H/T Righting America: Timmer’s Lucid Retrospectives Ending 2005

Strange to see … Scott Ott out of character:

»» …Bush’s New Year Resolutions

BREITBART.com
FREMONT, California – A pack of angry Chihuahuas attacked a police officer who was escorting a teenager home following a traffic stop, authorities said. The officer suffered minor injuries including bites to his ankle on Thursday when the five Chihuahuas escaped the 17-year-old boy’s home and rushed the officer in the doorway, said Fremont detective Bill Veteran.

…

Fremont is about 35 miles (56 kilometers) southwest of San Fransisco.

» Breitbart.com: » Angry Chihuahuas Attack Officer

Two days ago I posted, Kwanzaa: A Celebration of Hate? In hindsight I shouldn’t have made that a question. Carlotta Morrow raises the right questions: Should Christians Celebrate It – Should Anyone Celebrate It?

La Shawn Barber has a new post that provides background and a link to Carlotta’s site, The Truth About Kwanzaa, and La Shawn says, “The research I’ve done pales in comparison to the work Carlotta has done.”

But you really need to visit La Shawn’s site to prep for the educational experience waiting at Carlotta’s super site.

From a story in Fox News, Dec. 29, 2005:

WASHINGTON — The specter of another Washington leak investigation has been raised in the wake of December’s revelation that President Bush authorized the National Security Agency to monitor phone calls and e-mails inside the United States without court warrants.

…

“The government has no legal right to pursue the whistleblower [or] whistleblowers who disclosed what’s been publicly aired to date,” Tom Devine, the legal director for the Government Accountability Project and a lawyer who represents whistleblowers, told FOXNews.com.

… » Fox News » NSA Spy Story Could Lead to New Leak Probe

UFB!

BTW: A Rasmussen poll shows that 64% of Americans think that listening and watching is a good thing. — And,

BTW again from Rasmussen: Friday December 23, 2005–Fifty percent (50%) of American adults approve of the way George W. Bush is performing his role as President. That’s up six points since the President’s speech on Sunday night.

Year-end message from NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory:

“JPL missions and instruments capture unique and beautiful images 365 days a year. The following photo essay and gallery offer a glimpse at just a few of these views.”

A sample

“Mimas drifts along in its orbit against the azure backdrop of Saturn’s northern latitudes in this true color view. The long, dark lines on the atmosphere are shadows cast by the planet’s rings.”

JPL photo essay and gallery »

Kathleen Parker has a column in Townhall.com, “Lord of the blogs.” The article explains that bloggers are a threat to humankind. She says we are “spoiled and undisciplined.” She adds that we lie and unlike Mary Mapes and Dan Rather we don’t check our facts. — DJ Drummond @ PoliPundit doesn’t agree.

A Blogger Responds To A Slap In The Face

I like reading Townhall most of the time. Solid columns which are generally both well-written and intelligent. Sadly, there are a few cases which demand a response, and at times a forceful one. …

…

Blogging exists for a variety of reasons, but it would not have an audience for commentary and analysis, except that your cadre of politically correct partisans drives people with common sense to seek alternatives and balance. Bloggers do not hate journalists in either the individual or collective sense, but we take on a code of honor which is sadly lacking in your numbers, and when we see a Rather or a Miller act in such an unconscionable way as they have, we present the facts and challenge falsity. Rather and Miller and Jordan received nothing which did not come from their own bad judgment and rash arrogance; indeed their positions have wrongly protected them from a fully just consequence. Rather, as an example, was neither arrested nor censured for his acts, but retired with a large pension and his pride unpricked. That is simply wrong madam, and you know it, or if you remembered your J-school standard, you would.

I am a blogger, and I am very good at what I do. Unlike you, however, I neither pretend to be better than other people, nor do I refuse to look hard into the mirror. And there are many like me. We are the future of journalism, not to replace the people who gather and report the news, but to drive them back to the ideals which used to matter; honesty, integrity, balance.

You know what I find “creepy”? That someone like you would be teaching future journalists. Watch and see, madam. Blogging is neither going away, nor is it ignored. Within ten years, you will start to see major journalism schools take it up as a necessary skill. Within five you will see a blog report segment on the major news networks, at least the ones which can keep their viewers. It’s simple really, just supply and demand – as long as you refuse to supply real news, people will demand it from us.

DJ Drummond: “Hypocrisy Does Not Befit You, Madam”

You really have to read the whole thing. … It’s Drummond at his best.

ALSO » Ace @ Ace of Spades Bloggers: A Growing Peril

Saving Iraqi baby a new mission for U.S. troops

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) — When troops from the Georgia National Guard raided a Baghdad home in early December, they had no idea that their mission in Iraq would take a different turn.

As the young parents of an infant girl nervously watched the soldiers search their modest home, the baby’s unflinching grandmother thrust the little girl at the Americans, showing them the purple pouch protruding from her back.

Little Noor, barely three months old, was born with spina bifida, a birth defect in which the spinal column fails to completely close. Iraqi doctors had told her parents she would live only 45 days.

But she was tenaciously clinging to life, and the soldiers in the home — many of them fathers themselves — were moved.

… » » CNN: Saving Iraqi baby a new mission for U.S. troops
(Video at CNN site)

H/T: Michael Yon: News that Boosts Morale

Townhall.com

Larry Elder:
While off for the holidays, I took my 90-year-old, former Marine, Republican dad to his inner-city barbershop. Dad goes to the same barbershop that my brothers and I went to when we were growing up. Different people now own the shop, and I hadn’t set foot in there in probably 35 years. Is it still, I asked Dad, the same “afro-centric,” white-man-done-me-wrong, trash-talking joint? “Yes,” sighed my father, who taught my brothers and me to overcome racism through hard work and personal responsibility.

…

Larry: When can we blacks get to the point where you and I can have a disagreement — about racism, affirmative action, the War in Iraq, whatever — without someone who thinks like me being a sell-out or an Uncle Tom? Is that at all possible? Am I asking too much?

…

Larry Elder in Townhall.com:
My dad’s barbershop — and personal responsibility

H/T: La Shawn Barber’s Corner: The Barbershop

Bulldogpundit @ Ankle Biting Pundit has a post, Two Must Read Articles:

The New York Times v. America by Michelle Malkin,

AND

Our Entitlement Paralysis, an article is by Robert Samuelson, of the Washington Post.

I agree with BDP but I have to add that Bernard at A Certain Slant of Light sums up my feelings nicely with this post, WaPo Editorial: A Peposterous Statement on Border Security. — Here’s the editorial.

BTW: On the Social Security entitlement paralysis, why can’t we all agree to gradually phase in a “means test” and every year add one month to the retirement age until it reaches age 68 (in 36 years), or 70 (in 60 years) or whatever.