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Pittsburgh Cancer Center Warns Of Risk From Cell Phone Use

Posted by On the Right on Thursday, July 24, 2008 7:21:17 PM
Science on Speed "The head of a prominent cancer research institute issued an unprecedented warning to his faculty and staff Wednesday: Limit cell phone use because of the possible risk of cancer," the Associated Press reports:
The warning from Dr. Ronald B. Herberman, director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, is contrary to numerous studies that don't find a link between increased tumors and cell phone use, and a public lack of worry by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Another researcher likened cell-phone use to "play[ing] Russian roulette with your brain."
Herberman is basing his alarm on early, unpublished data. He says it takes too long to get answers from science and he believes people should take action now--especially when it comes to children.

If Herberman thinks it takes too long to get answers from science, maybe he should go into astrology instead.

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It’s What We Didn’t Do, Not What He Didn’t Do

Posted by On the Right on Thursday, July 24, 2008 3:54:25 PM
Hamdan did a lot more than mindlessly drive bin Laden from place to place.“Missing the Point on Hamdan”

Not surprisingly, the story doesn’t bear out this preposterous premise. Inadvertently or not, Bravin ends up showing Hamdan did a lot more than mindlessly drive bin Laden from place to place.

We learn, for example, that he functioned as a trusted member of al-Qaeda’s inner circle. He provided security when bin Laden would rendezvous with his top deputies, such as Ayman al-Zawahiri and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, to discuss terror plots. Thus, the mere “driver” was on hand when bin Laden explained to Mohammed “that he had expected to kill 1,000 to 1,500 people in the [9/11] attacks, rather than the nearly 3,000 who died.”

Moreover, Hamdan helped prepare evacuations so that bin Laden could escape in the event — as it usually happened, the non-event — of any U.S. retaliatory operations. He was also one of the very few al-Qaeda members permitted to carry arms in close proximity to the world’s most wanted man (y’know, so he could, like, stay alive).

You have to tread deep into Bravin’s story to discover its most significant detail, rendered by the witness Ali Soufan, a former FBI agent who interviewed Hamdan at length:
In advance of attacks, Mr. Soufan said, Mr. Hamdan would often be alerted to prepare vehicles for a rapid move, in case of an American retaliation. He added that Mr. Hamdan came to believe that Washington’s failure to launch massive retaliations after the 1998 attacks on U.S. embassies in Africa and the 2000 Cole bombing emboldened Mr. bin Laden. The al Qaeda leader believed the U.S. would never send ground troops to pursue him in Afghanistan, Mr. Soufan said.
Barack Obama and the rest of the Left can continue telling themselves the civilian courtroom prosecutions of the 1990s, rather than the ongoing military approach, is the right model for dealing with international terrorists. But the blunt truth is that the failure to respond responsibly to the embassy bombings and the Cole bombing (as well as the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing) directly caused 9/11.

Sen. Obama might take note that bin Laden was under federal indictment when nearly 250 people (including 17 American sailors) were killed in the attacks on the embassies and the Cole. In fact, after the embassies were bombed, we even had a prosecution in which exactly five terrorists were “brought to justice.” It doesn’t seem to have helped much.
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Voodoo Climatology

Posted by On the Right on Thursday, July 24, 2008 3:46:44 PM
It seems Al Gore can’t help but make dramatic and fact-challenged claims on the slimmest of evidence. “The Grand Exaggerator”
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The Anti-Anti-Terrorists Push For Unilateral Disarmament.

Posted by On the Right on Thursday, July 24, 2008 3:42:25 PM
Neville Chamberlain was a hawk compared with America's antiwar Left. “Beyond Complacency”

It’s often said that the September 11 attacks were a “wake-up call’ — that they forced both the political class and the public to seriously (if belatedly) address a peril that for years had been minimized and marginalized.

. . . slumber persists; too many people still do not recognize that “in an age when weapons of mass destruction have become more accessible than ever before, militant Islam may actually pose an existential threat to the United States. At a minimum, it constitutes a formidable strategic threat.”

Advocates of a strong defense have been opposed at every turn by leftists who blame America first (“chickens coming home to roost”), paleo-conservatives who believe that Americans venturing abroad inevitably stir up hornets’ nests, and libertarians who see threats to civil liberties behind every counterterrorist initiative.

The fact that there has not been a catastrophic attack on American soil for nearly seven years has emboldened this anti-anti-terrorist coalition. They are certain that the reason we have not been hit recently — as have London, Madrid, Bali, Baghdad, Kabul etc. — has nothing to do with any actions taken by the Bush administration.

One might argue that the federal government’s primary obligation is to protect America. But that cuts no mustard with those who, as Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow Max Boot writes, insist “we pull out of Iraq, repeal the Patriot Act, roll back the executive branch’s surveillance authority, force the release of Guantanamo’s detainees or remand them to the normal criminal-justice system, impose even greater restrictions on interrogations of terrorist suspects, and generally dissipate the sense of urgency that has animated American counterterrorism efforts since 9/11.
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Showdown

Posted by On the Right on Thursday, July 24, 2008 3:09:23 PM

Senate Republicans: None shall pass until drilling commences


Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has laid down the gauntlet to Majority Leader Harry Reid on energy, according to The Hill.  Following the efforts of Tom Coburn and Jim DeMint, the Republican caucus has promised to obstruct any bills not pertaining to energy until the Senate votes on removing the remaining restrictions on off-shore drilling.  It promises to make the Senate the focus of high-profile political brinksmanship, and puts the Democrats in a tight spot with fuel prices impacting every aspect of the American economy

It’s not even clear that Reid can keep all of the Democrats on board. Coburn predicted that Reid would whip his caucus hard to keep all 51 Democrats behind him while he tried to bribe ten Republicans away, but fuel prices have made Reid’s obstructionism on drilling a losing cause.  No one wants to go back home in August to explain to constituents why they blocked drilling in the OCS and the interior while people are paying twice as much for gas as they did before Reid and Nancy Pelosi took control of Congress.  Democrats know that Republicans are poised to expose this on a national basis, and that the electorate is angry enough about Congressional inaction on energy policy to listen.

