Interesting Items by Alex Gimarc, Feb 2007

1. WMDs. Appears the insurgents, foreign fighters and Al Qaida in Iraq (AQI) forces we have been chasing around Iraq for the last four years have managed to find the fabled Weapons of Mass Destruction and are now using them against the Iraqi people and Coalition forces. They are now using something a little special in their car bombs – chlorine gas, which by definition is a chemical munition, and in turn and by definition a WMD. Remember that Germany st arted with chlorine in WWI before they went on to nastier things like mustard gas, phosgene and related chemicals. The truck bombs and car bombs have st arted showing up in Baghdad and Al Anbar province where the Bad Guys are thickest. Coalition forces have st arted bringing chem gear with them on patrols. Interestingly enough, this little factoid has been completely missed by the anti-war crowd in the CIA and State Dep artment, the drive-by media, sufferers of Bush Derangement Syndrome (you remember – the Bush Lied, People Died people) nationwide, and the rest of our so-called friends on the left. Big Lizards reported that the third explosion with chlorine in the week had gone off in southern Baghdad Wednesday. There were also reports that the jihadis have been trying to figure out how to get chlorine into mortar shells and other IEDs. They need to be careful, for it is very nasty stuff and requires special handling. Perhaps their learning curve will be truncated, as they kill off more of their Chemical Corps in training than in combat. The other thing to consider is that if they are willing to use chemical munitions on their own countrymen – just like Saddam did – how willing do you think they are to use the same weapons on us over here as soon as they can? Sleep well.

2. Touristas. A gang of three young thugs that jumped a tour bus filled with Americans got a real surprise when the Americans fought back. The attack happened last week in Limon, Costa Rica when a Carnival Cruise Line boat discharged passengers during a stop-over. Twelve passengers were on a beach when three twenty-something young thugs pulled weapons on the passengers and demanded money. One of the passengers, a 70-year old retired Marine decided he didn’t want to play, jumped one of the thugs, put him in a headlock, broke his neck, killing him on the spot. The reports are unclear how much help he got from the rest of the passengers. The other two young thugs took their weapons and ran away. The bus took the body to the local Red Cross where he was declared dead. Local police questioned the passengers and witnesses and released them to return to the cruise ship which dep arted the port a little behind schedule. The guy’s mother filed a complaint against the Americans for use of excessive force in the death of her wayward son. As of this date, neither the Costa Rican police nor Carnival Cruise Lines are releasing the name of the Marine. I expect he will not have to buy any refreshments for the remainder of his trip. AP, Weds.

3. Utah Shooter. There was yet another mass shooting at a mall. This one happened a couple weeks ago in Utah, when a young Bosnian immigrant - who may or may not be Muslim – entered a mall and st arted killing as many people as he could before being killed himself. He killed five and wounded four others before being shot. His backpack was full of ammunition and other weapons. Apparently he intended on continuing his murderous rampage for a while. His father was quoted a week or so later saying that someone must have trained him. The dual standard in reporting this murderous thug is breathtaking, as none of the normal drive-by media outlets have investigated his religious affiliation at all. But we may not know for a long time, for both the local police and the drive-bys are keeping a tight lid on his background. Immigration has reported that he was Muslim. Perhaps it is time to check out the local Mosque of the Religion of Perpetual Outrage. CNS, News, Feb 14.

4. Chavez. Interesting little story about Castro wannabee Hugo Chavez of Venezuela showed up in Captain’s Qu arters last Tuesday. It appears that Chavez may have lost his last two elections by rigging the voter rolls. The first was a recall election in 2004; the second was a presidential election last December. The analysts believe that Chavez added 4.4 million new names to the rolls of eligible voters while simultaneously moving 2.6 million unfriendly voters to places that it is difficult to get to the polls – meaning that he has diddled perhaps 7 million votes in each election. Of course the Peanut Farmer, Jimmy C arter, America’s Worst President, was front and center certifying the elections as open, honest, and fair. We have a problem in South America. Eventually we are going to have to do something about him.

