I'm so surprised
The Times (UK) reveals that Saddam defends palaces against arms inspectors:

IRAQ and America were locked in confrontation last night as Saddam Hussein rejected US attempts to give weapons inspectors access to his presidential palaces.

The Iraqi President told the UN he would accept inspectors on condition that they did not violate Iraq's "rights, sovereignty, security". The demand was immediately rejected by the US, which accused him of trying to "lure the world down the same dead-end road" it has travelled before.

Watch the weasel boy dance.

Earlier, it had emerged that Washington wants the inspectors to be given new powers to search Saddam?s eight presidential palaces. Under current rules of engagement, they have restricted access to the sprawling complexes.

Only eight? Saddam seems to have "palaces" everywhere. Most estimates are around 50 - see 1, and 2. And what palaces they are. Tharthar covers 2.5 square miles with a 1 square mile presidential compound with 45 structures.

This is all crap. Saddam is a bazaar huckster who cons the gullible. He's fortunate that they don't seem to be in short supply.

Short Arm of the Law Alert!
I mentioned this previously, but now the Washington State Supreme Court has ruled:

Photographing or videotaping up a woman's skirt in a public place doesn't violate a voyeurism law, the state Supreme Court ruled Thursday.

The unanimous ruling found that the law only protects people in places where they have a reasonable expectation of privacy. The court rejected prosecutors' arguments that people reasonably expect privacy under their clothing.

The ruling overturned the convictions of Sean Glas and Richard Sorrells.

"Although Glas' and Sorrells' actions are reprehensible, we agree that the voyeurism statute, as written, does not prohibit upskirt photography in a public location," wrote Justice Bobbe Bridge, one of four women on the nine-member court.

Prosecutors said Glas apparently planned to sell to an Internet site photographs he took at a mall in Union Gap. He was arrested in 1999 when women he photographed spotted him crouching near them.

Sorrels was arrested at a Seattle food festival after witnesses told police they saw him videotaping underneath little girls' dresses. Police found images taken up girls' and women's skirts on his camera.

Maybe they'll meet up with a guy in kilts.

Dumb Crook News
The Herald Sun (Australia) reports Poo on shoe convicts thief:

A CLUMP of dog poo on a shoe has tripped up an armed robber who didn't watch his step on his way to hold up a Gold Coast TAB.

While 26-year-old Jacob Michael Smith hid his face during the armed robbery by wrapping a sheet around his head, he neglected to wipe a piece of dog poo off his shoe which formed an unfortunate pattern that would lead to his arrest.

The poo shape was noticed on a photo taken by a security camera and was enhanced by police scientific officer Sergeant Alan Piper.

"It's not rocket science. It's as plain as poo on your shoe," Sgt Piper said today.

No poo, Sherlock.

And then there is the cat lover in Kansas:

WICHITA, Kan. -- A Kansas fisherman believes he has reeled in a Peeping Tom.

The Wichita man was convinced someone was watching his daughters as they showered at night. A backyard chair kept getting moved under a bathroom window.

So he rigged a simple trap using clear fishing line. He tied fishing line to the chair, ran the line into the house and put the spool on a kitchen counter.

Last night, the unwinding spool fell.

The father grabbed a piece of pipe, went outside and found a man pulling the chair up to the window.

He ordered the intruder onto the ground while his wife called police.

The man turned out to be a neighbor, who claimed he was looking for a cat.

Meow!

Global Something
The New Scientist reveals Africa's deserts are in "spectacular" retreat:

The southern Saharan desert is in retreat, making farming viable again in what were some of the most arid parts of Africa.

Burkina Faso, one of the West African countries devastated by drought and advancing deserts 20 years ago, is growing so much greener than families who fled to wetter coastal regions are starting to go home.

New research confirming this remarkable environmental turnaround is to be presented to Burkina Faso's ministers and international aid agencies in November. And it is not just Burkina Faso.

New Scientist has learned that a separate analysis of satellite images completed this summer reveals that dunes are retreating right across the Sahel region on the southern edge of the Sahara desert. Vegetation is ousting sand across a swathe of land stretching from Mauritania on the shores of the Atlantic to Eritrea 6000 kilometres away on the Red Sea coast.

Nor is it just a short-term trend. Analysts say the gradual greening has been happening since the mid-1980s, though has gone largely unnoticed. Only now is the evidence being pieced together.

Ever wonder how much Ecoweenie angst is due to the fact that the weather is changeable? In the Stone Age, if there were floods or drought or lots of snow, it was Og, the weather God, who was angry. Now it is the Americans who are causing it. What a snoozer.

Down on the Farm
The St. Louis Post Dispatch reports College's use of meat for tuition draws fire:

Instead of writing a check for tuition, parents of some Lindenwood University students hand over bacon and sausage and ham.

