Off Wing Opinion

The following is a bit off topic for Off Wing, but I feel it needs to be raised. According to today's edition of the Washington Post, the Federal Government has rejected shelling out $900 million to help pay for the extension of the Washington Metro to Dulles International Airport (also known as the Silver Line), effectively killing the project.

Back in December 2006, to help pay for the project, the state of Virginia handed control of the Dulles Toll Road to the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority. According to the Washington Post, revenues from the toll road -- which were previously dedicated solely to maintain the road -- were to account for about $2 billion of the project's total $4 billion budget. To raise that money, the state first hiked tolls on the road by 25 cents in May 2006 before the handover, with another 25 cent increase scheduled for 2010.

But now that the project looks to be dead, wouldn't it make sense to cancel the planned 2010 increase, as well as roll back the increase from 2006? In addition, what's going to happen to the additional revenue that has been collected since that 2006 toll hike now that the project looks to be dead?

Further, if the extension is not going to be built -- project management of which was detailed to the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority -- then doesn't it make sense for control of the road to be passed back to the state of Virginia? One wonders why the Post wasn't moved to ask any of those questions in their story today.

Note to Off Wing readers: Things have gotten pretty busy around here, so I've recruited some extra help from my alma mater, Catholic University.

Starting today, CU students Kate McGovern and Ann Scrimenti are joining Off Wing as interns. Kate will be working as a photographer, while Ann will be an editorial assistant. Earlier today, a group of students organized by the College Sports Council came to Washington to lobby Congress to reform the enforcement mechanisms used to apply Title IX to college athletics. Ann filed the following report and Kate brought her camera. I'm looking forward to see more from these two.

Students from the greater Washington area schools gathered for a rally today to demand improvements to Title IX, a Civil Rights Amendment Act that prohibits gender discrimination for education programs and activities that receive federal aid. Parents, coaches and advocacy groups stood with the students outside the Department of Education, while the James Madison University (JMU) men's and women's track teams ran five miles side by side around the Department. The JMU swimming, archery, fencing, wrestling and gymnastic teams were also a large presence at the today's rally.

Because many of the local institutions do not have a balance of teams for both men and women, federal funding of sports programs has been cut. Students seeking an alternative to cutting programs have been granted a meeting with Department of Education officials immediately following the rally at which they will be delivering a letter detailing specific reforms, with several hundred signatories, according to the College Sports Council.

Tari Rossitto-VanWinkle (pictured left), mother of male JMU gymnast Stirling Van Winkle, said that a solution to this problem is "multi-faceted." She said she believes JMU should "immediately breakup the timetable to 2010." Both parents and students alike are seeking reform from the Department of Education because of the "clear violation of Title IX. It was never intended to cut women's and men's sports," she said. Rossitto-Van Winkle flew from Tallahassee, Florida today to encourage her son to speak out.

For a full gallery of photos from the event, click here.

George Monbiot thinks professional sports are contributing mightily to greenhouse gas emissions and global warming.

His solution: Ultimate Frisbee:

Perhaps it's time to consider a fixed site for the Olympics and to encourage spectators to stay at home and watch international events on the telly. Perhaps we should recognise that some sports are simply too wasteful to be sustained. It is, after all, just entertainment. Can we really live with the idea that we might destroy the planet for fun?

For years a group of us struggled to find a sport that everyone could play. The young men were happy with football, but women, children and older people got hurt in collisions. We tried hockey, with disastrous results. Cricket and rounders lacked excitement. Then someone suggested ultimate frisbee and we have never looked back.

It is - if you choose to play it that way - fast and demanding, but, because there's no contact and a variety of useful tactics, almost anyone can join in. Our players so far have ranged from four to 79. Fifteen years on, most of us are in our forties and still executing some pretty spectacular dives. It's a great sport - I don't why it isn't played more widely.

I think George and his moonbat friends should try hockey again. I'd be happy (wrapping fists in tin foil) to reintroduce him to the sport.

Over at Uncommon Sense, my old college buddy Marc Masferrer is taking part in the "2,996" Project, a Web-based effort to tell the stories of all the people who perished five years ago today. Marc is remembering Maureen L. Olson of Long Island, New York.