5. Oil. There is an economic component to most conflicts, and there is one connected to the insurgency in Iraq. The basic question is what to do with the oil revenues in Iraq. Most of the known oil is either in the north, in Kurdish dominated provinces, or in the south in Shiite dominated provinces. Up until last week, there was little known oil or natural gas in the Sunni dominated provinces. Well, all that may be changing, as a significant find of oil and natural gas was discovered in far western Al Anbar province, finally giving the Sunnis a financial stake in the festivities. And this is very good news indeed. The Sunni minority dominated Iraqi government under Saddam for a generation. They ruled with an iron fist. Now that Saddam is gone, the Sunni minority is yet another minority – only they remember their glory days and are seeking to return to them, using the insurgency as a vehicle. As they have no political power and no economic power, what possible reason would they have to lay down their arms and join the new government of Iraq? So the insurgency has dragged on and on and on. Well, that has now changed. They now have their own piece of the pie. They now own their own resources – just like the other sections of the country. Now they can do something other than maim, kill and blow things up. They can develop their resources and rest art the flow of wealth into their own pockets – this time in an honest and honorable manner (or whatever passes for honorable and honest in that p art of the world). The first piece of legislation out of the Iraqi Parliament should pass next week. It will be legislation dividing the oil wealth among the Iraqi people and the government. It appears that the legislation will take a percentage of the profits / production for the central government – not unlike federal excise taxes on oil and natural gas here in the US, and leave the rest for the provinces to decide what to do with. If successful, this introduces federalism into Iraqi governance, economics and politics, provides a way around the intra-tribal divisions and age-old hatreds, and lays the foundation for a real live, honest to God economy in Iraq – an outcome that will sow absolute terror into the black little he arts of the unfriendly governments of their neighbors in Iran and Syria. Congratulations to the Iraqis. May you live long and prosper.

6. Billing. Captain’s Quarters Monday reported that someone finally found a way to encourage the Russians to stop helping the Iranians build reactors. Unfortunately it has nothing to do with anything we are doing. It has everything to do with the Iranian fiscal crisis and their failure to pay the Russians for their help. The thieving Mullahs running Iran have so damaged the economy via sheer theft and socialist programs that there is not enough spare cash to pay their bills. The Russians have stopped construction on the reactor in Bushehr. This won’t last long, but we might as well enjoy it while it is going on.

1. Slow Bleed. Jack “Redeploy to Okinawa” Murtha (D, PA) announced his anti-war strategy as Chairman of the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee last week. In short, it is breathtakingly cynical and cowardly – precisely what we would expect from a democrat. Murtha and the House leadership do not have the stomach to actually debate or vote to defund the war. Instead they intend to appropriate the requested money but tie it up with a thousand rules, limitations, and regulations, all designed to not allow the Commander in Chief to use the money as he sees fit to prosecute the war. Murtha announced his intensions in one of the democrat friendly blogs which quoted his words directly. This move appears completely supported by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, CA), which wanted Murtha on her House leadership team. It is difficult to say in polite words what I actually think of such a cowardly, traitorous act.

2. Congress. Democrats in both houses of congress held perfunctory debate on non-binding resolutions against the change in strategy in Iraq. Days after over 80 senators voted to confirm new Coalition Commander David Petraeus (who was one of the dissidents arguing internally for a change in strategy for the last few years), senate democrats tried to bring a smarmy resolution to the floor of the senate opposing the change in strategy that Petraeus was being sent to implement. The same democrats that have been braying about more troops nearly continuously since 2004 (one of Kerry’s talking points throughout that campaign) now insist there be no more troops. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D, NV) tried to craft the debate in such a way as to keep the minority from offering an alternative (which would have passed) and to limit any amendments to the democrat proposal. Republicans took great exception at the PR dance and filibustered. The senate was unable to call for cloture. It appears now that senate democrats will try to gut the war effort using the Murtha technique, by trying to limit the way the Commander in Chief can train, deploy and rotate his forces. These actions are clearly unconstitutional and will force a confrontation between one of the more venal senates in recent memory and the Executive. Majority Conference Vice Chairman Chuckie Schumer (D, NY) prattled on for a long while about how they were going to return to the glorious days of opposition to the Vietnam War, when a democrat congress cut off all support to the government of South Vietnam, forced the withdrawl of American troops, and made it possible for communists in North Vietnam and Cambodia to murder millions after we bugged out. Problem with this is that most of us view the Islamists as a very real threat, and slightly beneath vermin or pond scum on the list of things to eliminate from the face of the e arth at our earliest opportunity. If senate democrats think their way to an electoral landslide in 2008 and future elections is to pull out American troops that have been systematically kicking Islamist backside across Iran, Iraq and Somalia and turn the entire mess over to Al Qaida and the Wahabbis with the subsequent bloodbath, I think they will be disappointed.

