Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader hasn’t been paying very close attention to the race for Congress in his district (VA 1). That may seem a little out of character, but it isn’t really. The First District of Virginia is a safe district. Rob Wittman, your Maximum Leader’s Congressman, is in little danger of being outsted by his Democratic challenger, Krystal Ball. (Yeah, the name is sorta sounds like she should be endorsed by gypsies everywhere.)

Other than seeing a few ads on the interwebs (from the Ball campaign in which she accuses Wittman of being wooden), he hasn’t heard much about the race. It really isn’t making news. At one point, someone in the Wittman campaign made a crack about Ball being cute. That caused a stir. Apparently, Ball was once voted one of the sexiest staffers on Capitol Hill. In spite of that, we can’t comment on her physical appearance. That’s sexist you know. (NB: In your Maximum Leader’s opinion, Krystal Ball is sort of cute. The photo she has of herself on billboards and stuff around is very unflattering.)

Well Krystal Ball got a little more sexy… Apparently Gawker has photos (originally posted to Facebook) of Krystal Ball sucking a dildo off a man’s nose. That man was (apparently at the time) her husband. (NB: Nice Christmas party by the way… Your Maximum Leader never gets invited to the sexy Christmas parties.)

Now, if your Maximum Leader were a little more like his friend Skippy, this would be a game changer. Really, how often do photos of your prospective Congressman/woman turn up showing them performing oral sex on a dildo? Not often is your Maximum Leader’s answer. Not often enough would surely be Skippy’s answer. Your Maximum Leader hasn’t ever considered skill at fellatio a criteria for voting for (or against) anyone for Congress. Hasn’t crossed his mind, until now that is.

Your Maximum Leader is confident that these photos will not change his vote, but the race did get a bunch more interesting. Interesting if you like to know how well your candidate gives blow jobs. Just saying…

Thanks to FLG for pointing this out to your Maximum Leader.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader sat down last night and had planned on writing a little piece about liberal fascination with China. Specifically, your Maximum Leader has been perplexed by how often “liberal” commentators praise China’s ability to get things done. Your Maximum Leader wonders if these commentators (Paul Krugman leaps to mind) ever consider that the reason China can get things done is because they are an authoritarian state? Sure there is a lot of economic freedom in China, but there isn’t any political freedom. Do these commentators see that connection? Your Maximum Leader wonders if they do.

Of course, since you don’t see a post on China on the site you can safely assume your Maximum Leader didn’t write the post. He didn’t write it because he needed to cook dinner for the family. He whipped together a basic ragout (ragu?). Pork, onions, carrots, celery, garlic, tomato paste, chicken broth, red wine, you know a ragout. It would have been better if it had simmered for a few hours. (Since it didn’t would it really qualify as a ragout? Interesting questions.) But it was tasty.

After dinner your Maximum Leader decided to watch to TV on the DVR. He watched an episode of “The Late Late Show w/Craig Ferguson” and “Chelsea Lately” both guilty pleasures. Then he was going to watch “Castle” with his daughter. But then Mrs Villain and his daughters hijacked the TV and your Maximum Leader went to his office to get on the computer.

He had planned to blog on the computer. But then he decided to play an old game he has. Medieval Total War II. He started a campaign as the Spanish. His goal is to recreate the Spanish/Hapsburg Empire in Europe at the time of Charles V. So far your Maximum Leader has most of Iberia under his control. He hasn’t kicked the Moors out yet, but it is early. He did snag Corsica and Sardinia (which would have been part of the Kingdom of Naples). He also, by chance, took over Rhodes. (He was going on Crusade to take Jerusalem, but the French took Jersusalem first. Since he had an army in the area… Look! Rhodes is nearby!) So he played his game for a while.

Not like that is terribly interesting.

Not like China… That would be interesting…

Perhaps later…

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader tweeted the other day “Does liking the music of Khachaturian make me a Communist?” This was brought about by an early morning errand.

You see…

Your Maximum Leader was in the Villainmobile running around town early on Saturday morning. He had a lot of stuff to do starting at 9am; so he was out early to get some cash and a few sundries that would make the day better. While driving he heard a piece of music on the radio (Classical WETA in our Nation’s Capital). The piece was instantly familiar. But at the same time your Maximum Leader couldn’t place where he’d heard it before. The announcer kindly added that the piece was the Adagio of Spartacus by Aram Khachaturian. Your Maximum Leader pulled over, texted the title to his wife and then made a follow-up call to make sure she didn’t delete the text.

