FMJRA 2.0: Totem

Accused sex offender Kaitlyn Hunt will appear in a Florida courtroom Tuesday for a hearing on charges that she violated terms of her pretrial release by contacting the underage girl with whom she is accused of having an illegal lesbian affair. In a motion filed Thursday in Indian River County, prosecutors said Hunt, 19, sent “lewd” photos and a pornographic video of herself masturbating to the younger girl. . . .
Hunt has remained free on $5,000 bond since her arrest, but at a hearing scheduled for Tuesday in Vero Beach, prosecutors will present evidence to Circuit Court Judge Robert Pegg that Hunt has violated terms of her release. Prosecutors from state attorney Bruce Colton‘s office are expected to argue that Hunt’s bond should be revoked and she should be jailed until her trial, which had been scheduled for September, but has since been postponed. . . .

You can read the whole story at Viral Read. The question in the headline is prompted by what Ken Shepherd wrote at NewsBusters:

[Prosecutors’ account of how Hunt violated the no-contact order] if proved true in court, shows that Hunt is obsessed with her victim, that she is exhibiting predatory behavior, and that she is attempting to obstruct justice by pressuring her victim into silence.

How does someone get that messed up? What happened to Kaitlyn Hunt to turn her into a sociopathic sex freak? And in other news:

BREAKING: Lawyer notorious for defending perverts and weirdos joins #FreeKate legal team! pic.twitter.com/rxuaYn5Hqf Hat-tip: @Jeanette_Runyon

— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) August 17, 2013

You can look this guy up. Every case I’ve found so far, William Korman’s client has been (a) a pervert, and (b) guilty.

Category: Kaitlyn Hunt

Major Jordan, Carroll Reece, Birchers, Buckley and the Attack on Diana West

Posted on | August 16, 2013 | 94 Comments

Diana West, interviewed by The Blaze, July 17

One of the stories Diana West tells in her new book American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation’s Character is about Army Maj. George Racey Jordan, whose tale about Lend-Lease shipments to the Soviet Union you can read beginning on page 110 of the book.

West recounts, on pages 139-140, Major Jordan’s narrative of an April 1943 incident in which his Russian liaison, Col. Anatole Kotikov, put him on the phone with top FDR aide Harry Hopkins. According to Major Jordan, Hopkins told him about “a certain shipment of chemicals,” ordering him to “just send it through quietly, in a hurry.”

Has anyone disproven Major Jordan’s account of that incident, or otherwise contradicted his tale of how, he said, the Lend-Lease program aided the Soviets in stealing U.S. secrets and materials necessary to the development of atomic weapons? I am unaware of any such contradiction or disproof, and the question is why — in the wake of what we have learned about Soviet espionage since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the release of the Venona decrypts — scholars have not done more to investigate Major Jordan’s tale, which made headlines when he testified to Congress in 1950.

Frankly, there are too damned many such questions that ought to be of interest to historians, and too few historians working to investigate accusations made during the Cold War that got laughed off as ridiculous or denounced as “witch hunts.” We should be grateful that Diana West is picking at the dangling loose ends of history.

Instead, she’s been denounced for her methodology and condemned as a conspiracy theorist by both Ron Radosh and David Horowitz. There have been some people who, persuaded by the arguments of Radosh and Horowitz, have condemned Diana West without ever reading her book. And I suppose the reputations and persuasiveness of these eminent critics are such that, if you went and bought American Betrayal right now, it would be impossible for you to view it in an unprejudiced light. How can she be right — an intelligent and honest investigator — if Radosh and Horowitz say she is so wrong?

Let me attempt to answer this by asking another question: How much do you know about the Reece Committee?

This is one of those Cold War mysteries that the John Birch Society has kept alive, God bless them. You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to be intrigued by such mysteries, and I once knew a fellow, directly familiar with the inner circles of JBS, who explained to me that talk of a communist “conspiracy,” which has given Birchers such a bad name, was simply a mental framework for viewing the problem.

