It turns out that my opinion of former U.N. weapons inspector and alleged part-time pedophile Scott Ritter operates according to Zeno’s dichotomy paradox: every time I think I’ve reached the absolute lowest possible opinion of him, it turns out that really there’s still a few more microns to go. From The Command Post today (emphasis mine):

The [youth] prison in question was inspected by my team in Jan. 1998. It appeared to be a prison for children—toddlers up to pre-adolescents—whose only crime was to be the offspring of those who have spoken out politically against the regime of Saddam Hussein. It was a horrific scene. Actually I’m not going to describe what I saw there because what I saw was so horrible that it can be used by those who would want to promote war with Iraq, and right now I’m waging peace.

That’s right: according to Scott Ritter, it’s OK to leave kids in squalor and misery, for the greater moral cause of preventing war. If this doesn’t fundamentally discredit the thinking of the radical anti-war movement, I’m not sure what could.

Patrick Carver was fortunate enough to catch up with Antonin Scalia, and get his autograph, after his speech at Fulton Chapel here at the University of Mississippi Thursday; a somewhat different take is from an anonymous reader at How Appealing.

I’m not entirely sold on “original intent” as a jurisprudential philosophy, nor am I really sold that Scalia practices it (he may believe he practices it, but as a good student of political psychology, and judicial behavior in the attitudinal tradition, I’m unconvinced). But by all accounts Scalia is a smart guy, and possibly next in line to be Chief Justice of the United States, so it’s certainly nice that he dropped by. (I would have been there but I’ve been sicker than a dog for the past three days; I must have caught something in Chicago.)

In my never-ending quest to confuse readers by blogging about Canadian politics, I present the news (via Pieter) that New York Governor George Pataki and Ontario Premier Ernie Eves have called for a security perimeter encompassing the U.S. and Canada, to streamline border controls between the two countries.

The report comes fresh on the heels of poll results suggesting 65%* of Canadians favor the idea of a security perimeter; in the same poll, 73% also favor tougher immigration policies.

Perhaps the more interesting pattern of this story: Google News finds that both the Toronto Star and Globe and Mail in Canada give it play, while among U.S. papers, only the Buffalo News, the Ithaca Journal, and a minor New York-based paper appear to have picked up the news.

* Poll conducted April 4–6, n=500, margin of error ± 4.5% with a 95% confidence level.