A bombshell like this is hard to overstate, provided it’s legit. James Cameron, of Titanic fame (and quite possibly titanic fame), claims to have found the tomb of Jesus Christ and the BBC will air a documentary about this discovery.

At the center of the mystery are 10 bone boxes, or ossuaries, taken from a crypt that was unearthed in the Talpiyot neighborhood of Jerusalem in 1980. Largely ignored for 16 years as they languished in an Israeli Antiquities Authority (IAA) storeroom, the objects sparked wider interest when a couple of scholarly articles brought attention to the inscriptions on six of the 10 limestone boxes. In addition to “Jesus son of Joseph,” there were two Marys, a Matthew (a possible relative of Jesus’s mother), a Yose (the name by which Jesus’s brother Joseph goes in the Gospel of Mark), and “Judah son of Jesus.”

So why didn’t those names set off an immediate alarm? The answer, quite simply, is that to the Israeli archaeologists scrambling to salvage antiquities during a Jerusalem construction boom, the names were anything but unusual. Amos Kloner, author of one of the first articles about the tomb, has pointed out that the name Jesus was found 71 times on objects from the some 900 burial caves unearthed in the same general area. And there was even one other instance of “Jesus son of Joseph.” Kloner and other archaeologists have also noted that the crypt in question bore signs of belonging to a comfortable Jerusalem middle-class family—something Jesus’s humble Nazarene family definitely was not.

Obviously this is going to cause many a ripple amongst both the Christian and non communities. Allow me to thus weigh in.

One of the most bizarre contradictions I see in those of faith is their on-and-off acceptance of scientific discoveries. If a report comes out that a bunch of archaeologists found Noah’s Ark or that they found the likely area where Moses parted the Red Sea, that’s held up as evidence that their faith is right. If scientists say that the Shroud of Turin was impossible to create by any feasible means, then that means it’s obviously holy.

But when science definitively does prove (or may prove) something that doesn’t mesh well with what theists believe, then suddenly science is inadequate and otherwise cannot be used as evidence of anything. When a study showed there was no link between prayer and recovery in the hospital, it was shrugged off. Now you find many again throwing up their hands and saying it means nothing if this is found because, hey, there were lots of Jesuses (Jesi?).

Of course, that kind of evidence only bolsters the claim that the “real” Jesus was not any kind of Messiah, but was just a man. A good man with good teachings, but a man nonetheless. The question becomes, if a tomb was found with the inscription “Jesus Christ” but was devoid of a body, would the faithful take that as proof that he was real and he ascended?

The arguement has already been leveled that of course this proves nothing, Jesus didn’t literally ascend as in his body floated up. I think that’s a dubious claim to make, as it was written that “while [Jesus] blessed them, parted from them, and carried up into heaven.” (Lk 24:51) To suggest that this means he suddenly died and his body laid there while everyone understood his spirit went up requires a bit of a symbolic interpretation, which throws everything into question.

But now we’re getting into hairy territory. My point is just this: if this discovery wasn’t antithetical to the Christian understanding of Jesus’s life, would they be so apt to throw it away? For the record, I don’t believe this is legit either, it’s a little too convenient that it houses everyone of consequence in the same area, I just find the general Christian argument that I’m seeing to be… strange.

This may be the dumbest thing I’ve ever read. McCain showed up on Letterman recently, not to announce that he’s running, but rather to announce that he’ll be announcing that he’s running. How that doesn’t count as announcing that he’s running, I don’t know.

The Arizona Republican, surprising few Americans, made the announcement during an interview on CBS’s “Late Show with David Letterman,” which was taped for broadcast late on Wednesday.

“I am announcing that I will be a candidate for President of the United States,” McCain told Letterman.

McCain said he would make a formal announcement in April.

If that doesn’t make sense to you, you’re in good company. Or at least company with me. You’d think that getting on television and publicly saying you’ll run counts as an official announcement, but apparently not. My head hurts.

Boy this certainly isn’t discouraging. Proving our efficacy in the War on Terror, hot on the heels of the suicide bombing that may or may not have been intended to kill our veep, comes Brian Ross with an update on Osama bin Laden.

The newly appointed Director of National Intelligence Jack McConnell made the assertion about bin Laden and his No. 2 man, Ayman al Zawahri, in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Referring to Pakistan’s rugged tribal area, McConnell said “to the best of our knowledge that the senior leadership, No. 1 and No. 2, are there, and they are attempting to re-establish and rebuild and to establish training camps.”

That’s right, folks. Osama bin Laden is not neutralized, and he and his No. 2 are very possibly setting up shop in Pakistan. You may criticize Ross himself, but keep in mind that he broke the Foley scandal and a number of others, so I’d say he’s a reliable source.