The Law of Inadequate Paranoia

One need not believe any of the more wild-eyed accusations made by Birchers in order to share their general suspicion that the full story is not known, and that if the full story were known, it would shock your socks off, curl your hair and scare you half to death.

This is what M. Stanton Evans has called Evans’s Law of Inadequate Paranoia: “However bad you think it is, it’s probably much worse.”

Start asking certain questions about subversive influences on American policy during the Cold War, and you will find enough evidence of that stuff to make you understand what Evans means by that.

So . . . the Reece Committee, officially the House Select Committee to Investigate Tax-Exempt Foundations, was created in 1952 under the chairmanship of Rep. Edward Cox (D-Georgia) and continued later under the chairmanship of Rep. Carroll Reece (R-Tennessee). Reece believed that Cox had not gotten to the bottom of the matter — there was the suspicion of a “whitewash” — and brought in a staffer named Norman Dodd as the lead investigator.

Please, go read Dodd’s 16-page report of his investigation. And when you’re done reading that, then you’ll be prepared to learn that, according to Dodd, the Reece Committee’s further investigations were shut down and the committee itself disbanded, and Dodd said that this was done as a result of heavy political pressure.

Big money and important people didn’t want any more snooping around into Dodd’s accusation that there had been a “revolution” in the 1930s that had involved the American education system, and what children were taught about government and economics.

Think about this: A congressional committee with subpoena power to command testimony and requisition evidence as part of an investigation into how major non-profit philanthropic foundations — Ford, Carnegie, Rockefeller, etc. — had influenced policy in a direction that some have called “un-American” or “subversive.”

And they shut that committee down.

You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist ranting about Commie infiltrators and pinko subversives to see the implications of this.

Let’s just say that, minimally, Dodd’s report to the Reece Committee raised questions, and that we don’t know all the answers. However, it appears that for many years there was a consensus among leading officials of major philanthropic foundations that U.S. policy needed to be shifted leftward, and that children needed to be taught to accept this shift as beneficial and necessary. In other words, they had their thumb on the scales, tilting everything to the left, and they expended millions of (tax-exempt) dollars for this purpose.

Research it yourself, and see if you disagree with that description.

Say whatever you want about “conspiracy theories.” My point is that if we don’t know all the answers about these things, there is a reason: Important people didn’t want anyone asking questions, and they exercised enough influence that they were able to discredit or shut down anyone who tried to get answers to certain questions.

In the present controversy regarding Diana West and her book American Betrayal, we see a strangely familiar echo of that theme. West is accused of being a conspiracy theorist and an irresponsible demagogue, basically because she calls attention to unanswered questions — which may seem moot to some people — about a shift in U.S. policy that began during Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency.

What Would Bill Buckley Do?

West’s critics have invoked William F. Buckley Jr.’s famous “purge” of the Birchers from the conservative movement as justification for their campaign against her, thereby inviting others less familiar with the substance of the controversy to dogpile onto their side.

I lamented this controversy when it first arose, and declared myself committed to defending Diana West, and remain resolute. Radosh and Horowitz say that they have serious reasons as conservatives for their crusade against American Betrayal, and despite my general admiration for their work, I think they are misguided in this effort.

Whatever West’s errors, she doesn’t deserve this treatment, and I think serious people need to ask what could be so dangerous about West’s book that it has engendered such extreme hostility.

Well, what happened to the Reece Committee? Didn’t Norman Dodd’s report help answer some of the questions Buckley himself had raised in God and Man at Yale? Isn’t this where the whole modern conservative movement began, with Buckley’s inquiry into why collectivism and secularism had become the prevailing influences in America’s leading educational institutions by the early 1950s?

About 80 years ago, a certain elite in American society decided — more as a consensus than a conspiracy — to bring about this shift that Norman Dodd called a “revolution,” and this shift has proven impossible to reverse, I would argue, because so few educated people are aware of how the shift took place, or what the consequences of that shift have been. This in turn explains why the investigation of Major Jordan’s account, like so many other Cold War mysteries, remains so mysterious to this day: To be “educated” now means to believe that it is impossible for Harry Hopkins to have done what Major Jordan said Hopkins did.

