2005 NCAA DIV-I Football Picks - Part I

Ahh, college football ... the sounds, the smells of Fall (in the Midwest, at least - the REAL heartland and football capital of America), the competition, the continued B.S. of the BCS, the arguments, the politics. I'm ready for it - so let's go!

Should be a great season upon us. More blogs to come as to my national championship and bowl picks. But for now.....

Of course, I believe as do most folks that USC is fairly deserving of their pre-season top ranking - they are indeed a good if not great team with their nucleus of Leinhart & Bush back in full stride plus a cast of great D-line and O-line returners and some fresh faces of great talent. But don't take my comments as being pro-USC - most of you know I'm anything but a USC apologist. I'm just a realist, and appreciative of the talent and opportunity USC has to be the first team to win three straight national titles. They are the first team with even a shot at doing so since the '96 Nebraska Cornhuskers who, after back-to-back titles at 25-0, were not only blanked by Arizona State 19-0 in the second game of the season but -- with a chance after 10 straight wins to actually participate in the title game for a shot at that elusive third consecutive title -- fell to Texas in the inaugural Big 12 title game 37-27 en route to a two-loss season. It's hard to do in any sport, but USC has the best talent and favorable schedule (key home games) to pull it off.

I also believe that pre-season rankings are worthless - as much as the BCS itself, but for now, it sorta works and it's all we have...though I absolutely love a controversy such as the USC-LSU split in '03, which is what the BCS was created to avoid! While I believe USC is a favorite to play in their second straight BCS (and third straight AP) title game, this time basically in their backyard with the Rose Bowl only 15 miles from the Trojans' campus, I also believe that the title chase is more wide open than many give credit, especially the race for #2 to play in the Rose Bowl. I also believe there could be three, four, or more unbeatens at the end of the season and even after conference title games, to truly throw a giant - and magnificent - wrench into the scheme of things. Tri-champs? It's possible! It's gonna be great, no matter the outcome(s).

Here are my picks per conference - you'll notice I do not pick every single DIV I conference - some are just unnecessary to the championship process; nor do I pick records and rankings for every team in every division of each conference standings, rather mainly the top three or four, plus conference championship game winner (if there's a game, per conference). Feel free to give input and reply-in-comment with your picks as well. Enjoy the picks, and definitely comment as to yours (or your arguments with mine).

Big East:
West Virginia - BCS bound? (hosts LV and PITT in key conf. games)
Louisville (road games at WVU, CIN)
Pitt (road games at LV and WVU)
Syracuse
Boston College
Cincinnati - new era, new stadium, updated logo ... mediocre football!
Connecticut
Rutgers
South Florida

Big Ten
Purdue (hosts Iowa, does not play MI or OSU)
Iowa (hosts MI, on the road at PU)
Ohio St (hosts PU and IA, road at MI)
Michigan - minus OSU, home schedule undaunting; road games at IA and MSU ... hey UM fans, STFU regarding Purdue's schedule - it is what it is, and we sure wouldn't hear any complaining if the Wolverines hadn't had the Boilermakers on the schedule during the Drew Brees era!
Michigan St - I'm calling it here: MSU upends MI in E. Lansing! (But still finished behind UM)
Wisconsin
Illinois
Minnesota
Penn St - Joe Pa, for the love of God and the good of the game: please hang it up!
Northwestern
Indiana

Big 12 North:
Colorado - edge to the Buffs, as they host the Huskers on Thanksgiving Friday
Nebraska - no 62-36 pasting in Boulder...NU loses like that only when top-ranked with everything on the line
Iowa St
Kansas St
Mizzou
Kansas

Big 12 South
Texas - Longhorns finally have OU's number in '05...but not enough for a national title as they'll fall on the road at Ohio St and suffer at least one conference loss
Oklahoma - nice opener at home with TCU! (TX game will be another thriller; road games at UCLA and NU could prove tricky)
Texas A&M - Aggies should be back on track to force an upset or two
Texas Tech - lots of offense, no defense ... another satisfying 7-4 season in Lubbock
Oklahoma St
Baylor

Conference championship: Colorado vs Texas - TX in another mediocre Big 12 title game

More Anti-ACLU Banter - it can only be for the good!

From TheMuseumofLeftWingLunacy.com - today's blog 8/24/05:
This is excellent, and further open discussion on the increasing irrelevance of the once great but now blatantly anti-American, anti-religious (notably Christian), neo-Communist "protector" of all things civil:

ACLU Vs. National Security

Perhaps there is no other issue as fragile to the preservation of our liberties than a careful balance between civil liberties and our national security. To its credit, the ACLU recognizes the danger if the scales are tipped too far to the side of national security, however it doesn't seem to acknowledge the danger if the scales are reversed.

