Texas has begun sending undercover agents into bars to arrest drinkers for being drunk, a spokeswoman for the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission said on Wednesday.

 

The first sting operation was conducted recently in a Dallas suburb where agents infiltrated 36 bars and arrested 30 people for public intoxication, said the commission’s Carolyn Beck.

The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that police without a warrant cannot search a home when one resident says to come in but another tells them to go away, and the court’s new leader complained that the ruling could hamper investigations of domestic abuse.

The collective net worth of the 691 billionaires we could find is $2.2 trillion, up $300 billion from the combined worth of the 587 people listed last year. Every region saw gains. The world’s richest moguls now hail from 47 countries, including, for the first time, Kazakhstan, Poland, Ukraine and even Iceland. The newcomers include 69 Americans and 38 Europeans. More than half of them are entirely self-made.

I double checked, but I missed the list again this year. Damn.

A delegation of Republican House members including Majority Leader Tom DeLay accepted an expense-paid trip to South Korea in 2001 from a registered foreign agent despite House rules that bar the acceptance of travel expenses from foreign agents, according to government documents and travel reports filed by the House members.

Dummies.

Young blacks have grown markedly less willing to join the Army, citing fear of being sent to fight a war in Iraq they don’t believe in, according to unpublicized studies for the military that suggest the Army is entering a prolonged recruiting slump.

Fear of combat also is a leading reason fewer young women are choosing the Army, the studies say.

Yep. The Army loses a lot of its attractiveness once it starts to do its job.

China unveiled a law on Tuesday authorizing military action to stop rival Taiwan from pursuing formal independence, but said an attack would be a last resort if peaceful means fail.

Taiwan immediately lambasted the legislation, calling it a pretext for attack that “gives the (Chinese) military a blank check to invade Taiwan.”

Well, this could get real ugly real fast. This probably looks like a real opportunity for the ChiComms with US troops tied up and unable to respond.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael Powell said Thursday that he does not support extending broadcast indecency guidelines to cable and satellite television and radio, and said any efforts by Congress to do so would face legal scrutiny.

"I personally don't really support an extension," Powell said on Fox News Channel. "I think when the Congress takes a hard look at this, if they really study the constitutionality . . . that it's difficult and unwise to extend it."

Earlier this week, two congressional Republicans with influence over telecommunications issues indicated they would consider such a bill.

Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska, head of the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, said Tuesday that he would push for such a measure in part because most viewers don't differentiate between traditional broadcasting and cable.

Rep. Joe Barton of Texas, chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, said he would support legislation "if we can work out the constitutional questions."

Read: Find a work-around the Constitution.

The Navy plans to send the retired carrier USS America to the bottom of the Atlantic in explosive tests this spring, an end that is difficult to swallow for some who served on board.

The Navy says the effort, which will cost $22 million, will provide valuable data for the next generation of aircraft carriers, which are now in development. No warship this size or larger has ever been sunk, so there is a dearth of hard information on how well a supercarrier can survive battle damage, said Pat Dolan, a spokeswoman for Naval Sea Systems Command.

Nice it will serve the country one last time.

George Will is, once again, on target

In 1967 Lyndon Johnson added yet another piece to the jigsaw puzzle of national perfection: The Corporation for Public Broadcasting was born. Public television was a dubious idea even when concocted as a filigree on the Great Society. Why should government subsidize the production and distribution of entertainment and, even worse, journalism? Even if there were -- has there ever been? -- a shortage of either in America, is it government's duty to address all cultural shortages?

AND

Public television's survival, with no remaining rationale, should fill students of government with awe, wonderment and melancholy. Would it vanish without the 15 percent of its revenues it gets from government? Let's find out.

AS the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln returned home to San Diego this week from its relief mission in Indonesia, the main lesson of the United States military's remarkable tsunami relief effort has yet to be acknowledged: that the global war on terrorism, rather than distracting the military from performing humanitarian deeds, has made it far more effective at them. This is worth bearing in mind, especially now that President Bush's request for $82 billion in emergency military spending has re-opened the argument over Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's longstanding plan for remaking the armed forces as a leaner, more flexible military machine.

