U.S. Wins

A team of three U.S. students won the seventh National Geographic World Championship, the National Geographic Society announced on Friday.

Whew

Reuters reports that a group created by the United Nations to figure out how best to manage the Internet has been unable to agree on who should do the job -- or even how it should be done.

Whew.

Read the full story here.

Facts Do Matter

Wow, take a look at The OpinionJournal's Best of the Web Today - July 15, 2005 By JAMES TARANTO. Taranto provides some balance to both right and left concerning the Karl Rove ordeal.

Since many of you say that you do not follow the links I provide, here is his post entitled, An Innocent Man:

Let's conduct a little thought experiment, shall we? Suppose that people in Washington generally had the sense that Karl Rove was soon to be indicted in the Valerie Plame kerfuffle. How would they react?

It seems to us the White House would be working to distance itself from Rove, possibly planning for him to make a quiet exit, much as John Kerry's campaign "disappeared" Joe Wilson last summer when Wilson's credibility fell apart. The Democrats, on the other hand, would act high-minded and talk of "letting the process work," at least as long as Rove remained on the job. An actual indictment, after all, would do maximal political damage to the Bush administration.

Instead, the White House (which knows a lot more about the investigation than any of us) is confidently standing behind Rove, while the Democrats are waging a hysterical attack that would be premature if it were based on anything real. Partisan Democrats don't want to talk about the facts of the case (facts are irrelevant, as a former Enron adviser insists) or about the law. They just want to pound the table and insist that Rove is metaphysically guilty.

Here at Best of the Web Today, facts do matter, so let's look at the latest to emerge on the Plame kerfuffle:

The New York Times, the Washington Post and the Associated Press all report that, as the AP puts it, Rove "originally learned about the operative [Plame] from the news media and not government sources, according to a person briefed on the testimony," apparently a lawyer friendly to the White House. According to the Times account, Rove was the second source for Bob Novak's column identifying Plame's role in arranging Wilson's trip to Niger:

Mr. Rove has told investigators that he learned from the columnist the name of the C.I.A. officer, who was referred to by her maiden name, Valerie Plame, and the circumstances in which her husband, former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, traveled to Africa to investigate possible uranium sales to Iraq, the person said.
After hearing Mr. Novak's account, the person who has been briefed on the matter said, Mr. Rove told the columnist: "I heard that, too." . . .

On Oct. 1, 2003, Mr. Novak wrote another column in which he described calling two officials who were his sources for the earlier column. The first source, whose identity has not been revealed, provided the outlines of the story and was described by Mr. Novak as "no partisan gunslinger." Mr. Novak wrote that when he called a second official for confirmation, the source said, "Oh, you know about it."

That second source was Mr. Rove, the person briefed on the matter said.
If this account is accurate, then Rove simply confirmed a fact that was already in circulation. He no more "outed" Plame than Wilson did when he peddled his "outing" allegation to various left-wing journalists after Novak's column ran.
Meanwhile, the Washington Times quotes an erstwhile colleague of Plame's who casts further doubt on the Democratic narrative:

A former CIA covert agent who supervised Mrs. Plame early in her career yesterday took issue with her identification as an "undercover agent," saying that she worked for more than five years at the agency's headquarters in Langley and that most of her neighbors and friends knew that she was a CIA employee.
"She made no bones about the fact that she was an agency employee and her husband was a diplomat," Fred Rustmann, a covert agent from 1966 to 1990, told The Washington Times.

"Her neighbors knew this, her friends knew this, his friends knew this. A lot of blame could be put on to central cover staff and the agency because they weren't minding the store here. . . . The agency never changed her cover status."
Mr. Rustmann, who spent 20 of his 24 years in the agency under "nonofficial cover"--also known as a NOC, the same status as the wife of Mr. Wilson--also said that she worked under extremely light cover.

In addition, Mrs. Plame hadn't been out as an NOC since 1997, when she returned from her last assignment, married Mr. Wilson and had twins, USA Today reported yesterday.

