Remember “The D.C. Madam’s Modest Plea”? She gave public notice that unless she received donations to pay her defense counsel she might just offer to sell her appointment books on eBay.

The Washington Post has a follow up story:

‘D.C. Madam’ surrounded by air of intrigue:

“A one-time law student, [Deborah Jeane] Palfrey ran for 13 years what she insists was a legal escort service. Federal prosecutors allege she was providing $300-an-hour prostitutes, and a grand jury indicted her in February on federal racketeering charges.”

Its now reported that some folks in D.C. may be worried that Palfrey’s call books may reveal a list of her employees, which may prove as embarassing as her list of clients, i.e., “the list includes the names of some ‘very prominent people,’ as well as a number of women with ‘important and serious jobs’ who had worked as escorts for the firm.”

Stay tuned.

Supreme Court Sides With Police in Chase Case

The Supreme Court today handed an important victory to police officers who are involved in high-speed chases, and took the unusual step of posting a videotape of the chase on its Web site to show that the now-paralyzed civilian driver was to blame.

The court ruled 8-1 that Georgia deputy sheriff Timothy Scott could not be sued for the accident that left then 19-year-old Victor Harris a quadriplegic. The high-speed chase down dark highways in 2001 — which ended when Scott rammed Harris’ Cadillac from behind and sent him down an embankment — was captured on videotape by a camera in one of the pursuing police vehicles.

…

Scalia was incredulous that the lower courts had said Harris’s case against Scott could proceed.

But Justice John Paul Stevens said from the bench that it was preferrable to let a jury see the tape and decide the case, rather than “elderly appellate judges.” Stevens is the oldest member of the court at 87.

…

In their opinions, Scalia and Stevens got into a battle of footnotes, which Scalia said the public could decide.

“Justice Stevens suggest that our reaction to the videotape is somehow idiosyncratic, and seems to believe we are misrepresenting its contents,” Scalia wrote. “We are happy to allow the videotape [to speak] for itself.”

… Full story >> Washington Post

Bridge collapse affects Bay Area commute…

Flames reach up to 200 feet after a gasoline tanker truck crashed and exploded into flames early Sunday, leaving the truck driver of the truck with moderate burns.

Many commuters on Bay Area Rapid Transit trains this morning were looking at the San Francisco Chronicle, whose front page devoted about a third of its space to a picture of the fiery collapse and a succinct headline: Maze Meltdown.

Well Rosie, was it Bush or the Martians?

Aerial view of the freeway interchange that funnels traffic off the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge collapsed onto another highway ramp in Oakland Sunday after a gasoline tanker truck overturned and caught fire.

… More >> MacArthur Maze collapse

During my third reading of Lt. Col. Paul Yingling’s excellent monograph, “A failure in generalship,” I am struck by the article’s simple common sense, reliance on historical fact and military truisms. Its remarkable that Congress, the Pentagon, the Department of State and the President’s staff didn’t have enough people with enough guts, foresight and conviction to sound the alarm that an invasion of Iraq, concurrent with the conflict in Afghanistan, would require far more national commitment than Bush and Rumsfeld contemplated.

Yinling’s simple observations:

Armies do not fight wars; nations fight wars. War is not a military activity conducted by soldiers, but rather a social activity that involves entire nations. Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz noted that passion, probability and policy each play their role in war. Any understanding of war that ignores one of these elements is fundamentally flawed.

The passion of the people is necessary to endure the sacrifices inherent in war. Regardless of the system of government, the people supply the blood and treasure required to prosecute war. The statesman must stir these passions to a level commensurate with the popular sacrifices required. When the ends of policy are small, the statesman can prosecute a conflict without asking the public for great sacrifice. Global conflicts such as World War II require the full mobilization of entire societies to provide the men and materiel necessary for the successful prosecution of war. The greatest error the statesman can make is to commit his nation to a great conflict without mobilizing popular passions to a level commensurate with the stakes of the conflict.

Popular passions are necessary for the successful prosecution of war, but cannot be sufficient. To prevail, generals must provide policymakers and the public with a correct estimation of strategic probabilities. The general is responsible for estimating the likelihood of success in applying force to achieve the aims of policy. The general describes both the means necessary for the successful prosecution of war and the ways in which the nation will employ those means. If the policymaker desires ends for which the means he provides are insufficient, the general is responsible for advising the statesman of this incongruence. The statesman must then scale back the ends of policy or mobilize popular passions to provide greater means. If the general remains silent while the statesman commits a nation to war with insufficient means, he shares culpability for the results.

…

And I really like Yingling’s closing paragraphs:

Mortal Danger

This article began with Frederick the Great’s admonition to his officers to focus their energies on the larger aspects of war. The Prussian monarch’s innovations had made his army the terror of Europe, but he knew that his adversaries were learning and adapting. Frederick feared that his generals would master his system of war without thinking deeply about the ever-changing nature of war, and in doing so would place Prussia’s security at risk. These fears would prove prophetic. At the Battle of Valmy in 1792, Frederick’s successors were checked by France’s ragtag citizen army. In the fourteen years that followed, Prussia’s generals assumed without much reflection that the wars of the future would look much like those of the past. In 1806, the Prussian Army marched lockstep into defeat and disaster at the hands of Napoleon at Jena. Frederick’s prophecy had come to pass; Prussia became a French vassal.