As for me, like every year, I'll be remembering Tim Welty. And I urge you all to remember just one name from among the 2,996. And do it every year for as long as you live. I know I will.

UPDATE: Radley Balko remembers John W. Perry.

Here's the latest from Krempasky and Kos. If you care about your online speech rights, call your Representative now, and let them know you expect a "yea" vote on HR 1606.

I know I don't do a lot of politics anymore, but here's one effort I can get behind.

Remember: Everything that protects sites like Red State and Daily Kos protects sports bloggers like me too. Urge your represetative to vote for H.R. 1606. Thanks to Instapundit for the pointer.

Over the years, many folks in Pennsylvania have been hoping for a Steelers/Eagles Super Bowl. This year, they'll finally get their wish - politically speaking, of course.

For those of you who don

Some disturbing news out of Germany:

A German parole board has released a Lebanese man convicted 16 years ago of killing an American Navy diver during the 1985 hijacking of a T.W.A. jetliner, a spokeswoman for the Frankfurt prosecutor's office said today.

The man, Mohammed Ali Hamadi, who was arrested at the Frankfurt Airport in January 1987, was found guilty in a trial in 1989 of the murder of Robert Dean Stethem, a 23-year-old from Waldorf, Md., whose body was then dumped onto the tarmac.

Something tells me this guys is going to be on the run for the rest of his life. Serves him right. To learn more about Petty Officer Robert Dean Stethem, USN, click here.

When a friend sent me the following a few minutes ago, I was convinced it was a fake:

H.R. 4210 Tupac Amaru Shakur Records Collection Act of 2005 (Introduced in House)

109th CONGRESS

1st Session

H. R. 4210

To provide for the expeditious disclosure of records relevant to the life and death of Tupac Amaru Shakur.

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

November 2, 2005

But then, I did some searching in the Congressional database, and it's for real.

Unbelievable.

I normally don't deal with politics much anymore, but I've been a confirmed fan of John Tierney for some time now, and think his column from this morning on the Roberts Supreme Court confirmation hearings is an absolute scream:

Is there any chance that you could speed up Justice Stevens's retirement by addressing him as "Gramps"?

After seeing a judge's robes in a Gilbert and Sullivan production, Chief Justice Rehnquist added gold stripes to his robe. If confirmed, will you keep the stripes, or do you have a whole new look in mind?

In your best judgment, did Brad and Jen really just grow apart, or was it Angelina's fault?

Sounds just as deep as any other question Judge Roberts will deal with over the next few days.

Just let me do . . . what I . . . want.

Just go now. The future of the nation depends on it.

Download the campaign poster here (Adobe Acrobat required). I'm feeling the groundswell already.

Now, is this some cheap publicity stunt to help prop up the box office on Wedding Crashers now that it's been out a few weeks? Maybe, but the execution is too brilliant for me to ignore.

Off the AP wire:

English club Millwall and the Iranian national team have called off a game scheduled for Saturday because of fears Muslim fans could be attacked . . . In 2004, the Football Association fined Millwall $43,600 because of racist behavior by club fans.

Glad to see somebody was thinking straight when they caught wind of some disturbing news.

Like everyone else, I was horrified by yesterday's attacks in London, an event that simply reinforced the hard truth that we're engaged in a war with barbarians who won't ever be reasoned with.

They expect no quarter, and we shouldn't give them any either.

My condolences to those who lost family and friends yesterday. Please know that we're with you, and we will see this through together.

But like Winston Churchill said of the Blitz, "London can take it." And I saw some evidence of that in a note I got this morning from a former colleague who works there:

Everything's getting back to normal surprisingly quickly. We've had so many bomb attacks in London that for most people who've been here a while and weren't directly involved, after the initial horror it quickly subsides into not being a big deal. Odd really, but I think it's part WWII blitz spirit, part IRA campaigns in the 70-90's that have conditioned us.

So much for the wages of terror.

I know I don't normally post about politics anymore, but this George Will column distills exactly what I think about yesterday's Supreme Court ruling in Kelo.

Yesterday was a bad day for liberty. And we will be suffering from the consequencees for decades to come.

