My thought is that both countries are getting what they have been asking for since the hated Nukular Bushwa took office, and exactly what they asked for when the hated Bush the Elder, and the Reaganoid were in office. With respect to Bush 43, the elites in both countries hate him with a passion ordinarily reserved for Hitler, pederast murderers, and those who smoke in Montgomery County Maryland restaurants or in front of children. The people of both countries consistently (and Montgomery County, for that matter) poll 50:50 at best about American presence, and generally run 60:40 against, or stronger. Clearly, we aren't wanted, and we are perceived as an imperialist colonialist racist yadda yadda yadda power. That's actually the District of Columbia's line about the Fed Gov, but again, I digress.

So, I'm fine with it if we leave Korea, or Germany, and I suspect the Germans and South Koreans are fine with it too, at least they are until the stunning cost of providing for their own self-defense, both in treasure and blood, sinks in.

Either way, it will force both nations to stand on their own for a change, and shoulder the burden for their own defense.

Let's face it, after the last three years of the Kerrycrats and Deaniacs screaming that we shouldn't be pushing the rest of the world around, I'm starting to come around to their viewpoint. We should do our part in the war on terror, saber-rattling at the ChiComs, whatever. It's basically a law enforcement problem, right Mr. Kerry? So we'll send lawyers, put 100,000 new beat cops on the street, declare a peace march on terror, send Johnny Edwards to file a plaintiff's suit for the Enemy Prisoners of War held at Gitmo (gotta protect freedom, you know; this war is about protecting the right to dissent, etc). Yep, Mr. Kerry will do whatever it takes, even if it means that he will once again have to go patrol the Washington, D.C. / Cambodia border. Because Washington is on the Cambodian border the same way the Mekong Delta is, because if you go far enough past either, eventually you find yourself in Cambodia. But there I go again. Point is, Kerry will do anything to kick Bush's, er, Osama's ass. Hell, let's send a double compliment of lawyers to Afghanistan with two secretaries and two paralegals each, no matter how heavily they churn the bills. But no more soldiers, no more war, etc.

I don't think the infantile left in either country understands a basic fact of life my daddy pointed out the day I left home, "you walk out that door, you are on your own. I'll still love you, I'll still be your father, but it will be on you from that day on." The massive street demonstrations, the Bush=Hitler stuff, the use of Bush in particular and America generally by Gerhard Schroeder as an outlet valve for domestic ennui - it's all over. Ever take a swing at your old man? I did. There was hell to pay afterward. And Gerhard and the South Korean appeasers have been taking plenty of swings at Uncle Sam over the last couple years.

So let's apply a little of that old man wisdom, and see how the Koreans and Germans feel about making their own car payments, buying their own food, and washing their own socks. The mass of Germans - many of whom I number among my dear friends - can choke on it for all I care. I guess they will now have a chance to take their smug certainties of the age out for a test drive. he South Koreans - for whom my father sacrificed three years of his life and his health, who have demonstrated most violently against all things American, save our clothes, hamburgers and music - can choke on it too. The time has come to see how well their appeasement of the Hermit Kingdom, the billions of dollars of payoffs that keep the North afloat, have worked to buy peace and goodwill. Sorry chaps, we aren't playing world's cop so you can play world's social worker and the world's angry teenager. It's your turn to grow up and be the daddy, and pay the bills.

We Americans have borne the greatest part of the burden for far too long. We are now under attack and will be, probably for some decades, and with the exception of token forces assigned to low risk missions, neither of these nations gives a flying fuck at a rolling donut for helping us with solving the real root causes of our terrorist enemies. Here's a hint - the root cause ain't our involvement in other countries, like Germany and South Korea, or even our selling arms to Israel. But since they aren't clever enough to reason inductively, we'll pull our troops out of Saudi and your countries, and they can take a crack at deductive reasoning and try and figure out what the root cause is.

