Captain's Quarters -

The Guardian (UK) reports that Jacques Chirac has made some progress in turning around what would have been a devastating loss in the upcoming plebescite to approve the new EU constitution. Polling now indicates that the French favor the constitution by a slim but unstable margin, with many who now support it saying they may change their minds:

Opinion polls out this weekend show for the first time that a majority of French people intend to vote in favour of the European draft constitution next month.

The two surveys, carried out for Le Monde and the Journal du Dimanche, found that 52 per cent supported the draft constitution and 48 per cent opposed it.

But a large proportion said they might still change their minds ahead of the 29 May referendum - 24 per cent in the Le Monde poll and 30 per cent in the other survey.

However, with French unemployment now over 10% and the government pressing for further labor reforms to bring France into a market-based economy, that lead looks short-lived. As the Guardian notes, today's May Day celebrations of labor will undoubtedly include protests over the loss of a holiday on May 16th, which precedes the referendum by less than a fortnight. Many French workers see the new constitution as a further threat to employment as industries will have an expanded ability to relocate to other European locales where the labor force doesn't expect 32-hour work weeks and the entire month of August as a holiday.

Even more interesting is the polling from the Netherlands, which the French see as a bellwether EU nation. The referendum for ratification takes place on June 1 for the Dutch, and so far the measure looks to be heading for a resounding defeat, with 58% voting no. That may let the French off the hook, as the constitution must have universal approval among all EU nations. If the French see a defeat upcoming in the Netherlands, they may decide that a yes vote carries little risk of immediate application, while maintaining French influence on EU politics. The Socialists are also using British opposition to the constitution as a reason to vote for approval, appealing to traditional Franco-British tensions.

In the end, I'd expect this to squeak by in Paris, but that hardly represents a resounding endorsement of Chirac's EU policy.

Jack Kelly of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette makes the argument that the GOP has lost political momentum through the lackadaisical effort of its legislative caucuses, especially in the Senate, since the elections last year. Kelly writes that a lack of effort and basic competence in the Republican leadership has allowed the Democrats to bounce back from their stunning defeats, assisted by an ever-willing Exempt Media:

Democrats may have been waxed at the polls last November, but they're running rings around Republicans in the public relations battles so far this year. Consider:

* Polls indicate a majority of Americans agree with President Bush that reform of Social Security is needed, and about half of Americans favor his plan to permit workers to divert a portion of their Social Security taxes into personal retirement accounts. But in the most recent poll (taken for CBS April 13-16), only 25 percent of respondents indicated they were "confident" Bush would make the right decisions about Social Security, while 70 percent were "uneasy."

* The president's nomination of Undersecretary of State John Bolton to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations is in trouble after waffling by GOP Sen. George Voinovich of Ohio forced postponement until May 12 of a vote in the Foreign Relations Committee. Nominees rarely gain strength while they twist in the wind.

* In a poll taken by Ayres-McHenry (a Republican firm) on April 4, 78 percent of respondents said senators have a constitutional duty to vote on judicial nominees. Yet in a recent poll taken for Senate Republicans, 51 percent of respondents opposed ending the Democratic filibuster that has been blocking votes on Bush's nominees for federal appeals courts.

Democrats benefit enormously from having most of the major media in the tank for them. Although media bias is more egregious than ever, it's not exactly a new phenomenon. You'd think Republicans would be prepared for it by now.

Plenty of blame exists for these developments, and Kelly spreads it around to everyone, including the White House, for not focusing on legislative business more effectively. He argues, I believe convincingly, that a tactical loss on one front was expected, but losing on all fronts shows a serious lack of competence in party leadership. Read all of his excellent column today, and consider just how much of the President's expressed priorities have even been addressed by this session of Congress yet. The only issues that have moved through the Senate, for instance, are one portion of tort reform, the bankruptcy reform act, and a highway bill still under debate. Nothing on the Patriot Act renewal, Social Security reform, or the judicial confirmations that the GOP advertised as its highest domestic priority. They haven't even gotten the additional funding passed yet for the war on terror.

Not exactly a track record of excellence as the fourth month of the session draws to a close...

