JawsBlog

Came across two interesting articles this afternoon, which raise speculation that the GOP (or perhaps just President Bush) is attempting to tack back to the right, perhaps in an effort to shore up its [social and fiscal] conservative base–who have been dissapointed recently with the President.

On the social conservatism side: Marriage law eyed for GOP platform

Then on the fiscal side, Park Service controversy over outsourcing: The Senate may resurrect a Bush plan to farm out park jobs to the private sector

It’ll be interesting to see how these things evolve…

Perhaps it’s just me, but I was under the impression that for the most part, Texas was a state where PETA folk didn’t do very much…

But now comes along the following story about a mall where

The landlord imposed strict rules on tenants requiring that no meat or animal product [including leather--ed.] be sold in their stores, and that no animals – including ants – be harmed.

While this landlord has a right to dictate the rules of her property, I think that this is an absurd idea. Perhaps Misha, Laurence, Serenity, Rachel Lucas, Dok Russia and some other Texan VRWC bloggers need to have a meet-up in Austin and visit this mall.

Okay, this is a far deviation from the usual fare here on my blog. I was going through the Dead-Tree version of the Justice, and I saw the headline for this letter, and was shocked. I was very suprised that the Justice would first off decide to run this letter, as it’ll open up a firestorm.

The letter is from an alum, who I remember from my first two years here at the school. This guy was, um, how can I put it politely….very, very, very out there. He was bright and all, but he lacked tact and was just a bit too far. He’s also, very, very, very, very religious.

He’s the same individual who was mentioned in regards to this incident last year.

So with that disclaimer, you can go read the letter.

[note: this blog does not agree with the main thesis of his letter (that its a crime) though he does make some good arguments in the course of the letter (specifically his defense of Justice Scalia)]. But otherwise, I can’t believe he’d write this. (The letter last week Defending Scalia and his reasoning was much, much better)

JPost: Undercover troops break up Tanzim party; 12 arrested

In a dramatic anti-terror operation, Border Police in an undercover unit disguised as Arabs sneaked into a cafe in Nablus where armed Tanzim fugitives were holding an operational meeting.

Military sources said the Border Police overpowered the fugitives and arrested 12 of them, who turned out to be top Tanzim terrorists and a number of “ticking bombs,” a euphemism for a suicide bomber.

Military sources said they had intelligence information that the fugitives were meeting late Monday at the Abu Rabha Cafe” in the Rafidiyeh neighborhood of Nablus. Most of the fugitives were from the Balata refugee camp

That’s one way to crash a party….but why not consider rewarding the IDF troops with a party of their own: get ‘em some Pizza! Or send them some honey and chocolate–for a sweet new year!

Yes, it’s Tuesday, meaning that the latest issue of the Brandeis paper “The Justice” is out!

Now what is the first thing that we do when the Justice comes out? We go straight to the Police Blotter! (Do not pass Go! Do not collect $200! Go stright to reading the blotter). It’s one of the best parts of the paper.

Hmm…what else is in the news this week (at first glance)…

Looks like some first years are really gonna get screwed: First-years may get new roommates in triples. Yeah, that sucks for them…but alas, we do have a housing crunch, plus a mid-year entering class.

In “buisnes” news…Contract with Coke in limbo. So from what I gather, since the “Expressway” (C-store) sells Pepsi products, Coke may be upset. Fair enough. I personally perfer Diet Pepsi to Diet Coke (My house lives on Diet Pepsi–but that’s another story), but I try not to shop at the C-store if possible. Why? Because it’s a huge, huge rip-off. But this is just a funny story.

It looks like Hillel may be dragged back into the news, as Chabad wants recognition as a club, yet doesn’t want to go under the Hillel Umbrella. Hmmm….interesting….this could turn out to be something much more.

And finally (for now at least) there’s this article about a first-year who was DQ’ed from the Student Gov’t elections because she had a link to the elections page on AIM. I don’t know who this girl is, but I sort of feel bad for her. At the same time, I have no idea as to what the election rules are either, so I’m gonna withold judgement on this whole story. Perhaps the elections committee should update their rules?

More from the Justice later

From the Ha’aretz (English) Ticker:

05:12 Saudi diplomat: Saudi Arabia tried to act against terror before Sept. 11, 2001, but had met resistance from U.S.

Silly Fraudis…

“Do images of those fighting on the peaks of Afghanistan or in the desert of Iraq, when juxtaposed to the rallies on our elite campuses, suggest that a populist military is doing a better or worse job than our privileged universities in training our youth to be educated, well-spoken, and rational?” –Victor Davis Hanson

“Modern Democrats insist on confronting thugs and tyrants with tea and sympathy. This approach was expressed indelibly by Michael Dukakis in 1988, who, when asked during the debates with George H.W. Bush how he would deal with a rapist in his wife’s bedroom, offered to set up a blue-ribbon commission to study the root causes of crime. Poor Kitty Dukakis was to be left in her nightie to deal with the brute while the little Duke hurried off in search of ribbons.” –Wesley Pruden

“As for the political leaders themselves, President Bush and Tony Blair should be proud of their resolve in the face of so much doubt.”

