Dateline recently re-aired an episode called “Murder By the Sea.” I just got around to watching it on my DVR, and I can honestly say I have never seen a story about wrongful imprisonment where I was more convinced the inmate was innocent.

The gist of the story is that an American citizen, Eric Volz, was living in Nicaragua when his ex-girlfriend was brutally murdered. Eric claims (and has ten witnesses to support this) that he was two hours away when the murder took place. Although there is no physical evidence to tie him to the murder, and the prosecution’s only evidence is the testimony of an alcholic (who was granted immunity regarding the case in exchange for his testimony), Eric was found guilty. The Nicaraguan judge threw out the cell-phone records indicating he was in another town, threw out the testimony of his colleagues, and other evidence. Eric has two appeals pending. You can view the Dateline story here.

For more information, or to send Eric a message, go here.

Thanks to everyone who has donated money to help us ship packages to our troops serving in the Middle East! Any money we get through the end of this month is going into our “send the troops cool stuff” budget. If you’re interested in sending stuff to the troops yourself, check out the Books For Soldiers website.

Our latest care package is heading to a soldier stationed north of Baghdad. Aside from yummy snacks, he’s also getting a couple of magazines, season four DVDs of CSI, a couple of battery powered hand-held fans (w/ batteries of course) because it’s in the 110s over there during the day, and toys like a nerf football and an inflatable beach ball.

There are lots of good military blogs out there that reflect the sacrifices that our armed forces make when they are called to duty. One of my favorites is Chaplain Kline’s blog. He has some amazing pictures.

Anyway, here’s the PayPal link again:

Becky’s latest hobby — which I think is really cool — is sending letters, care packages and various requested items to American soldiers stationed overseas through BooksForSoldiers.com. We can’t afford to break the bank on this effort, but a lot of the stuff they want is surprisingly cheap (in some cases, they just want letters, even from strangers, which kinda breaks your heart), and it makes you feel good to actually “support the troops” in some tangible, even if very small, way.

It’s sometimes amusing, and sometimes heart-rending, to read the lists of things that soldiers are requesting. (You have to be an “Official BFS Volunteer” to view the troop requests; it’s free to join, but to become an official volunteer, you have to get the application notarized.)

For example, it’s kinda funny that some of these guys, after spending their “on duty” time fighting real-life insurgents with real-life weapons, want to spend their “off duty” time playing violent video games and shooting each other with squirt guns. Then again, it serves as a reminder that these are young people, mostly young men — barely older than boys, really — who have volunteered to put themselves in harm’s way, away from their families, in defense of the freedoms that so many of us take for granted (a noble decision whatever one thinks of their current mission). That fact hits home repeatedly when you read one request after another for video games, DVDs, and glossy magazines like Maxim.

On the tear-jerking front, your heart hurts when you read soldiers’ requests for gifts to send home to their children for birthdays they’re missing, or the request from an expectant father who wanted baby books so he could audio-record himself reading them aloud, then send the tapes to his wife so that she can play the recordings to her belly, allowing their unborn child to hear its daddy’s voice.

Anyway, I’d encourage anyone with a bit of free time to get involved with this. It gives you a warm fuzzy feeling to think you might be brightening somebody’s day “over there.” And if you don’t have the time or energy to send stuff yourself, but you still want to help in some way, make a donation via my PayPal link — I’ll put all PayPal contributions received for the remainder of this month into Becky’s send-stuff-to-the-soldiers fund. Here’s the link (it’s also in the left sidebar):

If we get some contributions, one of us will post updates so you’ll know what cool items your money bought for our troops.

P.S. Becky says I should point out that the requested items aren’t all just for the soldiers themselves. For instance, there are occasional requests for toys for Iraqi orphans, soccer balls for Iraqi Army trainees, etc.

From the good senator’s interview with Hugh Hewitt:

HH: Would you accept a place on a Giuliani, a Romney or a Thompson ticket if offered to you?

JL: No, I think I got that bug out of my system. But…the national bug, I mean. It’s nice of you to ask, and I don’t think any one of them in their right mind would ask me, but my wife will appreciate that you asked.

HH: Is that an unequivocal no, Senator?

JL: Yeah, that’s unequivocal. Actually, my wife probably would not appreciate that.

Of course, Hewitt only asked about “a Giuliani, a Romney or a Thompson ticket” — in other words, a Republican ticket. He didn’t ask about an independent McCain-Lieberman ticket, which would be the most obvious possibility, IMHO. (Though, as I mentioned previously, such a ticket presumably couldn’t win in the current political climate vis a vis Iraq, and would just serve to throw the election to the Democrats.)

