It's about damn time.

She's about a week or so late, but I'm glad she did it.

Her column is very good as well.

Not a bad week.  Not bad at all.

Thanksgiving was as good as could reasonably be expected.  We detailed that in the preview.  But as for Sunday, New England proved why they were the defending champs, Philly clinched the NFC East in November (as if that wasn't expected), and Pittsburgh is still on top of the mountain, albeit not without some challenges.

That's what Tuesday seemed like.  A lot of people either resigned or were given a pink slip.

Tavis Smiley announced that he wasn't renewing his contract with NPR and his last day is December 16th, claiming that he couldn't draw enough young people to talk radio.

Someone should ask him when has he ever drew young people to anything.  Only older folks watched his show on BET, and young people never listened to NPR or PBS before.  So I don't know what made him think he would be successful with that show.  It seems to me that Smiley and others want to force young people to accept them and follow them everywhere they go rather than actually listening to what they have to say and making decisions based on that.  But if those guys actually did that, they would have shows that are a lot different than what they have now.

Smiley is a good guy, when it comes down to it.  But he is just the same voice in a somewhat younger body (not too young...he is 40).  The fact that he engages in joint ventures with Tom Joyner, a middle-aged dj that targets older audiences, should be a testament to how out of step he is towards the younger audiences.

Next, Kwesi Mfume "resigned" as President of the NAACP, saying he wanted to spend more time with his family, and was possibly aiming for a Senate run in Maryland (good luck with that one). 

Word is that there was a rift between Mfume and NAACP Chairman Julian Bond.  A number of people blamed Bond for an IRS investigation into the NAACP's tax exempt status due to political partisanship.  At the heart of the matter was a hatchet speech that Bond made this summer, bashing Bush and the Republican Party.  Comparing the GOP to the Taliban before September 11th didn't help things either, I'm sure.

Rumors are going to start soon that Smiley might be interested in taking the NAACP post.  While that would give the NAACP a new look, and Smiley might envigorate the grassroots effort, I don't think it will solve the problems of the NAACP.  The organization is partisan, and it doesn't address the issues of African-Americans today, nor does it prepare them for the future.  Personally, I think the whole organization should be dismantled.

There was one hiring...Mel Watt will be the head of the Congressional Socialist Black Caucus.  Watt -who looks like Michael "Flash" Turner from The Five Heartbeats - said he is ready to repair relations with the Bush Administration.

Isn't it interesting how all of these organizations now claim to want to repair relations with Bush, instead of the other way around?  As I was saying earlier in the year, Bush doesn't need them, they needed Bush.  Now it seems that all of the Bush-bashing has put a lot of folks in these organizations in a pickle.

That's a shame, ain't it?  Not.

And Tom Ridge resigned as Secretary of Homeland Security this afternoon.  He will stay on until February 1st.

Not surprising, considering it's a stressful job, as the first term has been to a lot of people.  It would be nice if Bush nominates someone that wants to enforce our immigration laws and close the borders to illegal immigration, as Michelle Malkin wishes, but I guess that's asking too much.

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In sports, Ty Willingham was fired from Notre Dame after three seasons.

That sucks, but the bottom line is that he couldn't bring in the money.  Notre Dame doesn't believe in having a extensive rebuilding period.  They believe in winning NOW.  And if you don't win, you get fired.  It's as simple as that.  When a college puts the kind of money into their football programs as Notre Dame does, you better pull off that $14 million dollar BCS bid.  If not, you're assed out.

To be honest, I wouldn't envy anyone that had to coach at Notre Dame.  It's probably one of the worst situations to have in college football, because

(1) there is so much pressure to succeed and

(2) Notre Dame is an independent school, meaning they do not belong to a conference.  That means that they have a harder time getting a BCS bid because of the automatic conference championship bid clause, which I explained to a point here.  You see, the champions of the major conferences get an automatic BCS bid no matter what their records are.  Since Notre Dame doesn't belong to any of those conferences, that means they only are viable for two at-large bids.  That makes it even harder for Notre Dame to be successful.  In fact, they've been to maybe one BCS bowl since it's been implemented.

So that means Willingham didn't have a real chance unless he went undefeated.  And to make matters worse, he went 5-6 and wasn't bowl eligible last year and went 6-5 and is headed to the lowly Insight Bowl this year.  He's also been blown out by USC, a hated rival, by 31 points each of his three seasons.

