This lovely web page is making the rounds as a spam email. (If, like me, you can’t stand the music for more than a few seconds, go here instead.)

You don’t have to read all of it, but I suggest you skim enough to pick up the flavor. The basic thrust is that the Founder’s really were dedicated Christians, that they wanted America to be a Christian nation, that these facts have been suppressed, and that the Supreme Court has been mean. It doesn’t get around to drawing any conclusion or calling for any action.

Anyway, I received it from my mom yesterday so that she could ask my opinion of it. Here’s what I told her:

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Really. Who are my people? To what group do I belong? No matter how individualistic a person is, and I flatter myself that I am at least as individual as the next guy, it is impossible to ignore the benefits and even the instinctual pull of belonging. Belonging to groups makes up a great part of our identities. The groups we belong to tell us who we are as well as give us a community of allies we may call upon throughout life.

We belong to many groups, but one group usually wins out over the rest. That’s the one we think of ourselves as most. You are an American, or are Jewish, or are Republican, or are gay; that you are also a woman or third-generation Swedish is secondary. These super-groups are at the core of who we are, they conform to our most deeply held beliefs (or vice versa), and they tell us who are our fellow travelers.

Our tribe.

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McCain and Obama are each miserable choices for President. Yet we also face perilous threats in the world, like the prospect of a nuclear Iran. Can we afford to stay home during this election?

Obama vs. McCain: The Big Picture by Thomas Sowell

The answer is, of course, no. But it sure doesn’t feel good to have to make a choice based on that criteria.

Ever since the campaign finance reform bill passed in 2001 I’ve held a contempt for John McCain as an unprincipled career politician, a media whore, and a man who either doesn’t understand or doesn’t approve of the Constitution.

That’s why my natural implication is to vote for Barr and leave the Republicans to go jump off a cliff. That would feel good but it wouldn’t be smart. McCain is vastly better on Iran and the war against Islamo-fascist terror than Obama. Those issues are about survival and are therefore more important than anything else.

And that’s why I’ll be holding back the vomit as I pull the lever.

A soldier interrupted the Guitar Hero session, telling the pilots to get in the air. Orders would come over the radio. The pilots abandoned Guitar Hero and raced out the door into the cold night to their OH-58D Kiowa Warriors, economy-sized helicopters that would make a Ford Pinto seem spacious. The pilots crammed two each into the two helicopters, strapping in, cranking engines, while radio chatter had already started. The pilots learned that the Predator had identified a target, which it would laser-designate for a Hellfire shot from a Kiowa.

You probably don’t know what’s going on in Iraq. Most of the information we get about the situation there is a long string of ‘grim milestones’. This coverage leaves the impression that we have no plan for success, no forward momentum, and that our troops are sitting ducks for insurgents as they attempt to police the streets of Baghdad and Fallujah.

But it’s not that way at all. That’s why we need independent journalists like Michael Yon, the man who penned the quote above. It’s part of his dispatch called “Guitar Heroes”, new from Mosul as of today. It reads like an action story and gives some fascinating detail on how we’re prosecuting the war on a tactical level.

Another independent journalist worth reading is Michael J. Totten. Try him out with this article on the state of things in Al Anbar province, a region that was once one of the most violent in Iraq.

Here’s an interesting report on the high esteem our servicemen in Iraq have for Chuck Norris. I’m not joking. Even Iraqi policemen view him as a shining example of all things manly and heroic.

The Internet works in mysterious ways.

I just read the Wikipedia article on the practice of jury nullification.

“Jury nullification refers to a rendering of a verdict by a trial jury, disagreeing with the instructions by the judge concerning what the law is, or whether such law is applicable to the case, taking into account all of the evidence presented.”

Why haven’t I ever heard of this before? It places ultimate responsibility for upholding justice in the hands of the citizenry. Seems like a good idea to me. Couldn’t this serve as a check on encroaching state powers, at least in individual cases?

Interestingly, it’s uncommon in the US for a jury to be informed of their power of nullification. Also, “in some states” a juror can be dismissed if they don’t agree to abide by instructions from the judge, effectively waiving their power of nullification.

I encourage you to read the entire article.