P.S. Speaking of Lieberman… Sean Paul Kelley at The Agnoist thinks Lieberman’s “Sense of the Senate” resolution (PDF here) wagging the Senate’s collective finger at Iran — approved by a vote of 97-0 — opens the door for an Authorization of the Use of Military Force down the road. The amendment, as characterized by Kelley, basically says (not in so many words), “It is the sense of the senate that Iran is participating in acts of war against the United States.” Which seems to lend itself rather nicely to a rather powerful pro-war argument down the road: “How could you not support military action against a country committing acts of war against the United States?” (Hat tip: My Left Nutmeg.)

Personally, I doubt this vote will have any real effect on later debates. If going “on record” in such a way had the kind of rhetorical power envisioned by Kelley, nobody would be able to gripe about “Bush’s” rejection of the Kyoto Accords (which were rejected in principle on a 95-0 “Sense of the Senate” vote in 1997), nor about “Bush’s” decision to pursue regime change in Iraq (a policy explicitly endorsed in 1998 by a vote of 360-38 in the House and by unanimous consent in the Senate). Yet nobody seems to feel shamed by those votes, so I doubt they’ll feel shamed by this one. If war in Iran comes up for a vote, Democratic senators aren’t going to feel obligated to authorize it just because they voted for this unanimously approved legislative nullity.

Still, it’s an interesting development nonetheless. The storm clouds continue to gather, I fear.

On the twelfth of July as it yearly did come
Bob played on the flute to the sound of the drum
You can talk of your fiddles, your harp or your lute
But there’s nothing could sound like the Old Orange Flute.

Yes, it’s time again for good Orangemen everywhere to celebrate the bloody coup by King Billy glorious victory of Prince William of Orange over James II & his forces of Popish Jacobite tyranny at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. ;> (Seems like Only yesterday… :)

But today, a mere 317 years On ;>, there seems to be Real reason for hope that at last ~ at long last! ~ the ancient animosities are Finally beginning to fade (and God send that this hope be Realized). From the BBC, a short Two months ago (emphases added):

…There was talk of sunshine and showers - a forecast that does us perfectly well on nine days out of 10 in Ireland - but no mention, as there surely should have been, of hell freezing over.

For this was the day when Ian Paisley - custodian for 50 years or more of the loudhailer of Northern Irish Unionism - came to the site of the Battle of the Boyne as a guest of the Irish government.

…[Republic of Ireland Prime Minister Bertie Ahern] told the DUP leader: “As we work to build a shared future we are all coming to acknowledge that we have a shared and complex past… We owe it to the generations that preceded us, but most of all, we owe it to those who will follow.”

…[newly-inaugurated UK Province of Nothern Ireland First Minister Paisley] was in reflective mood himself - poetically evoking the manner in which the gentle countryside of [the Irishrepublican county] Meath has reclaimed the battleground.

As he put it: “Instead of reverberating to the roar of cannon fire and the charge of men, the shot of musket or the clash of sword steel, today we have the tranquillity of still water where we can contemplate the past and look forward to the future.”

Amen, amen, to both the Taoiseach and the First Minister. / And, God send that it be a future of Peace ~ spiced with a dash of peace’s flavourful companion, good Humour :) ~

There is still a touch of devilment about Ian Paisley though - even as an 80-year-old head of government.

He chose to present Mr Ahern with a musket as a gift - a rather handsome 350-year-old relic of the fighting - taking care to remind him that it had been recovered from the losing side.

And he even managed a jocular reference to the issue of disarmament which held up Ireland’s peace process for so long saying: “If you ever want to use it, remember you’ll have to see the decommissioning organisation.“

Now the Old Flute was doomed, and its fate was pathetic:
‘Twas fastened and burnt at the stake as heretic.
As the flames rose around it, you could hear a strange noise
‘Twas the Old Flute still a-whistlin’ “The Protestant Boys”.

A truly Happy Twelfth to one & All. :)

The New York Times reports:

White House officials fear that the last pillars of political support among Senate Republicans for President Bush’s Iraq strategy are collapsing around them, according to several administration officials and outsiders they are consulting. They say that inside the administration, debate is intensifying over whether Mr. Bush should try to prevent more defections by announcing his intention to begin a gradual withdrawal of American troops from the high-casualty neighborhoods of Baghdad and other cities.

