24 December 2006, the last day before Christmas

Do the militants have a big surprise in store for us tomorrow?  Wait and see, I guess.  Meanwhile, I can expect a press reaction tomorrow from this NYT headline:

Altering his earlier position, the top American ground commander in Iraq is now willing to back an increase in U.S. troops in Baghdad.

No doubt he will have 'caved in' to pressure, whereas Rumsfeld would have remained stubbornly refusing to change his mind.

This prosecutor is going to wish that he had:

On the stand at a pretrial hearing was Brian W. Meehan, director of a private laboratory that performed extensive DNA testing on rape kit swabs and underwear collected from a stripper only hours after she said that she had been gang-raped by three Duke lacrosse players after performing at a team party in March. Mr. Meehan’s tests on the swabs and underwear had detected traces of sperm and other DNA material from several men.

(The woman had told investigators that before the party, she had not had sex for about a week.)

But his tests had found something else, too: none of that DNA material was from the three players, or any of their teammates.

I don't think his witness/victim lead a very, ah, clean life.  The lacrosse team members are rather glad that she did not, needless to say.

And the prosecutor has a good reason...he was busy!

Mr. Nifong said, trying to explain his failure to disclose the DNA tests sooner, he had other work to attend to.   "You know, it’s not the only case I have right now,” he said. 

Oh, well...I suppose that's understandable in the overwhelming press of business...

“I have two.

Now this is one hard-pressed dude, you understand!

"The other one’s a quadruple homicide. If you ask me, to everybody but a reporter for an out-of-town newspaper, the quadruple homicide is probably the more significant case."

Maybe not to the innocent lacrosse players, of course, but, hey, everybody's entitled to their point of view.

But given the volume of evidence in this case, he said he simply did not realize that he had failed to turn over the DNA results in question. “It was not something that I specifically noticed,” he said, “because if I specifically noticed it I would have dealt with it.”

On Thursday afternoon, the volume of evidence was plain to see in his office. Next to his desk, a small conference table was overrun with documents and court filings related to the case. More boxes of documents were stacked on the floor and on chairs.

“When you’re going through these pages,” he said, “and you’re numbering them and making copies, you’re not reading and understanding what’s on every single page.”

 Uh, then how come you had time for this?

It was already clear from a state laboratory report in April that none of the lacrosse players’ semen, saliva or blood was found on or in the woman or her clothes. Mr. Meehan’s firm, DNA Security, was hired by the district attorney in April to conduct more sophisticated testing.

Mr. Nifong, overburdened with not only two cases at one time but also too much evidence to read and understand all of it, nevertheless wanted more?

Well, yes...you see, the first tests did not find the evidence he wanted to find.

Calling Dan Rather, calling Dan Rather...

Iran Condemns U.N. Sanctions

Why bother?  Why bother with the sanctions in the first place, for that matter?  Nothing different is going to happen as a result, one way or the other.

Clinton and Obama Clear The 2008 Playing Field

Without declaring runs, star senators are rewriting the script of the Democratic presidential campaign by driving potential rivals to the sidelines.

Thinking about the stir of interest Obama is raising, and the fact that he is the product of an interracial marriage in which his appearance favors the black side of his heritage, I cannot help but wonder if he'd be attracting the same attention if he favored the white side?

I don't think he would.  Amusingly his color is an asset mostly among white liberal Democrats and afraid-to-be-thought-racist conservatives.  Blacks seem to think he isn't really black enough, with one white parent.

Anyhow, what do you think, will the two of them clear the playing field and then Obama will take #2 spot for this time, settling for the heir apparent role?

My Christmas present a day early?  John Kerry reveals his wit and wisdom in public?

There's something much worse than being accused of "flip-flopping": refusing to flip when it's obvious that your course of action is a flop.

And, even more significant, you cannot fry pancakes without flipping them...that fact needs to be kept in mind, too.  Also frying hamburgers, and people who like their eggs "over".  This is a very significant discovery Mr. Kerry has made.

This isn't a time for stubbornness, nor is it a time for halfway solutions -- or warmed-over "new" solutions that our own experience tells us will only make the problem worse.