While I thought he would have one more chance to save his job next season, it was obvious that he wasn't going to pull in the recruits to be able to get a BCS bid, and that's the only way his job would have been saved. 

Meanwhile, Notre Dame should seriously think about joining the Big East, who has a 7-3 team (Pitt) and a 6-5 team (Syracuse) vying for a BCS bowl bid.  Notre Dame might be salty because they would have to give up some money if they did get a BCS bid, but at least they'd be there.  And it would be a hell of a lot easier getting in through the Big East, considering that Boston College is leaving for the ACC next year and there really isn't much competition.  Do it now before the NCAA strips the Big East of it's automatic bid eligibility.

In the NFL, Butch Davis resigned from the Cleveland Browns.

I'd rather say fired.  Everyone pretty much knew this was his last year.  Cleveland hasn't been a playoff threat in about two seasons.  This would make number three.

But Davis might land on his feet like Pete Caroll did and get a decent coaching job in college football.  Davis was the coach at Miami, in which he took over a scandal-plagued football team and led them to victory against Florida in the 2001 Sugar Bowl and finishing with an 11-1 record.  Caroll is now gunning for his second straight national championship and undefeated season after being fired by the New England Patriots in 2000 for Bill Bellichek.

Some say Davis might look at the job at Notre Dame.  I doubt it, as it looks like Utah's Urban Meyer, who has Utah looking at a possible BCS bid and an undefeated season, will get the job.  He was a former assistant coach and he has said that Notre Dame is his dream job.

It's quite obvious that the 9/11 Commissioners as well as the Washington establishment are not pleased at all about a hold-up in the House of Representatives that threatens to kill the Intelligence Reform Act that would consolidate all of the intelligence agencies under the control of a new Intelligence Director.

Yesterday the chairs took aim at Sensenbrenner's provisions in particular by opposing Sensenbrenner's insistence on making driver's licenses for illegal aliens illegal. 

MR. KEAN:  We've recommended uniform systems and driver's licenses in our recommendations.  We haven't recommended the specific one that Congressman Sensenbrenner wants.  But we're very reluctant to see that whole bill held up just by this one provision.  I mean, we recognize that he wants this very, very badly.  But to hold up every single one of these other provisions to make the American people safer for this one provision or two provisions, to me doesn't make any sense.  He can put it in a separate bill.  We have no position on it under the commission because we didn't consider it.  So I just hope that he will let this bill go forward and then let us look at these provisions and maybe we'll support them as well as everybody else.

MR. HAMILTON:  It is important to have national standards on driver's licenses, passports and other identification documents.  There isn't any doubt that the hijackers use the state driver's licenses to get by a lot of checkpoints.  So standards are important here.  But the fundamental question--we can put national standards in--but whether or not, for example, you issue a driver's license, that's a state matter and ought to be resolved by the state.  And the question Congressman Sensenbrenner raises, don't give driver's licenses to illegal aliens, I think is a valid question.  It needs to be debated.  It should not be resolved, I think, in this bill.  But it should be in the future, and it certainly ought not to hang up literally hundreds of provisions, hundreds of provisions in this bill, including, for example, facilitating emergency responders' work, including improvements in American foreign policy, including border security improvements, aviation security.  We ought not to hang all of that up on a disputed provision in the immigration side.

Kean's reaction doesn't surprise me, as he is a former governor of New Jersey and has a more leftist edge in his outlook.  Hamilton's does.  To try to blazenly dismiss the importance of identification as an access tool for terrorists and illegal aliens that are breaking the laws of our country is reprehensible.

The question that should be asked to Kean and Hamilton is why wasn't this placed into their reform structure?  As Kean stated, the Commission agreed that the driver's license requirements need to be reformed, and had proposed them.  Hence, why didn't they request that those recommendations are added into the current bill?  It sounds like the Commission is interested in political lobbying rather than coming up with needed reform.

And Hamilton's reaction is especially disappointing as he infers that states should have the right to grant access to driver's licenses to those who break federal law.  To claim it would be a "national standard" is ridiculous.  That would be relevant if we were talking about U.S. citizens that were abiding federal law.  But the federal government, particularly the White House, a right and responsibility to enforce laws created by Congress as well as protect our borders from terrorist threats.