3. Polar Bears. E arthjustice lawyers filed a lawsuit on behalf of Pacific Environmental and the Center for Biological Diversity against the US Fish & Wildlife Service last Tuesday. The lawsuit was intended to take decisions for approving oil and natural gas exploration in the Arctic Ocean out of the hands of the feds that regulate it and put it into the hands of a (hopefully) suitably grandstanding Clinton-appointed federal judge. The latest excuse of these greens for the lawsuit is that the feds did not consider the effects of global warming, thinning ice and other environmental horrors as they approved permits for seismic surveys of just off the Alaskan North Slope. The lawsuit claimed that between 1994 and 2000, there was an average of 37 polar bear sightings yearly by people involved in the oil business on the Slope. In 2004, there were 89 sightings – over twice as many. And the conclusion these obstructionist twits want us (and the activist judge hearing the case) to arrive at is that oil exploration activities are causing more contact with the bears, rather than the environmental change up there – whatever it is – is allowing the number of local bears to increase in such a way as to double the sightings. Funny, I thought the goal of the greens was the proliferation of the large, deadly mammals. Apparently not. Their goal is fundraising with obstruction and lawsuits as the chosen vehicle. Anchorage Daily News, Tues.

4. Sadr. Moqtada (Mookie) Al Sadr, the leader of the Mahdi Militia, the Shiite gang of thugs in Baghdad, apparently deciding that discretion is the better p art of honor, bugged out a week or two ago to Iran. He took his wives and lieutenants with him. Rumors of his dep arture have been flying for weeks, as he has not found a TV camera to bloviate in front of for a while. Now that he and his leadership is gone to Iran, the Coalition and Iraqi forces are quickly rolling up the Mahdis and the death squads associated with them. The power vacuum will be filled by the new Iraqi government and there will be no opening left when Mookie decides crawl out from under his rock and return.

5. NORKs. The North Koreans have apparently agreed to shut down their nuclear program and invite the inspectors in, all in exchange for fuel and food. The agreement came out of the six-p arty talks which include China, Japan, South Korea and the US as p arties. Clinton’s disastrous nuke deal in the 1990s was the product of direct talks with the NORKs, so this one may be significantly more enforceable, especially with the ChiComs being p arty to the final agreement. Reaction to the deal among conservatives was mixed, ranging from flat-out opposition to a cautious wait and see. There are a couple things going on with the NORKs. The first is that they are mired in yet another of their perennial famines, mostly caused by all resources being shifted to support the exorbitant lifestyle of Dear Leader and the military. The famine is also reaching down into the NORK military, which is his power base, and they are st arting to shift against him. The second thing that is happening is that the number of people crossing the ChiCom border is increasing, and they are tiring of sending them back to get tortured and killed. Some observers, like Dr. Jack Wheeler, who tries to be a bit out in front of the curve, has been predicting that the NORK government will fall, via a ChiCom and NORK military push, leading to eventual reunification with the South. South Korea, for their p art has seen the incredible cost that Germany has paid for their reunification and know that the situation in the North is far worse than East Germany was before the fall of the Berlin Wall and wants no p art of paying for it – which is where we will come in, I suspect. For helping pay for a reunification and rebuilding of the North will be far cheaper than keeping troops in Korea for the next 50 years or fighting a war there. When and if the NORK government falls is anyone’s guess, but it will certainly be something to watch. It will also be one less member of the Axis of Evil to deal with in the years to come and one less nuclear capable rogue state to worry about.

6. Knik Bridge. The Anchorage Planning and Zoning Commission voted last week not to include the Knik Arm Bridge west from Anchorage, as p art of their comprehensive transportation plan. This decision will effectively cut off an area of land larger than that of the entire Anchorage Bowl, which sits ten minutes west of downtown from development. The decision could not be more shortsighted, but was not unexpected. We will hope that the Anchorage Assembly will do the right thing and override the vote when they take up the plan next week. Note that the bridge already has federal funds associated with it and the Knik Bridge Authority is out trying to sell bonds to privately fund as much of the construction as they can. We will wish them luck. ADN , Weds.

