Telic Thoughts has a neat computer sim of the nuclear pore complex. These pores are the gateways through which materials pass into the nucleus of cells. They are much more than simple holes in the nuclear membrane as you'll see in the video.
Before you watch it, though, you must close your eyes real tight and repeat three times: "This is not designed. It happened by chance."
RLC
Scott Ott at ScrappleFace breaks this developing story in the U.S. Senate:
(2007-01-18) - Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-NB, today introduced a bill with several of his Democrat colleagues that would cap the number of Republican Senators at current levels and begin negotiations with Democrats for a phased GOP withdrawal from the Senate.
The measure comes as the Senate prepares to debate a Hagel-sponsored resolution opposing President George Bush's move to send 21,500 more troops to Iraq.
"Just as sending more U.S. troops isn't the solution to defeating terrorists in Iraq," said Sen. Hagel, "more Republican senators won't accomplish the party's legislative goals here. Each additional GOP senator simply antagonizes the majority party and makes the Senate a worse quagmire than it already is."
New York Democrat Senators Charles Schumer and Hillary Clinton co-sponsored the so-called "cap and yank" measure.
"We admire Chuck Hagel," said Sen. Clinton, "because when he reaches across the aisle, it never seems like a stretch."
You can bet you won't hear about this from the MSM.
RLC
Bill Roggio updates us on progress in the Global War on Terrorists. Here's a summary:
Coalition forces have made some strides in degrading the leadership of the global Islamist movement. Two senior Taliban commanders were captured in Afghanistan, while the Philippine military continues to dismantle Abu Sayyaf's leadership on the island of Jolo. Kenyan officials believe the Islamic Courts' second in command was detained and another killed in an airstrike, while Pakistan is on the heels of an al-Qaeda leader who fled airstrikes in North Waziristan.
Read the details at The Fourth Rail.
Also, Captain Ed has some very interesting stuff on how things have changed of a sudden for the Mahdi army in Baghdad and for the Iranians in Iraq. Read the first post on al-Sadr's Mahdi army and then scroll down to the post on the task force that's been assigned to roll up Iranian operations in Iraq.
RLC
Jonah Goldberg contrasts the President's plan with the Democrats' non-plan for victory. The Democrats' strategy for Iraq is to wait until Bush announces his plan and then bash it, even when he does what they've said he should do. Here are Jonah's key passages:
...when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid come to a fork in the road, they follow Yogi Berra's advice and take it. On the one hand, they tell the president that they want this war "brought to a close." On the other, they refuse to use their power of the purse to do exactly that, opting instead for a symbolic resolution. It may be the wisest political course for them, but it does a disservice to the nation by making the Iraq debate the equivalent of boxing with fog.
Here we have a president forthrightly trying to win a war, and the opposition -- which not long ago was in favor of increasing troops, when Bush was against that -- won't say what it wants. This is flatly immoral. If you believe the war can't be won and there's nothing to be gained by staying, then, to paraphrase Sen. John Kerry, you're asking more men to die for a mistake. You should demand withdrawal. But that might cost votes, so the Dems don't. And, of course, Kerry, Pelosi and other Democrats were in favor of more troops before they were against it.
In fact Harry Reid and others were actually criticizing the President as recently as a few months ago for not having enough troops in Iraq.
Another Democratic dodge is the incessant demand for a "political solution" in Iraq. "What is absolutely clear to me is there is no military solution to the problems in Iraq, that only political solutions are going to bring about some semblance of peace," Sen. Barack Obama declared. This is either childishly naive or reprehensibly dishonest. No serious person thinks that peace can be secured without a political solution. The question is how to get one. And nobody -- and I mean nobody -- has made a credible case that the Iraqis can get from A to B without more bloodshed, with or without American support.
Saying we need a political solution is as helpful as saying "give peace a chance." Peace requires more than such pie-eyed verbiage. In the real world, peace has no chance until the people who want to give death squads another shot have been dispatched from the scene. It reminds me of the liberal obsession in the 1980s with getting inner-city gangs to settle their differences with break-dance competitions. If only Muqtada Sadr would moonwalk to peace!
Bush came up with the "surge" plan. Will it work? Nobody knows. But the one thing the American people know about George W. Bush is that he wants to win the war. What the Democrats believe is anybody's guess.
For an example of exactly what Goldberg is talking about when he talks about the demand for a "political solution" in Iraq see Jim Wallis' piece at Sojourners.
Chuck Asay weighs in with his own comparison of Bush's plan and that of his political opponents:
