Doug Ross, by way of The Classic Liberal…

Thank you. To enter the nature of your ailment, condition or problem by name, use the touch-tone keypad to spell the name, then press the pound sign.

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Article behind image.

Too late now, guys. You’ll have to file it away for next year.

Hat tip to Dyspepsia Generation.

I’ve already picked on Mr. Klein, but today he or one of his editors chose that title and it’s just too perfect. It illustrates what is wrong with the post-modern liberal movement, or half of what’s wrong with it. It is all about winning. The other half of what’s wrong, is that these are the people who want to erase fissures between us in — everything. Class, wealth, prestige, national borders, “partisan bickering,” race, sex, sexual preference, creed, snips, snails and puppy dog’s tails. We’re all just on spaceship earth together…

…it’s complete bullshit. Their primal urge is to win. They want an elite club, and if nobody is excluded from it then nobody can be in it. They are dedicated to keeping us divided, and then making sure their side wins. And then, to make sure something emerges from the victory, something locked in, so that we’re stuck with it forever and ever, without regard to how unpopular it becomes. And then they want to win at the next thing.

Like I keep explaining to my twelve-year-old son: Find the right scenario, and liberals will behave precisely in the manner and profile they attribute to conservatives.

Passing legislation, it turns out, is a long and ugly process. God, is it ugly. The compromises, both with powerful special interests and decisive senators. The trimming of ambitions and the budget gimmicks and the worship of Congressional Budget Office scores. By the end, you’re passing a compromise of a deal of a negotiation of a concession.

Bad a system as it might be, it’s the only one we’ve got, at least for now. This is what victory looks like…

Only system we’ve got for now? Oh my…is there something about this plan that has not yet been revealed to us? That running for re-election every two or six years is just an intolerable inconvenience isn’t it?

“Victory”? Ah…what a sweet word. As a certain Vice Presidential nominee observed, how nice it would be to see a liberal use that word with regard to America’s enemies.

Hey, that’s beautiful Ezra. Your side won. The Constitution lost…

Ignore, for the moment, the ludicrous claim that giving 30 million Americans health insurance actually lowers the cost of health care. What happened to freedom, to the opposition to an intrusive federal government?

Ask a liberal what he most dislikes about the “right”? “I resent the attempt to tell me how to live my life,” he’ll say. He’ll mention abortion and say that the decision belongs to a woman and her doctor. He’ll mention same-sex marriage and say that government should not prevent two people of the same sex from marrying, especially if one objects based upon religious grounds. He’ll argue that a Supreme Court “stacked” with right-wingers threatens his liberty.

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia gives liberals hot flashes. He is religious. He calls the Constitution a “contract,” not a “living, breathing” document on which one can discover or project nonexistent rights. He is a “strict constructionist,” or an “originalist,” who believes that the literal words in the Constitution have meaning. He thinks his job is to figure out what the original Framers meant, not what he would like them to have meant.

Ask a liberal how Scalia and those who share his “conservative” philosophy think the Supreme Court should decide issues like abortion, same-sex marriage and doctor-assisted suicide? He’ll say, “Scalia would impose his religiously based worldview on society — anti-same-sex marriage and anti-abortion — because the federal government should always preserve life.”

No, Scalia would not. In fact, Scalia has publicly said these issues are none of the Court’s business. He’s said that however he feels personally about these contentious matters, the Constitution gives the Court neither the authority nor the expertise to decide them — and such matters are ideally left to the states.

This brings us to ObamaCare.

What words in the U.S. Constitution allow the federal government to compel every American to purchase health insurance? Where does the Constitution allow the federal government to take money from some Americans and give it to others so that they may purchase health insurance?
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A liberal once asked me: “What should society do about the poor? Is your attitude ‘just (expletive) them’?” I said: “Allow me to rephrase your question. Because of someone’s plight, is he entitled to money from you?” “No,” he said, “but it’s the right thing to do.” Yes, a moral, compassionate society cares for those who cannot care for themselves. This is, however, an entirely different matter from using the power of government to take from someone who has, to give to someone who doesn’t. The Constitution does not provide that authority. Nor has it been amended to do so.

What about the poor? Through economic freedom and competition, we make goods and services cheaper, better and more accessible. Health care is less affordable because of well-intentioned rules and regulations. When government officials go beyond passing laws to protect us against force or fraud, they raise costs and hurt the poor.

Finally, what of charity? Americans are the most generous people on earth. The religious and those who believe in limited government are the most generous of all. By design, the federal government plays a limited role. The rest is up to us. Our country was founded in opposition to tyranny by government.

Today we submit to it.

INGSOC. Freedom is slavery.

Related: Amorian.org: “The Supreme Court does not have the authority to ‘widen’ Congress’ powers.”

Also: Point of Law: Why the Reid Bill is Unconstitutional.

Dan Rather didn’t want to talk about Chandra Levy. Charles Gibson wanted to leave the ACORN bust to “the cables.” David Weigel refuses to discuss Sarah Palin’s Facebook updates. But he isn’t above putting out a thesis explaining why exactly it is that he’ll never discuss it.

The problem is that Palin has put the political press in a submissive position, one in which the only information it prints about her comes from prepared statements or from Q&As with friendly interviewers. This isn’t something most politicians get away with, or would be allowed to get away with. But Palin has leveraged her celebrity — her ability to get ratings, the ardor of her fans and the bitterness of her critics — to win a truly unique relationship with the press. She is allowed to shape the public debate without actually engaging in it.

As I said in my reply (#70), it’s kind of a new thing for a Palin criticism to actually make some sense. I gave him credit for that.

But his argument fails for two reasons. First of all, once again, the standard imposed on Palin is an arbitrary one. Supposedly, she isn’t participating in a discourse honestly until she surrenders all control to those who labor exuberantly toward making her look foolish, even if they have to lie to do it. Book burnings, rape kit scandals, Bristol is Trig’s real mother, she calls dinosaurs “Satan’s lizards” — need I go on?

But who else is fulfilling the Weigel standard? Al Gore won’t. President Obama won’t. Hillary Clinton won’t…and those are just the three big offenders. Kerry, Edwards, Frank, Pelosi, Dean — they get a question that isn’t to their liking and we get the Nixon boilerplate of “I’m not gonna dignify that with a response.” I’m not defending this practice. I think we just might have a political system more to our liking, and better for our health, if the people shaping our policy had what it takes to respond to unfriendly questions. Or at least were willing to rise to the challenge. That would be good. But it isn’t happening — perhaps nowadays you can’t survive doing this, no matter how smart you think you are — and Palin didn’t create that situation.

