In a related article, the PATRIOT Act is becoming ‘semi-permanent’. House Votes to Extend Patriot Act.
In a knee-jerk reaction to the bombings in London, lawmakers move to extend the PATRIOT Act, which is set to expire later this year.
I have never been a fan of this Act, I feel it infringes on too many basic freedoms. I don’t care if it makes me “safer,” I would rather be free and live with the risk than give up freedoms and still have to live with the risk.

“Periodically revisiting the Patriot Act is a good thing,” said Rep. Martin Meehan, D-Mass. “The Patriot Act was an effort to answer the most difficult question a democracy faces: How much freedom are we willing to give up to feel safe?“

None, Congresswoman, none. Ben Franklin and all that.

The last of a group of very brave men has died. Last of the WWII Comanche Code Talkers Dies.
These men were called into service not to fight, but to use their native language as an unbreakable code against Germany. Like their Navajo brethren in the Pacific, the enemy was never able to make heads or tails out of the code.

Well, the schedule change is here. Starting Tuesday, I will be working four 6 hour days instead of three 8 hour days. This will get me working Tuesday-Friday, so now I can have Saturday off again! Yay! I can wargame with more people (Saturday is the busiest day at the Battle Bunker) and I can fly rockets again!
Let’s hope this will work out and I won’t have to change my schedule again, as this change was like pulling an impacted wisdom tooth.

Real life buddy Mike and I get together on Wednesdays and beat the snot out of each other in Epic:Armageddon. We played a 6,000 point game last night, just about every thing in both of our inventories.
The game opened with me being fairly strung out, while Mike was stepping all over himself, being tightly packed in a corner. I acted out of character and played aggressively, putting Mike off his plan a little. Normally I don’t play so aggressive, which is exactly why I played so.
I swept my left flank around to his forces, and kept him from half of the board, including control of my objectives. My blitzkrieg was guarded by both my Whirlwinds and a detachment of Tactical Marines. His Blitzkrieg was protected by a single tactical detachment. I pounded one tactical detachment, his biggest point unit. I broke it, then wiped it out with a Thunderhawk strike.
Turn two opened with both of us teleporting Terminators onto the others Blitzkrieg. He wiped out my Whirlwinds, I killed a couple of Land Raiders. Both of our Terminator detachments died gloriously. I tried to break his left flank, but a Thunderhawk strike all but wiped out one tactical detachment, while a set of tanks rushed to support another detachment under fire. My forces continued to drive back his right flank, compressing his forces further and limiting his ability to maneuver. My assault Marines from the Thunderhawk strike managed to wipe out his Whirlwinds, but were mortally wounded from all of the supporting fire from all of the other units in the area from his tight formation.
Turn three saw more teleportations, both of us descending on the others Blitzkrieg objective. I got to assault first, but he beat me off. I got to activate my titan before he could assault and managed to almost wipe out his Terminators, keeping my Blitzkrieg safe and intact.
It was down hill from there, both of us had control of the objectives on our side of the board, but I had forces on his side of the board and I killed his biggest point unit, giving me a 3-1 point win.
Mike had a short, tight line, and a lot of depth in his formations, leading to his being a tough nut to crack, but he could not maneuver because of his tightly packed formation. He learned Napoleons maxim, “All defensive warfare ultimately leads to defeat.” He had no right flank to speak of, but other than my titan I had nothing to continue the push. His left flank was moderately secure, but I had the ability to at least try and push him off the objective he was guarding. But with two full strength tactical units nearby, I wouldn’t have made too much of an inroads.
All-in-all, a fun game with lots of thinking and good natured ribbing both ways. I would love to see more people play Epic, but Wednesday night is just not the night to see a lot of players. That will change as you have already read from the prior post.
Thanks for reading.

I have been getting up early for the last couple of weeks, but today I couldn’t get out of bed. When I did, I just crawled into the recliner and slept another hour.
And I’ve been missing a lot of stuff. Glenn Beck has had a guy on about the American Hiroshima, an Al Qaida plan to detonate up to 7 nuclear weapons in the U.S. It sounds scary and it should be. If you live in a target city, you could be living on borrowed time.
I also missed the “attempted” bombings in London. Of course, it seems like nothing at this point in time, could this be a prank or something.
I’ll talk to you later when I’m feeling better.

From Fox News: Fast Facts: John G. Roberts.

