Right Wing Nut House

I have purged my IP Deny list from my Wordpress C-Panel thus granting access to the 27 IP’s that I have banned in the last two years.

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The rules for commenting are simple and ruthlessly enforced:

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3. No insulting the host. Period.

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Comment violators will be given a warning or, if the transgression is egregious enough, banned from commenting outright.

None of the above rules apply to me. If you don’t like it, start your own blog and then you can make your own rules.

This is one of those stories that, if you’re a science buff whose enthusiasm far outstrips your actual knowledge of the subject matter, makes the hairs on the back of your head stand up and goose pimples appear.

Apparently, one of the great mysteries of the universe is being unravelled as I write this - and in spectacular fashion:

One of the greatest mysteries of the universe is about to be unravelled with the first detailed, three-dimensional map of dark matter - the invisible material that makes up most of the cosmos.

Astronomers announced yesterday that they have achieved the apparently impossible task of creating a picture of something that has defied every attempt to detect it since its existence was first postulated in 1933.

Scientists have known for many years that there is more to the universe than can be seen or detected through their telescopes but it is only now that they have been able to capture the first significant 3D-image of this otherwise invisible material.

Unlike the ordinary matter of the planets, stars and galaxies, which can be seen through telescopes or detected by scientific instruments, nobody has seen dark matter or knows what it is made of, though calculations suggest that it is at least six times bigger than the rest of the visible universe combined.

The significance of this is absolutely startling. And like all other scientific discoveries I’ve tried to understand over the years there is a terrific detective story at the heart of it - a story that reveals the best of who we are as a species as individual scientists, struggling to understand what was previously unknowable, shine a light into the darkest places of the mind to illuminate the fundamental mysteries of the universe.

The search for dark matter began in earnest once scientists realized that all the matter in the “visible” universe - including objects and phenomena not only open to study in the range of visible light but also x-rays, gamma rays, radio waves the infrared and ultraviolet spectrums - made up only a small portion of the mass of the universe. Something else was there - something exotic and mysterious. It’s existence was inferred in a variety of way but most importantly, by a phenomena known as “gravitational lensing.” Basically, this effect is achieved as very, very distant light is “bent” when it passes through a large astronomical body like a galaxy or a cluster of galaxies. The image behind these bodies appears much bigger and a variety of observations can be made that led scientists to the belief that the visible matter in the lensed object couldn’t account for all the “bending” in the light. Something else was at work, something unseen.

Using the Hubble Space Telescope and a bit of creative thinking, scientists have actually been able to “map” an area of space and image dark matter:

A team of 70 astronomers from Europe, America and Japan used the Hubble space telescope to build up a picture of dark matter in a vast region of space where some of the galaxies date back to half the age of the universe - nearly 7 billion years.

They used a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing, first predicted by Albert Einstein, to investigate an area of the sky nine times the size of a full moon. Gravitational lensing occurs when light from distant galaxies is bent by the gravitational influence of any matter that it passes on its journey through space.

The scientists were able to exploit the technique by collecting the distorted light from half a million faraway galaxies to reconstruct some of the missing mass of the universe which is otherwise invisible to conventional telescopes.

“We have, for the first time, mapped the large-scale distribution of dark matter in the universe,” said Richard Massey of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, one of the lead scientists in the team. “Dark matter is a mysterious and invisible form of matter, about which we know very little, yet it dominates the mass of the universe.”

And in what surely must be considered a moment of triumph for cosmologists, this study’s observations have confirmed the theoretical - a red letter day in any theoretician’s life:

One of the most important discoveries to emerge from the study is that dark matter appears to form an invisible scaffold or skeleton around which the visible universe has formed.

Although cosmologists have theorised that this would be the case, the findings are dramatic proof that their calculations are correct and that, without dark matter, the known universe that we can see would not be able to exist.

“A filamentary web of dark matter is threaded through the entire universe, and acts as scaffolding within which the ordinary matter - including stars, galaxies and planets - can later be built,” Dr Massey said. “The most surprising aspect of our map is how unsurprising it is. Overall, we seem to understand really well what happens during the formation of structure and the evolution of the universe,” he said.

Now the challenge will be to figure out what dark matter is made of. Already, these observations are being put to good use:

“Now that we have begun to map out where dark matter is, the next challenge is to determine what it is, and specifically its relationship to normal matter,” Dr Massey said. “We have answered the first question about where the dark matter it, but the ultimate goal will be to determine what it is.”

