Immigrants arrested in the United States may be held indefinitely on suspicion of terrorism and may not challenge their imprisonment in civilian courts, the Bush administration said Monday....

Sen. Chris Dodd said prior to the election that he regrets the decision not to filibuster the MCA: "I regret now that I didn't do it . . . This is a major, major blow to who we are."

Remember kids, anyone any federal official accuses of Terrorism is guilty, especially if they are an immigrant. Democrats want the Terrorists to win.

The Military Commissions Act in action

The ACLU fights just as hard for INDIVIDUAL free exercise of religion as the ACLU fights against GOVERNMENT endorsement, sponsorship, or establishment of religion.

Someone who has finally had it with the "ACLU has an anti-christian agenda" meme and started keep a list.

Of course, we're now heading into what used to be a happy time of year until conversative pundits decided to motivate their base by encouraging them to get belligerent everytime someone wishes them a Happy Holidays. The ranting and raving appears to have already started. Someone needs to remind Neal Boortz that if you're socially conservative, you're not a libertarian.

The ACLU Fights for Christians

The Daily Telegraph reports today that Iran is seeking to wield influence within Al-Qaeda to help name its number three individual in the Al-Qaeda organization. If accurate, the report states that Ahmadinejad is trying to persuade Al-Qaeda to promote a pro-Iranian activist (Saif Al-Adel) to a senior position within its leadership.

For the past three years, U.S. intelligence officials have said a shadowy group called the "al Quds force"-- the Jerusalem force -- part of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard organization, may be sheltering some al Qaeda leaders, including its military commander, Saif Al-Adel, and Saad Bin Laden, son of the al Qaeda leader.

It is now reported that Iran is seeking Saif Al-Adel to fill the number three position of the Al-Qaeda organization. It is also reported that is believed that Osama Bin Laden health problems may be causing Iran's push to have Saif Al-Adel in that role to complement Zawahiri. According to reports from Western intelligence agencies, Iran is training senior Al-Qaeda operatives in Teheran to take over the organisation when bin Laden is no longer leader. For some time, military officials have claimed that Iran is providing Iraqi terrorists with arms.

Clearly Iran is supporting Iraqi Shia. Clearly Al'Q is supporting Iraqi Sunni... What does THIS mean?

Counterterrorism Blog: Iran forging alliance with Al-Qaeda?

Did YouTube Win the US Senate for the Democrats?

YouTube - Did YouTube Win the US Senate for the Democrats?

What Sun is due to announce Monday is the open-sourcing of both its Java Platform Standard Edition (Java SE) and its Java Platform Micro Edition (Java ME) under the GNU general public license version 2 (GPLv2).

Woah!

Macworld: News: Sun open sources Java under GPL

Samsung has partnered with Korea university and developed the machine-gun equipped robotic sentry. It is equipped with two cameras with zooming capabilities one for day time and one for infrared night vision. It has a sophisticated pattern recognition which can detect the difference between humans and trees, and a 5.5mm machine-gun.

Yet another milestone on the path toward robots that hunt, kill, and eat people, and use their flesh to generate electric power.

Samsung develops machine gun sentry robot costs $200k - Newlaunches.com

Mike the Usurper wrote:
The Katrina debacle wasn't about fixing the levees, it was about handling evacuations properly and failing that, getting emergency workers to the places they were needed immediately after.

I don't entirely agree. I think thats half the picture. With regard to confidence in this administration, its the whole picture. Clearly, as you said, they didn't respond competently. People are trusting them to handle terrorist attacks. They've asked for support in a war no one understands and for the unilateral ability to spy on people and imprison them. They got the people's support for those things, in 2004, because most people trusted them to do the right stuff. This event is a close analog to a terrorist attack. They failed to handle it well, and that broke the trust, which I think is the reason they lost in 2006. I think people are asking, if they can't be trusted with this, then can they be trusted with Iraq?

But, the Katrina story as a whole is bigger then that, and thats why I don't think anyone wants to talk about it. It doesn't work as a partisan issue, because Democratic leadership in Louisiana may have been as much a problem as the Bush administration. The right wing plays that up as an excuse, and its no excuse. The administration was clearly incompetent. One's incompetence is not excused by another's incompetence. And most of us don't vote in Louisiana.