I don’t mean by this that the Weigel standard is unfair. I mean to say that it is rather silly.

And this brings me to the second problem: Who exactly is this woman who is updating her Facebook page? She isn’t the Governor of Alaska. She doesn’t have an actual career as an author, per se. She isn’t the architect of some shady health care scheme that’s about to wreck our economy — she’s criticizing one, sure, just the same way Weigel has some criticisms for her.

Really, Facebook seems like exactly the perfect and proper forum. She’s an experienced and knowledgeable private citizen, who’s selling books to pay legal bills and then she’s going to go home. For a little while or maybe for a long while, who knows. But it seems like a good fit.

The people who are really doing things — refer back to Problem #1 — might consider opening Facebook pages as well, for all the trouble they’re taking to answer less accommodating questions. I mean, really what do we get out of them? “The time for talking is over,” “For too long we have (blank),” “Mistakes we have made,” “Let me be clear,” “Um, Er, Uh” and then the event is closed. If the dictionary says our President isn’t using the word “tax” in the right way — the dictionary! — we just get another snide lecturing that we aren’t supposed to be looking things up there.

It seems every time a Palin critic thinks he has something to say, it all comes down to a rather glaring lack of sense of perspective on his part. Let’s see if I can sum up this feeble mindset in a single sentence:

Silly you, private citizens don’t get to put up statements and then just leave ’em hanging there, avoiding any challenge or criticism; that’s something our leaders get to do while they’re wrecking our economy.

Update: The Weigel Moratorium has been relaxed struck down. More silliness…this time it’s hair-splitting. The point has sailed right over the columnist’s head that state-run health care plans are inimical to any cherishing of the value of the gift of human life. They always have been, they always will be, and it’s just nonsense to keep debating it. Costs have to be controlled. There’s only one way to control them.

I wonder if this is a rather chilling omen about what will really happen? “There’s no such thing as death panels” pundit takes center stage, grabs the mike, and at high noon says “I’m not going to do X.” By 12:30 he’s doing X.

Takes a special kind of person not to be worried about that, Mr. Weigel. How concerned do you think we should be?

Uh oh, looks like someone’s name is getting crossed off a list. Ezra Klein isn’t going to back up PrezBO. And if you’ve been reading Ezra, you know this means there’s been a shift. To call Mr. Klein a lapdog is a slight toward ordinary lapdogs.

Oy. I’ll defend the argument that the health-care bill that looks likely to pass is structurally similar to the health-care proposal released by the Obama campaign. But it’s impossible to defend Obama’s statement that “I didn’t campaign on the public option.” For one thing, it was in his campaign plan, which is to say, he campaigned on it. The proposal (pdf) assured voters that Obama’s plan will “establish a new public insurance program available to Americans who neither qualify for Medicaid or SCHIP nor have access to insurance through their employers.”

The White House argues that they didn’t emphasize it in public speeches, and according to Salon’s Alex Koppelmann, that’s true. But speaking as someone who did a lot of reporting on their health-care plan, they emphasized it privately quite a bit. It was, in fact, their answer to a lot of the other flaws in their proposal. So whether Obama used it in his speeches, his campaign purposefully pushed it to, at the least, some reporters, which is to say they worked to ensure that people knew about the public option’s important role in their health-care thinking.

Sen. Jim DeMint gets to the stuff that should make your eyes pop straight outta your head, at or about 6:08.

Nobody seems to be entirely sure whether this is constitutional. I don’t have a clear answer either. But it certainly does effectively defeat the purpose of having an elected legislature, and it’s certainly in direct conflict with the spirit of Article I.

With a grateful hat tip to Cassy.

Ed Morrissey has more to say:

As I recall, Congress is not allowed to pass rules that bind future Congresses. In the House, the rules have to be offered and approved at the beginning of each session. The Senate has standing rules, but they are not in the form of law that requires further legislation to alter — legislation that would be, under this bill, out of order even to introduce…
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Clearly the founders did not intend…that the first Congress could set the rules in perpetuity, and indeed as DeMint points out, rule changes have been made consistently without resorting to legislation to accomplish them because of the orders of a prior Congress. Put another way, the elected representatives of today should not have greater authority than those who will follow them. Any attempt to pass this into legislation aggrandizes the power of this Congress at the expense of those that follow.

Gary Bauer, writing in the Weekly Standard:

It has been more than a month since U.S. Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan allegedly murdered 14 people and wounded 30 others at Fort Hood military base in Texas. And while we were led to believe that the rampage by Hasan, who is Muslim, would provoke a strong and violent reaction against Arab and Muslim Americans, a backlash has been conspicuous only by its absence.

In fact, in the immediate aftermath of each of the dozen attacks by Muslim Americans since 9-11, the conversation has been dominated by predictions of inevitable violence toward Muslims by bigoted Americans unable to control their rage. And each time a backlash has been virtually nonexistent. Our journalistic and political elites have become terrorism’s unwitting domestic enablers, perceiving religion-based violence where there is none, while ignoring it where it is widespread and intensifying.
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[T]he data show that America’s more than two million Muslims have little to fear from their fellow citizens. According to crime statistics compiled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the number of hate crimes against Muslim Americans increased in the immediate aftermath of 9-11. But it declined precipitously after that, and has remained low ever since.

Of 6,832 religion-based hate crimes reported between 2002 and 2006, 4,627, or 68 percent, were committed not against Muslims but against Jews, while 744, or 11 percent, were committed against Muslims. In 2007 there were 1,477 reported offenses motivated by religious bias. Again, 68 percent were committed against Jews, and only 9 percent against Muslims. Reported hate crimes against Catholics and Protestants accounted for 8.4 percent.
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A Rand Corporation report states that of the more than two dozen homegrown terror plots uncovered in the U.S. since 9-11, ten surfaced in 2009. That puts “the level of activity in 2009 much higher than that of previous years,” Rand senior adviser Brian Jenkins told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee in November.

The misplaced fear of igniting an anti-Muslim backlash is a consequence of the pervasive and stifling political correctness that surrounds Islam in the West. It prevents many of our journalistic and political elites from naming our enemy and compels them to accommodate radical Islam most readily in the very places it can cause the most damage–in our prisons, public schools, and military.