If they want to be secure, it's their turn to deplete their treasuries, sacrifice blood, and suffer the wounds of vicious political infighting, as we have done since WWII. World War IV is afoot, and if they want to play Poland or Belgium, I'm all for it. That's what self-determination and democracy are about: being just as catastrophically stupid as you want to be. But assuming they want to play dumb, I don't want the U.S. to be in the position of playing sacrificial British Expeditionary Force as the Islamist cultural and terrorist blitzkrieg rolls on.

--------------------------------

If you don't read ESPN's "The Sports Guy" you should turn in your Dude Card right now. This column pretty much tells you why you should be reading him. Some highlights of the long rambling conversation linked to above:

I'm with you on the decline of American civilization. Last Tuesday, I was standing in line at Starbucks. The person in front of me was talking on a cellphone, as was the person behind me, and they were both shooting each other nasty looks because they thought the other person was talking too loud. Meanwhile, I was getting angry because the person at the front of the line was paying for a $3.75 venti soy latte with a credit card and holding everyone up, and it made me even angrier that I knew what a "venti soy latte" even was, or why it cost the extra 40 cents. I'm not sure what's happening. Our society is turning into a Charlie Kaufman script.

As for the "women's" (and I use that word loosely) gymnastics on Sunday night ... I mean, what would possess someone to direct his or her daughter toward the seedy world of competitive gymnastics? Would you ever send your kid to the Karolyi Ranch? After the ongoing Michael Jackson fiasco, isn't it every parent's duty to avoid sending their kids to a place that features someone's last name with the word "Ranch"?

---------------------------

Of course, this is the same guy who (just last week) spent 10 minutes debating over the following question:

Q: "If you were single and completely unattached, would you rather have consecutive Super Bowl titles for the Pittsburgh Steelers (his favorite team), or one night with Josie Maran?"

A. "Well, both choices would keep me warm long after the annual event."

I thought that was a classic response -- certainly the most clever thing he has said in the 20 months that I've known him (other than the time he wondered how Dalton earned "best cooler in the South" status in Road House, and how they even kept track of such a thing). Eventually Sheck voted for the consecutive Steeler Super Bowls. And I couldn't blame him. I'm the same guy who counts the Pats-Rams Super Bowl as one of the five greatest moments of my life.
---------------------------

I'm constantly living in fear here in Los Angeles. Everyone talks about Compton; but for my money, there's a much more terrifying area in L.A.: the Scientology compound in Los Feliz, right near where my friend Nick lives. It's eerie, crazy-quiet there, and randoms are walking around the compound checking everyone out and providing pseudo-security, giving off a vibe reminiscent of when Kelly Taylor was abducted by Professor Finley's cult in "90210." I can't even explain how creepy this place is, especially at night. Every time I went there, I kept waiting for Nick to act quiet for a few minutes, then open his mouth, point at me and emit that screeching sound like Donald Sutherland at the end of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." I never visit him anymore. He has to come see me.

Go read the rest of it.

I am reminded of something that happened back in the 80s. Jerry Falwell bargained with Ted Kennedy for each to deliver a speech at each other's home turf - Kennedy at Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, VA, and Falwell at Harvard. Kennedy got a polite reception, while Falwell was inundated with heckling.

Falwell's treatment is quite typical of that of conservative campus speakers over the past two decades. One is pained to find an example of such heckling of leftist speakers; the rare ones who do usually have to resort to talking uncivilly about politics when they're being paid to do something else in order to elicit such a response.

The general perception of liberals is clouded by the fact that liberals in prominence do not represent a cross-section of liberals in general. Celebrities, academics, student activists, and the like skew toward the more intolerant radical fringe. Non-liberals in prominence represent a wider range of thought and are generally more willing to have rational discussions across the ideological divides.

Why? I think the difference lies not in what separates left and right but what defines radicalism. All radicals, whether they be Marxists or Klansmen, view the world in terms of class warfare. Entire classes are inherently at war with each other in the eyes of the radical; the only solution is for one set of classes to triumph completely over the other. There is no room for all classes to advance. Non-radicals, to the contrary, believe that everybody can be pleased to some degree.

