Tom Elia, at The New Editor, writes about Rahm Emanuel's being on the spot

Tom Elia, writing at The New Editor blog, has an enlightening piece about the reception Rahm Emanuel got at a recent meeting with other Democrats:

The Chicago Tribune's Jeff Zeleny has interesting and revealing article on some tense exchanges at a recent breakfast meeting that Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) had with Ohio Democrats over their party's position on national security.

Zeleny writes: (emphasis added)

The audience was supposed to be a gracious one.

But Rep. Rahm Emanuel, the leader of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, found himself fielding spirited questions at a breakfast meeting late last week as he laid out his ideas on how Democrats could seize control of Congress from the Republicans. When the Illinois congressman didn't include national security in his top five talking points, a man raised his hand and his voice.

"Can I give you a piece of advice?" said Ford Huffman, a Columbus attorney. "They obviously believe it's their winning issue. Why can't we get out in front with it and say there's not an issue about security? Every American believes in securing America."

Emanuel tried to answer the question, asserting his eagerness to challenge the White House, but said he does not believe national security should be a political issue. As Emanuel spoke, Huffman turned his head and told those sitting around him: "It sounds like we are trying to dodge the issue. People are going to say the Democrats are being wussies."

Marc Cooper thinks that the Alito "filibuster" was botched

The Alito "filibuster" flopped, as 72 senators voted for closure of the debate while 25 voted against. Those voting against apparently included Lincoln Chafee, our Liberal Republican buddy. Marc Cooper doesn't approve of the filibuster attempt, as it was done under false pretenses, and appeared to be absurd:

That was a pretty marvelous and transparently craven moment late last week when waffling 2008 Presidential Candidate John Kerry decided to call for the filibuster from Davos, no less. I suppose the imagery could have been worse; if the water temp had so permitted Kerry might have made the call from atop his wind-surfboard. In French.

Marc would prefer that the Democrats would state the real reason for opposing Samuel Alito:

The Democrats –[...]—had months and months to make the case, topped off by some prime-time broadcasts of the actual Judiciary Committee hearings. What we got instead was some erratic nit-picking, the usual Category 5 gusts of bluster from blabber-mouth Senator Biden, and some pretty cheap and distracting shots trying to smear Alito as a petty racist.

All the Democrats had to do, instead, was to tell a much simpler and direct truth: Alito’s a nice guy and an extremely accomplished jurist. He’s even in the mainstream albiet on the conservative side. We just don’t want the country to go anymore in the direction it’s been heading and want you to join us in this effort and force the President to name a more centrist judge.

Our visiting pastor today was named Hood

We had a visitor on the pulpit today, as our regular pastor was in Austin for a continuing education class. He married name is Hood, so I asked her if the Hood family was related to the famous British admirals.

What I study is 17th and early 20th Century naval history, so I only member of the family of whom I very familiar is Rear-Admiral the Honourable Horace Hood, who commanded the 3rd Battlecruiser Squadron at the Battle of Jutland. Horace Hood was killed when his flagship, the Invincible, exploded on 31 May 1916 after being hit by return fire from the German battlecruiser Derfflinger. The Invincible and her squadron mates had been pummeling the German battlecruiser Lützow, when the Derfflinger hit the Invincible. The probable cause was the unstable nature of the Cordite that the British used along with unsafe handling practices.

Horace Hood's ancestors fought in battles in the 18th and early 19th Centuries. One, Sir Samuel Hood fought in the Battle of the Saintes against the Compte de Grasse, and criticized his commander, Sir George Rodney, for not chasing the retreating French ships.

Problems caused by careless gunpowder handling caused the loss of a number of Dutch ships in the 17th Century. At the Battle of the Gabbard (or the Battle of Nieuwpoort) on 12 June 1653, the Dutch ship Gelderland exploded because of too much gunpowder in the air being accidentally ignited. At the Battle of Lowestoft on 13 June 1666, the Dutch flagship Eendracht exploded after firing a gun. The Dutch fleet commander, Jacob van Wassenaer was killed. In this sort of explosion, such when the battlecruiser Hood exploded in action with the Bismarck on 24 May 1941, typically only five or fewer men would survive. Those often were situated on the masthead and were protected from the explosion.

The Nanny State

The Democrats have won in a fundamental way. We now live in a nanny state where our rights are sharply curtailed, because someone wants to keep us from doing what they think is the wrong thing. I just watched two short segments, one said to be from 1951 and another from the late 1940's or early 1950's, and everyone was smoking. Now, smoking is demonized and banned from most places. Smoking is not a great thing to be doing, but thanks to the Democrat sponsors, the trial lawyers, and their judge buddies, our right to do whatever we want, good or bad, is limited. They want to do the same thing to fast food, alcohol, and (can you believe it) shopping at Wal-Mart.

Eleanor Clift comes across as a sore loser

Eleanor Clift is correct in that by President Bush (and the Republicans) winning the 2000, 2oo2, and 2004 elections, President Bush was able to appoint his choices for Supreme Court justices. He "made their careers" is a true statement. From what she writes, Eleanor is not happy being on the losing end. If someone wins an election, he can do what he thinks is right (or what he wants to do). If you lose, you do not have any right to expect that you are going to be able to influence what happens. Only someone living in a fools world should expect otherwise. Eleanor's piece is called "50 Plus One", as if a party and president has a majority, than to make substantive moves only requires 51 out of 100 votes in the Senate. There is the small matter of cloture votes, but that is not an issue in this case, as they Democrats don't have enough votes.