Back in 2003, President Bush said he wasn’t thinking about bin Laden, didn’t know where he was and didn’t seem to care. When the first American, be it soldier or civilian, dies at the hands of the regrouped Al Qaeda, you can bet your ass that statement will become Bush’s downfall. At least if there’s any justice in this world.

Yep, the forums are back. You can check them out here, or using the link up top. I’m not having them as cleanly integrated as I used to, because that proved to be far too difficult.

I’ll see if I can keep them somewhat busy, but seeing as I’ve been dang busy myself lately, that might prove difficult. Still, I’ll do what I can to actually keep them moving this time around.

A close call to be sure. Though the death toll is hazy, the implications of an attempted attack on our vice president by a suicide bomber are hard to miss.

A purported Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousef Ahmadi, said Cheney was the target of the attack.

“We knew that Dick Cheney would be staying inside the base,” Ahmadi told The Associated Press by telephone. “The attacker was trying to reach Cheney.”

Yep, not only was Cheney the apparent target, but he was the apparent target by the Taliban.

Now, I’m sure there are going to be the squawkboxes saying “I’ll bet you liberals wish he WAS killed!” Hate to disappoint you, but that’s not at all the case here. Rather, this infuriates me because it tells me that the threat of terrorism is not even close to being eradicated in the very place we were supposed to have an easy handle on.

One of the unsaid presumptions about the Iraq invasion was that we could handle it because Afghanistan was such a cakewalk. We’d blow through there, sure the Taliban and Al Qaeda aren’t destroyed but they’re neutralized at least, and then march into Baghdad.

The extra peculiar thought is that if Cheney HAD been injured (or worse, killed) in such a blast, it would be taken as an indication not that the first leg of the “war on terror” had failed, but rather a reinforcement that it was necessary. This is the bizarre paradox of the WoT. In a normal war, finding that a lot of your enemies aren’t dead and that their leaders are still alive and capable of leading means you screwed up. Here, more terrorists is proof we need to expand the war.

Later in Kabul, Cheney and Karzai met privately for an hour and spoke about the “problems coming from Pakistan,” said an Afghan government official, a reference to cross-border infiltration by militants who launch attacks in Afghanistan.

“We understand now that the U.S. government realizes that in order to stop terrorism in Afghanistan and to stop terrorist attacks in Afghanistan, there must be a clear fight against terrorism in Pakistan,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

Eeeeeexactly.

Arrrgh. This is exactly the path of destruction that I was worried the new majority Democrats might take. The Iraq Debate is raging along, and the Democrats are split on what to do about it, which is making me rub my temples in frustration.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Monday he wanted to delay votes on a measure that would repeal the 2002 war authorization and narrow the mission in Iraq.

…

“Iraq is going to be there - it’s just a question of when we get back to it,” Reid said, predicting it would be “days, not weeks” before the Senate returned to the issue. The war reauthorization legislation also appears to lack the 60 votes it would need to pass the Senate.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., meanwhile, said she doesn’t support tying war funding to strict training and readiness targets for U.S. troops.

Pelosi said she supports holding the administration to training and readiness targets, but added: “I don’t see them as conditions to our funding. Let me be very clear: Congress will fund our troops.”

Okay, let’s remind ourselves of one thing: Congress controls funding. That’s really it. They control the wallet, as the old saying goes. Pelosi wants to hold the administration to targets… how? What in the hell is going to hold them to those targets? That’s why the non-binding resolution is drawing so much scorn from people, it doesn’t actually DO anything, it just shakes a finger. Like a parent who yells at her child for over-eating, as she puts another slice of cake on his plate.

“I do not believe that someone is unpatriotic if they don’t agree with my point of view. On the other hand, I think it’s important for people to understand the consequences of not giving our troops the resources necessary to do the job,” Bush said.

This is, once again, what passes for “bipartisanship” in Bush’s mind. He doesn’t mind if you disagree, he just minds if you act on your disagreement. You can dissent all you want, just continue to pump the money into his failed project and do nothing to stop him. That’s the patriotic way.

If the Democrats don’t find their balls again, or at least realize why they got elected in the first damn place, they can kiss their majority and hopes for a presidential candidate goodbye come 2008.

Well this certainly isn’t worrisome. Now I understand that it’s good to have plans on the backburner and all, but a specific plan to target sites in Iran for bombing, well, that doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence in me, call me crazy.

The panel initially focused on destroying Iran’s nuclear facilities and on regime change but has more recently been directed to identify targets in Iran that may be involved in supplying or aiding militants in Iraq, according to an Air Force adviser and a Pentagon consultant, who were not identified.

Honestly, though, this seems fairly reasonable.

