China’s Catcher’s “Mitt” is the “Bain” of American Security

Duncan Hunter for President press release:

Columbia, SC – At a press conference held at the South Carolina State Capitol today, Presidential candidate and U.S. Congressman Duncan Hunter (R-CA) again called on Bain Capital, a company founded by former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, to drop its strategic partnership with Chinese defense contractor Huawei Technologies in a bid to buy U.S. defense contractor 3Com.  Hunter also called on Romney to use his continued influence with Bain to terminate the proposed merger between Huawei and 3Com, which, according to a report in today’s Washington Times, would threaten U.S. national security.

“As the founder of Bain Capital, Governor Romney has an obligation to utilize his influence within the company to terminate the proposed merger between 3Com and Chinese defense contractor Huawei,” said Hunter.  “In light of China ’s refusal to port several American naval vessels last week, it is increasingly more important that American military technology be protected from foreign companies, such as Huawei, that are closely aligned with the Chinese government.”

The Washington Times reported today that U.S. intelligence agencies informed the CFIUS review committee, responsible for examining proposed foreign investment transactions, that a merger between 3Com and Huawei would threaten America ’s national security.  3Com presently performs vital cyber-security work for the Department of Defense.

“This proposed deal, which Governor Romney can work to terminate should he choose to do so, is unpatriotic and damaging to national security,” continued Hunter.  As further detailed in a resolution introduced in the House of Representatives, Huawei has close ties to the military of Communist China and allegedly aided Saddam Hussein and the Taliban.

Earlier this month, Hunter sent a letter to Governor Romney requesting that he use his influence as the founder of Bain to terminate the company’s partnership with Huawei, including the proposed merger with 3Com.  Hunter, who is ranking Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, has not received a response to the letter.

***

Fit Right In

Someone with a history of mental illness walks into HRC’s NH headquarters in Rochester. And that’s surprising? That’s like an old man visiting a retirement home.

Why didn’t HRC and her people call off the SWAT team? After all, to apply her terrorism policy logic to this, we shouldn’t have angered him by brandishing official guns in his presence — we should understand the root causes of his actions, blame society, blame guns, blame Bush, and give him a bagful of your money.

The nut who did this was reported to have made disparaging remarks about all the Democrats and Republicans running for President. If that’s their only criterion, then most Americans are nuts. But he also was paranoid about how the government was out to get him. That wasn’t true yesterday, but it’s certainly true now.

John Edwards’s NH headquarters was two doors down from HRC’s, and Obama’s is also in Rochester. There might be two Americas, but it seems as the Democrats only like one town. How much you wanna bet that there’s a beauty supply shop between Edwards and Hillary?

Obama supporters are already trying to say that HRC staged this whole thing to make herself look tough on terror and an “adversity-overcomer” (sic).  And they say Ron Paul’s people are nuts.

Beating Back AIDS Is Not Magic

HealthDay:

FRIDAY, Nov. 30 (HealthDay News) — In the 26 years since scientists first spotted AIDS in America, millions of dollars have been poured into outreach efforts aimed at keeping young people clear of HIV, the virus that causes the disease.

But on the eve of World AIDS Day, a disturbing statistical fact has emerged in this country: The number of newly infected teens and young adults is suddenly on the rise.

And the question is, why?

According to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for 2001 to 2005 (the latest years available), the number of new cases of HIV infection diagnosed among 15-to-19-year-olds in the United States rose from 1,010 in 2001, held steady for the next three years, then jumped 20 percent in 2005, to 1,213 cases.

For young people aged 20 to 24, cases of new infection have climbed steadily, from 3,184 in 2001 to 3,876 in 2005.

One could easily talk about race here, but as one will see further down in this article, the rate of new HIV diagnoses among blacks is going down.

