WOIFM

The Big Thing

The Big Thing is here. I've opened up my own shop: The Law Office of Michael Alex Wasylik.

My areas of practice include intellectual property, civil litigation, and legal counseling and planning. I am licensed to practice in Virginia and Florida and welcome referrals from both states.

UPDATE: I am now also admitted in Washington, D.C.

Something Big is coming.

Something Big is coming.

Blogger Automates a Bit

Evan is preparing to implement the new weblogs.com update scripts. Which is good, because I just scratched my head when reading about "XML-RPC, SOAP or HTTP-POST."

GIANT FOO!!

GIANT FOO!!

But I Play One on TV

Martin Sheen, who is not a politician but plays one on TV, stars in a new ad opposing oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. As the National Center for Public Policy Research reveals, the ad is full of outrageous lies.

A Note to the Taliban

Americans can send mail, too. Here's a note to the Taliban: "You are condemned... you sentenced yourselves to death. The Armed Forces of the United States are here to seek justice for our dead."

Rogue State Rebuttal

One of the main rebuttals against the "rogue state" argument for a missile-defense system is that no nation would be stupid enough to launch a nuclear attack with "a return address" on it - instead, they would choose more surreptitious methods, like sneaking a bomb into one of our harbors on a boat, or using biological or chemical warfare.

As if those methods don't have a "return address" on them either. The events of the last several weeks have shown that not only does America have enemies who hate us enough to try weapons of mass destruction, they're stupid enough to poke the sleeping dragon ineffectively. By that, I mean the recent spate of anthrax deliveries in our political and media centers, which are looking more and more like state-sponsored terrorism.

It is no secret who is behind this, and it is no secret that we will convert the perpetrators into a fine aerosol mist, wrap what remains in pig entrails, and bury the package in a pile of dung. While they may have succeeded - temporarily - at making us a little nervous, they have guaranteed that the only superpower on Earth will forever oppose their cause. We have enlisted the rest of the civilized world to turn over every rock until every last parasite has been found and crushed. Far from becoming less involved in the Middle East, mainstream America now understands it must watch the region with constant vigilance and be more involved than ever in regional politics. Whatever their goals in poking the sleeping dragon, they have accomplished exactly the opposite.

So we can conclude this... our enemies are ruthless, and strategically challenged. They are backed by rogue nations. If they had nuclear weapons, missiles or not, they would have used them. This is exactly why we must seek to develop a scientifically - or psychological - sound missile defense system. We cannot afford vulnerability any longer.

Seven Nations

I saw a Dewar's ad in a magazine featuring a bunch of guys standing in the middle of a stream with kilts, bagpipes, and other implements of destruction. I went to the trusty internet, and gathered more information. Now I'm blasting Seven Nations as loud as my poor computer speakers can handle.

Bagpipes rock.

Big Hunk of Metal Love

Yes, that does say "big hunk of metal love." Isn't that a song by AC/DC?

Osama bin Laughed-at

Osama bin Laden has become an accidental laughing stock due to his association with Muppets.

D-Day, In Today's Media

How would the media have covered D-Day if it were today? Rich Galen has a brilliant Mullings today.

So, there you have it. The Allied Expeditionary Forces will, in fact, invade Europe not at Pas de Calais as the American public had been lead to believe, but at Normandy. And, that attack will take place either tomorrow or the next day, depending upon the weather.

Fortunately, we haven't relied on element of surprise to defeat the Taliban.

Anthrax Deeply Regrets

FoxNews reports that thrash band Anthrax has issued a press release regretting the turn of recent events that have made the band's name suddenly "not so cool."

Before the tragedy of September 11th the only thing scary about Anthrax was our bad hair in the 80's and the "Fistful Of Metal" album cover. Most people associated the name Anthrax with the band, not the germ. Now in the wake of those events, our name symbolizes fear, paranoia and death. Suddenly our name is not so cool.

Hang in there, guys. What we really need is a biological agent named "N'Sync."

Flag Burning

We don't need a Constitutional amendment to ban flag-burning. The law of natural selection already takes care of the problem for us. Case in point: A Pakistani protestor set himself on fire burning a U.S. flag this week.

Link from Reductio.

It begins: Airstrikes in Afghanistan.

It begins: Airstrikes in Afghanistan. Significantly, the first air drops have included humanitarian supplies such as food and first aid.

