This and that

Some extra reading for this bonus February day...

Visiting this National Park is certainly no pic-a-nic, Yogi

Organ Pipe was named "the most dangerous national park" that year and also in 2003 by the U.S. Park Rangers Lodge of the Fraternal Order of Police, before the group discontinued the series. The drastic increase of drug activity on Arizona's southern border since the 1990s has turned Organ Pipe rangers into de factor Border Patrol agents, and spurred state lawmakers to pass several laws cracking down on illegal immigrants within the state.
Since 2009, the park has offered van tours to the springs, as long as rangers armed with rifles go along to protect the visitors.

From the "You Weren't Supposed to Notice" files

Last Wednesday in the White House briefing room, the administration’s press secretary, Jay Carney, opened on a somber note, citing the deaths of Marie Colvin and Anthony Shadid, two reporters who had died “in order to bring truth” while reporting in Syria. 
Jake Tapper, the White House correspondent for ABC News, pointed out that the administration had lauded brave reporting in distant lands more than once and then asked, “How does that square with the fact that this administration has been so aggressively trying to stop aggressive journalism in the United States by using the Espionage Act to take whistle-blowers to court?”

He then suggested that the administration seemed to believe that “the truth should come out abroad; it shouldn’t come out here.” 

Staff 'staching of bills

“The Stache Act (Stimulus to Allow for Critical Hair Expenses) aims to earn a well-deserved $250 annual tax deduction for every Mustached American for expenditures on mustache grooming supplies,”reads.
...it was odd that Bartlett would even participate in what clearly seems to be an elaborate parody of Washington, D.C., think tanks and advocacy groups—and Congress.
So I called Bartlett’s office to see if something so silly could possibly be real. Sure enough, it is—but there’s a wrinkle: Congressman Bartlett was never aware that the bill had been referred to the committee in his name.
Wright conceded, when asked whether it’s a waste of the congressman’s time to be toying with legislative stunts like this one, that Bartlett actually knew nothing about the bill he supposedly had referred to the House Ways and Means Committee.
“I did not raise it with him,” (Lisa Wright, Bartlett’s press secretary) admitted. “Actually it’s a staff referral . . . I did it, I referred it.” When asked whether Congressman Bartlett knew about the referral, Wright sheepishly said, “I don’t think I told him yet.”

Remind me again why we hire Congressmen... the machinery of government is a bit expensive to be using as a prank.

Security theater takes an intermission

If this were an isolated failure, perhaps I wouldn't be so quick to wonder why the HELL we put up with any of the abuses of our liberties and dignities by this monstrous spawn of the Federal Government (aka TSA):

Terminal B at Sacramento International Airport was shut down temporarily after five people got past an unattended security checkpoint.
The security breach happened Saturday when a walk-through metal detector was left unattended for less than a minute, officials said.
After noticing it was unattended, Transportation Security Administration officials closed the checkpoint and went to search for the five individuals that got by. Police were called to help.
"All five individuals were located and were brought back to the checkpoint and rescreened as a precaution," according to a statement from the TSA.

Since the economy's doing so well it's hard to find people needing a job, TSA couldn't afford to let go the two who abandoned their post.  But fear not, they're undergoing "additional training."

When apologies say much more than "sorry"

From their actions, we can deduce the Administration believes it's OK to force Christians to violate their conscience through legal fiat.  But it's worthy of (repeated) apology when we inadvertently offend people who take offense so easily they riot and kill even their own in the process.  ...Noted...

Unequally yoked

Reality is becoming too hard to silence in the Graveyard of Empires:

Central to the U.S.-led international coalition's strategy for countering the Taliban insurgency is the idea of building up Afghan security capacity by working closely with the Afghan army and police. That requires a measure of trust, which is undermined when Afghans turn their guns on their foreign partners.  ((ya think?))
Just this past week the U.S. Army announced it was creating specially tailored brigades — some now getting training in the U.S. — to perform training and advising missions in Afghanistan starting this summer. It will assign 18-person teams to Afghan combat units in hopes of improving their ability to handle the Taliban insurgency on their own by 2014.

That sounds like a great idea: scatter our troops around in ever-smaller cohorts so they can be drowned in a sea of potential adversaries who seem to have resisted catching any Western sentiments even after a decade of effort by the U.S. and its cantankerous partners, both European AND South Asian.  We should not be surprised that Constitutional-style government, a la 1789, has failed to take root in that far-off land.  It was a product of a specific blend of culture, heritage and--like it or not--religious outlook.  To the extent those are rapidly shifting in Western Europe and the U.S., that same style of governance is becoming increasingly sterile there as well.

