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Saturday, May 29, 2010

Mass Scale War Crimes That You Probably Never Knew or Learned About

Hat tip to Stewart Baker at The Volokh Conspiracy who points out an intriguing investigative report on the biological warfare that Japan waged against China 70 years ago.
Jiang, a 70-year-old farmer, can’t remember a time when flesh-eating ulcers didn’t cover his legs. “They never go away,” he tells me. “They just get drier. Sometimes they hurt less.” He doesn’t know for sure how he got them, but his father told him that the wounds first appeared in July 1942, soon after the Japanese army passed through his village. His entire family developed the festering sores. His mother and younger brother died in unbearable pain a decade later as the untreated, mysterious infection crept up their legs.

Jiang is one of 15 elderly Chinese men and women whom Zhu is treating in his simple village clinic for what locals label “rotten leg disease.” A definitive diagnosis is no longer possible so many decades after the initial exposure and secondary infections. But Chinese, American, and other Western physicians who have examined the survivors, documented their histories, and photographed their wounds claim that they are victims of the most gruesome biological warfare attacks in modern history.
According to the article, Japan has only minimally acknowledged that it used bio-weapons, and the government has never apologized for doing so. Incredibly tragic, but also infuriating given the amount of noise Baker notes that many politicians and courts in Japan have made about how the use of nuclear weapons by the U.S. on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a war crime.

Update: Thanks to the Age of Google, I've discovered there have been a handful of books written on the subject of Japan's history of biological warfare. The very earliest appears to be Unit 731: Japan's Secret Biological Warfare in World War II, which was published in 1989.

Thursday, May 27, 2010

Rendering the Term "Pro-Life" Meaningless

Larry Kudlow is the latest right-of-center pundit I've seen to repeat the assertion that U.S. Senate candidate Carly Fiorina is "pro-life." No, she's not. At least not until she comes out and expressly says she does not believe there ought to be a legal right to abortion.

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Obama Topping Himself in Bad Judicial Nominations

Meet Robert Chatigny, Obama's new nominee to the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals:
"But looking at the record in a light most favorable to [Michael] Ross, he never should have been convicted. Or if convicted, he never should have been sentenced to death because his sexual sadism, which was found by every single person who looked at him, is clearly a mitigating factor...He can sit on his hands and sit mute and he may find not only that the death sentence is set aside, he may find the death penalty has been abolished. He may find that he gets the life sentence that he has repeatedly said he would take in an instant if it was offered to him."
The above should be read within the context of Michael Ross having confessed to murdering 8 women, 7 of whom he raped. Also, Ross didn't want to stay his execution, but his attorney did it after being strong-armed by Chatigny.

And I thought Obama couldn't possibly nominate someone worse than Goodwin Liu. Sure looks like I was wrong.

h/t Ace

Sunday, May 23, 2010

I'm Starting to Think Jonah Goldberg is Kind of Stupid

On May 8, 2010, Jonah Goldberg posted a message he got from someone about the controversial Arizona illegal immigration law. The message was purportedly from a legal immigrant who said he didn't always carry around his green card, and wondered whether just carrying his valid driver's license would be good enough. Jonah didn't provide an answer, because he obviously didn't know. However, anyone who has bothered to read the Arizona statute, particularly 11-1051 B, would clearly see the answer to this person's question is "yes," a valid driver's license is good enough. I e-mailed Jonah this information, but never got a response (not even a one-word thanks).

Curiously enough, Jonah's May 8 post no longer appears to be on the NRO-Corner site. Click here, then click the link "The Arizona Law." Why it's gone, I'm not sure. But if I had to guess, Jonah may have gotten a lot of e-mails like the one I sent him, and he realized his posting made him look foolishly ignorant.

Now Jonah is making himself look not too smart again by asking why it should be a scandal if it's proven the White House offered Joe Sestak a job in the administration in exchange for him dropping out of the Senate Democratic Party primary in Pennsylvania. This is really nothing short of incredible. Jonah Goldberg is either too stupid or ethically challenged to not recognize what is by all accounts an act of bribery. I kind of had a hard time doing so before, but now I really can't take Jonah Goldberg seriously.

Just a Whole Lotta Stupid Going On

As David St. Hubbins of Spinal Tap once said, "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever." The following from the makers of the Gringo Mask, a protest against the Arizona illegal immigration law, clearly falls into the former category. How so? For one thing, the Gringo Mask makers are assuming the Arizona law permits racial profiling, which it expressly doesn't. Also, William Jacobson at his excellent Legal Insurrection blog notes that wearing a mask is legal grounds for being detained and arrested in several states - but not Arizona.