As I've stated before, the Senate, the President, and the 9/11 Commission are more interested in candy-coating this in order to make it look like they've done something rather than championing and implementing true reform that could go a long way in protecting the populace.  Sensenbrenner on Rush Limbaugh's show last week stated that the 9/11 hijackers possessed over 60 driver's licenses from five states, and all of them were illegal in accordance to those states' laws.  If the states won't do their job, what's stopping the federal government from taking care of their responsibility?

Here's what Sensenbrenner had to say on ABC's "This Week" on Sunday (via NewsMax):

"The 19 murderers on Sept. 11 got 63 separate legally issued driver's licenses from five states. They used those to open bank accounts and to get on the plane."

Sensenbrenner warned that unless the terrorist loophole was closed, U.S. law enforcement wouldn't be able to prevent another 9/11-style attack.

"The 9/11 Commission specifically recommended that aliens who are here on temporary visas, which were the 9/11 murderers, have their driver's licenses expire on the date of the expiration of their visas," he noted.

"What's wrong with having a uniform national standard to apply to driver's licenses so that people who want to commit terrorist attacks can't game the system?" the Wisconsin Republican asked. "What good is reorganizing intelligence if we don't have homeland security?"

It does no good.  Kean and Hamilton both know it.  But they will stubbornly hold on in an attempt to add on to their 15 minutes.  How dare Sensenbrenner and Hunter oppose the high and mighty Commission???

Sensenbrenner and Hunter, I say again...stand your ground and don't give in.

First, let's talk about college for a minute.  I've been watching some of the games over the weekend, and I've watched some here and there over the season.

This will be published on NorthernArc over the weekend.

---

As soon as John Kerry conceded the election, the self-righteousness of the left sprang forth to insult every Bush voter in the country.  Talk about secession, inbreeding, and intelligence became normal talking points when the left would discuss the election.  By the end of the day, a graphic was being passed around on the internet where the Canada/U.S. boundary had been moved further south to add all of the states Kerry won.  The northern country was named "The United States of Canada".  The Southern one, which comprised of the Bush states, was named "Jesusland".

That's normal for them, because they can't admit to how wrong they were throughout this election.  Instead of actually looking within to see what put you in this predicament, always assign blame to others.  After all, leftists have always been good at placing accountability someone other than themselves.

Continuing with their childlike temper-tantrum, average IQ statistics of every state in the nation were being passed around, where the states Kerry won had a higher IQ than most of the states that Bush carried.  Thus, it reminded me of watching an episode of Dexter's Laboratory on Cartoon Network way back, where Dexter starts yelling at his sister, Dee Dee: "You're STOOOPAAD!!"

But in this case, it's the left that's making themselves look "STOOPAD".  Had they actually took the time to think about what they're saying, and do just a little bit more reading - they're calling themselves stupid as well.

Anyone that looks at statistics knows you can't broadbrush the whole group by targeting a majority within a minority of the group and think that's going to provide an accurate analysis.  Leftists are taking the IQ's of the whole population within the state - IQ's and all - and are trying to use that to say the majority of the VOTING populace, which is a much smaller group, is stupid, and that's why they voted for Bush.

But Bush didn't get 100% of the vote in any state he won.  Indeed; most of the voters in the Southern states - where Bush swept the whole region, and tend to be at the bottom of the statistics table - are registered Democrats.  The next time you see someone touting the "stupid" statistic, ask them whether they feel their Democratic Kerry brethern are stupid as well.  Then ask them why have Democrats dominated the state and local legislatures of those states even to this very day.

Knowing leftists as well as I'm sure I do, they'll retort that those aren't leftists, or even moderates.  That's when it's really time to make them sweat:  ask them why the three Democratic presidents after John Kennedy's election in 1960 have been Southerners, and automatically leaders of their party.  It should be fun to see them stumble.

And precisely when did the South become stupid?  After all, the South as been a Democratic stronghold since Thomas Jefferson won the presidency in 1804 (although Jefferson called himself and his followers "Republicans" back then, before Andrew Jackson took the helm and started calling them Democrats).  Despite Republicans' attempts at a "Southern stragedy" during Nixon's runs for president in 68 and 72, Democrat Jimmy Carter still carried every Southern state on his way to winning the Presidency in 1976.  Was the South stupid during all of this time?  When Democrats had an eight-seat advantage in the Southern states in 1994, were they stupid then?  Precisely when did they become stupid?

