Yahoo News:
Poll:  Most doubt Dems have plan for Iraq

Though voters apparently embraced the Democratic mantra of changing course in Iraq, a majority of the public did not detect a clear Democratic blueprint for ending the war. Fifty-seven percent of all adults in the AP-Ipsos poll said Democrats do not have a plan for Iraq; 29 percent said they do. The poll of 1,002 adults has a margin of error of 3 percentage points.

That finding strikes at the heart of a Democratic dilemma. The party has been of one voice in criticizing President Bush's strategy for the war but has been more equivocal on how to move in a different direction.

Welcome to reality, Democrats.  It's always easier to complain from the outside than it is to execute from the inside.

For the sake of our country, I hope you do the right thing.  History will be the final judge.

So indicates the head of the UK's MI5 intelligence service, according to Yahoo News:

LONDON - British authorities are tracking almost 30 terrorist plots involving 1,600 people, the country's domestic spy chief said in remarks released Friday, warning that young British Muslims are at risk of being radicalized by extremists.

It was the first public estimate of the threat by the head of MI5, Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, who said her agency and police are monitoring 200 cells actively engaged in plotting or aiding attacks in Britain and abroad.

More than a year after the suicide attacks on London's transit system, Manningham-Buller predicted the fight against terrorism would last a generation.

"It is a sustained campaign, not a series of isolated incidents," she said in a speech to a small audience of academics Thursday, according to a transcript released by the spy agency on Friday. "Radicalizing elements within communities are trying to exploit grievances for terrorist purposes."

This war won't go away if we just talk to the terrorists.  They have made their demands perfectly clear.

Submit.

Or die.

Well, not quite. But the headline in this Space.com story reads:
Heineken to track beer by satellite

Do you know where your beer is? Dutch beer maker Heineken wants to make sure - so it has put together a team that includes IBM and the University of Amsterdam to track beer by satellite.

Beer Living Lab is a pilot project that will track 20 beer containers shipped from the Netherlands to Heineken's UK distribution centre. Each container will be outfitted with GSM, GPRS and global positioning systems. Satellite uplinks will be provided due to particular technical problems with RFID, which can only be read when the tag is close to a RFID reader.

I hope the Democrats, now back in power in Congress, will grow up, sober up and start seriously engaging issues from Iraq to Social Security.  I hope they do not squander the next two years with a crippling anal examination of every aspect of the Bush Administration, but instead will want to move forward, keep this country safe, and fix the entitlements mess for which they are largely responsible.

I hope the Republicans ponder the fruits of abandoning the small-L libertarian smaller-government, lower-taxes, individual-empowerment philosophy which was central to their taking over Congress in 1994, and rededicate themselves to being the reformist party that brought them to power in the first place.

Catching up on the weekend's news after a wonderful weekend in Knoxville (and no, I didn't look up Glenn Reynolds).  The weekend would have been complete with a Tennessee football win over LSU, but the food in the skybox was pretty darn good.

Anyway, it seems that everyone's favorite former dictator has almost come to the end of his rope, literally.  Lovers of freedom and liberty throughout the world hailed the imminent final meting of justice to a murderous tyrant:

Former Democratic Sen. Max Cleland of Georgia said the death sentence would make no difference and predicted more violence.

OK, perhaps not.

Well, that's not exactly how the New York Times is trying to spin the story, but that's pretty much what they're saying.

See, the Times thinks that they've got Bush again.  Now they're reporting that the International Atomic Energy Agency (the UN don't-inspect-for-weapons agency) is concerned that the U.S. has put captured Iraqi documents on the web for, basically, anyone who can to translate from Arabic to English.

Guess what?

Some of those documents, according to the IAEA as reported by the N.Y. Times, reveal in detail how to go about building a nuclear weapon.

Weren't we told again and again and again that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and Saddam was years from obtaining one?

If so, how can the captured Iraqi documents be that serious?

Hmm??????

Makes you wonder who, exactly, has been lying to us all these years?

This story focused on ACORN's shady voter registration tactics in St. Louis, but the first Federal indictments for vote fraud in this year's election cycle come against ACORN workers in Kansas City:

The four indicted -- Kwaim A. Stenson, Dale D. Franklin, Stephanie L. Davis and Brian Gardner -- were employed by ACORN as registration recruiters. They were each charged with two counts.

Federal indictments allege the four turned in false voter registration applications. Prosecutors said the indictments are part of a national investigation.

ACORN says they turned the four in, and have fired them.  But how deep does the corruption go, really, and what are the links between ACORN and the Democratic Party?  Will these four Kansas City indictments be the last in Missouri this election cycle?  These indictments are part of a national investigaton. Where will the next rotten ACORN be found?

Hat tip:  Instapundit and Gateway Pundit.

Forced to cancel numerous campaign appearances, Kerry emerged from foot-in-mouth surgery late yesterday as outraged citizens extracted this statement from his tortured soul:

As a combat veteran, I want to make it clear to anyone in uniform and to their loved ones: my poorly stated joke at a rally was not about, and never intended to refer to any troop.

I sincerely regret that my words were misinterpreted to wrongly imply anything negative about those in uniform, and I personally apologize to any service member, family member, or American who was offended.

It is clear the Republican Party would rather talk about anything but their failed security policy. I don’t want my verbal slip to be a diversion from the real issues. I will continue to fight for a change of course to provide real security for our country, and a winning strategy for our troops.

The operation was obviously not a total success. He would have done well to stop at the second paragraph, because the third is the verbal equivalent of crossing his fingers behind his back.

The blogswarm and firestorm over John Kerry's "joke" continues.  I have little to add, except:

This was the candidate for President for one of the country's major political parties.

Think about it, before you go to vote this year.

Think about a party that would nominate such a raging twit for President.  Then think about that person with the D beside their name that you're about to vote for.

Vote Twit.  Vote Democrat.

Posting is light, primarily because we're in the heart of the college athletics season--but also because I'm utterly burned out on politics and Islamofascism and serious stuff.

So, it is with joy that I present this story from Yahoo News:
Man builds 3,300-pound rubber band ball

EUGENE, Ore. - With all due respect to The Spinners and T.I., prepare yourself for the new rubber-band man. Steve Milton, through concentration and perseverance, has created a 3,300-pound ball comprised of rubber bands. His creation measures almost 5 feet tall and takes up half his two-car garage. Though it's not official, the 26-year-old Eugene man believes he has broken the record for the heaviest such ball, eclipsing John Bain's mark of 3,120 pounds. The Wilmington, Del., man's record has stood for eight years.

Milton has posted updates of his ball's growing girth on his MySpace page. He's also uploaded videos of the ball crushing things, such as using a forklift to drop the ball on an old van.