The fact is, the Navy of the 1990's could not have responded nearly as quickly and efficiently to the tsunami as did the post-9/11 one. This is largely because of structural changes made to fight the war on terrorism.

A decade ago, our carrier battle groups mainly did planned, six-month-long "pulse" deployments. Since 9/11, the Navy has put increasing emphasis on emergency "surge" deployments, in which carriers, cruisers and destroyers have to be ready to go anywhere, anytime, to deal with a security threat. The new strategy explains why, in late December, the Abraham Lincoln strike force was able to so quickly leave Hong Kong for Indonesia at a best speed of 27 knots.

A very good and positive Op-Ed on today's Navy-Marine Corps Team. And from NYT. Almost unbelievable.

The Bush administration is aggressively wielding a rarely used executive power known as the state secrets privilege in an attempt to squash hard-hitting court challenges to its anti-terrorism campaign.

How the White House is using this privilege, not a law but a series of legal precedents built on national security, disturbs some civil libertarians and open-government advocates because of its sweeping power. Judges almost never challenge the government's assertion of the privilege, and it can be fatal to a plaintiff's case.

I always wondered about the basis of this privlege. Apparently, the courts are not really bound by it.

 She prays, she listens, she learns. She knows the Midwest, understands the South and speaks New Yorkese. When her marriage nearly collapsed as a mortified world looked on, she took the advice of Tammy Wynette, after all, and stoically stood by her man.

And now, just months after a majority of Americans judged the Democratic Party as clueless about their lives, dreams and values, a startling chunk of the political cognoscenti are starting to talk up Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton as the wonder woman who just might fix things.

There are two things I can all but guarantee:

First, if Hillary runs for the Democratic (which she will), she will be the Democratic nominee. (Guaranteed.)

Second, the Republicans win the general election. (Guaranteed.)

And lots of them.

Still, this has so far been a year of heartening surprises - each one remarkable in itself, and taken together truly astonishing. The Bush administration is entitled to claim a healthy share of the credit for many of these advances. It boldly proclaimed the cause of Middle East democracy at a time when few in the West thought it had any realistic chance. And for all the negative consequences that flowed from the American invasion of Iraq, there could have been no democratic elections there this January if Saddam Hussein had still been in power.

This must have been pure torture for the NYT Editorial Staff.

A 15-year-old Bangladeshi Muslim schoolgirl in Britain won on Wednesday the right to wear full Islamic dress at school in a case at the heart of passionate debate across Europe over religious clothing.
Britain’s Court of Appeal overturned a previous court ruling to find in favor of Shabina Begum’s claim that her school wrongly refused to allow her to wear a jilbab, which covers the body except for the hands and face.

As one would expect, the Brits have a lot more good sense than the French.

Our high schools are obsolete.

By obsolete, I don't just mean that they are broken, flawed and underfunded — although I can't argue with any of those descriptions.

What I mean is that they were designed 50 years ago to meet the needs of another age. Today, even when they work exactly as designed, our high schools cannot teach our kids what they need to know.

Bill Gates is exactly on target. Not bad for a college drop out.

Three years ago, Bush made a point of congratulating Russian President Putin for his country's flat tax, which took effect on Jan. 1, 2001. On that occasion, Bush particularly noted the fairness of the Russian system, which treats taxpayers equally, rather than punishing the successful merely for being successful.

Why so much interest in the flat tax? A key reason is that it is far more effective at raising revenue than progressive rates. With progressive rates, it looks as if extra revenue is being extracted from the wealthy. But it is also giving them a powerful incentive to arrange their affairs so as to minimize their tax liability or to evade taxes altogether

Lastly, it should not be forgotten that a flat tax is the revenue-raising system most compatible with human freedom. As University of Chicago law professor Richard Epstein recently put it, "It is no accident that every strong defender of limited government has gravitated toward the flat tax.