Leftists are only showing their ignorance when they try to use statistics like these, not the supposed ignorance of others.

I'm not going to say much - mainly because it's the middle of the night (I'm a vampire) and I'm on a janky, archaic computer with a measley dial-up connection.

By Jonah Goldberg from National Review:

But Kerry left out another area where the status quo was to be extended by another Bush term: The president can do nothing right.

This has been a constant theme of the last four years. When Bush was allegedly acting unilaterally (Iraq), he was denounced for not being multilateral. When he was multilateral (North Korea), he was denounced for not being unilateral. When Europeans are excluded, that's bad (again, allegedly Iraq); when Europeans are allowed to take the lead (Iran), that's bad, too. When Bush "outsourced" the war in Afghanistan by using non-American troops, that was a monumental mistake, according to Kerry and others. When we didn't outsource the war in Iraq, that was a monumental mistake as well. And so on.

Is there a such thing as being "too" right?  If so, Goldberg is too right to a tee as he takes on the President's critics on Porter Goss's reformation of the CIA.  Read it when you get a chance.

I think I'll write about Democratic Party contradictions in my column at NorthernArc this week.

Over the weekend, the media started whooping and hollering about the House of Representatives voting down the Intelligence Reform bill that would have consolidated all of the intelligence agencies under one umbrella.  The media tries to claim that it's a "turf war", saying the House is trying to protect the status quo and standing firm against change.

Don't be fooled by what they are telling you.  The truth is that the Senate wants to try to candy-coat true reform, and provisions that the House has asked for that would really go a long way to protect this country against terrorist aggression.

The two leading this supposed rebellion against the wishes of the 9/11 families and the President is Congressmen James Sensenbrenner from Wisconsin, who is the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee; and Duncan Hunter from California, the Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.  And as Brendan Miniter explains, there are a few central issues that the Senate needs to get straight:

The Washington Post identified the "conservatives" in the House as the bad guys. Meanwhile others claim certain House members were simply doing the Pentagon's bidding. Give it a few days, and we'll likely hear that it was actually Halliburton that was behind the curtain all along. But make no mistake, this bill died in House-Senate conference over a central policy issue: whether the military should take the lead in fighting the war on terror. More than a few Beltway insiders don't see Iraq as part of that war and anyway would rather the Marines and special-ops guys take a back seat to the CIA and other clandestine services--a view reflected in the reforms pushed by the Senate.

It's real simple, folks; should the War on Terror be ran by the people who are actually fighting it and trying to kill these people that have them in the crosshairs or should the bureaucrats in Washington do it?  Considering the problems in the CIA as of late as they have been engaging in a power struggle with the president and the numerous times bureaucratic control failed in the years leading to 9/11, there is no question that it's time for the people who are in the war and have their lives on the line to control the war.  That's what the Pentagon is there for.

Another great statement by Miniter:

Before we get too far into the details--and there are a lot of details that have not been widely reported but will nonetheless make you cringe--let's pause for a moment to consider the politics. Rep. Jane Harman, a California Democrat, responded to a reporter's question this way: "If there is another major terrorist attack on our soil--and sadly, there will likely be one--we will have only ourselves to blame. Congress had a chance to protect America, and Congress failed." She's hardly alone. This seems to be part of a new Democratic offensive.

This strategy is a dangerous one for America. Talking down American power and misleading our enemies into believing that an attack could damage the political party that is most vigorously pursuing the war on terror--à la Spain--invites disaster. What Osama bin Laden needs to understand is that his is a hopeless cause destined to leave him a broken and humiliated man.

Minter's right; the media and the Democrats are now going to put on the shell of foreign policy strength; something that they've never been concerned about in the last 40 years.  If a terrorist attack happens again, they will point fingers at the Republicans.  They still live - even after this year's disasterous election - with the belief that whatever is bad for America will be good for the Democratic Party.

Also, another hilarious notion is the lamenting of "Rebellious Republicans", when it was just last week that the media and the Democrats were complaining about the controversy over Senator Arlen Specter.  In that case, they were complaining because moderates were supposedly being pushed out through party line.  However, this week, they're complaining that the party line isn't being enforced.  Take the Democratic Leadership Council's statement on Monday:

It's time for Bush...to make it clear that he, not James Sensenbrenner or Duncan Hunter (the two House committee potentates who are opposing intelligence reform) -- or for that matter, Tom DeLay or Donald Rumsfeld -- is the leader of his party. It's time for him to spend some political capital in the pursuit of national security, and to make some heads roll within his own administration if the safety of the American people continues to be subordinated to self-interested bureaucratic turf wars.