Mr. Al-Munajid says the world is lost without Islam and proves it by contrasting the bathroom etiquette of Dar Al-Islam with us foul Western beasts.

Someone should really save us from ourselves.

Honestly, our customs may seem as bizarre to muslims as their’s seem to us. (For instance, Islamic teaching prohibits wiping one’s butt with a bone. For more on proper pooping, read here.)

But differences in opinion about how best to respond to the call of nature are hardly a good excuse for calling us barbarians and praying for our eventual demise.

If we were as prone to insult as the Muslim World, we might not find this funny. It is therefore fortunate for our white-bottomed cleric and those he represents that us Western beasts value liberty and tolerance so much.

Here is a video of a charming Swedish professor named Hans Rosling talking about the way the world is changing. Along with his jovial demeanor, he uses some really nifty software to make the statistics exciting and dramatic. At the end of his presentation, he also talks about the coming liberation of data, something that the software engineers of the world will play a large role in.

If only it were that easy. But you won’t read that headline in any newspaper. You won’t listen to the president address the nation about the coming conflict. We are not at war with Iran.

But we should be. Because Iran is at war with us. They kill our servicemen and women in Iraq by training and equipping terrorist organizations. They kill our servicemen and women in Afghanistan by training and equipping the Taliban. This aid and comfort is well-documented.

And yet we do nothing. We do nothing because we are not prepared for another war. Our will is gone. We are nearly broken. The unpleasantness of Iraq and Afghanistan has soured the taste of war. Right now, we are at war without feeling like we are at war. We may go about our day with never a thought of the fighting and dying. The war is far away. A war with Iran would change that. A war with Iran would hurt.

So while Iran fills graves in Arlington, we issue statements of concern and pledge to toughen our diplomatic stance. In our disquietude, we have even seen fit to label the Iranian military a terrorist organization. But we go no further.

Iran is taking full advantage of our unwillingness to begin another war. Their proxy agents in Iraq and Afghanistan are actively targeting U.S. soldiers. Hezbollah, which has close ties to Iran, is rearming for another war with Israel. More ominous still, the Iranian nuclear program has advanced to the level where weapons-grade plutonium is only a matter of time.

This is a problem. And, unfortunately, it is one of those rare problems that doesn’t get better by ignoring it, putting it off, or looking at it from the corner of one’s eye. Every day that a roadside bomb, made in and imported from Iran, finds its target on a street in Iraq, Iran is emboldened. Every step forward that the Iranian nuclear program takes is one more sign that we have already lost.

By supporting those who seek our deaths, Iran has committed acts of war against us. By pursuing nuclear weapons, Iran has shown itself to be truly dangerous. That we continue to pretend this is not so speaks to the insanity of the current situation. This problem will not go away. At some point in the future, we will have to deal with Iran. Therefore, in losing our taste for war, let us sincerely hope that we have yet retained a taste for survival.

UPDATE – August 19, 2007 5:00pm

From the AP today, a report (go here for excerpts) of 50 Revolutionary Guard troops in southern Iraq to train Shia militias.

[Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch] singled out the Shiite extremists as being behind rising attacks using armor-piercing explosively formed penetrators, or EFPs, which he said were largely assembled in Iraq from parts smuggled in from Iran. He also noted a marked increase in Iranian-rockets that have been increasingly effective against U.S. bases.

(Note: The effectiveness of rockets is a measure of their propensity to maim and kill.)

Iran denies the allegations and says it supports efforts to stop the violence.

This is a complete lie. Iran is taking every covert measure it can to destabilize the region. But it speaks these falsehoods because there are many in the West who desperately want to believe them. It’s the same denial strategy that North Korea used so effectively in forestalling action until they built their nukes.

Meanwhile, we pay for our inaction in lives.

A quote from the video:

We reject Sharia, totally. Not because it’s different, but because it’s barbaric. We once also employed mutilation and gruesome death in the name of religious justice. We called it the Inquisition.

That’s not even the best part! This British gentlemen turns on the words and pummels your brain with cool, clean, brilliant commentary on the Islamization of Europe. You don’t know how bad it already is, but he’ll tell you.