Nice catch by Best of the Web.

The reliably obnoxious Eric Alterman attacks ABC News head David Westin, who apologized for suggesting that the Pentagon may have been a “legitimate target” for terrorists. “Of course the Pentagon is a legitimate target for an attack for those at war against us,” Alterman opines. “Hello? War is the Pentagon’s entire reason for being. It’s where we plan our wars and figure out how to carry them out. By what conceivable definition of war could the Pentagon be excluded as a potential target?”

And, Eric, this is OK, because the terrorists had issued a formal declaration of war against us.

Right?

Right?

Alterman? Alterman? Bueller? Anyone?

Whether or not the Pentagon was a “legitimate military target” is utterly beside the point, which both Dave Westin and Eric Alterman seem to have missed. As on December 7, 1941, on September 11, 2001, the United States was not, as far as it knew, at war.

With anyone.

Had we been, we might have had defenses up against what happened, especially at the Pentagon.

But such issues, being favorable to the position of the US, are not worthy of note to “journalists” such as Eric Alterman and Dave Westin…

Thanks to Professor Reynolds for pointing out this superlative piece by James Delong, in which he articulates in an article most of the things about which I’ve been fuming for the last three months. Fortunately (or not, if I can’t get my butt into gear), there are still a few points to be made, or at least elaborated upon, at least in a quantitative sense, and I hope to be able to sort them out in the next few days, before going back to California.

Will Vehrs asks:

While we’re at it, shouldn’t the Treasury Department freeze the assets of Walker’s parents? After all, they were supporting a terrorist.

Well, actually, while I’m probably a little “wobbly” on Walker myself (in that while I think his behavior treasonous, that there’s little point in making a literally capital case of it), I do think that this would send an interesting message to parents who not only don’t control the direction of their offspring’s antisocial behavior (which is not always possible), but who actively encourage it by, for example, sending him money in the midst of it, and not even under the pretense that he will use it to get out of the game, but to actually allow him to continue it.

I have even less sympathy for the parents than I do for little Jihad Johnnie.

Last night, we were watching that most reliable prognosticator of future technology–Futurama. The professor had himself a flying barcalounger. Pat said, that’s what I want.

Me too. Especially if, unlike the Segway, it has a cupholder and a bumper for bumper stickers.

In the battle of duct tape against nature, the score is Bears 1: Suit 1.

According to The New Scientist, which has been diligently tracking this important story, a female grizzly was so put off by the bizarre appearance that she wouldn’t even approach it.

The bad news is that the much-larger male grizzly did come up to the empty suit, and started jumping on it and tearing it apart. The suit’s owner/designer was pleased to be viewing the ursine adventure from afar.

Hurtubise has learned that you should never skimp on chainmail. “I should have used shark chainmail,” he now laments. “Instead, I sent away for butcher’s chainmail from France.”

Yes, those cheese eaters haven’t made good chainmail since the Battle of Hastings. Plus, he may have skimped on the duct tape. You should never do that…

According to reports, the latest bin Laden tape indicates that not all of the hijackers understood the mission (or perhaps they were too dim to understand that driving their airplane into a skyscraper would kill them, too). What this indicates is that bin Laden couldn’t come up with the dozens of suicidal people necessary to carry out the attacks on September 11. He had to convince most of them that they were hijacking the plane for some other purpose, and only the pilots themselves knew the true mission.

If true, this gives me a little solace. It also lowers my opinion of bin Laden even further, a feat I would heretofore have thought impossible. He didn’t even care about his own people. One wonders whether this will have any effect on future recruiting, assuming he survives his current “Where’s Waldo” escapades.

I have always been somewhat sanguine about our prospects for being damaged by terrorists, because of the thought that the combination of both evil intent and competence to carry it out is rare. There is a large supply of people willing to kill themselves or others for (fill-in-the-blank), particularly in Arabia, but the intersection of that set with people who can fly airplanes, set ordnance, design bombs, breed smallpox, etc., is small. This will hopefully remain true as truly terrifying technology comes along in the future.

According to reports, the latest bin Laden tape indicates that not all of the hijackers understood the mission (or perhaps they were too dim to understand that driving their airplane into a skyscraper would kill them, too). What this indicates is that bin Laden couldn’t come up with the dozens of suicidal people necessary to carry out the attacks on September 11. He had to convince most of them that they were hijacking the plane for some other purpose, and only the pilots themselves knew the true mission.

If true, this gives me a little solace. It also lowers my opinion of bin Laden even further, a feat I would heretofore have thought impossible. He didn’t even care about his own people. One wonders whether this will have any effect on future recruiting, assuming he survives his current “Where’s Waldo” escapades.

I have always been somewhat sanguine about our prospects for being damaged by terrorists, because of the thought that the combination of both evil intent and competence to carry it out is rare. There is a large supply of people willing to kill themselves or others for (fill-in-the-blank), particularly in Arabia, but the intersection of that set with people who can fly airplanes, set ordnance, design bombs, breed smallpox, etc., is small. This will hopefully remain true as truly terrifying technology comes along in the future.