 The time has clearly come to CUT AND RUN!

The Iraq Study Group tells us that "the situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating." It joins the chorus of experts in and outside of Baghdad reminding us that there is no military solution to a political crisis. And yet, over the warnings of former secretary of state Colin Powell, Gen. John Abizaid and the entire Joint Chiefs of Staff, Washington is considering a "troop buildup" option, sending more troops into harm's way to referee a civil war.

Mr. Kerry is serenely oblivious that it has been Bush resisting sending more troops to Iraq while the Democrats have criticized him--and his top generals--for not doing so!  It would be funny if it weren't so serious, watching Kerry deal with his own unawareness.  Or possibly he thinks the American public hasn't been paying attention and he can fool them with this spin attempt. 

I think it's clear, as well as ironic, that Bush is eventually going to yield to the pressure to send more troops to Iraq, but it should also reflect the fact that this is a change in the position he has held for some time.  Mr. Kerry advocates change when conditions dictate, he says.

How many times do we have to see that Iraqi politicians respond only to firm, specific deadlines...

Another case where steadfastness long ago gave way to stubbornness is our approach to Iraq's neighbors. Last week in Damascus, Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut and I met with Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. We were clear about U.S. expectations for change in his regime's policies, but we found potential for cooperation with Syria in averting a disaster in Iraq...

I wonder if they set any deadlines for Assad?

Conversation is not capitulation. Until recently, it was widely accepted that good foreign policy demands a willingness to seize opportunities and change policy as the facts change. That's neither flip-flopping nor rudderless diplomacy -- it's strength.

The difference is...whose hand is on your rudder, yours or theirs?  But John is apparently blissfully unaware of the conversations going on in Iraq, all he sees on televisions are the explosions. 

President Bush and all of us who grew up in the shadows of World War II remember Winston Churchill -- his grit, his daring, his resolve. I remember listening to his speeches on a vinyl album in the pre-iPod era. Two years ago I spoke about Iraq at Westminster College in Fulton, Mo., where Churchill had drawn a line between freedom and fear in his "iron curtain" speech. In preparation, I reread some of the many words from various addresses that made him famous. Something in one passage caught my eye. When Churchill urged, "Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never -- in nothing, great or small, large or petty, never give in," he added: "except to convictions of honour and good sense."

This is a time for such convictions.

Churchill meant to one's own convictions, not those of some pretentious panderer.  What a disgrace.

Jim Hoagland doesn't want you to remember enough:

The book of the year is Lawrence Wright's "The Looming Tower," in which the New Yorker staff writer traces the philosophical and personal origins of al-Qaeda and then explains how a relatively small band of desperados repeatedly got past the defenses of the CIA, the FBI, the National Security Council's counterterrorism squad and the U.S. military to carry out the attacks that culminated in the rain of fire and destruction over Manhattan and at the Pentagon on Sept. 11.

Be warned: You, too, may have to fight back a feeling of nausea when reading about the CIA's willful obstruction of FBI efforts to find Sept. 11 plotters already on American soil. You may wonder why Bush did not order prosecutions for misfeasance in office rather than showering agency chiefs with medals. And you will not be able to forget Wright's masterful portrait of FBI agent John O'Neill, who fought al-Qaeda, was thwarted by bureaucratic nonsense and, after retiring, died in the wreckage of the World Trade Center.

I wonder if he remembers Jamie Gorelick's boast, a top dog in Clinton's justice department, that she succeeded in raising restrictions for the transfer of information between the CIA and FBI even higher than the legal bureaucratic nonsense "wall" that already existed.

There was no misfeasance because the law was, unfortunately, being followed: the CIA and FBI were legally prevented from sharing the needed information.  This is one of the walls the Patriot Act was designed to tear down.

The idea that as Qaeda represents only a small band of desperados is apparently meant to be comforting.

