Taken from: American Partisan where you can see an even larger version.

A history of the picture. It dates from 21 Sept 2001.

A comment Glenn Reynolds made the other day reminded me that everyone has their limit:

Bill Quick begs to differ. Hey, for everybody there's a point at which they'd rather take their marbles and go home. For me it would be Huckabee. For some Democrats it was Gore in 2000 and they voted Nader instead. For some Republicans it was GHW Bush in 1992 and they voted Perot.

While Goebbels is of course an extreme hypothetical, these are good questions.

And lest anyone get the misimpression that I don't have my limit, I do.

I'm tempted to say it's Alan Keyes, who, by running against Barack Obama, caused me to support the latter in the Senate race (in a fit of pique, I even purchased RepublicansforObama.com and let it lapse). If the GOP somehow selected Keyes as the nominee, the truth is that I simply, absolutely, could not vote for him. (No, I would not vote for Hillary, but I might very well think about leaving the country to avoid the coming civil war.)

But Keyes isn't my only limit; Pat Buchanan would probably do it for me to. And so would David Duke (who ran in the 1992 GOP primary, believe it or not).

So, I have my limits, and I think everyone does.

I'd be a hypocrite not to understand the refusal of people to vote for McCain if the man so violates their sense of principles, and I'd be the last to demand that anyone pull the lever in such a way as to violate his sense of conscience.

But just because I understand, that does not mean I agree.

And just because I disagree does not mean I am being condescending.

MORE: In the first sentence, I should have said that "everyone has his limit," which would be grammatically correct. But that's so politically incorrect that the standard usage in ordinary conversation has changed. It's now politically correct to be grammatically incorrect.

(And I should probably say "incorrect grammatically," but some things carry the Culture War too far....)

Via Glenn Reynolds, another horrible (thought not unsurprising) story about more anti-military bigotry -- this time from Berkeley:

...The Berkeley City Council [] voted 8-1 Tuesday night to tell the U.S. Marines that its Shattuck Avenue recruiting station "is not welcome in the city, and if recruiters choose to stay, they do so as uninvited and unwelcome intruders."

In addition, the council voted to explore enforcing its law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation against the Marines because of the military's don't ask, don't tell policy. And it officially encouraged the women's peace group Code Pink to impede the work of the Marines in the city by protesting in front of the station.

In a separate item, the council voted 8-1 to give Code Pink a designated parking space in front of the recruiting station once a week for six months and a free sound permit for protesting once a week from noon to 4 p.m.

Councilman Gordon Wozniak opposed both items.

The Marines have been in Berkeley for a little more than a year, having moved from Alameda in December of 2006. For about the past four months, Code Pink has been protesting in front of the station.

"I believe in the Code Pink cause. The Marines don't belong here, they shouldn't have come here, and they should leave," said Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates after votes were cast.

Parenthetically, I'd note that Shattuck Avenue, where the recruiting office is, has the highest vacancy rate in history, and little wonder. Berkeley's hostility to businesses is second only to their hostility to the military.

While I don't know Gordon Wozniak, I'm sure he's had to endure more than his share of insults and ad hominem invective. When I had the misfortune of serving on the Berkeley Police Review Commission I certainly did, so for that I admire him.

Interestingly, there are people in Berkeley who agree with Wozniak, but they're afraid to speak up:

Even though the council items passed, not everyone is happy with the work of Code Pink. Some employees and owners of businesses near the Marines office have had enough of the group and its protests.

"My husband's business is right upstairs, and this (protesting) is bordering on harassment," Dori Schmidt told the council. "I hope this stops."

An employee of a nearby business who asked not to be identified said Wednesday the elderly Code Pink protesters are aggressive, take up parking spaces, block the sidewalk with their yoga moves, smoke in the doorways, and are noisy.

"Most of the people around here think they're a joke," the woman said.

Wozniak said he was opposed to giving Code Pink a parking space because it favors free speech rights of one group over another.

"There's a line between protesting and harassing, and that concerns me," Wozniak said. "It looks like we are showing favoritism. We have to respect the other side, and not abuse their rights. This is not good policy."

Sickening.

But as I explained previously, things like this are but another reminder of what drives the Democratic "base."

No matter how much Hillary talks the talk, her party continues to walk the walk.

Never mind BCA's historically well-known (and even ongoing) Marxist and Communist proclivities. For for that matter, never mind Hillary's. Some questions can't be asked:

Barbara Olson reported, "Hillary has never repudiated her connection with the Communist movement in America or explained her relationship with two of its leading adherents. Of course, no one has pursued these questions with Hillary. She has shown she will not answer hard questions about her past, and she has learned that she does not need to-remarkable in an age when political figures are allowed such little privacy."

And anti-military bigotry is progressive, and forward!

UPDATE: It turns out that this was all a false alarm, and all that let's-be-thoughtless-and-cruel-to-the-Marines stuff was a Karl Rove prank.

My apologies for taking it seriously.

My Pet Jawa has a report up on the cyber war between the Taliban and the Jawas.

To: Taliban Shura Council
CC: Propaganda Dept.; Cyberwarfare; Planning;
BCC: Adil 'Murchal' Watanmal; Qari Muhammad 'Ahmadi' Yussuf; Zabihullah Mujahid

From: Rusty Shackleford, The Jawa Report, & Sandcrawler Crew
Date: 01/25/2008
Subject: Cyberattack Failure

Nice try. Your cyberattacks are even more pathetic than your actual attacks on NATO forces, all of which are easily repelled. Next time you should probably hire someone who is not a total retard to manage your webspace and cyberattacks.

Let's tally the score Adil:

Taliban websites successfully attacked by Jawas over past week: 41
Jawa websites successfully attacked by Taliban in the past week: 0

This may not be exactly the private war A. Jacksonian had in mind, but it will have to do until something better comes along.

HT linearthinker via e-mail

Cross Posted at Power and Control

I keep taking flak for saying that I'm willing to hold my nose and vote for McCain, even though that's hardly an endorsement of the man. I admit, I like his position on Iraq, and national defense.

As to McCain-Feingold, I don't think I could count the number of angry, even rabid posts I wrote on the subject.

This one's typical:

I get really discouraged sometimes, and it's almost always over intractable human stupidity.

McCain Feingold is the worst disaster that ever befell the First Amendment, and yet the damned fools who passed it illegally sit idly by while the mischief grows.

The idea of assigning a monetary value to speech so that it can be regulated as a "contribution" is so utterly repugnant to our tradition that it's just mind boggling.

And if that one didn't, then surely my writing to the FEC must have brought the McCain regime to its knees.

Or my angry pledge that I'd go to prison rather than comply:

While I can't speak for others, I'd go to prison before I'd comply with such nonsense.