The degradation of the United Nations continues apace under the moral authority of the Kofi Annan administration. The AP reports that UN peacekeepers sexually exploited Liberian women and children in the same pattern as they did in Congo and several of the other UN assignments:

UN peacekeepers sexually abused and exploited local women and girls in Liberia and more accusations are expected, a UN spokesman said Friday. ...

"The allegations range from the exchange of goods, money or services for sex to the sexual exploitation of minors. The peacekeeping department here in New York as well as the mission on the ground are taking appropriate follow-up action," he said.

A UN official speaking on condition of anonymity said the number of allegations could eventually total 20.

The head of the mission in Liberia, Jacques Paul Klein, is to step down when his contract expires at the end of the month, a UN spokesman announced Thursday. His deputy Abou Moussa will temporarily take over.

So what the UN proposes is to leave the man responsible for this behavior in charge for another month -- and then to promote his right-hand man "temporarily" in his place. Wow, that'll teach them to rape and pillage the locals! Small wonder almost every UN deployment has resulted in what the UN itself defines as war crimes.

How can anyone doubt that the UN needs diplomats who talk tough and demand action, rather than milquetoast ambassadors who concern themselves more with the proper arrangement of seating at dinners rather than reform? Efforts to block John Bolton's appointment to Turtle Bay amount to little more than an endorsement of the current UN regime and its track record of disgusting corruption and criminal lack of discipline. Anyone still laboring under the illusion that Annan should remain in his position should be ashamed of themselves.

As further evidence of the Left's efforts to chase the religious from all public debate, a conclave of secular humanists and Leftists have gathered in New York to strategize on the further marginalization of religious belief, issuing dire warnings of the impending secular Apocalypse by theistic Anti-Christs. The Washington Post reports that Democratic politicians, People for the American Way, and assorted anti-religious groups have assembled to hiss at pictures of Bill Frist, among other activities:

Secular humanists and leftist activists convened here over the weekend to strategize how to counter what they contend is a growing political threat from Christian conservatives.

Understanding and answering the "religious far right" that propelled President Bush's re-election is key to preventing a "theocracy" from governing the nation, speakers argued at a weekend conference.

"The religious right now has an unprecedented influence on American politics and policy," said Ralph White, co-founder of the Open Center, a New York City institution focused on holistic learning. "It is incumbent upon all of us to understand as precisely as possible its aims, methods, beliefs, theology and psychology."

The Open Center, founded 21 years ago, played host to the two-day conference at City College of New York called "Examining the Real Agenda of the Religious Far Right."

People for the American Way, a liberal advocacy group that opposes religion in the public square, co-sponsored the conference, which drew about 500 participants.

"This may be the darkest time in our history," said Bob Edgar, general secretary of the left-leaning National Council of Churches and former six-term Democratic congressman from Pennsylvania. "The religious right have been systematically working at this for 40 years. The question is, where is the religious left?"

PFAW has put itself in the center of the Democratic efforts to filibuster appellate nominees of George Bush over the past two years and more. It has raised funds for Democratic Senate candidates and staged protests all over the country. Now they openly endorse such hate-filled conferences such as this, where Bob Edgar talks about nominating a handful of people who believe in God to the appellate court as "the darkest time in our history" -- as opposed to slavery, Civil War, Jim Crow, the Great Depression, the Sedition Acts, Watergate, and so on. It's the Hysterics Conference, attempting to paint religious belief as the new witchcraft and church-going Americans as its new purveyors.

Edgar isn't the only one spouting deranged and hyperbolic rhetoric in New York, either:

The United States is "not yet a theocracy," Joan Bokaer, founder of TheocracyWatch.org, said Friday night, but she argued that "the United States is beginning to fit the model of a reconstructed America."

Tax cuts combined with increased funding for faith-based social programs and decreases in welfare spending, Ms. Bokaer said, were examples of "the theological right ... zealously setting up to establish their beliefs in all aspects of our society."

She compared the Federal Communications Commission's threatened crackdown on indecency on television with the Taliban, the repressive Islamic rulers of Afghanistan who harbored Osama bin Laden's terrorist network until toppled by a U.S.-led invasion.

"Indecency police are a major part of theocratic states," Ms. Bokaer said, flashing a picture of Islamic women covered head to foot under the title, "Taliban: Ministry for the Protection of Virtue and Prevention of Vice."

