Be careful at who you make fun of, karma may insist on getting back to you. Either that or Karl Rove.

As a matter of fact, Karl Rove had to be involved in this somehow:

Man Shot In Accident After Laughing At Cheney

AP) LAFAYETTE, Colo. Hours after laughing about Vice President Dick Cheney’s hunting mishap, Josh Kayser was himself shot by a friend during a hunting expedition.

The 21-year-old Lafayette man was taken to the hospital Monday night after his girlfriend accidentally shot him while they were trailing a raccoon that had been preying on chickens on his family’s property.

"I read that thing about the vice president and said to myself ‘how can you shoot your friend with your gun?’ And look what happened," he said Tuesday.

Kayser was crouched down to look under a shed where he thought a wounded raccoon was hiding, and his 17-year-old girlfriend accidentally shot him with a .22-caliber rifle. Police have not identified the girlfriend.

Yuck it up dude. Karl will get you!

P.S.: Just to be totally clear for purposes of karma and other providential principles: I don’t believe Karl Rove has this kind of power and I never laughed at Dick Cheney or this guy’s accident.

Member of Marines not "sort of person UW wanted to produce"

The student Senate at the University of Washingon has voted to block a memorial to ‘Pappy’ Boyington, A Marine WWII Aviator and recipient of the Medal of Honor. You can read the minutes of the meeting here.

Hat tip NRANews.com

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, the greatest show on earth is coming to Houston this weekend. Make your plans, get your cameras ready, this should quite an event.

Two Houston events with Cindy Sheehan - Feb 19 & 20

Sunday, February 19, 2006 at 7:00 p.m.

An evening peace rally in The Woodlands with Cindy Sheehan and Goldstar Families for Peace.
Event sponsors include the North Houston Peace Group, Gold Star Families for Peace, Potlucks for Peace and Concerned Citizens of Montgomery County.

Montgomery College Theatre, Building D
Montgomery College, 3200 College Park Dr.
The Woodlands, TX

Monday, February 20, 2006 from 4:00 pm - 7:00 pm

President’s Day Protest with Cindy Sheehan and Gold Star Families for Peace
On President’s Day, Cindy Sheehan and the Gold Star Families for Peace, in conjunction with Veterans for Peace and Code Pink (and other groups) will be taking our protest of the Iraqi War to Barbara Bush, mother of the President. We want to ask her "Why did our sons die for your son’s lies?" This is to be a peaceful, nonviolent anti-war protest/demonstration, mother to mother (and we all have mothers, right?).

In front of St. Martin’s Episcopal Church,
717 Sage Road at Woodway in Tanglewood
just outside 610 (the West Loop)

This is your chance to get your face on national television if any of the major outlets cover this freak show. You could be on Fox News yapping on your cell phone while waving like an idiot to the camera, all over the shoulder of Cindy Sheehan, America’s favorite author! Oh, and don’t forget to wear your T-shirts.

Seems the Army Logistics Command has a bit of a problem, and unfortunately it tends to get our men and women in desert camo killed. “CLP” - Cleaner, Lubricant and Protectant - is what the Logistics Command is issuing to our Troops for cleaning and lubricating their weapons. CLP is intended to be a combination cleaner/lubricant/corrosion preventative for small arms. The problem is that the Stuff is a dust and sand magnet. There have been an inordinate number of gun jams in Iraq. The Army has passed this off as inadequate cleaning/maintenence of the weapons, but more and more guys and gals at the pointy end of the stick have come to the conclusion that the real culprit is CLP. For the longest time, the Army Logistics people refused to even contemplate that CLP was a problem. When the guys and gals on the ground in Iraq started trying to buy better, commercial alternatives, the Logistics people cancelled the order and sent more CLP instead. After much complaining, the Logistics people have relented and allowed the orders to go through, but still insist that ANY deviation from official GI PM procedures constitutes damage to government property. You can read more here.