Various experiments on Earth are under way to try to find out what dark matter is made of. One theory is that it is composed of mysterious sub-atomic particles that are difficult to detect because they do not interact with ordinary matter and so cannot be picked up and identified by conventional scientific instruments. Comparing the maps of visible matter and dark matter have already pointed to anomalies that could prove critical to the understanding of what constitutes dark matter.

If the past is any guide, what we find will elicit more goose bumps as discovery by discovery, the universe gives up her secrets to the inquisitive minds of scientists.

I have always found it laughable that there exists a school of thought that mankind’s greatest achievements were actually the result of intervention by aliens from another civilization. The pyramids, the Nazca lines, even Stonehenge, according to this “theory,” were all built by aliens because we humans just aren’t clever enough to have done it ourselves.

Discoveries like this prove that the alien hunters consistently sell our species short. We have in the past and will continue in the future, to use our minds and imaginations to the utmost to solve the riddles of our existence - without the help of anyone else.

I haven’t written anything about Iraq recently and there’s a reason for it; I’m waiting until we hear from the only guy who counts - the Commander in Chief.

Bush is set to unveil his proposals to improve the situation in Iraq on Wednesday night. I will say this; it’s about damn time. The current uptick in violence started at the beginning of last summer and by August, we had begun transferring more troops to Baghdad to deal with it.

In September, the Iraqis and our military came up with another plan to deal with the sectarian killings because the one we had drawn up in August not only wasn’t working but wasn’t being implemented thanks to the refusal of some Iraqi army units to deploy to Baghdad. Out of 3,000 troops promised to assist Americans in their “sweep, clear, and hold” operations, only 1200 had deployed. Meanwhile, the President, fearful that any change in plan would be seen as a political downer, let things simmer in Iraq as the number of deaths skyrocketed.

After the election, the idea was that the Administration would wait for the recommendations from the Iraq Study Group to change policy. Once it became clear that the ISG was not the answer (except, perhaps for Syrians and the Iranians), only then did the President initiate this in-house review - about 6 months too late in my opinion.

But better late than never. And amidst all the talk of surges and jobs programs, I have yet to hear much about the political initiatives that we need from the Iraqis that should go hand in hand with any surge in troops. For in the end, it is only at the conference table that the various factions in Iraq will find peace - not using the barrel of a gun.

So I have taken a wait and see attitude regarding what the President will do. Couple that with the track record of most major media when it comes to these leaks actually reflecting the President’s thinking rather than one faction or another playing cheerleader by publishing recommendations they want to see included, I’ll keep my powder dry and hold off on commenting until the CIC speaks.

Have I lost faith in Bush? The answer, I’m afraid, is yes. It will take a jaw dropping speech along with imaginative and realistic ideas on how to tamp down the violence for me to believe that the Administration has a clue on how to save the situation from getting even worse much less making a start toward healing Iraqi society.

I’ll have much more to say in the days and weeks following the President’s speech. I hope that we can have a civil debate on those proposals here without having the conversation degenerating into conspiracy mongering or name calling.

Somehow…I’m not optimistic about that last part.

I can’t begin to tell you all how overwhelmed with gratitude I am for the support so many of you have shown by donating to this website.

The response was astounding. I honestly didn’t know what to expect when I asked for donations. The dozens of you who responded so generously have allowed me a little breathing room in the bills department while building up some funds for the redesign of the site that I am planning for later this summer.

I have emailed my thanks to many of you and will try to send out more today. If I miss you somehow, please accept my personal thanks for showing your support.

NOTE: This post will stay on top until Sunday evening.

UPDATE: 1/4

I have received a couple of emails complaining that the original post was too long and that I should stick to the matter at hand - asking for contributions - rather than going off on personal tangents.

In light of this excellent advice, this post will contain only the portion where I ask for funds. If you are interested in some of the blog’s highlights and my New Years Resolutions, you can go here for that info.

***********************************************************

Now to the purpose of this post - my bi-annual request for funds.

I realize that many of you generously gave when I had the “Bleg Blitz” last September - a 12 hour fund raising effort that solved an emergency need for cash when Sue’s granddaughter was born and she had to leave work to take care of her daughter in law for 10 days. For those who opened their wallets back then, I would like to again say “thank you” and please do not feel obligated to donate again.

This bleg will be more traditional. I have placed two buttons below; one connects to Amazon.com and the other to Paypal. Any amount you can give will be greatly appreciated.