EXPERIENCE
— on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit since June 2003.
— one of President Bush’s least contentious picks for the bench.
— former Rehnquist clerk, Roberts was associate counsel to President Reagan from 1982-86 and then served in the first Bush administration, arguing cases before the Supreme Court from 1989-93.
— during the Clinton administration, became a highly sought-after private lawyer in Supreme Court cases, representing clients such as the National Collegiate Athletic Association in a discrimination case, and carmaker Toyota in winning limits on a disabled workers claims.
— had been in line to join the appeals court in 1992, but nomination during the first Bush administration died in a Democratic-controlled Senate.
— 146 members of the D.C. Bar signed a letter urging his confirmation, including officials from the Clinton administration.
EDUCATION
— received his undergraduate and law degrees from Harvard.
PERSONAL
— 50 years old
— native of Buffalo, N.Y.

You can bet that the long knives will be out for Mr. Roberts. The Democrats will grill him like a cheese sandwich. Let’s hope he can take the heat and make it through intact.

The Loony Left Wing strikes again. MoveOn Sees Conspiracy in Roberts Timing.
Just like the DNC President Howard Dean thinks that Tom DeLay should go to jail without a trial, MoveOn thinks Karl Rove should be fired and go to jail, even when Rove has committed no crime. Even when there is no evidence that a crime has been committed by anybody, let alone Rove.
Now the Moonbats are accusing the Bush administration of doing exactly what their darling Clinton did: Do something newsworthy to get something embarrassing off the front pages. In President Clintons case, it was launching a few cruise missiles into Iraq to get Monica Lewinsky and her stained dress off the front pages.
Too bad that isn’t the case here. It just so happens that there is a real vacancy in the SCOTUS, and President Bush is trying to fill that spot before the SCOTUS convenes on the first Monday of October.
One of these days MoveOn and their ilk might get it right.
But I wouldn’t count on it.

I have been following Michael Newdow and his crusade to eliminate the “Under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance since I started this blog. Well, here is another step. A Judge has thrown out a large portion of his case, limiting the case to just the pledge in the school. Newdow cannot challenge the pledge itself. Judge Will Throw Out Parts of Newdow’s Pledge Case.
In the wake of the SCOTUS decision to punt, this is the only possible thing the judge could have done. By limiting the question to a yes/no possibility to if the Pledge belongs in the schools at all, it is a pretty good chance that Newdow will go down in flames.
Good for him. It is a bad thing for one person to have the power to control over the entire country like this. If he doesn’t like “Under God” in the pledge, then he can just shut up when it comes to those two words. I don’t care if he’s offended by them, there’s lots of things that offend me, but I realize we are a country of freedoms and I must let other people express their freedoms, as long as it doesn’t directly affect me.

Here you go. Bad Research Leads to Bad Law.
This article goes into how bad scientific practices make it into law. When one-third of “hard science” (medicine, physics, etc.) studies can be called into question, what about the “soft sciences” where it is largely interpretation of the data that determines the outcome?

This is not a mere academic matter. Inaccurate studies become entrenched in laws that govern our daily lives. Using VAWA [Violence Against Women Act] as an example again, the Act incorrectly assumes that women, and not men, are the victims of domestic violence, and it has been influential in denying men access to shelters. This denial often extends to the older male children of women who seek assistance.

The act also calls for more studies, a perpetuating act.
When three soft science researchers can look at the same data and come up with three different conclusions, all based on their judgment and agendas, we should not be making law based on these studies. But that is exactly what is happening today, especially with Liberal causes.

It may surprise people, however, to hear that I don’t think political agendas are inevitable within the soft sciences. Even on controversial subjects like rape, it is possible to find interesting studies in which researchers sincerely pursue solid data.
But you have to go back a few decades. In his book from the ’70s, “Men who Rape: The Psychology of the Offender,” Nicholas Groth offered a theory that sounds almost jarring to today’s ears. He wrote, “One of the most basic observations one can make regarding men who rape is that not all such offenders are alike.” That is, a drunken boyfriend who rapes because he does not hear the “no” being uttered should not be placed in the same research category as a back alley rapist who leaves his victim physically crippled for life.
A rape researcher could not make that statement today on a college campus. He would be fired, bludgeoned into silence, or his funding would be yanked. There is now only one acceptable view of rape; it is an act of power. There is only one research category of rapist: the oppressor.

Has it been that long when soft science had the ethics to get to the truth of things, and not conform with some Political Correctness whiner?
We’re in more trouble than I thought.

This is important to me, as I spent 6 years in Hawai’i, and my wife is Hawai’ian. Hawaiians Grapple With Self-Government Bill.
I don’t see this as a good thing. First of all, there are very few “real” Hawai’ians left, and they already live on their own island, living like their ancestors. To surrender up to 40 percent of the land is going to cause problems in the real estate market.
And on top of that, just look at what happened when we segregated the Indians. Look at the problems they have, and tell me it’s a good idea to split the islands in half, especially when a majority of people don’t want it to happen.
This is going to be a bad idea, but then again Liberals are well known for implementing bad ideas. And Hawai’i is a very Liberal state.

