Remember when the lamebrains at the Associated Press published photos of Navy Seals accompanying prisoners—suggesting that the photos showed abuse of the prisoners? Froggy at Froggy Ruminations blogged about this outrage earlier this month. He’s now blogging about the lawsuit that the Seals have filed against the AP for publishing those photos.

In fact, the lawyer for the Navy Seals was just interviewed by John Gibson filling in for O’Reilly. A lawyer supporting the position of the AP (though he claimed that he doesn’t represent the AP) balanced out the segment.

Apparently the suit is based on invasion of privacy. According to the lawyer for the Seals, the wife of one of them posted the photos in question on a private website which she believed required a password for access. The suit also focuses on the fact that not only were the photos improperly published, the faces of the Seals are clearly seen in the photos—posing danger to the Seals who are still over there fighting and their families over here in the U.S.. I’m not sure what kind of cause of action exists based on the AP’s failure to obscure the faces unless there was a sustainable case for invasion of privacy. Perhaps some kind of negligent publication theory based on the the fact that the AP has exposed the Seals to danger by the publication? I would think that there would have to be a physical injury to sustain such a theory, so I don’t understand where the lawyer is going with that.

On the privacy issue, though privacy laws vary from state to state, a general discussion of the law can be found in the Restatement of Torts 2:

652A. General Principle
(1) One who invades the right of privacy of another is subject to liability for the resulting harm to the interests of the other.
(2) The right of privacy is invaded by:
(a) unreasonable intrusion upon the seclusion of another, as stated in 652B; or
(b) appropriation of the other’s name or likeness, as stated in 652C; or
(c) unreasonable publicity given to the other’s private life, as stated in 652D; or
(d) publicity that unreasonably places the other in a false light before the public,as stated in 652E.

An interesting question is whether there existed “reasonable expectation of privacy” regarding the photos. The wife thought that the website was restricted—it may not have been restricted since the reporter got into it (I don’t know how). If the wife reasonably believed that it was restricted—is that enough to establish “a reasonable expectation of privacy”? I’d like to know upon what facts she based her conclusion that the site was restricted. I would also like to know what efforts she made to ensure that the site was restricted.

Further, the reporter tracked down the wife and she, according to the Seal’s lawyer, informed him that the photos were taken from a site she believed was restricted—thus the reporter was put on notice that the publishing (via the personal website) of the photos to those outside the family and friends possessing the password was inadvertant. The reporter chose to publish it anyway. (Correction: I watched the segment again during the repeat. The reporter didn’t speak to the wife. He left her a note acknowledging that the site from which he obtained the photos was her private site. Thus, there is evidence that he knew that there was no intent on the wife’s part to publish the photos to the general public. Hmmm, did he hack the site?)

Even if the publication of the photos by the AP was not a tortious act, under the circumstances, it certainly seems like a breach of the Code of Ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists which states:

Recognize that private people have a greater right to control information about themselves than do public officials and others who seek power, influence or attention. Only an overriding public need can justify intrusion into anyone’s privacy.

What is the overriding public need here? The AP will say the “fact” that abuse was ocurring. That “fact” is debatable as discussed below. And, in reaching that conclusion, I believe that the AP ran roughshod over several other sections of the Code of Ethics. (see below)

The lawyer for the Seals also said that when the AP went to the military to inform them that the photos were going to be published, the AP was informed of the dangers posed to the Seals if their faces were revealed. The Seals are, after all, still engaged in covert actions. The AP ignored this and published them anyway—and now the Seal’s faces have been pasted all over the Arab world via Al Jazeera.

Again, from the Code of Ethics:

Recognize that gathering and reporting information may cause harm or discomfort. Pursuit of the news is not a license for arrogance.

Seems to me that the AP has been pretty frick’en arrogant given that they showed total disregard for the safety of these men.

Getting back to the O’Reilly Factor, the punk lawyer supporting the AP justified the publishing of the photos on the basis that the public is entitled to the “truth” and covering up the “truth” is
never harmful. (I don’t think that he’s read the Journalistic Code of Ethics—do you?) Of course, the “truth” as “determined by the AP editorial board” (paraphrasing punk lawyer) is that these photos were evidence of “wrongdoing” necessitating publishing them. Here’s another tidbit from the Code of Ethics:

Be judicious about naming criminal suspects before the formal filing of charges.