American Muslim radicalization is happening in a very tolerant America. The United States contains more than 1,200 mosques, and since 9-11 it has elected its first two Muslims congressmen as well as a president who inexplicably believes our country is as much Muslim as it is Christian, and who habitually refers to Islam as a “great religion.”

So some hate-nozzles who’ve dedicated their time and resources toward snarking at Sarah Palin, were recognized at her last book signing and escorted from the event. Andrew Sullivan linked to one of them, and if you’re wondering why Sully can’t stand to have comments at his site you should check out the 280+ under the post of the ejected blogger.

I strongly recommend to any & all who like to advertise their intellectual superiority by criticizing Palin, to check out those 280 so you can see who your bedfellows are. I think my favorite might have been this…

Such a shitty little baby she is pulling a power trip only because she still has some support in this crappy little town.
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Just for the record, I believe that Trig is Willows and that Track is a Menard. I gave this woman the benefit of the doubt for so long but her recent activity has set in stone my belief that she and her family TRULY are nothing but trash and that the most ludicrous tales attached to them are most likely the truth.

Behind that, would be this one…

Hey S’error, you are a phony pit bull. Your teeth are fake. You wear wigs. You have rent a child. Who’s your baby daddy ? How uneducated are your children ? Why does Track hate you ? Why does your house look just like the sports center ? How come your husband does not work ?
I read your book. How come you are always a victim ?
How is life going to be now that you tour is over and no one is paying attention to you ?
Nice facelift ! HA !!

Here’s what I find amusing, and a little bit unsettling…since the book tour started, the newcomers clambering on board the “Yes on Sarah” bandwagon consistently cite as a reason for their support, that the former Governor “seems to piss off the right people.” The No-on-Palin people then proceed to prove the truth of this over and over again.

They think very highly of their own intellectual acumen. It is very important to them that they are acknowledged for being oh so smart. Now dig into those comments; click on some profiles. You’ll see a whole bunch of them are “Anonymous.” Others, if you click on their profiles, you’ll see they started Blogger accounts without blogs, apparently just for the purpose of commenting. Like where they really want to be, is Twitter. Can’t put up anything too complicated, just want to toss out a line of snark here & there.

Click, drip some bile, click something else, repeat. We’re supposed to believe Palin is not a threat? Really? Is there a campaign-of-hate like this being stirred up against, let’s say, Romney? Huckabee?

They also have it in common with each other that there’s always some tip-off, some red flag, that a truly intelligent discerning person wouldn’t want them making important decisions about anything. The “LOL”s, the paranoia, the conspiracy theories, the woman who brags about 4 dogs and 6 cats taking up all her time, but then somehow managing to sign her name to a good chunk of the 280 comments.

A cursory skimming job raises the possibility that every single one of them, qualifies for every single one of the 25 things I notice about Palin bashers. I shall not be verifying this on an item-by-item, poster-by-poster basis. Not worth my time. But I do have to wonder how many of those people are really out there.

Sarah Palin just might decide not to run for anything. But a high level of saturation of these types, would have a deteriorating effect on my faith in people in general. And that’s going through a rather strained recovery at the moment, not unlike our nation’s Obama economy.

The time has come for this one…

This guy voted against Barack Obama and he’s really sorry he did it. He’s got a friend who voted for Barack Obama, and he’s really sorry for that. They meet up with Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, and the four of them walk down the sidewalk…repentant McCain voter, repentant Obama voter, Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.

They see a ten dollar bill just lying there. Which one of them picks it up?

“…and that’s why we’re here.”

That’s from 1:55-2:02 in the video above. Okay sweet-pea, but as the guy points out you still flew here in a great big ol’ plane.

Hat tip to Rick. The passage I quoted in the title, in my opinion, was a somewhat-adequate defense; they’re alternative-fuel proponents, and as of now you can’t get to Copenhagen from stateside using linseed oil. They’re just a couple more young people trying to do their part by bringing about the next revolution. All of western society is going to smack itself in the forehead and say “Omigaw, I’ve had my head stuck up my ass all this time and it took the courage of (insert your name here) to point it out to me!”

My concern is not the hypocrisy. Although I do like that voucher, and I think it’s a scream. Read the wording, it just gets funnier and funnier as you keep on reading toward the bottom.

My concern is that sentiment, that objective, regarding society smacking itself in the forehead and “realizing” something. How that approaching Omigosh-moment is so casually defined by our younger people, and has been for generations now, as the meaning behind the word “work.”

Everyone who’s ever stepped onto a campus wants to be our next Joan of Arc.

Like I said in my comment,

These youngsters want to “make us realize” this-or-that…it doesn’t matter what the epiphany is, so long as we “all” have one, and they’re the ones who gave it to us…because they are BORED. They don’t want to fill in the blank after someone else has designed the checkboxes, they want to design the checkboxes, because filling in the blank is for losers. That’s what they have been taught, and I think our society will eventually survive it, but not easily. And we shouldn’t be struggling with this theft of our society’s youth. We shouldn’t be tolerating it.

As I said further on, I know this personality type very well. The tragedy is that these people, while their judgment is unsound, their intellect is not lacking. Overall, they’re reasonably intelligent. In fact that’s usually how the problem got started: When they were about five-to-eight years old, someone told them so.

The folks from days-gone-by did things better than us, though. I’m not referring to their smaller carbon footprint; I’m referring to apprenticeships. You couldn’t become a blacksmith until you did your time as a blacksmith’s apprentice. Ditto for the bricklayer, the barber, the tanner, the shopkeeper, the cooper, the roofer, the miller. You had to form your ideas about how things should work — by spending your certain required number of years just toiling away at them the way they did work, and keeping your high-minded ideas to yourself. It was thought, back then, that if your revolutionary ideas really had merit, you’d still be hanging onto them after the end of this apprenticeship. That idea took hold well before the Renaissance and it was in full bloom afterward, so it can’t be all bad. Why did we scratch it? Whose dumb idea was that?

We’ve gotten rid of this; not through a conscious decision, and so nobody has had to qualify exactly how this decision made sense, or if it ever did. But I think it’s reasonable to say that experiment has failed, and before we talk about “agreements” from Copenhagen, we should first make it a mission to bring back apprenticeships. That is the big crisis that confronts the globe now.

