8yr old on watch list - a myth? No!

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Mikey Hicks, 8, Can’t Get Off U.S. Terror Watch List
Michael Winston Hicks’s mother initially sensed trouble when he was a baby and she could not get a seat for him on their flight to Florida at an airport kiosk; airline officials explained that his name “was on the list,” she recalled. The first time he was patted down, at Newark Liberty International Airport, Mikey was 2. He cried. After years of long delays and waits for supervisors at every airport ticket counter, this year’s vacation to the Bahamas badly shook up the family. Mikey was frisked on the way there, then more aggressively on the way home. “Up your arms, down your arms, up your crotch — someone is patting your 8-year-old down like he’s a criminal,” Mrs. Hicks recounted. “A terrorist can blow his underwear up and they don’t catch him. But my 8-year-old can’t walk through security without being frisked.”

It is true that Mikey is not on the federal government’s “no-fly” list, which includes about 2,500 people, less than 10 percent of them from the United States. But his name appears to be among some 13,500 on the larger “selectee” list, which sets off a high level of security screening.
And all this because he shares the name of a suspicious person. Jeez. These people really are nuts.

Avatar not liberal enough

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They're Joking. Aren't They?: Liberal Heaven: still not Paradise
From a film that only just avoids showing George W Bush raping Pocahontas upstairs in a men only bar on Wall Street (except perhaps by the most artistic of implications: nothing tawdry or trite here in 3-D you understand), and all that just after eating a meal of manatee fritters with Bald Eagle eggs, easy on the panda, somehow it just isn’t liberal enough.

To ban or not to ban

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Islam4UK: free speech is never absolute
Anjem Choudary's group has incited violence and banning it is the right course for a society fighting terrorism
First they came for the extremist groups…
Alan Johnson’s decision to ban, which he believes is a “necessary power to tackle terrorism”, will make it illegal to be a member of the organisation. The maximum sentence for the “crime” is ten years in prison. Isn’t this a little steep? Brown may call its activities “disgusting and offensive”, but the fact that its actions lack “public support”, or that it voices opinions that are unpalatable to many, shouldn’t be justification enough to criminalise it.
The government's decision to ban Islam4UK will only strengthen hardline Islamists—and drown out moderate Muslim voices
Choudary and his followers will thrive on their newly-acquired victim status and draw even more publicity than before (as evidenced by Choudary’s appearance on Newsnight immediately after the ban was announced). There is also the possibility that in a few weeks Choudary will simply create another group with a different name but the same ideas, and the process will begin all over again.
Truth is, I suspect, that it makes little difference either way. It is, like most of the 'anti-terror- bollocks, mostly window-dressing and showboating.

Update: Also check out Free speech for idiots? at Stumbling and Mumbling

Beyond this place of wrath and tears...*

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Invicta: what a terrible choice of poem - Matthew Parris
Invictus, (the poem that Gordon Brown says he finds strength in) was chosen by Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, as his only statement before his judicial execution in 2001. The mass-murderer had killed 168 innocent people by collapsing an office block on to them. At his execution McVeigh passed a handwritten copy of Invictus to his warden, then went to his death in silence. The truth to which McVeigh’s and Mr Brown’s chosen verse points this reader is that, although we cannot win by an act of will alone, nobody can deny us the right, by an act of will alone, to lose.

Less sensationally than McVeigh, Mr Brown now looks set to demonstrate this.
* Lies defeat, retirement from politics and a lucrative career working for multinationals.

Is it too big, is it too small...?

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Five Reasons Why Libertarians Shouldn't Hate Government - Reason Magazine
Five Reasons Why Libertarians Shouldn't Hate Government: Plus, Five Big Projects That Went Well and Five That Were Disasters

William Eggers and John O'Leary, the authors of the new book If We Can Put a Man on The Moon..., make the case that if libertarians want to shrink the size and scope of government, they need to figure out the ways in which government can succeed at the tasks with which it is legitimately charged.