The AP editorial board seems to have no concept of the meaning of “judicious”. Either that, or the members believe that they are legitimate arbiters of guilt or innocence, and, of course—our guys are always presumed to be guilty. It seems that they forgot that their own Code of Ethics says:

Test the accuracy of information from all sources and exercise care to avoid inadvertent error. Deliberate distortion is never permissible.

I guess the AP skipped that part because the Seals take issue with the AP’s representations that the photos showed that the prisoners were being abused. I don’t remember the AP or MSM discussing that part. The lawyer for the Seals says that the Seals are fully prepared to testify that there was no abuse. This may be the strongest part of their case. I refer back to the Restatement of Torts section posted above:

(d) publicity that unreasonably places the other in a false light before the public,as stated in 652E.

Here’s the section from the Restatement defining what that means:

652E. Publicity Placing Person in False Light
One who gives publicity to a matter concerning another that places the other before the public in a false light is subject to liability to the other for invasion of his privacy, if
(a) the false light in which the other was placed would be highly offensive to a reasonable person, and
(b) the actor had knowledge of or acted in reckless disregard as to the falsity of the publicized matter and the false light in which the other would be placed.

As I was writing this, Froggy posted on the Factor interview too:

After watching O’Reilly Factor with John Gibson just now, I have a sinking feeling that when I watch 60 Minutes II tonite there will be some more collusion evident between CBSNEWS and other leftist MSM outlets. The attorney advocating for the AP on ORF made the case that no privacy rights had been infringed upon by AP by its methods of obtaining the SEAL’s photographs. Which is what you would expect. The question he didn’t want to answer was, “What news interest was served by showing the photographs unredacted?”

Froggy goes on to say:

In the US “cover ups” are never met with much support, and I don’t begrudge the AP from filing stories that it thinks are newsworthy. But when you take the time to obscure the faces of the terrorists that the SEALs apprehended, what possible reason is there to not afford the SEALs the same courtesy? I can find no other explanation than a malicious intent by the AP to “send a message” to the Teams that the editors do not support the Iraq War in an effort to intimidate the families of the SEALs themselves. How would you feel if your husband was half a world away fighting terrorists, and all of a sudden his mug was on Al Jazeera 24-7 with the tagline “Imperialist terrorist aggressor” scrolling beneath? You’d feel like it was time to move, and furthermore to implore your husband that his dangerous work was putting his children in jeopardy. Re-enlistment bonuses and special pays don’t make up for that kind of pressure to get out, move and become a cop in your hometown. I am incredulous at the thought that this never occurred to the AP editors who decided to publish these photo worldwide.

I hope that the lawyer for the Seals comes up with an effective theory against the AP. If he does, maybe it will set loose a swarm of plaintiff’s personal injury trial lawyers on the MSM. That would be entertaining.

Today’s Washington Times publishes an opinion piece by Tony Blankley regarding the attacks on Rumsfeld. He begins the piece by saying:

It is often observed that certain brilliant people “don’t suffer fools gladly.” But the more common experience of mankind is that fools don’t suffer brilliant people gladly.

And what about the outrage of some at Rumsfeld’s comment that “you go to war with the military you have”?

Several senators and congressmen who have been in town for decades hate Mr. Rumsfeld’s logic that you fight a war with the Army you’ve got. They prefer the illogic that cutting the size of our Army in half between 1990-2000 should have no bearing on the size of the Army you have in 2001. How dare Mr. Rumsfeld point out the consequences.

He goes on to recount the history of the peace dividend and to explain Rumsfeld’s logic:

Their good, if illogical, reason for gutting our Army was to trade a “peace dividend” for votes in the 1990s on the hope that we wouldn’t have any new enemies in the 2000s. But the logic of their action was that in our current war, the Army is too small. And, the cost of rebuilding the Army back to 15-20 divisions would double or triple today’s much-complained of deficit of about a half a trillion dollars per annum. No wonder Mr. Rumsfeld isn’t calling for massive Army expansion in today’s political climate. But the logic of his decisions outrages the Beltway sages.

Blankely also discusses the motivations of some of Rumsfeld’s critics which I discussed here.

My favorite part is Blankely’s explanation of the fervor behind the outrage at Rumsfeld—Rumsfeld’s failure to be a big schmoozer. What the Senators and Congressman apparently want is the Walrus from Alice in Wonderland as Blankely notes:

He is , in fact, doing his job just fine. But we live in age of fraudulent sentiment and paralyzing political correctness. In such a time, Don Rumsfeld1s greatest mistake is not sweetening his logic with sentimental treacle. He could learn from Lewis Carroll’s Walrus who, before gobbling up the little oysters (which is the logical consequence of a Walrus meeting a plate of oysters), proclaimed:

“I weep for you,” the Walrus said, “I deeply sympathize.