Radicals are also heavily dependent on the State to socialize children and adults individuals in order to remake society. Hate speech laws in Canada, England, continental Europe, and Western academia serve as one of the most insidious examples. School curricula distort history and proffer all sorts of Lysenkoist treatment of sexuality, "tolerance," and "diversity" - all for the cause of making children into citizens who adopt the class consciousness and the party platform.

Non-radicals do not view government as a vehicle for making men and women righteous. Politics, while having moral implications, is a bit player in basic human civility. Most of what people require for good relations with their neighbors has nothing to do with legislation, so political differences are not an inherent impediment. Not so with the radicals. They must tear down the old society - and all the classes and individuals associated with it - and build a new one in its place.

Your a star-belly sneech you suck like a leech
You want everyone to act like you
Kiss ass while you bitch so you can soak the rich
But not your wife who gives money to you...

Well you'll spin harder with O'Neill at your back
He vows he'll make you pay,
Jim Carville ain't gonna help you now,
Then your head skewered on a stake

Now you can go with that band of brothers,
Five like you, unlike two hundred others,
What you need my son:

Is your Navy buds from Cambodia
With their lawyer dressed in black;
Your Navy buds from Cambodia,
Your campaign will crack.

Pol Pot, Pol Pot, Pol Pot, Pol Pot [etc.]

And it's your Navy pals from Cambodia
They won't do what they're told
It's the Navy guys from Cambodia
Hey Theresa's got Afro- soul

I Fought the Law (and I Won)
Drinkin' beer in the hot sun
I fought the law and I won

I needed cash, so I got mine
I fought the law and I won

The law don't mean shit if you've got the right friends
That's how the country's run
The Post is the best friend I've ever had
I fought the law
And I won

I blew the Cong's brains out with my six-gun
I fought the law and I won

Gonna write another book and make a million
I fought the law and I won

I'm the new war hero of the left wing man,
My rich friends think that's fine
You can get away with murder if the press loves you,
I fought the law
And I won
Lanny Davis works for me,
So I won

Your legal concepts of property, expression, identity, movement, and context do not apply to us. They are based on matter. There is no matter here.

That strikes me as an incredibly stupid and inconsistent position to take for a man who resolutely insists that the 4th Amendment requires cops to get a warrant before they look at computer communications, because such communications are "just like personal papers."

No property rights in E-Commerce, eh? I guess Reason has finally gone completely insane, and come to form a new kind of libertarianism, Marxo-Libertarianism. This new kind of libertarianism, that only a few masters of snark at Reason fully understand, is just like the old kind of libertarianism, but instead of private property forming the basis of society and the sole reason for the government to exist, the new Marxo-libertarianism starts from the premise that attempts to assert ownership over property (i.e. private property per se) is wrong.

They really need to change the name of that rag, from "Reason" to "No Critical Faculties."

Finally, soon-to-be-former Governor of New Jersey McGreevey will be stepping down, because in his words, he is a gay American.

And yes, true to form, the loonies at Duncan Black's [H]atrios and the surprisingly mainstream posters at Dumocratic Underground are saying it's the result of a Republican plot.

You know, if a sparrow falls in Kamchatka, to most loyal Dems, I think it is the fault of the Republicans.

It must be horrible to live with that kind of warped hatred.

Lemon Creamy Stuff

1 cup white sugar
1 cup fresh lemon juice
1 tablespoon fresh lemon zest
2 tablepoons cold butter, chopped
3 eggs, slightly beaten

1. Mix all ingredients in a large saucepan.

2. Cook over low/medium heat for 10-12 minutes, STIRRING CONTINUOUSLY (aka constantly). It may start to look funny when the butter starts melting, but just keep stirring. When it thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon, remove from heat.

3. Immediately transfer to clean glass jars and refrigerate. Curd will thicken upon cooling.

Wow. The government is going to assert sweeping new powers, and it's going to result in illegals losing their day in court to state their case.**

When you dig a little way into the article, you find this gem:

Immigration legislation passed in 1996 allows the immigration service to deport certain groups of illegal aliens without judicial oversight, but until now the agency only permitted officials at the nation's airports and seaports to do so. The new rule will apply to illegal aliens caught within 100 miles of the Mexican and Canadian borders who have spent 14 days or less within the United States.