All day your Maximum Leader heard the tune in his head. He hummed it. He whistled it. And all the while he couldn’t place where he’d ever heard the peice before. He is not a huge Khachaturian fan. He is not a fan of ballet. (Indeed your Maximum Leader finds that the loves lots of the music of ballet, but finds the actual dancing to be technically amazing and unable to hold his attention.) He couldn’t place the piece. In case you are wondering about the piece here it is:

Your Maximum Leader embedded the ballet rather than another clip that only showed Aram Khachaturian’s face for the whole 9 minutes. He did this for those of you who like ballet. And also ole Aram isn’t all that handsome a fellow…

Anyhoo…

Your Maximum Leader found the peice on iTunes and bought it. He’s listened to it 15 times since Saturday. (Thanks iTunes play count!) All the while he’s not been able to place where he’s heard it before.

About 20 minutes ago your Maximum Leader suddenly remembered, he lives in the age of the interwebs. Surely the Google must know something about this piece. And as certainly as night follows day, and May flowers follow April showers the Google was a help. It turns out that this piece has been in many movies. The one that your Maximum Leader immediately recognized was “The Hudsucker Proxy.” (NB: your Maximum Leader loves the Hudsucker Proxy.) Now his mind is no longer agitated by not knowing where he’s heard this little ditty before.

Of course, none of this answers the question of are you a Communist if you like Khachaturian?

Probably not… But one should wonder…

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader was reading the Wall Street Journal’s daily wrap-up of news and blogs the other day. In that wrap-up the editors of the WSJ introduced your Maximum Leader to the plight of Molly Norris.

Now in all honesty, your Maximum Leader allowed himself to be overtaken by events and he didn’t immediately write about how he felt and what he thought about Molly Norris. Thankfully, your Maxmium Leader was over reading Professor Mondo’s blog and it all came back to him.

Rather than just blather on himself, how about we check out what the good Professor had to say:

“Islamophobia” is a term that gets bandied about these days, with the ever-popular rhetorical effort to define disagreement with the multicult as mental illness. However, Molly Norris isn’t being stalked by rogue Episcopalians or offended Baha’i. The fact is that she’s been forced to go to ground by deranged Muslims. Meanwhile, saying that we have to be careful not to offend the deranged is a cowardly way out — and it simply makes all of us hostage to whoever we perceive as being least rational.

Well put sir! Well put. You should click through to see the Professor’s site and you should click on the links he provided.

Your Maximum Leader grows weary of trying to avoid the delicate sensibilities of Muslims around the world. If every Muslim in the world thinks that when your Maximum Leader speaks out against “Muslim terrorists” he is actually saying that “every Muslim in the world is a terrorist”; then most Muslims in the world need to lighten up and catch a clue. We all know that just being a Muslim doesn’t mean you are or are sympathetic to terrorists. Conversely, not every Christian is a Koran-burning Christian. Don’t you find it odd that the President of the United States and just about every Christian religious leader in the United States has to apologize to the entire Muslim world for the (threatened) actions of about 50 Christians at a Florida church who thought burning the Koran would be fun?

You know something. If 50 Muslims somewhere in rural Wahziristan decided to burn Bibles, wrapped in American Flags while throwing apple pies off a cliff; your Maximum Leader would hardly think it was newsworthy. Furthermore he would not assume that those 50 Muslims were speaking on behalf of a billion Muslims around the world. Call him crazy (He’s crazy!) but he doesn’t think that way. Apparently many Muslims do think exactly that way.

Anyhoo…

Your Maximum Leader is upset (very upset) about what is happening to Molly Norris. She doesn’t deserve to have to go into hiding and make a new identity. Frankly, she shouldn’t have to pay for it too. Isn’t this another battle in the War on Terror? Can’t we find a few grand to help Molly out in the Defence budget? Or the Stimulus bill?

We should all be appalled by what is happening to Molly Norris. We should all demand that the President request that the Muslim leaders apologize to Molly Norris. Or, heaven forfend, perhaps the President could put a bounty on the head of Anwar al-Awlaki and see how he likes it.

Oh! The President apparently has done so.

Sadly your Maximum Leader doubts that the President is encouraging the CIA (or other entities) to actually kill the people on this “hit list.” Perhaps we should go the route of Letters of Marque & Reprisal.

