) surround Barack Obama. And the Democratic party has chosen him.

Two observations, if I may.

First, Hillary ain't going anywhere, yet. Her speech was anything but a valedictory to her loyal-but-disappointed followers. And why should it be? The knock on the political conventions has been that they're nothing but a boring, marathon speechifying suckfest, the conclusions foreordained. Clinton goes into the convention having won seven of the last ten primaries -- or to put it another way, Obama goes into the convention having lost seven of the last ten primaries.

She's arguably ahead in the popular vote -- which we know is of paramount importance to the Democratic machine (2000, anyone?). So why not have a convention where the candidates make their case to the delegates? Where is it written that Clinton -- or any other candidate -- must throw in the towel before the party gathers to pick its nominee?

I say this as (ahem) something less than a Hillary Clinton fan.

Which brings me to my second point.

Obama?

Really?

This is the best the Democrats could do?

I say this as no particular fan of John McCain, but I think the Democrats have settled on the perfect candidate for the grumpy Arizonan to demolish, destroy and decimate in the general election.

Say what you will about McCain's idiosyncratic policy preferences, the man is experience and courage defined.

Obama?

Please.

In an election that is an underhand slow pitch for the Dems to knock out of the Presidential park, they've decided to pull Babe Ruth out of the lineup and let Urkel pinch hit.

Bravo.

Posted by Mike Lief at 07:12 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

June 02, 2008

Waiting for the Big One

The "Big One" being the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Heller. Dave Hardy explains why the anticipation is so high.

This is the most important decision in decades. Not just the most important [Second Amendment] case. In terms of number of Americans interested, it beats every other issue in decades -- probably the school desegregation cases and Roe v. Wade are its only competitors in a half a century. The Court simply MUST get it on the nose. Its prestige rises in tens of millions of minds if it does so, and collapses in tends of millions if it does not. And this is an area where the Supreme Court case law is almost nonexistent, so it must work from scratch.

Hardy thinks we'll know by June 23.

Posted by Mike Lief at 09:53 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Dictator trading cards

There's an interesting auction on Ebay, for a piece of dictator-related memoribilia. According to Jay Nordlinger:

Up for bid is a baseball card picturing Fidel Castro; embedded in the card is his autograph. Last year, a friend of mine bought this item, so outraged was he that it even existed. He has since “improved” the card — defacing it to note that Castro is a murderer and tyrant.

Taking a page from Rush Limbaugh, he decided to auction the card on eBay — giving the proceeds to a worthy and apt cause, specifically the Center for a Free Cuba. This center stands for everything that Castro despises: freedom, human rights, decency — and truth.

I hadn't realized that there was a market for dictator trading cards, but apparently Topps knows better than me. The seller has this to say.


Fidel Castro card 1.jpg


ALL folks interested in bidding on this item should be FULLY aware that this item -- which contains an authentic cut signature of Fidel Castro -- has been substantially modified since it was manufactured by The Topps Company. Allow me to explain.

Since card manufacturers began including cut-signature items in their offerings, some people in the hobby have speculated as to whether or not any card company would ever cross the line of good taste by offering an inappropriate -- offensive -- product (for example, a cut-signature card bearing Adolf Hitler's signature).


Fidel Castro card 2.jpg


Although Topps in general should be commended for doing a good job with regard to most of the cut-signature cards it has created the last several years, Topps has clearly vaulted over the line of common decency by creating a cut-signature card of Communist dictator Fidel Castro, one of the most notorious mass murderers in the history of the Western hemisphere.

The card is clearly an attempt to portray Fidel in a positive light -- note, for example, the baseball cap that Castro is pictured wearing on the front of the card. What is the message Topps is attempting to send? That being a mass murderer is somehow "OK" and "acceptable" so long as that person is also a ... baseball fan?

To more accurately reflect the true Castro legacy, the card has been altered so that it now includes numerous words and phrases pertaining to Fidel on both the front and back of the card. For example, phrases on the front of the card now include:

* mass murderer
* Communist
* El Manbu concentration camp
* Free Presidential Medal of Freedom winner Oscar Biscet!

And, phrases on the back of the card now include:

* firing squads
* author of the Camilo-Cienfuegos forced labor plan
* violator of peaceful journalists' free-speech rights
* Remember Pedro Luis Boitel!

Also, all bidders must be aware that the corners of this card have been damaged by whacking each corner against a rather hard table several times (these damaged corners represent the damage to Cuba done by Fidel). In addition, all bidders must be aware that the sides of this card have several small cuts in them made with a knife (these cuts represent the torture -- and worse -- suffered by thousands of political prisoners during Fidel's regime).

Please note that this auction is in full compliance with eBay's Offensive Material Policy, as this auction does NOT glorify hatred, violence, racial or religious intolerance, or items that promote organizations with such views.

In fact, this auction serves as a reminder that -- despite what the lamestream media, nitwit "celebrities," and ivory-tower university ostriches would have us believe -- it was Fidel who made a career out of glorifying hatred, using violence, and stoking racial and religious intolerance.

There is NO shipping/handling fee for this auction.

Show YOUR support for the individual rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that every human being enjoys by bidding on this item today!

The auction ends June 6.

I can think of few causes more worthy than freedom for the Cuban people. Can you?

Posted by Mike Lief at 08:01 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Doggone crazy

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you know that we're cRaZy! about our dog Bogie. As a matter of fact, one of the reasons why we got our Airstream was because we don't like leaving the boy behind when we travel.

As it turns out, an automaker's marketing department has realized that there are a lot of dog nuts out there. And it also turns out that it wasn't an American automaker that decided to throw dog owners a bone -- it's those darn innovative folks over at Honda.

With detailed measurements and suggestions for how best to share the ride with Rex, Honda appears to be taking this market -- and the marketing -- quite seriously.

According to Autoblog, the Japanese company even offers a special dog-version of their Vamos minivan for the domestic market -- no luck for you and your hound Stateside, I'm afraid.

The photo gallery even offers suggestions on where to stash Fido's favorite chew toys.

As if we needed yet another reason to like Honda.

Bogie gives this one four paws.

Posted by Mike Lief at 07:08 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack