Who Dat Pep Rally Kicks Off Busy Weekend

We've got a big weekend on tap around here and it's already underway!

This afternoon at 4:00 was the "Who Dat" Pep Rally on Travis Street downtown. I met my brother down there and we hung out for about three hours listening to Robin and the Bluebirds (video below) and taking part in the festivities. Mayor Cedric Glover and the Shreveport City Council, specifically Joyce Bowman, came up with the idea to have a Pep Rally on Tuesday. Through the week they pulled together a fabulous celebration!

Shaver's Catering was there handing out jambalaya, there was face painting and balloon art for the kids, and lots of music and community participation. Huntington High School's band was there, their entrance even more dramatic than expected as their big drums came bellowing through the alley between the tall downtown office buildings.

The Battlewings Dance Line was there and the Southern University Cheerleaders as well.

For three hours we danced in the streets and celebrated the Saints and Mardi Gras. The mayor and various council members threw beads, hats, cups, and footballs from the stage as Robin belted out "Mardi Gras Mambo", "At Last", "C'est La Vie" and of course, "When The Saints Go Marching In."

When it was all over, about 7:00, my brother and I headed to my house to collect Steve and we went on down to Superior Mexican Restaurant to hear the Great Jimmy Day and friends play a couple of sets. I haven't been to Superior in, no lie, 20 years, and it hasn't changed one iota. It's still a packed house with a 2 hour table wait. We squeezed in a faux table next to the band, and a former student recognized us and took pity on us, waiting on us when he didn't have to. Hats off to him!

Tomorrow?

Well, that's the Centaur Parade, which is an all afternoon and evening affair; I'll be posting pictures through the afternoon and evening.

Sunday?

The Barkus and Meoux Parade in the afteroon and then ....

Who Dat!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is Robin and The Bluebirds, "When the Saints Go Marching In." Not the best quality but I was holding my camera over my head, shooting blind.



Here's the local media video. I'm in it, around 2:30 or so ... I'm the chick in the #12 Colston jersey leaning against a car shooting the Huntington Band. Gotta have quick eyes to catch me.

Who Dat Pep Rally

The New Yorker Joins the Abdulmutallab Cacophony

The conflicting stories about the handling of the Abudulmutallab affair are getting monotonous.

Tuesday I posted on the conflicting tales between Eric Holder and the testimony before the Senate Homeland Security Committee: Holder said at least four agencies were involved in the decision to charge Abdulmutallab as a common criminal rather than an enemy combatant, but the heads of those security divisions said they were never consulted. Who to believe?

NRO's The Corner also picked up on this same distortion today:

But in testimony before the Senate Homeland Security Committee, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, National Counterterrorism Center Director Michael E. Leiter and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said they were not consulted about the charging decision.

Blair, Mueller, Leiter, and Napolitano all fall under one or both of the descriptions "partners in the intelligence community" and "senior members of [Obama's] national security team," and all four claim they were not consulted. Could they all be mistaken?

So who is correct? Holder? Or all four security honchos?

Now we can add The New Yorker to the distortion machine. In an article from their February 15 issue, Jane Mayer highlights Eric Holder and the KSM trial. She says of the Abdulmutallab affair (emphasis mine):

After the Christmas Day incident, conservative pundits lambasted the Justice Department’s handling of Abdulmutallab, who had concealed in his underwear a bomb that ignited but failed to explode. When the plane landed, Abdulmutallab was taken to a hospital for treatment; at Holder’s directive, he was arrested as a criminal suspect. (The F.B.I., the C.I.A., and the Pentagon signed off on Holder’s decision.)

Mayer goes further to say that we actually gained "time-sensitive information" from Abdulmutallab:

He divulged time-sensitive intelligence: he had been trained in Yemen, by affiliates of Al Qaeda, and had obtained explosives from them.

I'm no security expert but is that really time-sensitive? I don't think so. Didn't we already gather some of that from his father?

The bottom line is this. It does not matter if Abdulmutallab is cooperating now or not. It's good if he is but certainly genuine "time-sensitive" information has been lost. One of the first things Abdulmutallab reportedly said was that there were others like him that are coming. WHO? WHEN? HOW? That would be actionable, time-sensitive intelligence.

Meanwhile, is to too much to ask that everyone get on the same page?

Louisiana Purchase Mary Wants You to Shut Up

Louisiana Purchase Mary gets emotional as she defends her bribe today before the Senate, and she wants you to quit griping about it.

Somehow she still does not understand why people are angry that she made a backroom deal for more money for her state that other states won't receive. I live in Louisiana so I guess theoretically I should be sympathetic to her complaint, but Mississippi got hit just as hard by Katrina and they've moved on. They aren't getting a backroom deal.

The fact remains that she sold her vote for Obamacare. Period. She wasn't willing to vote for it until she got the money. That's a bribe.



(H/T: Memeorandum)

41 Has Arrived!

Who Dat Watching the Super Bowl?

Never one to miss a chance to throw a party, the Obamas will once again hold a Super Bowl party at the White House. Obama has invited Congressional members from both Indiana and Louisiana and has revealed that he is pulling for "the underdog" Saints.

NOLA reports that Joseph Cao will be there will his family. He's the only member of the Louisiana delegation who plans to attend. Louisiana Purchase Mary will be in New Orleans, Jindal will be at the game in Florida and Vitter will be watching at home with his family.

If you're in Shreveport, Friday there will be a "Who Dat Rally" at Government Plaza, kicked off by Mayor Cedric Glover with music by Robin and the Bluebirds. Robert Trudeau says that Bruce Flett's seven-piece Mardi Gras group will lead a second line in the street. The fun begins at 4:30 and goes until 6:30.

And for today's laugh, check out Red's blog and her letter to Miami from the Who Dat Nation.

Andy McCarthy's Scathing Scolding of Obama

To no one's surprise, Obama seems to have reversed himself through the years regarding Miranda rights for terrorists. Allahpundit over at Hot Air reminds us of Obama's March 2009 statement in which is said that terrorists don't deserve Miranda rights:

“Well, there is no doubt that we have not done a particularly effective job in sorting through who are truly dangerous individuals that we’ve got to make sure are not a threat to us, who are folks that we just swept up. The whole premise of Guantanamo promoted by Vice President Cheney was that somehow the American system of justice was not up to the task of dealing with these terrorists. I fundamentally disagree with that. Now, do these folks deserve Miranda rights? Do they deserve to be treated like a shoplifter down the block? Of course not,” Obama said.

Yet now we have terrorists being given Miranda rights. So is Obama now just deferring to Holder?

Be sure to check out Andy McCarthy's scathing scolding of Obama at NRO's The Corner:

"...the main problem with Obama's above-it-all, government-by-speeches approach, is that the job of a president is not to vote present, observe, and provide us with running commentary."

....

"If you're going to use our criminal justice system because you think, as is, it is capable of safeguarding the country from terrorists, then, as the Attorney General argues, you have to give the terrorists Miranda warnings and be accountable for the fact that you will lose at least five weeks of actionable intel against people who are tying to kill us. If you think the justice system doesn't work for this class of offenders, then you have to try another approach, as VP Cheney urges, and be prepared for the inevitability of caterwauling from the Left (knowing it will be considerably milder than what Cheney had to deal with). But one way or the other, you've got to decide. And if you choose to stay on the golf course while the Attorney General handles it, that is a decision to do it the Attorney General's way. Obama's decision, not Holder's."

Read the rest here.

The spin yesterday and today that Abdulmutallab is cooperating and apparently singing like a canary is just spin. And whether he is or he isn't isn't misses the point that the entire arrest was mishandled. If he's talking, great, but there was never any reason to expect he would given his new right to remain silent. He should never have been treated like a common shoplifter.

The administration is merely "leaking" this kind of information to take the sting out of the criticism of their bungling the arrest.

Most of us can still see it for what it is.

No More George Washington

High school juniors in North Carolina may be looking at a new history curriculum. The state is considering adoption of a history curriculum in which American History would begin in 1877. No George Washington, no Abraham Lincoln, no Civil War...

The state's on-going curriculum review hits all subjects but it's the proposed changes for high school students learning social studies that have provoked fears. Under the new guidelines, students will graduate without learning enough about world history and key parts of American history including Abraham Lincoln, westward expansion or much else that happened before 1877 when Reconstruction ended, critics say.

"We are certainly not trying to go away from American history. What we are trying to do is figure out a way to teach it where students are connected to it. Where they see the big idea. Where they are able to make connections and draw relationships between parts of our history and the present day so the students who see it as relevant," said Rebecca Garland of the N.C. Department of Public Instruction.

I'm not sure how you can teach American History without the Constitutional Convention and the Revolutionary War, and, well, so much else!

Ninth graders would take a new course called "Global Studies" rather than "World History" which they take now. Global Studies is described as a course that "focuses on modern issues like the environment" rather than history. Tenth graders would continue to get Economics and Civics and then in the eleventh grade, the new history curriculum...beginning with Rutherford B. Hayes. WTF?!

----->Cue Stacy McCain's pitch for home-schooling here...

Update: A history teacher I know and respect a great deal left this message on my Facebook link:

"Well we've been doing this for years! They get first half in 7 th & they get
roots of democracy in Civics! This isn't as bad as it sounds! I pick up lots of
pre industrial as I am teaching the various units as background & REVIEW! I
think it works. "

I will say that I've heard her, and others, say that it's extremely difficult to get it all in. I think that one of the challenges many history teachers face is getting kids to relate to history or become interested in learning it. To me, history is fascinating. But to a fifteen or sixteen year old kid, not so much. Of course there are exceptions, and that God for that. I still don't really know how you can teach history without the Founding, though.

Jindal Rumors

Could Bobby Jindal really be supporting Charlie Crist? Is this true? Or satire?

I can't believe it. I'm not sure I do.

Reports are that Jindal will be in Florida for the Super Bowl and that he'll also attend a fundraiser, but Jindal's spokesman has been mum on details of that fundraiser. I was under the impression that it was for his own re-election campaign.

Paul Heard, hosting for Moon Griffon yesterday, suggests it may not be so.

I just can't believe Jindal would endorse a tanking candidate like Crist.

We'll watch this one today and see what the real deal is.

Happy Birthday, Norman Rockwell

Do You Feel Safer Now?

While the report from top intelligence officials that a new terrorist attack is imminent is frightening, I don't think it's surprising.

From Day One this administration has seemingly gone out of its way to portray this country as soft on terror, beginning with the Executive Order to close Gitmo. And no, I'm not buying that bunk that Gitmo is a "recruiting tool." Even if the specter of Gitmo is invoked by anyone recruiting for al-Qaeda, they really don't need Gitmo to recruit extremists who hate us.

What does sort of surprise me, and I guess it shouldn't, is that Janet Napolitano didn't even attend the House Homeland Security Committee hearing last week to clarify the actions of her department regarding the Christmas Day bomber. Instead she sent a stand-in while she was in her office "consulting with members of an unspecified think-tank."

Didn't she think it was important to be there? Not to cast stones at her stand-in, who I am sure was probably adequate, or at least as adequate as Napolitano, but it sends a message that she just doesn't think it's important.

Maybe she'll pay more attention to this prediction by top intelligence officials:

The nation’s top intelligence officials warned Congress on Tuesday that terrorists are “certain” to attempt another attack on the U.S. within the coming months...It was echoed by Blair, FBI Director Robert Mueller, acting U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Intelligence and Research John Dinger, and the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency Lt. Gen. Ronald L. Burgess, Jr.

As I said before, not surprising. What really scares me, though, is who is in charge. The entire National Security front leaves me feeling a little insecure.

Gitmo is Looking Better and Better to Obama

Well I guess Obama IS rethinking his decision to renovate the Thomson, Illinois prison now that he's probably beginning to hear the bi-partisan drumbeat against it. According to Steny Hoyer today:

“I think the administration realizes that this is a difficult issue,” Hoyer said, speaking at his weekly meeting with Capitol Hill reporters. “And I think that they are assessing where they are and where they think we ought to be, and I think that’s appropriate and I look forward to discussing it with them.”