This is the biggest threat to free speech I have seen in my 50 years living in the United States. It's one of those "we must hang together or we'll all hang separately" things that everyone -- old media, new media, bloggers, MSM journalists, Republicans, Democrats, Neocons, religious conservatives, socialists, gun nuts, Marxists, Homocons, you name it -- should resolutely oppose.

I don't mean to beat this issue to death (or bore anyone with a long litany), but I can't assume that everyone who reads a post like this has read this blog for years and knows how strongly I feel about free speech, or how deeply distrustful this makes me of McCain. The only reason I'm not still gnashing my teeth over it as much as I was is not only because the FEC temporarily seemed to back down, but because Bush had signed it, the Supreme Court upheld it, and even my favorite candidate Fred Thompson supported it (as a pesky commenter just had to gloatingly point out). So how much could my teeth-gnashing possibly accomplish?

Yes, I realize that politics is a dirty, even filthy, business.

But the fact remains that assaulting the First Amendment is McCain's Sin Number One. I have not forgiven him for it, and I will not, unless he admits it was a mistake.

That does not mean I would prefer Hillary Clinton, who has advocated Internet gateways and government control of talk radio.

The second big problem with McCain is over immigration. There's no question that he is, from a conservative standpoint, weak on that issue. But is he weaker than Bush? I'm at a loss to understand how his position is all that different, and many of the people slamming McCain on immigration voted for Bush, so I'm not quite sure what's going on. In a comment earlier, I asked whether immigration is the new defining issue of the conservative base.

And I do mean new.

Via The Anchoress, here's are words uttered in 1988 from the man McCain likes to claim as his mentor:

Our goal must be a day when the free flow of trade -- from the tip of Tierra del Fuego to the Arctic Circle -- unites the people of the Western Hemisphere in a bond of mutually beneficial exchange; when all borders become what the U.S.-Canadian border so long has been -- a meeting place, rather than a dividing line.

The idea of a North American accord has been mine for many, many years. I have seen presidents, both Democrat and Republican, approach our neighbors with pre-concocted plans in which their only input is to vote "yes."

Some months before I declared, I asked for a meeting and crossed the border to meet with the president of Mexico. ... I went, as I said in my announcement address, to ask him his ideas -- how we could make the border something other than a locale for a nine-foot fence.

The way people talk, you'd think McCain started this sinister conspiracy to erase the border.

FWIW, I think the border is out of control, and I have written post after post about that too. Long and thoughtful posts, as if anyone cared. I even worried that this might lead to another Civil War, as if I could prevent such a thing.

And of course, I couldn't help wondering how the issue appeared virtually out of nowhere to suddenly emerge as an impeachment issue on the right:

What's especially remarkable is that even though immigration has been out of control for many years, it wasn't even a blip on the political horizon during the 2004 election. CNN's voter exit polls didn't even list it as a concern.

And now it's an impeachment issue?

Who'da thunk it?

As for me, I still want to get rid of big government statism, preserve the Constitution, reverse the course towards socialism, legalize drugs, and end bureaucratic tyranny.

The president is not doing any of these things, either. And often I forget to complain. I'm probably too old.

It's like, I held my nose and voted for Bush, and for years I got it from the left. My friends on the left castigated me regularly as a Bush supporter, and over and over I had to correct them and say that I was really voting against Al Gore and John Kerry. Naturally, no one believed me.

And so now I'm poised to hold my nose and vote against Hillary, and I'm getting it again, only it's not from the left.

Irony provides small comfort.

UPDATE: Rick Moran takes a long look at McCain's popularity, and wonders whether conservatives are redefining themselves:

A breakdown of the conservative vote shows that McCain bested Romney by 35%-32% among those who identify themselves as "somewhat conservative" while dominating among "moderates" by a 2-1 margin over Romney. The significance is that while Romney creamed McCain among those who identified themselves as "very conservative," there were much fewer of those voters than moderates and lesser conservatives. Those two groups made up a majority (55%) of the GOP vote and McCain won both groups with ease.

It could very well be that what we are seeing in the Republican party is a redefining - or perhaps more accurately, a "readjustment" - in how people identify themselves as conservatives.

Taking the long view of all this, I think the immigration argument may go to the heart of the redefinition of conservatism. If conservatism was redefined in the last few years, might there be an ongoing (still-unresolved) redefinition of the redefinition?

Iraq.

That's what I woke up thinking about today. McCain seems to be the only candidate who's really comfortable talking about it. Hell, he seems to almost want to talk about it.

And while it was a a tad disingenuous the way he spun Romney's timetable talk last night, I think McCain did have a point. From an ABC News report from last March:

When asked a similar question on CBS's "Early Show," Romney responded, "Well, I wouldn't publish [a timetable] for my adversaries to see," advocating instead "a series of milestones, timetables as well, to measure how well they're doing."

"But," Romney said, "that's not something you publish for the enemy to understand, because of course they could just lay in the weeds until the time that you're gone. So these are the kinds of things you do privately, not necessarily publicly."

While Romney's Tuesday call for "milestones" is nothing new, he has mostly shied away in the past from employing the more politically charged terminology of "timetables."

When asked if Romney's Tuesday morning show comments represented something new for the Republican presidential hopeful, Romney spokesman Kevin Madden described them as "consistent with his previous statements about milestones and metrics towards success in Iraq."

While Romney's embrace of timetable terminology seemed to put some distance between himself and Bush, the former Massachusetts governor also made it clear that he does not support efforts on the part of the Democratic Congress to establish a public timetable.

I am sick and tried of the contentiousness, though, and what I'm really sick of is the way the Democrats have been yelling and screaming about Iraq all these years. This has caused many Republicans to act guilty, and avoid talking about the war. (The deer caught in the headlights syndrome. Say what you will about McCain, but he's no deer caught in the headlights.)

I'm not sure McCain takes Iraq off the table, but if he's the GOP candidate, the Democrats are most likely going to want to find something else to talk about.

I'm sure they'll think of something, but what?

Immigration, perhaps? I doubt it.

Maybe they're hoping for a recession.

A larger question than whether Romney or McCain did a better job at tonight's debate is whether we should elect a president who "Says She Can Control Her Husband."

Now, I don't mean to sound sexist, but how would it look if a man running for president promised to control his wife?

Some "two man race" this turned out to be!

I just turned on CNN to watch the debate, and what do I see?

Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul, that's who.

I hope I have the patience for this. I wouldn't mind so much if everyone hadn't been screaming that the race had finally been narrowed down to two.

MORE: This debate is fit only for drunkblogging.

