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I graduated from Princeton in the mid-1980s and remember CAP and Prospect well. While that particular article may have been satire (and ask yourself, what exactly were they satirizing? Who is laughing at whom here?) the viciousness of CAP's language throughout its existence was apparent to everyone who saw it. That is why the organization had no support on campus, even from conservatives. CAP didn't oppose affirmative action, it opposed the admission of women, people of color, gay men and (doubly) lesbians, to Princeton. As far as I can recall, CAP existed solely for the purposes of spreading this ugly rhetoric. They did nothing aside from publishing Prospect, nothing except for finding various ways to express their bigotry.Why does this matter for Judge Alito? Of course there is no reason to think he is personally a bigot. But in order to get a job he was willing to say �yeah, I�m with those bigots over there.� Should someone like that have a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court? This is not guilt by association � Alito is the person who chose to do the associating. He volunteered a connection to an extremist organization and it is reasonable and appropriate to ask him about why he threw his lot in with these people. While Judge Alito may not have signed off on each and every word, he did sign off on the group as a whole at a time when very few Princeton alumni did. And it really is shameful.
"I think for a lot of people in the center, what party loyalty they have is based on which extreme they fear or dislike more: The religious right or the radical left.Personally, I often disagree with the religious right -- I'm a social and cultural libertarian -- but I've never considered them to be anathema. For me it's the radical left personified by Dean, Kennedy, Cindy Sheehan, Moveon.org, etc. that I find so repellent to keep me supporting GOP candidates.However, give me a viable center party that believes in defending the nation and practicing social tolerance and I'll be there supporting it. Problem is, the key word is "viable." Until then, I remain a reliable Republican voter, if only to keep the Deans and Ted Kennedys of the nation out of power."
When Jesus died on the Cross, it fulfilled a prophecy. More prophecies were likely fulfilled in 1948 when Israel became an Independent nation and in 1967 when Israel regained control of Jerusalem from Jordan in the Six Day War. "They will be brutally killed by the sword or sent away as captives to all the nations of the world. And Jerusalem will be conquered and tramped down by the Gentiles until the age of the Gentiles comes to an end (Luke 21:24)."As incredible as the Rapture, the Antichrist, the Tribulation, the mark of the beast, and the Millennium sound, they really are going to happen because the Bible says they will!
"They will be brutally killed by the sword or sent away as captives to all the nations of the world. And Jerusalem will be conquered and tramped down by the Gentiles until the age of the Gentiles comes to an end (Luke 21:24)."
All streams of Islam believe in a divine saviour, known as the Mahdi, who will appear at the End of Days. A common rumour - denied by the government but widely believed - is that Mr Ahmadinejad and his cabinet have signed a "contract" pledging themselves to work for the return of the Mahdi and sent it to Jamkaran.Iran's dominant "Twelver" sect believes this will be Mohammed ibn Hasan, regarded as the 12th Imam, or righteous descendant of the Prophet Mohammad.He is said to have gone into "occlusion" in the ninth century, at the age of five. His return will be preceded by cosmic chaos, war and bloodshed. After a cataclysmic confrontation with evil and darkness, the Mahdi will lead the world to an era of universal peace... Mr Ahmadinejad appears to believe that these events are close at hand and that ordinary mortals can influence the divine timetable.
Looking forward to the new site. I stumbled across your site, I believe as a link from Josh Marshall's in the winter of 2001, and the two of you have provided me with much sanity and enjoyment during the last four-odd years.What's impressed me with your blog and writings is how your personal politics and your own definition of "conservative" have largely stayed the same, despite the right-ward drift of our body politic and Washington leadership and the resultant bastardization of what "conservative" means, or at least, used to mean.I've always voted for Democrats, but like you, I've grown distrustful of the current direction of the party. I'll never be a Republican (the religious fundamentalists are anathema to me), but as your blog continually asks, I wonder/hope if there can't be a third way in American politics? Not a Bill Clinton "Third Way," but a true, grass roots, independent third party that combines some of the old-school conservatism of what used to be the GOP (fiscal sanity, foreign policy realism etc.) with the best of the Democratic party (inclusiveness, domestic competence, worker's rights etc.). Or more simply: Fiscally conservative, socially liberal.
So you couldn't be a Democrat because Kennedy may have accidentally misunderstood CAP-endorsed bad satire (assuming arguendo that what the CAP contributer says is actually true) as a demonstration of what CAP really believed. But Delay and the Abramoff scandal, the Terry Schiavo mess and the Bush's adminstration's demands that they be allowed to torture don't turn you off the Republican party? Says a lot more about you and your self-delusions than about the Democratic party.
—posted by Julian
That would lead one to ask the question: "Why did they omit the FISA court?"I would think one reason that is possible is that perhaps a system already existed that you could do this with, and all you had to do is change the venue. And if that's the case, and this system was a broad brush system, a vacuum cleaner that just sucks things up, this huge systematic approach to monitoring these calls, processing them, and filtering them--then ultimately a machine does 98.8 percent of your work.
A huge, computerized "vacuum cleaner" system that already existed, but that needed its "venue" changed for domestic surveillance, huh? That sounds a hell of a lot like the Echelon program to me. It seems like it would've been very tempting—and, I imagine, relatively easy—to just turn a system developed for mass analysis of foreign communications inward.
General Miller's decision to invoke his right not to incriminate himself came shortly after Col. Thomas M. Pappas, whose military intelligence unit was in charge of interrogations at the Abu Ghraib, was granted immunity from prosecution and ordered to testify in the dog handlers' coming courts-martial. Major Crawford said she and General Miller were not aware that Colonel Pappas had immunity protection when General Miller invoked his military Article 31 rights.
Again, rhetorically, I suppose that emphasis made sense. But focusing on that aspect allowed Alito to respond, perfectly correctly, that there's no special Fourth Amendment for ten-year-old girls, and that it's a damn good thing, since if there were criminals would have even more incentive to stash all their contraband on young children. There's no question that, had the warrant explicitly granted officers permission to search anyone they found on the premises, as well as their suspected drug dealer, that it would have been perfectly proper.
But, of course, that's not the point—or ought not to be. The point is that Alito bent over backwards to squish in some kind of tacit approval for a broader search than the explicit text of the warrant sanctioned. And that's troubling whether the subect was a 25 year old man or a nonagenerian hermaphrodite. I'd have liked to have seen less senatorial fixation on nude prepubescents and more on whether Alito takes a fast and loose, "so long as they meant well" approach to the Fourth Amendment.
Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program, usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves. There are such unfortunates. They are not at fault; they seem to have been born that way. They are naturally incapable of grasping and developing a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty.
. . . because A Million Little Pieces�one of the best-selling books about drug addiction ever written�has been trumpeted as an unflinching, real-life look into the world of a drug addict, it has helped to shape people's notions about drug abuse. Ironically, the very abundance of its clich�s has likely helped make it a runaway best seller: People, after all, like having their suspicions confirmed. For nonaddicts, Pieces reinforces the still dangerously prevalent notion that it's easy to spot a drug addict or an alcoholic�they're the ones bleeding from holes in their cheeks or getting beaten down by the police or doing hard time with killers and rapists. For those struggling with their own substance-abuse issues, Pieces sends the message that unless you've reached the depths Frey describes, you don't have anything to worry about�you're a Fraud. And if you do have a problem, you don't need to necessarily get treatment or look to others for support; all you need to do is "hold on." In building up a false bogeyman�the American recovery movement's supposed reliance on the notion of "victimhood"�Frey has set himself up as the one, truth-telling savior. In fact, it seems clear that Frey would have been well-served by taking the kind of unflinchingly honest look at his own life that most recovery programs demand.
Isn't the Bible replete with examples of God inflicting natural disasters on people? Some because they do not act righteously (Sodom, Gomorrah, Egypt, etc.) and at least one, very famously, to test his faith (Job)? My point is not that Robertson is right, but rather that people who want to maintain their belief that the Bible is the word of God and yet disbelieve in Robertson have an awful lot of rationalizing to do.
None of the accounts I've read have suggested that they've got, to put it crudely, a body—someone who was killed or some act of violence committed at Hamza's prompting—or that there was any kind of direct involvement with any particular plan or target. And it seems to me that there's a big difference between a narrow command, with an expectation that it will be obeyed, to harm some particular persons, or a direct incitement to riot ("They're over there, get 'em!") and this kind of general advocacy, which seems to be (if only barely) within the ambit of speech a free society ought to countenance. The new British policy is to go after those who seek to "justify" or "glorify" terrorism. And it's hard to see how you draw a bright line that stops you short of putting in that category, for instance, Pat Robertson's implication that the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin was divinely inspired.
ISLAMO-FASCISM This isn't directly related, but since Andrew defends the term "Islamo-fascism" in passing, I'll chip in that I've been persuaded by Olivier Roy's excellent Globalized Islam that this is not a terribly helpful term. That's not to say it's never apt—it might be well suited for Iran under Ayatollah Khomeini—but that using it in a blanket way for any radical Islamism of an authoritarian stripe elides more than it illuminates. (And I know that as an Orwell fan, Andrew will be acutely sensistive to the problem alluded to in "Politics and the English Language" of watering down terms until "[t]he word Fascism has...no meaning except in so far as it signifies 'something not desirable.'")
