For months, John Kerry has been claiming his military records – all of them, not just the cherry-picked ones on his web site – had been made public. Then, last Thursday, in a vain effort to rebuff charges that George Bush has a higher IQ than he does, Kerry admitted to Tom Brokaw that his military records weren’t public after all.

Now, Captain Ed reports that this part of the interview has been quietly excised from the Dateline transcript. Right now the old version is still up, so in case one hand figures out what the other has been doing, here’s the semi-excised portion:

Brokaw: Someone has analyzed the President’s military aptitude tests and yours, and concluded that he has a higher IQ than you do.

Kerry: That’s great. More power. I don’t know how they’ve done it, because my record is not public. So I don’t know where you’re getting that from.

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If you support Prop 66 because you think it will release only minor, nonviolent offenders, do you know something all 58 D.A.s don’t know?

If you support Prop 66 because it will save taxpayers money, do you know something the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association doesn’t know?

UPDATE: Here’s a question for all readers, regardless of where you stand on Prop 66: has my constant harping on the issue had any impact on your views on the matter?

By now, I’ve pretty much beaten you to death with examples of extremely violent “nonviolent” third strikers who will soon be released if Proposition 66 passes. So far, I’ve profiled such sweethearts as Charles Rothenberg, Joseph Noble, Steven Mathews, Andrew Abernathy, and Kenneth Parnell. There are plenty more examples where they come from, but frankly, if those five aren’t enough to persuade you that Prop 66 is a bad idea, I doubt that a sixth profile (or a seventh, or an eighth, etc.) will. I am happy to say that they seem to have helped to persuade at least one prominent L.A. blogger to withdraw his support for the initiative, though it’s unclear how much credit I should get for that, having had ample assistance from a little help from my friend Patterico and the Wall Street Journal.

So at this point I’d like to switch gears, and focus on what Prop 66 would do to the definition of “serious” and violent.” Much is said about “making the punishment fit the crime,” so let’s consider a hypothetical scenario to see how good of a fit that would be:

Charles Criminal intentionally sets a fire in the Angeles National Forest, causing $10 million worth of property damage. After watching a few of the some trees to up in flames and yelling “burn, baby, burn,” he heads off to the bar, where he consumes 16 beers and four shots of Jaegermeister, which he then tops it off with a marijuana joint and some crack. After enjoying the joint and the crack, he realizes he had six more joints left over, so drives to a local school and sells these “happy cigarettes” to six 12-year old kids. He then gets back behind the wheel and tries to leave, but being drunk and stoned, loses control of the vehicle and plows into the kids he had just sold his marijuana to, killing four of the kids instantly. He then gets out of the car, turns to the two survivors, and warns them not to tell anyone what they saw, or he’ll kill them, too. He then asks each of them where he lives, and drives to each house with the intent to burglarize it. He tries to get into the first house, but fails, and flees after realizing that a resident is at home. He then arrives at the second house, which is unoccupied, breaks in, helps himself to the family’s valuables, and returns home.

Charles is caught by the authorities and convicted on all the above counts. Under both the existing law and Prop 66, how many “strikes” has he committed?

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