Wars on two fronts have broken out in the blogosphere recently and neither one of them are pretty to watch standing on the sidelines.

Jeff Goldstein and Malachy Joyce have squared off partly over the Schiavo matter but mostly because Malachy used a bigoted expression when calling out Jeff on Mr. Goldstein’s portrayal of religious conservatives in the Schiavo matter. The epithet he used will not be used here. Suffice it to say it was a poor choice of words and, even if used innocently (I pointed out in comment #126 how it may have been an innocent use of an archaic expression) was insensitive and uncalled for. Mr. Joyce also should not have made the purging of his blogroll of people who did not support those of us fighting for Terri’s life a subject of a post. Perhaps a private email would have sufficed.

On the other side, well, Jeff Goldstein is Jeff Goldstein. When he calls some Christians an extremely derogatory euphemism for “Jesus Lover” he’s trying to get a rise out of people and get a little laugh at the same time. That’s what he does. That’s why his site is in the top 50 blogs. He’s a funny, talented guy who can skewer a target more effectively than a cook at a Texas barbecue.

But that comment was as out of line as Mr. Joyces. And I know it sounds crazy, but Ace is actually trying to referee this imbroglio…and making a lot of sense doing it:

Playing Ref: Jeff, I think you were way out-of-line to insult someone as a “(deleted).” You’re guilty of the same sin you’re protesting, and the “she did it first” defense won’t wash.

A quick apology is usually better than a prolonged bout of back-tracking and “explaining.” It’s quick and painless and you even gain “manful admission” points.

And this advice for Malachy:

But HundredPercenter—not looking to get de-linked or anything, but have a bit of caution about plainly Jew-baiting remarks. What does that accomplish? Nothing, nothing except animosity and hurt feelings..

Now if this weren’t enough, two of my all time favorite bloggers are going at it hammer and tongs. Paul at Wizbang and the Commissar have gotten themselves into a mess that reminds me of the way that Europe got embroiled in the First World War.

Paul has some very strong feelings about evolutionists, namely that there’s no scientific proof for it thus its adherents are as guilty of the same kind of faulty reasoning as creationists. The Commissar has passionately defended evolution. Somehow, this battle of ideas degenerated into some of the most vile name calling I’ve seen on the web. Paul deletes comments from the Commissar. The Commissar gets madder and calls Paul more vile names. It’s nuts.

The blogosphere is not a place to solve the mysteries of the universe. Even the collective wisdom of millions of people harnessed just for that purpose would fail miserably. It’s not that some things are “unknowable.” As Paul points out, the sum total of our knowledge to date is nothing compared to what it will be in say, 2000 years. Even then, I doubt whether questions about the origins of life and the spread of species on this planet will be solved.

Watching these two go at it as well as viewing the train wreck happening between Jeff and Malachy gives me a slight uneasiness in the pit of my stomach. These are people who I “visit” 2 or three times a day. In a sense, you get to know them. So it’s kind of like watching two friends go at it with you standing powerless on the sidelines unable to do anything about it.

I don’t hold out any hope for comity between any of the warring parties. A truce, maybe. And in the end, former allies and colleagues have a falling out and the blogosphere is poorer for it.

When is it wrong to kill in war? According to a military court, when your adversary is wounded and helpless:

WIESBADEN, Germany (March 31) – A military court on Thursday found a U.S. Army tank company commander guilty of charges related to the shooting death of a wounded Iraqi last year

Prosecutors said Maynulet violated military rules of engagement by shooting a man who was wounded and unarmed. Maynulet, 30, maintained that the man was gravely wounded and that he shot him to end his suffering.

Maynulet’s 1st Armored Division tank company had been on patrol near Kufa on May 21, 2004, when it was alerted to a car thought to be carrying a driver for radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and another militiaman loyal to the Shiite cleric.