By the way… Professor Mondo is now on the blogroll - over there on the left side. You should go over an take a read.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has written in this space before that he’s not much of a “Tea Party” type of person. He considers himself a conservative. He further considers that he is likely in agreement (in broadest principles) with many of the overarching ideas espoused by the Tea Party movement.

But honestly, he thinks that the movement is going a bit far.

The requirement to which your Maximum Leader objects the most is the one calling for ideologocial purity. Purity in a political movement is counter-productive in this and most times throughout US history. (This is made worse by the fact that in many cases the ideology espoused by many in the Tea Party movement just isn’t consistent in the best case, and just completely ignorant in the worst case.) Your Maximum Leader also isn’t thrilled with many candidates running under the banner of the Tea Party.

So let us get a few things out of the way… Your Maximum Leader hasn’t directly supported any Tea Party candidate. Frankly he has no reason to. He is represented in Congress by Rob Wittman. Congressman Whittman is a great guy personally and is perfectly conservative enough for your Maximum Leader. Your Maximum Leader doesn’t spend a lot of time going around actively supporting candidates who have no connection directly to him. (Although he is still very interested in politics in the aggregate.)

To your Maximum Leader the Tea Party movement has been something from which he has felt detached and more than a little bit disturbed by. He is generally suspicious of any populist movement of any ideological stripe. Anger is not his favorite emotion in politics. Certainly anger and fear are the most powerful of political motivators in our country. That said your Maximum Leader isn’t all that comfortable with emotion being the major motivator in politics. (NB: This is not to say that your Maximum Leader doesn’t like intrigue, backbiting and grudges. He does. But he doesn’t want voters to be overly emotional that just makes them more crazy than normal. Emotional voters - bad. Politicians being politicians - normal and sometimes good and fun.)

So… What about the Tea Party victory of the moment? Let your Maximum Leader discourse for a moment on Christine O’Donnell. Let him start with the good stuff. Speaking as an objectifying man, she is cute. She’s a hell of a lot better looking than Mike Castle that’s for sure. (NB: Your Maximum Leader has met Mike Castle in the distant past. At the time Castle was Governor of Delaware. And he should also add that he seems to remember then-Gov Castle having a rather hot girlfriend. Your Maximum Leader only mentions this because apparently some people were rumoring recently that Castle was gay. Take that for what it is worth.) And being cute certainly must count for something. Insofar as her politics go, your Maximum Leader can’t say anything good or bad about her. Other than knowing that she was supported by the Tea Party movement and Sarah Palin there doesn’t seem to be much written about her politics.

Except the stuff about abortion (she’s against it - so is your Maximum Leader by the way), masturbation (she’s against it - your Maximum Leader doesn’t know why masturbation might be a political issue - but insomuch as it is political he’s for it) and calling President Obama anti-American your Maximum Leader doesn’t know much about her politics. Again, like with the Tea Party at large, he suspects that he would likely agree with lots of her politics if he knew what they were. (Then again, like the Tea Party at large, the devil is in the details.)

She was nominated as the Republican candidate for Senate twice before. So apparently much opposition to her is recent. It is fine for her to be a sacraficial lamb before the campaigning of (now Vice-President) Joe Biden but it is too much for her to compete for a seat that is now open.

She won the primary fair and square. She won it in the only way she could. She tapped into voter anger and pushed the buttons that needed to be pushed. She’s played by the rules and won according to how the rules are played.

But there is the question of should she have run against Castle in the first place. This is the heart of what your Maximum Leader has to say on this.

Okay… Is Mike Castle a RINO? Is he a dreaded Republican in name only? No. He is a Republican. Is Mike Castle a conservative? No he is not. Your Maximum Leader realizes that Republicans tend to be more conservative than Democrats. But since we only have two political parties in this country they both need to be pretty big tents (to use a cliche). If one attempts to purify one of the parties you are left with a small rump party that ceases to be viable long-term.

Let us go back to the situation in Delaware. Is Delaware a particularly conservative leaning state? No. If it was would they have elected Joe Biden for all those years? Why has Mike Castle been so successful in Delaware? He’s been successful because he is in touch with the people he has represented for so many years. Mike Castle was the Republican that was able to appeal to the people of Delaware. Could conservatives count on the Mike Castle vote 100% of the time? No they could not. Could conservatives count on Mike Castle’s vote 50% of the time. Sure they could. Could conservatives count on Joe Biden’s vote 50% of the time? Nope. Could conservatives count on Joe Biden’s vote 10% of the time? Probably not.