People who haven’t done any real work…by which I mean, not simply spending calories…but putting in effort to produce an outcome defined at the outset by someone more senior; figuring out independently that this-thing or that-thing cannot keep drifting in its current direction if the outcome is to be achieved; and so this must be changed, that must be changed, and it’s all up to you to realize these things and act on them…people who have never been through a stewardship process like that, have these ambitions about “correcting” the rest of us. It is arrogant, counterproductive, wrong, and I cannot find the words to express the magnitude toward which this wastes our human potential.

I think PrezBO put it perfectly — just direct those words toward a different crowd, I say. Quit telling me I’m holding the mop wrong. Grab a mop.

Cassy keeps up with what’s going on at Feministing so you don’t have to!

And Morgan sides with the man-bashing feminists…to a point. (Comment #8.)

I think that I shall never see, anything quite as tragic or pathetic as a post-modern feminist muttering something to the effect of “look how far we still have to go.” Why do we let these people decide anything about their own lives, let alone how anybody else’s life should work? They put four decades of their most passionate effort into something, and when the results are not to their liking they loudly announce that there’s a necessity to do a whole lot more of what was already done…that produced the results they don’t like.

These people shouldn’t be making rules for the rest of us. They shouldn’t own pets, they shouldn’t dress themselves, they shouldn’t pick out wallpaper for their own living spaces, they shouldn’t even be in charge of their own bank accounts.

Daphne found someone who can write almost as well as she can. It’s that lawyer-lover Mahons fellow, with whom I entered into that little dust-up; I was treating him like a jerk, because frankly, he was behaving like one. Well, perhaps I should give him another eval…or not…regardless, this is superb.

Morning has broken. So has my head. As I lay in bed dawn’s soft sunlight burns me like the noon day sun on Dracula at the beach. My mouth feels like an army of pygmies with muddy feet has marched across my mouth for a month.

The tidial headache ebbs and flows between splitting migraine and traumatic brain injury. Events of the night before flash on and off in my battered memory – the vividly inappropriate joke, the tragic karaoke choice and the unnecessary nineteenth drink. Whose idea was shots for the house? Did someone really bring a camera? Why am I wearing one shoe in bed?

Sitting up in bed seems a task fraught with danger. Standing up an impossible fantasy. Yet I manage both. Briefly. A walk fall and crawl to the bathroom (the hop skip and jump of the drinker’s olympics) results in the application of cool tile to the face. I lay on the floor of the bathroom, my feet under the sink and my head next to the bathroom scale and weigh my options. A new low. Before some dectectives comes to chalk around my body, I struggle upright by grabbing the sink and pulling myself up with both shaking hands. A horrible glance at the poor soul in the mirror. Not a moment of great self-respect.

I sidestep to the toilet like a deranged crab and begin pissing away the poison into the bowl. Since I need my hands to hold onto the walls, accuracy at times must be sacrificed for basic relief. When the Mrs. discovers the effects of uncertain targeting later in the day, hilarity will not ensue. With so much alcohol in my system when I finish my dick burps. Not a pleasant experience, I assure you.

Mother of God. Whose idea was cigars? The effects of smoking join forces with the effects of drinking as my liver and lungs compete to see which system can fail first. I don’t need the hair of the dog, I need the hair of the Yak. This day will clearly be spent in agony and penance.

Now I recall why I hate holiday office parties.

Before we thought my son was a girl, we thought he was twins. When we thought he was twins, there was an office party. During and following the office party, this was my experience…partly because, I like to think, we thought he was twins. The ensuing unpleasantness left such a deep mark it has not been repeated since. He’s twelve now.

Where did Cassy find this anyway?

Caroline and Steve Cartwright’s love making was described as ”murder” and ”unnatural” and drowned out their neighbours’ televisions.

Even the local postman and a woman, who walked past the house taking her child to school, complained and she was given a noise abatement order.

Now Mrs Cartwright is appealing a conviction by magistrates for breaching a noise abatement notice that banned the couple from ”shouting, screaming or vocalisation at such a level as to be a statutory nuisance”.

She is using Article 8 of the Human Rights Act to argue that she has a right to ”respect for her private and family life”.

Mrs Cartwright, of Washington, Tyne and Wear, is also arguing that she cannot help making the noise and has instructed a sexual psychologist to give evidence on her behalf.
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Marion Dixon, an environmental health manager with the council, told the hearing what happened when the Cartwrights were confronted by the council with the neighbours’ complaints.

”Mr Cartwright held his head in his hands but Mrs Cartwright seemed to find it quite amusing,” she said.

”I told them at the time that the council found this extremely serious and was considering serving them with a noise abatement notice.

”She was adamant she could not stop the noise and had always done it.”

Cassy adds…

I know that sex can be amazing, but seriously? I have to wonder if this woman really can’t control herself, or if she gets off on knowing that her neighbors can hear her. Her husband apparently seemed embarassed by it, while she herself found it “amusing”. I find it extremely hard to believe that she’s completely unable to do anything to keep her neighbors from being bothered by the noise. And when it’s so loud that it can be heard outside, I think we’re getting into the over-the-top area. Two people both complained about hearing it from outside of her home. She’s got neighbors saying it keeps them awake at night. Seriously, she can’t even put her face into a pillow or something?

Yep, standard passive-aggressive bullshit.

Okay, here’s the clip, the video clip you just thought of, you know you’ve got it right at the front of your mind…

…as have I, on many occasions. But I don’t use it like this, when someone’s trying to stop me from being a jerk.

According to a House Republican aide who happened to be seated nearby, the notoriously chatty New York Democrat [Sen. Charles Schumer] referred to a flight attendant as a “bitch” after she ordered him to turn off his phone before takeoff.

Schumer and his seatmate, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), were chatting on their phones before takeoff when an announcement indicated that it was time to turn off the phones.

Both senators kept talking.

According to the GOP aide, a flight attendant then approached Schumer and told him the entire plane was waiting on him to shut down his phone.

Schumer asked if he could finish his conversation. When the flight attendant said “no,” Schumer ended his call but continued to argue his case.

He said he was entitled to keep his phone on until the cabin door was closed. The flight attendant said he was obliged to turn it off whenever a flight attendant asked.

“He argued with her about the rule,” the source said. “She said she doesn’t make the rules, she just follows them.”

When the flight attendant walked away, the witness says Schumer turned to Gillibrand and uttered the B-word.

We’re supposed to look past their crappy laws, and keep re-electing them because they’re so much more decent and wonderful people than those awful Republicans.

