Somalis Gone Wild...

I enjoy watching late night television. There is something therapeutic in the glow of late night TV. I could do without the "Girls Gone Wild" television commercials, which purportedly offer low-grade video of college girls on Spring Break exposing themselves in a drunken frenzy (all for the low, low price of $19.95 + shipping and handling). There is something unseemly about the advertisements for "Girls Gone Wild", and I shudder to think about just what type of desperate person would actually buy this crud. "Girls Gone Wild" is the worst of the worst in terms of the soap scum our society produces and throws out to the masses as something to be consumed. To be quite honest, "Girls Gone Wild" gives me the creeps. It brings nothing to the table other than to turn women into sex objects for the highest bidder.

I had a similar feeling of revulsion when I read the following blog post on powerlineblog.com: Click Here. Powerlineblog.com has been following the sad story of Muslim Somali cab drivers in Minneapolis refusing to transport any passengers from the airport who are carrying liquor. The reason for this "boycott" is because the Somalis state that transporting alcohol violates the Islamic law of sharia. Powerlineblog.com does a superb job of debunking the "sharia" claims, and correctly points out that this is just another power play by extremist Muslim groups in the United States (what the Prussian military strategist Clausewitz would label as war by other means).

I view the controversy in Minneapolis the same way I view "Girls Gone Wild": two examples of a broken society in the United States that offers nothing to the common good beyond selfish narcissism and mindless pandering.

Winning the War on Terror

I have just finished reading a blog post on the "Confirm Them" website (www.confirmthem.com) regarding the new book by John Yoo called "War By Other Means: An Insider's Account of the War on Terror". It is a fascinating post to read, and it mirrors by own thinking regarding the debate on whether or not to extend "criminal rights" to blood-thirsty terrorists who want me and my family dead by any means necessary. (Full Disclosure: I come from the "old school" on this issue...) The full blog post is located here: Click Here.

The blog post on "Confirm Them" quotes this passage from the Yoo book, which I agree with 100%:

"[Criminal justice] involves the fundamental relationship between the people and its government, and so ought to be regulated by clear, strict rules defining the power given by the principal to its agent. [War], however, involves a foreign enemy who is not part of the American political community, and so should not benefit from the regular peacetime rules that define it."

The "Confirm Them" website was set up by law students fed up with the fact that Democratic Senators in the U.S. Senate have been blocking/obstructing President Bush's judges to the federal district and appellate courts from being confirmed through use (misuse?) of the filibuster. I have always thought that blocking President Bush's judicial selections was a bad idea for the Democrats, because someday in the future there will be a Democratic President and this Democratic President will want to have his/her judicial nominations confirmed to the federal bench. And unfortunately, Senate Republicans are going to look at the disgraceful precedent established by Senate Democrats in the 2001-2008 period in terms of blocking Bush's appointees to the courts, and the Senate Republicans are going to exact their revenge through misuse of the filibuster to block the Democratic nominees. It won't be right for the Senate Republicans to do this, but turnabout is indeed fair play in politics. Democrats will rue the day they have ever unleashed this awful Pandora's Box on our political culture.

The "Confirm Them" website also played a pivotal role in torpedoing President Bush's nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court in October of 2005. Harrier Miers had no business being confirmed to the Supreme Court. She was an unqualified crony with none of the legal qualifications of a John Roberts or an Antonin Scalia or a Stephen Breyer. "Confirm Them" did a great service to the country by going long and strong against the Harriet Miers nomination, forcing her to withdraw her nomination. "Confirm Them" is one of my favorite blogs because it is an influential blog that is read by White House staffers, and if you know what you are writing about you can have real influence over politics.

I am still waiting, by the way, for Hollywood - or even Bollywood - to make a great movie about the War on Terror. That movie has not yet been made. I think an enterprising screenwriter could make a princely sum concocting just such a movie script. There is so much fertile material to be mined, and there are so many innovative ways to address this topic. But, alas, that movie has not emerged as of the writing of this blog post.