The U.S. troops chased the vehicle and fired at it, wounding both the passenger, who fled and was later apprehended, and the driver. The killing was filmed by a U.S. drone surveillance aircraft

The judgment sounds reasonable to me. Capt. Rogelio ‘’Roger’’ Maynulet said that his company’s medic said there was nothing to be done for him at which point he said that he wanted to end the man’s suffering. This could have been done without shooting him because of the morphine syrette’s carried by medics. According to one medic who served in Viet Nam, he routinely gave overdoses of morphine to gravely wounded soldiers to ease their pain and put them out of their misery:

I was trained for this at camp and on the battlefield I was begged by my fellow soldiers to relieve their pain or send them on into the next world. In the field there was so much noise from artillery fire, whizzing bullets, choking smoke and confusion that we medics were forced to play God over life and death. Mercy killing you might call it or as I was trained, euthanasia. I’ll admit that I purposely gave too much morphine to about 2% the soldiers I treated, but this was only because they were too far gone for any medical care. When you’re under explosive fire and you see arteries shooting blood out, as a medic you have to make a medical decision about your fellow soldier. Is there any chance he’ll make it or is there no chance? When a boy or a man gives you that look in the eyes, that final look, I knew I was there to give them their final relief. Only death can bring final relief.

And then the crux of the matter emerges; of what value is the life of an enemy?

He further testified that, as company commander, he had more important priorities on the mission than saving the Iraqi, including searching for two escaped passengers and maintaining the safety of his men.

He testified that he was reluctant to expend limited first aid resources on a man he had been told would die anyway.

I’m sure that this kind of incident was repeated perhaps dozens of times in Iraq and any other conflicts for that matter. The question that nags at me is why the military felt it necessary to try this man? Was it to make an example of him so the world will see that we try to play by the rules of the Geneva Convention in war? Could Abu Gharaib have had anything to do with this prosecution? Or was this soldier’s transgression more egregious than what could be termed “normal?”

The fact that the incident was captured on tape by a US Spy Drone probably had something to do with it. Plus, I think that the Army was correct in its judgment that this incident was especially un-called for:

Questions from the six-member panel – the equivalent of a civilian jury – focused on whether Maynulet tried to hide his actions by failing to report the shooting at the end of the day. Maynulet said he discussed the shooting in a debriefing that immediately followed the mission and denied trying to hide the killing.

Maynulet’s excuse; that he was too busy tracking down the other wounded Iraqi and that his medical supplies were limited doesn’t stand up to scrutiny if he deliberately withheld reporting the incident in his after action report.

Maynulet has a spotless record and was praised during his trial by an Iraqi Defense Ministry official:

Iraq’s interim deputy defense minister, Ziad Cattan, testified later Wednesday that he worked with Maynulet when the soldier was stationed in Baghdad and had contact with Iraqi officials.

Cattan, a district council chairman at the time, described him as ‘’a good soldier and a good officer.’’ Asked about Maynulet’s attitude toward Iraqis, Cattan said: ‘’He is very compassionate.’‘

Given the facts, I would hope for leniency of some kind. He’s a good soldier who made a horrible mistake. He isn’t the first and he won’t be the last. Such is the nature of war.

PLUTO AND ITS MOON CHARON AS SEEN FROM THE HUBBLE TELESCOPE

NASA is asking for public comment on The New Horizons Mission to the planet Pluto. The reason? NASA will be using a tiny amount of plutonium to power the spacecraft:

The New Horizons mission will use a plutonium-powered radioisotope thermoelectric generator for power in deep space, where sunlight isn’t intense enough to run the spacecraft. It’s like the generators that flew in the Cassini probe now at Saturn. In fact, it’s Cassini’s spare.

“RTGs have a proven track record and safety record,” Kurt Lindstrom, NASA’s executive for the mission, said in a press conference today at Kennedy Space Center.

The thermoelectric generator is one of those inventions that you might slap yourself on the head and say “Why didn’t I think of that!” It uses heat generated from the plutonium and turns that heat into electrcity. The atoms in plutonium are so energetic that if you were to hold a clump of the stuff in your hand, you could actually feel the heat.

