Am I mistaken or did they delete that extremely long and delicate post we had going? Holy Crap if they did. What, they saw I was making progress and decided that was not a good thing? WTF is wrong with this site.

Bass, I can't exactly remember where we left off, but what was your last thoughts/opinions about it? I was giving you cold hard facts that completely made sense about what happened (thermate, sulfur, steel cut at 45* angle, etc.)

p.s. Watch this. Its interesting. Its Crey Rowe, one of the guys from loose change. Whatever your opinions are of the movie, what he says here about Iraq is vital.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2399257667872916789

Over the last couple days, I've received four emails from one liberal reader of these columns, repeatedly asking me why conservatives are so 'angry and mean-spirited'. I tried explaining that while anger is common to the human condition, in no way do conservatives have a monopoly on the emotion. To the contrary, I cited a recent study revealing that, even when controlling for relevant variables, Republicans tend to be happier than Democrats.

Since I was unable to prove the proposition to the reader's satisfaction, I very much hope he was watching this evening's Hardball. For the show provided a perfect case in point of Republican good humor and raw Dem anger.

Call the MSM liberal all ya want. I tend to agree. But I don't see one word here about an issue that's important to Jews and Christians the world over, and going on right now. That's one point for the pinko lib commie MSM.

On Monday’s Diane Rehm show on National Public Radio, the arrogance of The New York Times was on full display. Times reporter Eric Lichtblau was a guest on the program discussing the story the Times published on Friday disclosing a secret anti-terror program designed to follow the money. Among the claims made by Lichtblau were, The New York Times determined this anti-terror program was a matter for national debate, the Bush administration is trying to score political points by feigning outrage over the disclosure of this program, and that none of the sources who disclosed the program had political motives.

Lichtblau ,and fortunately for the war on terror and the national security of America he didn't cite an example to back up this claim, wants listeners to believe:

"Um, you know, we’re not gonna just take a leak and run with it. We, you know, carefully look at the facts of the case to decide whether or not it’s worth publishing and I think it’s important to remember that there’s information that we at the New York Times and other papers keep out of the public domain all the time because we agree that yes, this could compromise a source and method, this could actually help the bad guys."

At 7:30AM EDT on Wednesday’s American Morning, CNN’s Miles O’Brien was particularly antagonistic toward Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. O’Brien began the segment by highlighting video of Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid accusing Republicans of concentrating on issues such as the flag burning amendment, while ignoring more pressing matters. O’Brien jumped at the charge:

Miles O’Brien: "I–the question that a lot of people have on their minds, Senator, is, are you, are you fiddling while Rome is burning?"

O’Brien continued to pound Frist throughout the interview, and cited an editorial from a Chattanooga, Tennessee paper which slammed Frist for his "shameless pandering to conservatives." O’Brien asked the majority leader why Americans were not hearing the message that the Senate was taking action on these issues. Frist turned the tables on O’Brien, charging him for focusing on the Senate debates over same-sex marriage and the flag amendment, while not mentioning: "what we’ve done on the floor for the last six weeks: Iraq, the war on terror, making you safer, yes, cutting your taxes, fighting for fairer tax code over time, addressing border security head-on. Where’s your coverage of that?" Frist then directly answered O’Brien’s charge that Americans are not hearing his message:

Senator Bill Frist: "What you do is concentrate on the things that are spun to you from the other side of the aisle, and that’s why that message doesn’t get out."

As you may have heard, Star Jones has been fired from The View. Numerous media outlets reported on the behind-the-scenes drama that has engulfed the ABC show. Several reasons have been given for the departure. Many speculate it was due to her feud with incoming View host Rosie O’Donnell or that it’s related to her sudden weight loss. Whatever the truth is, one thing is certain: Throughout the years, Ms. Jones, a former legal correspondent for Today and NBC’s Nightly News, has been a constant source of liberal bias.

Just prior to the 2004 presidental elections, Ms. Jones recounted, on-air, her campaign appearances with Democratic candidate John Kerry. Her comments appeared in the November 2, 2004 edition of the CyberAlert:

"But I was with Senator Kerry on Friday night in Florida because you know that's a battleground state [video of her at a podium with a Kerry campaign sign and a still shot of Kerry with his arm draped around her]. And everybody is down there, I got a chance to give a speech to talk about why I believe what I believe. And then, we went from Miami to Fort Lauderdale and into Pensacola. And, Barbara, to me, your talking about South Africa reminded me of the people in Pensacola. People don't realize just how much poverty is in our own country. And there are people with no jobs, there are people with no health care, people who can't afford to buy their drugs, and I'm talking basic prescription drugs you might need, like insulin, every single day."

Yesterday, Dennis Persica of the New Orleans Times-Picayune claimed conservatives couldn't care less if journalists were gunned down. He's now posted his thoughts again (modified) at the liberal site TomPaine.com. This time, he links to a T-shirt advocating the lynching of journalists. And then I found this blog post from the same people joking about hanging people at the New York Times, giving them their "just desserts."

That is just revolting and wrong, and those people do not speak for me. Yesterday I called Persica "unhinged." Today, someone's giving him a hinge.

In theory, we're all pro-assimilation. And in theory, even the CEA agrees that Latino kids ought to be learning English. So naturally, the same education professionals who brought you "whole language" and the New Math oppose English immersion programs:

A proposal to immerse students who don't speak English into intense English-instruction classes for a year before they return to mainstream classrooms is not educationally sound and could be harmful to students, educators and critics say.

"This (proposed state constitutional) amendment is one-size-fits-all, regardless," said Sheila Shannon, a professor in the School of Education at the University of Colorado.

At issue is the "Education of English Learners" ballot initiative proposed by a Weld County-based committee, English for Colorado. It calls for placing kids learning English into language classes for a year, without lessons in math, science, social studies or other topics.

When President Bush has an accidental slip of the tongue, the establishment media makes it a front page headline, but when the chairman of the Democratic National Committee says something outrageous in prepared remarks, they all suddenly experience hysterical deafness. 

Yesterday, DNC Chairman Howard Dean called the 60’s “the age of enlightenment” and called for a return to the morals of that era during a press conference.  Not only did Dean praise an era best known for sex, drugs, racial strife, and declining church attendance, he even had the gall to hypocritically condemn giving power and authority to the government.

This is a paper by Judy Wood. She uses science, logic, and common sense to show what actually happened. People here criticized Steven Jones for only being a physicist, and as predicted said MIT professor Jeff King was not credible either. Well, here is a third source (of many) with the same contentions.  Here are her credentials:

"Judy D. Wood is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Clemson University with degrees in Civil Engineering, Engineering Mechanics, and Materials Engineering Science.  Professor Wood teaches courses in the areas of engineering mechanics and experimental stress analysis."

Read the paper. Its quite short with all of the pictures inserted. I think you'll enjoy reading something that is not made up or that has left out critical information (aka 9/11 commission, fema, nist reports). Now, i don't want to pre-judge you all, but i'm gonna guess you'll find something on her that is not to your "liking."

From The New York Daily News:

A few hours after a televised display of saccharine warmth and affection between Barbara Walters and Star Jones Reynolds - who yesterday surprised her "View" colleagues by announcing she's leaving in mid-July - their relationship turned very chilly indeed.

Never mind Walters' previous public assurances that Jones Reynolds was welcome to stay on the show as long as she wanted. Yesterday, "The View's" alpha female - the show's co-owner and co-executive producer - told me that she lied "to protect Star" from the damaging news that ABC long ago decided not to renew her contract.

Remember, a lie is never acceptable from a public figure.

UPDATE: The View transcripts (via Drudge)

"The network made this decision based on a variety of reasons which I won't go into now. But we were never going to say this. We wanted to protect [S]tar. And so we told her that she could say whatever she wanted about why she was leaving and that we would back her up."

Well I'll be, The View is a news program after all. If she did this to protect someone she dislikes, just think what she's done to protect the people she likes.