So let us see where we are now. Christine O’Donnell might well win the race in November. Who knows. She won a primary “against the odds.” So if she can pull out one more win this year that would be great. If she wins in November your Maximum Leader will eat his words and state that nominating her wasn’t a mistake.

But let us say that history has not changed and Delaware is still what it has been for decades, a pretty safely Democratic state, and that Christine O’Donnell is beaten by a relative nobody on the Democratic side. Then what? What if Delaware was the difference between Republicans running the Senate or Democrats retaining control? In that situation would it not have been better to have Mike Castle there than in enforced retirement? As far as your Maximum Leader is concerned, the answer to that question is yes. Better to have Castle than nothing.

But for many Tea Party advocates it is better to have nothing than something. That is very disturbing.

Many years ago your Maximum Leader was an intern on Capitol Hill. And in his lowly position he had occasion to run into Lee Atwater and Mary Matalin and a host of other late 1980s early 1990s political guru types. At one point Lee Atwater said to a bunch of us interns that generally speaking 40% of Americans were always going to vote Democrat and 40% were always going to vote Republican. Both parties were fighting over about 11% of the electorate. Now Atwater was speaking about national races and speaking in the aggregate. But there is a basic truth here that many in the Tea Party movement don’t seem to get…

Let us say that those evenly split 80% of Americans were not just Democrats and Republicans. Let us instead think of them as Liberals and Conservatives. Those numbers are pretty hard and fast. Your just not going to change the mind of anyone in that 80%. But that doesn’t mean you can’t try to. And in your Maximum Leader’s opinion that is just what the Tea Party movement activists are trying to do. It isn’t that the Tea Partiers are fighting in a meaningful way to win over the minds of the middle 20%. They are trying to make sure that the only people on their side are the ones that completely agree with them.

Your Maximum Leader thinks that it is unlikely that O’Donnell will win in November. She might, but it is unlikely. With Delaware remaining safely in Democratic hands it becomes less likely that Republicans (conservative ones as well as not so conservative ones) will take control of the Senate. If the Senate stays Democratically controlled it is much less likely that the Tea Partiers will get their (purported) wish, namely the opportunity to stop President Obama’s agenda.

So the question seems to be are the Tea Partiers looking to win, or just to make sure only the kids they want to play get to play? At this point your Maximum Leader thinks that the primary objective of Tea Party activists is to take control of the Republican party where ever they are able, regardless of being able to actually beat the man who they believe is ruining the country.

Sure some Tea Party supported candidates are going to win this fall (your Maximum Leader thinks Rand “Aqua Buddha” Paul will likely win in KY and it seems that Sharon Angle might actually beat Harry Reid in NV). It will be interesting to see how the Tea Party candidates will actually govern. Your Maximum Leader suspects that they will be a pain in the arse to everyone of all political stripes. We’ll see on that.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader saw this piece by John Yoo on Ricochet and felt like sharing: Pirates: Still the Enemy of All Mankind.

There is nothing in the piece that you don’t already know if you’ve ever read this site before (or ever read Fear and Loathing in Georgetown). But your Maximum Leader makes it a point of always trying to re-link articles that mention “Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead!”

By the way, if you haven’t seen The Wind and the Lion, it is worth your time.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has no political capital to expend so his suddenly wading in from the sidelines on the “Ground Zero Mosque” is only slightly less interesting than President Obama wading in suddenly from the sidelines on the same issue.

By now, unless you live under a rock, you have heard that a group wants to put a mosque in a building a few blocks away from the World Trade Center site.

So… Let your Maximum Leader just unload on this issue, and others on the periphery of the issue…

To speak directly to the issue of the mosque…

There are two questions at the heart of the mosque issue. The first question is can a mosque be built near the site of the World Trade Center attacks? The second question is do people want a mosque built near the site of the World Trade Center attacks?

The first question, the rarely asked question, in this discussion is so very important and so constantly overlooked that it makes most of the people on both sides of this “debate” seem like drooling idiots. Can the mosque be located in the building in question? So long as local zoning laws and building codes are followed it can. Of course it can. There is no legal reason why you can’t put a mosque in that building.