According to reports, the latest bin Laden tape indicates that not all of the hijackers understood the mission (or perhaps they were too dim to understand that driving their airplane into a skyscraper would kill them, too). What this indicates is that bin Laden couldn’t come up with the dozens of suicidal people necessary to carry out the attacks on September 11. He had to convince most of them that they were hijacking the plane for some other purpose, and only the pilots themselves knew the true mission.

If true, this gives me a little solace. It also lowers my opinion of bin Laden even further, a feat I would heretofore have thought impossible. He didn’t even care about his own people. One wonders whether this will have any effect on future recruiting, assuming he survives his current “Where’s Waldo” escapades.

I have always been somewhat sanguine about our prospects for being damaged by terrorists, because of the thought that the combination of both evil intent and competence to carry it out is rare. There is a large supply of people willing to kill themselves or others for (fill-in-the-blank), particularly in Arabia, but the intersection of that set with people who can fly airplanes, set ordnance, design bombs, breed smallpox, etc., is small. This will hopefully remain true as truly terrifying technology comes along in the future.

Dale Amon writes at Samizdata:

We don’t know what he actually did so how can we decide his fate from in front of our comfortable computer screens? For all we know he could have been dragged along by events and lain cowering in the basement wondering at his own idiocy. Or perhaps he went to fight with the Taliban against the Northern Alliance never imagining he could end up fighting his own country. After all, on September 10th how many of us would have considered US forces in Afghanistan as even the remotest possibility? If that were the case he is a soldier of fortune who got caught up in the wrong war at the wrong time. A few years in prison and a slap on the wrist would suffice.

The problem with this is the statement “for all we know.” Unfortunately for Mr. “Marinhadeen,” we know a good deal more. He continued to display his idiocy after being pulled from the flooded basement. We know that when asked if he supported the twin towers bombing, after much prodding and avoidance, he finally answered “Yes.” How does that square with the theory that he just got caught up with the wrong crowd, and never imagined that he’d be taking up arms against his countrymen?

While we still have a first amendment, in times like these words like, “I support the attack on the WTC” have consequences. Certainly they could be grounds for, at a minimum, deportation of someone not in the country legally. It’s not clear exactly where the line lies between simple opposition to US policies and sedition, but when someone is found, armed, among people who have been shooting at American troops, and he offers such words, he is so far across it that he can’t even see it from there.

I don’t think that in this case hanging him as an example is all that useful–there are very few other loonytoons like him to deter, but I would like to see him do some hard time, and be given opportunities to use it to undo his (non)education in Marin County, and learn how to think, and distinguish good ideas (freedom, etc.) from bad (flying planeloads of innocents into buildings full of innocents).

Sean O’Keefe, Bush’s pick for NASA Administrator, was grilled by the Senate in a confirmation hearing on Friday. It’s nice to see that they moved so quickly to confirm him–I was afraid that it might take months. Fortunately, particularly in the current climate, NASA isn’t important enough to play political football with. (This is a thought to keep in mind in the future if O’Keefe comes up with some proposals that would have been politically unthinkable in the past…)

Little new here, just the usual suspects lobbying to maintain jobs in their states while pretending that they actually give a damn about our future in space. Trent Lott was worried about Stennis, Kay Bailey Hutchison was worried about JSC. I didn’t hear from Richard Shelby, but presumably he will go to bat for Marshall.

Nelson, who was the only senator left at the end of the three-hour plus hearing, used much of his allotted time to lecture O’Keefe on the importance of the space shuttle. He advised O’Keefe against following through on the task force recommendation to limit shuttle flights to a rate of four per year. Such a cut would result in major layoffs, he said, and jeopardize NASA’s ability to fly the shuttle safely.

Bill Nelson (D-FL) should be called the “Senator from Shuttle.” He flew in it on a junket as a congressman (the flight before the Challenger disaster), and he’s obviously trying to maintain the jobs base in Cocoa Beach and Titusville. However, in this case, I agree with him. Cutting Shuttle flight rate to save money is a false economy. They need to either fly it at capacity, or shut it down (we know which option Bill Nelson prefers). But going from six flights to four per year would only save about ten percent of the budget, while reducing the number of flights by a third. Hopefully Mr. O’Keefe will understand the basic concepts of average and marginal costs, and act accordingly.

Mr. Nelson has also criticized the Space Launch Initiative, which he says comes at the cost of Shuttle improvements. Here he is totally off base. I’m not a big fan of SLI (a Marshall program to develop new launch technologies, ostensibly to reduce the cost of launch), but Shuttle improvements are an even bigger waste of money–throwing good money after extremely bad. Shuttle is so far away from routine and affordable space transportation that any money spent in “improving” it would be far better spent on something completely new, not that I advocate that NASA do either.

What I’d like to see is for NASA to put up the billions of dollars a year proposed for these programs and simply offer to purchase flights with them from the private sector. This would create a market, the lack of which is what is really keeping costs high–not the lack of technology.

But that won’t produce jobs in Houston, Huntsville and Florida…