This rant relates to the enforcement of existing FCC regulations keeping indecent material off of public broadcast airwaves, regulations which are hardly new or an indication of any recent political shift. The commissioner most vocal about enforcing them, Michael Powell, was a Democratic nominee to his post. Congress supported increasing fines for such violations in a bipartisan vote. So who are the extremists here? If such regulation offends the majority of Americans, the laws can easily be amended or struck down by Congress.

The use of the Taliban imagery sets up just another hysterical strawman, arguing that Christianity as practiced in America -- or anywhere else, for that matter -- winds up as extreme as Islamofascism, and that the current administration somehow exists as a Trojan horse for such efforts. Not only is such a charge ludicrous, it's patently offensive, given the amount of effort expended and criticism received (from the same Leftists that make this comparison!) in Bush's efforts to liberate people from Islamofascist rule. Nowhere in the world can they point to a single Christian 'theocracy', not even the Vatican which may be the only government that actually qualifies as such, where such traditions exist.

This orgy of namecalling and paranoid conspiracies gets its impetus from such politicians as Howard Dean, Al Gore, and Ken Salazar, who have green-lighted a war on religion from the Left, especially during this debate over judicial filibusters. They have rationalized the unprecedented obstruction of qualified judicial nominees for their religious beliefs by creating out of whole cloth a threat to the Republic from Christianity, which managed to co-exist with democracy and promote it for over 200 years up to now.

They have created a modern-day voodoo called Dominionism and smeared all church-going people as covert members of its conspiracy. Supposedly, all Christians have worked for centuries to transform America into an Old Testmant-based theocracy with high priests instead of elected officials -- somehow forgetting that for Christians, the New Testament takes precedence over the Old. Otherwise, we'd live under the same precepts as Orthodox Jews, holding Saturday as the Sabbath, eschewing pork, and avoiding cheeseburgers.

The ignorant, bigoted, and the paranoid members of the Left, in this case, hold positions of power in the Democratic party. PFAW in particular has a central place in their electoral politics and strategies, especially when it comes to fighting judicial nominees. These people want to recreate Salem 1692, only they want to discredit faith in itself as a source of values. That's what the modern Democrat Party has decided to endorse in 2005.

When Edgar asks what happened to the religious Left, he misses the point. Religious liberals -- and there are many -- have finally awoken to the fact that the Democrats don't just oppose conservatives, they oppose faith and believers expressing their values in the public square. They want to impose a secular prerequisite on any political debate, where any argument that might come from faith-based values such as opposition to abortion have been predetermined to be invalid and therefore extremist. That cuts out not just conservatives, but a wide swath of the center-left as well from engaging in political debate.

These paranoid bigots have almost guaranteed the demise of the religious Left. The Democrats have made clear in their rhetoric that they hate faith, and they hate those who practice their faith.

BUMP: To top.

Michelle Malkin is rightly outraged over a leak that has exposed the names of American servicemen in Iraq involved in the Giuliana Sgrena incident, and much more. The PDF file has been published by the Italian media, and lists not just the names of the men cleared in the accidental death of Nicola Calipari, but also the following strategic information:

* An itemization of IEDs and VBIEDs deployment techniques which have been most effective,
* An analysis of the tactical strengths and weaknesses of specific checkpoints along "Route Irish",

* Combat readiness assesment of the units and soldiers involved,

* A detailed description of how the checkpoint is laid out,

* Exact grid locations of various assets.

* Details of how checkpoint searches are set up and executed

* Details of how checkpoints are expected to deal with approaching vehicles, including threat assesment methods.

* A statistical analysis of "normal" traffic approaching the checkpoint.

* It names the soldiers involved and details the specific actions taken by those soldiers. It names the soldier who killed Calipari.

In other words, its release likely will mean that Iraqi insurgents can now tailor their attacks to the American strategies for defense at our checkpoints, which will not only result in more Americans getting killed, but also more innocent people as a result of even further confusion as rules of engagement have to be changed. Idiots like Kevin Drum might find this a cause for celebration, but anyone with a brain should understand why this information was redacted in the first place -- and why it should have remained so.

UPDATE: Austin Bay has an excellent analysis of the document.