One of Roy's key points (one of many in an insight-rich book) is that the modern terrorists he dubs neo-fundamentalists represent an important break from state-focused Islamism as we previously understood it. One central trend he identifies among these newer groups, for example, is de-territorialization: What is in many ways radical and dangerous about these new doctrines is that they reject the local and national accretions that different forms of Muslim practice have picked up over the years in favor of an ostensibly purer, trans-national, trans-racial Islam. The driving force here is a desire for a practice not embedded in any local or national culture. In a perverse way, it is more individualist than traditional Islamism, and, argues Roy, the neo-fundamentalists' "quest for a strict implementation of sharia with no concession to man-made law pushes them to reject the modern state in favour of a kind of 'libertarian' view of the state: the state is a lesser evil but is not the tool for implementing Islam."
Of course, this description too is a broad one that won't accurately capture every sort of violent fundamentalist—and probably some will regard all this as picking nits. But as Sun Tzu advised, if you "know the enemy and know yourself, in a hundred battles you will never be in peril." And however rhetorically satisfying it is, "Islamo-fascism" as an umbrella term doesn't seem like a helpful tool for knowing the enemy.
In almost none of these cases, though, does Alito seem like a little-guy champion. He seems like a judge who dutifully follows the law. When the law instructs him to find for the criminal defendant or the plaintiff, he does so. When you get to the Supreme Court, though, you get to rip up the instruction manual and rewrite it. There's very little in Alito's record that suggests his revisions will favor the little guy.
"In the course of one lecture [Abu Hamza] accused the Jews of being blasphemous, traitors and dirty. This, because of the treachery, because of their blasphemy and filth, was why Hitler was sent into the world."
I HAVE IN MY HANDS THE NAMES OF 57 TERRORISTS: Here's a question I found myself batting around with Yglesias last week: How many committed al Qaeda operatives, people willing to kill and perhaps die for the cause, do we think there are in the U.S. right now? The initial New York Times piece on the NSA wiretap story suggested that about 500 people were being tapped at any given time. How many do we think were full-blown al Qaeda terrorists? One in ten? One in twenty?
I wonder, because if you've ever engaged in the rather morbid thought experiment of contemplating what it would take to stage some catastrophic and deadly attack, it actually seems terrifyingly easy. It would take a fair amount of work and planning, of course, but 9/11 was pulled off by a relatively small team on a relatively small budget, and it certainly seems like you could do a sub-9/11 scale but still highly destructive attack with a lot less—a couple guys, a rented truck, and some explosives, say. And if you were an al Qaeda member in the U.S. in the years following 9/11, mightn't it seem as though the newly aggressive efforts to track folk like you down meant it was advisable to get anything you were planning executed as quickly as possible?
Maybe we've just been that effective at catching these folk—or maybe we managed to deport a big chunk on visa violations—and I'm certainly not implying there aren't any U.S.-based al Qaeda. But if they've got even a fraction of 500 people here involved in their plots, why hasn't one of them managed to pull anything off?
Mohler differs from Robertson in not seeing a specific weather event as God-induced. But he shares with him the notion that all bad things in the universe stem in part from human sin.
Fully 44% of Americans believe that God gave the land that is now Israel to the Jewish people while a substantial minority (36%) thinks that "the state of Israel is a fulfillment of the biblical prophecy about the second coming of Jesus." White evangelical Protestants and, to a lesser degree, African-Americans accept both of these propositions. Significantly fewer white Catholics and mainline Protestants believe Israel was granted to the Jews by God or think that Israel represents a fulfillment of the Bible's prophecy of a second coming.
God created the world as the theater of His own glory. It is a world of great beauty and wonder; a world that allows crops to grow and provides everything that we physically need. Yet, it is also a world of terrible storms and natural disasters. In part, all this is the result of the devastating effects of human sin. As the Apostle Paul makes clear, the whole creation anticipates the redemption that is to come. But, as we experience the reality of weather after the Fall, we should not trace any particular weather pattern to contemporary human sins. Jesus explained that the rain falls on the just and the unjust. The weather is not fair.
To quote David Barry, I swear, I am not making this up. A few years ago, I was sitting in the galley of the Naval Training Center in Illinois. There was a television playing CNN headline news. The program gave the results of a poll about Americans' views regarding the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. I forget the exact numbers as to which side people supported, but what struck me was a second poll - if you support Israel, why? As I recall, the plurality said they supported Israel because of terrorism, but a pretty substantial majority said they supported Israel because of its "biblical claim to the land". Perhaps inadvertently, I scoffed slightly. Another sailor asked me what I was thinking, and when I told him, he said something to the effect of, "What's wrong with that? Unless you don't believe in the Bible ..." Mr. Sullivan, I had a fairly decent Christian education. So I retorted something like, "Why do they have a claim? Because God promised the land to Abraham? Well, Abraham had 8 sons. Why are you going with the second son? Okay, fine, let's take Isaac. He had two sons - why do you give the whole land to the second son? Well, fine, let's take Jacob. There were 13 tribes of Israel (everyone forgets Levi) - why are you only counting Judah for the whole land? Surely Tel Aviv wasn't part of the original tribe of Judah. But, okay, let's take Judah. Well, didn't the Babylonian captivity pretty much end the Jewish claim to the land? Didn't Jesus say that he could raise children of Abraham from the stones, that being a child of Abraham didn't count for much?" The guy I was talking to paused for a second, then said, "Wow. You're gay, aren't you?" Yes, I probably was playing a bit fast and loose with those biblical references. It was 5:30 am - what do you want from me?
In a feat of technical sophistication and strategic insight, [the authors] have modeled a U.S. first strike against Russia. (Although China is Washington's most probable great-power rival, the authors argue, Russia presents a "hard case" for their contention that America has achieved nuclear ascendancy.) That model, which they presented at the Council on Foreign Relations in October, has been vetted by most of the top civilian defense analysts. To be conservative, it assumes that U.S. nuclear weapons will perform with much less accuracy and reliability than should be expected. Even so, the authors conclude, a U.S. attack today would destroy the entire Russian nuclear arsenal. To grossly oversimplify: the erosion of Russian capabilities, combined with new, overwhelming warhead yields and the "accuracy revolution" in U.S. nuclear forces, has largely obviated the problems of "fratricide" (the prospect that U.S. missiles on the attack would destroy each other, leaving their targets safe) that once helped make a disarming strike impossible to achieve.
Thanks to 'Variety' for perpetuating the fly-over/red-state stereotypes. I have to say, for those of us in Des Moines, Brokeback's strong opening here is not a surprise. I imagine it will do well and continue to do well because it's a beautifully powerful film, well-reviewed, and hyped as controversial. The movie release has been managed well and the expectations set, masterfully drawing people into theaters. My opening night experience in Des Moines was in a suburban theater and the audience was primarily middle-age couples, young women and a large (but not-the-majority) gay contingent.As far as the opposition goes, it's just not there or just not organized. And call me bitter blue in a red state, but the political/cultural context of Iowa (and Des Moines in particular) is nowhere comparable to Texas or Oklahoma. The strength and emotional force of the Christian Coalition (and the anti-gay forces) in the state is nowhere near that of OK or TX. Largely, Iowans keep to themselves as a whole and can't be bothered. It's the educated, quietly patriotic, thoughtful side of our agricultural past coming through.
I was born and raised in Texas, not far from where Jack "lived" in Texas. In my twenties, I lived all over the state: San Angelo, Odessa, Lubbock, Dallas, Houston, and Austin.I spent nearly 5 years in Lubbock where I met my best friend and his wife, both ardent Republicans. I shared a house with him and his cousin who was a cowboy and a bouncer at a local honky tonk. Both knew I was gay and couldn't have cared less. I have always said that the libertarian streak in west Texans outweighs any social conservatism and I stand by that assertion to this day. I never recall hearing of any fag bashings while I lived in that part of the state. They occurred often in Dallas while I lived there and I was the victim of two of them.Lubbock is the only place in Texas where I never experienced any, and I mean, any homophobia. That the movie is a success there doesn't surprise me at all.
So "most members" of the "religious right" believe that the world is on the brink of the rapture and coming to and end, and exactly how do you know this to be true? I can garauntee you that if you knew me, you would list me too as a member of your so-called "religious right", and yet I think Pat Robertson's eschatalogical views are absurd and I deplore his recent comments regarding Sharon. Pat Robertson and his like on evangelical TV would do themselves, and me personally, a HUGE favor if they would stick to their (and mine) Christ-sponsored mission of spreading the good news of Christ's love, forgiveness and ultimate sacrifice, rather than indulging in every political foray of the day. And you, my dear blogger, would do yourself a favor to either get to personally know a few more conservative-evangelical Christians (like me).
When we get tarred with the same brush every time the Republicans screw up, we can never separate ourselves from them in the voter's minds. That leaves the voters deciding their votes only on quasi-religious, and Rambo grounds, and we will never win on those grounds.