It was the this first question that President Obama was trying to address in his remarks on the subject recently. Now let your Maximum Leader go on the record and say that he wonders why the hell the President would inject himself into this “debate.” It is a loser all around for him. It makes no sense, from a political perspective, to comment on this issue. Sure my liberal friends can say “He needed to use the bully pulpit to do the right thing.” Yeah, your Maximum Leader can see that. But in this case doing the “right thing” diminishes the President’s ability to do the right thing later. He is spending political capital (that he is losing at a rapid rate) on an issue that so inflames peoples sensibilities that there is no possibility of coming out ahead. Sure the president is “right on principle” as the linked Washington Post peice says, but he is completely wrong on politics. Furthermore, President Obama’s opinion on this matter cannot affect the situation one bit. The president isn’t on the Zoning Board for lower Manhattan. He doesn’t own the property. He isn’t a stakeholder in the neighborhood. His opinion ain’t gonna change a thing.

In fact, President Obama’s opinion and the opinion of your Maximum Leader are worth about the same in this “debate.” Neither of us are contributing to the discussion. We are throwing our opinions into the crashing noise of raised voices that passes for debate on this subject. We are just two more voices crying out into the cacaphony. Two more voices that, frankly speaking, don’t need to be heard on this.

Of course, your Maximum Leader is a lowly blogger with minimal following and no future in politics short of an armed coup and Barack Obama is President of the United States. He is coming up with the short straw in this game.

Your Maximum Leader hasn’t addressed the second question yet. Does your Maximum Leader want a mosque built on the site discussed? When this “debate” first began his answer was that he didn’t care much one way or the other. He sympathized with the many who just didn’t want the mosque so near the World Trade Center site; but in the end he figured out that NYC officials and stakeholders in the project would do the right thing.

Your Maximum Leader has changed his mind now. He wants the mosque built. He is willing to stand up for the principle involved. The principle involved is twofold. The first is a straight property rights issue. If you follow local laws you should be able to build what you want on property you own. If the landowners want to lease the space for a mosque, great! Let them do it. The mosque shouldn’t get any special treatment or concessions. If they can put a mosque there they should. The second issue is the religious issue. This site is a few blocks away from the World Trade Center site and was damaged in the attacks of September 11. But it wasn’t the object of the attack. The building in question wasn’t destroyed and rebuilt. How close is too close? From what your Maximum Leader reads there are some mosques in the general vicinity already. Why is this one a big problem? Would it be a big problem if it were a block further away? Two blocks further? 10 blocks further? Would “society” object to a Christian Church being put in the same building? A Buddhist temple? A meeting hall for the followers of the Flying Spaghetti Monster?

This brings your Maximum Leader to a issue that has now been simmering in his mind for a year or two. How long are we going to fetishize the whole lower Manhattan area around the World Trade Center site? Your Maximum Leader doesn’t like calling the site Ground Zero. He doesn’t because Ground Zero is a term that can be used in any disaster. He is concerned that at some point in the future people will be upset by some other disaster site being called “Ground Zero.” Sad isn’t it.

If your Maximum Leader could point out a few items… The World Trade Center site is very valuable real estate. He should be redeveloped (and is being redeveloped). But many Americans have a maudlin fixation on the site. In the immediate aftermath of the attacks there was a sort of consensus that we needed to get on with rebuilding the World Trade Center site. Now your Maximum Leader wonders if we are going to start objecting to certain uses of the redeveloped space? Would a muslim charity renting office space in a new World Trade Center building be objectionable? Would investment bankers (given their role in the recent economic troubles) be objectionable in that they weren’t a “good enough” type of organization. Should we just build a mega-public safety center on the site and fill it with Firefighters and Police officers?

Is your Maximum Leader the only one that worries about this? (Well… When he’s not waxing eloquent over Lindsay Lohan and mastubating furiously Skippy might have some similar concerns. But that could just be your Maximum Leader projecting on Skippy.) We still use Pearl Harbor. Is it “less sacred” than the World Trade Center site? We have built all over Bunker (and Breed’s) Hill? Is that site less meaningful because of it’s continued use? Is it just a question of scale? If more patriots died at Bunker Hill would we have objected to building on and around the site?

