Delta Air Lines is exploring bankruptcy financing:

The Atlanta-based airline is holding the discussions with lenders including GE Commercial Finance, which provided restructuring money in 2004, the Times said, citing both airline employees and members of the financial community. It said GE Commercial declined to comment.

Northwest may be close behind on the road to bankruptcy.

"We think the risk of bankruptcy is too high to continue to hold the stock," Standard & Poors analyst James Corridore wrote in a research note advising investors to sell. He's also not swayed by Northwest's $2.1 billion in cash.

None of the "main line" airlines with their extravagant labor contracts and relatively inefficient operations (compared to, say, Southwest) are a good bet to survive much longer.

So says a Virginia district court judge.

Virginia's law is unconstitutional because it presumes that an individual with a blood-alcohol content of 0.08 or higher is intoxicated, denying a defendant's right to a presumption of innocence, Judge Ian O'Flaherty ruled in dismissing charges against at least two alleged drunken drivers last month.

Gee. Presumption of innocence. Who'd a thunk it?

via Fark.

The Save a Connie folks have a big engine repair bill :

Officials of the Airline History Museum at the Wheeler Downtown Airport were devastated by the blowout, which occurred during routine maintenance checks on the ground.

Three cylinders in the No. 2 engine failed, spewing gallons of oil and fire that “stuck like napalm” to the plane’s metal skin, disfiguring the plane.

“It was a black, black day,” said Foe Geldersma, president of the Airline History Museum.

The engine failure meant scrubbing a visit to an air show last weekend in Rockford, Ill., and another scheduled for Labor Day weekend in St. Louis.

The nonprofit museum board and members are all volunteers, and many of them are former pilots. Rebuilding the Wright R3350 engine would cost more than $120,000 and wipe out their reserves.

The Airline History Museum in Kansas City could use some help here.

Hamas renews "Death to Israel" vow:

Hamas, which is dedicated to Israel's destruction, showcased its leaders and political message on the heels of a Palestinian Authority-organized Gaza beachfront celebration on Friday of the planned Israeli pullout.

There already exists a Palestinian state. It's called Jordan. Why do they need two? None of this is about Palestinian independence, it's about the extermination of the Jews.

Iraq closes in on a constitution:

"The meetings are still going on and we have gone forward," Talabani told reporters. "There is a meeting today and another meeting tomorrow and God willing we will finish the job tomorrow" — one day ahead of the deadline for parliament to approve the charter. Talabani said the meetings are concentrating on federalism in Shiite areas of central and southern Iraq, as well as the role of Islam in the state.

Progress is made more by little incremental steps than by grand great events. Iraq struggles toward freedom.

Iran's President Rafsanjani is astonished that the world is nervous about Iran's nuke program:

"It was astonishing and really strange...that eventually what Europeans and America wanted was approved with unanimity. How is it possible?" Rafsanjani told worshippers at Friday prayers at Tehran University.

"We didn't think that an international organization, before the eyes of the whole world, would sanction that Iran should stop everything," he added in a sermon broadcast live on state radio. "The decision was a cruel one."

They sound remarkably like the schoolyard bully when his behavior is finally called out by the Principal. "You're cruel, it's not fair!"

Gee, you don't suppose committing acts of war aganst everybody and generally trying to export Islamofascism to the world kinda gets people's attention?

Michael Totten:

So many Westerners, liberal and conservative alike, are only interested in the Middle East and the wider Islamic world at the points of inter-civilizational contact, when and where its problems intersect with us and become our problems. It's understandable, but it's blinkered. Islamism exists independently of the West, not merely in reaction to it, and it would continue to exist if America and the rest of the West did not. It's not all about us.

. . .

First of all, let's get one thing out of the way. "Terrorism," suicidal or otherwise, isn't the enemy. Totalitarian Islamists are the enemy. They won't go away just because Western troops go away. Terrorism is merely the tactic they use against Westerners because they're too militarily incompetent to use anything else.

The overwhelming majority of Islamist killers aren't terrorists. They are soldiers and members of state-sanctioned death squads. Most victims of Islamists violence aren't Westerners...they're the Islamists' fellow Muslims. It's easy to forget this -- or not even be aware of it -- if you aren't interested in what happens inside the Muslim world when George W. Bush, Tony Blair, and the rest in the West aren't involved.

The Islamist regime in Sudan has killed more than a million people all by itself in the Christian south and in the Muslim region of Darfur. It would take tens of thousands of terrorists to do worse than that.

But the Islamists in Algeria gave it a hell of shot. More than 100,000 were killed during the past ten years in that country's civil war between radical Salafi fundamentalists and literally everyone else.

Iran's Islamist regime killed its way into power and kills to remain in power. Afghanistan's former Taliban regime likewise killed its way into power and killed to remain in power.

If we can't agree on who the enemy is, how are we going to win? We have crazed momma Sheehan and her political allies screeching the "Leave Iraq Now" chorus.

No, Mrs. Sheehan, that way lies disaster. If we stay, we die by ones and twos, taking tens and hundreds of the thugs with us. If we leave, we die by the thousands, and they kill themselves by the tens of thousands. Leaving Iraq, disingaging from the war on terrorists, is an utterly immoral and indefensable policy. Those who advocate it should be ashamed.

Tony Blair's Liberal government in Britain begins deporting Muslim radicals, starting with ten foreigners:

LONDON - Britain's top legal official on Friday defended plans to deport a radical Muslim cleric and nine other foreigners suspected of posing a threat to national security despite claims by human rights campaigners that they could face torture in the countries they are sent to.

Five years ago, this policy change would have seemed radical and draconian:

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain said on Friday as part of an anti-terrorism drive it may reform laws to force judges to give equal weight to national security as well as human rights in the cases of foreign nationals facing deportation.

Not in the post-9/11 and post-7/7 world, however.

Reported previously here, a Times of London story about MI5 taking out Islamic terrorist-related web sites seems to have beenoverstated at best.

"Somebody was trying to make a big story," said Yigal Carmon, head of the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI.org). MEMRI monitors and translates newspaper and magazine articles, editorials, public statements, and web publishing from the Islamic world. Its product (memri.org), has become an invaluable resource for Westerners seeking to understand -- not just speculate about -- Muslim thought. This is what Arabs really say to each other.

Carmon also dismissed one unidentified source in the story, Uri Mahnaimi, with a snort and a memorable wisecrack which he asked me not to quote. "Not credible," he said. Two websites had in fact been taken down, along with two more which are back up now, Carmon said.

In short, don't believe everything you see on the Internet.

This is real, though. Trust me.

The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, which conducts regular polling on attitudes toward the media, said that in 1985 about 84 percent of Americans said they believed most of what they read in their daily newspaper. By 2004, that had dropped to 54 percent.

What isn't clear is whether fabrications have become more common, or just easier to uncover.

These days, an army of amateur and professional media critics have made a hobby out of attempting to discredit news reports and statements by politicians.

Skepticism is healthy. Just don't fall into the trap of being asymetrically skeptical (i.e. skeptical of the right but not of the left, or vice versa).