Who do you know who continues to argue this point about the cell phones in a similar situation? Can you name five personal acquaintances who would?

Who might?

Can you even name one?

We were following a trackback and we stumbled across this bit of finery from a fellow Palin admirer:

Back in September, Sam Tanenhaus published a slender book titled, in a note of hopeful optimism, The Death of Conservatism.
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What Tanenhaus really delivers is an in-print liberal temper tantrum, trashing Palin up, down, and sideways, sinking frequently to the level of the high school “in crowd” savaging the non-cool kid from the not-rich family who got above herself. Carried away by his indignation at the nerd Palin, from the wrong side of the nation’s geography and class structure, daring to sit down at the lunch table reserved for the cultural equivalent of cheer leaders and football players, Tanenhaus openly reveals what liberals really think (in their most secret little hearts): Sarah Palin represents the erasure of any distinction between the governing and the governed. [emphasis in original, but I’d add it in if it wasn’t there.]
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Today’s liberals are a strange combination of the Secret Six, the Narodnaya Volya, and every high school’s ruling clique. Like the 19th century radical Abolitionists with whom they explicitly identify, Liberals believe they are morally and intellectually more enlightened than Americans generally, and perceive grave and fundamental sins blemishing America, which they feel entitled to correct regardless of what any or all of the rest of us happen to think about it…

On a more mundane level, like any high school clique, they feel entitled to rule, and they demand deference, on the basis of status. Tanenhaus refers to “distinction,” which he summarizes as consisting of skill, experience, intellect but, as we saw in the 2008 campaign, in which the record of the most popular and successful governor in the nation was compared disfavorably by every liberal evaluator of “distinction” to a candidate whose only meaningful accomplishments were a (possibly ghost-written) post-Law School memoir and the campaign then still underway, that skill, experience, and intellect tend to be qualities varying greatly in the eye of the beholder. A captious critic could easily observe that the election of Barack Obama proves just how easily the top lunch-table clique can be seduced by such superficialities as glibness and a good announcer’s voice.

Here is one of the most formidable and insurmountable contradictions of the liberal worldview. It is egalitarian in nature…but at the same time, not.

It is dedicated to the proposition that all men are not created equal. The title “death of conservatism” itself is just another example of this. It doesn’t mean Death of Conservatives, does it? Perhaps not. But perhaps the lack of a stated answer to that is more ominous than any stated answer possible. Convert; die; just stop voting. One way or the other, the opposition is to be deprived of a voice. Not to be bested in debate, but deprived of a place at the debating table.

This has happened rather quickly, hasn’t it? The primary thrust of Al Gore’s campaign in 2000 wasn’t that he was a better sort of person than George W. Bush; sure he and his followers thought so, and occasionally said so. But Gore and Bush debated on matters of policy. Four years later, John Kerry said “I have a plan!” He didn’t say what the plan was. And on other issues, the selling point wasn’t quite so much that Kerry’s idea was better than Bush’s idea, or that it was more compassionate. It was, rather, that Kerry had thought of it, which is a decidedly different thing. Our “allies” would respect this plan because Kerry had the “moral authority” to command their deference whereas Bush had “squandered” whatever remained of that authority he ever once had.

Fast forward to 2008 and the transformation was complete. Very little was discussed about policy. We were told whatever policy there was in the McCain camp had to be a Xerox of whatever would be done by President Bush, and this was double-plus ungood.

No, we sunk deeply into the swampland of personality politics. Barack Obama was just one of the cool kids. Captain of the football team, ASB President, the kid all the girls wanted to date…versus the Principal who should’ve retired long ago, and smelled funny.

It’s worse. When the elections are over, the problem continues. What will our leaders do tomorrow, next week, next year? What’s in that health care bill everyone’s arguing about, anyway? Will anything get decided in Copenhagen, and if so, what?

Nevermind. We have our brightest people in those talks, that’s what matters. They are the cool kids. Football champs and cheerleaders.

They’re entitled to rule. Who cares about what they’re deciding? “Rule” means never having to explain it to anyone.

Fellow Right Wing News contributor Dr. Melissa Clouthier reports, offering a hat tip to Nobody Asked Me, by way of Pierre Legrand:

One week ago, I went to Ohio on business and to see my father. On Tuesday, November the 17th, I returned home. If you read the papers the 18th you may have seen a blurb where a AirTran flight was cancelled from Atlanta to Houston due to a man who refused to get off of his cell phone before takeoff. It was on Fox.

This was NOT what happened.

I was in 1st class coming home. 11 Muslim men got on the plane in full attire. 2 sat in 1st class and the rest peppered themselves throughout the plane all the way to the back. As the plane taxied to the runway the stewardesses gave the safety spiel we are all so familiar with. At that time, one of the men got on his cell and called one of his companions in the back and proceeded to talk on the phone in Arabic very loudly and very aggressively. This took the 1st stewardess out of the picture for she repeatedly told the man that cell phones were not permitted at the time. He ignored her as if she was not there.

The 2nd man who answered the phone did the same and this took out the 2nd stewardess. In the back of the plane at this time, 2 younger Muslims, one in the back, isle, and one in front of him, window, began to show footage of a porno they had taped the night before, and were very loud about it. Now….they are only permitted to do this prior to Jihad. If a Muslim man goes into a strip club, he has to view the woman via mirror with his back to her. (don’t ask me….I don’t make the rules, but I’ve studied). The 3rd stewardess informed them that they were not to have electronic devices on at this time. To which one of the men said “shut up infidel dog!” She went to take the camcorder and he began to scream in her face in Arabic. At that exact moment, all 11 of them got up and started to walk the cabin. This is where I had had enough! I got up and started to the back where I heard a voice behind me from another Texan twice my size say “I got your back.” I grabbed the man who had been on the phone by the arm and said “you WILL go sit down or you Will be thrown from this plane!” As I “led” him around me to take his seat, the fellow Texan grabbed him by the back of his neck and his waist and headed out with him. I then grabbed the 2nd man and said, “You WILL do the same!” He protested but adrenaline was flowing now and he was going to go. As I escorted him forward the plane doors open and 3 TSA agents and 4 police officers entered. Me and my new Texan friend were told to cease and desist for they had this under control. I was happy to oblige actually. There was some commotion in the back, but within moments, all 11 were escorted off the plane. They then unloaded their luggage.

