Dang it all!
I missed on out on the TV Guide Sex and the City Collector's Covers!

Walter Annenberg must be spinning in his grave.

Eric Rudolph was a Doper?
So reports Cliff Kincaid in Accuracy in Media's Media Monitor column:

The Washington Post has angered some conservative Christians by quoting a so-called terrorism expert as saying accused bomber Eric Rudolph is a "Christian terrorist." A more accurate description would be "doper." The Post had previously noted in passing that Rudolph had traveled to Holland to procure high-quality marijuana seeds for the marijuana he raised and smoked.
...
Deborah Rudolph, one of Eric Rudolph’s former in-laws, told the Southern Poverty Law Center that many years ago Rudolph was "probably making $60,000 a year selling pot…" She said he constructed a "secret little room" in a house where he grew marijuana under special lights, and that he received High Times magazine, which glorifies the drug culture and runs ads for marijuana growing equipment.

Law enforcement officials told Jim Stewart of CBS News that the extreme rhetoric attributed to Rudolph in "Army of God" letters was a diversion. Stewart reported, "As for some 'Army of God' letters stating a philosophy, lawmen don't buy that either. Rudolph bombed a gay nightclub, yet he has a beloved gay brother. He professes to hate abortion, yet his mother says he never mentioned it. He denies the Holocaust, but can't explain why. He flirted with the white supremacist Christian Identity movement, but never joined. Rudolph did join the Army, and took copious notes during explosives training. But then he got bored, agents say, and smoked so much dope he drew an early discharge. Back home, he was known for just hanging out in the woods and renting video movies nonstop…About the only two things Rudolph ever excelled at, lawmen say, were growing marijuana and building bombs."

Eric Rudolph does seem to be a wingnut. What kind seems rather unclear.

On the other hand, we'll probably find out more than we want to know when it pops up as media trial of the month. Which reminds me, whatever happened to the Robert Blake trial?

Gotcha!
I'm not a big fan of labor unions, but these days I'm nostalgic for the ancient champions of the anti-idiotarian left like George Meany as opposed to the current crop of Kool-Aid drinkers in the NEA or AFSCME. I'd heard that Meany's spirit was still alive in some of the craft unions and offer this from Fred O. Williams in the Buffalo News - Construction Police:

Union leaders fed up with contractors who employ illegal immigrants - thereby taking jobs from legitimate workers - have begun tracking down and turning in offenders.

Chris Stone is no immigration agent, but some days he acts like one.

One morning last week, he was tailing a group of Spanish-speaking men to a construction site in Cheektowaga. After getting into the left lane on Broadway to keep them in sight, he found himself alongside their car.

"They veered toward me," said Stone, a union organizer for Carpenters Local 9.

He called Cheektowaga police, who later arrested four men at the Sam's Club expansion site and turned them over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Using tails, stakeouts and even video cameras, area construction unions have taken a vigilante role against illegal immigration. In the past few weeks, Stone and other union staff have led authorities to 13 illegal immigrant workers at two non-union construction sites.

Already facing a slow economy, construction unions say they are protecting area jobs. They accuse the federal government of lax enforcement and employers of looking the other way.
...
Non-union contractors have battled the building trades in the past, as they have gained a greater share of construction jobs. But on this issue, the non-union Associated Builders and Contractors says it is on the same page with its longtime foe. Builders who use illegal labor hurt legitimate businesses, both union and non-union, said Rebecca Meinking, president of the builders association's Empire State chapter.

Nor do legal experts criticize the union's gumshoe tactics. As long as it's done in public, where there's no expectation of privacy, people are free to watch and even videotape each other's activities, said Erie County District Attorney Frank J. Clark.

"In many cases, private citizens have more latitude investigating than law enforcement," he said.

It's a minor miracle they got the Feds to pick up the illegals. But they haven't caught very many so far. Maybe it's because Buffalo is so far North?

Buffalo native Alberto Benitez, an immigration law expert at George Washington University, says advocates of tighter immigration controls have an uphill battle. Where he lives now in suburban Virginia, it seems most of the low-paying jobs are performed by recent immigrants from Mexico or Central America - and no one's interested in whether they have a green card or not.