As a sports aside, I suspect that this will make it that much easier for politicians to seize land and property that gets in the way when your favorite local sports owner wants a new arena or stadium. And that's bad for everybody.

I know I normally don't deal with politics much these days, but a lot of what I've seen and heard about W. Mark Felt's unmasking as "Deep Thraot" has left me more than a little bewildered (and that includes the front page love letter to Felt's daughter the Washington Post dropped on its front page this morning). After all, as former prosecutor John Nields pointed out today, when Felt had his hands on the controls, he was more than willing to trample the same laws that Nixon's henchmen rolled over:

In late 1972 and early 1973, during the same period when he was investigating the Watergate break-in, Felt authorized FBI agents in New York and New Jersey to break into and search the homes of friends or relatives of fugitives associated with the Weather Underground, a radical, violent antiwar organization. These friends and relatives were innocent of any wrongdoing. There was no probable cause to conduct the searches. There was no search warrant authorizing them. And they were clearly illegal.

Not that I'm a fan of the Weather Underground*, but it's important to point out that Felt authorized these break-ins years after his former superior, the late FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, had concluded that such "black bag" operations were "clearly illegal". Not that I give Hoover much credit for what looks like a deathbed conversion, but it speaks volumes about Felt that he was willing to borrow that idea from the old playbook.

Given what we do know about Felt now, and the crimes he was convicted of, I have to wonder just what damage he would have done to our civil liberties if he had actually taken over as FBI Director upon Hoover's death as he had originally aspired.

But unlike both Ben Stein and Peggy Noonan, two writers that I admire and respect, I'm not inclined to pin the blame for the Fall of Southeast Asia and the Cambodian genocide on Felt and his role in Watergate. In fact, that line of thinking reminds me quite a bit of what I heard from plenty of Democratic partisans during the Clinton impeachment battle.

The fault for Watergate, and the other disasters that could be directly attributed to the fall of the Nixon presidency are the responsibility of President Nixon his staff alone. If the stakes were so high on the world stage, then they should have known better than to be underwriting two-bit burglaries. And perhaps the biggest joke of all is how unnecessary it all was. After all, they were spying on a Democratic party as it was blundering to the worst national electoral defeat in its history.

So while Watergate was certainly one of the greatest political power plays ever, it should be far past time for anyone to pretend that the players were acting in anything other than their own self-interest.

So forgive me if I pass on the applause.
_______________________________________________________
I guess it's nice that a Google search on the Weather Underground leads you to the weather service, not a history of those domestic terrorists.

Sorry for today's fadeout, as I've been all too busy to have any time for regular posting. However, I do want to pass along some text from a bill that was passed unanimously by the Idaho House of Representatives honoring the creators of the movie,Napoleon Dynamite.

This is an absolute hoot:

WHEREAS, the State of Idaho recognizes the vision, talent and creativity of Jared and Jerusha Hess in the writing and production of "Napoleon Dynamite"; and

WHEREAS, the scenic and beautiful City of Preston, County of Franklin and the State of Idaho are experiencing increased tourism and economic growth; and

WHEREAS, filmmaker Jared Hess is a native Idahoan who was educated in the Idaho public school system; and

WHEREAS, the Preston High School administration and staff, particularly the cafeteria staff, have enjoyed notoriety and worldwide attention; and

WHEREAS, tater tots figure prominently in this film thus promoting Idaho's most famous export; and

WHEREAS, the friendship between Napoleon and Pedro has furthered multiethnic relationships; and

WHEREAS, Uncle Rico's football skills are a testament to Idaho athletics; and

WHEREAS, Napoleon's bicycle and Kip's skateboard promote better air quality and carpooling as alternatives to fuel-dependent methods of transportation; and

WHEREAS, Grandma's trip to the St. Anthony Sand Dunes highlights a long-honored Idaho vacation destination;

Read the rest right now. You won't be sorry.

The second part of the Washington Post's two-part series on the death of Pat Tillman was just posted -- and the piece comes off as more of a coda than a full-fledged second act of a story.