Just by the way, you may be interested to know that in 1946, when Soviet agent Alger Hiss left his State Department job as Director of the Office of Special Political Affairs, he did so to become president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Maybe that was just a coincidence, and maybe it’s just a coincidence that Diana West’s book has caused such a firestorm. But whenever I see a situation like this — where it’s like someone hit the trip wire that set off the Claymore mines on the perimeter — my instinct is to think that the questions being asked are very important, and to disregard those who want to head off certain lines of inquiry.

OK, so here is a 52-minute interview with Norman Dodd, conducted in 1982. Maybe you can dismiss him as a doddering fool:

Was Norman Dodd a crackpot? Was he a paranoid conspiracy theorist? Or was he, as I believe, a man who unearthed some important information that he was not able to explain adequately? The system of organizations funded by major tax-exempt foundations, which was the subject of his 1954 report (if you haven’t read it yet, click here to read it now), may not have been a conspiracy, but neither was the direction of their influence random and coincidental.

Think about it. Try not to get paranoid, but remember what Stan Evans says: “However bad you think it is, it’s probably much worse.”

Category: Books, Conspiracy Theories, History

Michael Hastings Conspiracy Theories: Missing the Real Mystery of His Death

Posted on | August 16, 2013 | 79 Comments

On June 19, the day Michael Hastings died, I remarked: “The conspiracy theorists have already gotten way ahead of me on this story.”

That day, I wrote a 2,000-word article for ViralRead (“The Short Career and Sudden Death of Michael Hastings“), and the next day I wrote another 500 words (“Michael Hastings Was ‘Paranoid’ About FBI Before Fatal Crash“). Then I wrote a long column for The American Spectator, “Hope, Fear and Michael Hastings”:

Scarcely had the charred remains of Michael Hastings been pried out of the wreckage of his Mercedes-Benz than conspiracy theorists began to suggest that the award-winning journalist’s fiery death was not an accident. Within 12 hours, it was reported that Hastings had told a lawyer before Tuesday’s fatal crash in Los Angeles that he was under investigation by the FBI. His friends soon confirmed that Hastings had been “paranoid … incredibly tense and very worried” about government surveillance, and the fevered imaginations of the kook fringe cooked up all sorts of wild-eyed claims: Hastings had been “murdered” or “assassinated” by a “car bomb,” perhaps by the CIA.
Welcome to America in 2013, where Hope and Change have transmogrified into Fear and Loathing, where even a liberal reporter who last year praised Obama as “one of the most talented politicians around” could not resist the pervasive paranoia inspired by what voters were once promised would be “the most transparent administration in history.” . . .

You can go read the whole thing, if you’ve never read it or if you need to remind yourself that Michael Hastings himself seems to have slipped over edge into paranoia before his death.

The idea that Michael Hastings was assassinated because he was “getting too close” to some hidden truth — the spy-thriller scenario, “The Man Who Knew Too Much” — was something I also explored in a 700-word article for ViralRead: “What ‘Big Story’ Was Michael Hastings Working On When He Died?” And the bottom line of that story is, Hastings seems to shown interest in three or four different stories, none of which looked like a motive to have him targeted for death by the Military-Industrial Complex or any other shadowy Force of Evil.

You kooks should stop using cheap tinfoil in your hats. Insist on premium Reynolds Wrap™ to block those CIA brain-control waves.

Mother Jones has an article about Examiner columnist Kimberly Dvorak’s writing on the death of Michael Hastings, “Meet the Journalist Spreading Michael Hastings Conspiracy Theories,” which stops just short of calling her a kook. Dvorak seems to be a conservative, and has actually gone to L.A. to try and report on the story, which is a hell of a lot more than some of Hastings’ liberal friends have bothered to do, but the problem is, she’s chasing the wrong story.