Then again, if you’re dumb enough to hold the stuff you’d be dead in a couple of days. Plutonium is the most toxic substance known to man. A grain smaller than a pinhead lodged in your lungs would give you cancer and you’d be dead in six months.

That being said, we’ve used similar technology for more than 30 years. The problem isn’t with the technology; it’s with how we get the darn thing up in space in the first place.

Here’s a risk profile for the mission:

There’s a 93.8 percent chance of a successful launch, the statement says; a 5.8 percent chance of an accident with no release of radiological material; and 0.4 percent chance of a mishap with a radiological release

I’m not quite sure how they reached that 0.4% chance of radiological release but given how the environmentalists almost scuttled the Cassini mission over the same issue, you can bet it’s based on pretty good science.

The mission itself sounds fascinating. Pluto is without a doubt the strangest “planet” in the solar system. I put the word planet in quotes because recently, there’s been a rather lively debate about whether or not Pluto can be considered a real planet.

Scientists settled on the idea that since Pluto has been referred to as a planet for so long, it should remain that way. It turns out that thousands of kids wrote to the IAU (International Astronomical Union) and begged the adults to keep Pluto as a planet. Even scientists can’t resist when kids get involved.

That being said, Pluto is weird. It’s very small – less than 1/5 the size of Earth – with gravity that’s 2 1/2 times less than on our moon. Speaking of moons, Pluto’s satelite Charon is half the size of it’s mother planet! The two bodies do a strange gravitational dance around each other that scientists are still scratching their heads trying to figure out.

Pluto’s orbit is highly irregular. It careens around the solar system like a drunken sailor, passing inside the orbit of Neptune (thus for a time making Neptune the most distant planet) as well as orbiting in the opposite direction than the rest of the planets.

Pluto is also the only planet in the solar system we haven’t visited. That will change if NASA gets the go ahead for the New Horizons mission. The plan is to launch next January, get a gravitiy assist from Jupiter which will slingshot the craft towards the outer planets in 2007, and initiate a flyby of Pluto in 2015, coming within 10,000 km of the planet and 50,000 km of Charon. Then the spacecraft will swing out towards the mysterious Kuiper Belt where some of the most bizarre objects in the solar system can be found.

Plans for this extended mission include one to two encounters of Kuiper Belt Objects, ranging from about 25 to 55 miles (40 to 90 kilometers) in diameter. What are these objects? They’re the flotsam and jetsam left over from the creation of the solar system, after the planets formed from our sun’s accretion disk.

If all goes well, just about the time I’m ready to start collecting one of my pensions (I’ve got two!), human beings will get their first look at the surface of this world that its discoverer Clyde Tombaugh named after the God of the Underworld.

Every week for the last six months, I’ve submitted a post to the “Carnival of the Vanities,” a linkfest that features smaller to medium size bloggers and what they consider their best posts for the previous week.

This week’s COTV was hosted by Eric Berlin. Given the proximity to April Fools Day, Mr. Berlin posted guidelines for submissions requesting “humorous and offbeat” posts. It was a great idea and Eric did a great job with it, going so far as to divide the entries into groups with one entry in each group a fake! This took an inordinate amount of work and the result was both funny and well written.

But there was a catch to Mr. Berlin’s posting guidelines:

Posts about Terry Schiavo will be ignored. I don’t care if she is consumed bodily by a flash of light. You can go back to talking about her next week.

Since I had perhaps two or three rather mediocre posts that were not related to the Schiavo matter, I submitted this post where I tried to draw an historical parallel between the polarizing effect of John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859 and the Schiavo issue.

The post was not accepted. Nor did I receive any word from Mr. Berlin that my piece was disqualified. I wrote the following email to Mr. Berlin and the organizer of COTV:

I am writing to complain about Mr. Berlin’s restrictive, arbitrary, and capricious posting guidelines for this week’s COTV.

