A prison inmate, employed by the state at $26K plus a car plus a cell phone, has access to a gun storage unit. Half-Bakered has the details.

Technorati Tags: Tennessee.

OK, I just can’t quit giggling over this one.

You need to read Cavalier’s Guardian Watchblog post about a new documentary. It should convince you to go see it.

It looks like Abdul Rahman, the famous Christian Afghan, will be freed tomorrow (although clerics are calling for him to be killed so can’t walk the streets). Wizbang! reports that Rahman is seeking asylum. The Big Picture tells why Rahman is a true hero. Instapundit finds a story that says there has been a “surge of interest in Christianity among Afghans” because of the Rahman case. For more, go read the Anchoress.

Last week, Strata-Sphere told us that the Russians have been implicated in the oil-for-food scandal. Unsurprisingly, they also gave Saddam our troop locations and anticipated movements in an unsuccessful attempt to protect him (read commentary by Captain’s Quarters). For an excellent analysis and opinion on what this means for the future, read Back(stabbed) in the USSR by Cavalier’s Guardian Watchblog.

Maggie’s Farm has a great post on the language framing in immigration debate.

The Carnival of Cordite one-year anniversary was celebrated in a big way. So big that it required two posts: Carnival of Cordite #52 (part one) (highlights from the entire year) and Carnival of Cordite #52 (part two) (the normal weekly carnival posting). Hell, it’s worth going through part one just for the pictures (but, like Playboy, there’s some interesting stuff in the wordy part too).

Speaking of Playboy, CJ has pictures proving that he was at the Playboy Mansion (although it looks like my back yard, but that’s just me).

E-nough! brings us the impossible: actual video of actual French counter-protesters actually yelling, “We want to work!”

I have more to catch up on, but it’s after midnight and I swore that I would start getting to bed by 10. Doesn’t seem to be working out too well so far. And to think, I sat down three hours ago to write up my impressions of my trip this evening of going to hear a Democrat who is running for Juvenile Court Clerk (a county race). Ah well, perhaps tomorrow. Uh, I mean today.

• Iraq the Model: The third anniversary…sacrifice, fear and hope.
  

  Before the liberation we were suffering and we had no hope, now we are also suffering but we have hope and I see this hope even in the words of those that are cynical about the outcome of the political process; who say they hope things will be better in four years or eight years…
  When Saddam was here we didn’t have any hope and we could expect nothing good from a dead regime that cared only about its absolute existence.

• Hammorabi: After 3 years; is Iraq better or worse?
  

  Iraq as the rest of the world is much better without Saddam but much worse in every other aspect especially the security.

• Powerline: Why we fight, why we must stay from Bill Bennett:
  

  What we have done in Iraq and what we are doing there now are among the noblest things we have ever done. You know, we truly are the last best hope of earth. We dare not quash that hope in Iraq, and, in the process, destroy our valiant, struggling friends–and their hope for peace and justice.

• Wizbang!: Speaking truth to pinheads
  

  Based on the best information available, and the existing legal state (the repeated violations of the 1991 ceasefire, and the Congressional authorization of the use of force), the invasion of Iraq and deposal of Saddam was the least worst of the available options. And those who wish to rewrite history based on their own lies and prejudices need to be confronted and defeated with the most powerful weapon available:

  The truth.

• Daimnation: Three Years Later
  

  Something had to be done about Saddam Hussein, and the United Nations certainly wasn’t going to do anything about it besides administering a porous, much-maligned sanctions regime. (One genuinely positive side effect of the war is that we now know the degree to which the UN “oil for food” program was corrupted, and how many officials and governments were on the take all along.) I certainly won’t apologize for supporting his removal, but it’s gone from being merely hard to almost impossible to see how this is going to end well.

• Israpundit: Retreat, retreat, retreat
  

  In the present circumstances of terror on the march in the Middle East, abandoning territory will not tame the terrorists, only strengthen them and expand their holdings.

• Dr. Sanity: Let’s Finish It and Win
  

  How frustrating it must be to all the people who desperately want America to be humiliated and defeated to realize that no matter what they write; or how often they write it; no matter how many polls they take or how low they make them come out; that the President will press forward with his strategy. …

  Two things the left should remember no matter how much it goes against their ideological conditioning: Americans are not stupid; and they really like to win.

• Sigmund, Carl & Alfred: Some More Progressive Thought
  

  We’ll go one step further: Not only will the president stay the course, history will be more than kind to Mr Bush. Why? Because a free Iraqi people, living in a democratic society, negate everything Mr Bush’s opponents stand for. In fact, a free Iraq can only highlight the moral bankruptcy of Mr Bush’s critics. That truth cannot be disputed and that is why the hatred for Mr Bush is so profound. The primary concern of the ‘progressives’ is that they will be exposed for what they are- empty and devoid of any real morality. Theirs is a hatred bred of fear.

• Sigmund, Carl & Alfred: The Left, Iraq, and a Couple of Truths
  

  In the end, freedom will transform the Middle East as it did Eastern Europe. Nothing great is easy, and establishing democracy in Iraq is a challenge. We have also said, democracy is built on the blood of patriots. Like Lafayette and Kosciusko that came to the aid of the patriots that built our country, we are coming to the aid of the Iraqi patriots that are paying for their freedom every day, in blood.