In other words, go to Hunter and Sensenbrenner, smack them around, and tell them who's boss.  But after seeing what Sensenbrenner had to say on Rush Limbaugh's show today, I don't think he's intimidated by either the President or the Senate:

SENSENBRENNER: Well, after the supporters of this bad deal trashed both Duncan Hunter and me on every Sunday morning talking heads shows -- neither of us, by the way, were invited to defend ourselves -- it's obvious that the positions have hardened. Neither Duncan nor I are going to give in on our provisions which we believe are extremely important to protect America and particularly to give our war fighters in combat the proper intelligence that they need. And we have been standing together on this issue. I think that we do need to reform our intelligence community. That's a given. But if the people who receive the intelligence, whether it's law enforcement or the war fighters in combat, do not have the laws and the procedures to be able to use that intelligence, the good intelligence isn't really going to help anybody much at all.

Sensenbrenner was excellent in this interview with Limbaugh today.  And he, Hunter, nor any of the other Republicans should back down at all. 

Now there are other provisions that the Senate has their panties in a bunch about.  Two of them are the driver's license ban and the asylum ban.  The driver's license ban would make it illegal for any illegal immigrant to be able to obtain a license anywhere in this country.  That's the one I REALLY want to pass.  And Sensenbrenner has made it clear that he isn't going to bulge on that provision:

RUSH: Congressman, where do we stand on this now? This is obviously a dead issue during this session of Congress, is that true?

SENSENBRENNER: The leadership would like to have more negotiations going on before we get back here on December the 6th. I am absolutely insistent that the driver's license provision stay in the bill. We need tough standards. We need to deny driver's licenses to illegal aliens, and I think the proof in the pudding on that is that the 19 September 11th hijackers --

RUSH: Yeah.

SENSENBRENNER: -- ended up getting 63 validly issued driver's licenses from several states.

HELL YES.  It's about time someone did something about it.  In fact, in Michelle Malkin's book "Invasion", one of the biggest things that struck me is how easily the terrorists were able to obtain the kinds of information and access that you'd think only the residents of that state or the citizens of the U.S. would be able to get, yet these guys were able to use a very complex illegal immigration black market racket in Virginia to get all they needed to get around the country and then some.  The fact that North Carolina made it legal for terrorists to do the same thing really pisses me off to no end.

The asylum ban would make it harder for people seeking to come to this country to declare political asylum, and Sensenbrenner gave a good explanation by this needs to be implemented:

The Senate rejected any change in the asylum law, and once again, yesterday, they were shown to be wrong because there were 26 people that were indicted for gaming the asylum and driver's licenses law in order to document 1900 illegal immigrants from Indonesia.

The truth is, the facts are with Sensenbrenner and Hunter, NOT the President nor the supposed moderate Republicans that are trying to pander to a Latino community that wants to place political power at the expense of national security and weakened law enforcement.

Someone needs to tell the 9/11 Commission and the families that their 15 minutes of fame passed by over the summer.  They are not elected officials, and we elected people to Congress to pass laws.  And I don't know of any article or amendment in the Constitution that states that Congress should blindly pass any law or resolution simply because a supposed bipartisan commission claims it is the right thing to do. 

I never thought consolidating the intelligence agencies under one director was a good idea anyway.  I didn't think the Republicans would place a halt to such an idea, but I'm glad Sensenbrenner and Hunter need to continue to stand their ground.

Keep on keeping on.

A solid week, albeit there was only a couple of hot games, and those weren't supposed to be as good as they were.

Minnesota, New England, and Pittsburgh almost blew it.  Pittsburgh and New England pulled it out, and it took a 12-point turnaround in the 4th for Minnesota to pull out the win. All three showed a bit of weakness in their games this week.

Atlanta almost blew it too, all in the face of a rookie quarterback's first start.  If Algee Crumpler wasn't on that field Atlanta would probably be 6-4 rather than 8-2.  But even 6-4 is more than enough to win the NFC South and get a playoff spot, as it looks as if no other team in that division will make it to .500.