Pretty much how I got there. Easier, fairer, and more compliance. All with smaller government. You could all but eliminate the IRS.

The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that the Constitution forbids the execution of killers who were under 18 when they committed their crimes, ending a practice used in 19 states.

The 5-4 decision throws out the death sentences of about 70 juvenile murderers and bars states from seeking to execute minors for future crimes.

I don't think this is any major surprise. Although I expected the cutoff would be 16, as they've done in the past. Maybe they decided if we could send them into combat at 18, that was the official age of adulthood.

Maybe we should get rid of the death penalty altogether. In this country it is a long, expensive process. And I don't think it adds to our well being or moral integrity.

QUESTION FOR THE DAY: If Liberalism isn't dead, then why are autopsies performed so regularly?

Good question. And here is part of the situation.

Worse, the cultural liberalism that emerged from the convulsions of the 1960s drove the liberal faith out of the mainstream. Its fundamental value is that society should have no fundamental values, except for a pervasive relativism that sees all values as equal. Part of the package was a militant secularism, pitched against religion, the chief source of fundamental values. Complaints about "imposing" values were also popular then, aimed at teachers and parents who worked to socialize children.

Dead? Maybe not, but no one is providing resuscitation either.

In the eyes of Wal-Mart's detractors, the Arkansas-based chain embodies the worst kind of economic exploitation: it pays its 1.2 million American workers an average of only $9.68 an hour, doesn't provide most of them with health insurance, keeps out unions, has a checkered history on labor law and turns main streets into ghost towns by sucking business away from small retailers.

But isn't Wal-Mart really being punished for our sins? After all, it's not as if Wal-Mart's founder, Sam Walton, and his successors created the world's largest retailer by putting a gun to our heads and forcing us to shop there. (Emphasis added)

And that is exactly right. Wal-Mart is a great success because they deliver what Americans want. Americans complain about the plight of Mom-and-Pop stores, but if it is between paying a dollar or fifty cents for a can of soup, guess what? We can say anything, but we vote with our wallet.

Needless to say, the rest of this article is liberal garbage.

Separately on Sunday, Sen. Joseph Biden said Senator Clinton would be incredibly difficult to beat if she decides to run for president.

What Biden means is she would be difficult to beat in the primary. She would be sure to be beat in the general. This has to be the greatest thing since Making Howard the head of the DNC -- for Republicans.

Anglican leaders struggling to resolve explosive differences over homosexuality have asked the U.S. Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada to temporarily withdraw from a key council of their global communion because of the election of a gay bishop in the United States and the blessing of same-sex unions there and in Canada.

The request was made following a meeting in Northern Ireland that the Anglican leaders, or primates, convened on the crisis this week. Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the spiritual leader of the 77 million-member world Anglican Communion, did not comment but was scheduled to appear at a news conference Friday.

This would seem to be a pretty serious action. But there is no reason for the Anglicans to buckle for the Episicopalians.

European leaders no longer expect further military expeditions in Bush's second term. And so they have been gracious -- but assertive, thus reflecting how far the United States has fallen from "hyperpower" status -- a term coined about America by French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine.

Indeed, analysts said, European leaders are increasingly united against U.S. positions and feel emboldened to go their own way on such issues as Iran and China.

Sounds good to me. First step, immediately withdraw all American trrops from Europe -- starting with Germany.

Pope John Paul II was hospitalized Thursday after suffering a relapse of the flu, the Vatican said, a day after the pontiff made his longest public appearance since being discharged from the clinic two weeks ago.

I'll be surprised if he recovers this time.

 A Georgia woman has sued Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ.N: Quote, Profile, Research) , claiming the ink cartridges for their printers are secretly programmed to expire on a certain date, in some cases rendering them useless before they are even installed in a printer.

I've long suspected as much. I'm going to follow this one. (Of course the best she can hope for is a coupon for HP ink cartridges.)