You won’t believe this. On the other hand, maybe you will. Clinton speaks before Hispanic civil rights conference.

Speaking to the nations’ largest Hispanic civil rights organization, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., received a standing ovation Monday when she vowed her support for legislation that would allow illegal immigrant high school students to attend college. [emphasis mine]

If they want to go to college here, let them come in legally. Supporting legislation like this only encourages more illegal immigration, and we as a nation cannot withstand much more of this. Mexican Enclaves are popping up everywhere, including here in Memphis. And they are not joining in the “melting pot” that is America. They are keeping their Mexican heritage intact and refusing to assimilate. They demand that we speak to them in their language, because they refuse to learn ours.
This is getting out of control and it has to stop somewhere. Senator Clinton and her ilk are a contributing factor in the destruction of the American culture and way of life. And they know it, and are active and willing participants in the process.
Stop them. Stop them now. Oppose any effort to extend any help or assistance to illegals. That is the only way to chase them back over the border.

I think I’m in pretty good health for a sedentary 44 year old. I donate blood regularly, so I know my last blood pressure. When it was taken last week, it was 110 over 70, my last cholesterol check was 102. I’m 6’3″ and I weigh 215. But according to the CDC’s BMI Mass Index I am overweight. I would have to drop another 16 pounds to get to “normal.”
Which brings us to this story: The Government’s Fat-Fear Farce.

You’re probably fat, too. The average woman is 5 foot 3 inches tall. By the time she hits 141 pounds, the government says she is officially “overweight.” At 170, she’s “obese.” The average man of 5 feet, 10 inches hits “overweight” at 174 pounds. By 209 pounds, he’s “obese.” Something is wrong here. When people like Cruise, world-class athletes and a fit president are being told by the government that they need to lose weight, perhaps there’s something wrong with our metric.

It is interesting about the politics of the study itself:

But last April, a study commissioned by the National Institutes of Health urged by critics of the obesity hysteria confirmed what less hysterical health researchers had suspected all along. The 400,000 figure was wrong. And not by a little bit. The actual figure is closer to 100,000. And guess what? According to recent research, people who are slightly “overweight” are actually healthier than those who are normal weight. When you factor in the number of lives saved by being modestly overweight, the number of people who die due to obesity drops to around 25,000.
The CDC has been reluctant to embrace the new study’s figure. That might have something to do with the fact that the CDC’s director, Julie Gerberding, was co-author of the 400,000 study. In fact, a subsequent internal investigation revealed that the CDC may have actually known that the original study was flawed! It seems the study was published over objections from peer-reviewers due to internal politics. In other words, because the boss wrote the study.

Just one more case of bad science, activist researchers who make the facts fit what they think is right, instead of admitting they were wrong and adjusting themselves to fit the facts.
Sheesh.

And finally, a fun puzzle. There are two errors in this picture from McDonald’s. Can you spot them? Click on the picture for a larger view.

As usual, our feckless friends the Democrats are showing that they have one standard for themselves and another one for everybody else. Let the Screaming Match Begin.
This whole Plamegate is a non-starter. People are calling for Karl Rove’s head when it hasn’t even been proven that a crime has been committed. Ms. Plame had to have been on assignment within the last five years, she hadn’t been on assignment outside the U.S. in nine years. It’s also been stated by the prosecutor that Mr. Rove is not the target of the investigation.
How much clearer can you get? Obviously facts don’t get in the way of a good Democrat rant.
Then comes the other side of the coin. Sandy ‘Burglar’ Berger was literally caught with his pants down and full of classified documents. He then took these highly classified documents home and destroyed them “by accident.” What does he get? A slap on the wrist and loss of his security clearance for a couple of years.
Why we let him off so easily I’ll never know. If I had some something like this when I had a security clearance, I would have been in prison for years. Such is the politics of the powerful I guess.
At least when you’re a Democrat.

This is something I’ve known for a long time: Study says ethanol not worth the energy.
This is one of those ideas that sound good, rather than a good, sound idea.

But researchers at Cornell University and the University of California-Berkeley say it takes 29 percent more fossil energy to turn corn into ethanol than the amount of fuel the process produces. For switch grass, a warm weather perennial grass found in the Great Plains and eastern North America United States, it takes 45 percent more energy and for wood, 57 percent.

This is because you must harvest this energy, which takes a lot of energy to harvest. Corn, wood, grass, are all dispersed over a wide area, instead of the other way around, with oil you need only drill a single hole and have all of it right there. Oil requires only a single “cracking” to separate it into the different chemicals that we use out of it. Biodiesel requires a set of processes to change biomass into biodiesel.
We need to look elsewhere to solve our energy needs.