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Better scratch that whole World War III thing. Iran isn’t building nuclear weapons after all.
Any more than Iraq was hoarding WMDs. Any more than George W. Bush has been presiding over a foreign policy built on the concept of humility.
All of that was just words, dangerously divorced from the reality of an increasingly skeptical world. This time, at least we learned the truth before we went to war…
…the U.S. intelligence agencies have reversed themselves and, despite the dire talk in Washington, Iran halted its nuclear-weapons program in 2003.
Oops!…
Unsurprisingly Mr Henican doesn’t choose to address matters from this perspective: to employ grown up language, in other words our “intelligence community” has, all at once, moved in lockstep from “truth” being perhaps overestimating an enemy’s capabilities, to quite possibly (once again) perhaps underestimating (”The Zero isn’t that good“. “The Nazis are finished.” “The Chinese won’t cross the Yalu.”) an implacable enemy which has already public pronounced – to great fanfare, let us not forget — that it is seeking nuclear technology.
That re-evolution Mr Henican clearly believes to be a distinct positive. And to us little people, who don’t grasp the minutiae of the “intelligence trade” with the same breezy certainty Mr Henican obviously possesses, his rhetorical end zone TD dance, uncork the champagne self-confidence on the overall matter is exceedingly reassuring. I know I’ll sleep better tonight.
Hopefully, though, a decade or so hence, long after everyone has long since forgotten these witty verbal joustings that emanated from Mr Henican’s deftly used keyboard, we won’t on some other Wednesday find ourselves suddenly exclaiming “Oops!” . . . for a decidedly different reason.
[Posted 11:32 AM NY time]
Adults who allow other people’s children to drink alcoholic beverages in their homes would face fines and possible jail time under “social host” legislation the Suffolk County legislature passed Monday.
The proposal, nearly identical to a law already on the books in Nassau County, is aimed at preventing adults from serving alcohol to anyone under the legal drinking age of 21 and targets underage drinking on New Year’s, said the bill’s sponsor, Legis. Ricardo Montano (D-Central Islip)…
…While there are no studies of the effectiveness of social host laws, scores of communities across the country have adopted such statutes in the past three years…
A far more straightforward solution that requires no study whatsoever might be to treat 18, 19 and 20 year old adults as ADULTS, by bringing the legal drinking age into line with the generally accepted age denoting the commencement of legal adulthood: age 18 . . .
…”I don’t want somebody else to decide whether my child can consume alcohol,” said Denna Cohen, president of Mothers Against Drunk Driving…
. . . but, then again, of course referring to a 20 year old as “my child” falls pretty much within our current day American mindset: childhood, a nearly lifelong affliction.
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Distantly related subject-wise, The A.P.:
No criminal charges will be filed against people who sent cruel Internet messages to a 13-year-old girl before she committed suicide, the St. Charles County prosecutor said Monday.
The parents of Megan Meier of Dardenne Prairie, who hanged herself last year, said her suicide came minutes after she received mean messages through the social networking site MySpace.
County Prosecutor Jack Banas said at a news conference there was no applicable statue to file charges in the case. Banas said he looked at laws related to stalking, harassment and child endangerment, but found no repeated incidents of threats to someone’s life or health, and no organized conspiracy.
A police report said that a mother from the neighborhood and her 18-year-old employee fabricated a profile for a teenage boy online who pretended to be interested in Megan before he began bullying her…
A presumably otherwise seemingly rational perpetual child parent, and an 18 year old child employee (who, hopefully, didn’t at any point consume alcohol), hounding a 13 year old girl over the net? What the hell is wrong with some people?
[Posted December 4, 9:04 PM NY time]
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