Ugly Truth: I've not trusted the New England Journal of Medicine ever since they showed their bias by publishing the distorted (and often cited) Kellerman study claiming that owning a handgun puts homeowners at greater risk. Nonetheless, they have a disturbingly graphic photo essay titled, Caring for the Wounded, that those of you who want to be fully informed might want to view.

Peter Beinart's Article: If you haven't already read it, please make your way over to the New Republic and check out this Must Read article. Peter Beinart, a respected liberal, makes the case that the Democrats must make the issue of confronting Islamic totalitarinism their cause. It is very well written and researched.

Today, three years after September 11 brought the United States face-to-face with a new totalitarian threat, liberalism has still not "been fundamentally reshaped" by the experience. On the right, a "historical re-education" has indeed occurred--replacing the isolationism of the Gingrich Congress with George W. Bush and Dick Cheney's near-theological faith in the transformative capacity of U.S. military might. But American liberalism, as defined by its activist organizations, remains largely what it was in the 1990s--a collection of domestic interests and concerns. On health care, gay rights, and the environment, there is a positive vision, articulated with passion. But there is little liberal passion to win the struggle against Al Qaeda--even though totalitarian Islam has killed thousands of Americans and aims to kill millions; and even though, if it gained power, its efforts to force every aspect of life into conformity with a barbaric interpretation of Islam would reign terror upon women, religious minorities, and anyone in the Muslim world with a thirst for modernity or freedom.

After you've read his article, you might be interested in some of the waves it has created:

• Jonah Goldberg's column.


• William Voegeli is skeptical.


• George Will


• Mickey Kaus at Slate


• Peter Beinart on C-SPAN this morning (41 minute RealVideo)

I've been searching the Left/Liberal 'blogs for about 2 hours and I don't see a mention of the Beinart article. If you find any, please post a comment below. UPDATE: Found some.

London: I just booked my April flight and hotel for 10 days in London. This is going to be my first time there. I'm currently reading Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver, needless to say, it is a great book to read while getting psyched up for a trip to England. I'm going alone and I'm just going to do what I want to do. My hotel is smack in the middle of the museums.

Chicago PW Video: Saturday was Human Rights day and the Chicago chapter of Protest Warriors gathered to show our commitment to the human rights of those suffering under Islamic tryanny Regular Resolution (23MB) Extreme-Hi Resolution (48MB)(only run Extreme version if you have a very, very fast computer). Right-click the link and choose Save Target As...

Update: I've been asked what program I used to make the video out of my still photos. I used the free download of Microsoft's Photostory 3. Some who've had problems playing the video simply upgraded to Windows Media Player 10 and it played fine. Also, I took the photos with my Canon 20D 8.3MP DSLR.

Black Bush: This short video clip is hilarious. Who needs John Stewart.

Hitchens Update: Christopher Hitchens is said to be scheduled to speak at West Point. (hat tip Christopher Hitchens Web)

Unexcusable: This story is just horrible. I hope the Israeli commander is imprisoned for life, if not executed for this murder.

An Israeli army officer who repeatedly shot a 13-year-old Palestinian girl in Gaza dismissed a warning from another soldier that she was a child by saying he would have killed her even if she was three years
old.

Less Work So We Can All Work: Maybe this is why the City Colleges teachers went on strike to maintain their 12-hour work week.

Chicago-based Marines in Iraq destroying terrorist network: This New York Times story details some of the work of Strike Force Two this week in Central Iraq.

The primary mission of the 2/24 battalion, a Chicago-based Reserve force of 1,200 troops, is to destroy a network of insurgent cells that United States military intelligence has identified as the nerve center of the Sunni insurgency in central Iraq.

A Chicago police sergeant brings his street skills to the war.

Perhaps the most successful of the marines' tactics have been the nighttime raids. With more than 70 police officers in the battalion, the work-up for the raids at the Mahmudiya base has been strongly influenced by American police tactics. Colonel Smith said he attributed much of the unit's success in tracking down wanted insurgents to Warrant Officer Jim Roussell, a 53-year-old Chicago police sergeant who spent years working with the city's gang unit.

And when he gets back, hopefully he'll take some of this new terrorist-fighting skills to the gang-bangers in Chicago (I hope they let him keep his M4/M203, not sure if Sandra Day O'Conner would approve of that as an anti-loitering device). Read the whole thing, it's fascinating.