“With sobs and tears he sorted out

“Those of the largest size,

“Holding his pocket-handkerchief

“Before his streaming eyes.”

Perhaps Mr. Rumsfeld would have more friends in Washington if he had weeped before cancelling the Crusader cannon, or explaining the realities of war. But without his cold logic, we would expose ourselves to the fate of the ever-sentimental little oysters.

The Currency Lad weighs in on the squashing of Christmas by the Christophobes. He also publishes and links an article which reveals that it hasn’t always been non-Christians who have ruined Christmas for other people:

In 1647 Oliver Cromwell cancelled Christmas: no parties, no fun, no days off work. Cromwell’s Puritanism was offended by bacchanalian revelry, led by the Lord of Misrule. Each year, town criers went through the land ordering that “Christmas and all other superstitious festivals” should not be celebrated.

The English were outraged. Secret festivities were held, pro-Christmas riots broke out and dozens of Christmas martyrs were jailed. A pamphlet called An Hue and Cry after Christmas was published, demanding that: “Any man or woman, that can give any knowledge, or tell any tidings of an old, old, very old grey bearded gentleman, called Christmas…let him bring him back again into England.”

Just remember that Cromwell’s Puritans were part of the same group of people who immigrated to New England and whose descendants now live in those northeastern Blue States. More about the differences between the New England Puritans and the Scots-Irish ancestors of most of us out here in “Jesus Land” will be discussed when I write my review of Born to Fight: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America.

David Limbaugh has a really good post on why the liberals are attacking Rumsfeld—to backhandedly get to Bush:

In the same way, trashing Rumsfeld is trashing Bush but without having to mention his name—a type of plausible deniability. This is not to say, of course, that the libs don’t independently loathe Rumsfeld and Cheney, which they most certainly do. These are two tough guys who refuse to play politically correct games and who dish back as much as they receive. You’ll remember Cheney’s coining of the new word, “Clymer,” and his colorful dressing drown of Patrick Leahy over painting him and the president as criminal liars. As for Rumsfeld, he simply refuses to suffer liberal fools—especially those in the Old Media—gladly.

He’s got that covered, so I want to discuss the anti-Rumsfeld Republicans presently acting like jackels at a “wolf kill”. I’m doing a bit of live blogging as I eat lunch at my desk and listen to Judge Napolitano host the O’Reilly radio show. A retired Colonel who is now a defense analyst at the Pentagon just called in and pointed out the fact that Rumsfeld’s vision of what the military should be is so at odds with what our cold war conventional forces were—that perhaps some entrenched special interests are threatened by the change. We’ve all read that Rumsfeld thinks our forces should be lighter and quicker and more mobile to meet the demands of warfare against terrorists. If Rumsfeld succeeds in that vision—won’t that mean there are less pork-barrel goodies for Senators to hand out to their states?

The caller on O’Reilly seemed to think so. Remember, there is talk of closing bases in Trent Lott’s state of Mississippi going on right now. And, though I can’t find a link on it right now, I seem to remember that Lott wanted some weapons system (that would be built in Mississippi) that Rumsfeld didn’t want.

With the Republicans being pro-military, are pork-barrel military projects more important to Senators of our party? Do McCain, Hagel and Lott feel threatened that a less conventional, lighter, more mobile and more efficient military would not yield the kind of high-dollar projects a cold-war type military would generate?

Besides Lott, would McCain and Hagel benefit (in currying their respective constituencies) more from Rumsfeld’s vision—or more from a continuation of a conventional cold-war fighting force?

If this is the motiviation of these three guys in attacking Rumsfeld, then, as I characterized McCain and other Republicans joining the attack in this post—they are a bunch of opportunistic jackels. Just because they are Republican does not mean that we should give them a pass when they behave like Luddites trying to drag our military back into the 20th century for personal political gain.

Update:

I discovered what the weapons system was that Lott wanted. It was the Crusader artillery platform. I discovered it via Hugh Hewitt’s link to a new column by Victor Davis Hansen who writes about the attacks on Rumsfeld and gets in a dig at Trent Lott:

Fifth, have we forgotten what Mr. Rumsfeld did right? Not just plenty, but plenty of things that almost anyone else would not have done. Does anyone think the now-defunct Crusader artillery platform would have saved lives in Iraq or helped to lower our profile in the streets of Baghdad?