On July 12, 1990, Morton Halperin, who at that time was director of the Washington Office of the ACLU, testified before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence: "The ACLU is deeply troubled by the notion that there is a national security exception to the Fourth Amendment or any part of the Bill of Rights. We regard those rights as fundamental and absolute."

"Absolute" is the key word to understanding the ACLU. Its absolutist philosophies, just as any extremist view, endangers the very civil liberties it claims to protect.

In his book "Twilight of Liberty", William Donahue compares Halperins views of liberty with that of Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson said, "A strict observance of the written laws is doubtless one of the high duties of a good citizen, but it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation. To lose our country, by scrupulous adherence to written law, would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property and all those who are enjoying them with us: thus absurdly sacrificing the end to the means."

There is no doubting the ACLU's concern that there are untrustworthy public officials who will invoke national security as a cloak to cover their own wrongdoings; the pages of history are full of them. But does that mean that the only proper response is to make absolute the Bill of Rights, even in those clear-cut instances when the nation's viability is seriously called into question: It is fair to say that most who have studied the question would prefer to side with Jefferson on this matter." Twilight of Liberty pg 172

There is probably no other time that a proper balance between civil liberties and national security becomes more important than in wartime. During times of war, sometimes unusual responses are implemented, often requiring suspension of certain liberties. Of course war opens the opportunity for abuse by governments, and the ACLU are right to watch for them. However, the ACLU in its absolutist perception of freedom, only worries about one side of the equation, civil liberties. It pays no attention to the national security side of things, not only ignoring it, but in many cases working against it.

It is nothing new for the ACLU. They grew out of an organized effort to protest World War I. The only exception to their anti-war stance was World War II, and part of that is due to the investigation during this time into the fact that they were a Communist Front group.

After 9-11, the ACLU and its leftist cohorts spearheaded a movement to depict the US in general - and the airline industry in particular - as a snake pit of bigoted vipers eager to abuse and humiliate Muslims and Middle Easterners. The statistics, however, tell quite another story. During the nine months immediately following 9-11, the ADC received a mere 60 reports of incidents where airline security personnel prevented "Arab-looking" male passengers from flying as scheduled. While this may have been an annoying inconvenience for those affected, six or seven complaints per month is hardly an epidemic - particularly in light of the fact that the most devastating attack in American history had just been carried out by nineteen men of virtually identical physical, ethnic, and religious characteristics".

"From 9-11 to the present day, the ACLU has vigorously opposed every governmental attempt to more effectively protect the American people's security. It sued, for example, to prevent the implementation of the Aviation and Transportation Security Act, which was passed in November 2001 and included a citizenship requirement for airport screeners. It organized protests against a "discriminatory" Justice Department and INS registration system requiring male "temporary visitors" to the US from 25 Arab and Muslim nations to register with the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services. It condemned the FBI's "discriminatory" plan to count and document every mosque in the US. It protested when FBI and Homeland Security agents recently tried to track down illegal Iraqi immigrants they deemed dangerous. In Illinois, the ACLU actually set up a hotline designed to give free legal advice to undocumented Iraqis facing deportation. Former ACLU Executive Director Ira Glasser casually dismissed Americans' concerns about illegal immigration, chalking such sentiments up to a "wave of anti-immigrant hysteria."

"The ACLU further claims that the Patriot Act has created an Orwellian big government of unprecedented proportions. "Under the new Ashcroft guidelines," reads one of its disingenuous press releases, "the FBI can freely infiltrate mosques, churches and synagogues and other houses of worship, listen in on online chat rooms and read message boards even if it has no evidence that a crime might be committed." Curiously, the ACLU does not mention that the FBI already had the authority to take these measures long before the Bush administration took power. Nor does the ACLU point out that the FBI can wiretap only after showing a court that the suspect is affiliated with a foreign terrorist group or government - the very same requirement instituted 25 years ago by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act".

"What the ACLU is actually rebelling against is the Justice Department's recent removal of Clinton-era intelligence-gathering restrictions that had crippled the government's ability to fight terrorism. These restrictions prohibited intelligence investigators from conferring and sharing information with criminal investigators, even if they were both trailing the very same suspect who was plotting a terrorist act. On August 29, 2001, for instance, an FBI investigator in New York desperately pleaded for permission to initiate an intensive manhunt for al-Qaeda operative Khalid Almihdar, who was known to be planning something big. The Justice Department and the FBI deputy general counsel's office both denied the request, explaining that because the evidence linking Almihdar to terrorism had been obtained through intelligence channels, it could not legally be used to justify or aid an FBI agent's criminal investigation; in short, it would constitute a violation of Almihdar's "civil rights." "Someday, someone will die," the agent wrote to his FBI superiors, "and the public will not understand why we were not more effective and throwing every resource we had at certain problems." Thirteen days later, Almihdar took over the cockpit of American Airlines Flight 77 and crashed it into the PentagonExerpt Front Page Magazine