I have written before of our rather modest lifestyle so your contribution will go largely to easing our monthly distress of stretching our dollars to make ends meet. If I ever get enough ahead, I plan on redesigning the blog - but so far, that just hasn’t been in the cards.

So if you like what you read here - or if I challenge your assumptions, pique your curiosity, raise your blood pressure, or make you giggle a little - I would be forever grateful of you were to contribute.

Thank you.

Rick Moran
Proprietor

There is hardly anyone at The Huffington Post who is more consistently idiotic in their commentary than Cenk Uygur - although noted political and foreign policy expert Deepak Chopra can be equally oblivious at times. The self loving self-help guru can usually be relied upon to supply equal dollops of idiocy and sanctimony while doing his best to obscure even the simplest moral questions with a heaping of platitudinous nonsense and New Age hooey.

But Uygur’s venomous rants are a cut above the normal lefty fare due to a curious lack of restraint in showing the world how ignorant he is. He revels in sophistry. He glories in irrationality. He bathes in puerility.

And the irony is, he believes he is either being clever or, in the case of this post on the startling news that Israel may use tactical nuclear weapons to destroy the Iranian nuclear program, ponderously portentous:

If Iran is at best two years away from developing a nuclear weapon and they say they have no intention of even building one, let alone using it against anybody and Israel says they are planning to use one against Iran, shouldn’t we be considering preemptive military action against Israel instead?

We claim that we care about non-proliferation. We claim that we care about the use of weapons of mass destruction. Then shouldn’t our top priority be to stop Israel?

Or could it be that we are wildly hypocritical and don’t give a damn about weapons of mass destruction as long as it is our friends who use them? Remember we didn’t mind at all when Saddam Hussein used WMD against Iran, because at the time he was on our side.

Absolutely, Cenk. I think we should believe everything the leaders of Iran say. So when they tell us they have no intention of building nukes, why not take the nutcases at their word?

And when Ahmadinejad says that he wants to “wipe Israel off the map” I’m sure he means that he only wants the cartographers of the world to use a little White-Out right where the Jewish state is penciled in. Maybe we’ll just leave that part of the map blank. We could fill it in later, perhaps after we find another democracy in the Middle East who has supported our interests and stood steadfastly by our side for 60 years. Shouldn’t be too difficult. Maybe we could get Deepak thinking about the problem.

Actually, Mr. Uygur makes a valid point about our support for Saddam in the 1980’s - if we lived in a vacuum or, like Mr. Uygur, ignored context and history for the sake of a little gratuitous American bashing. But then, the rest of us don’t live in a vacuum and recognize our tilt toward Saddam was “reality based” foreign policy - that a strong Sunni-led state in opposition to the Shia fanatics in Tehran (real gimlet eyed fanatics and not the laughable liberal definition of the weird but relatively harmless Christians who pop up now and again in the Bush Administration) was a strategic necessity.

No matter. It is Uygur’s eye popping notion that it is hypocritical to support your friends and oppose your enemies that has us scratching our heads in perplexity. Israel has been saying for nearly two years that Iran is close to building a nuclear weapon. Just a few weeks ago, Ahmadinejad proudly announced that the Iranians were going to start operating 3,000 centrifuges at their hardened site near Natanz in order to enrich uranium - progress towards construction of a nuclear weapon far in advance of our own CIA’s estimate that they mullahs were a decade away from building a bomb.

The practical result is mathematical; add Ahamdinejad’s flowery rhetoric about annihilating the Jewish state to nuclear technology and you get a threat unlike any that has confronted Israel in its history. And since the Iranians have buried their illegal program under a mountain of concrete and rock, it would appear that there is only one way for Israel to combat this threat; its own use of nuclear weapons.

Or, they could as most of the left would advocate, wait until they are hit with a nuclear weapon and then respond. Except in Israel’s case, there wouldn’t be much of a country left for anyone to worry about. Slightly larger than the state of New Jersey, one nuclear weapon detonated on their soil would, for all intents and purposes “wipe Israel off the map.” Perhaps Uygur thinks this would be an excellent jobs program. Think of all the out of work cartographers who would find employment rewriting the geography texts of the world.

What makes this screed by Uygur so ignorant is not his disapproval of Israel using nukes. It is his simple minded and naive posturing that actually places the Iranians in the morally ascendant position:

I don’t know why Israel is threatening to do this, whether it’s to get us to start a war with Iran instead (how does it make it better for us if we fight Israel’s irrational war for it) or to scare Iran into cooperating or because they’re actually going to do it. But it’s madness all the same.