Your Maximum Leader isn’t advocating that we all forget the attacks of September 11th. Not at all. But at some point we need to take a more practical approach to how we will use the land of lower Manhattan.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader isn’t running for political office. He isn’t planning on running for political office. Indeed, some of the things he’s written in this space (including what is coming in this post) would likely keep sensible people from voting for him. Lucky for your Maximum Leader that he is not seeking to represent the people of Virginia (or Kentucky let’s say) in the United States Senate. Pseudo-benevolent Dictators can have more skeletons in the closet than can someone running for US Senate.

But here is a hypothetical question for you… Let us say that one night in college your Maximum Leader happened to have a little problem with self-retraint and decided to enlist the help of Smallholder and go out and knock on the door of a particularly hot girl we knew. When she opened the door we blindfolded here and tied up up and then took her to our sooper seekret hideout. Upon arriving at our sooper seekret hideout we unblindfolded her and told her that she’d have to pound shots with us and and then we’d initiate her into our cruel cult of personality…

No biggie right?

Just another wacky Friday night at college with nothing better to do…

Now, your Maximum Leader isn’t saying that he ever did anything like this in college. Nor is saying that Smallholder did anything like this. On thinking back, it is likely between the two of us we could have found a few girls we knew who would gladly have volunteered for such an outing. (Kinky eh?)

Then again… Neither your Maximum Leader nor Smallholder are running for the US Senate… Unlike someone else you may have heard of.

By the way, on the Villain-o-meter this type of behaviour deserves 4 marks (out of 10). If the “abducted girl” developed some sort of Stockholm Syndrome like attachment to her “abductors” and became their somewhat willing love-slave this would get 6 marks (out of 10).

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader, a good anglophile, is a fan of the good ole days of the British Empire. He is also a fan of the various regiments who’s long and illustrious history is wrapped up with the tales of Empire.

Your Maximum Leader has always been a fan of the most kick-ass regiment of soliders ever in the history of the world, the Gurkhas. If you knew your Maximum Leader many moons ago while he was in high school you’ll know that he lived for tales of Gurkha prowess on the battlefield. (Way back when he seems to remember writing a letter to the British Ambassador to the US expressing outrage that the UK was considering eliminating the Gurkha regiment.)

Anyhoo…

It is a sad day for the Gurkhas, for Britain, for lovers of freedom and for all who dare to stand up for what is good and right in the world when a private in the Gurkha regiment is punished for doing what his regiment has been doing for over a hundred years - namely kicking-arse.

It pains your Maximum Leader to say it, but perhaps the terrorists HAVE won…

To wit: Gurkha ordered back to UK after beheading dead Taliban fighter. Sadly, the private in question beheaded the Taliban fighter only after the Taliban guy was dead. Your Maximum Leader would have preferred that the private beheaded the Taliban guy in order to cause his death…

So here is the jist of the story…

A Gurkha soldier has been flown back to the UK after hacking the head off a dead Taliban commander with his ceremonial knife to prove the dead man’s identity.
The private, from 1st Battalion, Royal Gurkha Rifles, was involved in a fierce firefight with insurgents in the Babaji area of central Helmand Province when the incident took place earlier this month.
His unit had been told that they were seeking a ‘high value target,’ a Taliban commander, and that they must prove they had killed the right man.
The Gurkhas had intended to remove the Taliban leader’s body from the battlefield for identification purposes.
But they came under heavy fire as their tried to do so. Military sources said that in the heat of battle, the Gurkha took out his curved kukri knife and beheaded the dead insurgent.
He is understood to have removed the man’s head from the area, leaving the rest of his body on the battlefield.
This is considered a gross insult to the Muslims of Afghanistan, who bury the entire body of their dead even if parts have to be retrieved.
[…]
The incident, which is being investigated by senior commanders, is hugely embarrassing to the British Army, which is trying to build bridges with local Afghan communities who have spent decades under ­Taliban rule.
It comes just days after a rogue Afghan soldier murdered three British troops from the same Gurkha regiment.
If the Gurkha being investigated by the Army is found guilty of beheading the dead enemy soldier, he will have contravened the Geneva Conventions which dictate the rules of war. Soldiers are banned from demeaning their enemies.
The Gurkha now faces disciplinary action and a possible court martial. If found guilty, he could be jailed.
He is now confined to barracks at the Shorncliffe garrison, near Folkestone, Kent.

So, let your Maximum Leader make sure he gets this… Gurkhas were attacked by the Taliban and three Gurkhas were killed. Three days later Gurkhas go out and do what they are ordered to do, namely kill a Taliban baddie. While taking fire from other Taliban baddies the private in question cuts off the mission (accomplished by the way) target’s head and high-tails it out of the fire-fight with proof of the mission’s success. For that the private in question could be jailed?

