Who knew there was an Afghan warlord named Milo Minderbinder?

Washington Post:

The U.S. military is funding a massive protection racket in Afghanistan, indirectly paying tens of millions of dollars to warlords, corrupt public officials and the Taliban to ensure safe passage of its supply convoys throughout the country, according to congressional investigators.

It's really not a good day for Afghan war supporters.

Netflix Queue: Ong Bak 2: The Beginning

It's like "Batman Begins" meets "The Empire Strikes Back" in 15th century Thailand. And he beats up an elephant!

Sadly, that pitch is far more interesting than the movie. Tony Jaa is losing his mojo.

Army Major Nathan Hoepner is an American hero

Perusing a recent issue of Military Review, I came across this (PDF) article about a debate (and the results of that debate) among U.S. soldiers working the "Sunni triangle" of Iraq in 2003. Some wanted "the gloves to come off" and to start hitting, beating and otherwise torturing suspected insurgents. But Maj. Nathan Hoepner opposed such efforts, and wrote in support of his position:

As for “the gloves need to come off” . . . we
need to take a deep breath and remember
who we are . . . Those gloves are . . . based on
clearly established standards of international
law to which we are signatories and in part
the originators . . . something we cannot just
put aside when we find it inconvenient . . .
We have taken casualties in every war we
have ever fought—that is part of the very
nature of war. We also inflict casualties,
generally many more than we take. That in
no way justifies letting go of our standards.
We have NEVER considered our enemies
justified in doing such things to us. Casualties
are part of war—if you cannot take
casualties then you cannot engage in war.
Period. BOTTOM LINE: We are American
Soldiers, heirs of a long tradition of staying
on the high ground. We need to stay there.

Heroes are men and women who can keep their heads about them to do the right thing in difficult circumstances. Maj. Hoepner -- today he is a lieutenant colonel -- is clearly such a man.

And throwing up on cops is like saying "aloha" in Philadelphia

Favorite letter to the editor in today's newspaper:

South African soccer fans who blow that obnoxious and deafening vuvuzela horn are excused, even at the World Cup, because "it's part of their culture."

Yet Philadelphia fans who go a little crazy and run onto the field - which is part of their culture - are tased and arrested. Doesn't seem fair.

Jim Acton, Collegeville

Will the BP oil disaster destroy Obama's presidency?

Well, I'm unusually harsh about President Obama in this week's column for Scripps:

President Obama might make a great senator someday.

That's the thought that occurred Tuesday night as Obama vaguely described a "set of principles" that would set America on course toward its energy future -- even as he lamely admitted to being "unsure exactly what that (future) looks like." Senators have the luxury of noodling around with legislation, haggling and negotiating until a bill comes into shape. Presidents, on the other hand, are supposed to offer leadership -- a concrete plan of action.

So far, Obama is failing the test.

Unfortunately, there's nothing new to this. Obama spent the first year of his presidency being overly vague about what he would and wouldn't accept in a health-reform bill. The result? Senators took the lead, spending months in confusing and nearly fruitless negotiations while an antsy public grew increasingly angry.

There's nothing technically wrong with this: Congress is, after all, a co-equal branch of government. But Obama's style of vague direction-setting raises two unsettling possibilities about his presidency. A: He lacks confidence in his agenda, so he won't commit to specifics that can be publicly rejected. B: He doesn't actually have an agenda.

Back in 2008, many liberals backed Obama because they felt Republicans would offer obstinate, conspiracy-mongering obstruction to a Hillary Rodham Clinton presidency. Turns out they did that anyway. Clinton, at least, might've pursued her agenda with more tenacity -- and Obama might've made a loyal foot soldier, happily engaged in the Senate's give-and-take. Instead, he's meandering into the future. The oil spill isn't undoing Obama's presidency; he's doing fine at that on his own.

Will the BP oil disaster destroy Obama's presidency?

Well, I'm unusually harsh about President Obama in this week's column for Scripps:

President Obama might make a great senator someday.

That's the thought that occurred Tuesday night as Obama vaguely described a "set of principles" that would set America on course toward its energy future -- even as he lamely admitted to being "unsure exactly what that (future) looks like." Senators have the luxury of noodling around with legislation, haggling and negotiating until a bill comes into shape. Presidents, on the other hand, are supposed to offer leadership -- a concrete plan of action.