Even threatening to use nuclear weapons against another sovereign country is a complete abdication of the moral high ground. Then you have absolutely no right to complain about the idea that Iran might use them at a later time. You are, in essence, saying it is perfectly acceptable to use them.

If Israel actually goes through with this, they will be an international pariah and they should no longer be considered an ally. There is no legitimate excuse to do a nuclear first strike.

This isn’t even about Israel’s concern that Iran would ever use their non-existent nuclear weapons. They know that even Iran isn’t crazy enough to risk the lives of every one of their citizens by dropping a nuclear bomb on Israel - and that would clearly be the retaliation they would face.

Instead, this is about Iran gaining bargaining leverage in the Middle East. If Israel is willing to nuke a country to make sure they don’t have slightly better leverage in the region, then their government is far more hideous than I think (I assume and hope that the government considering this barbaric idea doesn’t truly represent the will of the Israeli people).

It apparently hasn’t entered Uygur’s head that Israel would take this drastic action because it felt threatened. Instead, we are treated to the juvenile explanation that Ohlmert wants to goose the Americans into doing Israel’s dirty work for them - the Jewish conspiracy at work! And the idea that the mullahs would embrace a MAD (mutually assured destruction) doctrine has yet to be proved. In fact, given the mystical Mr. Ahmadinejad and his kooky belief in the imminent return of the 12th Imam, there is every reason to believe that if the Iranian President thought that nuking Israel would hasten the little guy’s comeback tour, he’d light the fuse himself.

And how about Uygur’s breathtaking naivete about Iran’s nuclear program? Even the simpering sot of a nuclear watchdog Muhammad ElBaradei believes Iran is close to producing a bomb. The only thing “non-existent” about the Iranian nuclear program is an ability by Uygur and the left to plug the holes in their heads where gray matter is leaking copiously. That’s the only explanation I can think of for why there is this childlike faith that when the theocrats tell us they only want to use their enrichment facilities for peaceful purposes that people like Uygur take them at their word.

Finally, I must commend Mr. Uygur for his perspicacity in gleaning the real meaning behind this Israeli threat. (Note: What Mr. Uygur makes of the Iranian threats to destroy the Jewish state, he doesn’t say. Perhaps, like Neville Chamberlain, Uygur thinks that Ahmadinejad’s shtick is for domestic consumption. Or, more likely, he doesn’t think about it at all.) To posit the notion that Israel will risk world war because they’re jealous of Iran’s “bargaining leverage, whatever that means, is daffy. Is Uygur saying that Iran’s “leverage” will improve if they get nukes? I’d say that’s a great big affirmative. And, of course, that leverage could end up levering the Israelis into the sea.

Uygur displays a towering ignorance and breathtaking myopia about Iran, about Israel, and about the existential threat that the mullahs pose to the Jewish state. This is not surprising, given he regularly displays those qualities when it comes to American security issues.

Word out of Israel this morning that Israel is denying that they are training to use tactical nukes against Iran. What else could they say? I wonder if Uygur believes them? After all, he accepts the word of the Iranians at face value that they’re not interested in building nukes. And they’re the enemy. What are the chances that Uygur would accept the word of an ally?

My post yesterday taking lefty bloggers to task for their gloating over AP confirming the existence of Jamil Hussein generated some comments that were, to put it mildly, revealing.

Ed, a frequent commenter on this site, spoke for those who see any attempt to discredit AP by questioning either the existence of their sources or the veracity of their information as disingenuousness by the right:

You really didn’t read the ‘Jamilgate’ blogs if you interpreted the attacks on the AP as anything other than just another attempt to intimidate the liberal MSM because they were reporting things that partisans didn’t want to hear. It wasn’t that there were inaccuracies, it was that inaccuracies could be used to discredit the AP’s overall coverage of the war. And yes, that is meant to insinuate that things would be different if people knew the “real” story.

So yes, a little crow-eating might be in order.

First, the idea that any blogger or group of bloggers could “influence coverage” by AP or any other major news outlet to the extent that they become war boosters is absurd. But if Ed means that we wish to influence the editorial coverage so that “fake but accurate” is not used as a matter of course in reporting on the war, he is absolutely correct.