One of the most revealing occurances towards the ACLU's absolutist position on national security and its recent evolution can be seen in the action the board of directors took at its Oct 1989 meeting: It dropped section (a) from its policy, "Wartime Sedition Act." Before, the ACLU held that it "would not participate (save for fundamental due process violations) in defense of any person believed to be "cooperating" with or acting on behalf of the enemy." This policy was based on the recognition that "our own military enemies are now using techniques of propaganda which may involve an attempt to prevent the Bill of Rights to serve the enemy rather than the people of the United States." In making its determination as to whether someone were cooperating with the enemy, "the Union will consider such matters as past activities and associations, sources of financial support, relations with enemy agents, the particular words and conduct involved, and all other relevant factors for informed judgement."
Source
All of this is now omitted from the Official ACLU policy!

As these policy changes indicate, balancing national security interests and civil liberties is not a goal of the ACLU. Its only goal is the absolute pursuit of unlimited civil liberties, with no regard to any consequence or negative impact upon our security. Not only does it ignore the issue of national security, but there are many examples I have shown where they actually work against it, even to the point of defending the enemy. The absolute tragedy is that it is not only the nations's security the ACLU's absolutist philosophy puts in danger, but the very cause of liberty itself. We've also saw recently the attitude of the ACLU to securing our borders, again civil liberties trump national security, their refusal of contributions because of anti-terrorism stipulations, sueing New York for trying to protect its subways, and even wanting to help the enemy keep its secrets from interragators. Is all of this not enough for Congress to do some kind of investigation? Write your Congressman and tell them you want an investigation on the ACLU immediatly before its too late.

It pursues its radical agenda with your taxdollars.

Sign The Petition To Get The ACLU Off The Taxpayer's Dole

Crossposted At Stop The ACLU

GITMO Abuses Confirmed!

Excellent review of what really occurs at Club GITMO (I just LOVE that nickname!) and a powerful refuting of the misleading, unfounded myths about the "abuses" occurring at the Joint Task Force base in Cuba:

What I Saw at Gitmo
By Lt. Col. Gordon Cucullu
FrontPageMagazine.com June 27, 2005

Last week, I was privileged to be part of a Department of Defense trip to the Joint Task Force - Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. I got to see the operations of this “controversial” facility up-close – something particularly important after Sen. Richard Durbin’s comparison of its guard to Nazi stormtroopers and calls of leftists to shut the center down. Our group went to GITMO to check out tales that the military was being too tough on these terrorist detainees. We left convinced that America is being extraordinarily lenient – far too lenient.

After speaking with soldiers, sailors, and civilians who collectively staff Gitmo, I left convinced that abuse definitely exists at the detention facilities, and it typically fails to receive the press attention it deserves: it’s the relentless, merciless attacks on American servicemen and women by these terrorist thugs. Many of the orange jumpsuit-clad detainees fight their captors at every opportunity, openly bragging of their desire to kill Americans. One has promised that, if released, he would find MPs in their homes through the internet, break into their houses at night, and “cut the throats of them and their families like sheep.” Others claim authority and vindication to kill women, children, and other innocents who oppose their jihadist mission authorized by the Koran (the same one that hangs in every cell from a specially-designed holder intended to protect it from a touching the cell floor – all provided at U.S. taxpayer expense). One detainee was heard to tell another: “One day I will enjoy sucking American blood, although their blood is bitter, undrinkable….” These recalcitrant detainees are known euphemistically as being “non-compliant.” They attack guards whenever the soldiers enter their cells, trying to reach up under protective facemasks to gouge eyes and tear mouths. They make weapons and try to stab the guards or grab and break limbs as the guards pass them food.

We dined with the soldiers, toured several of the individual holding camps, observed interrogations, and inspected cells. We were impressed by the universally high quality of the cadre and the facilities. While it may not be exactly “Club GITMO,” as Rush Limbaugh uses to tweak the hard-Left critics who haven’t a clue about reality here, GITMO is a far cry from the harshness experienced even by maximum security prisoners in the U.S.

Meals for detainees are ample: we lunched on what several thought was an accumulated single day’s ration for detainees. “No,” the contract food service manager said with a laugh, “what you’re looking at there is today’s lunch. A single meal. They get three a day like that.” The vegetables, pita bread, and other well-prepared food filled two of the large Styrofoam take-home containers we see in restaurants. Several prisoners have special meal orders like “no tomatoes” or “no peanut products” depending on taste or allergies. “One prisoner,” General Hood said, “throws back his food tray if it contains things he has specifically said he doesn’t want.” How is he punished for this outrageous behavior? His tray is numbered, the food he requested is put on it, and the corrected “order” is delivered to his cell.