I have been thinking about the future of Afghanistan. What happens when the Taliban has been eradicated? Will the United States repeat the mistakes of the past, by abandoning the region to its own misery, or will we repeat the successes of our past, by launchng a reconstruction effort like we did in Japan and Germany after World War II? The potential benefits of such a "Marshall Program" in Asia seem compelling.

First, we can avoid the prospect of Afghanistan becoming once again a safe haven for terrorists. Second, the formation of a U.S.-friendly, democratic state in the region will give us a strategic foothold for our dealings both with the Middle East and with the rest of Asia. A re-built Afghanistan can serve both as a military ally and a trading partner. Third, the Afghan people by and large don't support the Taliban. If we both eliminate the Taliban but also stay behind to clean up the mess, and get the Afghans back on track, they might- just might - be grateful and loyal for it. We can guarantee our continued strategic presence through continued support of Afghan political and economic stability.

The consequences of simply pulling out almost inevitably lead to more warfare against America. That, we cannot allow.

Sorry for the long silence.

Sorry for the long silence. I've been holding a number of posts in the reserve queue, and finally had time to publish them today. Enjoy.

Reno Not Immune From Suit

A federal judge ruled today that bystanders injured in the raid to capture Elian Gonzalez can sue Janet Reno. Reno had claimed, that because she had been serving as attorney general at the time, that she was immune from civil suits over the consequences of her actions.

The judge's decision was a stinging rebuke:

A reasonable officer in Reno's position would know that the law forbade her from directing the execution of a warrant in a manner that called for unjustified force against bystanders.

Now that the judge has cleared the way for the suit, discovery should be progressing on schedule over the next few months. Reno's deposition ought to be availble to the media no later than next summer.

GOP Prospects

Even as the GOP's hopes of re-taking the Senate get slimmer, their chances of running up the score in the House get fatter. Just this week, the redistricting plan most likely to be implemented in Texas sent Dems reeling. The plan would

...likely end the House career of Democrat Ken Bentsen and would threaten the reelection of at least four other Democrats: Charles W. Stenholm, Jim Turner, Max Sandlin and Chet Edwards [and would] produce at least three new GOP seats -- including the two new seats added to the delegation because of the state's population increase in the 2000 census.

Dem strategists are running scared today:

The Texas plan, which some Democrats suggested could result in the loss of as many as nine seats, would put the GOP so far ahead in the national competition to win a majority of at least 218 seats that the odds of a Democratic House would become prohibitive given the declining number of marginal, competitive seats across the country.

"I can't tell you how bad this is," a Democratic strategist said yesterday. "If this stands, and we have to live with just a one-seat gain in California, it is going to be very hard to win the House back."

Nationwide, with plans in place and expected to be in place, the GOP expects to pick up 8 - 10 seats. Not quite the 15 - 30 seat gain that I once predicted, but still enough to put the chamber out of easy reach for the Dems until 2012.

Dar Williams Show at the 9:30 Club

Four of us went to see the Dar Williams show at the 9:30 Club last night. All I can say is, wow. Dar's live performance had me floored. She took songs that I thought I knew and made them absolutely pop, as if listening to the albums weree two-dimensional, and seeing her live was 3D. Of course, the club was packed with fans who knew every word to every song, sang along without any encouragement, and basically fed right back into the whole experience. After the disappointment we had last fall, I'm glad we finally got to see Dar headlining live... it was so worth being persistent.

Politically Incorrect

By now, almost all of y'all have heard that Bill Maher's Politically Incorrect has been yanked off the air following his sharp criticism of the American military recently. As one might expect, liberals around the globe have - rightly - rallied to his defense. These folks were noticably silent when the Boston Globe fired its only conservative columnist two years back. And you can bet every penny of junior's college fund that they were standing on the sidelines cheering when the National Review axed Ann Coulter's syndicated column.

One nexus of the Maher controversy is White House spokeman Ari Fleischer's remarks that people "ought to watch what they say." Oddly enough, Maher wasn't criticising the current administration, he was lambasting the last one, when he said: "We have been the cowards, lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away; that's cowardly."

So why does everyone seem to think this is the product of some super-secret White House plan to get Bill Maher?

McMurphy v. The Supreme Court

Kevin takes the Supreme Court to task for treating former President Bill Clinton just as they would any other lawyer who had been disbarred. As the sidebar on the story clearly tells, any time a lawyer is disbarred in any jurisdiction, other courts in which the lawyer is admitted routinely follow suit - several other lawyers were apparently disbarred in the same ministerial action. So, since Clinton has said he will appeal the decision, the only question is - why does he think he's entitled to special treatment?