Like Clockwork

I'm trying to figure out this US-China naval row. The US says the Chinese surrounded their ship, China says the USNS Impeccable was illegally surveying Chinese waters, and apparently the crew on the unarmed Impeccable had to use fire hoses - FIRE HOSES - in self-defense.

Anyway, the Secretary of State and China's Foreign Minister spoke yesterday and agreed to work to avoid further incidents. This happened eight years ago at the beginning of Bush's regime with a mid-air collision and 24 Naval airmen briefly held on Hainan Island. I would say that Obama's Administration acted a bit better, but you get the sense that China just wants to feel things out at the beginning of a new Presidency to test the boundaries.

What Is In The Traditional Media's Water

Yesterday, the LA Times ran a story about how John McCain was a bad pilot who crashed a lot of planes.

John McCain was training in his AD-6 Skyraider on an overcast Texas morning in 1960 when he slammed into Corpus Christi Bay and sheared the skin off his plane's wings.

McCain recounted the accident decades later in his autobiography. "The engine quit while I was practicing landings," he wrote. But an investigation board at the Naval Aviation Safety Center found no evidence of engine failure.

The 23-year-old junior lieutenant wasn't paying attention and erred in using "a power setting too low to maintain level flight in a turn," investigators concluded.

The crash was one of three early in McCain's aviation career in which his flying skills and judgment were faulted or questioned by Navy officials.

Today, the AP joins in with this story about his links to the right-wing US Council for World Freedom.

WASHINGTON - GOP presidential nominee John McCain has past connections to a private group that supplied aid to guerrillas seeking to overthrow the leftist government of Nicaragua in the Iran-Contra affair.

McCain's ties are facing renewed scrutiny after his campaign criticized Barack Obama for his link to a former radical who engaged in violent acts 40 years ago.

The U.S. Council for World Freedom was part of an international organization linked to former Nazi collaborators and ultra-right-wing death squads in Central America. The group was dedicated to stamping out communism around the globe.

The council's founder, retired Army Maj. Gen. John Singlaub, said McCain became associated with the organization in the early 1980s as McCain was launching his political career in Arizona. Singlaub said McCain was a supporter but not an active member in the group.

As the report intimates, this is all happening because of that media desire for "balance." If McCain attacks Obama for past connections, the need arises to find some connections to McCain and hype them. I actually think it's ultimately a negative consequence - they simply have to find a foil to balance each side, because hey, everybody knows Nazis, right? Also, there's a qualitative difference between McCain actually attending these meetings 25 years ago, when he was Obama's age, and Obama sitting on a board with Bill Ayers, whose more heinous activities occurred when Obama was 8 and who is now a professor.

So maybe the answer is for the media to ignore all of this.

Mission Accomplished!

They did it! The US Navy hit a slow-moving satellite with a consistent trajectory after initially calling the whole mission off because of weather! This just goes to show you, missile defense can save all of our lives - as long as it doesn't rain, and the weapons it's trying to hit go very very slowly, and in a deliberate manner. And we have about a week's notice.

Exciting!

...by the way, this development means we obviously need to give the Air Force billions more dollars so they have the tools they need to help us go house-to-house in Iraq and blow missiles out of their orbit.

Get Your Old "Save The Whales" Posters Out

The battle between environmental groups and the US Navy over the use of sonar off the California coast appeared to come to an end last week, when a federal judge forbade sonar use within 12 miles of the shoreline. But for this ruling to hold, you would have to have a President who believes in an independent judiciary and the rule of law. Alas, we have a king.

The Navy announced today that two important steps have been taken under existing law and regulations to allow it to conduct effective, integrated training with sonar off the coast of southern California after a federal court earlier this month imposed untenable restrictions on such training.

In accordance with the provisions of the Coastal Zone Management Act (CZMA), and at the recommendation of the Secretary of Commerce, the President concluded that continuing these vital exercises without the restrictions imposed by the district court is in the paramount interests of the United States. He signed an exemption from the requirements of the CZMA for the Navy's continued use of mid-frequency active (MFA) sonar in a series of exercises scheduled to take place off the coast of California through January 2009. The Navy already applies twenty-nine mitigation measures approved by federal environmental regulators when using active sonar, and these will remain in place.

In other words, the President thinks killing whales is a small price to pay for not having to tell the Navy move their boats a bit. Anyway, if the whales aren't willing to die for the cause of liberty, then they simply want the terrorists to win.

The Navy takes steps to limit damage to whales, granted. But that is pretty much besides the point. Between denying the waiver for California to regulate its own tailpipe emissions and this latest action, it's clear that this Administration doesn't find the normal structures of the law to apply to them. This next election is in large part about bringing this back into balance, about finding an executive who doesn't treat the Constitution like something on which you wipe your shoes.