"Day care workers, short-order cooks, lawn care, apple picking - the U.S. economy would implode" without undocumented workers, he said.

In a less diverse, economically disadvantaged area like his hometown, though, Benitez acknowledged that the climate toward immigration is different.

"Buffalo is not a very diverse city," he said.

Apparently "diverse" means "tolerates illegal aliens" and "implode" means there would be no unemployment. That's really awful!

But let's see what the real wingnuts have to say:

"It sounds like they are deputizing themselves to denounce people, when it's not their function," said Sophie Feal, an immigration lawyer at the Volunteer Lawyers Project in Buffalo. "Just because someone looks foreign does not mean they're not eligible to work."

Sophie's just ticked that only illegals have been picked up so far. Sounds to me like they're just concerned citizens doing their duty to help round up illegal aliens. What are you doing, Sophie?

Which brings me to Fewer employers getting worker 'no match' letters:

The federal government is scaling back a program that sparked an outcry from industries that use immigrant labor.

No longer is the Social Security Administration sending out nearly 1 million letters a year to employers whose workers' Social Security numbers appear invalid.

This year the administration reduced the number of so-called "no-match" letters and added a caution that the letter alone is no reason to fire a worker.

Those who favor tighter border control say the move undermines enforcement of illegal immigration.

Those who advocate for immigrants hail the decision, saying it should reduce problems for foreign workers and confusion for employers.

"The program not only caused concern for the many immigrant employees - both documented and undocumented - but confused the employers who depend on immigrants to fill their jobs," said Shelley Schrader, director of the Interfaith Immigration Services of Nebraska.

The administration had said the expanded letter program was an effort to correct records so that billions of dollars of unaccounted Social Security earnings could be properly linked to workers for retirement benefits.

Let's see - the illegal aliens gum up Social Security records by using bogus numbers. The SSA sends out notices that the numbers are bogus and then all the whiners and profiteers get their knickers in a twist. And the proposed solution is not to send the letters.

This year the number of "no-match" letters was to be reduced to about 130,000, which is slightly above the 2001 level.

"We made a business decision to implement the new procedure," said Social Security spokeswoman Carolyn Cheezum. She could provide no statistics but said last year's expanded effort yielded a "substantially low number" of corrected records.

I wonder if it occurred to the Social Security rocket scientists that the numbers were uncorrectable?

Let's trick Blogger!
Per my lament below, the Blogger archiving problem that ignored all my posts from this morning is now fixed - for new posts only. What a system! So I have reposted (and deleted the old posts) and the permalinks now work.

There will always be an England?
First the diversity crowd wanted to "improve" the Union Jack, now there's a Call for Queen to lose title as head of Church:

The Queen should be stripped of her title as Supreme Governor of the Church of England so that the royal family better reflects the religious and ethnic diversity of the United Kingdom, according to a major report on the monarchy.

Some useful employment would decrease the wanking level.

Originally posted at 12:49 PM. Reposted to amuse Blogger.

Jackanapes caught in the cookie jar
(Via Pave France) Jon Henley reports for the Guardian that Paris judge holds Chiracs to account for £1.4m grocery bill:

A Paris investigating magistrate has overruled the recommendation of a senior public prosecutor and set up a formal inquiry into the £1.4m grocery bill claimed by Jacques Chirac and his wife during eight of the 18 years that the president spent as mayor of the French capital.

So he's a big eater, right? Well, it's a tad more than that:

Because most of the files from the early years of the Chirac tenure were shredded before municipal elections in 2000, the report covers only the years 1987-1995. But the evidence looks strong: during those eight years alone, the Chiracs claimed for, and were reimbursed, £1.45m for their personal food bills.

Some £950,000 of the bills, which are entirely separate from the mayor's annual £1m entertainment budget, were paid in cash apparently taken from the proceeds of the town hall's staff bar. The money was reimbursed in exchange for receipts that "in many instances give rise to suspicions of substantial fraud", the report says.

One £1,500 bill for foie gras and truffles had plainly been tampered with. "The initial sum appears to have been £500, with the figure 1 added at a later date," the auditors said. Another bill, for £375 in 1994, was reimbursed "four times that year, and then once the following year, on the basis of carbon copies of different colours and a modified date".