In fact, this seems to be the de facto position of many commenters from that post; that it really doesn’t matter if 6 Sunnis were burned alive or not. It doesn’t matter if 4 mosques were destroyed or not. It doesn’t matter if any violent incident Jamil Hussein has been a confirming source for over the last 10 months actually occurred or not. The fact that Iraq is in chaos is what is important and that an inaccuracy here or a piece of enemy propaganda there is not going to change that overarching fact one bit.

Challenge them on that point and, like Ed, they change the subject to pre-war intel - as if there was even the slightest comparison between “news” in the form of intelligence analysis that was never meant to see the light of day (the information was leaked in violation of the law) and stories written for publication by AP or any other news organization.

And lest you think that I’m misstating or exaggerating the point about “fake but accurate,” here’s a follow up comment by Ed (an intelligent guy who contributes to reasoned debate on this site):

The major news from Iraq is and has been for a long time:

What other news are we missing, exactly? Perhaps you think our “rebuilding efforts” are more important news that the three points above that is what is usually referred to as the missing news from Iraq)?

The news that we’re “missing” from Iraq is of the factual variety - a point highlighted not only by the burning Sunni story but by many other stories commented on by this site and others.

As an example, there was the reporting on the Haditha massacre. Leaving aside the army investigation for a moment, the news stories that were written about that incident were wildly different and varied enormously. Here’s what I wrote when the story of the massacre first came to light:

While it is not unusual for small details to be lost or found in different translations, these discrepancies are huge, up to and including one 12 year old girl (or 13 or 15 depending on which report you are reading) being in different houses, being shielded from the wrath of the Americans by 3 different family members, and telling completely different and ever more bloodcurdling details of how the Marines killed her family.

Then there is the weird case of Aws Fahmi. In an AP report, he is reported to have been a victim of the massacre, left to bleed in the street after being shot by the Americans. But the Washington Post story in which several eyewitnesses are interviewed, features Mr. Fahmi’s testimony prominently and in which the “victim” has morphed into an eyewitness, viewing the events from his house with no mention of his being shot and left to bleed to death in the street.

I want to be extremely careful here because there may be other, more mundane explanations for the discrepancies in eyewitness accounts than what appears on the surface to be a coordinated disinformation campaign by the insurgents that has taken in reporters for AP, Reuters, and Time Magazine to name a few.

I feel constrained again to point out that there is no more difficult job than reporting from a war zone. Whom to believe? Whom to trust? Individual reporters, guided only by their personal code of ethics and common sense, have to sort out the facts from the confusion, the terror, the grief, and the hate that contributes to discrepancies in eyewitness reports in a battle zone.

But the Jamil Hussein story is different. Here is someone who, although not an authorized spokesman for the Iraqi government, has been used as a sole source on dozens of stories involving the worst of the war’s violence; sectarian massacres, blood curdling murders, and police or army collusion in the violence. And questioning the judgement of the stable of AP reporters in Iraq who have used Hussein as a sole source these many months - despite his distance from most of the incidents among other problems - would seem to me to be a reasonable and responsible way to hold AP to standards they themselves have set.

As for Hussein being in danger as a result of bloggers trying to find him, I find this incredible. AP didn’t use him as an anonymous source or try to hide his identity. They gave his name and location in any number of stories. Dan Riehl:

For Carroll’s assertion that Hussein is in danger one must assume that there is an element of the Iraqi government that would harm him for having been a primary source for the story. The other initial source, Imad al-Hashimi, retracted his statements after a visit from the Iraqi Defense Ministry.

Without arguing that first point, one need only answer two simple questions to reach the conclusion that the blog coverage of this incident would be more to Hussein’s benefit, than harm. Assuming he was in danger for being an AP named source, which is more likely: that these assumed to be dangerous elements of the Iraqi government would quietly take out an individual after the drive by media was long gone and onto another story? or that they would be reluctant to do so because blogger coverage has kept the issue and Jamil Hussein’s name in the news?

Some bloggers are still questioning whether or not Hussein exists, that until AP produces the police captain in the flesh, there will be a question. I am satisfied Hussein is a real person and works as a police captain in Baghdad. What I am not satisfied with is whether the information he has been feeding AP is factual or not. And until AP deals forthrightly with questions about the accuracy of Hussein and other sources, all the gloating in the world won’t change the fact that AP has a credibility problem.

Her name is Ashley. She’s 9 years old and weighs only 90 pounds. Her parents, hoping to keep their severely disabled “pillow angel” tiny so that it is easier to care for her, elected to have radical surgery performed that will stunt Ashley’s growth and prevent her from reaching a normal puberty:

In a case fraught with ethical questions, the parents of a severely mentally and physically disabled child have stunted her growth to keep their little “pillow angel” a manageable and more portable size.