Things are getting interesting in the Libby case

Tom Maguire, at JustOneMinute, writes more about a favorite subject of his, the involvement of NBC news in the Plame affair and their vulnerability to Scooter Libby's legal team:

The Libby defense team recently filed a request for the court to order Special Counsel Fitzgerald to turn over the information he gleaned in his many court tussles with reporters during his investigation of the Plame leak.

Links to the filings are here; we find a special bit of bad news for the Washington Desk of NBC News:

Another issue concerning Mr. Russert’s expected testimony which the defense needs to investigate to examine him effectively at trial is whether any of the NBC reporters who worked for him were aware of Ms. Wilson’s identity prior to July 14, 2003. (6) If any such NBC reporters knew this information before that time, the defense would be entitled to gather that information to prepare its cross-examination of Mr. Russert. Once the defense gets further information about the sources who disclosed Ms. Wilson’s employment status, we can investigate whether these sources were in communication with any reporters in the NBC Washington bureau prior to July 14, 2003, or if they talked to other individuals who might have passed this information on to NBC’s Washington reporters.

The filing specifically cites Ms. Mitchell, noting her statement on Oct 3, 2003 that, among journalists following the Niger story, it was "widely known"that Ambassador Wilson's wife worked at the CIA. The filing also mentions her subsequent backpedaling (Background and transcripts here).

James Joyner on "How Wal-Mart Is Like Academia"

James Joyner has a piece at Tech Central Station about why academia is like Wal-Mart. The thrust of his piece is that both in academia and at Wal-Mart, people apply for jobs knowing that that conditions are not great, but having such a job is better than not having it. He points out the ironies of the current vendetta against Wal-Mart, after writing about the similarities to academia:

Still, some of the same conditions apply. TCS Contributing Editor Arnold Kling points out the irony that self-professed advocates of the poor are standing in the way of their progress:

“In the liberal morality tale, Wal-Mart is a villain, and its workers are victims. However, Wal-Mart workers themselves feel lucky to be able to work there. What low-skilled workers need are more Wal-Marts. More Wal-Marts would increase employment for low-skilled workers, and ultimately this could drive up wages for such workers.”

Even for the New Donkey, abortion is the only issue

The Democratic Party often gives the impression that the only important issue to them is abortion. The New Donkey blogger seems to confirm that for him, that is also true. He opposes Samuel Alito strickly on abortion rights grounds:

know I'm late in officially registering opposition to the confirmation of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, but I've said enough negative stuff about him to make my position clear. I agree with the arguments for opposing Alito mentioned in yesterday's New Dem Dispatch. But I would add to them my particular concern that he is almost certain to do his best, or worst, to undermine or reverse Roe v. Wade, not only eliminating every woman's constitutional right to choose, but also turning the politics and legislative process of many states into an obsessive, nightmare struggle on abortion restrictions for many years to come.

OpenRICO and AJAX (Tech stuff)

Technical people are well-aware of AJAX, which is the technology used in sites such as Google Maps. In my work, I am doing some AJAX UI prototyping. I have found that examples and documentation are very uneven. Frank Zammetti has several end-to-end examples that I found very useful. I was able to implement my own page using AJAX with his approach. I also have been trying use OpenRICO (rico.js), but have not been successful, to date. For one thing, their documentation and examples are light, and lack any end-to-end examples. My interest is in Java and Struts on the server, while much of what is on the web is PHP-oriented.

The other tool that I am trying out is JSON, instead of XML documents. I have JSON easy to implement in the browser and in Java in my Struts actions. JSON is short for Java Script Object Notation. There are plenty of examples and useful Java utilities that are easy to use. Reportedly, the principals in RICO are using JSON in their own work.

Radio Blogger has the transcript of Hugh Hewitt's interview of LAT columnist Joel Stein

Duane Patterson, at Radio Blogger, has the transcript of Hugh Hewitt's talk with Joel Stein, LA Times columnist. Unlike sometimes, Hugh seems to have been courteous to Joel Stein. Joel Stein, by the way, does NOT support our troops:

HH: All right. Now who is your...this is a column about the troops that begins, "I don't support our troops." We'll get to the specifics in a second. But who is your closest family member or friend who is on active duty?

JS: That's an excellent question. I wouldn't say I have a very close friend. I would say only acquaintances. No family at all.

Hugh zeroed in on the what motivated Joel Stein's column:

HH: You do honor military service?

JS: Yeah. No, I'm grateful for people that serve in the military.

HH: But you don't support our troops?

JS: I don't...I don't believe in supporting the troops in an action that you don't believe in.

HH: And so, that would be everything I've named thus far. So I guess...did you support and honor the troops in the Pentagon on 9/11?

JS: Sure, yeah.

HH: All right.

JS: All the troops that are here to defend our country, I'm very, very grateful for. I'm grateful for the police...

HH: Provided they don't leave the country?

JS: Yeah, provided they don't fight in wars that I think are endangering them for no reason.