Sunday Scan

Kicking Some Ashcroft

Speaking to a large group of home-state Republicans in Missouri yesterday, former AG John Ashcroft defended the president's surveillance efforts:

"The president of the United States has been among the most respectful of all leaders ever engaged in the responsibility of fighting for freedom,'' Ashcroft said, and has been "most respectful in terms of respecting the civil liberties and rights of individuals while engaged in the important task of fighting for freedom."

Ashcroft said Woodrow Wilson monitored "all calls into and outside the United States'' in World War I, while Franklin Delano Roosevelt had "all traffic coming into and going out of the United States'' monitored in World War II.

Wilson's and Roosevelt's policies are a matter of historical record, and they were more intrusive than the more pin-pointed policies technology allows Bush to pursue. I have no doubt that Wilson and Roosevelt would have done the same, if they had the technologies available to them, because presidents tend to believe in the Constitution.

Nevertheless, that didn't stop the BDS crew at Think Progress:

Dirty Hippy: Down is up. Black is white. The surge is working…… Heckuva job. ****heads…….

Ralph the Wonder Lama: Oh yeah, Hitler

Bullsmith: Ashcroft, like Bush, spits on the Bill of Rights when he spews such obvious falsehoods about such important issues.

The first lefty to post a comment included "the surge is working" as one of Bush's lies. He was corrected a bit later by Frank M, noting that it working. That generated:

Crap, just when I thought we might have some peace a poster like Frank MORON shows up. **** off ******.

Some things never change.

A Little More Lefty Looniness

Surely you've read of Toledo mayor Carty Finkbeiner's action against the Marines -- denying them permission to conduct urban warfare training after the troops had ridden for four hours from their base in Michigan to Toledo. Here's the story, if you haven't.

So what's the lead-off commenter on the link above got to say about this sorry state of events? Here's what Neo Conned opines:

Urban Warfare training in preparation for who, the American populous? Good for the mayor- training s/b on on the bases/facilities.

Just another example to acclimate us to a military dictatorship. Oooooh, Al Qaeda gonna get ya- oh i forgot there is no such animal, just false flags prepping us for Haliburton camps.

Military dictatorship? No al-Qaeda? I guess Dennis Kucinich isn't the only certifiable loon to come out of Northern Ohio.

Microsoft (And Curvy)

Isabel Vogel was hired by Microsoft in Germany a few years back -- surprising her because she was a woman with children. Says Spiegel:

She knew that making it this far was already a victory. Despite her stellar background, she wouldn't have stood at a chance at most other companies.

For all its European enlightenment -- so exalted by the Left -- Germany isn't as enlightened as America, and it takes companies like Microsoft to show them the errors of their way by hiring people like Vogel and letting her:

She has served as a shining example for other young women in the company since then -- and as evidence to her employer that its woman-friendly personnel strategy is working. "If we don't manage to recruit women now, we'll be facing massive problems in less than five years," says Achim Berg, the general manager of Microsoft Germany, referring to the challenges of a shrinking population in Germany.

Ah, enlightened Europe! Stop having babies, resist hiring women, keep up the old face ... and let the Muslims procreate, subject their women to serf-like bondage while mocking America all the while.

Speaking Of Power Women ...

In the last week, not one, not two but three books have been published in France charting the romance of president Nicolas Sarkozy and Carla Bruni -- and there's some pretty good scuttlebutt about Carla's butt and how very effectively she's used it, like this:

The authors quote Bruni telling a friend that although she would not vote for him, she had “the hots” for Sarkozy during the election campaign last year. The former top model, whose conquests included Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton, the rock stars, and Donald Trump, the American property billionaire, told another friend before meeting Sarkozy: “I want a man with nuclear power.”

Whoa ... that puts foreign affairs in a whole new light, eh?

The Next Greenie Gotta-Have-It

What could be greener?

Just strap on your own knee-powered power generator, take a walk, and generate the juice for your next cell phone call, GPS query for the locale of the day's global warming demonstration or electronic nose-hair trimming session!

This prototype unit, described in Science Daily, weighs 3.5 pounds and generates a bit more power than it takes to crank it while walking. Figure the units will become lighter and more efficient as good ol' Yankee ingenuity is applied to them, and they may become Greenie as in Army Green.

It's easy to see soldiers being issued these, so after a day of maneuvers, they've got a plug-in device to power their equipment. Pretty cool.

In The Interest Of Accuracy

Here's an actual correction that should help clarify the newspaper's relationship to Mark Steyn:

The Ottawa Citizen and Southam News wish to apologize for our apology to Mark Steyn, published Oct. 22. In correcting the incorrect statements about Mr. Steyn published Oct. 15, we incorrectly published the incorrect correction. We accept and regret that our original regrets were unacceptable and we apologize to Mr. Steyn for any distress caused by our previous apology.

Glad we got that all straightened out. (Source)