Congress would have to appropriate the funding for the move, of course, and has so far appeared more than unwilling to do so, to their credit.

This realization, on the heels of the KSM trial blunder, on top of the Abdulmutallab flub, points to a serious flaw in the House of Obama foreign policy.

Jennifer Rubin points out an ABC New report in which "Democratic Sens. Jim Webb and Blanche Lincoln are joining Republicans to up-end plans for a civilian trial for KSM by denying funding to transport and try them in the U.S." Joe Lieberman and John McCain are also against such a move.

I don't for one minute believe Obama is rethinking this decision for any other reason than on funding. If he had the funds for it - he'd stick with his plan to import terrorists to Illinois. The 2010 elections are coming up and national security is clearly going to be an issue. For Steny Hoyer to suggest that Obama is having some new awakening is naive.

So, maybe it's back to Gitmo, after all! Go figure. Why didn't I think of that.

Little Barry Not So Popular in Indonesia

Some in Indonesia aren't so thrilled with the Little Barry statue and want it removed. A statue of Obama as a child was erected in Jakarta's Menteng Park last month but already there is a large group of critics who don't believe Obama should be so honored:

"We've been discussing for the past two weeks what to do with the statue... whether to take it down, move it elsewhere or retain it. We're finding the best solution," Jakarta parks agency official Dwi Bintarto said.

There is a Facebook page in protest of the statue and comments there suggest that Obama only lived there a few years and as of yet has contributed nothing to the Indonesian nation.

Maybe after Obama and family travel there this year, they'll change their minds. I'm sure a deep bow or two can make things right.

Stop Talking Now

It seems the administration is attempting to reframe is abominable response to Mirandizing Abdulmutallab after a fifty minute interview. According to the LA Times at least four government agencies were involved in the decision:

The decision to advise the accused Christmas Day attacker of his right to remain silent was made after teleconferences involving at least four government agencies -- and only after Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab had stopped talking to authorities, according to knowledgeable law enforcement officials.

Among those involved in the hastily called teleconferences were representatives from the Justice Department and the FBI, along with officials from the State Department and the CIA.

I'm wondering who they actually spoke to in those agencies because just last week the testimony before the Senate Homeland Security Committee was a little different:

Four top counterterrorism officials testified before a congressional committee that they were not consulted about how to handle the interrogation of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab...That group included all three senior Obama administration officials who testified before the Senate Homeland Security Committee on Wednesday: Janet Napolitano, Secretary of Homeland Security; Michael Leiter, chairman of the National Counterterrorism Center; and Dennis Blair, the Director of National Intelligence. It also included FBI Director Robert Mueller.

A decision this big, an al-Qaeda attack on the United States, and the top dogs weren't consulted. Apparently it was left to underlings.

They just need to quit talking now. Every time someone in the administration tries to make this better, it gets worse.

(H/T: Memeorandum)

On The Reading Shelf: February 2010

Every now and then I do a post about my reading shelf. I had such a backlog last time I posted on this that I'm only now getting halfway caught up. At that time I had eighteen books waiting on me; that was in November. As I've said before, I read a lot of non-fiction and throw some popular fiction in every now and then to break the pace.

Sometimes I get sidetracked and put a book down and get back to it. I only do that with non-fiction. For example, I started Empire of Liberty back in November. I set it aside to read Going Rogue and that led to Sara Paretsky (which I labored to get through - review here) and after that I picked up Stacy McCain's book with Lynn Vincent - Donkey Cons. I'll be honest - I really enjoyed Stacy's book. It's a keeper.

So on my shelf right now, and a couple are still holdouts from the November stack, is Stephen King's Under the Dome, and Ayn Rand's We the Living. I've still got Empire of Liberty to finish. It's wonderfully written and really interesting, but it's a huge book and I had to step back from it for a bit. I've just ordered Marc Thiessen's Courting Disaster. Also waiting for me is the new Edwin Edwards biography. Say what you will about ol' Fast Eddie - he was a Louisiana Character! I can't WAIT to read that one!