So far, Obama is failing the test.

Unfortunately, there's nothing new to this. Obama spent the first year of his presidency being overly vague about what he would and wouldn't accept in a health-reform bill. The result? Senators took the lead, spending months in confusing and nearly fruitless negotiations while an antsy public grew increasingly angry.

There's nothing technically wrong with this: Congress is, after all, a co-equal branch of government. But Obama's style of vague direction-setting raises two unsettling possibilities about his presidency. A: He lacks confidence in his agenda, so he won't commit to specifics that can be publicly rejected. B: He doesn't actually have an agenda.

Back in 2008, many liberals backed Obama because they felt Republicans would offer obstinate, conspiracy-mongering obstruction to a Hillary Rodham Clinton presidency. Turns out they did that anyway. Clinton, at least, might've pursued her agenda with more tenacity -- and Obama might've made a loyal foot soldier, happily engaged in the Senate's give-and-take. Instead, he's meandering into the future. The oil spill isn't undoing Obama's presidency; he's doing fine at that on his own.

Talking Imprimis and Larry P. Arnn: America was built on the redistribution of wealth

I've recently become a subscriber to Imprimis -- the most influential conservative publication you've never heard of -- because A) I want to keep tabs on influential conservatives and B) it's free. It's published by Hillsdale College in Michigan, and consists mainly of reprinted speeches from notable conservative thinkers and writers. It's pleasantly old-fashioned, a throwback to the olden days of pamphleteering.

Just got my first issue in the mail today, and it's actually kind of a back issue, from back in December, featuring a speech by Hillsdale College President Larry P. Arnn. In it, he seeks to contrast the bullying and tyrannical nature of the U.S. government today -- exemplified by the mandates included in the Affordable Care Act -- with the liberating nature of the U.S. government in the early years of the republic ... as exemplified by the Homestead Act.

A quick primer on the Homestead Act, from Wikipedia:

The Homestead Act is one of several United States federal laws that gave an applicant freehold title to up to 160 acres (1/4 section, 65 hectares) of undeveloped federal land outside the original 13 colonies. The law required three steps: file an application, improve the land, and file for deed of title. Anyone who had never taken up arms against the U.S. government, including freed slaves, could file an application and evidence of improvements to a federal land office.

And here's Arnn, describing the act's liberating effects:

What the Homestead Act did was to take the western land of the United States—surely one of the greatest assets ever held by any government in history—and give 160-acre plots to anyone with the backbone to live on them and work them. These plots of land were granted regardless of who someone was and with the certainty that no one settling on them could ever vote for this congressman or that. It is one of the greatest impartial acts of legislation in all of human history. It, and things like it, built America and the character of the people who spread across it.

The principle that justified the Homestead Act has two parts, and both are found in the first 15 lines of the Declaration of Independence. The first is the idea of human equality—the idea that it does not matter what race or what family you come from, it only matters what you do—which has been the source of our greatest struggles in an attempt to live up to it.

Let's stop right there, because Arnn is committing a pretty overt act of historical amnesia in order to frame his critique of modern government this way. He's forgetting -- probably deliberately -- that people used to live on land that was "settled" under the Homestead Act. Native Americans. They may not have held title to the land that was taken by the settlers, but they surely owned it under any meaningful sense of the term.

In order for the settlers to claim and improve the land, the United States government had to send armies west to kill and clear out the Native Americans who'd lived on those lands for centuries, perhaps even millennia.

So the actual history of the Homestead Act is nearly the opposite of what Arnn advocates here: Rather than being predicated on the idea of human equality, it was steeped in racism -- the idea that the "Indians" who'd lived in America before Europeans were here were less than fully human. And interestingly, it may have been the most redistributive act the U.S. government has ever undertaken -- the genocidal-level force of arms used to take land (wealth!) and given to anybody who, well, wanted it.

I'm not suggesting that the land be given back: History has happened.

Maybe I'm being churlish. But Arnn offers up his Homestead Act example in the course of making the case that A) "absolute truth" exists and B) our leaders aren't well-educated or even believers in absolute truth -- and thank God there's Hillsdale College to offer a remedy! Arnn's version of history, though, omits huge swaths of context and fact in order to cast a tyrannical and socialistic act as embodying the most noble traditions of American freedom and equality. His example, it seems to me, greatly undermines the point he's trying to make.