Oh, so in reality, the "sweeping new power" was actually signed into law by the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration has thus far abstained from exercising the "sweeping new power".

An accurate headline would have been, "Border Patrol to Exercise Dormant Powers". An accurate lede would have been "citing concerns about terrorists crossing the nation's land borders, the Department of Homeland Security announced today that it planned to allow Border Patrol agents to exercise broad powers granted in a 1996 statute allowing the expedited deportation of illegal aliens from the frontiers abutting Mexico and Canada without providing the aliens the opportunity to make their case before an immigration judge."

One other beef, here. The thing about the aliens not getting a chance to make their case before an immigration judge? First off, certain classes of aliens such as juveniles and asylum seekers will get a chance to make their case, based on what I've heard.

Second of all, immigration court isn't the friggin judicial court. It's the friggin' Administration's administrative court branch that happens to specialize in immigration law. Yes, that's right, the power exercised by an immigration judge (IJ) is just executive branch discretion - the same power exercised here by Border Patrol agents. In some parts of the country, IJs don't decide deportation questions, district directors of the old INS - now I think they belong to Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) decide the question.

So the implication that the aliens have somehow missed out on something by not getting a date in immigration court, is either spectacularly ignorant*** for the Paper of Record, or it is intentionally deceptive. The sentence could arguably be rephrased, "Illegal aliens within 100 miles and 14 days of the contiguous borders, may now be deported by Bush Administration law enforcement agents, without having a second chance to make their case to the Administration's law enforcement agents.

There is a final bit of editorializing in the news article, the inevitable citation to "advocacy groups", who fear that Border Patrol agents will make the decision to deport poor unwitting folks, making the decision "often in the vast, inhospitable plains of the southern desert." Couple points here. First, there's pretty good grounds to think somebody is illegal if he looks and speaks Mexican, is out in the middle of nowhere in the Southwestern desert, and is hoofing it Northward. I'm no criminal law expert, but I'd say that amounts to reasonable suspicion justifying a stop. Second, the Border Patrol makes all sorts of decisions every day under just those circumstances. "Should I stop that guy who is running North?" "Is that a bundle of drugs under the tarp in that pickup?" "I'm hungry... should I run into town and get a donut?" My understanding of the plan based on other things I've read is that the illegals will be processed at big stations near the borders, that there will indeed be process, and that it will result in much quicker "catch and release" of illegals. The way this is written up, makes it sound like the Border Patrol will be turning around illegals in the middle of the desert, and frog marching them back through the same isolated sands back to Mexico.

All in all this is a really nasty set of insinuations. But what the heck. I guess Tom Ridge has been deemed as too credible, and the NY Times feels compelled to tear him down. Sometimes, it makes you wonder why DHS works so damn hard to keep Manhattan safe.

Of course I shouldn't bitch. This pseudo abuse-of-power scandal will probably help Bush shore up his base, and win over some protectionist Dem centrist voters in the labor movement. Nor will he lose people in the black-UN-helicopter-gubmint-hatin' wing of the party; many of those boys hate the gubmint, but hate the Messicans even worse. Come to think of it, I should be cheering for the Times to go whole hog, and say "Evil Bush Mounts Vicious Crackdown on Flood of Illegal Aliens, Throwing 'em Out Without Extended Court Proceedings or Benefit of ACLU Lawyers."

Yeah. That'd teach that bastid.

--------------------------
*No, really. The Border Patrol are being accused of picking on actual Canadians. I know the term "Canadians" has at times been used to refer to Jews, or to Blacks, or to any other prominent minority group, where the speaker is afraid of being called out for noticing a prominent racial or ethnic or cultural difference - but in this case, the NY Times isn't saying "Canadian" euphemistically or ironically. They are accusing the Border Patrol of picking on Canadians, something the wily Canucks have probably long suspected.

