Martin Sheen, Sharpton Visit Anti-War Camp - Yahoo! News

I'm always confused when "bereaved" people wear such big smiles.

Internal CIA report faults ex director, others for pre 9/11 faults

Yahoo! News: "Tenet, who resigned in July 2004 after seven years at the top, was censured for failing to develop and carry out a strategic plan to take on Al-Qaeda in the years before the attacks, two people familiar with the report told The New York Times."

Why hydrogen is no route to renewables

The Ergosphere:

"Why hydrogen is no route to renewables

All the attention in the nation appears to be on hydrogen as the ideal medium for energy in a renewable economy. It has a lot going for it, in particular the fact that it can be produced from nothing more than water and energy. But this comes at a high (and hidden) price, especially for production from renewable energy; it is far from obvious that the use of hydrogen is worth the additional costs. The consequence is that we should downgrade hydrogen research, and cease deployment efforts immediately.

Hydrogen is certainly a wonderful molecule. It's the lightest element and has a very high energy/mass ratio. It's also the foundation of many chemical synthesis processes, both artificial and natural; when plants make sugar, they begin by splitting a water molecule to make hydrogen. There are even some ways to persuade plants to yield hydrogen directly. And when hydrogen is required, nothing else will do. You need hydrogen to make ammonia (for nitrogen fertilizer) or synthesize hydrocarbons.

We can learn a lot from plants (biomimicry has yielded a lot of good concepts), but there are limits to how far this can go and still be useful. It's one thing to borrow inventions and techniques from nature when they are well-suited to the task at hand, and quite another thing to cut the engineering problem to fit the Procrustean bed of a biological prototype. I intend to show that the 'hydrogen economy', and particularly the hydrogen fuel-cell car, is a poor way to accomplish this."...

Follow link for analysis.

Hold Your Tears ... Mark Steyn

Hold Your Tears ... Mark Steyn: "Whenever I’m on a radio show these days, someone calls in and demands to know whether my children are in Iraq. Well, not right now. They range in age from five to nine, and though that’s plenty old enough to sign up for the jihad and toddle into an Israeli pizza parlour wearing a suicide-bomb, in most advanced societies’ armed forces they prefer to use grown-ups.

That seems to be difficult for the Left to grasp. Ever since America’s all-adult, all-volunteer army went into Iraq, the anti-war crowd have made a sustained effort to characterise them as ‘children’. If a 13-year-old wants to have an abortion, that’s her decision and her parents shouldn’t get a look-in. If a 21-year-old wants to drop to the Oval Office shagpile and chow down on Bill Clinton, she’s a grown woman and free to do what she wants. But, if a 22- or 25- or 37-year old is serving his country overseas, he’s a wee ‘child’ who isn’t really old enough to know what he’s doing."

Illegal Immigrants Win Arizona Ranch in Court - New York Times

Illegal Immigrants Win Arizona Ranch in Court - New York Times

Pathetic.

State Dept. Says It Warned About bin Laden in 1996

State Dept. Says It Warned About bin Laden in 1996 - New York Times: "WASHINGTON, Aug. 16 - State Department analysts warned the Clinton administration in July 1996 that Osama bin Laden's move to Afghanistan would give him an even more dangerous haven as he sought to expand radical Islam 'well beyond the Middle East,' but the government chose not to deter the move, newly declassified documents show."

Intelligence Briefs: Iraq (April 2001)

Intelligence Briefs: Iraq (April 2001): "Iraqi Spies Reportedly Arrested in Germany
16 March 2001

Al-Watan al-Arabi (Paris) reports that two Iraqis were arrested in Germany, charged with spying for Baghdad. The arrests came in the wake of reports that Iraq was reorganizing the external branches of its intelligence service and that it had drawn up a plan to strike at US interests around the world through a network of alliances with extremist fundamentalist parties.

The most serious report contained information that Iraq and Osama bin Ladin were working together. German authorities were surprised by the arrest of the two Iraqi agents and the discovery of Iraqi intelligence activities in several German cities. German authorities, acting on CIA recommendations, had been focused on monitoring the activities of Islamic groups linked to bin Ladin. They discovered the two Iraqi agents by chance and uncovered what they considered to be serious indications of cooperation between Iraq and bin Ladin. The matter was considered so important that a special team of CIA and FBI agents was sent to Germany to interrogate the two Iraqi spies."

Interesting, no?

Dean works to energize state's Democratic Party - Fosters

Dean works to energize state's Democratic Party - Fosters: "'New England Republicans are different than most. They are more reasonable and thoughtful,' Dean said. 'You don't get as many right-wing wackos.'"

But of course, you do get quite a few left-wing wackos. Some of which go right to the head of the class.

NARAL Loses Nerve

My Way News: "After protests by conservatives, NARAL Pro-Choice America said Thursday night it would pull the ad that began running this week.

'We regret that many people have misconstrued our recent advertisement about Mr. Roberts' record,' NARAL President Nancy Keenan said.

'Unfortunately, the debate over that advertisement has become a distraction from the serious discussion we hoped to have with the American public,' she said in a letter Thursday to Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., who earlier in the day had urged the group to withdraw the ad."

I call BS.

WSJ.com - Oil for Fraud

WSJ.com - Oil for Fraud: "What is clear is that the Secretary General intends to spin the Volcker report not as an indictment of his tenure in office, but -- and this is amazing -- as another reason to endorse his reform agenda and, therefore, his continuance in office. 'As part of its investigation of Mr. Yakovlev,' a U.N. press release states, the U.N. 'will separately make recommendations for further reforms, particularly regarding strengthened supervision and controls over individual procurement officers.' "

Oil-for-food probe expected to accuse UN director

In a story pretty much fully explored by the Wall Street Journal back in the run-up to the latest Presidential election...Wired News, via Reuters reports: "An investigation into the oil-for-food program will accuse for the first time on Monday the director of the defunct $67 billion U.N. operation of getting cash from oil deals."