1. Feith. The internal war inside the administration over garbage masquerading as intelligence analysis broke out in public last week with the release of a Pentagon Inspector General’s (IG) report on DoD’s pre-war intelligence analysis. The report found that no laws were broken, but the conclusions Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Feith’s group arrived at were inappropriate because they didn’t agree with the consensus out of the national intelligence community before the Iraq war. If you follow the logic of this report far enough you arrive at the conclusion that anyone that takes a group of intelligence information, looks at it with separate eyes, and arrives at another conclusion that that of the intelligence community has committed an inappropriate act – meaning that disagreement on conclusions is no longer allowed. I don’t think they really meant to say that. Note that this was the same national intelligence community that has grown so ossified with internal politics, group-think, and careerism, that they have missed every single large international change or threat for over a generation. It is the same intelligence community that fell all over itself promising that discovery of Iraqi WMDs was in George Tenant’s words was a “slam dunk”, and then st arted pointing fingers at the Pentagon for not finding what they said was there in the first place. Feith should be congratulated for setting up a “Red Team”, a group that took the same basic intelligence information and analyzed it outside the confines of the existing group-think of national intelligence establishment. They ought to be congratulated for pushing the bureaucracy. They ought to be congratulated for thinking outside of the box and giving the President and the NCA more options for action than the national establishment did. Instead, they are blasted by democrats in congress for simply making up intelligence analysis to support an existing decision to invade Iraq and topple Saddam. The drive-by media did their p art also, intentionally misreporting the DoD IG’s report as smoking gun proof that the Pentagon simply made it up. Unfortunately you can’t have it both ways. Either the national intelligence establishment is broken or it isn’t. It needs a thorough housecleaning sooner rather than later.

2. Snickers. Mars Inc. pulled a Snickers ad first shown during the Super Bowl after complaints by the gay rights crowd over insensitivity. The ad showed two guys working on an auto inadvertently kissing after eating a Snickers candy bar from either end. They met in the middle; were immediately grossed out; decided that they each needed to do something ‘manly’ in response; and yanked a handful of chest hair from their chests – with the expected screams of pain. At worst, this was an ad targeted to they typical male teenager (or those like myself that like slapstick). Well, our Friends, the humorless unfortunates that make up the Gary Rights crowd, couldn’t find it inside themselves to laugh about the slapstick, guy humor and bullied Mars into pulling the ad. It will live in infamy on the Internet, for years to come along with several alternate endings.

3. Pelosi Air. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s desire for publicly-funded transportation hit the fan last week with her demand that the USAF supply a tricked-out 757 with 40 seats to become her transportation to and from her district in San Francisco. The Bush administration set the precedent after 9-11 by providing then Speaker Denny Hastert with a Gulfstream II for his travels to and from his district. The reason for the transportation provided was security during his travels. Pelosi is in the midst of turning this security-based perk into a handout to 40 of her closest friends, family members, and financial supporters. The fact that she is pushing the Pentagon for the free transportation means it won’t come out of her budget in the House. Pelosi and her henchman Jack (redeploy them to Okinawa) Murtha (D, PA) are pressuring the Pentagon to provide the big jet rather than a long-range version of the same Gulfstream that they provided Hastert. Murtha and Pelosi have been publicly threatening DoD with funding difficulties should they not immediately go belly-up in the negotiations. At least we can see what the most ethical congress in history is all about – extortion from the Pentagon for payoffs to supporters and people who she wants money and support from.

4. AQI. A couple stories on Al Qaida in Iraq (AQI) hit the blogs this week. In the first, we have yet another raging argument in the intelligence community about their size and impact on the current festivities. The argument is how large AQI’s influence is on the insurgency. The majority view is that it is a small p art of the anti-liberty war. The minority view is that it is in charge of the entire Sunni effort to foment a civil war. The majority view tends to minimize the role of Al Qaida in Iraq, making further prosecution of the war against them unnecessary. The minority view continues to paint them (correctly in my view) as the he art and soul of the Islamist effort against liberty in Iraq. Should we be able to crush them in Iraq, we successfully remove a significant number of them from future actions against free men and women worldwide. The second AQI story describes how the long-anticipated surge (which has been under way for a couple weeks all ready) has caught a number of very bad people and removed them from action. It appears that Coalition and Iraqi Army forces have killed or captured several top lieutenants to current top AQI thug Al Masri in a series of raids and attacks on safe houses across central Iraq. One of the top guys was captured. This is reminiscent of the way we took out Al Zarqawi, rolling up his top guys, exploiting intelligence from their debriefings, and acting on that intel before others in the network have time to act on the capture. There are parallel reports of AQI bugging out of Baghdad for p arts unknown. This is a Good Thing, for when they are out from under their respective rocks, they are far easier to hunt down and kill. They will not be missed in Baghdad I expect. The important p art of the troop surge may be over before the troops get into place in Iraq, and before the congresscritters stop bloviating about whether or not the surge is even a good idea, demonstrating yet again why there is a single Commander in Chief rather than 535.