We talked about the occurrence and were in disbelief that it had happen, when suddenly, the door open again and on walked all 11!! Stone faced, eyes front and robotic (the only way I can describe it). The stewardess from the back had been in tears and when she saw this, she was having NONE of it! Being that I was up front, I heard and saw the whole ordeal. She told the TSA agent there was NO WAY she was staying on the plane with these men. The agent told her they had searched them and were going to go through their luggage with a fine tooth comb and that they were allowed to proceed to Houston. The captain and co-captain came out and told the agent “we and our crew will not fly this plane!” After a word or two, the entire crew, luggage in tow, left the plane. 5 minutes later, the cabin door opened again and a whole new crew walked on.

Again…..this is where I had had enough!!! I got up and asked “What the hell is going on!?!?” I was told to take my seat. They were sorry for the delay and I would be home shortly. I said “I’m getting off this plane”. The stewardess sternly told me that she could not allow me to get off. (now I’m mad!) I said “I am a grown man who bought this ticket, who’s time is mine with a family at home and I am going through that door, or I’m going through that door with you under my arm!! But I am going through that door!!” And I heard a voice behind me say “so am I”. Then everyone behind us started to get up and say the same. Within 2 minutes, I was walking off that plane where I was met with more agents who asked me to write a statement. I had 5 hours to kill at this point so why the hell not. Due to the amount of people who got off that flight, it was cancelled. I was supposed to be in Houston at 6pm. I got here at 12:30am.

She has a follow-up posted earlier this week, from Rusty Shackleford:

If after 9/11 native Arabic speakers don’t get why the rest of us get nervous around them on an airplane then they are living in a fantasy world.

Yes, you make us nervous. Especially when you behave in ways normally considered rude. We tend to overlook rudeness to varying degrees depending on the context of the situation.

And the language you speak does add an extra layer of context.

I certainly don’t approve of racism. But I’m also quite aware that hijackers are thousands of times more likely to be Muslims than of any other religious identity. And that a great number of Muslim hijackers are also Arabs. Like, all 19 on Sept. 11th.

So, note to readers: Arabs speaking loudly and ignoring the requests of stewardesses are probably not hijackers, just assholes.

But note to native Arabic speakers: show a little self control and sensitivity. You make a lot of people very nervous when you behave rudely. Some might call this fear irrational and they may have a point. But no more irrational than, say, instructing passengers how to use the airplane cushions as a flotation device. The odds of being hijacked and surviving a crash long enough to need them probably being similar.

Yes this sucks. We don’t live in an ideal world. It could be much worse. Embrace the suck.

Well put.

Taranto in Best of the Web:

This column has long been arguing that the health-care ideas Congress is considering are so bad that inaction would be vastly preferable. Fox News.com reports that a majority of Americans in a new poll now agree with us:

While 41 percent of Americans want Congress to pass major health care reform legislation this year, a 54 percent majority says they would rather Congress “do nothing on health care for now,” up from 48 percent who felt that way in July.

The poll finds that 57% of Americans oppose “the health care reform legislation being considered right now.”

Anchoress opens a can o’ whoop (hat tip to Gerard):

Dear Congress:

After watching the absurd kabuki theater going on in Washington, where Harry Reid spends half his time crowing, “we’ve got the votes!” and the other half bullying people to get the votes, and Nancy Pelosi walks around like a smiling set of brass knuckles, offering anything, hourly, to anyone who will help her pass their healthcare plan “by Christmas,” I have a message for all of you in both houses of the US Congress:

GO HOME. Drop what you are doing, right now, and go home. Put the 2000 page healthcare bill that you haven’t read into the trash can as you turn out the lights and head for the airport.
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(Several more paragraphs of wonderfulness you have to go read right now.)
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Go home, Congress, and give America a break from your freakish certainties, your falsities, frailties and your folly. Turn off your blackberries and stay off the television and try to find whatever scraps of humanity still remain buried beneath the crust of stinking, corrupt ambition you’ve allowed to grow on you.

Perhaps when you come back, you can be humans again, and sane, and willing to actually serve your nation, instead of yourselves.

…to keep on thinking there’s a “climate change” boogeyman hiding under your bed.

There is no evidence of carbon dioxide being a poison, or that it is capable of causing a warming Armageddon. What follows is a summary of the proof — straight from real science, peer-reviewed over the past 232 years by legions of physicists, thanks to Newton’s Principia.

Remember the famous picture of Miss Marilyn Monroe with her skirt blown high? Even at the age of 76, when I see this picture my temperature goes up — followed by the amount of carbon dioxide I exhale. Never the other way ’round. Now, thanks to the study of a series of ice cores, this appears to be an inconvenient truth for the global warming industry.

Al Gore used this ice core data to claim that carbon dioxide made the temperature of the world rise, threatening life on earth, because there was a correlation between atmospheric CO2 levels and the world’s average temperature. Yet the data from the much-celebrated Vostok ice cores paints a very different picture: Up goes the temperature, followed by a rise in carbon dioxide.

Effectively flattening Gore’s dreams of hedging his funds.

More troubles lie ahead for the warmists. Independent researchers have pointed out that crucially important pieces of the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) evidence were based on false statistical analysis. For starters, take a look at historical evidence from the last 1,000 years. There was a worldwide Medieval Warm Period — no, not just in Europe — and a few centuries prior to that period it was warm enough for the Romans to produce red wine on the borders of Scotland.

The warmists did their best to hide this inconvenient truth, too. In 2006, Dr. David Deming of the University of Oklahoma testified to the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. He stated that soon after he had published a paper on borehole temperature based on historical data in the journal Science, he received an email from a major climate change researcher which read:

We have to get rid of the medieval warm period.

Michael Mann, one of the divas of global warming, had done just that. He published a reconstruction of past temperatures from AD 1000 to the present … in which the Medieval Warm Period conveniently vanished.Warmist believers joined in, flag-waving and sandwich-boarding, calling Mann critics “deniers” and worse.

Over the past 5,000 years? There was not just one, but three periods when it was warmer than today. And yet life on Earth survived. Climate change is natural, and warmer periods occur without human CO2 emissions being the cause. Just looking at the last decade, world temperature is falling as CO2 rises — big emitters China and India have been stocking up their coal sheds. Increases in CO2 rarely coincide with rises in the Earth’s temperature — so how can CO2 be the driver of global warming, let alone climate change?

