Fact 1: The government of Iran is providing the IEDs (bombs) that are killing American soldiers in Iraq.

Fact 2: Military recruiters and the ROTC are not welcome on the campus of of Columbia University.

Fact 3: Columbia University has extended an invitation to the head of the Iranian government (see Fact 1) to speak to the students.

 Now discuss.

Here’s William Kristol doing just that: Columbia University: Ahmadinejad Yes, ROTC No

And thr Wall Street Journal: Lee Bollinger: Tough Guy

And Michelle Malkin has a round up of many, many others.

I’m off on an early flight in the morning to Washington, D.C. for a few days of meetings.  Fortunately, I don’t think I will be getting close enough to the Capitol building to be at risk of being irradiated by the toxic waves of bloviation still emanating from Senate Armed Service Committee hearing room.

The residue from Barbara Boxer’s speechifying alone probably has a half-life of more than 50,000 years. 

My apologies dear readers. I haven’t been very good at keeping my blog promises. (blogmises?)   Early on the 11th I promised some “deep thoughts about big things” later on in the day. Never happened. Well, I meant well. And like most Christians, though I judge others by their actions, I judge myself by my intentions. So, how about some shallow thoughts about trivialities instead? 

 I came across a great quote the other day that I thought was apropos of the MoveOn.org types and all the new 9/11 experts on what will and won’t melt steel: 

 “In the fevered state of our country, no good can ever result from any attempt to set one of these fiery zealots to rights, either in fact or in principle. They are determined as to the facts they will believe and the opinions on which they will act.” 

That was Thomas Jefferson. Here’s another for you: 

“Political extremism involves two prime ingredients: an excessively simple diagnosis of the world’s ills and a conviction that there are identifiable villains back of it all.” 

That was John W. Gardner, a cabinet member in the Johnson administration referring to the anti-war protesters of that day. Speaking of war. . .  I have already set my DVR to record Ken Burns new documentary in glorious Hi-Def. I am a huge fan Burns previous documentary work—particularly The Civil War and his series on the History of Jazz.  The subject of his new work is World War II. First episode of “The War” airs 9/23. Can’t wait.

Did a secret Israeli air strike blow up North Korean nuclear material in Syria? A Times of London report says “yes.”

Brilliance from RedState.com . . .

 I will try to live-blog it as I read it.

 

 An absolutely gorgeous day in North Texas today. Clear blue skies and the mildest temps we’ve had in months. Perfect really. Identical to the day we were having six years ago.

 I’ll have some deep thoughts about big things late tonight when I can spare some time. But in the meantime:

• James Lileks has posted the video he put together six years ago.

• Here’s a two-year-old Bill Bennet essay that still rings with relevance after yesterday’s Abomination of Defamation by Move-On/Code Pink . Here’s an excerpt, but please do read the whole thing.

It is not just the terrorist threat that we have to deal with now, but the grievance culture under it, that has taken such a strong hold in the West. It may, in fact, prove the greater threat because it takes away our greatest protection against terrorism: moral clarity. Where once our law and culture were based on assigning blame on a perpetrator of wrong, and personal responsibility was a commonplace (as well as commonsense), a new psychology has taken hold in Western culture. Where once we punished and fought, we now psychologize and debate the causes of anger and terror. We, to borrow from Shakespeare, have made the wrong medicines of our great revenge.

This guy thinks the Bin Laden video is fishy. Apparently the video freezes for long periods of time in two places. And it is in those places that the voice heard on audio makes all the references to current events.

But then a new OBL video is supposedly about to be released.  It will be interesting to see if there are any current references in which both video and audio are synced.

A couple of posts below, I made some comments about the growing number of wild-eyed 9/11 conspiracy mongers. Along those lines, here’s Mark Steyn in full satiric cry today:

 Have you seen that bumper sticker “9/11 WAS AN INSIDE JOB”? If you haven’t, go to a college town and cruise Main Street for a couple of minutes. It seems odd that a fascist regime which thinks nothing of killing thousands of people in a big landmark building in the center of the city hasn’t quietly offed some of these dissident professors — or at least the guy with the sticker-printing contract . . .According to a poll in May, 35 percent of Democrats believe that Bush knew about 9/11 in advance. Did Rumsfeld also know? Almost certainly. That’s why he went to his office as normal that today, because he knew in advance that the plane would slice through the Pentagon but come to a halt on the far side of the photocopier. That’s how well-planned it was, unlike Iraq.

Apparently, 39 percent of Democrats still believe Bush didn’t know in advance — or, at any rate, so they said in May. But I’m confident half of them will have joined Rosie O’Donnell on the melted steely knoll before the Iowa caucuses.

Please read the whole thing.

Hugh Hewitt has a good roundup of links to analysis and thoughts about the latest YouTube audition of “He Whose Beard Is Like the Raven That Flies Away in the Night Breezes.” 

 . . .here.

 

 In this forum in the past I may have sublty implied a belief that Bin Laden is dead. Oh, like, say in this post headlined, “Bin Laden is Dead.”

A three-year span without any video pronouncements or any audio that was conclusively of recent vintage certainly suggested that he was either dead or incapacitated. But now we have this.

As James S. Robbins, senior fellow for national security affairs at the American Foriegn Policy Council points out in this piece, Bin Laden seems to be monitoring the Democratic debates and/or perhaps Bill Maher’s television program to harvest his talking points.

Others have speculated that if the beard is indeed fake, Bin Laden may be hiding out in a place where Muslim men do not typically have beards, such as Indonesia or Malaysia.

It is also noteworthy that according to the leaked transcript, Bin Laden once again affirms that he is responsible for the 9/11 attacks. This, of course, won’t have any impact whatsoever on the weak-minded conspiratorialists who are convinced that the brilliantly-evil, yet-stupid Bushhitlerburton was behind the attacks.

That’s right, after only eight months in office Bush was able to engineer a global conspiracy that arranged for planes to be hijacked and flown into buildings AND explosives placed in those buildings to assure they fell down AND to have another airliner shot down by military jets over Pennsylvania, all in the same hour AND make it all look like Al Qaeda terrorist did it—all in order to have an excuse to invade Iraq for some oil and some Halliburton contracts.

And yet, in the four years following this all-powerful criminal mastermind couldn’t arrange to have a few WMDs planted in Iraq to legitimize the whole operation. Right. Got it.

For a frightening microcosmic glimpse into the dark fever swamps of conspiratorial thinking, just check out the comment thread under this article over at ABCNews.com. Scroll down a bit to find the nuts and flakes.

Keep in mind, those comments are actually a model of of sanity and reason compared to what you will typically find in the comment threads over at The Daily Kos, The Huffington Post and the Democratic Underground.

Abandon your grip on reality on ye who enter there.