AGHAST. That’s my reac­tion to this post by Glenn Reynolds:

THE REAL WILSON SCANDAL: For­get Valerie Plame, the big scan­dal is why any­one in the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion would ever have tasked a guy with Wilson’s views with an impor­tant mission.

Regard­less of the rest of the story, heads should roll for that.I’m not even going to address what Wilson’s views might be. That isn’t the point, and it’s com­pletely irrel­e­vant to my con­cern here. “For­get Valerie Plame”? Even leav­ing room… [The Light of Rea­son]

Reynolds doesn’t care about felony that’s been comit­ted, or the lives that have been endan­gered, but instead he com­plains that Wil­son shouldn’t have been sent to Nige­ria because he wasn’t a Cru­sader (and there­for might be inclined to make an hon­est report). I’m con­stantly amazed at how anti-American the Cru­saders are–that kind of “yes men only” think­ing is more typ­i­cal of dic­ta­tor­ships such as Sad­dam Hussein’s Iraq.

From a mail­ing list I sub­scribe to:

bq. Ratio­nal WMD analysis

The glar­ing absence of uncon­ven­tional Iraqi arms should not blind us to the fact that even if Sad­dam Hus­sein had amassed chem­i­cal, bio­log­i­cal, and — yes — even nuclear weapons, he would not have posed a threat to the Amer­i­can peo­ple. As offen­sive tools, those weapons would have been useless.

How could that be? Sim­ply put, with the United States armed with the most sophis­ti­cated weapons imag­in­able — includ­ing nuclear bombs — it is unthink­able that the for­mer Iraqi pres­i­dent would have embarked on the sui­ci­dal mis­sion of attack­ing [our] nation.

From recent his­tory (Libya, Iran) he already knew that to spon­sor even a con­ven­tional ter­ror­ist attack on Amer­i­cans would bring deadly retaliation.

It should be kept in mind that until recently chem­i­cal and bio­log­i­cal weapons have not been regarded as weapons of mass destruc­tion (WMDs). This is a cat­e­gory delib­er­ately broad­ened for rhetor­i­cal pur­poses — to spook the Amer­i­can peo­ple into sup­port­ing an offen­sive war against a gov­ern­ment that did not attack them or, indeed, even show signs of want­ing to.

The power to define is the power to con­trol. Some of the most lethal weapons on earth are held by the U.S. gov­ern­ment but are not clas­si­fied as weapons of mass destruc­tion. Yet if even one vial of old anthrax is found buried deep in the ground in Iraq, it will be pro­claimed as proof that Hus­sein had an arse­nal capa­ble of killing mul­ti­tudes. This would be pro­pa­ganda, not ratio­nal analysis.

– Shel­don Rich­man, Future of Free­dom Foun­da­tion, 2003

Pis­sers & Moan­ers, Mil­i­tary Divi­sion. The Straight White Guy has an excel­lent post on peo­ple who join the var­i­ous Armed Forces Reserves, and then dis­cover (to their hor­ror) that this com­mit­ment requires them to per­form actual mil­i­tary duty(!):bq. Reservists are needed… we NEED men and women here to help us deploy quickly… but some of peo­ple who join the reserve…
[Kim du Toit]

One of the more vicious Cru­saders demon­strates just how much he sup­ports our troops.

CIA seeks probe of White House. The CIA has asked the Jus­tice Depart­ment to inves­ti­gate alle­ga­tions that the White House broke fed­eral laws by reveal­ing the iden­tity of one of its under­cover employ­ees in retal­i­a­tion against the woman’s hus­band, a for­mer ambas­sador who pub­licly crit­i­cized Pres­i­dent Bush’s since-discredited claim that Iraq had sought weapons-grade ura­nium from Africa, NBC News has learned. (link)

So it finally hits the main­stream media. Of course, the lefty blo­gos­phere has been fol­low­ing this story for a cou­ple months, espe­cially Mark Kleiman. See also this Wash­ing­ton Post story. [Al-Muhajabah’s Islamic Blogs]

Arthur Sil­ber has been writ­ing about this for a while. Here’s his lat­est.

Kucinich and the Pol­i­tics of Non­vi­o­lence. In Thurs­day night’s Demo­c­ra­tic pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates’ debate (yes, I watched it — masochism, I guess), Rep. Den­nis Kucinich sud­denly declared him­self a libertarian.

No, he didn’t use the L-word. But he announced his plan, should he be elected, to cre­ate a “Depart­ment of Peace” to bring about a “trans­for­ma­tion of our soci­ety” by “mak­ing non-violence an orga­niz­ing principle.”

[…]

Since nobody with Kucinich’s rev­er­ence for non­vi­o­lence could pos­si­bly want to increase “vio­lent action or the threat of such action,” he plainly couldn’t seri­ously be call­ing for his projects to be gov­ern­men­tally enforced. He must instead be try­ing to per­suade peo­ple to imple­ment these pro­grams vol­un­tar­ily. [LewRockwell.com]

A tongue-in-cheek look at the philo­soph­i­cal impli­ca­tions of Den­nis Kucinich’s claimed inter­est in non-violence.