Bush in Halifax: Here is a video clip (18MB) of the last 20 minutes of Bush's recent speech in Canada. It is a pretty good argument for the Global War on Terror (GWOT). (Right-click and choose "Save Target As...)

Video by Request: A friend was asking about this story, Reagan Approved Plan to Sabotage Soviets - Book Recounts Cold War Program That Made Technology Go Haywire, so here is a link to the Washington Post story and the BookTV video interview [54:24 into clip] (RealVideo, Right-Click and choose Save Target As...) with the author of At The Abyss, Thomas Reed.

Combat Video: Incredible video of Marines in Falluja from ABC's Nightline (47MB) Right-Click and choose Save As...

Asking Academia about political bias on Campus: I just started a thread within my college's Discussion Board and sent an email to most of the faculty alerting them to the topic there. It might be interesting, or it might be totally ignored. I also included three recent articles/editorials to get things started.

Thugs Rejoice: The gang-bangers and thugs on Chicago's South and Westside must be toasting their 40s after hearing that congress overroad Bush's desire to continue funding the Project Safe Neighborhoods program:

Chicago authorities were scratching their heads Thursday over why Congress wiped out local grant money for Project Safe Neighborhoods, the federal anti-gun program.

The Bush administration asked for $45 million in such grants, but the 2005 spending bill that passed Nov. 20 eliminated them.

In 2003, the Chicago Police Department received a $444,000 grant for teams that hunt for illegal weapons in the Englewood, Deering, Harrison and Austin districts.

The Illinois Department of Corrections received $80,000 for forums that warn parolees they face serious prison time if they're arrested with guns.

And the Chicago Crime Commission received $241,000 to advertise the program.

Another $1.4 million grant -- awarded this year to the Chicago area -- is in the process of being divvied up.

Because the money in each grant is spread over three years, authorities don't think Project Safe Neighborhoods is in immediate peril here.

"None of this will come to a screeching halt," said Randall Samborn, spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office.

But David Bayless, a police spokesman, wondered why Congress would cut funding for a successful anti-crime program in the first place.

"The timing of this news could not come at a worse time, given our progress in Chicago in reducing violent crime," he said.

'Turns it into piecemeal program'

Under Project Safe Neighborhoods, federal and state prosecutors review each gun arrest to determine if the suspect would get a longer prison sentence in federal or
state court. Authorities in Chicago say the anti-gun program is one of the
reasons murders have declined 25 percent this year.

Samborn stressed that Project Safe Neighborhoods' funding for federal agents and prosecutors was not axed from the fiscal 2005 budget. The Justice Department will work aggressively to find money to replace the local grants, he said.

Still, Congress has weakened Project Safe Neighborhoods by killing the local grants, said John Lacey of the Americans for Gun Safety Foundation in Washington.
"It turns it into a piecemeal program," Lacey said.

Ted Chung, the point man on law enforcement on Mayor Daley's staff, said it's too early to predict the long-term consequences of Congress' action.

But "it ought to be the kind of program that receives additional funding, rather than a
reduction," he said.

Missing Explosives: Let me know if you see any sign of this in the U.S. MSM.

As American forces closed in on Baghdad last year, senior members of Saddam Hussein's government devised a plan to send suicide bombers in vehicles packed with devastating high-energy explosives that were under UN safeguards.

The disappearance of the explosive, known as HMX (high melting explosives), in mysterious circumstances at the end of the war caused a few nasty moments for President George Bush's presidential election campaign last month.

It's amazing Bush actually won with the press putting this story out days before the election, but he did, so no sense dragging this out - unless of course you care about getting important truthful information from the mainstream media. Even if I wanted Kerry to win, I certainly wouldn't want it done at the cost of turning the networks into propagandists for any candidate.

A letter to Saddam from Dr Naji Sabri, the Iraqi Foreign Minister, five days before the fall of Baghdad, suggests taking the HMX from underground bunkers, where it had been kept under seal by the International Atomic Energy Agency, and giving it to suicide bombers.

He wrote: "It is possible to increase the explosive power of the suicide-driven cars by using the highly explosive material [HMX] which is sealed by the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] and stored in the warehouses of the Military Industry Departments."

Now what was that pre-election story about missing explosives again?