I'm not sure, at least in my more cynical moods, that this is necessarily an inaccurate portrait of the modal American voter—responsive only to scandal and tribal instincts—but telegraphing that attitude may have something to do with why "we will never win on those grounds."
John Kasich: Now, Janet, what I need to know from you is, when Pat does things like this or says things like this -- and I think you would agree, it wasn't the appropriate time. Agree with that? It was just not the right time to be talking about this.Janet Folger: Look, the time you make statements like that is when you can do something about it -- don't divide the land.John Kasich: So, inappropriate time. The question is, does Pat sort of undermine the movement when he makes a statement like this -- that he might -- which he says was taken out of context or whatever -- does it undermine the movement, the Christian movement? People say, I'm not gonna listen to that.Janet Folger: You know -- again, I'm not gonna be another voice to bully up or beat up on PR. He's free to defend himself and he's very capable of it --John Kasich: Yeah, but I want to know what you think.Janet Folger: -- but I don't think we should blame him for reading from the bible. And I'll be honest with you -- the way I read the Bible, it talks about -- nations that bless Israel are gonna be blessed, nations that curse Israel are gonna be cursed -- and I'll be honest with you, where I worry about the judgment being cast is that I think we need to look in the mirror -- because we're one of the groups, the nations that actually strong-armed the prime minister into giving up land, making Israel less secure. And --
It was our hope . . . that the literary world could be one of community, of mutual support, of spirited but nonviolent discourse�all in the interest of building and maintaining a literate society. It's what we teach . . . that books are good, that reading is good, that everyone can and should write in some capacity, and that anyone pissing in the very small and fragile ecosystem that is the literary world is mucking it up for everyone�and sending a very poor message to the next generation.
The final, insidious manifestation of the reading crisis is the way it gives cover to the hostility to criticism. One�s critics �piss in the fragile ecosystem that is the literary world� (Eggers); or they are merely �resentniks� (Foer). The real trouble of course is that if �books� are �good,� as the mantra goes, you don�t have to face how good or bad your book actually is. The criterion is only to �make readers.� I make readers, the writer deludes himself, waving his sales reports�surely these millions came into existence only for him? It no longer matters what he wrote. In this way the novelist becomes as protected as the poet is today, a member merely of an endangered species (in the �fragile ecosystem�), or say of an identity group, who cannot be disagreed with, to whom certain months of the year will be dedicated, who is not only tolerated but encouraged and petted by the powers that be, not because of the content of what he writes (there is no content), but because, well, what sort of powers would they be, to discourage the flowering of such an art?
"Brokeback" came out ahead of several new pics on twice or four times as many playdates, including "Casanova," "Bloodrayne" and "Grandma's Boy." Among the new markets where the critically acclaimed pic opened strong were Tulsa, El Paso, Des Moines and Lubbock, Tex.
. . . great art "takes you out of yourself." By definition, it then puts you into somebody else, and in so doing enriches your understanding of reality. To do this successfully, it must be in the deepest sense sympathetic. The New Shorter Oxford Dictionary defines sympathy as "the fact or capacity of sharing or being responsive to the feelings or condition of another or others." Such a capacity is a sine qua non of all serious art. It is what makes Shakespeare's villains believable: We feel we can understand their motives, even if we don't share them. It is also central to the persuasive power of great art. Without sympathy there can be no persuasion. Even a caricature, however cruel, must acknowledge the humanity of its subject in order to be funny. The artist must create a whole character and not simply show the side of him that will most convince us of his villainy.What I find striking about much of today's political art, by contrast, is its unwillingness to make such acknowledgments. Instead of seeking to persuade--to change the minds of its viewers--it takes for granted their concurrence.
"Men and women soldiers and horses seemed to explode where they stood. It was as if the very words of the Lord had superheated their blood, causing it to burst through their veins and skin ... Even as they struggled, their own flesh dissolved, their eyes melted and their tongues disintegrated."
A human being is conceived when a human sperm containing twenty-three chromosomes fuses with a human egg also containing twenty-three chromosomes (albeit of a different kind) producing a single cell human zygote containing, in the normal case, forty-six chromosomes that are mixed differently from the forty-six chromosomes as found in the mother or father.
The President's inner circle always treated DeLay as a necessary burden. He may have had an unmatched grip on the House and Washington lobbyists, but DeLay is not the kind of guy�in background and temperament�the President feels comfortable with. Of the former exterminator, a Republican close to the President's inner circle says, "They have always seen him as beneath them, more blue collar. He's seen as a useful servant, not someone you would want to vacation with."
As stated at the outset, this case involves only the domestic aspects of national security. We have not addressed, and express no opinion [407 U.S. 297, 322] as to, the issues which may be involved with respect to activities of foreign powers or their agents.
Every time I see that, I think of this Shel Silverstein poem.
Fortunately, Glenn Greenwald has a quite thorough response posted already, so I can just reiterate the highlights:
Some kind of oversight - possibly an independent counsel housed within the executive branch, perhaps a beefed-up, streamlined, and more secretive FISA court, and preferably not a Congressional subcommittee - would go a long way toward ensuring some amount of honesty and trustworthiness.
WOULD THAT WHAT IT CONCEALS WERE NOT UNIFORM: Earlier this week, Florida's Supreme Court struck down the state's Opportunity Scholarship Program, which provided vouchers to kids in failing schools. The ruling turns on Article IX, Section 1 of the state's constitution, which stipulates:
(a) The education of children is a fundamental value of the people of the State of Florida. It is, therefore, a paramount duty of the state to make adequate provision for the education of all children residing within its borders. Adequate provision shall be made by law for a uniform, efficient, safe, secure, and high quality system of free public schools that allows students to obtain a high quality education and for the establishment, maintenance, and operation of institutions of higher learning and other public education programs that the needs of the people may require.
The court's logic here is that since private schools are not, in point of fact, "uniform," a program that attempts to provide for the education of children by means of such schools runs afoul of that provision. As the court puts it:
It diverts public dollars into separate private systems parallel to and in competition with the free public schools that are the sole means set out in the Constitution for the state to provide for the education of Florida�s children. This diversion not only reduces money available to the free schools, but also funds private schools that are not �uniform� when compared with each other or the public system.
Far be it from me to claim expertise in Florida law, but this is hard to make much sense of. First, those free uniform public schools are plainly not the "sole means" offered—the very same clause refers to "other public education programs that the needs of the people may require." More generally, it seems odd to read that second clause as limiting the first. It's a well settled point of federal constitutional law that parents must be permitted to send their children to private schools, so Article IX can't be read in a way that suggests the state has failed to meet its "adequate provision" obligations unless all children are educated by means of these free, uniform public schools. And an ordinary reading of a mandate of the form "The state shall provide for X. In service of X, the state shall establish Y," does not entail that the state may not also do Z in service of X.
You can make the argument work a little better by stressing the "diversion" of public funds from the state system to private schools—but not much better. For one thing, it would prove too much: Since money is fungible, any of these "other public education programs" are, in essence, competing with public schools for funds. Moreover, there's at least some good empirical reason to believe that subjecting poor public schools to competition from voucher schools imposes pressure for improvement. If you look at the net effect instead of focusing myopically on cash flows, there's a case to be made that the OSP is, among other things, a mechanism to raise the quality of those underperforming public schools.
DOUBLE ENTRY ACCOUNTABILITY: Kevin Drum at The Washington Monthly and Greg Anrig at TPMCafe both harp on putative contradiction between conservatives' infatuation with standardized testing as an accountability mechanism and the lack of some equivalent requirement for private schools receiving voucher funds. Now, I'm not all that wild about standardized testing in the first place, but I don't think this is much of a contradiction.
If we had a state quasi-monopoly on shoes, with shoe factories run directly by the government and the shoes distributed to citizens, you'd need some kind of elaborate accountability mechanism to provide quality oversight on the shoes—some combination of public inspectors, maybe focus groups and surveys of shoe wearers. But that's self-evidently (I hope) a second- or third-best form of "accountability." The best sort of accountability is direct accountability to the shoe wearer. Shift to a private market in shoe provision, maybe coupled with higher public assistance benefits or refundable tax credits so the indigent have some extra cash with which to buy shoes, and the oversight becomes largely otiose. That's because you've suddenly unleashed the dispersed information—what Hayek called "local knowledge"—that had been suppressed in the absence of a viable exit option under the state quasi-monopoly. So when Anrig asks "How are parents supposed to discover good schools in the absence of any reliable, systematic source of information about them?" one answer is that they already have some excellent sources of information about the relative quality of schools for their children, in the form of direct observation of their kids' performance and informal conversations with other parents.
That's not to say you don't want more systematic data, both to assist individual parents in their decisionmaking and to get some threshhold assurance that we're not just funding finger painting lessons in some basement. But it's not clear why that requires some kind of one-size-fits-all standardized testing regime. There are a plethora of public and private accreditation agencies to which the federal government refers in determining eligibility in programs like the Montgomery G.I. Bill.