The detainees are similarly catered to medically. Almost every one arrived at GITMO with some sort of battlefield trauma. After all, the majority were captured in combat. Today they are healthy, immunized, and well cared for. At a visit to the modern hospital facility – dedicated solely to the detainees and comparable to a well-equipped and staffed small-town hospital with operating, dental, routine facilities – the doctor in charge confirmed that the caloric count for the detainees was so high that while “most detainees arrived undernourished,” medics now watch for issues stemming from high cholesterol and being overweight. Each of approximately 520 terrorists currently held in confinement averages about four medical visits monthly, something one would expect from only a dedicated American hypochondriac. Welcome to the rigors of detention under American supervision.

Of the estimated 70,000 battlefield captures that were made in Afghanistan, only a tiny percentage, something on the order of 800-plus, were eventually evacuated to GITMO. These were the worst of the worst. More than 200 have been released back to their home country – if the U.S. is assured that the detainees would not be tortured by local authorities upon return. These men were freed because they were deemed by ongoing official military review processes to no longer pose a threat, or to possess no useful intelligence. And this process has proven too generous at times: more than 10 released GITMO detainees have been killed or recaptured fighting Americans or have been identified as resuming terrorist activities. Still, the process is up and running for review of cases, and if a Washington DC circuit court approves a government appeal, the system for military tribunals will get started. All mechanisms are in place and ready to go as soon as DoD gets a green light.

There is a good reason these unlawful combatants are being confined. They are evil and dangerous individuals. Yet these thugs are treated with an amazing degree of compassion: They are given ice cream treats and recreational time. They live in clean facilities, and receive a full Muslim religious package of Koran, prayer rug, beads, and prayer oils. An arrow in every cell points to Mecca. The call to prayer is played five times daily. They are not abused, hanged, tortured, beheaded, raped, mutilated, or in any way treated the way that they once treated their own captives – or now treat their guards.

Some questioned whether it were wise to give these radical Islamic fundamentalists the religious supplies that ended up landing them in Gitmo in the first place. “Giving them the Koran is simply something that we think we ought to do as a humane gesture,” said second-in-command Brigadier General Gong. “We’re Americans. That’s how we operate.”

When we challenged military authorities about the seemingly plush environs these would-be murderers receive, the commanding officers stated this was the most productive course. JTF-GITMO commanding officer Brigadier General Jay Hood radiated confidence and determination when fielding challenges from our group about his overly lenient treatment. “It works,” he says simply. “We do not allow torture or mistreatment, period.” How to they guarantee this? By rigorous, on-going training and constant oversight up and down the supervisory chain. As proof that “establishing rapport” with the detainees is far more effective than coercive techniques, General Hood refers skeptics to the massive amount of usable intelligence information JTF-GITMO continues to produce even three years into the program.

You are right to worry about inhumane treatment taking place at GITMO. But your concern should be for the dedicated, well-trained, highly professional American men and women who are subjected to a daily barrage of feces, urine, semen, and spit hurled at them along with vile invective as they implement a humane, enlightened system of confinement on men who want nothing more than to kill Americans. These quiet professional Americans, who live under the motto “Honor Bound for Defense of Freedom,” deserve our utmost respect and concern. Shame on anyone who slanders or disrespects them for short-term and short-sighted political advantage.

MORE Harry Potter News - see it here first!!

OK folks, so we know that Dumbledore dies on page 596. But of equal importance is the fact that Snape kills Dumbledore. Amazing stuff, folks. I mean, who knew?! Well, now YOU do! 'Cuz you got it, right here. No need for thanks, I do it with pleasure. So once again, I've saved the reader at least one day of your life and upwards of $29. What's that? Don't like the fact that you found out without reading the book? Hard-core HP fan? So deal with it - if you're such a huge fan, you should have read #6 by now. (No, I didn't read the book - why would I?!!)

An Eye on the (NY) Times: Two 9-11 Scoops of Actual Relevance from the NYT

Wow...who knew?! The NYT actually representing and exposing that which stands in opposition to their typical liberal and/or anti-Bush "news" doctrine! It only serves as further notice that Armageddon must be around the corner and pigs may just really fly.....

Meanwhile, as the sh*t continues to hit the fan regarding the 90s' political & national security inaction by the Pentagon on the "Able Danger" knowledge of Mohammad Atta and his al Qaeda hit squad cell, as well as the increasingly questionable "9-11 Cover-up Commission" and its 'missing' documentation of the knowledge of al Qaeda in America, it appears that with new information released daily the symbolic political fan has now been turned up from low to medium. The sh*t's about to fly all over and it ain't gonna be pretty for 90s apologists and the cronies from the Commission. This thing could be huuuge. More to come!

- P.T.E.

Two 9-11 Scoops from the Times

Two generally anti-Bush intelligence reporters, Eric Lichtblau and Philip Shenon, have important scoops in Wednesday's paper about anti-terrorist inaction on Clinton's watch. But will the networks newscasts notice?