Instead of an organized cover-up, which seemed to be what reporter Steve Coll promised at the end of Part I, we get a close look at the sort of beauracratic bungling you get the impression goes on all the time. After every paragraph, you expect to get hit with a sledgehammer -- but it never comes.

If anything, I can't understand why this couldn't have been handled all in one day. Still, the piece is worth your time, if only to learn of the fate of some of the other Rangers in Tillman's unit who were responsible for his death.

POSTSCRIPT: One other minor quibble: In the paper's print edition in Part I, the piece was accompanied by a four color map and a detailed timeline of the operation. It's a shame the Post couldn't find a way to include it online in some format or another, as it made the sequence of events far easier to understand.

UPDATE: For those inclined, you can follow a discussion thread on this over at Washingtonpost.com. The paper has also posted a post-incident graphic that lays out the delays in informing Tillman's family of the details of his death, but as I said before, there are few details to suggest the delay was caused by anything other than the normal beauracratic process.

And again, instead of just posting excerpts from after-action reports, the paper really should have taken the time to post the graphic of the actual battle that appeared in Sunday's print edition -- a far more compelling use of Web graphics than they've demonstrated so far.

UPDATE: Click here for a video report from the Post's Steve Coll. And once again, I'd urge you to take a look at the discussion string at Washingtonpost.com. Lots of stuff there I hadn't considered, and well worth your time.

HOLD ON A SECOND UPDATE: I just did a Google search on Tillman's death, and pulled the original Washington Post report that first confirmed that the Army Ranger died as the result of friendly fire. Reading it over again, it's easy to see that while Coll's piece added many important details, we've known the basic outline of what happened to Tillman that day for something on the order of six months.

Now, does this mitigate the actions of those who made mistakes in the field (including command personnel who may have blundered with some of the orders they gave)? Absolutley not. But when I hear the words "conspiracy" and "coverup" used, I expect a higher threshold of evidence.

In Sunday's Washington Post, reporter Steve Coll has reconstructed the events in and around the firefight where Pat Tillman, ex-NFL defensive back turned Army Ranger, lost his life in the mountains of Afghanistan.

Using a combination of official sources, as well as interviews with some surviving members of Tillman's unit, Coll paints a harrowing picture of an operation gone wrong, ending with a group of overeager and inexperienced Rangers wildly firing their weapons to escape an ambush -- killing Tillman in the process:

Tillman and nearly a dozen other Rangers on the ridge tried everything they could: They shouted, they waved their arms, and they screamed some more.

"Ranger! Ranger! Cease fire!" one soldier on the ridge remembered shouting.

"But they couldn't hear us," recalled the soldier nearest Tillman. Then Tillman "came up with the idea to let a smoke grenade go." As its thick smoke unfurled, "This stopped the friendly contact for a few moments," the Ranger recalled.

"We thought the battle was over, so we were relieved, getting up and stretching out, and talking with one another."

Suddenly he saw the attacking Humvee move into "a better position to fire on us." He heard a new machine gun burst and hit the ground, praying, as Pat Tillman fell.

But according to Coll, it would be another five weeks before the Army informed any member of Tillman's family -- including his brother Kevin who served in the same unit -- that he died as the result of friendly fire. In Part II, set to run in Monday's newspaper, Coll promises to detail how the Army tried to cover up the details of Tillman's death, and exaggerate his exploits on the battlefield.

UPDATE: Whatever other details might emergy, Petrified Truth gets it right:

Deaths by friendly fire are an all-too-common occurence in the proverbial "fog of war." So too is the human tendency to avoid public admission of error and failure. Neither detract from the honor of Pat Tillman's courage and sacrifice.

Indeed. And one of the SportsProphets plans a fitting tribute.

Other Links:

Donate to the Pat Tillman Foundation.

Buy a Pat Tillman Jersey. Proceeds to benefit his foundation.

UPDATE: Here's Phil Carter from Intel Dump:

Covering up incidents of friendly fire, as opposed to extensively AAR'ing them, only ensures they will continue to happen again -- and that unit after unit will relearn the same deadly lessons.

FYI: The Post generally posts articles to its online site anywhere from 10:30 p.m. to Midnight. I'll check in around then for Part II.