IF THE SHOE FITS: I think Anrig is right to say, though, that "the whole theoretical reason for vouchers disintegrates if the private schools are subject to the same oversight and requirements as public schools." Uniform shoes for diverse feet aren't going to provide uniform satisfaction. But to measure schools by a single common metric, you need not just "uniformity" in the sense that kids aren't unfairly assigned to much poorer schools than their peers the next town over, but a kind of standardization of curricula that clashes with the kind of dynamism that may be the best argument for educational choice.
The real genius of entrepreneurial markets lies not just in making old production methods more efficient (a cheaper, sturdier horse carriage) but in finding innovative new ways to serve old needs (the Model T). Making schools as we now know them better is clearly a worthy goal. But I'm also excited by the possibility of greater experimentation with things like, say, student-directed learning or some kind of middle-ground between homeschooling and the factory-model school—maybe small overlapping but shifting clusters of students working with a series of hired tutors.
Doubtless there are some bare-bones criteria any school is going to have to satisfy for it to be doing something we're willing to call adequate education. But, to keep the shoe-fetish a moment longer, think of the immense variety of functions a simple commodity like a shoe is supposed to serve. Do you want something to play basketball in? Something to match your Armani suit? Maybe a nice pair of Birkenstocks to let your toes breathe? Something quirky that makes a statement about your personality? Something leather-free, because you're committed to animal rights? Something to wear out dancing? To pad around the house?
How much more varied, then, are the functions education serves? The virtue of dispersed accountability is not just that (to borrow A.O. Hirschman's lingo) the option to exit enhances the voice of those with the best direct experience of a school's capacity to further given ends. It also expands their power to give the ends. In some cases, admittedly, that will mean fundies deciding that a good school looks like a madrassa with more Jesus. But it also makes it less likely that we'll see schools producing students as standardized as their tests.
The problem is, put warrants back in the picture and (leaving aside the nebulous data mining thing, which isn't what McCarthy's talking about) there is no "program"... there's just law enforcement officers seeking FISA warrants, as we've known they do for years. The Times could, of course, find some top-secret insider to leak the information that FISA warrant applications and approvals have recently reached record highs. Fortunately, they wouldn't have to look very hard, because the Justice Department releases those figures to Congress each year.
In other words, we don't need McCarthy's fertile imagination to know what the NSA tapping story might look like if judicial oversight were added to the mix... because it's the story we'd been getting for years already.
Iraq bought the cores for the Osirak reactor from France. Originally they were to be shipped to Iraq in April of 1979, but shortly before their departure an explosion ripped through the warehouse that held them. An organization calling itself the French Ecological Group, which had never been heard of before (and hasn't been heard from since), claimed responsibility. Shipment was delayed for six months while the cores were repaired. The next year Yahya al-Meshad, an important scientist in Iraq's nuclear program, arrived in France to test fuel for the reactor. The morning he was to return home a maid entered his Paris hotel room and found that he had been stabbed and bludgeoned to death. (The only person known to have seen the scientist the previous night, a prostitute who called herself Marie Express, was killed a few weeks later in a hit-and-run accident. The culprit was never found.) Soon afterward workers at firms supplying parts for the reactor began to receive threatening letters from a mysterious group called the Committee to Safeguard the Islamic Revolution. Bombs went off at the offices of one of the firms, in Italy, and at the home of the company's director-general. Over the next several months two more Iraqi nuclear scientists died in separate poisoning incidents.
Iraq bought the cores for the Osirak reactor from France. Originally they were to be shipped to Iraq in April of 1979, but shortly before their departure an explosion ripped through the warehouse that held them. An organization calling itself the French Ecological Group, which had never been heard of before (and hasn't been heard from since), claimed responsibility. Shipment was delayed for six months while the cores were repaired.
The next year Yahya al-Meshad, an important scientist in Iraq's nuclear program, arrived in France to test fuel for the reactor. The morning he was to return home a maid entered his Paris hotel room and found that he had been stabbed and bludgeoned to death. (The only person known to have seen the scientist the previous night, a prostitute who called herself Marie Express, was killed a few weeks later in a hit-and-run accident. The culprit was never found.) Soon afterward workers at firms supplying parts for the reactor began to receive threatening letters from a mysterious group called the Committee to Safeguard the Islamic Revolution. Bombs went off at the offices of one of the firms, in Italy, and at the home of the company's director-general. Over the next several months two more Iraqi nuclear scientists died in separate poisoning incidents.
Not that Israel ever claimed responsibility for any of this, mind you. And it's worth noting that even after all this effort, it still required an air strike to permanently take down the Iraqi nuclear program.
- posted by Ross
A hydatidiform mole is a rare mass or growth that may form inside the uterus at the beginning of a pregnancy. A hydatidiform mole results from over-production of the tissue that is supposed to develop into the placenta. The placenta normally nourishes a fetus during pregnancy. Instead, these tissues develop into a mass. The mass is usually made up of placental material that grows uncontrolled. Often, there is no fetus at all.
"Brokeback" gained an amazing 61% in its fourth frame despite adding only 52 theatres. Focus' Ang Lee-helmed gay cowboy love story lassoed up $4.8 million at 269 playdates, giving it a three-day per-screen average of $13,407. Pic expanded to just a few additional mid-sized cities and made boffo grosses in all of them, including $37,000 in Nashville, $44,000 in Columbus, and $32,000 in Milwaukee. Lowest grossing theatres are in the suburbs, where "Brokeback" is averaging mid-single digits, similar to moderately performing wide pics like "Geisha" and "Rumor Has It."
A studio spokesperson says the producers are encouraged by the advance buzz from red state critics. "Brokeback" has won the Best Picture award from critics groups in Florida, Dallas/Fort Worth, Las Vegas and in the state of Utah (the last presumably using a secret ballot).According to exit polls, "Brokeback's" audience started as women in their 30s and now is about evenly split along gender lines. Straight men may be leaving shoe-leather skidmarks on the way into the theaters, but they're going. Like "Curb Your Enthusiasm's" Larry David, who voiced his tongue-in-cheek objections to "Brokeback" in a recent New York Times op-ed piece, I felt that "cowboys would have to lasso me, drag me into the theater and tie me to the seat" to make me watch a pair of range riders steam up in a pup tent. But I've now seen the movie three times (twice with my wife, if you have to know) and it is one of the most devastating Hollywood love stories of all time.
Ramesh should know a zygote is a fertiziled egg (an embryo is a fertilized egg that has divided some arbitrary number of times). Sometimes the womb is to blame, but there are lots of zygotes that are defective so they never get far into the embryo stage (let alone the fetus implanted in the uterus stage). It is not the womb or mother's internal architecture that is defective--its the fertilized egg itself that has some sort of chromosome damage or other abormality that prevents it from going forward (could even be the father had some bad seed). When my wife and I first started trying to have children it did not happen instantly after we stopped using birth control--she felt "something" for the first couple of months of attempts that didn't pan out into a positive pregnancy result. It may have been in her head, but then again it may have been a zygote that didn't make it.
You are on the right track with the zygote discussion. The question for lawmakers about abortion is not whether it's a good or bad thing: it's always bad. The question is whether it's a bad thing government should regulate and if so, how? The reason the zygote question is important is because it's very difficult for government to ban ordinary physical processes, and miscarriage (known in medical books as "spontaneous abortion," by the way) is a completely natural process. We do well to remember that banning something doesn't stop people from doing it, it just allows the government to punish those who do. In this case, if it's not possible to determine easily whether something was natural or induced, how can the state legitimately apply punishments? If zygotes or blastulae or embryoes become 14th Amendment persons, entitled to all the protections thereof, how do we go about ensuring their protection against say, negligent acts by the mother? Could we start refusing to sell alcohol to breeding-age women? Refuse to let them ski, ride horseback, or cycle? All those activities can cause miscarriages, and 14th Amendment persons have the right to be protected from other 14th Amendment persons' harm, intentional or otherwise. If one objected to the Taliban, one cannot coutenance the kinds of restrictions necessary to protect zygotes from their mothers, who are quite often unaware of their existence.
"He was dividing God�s land. And I would say, Woe unto any prime minister of Israel who takes a similar course to appease the E.U., the United Nations or the United States of America. God says, This land belongs to me. You better leave it alone."
"Hopefully the news that the criminal of Sabra and Shatila has joined his ancestors is final."
YIGAL AMIR, SWORD OF GOD?: Bloggers such as Steve Clemons and John Aravosis have noted Pat Robertson's grotesque suggestion that Ariel Sharon's stroke was some kind of divine retribution for "dividing gods land." I did an extra double take (I guess we're on triple takes) at this, however:
And the same thing -- I had a wonderful meeting with Yitzhak Rabin in 1974. He was tragically assassinated, and it was terrible thing that happened, but nevertheless, he was dead.
"C" IS FOR COOKIE: On the heels of news that the NSA website had been improperly placing persistent tracking cookies on Web visitors computers, Declan McCullagh writes that dozens of government agencies have been doing the same. I'm not exactly prepared to freak out over a few cookies, but it is, apparently, illegal.
