The holiday season has officially started at my house. My wife has just finished making the first batch of the twenty or so batches of her world-famous English Toffee that she makes every holiday season as Christmas presents for friends, family, and colleagues. My wife mentioned that she used to make several other treats for people as well but when the recipients began to say “Well, yes, that’s nice but how ’bout more toffee?” she abandoned the rest and concentrated on perfecting the toffee.

If you’re very, very good I may give you the recipe before the holiday season ends.

It’s gone largely unnoted but Congress has re-authorized the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA):

Congress approved and sent to the White House yesterday an update of special-education requirements that eases pressure on teachers while increasing enforcement of high standards for the disabled.

The bill would be the first major revision to the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act in seven years. The law promises a free and appropriate education in the least restrictive environment to more than 6.7 million children with special needs.

The House passed it 397 to 3, and the Senate approved it by voice vote. President Bush was expected to sign it. That would allow Congress to take credit for a significant, bipartisan schools bill before the new year, when its membership will change and a heavy agenda of education issues awaits.

Changes in the new legislation include paperwork reduction, stronger enforcement, and more flexibility for schools. In what may prove to be one of the more controversial provisions the bill allows states and school districts to recover legal fees if a parent’s complaint is deemed frivolous. In my opinion this is a needed reform to level the playing field. Since the enacting of the previous law it’s been possible for determined (and well-to-do or legally connected) parents to get pretty nearly anything they want using legal strong-arm techniques particularly threat of suit. The new law may reduce this and let districts spend their limited funds on actually teaching kids rather than paying legal fees.

Now this is my wife’s idea of a real weapon of mass destruction (hat tip: Cronaca). As she said when she saw the picture: “I’m all over it (or vice versa)”.

Over the last few months I’ve found that there’s a sort of hierarchy to the comfort level I have with reading other people’s blogs. It goes something like this (from most comfortable to least comfortable):

Moderate/Centrist blogs
Group blogs with evenly distributed bloggers and clientele
Pro-WoT libertarian blogs
Pro-WoT right leaning blogs
Pro-WoT left leaning blogs
Hard libertarian blogs
Hard right blogs
Hard left blogs

Perhaps one of the things that I like about truly moderate/centrist bloggers is that they’re inclined to be rather temperate as well. Ideas of most political stripes are given due consideration.

I’m overjoyed when I find read a good, moderate/centrist blog for the first time. I find them as comfortable as an old pair of shoes and as interesting as a bull session with old friends I haven’t seen in a long time. PurpleStater of CenterFeud is the proprietor of such a blog and I look forward to every one of his posts. I’m pretty stingy with my blogrolling, PurpleStater. Welcome!

I have tremendous admiration for Abu Aardvark and his blog is a daily (or near-daily) read for me. But sometimes rhetorical constructs are so strained that they just call out for criticism. Here’s something from the Aardvark’s most recent post:

There’s a lot of talk these days about a possible confrontation between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States. Leaving aside the admittedly big question of nuclear weapons for a moment, it’s pretty easy to see the reasons for concern.

I don’t object to the post as a whole. But there’s an old expression about “the dog in the manger” and it certainly applies here.

Let’s try out some comparable constructions for size:

“Leaving aside that it would kill you, wouldn’t jumping off the Empire State Building be great? Think of the view!”
“Leaving aside that it’s a terrible diet, why not eat nothing but ice cream?”
“Leaving aside the cold, why not wear a bathing suit in the snow?”

The reason that there’s a lot of talk these days about a confrontation between the Islamic Republic and the United States is Iran’s nuclear development program. Leaving aside that, the Aardvark would have had no post.

Last night my wife and I attended the third production of our Lyric Opera season for 2004-2005: Verdi’s Aida. Although it’s not my personal favorite among Verdi’s operas Aida is certainly one of Verdi’s most popular operas. If you’re looking for Grand Opera Aida is one of the grandest.

For almost twenty years now we’ve been seeing the same production of the opera, a production I’ve come to call “the Smurf production”. The reason I look at it this way is that when the Ethiopian captives are brought on stage in the triumphal victory parade at the end of Act II, they’re wearing blue makeup. Yes, it’s done in blueface. Probably for reasons of political correctness but I, for one, find a bunch of blue Ethiopians running all over the stage somewhat absurd. Instead of the magnificent grand processional

Gloria all’ Egitto, ad Iside che il sacro suol protege!
Al Re che il Delta regge, al Re che il Delta inni festosi alziam!

