Hey there, everyone – heading to Reno for a few days. Blogging by me might be a bit spotty, so have at it with this open thread and I’ll try to have something up later today.

Which is news to the IAEA, but not to everyone with any sense at all:

A draft report from the International Atomic Energy Agency warns that Iran may currently be working on secret nuclear warhead. This is the strongest language the IAEA has yet used to describe Iran’s nuclear weapons program:

“The information available to the agency is extensive, … broadly consistent and credible in terms of the technical detail, the time frame in which the activities were conducted and the people and organizations involved,” the report said.

“Altogether this raises concerns about the possible existence in Iran of past or current undisclosed activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile.”

Give the fact that Iran has no need to have nuclear power, at all, the only possible reason for it is weapons. And if you’re going to build nukes, you need a way to deliver them to the target. Other than smuggling a bomb, a missile or a bomber is the only way.

And so…

Or, torture, as some would have it – Mike Potemra makes some trenchant remarks about it:

The question has been raised, Was it appropriate for a Catholic TV network to provide a platform for a torture advocate? In my view, the answer is yes. Marc Thiessen, who appeared on Raymond Arroyo’s TV show The World Over, defends the practices of the past decade because he believes that these practices are necessary to defend innocent lives…

…Irealize I run the risk of being accused of special pleading in this defense of Marc (and of EWTN), so I should probably point out that I disagree with him on the underlying issue. I think torture is a great evil, and that the resort to it in the past decade is a black spot on America’s record. But I am not in a stone-throwing mood against people like Marc, because I realize that the accusation that someone is not living to up to his or her religious creed is one of the lowest and least helpful arguments imaginable. For heaven’s sake, I — in religious matters — am now a rather liberal high-church Episcopalian, and I find even that pronouncedly lenient ethic hard to live up to…

…So the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak: I accuse myself. I have been dismayed by how rapidly the resort to torture has been undertaken in recent years, in response to much lesser threats than the one in my hypothetical. (Two or three incompetent pantybombers in a decade doth not a Hitler make.) But I recognize that my difference from Marc and the others on his side of this discussion is one of degree, not of kind. And there are other reasons to ask people for generosity of spirit – notably because we may have need of it ourselves…

To me, its just doesn’t rise to the level of immorality when we compel terrorists to divulge information. Terrorists, in my view, simply do not have a right to remain silent – they must tell us what they know. Physical coercion should be used sparingly, but if that is what it takes to get them to talk, then that is what a proper understanding of morality requires in such situations.

What we have in terrorists are non-State actors who yet pose a threat to not just an individual or group of individuals, but to a whole people. This is different in kind from a bank robber who is a risk to all banks or even a murderer who is a threat to a particular person at a given time. The terrorists, if allowed the time and resources, would not just rob a bank – or even 10,000 banks. They would not just commit a murder – or even 10,000 murders. They will kill every last one of us, if they can. There is no limit to the amount of damage they may do – and unlike chasing down a murderer, once we’ve caught one of them we have only barely – and temporarily – diminished the threat.

In order to effectively combat the terrorist threat we must, as far as possible, learn what they know and what their plans are. There are many means of doing this, but the most effective way is to draw the information out of those best informed: the terrorists, themselves. When we capture a terrorist, it is a golden opportunity to gain a distinct advantage over the threat – and we must take full advantage of it, even if the captive proves reluctant to come clean. And do keep in mind that the more information we gather from one terrorist will not only save the lives of our own, but of the terrorist’s own, too. Thwarted terrorist plans means, also, a smaller number of dead terrorists, in the long run.

It is a dereliction of duty – an act of immorality – for someone who can obtain information about this threat to refuse to do so on the imagined grounds that everyone, all the time and everywhere, may not be coerced in to giving information. Some people might ask, “where do you draw the line?”. Meaning, of course, that if we allow one terrorist to be waterboarded, then we are presumptively defenseless against the claim that we must rip out the fingernails of someone who refuses to spill the beans about his neighbors tax return. To such arguments I answer: are you stupid?