It's long past time to stop throwing good money--and lives--after bad in that sinkhole.  The announcement of withdrawing personnel from Afghan ministries due to security concerns(!) should be a brief prelude to the announcement ALL of our personnel are leaving the country for the same reason.  The last one out should ensure the various factions know we're less concerned with who ends up in control than we are that no future attacks against us be hatched in their hooch.  Should that happen, it must be crystal clear our next appearance won't be as a partner, but rather a Punisher carrying only munitions, not money.

Saturday Sounds

It's getting to where one of my weekly highlights is seeing what these guys do next...

So it's open season now?

Interesting to know there's now judicial precedent that says I can physically attack someone who's denigrating my Christian faith:

It almost sounds like the makings of a joke: an atheist, a Muslim and the Mechanicsburg Halloween parade. But non-believers aren't laughing about an attack and insist what's really frightening is the way a district judge ruled on it.

The Atheists of Central Pennsylvania decided to walk in the Mechanicsburg Halloween parade. There was a zombie Pope and a zombie Muhammed. On YouTube, you can catch a scary moment. It's dark and distorted, but a Muslim man comes off the curb extremely offended at Muhammed being depicted in this way.

"He grabbed me, choked me from the back, and spun me around to try to get my sign off that was wrapped around my neck," said Ernie Perce, who donned the costume.
The Muslim man and Perce both called police to report a crime. Both kept walking, and a few blocks down found Sgt. Brian Curtis. He talked to both and came to this conclusion.
"Mr. Perce has the right to do what he did that evening, and the defendant in this case was wrong in confronting him," he said.

Talaag Elbayomy was charged with harassment, but District Judge Mark Martin threw it out after criticizing Perce, the victim, and even calling him a "doofus." The audio is also on YouTube. Martin, who has done several tours of duty in the Middle East, said Perce would be put to death in those societies for his crime, but Perce wonders why that's relevant in this country.

"He let a man who is Muslim, because of his preference of his culture and his way of life, walk free from an attack," Perce said. 

The judge is apparently none too happy with the publicity his ruling has drawn.  Is there ANY doubt that had a misguided Christian, in violation of the teachings of Christ, stepped off the curb and attacked the "zombie Pope," it would be headline news around the nation?  That we would be hearing dire warnings about the 'desire of militant Christians to establish a theocracy?'

As Glenn Reynolds (who appears to be a complete secularist) often points out, Western civilization really needs to understand the perverse incentive system that's being created.  Criticism of the Muslim faith is demonstrably muted, out of deference to the very real possibility of inciting riot.  Meanwhile, Christians' complaints about the direction of a society that was once permeated by the principles of their faith, are mocked with impunity and marginalized at every opportunity.

I pray that Christians will continue to be guided by the Spirit and the principles of the Prince of Peace, confining our battle with the "god of this fallen world" to the public conversation.  This side of eternity, though, it's a constant struggle to control the vestiges of the sinful nature... the one to which the fallacy of the "tu quoque" argument seems mighty appealing at times.  Fortunately, we're taught "do unto others as you would have them do to you,"  not "do to others as you've had done to you."

Compare and contrast

...this does seem to be the main difference, in a nutshell...

Different flavors of freedom

This author does a good job of delving into the different facets of freedom, and exploring how not everyone in the world wants the same combination we developed in America:

Freedom is often confused as being a universal value shared by all societies and nations. But the truth is not everyone wants our American values, including certain freedoms. There are four different types of freedoms, but since we Americans have all four of them guaranteed by our US Constitution, we tend to bundle them together as being one. The four types are...

Our Founding Fathers understood these four freedoms and incorporated all of them into our Constitution. We became the first nation in modern times to have all four freedoms. Since then other nations have adopted freedoms for themselves. But there are some nations who just don’t want all four of these...

Until we understand that freedom means different things to different people, we will continue to get drawn into overseas adventures in a fool's attempt to impose our own social scheme on people who find it intolerable.  Meanwhile, this national exertion on our part serves to empower those who would undermine the majority of the freedoms that, in combination, have made the United States such a unique nation in the history of the world.

Something to think about...