The bedridden 9-year-old girl had her uterus and breast tissue removed at a Seattle hospital and received large doses of hormones to halt her growth. She is now 4-foot-5; her parents say she would otherwise probably reach a normal 5-foot-6.

The case has captured attention nationwide and abroad via the Internet, with some decrying the parents’ actions as perverse and akin to eugenics. Some ethicists question the parents’ claim that the drastic treatment will benefit their daughter and allow them to continue caring for her at home.

University of Pennsylvania ethicist Art Caplan said the case is troubling and reflects “slippery slope” thinking among parents who believe “the way to deal with my kid with permanent behavioral problems is to put them into permanent childhood.”

Not all doctors and ethicists agree:

Dr. Douglas Diekema, an ethicist at Children’s Hospital and Regional Medical Center in Seattle, where Ashley was treated, said he met with the parents and became convinced they were motivated by love and the girl’s best interests.

Diekema said he was mainly concerned with making sure the little girl would actually benefit and not suffer any harm from the treatment. She did not, and is doing well, he said.

“The more her parents can be touching her and caring for her … and involving her in family activities, the better for her,” he said. “The parents’ argument was, `If she’s smaller and lighter, we will be able to do that for a longer period of time.”‘

Reading the parent’s blog, I am also convinced they did this out of love. And one look at the pictures on their site will convince anyone that the child is happy, healthy, well nourished, and well cared for.

Still, the parent’s desire to “manage” Ashley’s care via surgery raises troubling ethical questions:

Right or wrong, the couple’s decision highlights a dilemma thousands of parents face in struggling to care for severely disabled children as they grow up.

“This particular treatment, even if it’s OK in this situation, and I think it probably is, is not a widespread solution and ignores the large social issues about caring for people with disabilities,” Dr. Joel Frader, a medical ethicist at Chicago’s Children’s Memorial Hospital, said Thursday. “As a society, we do a pretty rotten job of helping caregivers provide what’s necessary for these patients…”

An editorial in the medical journal called “the Ashley treatment” ill-advised and questioned whether it will even work. But her parents say it has succeeded so far.

No one should sit in judgement on the parents of this little one unless you’ve walked a mile in their shoes. Dr. Frader makes an excellent point about the gap between home care and institutionalizing someone like Ashley. In most cases, parents cannot handle the burden and must give their child over to the state to be cared for (private institutions are astronomically expensive and very few insurance plans today cover them). And while many insurance plans will partially cover bringing in an outside caregiver, that too can end up being more than almost anyone can afford over the life of someone like Ashley.

The parent’s solution solution sounds drastic - perhaps even a little bizarre - but the important thing is that the surgery has allowed them to keep their daughter at home. They explain it this way:

“Ashley’s smaller and lighter size makes it more possible to include her in the typical family life and activities that provide her with needed comfort, closeness, security and love: meal time, car trips, touch, snuggles, etc.,” her parents wrote.

Also, Ashley’s parents say keeping her small will reduce the risk of bedsores and other conditions that can afflict bedridden patients. In addition, they say preventing her from going through puberty means she won’t experience the discomfort of periods or grow breasts that might develop breast cancer, which runs in the family.

The parents are obviously sincere but their explanation dances around the ethical dilemma that has some doctors and ethicists worried; that the surgery was not done necessarily for Ashley’s benefit but rather to ease the burden of the parents as well.

Ethical questions like this will only become more commonplace as new treatments and procedures are developed that will challenge the way we think about the severely disabled and the care they require and deserve. Would we feel the same way and view the parents in the same light if say, they had asked a doctor to amputate Ashley’s legs or perform some other kind of grotesque procedure that would have accomplished a similar purpose? Of course, it is doubtful any reputable doctor would have performed such a surgery but it does raise the haunting question of how far we are willing to go in accommodating parents in caring for a severely disabled child.

We live in an age where the miraculous in medicine is commonplace. We are rapidly approaching a time when even more wondrous advances in medical knowledge and technology will almost seem magical. And along with the magic will come the question that dogs ethicists with every major medical advancement: Just because we can do it, should it be done?