I’m not. I can draw the line right where human decency requires it. I want information out of these terrorists – I don’t want so much as a hair on their heads harmed, if it can be in any way avoided. I don’t need to boil a terrorist in oil – in fact, doing so is counter-productive because a boiled terrorist cannot provide me the information I require. I want the terrorist to talk – and talk truthfully, as far as can be determined. Most of the time more regular interrogation methods will work – some times, however, it takes a bit more.

For us Christians, the greatest commandment is to love God with all our might, and love our neighbors as ourselves. Would I be loving my neighbor if I allowed my neighbor – in this case, a captive terrorist – to with hold information which may lead to the deaths of thousands? In my view, I’m not loving anyone – I’m guilty of cowardice, if I do such a thing.

I can’t help that some of my brothers and sisters make bad decisions – all I can do is react to the results of those decisions, and do my best to limit the overall damage. A man who is determined to fly a plane in to one of our buildings is someone who had gone severely wrong – the least worry we have is that it might require waterboarding to get him to talk. Our larger worry is how to change things so that it is less likely for a man to make such a choice – but part of that making change requires that any captives talk and tell us everything they know.

More trouble in Democrat-land:

Longtime Democratic strategist Pat Caddell on Wednesday blasted the Obama White House for creating “a world in which there is no dissent,” following his banishment from Colorado Democrat Andrew Romanoff’s campaign for Senate.

Caddell, in a phone interview with The Daily Caller, doubled down on the comments he made in November that he said public sector employee unions in Colorado used as leverage to get him tossed from the Romanoff campaign.

“What I said about Andy Stern and the SEIU? Sure, they’re thugs,” said Caddell, a former adviser to President Jimmy Carter, who until Monday* had an informal advising role with the primary challenger to incumbent Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet.

Caddell said he does not fault Romanoff, a former state House speaker, for cutting ties with him after his remarks from November — in which he called the Service Employee Union International (SEIU) “thugs” and said the goal of the environmental movement is to “deconstruct capitalism” — were made public.

But Caddell said the comments were pushed into the public spotlight by the state chapters of the SEIU and the AFL-CIO, who called on the Romanoff campaign to get rid of him or risk losing any chance of getting labor’s endorsement.

They really are starting to eat their own. The Unions demand no dissent. The pro-abortion fanatics demand no dissent. On and on it goes – only slaves to the powerful are permitted in the Democrat party, it would seem.

I think it really comes down to the fact that they think they really won in a positive sense in 2008 – that they won because people wanted liberal Democrats, as opposed to not wanting President Bush and the GOP (and now, of course, more and more people long for the Bush Administration). Democrats had a really solid chance of gaining a lot of power for a long time – but they would have had to govern from the center. This seems an impossible task.

Why is that? Because the Democrats allowed kook leftists to hijack the party. Once Michael Moore was invited to the party any chance of reasonableness or compromise became impossible – when you honor a liar because his lies make you feel good about your absurd hatred of someone, then you are very far gone.

Can they come back to the center? There is still a window of opportunity – but its small and closing fast. As things are heading right now, even an improved economy won’t help the Democrats in November (especially given that any “improvement” will be smoke and mirrors having no discernible effect on the day to day lives of non-government Americans). Only a complete shift away from the left will do the trick…and now we hear that Obamacare might be forced through via reconciliation; not the thing you’d be hearing if Democrats were awake to their peril.

When “tax the rich” meets reality:

More than $70 billion in wealth left New Jersey between 2004 and 2008 as affluent residents moved elsewhere, according to a report released Wednesday that marks a swift reversal of fortune for a state once considered the nation’s wealthiest.

Conducted by the Center on Wealth and Philanthropy at Boston College, the report found wealthy households in New Jersey were leaving for other states — mainly Florida, Pennsylvania and New York — at a faster rate than they were being replaced.

“The wealth is not being replaced,” said John Havens, who directed the study. “It’s above and beyond the general trend that is affecting the rest of the northeast.”

