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An Illusion of PermanencyTuesday, Apr. 14, 2009 3:41 AMAdif Zadari, Pakistan's Prime Minister, has signed a regulation allowing the Taliban to impose Shari'a Law in the northwestern Swat Valley region. Critics of the move include human rights groups and Western governments who are wary of the Taliban having a safe haven from which terrorists can operate. Some 'experts' are waxing poetic about a 'permanent Democratic majority,' citing recent polls and election results. To me, this is about as accurate as Newsweek's article on the end of Christian America. It's a projection on facts, to be sure, but it's the interpretation of those facts that makes the projection less reliable. Then there's the practical end of things - the Republicans thought they'd won the prize the last time they took control of Congress, and then the White House. They felt were entitled to something, that they had political capital that could be spent in a forward and unapologetic manner. That certainly worked out well, didn't it? I suspect that some of the GOP's current image problems - the self-destructive buffoonery of Glenn Beck, the confused ramblings of Michael Steele, the 'Rush Limbaugh runs the GOP' meme - are because they're positioned against an opponent who has changed (at least to some extent) the game plan. Unprepared for the shift, the GOP has overbalanced and fallen on its face. That can happen from the opposite direction as well, so the folks envisioning a rosy all-progressive all-the-time future need to be mindful of falling prey to hubris. Former MLB pitcher Mark 'The Bird' Fidrych was found dead at his home. He was 54. Former Cal football coach Bruce Snyder has died after a battle with cancer. He was 69. Dave Arneson, co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, also passed away from cancer last week. He was 61. Former porn starlet Marilyn Chambers was found dead at her home. She was 56. And, finally, a Boot to the Head for KTVU, which aired a photo of a young woman named Melissa Huckaby, a Sunday School teacher, age 28, in reporting the arrest of a suspect in the Sandra Cantu murder case. The only problem? It was the wrong Melissa Huckaby. KTVU showed the photo, taken off of MySpace, of an innocent woman who lives in Manteca, California, and has been receiving threatening phone calls as a result. Apparently, no one bothered to check with the Tracy Police Department for a booking photo, or went beyond surface details of name, age, and occupation.
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