Mr. Bush and his aides once thought they could wait to begin those discussions until after Sept. 15, when the top field commander and the new American ambassador to Baghdad are scheduled to report on the effectiveness of the troop increase that the president announced in January. But suddenly, some of Mr. Bush’s aides acknowledge, it appears that forces are combining against him just as the Senate prepares this week to begin what promises to be a contentious debate on the war’s future and financing.

Four more Republican senators have recently declared that they can no longer support Mr. Bush’s strategy, including senior lawmakers who until now had expressed their doubts only privately. As a result, some aides are now telling Mr. Bush that if he wants to forestall more defections, it would be wiser to announce plans for a far more narrowly defined mission for American troops that would allow for a staged pullback, a strategy that he rejected in December as a prescription for defeat when it was proposed by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group.

“When you count up the votes that we’ve lost and the votes we’re likely to lose over the next few weeks, it looks pretty grim,” said one senior official, who, like others involved in the discussions, would not speak on the record about internal White House deliberations. … “Sept. 15 now looks like an end point for the debate, not a starting point,” the official said. “Lots of people are concluding that the president has got to get out ahead of this train.” …

[However,] [t]he calendar may be working in Mr. Bush’s favor. If he can get through the next three weeks without more defections, Congress will recess until September, returning just as the report from Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker arrives in Washington.

Also, the Republican defectors have not agreed on what different strategy they would prescribe, giving the president some negotiating room. But Senator Lugar said yesterday on CNN that he would support a significant withdrawal that left “residual forces” in Iraq to ensure that “the whole area does not blow up.”

That approach would mean abandoning the current mission of using those forces to patrol Baghdad and try to reimpose order, which was Mr. Bush’s stated goal in January.

On a tangentially related note, antiwar demagogue Cindy Sheehan — whose retreat into private life lasted barely a month before she came “out of retirement” to “gather a people’s movement for humanity” in protest of “yet another Bush flagrant abuse of power” (the Libby commutation) — is now threatening to challenge Nancy Pelosi for her congressional seat “if Pelosi does not seek by July 23 to impeach Bush.” Sheehan would run as an independent. She told the AP: “Democrats and Americans feel betrayed by the Democratic leadership. We hired them to bring an end to the war. I’m not too far from San Francisco, so [moving to Pelosi’s district] wouldn’t be too big of a move for me. I would give her a run for her money.”

(Regular readers will recall that Cindy Sheehan bothers me.)

P.S. Seeing as how Sheehan has apparently joined the “post-partisanship” crowd with her conversion to being an independent: how does Bloomberg-Sheehan ‘08 sound? ;) Or better yet: Lieberman-Sheehan ‘08! Heh!

UPDATE: Here’s a helpful summary of the various Democratic proposals to push for an end to the war.

It’s 7/7/07, which means some superstitious folk are gambling or getting married — or better yet, doing both (in Vegas). Meanwhile, in Connecticut, one man is turning 77.

On a far more somber note, it’s the second anniversary of the 7/7 bombings in London.

What’s better than killing a high-ranking terrorist in Iraq? Killing him twice!

Confederate Yankee looks at the AP’s odd double standards when it comes to reporting on violence in Iraq. (Hat tip: InstaPundit.)

All joking aside, it really does seem that the recent terror plot in Britain was the attack of the killer doctors.

If this doesn’t drive a stake into the heart of the oft-repeated, repeatedly disproven mantra that terrorists are all “poor and desperate,” I don’t know what will.

If we adopt nationalized health care, the terrorists will win:

An Iraqi junior doctor and a brilliant neurologist working for the NHS are among the suspects being quizzed over the series of bomb attacks across Britain, it emerged today.

For those who don’t know, “NHS” refers not to Newington High School, my alma mater, but to the National Health Service, Britain’s much-maligned, Michael Moore-endorsed public health-care system. Which, we now learn, breeds terrorists. So, y’see? HILLARYCARE = TERRORISM. Now there’s a bumper sticker for you. ;)

The U.K.’s Evening Standard reports:

Anti-terrorist detectives swooped on five members of the gang across Britain after gathering crucial clues from phones found in the two London car bombs.

The phones were meant to trigger a blast when they were called. The bombers twice called the car outside the Tiger Tiger nightclub in Haymarket, and the one in Cockspur Street four times, but the bombs failed to detonate for technical reasons.