Following the spread of this evidence, the warmists began to see the lights of the skeptic train rushing down their tunnel of hype. Those with the most to lose dropped the term “global warming,” replacing it with “climate change” — which has been happening since the first living thing was there to record the evidence. With this new term, they gave themselves a spurious license to carry on frightening law-abiding citizens with waterlogged tales of unprovable tipping points just around the corner.

Roger L. Simon:

I have a suggestion for the Norwegians: Spare yourselves the embarrassment and get rid of the Peace Prize altogether. It has outworn its usefulness – if it ever had any.

Okay, I admit I have no standing in requesting this. At least Lionel Chetwynd and I were members of the Academy when we called last week for that organization to rescind Al Gore’s Oscar for “An Inconvenient Truth.”
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Medicine, chemistry, physics, etc. are much better bets. For one thing, the recipients are largely unknown to the public and therefore bound to be much less controversial. And the literature committee of late has done a good job of choosing unknown prize winners as well. It’s probably advisable to keep it that way.

But the Peace Prize? Fuhgedabouddit! (Yes, I chose the Mafia locution deliberately. It seems to fit.)

Cassy takes the trollop down:

The cultural breakdown by liberals continues. This time, it’s Newsweek writer Jenny Block. For liberals, personal responsibility is an antequated concept. Personal gratification for them comes before just about anything else, particularly when it comes to sex. Their mantra is if it feels good, just do it, and deal with the consequences later. It’s outrageous to suggest that a liberal exert some willpower and actually attempt to control themselves, and so it’s no wonder that we have the following article attacking monogamy.

Monogamy just isn’t always realistic. There’s nothing wrong with admitting that. It simply doesn’t work for some. And just as people choose different religions, eating habits, and places to call home, I believe we should be able to choose different ways to live out our relationships.
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Let me be very clear here: I have no problem with monogamy. I think conscious, honest, true monogamy can be a wonderful thing. What should not be tolerated is hypocrisy—and that’s where Tiger’s vow of marriage got him into trouble. If you want to be monogamous, great—but don’t think you can claim it while you sleep around. It’s not fair and, quite frankly, it’s exhausting.

It never occurs to Block that just because something comes natural to someone, it doesn’t mean they should just indulge themselves…
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Yes, monogamy doesn’t come natural to humans. However, that doesn’t weaken it. That strengthens it. When it comes down to it, it all boils down to making a choice. Just having an open marriage means you get to avoid that choice. Convenient, isn’t it? Open marriages may be honest, but they require no strength, no sacrifice, and no real test of love. Everyone is free to choose to do whatever they want to do with their own lives, but what Jenny Block is advocating is certainly not healthy and it’s not something that should be recommended as a good thing.

Besides, if you’re going to have an open marriage, why even bother getting married at all?

The line about hypocrisy, for reasons I stated at Cassy’s place, really frosts me. I grew up in a college town and I know exactly what this means; it isn’t the same thing as what you and I mean when we say “hypocrisy.” To real people, in order to be a hypocrite you have to engage in some kind of do-as-I-say, not-as-I-do contradiction.

To the cultural backlasher, all you have to do is point out some pain-in-the-ass rules. It doesn’t matter if you honestly believe in them and practice them yourself; that doesn’t enter into it. You’re already a hypocrite just for raising the issue.

Or, if the backlasher is the one who raised the issue, for failing to agree and go along.

Gagdad Bob:

As we have discussed in the past, science proceeds from the known to the unknown, i.e., (k) –> O, whereas religious practice proceeds from the unknown to the known, or O –> (n); or, on a slightly more concrete plane, you could say that science proceeds from facts to principles, whereas religion proceeds from principles to facts.
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To rip an example from the headlines, look at the intrinsic fallacies involved in the tautological science of “climate change” (climate stasis — now there would be a novel theory!). The warmystics take something with which they are familiar — their computer models — and substitute it for something they want to understand — the “global climate.” But as Bolton says, “unfortunately, familiarity can be confused with understanding, and in such cases, things can appear to be understood when they are not.” For example, I am familiar with electricity. But I would only be pretending if I said I understood it.

…the nondualists try to explain reality, which they do not understand, with reference to consciousness, which they also do not understand. Voila! Perfect understanding.

Uh oh…someone’s on that “Prove I’m A Good Person” cycle, which works just like a hamster’s spinning wheel.

Such a sad thing. It seems to have started when she chopped her ‘do.

I’m giving up my 37th Birthday and it has nothing to do with vanity or nearing the big 4-0. I couldn’t care less about numbers as they pertain to my age. I do, however, care about age when it pertains to those throughout the world who don’t make it to their 37th birthdays because of a lack of clean drinking water and proper sanitation.

As a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF and the founding ambassador for the Global Network, I’ve traveled to the field and seen firsthand the devastation left behind by waterborne illnesses. On these trips, I’ve run the gamut of emotions that range from mind-bending anger to heart-warming hope. Upon my return from the field, I count my blessings, and then as time passes, I become frustrated with myself that I’m not doing more to alleviate the pain of those I met on my journey.

It is because of this very frustration that I decided to give up my birthday. I have everything I could ever want or need. All I want is to provide life-giving water for 10 communities, 500 families and 2,500 people. This is my Birthday wish. In lieu of spending money on a party or presents, I’m asking people to donate to my Charity: Water campaign and help make my wish come true.

So she’s got a birthday coming up. It’s next Saturday. Far from keeping it a secret, she’s announcing it, and oh by the way she wants something.

How is this giving up a birthday?

It would be perfectly coherent, logical, charitable, good-willed and — I’m sure — well received for her to simply say “next weekend’s my birthday, and I’d just like everyone to know in lieu of gifts, I’d consider it a personal favor if…” How come the anger has to enter into it?

In fact, fortunately Alyssa’s birthday is at a time of year when people are feeling most charitable. So if that’s really the way her birthday feels, there never was a need to mention it.

These people must be spoiled rotten brats. She’s got the perfect setup for what she says she wants…and here she is throwing a fit. She must have grown up being taught that this is how you get people to do things; I really can’t think of any other possible explanation. There are needy people, there are others willing to help them, the desire is to bring them together. Why the bile? Because of your trips, is that it? Then keep soliciting donations, but stop going.

Alyssa’s water charity is here. Do consider donating. I’m sure the people really do need it, and it isn’t their fault their situation is being represented by someone so angry.

The alarmists are lickin’ their chops. They can’t wait.