I'm finishing up the latest Patricia Cornwell installment in the Scarpetta series - The Scarpetta Factor; I should wrap that one up tonight.

Hmmm. On second thought, it looks like I'm getting low on reading material! I get uneasy unless I have a huge stack waiting in the wings! Time to get back to Amazon...

Rubio Leads Crist and Announces Stimulus Money Bomb

In exciting polling news today, word comes from Rasmussen that Marco Rubio leads Charlie Crist in the Florida Republican primary 49-37!

Charlie Crist has tanked faster than a rock in a pond and now Rubio moves ahead for the first time. Will Crist stay in the race? Erick Erickson thinks not.

Even better, Rubio has announced his Stimulus Money Bomb fund raising drive. It's common knowledge by now that Crist spoke out in support of Barack Obama's $787 billion stimulus plan last year. As the one-year anniversary of the stimulus approaches, Rubio is asking that over the next ten days you donate some configuration of that figure, for example, $7.87, or $78.70, or even better, $787.00! His goal is to raise $1,000 for every $1 billion that was wasted through the stimulus.

You can donate to Marco here.



Cross posted at Not One Red Cent!

(More at Memeorandum)

Is The Bus Warming Up for Holder?

Is the bus coming for Eric Holder? I can't imagine the pressure he must be feeling these days. One botched move after another and he continues to make his boss look bad, who, truth be told, doesn't really need any help.

Today on Fox News Sunday, Senator Lamar Alexander suggested it might be time for Holder to step down:

"Perhaps he should step down," Alexander said on Sunday morning.

"(Holder's) doing a better job of interrogating CIA employees than he is of interrogating terrorists, and he's not making a distinction between enemy combatants and terrorists flying into Detroit trying to blow up planes and American citizens who are committing a crime. He needs to go to Congress and say I made that decision, and here's why. And based on that perhaps he should step down," Alexander explained.

The list of grievances against Holder continues to grow. He's had a deplorable record thus far and his boss just can't be happy. It was clear things weren't going to go well back in September when he dismissed the default judgment in the Black Panther case.

Even before that, in August, Holder announced his investigation into an already investigated CIA regarding interrogations and don't forget the controversial release of the torture memos in April.

No, Holder has made lots of damaging decisions in his first year as AG.

Then came the decision to hold a civilian trial, in New York City!, for KSM which has now been almost unanimously beat down by the New York delegation and the American people. Dana Perino and Bill Burck have an interesting look at how Holder can save face on that call.

And on top of all that, the Abdulmutallab interrogation, or should I say, interview. He wasn't really interrogated. I mean, fifty minutes? Really?

And after fifty minutes he is charged as a common criminal rather than an enemy combatant and turned over to the military who could obtain fresh, actionable intelligence from him.

Jennifer Rubin points to this comment from Robert Gibbs this morning:

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs declined several opportunities on Sunday to say whether Khalid Sheikh Mohammed would be tried in a federal or military court. “He will be brought to justice, and he will likely be executed for the heinous crimes he has committed,” Gibbs said on CNN's "State of the Union." “That you can be sure of.” But he dodged repeated questions by CNN host John King about whether the administration might shift the venue back from federal court in New York to a military court, finally saying that “The attorney general believes the best place to try him is in an American courtroom,” but not committing to that option.

"The attorney general believes..." As Rubin says, not exactly "the buck stops here" meme. It's all Holder's fault. The bus is warming up.

Obama has given folks their walking papers for a lot less.

As the 2010 elections creep closer, many are watching to see if Obama will creep to the center just a bit. I don't believe he will. But stranger things have happened. At any rate, rest assured that national security will be a key issue in the campaigns to come and Holder is a weak link on that front.

I, for one, don't believe any of Holder's decisions regarding KSM or the CIA issues were made unilaterally; I believe something so critical simply had to be made with Obama's input, or Rahm's, at the very least.

