[A screenshot from CBS this weekend.]

Given the definition used by the Shrubbery’s agitprop people we did not have a civil war in the United States from 1861 to 1865. It wasn’t The War Between the States or The War of Northern Aggression, it was an insurgency.

The incident at Fort Sumter wasn’t really a battle. There were only four casualties, and they were the result of an equipment malfunction, so it doesn’t count as a real battle.

Since the current Iraqi military and police units are derived from Shi’ia militias it is little difficult to discern Shi’ia on Sunni violence. This was the obvious result of Bremer’s “de-Ba’athification” program as the Ba’ath party was a Sunni organization.

Let me spare Secretary Rice the trouble of saying: “No one could have imagined an Iraqi civil war.” Yeah, right.

Riverbend of Baghdad Burning is in the running for the BBC4 Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction writing. The award includes £30,000 [$52,281] in cash, but she would have to identify herself to collect it, and I can’t believe that she could remain in Iraq if she did.

Being identified as wealthy in Iraq makes you and your family the target for kidnappers.

How about we enforce some of the laws that already exist, before we enact any more?

It is illegal to hire undocumented workers, but they are all over and being abused by businesses. You start by actually enforcing the laws against the businesses. Stop arresting workers and start arresting employers.

Then, actually fund the securing of the border. Hire the Border Patrol agents you need and let them patrol the border. Hire the Coast Guard and give them equipment to patrol our waters. Fund and implement port security.

The great fallacy of the “guest worker” programs and the H1B visas, is that Americans don’t want these jobs. Americans don’t want to work for the money that business wants to pay for these jobs, and as long as business is assured of labor at poverty level wages, the wages won’t rise to a living level. “Guest worker programs” are nothing more than a variation of outsourcing.

NBC says Scalia Speaks His Mind, but it should probably read Scalia Shoots His Mouth Off.

Scalia is not interested in facts, jurisprudence, or the Constitution, only in his own ideology. He apparently supports the “imperial presidency” and not the rule of law.

While he should recuse himself from the latest Guantanamo case, I would be surprised if he had that much integrity left.

The BBC, among others, is reporting on the election in the Ukraine as some sort of huge victory for Viktor Yanukovych’s “blue” party, the Putin faction in the Ukraine. While they are the leading party, they only have 27.3% of the votes.

President Viktor Yushchenko’s party is running third with 16.3% of the vote, but the coalition, the “oranges”, that elected him included Yulia Tymoshenko’s bloc, currently second with 23.4%. If the “oranges” stop arguing among themselves they still have a majority in the government and should use it to help the Ukrainian people.

Or dog bites man. From the BBC: Microsoft warns on browser bugs.

“To avoid falling victim, Microsoft urged users to avoid websites they did not trust and to refrain from opening attachments on e-mail messages from unknown senders.”

Internet Explorer is a bad piece of software that was written more to enforce Microsoft’s platform orthodoxy than to assist the user. Its proprietary “features” are designed to lock users into dependence on Microsoft, not to assist them with the task at hand.

The real shame is that Microsoft has some talented coders who are quite capable of writing software that would win market share on its merits without all of this extraneous garbage. They could write software for Linux that people would be willing to buy.

Too bad they don’t believe in their people enough to compete on a level field, rather than attempting monopoly.