I then googled Crusader Artillery Platform and found this interesting post written on December 21, 2004 by NixGuy . It concerns the fact that not only did Lott support the Crusader—but Norm Coleman did as well. NixGuy says:

Here is an article from 2 years ago where Senator Norm Coleman, one of Rumsfeld’s knifers is complaining about Rumsfeld killing the Crusader.

The possible loss of hundreds of defense industry jobs in Minnesota has become a political issue. The Bush administration has announced it’s canceling development of the Crusader artillery system being designed in Minnesota. Republican Senate candidate Norm Coleman is accusing incumbent Democratic Sen. Paul Wellstone of not doing enough to help save the Crusader and the Minnesota jobs associated with the program.

And now, Coleman is saying:

Senator Norm Coleman says he’s “deeply troubled” about whether the Pentagon has done enough to provide armored vehicles to troops in Iraq.

NixGuy asks the following question of Coleman:

Whatever, if we had a real hard-working media, the immediate question would be: Does Rumsfeld cancelling the Crusader have anything to do with your criticism?

Indeed.

I really admire Norm Coleman for his work on the U.N. Food for Oil Scandal investigation. That said he is a politician. We, the people, need to keep all these guys, Republican and Democratic, in line by audibly reminding them that our country’s defense is a heck of a lot more important than their individual pork barrel projects. Even really good men like Senator Coleman need such reminders occasionally. Heck, we all do.

Today I read a great opinion piece in the Austin American-Statesman written by woman about her hunt for mountain lions in the Davis Mountains located in the Big Bend area West Texas. The Austin-American Statesman’s outdoor writer, Mike Leggett had written a column about the hunt, causing Austin’s liberals to get their panties in a wad. She felt compelled to respond:

I am not a cold-hearted animal killer. Quite the contrary. I hunt for many reasons. I hunt to provide my family with the freshest meat, which has no preservatives or additives and is leaner and lower in cholesterol than beef. Hunting also gives me control over the cleaning of that meat, which I know is properly cared for. I also believe that to hunt an animal when it has lived free in the wild is far preferable to keeping an animal penned up so it can be fattened for slaughter.

You go girl!! I couldn’t find any of the letters or the original column written about her hunting trip. Many of you may know that Austin is a left-leaning town, and is filled with people who apparently don’t realize that the meat at the local grocery store comes from an animal that somebody killed. There are also a quite a few “health nazis” who shop only at Whole Foods and buy organic—so the above referenced paragraph is particularly relevant.

I enjoy hunting—though I have only hunted dove and quail. That’s not to say I am very good at it. I mainly enjoy being outdoors, watching exquisitely-trained dogs retrieve, shooting the gun—and I absolutely love the smell of gunpowder.

I used to be the only female partner at an Insurance Defense firm. For years, I was the only woman lawyer.

Every year, the guys would hold the South Texas Dove Hunt. They’d take insurance-adjuster clients, judges and all the male lawyers to my Senior Partner’s ranch outside of Devine, Texas to hunt dove. They wouldn’t take me.

For years I fumed and bitched and moaned about this. I’d make snide comments. I’d imagine taking my portable recorder into the Senior Partner’s office in order to ask him why I couldn’t go while sticking the recorder in his face to tape the response.

I visualized what the trip was like. I imagined that my colleagues were impressing clients with their legal knowledge, having intellectual discussions about the law with the judges and bonding with each other in an extremely elevated and comradely manner.

Finally, I’d had enough. I decided to crash the South Texas Dove Hunt. In advance, I made reservations at a motel in Devine, appropriately called the Antlers Inn. I knew that staying at the ranch itself would be pushing things too far and would really p.o. my partner’s wives. Besides, I had no desire to share one bathroom with thirty guys.

Late on Friday afternoon, just in time for the evening dove hunt, I arrived at the ranch. I have to say they handled it pretty well. I stationed myself at one of the tanks, prepared not only to hunt, but to be participating in all that other stuff I thought they were doing.

Within 15 minutes of arrival, I witnessed my partners’ attempts to impress clients. Rather than impressing the client with his legal knowledge, however, one my partners ended up impressing a client with how fast he could drive the client to the hospital. That was because the client got so drunk, he fell down and dislocated his shoulder and had to be taken to the nearest hospital for treatment.