First up is Lichtblau's "State Dept. Says It Warned About bin Laden in 1996," buried on A12: "State Department analysts warned the Clinton administration in July 1996 that Osama bin Laden's move to Afghanistan would give him an even more dangerous haven as he sought to expand radical Islam 'well beyond the Middle East,' but the government chose not to deter the move, newly declassified documents show."

Lichtblau explains: "The declassified documents, obtained by the conservative legal advocacy group Judicial Watch as part of a Freedom of Information Act request and provided to The New York Times, shed light on a murky and controversial chapter in Mr. bin Laden's history: his relocation from Sudan to Afghanistan as the Clinton administration was striving to understand the threat he posed and explore ways of confronting him. Before 1996, Mr. bin Laden was regarded more as a financier of terrorism than a mastermind. But the State Department assessment, which came a year before he publicly urged Muslims to attack the United States, indicated that officials suspected he was taking a more active role, including in the bombings in June 1996 that killed 19 members American soldiers at the Khobar Towers in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia."

Later he writes: "Critics of the Clinton administration have accused it of ignoring the threat posed by Mr. bin Laden in the mid-1990's while he was still in Sudan, and they point to claims by some Sudanese officials that they offered to turn him over to the Americans before ultimately expelling him in 1996 under international pressure. But Clinton administration diplomats have adamantly denied that they received such an offer, and the Sept. 11 commission concluded in one of its staff reports that it had 'not found any reliable evidence to support the Sudanese claim.'

"The newly declassified documents do not directly address the question of whether Sudan ever offered to turn over Mr. bin Laden. But the documents go well beyond previous news and historical accounts in detailing the Clinton administration's active monitoring of Mr. bin Laden's movements and the realization that his move to Afghanistan could make him an even greater national security threat."

Again, Lichtblau makes sure we know Judicial Watch is a conservative group before giving it props for bipartisanship: "Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, said the declassified material released to his group 'says to me that the Clinton administration knew the broad outlines in 1996 of bin Laden's capabilities and his intent, and unfortunately, almost nothing was done about it.' Judicial Watch, a conservative legal group, was highly critical of President Clinton during his two terms in office. The group has also been critical of some Bush administration actions after the Sept. 11 attacks, releasing documents in March that detailed government efforts to facilitate flights out of the United States for dozens of well-connected Saudis just days after the attacks."

More on the Times' labeling habits for Judicial Watch on MRC's NewsBusters blog.

Also on page A12 on Wednesday is a potentially explosive story by Philip Shenon, "Officer Says Military Blocked Sharing of Files on Terrorists." The text box reads: "Efforts to tell the F.B.I. of pre-9/11 Qaeda activities."

Those efforts are in reference to the secret Pentagon data-mining program Able Danger, which Rep. Curt Weldon first brought up on the House floor in late June. The claim: That 9/11 ringleader Mohammad Atta was fingered as a potential al-Qaeda operative back in 2000, but that Defense Department lawyers prevented Able Danger from telling the FBI about him.

Shenon explains: "A military intelligence team repeatedly contacted the F.B.I. in 2000 to warn about the existence of an American-based terrorist cell that included the ringleader of the Sept. 11 attacks, according to a veteran Army intelligence officer who said he had now decided to risk his career by discussing the information publicly."

"[Lt. Col. Anthony] Shaffer said in an interview on Monday night that the small, highly classified intelligence program, known as Able Danger, had identified the terrorist ringleader, Mohamed Atta, and three other future hijackers by name by mid-2000, and tried to arrange a meeting that summer with agents of the Washington field office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to share its information. But he said military lawyers forced members of the intelligence program to cancel three scheduled meetings with the F.B.I. at the last minute, which left the bureau without information that Colonel Shaffer said might have led to Mr. Atta and the other terrorists while the Sept. 11 attacks were still being planned."

Later Shenon points out the potential CYA factor at the DoD and FBI: "He said he learned later that lawyers associated with the Special Operations Command of the Defense Department had canceled the F.B.I. meetings because they feared controversy if Able Danger was portrayed as a military operation that had violated the privacy of civilians who were legally in the United States. 'It was because of the chain of command saying we're not going to pass on information -- if something goes wrong, we'll get blamed,' he said."

He notes "The interview with Colonel Shaffer on Monday was arranged for The New York Times and Fox News by Representative Curt Weldon, the Pennsylvania Republican who is vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and a champion of data-mining programs like Able Danger."

Weldon was the source for the Times' initial "Able Danger" scoop last week, which, unlike many front-page scoops by the Times, has yet to percolate widely onto the broadcast news shows.

Lichtblau, Shenon and other Times reporters heaped criticism on George Bush for not acting on the infamous President's Daily Briefing one month before September 11, a memo that warned in vague, general terms about the threat bin Laden posed to the U.S.

Times Watch trusts those reporters will bring equal energy to following up on these new stories, which if confirmed would drastically change what we thought we knew about the lead-up to September 11 and retraining the focus on Clinton's eight years of inaction on terror rather than Bush's eight months.