Earlier today, alert CQ readers noted an exchange on Fox News Sunday between Juan Williams and Bill Kristol on the nomination of Janice Rogers Brown. A complete transcript is not yet available, but this partial Google Video transcript will demonstrate the ludicrous lengths to which the Left will go towards smearing respected jurists with false charges in order to convince people that they are "extremists":

JW: The second point to be made here is, Bill, If they had a real debate about people like Priscilla Owen and Janice Rogers brown, the American people would say these folks are too extreme. Even republicans have said that in the case of Priscilla Owen and her rulings in Texas --

BK: Which Republican was that?

JW: In fact, a majority of --

BK: Wrong, wrong, dead wrong. His testimony, his recent testimony on the hill --

JW: He said he didn't mean what he written but he wrote that she was an activist judge which is exactly what Republicans are complaining about, that these judges have become activists legislating from the bench. If you listen to Janice Rogers attitude about people with disabilities, affirmative action, if you go on and on, she --

BK: That doesn't say anything about people with disabilities. When has she ever written about people with disabilities? She was reelected by the people of California with 75% of the vote. She's highly rated by the A.B.A. And people are saying --

JW: This is a debate that we should have.

BK: Absolutely. The republicans want to have it. They offered 100 hours of debate on the floor of the senate on each of these nominees If the democrats would guarantee an up-or-down vote. The republicans to want debate these nominees.

Got that? Not only is she a religious extremist who wants to deny minorities access of affirmative action, now she's hostile to people with disabilities. Can Juan Williams add any more Leftist bogeymen onto Brown? He certainly tried; according to one CQ reader, Williams conducted a mini-filibuster on Fox that left everyone else dumbfounded in the face of his hysteria about Brown.

The Left has no evidence of any extremism about Janice Rogers Brown or any of the other nominees. They talk in sound bites about extremism and "deeply held personal beliefs" and attempt to convince people that the nominees will attack minorities and the disabled -- but they have absolutely no evidence of any such hostility. When they get challenged for specifics, they simply make up stories designed to scare people. Meanwhile, judicial ethics demand that the nominees refrain from defending themselves.

If the Left wants to make an argument for their continued marginalization, then Juan Williams is their perfect spokesman.

For those who have noticed that the daily Day by Day cartoon has stopped displaying on the site, this hiatus is only temporary. I am rearranging some elements of the site in order to improve load times and add a new sponsorship slot. DBD will likely appear at the top of the left column later tonight. In the meantime, please be sure to visit Chris Muir's site to catch up to Damon, Jan, Sam, and Zed and their latest hilarious and timely commentary on current events.

After new polling emerged showing that Liberals have rebounded significantly from the initial Adscam revelations, a Tory MP from the Liberal stronghold of Ontario has announced his preference to delay new elections, throwing the upcoming no-confidence vote into doubt:

Cracks appeared yesterday in the Conservative Party's plan to topple the Liberal government at the earliest opportunity as several leading Tory parliamentarians insisted the decision isn't final and one central Ontario MP said a vote should be delayed.

"I've said for a while that I don't think we should be going to an election right now," said Larry Miller, the Tory MP for Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound, in a radio interview Saturday.

"Ultimately the choice will be out of our hands, but that's what the majority have said here and that's what I'll take back [to caucus]."

The interview, aired by CKNX-FM in Wingham, Ont., was immediately seized upon by the Liberals as fresh evidence that Tory Leader Stephen Harper is forcing an election that few Canadians want.

Party disunity is the last thing that Stephen Harper needs at this point. He needs to concentrate on the BQ MPs and the three independents for vote collecting, not the Conservatives who should stand ready to support his move against Paul Martin and the Liberals, especially after Martin's grubby NDP deal with Jack Layton last week to buy his support. Any such public wavering in his own party will make it almost impossible to gather the votes necessary to win new elections.

Miller's objections are short-sighted. First, Harper will likely only have one opportunity to table a no-confidence vote, thanks to the stripping of all but one Opposition Day from the Conservatives by the Liberals last month. The rest will disappear if Harper waits as Martin will likely prorogue Parliament before the other seven days appear on the Parliamentary calendar at the end of the session, putting off any action until fall at the earliest. Second, more revelations will come out about Adscam about Chuck Guité's involvement when Justice Gomery lifts the publication ban on his testimony, although that may happen late in an election campaign.