I think the answer has to do with the picture above.  Former NBA star Ervin “Magic” Johnson announced in 1991 that he was HIV-positive, and the prognosis then was that, with the right drug regimen and lifestyle changes, he would live on for another decade.  He has obviously lived a lot longer than that, and will probably live out the rest of his natural life, with the HIV under control.  He made many media appearances yesterday for World AIDS Day, and one of the anchorettes stated that the downside to Magic Johnson’s good health is that it might fool young and reckless people into thinking HIV/AIDS is no big deal anymore, and they can do whatever they want now.

Fun With Headlines

KSDK:  Hannah Storm Leaving CBS’ ‘Early Show’

If a tree falls in the forest…

NYT:  States Say Google and Firefox Are No Match for Microsoft

I agree with the inverse.

AFP:  Iran cracks down on ‘obscene’ rap music

And maybe also sagging burquas.

Gallup:  Republicans Report Much Better Mental Health Than Others

The neocon theoreticians are dragging down our average.

Wash Times:  Immigration group: Huckabee a ‘disaster’

Mark it down and commit it to memory:  Huckabee is more liberal on race than Bill Clinton.

CNS News:  Virginia GOP Demands ‘Pledge of Intent’ [to support the party nominee in the general election] from Primary Voters

All your soul are belong to us.

Malkin:  Thug singer Akon charged in boy-hurling case

I wouldn’t trust Akon any further than I could throw him.

Malkin:  NYT: All the racial-profiling data that’s fit to screw up

Of course whites are more likely to be stopped.  Blacks have an NAACP shield.

UK Telegraph:   White people have ‘less faith in police’

Unless you’re a white person that owns a bakery.

Time:   Immigration: The Hottest Issue

What happened to your “Iraq” template?

Reuters:   Male [homo sapiens] ancestor was slow to grow up

So much for evolution.

Politics Are Old People’s Games

Nielsen numbers for last night’s CNN/YT debate (this 30-year old’s thoughts here):

All viewers:  4,486,000
Ages 18-34:  516,000
Ages 18-49:  1,300,000
Ages 25-54:  1,540,000
Ages 55+:  2,668,000

This means that there were more than five times as many oldsters (55+) watching as those under 35.  If this got more than 100,000 viewers under 25, I would be surprised.

YouTube Debate Postmortem

(1) Immigration. Thankfully, it was the first issue, and most prominent issue, and the one that drew some Springeresque fireworks, though no shirts came off (thankfully). And Romney and Giuliani took each other down and exposed themselves as phonies in the process. Hunter and Tancredo were solid.

As far as the business owner from Maryland that was worried about the “lack of guest workers,” there are perhaps as many as 38 million illegal aliens in the country, and that owner can’t find enough “guest workers?” If that’s really the case, it’s because so many of them are living on your dime.

(2) Guns. Again, Giuliani was shown up for the two-faced phony that he is. While RG is technically correct that NYC’s gun laws aren’t as restrictive as the ones in DC that might soon be struck down, the difference is microscopic. In practical application, there are no differences.

(3) Blacks and Republicans. The third from the last question was submitted from a black man from Los Angeles, about the Republicans’ failure to get the black vote. Huckabee’s response was that he got 48% of the black vote. He only got that by being more liberal on race as an Arkansas governor than Bill Clinton — and even at that, he couldn’t get a majority of the black vote, demonstrating the wisdom in not even trying. Huckabee also let out this crack about not wanting to be part of a party that isn’t diverse — If you really feel that way, Mikey, become a Democrat.

The others fumbled with the question, but the real answer is quite easy — it is in the racial interest of blacks to vote for the party that spends the most, and even the most liberal big-spending Republican will always be outbid and outspent by most Democrats. Ipso facto, that’s where the black vote goes.

(4) Confederate Flag. Toward the end, a white man from Houston, with Texas and Confederate Battle Flags on the wall behind him, asked for the candidates’ opinions on the latter. Romney and Thompson were the only ones that got to answer (I wish we could have heard more answers), and both came out against it, couched in liberal language, and both emphatic that it should not be flown on public places. Any chance there might have been for me to vote for either of them against HRC or any other Democrat has just gone out the window. For my part, I won’t vote for any Republican for President in November 2008 not named Hunter, Paul or Tancredo.