Republican House leaders want to introduce a resolution condemning the New York Times for its reporting on the international bank-monitoring program. On the Senate side, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Pat Roberts, asked National Intelligence Director John Negroponte to assess the damage done by the leak.

Reports The Hill:

House Republican leaders are expected to introduce a resolution today condemning The New York Times for publishing a story last week that exposed government monitoring of banking records.

The resolution is expected to condemn the leak and publication of classified documents, said one Republican aide with knowledge of the impending legislation.

The Boston Globe, owned by the New York Times, ran two letters from soldiers in Iraq addressed to the New York Times. The article also says that the American public trusts the military over the media: 47 percent say they have "hardly any" confidence in the media, while 14 percent say they have a "great deal" of confidence in the media.

T.F. BOGGS is a 24-year-old sergeant in the Army Reserves serving his second tour of duty in Iraq, where he helps to provide security for a military base in Mosul. He is also an occasional blogger, venting his views at www.boredsoldier.blogspot.com. On Sunday, those views took the form of a letter to Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times. Two days earlier, the Times (along with The Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times) had exposed the existence of a top-secret government effort to monitor the international movement of funds between Al Qaeda and its financial collaborators.

Time to put those coffee cups down again, sports fans, because Sweetness & Light has discovered an editorial humorously published by none other than The New York Times back on September 24, 2001, strongly advocating the Bush administration, as a result of the attacks just thirteen days prior, impose a variety of new procedures to track down and shut off the funding for terrorists (hat tip to Clarice Feldman at American Thinker).

The editorial entitled “Finances of Terror” began:

“Organizing the hijacking of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon took significant sums of money. The cost of these plots suggests that putting Osama bin Laden and other international terrorists out of business will require more than diplomatic coalitions and military action. Washington and its allies must also disable the financial networks used by terrorists.”

Now that sounds like a great idea. The article wisely continued:

Perhaps sensing that editor Bill Keller’s arrogant open letter didn't do the job, today’s masthead editorial in the New York Times makes another defense of the paper’s latest terrorist-program wrecking scoop, mostly by accusing conservatives of attacking the paper’s patriotism.

The defensive “Patriotism and the Press” begins:

“Over the last year, The New York Times has twice published reports about secret antiterrorism programs being run by the Bush administration. Both times, critics have claimed that the paper was being unpatriotic or even aiding the terrorists.”

After several discussions over the last few days from people who say "specifically, what law did the New York Times violate?" Here it is. The legal remedy for what the New York Times has done is the death penalty and confiscation of the newspaper.

U.S. Code Title 18, Part I, Chapter 37, § 794
§ 794. Gathering or delivering defense information to aid foreign government

(a) Whoever, with intent or reason to believe that it is to be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of a foreign nation, communicates, delivers, or transmits, or attempts to communicate… to any foreign government, or to any faction or party… whether recognized or unrecognized by the United States… any document, writing… plan… or information relating to the national defense, shall be punished by death or by imprisonment for any term of years or for life, except that the sentence of death shall not be imposed unless the jury or, if there is no jury, the court, further finds that the offense resulted in the identification by a foreign power… directly concerned… early warning systems, or other means of defense or retaliation against large-scale attack; war plans; communications intelligence…. or any other major weapons system or major element of defense strategy.
(b) Whoever, in time of war, with intent that the same shall be communicated to the enemy, collects, records, publishes, or communicates, or attempts to elicit any information with respect to… any other information relating to the public defense, which might be useful to the enemy, shall be punished by death or by imprisonment for any term of years or for life.
(c) If two or more persons conspire to violate this section, and one or more of such persons do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy, each of the parties to such conspiracy shall be subject to the punishment provided for the offense which is the object of such conspiracy.
(d)
(1) Any person convicted of a violation of this section shall forfeit to the United States irrespective of any provision of State law—
(A) any property constituting, or derived from, any proceeds the person obtained, directly or indirectly, as the result of such violation, and
(B) any of the person’s property used, or intended to be used, in any manner or part, to commit, or to facilitate the commission of, such violation.

