Found at Ramblings of a GOP Soccer Mom.

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open it to page 161.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence along with these instructions.
5. Don’t search around and look for the coolest book you can find. Do what’s actually next to you.

My Result:

At one angle of the building was a little turret with a belvedere of round arches.

The book? A Treasury of Short Stories - Favorites of the past hundred years from Turgenev to Thurber from Balzac to Hemingway with biographical sketches of the authors. Edited by Bernardine Kielty. Published by Simon and Schuster - New York - 1948.

The story? Quattrocentisteria (How Sandro Botticelli Saw Simonetta in the Spring) By Maurice Hewlett. The story is from Hewlett’s 1899 book Little Novels of Italy.

I’ve been a non-smoker for 11 days and everything is still fine. I went to Acculaser Therapy and everything worked just great. An hour of time and more than a few of my dollars and no withdrawal symptoms, no “nic fits.”

There are times when I “reach for a cigarette”, but those are just the times when I would have had a cigarette when I was smoking. When a smoker leaves a building, sometimes when a smoker gets in the car (some smokers don’t smoke in their cars, some do), when you’ve finished eating something, etc. But I don’t need one and the feeling goes away rather quickly - 30 seconds or less.

At soccer today I met a lady wearing this t-shirt. She kindly allowed me to take a picture of its message. She told me she purchased it in Jerusalem.

I’d love to have one of these.

Michelle was on Fox & Friends this morning to discuss Reconquista.

Political Pit Bull has video here.

Hot Air has the video too.

Steve Doocy: Some Mexicans say they deserve an open border because they claim the United States took their land and the Mexicans want it back. This movement is called, and I’m not making it up, it’s called the Reconquista.

Brian Kilmeade: And you know it, to someone who knows you’re not making it up is Michelle Malkin. She talks about this crusade and she is a Fox News contributor with a heck of a blog and a heck of a website [Michelle Malkin and Hot Air - Ed.]

Michelle, first off, tell me about this movement. And it isn’t just a niche, is it just a niche group with a bunch of people who don’t want to let go of something?

Michelle Malkin: Well, a lot of people have been under the impression that this Reconquista movement is a fringe, intellectual, fantasy. But they’ve been around a long time, for decades actually, and in a lot of community colleges and universities there are professors who have been plying this idea that the Southwest was “stolen” from Mexico and that Mexicans ought to rightly, rightfully reclaim it for a long time. There are a lot of chapters of a student group called MEChA who believe this and I debated one of these young students just the other day and its as fresh as it was in the 1960’s and the indignent and the extreme nature of it has not died down. We saw that on Monday at the May Day rally even though the mainstream media didn’t want to show it.
(more…)

UPDATE 2: 42 page Jury Verdict Form here (pdf)

We know he’s guilty - that verdict is already in.

We know the Jury has decided that he is eligible for the death penalty - that verdict is in.

The verdict today is what exactly the sentence will be.

I agree with Bernard Kerik - Moussaoui should life in solitary without any hope of parole.

No contact with the outside world at all. No Martyrdom.

Actual Sentence from jury: Life - No parole. They were not unanimous for a death sentence.

UPDATED: At about 5:30 EDT documents should be available at the court’s website here along with all the other documents related to this case.

Found via A Certain Slant of Light, The Online Integrity - Statement of Principles is something that we at Musing Minds can stand behind.

Bernard will be putting these statements in his sidebar under “Policies”. I think that we will do so as well.

We’ve had some comment activity on the Neil Cavuto / Maria Elena Salinas / Claudia Spencer interview transcript post located here.

Since we’ve had some comments from across the spectrum, I wanted to highlight the post again.

Betsy points us to an article by Stephen Budiansky about trying to write satire about our institutes of higher learning and finding that the institutes have been there before him…

Betsy quotes part of it as follows:

As a model of pandering to students in the guise of lofty academic purpose, I thought that was pretty hard to top. Then I started reading the 92-page guide Case has created for teachers of these seminars.

If students fidget, talk or walk out of class, the guide advises seminar leaders not to “manage” such behaviors, but to explore their underlying causes. Instructors must remember that to such characteristically American cultural beliefs as the importance of morality, rationality and personal responsibility, there are equally valid alternatives that must be respected.

Instructors must be wary of spurious objectivity, such as a 0-100 grading scale; much better is a 0-5 scale, or, best of all, a check, check-plus, check-minus scale. And finally, if students do not contribute to discussions at all, seminar leaders should “make space for silence.”

and comments on the “check, check-plus, and check-minus scale.”

Me, I latched onto the “If students fidget, talk or walk out of class, the guide advises seminar leaders not to “manage” such behaviors, but to explore their underlying causes.” part.

These students are going to get a very rude awakening when they exhibit this kind of behavior at their new places of employment.

New employee is attending a meeting at place of employment.

New employee fidgets, talks, plays solitare on laptop or pda, and then just gets up and leaves said meeting.

A short while later, new employee is now ex-employee.

All this “feel good”, self esteem is everything - forget about actually learning skills stuff is sooo not helpful to survival in the real world.

I commented over at Betsy’s site that this is another example of “the bigotry of soft expectations” and it’s not just racial either.

I know that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, but when we continually work at making all the links weak instead of stronger we will all lose in the end.

The New York Times’ executive editor responds to the WSJ’s scathing editorial regarding the press complicity with intelligence leaks. He starts off by denying the existence of political bias in the media, and then proceeds to exhibit the very bias he denies.

In the body of Bill Keller’s defence he writes:

Among the suspects swept up and summarily convicted in your argument are: a) government officials who have disclosed secret doings of the government (with the exception of President Bush, whose leak-authorizing somehow escapes your notice); b) reporters and editors at the New York Times and Washington Post for reporting on these secret doings–notably the detention of terror suspects in CIA facilities in Europe and eavesdropping on Americans without warrants; and c) the Pulitzer Board, which honored both of those journalistic exploits last week.

I leave to others, including the court of public opinion, whether the government officials who spoke to reporters about secrets that troubled them were partisan evildoers, as the Journal contends, or conscientious public servants, or something more complicated.
Interesting how he accuses the WSJ of “summarily convict(ing)” the Times, then proceeds in the next line to categorically declare “secret doings” of the Administration such as the detention of terror suspects in CIA facilities in Europe, and eavesdropping on Americans without warrants.

The last I checked, the first “secret doing” may not even have taken place. As for the second point, assuming for the moment one agrees that counter-terrorist surveillance carried out pursuant to statute is a secret doing, any rational, impartial observer would agree that it involves “something more complicated” than merely eavesdropping on Americans without warrants.

As for Keller equating Bush’s constitutionally sanctioned right to release information he deems to be in the public’s interest with a CIA officer violating her oath of office (and perhaps one or more laws) as well his suggestion that the latter may be merely an act of a “conscientious public servant”, I leave it to the court of public opinion to decide whether such statements arise out of genuine ignorance of the legal and ethical obligations of CIA members regarding classified information, or are merely the result of blinding bias.

Dan Ford at eCorry.com is in need of some prayers for his health.

He’s also looking for a little “company” - go leave a comment…