The corners of many receipts had been cut off to remove the date, the report adds, while receipts for purchases worth £4,000 from the luxury Paris delicatessen Fauchon "appear purely and simply to be fakes".

He's not even a good fraud.

Originally posted at 12:15 PM. Reposted to trick Blogger.

Another reparations scam
Carol J Williams in the LA Times has all the details in Haiti bills France for slavery debt: $21.7 billion:

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — France owes this country exactly $21,685,135,571.48, the government figures — not counting interest, penalties or consideration of the suffering and indignity inflicted by slavery and colonization.
...
In one of the most colorful campaigns to galvanize Haitians in years, the country is awash in banners, bumper stickers, television ads and radio broadcasts demanding payback.
...
France recognized Haiti's statehood 35 years later, after the country began paying 90 million francs in gold to compensate French landowners driven out by the revolution.

The reparations demand, Haitians say, is today's value for the 90 million gold francs Paris strong-armed from Haiti in the 19th century. Reparations for moral crimes have yet to be calculated, says the government spokesman.

And anyone reading newspapers aligned with President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's government, or listening to state-sponsored broadcasts, would think a check for the staggering sum was all but in the mail.

I suppose it beats voodoo and you never know, the Frenchies might fall for it since clues seem to be in short supply over there.

Over the past week, an illusion of momentum has emerged following the Group of Eight industrialized nations' summit in Evian, France. On the fringes of the forum, French President Jacques Chirac replied to the repeated restitution demands by contending this country's dire economic straits were more the consequence of corrupt government than thwarted development inflicted by payoffs to France in exchange for recognition of Haitian independence.

Guess not, but you never know.

Haiti's state secretary for communications, Mario Dupuy, describes Chirac's allusion to corruption as "verbal violence" but smiles tolerantly in laying out what he sees as the colonial masters' long-term outlook. "This is the kind of attack that precedes negotiations," insists Dupuy.

Others inside Aristide's circle say the campaign will continue.

"It's serious and it's going to intensify," says Michelle Karshan, a media liaison for Aristide. "It's not something Haiti came up with by itself. It came up in the context of the summit on race in South Africa. The French leadership itself has acknowledged that slavery was a crime against humanity."
...
Haiti is the only country to make a formal appeal for compensation from a colonizing and enslaving power, said Haitian Foreign Minister Joseph Philippe Antonio.
...
Antonio insisted the French government eventually will see its way to do the right thing.

"France will pay restitution for the monies that it owes Haiti," he said. "Restitution means to reimburse what you took that did not belong to you, with interest."

Everyone needs a hobby.

Originally posted at 9:11 AM. Reposted to get around Blogger.

The Deck of Hillary
I had noticed that NewsMax was offering a deck of cards featuring Her Heinous. Now Richard Johnson has the details in the NY Post:

The novelty cards, which each features a vintage Hillary quote, are split into four suits. Spades feature remarks by "The REAL Hillary" such as:

* "I mean you've got a conservative and right-winged press presence with really nothing on the other end of the spectrum."
...
Clubs expose "The Feminist" side of Hill:

* "I have a pretty good antenna for people who are chauvinistic or sexist or patronizing toward women."
...
Mrs. Clinton's role as first lady is revisited with diamonds.

* "I knew nothing about my brother's involvement in these pardons . . . I had no knowledge whatsoever."
...
* "I'm not going to have some reporters pawing through our papers. We are the president."

Of course, most entertaining are the hearts, which dredge up her greatest sound bytes on the subject of "Bill & Me."
...
* "Who is going to find out? These women are all trash. Nobody's going to believe them."

As someone else observed recently, drag $8 million through a trailer park and see what comes out.

Originally posted at 7:57 AM. Reposted to defeat Blogger.

I've been BLOGGERED
My usual ability to defeat the oddities of Blogger has been countered by their moving the Country Store to a new enhanced Blogger version called "Dano". Well, Dano seems to prevent my usual archive prestidigitation and as a result, all permalinks from today are dead. Except for the first one, but that's because the weekly archive inconsiderately starts at midnite Pacific time, not my time. I thought things would actually improve after Google bought Pyra Labs. Color me naive.