• Dean’s World: Iraq 3 Years On and Magical Thinking
  

  How many more will die? Too many I’m afraid, but less than will surely die in a full-blown civil war. There is no magical solution to ending the revenge killings and terror attacks, no Harry Potter that will come in to banish Zarqawi and any other psycho with a grudge and a bit of explosive from the scene.

  Instead we continue, three steps forward a step or two back but always progressing, doing what must be done.

• Bear Creek Ledger: What We’ve Gained In 3 Years in Iraq quotes Donald Rumsfeld:
  

  The terrorists seem to recognize that they are losing in Iraq. I believe that history will show that to be the case.

• Harry’s Place: Whither Iraq?
  

  Readers should review the report in full but it’s worth noting these points:

  1. 64% think their country is heading in the right direction
  2. A majority do not approve of attacks on US soldiers
  3. 77% think the hardships resulting from the overthrow of Saddam Hussein have been worth it.

• The Wide Awake Cafe: Bloom and Grow [ht to PoliPundit]
  

  Because of the insurgency in Iraq, the abuse at Abu Ghraib and a host of other real (and imagined) struggles to lift the Iraqis into freedom the left has jeered at every attempt by the newly elected Iraqi government to get up and running.

  The bud’s been left with little water except that poured on by the true gardeners of freedom, the American military and by the careful clipping of the stalks by those of good will who would see a strong, healthy democracy grow in the Middle East.

• ScrappleFace: Bush Fails to Quell Unrest, Strife in DNC
  

  Three years after the Coalition invasion of Iraq that overthrew the regime of Saddam Hussein, President George Bush admitted today that he failed to anticipate the unrest and ideological strife which now threaten to tear apart the Democrat party.

Technorati Tags: War on Islamofascism,
War on Terror,
Liberation of Iraq,
Iraqi Freedom,
Iraqi Liberation,
Iraq.

Sondra of American Diva is having some fun with rollovers. Go see.

Carnival of the Cordite is up at Resistance is futile! Lots of interesting stuff, like using Moose Milk to during the cleaning process. Honest.

Say Anything posts this bumper sticker and is running a contest to see who can come up with the best ending to the phrase “I’d rather hunt with Dick Cheney than…“.

He is actually offering a cash prize. (Perhaps putting ads on a blog pays more than I thought.)

Hurry on over — the contest ends today.

Technorati Tags: Cheney,
Kennedy,
Shooting Accident.

No, not the big purple dinosaur. The fictional character “Barney” as played by Neil Patrick Harris (of Doogie Howser fame) on possibly the best sitcom on television today, How I Met Your Mother.

Harris plays a player, a guy that is always making moves on one girl or another and makes no bones about (pun intended). And he (or the writers) continues the character on Barney’s Blog with in-character posts such as Haiku? Hiya! which begins:

The way into a woman’s pants, we know, is through her heart… but short of invasive surgery, how does one get to a woman’s heart? Poetry. As a panty-melting agent, the original poem has much to offer, especially considering how freakishly easy it is to write one.

The guy’s a total scoundrel and absolutely my favorite character of the show.

One Cosmos has written a thought-provoking essay titled The Pathetic Last Children of Nietzsche’s Pitiable Last Men. The more you read, the more you are pulled in. A taste:

A while back, I wrote a post entitled Divorce American Style, discussing how the American political system historically bifurcated into two parties more or less mirroring the archetypal maternal and paternal spheres. As it evolved, the Republican party came to represent masculine virtues such as competition, maintaining strict rules (“law and order”), standards over compassion (i.e., not changing the rules for members of liberal victim groups), delayed gratification, and respect for the ways of the father–that is, conserving what had been handed down by previous generations of fathers, and not just assuming in our adolescent hubris that we know better than they. …

The Democratic party, on the other hand, came to represent the realm of maternal nurturance–compassion over standards (i.e., racial quotas), idealization of the impulses (just as a mother is delighted in the instinctual play of her child), mercy over judgment (reduced prison sentences, criminal rights, etc.), cradle-to-grave welfare, a belief that we can seduce our enemies and do not have to defeat them with manly violence, and the notion that meaning, truth and values are all arbitrary and subject to change (which is true of the fluid world of emotions in general).

Absolutely superb writing. The author elequently expresses that which I grapple to formulate into words (as I am one who has lived through some of the history that is addressed in the post).

(“Jimmy Carter’s gynocracy” — heh!)

Read the comments as well.

Hat tip to Dr. Sanity, whose post has some other excellent links.

I’ve been wrapped up in trying to get my house purchase in order and so have been rather distracted lately. The good news is that I close on my new home in less than two hours. The bad news is that the hours from now to Monday will probably be passing in a blur of cleaning, packing and moving.

My major fears, of course, revolve around getting my high speed internet connection hooked up and my email accounts transfered. And my TiVo so it doesn’t miss Desperate Housewives on Sunday night

So I can’t really comment on anything, but:

• Alito is headed for a floor vote.
• On her last day, Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor broke a 4-4 tie Monday and left a host of thorny issues for her successor.
• “Conservatives” win in Canada.
• The US economic projections are slightly stronger than expected at 3.5% growth projected.
• Meanwhile, the New York Times earnings plummet.

And in entertainment news:

• NBC cancels the show created to make Chritians look bad: “The Book of Daniel”
• The show created to set the stage for a Hillary run for the presidency is also in trouble
• 2006 to be a make or break year for Hollywood
• Maybe they’ll pull out of their slump as Magnum PI heading for silver screen
• Finally, UPN and WB are to combine to form a new network