More McCain cluelessness

Here is one more reason to add to a long list why I will never vote for John McCain for president. As he has demonstrated many times in the past, beginning with the truly awful McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill, he once is showing himself to be oblivious to the real world implications of his high sounding public posturing. By publicly derailing the President’s attempt to get clarification (and thus legal protection) for US agents interrogating terrorists, McCain is joining with those who care more about the “rights” of terrorists than he does about the lives of American citizens. By joining McCain in this effort, Colin Powell has shown himself to not be much better.

Thomas Sowell has absolutely nailed it with a column which concludes with the following:

“No amount of security precautions can protect us from all the thousands of ways in which terrorists can strike at times and places of their own choosing — and eventually strike with nuclear weapons. Our only hope is to get advance information from those we capture as to where other terrorists are and how they operate. Squeamishness about how this is done is not a sign of higher morality but of irresponsibility in the face of mortal dangers.”

For more on this, see Suicidal Hand-Wringing and McCain’s Dubious High Ground

5 Years Later

As everyone is doing their “5 year retrospectives” about the events of 9/11, one of the best I have come across is Why We Fight. Here is just an excerpt…

Islamic fascism is not why we fight, it’s what we fight. The distinction is more than merely rhetorical. For all our necessary emphasis on what we’re fighting — Islamic terrorists bent on the destruction of the West and the establishment of a new caliphate — we cannot forget what we’re fighting for.

The United States of America is the last best hope of Western civilization, and we fight because we know our way of life is worth defending to the last man. As we reflect back upon the events of September 11, 2001, let us humbly remind ourselves why it is that we fight.

Let us remember that no great civilization is defeated from without until it is first defeated from within.

Great weekend

We just had a great weekend at Disneyworld with our daughter Angela. On Friday we went to a Pirates dinner show in Orlando. It was a blast! You sit around a giant pirate ship in the middle of the room and for about 1 1/2 hours, you get to watch a lively show filled with just about every pirate cliche that there is. Angela is really into pirates right now (thanks to the Pirates of the Carribbean movies) and so we all had a jolly old time. Then on Saturday we took her to Disneyworld’s Magic Kingdom. She’s 21 but she hasn’t been since she was 4 so it was great to see her enjoying herself like a little kid all over again. We did the whole 9 yards… Small World, Peter Pan ride, Buzz Lightyear and, of course, Pirates of the Carribbean. Then yesterday (after sleeping in until the maid at the hotel knocked on the door) we went for breakfast and then a couple of hours shopping at Downtown Disney. Part of the time was in the HUGE Virgin records store there where I picked up some more music to use at school. We were all tired when we got home, but it was a real good time together with Angela before she had to leave for home this morning.