(5) North American Union. Ron Paul got a question from a skeptic, wondering if RP thought that the talk of the NAU was just a conspiracy theory. RP’s answer was pretty good, equated it with the EU, noted the perfidy of the plutocratic extremist hate groups Council on Foreign Relations and Trilateral Commission, and also made the crucial point that the NAU would make the immigration problem a lot worse. He’s more right than even he knows, because an NAU that is anything like the EU will mean that any citizen of an NAU country gets to reside legally in any other NAU country. In practicality, it means that everyone in Mexico and Central America moves to the NAU provinces formerly known as the USA and Canada. The NAU would be immigration amnesty ne plus ultra. Also, RP was situated next to Duncan Hunter, and RP would have done well to note that the man on his left has led efforts in the U.S. House to put a stop to the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), a NAU progenitor — Committee Chairmen in the U.S. House don’t waste their times with “conspiracy theories.”

***

Overall, this debate was a lot better than the Democrats’ YouTube debate, and Republican debates in general are more interesting than the Democrats’. The Republicans have a variety of opinions and records (sometimes to my chagrin), and irritation is the root cause of pearls. The Democrats are nothing but a non-stop echo chamber. Besides, when was the last time you heard a word like “allegory” bandied about in a Democratic debate? Maybe “Al Gore,” but not “allegory.”

However, McCain and Thompson, moreso the former, looked lost and amnesiac.

In the reality of the upcoming electoral politics of the matter, nobody really helped themselves that much, compared to the support they would have received without this debate, but I do think that Giuliani is coming out of this thing with serious wounds.

And one more thing. If you watched this debate, you probably watched it on regular CNN. But because I had a few other things to do, I had a browser tab open and watched it on CNN’s website streaming video. That presentation had some twit in a goldenrod necktie anchoring pre-debate coverage, and debate instant replays during commercial breaks on regular CNN. That goofball needed to get the hook.

***

UPDATE 11/29:  Now we’re finding out that some of the YouTube questions were submitted by those committed to one of the several Democrats running for President, and the retired General who asked about “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” is a big muck that deals with GLBT concerns within the HRC campaign.  While CNN wouldn’t “ambush” Democrats with Republican questions, I’m not really bothered by it, and I wish right-wingers would quit whining about it.  After all, if you can’t face down a John Edwards operative in 2007, how can you stare down Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2009?

Good Savage, Bad Savage

First, the bad.  The Savage that has a vendetta out on Ron Paul continues.  As of the time of this writing, there is a link from the Savage website about the old and now-discredited story that a Nevada brothel owner gave a donation to the RP campaign.  However, last week, on the Lew Rockwell Blog (?), we found out that some prominent MSM commentator (can’t remember who), arranged for the donation, in order to manufacture a “controversy.”

If someone reading this can send me corroboration of the latter, be my guest.

Now, the good.  The Savage that the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) wants to take down won’t be going down anytime soon.  While he himself, and this article, both admit that a few advertisers have buckled to CAIR pressure, most haven’t.

However, I want to make light of one that did, one not mentioned in this article.  Last week, Savage had a woman on as a guest that was associated with some watchdog group that monitored Islamic extremism, and they mostly talked about CAIR’s pressure on his advertisers.  In the process, Savage mentioned a few of the advertisers that dropped him, but when he said their names, the board engineer blanked them out, probably because it was someone’s policy not to mention them publicly.   However, the board engineer’s hand wasn’t quick enough to censor his mention of the name of one advertiser that dropped him.  And that was GoToMyPC.com.

GoToMyPC is advertised all over talk radio, and in case you haven’t heard, it is a paid monthly service ($20 a month for one computer, $30 a month for two) that allows you to access all the files on your PC from any other PC.