No other film matched "United 93" for relevance and artistry in 2006. Director Paul Greengrass captures the extraordinary heroism of ordinary citizens who fought to recapture the hijacked airliner after learning of the World Trade Center attacks, to crash it into a Pennsylvania field rather than let it strike the Capitol in Washington. Theirs was the human response of a nation under attack, reacting even as the attack was underway. It came from the bottom up, which is how societies survive. The passengers of United 93 did not wait for a Homeland Security Department to be formed.

True, and not to take anything at all away from the heroes on United 93, but is this what future airline passengers really want to happen?  Do they really want to stand ready to crash their planes into the ground in the event a terrorist group attempts to take them over?  Wouldn't having armed air marshals from Homeland Security aboard be better?

I have no idea when the next time I am going to fly will be, but I'll certainly feel better that at least somebody is trying, however imperfectly, to keep the terrorists off so that I don't have to charge the cockpit myself.

Here's George Will with an amazing statistic: 

The average weight of American men (191 pounds) and women (164 pounds) has increased 25 pounds since 1960. And according to one study, in 2003 Americans' 223 million cars and light trucks burned an extra 39 million gallons of fuel for every additional pound of passenger weight. So Americans are using almost a billion gallons of gasoline more each year than they would if they were as (comparatively) svelte as they were in 1960.

Amazing, at least to me, to see the actual numbers.  I know that I've probably crept back up over my 191 again, I'm afraid to look until after the first of the year.

Will is writing about Ford's survival problem but I was caught by this snippet:

...in 2001, with much fanfare, Ford rolled out a new version of a 1950s success, the Thunderbird. It was underpowered, handled badly and is no longer in production.

The problem was not the idea but the way it was screwed up.  I wouldn't be surprised if my old buddy Bob Lindblom doesn't still have his old T-bird, but the people who decided to bring out a new version weren't true to much more than using the name.  Building something bigger doesn't automatically make it better, especially something that people liked in the first place because of its size.

And building an underpowered car that doesn't handle well should have been discovered in the trial phases, and corrected.

What you have here is an example of people who think that they can just build something any way they like and you, the customer, will buy it because you have been taught to buy the name.  Like Microsoft Windows.

I'll bet you that Ford could dig out the original specs for the first T-bird, dust off the dies, and make a bundle.  All that R&D already done, the sales promotion all worked out...all of those intangible costs already paid for.

If I had the money and ambition, I'd lease the idea from Ford, contract to build the cars on their own production lines, then pay them out of the profits.

Christmas eve

Survived the party (Carol even went to the Catholic church with the family) and got home at a decent hour, got Tony into bed and the presents from the garage into the house and under the tree...we could go to bed and get a good night's sleep except for the Ticos setting off all of their fireworks, which make poor Poco so unhappy that he won't let us to go sleep unless one of us is holding his paw.

They celebrate on Christmas eve and sleep in in the morning, probably since they get to do that on such rare occasions.  Ordinarily Ticos go to bed fairly early because they rise before dawn in order to get to work on time, usually a fairly long walk or bike ride in itself.  The commuting style is different, but they still commute.

So the fireworks and the dogs are going to keep me up late, the kid will wake me early in the morning.  It's a wonderful life...which we didn't get to watch this week, nor did we get to sing Christmas carols while Carol played.  Oh, well, we all had a good time, just the same.

You should be reading this on Christmas morning...well, no, you shouldn't, you should be enjoying Christmas with your family, but if you are, Merry Christmas from Costa Rica.  This is the first Christmas with our new family together, and the change from last year's unhappiness and uncertainty is like night and day.  Last year we didn't know if we'd ever see Tony again; this year all is well.

Ditto for his birth mother, by the way...if the all-protective state had gotten their way, she would never have seen him again, either.  This way, even though she has still lost him in one sense she can also see him when she wants to visit.  I figure that's a pretty good Christmas present for her, too.

(Will she come by tomorrow?  We haven't heard from her this week.  Poor girl, I feel so sorry for her, so much of her life seems out of her control, but a great deal of that seems to be pretty much her own choices.)

I can't resist this, sorry:

What do a divorce in Alabama, a tornado in Kansas and a hurricane in Florida have in common?

No matter what, somebody's fixin' to lose a trailer.

Merry Christmas, just the same.