Great Jeezey Chreezey! What the hell is this world coming to? Your Maximum Leader would give that private a medal, promotion to corporal, and a nice whetstone to keep his kukri sharp as shit.

To all the Taliban who are offended by the fact that they cannot bury their scumbag buddy intact your Maximum Leader says: Reap the whirlwind muthafuckahs! Attack our cities and pay with your heads! War is hell arseholes!

If they convict this poor private of anything your Maximum Leader will officially say that we should just give up. We should just start having our women wear burkas, destroy our distilleries, re-consecrate our churches as mosques and just become subervient wussies who can give up all Western Civilization.

By the way… Your Maximum Leader has a replica kukri. One day he hopes to do something worthwhile enough to deserve the honor of a Gurkha (or former Gurkha) giving him a real one…

Of course, he could just go and buy one from here he supposes…

Also, your Maximum Leader doffs his bejeweled mylan cap to Wonder Woman for the pointer to this story, which he regrets missing in the first place.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is pleased to report that he can now see clearly again. As he reported earlier in the week his glasses got screwed up. We think that they got exposed to some heat somehow and got tempered. This tempering caused very small “waves” to form on the lens. When your Maximum Leader put the glasses on, he got the feeling like he was looking constantly through those heat waves you see coming up off asphalt during the summer. It made him sick to his stomach after a few minutes.

So your Maximum Leader tried to trot out his old prescription and get a new set of glasses. Sadly, since the prescription was three years old no one wanted to fill it. So, your Maximum Leader went over to his eye doctor and got a check up. He was clear. No signs of bad deseases of the eye. No deterioration of his vision either. In fact his eyes were unchanged in 3 years. That is a good thing.

Anyhoo…

Your Maximum Leader has new glasses and can see just fine now.

Your Maximum Leader hasn’t blogged much this week because of the glasses issue (which really wasn’t resolved until Wednesday) and a desire to get some of the books off his nightstand. You see your Maximum Leader can read without his glasses. In fact his vision at book-reading distance is quite good. So he read a lot. He is nearly done with two baseball books he recently received as gifts. The books are George Will’s “Men at Work” and Jason Turbow’s “Baseball Codes”. Your Maximum Leader highly recommends Will’s book to any baseball fan. It is certainly one of the best baseball books out there. Turbow’s book is a fun read. Your Maximum Leader can’t say that he learned much from the Turbow book, but it is filled with so many entertaining baseball yarns that it was a quick read.

Now your Maximum Leader is going to try and knock out Lord Norwich’s “Travellers Companion to Venice” and Christopher Moore’s “Lamb” before too long.

Your Maximum Leader is also going to try and get rid of all the old programming on his DVR and free up some space on that hard drive. Last night your Maximum Leader and Villainette #1 finished the last two episodes of Joss Whedon’s ill-fated series “Dollhouse.” The penultimate episode was okay, but would have been better if it had been the last episode. The final episode was disappointing from the perspective of the story. It seemed rushed, badly edited (in fact it felt like it was 3 hrs long when shot and only 1 hr long when it aired), and just thrown together. The best thing about the final episode was the Whedon was able to throw in a few of his favorite actors from previous outings (like Felicia Day from “Dr Horrible” and many members of the “Firefly” series).

For your intellectual curiosity, you should go and read one of the latest installments of FLG’s posts on time-horizons and their connections to politics/economics/world-view. FLG is probably on to something with this line of thinking.

That is all for now.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has seen S.E. Cupp on Fox a few times. He tries to read her pieces over at the Daily Caller. He also gets her tweets. She is an interesting commentator and he’s enjoyed what he’s read.

Of course now she is doing her best to catapult herself into the stratosphere of sexy political commentators. How you may ask?

Please read: S.E. Cupp’s “Can bacon save the world?”

Keep the bacon coming S.E..

Also worthy of note about S.E. Cupp… She is a hunter, publish author, and rational atheist who doesn’t hate religion.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader doesn’t pay as close attention to the vast majority of opinions handed down by the Supreme Court of the United States. He views this as something of a failing. He generally finds SCOTUS opinions to be an interesting read and it is always good to know how the highest court in the land is applying the Constitution in different arenas of public life.