**A reasonable argument, actually, since the Supreme Court ruled in Rasul/Al Odah that even murderous terrorist scum of the earth captured in open warfare making war on U.S. troops get a day in court, why shouldn't mere illegal aliens get at least as much due process? But then, what do I know; I'm a mere peon attorney, and not one of our omniscient robed masters sitting upon high Olympus, aka. the big Court. I'm sure they'll get a chance to sort this out.

***Spectacularly ignorant because one expects the reporters on any given beat with the NY Times, to have at least some expertise in the area they cover. That reporters covering a national security law beat are either lying, or ignorant of the basic administrative law principles that guide government activities in this sphere, is... well, it used to be shocking. It isn't shocking to conceive of it any more. Why, of course it's a liberal paper with Upper Manhattan sensibilities, as Mr. Okrent says...

As I discussed here, the best pizza I've yet eaten in Australia is at Gundaroo's own Cork Street Cafe. Most especially their pizza topped with luscious "prosciutto" from the nearby Poacher's Pantry. (I'm pretty sure it's not *actual* prosciutto, it's definitely smoked, but in any case it's delicious.) It's not on the menu; but the prosciutto is one of several ingredients in the Meat Lover's pizza, which features more yummy Poacher's Pantry-smoked meats like chicken and bacon, but tends to get soggy. Order it thusly: "A medium pizza with just sauce, cheese and prosciutto, please". The concept of "plain" or "cheese" pizzas is heretical in these parts, and if you asked for "just prosciutto", it's likely you'd get an oven-baked pizza crust with meat topping--no sauce or cheese. This, from the folks who brought you beets and eggs atop pizzas.

Incidentally, for those of you who were keeping score in the Australo-pizza stakes, I have docked major points from Bredbo Pizzeria because they no longer use recognizable mozzarella on their pizza. The topping is, incredibly, the so-called "Tasty" cheese, that bland cheddar/jack/colby/one-step-up-from-Velveeta habitue of every Aussie fridge. It's utterly unsuitable for pizza since it congeals rather too quickly into a semi-translucent, gruesomely gelatinous mound of tepid butterfat. Even their marvelously charred crusts and hot Nutella turnover (which is every bit as lustfully decadent as it sounds) cannot save this lonely yet cheerful oasis, warmed by the wood-fire oven and brightened with painted tiles.

But, back to Gundaroo. Tex agreed with me on the complete supremacy of the prosciutto pizza, as well as the previously drooled-over flourless chocolate almond cake. We noticed that the service at the CSC on that particularly cold day was positively Piscean in its flaky absent-mindedness. (FULL DISCLOSURE: birthday March 16--SC)We also agreed on the various Canberran pizza-takeout chains. Domino's is the best, followed closely by Pizza Hut and Pizza Haven, with the pretentious and substandard Australian Pizza Kitchen bringing up the rear. And Tex should know, he's the reigning Australian pizza authority.

I'm still, however, searching fruitlessly for a New York-style slice in Australia.

That's a pretty sad commentary on the country I've always been proud of, and a pretty sad commentary on about one half of our citizens, and pretty much the entirety of the mass media. That one half of the country supports these rotten bastards tells you that one half of the country is either vicious, or so terminally stupid as to justify a return of eugenics. How could anybody fall under the sway of such a group otherwise?

Former White House Counsel C. Boyden Gray noted a few years back that he hated talking to the NY Times. He would make his argument to their reporter, and the next day, the story would run - absent his points, but with a point-by-point rebuttal by some lefty. Get ready for the same thing to happen to the Swift boat vets - media smear jobs to follow, but there will be no mention of their factual allegations targeting Kerry.

So hold on to your hats, as the 60's anti-war left used to say, a real shitstorm is coming. The only thing that is certain about this, is that when the media is done spinning for the Dems, the public will be sick of the Republican party's mean-spiritedness. Yes, you heard that here first too - the media will destroy the Swifties at the behest of the DNC, and the Republicans will get blamed.