Bring­ing Democ­racy to the World. From this week’s Onion: U.S. Invades Non-Oil-Rich Nation To Dis­pel Crit­i­cism LUXEMBOURG VILLE, LUXEMBOURG–In an effort to quiet crit­i­cism of U.S. mil­i­tary pol­icy, 50,000 U.S. troops invaded and soundly defeated the non-oil-rich Grand Duchy of Lux­em­bourg Mon­day. “Once again, the… [LewRockwell.com Blog]

* NRA Pitch Angers 2 L.A. Offi­cials. When it comes to gun poli­cies, the city of Los Ange­les and the National Rifle Assn. could hardly be far­ther apart. Los Ange­les passed one of the nation’s first assault weapons bans and has pushed other mea­sures oppos­ing the pro­lif­er­a­tion of firearms, while the NRA tire­lessly defends the right to bear arms.

So two City Coun­cil mem­bers were out­raged to learn that Los Ange­les police offi­cers are receiv­ing solic­i­ta­tions to join the NRA when they buy Glock pis­tols at the city Police Academy’s gun shop. The mem­ber­ship pitch is sealed inside the pack­ag­ing with the gun’s war­ranty and safety infor­ma­tion. [FirearmNews.com]

The City Coun­cil cer­tainly is deter­mined to make sure that LA police offi­cers know what polit­i­cal beliefs are con­sid­ered acceptable.

Did you know that it’s against US law to con­spire to deprive any­one of their rights?

bq. If two or more per­sons con­spire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intim­i­date any per­son in any State, Ter­ri­tory, Com­mon­wealth, Pos­ses­sion, or Dis­trict in the free exer­cise or enjoy­ment of any right or priv­i­lege secured to him by the Con­sti­tu­tion or laws of the United States, or because of his hav­ing so exer­cised the same; or

If two or more per­sons go in dis­guise on the high­way, or on the premises of another, with intent to pre­vent or hin­der his free exer­cise or enjoy­ment of any right or priv­i­lege so secured -

They shall be fined under this title or impris­oned not more than ten years, or both; and if death results from the acts com­mit­ted in vio­la­tion of this sec­tion or if such acts include kid­nap­ping or an attempt to kid­nap, aggra­vated sex­ual abuse or an attempt to com­mit aggra­vated sex­ual abuse, or an attempt to kill, they shall be fined under this title or impris­oned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sen­tenced to death

Title 18, Part I, Chap­ter 13, Sec­tion 241 US Code

Need­less to say this law is never enforced. How­ever, look around at the gov­ern­ment employ­ees you come in con­tact with or read about. How many of them should be in prison?

In par­tic­u­lar, con­sider the pri­vate secu­rity guards, FAA bureau­crats, and mem­bers of Con­gress respon­si­ble for depriv­ing the peo­ple on the 9/11 flights of their right to bear arms. Because death resulted from their vio­la­tion of this sec­tion, every sin­gle one of them may be sen­tenced to death–and I would add that because of the huge num­ber of deaths caused by their actions, every sin­gle one of them should be put to death.

Amina Lawal’s vic­tory. Al-hamdulillah, an Islamic appeals court in Nige­ria has over­turned the con­vic­tion of Amina Lawal:

As I explained when I first posted on this issue last Decem­ber, the con­vic­tion of Lawal was a trav­esty per­pe­trated by peo­ple who are either igno­rant of Islamic jurispru­dence or unin­ter­ested in apply­ing it prop­erly. [Al-Muhajabah’s Islamic Blogs]

There’s con­sid­er­able irony in this poor woman being spared from a bar­baric pun­ish­ment for a non-existent crime in part because of a ludi­crous defense that nobody could pos­si­bly take seriously.

I very much doubt the police­man will receive any pun­ish­ment, flog­ging or oth­er­wise. They never do.

civil lib­er­ties heroes of the day: Den­nis Kucinich and Ron Paul.

I salute the pro­gres­sive Kucinich and the lib­er­tar­ian Paul, true patri­ots work­ing together to restore the val­ues that Amer­ica stands for. [Al-Muhajabah’s Islamic Blogs]

You know the Feds are push­ing their luck when dia­met­ri­cally opposed polit­i­cans try to reign them in. This reminds me of the let­ter sent to Ashcroft in early 2001 object­ing to the “drug war,” which was signed by both the ACLU (an unof­fi­cial branch of the Demo­c­ra­tic Party) and the NRA (an unof­fi­cial branch of the Repub­li­can Party).

Unfor­tu­nately, I don’t think it will do any good. Politi­cians and civil rights groups are impor­tant, but when it comes to using and main­tain­ing gov­ern­ment power, the only peo­ple who mat­ter are the bureaucrats–and they’re answer­able to no one. The “Patriot” Act increased the power of the Feds, and they will keep that power. Even if the act were repealed, they will go right on exer­cis­ing that power.