Nothing is more difficult than competing with a myth.

— Françoise Giroud

... for more than 6 hours today, and you have about 30 minutes more to register an LGF account.

Before taking this momentous step, please read all the rules and commit them to memory, don’t register with a proxy, don’t register with a throwaway email address, don’t register more than one account, don’t be a jerk, do play nice, and everything will be groovy.

UPDATE at 11/25/08 6:28:36 pm:

Now closed, with 94 hatchlings.

Should there be a conservative bloggers’ conference like the dreaded Yearly Kos?

This is an interesting clip from Reuters on Obama’s latest promises to fix the economy (but it’s also being posted to test some new LGF Blog video management tools).

Reuters Video

Vision without action is a daydream; action without vision is a nightmare.

— Japanese Proverb

The UN’s blind watchdog Mohamed ElBaradei is pushing hard to continue helping the Syrians build a nuclear reactor, despite new evidence that they were conducting a clandestine nuclear project. ElBaradei says that just like individuals, countries should be considered innocent until proven guilty: ‘Don’t prejudge Syrian nuclear program.’

“There are claims against Iraq, which proved to be bonkers, but only after a terrible war,” ElBaradei said after the US and its allies questioned Syria’s right to his agency’s help in planning a power-producing atomic reactor.

“There is one thing called investigation, another called clear-cut proof of innocence or guilt ... and all of you, even if you are not lawyers, know that people and countries are innocent until proven guilty,” he said. ...

Syria denies hiding nuclear activities. But the report strengthened both concerns that it might have something to conceal and arguments from the US and its allies that Damascus should not be offered agency help in planning its civilian reactor. Beyond helping the Syrians develop expertise, the $350,000 aid project would send the wrong signal about a country under investigation by the IAEA, critics like the Americans argued.

In Washington, US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said it was “totally inappropriate, we believe, given the fact that Syria is under investigation by the IAEA for building a nuclear reactor outside the bounds of its international legal commitments.” ...

But ElBaradei disagreed, saying there was no legal basis to cancel or postpone the program.

Commenting on ElBaradei’s scrappy stance, a senior diplomat with good connections to IAEA staff said the agency chief personally sent text messages to key aides telling them to stand tough on the Syria issue. He demanded anonymity because his information was privileged.

The Investigative Project has details on the strategy adjustments that allowed prosecutors to get convictions in the Hamas funding trial of the Holy Land Foundation Islamic charity: HLF Officials Convicted on All Counts.

Prosecutors made a series of significant adjustments, from dropping 29 counts each against defendants Mufid Abdulqader and Abdelrahman Odeh, to adding new witnesses who could put the charity support in context. In addition, jurors in this trial saw three exhibits Israeli military officials seized from the Palestinian Authority which showed the PA also considered HLF to be a Hamas financer and that an HLF-supported charity committee was controlled by Hamas.

The result was a much more streamlined case that followed a logical narrative, said Peter Margulies, a law professor at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island. Seeing the Palestinian Authority reach the same conclusion as the U.S. government had to have helped, he said.

In addition, prosecutors provided summary exhibits that served as “a road map” to the case and had to help jurors deliberate, Margulies said. “The jury was able to look at the evidence and get past the perceived biases of any of the witnesses and see the evidence as a whole.”

That evidence made clear that the defendants knew where the money raised in the U.S. was going despite legal prohibitions against support for Hamas.

The verdict was hailed by M. Zuhdi Jasser, founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy. Prosecutors prevailed because they were able to “connect the ideology of political Islam and the overriding mission of Islamist organizations like the HLF to their desire to contribute to the efforts of terror groups, like Hamas,” he said. “When this connection is made we will see the return of a guilty verdict. In future [terrorism financing] cases DOJ will not only have to connect the financial dots but [will have] to demonstrate an overarching common Islamist mission.”