Tizer Woods

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Tiger Woods "Pop Art" Bust
A Colorado artist who replaced the labels on 100 Gatorade bottles with a picture of Tiger Woods and his wife and the word "unfaithful" - and then returned the items to store shelves - has been charged with tampering with the sports drink. The artist, Jason Kay, has been hit with a felony charge and two misdemeanor counts, which carry a combined maximum of five years in federal prison.

Stop moaning about the weather!

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There were two stories that caught my eye on the local news last night. One was about farmers throwing away milk because the dairy tankers were unable to get up their snow covered farm tracks and the other story was how much extra the cold spell will add to this winter's heating bills.

 Can't farmers organize themselves to clear a bit of snow? They are farmers, FFS. They have tractors. In Scotland the local farmers are used and paid by the local authority to clear local roads, not just their own tracks. Instead the farmer last night simply moaned that his (private) road hadn't been cleared and gritted by the council.

As for paying higher bills. Use some of the money that you saved over the last few years when we had extremely mild winters. It's swings and roundabouts. Stop moaning, for fuck's sake.

Build character, skint yourself!

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Liberal Conspiracy -  It’s not class war, Dave, it’s just character building…
Life, for David Cameron, has been, for the most part, far too easy and far too short on genuine adversity and the kinds of difficult personal experiences that, once upon a time, would have been universally referred to as ‘character building’.
Difficult personal experiences?

There was a time when the worst we could expect from Unity was to be bored to death with his Wikipedia-lite blogposts but since he's got his feet under the LibCon table and his head  up the sainted Sunny's arse he's now not just boring but self-righteous and unpleasant to boot. He's in good company. Tedious cunt.

The blind leading the Bliars

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John Rentoul* - Best Prime Minister We Never Had
He (David Blunkett) reminded me of a list I was going to compile of Next Prime Ministers. For much of his time as Home Secretary, 2001-04, he was the only rival to Gordon Brown as "next prime minister". If he had survived, things might have worked out differently in 2007.

Those next prime ministers in full: John Moore, Ian Lang, Gillian Shephard, Michael Heseltine, Kenneth Clarke, Michael Portillo, Mo Mowlam, David Blunkett, John Reid, Alan Johnson, David Miliband.
We all know Rentoul is a complete twat but really, what the fuck is this guy smoking these days?

* He has written a biography of Tony Blair, whom he admired more at the end of his time in office than he did at the beginning.
Nuff said.  Nurse!

What ho! Campbell

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First Post: Alastair Campbell will one day regret defending Blair
Campbell and Blair, the Jeeves and Wooster of this blackest of political farces.

The Campbell performance, masterly in its own way, has ensured that unlike the Hutton and Butler inquiries, the report from the Chilcot panel will not be the last word. There is now too much information, well attested and sourced and from all kinds of places, to give the Blair team the benefit of the doubt. Campbell's parting jibes as he left the hearing that this is all largely got up by the media were beyond risible.

Many of his colleagues in government past and present must be cursing his avalanche of eloquence yesterday, for his torrent of words warned friend and foe alike that he is a weapon of ultimate self-deception and that this is far from over.

If Cameron supports, they will oppose

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Cameron, Myleene and tabloid tales
Essentially, then, the word of a celebrity TV presenter is regarded as being more credible than that of the police.
What? Coppers not telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? I can't wait to see Anton Vowl repeat that line next time a demonstrator (maybe even a Labour supporting celebrity) complains of being roughed up by police and the cops issue a vehement denial. Or maybe when an innocent man gets shot in the head seven times by armed officers.

Andrew Bartlett, in the comments, equates waving a knife in your own home at some guys outside, who are clearly up to no good, with carrying a concealed blade through the streets of south London.
Myleene Klass felt threatened. Decides that reassurance lies in the shape of a knife. Public support. A young person - the most likely victim of violent crime - feels threatened. Decides that reassurance lies in the shape of a knife. Public damnation - with calls for jail sentences for carrying (not using) a knife.
I won't even bother to comment on that. It's just plain bonkers.