Fortunately, Stephen Green has that part covered (he just accused McCain of sounding "sensible on the environment, almost Instapundit-ish"), so I can spare my fingers and my liver.

AND MORE: I'm looking at the candidates' appearance, and Romney wins lots of points on hair and attire. Tanned and rested-looking, there's no question that he's the most attractive candidate. (By contrast Ron Paul looks like he needs a touch up from the embalmer.)

The thing is, Glenn Reynolds quotes a poll from Megan McArdle which says "the gay Republican vote is apparently going for McCain, with a margin of error of 100%."

What's that supposed to mean? That they're 100% wrong because Romney is obviously more attractive?

Right now McCain and Romney are trying to claim the Reagan mantle.

Uh oh, now it's immigration.

Reagan was against that, right?

MORE: Romney says illegal immigration has to stop and that he wants to deport all recent illegal immigrants. McCain says he will secure the border first and says he can, and he will not support the bill that the American people rejected.

8:48: Now it's right to life.

Huckabee is asked about Reagan's appointment of Sandra Day O'Connor ("Was she the right choice?"), and he ducks the question. Says he is pro-life.

I think Ron Paul said he didn't like O'Connor for some reason.

McCain says he likes O'Connor and won't second guess Reagan, that he also likes Roberts and Alito. Romney won't touch the O'Connor question and says he likes Roberts and Alito.

I'm glad we're getting a referendum on Justice O'Connor.

It's like, the number one issue, you know...

MORE: When Romney talks, McCain sits there with a look on his face which is almost impish and sage like at the same time. It's as if he's an indulgent parent letting junior have enough rope to hang himself. If I were Romney, I'd be mussing up my hair.

Instead, he just said McCain's remarks were "reprehensible." (To great cheers.)

That's a strong word, but it didn't phase McCain. He's haggling with Romney about the "timetable" charge and it's getting nasty.

McCain flippantly said Romney mentioned "timetables and milestones" and "waiting in the weeds until we leave" remark, but either he's quoted Romney out of context or I don't understand McCain's meaning. Anyway, the Romney folks are cheering.

Stephen Green said, "I still don't like or trust Romney, but on this one he's been wronged."

McCain keeps repeating that "timetables were the buzzword," and Romney should have said no.

Right now, Ron Paul is being weird, and his contingent is cheering.

MORE: McCain might be wrong in his accusation against Romney, but he's really sticking to his guns on "no timetables." (I think the crowd prefers Romney.)

And now Putin. (Known affectionately to Bush as "Pooty Poot" which sounds dirty.)

Huckabee says he can't read Putin's soul. (And I'm reminded of Reagan's "trust but verify.") Peace through strength. Romney and McCain both smirk. Romney is talking about the world, and China, and al Qaeda. Strengthen our friends so our kinds won't know war. Now McCain smirks.

MORE (09:21): Now McCain is badgering Romney with the T-word "timetables" again. He's being a pit bull and talking about his POW experience and following Reagan's tradition. (There's no denying that he's walked the walk.)

Romney is talking about his business experience, which is good. But much of the world is not corporate; they respect and fear not takeovers, but military force.

He regrets his lack of military experience.

McCain is about as unflappable as they come, and whether he's right or wrong, he's calm under fire. I have to say, I think that's a good quality in a president. (Enemies will get nowhere with him.)

MORE: My thanks to Stephen Green for the link.

MORE (09:29 p.m.): Huckabee says he likes the 10th Amendment, which is great, as it needs fans. But does he really mean it. (Or might I have mis-heard "Commandment"?)

MORE: (9:30 p.m.) Would Ronald Reagan endorse you?

Romney says he would. Ticks off his list and says Reagan would agree with it. (Strong applause.)

McCain says Reagan would not like people whose positions change. Says he knows he stuck with his principles. Hopes that Reagan would be proud of him as a former footsoldier.

Ron Paul says Reagan campaigned for him in 1978 and wanted to bring back the gold standard.

Huckabee says it would be presumptuous to say Reagan would endorse him, and praises Reagan. Has the right answer, but he had the last word.

I don't know who won this. I suspect it depends on whom you support.

Personality-wise, McCain came a bit closer to winning me over, but I still have serious ideological problems with him. (He's a tough and very pleasant son of a bitch, if I can say that, and I think that if he made up his mind on something, he'd exasperate whoever crossed him. Which would be good in the case of our enemies as well as those who'd like to bamboozle American leaders).

McCain likes a fight, he sparkles when he gets one, and he won't back down. He's turned Romney's Iraq "timetable" remark from a war over the words into something resembling a fistfight he provoked. Romney thinks it's about the words, but I think it's more along the lines of a duel.

Much as I hate to use the overwrought "pit bull" analogy, I know the breed well, and just this once I'll use it. McCain reminds me of a pit bull whose tail is wagging because an aggressive (but clueless) non-pit bull was dumb enough to accept a challenge. This is not fair, but fairness is irrelevant in the case of aggressive combatants. (McCain is no angel, but Romney is no innocent choir boy.)

MORE: In two posts tonight, Glenn Reynolds noticed that McCain had a distinct anti-business tone, and on CNN I heard Bill Bennett criticize McCain for saying "when I went abroad, it was for patriotism, not profit." (As if there's something wrong with profit.)

Not good. McCain would do well to leave the business-bashing to Hillary.

The US Military has put out a slide show about Al Qaeda In Iraq [pdf]. The first few slides are innocuous enough. After that it gets pretty graphic. Pictures of wounds on torture victims. Mass graves. And other such vileness.

After looking at the presentation it is no wonder the Iraqis hate Al Qaeda and all it stands for.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

I'm sick of hearing the phrase, but I have a feeling it's only going to get louder and shriller in the next few weeks.

No I don't mean the talking points themselves (whatever they are). I'm not a McCain supporter, although I would certainly vote for him over Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. Rather, I am hearing the "McCain Talking Points" charge (and other similar charges) being used as a cudgel to impugn the motivations people who are not all that enthusiastic about McCain, but are realists who've seen the various polls and have concluded that he's the best chance the GOP has to defeat the Democrats.

I'm seeing this ugliness emerging in the blogosphere, and I hear it on talk radio. Earlier I heard Bill Bennett (and if he's not a conservative who is?) being lambasted by an irate listener who considers his preference of McCain to Romney some form of treason, and who accused him of being a McCain shill, whose views are not his, but are instead "McCain Talking Points."

There's a lot of screaming going on, and this election is causing turmoil on talk radio:

conservative talk radio and blogger colleagues are beside themselves at the prospect that one of the Republican contenders they deemed to be "not conservative" might be nominated. As Mike Huckabee won Iowa, John McCain took South Carolina and Fred Thompson bestirred himself to draft a note withdrawing from the race, the fretting has intensified. How could the voters reject their advice?