For Lichtblau on bin Laden, click here.
For Shenon on Able Danger, click here.

The Truth of The 9/11 (Cover-up) Commission
By Ben Johnson and Lt. Col. Gordon Cucullu
FrontPageMagazine.com August 15, 2005

“For there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; and hid, that shall not be known.” –St. Matthew 10:26

Recent revelations about covert “Able Danger” operations are forcing certain people to deal with subjects that they had thought swept under the rug. Despite apparent attempts to conceal the fact, the 9/11 Commission has had to admit it was informed that government agents knew of Mohammed Atta’s affiliation with al-Qaeda two years before 9/11, that Clinton-era policies prevented intelligence officials from sharing that information with the FBI, that the amended time frame would allow Mohammed Atta to have made contacts with Iraqi intelligence, and – most damningly – that it kept all this out of its final report.
Rep. Curt Weldon, R-PA, has done praiseworthy work in drawing attention to the recently released “Able Danger” report. Former CIA operative and terrorism expert Wayne Simmons has described the “Able Danger” operation as “one of our best covert operations” run by the intelligence community. The operation, he continues, was expert at “using open source intelligence,” including data mining techniques, “to locate and identify Islamic terrorists,” specifically al-Qaeda operatives in the United States. This operation identified 9/11 mastermind Mohammed Atta and three of his fellow hijackers as members of an al-Qaeda cell located in New York City (and codenamed “Brooklyn”) in 1999. We can only surmise that a gold mine of information lies yet unrevealed.
Weldon noted with exasperation that this information had been delivered to the 9/11 Commission in at least two separate briefings, possibly three, proving the incredible ineptitude of the commission. Weldon says staffers of the 9/11 Commission did not share – and Commissioners did not request – information about these “Able Danger” reports. This would have been indispensable to uncovering how 9/11 happened and what could be done to prevent a repeat performance, allegedly the commision's task..
Faced with these revelations, commissioners first claimed Rep. Weldon was not telling the truth, that the 9/11 Commission had never been presented with this vital information. Early last week, commission spokesman Al Felzenberg said, “The name ‘Atta’ or a terrorist cell would have gone to the top of the radar screen if it had been mentioned.” Former Congressman and commissioner Lee Hamilton, D-IN, echoed Felzenberg, saying last Monday: “The September 11 commission did not learn of any U.S. government knowledge prior to 9/11 of surveillance of Mohammed Atta or of his cell. Had we learned of it obviously it would’ve been a major focus of our investigation.” The New York Times notes that just a few days later, “Mr. Felzenberg said the uniformed officer who briefed two staff members in July 2004 had indeed mentioned Mr. Atta.” Hamilton, too, quickly “readjusted” his initial comments to admit that, indeed, the commissioners heard of Atta after all. Felzenberg acknowledged the commission had been briefed on this information but rejected the testimony of a uniformed officer on the grounds that his evidence did not match their preconceived timeline; it indicates Atta was active from February-April 2000, whereas the commission believed Atta entered the United States for the first time that June.
There are several factors – none flattering to the Commission – that might explain this appalling lapse. John Podhoretz neatly summaries them: “So was the [9/11 Commission] staff a) protecting the Atta timeline or b) Jamie Gorelick or c) the Clinton administration or d) itself, because it got hold of the information relatively late and the staff was lazy?”
The really upsetting issue is contained in Podhoretz's first note. It requires a deeper reading because understanding it fully opens the entire mindset of the hard Left toward terrorism and Operation Iraqi Freedom. Podheretz notes that the Commission was “protecting” its interpretation of Mohammad Atta's international and domestic U.S. travels. Key in this “interpretation” in the minds of Clinton supporters and Bush haters of all stripes is the necessity to deny all ties between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and al-Qaeda. After all, in the endless cacophony of criticism against the Iraq War, the two steady drumbeats have been the failure to find WMDs, and the assertion that there were no links between Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and the September 11 attacks. Until now the Left has issued a series of deliberate misinterpretations of a series of reports – including that of the 9/11 Commission, and WMD reports by David Kay and Charles Dueffler. However the unimpeachable “Able Danger” report was at first denied by 9/11 spokesman Al Felzenberg, then was reluctantly confirmed to be correct. Felzenberg said that “the information that [the “Able Danger” briefing officer] provided us did not mesh with other conclusions that we were drawing.” (Emphasis added.)
And here we get to the crux of the matter. The movements of Atta prior to the terrorist attack as detailed by “Able Danger,” if acknowledged, would support statements by the Czech Republic that link Atta, and hence the al-Qaeda attack on America, irrefutably to Saddam's covert intelligence operatives. This is something that surfaced shortly after 9/11. A former Czech deputy foreign minister, later ambassador to the UN, gave statements that he personally expelled a high raking Iraqi embassy official in Prague for being a covert foreign intelligence agent after the latter was discovered to have met with Mohammed Atta in the international lounge at the Prague airport in August 2001. There the Iraqi transferred a large amount of cash to Atta, sufficient to fund the completion of the September 11 attack. Despite cruel pressure from mainstream media, the hard Left, the U.S. State Department, and the CIA, the Czechs insisted that their report was correct. Former Congressman John LeBoutellier was furious at the Bush administration for bowing to CIA pressure to discount the Czech report because it verified a vital deadly connection within the covert terrorist community. Now it appears as if the Czechs – and those who supported their account – were right.
