Links and Minifeatures 10 06 Thursday

I got distracted and forgot to post that Carnival of Vanities is up!

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Okay, this is weird. Just looked at the website on a preview and it said "Playful Primate." Just to be certain, I hit the link over to TTLB, and my true rank is about where it was last time I checked. Comfortably "Large Mammal" but needing to at least triple external links in order to have a prayer of Primate-hood. I checked a couple of other Large Mammal sites, and their rankings seem messed up as well.



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Captain's Quearters has some new information on the DeLay indictment. Seems that the prosecutor involved convened at least one grand jurt who refused to indict, and evidence presented to the grand jury that indicted was negligible. Check out the comments also.



I'm not a hard core Elephant. I'm not particularly fond of Mr. Delay's politics - in fact I'm more than a little displeased by some of them. I actually went around to most of the better known left-wing sites (Kaus, Kos, Matthew Yglesias, Oliver Willis)to see what they're saying, which is to say, not a peep. Given that, it's starting to look a lot more likely that this is indeed a vendetta on the part of Mr. Earle.



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LGF notes that the british have accused the Iranians of supplying weapons for insurgents to use against them.



However refreshing the candidness is, I think Iran needs taking down from inside, not outside. I have a belief (which may be founded in unrealistic optimism) that the mullahs are on their last legs politically. If we do nothing, they will be overthrown soon. If we invade, we will topple the regime but the mullahs a new lease on power as the resistance. Patriotic Iranians who may or may not have a use for the mullahs will use them as the center of the resistance. Iran is approximately the size and population of Afghanistan and Iraq combined. The correct strategy there is probably containment coupled with aid to any democratically inclined rebels who ask. Syria, on the other hand, is not only a smaller bite but the Ba'athists there are as vulnerable as Saddam Hussein was in Iraq.



Speaking of the War on Terror, the Senate voted for an amendment on the treatment of prisoners in custody of Department of Defense. I see mostly plusses to this. On one hand, it may be needless interference and political posturing. On the other hand, it's an affirmation of what the United States is about, it's an example of Congress giving clear guidelines (something to be encouraged, as anything else translates into part of the Attorney's Full Employment Act). Reading Mudville Gazette's research (the text of the Act and the relevant manual), it seems quite reasonable, however political their actions were intended to be. I hope I understand why those nine senators voted against it, but it isn't a "vote for torture" no matter what certain big name left wingers may say.



While I'm at it, Michael Yon has a retrospective of his recently concluded embeded tour in Iraq. Read it if you haven't already.



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Ann Althouse has an article on a young gentleman who may be removed from his education prgram because he doesn't kowtow to liberal cannon. Disgusting.



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Dean's World talks about his feelings on Intelligent Design, mostly that it's harmless twaddle, and that debate is to be sanctioned. He says he expects to get trackbacks from people labelling him all kinds of gratuitous Bad Things. He's probably correct, unfortunately. I however, think that whereas Intelligent Design is NOT harmless twaddle, he takes exactly the correct tack in how do deal with it: Debate it. Show it for the unscientific nonsense it is. Get down to details and brass tacks and exact context. Evolution as a theory holds together about like you'd expect it to, having been assembled using the scientific method. Intelligent Design at it's weakest and least objectionable is a philosphy of what's behind Evolution and Relativity and everything else, but it's philosophy, not science. On any stronger level, it falls on its ridiculous butt. The Creationists (now turned ID advocates) I've taken on from time to time in other venues want evolution discredited without being able to discredit it scientifically, much less advance a theory of their own that holds water scientifically. Nonetheless, Dean is correct in that they must have the ability to try. Without that, we'd still be talking about the ether and phrenology and Newtonian physics and ulcers being caused by stress, not bacteria. Suppressing it gives it legitimacy of a sort, legitimacy which ties well to the "believers are persecuted" meme of certain religions.



I'm not an accreditied scientist. But I know plenty enough to debunk most of their nonsense, and do research on the rest.



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Austin Bay has some new information on Harriet Miers in the form of an email from someone who has worked with her. I like what I read here.