This is beginning to get disturbing. If Houston’s police chief has his way, our city government may become more intrusive than ever. KTRK-TV reports that Chief Harold Hurtt would like to expand the idea of the city’s red-light cameras to include watching street corners, apartment complexes and perhaps even your house.

This plan includes placing surveillance cameras at crime hot spots such as malls, apartment complexes and those areas where prostitutes and drug dealers hang out. The video would be fed directly into the police department.

In fact, there’s already a plan to install five of those surveillance cameras in downtown Houston along Main Street to track and monitor any criminal activity.

Chief Hurtt believes it would be cheaper to have the cameras than to hire enough police officers and have them at every street corner. He’s even suggesting that those homeowners who have too many calls for service to their homes be forced to install the cameras as well.

Chief Hurtt seems to be taking his cue from decaying British society, where a proliferation of camera surveillance has done little to curb that country’s climbing crime rates. For some reason the concept of hiring actual patrol officers and having them out on the streets maintaining a visible presence to deter crime seems utterly foreign to this administration. Not that we should be surprised, since police chases are allowed to go on for ninety minutes until innocent bystanders are struck, officer concerns are squelched, illegal immigrants are given a free pass for being law breakers, and HPD leadership cannot make up its mind whether New Orleans evacuees have been contributing to Houston’s crime increase or not. Naturally, the Chief defended his pet project.

Chief Hurtt said, "Wherever you go in a city this size you’re going to be on video camera or tape at least 12 times a day. If you just think about it, you go to a convenience store, you get gas, you go to the bank, you drive down the street in front of people’s houses where motion sets off the cameras, you’re already on camera. I know a lot of people are concerned about big brother. My response to that is, if you’re not doing anything wrong, why should you worry about it?"

Ah, the classic “Everyone’s doing it why can’t we?” argument. Not very convincing, since private entities with security cameras are rather different from a government law enforcement agency watching the citizenry twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, possibly even in and around their own homes. The logic of the “If you’re not doing anything wrong, why worry?” argument also leaves something to be desired, as it opens the door to any method of law enforcement. Why not simply shoot those pesky downtown jaywalkers? After all, if you do nothing wrong, you have nothing to worry about.

I’m typically loath to pass judgement on the religious faith and practices of others… but this woman is nuts, and her "pastor" an idiot (Hat-tip: Houston Chronicle):

The pastor of a charismatic Christian church attended by the Plano mother on trial, accused of fatally cutting off the arms of her 10-month-old daughter, told jurors Wednesday that mental illness is really demon possession that cannot be cured with psychiatry or medicine.

[snip]

Dena Schlosser, 37, is on trial for capital murder in the slaying of her daughter Margaret in November 2004… Schlosser was arrested after police, responding to a 911 call, found her in the living room of her apartment, blood smeared on her face and clothes, a Christian hymn playing and a Bible open near the crib where the child was killed.

Open Bible and hymns playing in the background? Check.

Blood smeared on face and clothes? Check.

Chopped the arms off of your own 10-month-old daughter? Check.

Yes, lady, you are officially nuts.

Too bad your idiot husband and "pastor" failed to get you the meds necessary to balance the chemicals in your brain before it was too late. Now you get to spend the rest of your life– no longer psychotic– feeling anguish over what you’ve done. I pray and trust God will have mercy on your soul and forgive you in his time, in his way.

And I pray a much different fate awaits this knucklehead "pastor":

Davidson also testified that he has cast demons out of parishioners and seen evil spirits, including one that was 6 feet tall with a long tail. The former veterinarian, who has no formal religious training, has a cable TV show in the Dallas area and several states.

… AND …

A police report [from September 2004] states the pastor [Davidson] was in the home of another married member of his congregation, sitting on top of her and trying to choke out evil spirits. Davidson told jurors that God had pledged the woman to him and that demons were keeping them apart, but he denied he was drunk or was trying to choke her.

Let’s hope this "church" hasn’t bothered applying for any federal "Faith Based Initiative" money.