This Atta-Iraqi meeting did not track well with some of the 9/11 Commission's pre-ordained agenda and had to be firmly discounted. They were able to accomplish this through a lame credit card receipt that could have been signed by any of Atta's cell. But a report with the weight of the Department of Defense and highly credible intelligence operatives behind it would expose the flimsy nature of the evidence that Atta was in the States. Hence, as Flzenberg said, with unflappable arrogance, “if we missed anything we will say so, but we doubt that we did.”
The possible motives of protecting Commissioner Jamie Gorelick and her former employer, President Bill Clinton, are also closely related. Then-Attorney General John Ashcroft testified at the 9/11 Commission’s grandstanding hearings that one of its own commissioners, former high-ranking Clinton Justice Department appointee Jamie S. Gorelick, had been the prime architect of one of the problems for which the commissioners regularly denounced the Bush administration: the wall between intelligence agencies. Her infamous 1995 “wall” memo produced much of the harmful lack of intelligence coordination that the Commission then used to criticize the Bush administration. As FrontPage Magazine’s Jean Pearce wrote last May, the intelligence wall Deputy Attorney General Gorelick put in place smothered ongoing investigations into Chinese contributions to Bill Clinton’s presidential campaigns. Specifically the Department of Defense and the CIA were prohibited from exchanging relevant information with the FBI.
Not all were happy at the time with Gorelick's action. Gutsy New York City-based U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White was appalled by the Gorelick directive, sending two of her own memoranda back to Janet Reno and Gorelick protesting, “The most effective way to combat terrorism is with as few labels and walls as possible so that wherever permissible, the right and left hands are communicating.” Her recommendations were ignored. According to the New York Post, White was so incensed by their actions that she wrote a second, scathing memorandum warning that the “wall” hindered law enforcement efforts to combat terrorism. “It will cost lives,” she reportedly warned. This second memo is still kept secret.
Her prophecy proved accurate; in 2000, members of the Department of Defense knew of an al-Qaeda operative in the United States, but the DoD – hands tied by Gorelick’s policy – declined to alert the FBI, a step that might have prevented the 9/11 attacks. At this time, al-Qaeda had already, either directly or through its affiliates, killed American soldiers in Somalia, detonated the Khobar Towers, and bombed U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. In the summer of 2000, they attacked the U.S.S. Cole.
This inaction seemed to fall into line with the Clinton administration’s general disregard for terrorism. Although the discredited former National Security Council staffer Richard Clarke presented President Clinton as an anti-terrorism warrior, former intelligence officer Ralph Peters tells a much different story. “Admitting that [terrorist] threats were real.threatened to destroy the belief system the Clintonites had carried into office,” Peters detailed. In regards to the entire terrorist network, methodology, and ideology, the Clintons were “a textbook case of denial.” It was bad enough, as the “Able Danger” reports indicate, that the Clintons were willfully ignorant of the threat but their criminal negligence was compounded by a sleazy attempt to pass the buck on the Bush administration. Bill Clinton never made any serious retaliation for any of these provocations, nor the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, emboldening these terrorists, assuring through his “intelligence wall” that 9/11 terrorists could not be properly identified and apprehended, and passing the blame for the inevitable outcome of his policies to the nascent Bush administration.
If there was, in fact, covert direction from the top of the Commission to key members of its staff to cloak any link between Saddam and the September 11 attacks, to obfuscate evidence tying the Iraqi regime to al-Qaeda and Mohammed Atta, and to paint the most positive possible picture of the Clintons as implacable terror-warriors, then “Able Danger” had to be ignored and covered up. It fits the pattern of revisionist historical interpretations that seems to be the only authentic legacy from the Clinton years. Further, in Washington staffers tell their bosses what the latter want to hear. They are not rewarded for initiative. As Peters says, when told to think outside the box by a superior, a subordinate knows his job is to “come back with fresh reasons why the in-house position was right all along.”
By acknowledging the Iraq/al-Qaeda ties, not only to terrorism in general but to the September 11 attack, the war becomes completely justifiable as exactly what the Bush administration claimed it was: a defensive, if preemptive, war to protect the United States from a regime with cordial ties to anti-American terrorists. This outcome is so repugnant to the hard Left that it will justify even the most extraordinary suppression of evidence or promulgation of an outright lie in order to achieve its ends.
This is a critically important story that demands public attention. It will not be seriously investigated by many reporters, because the mainstream (read: leftist) media is not interested in exposing how its favorite president in decades enabled terrorists to pull off the worse act of domestic terrorism in U.S. history.