Our reaction to a genocide is, obviously, different from our reaction to an earthquake that kills millions. Still, anyone with a moderately well developed moral sense reacts to the earthquake with horror and sadness. And if someone is unmoved, we can articulate at least somewhat clearly what's gone awry: If it's a failure of empathy because the victims are far away, we can focus attention on how the victims suffered just as you and your neighbors would, had plans and hopes in many ways like yours that have been destroyed, and so on.
Now, my response to learning this fact about nature's "waste" of zygotes is not anything like my reaction would be to learning that some plague had wiped out millions of people I'd never met. (For the reactions to be similar, among other things I would have to feel as though it were extremely important to change our public and private medical research priorities, ranking spontaneous miscarriage of zygotes higher than just about every other illness.) Maybe that's a theory-laden intuition, and people's response to this fact just tracks pretty well their position in the abortion debate. But if, as I suspect, most of us do not now feel as though we are daily surrounded by little killing machines, I think that shines a spotlight on the morally salient features that are missing to account for that relative lack of concern. And I think it comes down to the things I suggested we'd appeal to earlier to show someone who failed to react to the earthquake properly—facts about mental states and related features absent by stipulation.
Now, Ross might say that even if I'm right about people's common reaction to this, that's a merely intuitive as opposed to logical argument. But when we get to questions like "what is it about people that matters, morally?" we're down at the ethical equivalent of accounting for the rules and operators of logic themselves. The foundational question, in each case, can't be answered within the system except in a kind of rule-circular or coherentist way. That's not to say a raw, pre-reflective intuition ought to carry a whole lot of weight in itself, but they're also ultimately the brute facts we've got to work with. Maybe we just need our intuition reconditioned by a bit of reflection and abstraction, as in the case of the bigot or the man unmoved by far-off disaster, but it may also draw our attention to the lack of the raw material with which we'd ordinarily do that work.
If you believe that human beings exist from the moment a zygote comes into being, there are almost no environments more dangerous for humans than inside their own mother.
I was in Washington in the 1970s, at a time when there was great and legitimate concern about civil liberties and about potential abuses within the executive branch. I had the honor of serving as White House Chief of Staff to President Ford, and that experience shapes my own outlook to this very day.Serving immediately after a period of turmoil, all of us in the Ford administration worked hard to restore people's confidence in the government. We were adamant about following the law and protecting civil liberties of all Americans, and we did so. Three decades later, I work for a President who shares those same values. He has made clear from the outset, both publicly and privately, that our duty to uphold the law of the land admits no exceptions in wartime. The President himself put it best: He said, "We are in a fight for our principles, and our first responsibility is to live by them."
I don't know what's more pathetic, Jack Abramoff's sleaze or Republican paralysis in the face of it. Abramoff walks out of a D.C. courthouse in his pseudo-Hasidic homburg, and all that leading Republicans can do is promise to return his money and remind everyone that some Democrats are involved in the scandal, too.That's a great G.O.P. talking point: some Democrats are so sleazy, they get involved with the likes of us . . .. . . Back in the dim recesses of my mind, I remember a party that thought of itself as a reform, or even a revolutionary movement. That party used to be known as the Republican Party. I wonder if it still exists.
A PENNY (OR MORE) FOR YOUR THOUGHTS: If Doug Bandow's farewell column on the muddled intersection of money and punditry has a faintly self-serving, "all the kids are doing it" odor to it, I think it nevertheless raises an important point—one I'm inclined to take a little further, actually. If accepting a direct payment to write an op-ed on a particular topic without disclosing the payment is pretty obviously improper, there is, as Bandow observes, a big gray area involving indirect support by way of institutions, or more tenuous links where a writer has previously done unrelated work for some party with an interest in a topic she later writes about.
I don't worry a great deal about these things. I do occasionally worry, in my own case, about the self-reinforcing nature of Beltway opinion work. Put it this way: I work at a wonderfully non-dogmatic libertarian periodical, where I've never felt any pressure to toe a particular line or hush up one of my various heresies from a "pure" libertarian position. I'm quite sure my friends who're also political comrades wouldn't launch some kind of Amish-style shunning if my own views moved to the left (say), and the many liberals in my social circle would probably pat me on the back and congratulate me on having seen the light. I expect I'd be perfectly happy writing apolitical stuff or going back to graduate school. Still, there's a pretty clear sense in which it would be both socially and professionally awkward if, over a few months of rumination, I decided that A Theory of Justice were pretty much dead-on after all. And I'm 26; doubtless that's far more the case for someone who's been, in effect, a professional ideologue (which is more or less what I am) for several decades.
Now, the market value of my opinion is low enough that nobody's ever bothered to try buying it—but if they did, I expect it would be an easy enough lure to resist precisely because it would be so obvious and clear-cut, the devil approaching with horns protruding and eyes glowing red. It's the background pressure of an ideological community that I find more worrying, because the way it operates is far more subtle. At the end of the day, you can't really be sure you wouldn't have changed your mind on this or that issue in a different context, because there's no big flashy crisis point—instead you're looking for the dog that didn't bark, the internal dialogue you didn't bother having because (as you and all your friends know) such-and-such counterargument isn't worth taking all that seriously anyway.
That kind of pressure, I hasten to add, is pretty clearly not "improper" in the sense of running counter to canons of journalistic ethics. It's probably an inevitable upshot of having a commmunity or a social network. But from the point of view of personal, more than professional, integrity, it's the kind of "contamination" I find most troubling.
"There is a sort of an unwritten code in Washington, among the underworld and the hustlers and these other guys, that I am their friend," Barry said at an afternoon news conference in which he described the robbery in detail. "I don't advocate what they do. I advocate conditions to change what they do. I was a little hurt that this betrayal did happen."
Focusing on confession and love of the here and now may be just the right way to stomach this Christian legacy I'm living under. I can let go of both the ancient miracle of the Resurrection and the modern miracle Catholics experience when priests change bread and wine into the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. In fact, I must let go of these most basic elements of Catholicism that point to the afterlife, salvation, and personal, eternal reward. But why? Karen Armstrong, a former nun turned religious scholar, who is also not interested in the afterlife, has answered this question well: the afterlife is about preserving your ego "eternally in optimum conditions." It's that sort of egotism that God would have us let go of, and that builds walls between people.
Medicine—despite the popularity of the phrase—never actually "saves" lives; at best it leases them back from oblivion for a while longer. So the actual choices we face in medicine aren't ever really of the form "how much is this life worth?" but rather "how much is it worth to prolong this life another day, or week, or month?" And, of course, since there's not an objective answer to that question, it's just as well that mostly those are decisions made by each person about her own life. But we've also got cases like these, where someone else has to make the call. The rhetorically appealing answer is that we should treat the value of life as infinite for each increment. But it's also a slightly crazy answer. As Landsburg points out, pretty much nobody actually makes that call about her own life. Our public spending across the board certainly doesn't suggest that sort of priority. And even if we did think that were the case, it would be hard to see why a rescue-principle approach would be the one we chose. Because of our time-asymmetrical attitudes, we end up willing to prolong a fading life "at any cost" when the resources devoted to that care would probably do a lot more life-prolonging in some more preventative capacity. But why does it make sense to bias outlays in favor of the most urgent cases, when this only guarantees that there will be more urgent cases—the ones who got less care at earlier stages because we were devoting vast sums to that extra month on a respirator—in the future?TIME'S WINGED CHARIOT GETS STUCK IN TRAFFIC: The question becomes more pointed the better our medical technology gets. If my colleague Ron Bailey is right, eventually we'll all just be nanotech-enhanced cyborgs who stay physically about 30 years old for centuries. I'm looking forward to it. But in the meantime, we're facing the prospect of being able to prolong life in tiny increments at ever higher costs. If we took the rescue principle seriously in its most extreme form, we could probably, eventually, devote all our medical resources to eking out a few more days for people on the verge of death. If we could, but wouldn't, then we're already dealing in the language of tradeoffs. And that, more or less by definition, means paying attention to "economic considerations." What really bothers most people about this case, I assume, is not that they think people always ought to have their lives prolonged at any cost for any increment, but that there was something unjust about the poverty that prevented this particular woman from having insurance. And that's a fair objection, but it's super important, I think, to keep the spheres of argument distinct to the extent possible: There's one question about economic justice, whether someone has a share of resources we think is adequate to give someone a fair range of real options—to put food on the table and also, if she wants it, provide for medical insurance. There's a distinct question about how we react once people have disposed of just shares as they see fit and still find themselves in dire medical straits. As I suggested, technology will eventually make that an issue even for the affluent, as it increasingly becomes possible to squeeze out a few more weeks for a few more millions. With that in mind, we can reframe the question this way: Do we really have one question, about economic justice, where there's only a further, distinct-seeming question about justice in health care because people are trying to correct for perceived injustice on that front. Or is it, rather, that there's a really distinct sphere of justice for healthcare, where even after someone's disposed of their fair share of wealth, we're obligated to treat life extension (and maybe only or especially at the verge of death) as of infinite value, even if the person herself didn't or wouldn't have? Landsburg's catching flak for having answered the second question, I think correctly, in the negative, without really acknowledging the first question properly. But the answer to the second question still ought to be in the negative, and we're apt to arrive at some profoundly screwed up ideas about medical ethics and health policy if concerns on the first front push us to confuse it with the second. - posted by Julian.