Did you guess Gen (Ret.) [turned candidate] Wesley Clark? If not, you should’ve. It’s from an April 10th piece he wrote for the London (UK) Times (reposted here)

Wow…just a few days into the campaign, and Clark is getting busted by his own lies. He better be shoving booth of his boots in his mouth at this rate.

Many remember the “after 9/11 someone from the White House called me to say that Iraq was involved” story…so I won’t revisit it.

Clark’s latest claim ran in Newsweek when he reportedly told Colorado Gov. Bill Owens (R): “‘I WOULD HAVE BEEN A REPUBLICAN IF KARL ROVE HAD RETURNED MY PHONE CALLS’… “

But, it turns out…that Clark NEVER CALLED Rove!

Ouch. That’ll sting….badly I may add.

Wow….it’s really been a couple of very slow days in terms of the news to say the least (save for news from Iraq and Clark entering the race).

I guess that gives me more incentives to do schoolwork…but I need editorial article ideas…thoughts?

Just a brief jeering session right now…

So Yom Kippur is from a Sunday night to Monday this year. okay, that’s how it falls. No biggie.

However, I’ve got both a test and a paper due on the Tuesday following Yom Kippur (boo! Hiss!)

The paper I’m not that worried about, as I’ll likely have it completed before then. On the other hand, I’m upset about the test, for obvious reasons. And unfortunately due to mid-term grades being do, the instructor can’t reschedule it. Booo! Hiss!

Okay and that’s my rant.

IDF Troops kill Hamas leader in Hebron

Let Misha know if you’re going to sponsor a pizza!

So earlier this week, I blogged about Sen. Ted “Swimmer” Kennedy’s (D-MA) comments regarding the war in Iraq

Did Sen. Kennedy think he’d get away with those remarks unscathed? I’d really, really hope not.

For starters, Rush Limbaugh (as usual) was all over Kennedy for his ass-backwards thinking.

Then, House Majority Leader, Tom DeLay (R-TX), took a shot back at Kennedy. According to this article from Fox News, DeLay said:

DeLay said Democratic leaders like House Minority LeaderNancy Pelosi (search), Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, and presidential hopefuls John Kerry and Howard Dean should tell Kennedy to rein in his accusations.

“I call on all the vociferous Democrat critics … to have the courage to tell their hero Ted Kennedy that he went too far,” DeLay said in a statement released Friday. “Are they leaders or are they just liberal pundits?”

“It’s disturbing that Democrats have spewed more hateful rhetoric at President Bush then they ever did at Saddam Hussein,” DeLay said.

But Kennedy felt like launching another shot back at DeLay (woohoo! A Congressional Rumble!) saying [via same source]:

“Once again, Republican leaders are avoiding key questions about the Administration’s policies by attacking the patriotism of those who question them. Our troops, their families, and the American people deserve answers, not more politics as usual,” he said.

Uh, Sen. Swimmer–would you like to indicate how DeLay attacked “the patriotism of those who question them”? I don’t see any such attack by the Representative from Texas.

And it looks like two presidential wanna be’s chimed in on the debate too.

The French looking Senator from MA, John Kerry, who served in Vietnam:

“Tom DeLay is a bully,” Kerry, of Massachusetts, said. “He tried to bully Democrats in Texas and we’re not going to accept his shrill partisan attacks or allow him to suggest that patriotism belongs to one political party.”

Again, DeLay is a texan which is why he may have done work in his State. Plus the Dems shouldn’t have bolted, but that’s now a dead issue. And look who is accusing who of shrill partisan tactics….and since when did the GOP monopolize patriotism? You’ve been drinking the Kool-aid again haven’t you.

Then Howard “Nikita” Dean decides to chime in as well:

Dean had a similar reaction: “I’ll tell you what I think: Tom DeLay is going too far by stealing six Democratic seats from the legislature in Texas, reapportioning in a sleazy way after it has already been done,” Dean said while campaigning in New Hampshire. “So I call on Tom DeLay to stop trying to steal the Democratic election in Texas, then we will talk.”

Okay, let’s put this Texas thing to rest now. After the census state’s have to redistrict based on Congressional seat gains/losses (which are related to the Census). So from what I understand, the GOP controls both the Texas House and Senate. Therefore, they’re obviously going to draw the new maps to favor their party. That’s how politics work–after all, politics is “who gets what, when and how”.

So Dr. Dean–the reapportioning apparently hasn’t been done. If it was done, this would be a moot point. No? And how is DeLay responsible for everything that goes on in his home state? And they’re not “stealing” anything either. This goes on in every state–you should know that governor. This is politics–pure and simple–and in this case, the GOP has the advantage.

In a late entry to the game, President Bush is also responding to Swimmer’s comments saying:

President Bush on Sunday described as “uncivil” Sen. Edward Kennedy (search)’s critical remarks of the administration’s policies in Iraq.