And it’s a ripoff.  Why?  Look at this and this.  They both do the same thing, and you can download either for free.  Both these things and GoToMyPC operate on the principle of a Virtual Network Client (VNC).  VNC source code and protocols were developed by AT&T, but are now in the open source realm.  In fact, if I’m not mistaken, Apple’s Mac OS X has VNC capabilities natively (though I might be wrong about that, correct me if I am).  Many Linux distributions contain TightVNC as an installable program upon installation of the OS itself.

Because Savage is no longer accepting e-mails, I wrote him a snail mail letter explaining these things, and why losing GoToMyPC as a sponsor should be considered no great loss.

Burglarly Schmurlary

They’re calling it a burglary gone bad, but his house was “burglarized” twice before in the last several months, and during this third “burglary,” nothing was taken from the house.

This was a gang hit.  Or maybe he was in arrears to some pusher.

Then again, he played college ball at the University of Miami, a football program that is almost its own street gang.

We Got a Who, a Why, and a Bad Analysis

Bloomberg:

Lott’s Departure Fuels Democratic Chances to Gain Senate Seat

The unexpected retirement of Mississippi Republican Trent Lott gives Democrats another opportunity to expand their one-vote Senate majority in next year’s elections.

(snip)

Democrats have made gains in traditionally Republican Mississippi, winning control of the state Senate earlier this month…..Marty Wiseman, a political scientist at Mississippi State University in Starkville, said the strongest sign of Democratic hopes lies in the recent gains in the state Senate. Democrats picked up three seats and now control the Senate, with 28 seats to Republicans’ 24 seats. And Democrats maintained their control of the state House, with 75 seats to Republicans’ 47 seats.

If that’s their hope, then they’re delusional.  “Democrats” may run the Mississippi legislature, but other than the black politicians, white Mississippi Democrats are the last remaining vestige of the Dixiecrats.  I can ill imagine a white elected official of the Democratic Party in the Mississippi House or Senate voting for HRC or any Democrat for the U.S. Senate in 2008.

Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, a Republican who won re-election this month with 58 percent of the vote, said he will appoint someone to fill the vacancy until a vote is held in November 2008 to serve the remaining four years of Lott’s term. Barbour said he wouldn’t appoint himself or run in the 2008 race.

Possible Republican candidates include Representative Chip Pickering, 45, who won’t seek re-election in the House, said Nathan Gonzales, political editor of the nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report.

If it’s Pickering, then all bets are off for the Democrats.  Pickering is plenty right-wing, and would have that Senate seat for decades if he wanted it.

By resigning before the end of the year, Lott won’t come under a new law that doubles to two years the waiting period before U.S. senators can lobby their former colleagues. The provision, signed by Bush earlier this year, will cover senators who were in office after Dec. 31.

And that’s the answer. He only has to wait one year to sign on with a lobbyist firm or a PAC if he resigns before the end of the year.  If he would serve out his term, he would have to wait until January 2015 and at the age of 73, two years after he would leave the Senate, to do so.

The Big O Won’t Help The Big O

So thinks Time.  But why would they think this?  After all, in 2000, both George W. Bush and then-Vice President Al Gore went to Chicago to kiss her ring and appear on her show.  It’s almost as if visiting The Oprah is a Constitutional minimum requirement to be President.

Cell Service

UK Sun:

PRISON guards have to call lags by their first name and ask permission to search their cells under new rules.

A Government report into boosting prisoners’ “quality of life” at HMP Winson Green, Birmingham, made the recommendations after finding inmates did not live in a “good environment”.

But one guard said: “We constantly battle drugs and mobiles [cell phones -- ed.] being brought in. Asking permission to enter a cell stops us doing our job.”

Tory MP Andrew Mitchell added: “Officers will be serving breakfast to inmates on a silver tray before long.”