Risen devotes a chapter to Sawsan Alhaddad, an Iraqi American recruited by the CIA as part of a "Hail Mary" prewar effort to gain intelligence on Saddam Hussein's weapons program by tapping the relatives of Iraqi scientists. Alhaddad was one of at least 30 Iraqi expatriates who risked their lives to travel to Iraq to ask their relatives about Saddam's arsenal. According to Risen, all of them reported that Iraq had abandoned its WMD program - but the CIA never informed the White House.
Adm. John Poindexter, TIA's creator, believed in the potential intelligence benefits of data-mining broadband communications, but he was also well aware of the potential for excess. "We need a much more systematic approach" to data-mining and privacy protection, Poindexter said at a 2002 conference in Anaheim, Calif., sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.Poindexter envisioned a "privacy appliance," a device that would strip any identifiers from the information � such as names or addresses � so that government miners could see only patterns. Then if there was reason to believe that the information belonged to a group that was planning an attack, the government could seek a warrant and disable the privacy control for that specific data. TIA funded research on a privacy appliance at the Palo Alto Research Center, a subsidiary of Xerox Corp. "The idea is that this device, cryptographically protected to prevent tampering, would ensure that no one could abuse private information without an immutable digital record of their misdeeds," according to a 2003 government report to Congress about TIA. "The details of the operation of the appliance would be available to the public."
The executive branch shall construe Title X in Division A of the Act, relating to detainees, in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President to supervise the unitary executive branch and as Commander in Chief and consistent with the constitutional limitations on the judicial power, which will assist in achieving the shared objective of the Congress and the President, evidenced in Title X, of protecting the American people from further terrorist attacks.
Since the Pentagon Papers, at least, the rule has been that papers could publish classified information in a whistleblowing mode, but that they would be sensitive to national security concerns. In return, the federal government would tread lightly in investigating where the leaks came from. But the politicization of the coverage, and the outright partisanship of the Times, has put paid to that arrangement.


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City of Fountain Valley - Police Department
On Wednesday, July 11, 2012, the Fountain Valley Police Department's Special Investigations Unit arrested Humberto Serabia (1/18/89) for possession of narcotics for sale. Serabia also had an outstanding Federal RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act) warrant for his arrest. This warrant stemmed from operation "Black Flag" in 2011. Operation "Black Flag" was a multi-jurisdictional organized crime investigation.
SIU Detectives obtained a search warrant which was served on Friday, July 13, 2012, with the assistance of Santa Ana Police Department's Gang Unit at Serabia's residence in the City of Costa Mesa.
Alejandro Maldonado (8/18/89) was taken into custody at the residence for possession of narcotics for sale and destruction of evidence. Approximately one ounce of tar heroin, five grams of heroin in powder form, and $40,000.00 in U.S. currency was seized from the residence.
(714) 593-45
FVPD Case Number: July 26,

subset: commoncrawl


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Found Object
Though designed to hold beverages, this set of exquisitely sculpted Moroccan tea glasses can also serve as votive holders, bud vases, or vessels for everything from makeup brushes to pencils.
Brother-and-sister team Salvo Stoch and Juditha Sakinofsky worked in parallel fields for 20 years before finally coming together to launch Found Object. Their shared love of beautifully designed products, combined with a wanderlust that has them traveling the world, has brought together several collections of exquisite pieces full of history and soul.


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Explore the Entrepreneurship.org Resource Center to find resources. Designed with entrepreneurs in mind, our resource center allows you to find materials to grow great ideas.
As a father of three, I vividly remember those chilly, early-summer mornings of packing bags, loading up the car, and waving a sad goodbye as my children began their latest adventure at the summer camp of choosing. And there were plenty of those mornings over the course of 18 years. There was volleyball camp, and Science Olympiad clinics, and lacrosse camp.
I spent much of Global Entrepreneurship Week traveling. It's one of the things I love most about my work at the Kauffman Foundation. And in that travel, I've learned that entrepreneurship transcends borders and languages—but it is deeply impacted by culture and policy.
Long understood to be the engine of the U.S. economy, the world is embracing entrepreneurship as one of the primary means of building a long-term recovery. Ironically, for this spreading global fervor to make a sustainable impact, the world of entrepreneurship must shrink.
The latest Kauffman Sketchbook illustrates how the Ice House Entrepreneurship Program develops the critical thinking, communication and problem-solving skills that help any individual think like an entrepreneur.
In a time when our world's escalating environmental and social woes are weighing heavy on my mind, it was an uplifting change of pace to sit down with Gifford Pinchot III. Beyond being a best-selling author and the legend credited with coining the term intrapreneurship, Gifford is co-founder of the Bainbridge Graduate Institute, an amazing school that has turned both education and entrepreneurship on its head by offering the first MBA in sustainable business.
While exploring Seattle's startup scene for the sake of our most recent ID8 Nation, I quickly discovered that the Emerald City's entrepreneurial ecosystem, which recently has received comparisons to Silicon Valley, is all its own.
I recently returned from participating in the 2nd Annual Rome Forum of the Harambe Entrepreneurial Alliance, hosted by the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.
Last month, the Kauffman Foundation announced a grant aimed at curating data on young companies from cities around the world. Our partner in this endeavor is Startup Genome; a free and open platform for collecting, curating and analyzing data about the startups, entrepreneurs, investors and community enablers in a local startup community.
You don't need to spend countless hours in a classroom, or have an MBA to become a successful entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs often don't have the time or patience to sit through a semester long class or six-week course in order to retrieve the answer to a question they have now--today. They need help quickly and efficiently. And this is where our idea for Founders School started.
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Customer Raves & Reviews
Beautiful and Romantic
Beautiful Invitation everyone loved it, it was so different and romantic. Everyone felt so special when they received the invitation...I also added a ribbon around it so that when people would open the envelope they had to untie it, it almost looked too pretty to open.


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East Duplin (9-1, 6-0) and coach Battle Holley travel tonight to Northside (10-0, 6-0), which is coached by Bob Eason, to decide the East Central 2-A Conference football championship — and possibly a No. 1 seed in the state playoffs, which begin next Friday. Sports editor Rick Scoppe talked with the other six
Your thoughts on the game?
"Honestly after seeing both of them on defense I think it'll probably be a low-scoring game, maybe a 14-7 or something of that nature; having said that, somebody will probably blow somebody out.
"They're two well-coached teams and both of them are very aggressive. I would like to be able to watch the ballgame. I think it'll be a good spectator game, even if it's low scoring. They're pretty evenly matched.
"We were able to throw the ball more on
Who's going to win?
"Who's going to win? I couldn't tell you that. Both coaches are good coaches. Both of them have had some great seasons in the past. Whoever makes the least mistakes I think is going to win this thing."
Agree Northside is favored?
"I think you'd probably have to if you look at the scores, if people compare scores in the conference or overall. I think Northside has scored a lot more points than
"If you look at it from that standpoint, you'd say (Northside is favored), but I've seen
Croatan coach David Perry
Your thoughts on the game?
"I think it'll be low-scoring. I think both teams have scored less points this year in conference compared to past years. I think both teams seem to be playing better defense."
Who's going to win?
"I don't know. That's a tough one. I kind of go back and forth. We obviously played better against
Richlands coach Mike Natoli
Your thoughts on the game?
"Two good teams, two good programs. I'm sure it'll be a good game. It'll be physical. I think Northside is the best team we've played by far. They're really, really physical. They have two of the best running backs I've played against. But
Who's going to win?
"You can't put it on me like that. I don't want either coach to get mad at me. I think Northside is obviously favored. I think everybody will admit that Northside's favored. But any time you have two good programs, two well-coached teams together, the kids have to decide it on the field. Northside's the favorite, but if they go out there and have two or three turnovers it wouldn't surprise me to see
Your thoughts on the game?
"I think it's going to be a pretty good football game. I think Northside's got some very good qualities. I think
"I feel like both teams' run defenses are pretty stout. So I think both teams are going to have to do some things maybe that they're not wanting to, throw the football a lot. I think Northside and
"I'll be honest with you, I think it's going to be a tight ballgame. I just don't know if it's going to be 35-34 or it's going to be 14-7. It could go either way really."
Who's going to win?
"I'm going to go with East Duplin just because
Swansboro coach Tim Laspada
Your thoughts on the game?
"Wow, I think that's going to be a hard-hitting game. I think both teams have worked all the way up to that. They're both physical teams. It should be exciting. They both run the ball well and they execute well.
"I think one thing Northside has is they have a big receiver No. 11 (Josh Cabrera). They have a little advantage. But I don't know what their quarterback situation is."
Who's going to win?