In literature, Mary Shelley illustrated the question brilliantly with Dr. Frankenstein’s creation, a warning that playing God has unforeseen consequences but also the very salient notion that with scientific advancement comes a responsibility to examine the underlying ethical considerations that attend all great discoveries. As we rush pell mell into the future, I feel at times that we are in danger of leaving behind a bit of our humanity in order to be first, or to be more innovative, or simply to demonstrate our capacity to amaze ourselves. And as our knowledge grows, so will the difficulty in resolving the ethical questions that inevitably arise from that knowledge.

There will be more disagreement among ethicists in the future as the line between what is right and what is possible grows ever more difficult to resolve. Let’s hope that our ability to decide such questions never fails to outstrip our capacity to glimpse the right course of action consistent with our values and our humanity.

UPDATE

If you want some intelligent analysis on how the surgery has affected Ashley and to get the perspective of a medical professional who deals daily with the severely disabled, you can do no better than visit my blog bud Raven’s site And Rightly So.

. She has been following the story for a while and has much more background on the case.

I can’t really get too upset about the rank triumphalism being exhibited by our lefty friends over the official opening of the 110th Congress. After all, if the shoe were on the other foot, I would be writing something similar (albeit much better written and a lot funnier).

But having said that, in perusing lefty blogs this morning, there is a distinct whiff of grapeshot in the air - an undercurrent of self righteous smugness that goes beyond triumphalism, beyond gloating, even beyond the left’s usual exaggerated self image of saving the country from Republican tyranny.

What is on display is not the understandable human desire for revenge born out of more than a decade of slights and insults at the hands of their enemies but rather the cold, calculated hunger for a reckoning, a settling of accounts. It isn’t enough to put Republicans in their place. It isn’t enough to humiliate them, to poke fun at them, to kick them in the head while they’re lying on the ground. It is time to rack the bastards, to stretch their necks and watch them dangle and twist slowly, slowly in the wind.

I am referring, of course, to the braying and crowing emanating from the left in response to the news that Jamil Hussein has probably been found - and right where he was supposed to be:

Ministry spokesman Brig. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, who had previously denied there was any such police employee as Capt. Jamil Hussein, said in an interview that Hussein is an officer assigned to the Khadra police station, as had been reported by The Associated Press.

The captain, whose full name is Jamil Gholaiem Hussein, was one of the sources for an AP story in late November about the burning and shooting of six people during a sectarian attack at a Sunni mosque.

The U.S. military and the Iraqi Interior Ministry raised the doubts about Hussein in questioning the veracity of the AP’s initial reporting on the incident, and the Iraqi ministry suggested that many news organization were giving a distorted, exaggerated picture of the conflict in Iraq. Some Internet bloggers spread and amplified these doubts, accusing the AP of having made up Hussein’s identity in order to disseminate false news about the war.

My two posts on the AP are here and here. I was wrong about Michelle Malkin debunking the possible problem with transliterating Arab names into English for as Allah posited at the time and points out here, that appears to have been the reason for the inability of the Iraqi Information Ministry and CENTCOM to track Hussein down.

It does little good to point out that the real story is not whether Hussein exists but rather whether the information he was a confirming source for in 61 stories is true or false. That’s because the left doesn’t seem interested in whether or not the news from Iraq is real or imagined. “Fake but accurate” is fine with them. And no, even if every one of the Hussein sourced stories was a lie, that wouldn’t change the grim reality that Iraq is a bloody, violent mess. For the left to make that charge is ridiculous. There aren’t more than a handful of right wing blogs who have been stupid enough to make that claim. But for liberals to willfully self delude themselves into thinking that there isn’t a problem with the AP or any other news outlet who knowingly or unknowingly prints the propaganda of the enemy is incredible.

And the fact of the matter is that the story that set this hunt for Capt. Hussein in motion - that six Sunnis were burned alive and that 4 mosques were destroyed by rampaging Shias - is still open to question. The New York Times was unable to confirm the story and CENTCOM has stated that patrols in the area were unable to confirm the destruction of any mosques much less 4 of them.

But our unquestioning lefty friends - who apparently don’t care if the news is true or false just as long as its bad for Bush and America - have jumped on the Hussein story and, as only leftist twits can do, ignored the implications of the real story and instead directed their venom at bloggers who questioned Hussein’s existence:

And, to their great credit, AP — which continues to aggressively defend its imprisoned-without- charges Iraqi photojournalist Bilal Hussein (whom right-wing bloggers repeatedly accused of being a Terrorist) — fought back against these accusations. And now the right-wing blogosphere stands revealed as what they are — a pack of gossip-mongering hysterics who routinely attack any press reports that reflect poorly on their Leader or his policies, with rank innuendo, Internet gossip, base speculation, and wholesale error as their most frequent tools of the trade. The operate in packs, constantly repeating each other’s innuendo and expanding on it incrementally, and they then cite to each other endlessly in one self-feeding, self-affirming orgy of links, as though that constitutes proof.