Why not go a step further and have the Queen knight every British prisoner?  That way, the guards will have to call them “Sir” before their first names.

Yoga Won’t Do the Trick

P-D:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Too little milk, sunshine and exercise: It’s an anti-bone trifecta. And for some kids, shockingly, it’s leading to rickets, the soft-bone scourge of the 19th century.

But cases of full-blown rickets are just the red flag: Bone specialists say possibly millions of seemingly healthy children aren’t building as much strong bone as they should – a gap that may leave them more vulnerable to bone-cracking osteoporosis later in life than their grandparents are.

And yet, public schools all over the country are banning tag and dodgeball like they were diseases much worse than rickets.

The Worst Defense is a Crappy Cell Phone

WCBS-2 New York:

MONTCLAIR, N.J. (CBS)

College students at Montclair State University are all talking about a new requirement that will require students to have a cell phone.

CBS 2 HD has learned more on this required feature that is forcing students to dig into their wallets.

At Montclair State, there is no excuse for being out of touch.

“‘School Phone’ I use for campus e-mail, different things like that,” freshman Angela Vuocolo said.

That’s right.

First-year student Vuocolo said ‘School Phone’ — as in a Sprint-operated cell phone — is now mandatory for all students. It’s the first program of its kind in the country.

The cost: $420 a year for a base plan which is bundled into the tuition bill.

It includes just 50 peak voice minutes a month, but unlimited text messaging to any carrier, unlimited campus-based data usage, and student activated emergency GPS tracking.

“What it does is allow students to have an extra pair or group of people watching over them when they’re going from one location to another,” Montclair Police Department Chief Paul Cell said.

Another supposed reason for these phones is to give students a means of communication should another Cho pulls a massacre.  Though I think their gun could take the cell phones in a fight quite easily.

Now if you propose that the Montclair State University campus cops have guns, then that’s controversial — much less allowing students with New Jersey CCW permits to carry on campus.

How Grammy Limey Got Her Groove Back

The Reuters headline is enough:

Older white women join Kenya’s sex tourists

The body of the article follows suit, but it also states that the Kenyan government frowns on the practice, and coincidentally (or maybe not so), the part of Kenya where this is happening is also a haven for men that are “pedophile tourists.”

Wanna Buy a Bridge?

Literally.  The Kickapoo River Bridge near Soldiers Grove, Wisconsin, built in 1910, and closed to traffic since 1976, can be had for $1.

But since it could collapse into the river at any time, if you buy this bridge, you really are buying a bridge.

By the Time I Get to Ghana

Remember when Lizz Brown made several trips to Ghana a few years back?  She forgot to tell you that it has now become the most important transfer point in the effort to smuggle cocaine from northern South America into Europe.

Who Didn’t See This Coming?

Sky News:

Shock rock singer Marilyn Manson has been accused of squandering his band’s profit on a child’s skeleton and masks made of human skin.

Keyboardist Stephen “Pogo” Bier filed a breach of contract lawsuit in August in which he accused Manson of taking cash belonging to the rest of the band to pay for the “sick and disturbing” purchases.

In related news, the sun rose in the east this morning.

It’s hard to tell which Manson is crazier:  Marilyn, or Charles.

Winning Is Fundamental

He who tried to recruit an illiterate jock to attend the same school where one of the South’s and America’s most noted authors once taught is on the unemployment line today.  Good riddance.

Though it should be said that it was more likely that he was fired because he couldn’t win a game in-conference this year, or many out-of-conference (Missouri beat them in their house earlier this season), and didn’t do that much better in previous years.

School Is About to Start

P-D:

An exclusive prison unit in Bowling Green, Mo., which had sat empty for months, reopened its doors last week when Missouri’s two youngest inmates arrived in the same day.

Sherman Burnett, 15, of north St. Louis County, who was sentenced to 60 years in prison for sexually assaulting a girl in Spanish Lake in 2005, will remain at the Northeastern Correctional Center’s unit until April 2009, when he turns 17.