There is no reason to believe that the car accident was anything other than a car accident — insofar as a fatal crash is an “accident” when you’re driving a Mercedes-Benz sports coupe 100 mph down a city street at 4 o’clock in the morning.

The real story — and I’ve said this from the get-go — is why Michael Hastings was driving so fast at such an ungodly hour.

Frankly, I think Hastings had slipped back into the substance abuse that once caused him to drop out of college for a year, and I think those of his friends who know about his personal problems won’t say anything about this, out of respect for their deceased friend.

If you want to know what happened to Michael Hastings, you need to find out who he was hanging out with in the final week or so before that crash, and you especially need to look at why he was out on the streets of L.A. at 4 a.m. Had he been to a nightclub? Had he been to a party?

Had he been hooking up with call girls or strippers?

Was he abusing alcohol, amphetamines, cocaine?

Maybe I’ve missed something in the past two months. Maybe some mainstream reporter or one of Hastings’ left-wing buddies has told the story of why he was out on the streets at 4 a.m., but I don’t think so. No, I think that there is not a deliberate cover-up, but rather an embarrassed silence among the friends of Michael Hastings who know the real truth: He had a paranoid breakdown, or went off on a binge, or both.

They don’t won’t to admit their buddy freaked out, see? They want Michael Hastings to be remembered as a courageous journalistic hero, and so none of his friends are interested in telling the truth.

Conspiracy theories about Michael Hastings’ death gain traction because his liberal journalist friends are afraid to report the truth.

They should be ashamed of themselves.

Category: Conspiracy Theories, Fear. Loathing., Journalism

LIVE AT FIVE: 08.16.13

Posted on | August 16, 2013 | 10 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

TOP NEWS
Egyptian Death Toll Rises To 638

Soldiers clear debris the day after security forces clear pro-Morsi protest camps

MuBros call for “Millions March Of Anger” today; Obama wrings hands, cancels joint military exercises

BJP’s Modi Needs To Be Heard, Say British MPs
Labour and Tory MPs defend House of Commons invite

NSA Internal Audit Finds Thousands Of Privacy Violations
Violations ranged from serious breaches of the law to accidental info collection due to typos

POLITICS
Gallup Poll: Obama Approval On Economy Sinks To 35%

A job seeker fills out a contact form at a job fair

Overall approval drops to 44%

WV Judge Accused Of Framing Former Lover’s Husband

Judge Agrees To Delay Former Detroit Mayor Kilpatrick’s Sentencing

Solar Panels Finally Installed On White House, Three Years After Promised

SecDef Hagel Issues Sexual Assault Rules As Congress Weighs Action

Special Prosecutor To Be Named In Ethics Complaint Against Texas Gov. Perry

Uncle Sam’s Yard Sale: Pentagon Looks To Unload Afghanistan War Hardware

THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Oil Continues To Rise Amid Mideast Turmoil: NYMEX $107.33, Brent $111.11
US Stocks Fall Most Since June As Data Fuel Fed Concern
Consumer Prices Rise As Expected In July
Asian Shares Slip As Prospects For Fed Tapering Rise
Jobless Claims Hit 2007 Lows
Buffett Raises GM Stake By 60%
Dell Takes Big Profit Hit As Mobile Users Look Elsewhere
Facebook Testing New Mobile Payment Option
Next Media Animation Does Elon Musk’s Hyperloop
“Plants V. Zombies 2: It’s About Time” Released For iPad, iPhones
Rockstar Unveils “Grand Theft Auto Online”
“Dots” Arrives On Android With New Untimed “Moves” Mode