In an interview with CNN yesterday, Wilson acknowledged, "My wife was not a clandestine officer the day that Bob Novak blew her identity," though he refused to say anything about her career before that day. As we noted yesterday, though, the source for that USA Today report was none other than Wilson himself, in his book, which apparently no one bothered to read until now.

Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

From Coast to Coast

The NY Times
Evangelicals Are a Growing Force in the Military Chaplain Corps

The LA Times
Enforce Immigration Law, or Change It? Answer May Be Both

Chicago Sun-Times
State says fire official drank on job

The Christian Science Monitor
Where L.A. riots flared, a housing boom

Discovery Crew Raring to Go

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Come on Ron

Ron Reagan Jr. embarrassed himself in a big way while debating Christopher Hitchens on terrorism. I find that this exchange demonstrates what many people feel, and that is that most people simply do not know the facts. Rather, it is easier to repeat what they have read or heard without really knowing the veracity of the statement.

Here is a snippet from Hugh Hewitt's blog.

CH: Do you know nothing about the subject at all? Do you wonder how Mr. Zarqawi got there under the rule of Saddam Hussein? Have you ever heard of Abu Nidal?

RR: Well, I'm following the lead of the 9/11 Commission, which...

CH: Have you ever heard of Abu Nidal, the most wanted man in the world, who was sheltered in Baghdad? The man who pushed Leon Klinghoffer off the boat, was sheltered by Saddam Hussein. The man who blew up the World Trade Center in 1993 was sheltered by Saddam Hussein, and you have the nerve to say that terrorism is caused by resisting it? And by deposing governments that endorse it? ... At this state, after what happened in London yesterday?...

RR: Zarqawi is not an envoy of Saddam Hussein, either.

CH: Excuse me. When I went to interview Abu Nidal, then the most wanted terrorist in the world, in Baghdad, he was operating out of an Iraqi government office. He was an arm of the Iraqi State, while being the most wanted man in the world. The same is true of the shelter and safe house offered by the Iraqi government, to the murderers of Leon Klinghoffer, and to Mr. Yassin, who mixed the chemicals for the World Trade Center bombing in 1993. How can you know so little about this, and be occupying a chair at the time that you do?

Read the whole thing at Radioblogger.

Take Control

Well, it probably sounds a little weird but I have been thinking a lot concerning age and feeling good. I resigned years ago to accept aging for what it is, but we all know the simple way to stay healthy: Eat right and Exercise!

Take a look at this and this.

Take control friends.

Suspended?

Image Credit: Newscom.com

As you may know by now the kid that created the Sasser Worm was "Convicted."

The AP reports that, "Sven Jaschan, 19 years old, was found guilty of computer sabotage and illegally altering data, said Katharina Kruetzfeld, a spokeswoman for the court in the northwestern town of Verden. He was given a suspended sentence of one year and nine months...Sasser caused infected computers to crash and reboot, making it impossible to work on them. The worm snarled tens of thousands of computers and caused Internet traffic to slow."

Does the punishment fit the crime?

More Evidence Points to Rove

The disclosure of a CIA covert operative's identity 2 years ago is looking more and more like Carl Rove might be the source. Dan Balz of the Washington Post reports that,

"More evidence points to Rove as the source (Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper) was seeking to protect -- although what information was provided is not clear. Rove and Cooper spoke once before the Novak column was available, but the interview did not involve the Iraq controversy, according to a person close to the investigation who declined to be identified to be able to share more details about the case."

Read the full story here.

Shock, Confusion in Dumbstruck London

Jerry Brown

Former California Governor, Jerry Brown, has an interesting post today concerning "our national policy of neglect at home in favor of over-extension abroad." Read the full post here.

July 4, 1776

Freedom is a Fragile Thing

If you have not read, The Declaration of Independence, in awhile I recommend that you take a few moments to reflect on the words that expressed the yearning for liberty.

"Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people. Those who have known freedom, and then lost it, have never known it again." Ronald Reagan

Find What You Love

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become." Steve Jobs

Ok, I admit I'm a Steve Jobs fan. Here are his thoughts providing insight into what makes life important. This speech was given at Stanford University on June 12th.