Iraq is America’s Valmy. America’s generals have been checked by a form of war that they did not prepare for and do not understand [Note 1]. They spent the years following the 1991 Gulf War mastering a system of war without thinking deeply about the ever changing nature of war. They marched into Iraq having assumed without much reflection that the wars of the future would look much like the wars of the past. Those few who saw clearly our vulnerability to insurgent tactics said and did little to prepare for these dangers. As at Valmy, this one debacle, however humiliating, will not in itself signal national disaster. The hour is late, but not too late to prepare for the challenges of the Long War. We still have time to select as our generals those who possess the intelligence to visualize future conflicts and the moral courage to advise civilian policymakers on the preparations needed for our security. The power and the responsibility to identify such generals lie with the U.S. Congress. If Congress does not act, our Jena awaits us.

[Note 1 Yingling does't rub their noses in the fact that 35 years ago in Vietnam generals found the same kind of war we now see in Iraq.]

Lou Dobbs in NumbersUSA – April 25, 2007:
Big media hides truth about immigration

The Bush administration and the leadership of the Democratic Party are preparing to take another legislative leap at imposing a massive illegal alien amnesty on American citizens.

And the mainstream media is complicit in advancing this thinly veiled blanket amnesty. Instead of asking and answering important questions about why our immigration laws aren’t being enforced and why we’re permitting pervasive document fraud, the national media seems hell-bent on trying to obfuscate the issue, shamelessly playing with language, equating legal immigration with illegal immigration while obviously trying to preserve the illusion of objectivity.

Too often, the language of the national media describes illegal immigration as “migration” and illegal aliens as “undocumented immigrants,” even though many of them have lots of documents, most of which are fraudulent or stolen. Some media outlets have taken to calling illegal aliens “entrants.” Whether such language is meant to engender sympathy or to intentionally blur the distinction between legal and illegal, the mainstream media is taking sides in this debate.

The Arizona Republic, for example, used “undocumented immigrant” more than 80 times in 36 separate stories in the past month alone; the term appeared as many as 12 times in one article on “migration,” according to our Lexis-Nexis search. At the same time, “illegal alien” appeared a total of only nine times during that span, with seven of the references coming from readers’ opinions, one from a quotation and one from an editorial.

The mainstream media reports as if America would no longer be a welcoming nation if we stopped illegal immigration. Nothing could be further from the truth. Why does the national media conveniently and routinely neglect to report that the United States brings in more lawful immigrants than the countries of the rest of the world combined? Each year, we accept 2 million immigrants legally. We give a million legal immigrants permanent residency every year. We bestow citizenship on 700,000 people a year and provide almost half a million work-related visas a year.

Illegal immigration, in fact, has the potential to change the course of American history: Demographers at the Brookings Institution and the Population Reference Bureau paint a troubling picture of the future of our democracy. As more illegal aliens cross our borders and settle in large states like California, Texas and Florida, congressional seats will be redistributed to these bigger states following each decennial Census. States with low levels of immigration will ultimately lose seats as a result. Unfortunately for American citizens, this seismic shift in political representation will be decided by noncitizens that cannot vote.

Congress will soon take up so-called comprehensive immigration reform, and a bipartisan House bill would probably admit 400,000 guest workers a year. And since any plan calling for eventual legalization would include family members who live outside the United States, the legislation would open our borders to tens of millions of people. The Heritage Foundation’s Robert Rector estimated that the 2006 version of the McCain-Kennedy bill would have added an additional 66 million immigrants over the next 20 years. The bill may change, but that estimate has yet to be refuted.

There’s no question this type of mass immigration would have a calamitous effect on working citizens and their families. Professor Carol Swain, professor of law and political science at Vanderbilt University and author of “Debating Immigration,” would like to see more people speak up for the sectors of society most affected by illegal immigration.

“How many African-American leaders have you seen come out and address the impact that high levels of illegal immigration [are] having in the communities when it comes to jobs, when it comes to education, when it comes to health care?” she asked. “And often, these low-skilled, low-wage workers compete in the same sectors for jobs.”

NumbersUSA Comment:
Click here to learn about the devastating affects illegal immigration has on Black Americans

Let’s have a vigorous open debate on illegal immigration in this country, and let’s begin with the facts. Estimates of illegal aliens in this country range from 12 million to 20 million people. Why doesn’t our government know how many there are?

Shouldn’t this Congress and this president at least recognize that the industries in which illegal aliens are employed in the greatest percentages also are suffering the largest wage declines? And shouldn’t there be an economic impact statement researched and delivered to this Congress, this president and the rest of us before any legislation granting amnesty is even considered?

Shouldn’t we first bring the facts of illegal immigration out of the shadows?