SPORTS
MLB Goes All In On Instant Replay

Jim Joyce’s blown call that cost Armando Galarraga a perfect game in 2010

Commissioner Selig to allow limited number of challenges

Fox Sports 1 Debuts Tomorrow, Takes Aim At ESPN

KISS Bringing Pro Football Back To LA

Russian Pole Vault Champ Condemns Homosexuality

Pacers To Face Rockets In Philippines, Taiwan

Rays’ Cobb Earns First Win Since Taking Liner To Head June 15

Cards Beat Pirates 6-5 In 12 For Key NL Central Win

Some Professional Wrestler Comes Out As Gay, Nobody Surprised

A’s Blank Astros 5-0

Prince Bashes Again, Tigers Beat Royals 4-1

Backup Catcher Saves The Game For Twins With Pinch-Hit Against White Sox

Rookie Heat Lifts Reds To 2-1 Win Against Brewers

Little League World Series Gets Underway

Soriano Coughs Up Homer And Game In 9th As Giants Avoid Sweep

FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
“That 70s Show” Actress Lisa Robin Kelly Dies, 43

Lisa Robin Kelly, 1970-2013 RIP

Died in her sleep Wednesday at a California rehab center; no cause of death announced

Laura Prepon Leaving Netflix’ “Orange Is The New Black”

Lindsay Lohan To Guest Star On “Eastbound & Down”

Amanda Seyfried And Justin Long Are Dating

Russell Simmons Apologizes, Takes Down Unfunny Harriet Tubman Sex Tape Video

Chris Brown’s Hit & Run Case Dismissed

Jana Kramer, Brantley Gilbert Split

Justin Timberlake To Perform At MTV VMAs, Accept Vanguard Award

Prosecutor Rejected Giudice Plea Bargain Before Court

Kiernan Shipka, Mason Dye Join “Flowers In The Attic”; Mena Suvari To “Chicago Fire”

The Secret To Keri Russell’s Awesome Abs? “Exhaustion”

Will Arnett Reportedly Dating Kathie Lee

Worn-Out Leathers

FOREIGNERS
Pro-Assad Hackers Hit WaPo Website
Strong Quake Shakes New Zealand
Car Bomb Kills 21 In Southern Suburbs Of Beirut
How Government Apathy Bled The Indian Navy
Ecuador To Open Amazon’s Yasuni Basin To Oil Drilling As Economy Slows
Two Koreas Reach Deal On Kaesong
Mugabe Victory Brings Wave Of Intimidation Against Women Activists
Narendra Modi Hoists Own Flag, Delivers Campaign Speech On I-Day
Lawyer For Teen Charged In Rehtaeh Parsons Case Says Client Facing “Online Lynch Mob”
SPD Faces Shaky Future As Steinbruck Sags

BLOGS & STUFF
Michelle Malkin: Ten Images Mocking George Bush That Were Far Worse Than A Harmless Rodeo Clown
Twitchy: Zing Trifecta! Dennis Miller Wants “Amnesty From This Sh*t”; Slams Oprah, Obama, Clintons
Jawa Report: Anjem Choudhary Rejects Islam, Embraces Atheism
Don Surber: Daily Scoreboard, August 15
American Power: “Abortion Barbie” Wendy Davis In Vogue
Shot In The Dark: Score Another For The Good Guys
The Necropolitan Sentinel: Obamacare Watch – The Very Hard Sell
Jammie Wearing Fools: Libtalker Thom Hartman Can’t Stand NPR – “Too Much Right-Wing Bias There”
According To Hoyt: I Am Spartacus
Allahpundit: Christie Takes Veiled Shots At Jindal, Paul During RNC Luncheon; Paul Fires Back
Legal Insurrection: For Dems In 2016, It’s Hillary Or Bust
Paul Bedard: Limbaugh, Hannity, Levin Eyed As 2016 GOP Debate Moderators
Ralph Peters: This Blood Is On The Hands Of The Muslim Brotherhood
PJ Tatler: Ideological Purge Urged At Washington Post
The Foundry: Planned Parenthood To Get $655K As “Navigators” For Obamacare
Stephen Kruiser: Robbing Peter To Pay Obamacare
Pat Dollard: Michael Savage Predicts He’ll Replace “Fake Conservative” Hannity At Cumulus
Mark Bowden: The Killing Machines
Megan McArdle: How Wonder Bread Fed The Womens’ Movement

Deadline to submit links for tomorrow’s FMJRA is midnight tonight.
DO IT.