Of course, there are some issues and cases which your Maximum Leader follows closely. Take for example the case decided today of McDonald v. City of Chicago. In that case the Court incorporated the rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment to citizens of all states.

Now, your Maximum Leader has not yet read the various opinions and dissents in McDonald yet (and according to Jonathan Adler at Volokh the opinions and dissents go on for 250 pages - so it might take a little while to read and digest); but the summaries he’s read all seem pretty promising.

Your Maximum Leader will give a little cheer (Huzzah!) to the 5 members of the majority who did (in your Maximum Leader’s opinion) the right thing in incorprorating the Second Amendment to the states.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader heard on the radio this morning that Robert Byrd, the longest serving Senator in history, had died this morning. If you have not, you should read the 6 (internet) page obit in the Washington Post.

Your Maximum Leader doesn’t have much to say about Senator Byrd. This is due to a reticence about speaking ill of the dead so soon after they pass; but also because he doesn’t have much to add to the big picture of his life. Your Maximum Leader can’t recall an issue on which he agreed strongly with Senator Byrd. He can recall a few where he did disagree strongly with Senator Byrd. Your Maximum Leader does have tremendous admiration for the man because of his knowledge of the minutae of the Senate’s arcane rules. Your Maximum Leader loves parliamentary procedure and the ways it can (and frankly should be) used in the legislative process. While he has not read it, your Maximum Leader understands Byrd’s book on Senate Procedure is a classic of the genre.

Rest in peace Senator. Your work here is done.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is a big fan of, but sadly not a subscriber to, The Economist. It is so well written, well researched and generally not crazy. There aren’t many publications superior to The Economist.

Your Maximum Leader subscribes to various audio feeds from The Economist. This past week there was a particularly interesting audio report that he thought he’s share with you. For your listening pleasure, The Economist on the State of the American Right.

Your Maximum Leader agrees with so many points on this commentary that he think’s he’ll just present it without further comment.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader, from time to time, sees where some federal judge orders a locality to do something to comply with the Voting Rights Act. In most cases your Maximum Leader thinks that the judges are acting within the past interpretations of the Act. But every once and a while some judge does something really wacky.

Case in point… Port Chester, NY. In Port Chester a federal judge has ordered that every voter get 6 votes to cast in an election for Village Trustee. According to the AP piece:

Voters in Port Chester, 25 miles northeast of New York City, are electing village trustees for the first time since the federal government alleged in 2006 that the existing election system was unfair.

Although the village of about 30,000 residents is nearly half Hispanic, no Latino had ever been elected to any of the six trustee seats, which until now were chosen in a conventional at-large election. Most voters were white, and white candidates always won.

Federal Judge Stephen Robinson said that violated the Voting Rights Act, and he approved a remedy suggested by village officials: a system called cumulative voting, in which residents get six votes each to apportion as they wish among the candidates. He rejected a government proposal to break the village into six districts, including one that took in heavily Hispanic areas.

Your Maximum Leader really ought to try and find out what was at the root of the initial allegation put forth by the federal government in 2006. In a way he hopes that it was something more than the fact that no hispanic has been elected as a Trustee even though half the community is hispanic.

From what is written here, it seems as though this is a case of a federal judge (Stephen Robinson in fact) trying to get a particular result from an otherwise free election. If the case is as simple as it is depicted in the AP piece, then the underlying assumption is that since “nearly half” the village population is hispanic and there has never been a hispanic village Trustee there must be some civil rights violation. This seems like a wrong-headed assumption to your Maximum Leader.

Let us assume, for the sake of discussion, that there has not been any voter intimidation or other patently illegal method of manipulating the election results. What we are left with is an election with low voter turn-out and a number of candidates running for a 6 available seats. Is it unfair that the hispanic community is “splitting” their vote among the available candidates in a way that happens to prevent a candidate of hispanic origin from being elected?

Your Maximum Leader supposes that another, rather insidious, assumption here is that hispanics should only vote for hispanics and if they don’t it is unfair. Is your Maximum Leader the only person that gets this out of this piece?

Not only are these assumptions disturbing, but what the hell is up with giving voters 6 votes to cast? That doesn’t seem right. It seems positively… Communist… Or just Socialist… (Or perhaps just very Italian.) Your Maximum Leader isn’t sure why dividing the village into precincts wasn’t a good idea…

The whole settlement of this case seems to be wrong-headed in so many ways.

Carry on.