For those Americans still considering a move to Canada in the wake of John Kerry's defeat at the polls earlier this month, you might want to listen to what Nora Jacobsen, an American ex-pat living in Toronto, has to say about the idea:

Although I enjoy my work and have made good friends here, I've found life as an American expatriate in Canada difficult, frustrating and even painful in ways that have surprised me. As attractive as living here may be in theory, the reality's something else. For me, it's been one of almost daily confrontation with a powerful anti-Americanism that pervades many aspects of life. When I've mentioned this phenomenon to Canadian friends, they've furrowed their brows sympathetically and said, "Yes, Canadian anti-Americanism can be very subtle." My response is, there's nothing subtle about it.

And as someone who consumes plenty of Canadian media every day of the week, that's a conclusion I came to a long time ago. Thanks to Colby Cosh for the link.

UPDATE: Then again, maybe not everyone North of the border feels the same way.

That one of the greatest pitchers in the history of baseball, if not the classiest, was forced to call it quits at age 30. For more on the life of Sandy Koufax, read A Lefty's Legacy by Jane Leavy.

CORRECTION: Man, I'm just tripping over my sneaker laces these days. Make that 38 years.

Mistakes like this are the way God tells you you're blogging too much.

I know I generally stay away from politics these days, but given that we have a significant Canadian readership, I thought the following news item merited some attention:

The number of U.S. citizens visiting Canada's main immigration Web site has shot up six-fold as Americans flirt with the idea of abandoning their homeland after President Bush's election win this week.

"When we looked at the first day after the election, Nov. 3, our Web site hit a new high, almost double the previous record high," immigration ministry spokeswoman Maria Iadinardi said on Friday.

On an average day some 20,000 people in the United States log onto the Web site, www.cic.gc.ca -- a figure which rocketed to 115,016 on Wednesday. The number of U.S. visits settled down to 65,803 on Thursday, still well above the norm.

Bush's victory sparked speculation that disconsolate Democrats and others might decide to start a new life in Canada, a land that tilts more to the left than the United States.

To which I say, don't let the door hit you on the way out. Then again, rather than foisting these heartbroken transnational progressives on Canada, we probably ought to work out a fair and equitable exchange.

So, Prime Minister Martin, in the spirit of Pierre Lacroix, here's the deal I'd like to offer your fair confederation:

To Canada:

Gore Vidal, Noam Chomsky, Paul Krugman, Alec Baldwin, Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, Peter Jennings (he wants to go back anyway) and the combined law school faculties at Harvard and Yale;

In exchange for:

Granting permanent resident status and eventual citizenship to every Canadian-born player in the NHL. Oh yeah, and we want Larry Walker too (20 years ago we would have asked for Leo Rautins).

If that isn't enough, I promise to throw in the Sociology department at Berkeley.

Come on, you know you want to make this deal. Admit it -- some of your leaders would absolutely jump at this chance. We'll even let you keep Margaret Atwood.

UPDATE: Comments are officially closed.

Here's what Mark Cuban had to say about the NBA holding its season opener on the same day as a U.S. Presidential election:

Tuesday is when it gets real. I won

Gene Healy shares an all too true observation about downtown D.C. that many locals can sympathize wtih:

On weekend afternoons, when everybody's gone home to the Maryland and Virginia suburbs, it's often utterly desolate. Walking from the metro stop to the office on a Saturday, one sometimes feels like a character in a sci-fi dystopia, awakened from a slumber to find the world depopulated by a sudden disaster.

For those of you who have never lived here, think Charlton Heston in The Omega Man.

Thanks to Radley Balko for the link.

I know that Beau is very busy with non-political Olympics coverage and Bryant has delicate journalism ethics. Please, if you don

I've often wondered how politicians evaluate the pros and cons of appearing at a game.

Just take last night's Red Sox-Yankees series finale. Senator John Kerry, who had been scheduled to fly to Florida, flew instead to Boston to make an unexpected appearance at the game, and he threw out the first pitch. His surprise visit was no doubt a thrill for the Fenway faithful, perhaps save for whoever had been previously scheduled to throw out the first pitch.