That comes pretty close to my thinking, and I hardly think it's fair to call it "McCain Talking Points."

I will say a few kind words about McCain though. He's not Satan. He's not Hitler. And while numerous netizens disagree, he's also not a "traitor."

I am still extremely sore over McCain-Feingold. I don't like his obvious sympathy for illegal alien amnesty, and I don't care what he calls it. But I do think that overall he's been more honest than Romney, and as I said before, I prefer McCain slightly. The main reason is that I am vehemently anti-Clinton, and I think the Clintons would clearly prefer to run against Romney.

It's not an endorsement, and these observations are hardly "McCain talking points." I can hold my nose in the same Machiavellian manner I've been holding it all these years, and vote for him.

I'm also a bit of a contrarian with a long memory, and the more McCain is subjected to paranoid attacks, the more I'm reminded of what was done to him in the 2000 campaign.

Here's what arch liberal Jonah Goldberg said at the time:

I have not been terribly supportive of the McCain campaign. National Review magazine has been positively brutal. But the sort of moronic, venal, cowardly, and immoral stuff being thrown at McCain from certain segments of the loony Right is sending me his way. At the risk of e-mail-box overflow, I think these people are revealing themselves as fools and they are hurting the conservative movement.

I just wish they'd be more polite. Not everyone who thinks McCain might be able to beat the Clintons is a sellout or a shill.

EDITORIAL NOTICE: This post (and many like it) was edited in my typical "20 minute" manner. As I don't have WYSIWYG capacity, I really can't see what my posts look like until they're published and I can view them in the blog. It is at that point that I proofread and edit them. So, please bear in mind that I typically change and rearrange words any way I see fit -- and I try to adhere to a twenty minute rule. What that means that for the first twenty minutes after a post is up, my spelling, grammar, word choice, and ways of phrasing things are all fair game and subject to my revision without any notice. This can even extend to factual data I get wrong; for example if I say "Iraq" and I meant "Iran," if I say "Bush" reflexively when I meant to type "Bubba," if I omit words that should have been there (such as "not" which can convey the complete opposite meaning), I'll change them to conform to what I meant to say.

What I do not revise -- even in the first twenty minutes -- are my opinions. If I change my mind, or if it turns out that I was factually wrong about a topic of importance, I'll admit my mistake in an update. But once the dust has settled and post has been up there, the only errors I correct are obvious spelling errors. With maybe two exceptions in four years, I almost never delete posts, and I only very, very rarely delete comments, or names of people. (Although I have on a couple of occasions deleted things which were specifically requested by people who wanted to preserve their privacy.) On such rare occasions, there will be an explanation in an update or a new post.

UPDATE: Via Glenn Reynolds, here's Roger L. Simon has a great post about "McCain Derangement Syndrome."

....Welcome to McCain Derangement Syndrome - it's happening before he's even elected!

I heard two examples of it this evening - one from my friend Hugh Hewitt, whose rage against McCain today on Wolf Blitzer's CNN show made the hair curl on my bald head and later, on the Larry Elder Show, I listened in as a woman caller excoriated McCain as no war hero even though she knew the Senator had spent five years in a North Vietnamese prison camp, was tortured, had his bones broken yet stayed with the other troops when offered a chance to leave, etc. Even Elder was appalled at the woman, though Larry is no McCain supporter.

I am amazed by all these conservatives who totally and almost slavishly believe this is the real Romney yet equally assuredly distrust McCain when he repeatedly says he would build a security fence. It reminds me of that old shrink's thing about the "need to be right," how it always trips us up. I have seen it happen to me a lot. Anyway, I'm not sure McCain Derangement Syndrome has a cure. People love their anger. It's a security blanket.

And, yes, even their hatred.

Aren't they're forgetting that they have a traditional outlet?

(This really should have been an update to my previous post on McCain Derangement Syndrome, but few people read updates to old posts, so it goes here.)

Thank God that Stephen Green is drunkblogging tonight's results!

Having spent the entire day with MCLE courses, I'm just not up to doing anything resembling serious blogging tonight.

Anyway, via Glenn Reynolds, Stephen is going at it, and I couldn't help notice what he said about Bubba:

...just in case you thought I hadn't noticed, what are we talking about during a primary election day that matters to Republicans more than Democrats? Yes, we're still talking about Bill Clinton.

Earlier Bill Bradley (also linked by Glenn) said this about Clinton:

Remember that Bill Clinton statement at the end of last week about how McCain and Hillary are supposedly such close friends and would conduct a milquetoast campaign against one another? The recording of Clinton saying that is featured in a robocall from the Romney campaign attacking McCain. You know the machiavellian former president, out to make mischief on the Republican side with conservatives predisposed to do the opposite of what he says, is anything but surprised by that.

Whether the trickery worked or not, I don't know. Drudge earlier was showing Romney as ahead, but we'll see.

MORE: Right now McCain and Romney are in a virtual tie (34-33% respectively), with Giuliani a distant third, at 15%. (A shame, as I was a Giuliani supporter.)

Hillary is beating Obama by a hefty margin, and she has been projected the winner.

MORE (09:12 p.m.): AP and Fox have called the race for McCain, who is now ahead 35% to 31% with 54% of the vote counted.

And Giuliani is reported as ready to drop out and endorse McCain.

MORE: I watched Giuliani's concession speech. The man has a good, self-deprecating sense of humor. I also watched Romney's speech. He's a likeable guy, and I'd vote for him. But can he beat Hillary?

My hope is that this doesn't turn into acrimonious Republican Party infighting.

MORE: I heard Hillary mention "principles" to Chris Wallace while saying she wants the Florida delegates counted.

Then I read that it all depends on what the definition of "pledge" is. (Via Glenn Reynolds.)

Aaaahhhh, Hsu!

(Sorry, but my allergies are flaring as a result of this dust-up.)

MORE: Predicting a surge in McCain/Giuliani bumperstickers, Stephen Green says,

It's a safe bet that if you think Rudy is just fine as a Republican, then you probably don't have much trouble with McCain.

I'm afraid this race is going to be a long nose-hold.

Blogging is going to be lighter than usual for the next few days, as I have to complete my 25 hours of mandatory Continuing Legal Education.

Wow.

I see that I have been blogging so long that this is the second time my continuing education has interfered with my blogging.

Hearing about recent legal developments has a way of upsetting me, though (as it did two years ago to hear about California employment law).

Yesterday, one of the courses dealt with religious discrimination, and among the subjects was the nature of what it is that constitutes a bona fide religion.