This was not always the case. The study – the first on interstate wealth migration in the country — noted the state actually saw an influx of $98 billion in the five years preceding 2004. The exodus of wealth, then, local experts and economists concluded, was a reaction to a series of changes in the state’s tax structure — including increases in the income, sales, property and “millionaire” taxes.

The real rich will always find a way around taxes – they’ll either lobby the government to grant loopholes, or they’ll hide their money overseas. Meanwhile, those who are prosperous and yet find themselves to be “the rich” as liberals go ever lower on the income scale for tax increases, just move to jurisdictions with lower tax burdens. While my State of Nevada is quite in the economic dumps right now, we still benefit from a huge amount of wealth which decamped from California as that State went on a tax and spending spree (Arizona, Utah and Oregon have also benefited from California’s economic suicide).

Taxes there must be, but taxes should never be implemented to make things “fair” or to redistribute wealth – such taxes actually end up hurting the poor the worst as opportunities for advancement dry up as money hides from the tax man. Taxes should always be geared towards a combination of revenue maximization coupled with encouragement of wealth creation – they should be simple, non-burdensome and everyone who earns a penny or has any wealth at all should pay something, even if its quite small (no true citizen can be excused from the burden of government unless physically incapable of earning money).

As liberalism has worked in practical effects, it has become a “soak the poor” scam – the rich are fine, the middle class is burdened and the poor “progressively” have their chances of advancement curtailed. We can’t make the law philanthropic – a desire to help has to come from within, not from the tax code, or any other legal code. Tax for the necessities of government, and leave the rest to the generosity and good sense of the people. Trying to do otherwise just makes a mess – as we can now see with blinding clarity in New Jersey.

This story caught my eye:

Atlanta Progressive News has parted ways with long-serving senior staff writer Jonathan Springston. Apparently, Springston’s affinity for fact-based reporting clashed with Cardinale’s vision.

And, no, that’s not sarcasm.

In an e-mail statement, editor Matthew Cardinale says Springston was asked to leave APN last week “because he held on to the notion that there was an objective reality that could be reported objectively, despite the fact that that was not our editorial policy at Atlanta Progressive News.”

Initially I thought this was a hoax – some sort of parody of liberalism. But, its not. Now, Matthew Cardinale apparently thought the matter over and realized that denying objective reality would make him – and his publication – a laughingstock. So, he revised and extended his remarks in a long article:

..Now, the first way we know that there is no such thing as objective media is that we have no evidence, no examples, of objective media outlets. (if you find one, let us know right away!)

Every publication has an editorial perspective which shapes and constrains the way its reporters cover the news, which in turn affects the way its readers view reality…

Which is a reasonable view – the only thing which bugs me about the MSM is that they don’t admit their bias. Cardinale claims its a conservative bias, as a lot of “progressives” do when the MSM shies away from the more lunatic opinions of the left (you know, things like claims that Bush knew about 9/11 beforehand, and such), but such a claim is just laughable for anyone who is not of the far left. Be that as it may, the bias is there – difference between APN and CNN (or, indeed, between Blogs for Victory and CNN) is that the one admits the bias, the other doesn’t.

But here is the crux of the matter:

…I want to clarify- this is not the same as saying there are not facts. Everyone can look at the Grady situation and see that there are dialysis patients, that they are undocumented, that the clinic has closed, etc. (Yes, there are facts within a socially constructed, inter-subjective reality; not quite objective facts.)…

Which is, in the end, an assertion that there are no facts, at all. This is the strangest thing we see on the left – and it simply must stem from the observation that leftist views do not match up to reality. Rather than admit to error in view, the leftist asserts errors in reality – which doesn’t really exist, and if we can just get some progressives in there we’ll make it all better. We’ll leave aside the fact that if there is no objective reality then there is nothing wrong and no need to change – and thus no need for progressives; but making such a comment is a bit of a downer to our liberal friends, so we’ll leave it alone.

It amazes me what people will do to retain an intellectual conceit about themselves. For pity’s sake, just admit there is reality and some times you don’t like it.