Major kudos to Dallas’ CBS-11 investigative reporter Todd Bensman for breaking this disaster of a story, which is just beginning to get national media attention:

The U.S. government’s signature domestic terrorism case – against the North Texas-based Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development – was delayed by more than five months last year because federal prosecutors “inadvertently” released volumes of highly classified intelligence materials to defense attorneys, newly unsealed records show.

To refresh your memory– we are talking about a front-group that has raised tens of millions of dollars for the suicide-bombers of HAMAS.

The government’s Dallas prosecutors in April 2005 thought they were handing over authorized discovery material the defense team needed to prepare for trial and mistakenly included over 14 volumes of sensitive classified intelligence.

The potentially embarrassing unauthorized release of the material was not discovered until four months later, in August 2005, during which time the defense team read the material and decided to keep it.

And how, exactly, did HAMAS’ lawyers get 14 volumes of sensitive classified intelligence handed to them?

The mistake occurred, according to one government account, because prosecutors and FBI agents in charge of the records were deeply involved in a related terrorism trial as a deadline approached for handing records over to the Holy Land defense team. Responsibility for copying the files was hastily given to FBI agents and support staff not familiar with the case, and they copied some of the wrong documents, which were never reviewed before being handed to the defense attorneys.

[snip]

… Among the 14 volumes of intelligence, according to other records and a confidential source close to the case, were transcripts of intercepted telephone calls and “surveillance discs.”

Tino Perez, a retired FBI supervisor who oversaw much of the Holy Land Foundation investigation, said he worried that the intelligence material might have identified informants and revealed secret relationships between American agencies and foreign intelligence services whose help with the case needs to remain a secret.

“The release of the information in this manner has the potential to damage relationships with other intelligence services in foreign countries,” Perez said. “Many times, when information is shared with the United States it’s with certain understandings or certain caveats that the information would not be released nor would its source be released to any third parties.”

I’m not saying I know this for a fact, but let me proffer a guess as to what agent Perez is referring to.

Imagine that the United States, before September 11th, had a bunch of stupid bureaucratic rules making it impossible for one American intelligence agency to share information about suspected (or confirmed) terrorists with another American intelligence agency. Perhaps there were even some stupid bureaucratic rules about who could be watched, or for how long, or what could be recorded, or whether you could even "Google" the people in question.

Now imagine that a foreign intelligence service– one that represents a country, for example, whose citizens are being blown up on buses every other day– decides that, whatever the stupid rules are for the Americans, IT can’t afford to sit by and do nothing while tens of millions of dollars are being raised to murder its citizens.

So even though they don’t exactly have permission, this foreign country sends representatives to the United States to do the sort of monitoring of terrorist sleeper cells that their American counterparts ought to be doing in the first place.

The sun rises on September 12th, 2001. The American people suddenly "get it", but their government has no idea how many terrorist sleeper cells it has inside its borders, or where they are, or what they might have been up to.

So the foreign intelligence service says "You are our allies and our dear friends– would you mind if we shared some information with you, in exchange for not making a big deal over how we got it?"

And the U.S.– finally with its head out of it’s ass– says "You bet, and thanks."

THAT is just ONE of the "relationships" with foreign intelligence services this boneheaded mistake has exposed to HAMAS, and its jihadi-allies.

I’m just guessing, don’t know for sure.

But you don’t need to "guess" what the retired FBI agent means by this:

Perez also said he worried that informants close to the defendants might have been revealed, endangering their lives.

“If there was an individual who was providing this sensitive information,” he said. “There’s a great potential that the individual could be harmed, based on all the other activity that’s now taking place in the Middle East.”

By that he means friends or family who cooperated with the investigation– whether for noble or parochial motives– who live (up until a short time ago?) in the Palestinian territories now "governed" by HAMAS.

What an absolute disaster.

A little retro Clinton-bashing for ya’ this morning…

You are getting veerrryy sleeeppyyy….

You want me to graaabbbbb your boooobiesss….