I expect the chorus to come on warbling “La-LA-la-la-la-la, LA-la-la-la-la”.

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PurpleStater from Centerfeud, a blogger whose work I very much admire, in his update to a post citing my post on nuclear deterrence here has some good resources on discussions of the status of Iran’s program and the options being discussed. The resources include a post from Bill of INDC Journal and a couple of posts from the excellent American Future here and here.

To come fully up to speed you might want to take a look at this article by James Fallows from last December’s Atlantic Monthly and the related Powerpoint presentation (Hat tip: the ubiquitous praktike). The article details a wargaming exercise concerning Iran’s nuclear weapons program. The presentation was given to kick off the exercise by retired USAF Colonel Sam Gardiner who played the role of CENTCOM.

The conclusion of the wargaming exercise is that there is no practical military option in Iran. Despite this I’ve heard there’s a dissident minority opinion in the Pentagon. This minority opinion is pushing for a massive short-term air campaign targeting some 400 sites over a 4 day period.

I’ve also heard a rumor that the Israeli destruction of the Osirak nuclear reactor back in 1981 was not accomplished by an aerial bombardment but by infiltration on the ground and that the bombardment was a diversion. Just a thought.

Eric Martin, commenting on my post from yesterday on deterrence, made a comment that I felt deserved a response. As I began to formulate that response I realized that my response was in danger of overflowing its banks and drowning the comments section so I’ve made it into a post of its own

Here’s Eric’s comment:

Allow me to take issue with your definition of terrorism:

“I think that a terrorist attack is an attack on civilians or civilian assets whose purpose is to provoke terror. It has no other tactical or strategic significance.”

I guess it depends on how you define “strategic significance” and “provoke terror.”

Some contend that the strategy of targeting civilains is an attempt to compel a certain adversary to acquiesce to political demands of one sort or another. By targeting civilians, the “terrorist” is attempting to make the costs of confrontation so onerous that the other side loses its resolve. Thus there is a strategic significance to the targeting of civilians. Would that mean they are not terrorists?

Maybe you don’t consider this a strategic significance, and would say that any deliberate targeting of civilians is terrorism, even if there is an underlying political goal or a desire to force your opponenet to surrender.

But how would either definition of this tactic handle the historicl tendency by many armies to target civilians as a means to induce surrender? It might sound strange to say, but many generals used terrorism – at least under certain definitions. It sounds strange only because the term has been associated with non-conventional armies and non-state actors, but as a tactic it is the same in quality.

The attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were close to falling under this definition. While there were certain military production facilities in Nagasaki, it is hard to argue that the point was not to make the costs of war seem so onerous on Japan so as to compel their surrender. That was accomplished by killing massive numbers of civilians, and the threat of further destruction in such a manner. The same could probably be said of the bombing raids in Dresden and Tokyo. And of course there is the long ignominious history of targeting Native American “civilians” in order to purge this country of its inhabitants.

In the context of nuclear deterrence as the concept has been discussed, targeting Mecca with nuclear weapons as a response to a nuclear attack on the United States by terrorists who are not supported by Saudi Arabia would be very close to falling under the definition of terrorism. In fact, I think it would be hard to call it anything but (although I am not suggesting that you are advocating targeting religious sites per se, as I understand that is not your position).

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Jay Tea of Wizbang has a two-part critique of the Geneva Conventions see here and here. I think he’s painting too rosey a picture of the Geneva Conventions. A primary purpose for becoming a signatory of the Conventions is to secure good treatment for your soldiers when they are taken prisoner by the enemy. Since we became signatories we have never faced an enemy that adhered to the provisions of the Conventions whether they were signatories or not. We have occasionally and incidentally violated the Conventions. Our opponents have violated them systematically.

Additionally, there are cases in which the Geneva Conventions achieve precisely the opposite of their intended result. As I mentioned earlier today the ban on chemical and bacteriological weapons actually enticed the Japanese to secure these weapons under the assumption that their opponents would not respond in kind. We face a similar problem in Iraq. The thugs we face are using the Conventions as a roadmap for identifying strategies to use against our forces.