And they are wrong over and over and over — and not just in error, but embarrassingly so, because so frequently their claims are transparently, laughably absurd, and they spew the most righteous accusations without any sort of evidence at all. The New Republic has its Stephen Glass and The New York Times has its Jayson Blair. But those are one-off incidents. The right-wing blogosphere is driven by Jayson Blairs. They are exposed as frauds and gossip-mongerers on an almost weekly basis. The only thing that can compete with the consistency of their errors is the viciousness of their accusations and their pompous self-regard as “citizen journalists.”

Yes, I know it’s Greenwald and that his over the top, laughable exaggerations of the vast majority of righty blogs are usually fodder for snarky commentary. But notice the hint of hysteria in his attack. You really should read the whole post because the feeling of smug superiority drips from almost every word, not to mention the paranoia, the tiresome falsehoods, and the outright lies that only our Lambchop can feed to his ravenous, sycophantic readers who hang on every out of control word as if from Gaia herself.

And then there’s this:

Nothing yet from TIDOS Yankee, though I would point out that today is the anniversary of the National Day of Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer, declared by President James Buchanan in 1861. National “Days of Humiliation” were a regular feature of Anglo-American political life from 1648 until the early 20th century; although such days are still declared every now and again, the political language has shifted somewhat to the use of the word “humility” rather than “humiliation.” Nevertheless, for Bob Owens, Michelle Malkin, the guy from Flopping Aces — and every right-wing soldier in the Army of Davids who linked to these wankers over the past month — today must certainly a day of humiliation in the traditional as well as the more contemporary senses.

One wonders if admitting error is enough for these folks. Obviously not. Nothing less than self flagellation and a knee walk up the cathedral steps while wearing sackcloth and choking on ashes will do.

And for all the ink and snark and failed attempts at humor, there is still the elephant sitting in the settee; how good a job is the media doing reporting from Iraq?

To not ask the question shows an incuriousness bordering on somnolence. I will take a back seat to no one in expressing my admiration for those reporters who have braved the wilds of Baghdad and done a thankless job while risking life and limb to ply their craft (Jill Carroll comes to mind). And for those reporters who, by necessity, rely on local Iraqi stringers for news and background, I sympathize with their plight. Confirming information in that bloody nightmare of a country must be an extraordinarily difficult undertaking.

But where is it written that reporters are infallible - even if they have the best of intentions? Are we to simply accept what we read and hear about what’s going on in Iraq from some in the media when others (not associated with the government or Administration) are telling a different story or, as in the case of the AP, the information can’t be confirmed?

It would seem to me to be the height of irresponsibility as a citizen not to question the sensationalism, the myopic obsession with body counts, and the almost total lack of context that accompanies every story out of Iraq. It is beyond belief that this is the best our journalists can do even under the trying circumstances in which they are forced to work - especially when there are stories coming from people like Bill Ardolino, Bill Roggio, and other embeds that, while still giving a horrific picture of what’s going on, also seem to be able to give a context to their stories that is missing from almost all the reporting we see and hear from Iraq.

I don’t think any righty blogger is looking for miracles when it comes to getting news from Iraq. Despite what many lefties are saying, no one that I’ve read on the right thinks that if only the “real” story of what’s going on could be “revealed,” the American people would do a 180 degree turn and support the war. But is it too much to ask that what is disseminated to the American people is a more complete and accurate picture of what is going on when we have 140,000 of our sons and daughters in harms way?

Apparently for the left, that is too much to ask.

The votes are in from this week’s Watchers Council and the winner in the Council category is Done with Mirrors for “Follow Your Surges.” Finishing second was “The Coming of Neo-Multilateralism” by American Future.

Coming out on top in the non Council category was “From Khomeini to Ahmadinejad” by Matthias Küntzel.

As we bid a fond farewell to Dymphna at Gates of Vienna, we welcome the newest member of the Council Francis W. Porretto of the excellent site Eternity Road. Good luck and welcome aboard!

If you’d like to participate in the weekly Watchers Vote, go here and follow instructions.