Big long post of the week

I am going on vacation next week so I will not be posting for a while. I haven't been posting much at all lately because I have been working crazy hours on a project due out. Today I will round up all the things that I have wanted to blog about in the past week or so but haven't had time. There will also be links to some good reading that's come out lately. So let's get started.

Guess what it turns out that people in the Gitmo really ARE being tortured

Harry Potter's worldwide popularity is so broad-based that it has become favorite reading for Islamic terror suspects at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay.
Lori, who for two years has overseen the detention center's library, said J.K. Rowling's tales about the boy wizard are on top of the request list for the camp's 520 al Qaeda and Taliban suspects, followed by Agatha Christie whodunits.
"We've got a few who are kind of hooked on it. A couple have asked if they can see the movie," said Lori, a civilian contractor who asked that her last name not be publicized.

:That's just inhumane despite what Rush Limbaugh and his "Club Gitmo" gear claim.

Speaking of Rush Limbaugh check out his interview with Sen Fred Thompson.Thompson, who's work in Hollywood(The Hunt For Red October) I have enjoyed, has been tapped by the White House to guide John Roberts through what is sure to be a nasty confirmation process.

From the department of DUH!!! The LA TImes discovers that Iraq is not Vietnam:

Despite what you may have read, the military situation in Iraq today is positive — far better than it ever was when we were fighting guerrillas in Vietnam, or when the Soviets were fighting the Afghan mujahedin, or in almost any other major insurgency of the 20th century.

With few exceptions, the insurgents in Iraq are not able to undertake militarily meaningful attacks on U.S. troops. They cannot prevent U.S. forces from moving wherever they want in the country nor can they keep U.S. forces from carrying out the operations they choose to pursue aggressively. This situation contrasts markedly with both the Vietnam and Soviet-Afghan wars, in which insurgents actually besieged U.S. forces at Khe Sanh and isolated a large Soviet garrison at Khost for nearly the entire conflict, among other incidents.

While it's nice to see some people in the media waking up to reality it's just sad that Iraq was ever compared to Vietnam in the first place. This stupid comparison comes from a complete misunderstanding of the war we are fighting which also blinds them to the fact that we are winning, indeed they don't think that there is a way to win in this war. After the removal of the Taliban and Saddam from power the way we will win this war is by bringing the third world middle eastern nations in to the 21st century. We do this by showing them that there are better ways to live than being ruled by religious extremism such as Wahabism or the Hamas. And we are winning that battle in Iraq, read here in the La Times article:

The Iraqi insurgents offer only fear. They oppose formation of the new Iraqi government but have not offered any alternative. In January 2004, insurgent leader Abu Musab Zarqawi said, "We have declared a bitter war against the principle of democracy and all those who seek to enact it." Eight million Iraqis defied him and voted instead. Today, most Iraqis remain committed to finding a way to make the new government work.

In the coming weeks Iraq will ratify it's constitution and then in a couple of months hold another election in which even the religious factions that boycotted the first election will participate. Things are looking good in Iraq, in the news you will only hear about bombings and people dying. But remember this, the only kind of attack the terrorists in Iraq can undertake are the cowardly kind that will drive the Iraqi people to protect their own land. It's a no win situation for the insurrgent terrorists.

Moving back stateside I have to address the recent doings of the New York Times. Normally they are big cheerleaders for any and everything liberal. But lately it's just been ridiculous. Like last week they reportedly started researching the adopted children of SCOTUS nominee John Roberts.

FOXNEWS's Brit Hume reported late last week how the TIMES has been asking lawyers that specialize in adoption cases for advice on how to get into the sealed court records:

"Sources familiar with the matter tell FOXNEWS that at least one lawyer turned the TIMES down flat, saying that any effort to pry into adoption case records, which are always sealed, would be reprehensible.

Talk about despicable, of course they claimed that it was just part of a routine background check. Baloney! That is just too brazen an attempt to find political ammunition to be shrugged off as a background check. But it wasn't a background check at all. The American Spectator's Washington Prowler reports:

It was opposition research generated by pro-abortion group NARAL -- and distributed to Democratic operatives working against the Supreme Court nomination of Judge John Roberts -- that spurred these operatives to encourage reporters in Washington to look into the Roberts' adoption process.

"They [NARAL and other anti-Roberts groups] went into this with a laundry list of things, and the idea that given what was at stake nothing was out of bounds," says a Democratic lobbyist who is part of the Roberts fight. "That's why you saw that ridiculous Roberts-is-gay thing spinning through the blogosphere, and why you had serious reporters looking at the adoption issue."

Another Democratic operative said that NARAL officials hit on the adoption issue because "Some of these NARAL and really aggressive pro-choice groups see political motivations behind everything. They see people who adopt children -- beyond the desire for children -- having an ideological predisposition against choice issues. It isn't just about kids, it's about politics."

The Democratic lobbyist says the very fact that the adoption issues reached so far as the New York Times, as well as other Washington bureaus for major newspapers and wire services, shows how desperate Roberts opponents have become: "There is a lot of Roberts writing, but there isn't anything much to hang our hat on. He's clean, and it's frustrating our ability to paint him anything other than what the White House put forward: a smart, sharp and fair legal mind."

Read the whole report. Now NARAL is one of the most reprehensible advocacy groups on the planet. To them any conception that didn't end in an abortion is a bad one. I'm not kidding you, they are the people that Rush coined his Feminazi term over because they seemed angry when a pregnancy wasn't aborted. So for the NYT to be picking up their talking points and research for their own investigative reporting amounts to a new low even for the Old Grey Lady. Remember that next time you hear the "the conservative media just repeats RNC talking points" or "the blogs get their marching orders from Karl Rove". When a group like NARAL gives out talking points the WHOLE mainstream media start reporting. Just look how much time it took the media to start nagative press on the challenger for Hillary's senate seat. Can you get any lower? Not much, but the NYT makes an attempt. Check out the Anchoress documenting what amounts to thinly veild anti-semitism.

One could also point at what the established media doesn't report as a very blatant bias towards dems and libs. I bet you haven't even heard that the liberal radio syndacate Air America ripped off a boys and girls club in New York. Well they didn't actually scam the club, AA were given a loan from funds earmarked for the club. A loan that didn't legally have to be paid back. Didn't know that did you? Well thankfully there is Michell Malkin and Captains Quarters around so we can keep up to date on this stuff. They have done more work than any 'real' journalist so far. There's even a cartoon about it.

And yet none of the major media outlets have reported on it. Sad. Think about how many times you heard that Rush Limbaugh had gone in to rehab. Mommy the emperor is naked.

In other news we finally have an indictment in the Oil For Food Scandal:

A former U.N. procurement officer was released on bail yesterday after pleading guilty to accepting nearly $1 million in bribes in connection with the corrupt Iraq oil-for-food program.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan hours earlier had lifted Alexander Yakovlev's diplomatic immunity in response to a request by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, said his chief of staff.
Mr. Yakovlev was the first U.N. official indicted in the scandal, which is being investigated by federal prosecutors, several congressional panels and a U.N. commission headed by former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker.

It won't be the last I am sure. But the bigger issue here is that Annan should resign. He has led one of the most corrupt beauacracies in history and should own up to this fact. The main reason I want all of this to come to light is so that people will understand why this country ignores it when a UN commission points the PC finger at us. It wouldn't sadden me if the UN were disbanded. We'll just have to see where all this leads. Captains Quarters has more.

Well that's it for now. Enjoy. I may get one more post or two in this week. But Madden 06 comes out today soooo maybe not.