That evening, we all went to a restaurant together where I got to interact with one of the judges. To be precise, I interacted with an Appellate Court Justice. But instead of having an intellectual discussion about the law with him, he got so drunk that he kept trying to feed me lemon meringue pie while repeatedly asking: “Isn’t this better than sex?” Finally a District Court Judge told him to knock it off.

As far as the bonding part goes, I sort of envisioned us all sitting around a campfire singing songs and telling stories or something like that. The singing part didn’t happen, but I got treated to stories about past hunting trips. I think that one of those stories is particularly relevant to understanding how men demonstrate sensitivity and should be read by all those ridiculous people complaining that Donald Rumsfeld is not sensitive enough.

During one of the trips a few years before I went, the guys were driving from the golf course back to the ranch to play dominoes before the evening dove hunt. Of course, the ones who weren’t driving had drunk a quite few cold ones while playing golf. I must also mention that the food eaten by the men during these hunts was a bit hard on the stomach. For breakfast, they favored really spicy chorizo—and for lunch they had dove wrapped with bacon and fresh jalepenos cooked over the barbeque pit. At night they liked chicken-fried steak with lots of really greasy gravy or spicy Mexican food.

Anyway during this previous trip, as the convoy of hunters drove back to the ranch, one of the cars had to pull over because a client felt the call of nature. This was the kind of call of nature which required some privacy so that he could pull his pants down. Needless to say, he was pretty drunk—and by the time he convinced the rest of the guys to pull over—he was also pretty desperate as he’d eaten a little too much greasy and spicy food that day. As soon as they pulled over, he shot out of the car and ran like the wind (albeit a shifty wind) towards the barbed wire fence—thinking that he was going to jump over it. Unfortunately, he ended up running straight into the fence, hanging up in the barbed wire and passing out cold while simultaneously doing his business in his pants.

The other guys showed great sensitivity toward him due to this unfortunate predicament. They (gingerly) picked him up out of the barbed wire and put him in the bed of one of the pick-up trucks for transport back to the ranch. Once there, they set him under a tree as far downwind as possible from the domino games. But-they were sensitive about it. They did leave him a paint scraper to use on himself when he woke up.

I learned a lot about men during that hunting trip. I probably cramped their style but they respected the fact that I took all the ribbing like a good sport instead of getting all huffy and feminazi-like. In fact, I got toasted at the Mexican food restaurant the last night of the trip. Those men toasted me for having the biggest—uh—nerves—of any woman they knew.

I respect them too. I respect them a heck of a lot more than I do those people like Phil Donahue who are yapping about Rumsfeld supposedly being insensitive . My one-time (and I mean one-time as I never bugged them about going again) hunting buddies are real men—and I don’t think that Phil Donahue would have been toasted by those men for anything on that trip. I think those men would have left Phil Donahue passed-out and hanging in that barbed wire fence without so much as a paint scraper—and he would have deserved it.

Tracy over at Worship Naked pointed me—via comments to my post about the funny joke posted by The Anchoress—to a totally hilarious personal story she posted back in November. I’m glad I didn’t have any coffee in my mouth when I was reading this story—especially when I got to the end.

Oh, and go look at the joke in this comment posted at the Anchoress.

I’m planning to write a review of my new favorite book Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America, I just have to find the words to do it justice. I was so captivated by the book that I had to read it while listening to the album The Chieftains made with some American country western singers. The name of the album is Another Country.

What I read in the book about these tough and enduring people perfectly dove-tails with my disgust at the criticism of Rumsfeld not being “sensitive” enough because he uses an Autopen. Can you imagine what George Patton, a Scots-Irishman himself, would say about this brouhaha over Secretary of Defense not being sensitive in the way these people mean it? Especially if Patton had to endure Phil Donahue talking about it as Donahue did on the O’Reilly Factor earlier this week. Patton would have slapped Phil Donahue with his glove like he did that G.I..

Hopefully, I’ll get the review done in the next few days. Maybe I’ll also find some additional music to listen to as you read the book.

I don’t like dirty jokes. They are not funny to me—just embarrassing. So when I find a really funny clean joke, I’m happy. The Anchoress has posted a wonderful joke over at her blog.

Go read it. It will make your Monday.

Aren’t they cute?
My Babies
Posted by Hello

I’m extremely upset about the new war against Rumsfeld. It was bad enough when leftists were orchestrating it. I’m disgusted that so-called conservatives are morphing into jackels and joining the leftist wolves in order to attempt to bring down someone who is a hero as far as I’m concerned.