Or go back to last month, when the Red Sox were playing at Yankee Stadium, and Vice President Dick Cheney was spotted sitting between Rudy Giuliani and Senator George Pataki. Apparently figuring that Massachusetts' 12 electoral votes wouldn't be coming his way anyway, he also donned a Yankees cap throughout the entire game.

Actually, sports has played a recurring role in the 2004 presidential race. Perhaps this was best seen in January, when after New England Patriots' quarterback Tom Brady decided to sit with First Lady Laura Bush during her husband's state-of-the-union address, John Kerry was asked, "Senator, has President Bush stolen Tom Brady from you?"

Of course, politicians and sports is not a uniquely American mix. Just this past weekend, in fact, Hsu Tien-tsair, the Mayor of Tainan (Taiwan), threw out the first pitch of game 1 of the Second World University Baseball Championship, an international tournament held in Taiwan.

But what might make the mix different in the United States is the risk involved. Specifically, the risk of being booed loudly by tens of thousands of fans, all of whom are standing right around you. To illustrate, consider that while Vice President Cheney was wearing a Yankees cap, and was sitting between Giuliani and Pataki, he still received the jeers of New Yorkers when his picture was displayed on the centerfield scoreboard. Similarly, John Kerry apparently heard more than a few boos last night at Fenway, even though the Park was full of DNC people, as well as his own Massachusetts constituents. This reminded me of when Donovan McNabb was at the 1999 NFL Draft, and while being congratulated by Commissioner Paul Tagliabue for being selected by the Philadelphia Eagles, a small, but strikingly vocal contingent of Eagles fans started booing him. Loudly. And that was probably the most memorable moment of the draft.

I guess the real lesson is, if you're a political advisor and your boss is scheduled to attend a sporting event, the best three words you can probably tell him are: "Don't show up."

On the other hand, maybe that's what makes America so unique and so appealing: The fans aren't afraid to boo their leaders, even when they're standing right next to them. Just a hunch, but I bet that doesn't always happen in Tainan. And maybe that's why Mayor Hsu encountered "cheering crowds."

Carol Slezak, in-house feminist for the Chicago Sun-Times, has a piece today pointing out the long-ignored fact that women athletes usually don

I've tried to ignore this story for as long as I could, but I can't anymore. Drudge is saying that Mike Ditka will announce he is running for the U.S. Senate in the state of Illinois.

This ought to be interesting. Stay tuned.

UPDATE: Ditka met with the state Republican Chairwoman, and a fundraiser is being planned for Thursday night where an announcement is expected.

Here's one former Wisconsin resident who won't be voting for Ditka:

I have two rules about U.S. Senate Candidates:

Rule #1: Male candidates cannot perm their hair.

Rule #2: You cannot respond to those who criticize you by throwing gum at them, spitting at them, swearing at them or challenging them to a fight.

Mike Ditka has, in his life as a Chicago icon, violated both rules, several times. How can he possibly run for U.S. Senate?

Note to the national Republican party: why is it that you are having so much trouble developing political talent that you have to turn to celebrities in order to wage credible campaigns?

While the polls closest to election day seemed to foreshadow a big victory for Canada's unified Conservative Party, the nation's voters had other ideas, putting Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin into power in his own right for the first time, albeit at the head of a minority government where he'll have to share power with the far smaller (and more radical), New Democratic Party (NDP).

Looking at the vote totals, it seems as if most of the voters disgusted by the ruling Liberals casual corruption, cast their protest votes not for the Conservatives, but rather for the smaller NDP. Further, the Conservatives, formed by the merger of the former Progressive Conservatives and the Western-based Canadian Alliance, actually won fewer votes this time out than the two parties combined had in the previous Federal election.

The other big winner on the night was the Bloc Quebecois, who hadn't won this many seats in the House of Commons since the heyday of separatist fervor in the early 1990s.

On the hockey side, Liberal candidate Ken Dryden won his safe Toronto seat easily. Former Quebec Nordique Peter Stasny, a Conservative candidate in Quebec, didn't fare as well.

As always, check out Colby Cosh for his post mortem.

CORRECTION: Looks like it was the wrong Peter Stasny. Thanks to Mike MacLean of Ottawa Sports Blog for setting me straight.