This back peddling on the KSM trial has got to make Obama testy, and even worse, if it ends up in Gitmo as a military tribunal, as it should have been in the first place, he's going to be in a tight spot.

My prediction? Obama will throw Holder under the bus, ramp up the Gitmo-tribunal option, and say it was all done in the interest of national security. He'll speak well of Holder, maybe even move him to some other diplomatic position, and act like he's only looking out for you.

I can smell the diesel fuel now.

(More at Memeorandum)

Rush's Advice to Obama

"But I find that idea if not odious, at least odious enough to keep me from selling the rights."

My tenth graders always ask me, whenever we read The Catcher in the Rye, why there is no film version.


Via NYT Arts Beat, here's why. Because Salinger said so:

I keep saying this and nobody seems to agree, but “The Catcher in the Rye” is a very novelistic novel. There are readymade “scenes” — only a fool would deny that — but, for me, the weight of the book is in the narrator’s voice, the non-stop peculiarities of it, his personal, extremely discriminating attitude to his reader-listener, his asides about gasoline rainbows in street puddles, his philosophy or way of looking at cowhide suitcases and empty toothpaste cartons - in a word, his thoughts. He can’t legitimately be separated from his own first-person technique. True, if the separation is forcibly made, there is enough material left over for something called an Exciting (or maybe just Interesting) Evening in the Theater. But I find that idea if not odious, at least odious enough to keep me from selling the rights.



Transcript of the letter is here.

I tend to agree. It sort of reminds me of Harper Lee who is very insistent that the film version of To Kill a Mockingbird is the only one that will be. She was so involved in the process of making the film and selection of Gregory Peck as Atticus, and so pleased with the outcome, it would be a real crime if the movie were ever remade!

And Salinger is correct, I believe, in the strength of the written word with this novel.

Let it be.

The Dialysis Diary

Linking to a new blog in case you, or someone you know, has advice or experience in ESRD (End Stage Renal Disease). If you do, please check out this blog and make contact.

Snow in Virginia

SWAC Girl has lovely, lovely pictures of the snow in Virginia today. Go here to look.

Cover Art

Is Obama losing The New Yorker? The title of this week's cover: "First Anniversary."

Military Evacuation Flights Suspended

Updates below.

The New York Times reports today that U.S. military flights to evacuate Haitians who need urgent medical care have been stopped. Most of those flights were taking patients to hospitals in Florida for care which have quickly become saturated and overwhelmed. Governor Charlie Crist, in a letter to Kathleen Sebelius, has asked the federal government for financial help in providing that care.

One can't blame Crist here. Florida cannot be expected to cover the cost for this care all alone.

One hospital, for example, has treated 117 patients, and they have established the "Haiti’s Children Fund to cover the costs of treating pediatric earthquake victims," reports The Times.

While the federal government is "reviewing Mr. Crist’s request for financial assistance" more and more Haitians will die waiting on the compassionate care of American hospitals.

One would hope that Obama would take control and initiate the National Disaster Medical System which could pay for the care of those injured people. The Times points out that some of those injured are American citizens. Some of them injured would qualify for Medicaid and some have insurance:

Some of the patients being airlifted from Haiti are American citizens and some are insured or eligible for insurance. But Haitians who are not legal residents of the United States can qualify for Medicaid only if they are given so-called humanitarian parole — in which someone is allowed into the United States temporarily because of an emergency — by United States Citizenship and Immigration Services.

We should hope that those same Democrats (and others) who were quick to blame Bush for the disaster in New Orleans would encourage Obama to take action in this case. New Orleans is an American city and thus the red tape easier to negotiate, however the options are still fairly clear here.

But, if the Obama administration isn't hip on covering the 9/11 health bill, why would they bother with Haiti?

Update (1/31/10): Via NYT:

The White House said Sunday it would resume a United States military airlift of Haitians seriously injured in the earthquake — some with devastating burns, head and spinal chord trauma, amputations and other wounds — to American hospitals. The humanitarian effort was suspended five days ago following complaints from the state of Florida that its hospitals were overwhelmed.