# # #

Judicial Watch : April 25 , 2007:
Judicial Watch Uncovers DC Illegal Immigration Sanctuary Policy

Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, released documents today received from Washington, D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department [MPD] in response to an open records lawsuit. The lawsuit, filed on March 8, 2007 in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, asked the court to compel the D.C. Police Department to comply with Judicial Watch’s August 10, 2006 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking documents pertaining to the department’s illegal immigration policies.

Within days of the filing of Judicial Watch’s lawsuit, the Washington DC’s Police Department released a memo from Charles H. Ramsey who, until recently, served as Chief of Police, that states: “MPD [Metropolitan Police Department] officers are strictly prohibited from making inquiries into citizenship or residency status for the purpose of determining whether an individual has violated the civil immigration laws or for the purpose of enforcing those laws…the MPD is not in the business of inquiring about the residency status of the people we serve and is not in the business of enforcing civil immigration laws.”

The newly released documents also reiterate the “limited” and infrequent support the department offers to federal immigration officials.

“The sanctuary policies of Washington DC’s police department are a disgrace and an affront to the rule of law. Local police departments do not have a free pass to violate and undermine federal immigration law,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “Our nation’s capital, of all places, should not undermine federal immigration law, but rather set an example for other cities in the U.S. I hope Congress and the Bush administration take some action to ensure that the rule of law is respected here in Washington, DC.”

Judicial Watch filed a taxpayer lawsuit seeking to end a similar sanctuary police policy in Los Angeles, known as “Special Order 40.” Judicial Watch has also investigated police sanctuary polices in Houston, Chicago, and Westchester County, New York. Federal law states that “…a Federal, State, or local government entity or official may not prohibit, or in any way restrict, any government entity or official from sending to, or receiving from, the Immigration and Naturalization Service [now Immigration and Customs Enforcement] information regarding the citizenship or immigration status, lawful or unlawful, of any individual.”

Judicial Watch also recently released the results of a national poll performed by Zogby International that shows the overwhelming majority of Americans support the use of local law enforcement officers to help enforce federal immigration laws.

To read copies of the Washington, DC Police documents uncovered by Judicial Watch, or to learn more about JW’s other illegal immigration programs, visit www.judicialwatch.org.

# # #

Deborah Jeane Palfrey, a D.C. madam who owns an escort service and is under investigation for running a prostitution ring, has issued a call for financial help to pay defense lawyers. She has asked for voluntary assistance but if that’s not forthcoming she’ll offer her appointment books for sale, possibly on eBay. The first collateral damage of Deborah Jeane’s modest request has emerged.

SeattlePI.com

Bush official resigns over escort links

WASHINGTON — Randall Tobias, head of the Bush administration’s foreign aid programs, abruptly resigned Friday after his name surfaced in an investigation into a high-priced call-girl ring, said two people in a position to know the circumstances of his departure.

It was Tobias’ own decision to resign, according to one of the people, who said the issue came up only in the past day or so. The people spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the investigation is still under way.

Tobias submitted his resignation a day after he was interviewed by ABC News for an upcoming program about an alleged prostitution service run by the so-called D.C. Madam.

ABC reported on its Web site late Friday that Tobias confirmed that he had called the Pamela Martin and Associates escort service to have women come to his condo and give him massages. More recently, Tobias told the network, he has been using a service with Central American women.

Tobias, 65, who is married, told ABC News there had been “no sex” during the women’s visits to his condo. His name was on a list of clients given to ABC by Deborah Jeane Palfrey, who owns the escort service and has been charged with running a prostitution ring in the nation’s capital.

… Full story >> Bush official resigns…

REMEMBER… “I gave at the office” won’t work!

AFA Poll: Status as of April 28, 2007
Posted @ ~7:28am e, April 28

GOP:	4/18	4/23	4/28
Sam Brownback	4,648	4,954	5,087
Jim Gilmore	153	164	170
Newt Gingrich	15,331	16,496	16,931
Rudy Giuliani	9,066	9,711	9,953
Chuck Hagel	100	108	113
Mike Huckabee	4,673	4,952	5,087
Duncan Hunter	945	1,005	1,039
John McCain	7,570	8,078	8,275
Ron Paul	3,221	3,461	3,593
Mitt Romney	12,251	13,178	13,574
Fred Thompson	38,759	41,820	43,007
Tommy Thompson	699	743	763
Tom Tancredo	3,096	3,272	3,366
Donks:
Joe Biden	112	122	127
Hillary Clinton	1,842	2,042	2,169
Chris Dodd	22	25	27
John Edwards	3,032	3,324	3,466
Barack Hussein Obama	2,283	2,519	2,672
Bill Richardson	285	308	316

>> Cast Your Own Vote @ AFA

A simple tutorial @ Joe’s Crabby Shack

h/t to Misha

This is just toooooo much. I had to post it…

MediaResearch.org:
Imus Pays Price for Bush’s Guilt
“I think something that has happened in just in the last couple of years, there has been such a negative reaction against President Bush’s failure to apologize, failure to seem like he is being accountable to where the people are, that we’ve got more of a thirst for people apologizing when they screw up, and then changing their behavior as a result of having been called to account.”
– Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter discussing the outcry against radio host Don Imus, MSNBC’s Hardball April 10.