UPDATE: The permalink to this post works. I should have guessed.

UPDATE: Now "fixed" - see above.

Rich and satisfying!
At the Weekly Standard, Matt Labash greatly amuses with Hillary Goes to Wal-Mart. I can't even begin to summarize the goodness, but here are some excerpts:

Fairfax, Virginia
It's hard to describe the electricity one feels when crossing this Northern Virginia strip-mall parking lot to attend Hillary Clinton's "Living History" book-signing. But I haven't been this excited about Wal-Mart since my one-hour photos came back in 25 minutes. It makes me feel all sprightly and young again--as if it were 1998.

Hillary has yet to arrive, but already, her fans and detractors are sparring. On one side of the street, snaking out of the store through the lawn'n'garden section, are the Hillaryites. They carry umbrellas and folding chairs and squeeze-bottles. They look like public librarians and NPR pledge-drivers. They arrive as early as 9 A.M. to snatch up all 2,000 books and be in place to get them signed at 7:30 that evening. They are a patient, trusting people. And they will need patience to endure the taunts of their opponents, standing across the way on a median strip.
...
The Hillaryites are frustrated, but a bellicose, heavyset woman starts trying to rally the troops by screaming "Bozo! Bush is a BOZO!" I scramble over to her and try to conduct an interview. But she's tasted blood and finds it difficult to stop. She tries to respond to questions and wage war at the same time. The effect is that of a Tourette's sufferer short of medication: "My name is Tina, and those are BOZO LOVERS! BUSH IS BOZO THE CLOWN! Hi, who you with? BOZO! Who do you write for? DOWN WITH BOZO!"

Across the street, Freepers are getting satisfaction. "Do you feel the love?" smiles one of them. But they up the ante with the announcement of a "Hillary Book Toss." It's done in homage to Hillary, who reportedly once chucked an ashtray at her husband's head. Whoever throws the book farthest gets to keep it and get it signed by Hillary. Just as the Freepers announce this, Wal-Mart security moves in and tells them they will have to conduct the book toss over to the side, on a grassy knoll. Safety comes first. Initially, I think security just wants to ensure that nobody sustains a head injury by getting clipped with the 562-page behemoth. But after reading it, I see the less obvious concern: If the book had fallen open to page 465, where Hillary tells a friend, "My husband may have his faults, but he has never lied to me," someone might have laughed himself to death.
...
But Hillary greets everyone with a smile, as her eyes bulge big--so big that the whites attain 360-degree clearance around her irises.

To the people assembled, this expression means different things. To her fans, her eyes say, "I'm one of you--just a gal who likes to stop by Wal-Mart for a Sam's Choice cola and a $1.78 Nacho Chile Pie." To her moderate critics, they say, "Look at me, I'm almost human." To her Freeper-style critics, the eyes say, "Back off, or I'll ice you, just like I iced Vince Foster." To me, they don't say much of anything, since her staffers won't let reporters near her.

Instead, I swim around the plastic flip-flop racks and Prayer Bear stuffed animals, to interview her supporters in line. Just for kicks, and to see if they are as gullible as Hillary purports to be, I ask when exactly during impeachment year they finally believed that Bill Clinton had had a relationship with Monica Lewinsky. Here are their verbatim responses: Hillaryite 1: "When he said so." Hillaryite 2: "I don't remember." Hillaryite 3: "I don't remember." Hillaryite 4: "When he admitted it." Hillaryite 5: "I think he was set up by the Republicans."

Hitting the other end of the line, I grab a Hillaryite to ask how his signing went. "She's pure evil," he says. "She's a cancer on America." It turns out he's not a Hillary fan at all. But he stood in line for nearly four hours just to try to get her to inscribe his book, "To BJ," which stands for . . . well, her husband knows. He also wanted to get his picture taken with her--as he flipped her the bird. He didn't succeed, and now he's kicking himself: "It was something my grandchildren might have said, 'You know, I'm proud of granddad.'"

Wait until Bubba hits the book circuit, he won't be able to resist personal inscriptions.