John McCain is one of the jackels. I don’t understand why any conservative has respect for John McCain. The man was castrated back in the 80’s over his support for Keating during the S & L scandels. Let me assure you that I believe that most of the S&L scandel was provoked by stupid government policies and that I don’t know if Keating was really a crook. Since I represent health providers against government regulators—I’m more willing to believe the regulated than the regulators. But, my opinion is that John McCain got really weird after almost being destroyed by his friendship with Keating.

My view was reinforced in 2000 after McCain showed a total lack of self control during the Presidential Primaries. Remember when he acted like a total butt towards Maria Shriver? Not that I like Maria Shriver—but I expect someone who intends to be my President to act like a human being in control.

My take on the John McCain issue is that conservatives are so used to him stabbing us in the back—that when he throws us any tiny little crumb—we’re on our knees crawling to thank and bless him for the tiny little favor. It’s as if the entire Republican Party has a Patty Hearst-like Stockholm syndrome over John McCain. He rapes us and then whispers a few kind words and we fall all over him. That’s pretty sick.

Back to Donald Rumsfeld.

People like McCain and Bill Kristol are using that meeting between Rumsfeld and the troops where the journalist violated journalistic ethics by feeding a question to a soldier in an attempt to put Rumsfeld on the spot. The problem is that McCain and others do not appear to be reading the whole transcript. Or, John McCain has some other self-aggrandizing motive.


Read what I link in the previous paragraph as the articles are far more articulate than anything I could produce as a paraphrase. But, what I will offer to you is a letter from a soldier written to Jack Wheeler’s To The Point News. This soldier was actually at that meeting with Rumsfeld. I got this letter from an article written by Jack Kelly published by Jack Wheeler’s To The Point News. I wrote about that site here. I highly recommend that you go there and pay some money for a subscription. It is worth it. Receiving the To The Point e-mail newsletter on Fridays is one of the highlights of my week. Here is the letter:

An Open Letter from US Army 1st Sgt. Timmy Rikard:

This is a shotgun blast response to the media reports on Secretary Rumsfeld’s visit to our Camp. I was fortunate enough to be there and even shake the man’s hand. When the media reports were released concerning the event, I could not believe what I saw and heard. There are over 12,000 troops on our base. Only 2,000 or so had the opportunity to attend the gathering and I can tell you, those were hotly contested seats.

Not as the media would have you believe, so we could voice our displeasure, but rather to have the opportunity to see and hear the man we admire. Mr. Secretary spoke for 10 minutes or so on the war in Iraq and what freedom meant to the people of Afghanistan. He was there for the recent elections and shared his wonderful insight. After his prepared remarks he opened up the floor for questions and made it very clear that nothing was off limits.

Folks, this is extremely unusual for a dignitary to do. Also, we as leaders were instructed to not screen our soldiers’ questions. They were to be honest and from the heart. Mr. Rumsfeld fielded a number of questions, took down notes for the ones he did not have answers to and genuinely enjoyed talking to the soldiers. Afterward, he spent over an hour with the enthusiastic troops who literally mobbed him and would not let him leave. He smiled for all, shook hands and had pictures taken. It ended only when his security forced us away. He was applauded, he was given a standing ovation, and he was loved.

He stood there like a professional, like a man, and he took the heat because that’s what leaders do. And yet somehow, the American media turned that wonderful event into a “disgruntled troops meet with Secretary Rumsfeld” headline. Incredible. The morale is high, the equipment is good and improving daily. Disregard what you read and hear from the media and trust in the American fighting men and women to do the right thing. We have excellent leadership and are doing what we signed up to do.

1SG Timmy Rikard

I conclude that Rumsfeld has been a fantastic leader.


UPDATE:

In addition to the letter I posted above from the soldier who was actually at the meeting between the troops and Rumsfeld, read a terrific post by Hindrocket at Powerline. The post reveals the true situation concerning the Humvees. It appears that the state of the Humvees belonging to the unit of the Guardsman who asked the planted question was not quite what the question implied. In fact, the unit’s Humvees were almost all completely armored at the time the question was asked. All of the Humvees were armored within 24 hours of the question, and that armoring was scheduled to happen within the same 24 hour period even before the question was asked.

Go read the transcript of the press conference regarding this which is also linked by Powerline.

Hugh Hewitt is writing about the revelations that Celebrex may carry some risks of heart problems. As Hugh demonstrates, this is being greatly exaggerated.

All I can say is, what a boon for plaintiff’s personal injury lawyers! As soon as similar information was released about Vioxx, I received letters from personal injury lawyers soliciting cases involving people who have been “harmed” by Vioxx. Since I’m a lawyer, I’m on their solicitation list.