More importantly; the fact is that this was an avoidable catasrophy. Even if the Administration had handled it beautifully it still would have been a problem, because we anticipated that this was going to happen and did not act decisively to stop it. Its an indictment of the whole system. No one cared about the people in the 9th ward. Everyone in the city knew the area was doomed. The people who lived there were poor. And everyone's attitude was that its stupid to live there and if they die it's their own damn problem. Thats a terrible attitude to have. And I think that any President, or Louisiana politician, who has sat in power for the past 30 years, and didn't move the ball forward on this, deserves a bit of the blame.

And I think everyone knows that. If the partisan blame game started back up on Katrina, everyone would loose. Its mutually assured destruction. So instead we're focused on other things.

I don't think the people trust the Democrats either. They're being given a chance to prove themselves. Its their game to loose now. But they have a real problem... the Republicans handed them a ticking bomb as they went out the door... We're probably not going to get Democracy in Iraq. It probably isn't possible. There is a good chance that we are going to get a massive increase in the violence there. And you can rest assured that regardless of what policy position the Democrats take on Iraq, Republicans will blame their policy for the problems we're going to see there. The buck just got passed.

So, those who've argued with conservatives for years that going into Iraq was a mistake can look forward to being blamed by conservatives when that prognosis turns out to be correct. It has already started.

RE: For Conservatives, It’s Back to Basics

He's exasperated now, visibly angry at what he sees as a willful Western foolishness. "Stop asking what you have done wrong. Stop it! They're slaughtering you like sheep and you still look within. You criticize your history, your institutions, your churches. Why can't you realize that it has nothing to do with what you have done but with what they want."

This in particular is quite amusing:

He leans back, takes a deep breath and moves to another area, one that he says is far too seldom discussed: "North Americans are too squeamish about discussing the obvious sexual dynamic behind suicide bombings. If they understood contemporary Islamic society, they would understand the sheer sexual tension of Sunni Muslim men. Look at the figures for suicide bombings and see how few are from the Shiite world. Terrorism and violence yes, but not suicide. The overwhelming majority are from Sunnis. Now within the Shiite world there are what is known as temporary marriages, lasting anywhere from an hour to 95 years. It enables men to release their sexual frustrations.

"Islam condemns extra-marital sex as well as masturbation, which is also taught in the Christian tradition. But Islam also tells of unlimited sexual ecstasy in paradise with beautiful virgins for the martyr who gives his life for the faith. Don't for a moment underestimate this blinding passion or its influence on those who accept fundamentalism."

A pause. "I know. I was one who accepted it."

The hedonsitic paradise offered by these religions is absolutely stupid. Its obviously a mistranslation.

Hot for martyrdom

John Podesta, founder of the Center for American Progress and former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, called the midterms “the end of the grand conservative experiment.”

Delusion on the left.

“There were no conservative grass-roots group saying, ‘Invade Iraq,’ ” Mr. Norquist said. “If Bush changed the policy, you’d have four neocons whine and the rest of the movement would be fine.”

Delusion on the right.

Apparently the big K was insufficiently shocking.

The pundit class must have secretly declared it a political third rail. There is too much blame to go around.

Bush's story is "trust us." We'll protect you from terrorists. You don't need to worry about laws and checks and balances and international opinions. We're the good guys. Make us powerful and we'll take care of it. Katrina broke that spell. People saw them clearly being incompetent and spinning it, and the trust went away.

But, if you were going to avoid Katrina you'd have had to start working on the new levy back in Clinton's time, or even earlier.

RE: For Conservatives, It’s Back to Basics

Here is an attempt to portray various philosophical and political factions under the Republicans' big tent ...

Here is an attempt to portray the major coalitions and blocs among Democrats ... Rather than the donkey, perhaps the cat, notoriously resistant to herding, would make a better symbol.

Those enamored by the pre-9/11 Washington Post analysis may appreciate this update.

A Guide to the Political Herds