Category: Live at Five

Groundpounders

Posted on | August 15, 2013 | 47 Comments

— Wombat-socho

Last month I did a compare & contrast between John Ringo’s Legend of the Alldenata/Posleen War novels and Sandy Mitchell’s Warhammer 40K Ciaphas Cain novels. This week, I’d like to introduce some of the classic military SF novels for your consideration, starting with what is arguably the seminal military SF novel: Robert Heinlein’s, Starship Troopers, not to be confused with Paul Verhoeven’s movie of the same name. Heinlein’s novel is a combination of Bildungsroman, philosophy lecture, and hard-fought tales of combat against an implacable alien foe. The book won the Hugo Award for best novel in 1960. It has been accused of being a fascist tract by people who fail at reading comprehension, but you should be ignoring idiots like that anyway. Inspired two other great novels which I’ll touch on a little bit later.

People tend to forget that before he turned to crime, L. Ron Hubbard was one of the most popular SF writers of the Golden Age, along with Asimov, Heinlein, and van Vogt. One of the reasons why was the hugely controversial Final Blackout, a dystopian tale of infantry combat in the ruins of a Europe devastated by a centuries-long World War II in which no weapon – atomic, biological or chemical – was left unused, with the end result being orders of magnitude worse than World War I. In this continental abattoir we find The Lieutenant and his hardy platoon of survivors, recalled at last to GHQ for a nefarious purpose – but The Lieutenant has plans of his own. The novel hasn’t aged well; obviously Hubbard was completely wrong in his projection of events in Europe, and his depiction of an imperialist America seeking Lebensraum in Europe goes over no better now than it did in 1940. Needless to say, his sly depiction of the Communist government of Great Britain would be equally as unwelcome to those who’d be fine with the “un-American” tone. For all its defects, it’s still a taut little adventure tale, well worth the $2 for a used paperback copy.

People moan over Robert Jordan’s incomplete Wheel of Time series, and worry about whether George R.R. Martin will live long enough to finish A Song of Ice and Fire, but I think the field’s first and worst loss in series prematurely ended by the author’s death was Gordon R. Dickson’s Childe Cycle, of which Soldier, Ask Not was one of the more famous pieces. Unusually for the genre, this novel’s main character isn’t a soldier; he’s a news reporter on a mission of revenge. Tam Olyn has a grudge against the mercenary soldiers of the Friendly worlds, worlds rich in nothing but faith and manpower that is hired out as mercenaries to other worlds, and he thinks he’s found a way to utterly destroy them. Unfortunately for humanity, he may be right. This novel was originally a Hugo-winning short story and had other material added to extend it into a novel and make it a better fit to the rest of the Childe Cycle. Other novels in the cycle that fall into the combat SF category include Tactics of Mistake and Dorsai!.

A little over a decade after Starship Troopers won the Hugo, Analog magazine published the hugely controversial “Hero” by Vietnam War veteran Joe Haldeman. “Hero” sparked months of angry letters and equal amounts of praise, most notably from Heinlein himself; much of the controversy stemmed from the feeling that Haldeman had deliberately set out to write a story that was everything Heinlein’s wasn’t. More stories followed and eventually the stories were knit together to become the novel The Forever War. William Mandella’s war against the Taurans is very different from Johnny Rico’s against the Skinnies and Bugs, mainly due to the lack of FTL travel and the consequent effects of time dilation, which have unfortunate effects on Mandella and (from his perspective) human society, and of course his UN isn’t Rico’s Terran Federation, either. Good book -it won both the Hugo and Nebula awards, an uncommon feat- but somewhat depressing.