For several years, the school in St. Charles has accepted pigs in lieu of cash, then served the meat in the school cafeteria. Lindenwood President Dennis Spellmann started the practice to help family farmers send their children to college.

On Wednesday, an animal rights group asked Spellmann to halt the policy.

Bruce G. Friedrich, director of vegan outreach for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, sent a letter to Spellmann suggesting that Jesus had been an ethical vegetarian and that the university's Christian roots should cause it to reconsider the program.

Spellmann said he has no intention of doing so.

...

One of the students who benefited from such barter was Sally Miller, 24, who graduated in 2000. Miller grew up on a farm near Silex, where her father, Kurt Bruns, 61, still raises cattle, corn, wheat, soybeans and hay with her two older brothers.

Miller said her father heard about Lindenwood's tuition program when she was a junior and hog prices were low. The family took some hogs to a processor in Silex and gave the meat to Lindenwood, where it wound up on students' plates. Miller said the program saved her a bundle on student loans.

This used to be a more common practice some years ago when more people lived on farms. It works because of the large differential between retail and farm prices for most agricultural products. As for PETA, why don't they stick Colonel Corn where the sun doesn't shine?

Don't let the garage door hit you on the butt, Rosie!
Apparently maddened by unrequited love, Roger Friedman gushes over Rosie's departure:

A little after noon Wednesday Rosie O'Donnell put her magazine out of its misery. She folded Rosie which used to be called McCall's, telling publisher Gruner + Jahr in effect that they didn't have the right to publish under their co-venture agreement unless she had editorial control.

...

Rosie looked unusually glamorous today. Her short hair cut was done beautifully, her makeup was very becoming, and she wore a tailored suit. It's obvious that she's been on a successful diet of some kind. She held her head high through the whole proceeding, with former U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White, now O'Donnell's lawyer, sitting beside her.

Here's Roger's idea of unusually glamorous. As for Mary Jo White, I wondered where Janet Reno's MiniMe had scampered off to.

In closing Rosie, O'Donnell has not left the magazine's staff high and dry. Unlike many magazine publishers who've closed their doors, Rosie wrote to every staff member individually. She also sent them checks -- some as high as $10,000 -- to compensate them until they find new work.

O'Donnell did not take reporters' questions, but she did confirm a report from this column several weeks ago that she's producing Boy George's musical on Broadway. She also said she'd seen Hairspray five times, that she's happy spending time with her family, and that she and her partner are expecting their fourth child in December.

She did not refute tabloid reports of a sex change, but I don't think that was necessary.

Is Roger funning with us?

One Worlders at Work!
There's nothing more useless than an online petition unless it is Amnesty International:

Amnesty International today launched a worldwide petition in response to US attacks against the new system of international justice.

New system of justice? I kinda liked the old system. Ah, "international justice". It's an oxymoron contest!

In recent months, the US has been approaching governments requesting them to enter into unlawful agreements that they will not surrender US nationals accused of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes to the new International Criminal Court.

Unlawful? I must have missed the section of the Constitution where they mentioned the International Criminal Court. Hmmm, it must the "law" of the UN bureaucrats and tin pot dictators. No thanks, donkeydips.

Amnesty International's petition -- http://web.amnesty.org/web/icc_petition.nsf -- calls on all states to refuse to sign such impunity agreements with the US.

The petition will be open for signature for one month and will be sent to governments worldwide. Signatures received by 27 September will also be sent to EU Ministers of Foreign Affairs in advance of their meet on 30 September to consider their position on the issue.

Don't you like the way the trendoids refer to immunity agreements as "impunity agreements"? Anyhow, don't forget to sign early and often. And catch the sob inducing picture of the US's empty chair at an ICC hoedown.

Q: What if they held a kangaroo court and no one came?
A: The bureaucrats would still collect their paychecks.

Give it to Kofi. He'll eat anything!
Today's Wall Street Journal sums it up with Disarming Saddam: Want "weapons inspectors"? Try the 82nd Airborne:

It sure is fascinating how the prospect of being defanged concentrates Saddam Hussein's mind. Having rejected United Nations inspections for years and again only last week, he's now responded to President Bush's determination to disarm him by inviting the U.N. back in. And the world is supposed to take him seriously.

Some people, to be sure, will believe anything--for example, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, who hailed the offer as a great victory. And the Russians, who say Saddam's word means the Security Council needn't draw up a new resolution after all. And naturally the French, who want not just one new U.N. resolution but two, drawing things out long enough to let Saddam delay any action past the best invasion time of winter. Sophisticates call all of this a "chess game."

The White House had another, more accurate name for it--"rope-a-dope with the world," spokesman Ari Fleischer put it yesterday. And Mr. Bush urged that "you can't be fooled again." Saddam, he added, "is a man who has delayed, denied, deceived the world. For the sake of liberty and justice for all, the United Nations Security Council must act."