“Technical reasons,” eh? Wouldn’t it be great if it turned out the terrorists were trying to set off the bombs with newly purchased iPhones, but failed because they couldn’t activate them? ;)

Remember when I demonstrated the laziness and gullibility of some journalists by showing that a Procter & Gamble front group, posing as an independent research “foundation,” had repeatedly hoodwinked major news outlets into running bogus stories about a “new” “scientific” “study” showing that redheads are going extinct — and the reporters didn’t catch it, even though the “new” study had been described in virtually identical terms (presumably copied from press releases) by media reports in January 2007, November 2006, March 2006, May 2005, August 2004, March 2004 and November 2003?

Well, it seems the same thing can happen with more significant news stories, like bogus reports of decapitated bodies in Iraq. On three separate occasions now, major media outlets (specifically, the AP, Reuters and the New York Times) have credulously parroted thinly sourced reports of gruesome mass beheadings near Baghdad, only to learn that nothing of the sort occurred. It’s a blatant propaganda effort by extremists hoping to incite more sectarian violence, and the MSM is falling for it — hook, line and sinker. Repeatedly.

Reporting from a war zone is hard, as NBC’s Karl Bostic noted in his blog post about the second of the three “bogus bodies” incidents last year. No question about that. And there’s lots of gruesome violence in Iraq these days, so reports of mass beheadings aren’t inherently unbelievable. But neither of those realities make it excusable to pass off unconfirmed urban legends and/or insurgent propaganda as news, especially when the very same reporters would doubtless cringe at the thought of treating their own government’s official statements with anything other than a healthy dose of skepticism. As well they should — but healthy skepticism (not to be confused with cynicism, of course) should apply to all sources of information, not just the ones associated with the Bush Administration.

Independent confirmation: learn it, live it, love it.

Another attempted terror attack in the United Kingdom? Apparently so, but it doesn’t seem to have done much damage, heavens be praised:

GLASGOW, Scotland (AP) - Two men rammed a flaming sport utility vehicle into the main terminal of Glasgow airport Saturday, crashing into the glass doors at the entrance and sparking a fire, witnesses said. Police said two suspects were arrested.

The airport - Scotland’s largest - was evacuated and all flights suspended, a day after British police thwarted a plot to bomb central London, discovering two cars abandoned with loads of gasoline, gas canisters and nails. …

In Glasgow, the green SUV barreled toward the building at full speed shortly after 3 p.m., hitting security barriers before crashing into the glass doors and exploding, witnesses said. Two men jumped out of the burning vehicle, one of them engulfed in flames, they said.

“The car came speeding past at about 30 mph. It was approaching the building quickly,” said Scott Leeson, who was nearby at the time. “Then the driver swerved the car around so he could ram straight in to the door. He must have been trying to smash straight through.” …

Passengers fled running and screaming from the busy terminal, Margaret Hughes told the British Broadcasting Corp. … Police said it was unclear if anyone was injured. ….

Leeson said bollards - security posts outside the entrance - stopped the driver from barreling into the bustling terminal at Glasgow’s airport.

“He’s trying to get through the main door frame but the bollards have stopped him from going through. If he’d got through, he’d have killed hundreds, obviously,” he said.

Leeson said only the nose of the vehicle made it inside the building. Richard Grey told the BBC that the vehicle was lodged into the center of the terminal’s main entrance.

“The jeep is completely on fire and it exploded not long after. It exploded at the entrance to the terminal,” witness Stephen Clarkson told the BBC. “It may have been an explosion of petrol in the tank because it was not a massive explosion.”

More here and here.

UPDATE:

British authorities raised that nation’s threat level to “critical” today following a vehicle attack on a passenger terminal at Glasgow airport in Scotland, British authorities said.

The last time the threat level was raised to critical in the United Kingdom was last August after a liquid bomb plot was foiled.

Subsequently the threat level had been reduced to severe where it remained until today.

Although the threat level “critical” is meant to indicate an attack is imminent, in practice the British appear to have reserved its use for after an attack or attempted attack has already occurred and a follow-up attack is imminent.

Yikes:

LONDON (AP) - Police thwarted an apparent terror attack Friday near Piccadilly Circus, defusing an explosive car loaded with gas cylinders, nails and a detonator after an ambulance crew reported seeing smoke coming from the vehicle.

The explosives were powerful enough to have caused “significant injury or loss of life” - possibly killing hundreds in an area famed for its nightlife, British anti-terror police chief Peter Clarke said.

The ambulance crew was there “responding to a call just before 1:30 a.m. about an injury at a nearby nightclub” when they noticed the smoke coming from the car. Whoever caused that injury may have saved a lot of lives!

P.S. According to the BBC, “Police sources say it is quite possible the device failed to ignite - and might have been minutes away from exploding.”

Roundup of links here.