I dunno. Anybody watch This Old House? They just renovated a brick DC rowhouse (I think close by to Matt's Shaw neighborhood). I think there's a good number of those.

Posted at August 28, 2006 11:45 AM in response to Housing Bust?

Certainly if war breaks out again in the near term, Chirac's "brilliance" is disproven.

Given that France isn't going to lead the force, I am somewhat skeptical that there will be a UN force at all. Is that a given? How many troops have been volunteered so far? Certainly not 15,000.

And if there is no 15,000-man UN force, will the cease-fire hold?

Posted at August 18, 2006 10:22 AM in response to The Fakeout

That's a pretty good result, especially considering that Chirac spent essentially none of France's resources achieving it.

Except for making France look foolish to everyone (except Matthew) for such a bait and switch.

Posted at August 18, 2006 9:08 AM in response to The Fakeout

Sorry - I was trying to make a joke based on Matthew's post yesterday.

Posted at August 16, 2006 11:31 AM in response to Of Monkeys and Senators

I'm not trying to defend Allen against the macaca thing. I'm responding to Matthew's second paragraph.

As to Matthew's second paragraph, I just note that, it seems to me that if Allen's interest in the confederate flag means that Allen is racist, then Webb's praise of the confederate memorial makes Webb a racist too. Do you disagree?

I don't think that's an ad hominem attack on Webb. It's a comparison between Webb's racial attitudes and Allen's racial attitudes. Which seems to me perfectly legitimate, since those are the two people vying for the election.

Posted at August 16, 2006 11:29 AM in response to Of Monkeys and Senators

I hate to be a frequent comment troll, but I wonder what you think of a person who "grew up on the move, attending more than a dozen different schools across the U.S. and in England" and "graduated from high school in Bellevue, Nebraska", and yet says the following:

The Confederate Memorial has had a special place in my life for many years. ... And there were many, many times that I found myself drawn to this deeply inspiring memorial, to contemplate the sacrifices of others, several of whom were my ancestors, whose enormous suffering and collective gallantry are to this day still misunderstood by most Americans.

...

I am not here to apologize f or why they fought, although modern historians might contemplate that there truly were different perceptions in the North and South about those reasons, and that most Southern soldiers viewed the driving issue to be sovereignty rather than slavery. In 1860 fewer than five percent of the people in the South owned slaves, and fewer than twenty percent were involved with slavery in any capacity. Love of the Union was palpably stronger in the South than in the North before the war -- just as overt patriotism is today -- but it was tempered by a strong belief that state sovereignty existed prior to the Constitution, and that it had never been surrendered. Nor had Abraham Lincoln ended slavery in Kentucky and Missouri when those border states did not secede. Perhaps all of us might reread the writings of Alexander Stephens, a brilliant attorney who opposed secession but then became Vice President of the Confederacy, making a convincing legal argument that the constitutional compact was terminable. And who wryly commented at the outset of the war that "the North today presents the spectacle of a free people having gone to war to make freemen of slaves, while all they have as yet attained is to make slaves of themselves."

link

I'm sure the partisans will come up with some ridiculous excuse why Allen's a racist but the person who said that isn't. Please.

Posted at August 16, 2006 10:12 AM in response to Of Monkeys and Senators

Frequent comment troll Al

I'll interpret that in the best possible light.

But you say in your article the following:

there's good reason to be very skeptical of terrorism-prevention schemes in general...

Money spent securing airplanes against unlikely attacks with exotic explosives might well be better spent on conventional crime-fighting strategies -- more police, better supervision of parolees, more drug treatment, etc. At a minimum, it makes sense to channel terrorism security money into "dual-use" activities. Better surveillance or more law-enforcement personnel in mass transit would help reduce terrorism and ordinary crime.

How to square the above with your interest in effective explosive scanners? If we were able to make effective explosive scanners, would you in favor of spending money on "terrorism-protection schemes" involving such scanners? Or would you still object to spending money on "securing airplanes against unlikely attacks with exotic explosives" and, in lieu of buying lots of new scanners, spend the money on "conventional crime-fighting strategies"?

And lets not limit this to theoretical scanners. What other Homeland Security expenditures would be better spent on "conventional crime-fighting strategies"? Enquiring minds want to know.

Posted at August 15, 2006 2:57 PM in response to A Detector Or A Pony?

Well, I'm curious - if we don't use profiling, what methods should we use (that we are not already using) to figure out exactly who are "the people that want to kill us"?

Posted at August 15, 2006 2:48 PM in response to Let Them Eat Liquid

Generally agree with all of this. Drudge points to a Times UK story about Britain considering focusing more on the people that present the greatest risk, rather than just tactics.

I do want to say one thing, though, about focusing on tactics. It makes sense to focus on a partuclar tactic if you have a specific reason to believe that terrorists are going to use that tactic soon. Here, for example, we had specific reason to believe that liquids would be used. So it makes sense to temporarily crack down on bringing liquids aboard - just until that specific threat has been addressed. Are they confident that the entire terrorist group planning the liquid threat has been rolled up? If so, then it should be OK to bring liquids aboard again. But if they think there's still a chance that there are some of the terrorists out there from this specific liquid-based threat, then, OK, keep banning liquids.

Posted at August 15, 2006 10:18 AM in response to Let Them Eat Liquid

Ever hear of a movie called "Metro '78"? Me either.

How about The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3? (Great movie, BTW.)

Posted at August 15, 2006 8:50 AM in response to Let Them Eat Liquid