Then he goes to adult prison, said Brian Hauswirth, a spokesman for the Missouri Department of Corrections.

The Northeastern Correctional Center has special accommodations for males like Burnett, convicted as adults but too young to serve their time among adults.

(snip)

Burnett was 13 when he attacked a 6-year-old girl who lived in his neighborhood and beat her nearly to death after sexually assaulting her.

At that time, he was booked as the youngest inmate in recollection at the adult jail in Clayton, which held him apart from other inmates.

Burnett will be eligible for parole after serving 51 years. Presuming credit for time already served, that would be in 2056, when he is 64.

(snip)

The teens will be required to attend school five days a week studying basic education and career development.

Provided he lives that long, I’m sure Burnett will be grateful that they made him “attend school five days week to study basic education and career development” before he turned 17, when they let him out of prison at the spry young age of 64, and I’m sure that education will serve him well in the majority non-white third-world “economy” of Brazil Guatemala Mexico Colombia America in 2056.

Some Friends

There has been a lot of internet gossip lately that the official story that most foreign insurgents entering Iraq are from Iran is false, and that the real source of those insurgents is Saudi Arabia.

Well, well…

CNN:

‘Al Qaeda rolodex’ found in Iraq

As many as 60 percent of the foreign fighters who entered Iraq in the past year have come from Saudi Arabia and Libya, according to documents discovered in a raid in September near the Syrian border, a senior U.S. military official in Baghdad confirmed to CNN Thursday.

Libya?  I thought they were our friends, since Gaddafi forfeited his WMDs.  Perhaps his doing so was a distraction from his real intentions.

The True Meaning of Thanksgiving

For all you newbies, from last year, and many years before that.

Candidates, Guns and Washington

Though this New York Post article about SCOTUS deciding to hear the D.C. Gun Ban case, and deciding on its constitutionality probably in May or June of next year, a Presidential campaign year no less, does not mention the Presidential campaign in its text, it does have a prominent photo of the anti-gun former mayor of New York City, Rudy Giuliani.

Since this decision is probably coming down next May or June, the two parties’ nominees will have been settled by then. If Giuliani does win the Republican nomination, increased interest in the issue by NRA members and other pro-2nd Amendment activists might mean that enough of them refuse to vote for him (or the Democrat) such that the Democrat slides into the White House by default. But if RG tries to pander, this only opens him up to Democratic accusations of flip-flopping, ruining his reputation among people not so interested in 2nd Amendment issues, which would mean the Democrat wins.

One interesting aspect raised by this article states that whatever the High Court’s decision, it might not impact the 2nd Amendment issue and legality anywhere else. The reason is that the issue is D.C.’s Gun Ban, and the District of Columbia is a creation of the Federal government and the U.S. Constitution itself, and any action of the home rule D.C. city government (including the gun ban) is an ex officio action of the U.S. Congress. New York and Chicago have gun bans, but those are ex officio actions of the states of New York and Illinois, respectively. And when you have state actions (or implied actions), the 10th Amendment comes into play.

We could have a situation where SCOTUS strikes down the D.C. Gun Ban, using the reasoning that the D.C. city government (an ex officio appendage of the U.S. Congress) violated the 2nd Amendment in enacting the legislation. If they do that, then this does not automatically mean that the New York and Chicago bans are unconstitutional, or does it mean that the same SCOTUS would strike them down. However, the “incorporation doctrine” that is an interpreted element of the 14th Amendment would mean that SCOTUS might, and New York and Chicago might repeal their bans to head off a legal fight.

New to the Blogroll

North Carolina CofCC Blog. Now all I need to do is to know “Triad” from “Triangle.”

This Too Will Have to Change

Kansas City Star:

Defense secretary goes to Knob Noster

WHITEMAN AIR FORCE BASE, Mo. | Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Tuesday that Iran’s nuclear ambitions must be resisted with every option ranging from hard-edged economic sanctions to the threat of military force.