"Oooh, I think Northside. I think Northside has the better defense. I think those kids swarm to the football. But I think it's going to be a tight game. I just think those 11 kids get after it. They're fast. It's at Northside, too. That's an advantage there. But it'll come down to turnovers. Whoever doesn't turn the ball over, but I just think Northside's a little stronger on defense."
Topsail coach Bryan Davis
Your thoughts on the game?
"Northside is extremely physical. When I (say) physical, the way they run the football, the way they play defensively. They're very good at the things that they do. I think
Who's going to win?
"Uh, we're going to beat Swansboro. That's what I'm worried about. I ain't worried about that one. That has no bearing on me."
But would agree Northside is favored?
"Heck, I don't know. We played those two the first and second week of conference. I haven't seen or thought about them much (since then). I know Northside has really good running backs and their defense flies around. I would wish them the both the best that's for sure because I like both coach Eason and coach Holley."


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Internet exclusive! Wrapped in grey and ivory stripes, this blazer delivers summer-ready style - it's made from a lightweight knit and is accented by a breezy back lace panel. Single button closure. 3/4 sleeves.
- Size 1 measures 26 1/4" from shoulder
- Polyester/rayon/nylon/spandex
- Wash cold; line dry
- Imported


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(63 Reviews) Read Reviews
Questions & Answers
Low Price Guarantee
This item does NOT come with locks. Locks must be purchased separately
Comment: Great looking bags. They are going to look better on the bike than anticipated. Can't wait to use them. I am very pleased with the size, perfect for my '04 Sportster 883xl.I would recommend these for anyone.
Pete P
Eustis, FL
Comment: I received these bags so fast, I forgot what was in the box. Wow!!! I never expected them within 3 days. Great looking and easy to install.I will be back to Jafrum for my motorcycle needs. Thanks
Kenny Goodman
Branson, MO
Comment: I've had these bags (w/o the studs) 2 years now & they still look as good as the day I pulled them out of the box. Been thru a few rain storms & NO leaks. Great product that holds up and travels well in all Florida conditions
Jacksonville, Florida
Comment: These are great bags, look absolutely great on my Vstar 1100. Shipped same day and received within two days. Would highly recommend.
Chuck R.
Columbia, SC
Comment: THESE BAGS LOOK GREAT ON MY 1998 HONDA SHADOW ACE. RECIEVED THEM FAST. I AM ENJOYING THEM. THANKS JAFRUM
Comment: Great quality bags at a fantastic price! I was going to make these a hard mount system but they fit so nice and look so good as throw overs I think I will leave them that way!
Cedar City, Utah
Comment: Great quality bags. Jafrum has been great to deal with. Had a problem with my first order and they took care of it. The bags mount easily as throw overs and don't need the bag supports, but I installed the supports and they work great. My cruiser (2008 Kawasaki 900 Classic) looked good before, but now has a finished look to it. Have received many comments on how good the bike looks since adding the saddlebags. Very satisfied with the bags and with Jafrum.
West Palm Beach, FL
Comment: Great saddlebags at a good price. They do not give you a way to measure for bags and if you are new at motorcycle riding, check with some one that knows about saddle bags before you order.
Billy Craft
Starr, SC
Comment: I ordered this bags for my bike and they look great! They are as described on line. And when I ordered them I recieved the next day!!! Great products and great delivery!!! Not first time I have ordered from Jafrum and I know it will not be the last!!
Comment: Real nice bags. Very sturdy, great price for good quality bags. They look great on my bike.
Northern Maine
Comment: These are great looking bags. Ordered them for my 97 Honda Shadow Spirit. The rear signals moved back, these fit very nice. Can't go wrong with this set. Lockable quick releases
Jackson, MS
Comment: I just received these bags and I would swear that they were leather. Roomy with storage pouches. They are detachable with a handle for easy carrying. I am very impressed.
Frank L.
Comment: Comment: Great looking bags. And the service was great. If you need saddlebags this is the place to get them. Jim
Jim Hudson
Comment: Best buy for the bucks, they look great on my 05 Vulcan 1500 Classic. How can you go wrong with 138 studs and a classic looking bag? Only one drawback and not the falt of the bag, on the Vulcan the shocks stick out and the bags need to be shimmed out to clear them. I could have paid seven times more and got bags made specifically to clear the shocks, but they would not have looked better. Thanks Jafrum
Don, VROC 31321
Valparaiso, IN
Comment: Im as happy as a Pig in Slop.I couldn't have ask for a nicer set of bags,just what i was looking for.Thanks guys.
Comment: These bags are just what I was looking for. Lots of storage space, good looks and affordable. Thanks jafrum great shipping time too.
A. I. Brown
Columbus, OH
Comment: I just bought these for my 2007 Suzuki Boulevard and they fit my bike GREAT!! I priced them on other sites and in local stores and Jafrum is the lowest price I found. I recommend these bags!!
Scott Karcher
Phoenix, AZ.
Comment: These bags turned better than expected. They seemed to be very durable and the plastic inside holds its shape good
Comment: I like them alot. Just took them on a 1500 mile trip and they worked great. I hard mounted them to the bike.
Canton , MI.
Comment: I'm happy with these bags. They arrived quick, didn't cost a fortune and look good on my V-Star. Easy to install and will serve my purposes for many years.I got them dirty the other day on a trip and they wiped right off with a rag.
Delmarva Peninsula
Comment: If leather is not an issue these bags are great look really good on my 81 sporty.The tie down stings are a little less than what you need,but a trip to the leather shop for a set of straps,or a large black tie wrap will take care of that. They hold true to everything in there resume.
Neil W.
North Charleston S.C.
Comment: Perfect!!!! Great price, too! Sent quickly!
Goffstown, NH
Comment: great product very happy quick Posting to australia will visit site again. Thanks.
chris wilson
bundaberg QLD Australia
Comment: holds true to everything on its resume. look good on my 81 sporty. nice feel and they hold
there shape. ordered on wed. received on thurs. next state over but still,very fast. would buy again or refer to a friend.
neil w.
north charleston s.c.
Comment: I was very happy with my purchase. The bags were great exactly what was advertised and were in perfect condition. I received the bags in 3 days. Great turn around time.
Cypress, Texas
Comment: These bags are the best I have found so far. They hang straight, are easy to open and completely dry. They classed up my bike!
Bill Church
Wyoming Mi
Comment: Great bags and quick delivery. Installed in 10 minutes
Comment: Quality product, fast delivery, great price. These are big bags.
Rob Raleigh
Comment: They were better than expected. Just wonderful
david b
Comment: Nice looking and waterproof within reason. They'll succumb to long trips and overstuffing and start losing their shape. But for the price they are great.
Northbrook, IL
Comment: very nice look on harley
Comment: These bags fit very well on my Yamaha Roadstar. I really like the heat protection on the bottom panel. Ty-raps work better than the laces provided to anchor to the mounts. My only gripe is that when I logged in to do this review, the bags are on sale for $25.00 less than I paid!!!
NW Indiana
Comment: NICE STURDY BAGS, GREAT PRICE. DON'T FIT JUST RIGHT BUT NOT TO BAD WITH A FEW ADJUSTMENTS
Comment: I am very pleased with the saddlebags. They are well made, have a lot of useful features and are reasonably priced. I made supports from metal stock I purchased at the hardware store so they fit very securely.
H. Hazen
Marietta, GA
Comment: GREAT PRICE/ QUALITY/SIZE/ DELIVERY. JAFRUM YOU DID IT AGAIN. I HAVE THE LARGEST SCOOTER MADE (BURGMAN 650) SET UP WITH YOUR LARGE BAGS, & FRINGE HAND GRIPS, I RIDE WITH THE BIG BOYS. THESE BAGS REPLACE THE LARGE LEATHER BAGS I BOUGHT FROM YOU JUST A COUPLE OF MONTHS AGO. NOTHING AT ALL WRONG WITH THEM, JUST LIKED THESE WITH STUDS BETTER. MY SCOOTER LOOKS LIKE A LARGE POLICE BIKE THAT THE COPS IN THE PHOENIX AREA USE. ALWAYS HAPPY WITH YOUR QUALITY & SERVICE.
Comment: Great service, fast, saddlebags were much better than I expected at an awesome price!
Comment: I like the bags, but I make two points. The first is the string ties should be leather or another non-slipping material because they get loose. The other point is that should be another tie toward the front so the bags cannot be subjected to the wind and have them pull outward and pulling more on the lower ties. Great bag overall though and quick supply.
Dan Valentine
Comment: Nice bags and fast shipping!
Massena NY
Comment: Ordered these bags and 2 days later they were here. Easy to install on my husbands bike Suzuki Intruder 800. Loved them so much, ordered the same bags w/o studs for my bike. Thanks Jafrum you are the best! Will be back tomorrow to place another order for the sissybar bag.
Guyton, GA
Comment: Good product at a great price. Have been using for a couple of weeks on a 2007 Suzuki Boulevard M50 and have been very useful. I might have gone a little larger than needed but as I seldoma rider they work for me
Danny Q
Las Cruces NM
Comment: We bought these bags for my husbands Suzuki Intruder and he loves them! they are large enough to put his jacket and chaps in, as well as more. after shopping leather shops for bags, we found most do not have much room, yet these are perfect...and they look great! perfect service and price!