A top United Nations climate official says the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to declare greenhouse gases a danger to public health will give Barack Obama more room to negotiate here.

“It’s a very good signal indeed,” said Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the Convention on Climate Change. “It makes it easier for the president of the United States to commit to something.”

Hey waitaminnit…can He do that?

Yes! He! Can!

Report: President Obama Has the Clear Legal Authority to Make a Binding Commitment for Greenhouse Gas Reductions in Copenhagen Without Waiting for Congress

COPENHAGEN— The Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute released a report today demonstrating that President Obama has clear legal authority to commit the United States to reducing greenhouse gas pollution…

“President Obama’s hands are not tied by Congress’s lack of action or the grossly inadequate cap-and-trade bills currently under debate. President Obama can lead, rather than follow, by using his power under the Clean Air Act and other laws to achieve deep and rapid greenhouse emissions reductions from major polluters,” said Center attorney Kevin Bundy, the report’s lead author. “Obama can use his authority to make a binding agreement in Copenhagen without additional action from Congress. The Constitution and existing domestic environmental laws give President Obama all the power he needs to join with other nations in making a real commitment to solve the climate crisis.”

I still want to hear how far the CO2 saturation in the atmosphere, currently 0.038%, has to get before we can consider the crisis solved.

Why do I obsess over this? Because nobody else is…and consider the ramifications of that. We sign on to something. Public doesn’t know what the CO2 saturation is, and doesn’t care what it is — even though that’s precisely what the crisis is supposed to be.

So it ends up being a bottomless cookie jar for the policy makers. “Whoopsie, we aren’t taxing enough to solve the climate crisis!” Why wouldn’t that be the rallying cry each and every week? Seriously, what mechanism have we put in place to stop it? If the public isn’t tuned into this number, the legislators and cabinet members and other bureaucrats at the tippy-top of the food chain…they can do whatever they like with it. It’ll just be measureless. Yet another “Come A Long Way, We’re Not There Yet” thing.

Don’t try it, it’s really true.

It’s a story you’ve heard before. An impressionable young boy eyes a metal pole as winter sets in and thinks, “‘what the heck, a little lick can’t hurt anyone.” Of course, there’s always a dare involved.

If you think we’re talking about the infamous scene in “A Christmas Story” you’d be right. But we’re also talking about a scene that unfolded this week in sleepy Boise, Idaho. On Tuesday morning, a boy of about 10 decided to stick his tongue on the metal pole, and lo and behold he could not get it off.

A woman driving by noticed the boy’s dilemma and called 911. Fire Capt. Bill Tinsley told The Associated Press emergency workers came to the rescue. And what did they use to free the boy’s tongue? The tried and true method of extraction: a warm glass of water. Tinsley said the boy’s tongue bled a little, but he was deemed healthy enough to continue his trek to school.

Wow, what a good story:

A man who says he was kidnapped, held hostage and robbed may have saved his own life by crashing the car he was driving into a Sacramento sheriff deputy’s squad car.

A deputy was taking an accident report at Folsom Boulevard and Manlove Road Tuesday evening when suddenly a car hit his patrol car. The driver got out shouting two men in his car had guns. Those men got out and fled the scene.

“He was screaming, ‘Oh my God, they’re trying to kill me,’ ” said Francheska Owens. She was a part of the original accident and witnessed the events unfold.

Deputies found a handgun in the front seat of the car the victim was driving and a shotgun in the back. It was unclear if the car belonged to the victim.

And then we have a stomach-churning “Yikes!” moment, the ultimate nightmare of many a motorist:

Florin Perkins Road was closed Wednesday morning after a deadly accident between a truck hauling milk, and a car.

The crash happened around 4 a.m. Wednesday morning on the southbound side of the Florin Perkins Rd. just north of Fruitridge Rd.

Sgt. Mike Carrasco with Sacramento Police Dept. says the big rig was pulling out of Ramos Court, turning north onto Florin Perkins Rd.

The car was heading southbound and didn’t stop, skidded underneath the big rig trapping the driver.

Witnesses say they tried to pull the driver from the wreck but the car burst into flames.

The person in the car died on the scene.

Officer Carrasco says speed may have played a factor in the crash, but alcohol did not.

These road names are just giving me a little bit of a chill. I’m well east of most of the tomfoolery and nonsense, and that’s a blessing. Girlfriend has to drive in to work, but that’s much later in the day. Still — it’s a jungle in there.

Sacramento & immediate environs have always had this “Murphy’s Law” thing going on. I get the feeling sometimes I should be taking out a special insurance policy whenever I go that way.

From One for the Road.

Associated Press is the only one out, that I can see, with a headline that says something like this. If you read the story, it’s just some of ’em. This is just more snow on the teevee while we’re waiting to see what picture ultimately crystallizes. For now.

We’ll see how it plays out.

Democratic senators say they have a tentative deal to drop a government-run insurance option from health care legislation. No further details were immediately available.

But liberals and moderates have been discussing an alternative, including a private insurance arrangement to be supervised by the federal agency that oversees the system through which lawmakers purchase coverage. Additionally, talks centered on opening up Medicare to uninsured Americans beginning at age 55, a significant expansion of the large government health care program that currently serves the over-65 population.

Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa told reporters he didn’t like the agreement but would support it to the hilt in an attempt to pass health care legislation.

Before the end of the year, huh?

Might happen. Better watch this pot. It really is the A-Number-One best chance Congress has to screw up the economy further.

As innerwebs loudmouths continue to lecture me that I’ve “lost all credibility” for backing Palin, real life continues to play out as the best Palin-in-12 commercial money could possibly buy.

PrezBO’s respect, or lack thereof, for experience in the private sector:

And the consequences of this respect or lack thereof:

In a massive security breach, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) inadvertently posted online its airport screening procedures manual, including some of the most closely guarded secrets regarding special rules for diplomats and CIA and law enforcement officers.

The most sensitive parts of the 93-page Standard Operating Procedures manual were apparently redacted in a way that computer savvy individuals easily overcame.

The document shows sample CIA, Congressional and law enforcement credentials which experts say would make it easy for terrorists to duplicate.

The improperly redacted areas indicate that only 20 percent of checked bags are to be hand searched for explosives and reveal in detail the limitations of x-ray screening machines.

I’m not sure what this improper-redaction-method was, exactly. I got an idea. And if that idea is wrong, I got an idea that when I find out what the technical details really are, I’m gonna cringe.