Speaking to about 170 mostly civilian Air Force boosters at the home of the B-2 stealth bomber — among the weapons most likely to be used should President Bush or his successor order an attack on Tehran — Gates said the United States cannot tolerate Iran developing nuclear weapons.

How long will it be before the diversity industry demands that the name “White Man” is too offensive, and must be changed to the Angela Davis AFB?

K.O.O.K.S, Part 3

P-D does a follow up on the tragic death of Karrar Abudarb.  I didn’t include it in Rush Limbaugh’s fictional KOOKS (Keep Our Own Kids Safe) file, because Abudarb was 19 years old, and anything but a kid, Lizz Brown’s rhetoric notwithstanding.

But the article has this gem:

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said it knows of 23 deaths and 38 serious injuries since 1979 from soccer goals tipping over and crushing children who climb on them or hang from the crossbar. Working with the soccer goal industry, it developed standards for anchoring the goals.

If there were 23 children that had died due to football injuries since 1979, we would never hear the end of it from child welfare spokesmouths.

AP Profiles SCCOC

Students for Conceal Carry On Campus is gaining major momentum after the Cho Massacre at Virgnia Tech this past spring. There are these interesting paragraphs toward the end:

But advocates pushing for the campus concealed carry right say it’s not just incidents like the one at Virginia Tech that create concern.

Campuses in higher-crime urban neighborhoods also pose risks for students, said Michael Flitcraft, a 23-year-old mechanical engineering student at the University of Cincinnati.

He argues, like most gun rights advocates, that weapons-free regulations only deter law-abiding students, not thugs or mentally ill shooters.

This writer had a college roommate that was from the Cincinnati area, and in the mid-1990s, and probably still, the University of Cincinnati is in such a bad neighborhood that pizza delivery places won’t even deliver there. The campus might be okay, but getting there evidently requires going through some serious ghetto. Since the links between pizza and college is so strong that when archaeologists of the future start digging in the areas where American universities used to be, that they’ll hit the decomposing pizza boxes before they unearth actual structures, that tells you how dangerous the surrounding areas are for the restaurants to write off the money machine.

St. Louis University has gotten a lot of bad publicity lately for on- and near-campus violent crimes.

Related: Minnesota law school student suspended for advocating conceal-carry, opposing diversity

Look Who’s Prudish Now

WaPo:

Censorship! That’s what some art lovers whispered during the Hillary Clinton fundraiser Nov. 5 at the Woodley Park home of Tony and Heather Podesta. The huge photograph of the nude man was missing from its usual spot on the living room wall, and some guests concluded that politically correct Clintonites had demanded that the naked guy disappear.

The Podestas are part of Washington’s Democratic elite: He’s a top lobbyist and brother of Clinton White House chief of staff John Podesta; she just launched her own lobbying firm. They’re also nationally known collectors of contemporary art, and one of their favorite pieces is “Soliloquy VII,” an eight-foot-tall color photo of a nude man lying on his back, by British artist Sam Taylor-Wood.

In 2002, while John Ashcroft was U.S. Attorney General, he had several nude statues in a press room at the Justice Department building blocked off by curtains. Whether or not it was to make the room more TV-friendly, or because Ashcroft objected to nude statues as a backdrop of press conferences, is unknown, but the left-wing, assuming the latter, had a field day with Aschroft’s prudishness.

Now we’ll see how loudly they scream over this. And just in case you’re wondering what the “politically correct Clintonites” wanted concealed, here it is — though beware it is exactly as advertised.

What? No Snowman?

This was the inside advertisement on today’s Netflix arrivals.  While this debate was scheduled for September 17 in St. Petersburg, Florida, and shunned by most of the candidates, I think the reason everyone changed their minds, and agreed to a debate next week and still in Florida, was that the Republicans want to make issue of the fact that the DNC and most of their candidates are shunning Florida because they moved their primary to an earlier time in an effort to upstage Iowa and New Hampshire, and the RNC hopes that Republicans paying attention to Florida, and attending debates in Florida, will make it more likely that the Republican nominee beats the Democratic nominee next November in Florida.