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Priorities

Posted by On the Right on Thursday, July 24, 2008 3:04:36 PM

Competing optics: Cheering Germans or American military? Update: Snubbing wounded soldiers? Update: Touring Berlin instead? Update: It is/is not a campaign event?

I guess this is a question of priorities.  Barack Obama apparently ran short on time in his visit to Germany today, and travelers know how schedules can slip during long tours, even without all of the events Obama had planned.  Those circumstances force people to prioritize their time, and eliminate less-useful stops.

So what did Obama cut today?  Der Spiegel’s blog reports on Obama’s priorities:

++ Visit to US Military Bases Cancelled ++

1:42 p.m.: SPIEGEL ONLINE has learned that Obama has cancelled a planned short visit to the Rammstein and Landstuhl US military bases in the southwest German state of Rhineland-Palatinate. The visits were planned for Friday. “Barack Obama will not be coming to us,” a spokesperson for the US military hospital in Landstuhl announced. “I don’t know why.” Shortly before the same spokeswoman had announced a planned visit by Obama.

On the other hand, the campaign apparently has no problem in keeping this event on its schedule:

The message here is that thousands of screaming German fans at the Tiergarten take precedence over visiting Americans serving their country at Rammstein and Landstuhl.  Maybe one of the networks following Obama could interview a few of the soldiers about how they perceive that set of priorities from Obama.



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Taxes For Thee And Not For Me

Posted by On the Right on Thursday, July 24, 2008 3:00:03 PM

Denver Post: Dems hypocritical on gas taxes

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Blessed Silence

Posted by On the Right on Thursday, July 24, 2008 2:58:46 PM

Video: The Wesley Clark Mute Button

The Anbar Awakening only preceded the “surge” if one defines it strictly as an increase in troops. But the “surge” was much more than that, and it long preceded the troop increase. The troop increase intended to fully support the change in tactics and strategy that had been adopted with success by local American commanders in Anbar to a true counterinsurgency effort, which coincided with Sunnis in the region switching sides and opposing the insurgents.

Barack Obama reveals a lack of understanding by harping on this point. He doesn’t grasp — and he never has — the difference between merely increasing troop levels and laying out a comprehensive strategy for attacking insurgents. That’s what led him to assert in January 2007 that adding 20,000 or more troops would not reduce violence in Iraq, and might in fact provoke worse violence. As events proved, the counterinsurgency strategies employed in the fall of 2006 and expanded into theater-wide doctrine as more troops arrived succeeded, and exposed Obama as not terribly adept at military strategy.



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There's More Urban Legend Than Fact In A Planned Parenthood Ad Attacking McCain

Posted by On the Right on Thursday, July 24, 2008 2:45:57 PM
Planned Parenthood is running a TV ad showing John McCain painfully groping for an answer to a reporter's question: "It's unfair that health insurance companies cover Viagra but not birth control. Do you have an opinion on that?"

McCain had good reason to be flustered. The premise of the reporter's question is a myth. We couldn't find any data that show a disparity between health insurance companies that cover Viagra and those that cover birth control. The full range of contraceptives, in fact, are covered by more than 86 percent of private insurance plans written for employers. Read Full Article    
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Have Both Changed Positions. Does The Candidate Admit He's Shifting?

Posted by On the Right on Thursday, July 24, 2008 12:04:31 AM
A tale of two flip-floppers
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Sticks And Carrots

Posted by On the Right on Wednesday, July 23, 2008 11:57:13 PM

Obama: “A nuclear Iran would be a game-changing situation”; Flashback: Obama on “tiny” Iran’s non-serious threat

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Commander Clueless Disses The Corps

Posted by On the Right on Wednesday, July 23, 2008 11:46:54 PM

Wes Clark on the surge: It was a Saudi payoff that worked

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Gore Exposed

Posted by On the Right on Wednesday, July 23, 2008 11:31:33 PM
Gore’s Solar Proposal

To begin with, Gore’s proposal is crazy even in its inception...
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Maverick

Posted by On the Right on Wednesday, July 23, 2008 11:14:44 PM
 
But Will They Respect Him in the Morning?  McCain has gone from being one of the Times' most frequent op-ed guest columnists to being an unpublishable illiterate.
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Media In The Tank For Obama

Posted by On the Right on Wednesday, July 23, 2008 10:53:35 PM
McCain vs. "Destiny" John McCain has figured out that one way to build enthusiasm among conservatives is to confront his former best friends in the liberal media. As the media glorify Barack Obama the "statesman" on his trip abroad, with the three network anchors lining up for interviews like a gaggle of smitten fan-club presidents, the McCain campaign suddenly acquired a surprising "Annoy The Media" flavor.
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