Harry Potter news - updated here!

Dumbledore dies on page 596.
I just saved you at least one day of your life and $29. Deal with it - if you're such a huge Harry Potter fan, you should have read the book by now.
(No, I didn't read the book - why would I?!!)

The Divine Rights of Cornhuskers Fans

From Husker Dan, HuskerPedia.com:

Dear Readers: For decades, Husker fans have known that the Nebraska football program has been unlike any other. Its winning traditions, outstanding players and passionate fan base are unequaled in college football. But the past few years, the Husker football program has taken some hits, especially after last year's 5-6 record. The experience has been so difficult for us that we are being accused of being bunch of spoiled crybabies.The accusers offer a reality check for us. "Welcome to reality, Husker fans", they say. "Welcome to the real world of Division 1 college football. Teams like Notre Dame, USC, Oklahoma, Miami, K-State, Washington, Colorado, and Penn State all have seen their programs drop in the crapper from time to time, so why should Nebraska be any different?". Because we ARE different, that's why. Most Husker fans really don't give a rat's patootie about other football programs. Husker fans know that they have a different set of God-given rules that apply only to the Husker football program, its players and fans. I know it. You know it. We all KNOW it. You'd have to have manure for brains not to know it. That's why all Husker football fans should have a copy of the following displayed proudly in their Husker dens at home or at their Dilbert cubicles at work.

THE DIVINE RIGHT OF HUSKER FANS

Whereas, the state of Nebraska, a state that doesn't have any mountains, or oceans, doesn't have any major league sports teams, and has weather that ranges from Death Valley to Siberia (sometimes in the same day),

And whereas, the state of Nebraska, a state that is not known for much other than a frumpy billionaire investor, the CWS, SAC, Johnny Carson, Marlin Perkins, Carhenge, Chimney Rock, the country's only unicameral state legislature and a wacky arch,

It shall therefore be The Divine Right of Husker fans all over the world that they should have a football program that:

1.) Is regarded every year as one of the premier programs in the country.
2.) Is admired by sports fans all over the planet.
3.) Is in the national championship hunt annually.
4.) Is the team to beat in the Big 12 North.
5.) Is the team to beat in the Big 12 Conference.
6.) Intimidates Husker opponents because of its rabid Husker fans, the Tunnel Walk and the bone-breaking hits by Husker players.
7.) Current and former Husker players always conduct themselves on and off the field with respect to the great traditions of Husker football.
8.) Almost never loses at home.
9.) Continues its current nation's leading string of consecutive home sellouts that dates back to November 3, 1962.
10.) Each year produces candidates for the Heisman, Outland, Butkus, Lombardi, Doak Walker, Maxwell, Davey O'Brien, Unitas, Rimington, All Big 12 Conference and All American awards.
11.) Continues to lead D-1 football in Scholastic All-Americans.
12.) Goes to a bowl game every year.
13.) Plays in a BCS game almost every year. *This assumes that the B.S. - er, uhhh BCS is even relevant to college football, as seen by its own incompetency in six of its eight seasons as the self-described "national championship" title crowning system. (Only in '02 and '04 has the BCS adequately lived up to its own hype, providing two clear and downright inconstestable unbeaten teams to play for the national title. Note: anyone foolish enough to believe that in '99 Va Tech was an unassailable competitor - even at 11-0 - over Nebraska to play Fla St in the Sugar Bowl for the BCS title is either clueless of all-things-college-football, or simply moronic, whether in or out of the state of Nebraska.)
14.) Has a winning record every year.
15.) Has most of its games televised.
16.) Continues to revere the likes of Bob Devaney, Memorial Stadium, "The Tunnel Walk", "Hail Varsity", "There is No Place Like Nebraska", "Come A Runnin' Boys", Ed Weir, Al Zikmund, Dana X. Bible, Forrest Behm, Bobby Reynolds, Lyell Bremser, Dave Rimington, Tom Rathman, Trev Albert, Frank Solich, Kent Pavelka, Tom Osborne, Tom Novak, Roger Craig, Rich Glover, Guy Chamberlain, Wayne Meylan, Johnny "The Jet" Rodgers, Jerry Tagge, Jeff Kinney, Larry Jacobson, Irving Fryar, Mike Rozier, Ahman Green, Tommie Frazier, Jake Young, Tony Jeter, Bob Churchich, Grant Wistrom, Scott Frost, the Peter Brothers, Eric Crouch, Turner Gill, and Bob Brown.
17.) Above all, will never, never, never, never, never, ever become irrelevant. *See the 1990s programs of Penn State, Notre Dame, and Oklahoma to name a few.