Jefferson, Maine
Comment: My Bike sits outside in the weather, so finding a good waterproof bag has been helpful. I am very pleased with the bags. They are exactly as described. They look great and really do the job.
Garland, TX
Comment: these bags are great fast delivery
gloria roberts
bartlett tn
Comment: I'm riding a 2003 Yamaha Roadstar 1600 and these are the perfect bags. The first ones were to narrow and held next to nothing. These are a good size w/o being oversized. Look great too.
Bob Zaccardi
Palm Coast, Fl
Comment: I was looking for replacement bags for my 1100 Shadow and these got my attention. The bags I had burned through the bottom from the heat generated from the exhaust pipe while riding bach from a trip to Michigan. You have to prefit the bags to your bike as I had to offset the holes in the through over flaps and they fit perfect and look great.
R Michael Clarey
Naples, Fl.
Comment: These bags look great on the bike. Alsmost like they were made for it. I removed the seat to put them on and tied the strings to the shocks and tail lights. The reamining string was tucked away under the velcro. These bags are pretty big. They should hold 2 gallons of milk each. I also got the iron cross pins which pushed through the outer flap easily enough. They look great and are a very nice compliment to the bike.
Comment: You will not find a better bag of this size, of this quality, for this price. Really like them.
Comment: I ordered these Motorcycle Saddlebags - 18Lx10.5Hx7.5W SD4068 Studs thinking they might be the cheap ones at such a low price. Just three days later they arrived, superfast shipping, and when I opened the package, was I suprised to find top quality bags that have a heavy duty zipper for easy removal and a pad lock for each bag. Was also suprised to find they have a hard backing plate on the backside of the bags so if I ever decide to mount them as hard bags, it will hold up. Great quality, fast shipping and the lowest price I have seen of all the internet searchs I did for saddlebags. Jafrum came through and I plan on making more of my purchases here for my 1600 Classic Vulcan.
Anthony Bertram
Robertsdale Al
Comment: Nice bags, but they looked alot bigger on the video then in person. The yoke is to large for a good fit under my bikes seat(I have a 2010 VN1700E/Classic). I'm having the yoke altered by a local leather shop. I wish the yoke design was the same as the 1 used on "SD2004". Will update on the new fit when I receive the yoke back,
McKenney, VA
Comment: Great saddlebags, a lot of room for all my gear. good quality, and look great on my M50. Installed in minutes. Well be buying from Jafrum again.
Patrick J.
Tucson, Az.
Comment: These bags arrive in superfast time from ordering them and when I opened the box, was really surprised at the quality of these bags for such a low price. I have owned many bikes and have had different bags on each and I must say, these bags are for superior in material, workmanship and style than any of the other bags. easy to install and comes with 2 locks if you mount them as throw over bags to keep them safe from walk by theives. Has the hard backplate on each to hard mount the bags if that is the way you choose and they look fantastic on the Bike. I Highly Recommend these Bags from Jafrum to get your style on.
Robertsdale, Alabama
Comment: These bags look really nice on my 750 Honda shadow and was really surprised at the room and ease of mounting totally a great value.
john r. webber
fairrield ca.
Comment: Don't get me wrong, I do like the bags but based on experience, the studs will not be rust free if your bike has no choice but to sit out in the weather like mine did. Secondly, based on the photo alone, I thought I was getting the exact pair I was replacing (also bought thru Jafrum) only to find they are much smaller. I could literally fit a weeks worth of groceries in my last ones where only a couple of days worth will fit in these and lastly, the buckle pinch mechanism on these already have me cursing!! I sure hope that changes fast.
All this being said, being my fault for not realizing the size difference, I am still giving four stars.
Midwest city Oklahoma
Comment: The original order for saddlebags went to Redlinemania. For 10 days following the order, I left multiple messages, completed multiple online status request forms and sent an email to the address they specified for status requests. All of these were totally ignored. After 10 days, I asked the order be cancelled and a refund of my money. After showing screen captures of all my ignored efforts, that Redlinemania responded to with a cancellation and refund.
I placed the order for the SD 4068 bags from Jafrum. In 3 days these bags were sitting on my porch. You may wish to keep this in mind if you consider ordering something from Redlinemania. Jafrum has just been placed on my list of bike vendors. You can probably guess who's been removed.
Comment: These bags look great and fit perfect on my 2004 vulcan1500 classic. I received the bags in 2 days and they are exactly as advertised. I would recommend these bags to anyone wanting a good quality large set of bags
Sean L
Dayton OH
Comment: very nice bags look good on my 07 c50, locking feature a plus, style nice and are roomy, very nice , would buy again
somerset, pa
Comment: I haven't had them long but the look good and are holding up well.
Gary Holcomb
Cottondale, Al
Comment: The Saddle Bags are a great price and look good but I have been disappointed in them. The bags are too soft and I have had three snaps break and I've had them less then two months.
Bonney Lake WA
Comment: Replaced my stock Silverado bags with these for more room. We figure we got about 20 - 25 percent more storage space. Overall nice looking too. BTW: I addes some fringe, a bike can't have too much fringe! It took 4 - 1" spacers, some fender washers, and a little work to make them fit the Yamaha saddlebag frame but now they are sturdy and work fine. If I had it to do over I would have gone with the larger bags instead. And, because they stick out a bit more than the stock my wife had to get accustomed to the added clearance when getting on the passenger seat. Also love that they're not rigid so we can cram in some stuff that never would have fit inside the stock bags. And when it comes to Jafrum, we've made several purchases and more are planned. Can't beat the quality and prices they offer! Overall we're very happy with the purchase.
Gary Heuer
Myerstown, PA
Comment: great looking bags,fit the bike great and super fast service
terry coble
asheboro nc
Comment: Very nice bags! They fit very nicely on my fiancee's 950 V Star. The only issue I found was the lock and keys didn't come with the bags! Incomplete order.
Rick Knoebel
Sioux Falls,SD
Comment: Great looking bags. Match my Studded Mustang seat & pillion perfectly.
Alex Rodriguez
New Jersey
Comment: These are the best bags for the price that I could find. I have purchased several things from Jafrum and they have always provided quality products and great customer service.
Cheryl Olberding
Olathe, KS
These Saddlebags are constructed using a leather-like PVC material and are
available in a plain or a studded version. Each version has a separate listing
on our site so be sure the item you wish to purchase is the item pictured in the
listing. These are a large sized bag and measure 18.25 x 7.5 x 10.5 inches. They
are perfect for large cruisers and work on many medium sized bikes as well,
although some customers had to relocate their turn signals. These bags are
designed to be used as either a throw over style, or a rigid mounted bag. To
mount using the throw over method, simply remove your one piece seat or the
passenger half of your two-piece seat and lay the yoke of the bags over the rear
fender. Adjust the yoke to ensure that the bags do not touch your exhaust
system. There is a layer of heat resistant fabric that has been added to the
bottom of the bag which keeps the bag from melting but exhaust clearance is
still needed to protect the bag's contents. In the reviews, some customers have
indicated that extra holes were needed in the yoke to get the height of the bags
perfect, but that adding the holes was easy. We also recommend using a saddlebag
support system like saddlebag bracket A, to make sure your bags don't sag or get
pulled into the wheel. Once you have reinstalled your seat, you can secure the
bags to the supports using these tiedowns. To eliminate the yoke for bolt on
mounting, you will need to purchase a rigid style mounting system. The back of
these bags are constructed using a rigid plastic offering a variety of mounting
options. These SD4068 bags are easily removed for security and convenience.
Lifting this hook and loop flap exposes a zipper for easy removal, and these
grommeted holes allow the bags to be locked to the yoke as a light theft
deterrent. Use caution when using these locks while riding to make sure they
aren't touching the paint. The carry handles are on the inside edge of the bag
instead in the middle of the lid. This allows the handles to be tucked away out
of site, giving the bags a cleaner look, and also makes it possible to carry
both bags with one hand. The bags are held closed by these hidden, lockable
quick release buckles, and a snap on the front and rear of the lid. Opening the
bag exposes a flap that is designed to help keep water and dirt out of your
luggage. Inside the bag, there are two low profile perimeter pockets and the
semi rigid panels that help the bags keep their shape.
Same Day Shipping.For Most OrdersPlaced by 4pm EST.
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- Available only for FedEx Ground for 48 US contiguous states for retail customers.
- Price is before any taxes or additional shipping fees
- Not applicable for orders being shipped to an International address


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Determine Your Bat Length
There are some standard rules of thumb in selecting the appropriate bat length. The charts below offer some guidelines
based on age, weight and height:
Use the age guideline as a starting point, but height and weight are usually better ways to determine your ideal bat length:
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Red Gatorline Trimmer Line: This red-colored round trimmer line is easily visible and fits all types of trimmer heads. It's made with long-lasting premium co-polymer material, and comes in donut or spool packaging. Select your Red Gatorline below.