Blood for oil: Libyan edition

"The British government decided it was 'in the overwhelming interests of the United Kingdom' to make Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber, eligible for return to Libya, leaked ministerial letters reveal."

These letters were sent two years ago by minister Jack Straw to Kenny MacAskill, the man who made the decision this month to release the bomber. Originally, Straw opposed including the bomber in a prisoner-exchange deal (letting Libyan and British prisoners serve out their time in their home countries). But... "Straw then switched his position as Libya used its deal with BP as a bargaining chip to insist the Lockerbie bomber was included."

Huh.

Fireballs seen in the sky

Article about lights and sounds observed in the sky last week. I got a call from this reporter, asking what it might have been. No major meteor showers going on, he noted. Probably space debris, and I had a student see these the same night.

So does US Space Command have a public information number?

Ted Kennedy's Soviet Gambit

Article here. This is astonishing. A Soviet memorandum from 1983 documents how Ted Kennedy tried to make a deal with the Russians to undermine Reagan's foreign policy and give the Soviets the advantage in nuclear negotiations...and to help Kennedy run for president.

It's a tribute to our free and open system that this man was still walking around free, despite having done this.

Is the Lockerbie bomber really dying?

Real questions come up, noted here. The idea that his release was part of a deal to get the Libyans to make an oil deal with Britain is getting some documentary evidence now. I'll link to that story when I find it again.

The idiots at State

Cowards. Idiots. Weasels. Unwilling to stand up to real tyrants but bullying democratic countries committed to the rule of law. This administration is turning hard Left in its foreign policy. (%*(!!

America has no Caudillo

I think I'm using that word correctly. Anyway, Foud Ajami at JHU puts Obama's failure to rule by personality into context very nicely here.

Thousandth post!

OK, something more substantial in the next one, but I couldn't let this go by when I saw Blogger note that I had 999 posts.

LIGO rules out long-wavelength gravitational waves

Story summarized on Slashdot here.

Amen!

"The federal government does not have the power to regulate Americans simply because they are there." Finally! I'm seeing somebody with real knowledge of the Constitution write what I've believed for a long time. Why am I not seeing more conservatives make these points?

The self-refutation of postmodernism

Mark Baulerlein takes down Stanley Fish's (old) defense of Social Text in the 1996 Sokal hoax. Fish essentially says that those post-modernists were taken in by Sokal's hoax because they relied on his credentials and didn't evaluate the truth of his paper's claims.

Surprisingly, he means that as a defense.

Goldberg on the hidden costs of "Cash for Clunkers"

Article here. He starts with Bastiat's "Parable of the Broken Window," of which this is a wonderful example. I was explaining this to our older daughter the other day, and she picked up on the reasoning very quickly.

1984 was written by an Englishman, right?

Appropriately enough.