And yes, that's another little prediction I'm certain of, but not proud of being able to make. Not in the least.

As an attorney with some litigation experience, I enjoy comparing and contrasting the Dem's demand letter, to Mr. O'Neill's response. While the Dem letter is a pile of carefully prepared innuendo wire-bound to strong-arm threats, saying little but saying it loudly, O'Neill's responds with carefully prepared facts, much in the way a skillful defense attorney would respond to claims made in a plaintiff's initial filing in a civil case. Oh wait a minute, that's what he is. And plaintiff's attorneys... I wonder whose camp they are in? But I digress.

That O'Neill replied with such a beefy document in such a short period of time, indicates that he probably didn't prepare the document this week. Ordinarily, even under rush-rush circumstances, it takes a solid week to crank out something of that quality, even if you have a couple partners, six associates and a small platoon of paralegals on the case. He clearly had affidavits in hand long before the ads were aired.

This means Mr. O'Neill is probably several steps ahead of Kerry's attorneys. Any similarly dishonest and thuggish moves they make, will likely be met with arguments of some legal force. I wouldn't be shocked to see direct litigation between the Kerry campaign and the Swift vets, initiated by the Dems to silence the vets voices. This response from the vets raises the stakes, and will likely force the Dems to respond with an escalation of their threats.

So what do the Swift vets need to prepare for now? Good question.

Some years back, I did some lawyering for a conservative advocacy group. We found that if you respond to the Dems' innuendo and slurs with clear statements of fact and law, boiling down inarguable facts into talking points for the public faces of your group to use, that you can win in the court of public opinion. And it goes without saying that when you reply in that manner, that you win in the courts as well.

The Swift vets are probably mindful of the fact that there is no way to beat the spin machine other than by putting out simple, easily remembered facts, using some attractive, utterly respectable faces. The Swift vets leadership had better have no extramarital affairs, public or private controversies, business ties to Halliburton, or angry ex-wives lurking in the closet.

Assuming the Swift vets can counter the spin machine, they will remain a relevant factor in the campaign, and the Kerry camp will have only the option of litigation if they wish to silence the vets.

Any direct litigation against the vets would have two potential aims - to either shut up the Swift vets immediately and permanently, or to shut them up immediately and for 90 days by winning a short term injunction against their ads, lasting for the duration of the litigation, coupled with drawing out the litigation over the length of the election season. While the Dems would lose the long-term battle to silence the vets, an injunction for the duration of the litigation would have the desired effect, of silencing the Swift vets during the period when they could influence the election.

Based on what I've seen so far, I'm comfortable stating that the Kerry-ites cannot win in court on a libel or slander theory, which is all they've put forward so far. Nor would their allegation that the Swift vets are a "sham group" - implying some type of tax fraud in corporate organization - hold up. The IRS would have to investigate that allegation, or perhaps the Federal Election Commission could undertake to silence the vets. Yet that is unlikely. We all know how slowly the IRS moves, for one thing. And the whole concept of a sham 527 that violates election laws is on shaky ground, for several reasons: (1) the Dems recently beat back a Republican challenge before the FEC arguing against the legality of 527's in political advertising; (2) Dem 527's are much more closely party affiliated than the Swift vets' 527, meaning their 527 is on more solid ground than the Dems' wholly-owned subsidiary 527s challenged in the recent case; and (3) the FEC is unlikely to reverse itself just months after the earlier ruling. In other words, most 527's are party creatures to begin with - sham organizations that live under the illusion of being distinct entities from the political parties. It would be very hard to argue that a 527 based in Houston and apparently independent, is more of a sham than a 527 that has representatives just down the hallway, in the same building as DNC offices in Washington...

What it boils down to, is that the Dems' only real courses of action are a litigation effort, or a public relations campaign to terminally muddy the issues and to discredit the Swift vets, and even ill-founded litigation could be of assistance in to the latter strategy. So the Dems' case is a dog, they know it, and Kerry is in trouble.