“Having received assurances that additional capacity exists both here and among our international partners, we determined that we can resume these critical flights,” Tommy Vietor, a White House spokesman, said in a statement.

Full Metal Jacket Reach Around: The Income Tax Edition

I'm calling this week's round-up the Income Tax edition because I've done both my taxes and The Teenager's taxes this week. I am sick of taxes. As I said before, I was not happy to discover that my refund this year is about one-fourth of what it was last year due to the "Economic Recovery Act" which "allowed me to keep more money in my pocket this year." Baloney. The teenager fared better than I did.

Putting depressing news such as finances behind us, let's get to the links.

Jules Crittenden has a post on the passing of J. D. Salinger and of Howard Zinn. Remember Jules, Harper Lee did the recluse thing, too. Thankfully, she's still with us. Yukio also makes note.

Gateway Pundit has Stephen F. Hayes with the most ridiculous statement from Obama's meeting with Republicans yesterday. Pundette has a round-up and summation of the appearance. Bride of Rove wraps it up with her eloquent observations and a final "I'm done."

Thank goodness the sheep are okay! Carol had me worried last week. However, Nancy Pelosi has not fared so well.

The Daley Gator makes note of the KSM trial being pulled from NYC. Baby steps. Professor Jacobson has an interesting observation.

Left Coast Rebel has penance to pay with Red. Avoid the banned words!

Reaganite Republican can show you what a Sukhoi Pak FA is...

Little Miss Attila is liking Mitt Romney these days.

Ruby Slippers has the skinny on the newly skinny Rush Limbaugh's fist-pumping skills.

OUCH! Grandpa John with a good catch. Speaking of the iPad, which I'll never be able to think of in the same way now thanks to Grandpa John, I'm not interested. Maybe later when it has some of the rather important things that it's currently missing. Donald Douglas takes a look.

How much booze is required to get health care passed? Snaggletoothie has an idea. Doug Ross explains even more - he posts on some high priced baby sitters. Speaking of booze, how about those "drunken White House parties"?

Not even college football is safe from The Hand of Obama.

Sandy tops the NFL "Who Dat" brouhaha with the perfect shirt.

Carolyn had a birthday this week! Happy Birthday to you!

The Desert Glows Green is teaching out of the comfort zone for some of his kids! I like it.

Jimmie Bise notes that there really is no honest global warming evidence.

WyBlog reports on Governor Christie taking on the education construction boondoggle. Fiscal responsibility, anyone?

Okay, I've got to stop now. It's nearly noon and I have to get moving. I feel like I haven't done anything yet today, but in fact, I've filed The Teenager's taxes and put bones on to boil for a pot of vegetable soup later. I've also taken a rock out of my labrador's mouth because he thinks rocks are appropriate toys.

Have a nice Saturday!

Don't Wave the Victory Flag Just Yet on New York Terror Trials

I think this is good news but I'm hesitant to get too excited just yet. News tonight is that The House of Obama has pulled the plug on holding the KSM terror trial in NYC. As opposition to the event picked up steam this week it seems that the pressure was too much to bear and now the word is that the plan is dead:

The Obama administration Friday abandoned plans to try 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in Manhattan, following objections from New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a senior administration official said. He will be tried domestically, but officials have not decided where. Options for the trial include a military base.

Other options may also include other domestic cities for all we know.

The New York Times reports:

By Friday, Justice Department officials were studying other locations, focusing especially on military bases and prison complexes, and no obvious new choice had emerged.

Begging the obvious, but what's wrong with Gitmo?

And even more obvious, shouldn't this have all just stayed in the hands of the military in the first place?

Ever the cynic, Allahpundit wisely wonders:

Exit question: Did Obama trade this concession for any congressional votes about closing Gitmo and funding a new prison? Someone call Mitch McConnell, quick.

Hmmmm.

I'm wondering what kind of pressure Eric Holder is feeling these days. Everything we learn about the handling of the Christmas Day terrorist reveals even more clusterfarks than one could imagine. Now this.

But somehow I don't feel we can rest easy on this one just yet.

(H/T: Memeorandum)