A Great Speech: If you're still swallowing the Chomsky/Moore "Blood for Oil" U.S. Hegemony motive for the war in Iraq, please watch this speech (RealVideo) by President Bush in Canada yesterday. You may think his plan to spread democracy in the Middle East is foolish and doomed, but you can't doubt his commitment - only if you keep your mind tuned to one strain of thought, be it via Michael Moore, Noam Chomsky, Indymedia, NPR or CBS. Or don't listen to him speak and let the media pick an 8 second soundbite for you.

Globalization Works: David Brooks baits the pessimistic intellectuals with some good news on global poverty, it is on decline. Why? Globalization, that capitalist scrouge that the poor in developing nations have been fighting for while the unionists and their anti-globalization dupes here in the first tier have been attempting to demonize. As the facts come in, it will be harder and harder for the unions to portray their anti-free trade protest as anything except what is is: American protectionism at the expense of poverty-striken third worlders.

When an American textile worker thinks going back to community college to make herself marketable - when African imports close her mill - is a burden, she can thank President Bush and Labor Secretary Elaine Chou for their support of community colleges as places to retrain. While said laid-off worker is filling out grant applications, they can curse the union that strung them along for years with false promises of a lifelong job at the sewing machine - instead of preparing them for the reality of global competition.

Developing countries are seeing their economies expand by 6.1 percent this year - an unprecedented rate - and, even if you take China, India and Russia out of the equation, developing world growth is still around 5 percent. As even the cautious folks at the World Bank note, all developing regions are growing faster this decade than they did in the 1980's and 90's.

This isn't happening because Greenpeace is handing out free meals, or because Starbucks-smashing anarchists are keeping corporations at bay, or "oh-I-wish-I-Lived-in-the-60's" neo-flowerchildren are getting arrested in the streets of Denver for "the cause." No, it's because free markets and capitalism work (albeit with rules).

What explains all this good news? The short answer is this thing we call globalization. Over the past decades, many nations have undertaken structural reforms to lower trade barriers, shore up property rights and free economic activity. International trade is surging. The poor nations that opened themselves up to trade, investment and those evil multinational corporations saw the sharpest poverty declines. Write this on your forehead: Free trade reduces world suffering.

Read the whole thing soon before it goes into the NYT archive$.

Maturing: Back in my 20's there were certain people I just hated, much like the people who now hate Bush. I avoided or ignored any evidence of their humanity and listened to those who fed my hate. Mayor Daley was my Dubbya Bush, and their was plenty to dislike: His questionable decisions as Cook County States Attorney, the police-torture under Commmander Burge that went unchecked, the usual scandals and corruption.

But I hit a low point that looking back on I am now ashamed of. I remember when Daley's teen son was in the news after he and a group of friends he had invited to the mayor's summer home were involved in a fight, resulting in Andrew Buckman being beaten in the head with a baseball bat by 16 year-old Andrew Buckman. At the time, I had have to admit I was dissapointed it was not the Mayor's son who did the beating, I so wanted this horrible incident to hurt Daley. I lost all sense of the humans involved. (for more in this see Eric Zorn's take)

I hope I've evolved since then. This story in today's Sun-Times shows that whatever trouble the Daley son was in as a youth, he's grown into a good man.

Mayor Daley's only son, Patrick, has joined the Army during a time of war.

He reports to active duty as an enlisted soldier in the Army's regular airborne infantry.

His activation date: between Christmas and New Year's. His destination: presumably North Carolina's Ft. Bragg. His final destination? It could lead him to Iraq or Afghanistan within a year.

"He wants to serve his country," said a Sneed source. "He's a patriot. It's just that it's a pretty dangerous time to be doing so. His father is very proud but his mother, Maggie, is nervous as any mother would be. It's a pretty honorable thing to sign up in a time of war."

In an exclusive interview with the Sun-Times, Patrick Daley -- who recently graduated with honors from the University of Chicago's MBA program and could have pursued lucrative job offers -- told Sneed why he made the decision.

"It's been in the back of my mind for some time," said Patrick Daley, one of Mayor Daley's four children, including Nora, Elizabeth and a second son, Kevin, who died. "I left West Point during my freshman year when I was 18 years old and always remembered their motto, 'Duty, Honor and Country.' But I was so young and not really old enough to understand what it really meant. But I know now.

"I suppose when you're 18 years old -- as I was at West Point -- you're selfish and
I didn't want to devote 10 years to an uncertain future. It took me a while to learn that there's also a virtue in selflessness. And I believe that virtue is to serve your country. And the values of West Point are still with me."

Read the whole thing.