There is of course a wild card in all of this - the manner in which the television stations and networks respond to the demand letter. If they drop the ads, there is no danger of the ads having any widespread influence. This would appear to pit television stations' love of money, against their love of left wing politicos. I'm really not sure how to handicap that race; I know I wouldn't put my money on either horse. If there is any identifiable trend, it's likely that Blue state affiliates refuse to run the ads, and Red state affiliates agree, thus preaching to the choir and having little effect on the election. So, in the end, the Dems wildly inaccurate, dishonest smear letter may achieve the desired effect, in spite of the excellent efforts of Mr. O'Neill and the vets.

The fact that the controversy over this ad is getting little mainstream press coverage, is not promising. Time will tell.

3. “a statement by a man pretending to be the doctor who treated Senator Kerry…”

- What are they saying - that this doctor doesn't have a license, and is “pretending to be a doctor”? Or is he “pretending . . . [to have] treated Senator Kerry” when in fact he never did? What's being disputed here?

4. “Not a single one of these men served on either of Senator Kerry’s two swift boats.”

- Hmmm… That’s another non-denial denial. Let's rephrase. "Although my neighbor claims to know me, since he lived next to me for 20 years, he doesn't know me at all since he didn't live in my house."

5. “Swift Boat Veterans styles itself as a group of men who personally served with John Kerry during the war… in fact it’s a sham organization.”

- What's sham about it, exactly? If these guys were in his unit – his section, platoon, or company, contemporaneously with Kerry – then this particular sentence is… well, then it’s another non-denial denial. There’s nothing in this that says that they didn’t personally serve with him. The non-sequitur about it being a sham organization is thrown in there as a second clause in the sentence, to case doubt on the claims expressed in the unrelated first half of the sentence. A comparable sentence would be, “Although Reverend Jones claims to be against drinking liquor, he gambles regularly in Atlantic City. Though there is no connection between the first and second parts of that sentence, the condemnation in the second part is meant to cast aspersions on the activity described in the first part.

6. “In fact, another physician signed Senator Kerry’s sick call sheet…”

Couple points here.

- First off, he went to sick call for treatment for a purple heart wound? Sick call is where you go when you have a cold. It’s a doctor’s appointment, basically, for routine medical care. You go to sick call with blisters on your feet, an infected paper cut, or the clap. Some purple heart. Sick call? What kinda weak-ass shit is that.

- Second, you might see a few people at sick call. There’s an orderly at the aid station, a physician’s assistant, usually a doc, maybe a nurse or two, and a bunch of enlisted medics. I'm guessing Cam Ranh Bay, which had one of the largest forward deployed naval bases in the world, had a pretty substantial medical facility, like a real hospital. In a military medical facility of any respectable size, wouldn’t be unusual that the enlisted medic who stuck you with a tetanus shot and put a bandaid on your ass, wasn’t listed on the record as signing your sick call slip. The “there’s no record of this guy” defense is basically the Clinton response to hard questions, “there’s no proof of that.” It’s another non-denial denial. By the way, who the f*** saves 37 year-old sick call slips? Just wondering. [UPDATE: The doc in question stated on CNN this afternoon that he didn't sign the record, an enlisted technician did. ]

7. As for the contention that John Kerry never lied to the Senate – well, I think it’s pretty well documented that he did. That the Nixon administration showed uncharacteristic good sportsmanship in not prosecuting him for perjury, means this sentence also has to be taken as “it was never proven in court that John Kerry lied to the Senate.

8. Regarding the blather about libel – well, it might be libel, in England. They have lax standards. I wouldn't touch this case in the U.S., not on Kerry's side, anyhow.

9. “The entire advertisement, is therefore an inflammatory, outrageous lie.”

- Um, I’ll rephrase for those of you who skimmed to the end without reading any of this. What Kerry's lawyers are saying is: “I disagree with two points that you made, therefore everything you say is utterly false and without merit, and causing great excitement among my enemies, so it's doubly false."

You'd think that for the kind of money Kerry has, he could afford better lawyers.