I couldn't stop thinking about the "church" of Scientology. I don't think it is a religion, but legally, it either is or is not. If it is, there's something I find disturbing about the idea that if I ran a business I might have to hire a Scientologist if one applied.

Why is it that you can discriminate in employment against people who have political opinions that offend you, but not views of the unknown which offend you?

While the First Amendment would seem to protect political and opinions equally, it is silent on matters of discrimination, which we have fetishized beyond belief.

Anyway, my education continues. At the expense of my blogging!

MORE: Readers searching for views of the unknown (and who hate mortality) might want to read this "guest post from the long dead" which I copied and pasted the last time I faced execution by legal education.

Bruce Bawer looks at the Islamization of Europe and sees the rise of gay bashing by Muslim youths as a barometer:

As the number of Muslims in Europe grows, and as the proportion of those Muslims who were born and bred in Europe also grows, many Muslim men are more inclined to see Europe as a part of the umma (or Muslim world), to believe that they have the right and duty to enforce sharia law in the cities where they live, and to recognize that any aggression on their part will likely go unpunished. Such men need not be actively religious in order to feel that they have carte blanche to assault openly gay men and non-submissive women, whose freedom to live their lives as they wish is among the most conspicuous symbols of the West's defiance of holy law.

Multiculturalists can't face all this. So it is that even when there are brutal gay-bashings, few journalists write about them; of those who do, few mention that the perpetrators are Muslims; and those who do mention it take the line that these perpetrators are lashing out in desperate response to their own oppression.

But such relative affluence has not prevented Muslim anti-gay violence, which has gone largely unchallenged and pretty well reversed Western Europe's climate of tolerance:

....for a while there, in much of Western Europe, homosexuality was on its way to being a non-issue. In Amsterdam in the late 1990s, I was delightfully surprised to discover that when groups of straight teenage boys passed gay couples in the streets, they just walked past without any reaction whatsoever. The sight of gay people didn't upset, threaten, amuse, or confuse them; the familiar, insecure urge to respond to open homosexuality with some kind of distancing, disdainful word or gesture - and thereby affirm to one another, and to themselves, their own heterosexual credentials - was simply not part of those kids' makeup. For me, it was a remarkable experience. Amsterdam then seemed to me the leading edge of a new wave in the progress of human civilization.

Well, I suppose it could be worse. At least they're not being defended as upholding traditional Islamic values.

From a leftist standpoint of course, gay self defense would constitute "oppression." I think the gays should arm themselves, but of course this is pacifist Europe, where not only are guns illegal, but self defense is increasingly seen as a crime.

Read the whole thing and see what a sickening and sordid spectacle Europe has become. (Again.) I see the Anne Frank house as a reminder of what happened all over Europe to the Jews. While today's Anne Frank will be more likely to be a victim of an "honor killing," the cowardly Europeans will do just about as much to save her.

Bawer's conclusion is ominous.

Europe is on its way down the road of Islamization, and it's reached a point along that road at which gay people's right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is being directly challenged, both by knife-wielding bullies on the street and by taxpayer-funded thugs whose organizations already enjoy quasi-governmental authority. Sharia law may still be an alien concept to some Westerners, but it's staring gay Europeans right in the face - and pointing toward a chilling future for all free people. Pim Fortuyn saw all this coming years ago; most of today's European leaders still refuse to see it even though it's right before their eyes.

who confessed in court to murdering Fortuyn to stop him exploiting Muslims as "scapegoats" and targeting "the weak parts of society to score points" in seeking political power.

It's sad to contemplate that even England -- which once proudly stood defiantly against Hitler -- won't even stand up for the classic childrens' story of the Three Little Pigs, even absent a demand from Muslims.

What would Porky say?

Meanwhile, in this country, the feminists who publish Ms. magazine refuse to allow images of successful and tough Israeli women to be published, and Americans who have no problem with bashing Christianity admit that they fear criticizing Islam. (Little wonder that Muslim gay bashing is ignored by the left and swept under the rug.)

Better to give the bullies whatever they want, yield to their demands, apologize profusely, and tell them they're victims.

And if that doesn't work, help them go after the people who dare stand up to them.

It might sound like the madness, but there's a certain logic to it. If we are all victims (especially the bullies), then it stands to reason that those who refuse to be victims are the enemy.

UPDATE: History professor and Pulitzer Prize winning author David Levering Lewis has written a new book -- God's Crucible: Islam and the Making of Europe, 570-1215, a revisionist history which promotes the idea that it would have been better had Islam conquered Europe long ago.

Fortunately, Lewis's book received an unfavorable review in the New Yorker:

Lewis's book is part of that revision. The Muslims came to Europe, he writes, as "the forward wave of civilization that was, by comparison with that of its enemies, an organic marvel of coordinated kingdoms, cultures, and technologies in service of a politico-cultural agenda incomparably superior" to that of the primitive people they encountered there. They did Europe a favor by invading. This is not a new idea, but Lewis takes it further: he clearly regrets that the Arabs did not go on to conquer the rest of Europe. The halting of their advance was instrumental, he writes, in creating "an economically retarded, balkanized, and fratricidal Europe that . . . made virtues out of hereditary aristocracy, persecutory religious intolerance, cultural particularism, and perpetual war." It was "one of the most significant losses in world history and certainly the most consequential since the fall of the Roman Empire." This is a bold hypothesis.

(I guess it's Glenn's fault that I found the book review, because he linked these Amazon reviews, and my curiosity made my fingers do the clicking.)

MORE: In a great discussion of the "Three Little Pigs" ban,
Pam Meister notes that this cowardly mentality has led (in England) to not teaching students about the Holocaust:

Better to ignore history than to offend a handful of Holocaust deniers.

Bending over backwards to keep from offending certain groups of people doesn't appease them. They begin to feel entitled and start demanding more, like the ACLU, Greenpeace, and the Anti-Smoking league. Sure, condemning a book about fictional pigs isn't such a big deal... until the books are banned outright because sensitive eyes might see them... or pork is banned from restaurants because some customers may feel offended by its presence on the menu... or pork is banned from supermarkets because seeing it in the refrigerated case causes the vapors - putting hog farmers out of business and depriving food lovers everywhere of bacon, sausage, ham, and other tasty morsels.

Are parents and taxpayers' hard-earned dollars being used in ways that ensure the highest quality education at the lowest possible cost?

Asked at Phi Beta Cons. (Via Glenn Reynolds.)

It's undignified to answer rhetorical questions.

John McCain has expressed opposition to gays serving in the military, and he appears to have given considerable thought to the subject:

In an April 16 letter to the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, McCain said, "I believe polarization of personnel and breakdown of unit effectiveness is too high a price to pay for well-intentioned but misguided efforts to elevate the interests of a minority of homosexual service members above those of their units.