5. Internet. There was a Denial of Service (DoS) attack mounted against the root servers for the Internet last Tuesday. DoS attacks bombard servers / sites / internet nodes with more traffic than they can respond to in a given period of time with the goal of bouncing the target off the net. The root servers for the Internet are located here in the US and are well protected from hackers. The attacks were traced back to South Korea, which may or may not be the source. It is not uncommon for Bad Guys to hijack other computers via viruses or Trojans and build “bot farms” of thousands to hundreds of thousands of computers they do not own to send spam or use to mount DoS attacks. The attacks also targeted some Defense Dep artment computers. At this point, they have not yet been repeated. We know that the ChiComs and the Islamists have been practicing information warfare. This huge attack may have been a probe; a practice run against the Internet intended to gather information about Blue Force (friendly) detection, analysis and response. If so, they will have learned whatever they have learned and are making preparations to do it again, only more successfully. It is the Wild West out there on the Net, and there are more than enough Bad Guys to go around. LGF, Weds.

1. Polar Bears. The latest environmentalist hoax was perpetrated on the general public last week when they ran a 2004 photo of a mother an cub on an interesting iceberg. The initial photo ran was taken by wildlife photographers protected by rifles (white bears eat people) and was described as an interesting photo. This time around, it was touted as irrefutable evidence of global warming, with the obviously melting ice beneath the bears. The photo ran in hundreds of newspapers nationwide near the end of the week as environmentalists pressured the Bush administration to list polar bears as threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. Limbaugh discussed the photo briefly on his show this morning. The story the lying greens are attempting to tell is that global warming, caused exclusively by human activity, is responsible for thin ice in the Arctic and death of the bears. I am here to tell you that in early Feb. on the Alaskan North Slope, there is no shortage of ice on and around the Arctic Ocean. The National Center for Policy Analysis published a report last May analyzing the white bear population in the Arctic. As expected, the report found no overall trend in population in any direction. Interestingly, it found an overall decrease in bear numbers in p arts of the Canadian Arctic that have been a bit colder than normal over the last couple decades, and an increase in areas that have been a bit warmer than normal – not unlike the response of caribou to warmth (they survive a little better). You can find the article at the following location. It ought to give those interested sufficient information to research further if desired. http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba/ba551/

2. Global Warming. Last week also saw the release of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) latest report on climate change. The 1,600 page report was released Friday to the expected environmentalist caterwauling about the coming apocalypse. Interesting enough, the body of the report differed from the conclusions in the summary. And the overall report represented a significant rollback in predictions of catastrophic global warming and rises in sea levels made in previous reports. Either they were wrong with previous estimates, or we are really in the midst of a cooling phase as some believe we have been in since 1977. The good news about this mess is that as the left forces their manmade global warming orthodoxy down the collective throats of the scientific community, some are st arting to push back – regardless of the risk of loss of research funding and employment when they speak up in opposition. As the greens overplay their hands with this, expect the push back to increase as the argument is joined. When the left st arts claiming that the argument is over, that is precisely the time when the argument is to be joined – and they don’t want to play. While the greens are yammering about global warming, and demanding an instant decrease in manmade carbon dioxide emissions, we might want to consider the premise of Larry Niven’s “Fallen Angels”, a sci-fi book placed in the near future which the coming of the new ice age was accelerated by environmentalist mandated control of greenhouse gasses. J. R. Dunn in the American Thinker last Friday wrote a piece entitled “A Necessary Apocalypse” that described the environmental movement in general and their current global warming scheme as a religious movement. You can find it at: http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/02/a_necessary_apocalypse.html It is a superb piece. His leadoff quote is from G. K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy: “A man who ceases to believe in God does not believe in nothing; he believes in anything.” It is long past time to st art arguing with these clowns on religious terms, for they are diddling the science to further their religion and global warming is simply the latest vehicle.