I meant to blog about this when I received those disgusting letters but other stuff was going on at the time that was more interesting to me.

All I can say is that there is NO drug without risks. That’s why physicians are involved in prescribing drugs like Vioxx and Celebrex. Most patients benefit greatly from these drugs. It’s a miniscule few who have adverse affects.

The fact that the few is miniscule will not stop predatory lawyers from attempting to feed on the bodies of the pharmaceutical companies making these drugs. And, it is probable that most of the cases will involve people who have heart problems because they are old. These same people will have arthritic pain because they are old. But the plaintiff’s personal injury lawyers will find expert witnesses willing to prostitute themselves to testify that the drugs caused the heart problems. That’s how it works in the realm of products liability.

Y’all want true tort reform? Figure out how to stop State funded law schools from pumping out more lawyers.

Today, World Net Daily posted this.

Two parents who objected to a Massachusetts high school’s homosexual-awareness day were expelled from the campus after a mother began videotaping a session.

snip

The school did not send home a note to parents about the event, a Newton North spokeswoman acknowleged to CWA’s Culture & Family Institute. But she said the event is listed on the school’s website and in calendars at the beginning of the year, and some e-mails were sent out.

While the event was not mandatory, she said, “Classes are scheduled to attend various workshops, but if students are uncomfortable or their parents are uncomfortable, the students can instead go to the library.”

Wasn’t that last point about being sent to the library one of the arguments used to purge prayer from public schools?

Regardless, here we have an event where the school threatens a mother with arrest for recording it—though on O’Reilly tonight, the mom said there is no policy about video taping such events and parents video tape school plays all the time—and we have the school trying to hide the fact that this is going on by not asking permission from parents for the children to participate.

The mother who was involved in this took the trouble to inform herself of what was on the school calender and to protect her child from this event. I can only hope that she takes the trouble to yank her child out of a school run by asshats who dare to threaten parents with arrest for video-taping a program consisting of perverts trying to propagandize to their children.

Memo to all you parents out there hiring lawyers to sue schools who do this out of some desire to change the system: Forget about it!! The school bureaucracy will outlast your influence. Stupid people will remain in control. I’m a lawyer. I know when litigation is not worth it.

Get your children out.

To be continued….

I love kids. When I socialize with parents I love to talk to them about their kids and animals.

I like to babysit my skipper’s three-year-old son. I bought Shirley Temple CD’s to take with me when I babysit. Little D and I tap dance to such Shirley Temple classics as “I Love to Walk in the Rain.” I assure you that this is far superior entertainment to that Barney and TeleTubby crap. In fact, when I first saw a TeleTubby episode, I asked: “Why are your children watching a show filled with things who have dead eyes?”

When I think of little D having to go to public school and being subjected to things like this, I absolutely cringe:

Today’s lesson in government idiocy comes to us courtesy of the city of brotherly love, Philadelphia. It seems last Thursday little 10-year-old Porsche Brown took a pair of scissors to school. That’s right, a pair of scissors. These were 8-inch scissors. In other words, full-sized scissors…like sewing scissors. About the length of a width of a piece of paper.And what did the fourth-grader do with the scissors? Did she threaten anyone with them? Of course not. But because the empty-headed wastes of oxygen that pass for “administrators” cannot think for themselves, they decided that just because she possessed the scissors, she violated their “zero tolerance” policy for potential weapons.So what did they do? Did they take the scissors away from the child and call the parent? Not at all. That would be at least remotely sensible. No….they called the police and had the girl arrested. So the police arrived, handcuffed the 10-year-old child, and hauled her away in a patrol wagon. To their credit, the police eventually realized she had done nothing wrong and let her go.

The child was also suspended and I am sure that some lawyer got involved on behalf of the child and her parents. I keep reading about parents getting attorneys involved to get their kids back into public schools after brain-dead behavior like this. My question is: Why? Why would any parent want their kid to go to a school run by a moron who would have a ten-year-old kid hauled away in handcuffs over a pair of scissors?

For the past few years, I have read about Christmas being erased from school programs. David Limbaugh writes about yet another ridiculous case of discrimination against Christians. His book Persecution, is filled with examples of such discrimination.

All over the United States, parents are filing suits on behalf of their kids over such trangressions violating the First Amendment rights of their children. I bet that most of these cases won’t be resolved until after the kids graduate from college.