"Most importantly, the national security of the United States, not to mention the lives of our men and women in uniform, are put at grave risk by policies detrimental to the good order and discipline which so distinguish America's armed services."

McCain, who voted in favor of "don't ask, don't tell" when it was enacted in 1993, concluded that "I remain opposed to the open expression of homosexuality in the U.S. military."

Furthermore, I am not a McCain supporter, although I have grudgingly allowed that I would prefer him -- slightly -- to Mitt Romney. But let's hypothesize for a moment. Suppose that the McCain campaign decided that it needed to do "gay outreach" in states with large urban gay populations where the race was close. How would he do this? Most likely, he would hire someone to do what is called "outreach" to what is inexplicably called the lesbian gay bisexual transgendered "community."

Politics being what it is, it would be very tough for him to find any openly gay outreach coordinator with any political experience who agreed with his position on gays in the military. It might even be impossible.

For that matter, McCain has gone on record as being against gay marriage, and he has even supported Arizona's anti-gay-marriage initiative. I think it would also be extremely difficult for him to find a gay outreach coordinator who agreed with his position on that. But let's assume he found a gay political organizer willing to help his campaign anyway. It's not impossible; Bush got 25% of the gay vote, and there are gays who think defeating Sharia-supporting Islamofascists is more important than marriage licenses or open service in the military. Most of that 25% consisted of people who voted for Bush despite disagreements. Any gay outreach coordinator hired by McCain would most likely be running around trying to wrangle these votes, and it is almost a certainty that he or she would not be in agreement with McCain on the gay issues.

Does that mean that McCain could be said to hold the views of his gay outreach coordinator?

According to the logic of the people who are irate about McCain's hispanic outreach coordinator, apparently the answer is yes.

The question is posed thusly:

If John McCain supports securing the border, why does he embrace a campaign Hispanic outreach director who doesn't believe in borders....

If John McCain supports healthy families and a strong military, why does he embrace a campaign homosexual outreach director who doesn't believe in these things, and who supports gay marriage and gays in the military....

This is not to say that they might not be. It is perfectly legitimate to ask McCain about those views. Some open border critics seem satisfied that McCain's positions are not the same as his Hispanic outreach coordinator, and Victor Davis Hanson is an example:

I take McCain at his word that--once chastised on immigration--he will close the border. Ending illegal immigration, restoring fiscal sanity, cutting spending, and insisting on victory in the war are the essential issues, and on all he is far preferable to Hillary. There really is a difference between "suspension of disbelief" and "no substitute for victory." That is why a number of conservatives have and will continue to hold their noses and endorse McCain.

Imagine if Hillary Clinton (or Barack Obama) had an aide who ran around saying such things. Would it cause a controversy? Ask Lani Guinier!

They might also want to ask Raul Yzaguirre. The former President of La Raza, the man is a real extremist I've criticized repeatedly, who likens the US English group to the Ku Klux Klan. No mere outreach coordinator, Yzaguirre is the Co-Chair of Hillary Clinton's campaign.

This is not to defend Hernandez, but Yzaguirre's views are way more extreme. And no one seems to be asking Hillary about him. (In that respect, I'd also note that Newsmax commentator Dick Morris is listed as a co-author of Hernandez's book, and no one seems to care about holding the supposedly anti-open-borders Newsmax accountable for that.)

Overall, I'm skeptical of guilt by association arguments. It's a bit like saying a blogger is responsible for viewpoints expressed by other blogger he might have linked, or even commenters. Especially in politics, and more especially in the case of political "outreach."

What is fair is to ask Hernandez what he thinks, and then ask McCain whether he agrees.

I'm having conceptual difficulty analyzing Toni Morrison's endorsement of Barack Obama for president, but whatever:

ABC News' Rick Klein Reports: Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison -- who famously declared Bill Clinton to be the nation's "first black president" -- is endorsing Barack Obama for president today, an Obama campaign source tells ABC News.

This comes as Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., also announces his support for Obama on Monday, at a rally in Washington.

....We are a democracy. As I wrote yesterday in the comments section, it's time to end the Divine Right of Kings in this country. That means no more Bushes, Clintons, Kennedys, Roosevelts, etc. I don't even want to hear from Kennedys for their recommendations. Enough of this monarchical crap and these over-blown, over-important political families. We might as well bring back the Romanoffs.

Family values are one thing, but royal family values are un-American!

Back to Morrison, who famously introduced into the national consciousness the notion that Bubba was the first black president:

In an October 1998 essay in The New Yorker, Morrison wrote: "Years ago, in the middle of the Whitewater investigation, one heard the first murmurs: white skin notwithstanding, this is our first black president. Blacker than any actual person who could ever be elected in our children's lifetime."

The problem is that the first first lady of our first black president won't let him try, because she thinks her royal family prerogative comes first.

The solution, obviously, is to amend the Constitution to either ban dynastic governments and presidential nepotism, or at least ensure that first ladies have to run for office and be elected just like everyone else.

Otherwise, what would stop first ladies from having as many terms as they want? There's absolutely nothing in the Constitution to stop Hillary from divorcing Bill and remarrying another presidential candidate, or even a president, is there? In light of all the shameless Clinton shenanigans, it could happen.

Actually, I spoke too fast there. It's not a First "Lady" Amendment we need, but a First Person Limitation Amendment, and I think we have to make it fair to both presidents and first people.

Something like this:

"No person having already served two terms as first person shall be eligible to serve for any later term as first person, nor shall any person having served two terms as president be eligible to subsequently to serve as first person."

Have to start somewhere.

What am I to do when I see a headline that says "WILL HILL CHILL BILL?"

Here's the story-in-brief:

Hillary's campaign will try to 'shift former President Bill Clinton back into positive, supportive-spouse role' he played before her loss in Iowa... Developing...

WILL ILL BILL CHILL HILL?

Sorry, but things have gone too far. I was trying to chill out a little bit from blogging tonight, but really...

In light of the earlier commotion over Time Magazine's rejiggering extravaganza, the word games just became too much to ignore, and regular readers know that if I am sufficiently provoked, I just can't let well enough alone.

So, I thought the least I could do would be to rejigger "Hillary Rodham Clinton," and I managed to come up with this:

Halt Old Horny Criminal

(It has more stopping power than than "Old Horny Maniac Thrill," although that does at least rhyme with the question of the day, which seems to be "WILL HILL CHILL BILL, OR WILL ILL BILL CHILL HILL?")

UPDATE: This stuff might rhyme, but I think it is really, seriously inappropriate and borders on deranged.

Dave Winer needs to chill, and big time.