P.S. I think that Eric did a great job with this week’s COTV and I’m not advocating he be prevented from hosting in the future.

Linkfests should be fun. They’re supposed to give us smaller bloggers some exposure. But when someone unfairly excludes an entry because of a prejudice against a particular topic, what’s to prevent someone from excluding a post on the basis of politics? Or race, creed, religion or sex?

I hope the organizer of COTV takes heed of my letter and prevents any future problems with this excellent event.

Yesterday was a red letter day for the House as Glenn Reynolds, Powerline, Hugh Hewitt, and Michelle Malkin linked to my humble site in the space of a little more than 24 hours.

Can I wake up now? Don’t pinch too hard, I have very sensitive skin.

Okay…Okay…enough horn tooting. Although, it kind of makes me wonder why it took me so long to get off blogger and on to a hosted site with a decent looking blog. My eternal thanks to Kim at E-Webscapes for all her incredibly hard work as well as her creative talent that makes this site almost universally praised for its layout and look.

Some quick hits and links for your bloggy enjoyment:

John Henke and the guys at Q & O have a new E-Zine you’ve definitely got to subscribe to. It’s called “The New Libertarian: A Journal of Neolibertarian Thought,” (PDF required). Sign up is free.

The rest of this post is dedicated to my buddies on our ever growing group blog “The Wide Awakes.”

TWA came about because several of my fellow righty bloggers were getting slammed by some of the meanest, nastiest lefty trolls around. Eventually, we came to the conclusion that by banding together (and using the Yahoo message board to stay in close contact) we could “ride to the rescue” of each other and flood the site being attacked with positive, supportive, comments. In addition, the site itself gives us all good exposure for our ideas and our writing.

The name “Wide Awakes” comes from the campaign of 1860 where “leather lunged Lincoln men” staged midnight torchlight parades all across the small towns and villages of the middle west in support of Lincoln’s candidacy. Because the parades occurred at such a late hour, they called themselves “The Wide Awakes.” The header art on the site is the actual logo used by the group.

Below are just a few examples from the group of excellent writers and defenders for The Wide Awakes:

Happy Blogiversery to Crystal! A licensed family counselor (and cute as a button), Crystal has a passion and insight into people you rarely find.

Just don’t get on her bad side (You should see how she dismanlted Michael Schiavo!)

TWA founder and mother superior is Cao of Cao’s blog. In this post, she rails against Google for dropping The Jawas for what they consider hate speech.

Cao also has some of the best background on Islamic fundamentalism around.

Feel like a little cat blogging? No place better to go than Romeocat’s Cathouse Chat. More seriously, she has a great update on what people are saying about the Schiavo case.

Another founding member is Beth of My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. And since this is Wednesday, Beth is channeling the cutest little piece of trailer trash in these here parts, Beulah Mae for “White Trash Wednesday.”

Raven at “And Rightly So” is a medical professional whose insights on what Terri is going through have been both informative and agonizing to read. Today, she rails against Kofi and Kojo for the crooks they are.

Our resident Mad Tech has a few words of wisdom for liberals on gun control…not that they’ll listen. Anyone who’s tried to argue with a liberal on gun control knows the feeling of talking to someone from a different planet. Mad Tech explains why.

Two of our more productive attack dogs at The Wide Awakes are Jay and Kender. Like knights of old, they ride to the rescue of the pure of heart who have fallen under attack by the forces of darkness and evil.

ATTENTION MOONBATS: DO NOT FEED KENDER OR JAY. THEY WILL START BY BITING YOUR HAND AND WON’T STOP UNTIL YOUR HEAD IS HANDED TO YOU ON A SILVER PLATTER!

Consider yourselves warned.