About a year after “Hero” came out, Jerry Pournelle introduced a mercenary officer, John Christian Falkenberg, who’d recently been cashiered from the CoDominium Marines. “The Mercenary” told the tale of Falkenberg’s hiring by the newly independent world of Hadley to train their constabulary – one that would be badly needed as the planet slid towards anarchy thanks to the masses exiled from Earth to Hadley by the CoDo Bureau of Relocation. This novella eventually expanded into several novels and a trilogy co-written with S.M. Stirling about the Helot Wars on Sparta which take place as the CoDo itself is breaking up until nationalist pressures. Often criticized for not having enough ray guns, lasers and other high tech, the stories nonetheless are entertaining tales of small colonial wars (Okay, the Helot War is actually damned sizable) and small-unit leadership. The entire series (including the Stirling collaborations) is collected in The Prince*, or you can just get the Falkenberg stories in Falkenberg’s Legion.

H. Beam Piper never won any awards, but he was one of the most entertaining SF writers of the 1950s, and Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen is one of the reasons why. State Trooper Calvin Morrison gets accidentally sucked into a cross-time transporter while hunting a criminal in the Pennsylvania forest, and thanks to quick reflexes and a good memory, manages to land on his feet in the feudal principality of Hostigos, which is about to be crushed for want of gunpowder…and Morrison remembers the formula. The combat is mostly Thirty Years War style, as the newly ennobled Lord Kalvan tries to save Hostigos and its gorgeous Princess Rylla from the forces of Styphon, the Gunpowder God while avoiding the attentions of the Paratime Police. Also available in the The Complete Paratime collection with the rest of Piper’s Paratime Police stories; the loose ends are tied up in Great Kings War by Roland Green and John F. Carr.

I’ve talked about David Drake’s Hammer’s Slammers previously; but I also want to put in a plug for another coming of age story, Ranks of Bronze, which tells the tale of a Roman legion that survives Crassus’ defeat by the Parthians and is sold to new owners…non-human owners. Many years later, Jim Baen pressured Drake into a sequel, which became the anthology Foreign Legions. Both very much worth reading.

John Perry is an old man of seventy-five when he decides to enlist in the Colonial Defense Forces. Fortunately for him, the CDF is going to grow him a spiffy new body with a BrainPal implant and upgrades to strength, dexterity and durability. He’ll also get nanotech weaponry – and he’s going to need all those things to survive in a very hostile universe. And that’s how John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War begins. In a lot of ways, Scalzi’s book is a lot closer to Starship Troopers than to The Forever War, advances in technology aside. The book is tightly written with brutally realistic depictions of combat against all manner of hostile aliens; despite this, Scalzi’s book is neither the morass of existential depression that Haldeman’s book often is, nor does it lapse into classroom lectures as Heinlein’s does. There are three sequels (not counting the chapbook The Sagan Diaries) of which I think The Ghost Brigades is the best.

Last but certainly not least, there are Keith Laumer’s Bolos. Introduced in the 1960 short story “Combat Unit”, these cybernetic supertanks have as much in common with the panzers of Hammer’s Slammers as a contemporary M-1 Abrams has with a Renault FT-17. Initially, the first Bolos are just bigger, heavier and nastier main battle tanks, but as computer technology (and weapons technology with it) advances and AIs are developed, it’s not long before Bolos don’t need much more than a human commander on board to backstop the computer that’s running the show. All six of Laumer’s original stories are included in the anthology The Compleat Bolo; but wait, there’s more! In the year of Laumer’s death (1993) Baen Books began publishing collections of new Bolo stories by David Drake, J. Andrew Keith, Barry Malzberg and others. The first of these, Honor of the Regiment:, was followed by eleven others along with separate novels by David Weber, William H. Keith, and John Ringo. The novels and most of the stories are excellent, and there aren’t really any bad ones. Good brain candy, at the very least.

*Also available as an e-book From Baen.

