Links and Minifeatures 2008 05 30 Friday (The Original Memorial Day)

Mice Vote to Bell Cat

The United States and other leading cluster bomb makers - Russia, China, Israel, India and Pakistan - boycotted the talks, emphasized they would not sign the treaty and publicly shrugged off its value. All defended the overriding military value of cluster bombs, which carpet a battlefield with dozens to hundreds of explosions.

It'll work as well as it always does

Pope Innocent Banned the Crossbow in 1139. They were nonetheless used for about another 500 years, until firearms technology replaced it.

People will decide that their circumstances are special enough to warrant use. This includes the signatories to the treaty banning them. That's basically a constant of the history of warfare.

Poetic Justice: It appears that the Democrats are about to nominate someone who won the nomination by being what gamers call a "rules lawyer": Obama used party rules to foil Clinton

Clinton hinged her whole campaign on an early knockout blow on Super Tuesday, while Obama's staff researched congressional districts in states with primaries that were months away. What they found were opportunities to win delegates, even in states they would eventually lose.

Obama's campaign mastered some of the most arcane rules in politics, and then used them to foil a front-runner who seemed to have every advantage

Here's the thing about rules lawyers: They're weak players. In a presidential campaign, even with the media in the tank for him, expect this to be a very long summer and fall for the Democratic nominee.

I've been doing my best to ignore Scott McClellan ("full of sound and fury, signifying nothing" came to mind when the news about his book broke). Since ignoring him doesn't seem to be enough with the shot in the arm he's given to the BDS sufferers, I'll just say I'm with Bob Dole on this one. If it was as bad as he claims, a man with any integrity would have quit and blown the whistle. He didn't.

In fact, Little Green Footballs follows the money trail right to hard left financier George Soros.

Powerline covers the how and historical precedent.

Tired of high gas and energy prices? It isn't the oil companies. It's high demand and low supply.

Given the expanding economies of the formerly third world, demand is going to keep going up no matter what some individuals or groups conserve. The only way to lower prices is to increase supply, which means tap new sources and alternatives energy technologies.

via Don Surber, I discover a petition to allow more oil drilling.