If this is true, then 2010 will be the best year I’ve ever seen in politics:

Big Government has learned that Clintonistas are plotting a “push/pull” strategy. They plan to identify 7-8 national figures active in the tea party movement and engage in deep opposition research on them. If possible, they will identify one or two they can perhaps ‘turn’, either with money or threats, to create a mole in the movement. The others will be subjected to a full-on smear campaign. (Has MSNBC already been notified?)

Big Government has also learned that James Carville will head up the effort.

Go ahead, make my day! And if you really want to help out, you can try to shove Obamacare through via reconciliation.

Whom the gods would destroy…

Liberals, get a clue – you can’t smear us in to defeat again. That was a one-off thing peculiar to the circumstances surrounding the last two years of the Bush Administration. The people are wise to your scam – they aren’t buying it now, they won’t buy it if you double down. But, by all means: have at it. The more the left attacks the American grass roots, the stronger the grass roots become. Keep it up and what could be a good year for the GOP will be a spectacular year.

We all expected this explosion of spending under Obama, but could we really have predicted that he’d spend away the future while simultaneously pontificating about fiscal responsibility?

After he signed a law last week authorizing the U.S. Treasury to borrow an additional $1.9 trillion, President Barack Obama delivered a characteristically sanctimonious speech. It was about his deep commitment to frugality.
 
“After a decade of profligacy, the American people are tired of politicians who talk the talk but don’t walk the walk when it comes to fiscal responsibility,” he said. “It’s easy to get up in front of the cameras and rant against exploding deficits. What’s hard is actually getting deficits under control. But that’s what we must do. Like families across the country, we have to take responsibility for every dollar we spend.”

To put Obama’s Olympian hypocrisy in perspective, one need only examine the federal budget tables posted on the White House website by Obama’s own Office of Management and Budget.
 
They reveal these startling facts: When calculated by the average annual percentage of the Gross Domestic Product that he will spend during his presidency, Obama is on track to become the biggest-spending president since 1930, the earliest year reported on the OMB’s historical chart of spending as a percentage of GDP. When calculated by the average annual percentage of GDP he will borrow during his presidency, Obama is on track to become the greatest debter president since Franklin Roosevelt.

It’s amazing, isn’t it? How can someone so blatantly say one and do another and get away with it? One has to conclude that either Obama is a pathological liar, or insane.

This whole revolution thing is catching on everywhere:

Calling for new tribal leadership and a break from the federal government, founders of the first Crow Indian Tea Party movement rallied Monday in Hardin.

Leading the new Crow Nation Tea Party was Adrian Bird Sr., a former tribal chairman candidate who recently filed a civil complaint against the Crow executive branch alleging malfeasance for mismanaging tribal funds.

Bird, his wife, Lavanna, and fellow Tea Party founder Karmelita Plains Bull Martin are seeking to impeach the tribe’s four executives and take the Indian government in a different direction.

“We want them out of there because they are mismanaging tribal funds,” Bird said. “We need to get the people together.”

The revolution grows in popularity – except on the left. The funny thing is, the leftists like to think of themselves as revolutionaries. That they are mind-numbed serfs of their liberal masters never occurs to them.

Anyways – the entire edifice of power in America is crumbling. The people are awake and are shaking off the corrupt elites who have fastened themselves upon the body politic. Curiously enough, it was Obama’s “hope and change” mantra which ushered this in – of course, he was faking it, but the people took him at his word; and now it is his own leftist base which is about to be routed.

Welcome to Lent. Time to give up a bit, and give a bit more:

Even now, says the LORD,

return to me with your whole heart,

with fasting, and weeping, and mourning;

Rend your hearts, not your garments,

and return to the LORD, your God.

For gracious and merciful is he,

slow to anger, rich in kindness,

and relenting in punishment.

Perhaps he will again relent

and leave behind him a blessing,

Offerings and libations

for the LORD, your God. – Joel 2:12-14

Even for non-Christians out there, it is good for one small part of the year – the next 40 days – to give up something and/or to go the extra mile for others. We really weren’t built to have lavish lives – a calm modesty and enough is enough is more what we’re geared for. Lent allows us a chance to do just that.

Just a small dose of humility can go a long way…