Send a trackback to this post, but don’t forget to link it. (PS: the graphic goes to a joke that John McCain looks like the character Saul Tye in Battlestar Galactica)

Surrendie is thrilled today of the neurotic Sybil like articles available in the NY Times. First, he wants you to read this

The individual right to bear arms identified by the Supreme Court on Thursday will have little practical impact in most of the country, legal experts said, though Washington’s comprehensive ban on handguns used for self-defense in the home will have to be revised, and similar laws in several cities are also vulnerable.

So, the Heller decision is just a big yawn, no big deal, let’s move on, people!

For the law to be just, it must temper society’s anger over even the most horrible acts withdecency and restraint. The Supreme Court exemplified that principle on Wednesday, striking down the death penalty for the rape of a child. While acknowledging the horror of the crime, Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority opinion drew on widely shared standards of decency, constitutional law and real-world impact to explain why the Constitution forbids punishing it withdeath.

The 5-to-4 ruling also laid down a critical standard: in cases of crimes against individuals (which excludes treason and espionage) the death penalty can be applied only when the victim’s life is taken. That rule should deter efforts to extend the use of capital punishment.

Refusing to allow people who violently sexually assault children without causing their deaths is a HUGE deal, though, and all must bow in the presenceof such wisdom, and don’t you damned neo-cons even THINK of trying to extend the death penalty to anyone else. Like abortion, this Right must never be touched and all people aspiring to the federal bench must follow this incredible precedent!

Of course, in another editorial, the Times is freaking out about the Heller ruling as being the future cause of un-countless gun related deaths. That they might be deaths of criminals shot by their attempted victims seems never to have crossed the Times’ neurotic mind

In his dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens was right when he said that the court has now established “a new constitutional right” that creates a “dramatic upheaval in the law.”

“Dramatic upheaval.” “New Constitutional Right.” It’s like the 2nd Amendment was just written yesterday. Goodness! Meanwhile, the 4th Amendment does not actually specify that it is only capital crimes, ie, ones that cause death, as the term “infamous crimes,” is included. In fact, it says that people shall not be deprived of their lives in these types of cases without due process, and I think brutally sexually assaulting an 8 year old, who will carry the mental and physical scars for the rest of her life, as “infamous.” Hell, back in the days of the Founders, said assailant would probably not have made it to a jury trial.

Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Perri Nelson’s Website, Rosemary’s Thoughts, Allie is Wired, The World According to Carl, The Pink Flamingo, Cao’s Blog, Democrat=Socialist, Right Voices, and Gone Hollywood, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Sound advice from the Times Online: Cheer up. We’re winning this War on Terror

Al-Qaeda and the Taleban are in retreat, the surge has worked in Iraq and Islamism is discredited. Not a bad haul.

“My centre is giving way. My right is in retreat. Situation excellent. I shall attack!”

If only our political leaders and opinion-formers displayed even a hint of the defiant resilience that carried Marshal Foch to victory at the Battle of the Marne. But these days timorous defeatism is on the march. In Britain setbacks in the Afghan war are greeted as harbingers of inevitable defeat. In America, large swaths of the political class continues to insist Iraq is a lost cause. The consensus in much of the West is that the War on Terror is unwinnable.

And yet the evidence is now overwhelming that on all fronts, despite inevitable losses from time to time, it is we who are advancing and the enemy who is in retreat. The current mood on both sides of the Atlantic, in fact, represents a kind of curious inversion of the great French soldier’s dictum: “Success against the Taleban. Enemy giving way in Iraq. Al-Qaeda on the run. Situation dire. Let’s retreat!”

The writer, Gerard Baker, is kinda missing the point, though. Those on the Left feed on the doom and gloom like some sort of psychic vampire from a B horror movie, which is shown by many of the freakout comments left with the article.

The “surge”, despite all the doubts and derision at the time, has been a triumph of US military planning and execution. Political progress was slower in coming but is now evident too. The Iraqi leadership has shown great courage and dispatch in extirpating extremists and a growing willingness even to turn on Shia militias. Basra is more peaceful and safer than it has been since before the British moved in. Despite setbacks such as yesterday’s bombings, the streets of Iraq’s cities are calmer and safer than they have been in years. Seventy companies have bid for oil contracts from the Iraqi Government. There are signs of a real political reconciliation that may reach fruition in the election later this year.

Hmmmm. Which candidate was pushing for The Surge well before it was announced, and which one prefers to retreat in the face of advancements?

Back on June 12th, after I caught the supposed birth certificate of Barack Obama’sat the Kos Kidz Konglomerate, I wondered whether it was faked. Things went back and forth around the port and starboard sides of the Interwebzosphere.

But, now, israelinsiderhas pretty much definitive proof the it is a load of bilge water.

The image became increasingly suspect with Israel Insider’s revelation that variations of the certificate image were posted on the Photobucket image aggregation website- including one listing the location of Obama’s birth as Antarctica, one with the certificate supposedly issued by the government of North Korea, and another including a purported photo of baby Barack — one of which has a “photo taken” time-stamp just two minutes before the article and accompanying image was postedon the left-wing Daily Kos blog. (for purposes of clarification, of of those at the first link is mine, done after the posting by Kos)

An authentic Hawaiian birth certificate for another Hawaiian individual has since surfaced which, using the same official form as the presumptive Obama certificate, includes an embossed official seal and an authoritative signature, coming through from the back. Obama’s alleged certificate lacks those features, and the certificate number referencing the birth year has been blacked out, making it untraceable.

Read the whole thing. I’d write more, but, damned beat from 18 holes in 96 degree weather.

Stop The ACLU through American Thinker

Funnily! It reminds me of a 3 Stooges episode

As the Mile High City gears up to host a Democratic bash for 50,000, organizers are discovering the perils of trying to stage a political spectacle that’s also politically correct.

Consider the fanny packs.

he host committee for the Democratic National Convention wanted 15,000 fanny packs for volunteers. But they had to be made of organic cotton. By unionized labor. In the USA.

Official merchandiser Bob DeMasse scoured the country. His weary conclusion: “That just doesn’t exist.”

Ditto for the baseball caps. “We have a union cap or an organic cap,” Mr. DeMasse says. “But we don’t have a union-organic offering.”

And it gets better and better. They are going to have people going around making sure every bit of garbage goes in juuuuust the right container, and will have people pawing through the garbage to verify. Disgusting!

Seriously, most of this is not “green,” but climate change silliness. Green is about protecting the environment. Climate change is about making sure to blame Man for everything, and blame America. They are even taking it to new lows

Democrats say the point is to build habits that will endure long after the convention. To that end, the city has staged “greening workshops” attended by hundreds of caterers, restaurant owners and hotel managers. “It’s the new patriotism,” Mayor Hickenlooper says.

I’m not even going to go there on that one.

Has anyone else noticed that Obama’s campaign seems to resemble the “machine that goes ping” joke from Monty Python’s meaning of life (Stacy is groaning with yet another MP reference ) Ah, I see you have the machine that goes ping. This is my favorite. You see we lease it back from the company we sold it to and that way it comes under the monthly current budget and not the capital account. In other words, Obama’s stances are all a game, and you never really know where he stands. There’s another quote that stands out, but, I’ll wait to the end

(The Politico) When former Sen. John Edwards dropped out of the presidential race, the progressive Netroots took their affections to Barack Obama, defending him against attack from Hillary Rodham Clinton and others.

But with his support of a government surveillance bill that offers retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies — a bill that he vowed last year to filibuster — the honeymoon has ended.

Disappointed over hi