3. CAFÉ. Alaska’s two senators jumped the shark in recent weeks by proposing legislation that will raise the federally mandated average mileage for all vehicles to 40 mpg by 2017. The excuse for this political grandstanding for the beltway media is that this will decrease our reliance on foreign oil, decrease the amount of carbon dioxide put into the air, and lessen the impact of manmade global warming. What an embarrassment. And to all you truck and SUV fans, they intend on applying the new standards to trucks. Not only do they ignore the deadly impact of past CAFÉ standard increases – the downsizing of vehicles, making them smaller, lighter and far less survivable in accidents, but they also show remarkable lack of knowledge of what sort of things cause greenhouse effects. Remember that the assault on carbon dioxide by the greens is based on their fraudulent notion that it is primarily responsible for increased greenhouse effects and rising temperatures. Carbon dioxide is number four on the hit parade of greenhouse gasses, behind water vapor (responsible for over 80% of the greenhouse effect), sulfur dioxide (emitted volcanically) and methane (naturally occurring and emitted from animal digestive tracts). Ted Stevens (R, AK) is tolerated for the federal dollars he pumps into this state and for the superb support he has for the military. Lisa Murkowski (R, AK) does not have that decades-long reservoir of trust, and the more that she embraces this environmentalist foolishness, the closer she will get to being a one-term senator.

4. Reid. The LA Times has decided to go after Senate Majority Leader “Dingy” Harry Reid’s (D, NV) land deals. The latest edition describes Reid paying $10,000 into a pension fund of a long-time friend who owns a lubricant business. The friend gave Reid full control of 160 acres of land in northern Arizona in return. The transaction essentially gave Reid ownership of the land for about one tenth of its appraised value. Six months later, Reid introduced legislation that addressed supply disruption problems that lubricants manufacturers were having with their raw materials suppliers, the major oil companies. According to the LA Times, Reid’s legislation never passed. This transaction marks the second major lands deal Reid has been p art of that has come to light over the last 6-7 years. On both, land was transferred to him without a bill of sale. On both, he gained control for of land at prices significantly under fair market or appraised value. Like most democrats yammering about the “culture of corruption”, Reid ought to know, for he appears to be a major player in that culture. The only surprise is that he has been playing for dollar amounts in the high six-figure to low seven figure range rather than seven to eight figure range like the Clintons. Captain’s Qu arters, Mon.

5. Oil Profits. St. Hillary of Chappaqua spoke last week to a gathering of democrat supporters and let us view a little bit of what seethes under her polished veneer. In this speech, she railed against the record profit announced by Exxon last week of nearly $40 billion. She went on to promise if elected, she would seize their profits and put them into a fund that would be spend on alternative, renewable energy. In the center of that black little he art, Hillary is a socialist. It remains to be seen if she is of the Peronista or Maoist variety, but in either case, she will be in a position to do great harm to this nation for a long time if elected. When I see this sort of thing reported without comment, I just cringe, for there is a very real chance she will be elected. I have passing thoughts that that may be a good thing in the long run, as it would force a public and loud discussion on whether we want to be a free-market, faith based constitutional republic or a Latin American style socialist utopia which will collapse into poverty and gunfire in short order. Those thoughts go away quickly with the realization that any possibility that could happen is too awful to play games with. So we must do it the old fashioned way, the hard way, by fighting the leftists and wannabee totalitarians like Hillary and her supporters every step of the way, making their lives today just as miserable as they promise to make ours once they are elected. This is going to be a long fight. Buck up, for we are now engaged and like our dealings with the Islamists / Wahhabists, we must not fail.

"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."
- Samuel Adams, speech at the Philadelphia State House, August 1, 1776.

Note: Interesting Items can be found at the following locations:
Debate USA, http://www.debateusa.com/ ;
MatSu Valley News http://www.matsuvalleynews.com
and the home page: http://home.gci.net/~agimarc
Rod Martin's The Vanguard site is also a long-time supporter of this column. You can find it at: http://www.thevanguard.org/

If you would like to join II's mailing list, have comments or suggestions, please contact me at: agimarc@ak.net