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27. juni 2006
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As I said, I've never been good at predictions in sports. In my World Cup predictions of the last sixteen, I got only four out of six right, missing two.
I did write that Spain has a tendency to come strong in a championship just to disappoint as soon as we get into the knockout stages. This year was to prove no different. An until now lackluster France sent Spain home with 3-1, coming from behind to break Spain's hopes in the last ten minutes. As toothless as France has looked in three championships in a row, including the first three games in this, I did not expect them to find the goal against Spain. That was wrong. France has now added to their iron defense with especially Viera finding lethal form up front.
Brazil sent home the last remaining African team, Ghana, by beating them 3-0 in a demonstration of effective counter-attacking. I heard a lot of mumbling from the pundits that Brazil wasn't as impressive as the legendary team should be. Frankly, I think a lot of them have inflated memories of all the artistic finesse Brazil displayed in championships past. Ghana had a lot of dazzle, good possession, an ineffective attack and a wide open "come in" sign in the defense. Didn't do them much good.
This requires an update of my predictions of the quarter-finals (hey, never give up):
- Germany will beat Argentina
- Italy will beat Ukraine
- England will beat Portugal
- Brazil will beat France
This will set up England to meet Brazil, and I hope beat them, and a European classic Germany vs Italy. Italy didn't impresss against Australia, and the Germans are fully a match for the Italians when it comes to championship experience and cynicism, but I'm not going to change my prediction for the final: England to beat Italy.
11:41:40 PM 
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A dream come true for talkshow hosts:
Rush Limbaugh was detained for about 3 1/2 hours at Palm Beach International Airport after authorities said they found a bottle of Viagra in his possession without a prescription.
The 55-year-old radio commentator's luggage was examined by U.S. Customs and Border Protection after his private plane landed at the airport around 2 p.m. from the Dominican Republic, said Paul Miller, spokesman for the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office.
Customs officials found in Limbaugh's luggage a prescription bottle labeled as Viagra, a prescription drug that treats erectile disfunction, Miller said.
"The problem was that on the bottle itself was not his name, but the name of two Florida doctors," Miller said.
This is just too funny.
4:20:06 PM
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Ward "little Eichmanns" Churchill to be fired:
The University of Colorado announced Monday that it will dismiss controversial professor Ward Churchill.
"Today, I issued to Professor Churchill a notice of intent to dismiss him from his faculty position at the University of Colorado Boulder," CU Interim Chancellor Phil DiStefano said Monday afternoon.
Churchill has 10 days to appeal, which entails making a request to have the university president or chancellor forward the recommendation to the faculty senate Committee on Privilege and Tenure. A special panel will then conduct hearings on the matter and make a recommendation to the president on whether grounds for dismissal are supported.
The statement that got him in trouble in the first place is protected speech. Ironically, calling attention to himself in that way exposed his scholarly fraud and general incompetence and dishonesty. Good luck to the CU administration; getting rid of a rotten professor with tenure is about as hard as eradicating malaria.
3:11:26 PM
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Today Ukraine upset my prediction by getting a victory against Switzerland in a penalty shootout. Well, I did say I was much in doubt, and that it would be a very even game... The Swiss went out without conceding a single goal in play. Surprisingly, they also set what must be something of a record by not scoring a single goal in a penalty shootout from three shots!
On the other hand, I was right that Italy would dispatch the brave Aussies, and I was also right that the Italians would win thanks to "cynical championship play." The penalty was not wrongly decided, I think, but Fabio Grosso obviously played for a penalty, and poor Lucas Neill fell for the trick. Australia can be proud of what the Socceroos have accomplished.
PS: Here is a good fan blog about the 2006 World Cup in Germany, with some great and funny pictures you'd normally not see in the respectable sports pages. Be warned that not everything is safe for work. Yeah, there be babes. Just browse down...
3:56:44 AM
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President George Bush and Vice President Cheney have come out hard against the decision of the New York Times and other press outlets to publicise details of a secret (not anymore) programme to track financial transactions to find terrorist suspects. Cheney said:
"The New York Times has now twice — two separate occasions — disclosed programs; both times they had been asked not to publish those stories by senior administration officials," Cheney said. "They went ahead anyway. The leaks to The New York Times and the publishing of those leaks is very damaging."
Unsurprisingly, the NYT defends the decision to publish these details by referring to press freedom and freedom of speech.
Bill Keller, executive editor of the Times, defended the decision to publish the story. He said the Times had spent weeks discussing with the administration whether to publish the report.
"Most Americans seem to support extraordinary measures in defense against this extraordinary threat, but some officials who have been involved in these programs have spoken to the Times about their discomfort over the legality of the government's actions and over the adequacy of oversight," Keller said in a note on the paper's Web site Sunday.
"We believe The Times and others in the press have served the public interest by accurately reporting on these programs so that the public can have an informed view of them," Keller wrote.
You can read Keller's full defense here. A roundup of harsh rebuttals are linked from Instapundit.
Obviously, nobody believes that in a democracy, the government should be able to preemptively censor any story, maybe one that would be emberrassing to the government and even disclose abuses of power. The argument from the NYT's Bill Keller is essentially that they should be allowed to publish anything, because the public should be given information to judge these matters for themselves. This defense, in matters of national secutity, is quite disingenious, since it is often paramount to keep information out of the hands of the enemy, and for practical purposes this means the vast majority of the population must be kept ignorant about it, too.
Let's say, in World War II, a newspaper learned that the allies had broken the German "Enigma" code, or the Japanese "Magic" code, which provided information whose value can hardly be overstated. Could we even imagine that a newspaper would publish this information on its front page, which would surely alert the enemy and ensure these sources were cut off? Or what if a clever newspaperman discovered, before the fact, when and where Operation Overlord would take place, and published it and alerted the Germans ahead of D-Day? The consequences would be disastrous. I think anyone agrees that the "public has a right to know" argument would not fly, and that the editor who published this information, along with whoever leaked it, would be guilty of treason.
The argument for disclosing secret information in the current war on terror really relies on the press not considering this a legitimate or real war, and takes it upon themselves to actively sabotage the war effort. Partisan political interests and the desire to break a big story no doubt played a part in the decision made by these press organisations.
Unless the United States hereafter is to fight every war while its secrets are constantly leaked to the enemy by a press eager to undermine it, some serious legal action will have to follow against the newspapers and the trusted persons who illegally leaked the information.
The terrorists who get away because these programmes were compromised may well blow up people in your neighbourhood tomorrow.
3:38:06 AM
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© Copyright 2006 Jan Haugland.
Last update: 01.07.2006; 12:23:58.
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