Thus, my question is: What’s the point? And, most importantly: Why are your kids still stuck in public schools?

To be continued…

I am trying hard to get into the Christmas spirit. As I wrote in my last post, I pity Maureen Dowd and her contempt for Christmas. That said, I have my own problems with this season.

As I child, I loved Christmas. I loved the Nativity Scenes and Mr. Magoo as Scrooge in A Christmas Carol. I loved going to church and singing Christmas Carols and participating in the school Christmas program. I loved the story of Baby Jesus.

I always thought I was getting a real haul from Santa Claus. I was very surprised as an adult to hear from my mother that she thought we (the children) weren’t getting very much. I strongly disagreed.

In fact, I received my favorite and most memorable gift when I was seven or eight years old—after seeing Disney’s Peter Pan. That year, I asked Santa for Tinkerbell Dust—and I got it! (It was a cute container of gold glitter—but I didn’t know that) In fact, I can’t remember any other gift that I received that year. I spent hours and weeks on top of my neighbor’s concrete block fence, sprinkling Tinkerbell Dust on me and trying to fly. It never occurred to me that there was a problem with the Dust—I thought that I was simply not believing hard enough. Somehow, I don’t think that many eight-year-olds of today would be as happy as I was about receiving a container of gold glitter for Christmas.

I have to admit that the Christmas season has become torture for me the last two decades because I absolutely, positively hate to shop—and that seems to be all Christmas is about these days.

That may seem like a strange thing for a woman to say. Most women I know love shopping. They consider a day of shopping and lunch to be the perfect social occasion. I consider such a day to be absolute purgatory.

I am an attorney. As a result, I have to have decent professional clothes. If it were not for my friends—and the internet, I would be showing up in court in twenty year old suits. Fortunately for me, I have friends who trick me into shopping at least every two or so years. The last time my friends tricked me into such a day, I totally embarrassed them by repeatedly and loudly exclaiming “you have got to be kidding” after being informed by the sales lady that a particular purse was priced at $200.

In fact, my shopping phobia is so bad that I allowed a friend of mine who was starting a counseling practice to work on me. We went to Target and she tried to counsel me and positively reinforce the experience in the midst of what seemed to me to be absolute chaos among shelves filled with uneccessary junk. The counseling didn’t work.

Now I think of the Christmas season as a stressful, shopping-focused, tortuous time. I never see Nativity Scenes. The church I go to doesn’t have one. Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol is no longer on television. No one reads Hans Christian Anderson’s The Little Match Girl—and where is Amal and the Night Visitors?

Are there any little girls who would love to receive Tinkerbell Dust from Santa Claus?

Last week I read about Maureen Dowd’s article dissing Christmas—I can’t remember where I first read about it. At first, I couldn’t bring myself to read her article. I assumed that her antipathy derived from her single, childless state—which I share. This made me feel sorry for her.

Then, I read The Anchoress and finally got the courage to read Maureen’s column. I discovered that her hatred of Christmas derives from her absolute contempt of people who love Christmas and honor the meaning of it—the birth of Jesus Christ. In other words, she has contempt for Christians.

I still felt sorry for her. In fact, after hosting a party for my employees last Friday and becoming almost maudlin over how much I care for all of them (adding in a few glasses of red wine), I decided that I needed to order a gift for Maureen Dowd to help her overcome her aversion to Christians. At midnight, after all of my employees left, I fired up my computer and went to Amazon.com and ordered the book about Corrie ten Boom, The Hiding Place. I also ordered the Bible study which accompanies the book. In my head, I composed a powerful letter to Ms. Dowd about why she should read the book and do the Bible study—which I promptly forgot by the next day. Today I received Maureen’s gift.

I think that I should send it to her. I just need some help to re-compose my letter. Can any of you help?

I really didn’t know all that much about Bernie Kerik before his nomination. What I read sounded pretty good. He seemed “take charge” and “no nonsense.” But, I have a real problem with serial philanderers.

You can’t trust people who do things like this in either business or personal life. Someone who would cheat on his wife AND his mistresses is beyond the pale in my opinion.

Bill O’Reilly had a guest on tonight and the two of them were bemoaning the fact that good men won’t vounteer for leadership positions because of the internet and medias coverage of information like this. I say B.S.! I don’t consider men who do things like this to be “good men” and I certainly don’t want to be led by one. Such a man either has no self-control or no compassion for his wife—or perhaps both.

Don’t you think that it is a bit sociopathic to have a secret harem in this day and age?