TWA has recently added two fantastic writers. Van Helsing of Moonbattery (Love the name, love the site!) discovers more Ward Churchills in academia. If you haven’t visited Moonbattery before be prepared to enjoy some of the best writing on the web this side of…well, ahem…modesty forbids me from saying anything more.

And Eric at Vince Aut Morire has a laugh out loud piece on an article in the Jerusalem Post that quotes a Muslim “scholar” who predicts the US will be destroyed in 2007. (I am going to have to ask Eric about the origins of the unique moniker for his blog. Great header art too!)

These are my bloggy buddies in whom I am both well pleased and eternally grateful. Check out The Wide Awakes and blogroll these sites. You can’t do better anywhere .

More chilling news on first amendment freedoms brought to you by the black robed nannies who sit on the Supreme Court:

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court refused Monday to shield the news media from being sued for accurately reporting a politician’s false charges against a rival.

Instead, the justices let stand a Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling that a newspaper can be forced to pay damages for having reported that a city councilman called the mayor and the council president “liars,” “queers” and “child molesters.”

Apparently, it’s just not good enough any more to simply report “the story.” Now reporters have to make sure that any charges bandied about by opposing politicians are actually “true.”

Does this mean I can’t call John Kerry a lying, sniveling, traitorous weasel anymore? Probably:

In their appeal to the high court, lawyers for the paper said news organizations should be allowed to report what public figures say, regardless of whether it is true or false.

Otherwise, they said, for example, the press could not have reported last year on the charges lodged against Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth because Kerry’s supporters said their charges were false.

In other words, if this ruling had taken place last year, John Kerry would be in the White House sipping French wine and desperately trying to figure out how to turn the coming victory in Iraq into certain defeat.

Am I missing something here? Is it really this complicated? How can you interpret the First Amendment so narrowly?

Politicians have been calling each other names for 217 years in this country. Half the fun of reading newspapers here in Chicago is finding the newest epithets hurled against “Little Boss” Daley and his gang of sticky fingered truants who’ve robbed the city blind for years. Now the Tribune and Sun Times are going to have to fact check every allegation. Wouldn’t you love to see the next press conference?

Reporter: Mr. Mayor, you’ve been called a crook, a cheat, a bum, and fairy by Alderman Skijanowitz. Would you care to deny those charges and, if not, is it alright if we print ‘em anyway?

A pox on the Court!

Famed New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, shouting “I’m just as sane as any other liberal,” was dragged off to Bellevue Mental Hospital this morning after it became clear he had gone stark, raving mad.

“If you want my professional opinion, he’s as loony as a June bug,” declared Dr. Ishmael Ahab, Director of Clinical Psychiatry at the famed institution. “Right now, he’s resting comfortably in our deluxe ‘rubber room’ where he’ll stay until his symptoms moderate.

Dr. Ahab said those symptoms included paranoid delusions, frothing at the mouth, excessive talking, and according to sources “barking like a sick puppy at the moon.”

Daniel Okrent, readers representative for the Times said that Krugman’s current column entitled “What’s Going On” in which Krugman posits the theory that Christian conservatives are going to start assassinating liberals will not be pulled from later editions.

“Just because he’s nuts doesn’t mean he’s wrong,” said Okrent. “We run stuff from loons all the time. Look at Maureen Dowd”

Okrent is referring to another well-known Times columnist who, while not declared officially insane, is reportedly under 24 hour suicide watch due to a lack of sex and a hatred of men.

Krugman’s column, which appears in newspapers nationwide, gives several clues as to how the famed liberal’s mind slowly degenerated into what Dr. Ahab calls “a persistent moonbat state or PMS.”

The Doctor points to these excerpts as classic symptoms of PMS:

One thing that’s going on is a climate of fear for those who try to enforce laws that religious extremists oppose. Randall Terry, a spokesman for Terri Schiavo’s parents, hasn’t killed anyone, but one of his former close associates in the anti-abortion movement is serving time for murdering a doctor. George Greer, the judge in the Schiavo case, needs armed bodyguards.