In an exclusive Oval Office interview with Fox News’ Brit Hume, Bush said that while he respected Kennedy, the senator “should not have said we were trying to bribe foreign nations.”

“I don’t mind people trying to pick apart my policies, and that’s fine and that’s fair game,” Bush said in the interview that will air Monday night. “But, you know, I don’t think we’re serving our nation well by allowing the discourse to become so uncivil that people say — use words that they shouldn’t be using.”

Note: Here’s where Dean got the “Nikita” nickname. The “swimmer” one should be obvious

I’ve got a major dilema on my hands.

For the first time this year, the Cleveland Browns game are actually on TV here in Boston
but
I’ve also got homework to do….

What do I do? Such a dilema, no?

It looks like members of the VRWC are going to be flocking to their local bookstores (or their favorite online realtors) and buying this latest book about President Regan. It’s a compilation of his many, many letters, titled: Reagan: A Life in Letters.

Time Magazine gave a write-up on the book here; but I think it’s very safe to say that despite Time’s claims to the contrary, President Bush isn’t another Reagan (well at least in terms of domestic agenda he isn’t. Just look at how the size of gov’t has grown).

But I have a feeling that members of the VRWC are gonna be rushing out to get their hands on a copy of this book when it’s released on September 23rd

Update: JaySolo shares his thoughts on the book (and he wants to get a copy too!)

Wow..Clark must really be trying to steal from Howard “Nekitta” Dean’s playbook. Remember Dean wasn’t sure if Saddam’s fall from power was a good thing?

Well, now Newsmax is reporting that in an interview with Fortune Magazine, Clark said:

Asked why it was right for President Clinton to use military force to halt Slobodan Milosevic’s crimes against humanity in Kosovo, but not for President Bush to do the same thing against Saddam, Clark said that in Iraq, “The imminence of stopping a guy from committing a crime in progress – it wasn’t there.”

“In Kosovo you had ethnic cleansing actually unfolding, and we had intervened to stop it,” the ex-NATO commander insisted, without commenting on the torture chambers, rape rooms and mass graves discovered in Iraq by coalition forces.

Hmmm…how quickly Clark seems to forget about (among other things), Hussein’s jailing of children, Uday and Qusay’s raping and torture practices and that’s just the tip of the iceberg

Oh, and let’s not forget Saddam funding terrorism (more)…Yeah…sure he wasn’t

And now this guy is the Dem front runner?

Zogby Blog informed me about this study on binge drinking from Harvard which correlates the price of beer to binge drinking.

I think that this argument is off the mark. While that may be one cause of binge drinking, I think the bigger problem is that most people don’t know their limits. Couple that with the fact that once inebriated, people don’t listen to their friends who tell them that they’ve had too much.

I also seem to have another visitor to my blog, who says, and I quote

Maybe you could write about how much of a shock you and your fellow neocons are in for next year. Then again, your cluelessness about the election is rather humorous. So please, for the sake of my entertainment, say something stupid.

First off, I’m not a neocon. When I first registered to vote, I registered as a Republican. Granted, I was more of a centrist back then, but I’ve since become more conservative. We could also go into the whole “What is a neocon” thing, but that’s been overused way too much.

Also, my “cluelessness about the election”? Face it, Dean has no chance of winning the Presidency should he win the Dem nomination. He’s way, way, way too liberal, and that will kill him. Wesley Clark–it’s too early to tell, but there’s a lot of stuff that could easily shoot him down–especially the fact that he lacks political experience. (is that the stupid thing you wanted to hear?)

That’s what is being reported about a Muslim Chaplain who worked at Gitmo.

This isn’t good…

So I guess I have a semi-busy weekend. I’ve got at least one lacrosse practice, and perhaps a second one. I’ve got two parties to attend (granted, I can’t drink at ‘em, but I attend anyway). I do have some books on genetics, transgenic animals and molecular manipulation from the library I should read…’should’ being the imparitive word.

One of my suitemates went to Target yesterday and decided to buy an 1000 piece puzzle, and a 4 (of the six of us) were sitting around last night just doing the puzzle. It’s addicting (in an unconcious way) and I think that I’ll be drawn to working on the puzzle a lot (in addtion to my suitemates). There’s just something about puzzles…ya know?

I think on Sunday I’m gonna also start working on my next piece for the newspaper. Anyone have any ideas for a topic I can write on? (Suggestions are very welcome)!

So I was in my suitemates room, and his window faces directly towards another dorm building (for Brandeis people it faces Ziv 129).

So I’m in his room and I notice something out of the window, and what do I notice? A USSR flag hanging in a window!

Yes, a USSR flag, red with the hammer and scythe (or is it a sickle?) Either way it’s a USSR flag! Does that mean the commies have begun to infiltrate the campus? (Or does someone have a twisted sense of humor?)

If its the former, I think we’ve gotta get in touch with the Ashcroft Jackboot Brigades!