(Considering what I've seen of him in the past, though, I can't say I'm surprised.)

Stretch them to the breaking point and then increase the pressure. Collapse will follow. In the early days of the siege of Richmond, Lee admitted that if Grant had been able to bring one or two more brigades to bear he would have been crushed as he had no reserves left.

It appears that this is what Bush has done in Iraq according to the Weekly Standard. It appears that Bush made one of the most audacious moves in civilian control of the Military since Lincoln appointed Relentless Grant to lead the Union Armies.

In September, Rumsfeld had rejected the idea of a surge when retired general Jack Keane, a former vice chief of staff of the Army and a member of the advisory Defense Policy Review Board, met with him and Pace. Keane insisted the "train and leave" strategy, as Bush referred to it, was failing. He proposed a counterinsurgency strategy, the addition of five to eight Army brigades, and a primary focus on taking back Baghdad. Rumsfeld was unconvinced. But now, with Bush favoring a strategy nearly identical to Keane's, he didn't object. "Rumsfeld was never a lose guy," a Bush adviser said. "He always wanted to win."

With Bush's connivance, Cheney asked the chiefs a series of questions designed to ease their qualms about a surge. What would be the consequences of losing in Iraq? Was the Iraqi army capable of quelling the sectarian violence without substantial help from American troops?

The chiefs had real grievances to air, and they didn't hold back. Schoomaker cited the stress on combat forces from repeated tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. That, Bush told me, was "the main thing I remember from that meeting. That was clearly a factor in some of the people around the table's thinking .  .  . if you sustain our level, much less increase the level, you could, Mr. President, strain the force, which is an important consideration."

Bush agreed that strain was a problem. Then he delivered a sharp rejoinder, touching on a theme he returned to in nearly every meeting on Iraq. "The biggest strain on the force would be a defeat in Iraq," he said. Winning trumped strain. To alleviate the strain, the president committed to enlarging the Army by two divisions and increasing the size of the Marine Corps. The chiefs had two more complaints. The military, practically alone, was carrying the load in Iraq. Where were the civilians from the State Department and other agencies? Again, Bush agreed with their point. He promised to assign more civilians to Iraq. (The number of provincial reconstruction teams was soon doubled.)

Their final problem was the unreliability of Iraq's Shia government and army. Would Iraqi forces show up and do their part in the surge? And would they act in a non-sectarian manner, treating Sunnis the same as Shia? Bush said he'd get a public commitment on both counts from Maliki before making a final decision on the surge. And he did.

On top of that Congress voted to increase the size of the military. The Democrat controlled Congress. Obviously it is never wise to come up short of divisions in wartime. It could adversely affect re-election prospects. Even of Democrats.

H/T Instapundit

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Of Purina Dog Chow, of course -- as seen on "Leave it to Beaver":

As I've kvetched, the number one reason I hate television is that I cannot stand commercials. They do not fit in at all with the programming. Far from it; they're as invasive as a SWAT team serving a no-knock warrant, and my response is to reach for the remote and open fire in self defense.

Commercials like the above -- routine in the golden days of television -- were much better because they were less invasive. They fit -- as if they were part of the show. I'm sure there are many legitimate reasons why today's commercials have to be ugly and invasive, but I won't watch them.

But I wouldn't turn off a commercial if it seemed like part of the show.

Why, the old commercials from the golden days of TV are so good that this calls for another Purina commercial from Leave it to Beaver!

Of course, even though they fit in with the show, the Purina commercials would be lost on some, because not everyone has a dog.

However, everyone eats, and most of us eat breakfast. Which meant that if you were a Beverly Hillbillies fan as I was, the following commercial might incline you to be an eager eater -- of Kellogg's Corn Flakes!

And what do you do after you've fed your dog, and eaten your Corn Flakes?

Why, if you're an "I Love Lucy" fan, you go out and buy a new Ford.

The above convertible is "a revolution made possible by Ford's advanced engineering!"

If Lucy can make the thing work, anyone can!

UPDATE: Second YouTube link corrected.

I can't believe it, but I'm watching the returns trickle in, and Obama is winning by a much larger margin than I expected.

As of right now, with 56% of the vote in, Obama is ahead 54% to Hillary's 27%.

And Bill is red faced and ranting in a Missouri speech -- as if he's running for president.

Naturally, the Clintons will spin this as a vote along racial lines. Michael Graham outlines how:

No matter what happens in South Carolina today - even if Obama wins a plurality among white voters - the Clintons and their media stooges have turned South Carolina into "the black primary."

In fact, the bigger his win, the more it reinforces the campaign-killing message that Barack Obama is "their" candidate.

If tomorrow's headlines read "Obama Crushes Clinton, Wins 80 percent of African-American Vote," every non-black voter will get the message that Obama is somebody else's candidate, not theirs.

However, the vote is so lopsided that Obama might be getting more support from white voters than the Clintons counted on. Considerable animosity was expressed by white voters in exit polls:

74% of African-American voters think that Clinton unfairly attacked Obama. But when we look at the same question among white voters, a comparable number thought Clinton unfairly attacked Obama -- 68%.

Also worth mentioning, a majority of the voters -- 56% -- said that Bill Clinton's campaigning was important to their vote today.

I do know that the pundits predicted a 13 point spread, and this is more than twice that.

MORE (09:26 p.m.): Just finished watching Obama's speech. Once again, I have to say that he is a great orator, a speaker with the ability to inspire. The best rhetorician I have seen (my B.A. is in Rhetoric and I say this as a compliment) since Ronald Reagan. His appeal is wide ranging, and his sincerity is obvious. While I am skeptical that he can overcome the entrenched Clinton machine, anything is possible.

I'm very impressed at his ability to go for the jugular in a respectful manner. He nailed the Clintons on their bullshit, and their racializing, yet he did so without a hint of an ad hominem attack.

MORE: CNN just showed Hillary delivering a speech in Nashville. That faux Southern accent again! Her performance reminded me of Zelig, and I half expected her to break out in the refrain of "Stand By Your Man." (Fortunately, she didn't.)

AND MORE: Via CNN, the white vote for Obama:

South Carolina White Vote for Obama

college educated 32%
no college 17%
18-29 50%
30-59 24%
60+ 15%

obama total 24%

jesse jackson white total 7%

UPDATE: My thanks to Glenn Reynolds for the link, for the quote, and for the kind words about the "jugular" remark. Welcome all!

Hmmm... I know about the adage about catching more flies with honey, but is there a corollary that jugulars are best approached with respect?

UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds has a great roundup of reactions including Dave Kopel who, while diametrically opposed to Obama politically, nonetheless gives him a high score:

A citizen can disagree with governmental policy proposals of Barack Obama, just as a citizen could disagree with the the policies of Ronald Reagan. But there is no reasonable doubt that Reagan did an excellent job in his role as Head of State. A patriotic American can appreciate the good work of a President as Head of State, even while disliking much of the President's work as Head of Government. Senator Obama's victory speech in South Carolina suggests that he too might be an outstanding Head of State.

And some Democrats are wising up about the Clintons; Captain Ed is not surprised!

Overall, I think Barack Obama has shown remarkable humility. Considering the nature of American politics, that's refreshing in itself.

No this is not a satire post about gun huggers, or a proposal for a bumpersticker showing a man hugging an AK-47 captioned "ARMS ARE FOR HUGGING!"

Much as I'd love to have time for such gun-lovin' antics, this post is an attempt to examine something I've been thinking about for some time and finally got around to writing.

What shamed me into this was to read Clayton Cramer's carefully researched and wonderfully thought-provoking law review article -- What Does "Bear Arms" Imply? -- which looks at the history behind the two words.

Usually the debate is about what is meant by "bearing" arms, but most people take it for granted what "arms" means. In fact, to most modern Americans, "bearing arms" means carrying a firearm.

But the Second Amendment says nothing about guns. Not even firearms. It's just been assumed that firearms were obviously what the founders had in mind. Obviously, they did, but is there any logical reason why the Second Amendment should be limited to guns? Could the government ban, say, pikes, crossbows, and edged weapons consistent with the Second Amendment? Considering that swords and pikes were very much in use as weapons then, and knives are still used now, a ban on knives would be no more constitutional than a ban on guns.

Cramer's article notes the history of knives, swords and other weapons as arms ("any Bill, Long-bow, Cross-bow, Hand-gun, Sword, Staff, Dagger, Halberd, Morespike, Spear, or any other manner of Weapon....") and cites cases involving knives.

Interestingly, the constitutionality of knife laws arises in a discussion of the DC gun case -- "The Parker Decision - Should Knife Owners Celebrate?":

...in addition to some of the strictest gun restrictions in the nation, Washington, D.C., also is home to draconian knife laws, none of which have yet been ruled unconstitutional. For example, D.C. prohibits carry "on or about the person, whether open or concealed, of any deadly or dangerous weapon. Period. Even in your own home."5 Carry of any such weapon in public is a felony....

In short, arms are weapons. Things used in self defense. Including but not limited to guns.

The word "arms" predates the invention of guns (which, as firearms are only one form of arms), and indeed goes all the way back to the Romans:

From Middle English armes, weapons, from Old French, pl. of arme, weapon, from Latin arma, weapons; see ar- in Indo-European roots. V., from Middle English armen, from Old French armer, from Latin armre, from arma.

I like this guy:

While Benjamin Franklin wanted dogs in the colonial militia, and I assume they had dogs like any other soldiers, I haven't searched the record in detail.

However, I did find a Bisexual Militia Dog T-Shirt.

(A steal at $13.99!)

In short, arms are weapons, and dogs -- especially dogs capable of being used for defense purposes -- can be considered arms.

In fact, in New York and other places, there are serious attempts to get dogs classified as weapons.

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) -- Shotgun. Switchblade. Blackjack. Dog?

A dangerous canine would be defined as a "deadly weapon" under a bill before the New York Legislature.

"Some of these dogs are killing machines," said Assemblyman Patrick Manning, whose proposal also would allow towns to ban certain breeds.

The bill is among a pack of legislative solutions being offered nationwide to address the problem of vicious dogs, which Manning said are becoming "the weapon of choice for drug dealers or gangbangers."

Sound familiar?

Lest anyone think this is an isolated idea, PETA (the major animal "rights" organization) has famously argued for selective dog banning in a famous piece titled ominously, "Some Dogs are Weapons - Ban Them."

My inquiry is whether banning dogs kept and trained for purposes of self defense would violate the Second Amendment.

While most people are so locked into modern stereotypes that it would never occur to them that dogs are in fact a form of arms, I think banning dogs would violate the Second Amendment, because dogs are weapons, or at least they certainly can be. Not only have dogs have been used in warfare since ancient times, but they have been used militarily in virtually every war, and still are.

Parenthetically, the most decorated war dog in U.S. history was a pit bull named "Stubby." Yeah, my bias is showing there. I admit it.

Certainly, to the extent that any legislation seeks to ban dogs because of their status as being weapons, the Second Amendment is clearly implicated, as the long history of dogs being used for self defense is beyond debate. Taking away someone's dog is every bit as much taking away his right to self defense as is taking away his gun.

Both are forms of disarmament.

If I had the hypothetical choice of either only a dog or only a gun to defend my home, I'd take the dog. I have to sleep, but Coco is always on duty, and she hears and smells what I cannot. A gun can't watch, listen and warn you, nor does it protect your home while you're away.

It is no accident that dogs are used by drug dealers for protection against SWAT teams, just as it's no accident that they're used by honest homeowners to protect their homes and families, by police to go after bad guys, and by the military to go after enemies. Nor is it an accident that power-crazed bureaucrats might see them as arms to be take them away just as they want to take away guns. (Dogs are a serious impediment to police state apparatchiks.)

Disarmament is disarmament. It is not limited to gun control. Nor is the Second Amendment limited to guns.

I think a good case can be made that it applies to dogs kept for self defense.

UPDATE: As Clayton Cramer reminds me, dog control is not new. In "The Racist Roots of Gun Control," it was made clear that dog ownership by slaves was prohibited in certain states.

What's new is the way it is packaged.

No, I am not talking about a struggle involving physicians in the Republican Party; I'm talking about the McCain Republican third rail phenomenon which is being called McCain Derangement Syndrome.

While I supported Fred Thompson and Rudy Giuliani before that (and I guess I would have to be considered a Giuliani supporter as long as he lasts), I have not supported John McCain in this election, and the primary reason is that I am still sore over McCain-Feingold. I also don't like McCain's immigration policies, although I do not think that he's a traitor to the country, hell-bent on annihilating national sovereignty and destroying Western civilization the way some people do. (No, I am not naming names as I don't mean to single people out.)

But the issue of irrational "McCain Derangement Syndrome" (read it, and more here) forces me to ask an obvious question: what is it that makes McCain so infinitely worse than Giuliani or Romney? He's not a real conservative? Please. I know he's taken some less than palatable positions on the gun issue, but compare that to Giuliani's. There's a legitimate beef with him over the immigration issue, but his views are not much different than those of George Bush. Yet many of the same people who consider McCain to be anathema voted for Bush. What gives?

FWIW, if you look at them and their overall positions and records over the past fi