The inspections gambit is an old Saddam reliable, one played to a fare-thee-well in the 1990s (when he also played Mr. Annan like a Stradivarius). That's precisely why Mr. Bush made it clear in his speech last week that the U.N.'s obligation was to enforce all 16 of its resolutions toward Iraq, and within weeks, not months.

Ole Kofi loves to spend months "negotiating" with Saddam on inspections, as he proved throughout the 90's. It must be the excitement of the "give and take" of diplomacy. Or the excitement of a steady UN paycheck.

Those resolutions have from the first demanded not merely inspections but disarmament. That implies the use of force not just to help inspectors knock on doors in Baghdad but to ensure that Iraq's weapons capability is destroyed. Compliance also means a cessation of support for terrorism and an end to the persecution of Iraqi minorities. All of this is what any U.N. resolution has to include if that body wants to be taken seriously by anyone, much less by Saddam.

Anyone who thinks "inspections" by themselves are worth anything should read last week's chilling testimony to the House Armed Services Committee by former U.N. bioweapons inspector Richard Spertzel. He recounted how inspectors "experienced obstructions in Iraq from the beginning" until they were finally ousted in 1998. "Iraq gradually gave up only what Unscom could prove Iraq still retained," he said.

"It appears that most of the proposals for getting inspectors back into Iraq are based on the premise that 'any inspectors are better than none,' " he told Congress. "To be blunt, that is pure rubbish, just an illusion of inspections. Even while Unscom inspectors were still operable, Iraq was constantly trying to restrict monitoring inspectors' activities, curb their access," and so on.

I'm so surprised!

The Journal goes on about Saddam's extensive biowarfare/bioterrorism program including importation of the West Nile virus. The closer:

All of which suggests that there is only one kind of inspection regime that can truly disarm Saddam--the 82nd Airborne, aided by armor and air power. This is the action that Mr. Bush said last week would be "unavoidable" if the U.N. didn't meet its responsibility to enforce the resolutions that Saddam has violated for a decade.

Saddam's latest inspections gambit isn't an attempt to oblige the U.N. It's a ploy to use the U.N. to play for time and blunt the effort by Mr. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair to rid the world of his terror-weapon menace. We're glad to see that Mr. Bush is insisting that the U.N. not blink again.

Yep. And for the whiners who think a billet doux from Saddam is worth something, I guess it depends on whether you're short of toilet paper.

Legal Eagle Alert!
Alex Roth in the San Diego Union-Tribune weighs in with Defense attorneys draw public's ire:

People in San Diego and around the country reacted with outrage yesterday to the notion that a defense lawyer who knows his client committed a horrible crime could tell a jury the client couldn't be guilty.

Their anger was incited by a report in The San Diego Union-Tribune, quoting unnamed sources, that David Westerfield's lawyers offered early in the case to have their client tell police where to find the body of 7-year-old Danielle van Dam if prosecutors would not seek the death penalty.

"David Westerfield's defense attorney knew he was guilty ... but he tried to mislead the jury anyway!" announced the Web site of "The O'Reilly Factor," the Fox News Channel national talk show. "Can anyone defend this kind of behavior?"

I guess I'm jaded. I thought all defense lawyers did that.

The newspaper's sources said prosecutors were on the verge of accepting the offer of Westerfield's defense team – a life-without-parole sentence in exchange for information about where to find the body – when volunteers discovered Danielle's remains off Dehesa Road east of El Cajon on Feb. 27.

Prosecutors no longer had any incentive to make a deal and the potential plea bargain collapsed, the sources said. Such negotiations cannot be used as evidence in a trial.

Legal experts said Westerfield's defense team was acting ethically on behalf of their client in an attempt to spare him the death penalty a jury eventually recommended.

...

There are ethical limits to what a criminal defense lawyer can do on behalf of a client. California State Bar guidelines forbid lawyers from knowingly letting a client lie on the witness stand.

If the client insists on testifying anyway, the defense lawyer has an obligation to tell the judge in private that the client will be testifying over the objection of his counsel, according to San Diego defense attorney Gerald Blank.

I'm sure that happens a whole lot.

But preventing a client from lying on the witness stand is entirely different from telling a jury the client is not guilty of the crime, Blank said.

In the opinion of Blank and other defense attorneys, asserting that the client is not guilty is different from asserting innocence.

"Innocent" means the client didn't do it. "Not guilty" means the state doesn't have the evidence to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt, Blank said. Jurors return guilty or not-guilty verdicts. In rare cases a judge will make a finding that a defendant is innocent.

Interesting distinction. Where's Bubba to tell us what the meaning of "is" is?

Don't Miss It
Interview with Scott Ridder, Restaurant Inspector.