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A plea for ethics

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I've signed on to the following letter, hosted by NZ Bear

An Appeal from Center-Right Bloggers

We are bloggers with boatloads of opinions, and none of us come close to agreeing with any other one of us all of the time. But we do agree on this: The new leadership in the House of Representatives needs to be thoroughly and transparently free of the taint of the Jack Abramoff scandals, and beyond that, of undue influence of K Street.

We are not naive about lobbying, and we know it can and has in fact advanced crucial issues and has often served to inform rather than simply influence Members.

But we are certain that the public is disgusted with excess and with privilege. We hope the Hastert-Dreier effort leads to sweeping reforms including the end of subsidized travel and other obvious influence operations. Just as importantly, we call for major changes to increase openness, transparency and accountability in Congressional operations and in the appropriations process.

As for the Republican leadership elections, we hope to see more candidates who will support these goals, and we therefore welcome the entry of Congressman John Shadegg to the race for Majority Leader. We hope every Congressman who is committed to ethical and transparent conduct supports a reform agenda and a reform candidate. And we hope all would-be members of the leadership make themselves available to new media to answer questions now and on a regular basis in the future.


Signed,

N.Z. Bear, The Truth Laid Bear
Hugh Hewitt, HughHewitt.com
Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit.com
Kevin Aylward, Wizbang!
La Shawn Barber, La Shawn Barber's Corner
Lorie Byrd, Polipundit
Beth Cleaver, MY Vast Right Wing Conspiracy
Jeff Goldstein, Protein Wisdom
Stephen Green, Vodkapundit
John Hawkins, Right Wing News
John Hinderaker, Power Line
Jon Henke / McQ / Dale Franks, QandO
James Joyner, Outside The Beltway
Mike Krempasky, Redstate.org
Michelle Malkin, MichelleMalkin.com
Ed Morrissey, Captain's Quarters
Scott Ott, Scrappleface
John Donovan / Bill Tuttle, Castle Argghhh!!!

Outback Steakhouse

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Sometimes, good customer service means a good response to the human mistakes that sometimes get made. Hats off to the Sioux Falls, SD Outback Steakhouse. My wife's letter to them (follow the "read more" link):

Living in "1984?"

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Radley Balko at the Cato Institute has "predictions" for 2006. Follow the link--you don't want to miss the punch line at the end of the article.

A quick sample:

My predictions:

—Moved by terrorist fears and anti-immigrant fervor, we will move ever closer to a national identification card. Citizens of the United States won't be allowed to do something as simple as ride the bus without first showing "their papers," invoking comparisons to communist regimes in the former Iron Curtain countries.

Someone in Congress will introduce legislation calling for a national ID card, but with Orwellian panache, will attempt to assuage fears of civil libertarians by calling for the words "this is not a national ID card" to be printed on the actual national ID card.

—The drug war will continue apace. Police dressed in paramilitary gear will conduct multiple early-morning raids on the homes of nonviolent marijuana offenders, including using forced entry, stun grenades, and other combat tactics commonly used in urban warfare.

—In the name of public safety, some small town will install cameras on its streets that nab motorists who speed, then send them a ticket in the mail. But in a thinly disguised move to generate more revenue, said town will lower the speed limits after installing the cameras, in effect entrapping motorists into fines they don't deserve.

—Drug warriors will finally drop the charade, and arrest the Bill of Rights. On drug charges, of course.

—Staking out new ground in egregious corporate welfare, an American city will once again build a new stadium for the millionaire owners of a professional sports team, at taxpayer expense. This time, however, the millionaire franchise owners will get a bonus $50 million from the city's taxpayers for breaking the lease on the old stadium — which the city will do for the express purpose of building the new one.

Worse, the team will get half of all revenues from non-football related events held at the taxpayer-funded stadium. Worse yet, the city will seize land from businesses who've been in operation for decades — not just to build the stadium, but to build parking lots around the stadium. The proceeds from which, once again, will go to the millionaire franchise owners.

The Alito Spectacle

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The Alito hearings may be remembered primarily as the point at which the Democrats' tactics of smear and innuendo became self-evidently ineffective.

Several observers are seeing a parallel in the Democratic Senators' antics with Tailgunner Joe McCarthy's anti-Communist hearings of the 1950's. This analogy is of course profoundly offensive to the Left, secure in their righteous belief that the Right has a monopoly on strident over-the-top Senatorial witch-hunts.

Peggy Noonan comments:

Either liberals like Ted Kennedy really believe that conservatives harbor deep in their hearts an animus toward women, and blacks, and Hispanics, and everyone who is not a white male, or liberals simply enjoy, for reasons that are cynical and perhaps also psychological ("The people I fight are bad; this buttresses my belief that I, in spite of what I know about myself, am good"), suggesting that conservatives are full of narrow-minded bigotry and hatred.
As a matter of fact, Peggy, yes, the Left really does believe that. And that belief blinds them and cripples them, resulting in the sorry spectacle of the Alito confirmation hearings.

The American Restaurant

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The American Restaurant is one of Kansas City's better restaurants. Unfortunately, my wife and I caught them on what is, to say the least, an off night. Our letter to them is in the extended article (click "read more"):

Iran President: "We must prepare to rule the world"

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Yes, the Iranian mullahs may very well be that crazy:
“We must believe in the fact that Islam is not confined to geographical borders, ethnic groups and nations. It’s a universal ideology that leads the world to justice”, Ahmadinejad said. “We don’t shy away from declaring that Islam is ready to rule the world”, he added. Ahmadinejad dwelled on his recurrent theme that the return of the Shiite Messiah, the Mahdi, is not far away and Muslims must prepare for it. “We must prepare ourselves to rule the world and the only way to do that is to put forth views on the basis of the Expectation of the Return”, Ahmadinejad said, referring to the Shiite Muslim belief that the Mahdi, on his return, will establish justice in a world consumed by chaos and corruption.
Oh, by the way, these are the guys who will by all reports have a nuclear bomb by summer, 2006.

Does this bother you? At all?

Well, this is annoying . . .

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Create an e-annoyance, go to jail
It's no joke. Last Thursday, President Bush signed into law a prohibition on posting annoying Web messages or sending annoying e-mail messages without disclosing your true identity.

In other words, it's OK to flame someone on a mailing list or in a blog as long as you do it under your real name. Thank Congress for small favors, I guess.

This ridiculous prohibition, which would likely imperil much of Usenet, is buried in the so-called Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act. Criminal penalties include stiff fines and two years in prison.

"It's pretty apparent that the (media) has dropped the ball"

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U.S. Army company commander and "365 And A Wakeup" blogger "Thunder6", interviewed in Winds of Change:
Its pretty apparent to the troops on the ground that the MSM has dropped the ball. There are a few exceptions, but for the most part the MSM seems to have a difficult time grasping the ground truth. I'm not sure if this is indicative of a downward spiral in modern journalism or whether it is grounded in some gut level revulsion of anything that can't be collapsed into a sound bite. I've met several superb journalists that wrote moving stories about our missions, but in the end the stories went unpublished. Unless it is short, sexy, or violent the MSM doesn't appear interested.
Old Media is not telling the whole story, to the great detriment of our troops in harm's way, and to the national security in general.