Despite the Bush administration’s insistence it has no plans to go to war with Iran, a Pentagon panel has been created to plan a bombing attack that could be implemented within 24 hours of getting the go-ahead from President George W. Bush…

That? Not so much. I think the fact that Bush was outside playing while the grown-ups were testing government capabilities in time of emergency is proof enough that we don’t want any kind of major decisions placed in his hands. This bit also bothered me.

The article, citing unnamed current and former U.S. officials, also said the Bush administration received intelligence from Israel that Iran had developed an intercontinental missile capable of delivering several small warheads that could reach Europe. It added the validity of that intelligence was still being debated.

Nothing against ol’ Israel, but one has to wonder how honestly they would report such things on the Iranian front. It’s undeniable that they, given Iran’s connections to groups like Hezbollah and Hamas, are not big fans of their radical Islamic neighboars. With that in mind, a claim of Iran’s missile capabilities has a ring of “no, seriously, they’re doing it, go bomb ‘em! C’mon!” to it.

Now, a story about the White House simulating a bomb attack in order to test government efficiency is nothing but a good thing. However, I must admit I’m a little disappointed with a few of the minor details.

Stanzel said the drill revealed gaps where the government needs to work to improve its response, but also showed progress since Hurricane Katrina exposed federal inadequacies when it devastated the Gulf Coast in 2005. For instance, coordination with state and local authorities and the ability to get federal resources in place quickly — key missteps after Katrina — appeared much better now, Stanzel said.

President Bush went on a bike ride not far from the White House Saturday morning, and did not take part in the test.

Okay, think about that one for a few second. There’s a massive simulation to gauge our government’s response time and efficacy in case of a national emergency, and out president is out riding his bike. why do I have a feeling a phone conversation occurred that went like this:

“President’s office.”

“Put me on the line with George, we’re about to start the simulation.”

“Oh I’m sorry, the president is out riding his bike.”

“…ooookay.”

It’s like watching a movie where somehow the president’s 10 year old son got put in charge for the day. Meetings get delayed because he won’t go in unless he gets some pizza, an important attack simulation goes on while he’s playing outside.

Our president, George “Sat in the classroom while the towers burned and played guitar in San Francisco while New Orleans drowned” Bush, was not involved in this simulation. Apparently they decided he wasn’t needed for this particular operation.

This isn’t that surprising but it’s still very disappointing. A recent survey popped up asking American citizens how many US soldiers had died in Iraq and how many Iraqi citizens had died. Unsurprisingly, they were close on the former, way off on the latter.

The number of Iraqis killed, however, is much harder to pin down, and that uncertainty is perhaps reflected in Americans’ tendency to lowball the Iraqi death toll by tens of thousands.

Iraqi civilian deaths are estimated at more than 54,000 and could be much higher; some unofficial estimates range into the hundreds of thousands. The U.N. Assistance Mission for Iraq reports more than 34,000 deaths in 2006 alone.

Among those polled for the AP survey, however, the median estimate of Iraqi deaths was 9,890. The median is the point at which half the estimates were higher and half lower.

Wow. That’s QUITE wrong. Now, keep in mind that there are tolls pegging the number significantly north of 100,000 and that an estimate of how many people had died in general above the normal rate since the 2003 invasion was more than half a million. Half of the American people don’t even think up in five digits.

I can’t help but wonder what would happen if these results were mapped along with where they get their news. I haven’t listened to right wing squawk radio in a while, but I never saw any reports on death tolls there. Take a chunk of the population who never hears numbers, but constantly hears how well things are going and it’s understandable that they’d guess so low.

I’m also curious what the lowest 25% of the guesses were. I have this sneaking suspicion that some people were guessing some incredibly low numbers.

Another update from the actual front of the War on Terror. We established a while ago that both the Taliban and Al Qaeda haven’t exactly been dismantled, now we’ve got a video where they take claim for an attack on a US base in Afghanistan.

Al Qaeda posted a 56-second video Friday of rockets being fired at what it claimed was a U.S. military base in Afghanistan.

The tape appeared to be the latest in a series of videos that the terror network has released to convey that its insurgents are faring well in the Afghan war.

The base was not visible in the video, which showed several rockets being launched from a forested hillside in the Balwara area of Afghanistan in November, according to a subtitle.

Now, obviously, the complete lack of proof in this video doesn’t lead one to believe they were firing at an actual military base, but the fact that they have ARMS is enough. They have rockets that fire and can fire them at things. Just because they haven’t quite yet targeted a military base doesn’t mean they can’t or won’t.

Iraq attacks no one and has no weapons, we go after them. Iran attacks no one and supposedly is trying to get weapons, we’re mounting an offense. Al Qaeda kills 3,000 citizens in a horrific attack, and we briefly poke around in their country just long enough to justify getting over into Iraq. Now that they’ve rebuilt… nothing.