Another thing that’s going on is the rise of politicians willing to violate the spirit of the law, if not yet the letter, to cater to the religious right…

And the future seems all too likely to bring more intimidation in the name of God and more political intervention that undermines the rule of law.

But medical care is the cutting edge of extremism….

“Classic case of PMS,” said the Doctor. “Notice the wild charges made with no evidence to back them up. Also, note the distortions, the fantasies, and the general tone of danger in the disconnected and rather insipid prose.”

Ahab also pointed to this excerpt that shows where the columnist truly “went around the bend,” and “screwed the pooch:”

America isn’t yet a place where liberal politicians, and even conservatives who aren’t sufficiently hard-line, fear assassination. But unless moderates take a stand against the growing power of domestic extremists, it can happen here.

According to sources at the Times, representatives in white coats from Bellevue were dispatched to haul Krugman away after he accused a co-worker of sabotaging his tinfoil hat by making the antenna pick up signals from Karl Rove’s office at the White House. While pummeling the co-worker – rumored to be Times house conservative David Brooks – Krugman was heard to scream “What’s the frequency, Kenneth,” time and time again while foam and drool oozed from the side of his mouth.

Another source reported hearing several dog-like barks coming from Krugman as he wrestled with the Bellevue attendants who were attempting to put him in a strait jacket.

Dr. Ahab did not appear optimistic about a quick recovery.” These things take time,” he said. “What Paul needs most is a lot of rest. Perhaps, in time, with the right mix of drugs and therapy, we can bring him back to reality.”

The Times claims that there are no plans to replace Krugman in the paper’s regular rotation of columnists. “Why should we,” said a source. “The fact that he’s crazy may make his columns more interesting. At least they’ll be unpredictable.”

UPDATE:

Welcome Hugh Hewitt Readers! Welcome to the House. Are you a fan of “24” and Jack Bauer? I post every Tuesday recapping the previous night’s episode. For the lastest speculation and body count...go here.

Now I know how my father felt when he was a kid going to Saturday matinees where serials like “Flash Gordon” and “Rocketman” would leave kids all over America panting for the next week’s thrilling installment. Will Flash be able to save Dale from the evil clutches of Ming the Merciless? How will Commando Cody get out of this one?

And knowing my Dad, he probably wished that he could jump in a time machine and be whisked away to next Saturday so he didn’t have to wait 7 days for the answers to the plot twists.

Oh, for a time machine today! Visiting the “24” forums and lurking as I do on a regular basis, I’ve noticed that many “24” aficionados have been disappointed in this season’s installments. Frankly, all I can say is they’re missing some great television.

Trying to enjoy the show while being a critic has been a very difficult assignment for me. . Early on this year I solved that problem by taping the show and watching it the first time for pure enjoyment and then watching a replay on tape for the critique. This has allowed me to garner some insights that perhaps some of the more cynical “24” fans have failed to appreciate.

One of those insights has to be the terrifying efficiency of Marwan’s organization. They’ve got all the bases covered. They’re piped into local police networks. They have an idea of how CTU works to the point that Marwan knows he can overload CTU employees with extra work by setting up the hostage exchange which will mean putting aside routine tasks like checking the “hourlies” from local and state police departments thus insuring our heroes are distracted long enough for his nefarious plot to succeed.

Marwan’s organization isn’t perfect. But its effectiveness can take your breath away at times.

SUMMARY

Interesting and revealing exchange between Jack and Marwan as Jack is held hostage in the warehouse:

Jack: That really wasn’t your plan, was it? We managed to stop the other 103 power plants from melting down. That’s what America will remember. That we stopped you.

Marwan: No. They will remember the image of Secretary of Defense Heller held hostage on your own soil. And it will burn in their psyches. This country will forever be afraid to let their leaders appear in public.

Jack: For all the hatred you have for this country, you don’t understand it very well. Whatever you throw at us, I promise you, that will never happen.