The large visage is debate moderator Anderson Cooper, and the candidates’ visages in the curiously fifteen squares, seven blank, to the right are, from top to bottom and left to right:  Giuliani, Huckabee, Hunter, McCain, Paul, Romney, Tancredo and Thompson.  Nice work on the alphabetizing.

Meier’s Law

AP:

ST. CHARLES, Mo. – An Internet hoax that ended with the suicide of a 13-year-old has led to calls from her family for better protections against online harassment, though any solution may run afoul of the First Amendment.

Megan Meier, 13, hanged herself Oct. 16, 2006, just minutes after receiving mean messages on the social networking Web site MySpace. She died the next day.

Megan’s parents learned about six weeks after her death that their daughter, who thought she was communicating online with a 16-year-old boy, was being deceived. The boy was created by a mother down the street who wanted to know what Megan was saying about her own daughter, who had had a falling out with Megan.

(snip)

Megan’s family wants reforms that would make it illegal for adults to misrepresent themselves to children online and make it illegal to harass or bully online.

(snip)

Aldermen in Dardenne Prairie, the Meiers’ hometown of about 7,000 residents about 35 miles from St. Louis, have proposed a new ordinance related to child endangerment and Internet harassment. And Republican Rep. Cynthia Davis, a state lawmaker who represents the area, said she is trying to see if existing Missouri laws can be improved.

But, she noted, any legal reforms must protect freedom of speech rights. And federal reform might be more appropriate since someone from outside the state could interact with Missouri children online, she said.

(snip)

Tina Meier, who acknowledges she let her daughter open a MySpace account before she was 14 as the Web site requires, said she monitored her daughter’s activities, logging on for her daughter and using software that was designed to capture Megan’s communications online.

Before Mrs. Meier throws stones at laws that do not exist and ones she wishes that did exist, perhaps she ought to look at herself and ask why she enabled her daughter to circumvent MySpace’s own policies, and knowing what Megan Meier did to herself, MySpace probably has a very good reason to set a 14-year old minimum age.

As far as the laws she wants, it’s going to be hard to define “harassment” or “bullying” in the way that the Meier family wants.  As far as it being “illegal for adults to misrepresent themselves to children online,” there are some instances where that would be a good thing.  In the episode “Spies Like Reba” of the WB/CW sitcom “Reba” starring Reba McEntire, Barbra Jean pretends to be Kyra, her 14-year old stepdaughter, online to chat with Kyra’s friends, and finds out about a secret boy-girl party at a parents-away-for-the-weekend house that Kyra’s going to, which the adult parental units in her life subsequently bust up.

This is fictional, but I’m sure many real busts of parties, drug distribution rings, etc., have been busted because adults have posed as teenagers online.  Also, a vigilante group has members that pose as teenagers online to entrap adult pedophiles, but their efforts wouldn’t be affected by “Meier’s Law” because those pretend teenagers chat with adults, not other teenagers.

Born to be Wild, and Cute as All Creation

P-D:

ST. LOUIS — St. Louis Zoo officials are trying to determine how a cheetah cub got out of its exhibit for a short time.

The cub escaped around 10:45 a.m. Monday on a day when the popular zoo in Forest Park was crowded, in part because of the unseasonably warm weather. The cub was found a short time later, about 30 feet from the exhibit. It was unharmed.

A zoo worker tranquilized the cub.

While the cub was out, zoo visitors were told to go into buildings, but the zoo was not evacuated.

Of all the cat species, domestic and wild, I’m partial to cheetah cubs as the cutest.  If this cub that escaped was about the age of the cub in the above picture, then I’m sure people would have been going toward it, and not away from it.