Sure, Tim Russert is a pillar of the great center-left media establishment. You can take the man out of Mario Cuomo's office, but you can't entirely take Mario's office out of the man. Even so, as MSM types go, Russert is among the more fair-and-balanced.

But in his Today show appearance this morning, Tim simply didn't make sense. Asked by Campbell Brown about the White House's anger at the New York Times for its latest divulging on an anti-terror program, Russert responded:

"There is no doubt this was an orchestrated campaign to try to frame this issue of national security versus the media, particularly the New York Times. It resonates with the organized Republican conservative base: taking on the media,liberal media. Remember Spiro Agnew, back in the Nixon administration: the 'nattering nabobs of negativism.'

As a veteran Couric watcher, I've recently come to follow [without actually watching] doings at The View, since Katie's replacement Meredith Vieira was for years a member of the show's cast. For those unfamiliar with it, The View is an all-female televised coffee klatsch and gabfest of which Barbara Walters is the creator, partial owner and a co-host.

The View has a distinct liberal tint to its patter. And as we know, one of the tenets of feminist theology is that women have a right to whatever body size they want, free of societal restraints.

How ironic - some might say hypocritical - that one reason for the recent firing of co-host Star Jones is that . . . she refused to stay fat! As you'll note from the before and after pics here, Star has undergone a dramatic physical transformation. According to this AP article:

Howard Kurtz takes his online lamentations of criticism of the breathtaking arrogance of the New York Times into the paper today. The headline is "Piling On the New York Times With a Scoop." From there, you can see Problem Numero Uno. Kurtz, like other media people with blinders on, pretends that the Times is merely an honest broker of information that is "piled on," but can never "pile on" the White House or other conservative targets. If Kurtz wrote about the Times "piling on" Bush again, wouldn't it look tilted? It certainly looks like the media circling the wagons for media buddies on this story.

"Even by modern standards of media-bashing, the volume of vitriol being heaped upon on the editors on Manhattan's West 43rd Street is remarkable," Kurtz writes. But the wildest quote Kurtz runs is Tammy Bruce comparing the Times to Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Bush and Cheney were stern, but hardly unsparing.

Washington Post defense reporter Thomas Ricks is one of several Post reporters with Iraq books hitting the market. But the title of his book, coming out in July, sticks out. It's Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq. I wonder if Post readers might not think in the day-to-day reporting on Iraq that Ricks is going to display a pronounced bad-news bias. The book description on Amazon suggests "caustic" is a word that fits this book's tone:

The definitive military chronicle of the Iraq war and a searing judgment on the strategic blindness with which America has conducted it, drawing on the accounts of senior military officers giving voice to their anger for the first time.

Click here for instructions on running Gaggle daily on your own site. There's also an archive of previous toons available here.

Rush Limbaugh the target of gunfire from gun enthusiasts? Evidently this is a thought MSNBC host Keith Olbermann finds entertaining, as evidenced by the opening teaser of his latest edition of Countdown. On Tuesday's show, when Olbermann got to a plug for a story about a gathering of gun enthusiasts in Oklahoma, and while showing clips of people firing at targets using automatic weapons, an image of Rush Limbaugh's face was briefly shown overlaying a clip of background explosions right after one of the participants shouted, "Rush! Big rush!" Olbermann then joked: "Huh? Oh, you mean a different 'big rush.'"

Earlier in the teaser, Olbermann, who has become a frequent Limbaugh critic and mocks him as "comedian Rush Limbaugh," previewed a story on the conservative host's recent brush with U.S. Customs over a supply of Viagra Limbaugh had in possession. Olbermann, imitating Limbaugh's voice: "With talent on loan from Pfizer." After playing a clip of Limbaugh laughing off the incident on his show, Olbermann asked: "Will he get the last laugh or was that premature jocularity?" (Transcript follows)

Video clip (27 seconds): Real (875 KB) or Windows Media (1 MB), plus MP3 audio (135 KB)