Marwan has been in this country a long enough time to realize his statement about our leaders not appearing in public out of fear is baloney. Or does he? From Bin Laden’s boasting about 9/11 to Zarqawi’s threats to kick America out of Iraq, terrorists the world over really don’t have a clue about what this country is made of. We see this myopia time and time again when listening to the pronuncimentos of radical islamists from Indonesia to Iran. In the end, this ignorance -along with their own hubris – will be the cause of their downfall.

All of this won’t help Jack who now becomes a pawn in Marwan’s game to distract CTU long enough so that terrorist pilot Anderson can get his stealth fighter off the ground and, we assume, go after Air Force I. The reason for this distraction – the imminent discovery by CTU that an Air Force pilots family is missing – becomes the main focus of the hour as the camera dotes lovingly on the CD containing the vital flagged police report. Thanks to the bureaucratic turf war between Chloe and fat geek Edgar, that CD makes torturous progress toward Edgar and eventual discovery.

Someone is going to pay for this error when its discovered. My guess is Chloe.

Meanwhile, not knowing he’s an orphan, Behroos is questioned once again by Curtis about his knowledge of Marwan. Lying through his teeth, Curtis assures Behroos his mother is fine. And that’s when CTU’s resident “Dr. Feel Good” comes in with his little black bag full of some of the biggest damned needles I ever saw. Referred to as “Richard,” when shooting Behroos up with truth serum, he seems to be enjoying himself just a little too much. And that begs the question; where does CTU get these guys?

And that little CD? It’s still winding its way slowly toward Edgar. And every time Edgar is about ready to discover its contents, he’s called away to do something else. This Hitchcockian plot device becomes more and more effective as eventually, the viewer just wants to scream at Edgar “Look at the damn thing, will ya!”

Audrey, still waiting for news on whether or not Paul will live or die, confronts Tony several times asking for updates on Jack. To his credit, Tony is brutally honest with her which only confuses both Audrey and us even more. Who will it be? Jack or Paul? My guess is that Paul will live but be paralyzed. And Audrey will feel duty bound to take care of him for the rest of his life.

Speaking of Audrey, her conversation with Chloe is priceless. Chloe, exhibiting the social skills of a tree sloth, asks poor Audrey how she feels about Paul taking a bullet intended for her lover Jack. Audrey tells Chloe to in effect, shut up which is when Chloe gets off the revealing line; “I was inappropriately blunt…I do that a lot.”

Yes you do dear, but we still love ya!

And Jack? Just before being taken to the dam where CTU will exchange him for Behroos, Jack manages to cross circuit some telephone wires in the warehouse which will come in handy later…if he lives. Marwan has decreed Jack’s death after the exchange takes place.

So Behroos, still unaware that he’s an orphan, is taken unwillingly to the exchange point. The switch goes forward and Jack is saved when Marwan makes a rare mistake and underestimates CTU’s tactical ability. Turns out our guys had placed a team at the site before Marwan’s assassin could get there. Jack is saved, but Behroos is now in the hands of Marwan where he’s finally told about his mother’s death. Do you think that this will have an effect on the young man’s willingness to cooperate with Marwan? I knew that you would.

Jack’s shenanigans with the phone lines pays big dividends as Tony finds the address of the warehouse. So Jack and CTU tactical head off to get Marwan while the vital information regarding the dead pilot’s missing family continues to be buried under fat geek Edgar’s backlog of work and Anderson takes off in his stealth fighter for his rendezvous with Air Force I.

Like I said…gimme a time machine!

BODY COUNT

Anderson snuffs the maintenance guy holding up his flight. CTU takes out Marwan’s assassin.

Jack: 27

Show: 124

SPECULATION

More food for thought. Behroos feels betrayed by CTU. To save his own hide (and get back at Curtis) the kid will revert to being a terrorist and, since he’s an orphan with nothing to live for, become a suicide bomber for the cause. Who or what will be blow up? I’m open to speculation there but my gut feeling is Jack will “rescue” him and bring him back to CTU.