Category: Books

Prosecutors: Kaitlyn Hunt Violated Order, Sent Messages, ‘Lewd’ Photos to Victim UPDATE: Hunt Accused of Sending Masturbation Video to Teenage Victim UPDATE: Lesbian and Victim Had ‘Intimate Contact’ Until Two Weeks Ago

Posted on | August 15, 2013 | 289 Comments

Accused sex offender Kaitlyn Hunt “violated a pretrial order to have no contact with the victim in her teen-sex case,” the Palm Beach Post reported Thursday, citing a court motion by prosecutors that may end the 19-year-old lesbian’s release on bond.

According to the document cited in an article by Elliott Jones of the Post, “Hunt has been in almost daily contact” with the underage victim, and has secretly sent more than 20,000 text messages to the younger girl. Prosecutors say they have “over 25 lewd and lascivious photographs the defendant sent to the child victim.”

Hunt, who graduated from Sebastian River High School in June, was arrested in February and charged with having sex with a 14-year-old girl who was a freshman teammate on the school’s basketball team.

In May, Hunt’s case made headlines when she rejected a plea bargain offered by Florida prosecutors, and her parents launched the online “Free Kate” movement on her behalf.

Wednesday, prosecutors offered a second plea deal to Hunt, but her mother, Kelley Hunt Smith, denounced the offer in several message sent to the “Free Kate” Facebook group.

UPDATE: From the London Daily Mail:

Kaitlyn Hunt is being urged to accept the new deal which would keep her out of jail and prevent her from being registered as a sex offender — if she pleads no contest to two misdemeanor battery counts and one felony count for interference of child custody. . . .
Hunt . . . is facing felony charges of lewd and lascivious activity. If she goes to trial, she faces 15 years in prison if convicted.

Click here to see all our coverage of this controversy.

UPDATE II: Oh, my goodness: Just saw the document filed with the court, and it is absolutely devastating to Kaitlyn Hunt. “These photographs are explicit and depict the defendant [i.e., Hunt] nude, sometimes engaged in sex acts such as placing her fingers inside her vagina.” According to the document, Hunt also sent the younger girl at least one video that “explicitly depicts the defendant [i.e., Hunt] masturbating by rubbing her vagina with her fingers while moaning.”

UPDATE III: More from the document filed today: “The defendant [i.e., Hunt] coordinated secret meetings with the child victim [who is now 15] where the child would leave her home and get picked up by the defendant. The defendant would drive the child to a remote location where they would have intimate contact. . . . The child victim has stated to Detective Jeremy Shepherd that these meetings have taken place as recently as two weeks ago.”

UPDATE IV: Here is the document:

Kaitlyn Hunt Violation by Ali A. Akbar

UPDATE V: Headline at ViralRead:

‘Lewd’ Photos, Video in Lesbian Teen
Sex-Crime Case, Prosecutors Say

Category: Crime, Florida, Gays, Kaitlyn Hunt, Sex

Perversion for Breakfast

Posted on | August 15, 2013 | 35 Comments

Last week, ABC decided to advertise its primetime soap opera Betrayal during its Good Morning America program, and publicist Rebecca Seitz was shocked that her 8-year-old son was exposed to steamy sex scenes at 8 a.m.:

What HELL just ascended into my living room and burned itself into my precious boy’s brain? . . .
Really? This is what we’ve come to? Show titles like, Deception, Scandal, Pretty Little Liars, Betrayal, and Revenge? Simulated sex scenes at 8am?

She followed up to report that she had filed charges with the FCC: “How do we justify seeing evil and walking away?” Her story got picked up by The Blaze, and thanks to Moneyrunner for calling it to my attention, This should be a no-brainer for the networks: Whatever the standards are at 10 p.m. — and, frankly, those standards seem to be very low — you can’t be broadcasting that stuff at 8 a.m.

By all rights, Rebeca Seitz should win this fight. And then maybe she can do something about all those Viagra and Cialis ads, and after that? Joe Theisman’s prostate problems. I really don’t want to hear about anyone’s prostate, or their colon, for that matter.

Category: Culture

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