If I were Michelle, I’d call the contractors now and get an estimate on how much it’s going to cost to rebuild headquarters.

Code Blue Blog is considered to be one of the best medical blogs around. A finalist for Best Medical Blog as well as a winner of the Best Clinical Sciences Blog, Dr. Boyle has almost 20 years of experience in the medical field.

And that’s why the conclusion he reached after examining Terri Schiavo’s medical records is so startling:

Terri WAS HIT ON THE HEAD OR DROPPED ON HER HEAD DURING LATER FEBRUARY OR EARLY MARCH WHILE IN THAT HOSPITAL.

The Doctor reaches this conclusion based on the following:

1. IF this is an accurate report (normal CT brain on 2/27—injury on 2/25) then TERRI DID NOT suffer an event of massive ischemia on 2/25. tHERE IS NO RADIOLOGIST OR NEUROLOGIST OR NEUROSURGEON IN THE WORLD THAT WOULD DISPUTE THIS. it is impossible. tHE ct ON 2/27 WOULD HAVE BEEN grossly ABNORMAL.

2. IF TERRI DID NOT SUFFER ANOXIC DAMAGE ON 2/25 THEN THE REASON FOR HER BRAIN ATROPHY WAS CAUSED BY SOMETHING THAT OCCURRED after 2/25 namely in the hospital during February or march of 1990.

3. How does one develop NONCOMMUNICATING HYDROCEPHALUS in ONE MONTH? By a blood clot obstructing the CSF outflow from the brain at the Foramen of Magendie.

4. How does one get #3.

BY BEING HIT ON THE HEAD AND SUFFERING INTRACRANIAL HEMORRHAGE

The medical evidence is clear. Terri had a normal brain scan up to 2 days after the event. Doctor Boyle points this out:

There is categorically and absolutely NO WAY Terri could have suffered MASSIVE ANOXIC INJURY TO THE BRAIN ON 2/25 AND HAVE NORMAL CT SCAN ON 2/27

NO WAY

Read the whole post…and check out two other interesting posts on Terri’s condition that call into question much of the conventional wisdom being put out there by the MSM.

Apropos of my post below where Jeff Jarvis accused the MSM of caddying for the Christian point of view on the Schiavo matter, perhaps Mr. Jarvis missed this little exchange over the weekend between that well known shill for Christianity Howard Kurtz and Michele Cottle of that bastion of Christian conservatism The New Republic:

[HOWARD] KURTZ: Michelle Cottle, has the press ridiculed, or maybe I should say marginalized, religious people who believed the Terri Schiavo must be kept alive as a matter of Christian morality?

COTTLE: Well, it’s not that they get out there and make fun of them. It’s just you come with a ready-made kind of visual here. You have people on the streets praying. They’re, you have very dramatic and even melodramatic protests and things like this.

These people are very easy to kind of just poke fun at without even saying anything. You just kind of show these people. And the majority of Americans who don’t get out there and do this kind of, you know, really dramatic displays feel a little bit uncomfortable on that level.

Oh those comical Christians! Given that until recently, Christians were almost without exception portrayed by Hollywood and the rest of the cultural elites as evil, hypocritical, rabid dogs who go into trances and do strange things like pray in public and exhibit kindness to others, it’s a wonder we haven’t clapped these poor unfortunates into irons and sent them off to live in some re-education camp. And while this attitude is changing slowly with the advent of a few TV dramas where God is a central part of the plot and Christians are actually portrayed in a positive light, it doesn’t change the fact that in the newsrooms of the country, they are still objects of derision.

Malkin draws the obvious conclusion:

Oh, and if Cottle is willing to be this honest on national TV about her discomfort with people praying on the street, can you imagine what her colleagues in newsrooms and control rooms across the country are saying about “these people?”

We can imagine it because we see it all the time.