In a way, the publication ban assists the Liberals in putting these strains on the Tories. If the polls are to be believed -- and there may be some reason to think that they shouldn't -- it appears that like their American counterparts, Canadian voters have a short attention span. Their outraged over Jean Brault's testimony and the evidence corroborating it appears short-lived indeed. It's hard to imagine that a plurality of voters can still support a political party that deliberately constructed and implemented a money-laundering scheme that stuffed cash into the pockets of high-ranking political officials and defrauded the government of millions of dollars, but if so, it's because the steady stream of revelations have been interrupted by Gomery's blackout.

Miller spoke more supportively of Harper later in the day, but his initial hesitation may reflect the lack of true momentum that Harper needs to push Martin and the Liberals out of power in Ottawa. The Tories need to find that momentum again and get their message out to the Canadian voters, reminding them of the stakes involved in delay.

Italian investigators working with Americans on the shooting that left commando Nicola Calipari dead and Giuliana Sgrena wounded will present a rebuttal to the American report that they released yesterday without proper redaction, which the BBC reports will challenge American conclusions about the nature of the incident. The Italians plan on disputing earlier contentions that Italy kept Calipari's mission a secret and a key issue of the timing of the warnings:

Correspondents say the Italian report will reply point by point to the Pentagon inquiry, which recommended that no disciplinary action be taken against the soldiers involved in Calipari's death. ...

Italy says at least three troops opened fire on the car taking freed hostage Giuliana Sgrena to Baghdad airport with Calipari and a second Italian intelligent agent.

Italian newspapers say an Italian reconstruction of events show the US authorities were informed of the operation to release Sgrena several hours before the shooting, though the US denies that.

Reports say the experts who drafted the Italian report will also claim that a three-second warning given by the US troops was not enough time for the car to stop.

Readers who have followed this story closely will already see the holes developing in the Italian rebuttal, if the BBC report is accurate. First, the three-second warning does not reflect on American action nearly as much as it indicates the rate of speed that Calipari's car approached the checkpoint. By acknowledging the three-second time span, Italy admits that the car traveled at much faster speeds towards the checkpoint than Sgrena first claimed, making the reason for shooting the car plain. Second, it demonstrates that the Americans did try to warn the driver to slow down and did not simply open fire, either out of malice or incompetence.

As far as whether the Americans knew about Calipari's mission at all, Italian newspapers answered that question in March, when two of them reported that not only did Italian commander not tell the Americans about the hostage release, he may not have known about it himself. General Mario Marioli sent his report to Rome, where presumably investigators still have access to it. The reason for the secrecy emerged within days of Sgrena's release and subsequent wounding, when Italy's ransom payment to the terrorists became public knowledge. Under those circumstances, the notion that Americans had been informed of the progress of Sgrena and Calipari becomes very doubtful; Italian secrecy about the mission from its American partners becomes a likely explanation for the miscoordination.

The rebuttal will be out this morning, but it sounds like the same vacillating story we've heard from the Il Manifesto crowd all along.

Proving that not all hyperbolic idiots occupy the left side of the political spectrum, Pat Robertson returned political stupidity to a fair and balanced position by proclaiming American federal justices as a greater danger to the US than the murderous terrorists who killed over 3,000 people on 9/11:

"Over 100 years, I think the gradual erosion of the consensus that's held our country together is probably more serious than a few bearded terrorists who fly into buildings," Robertson said on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos." ...

Confronted by Stephanopoulos on his claims that an out-of-control liberal judiciary is the worst threat America has faced in 400 years - worse than Nazi Germany, Japan and the Civil War - Robertson didn't back down.

"Yes, I really believe that," he said. "I think they are destroying the fabric that holds our nation together."

I don't care what side Robertson supports -- describing federal justices as worse than Nazis amounts to the same kind of irresponsible rhetoric as proclaiming Christianity to be the darkest threat in this nation's history. Neither comments help resolve the debate, and neither can come close to rational thought.

Pat Robertson has long embarassed the Right, and this statement is yet another example of why many of us wish he'd shut up. For the delusional paranoids who gathered this weekend to obsess over an impending Christian theocracy, Robertson surely had to be Exhibit A for the conspiracy nuts.

Go away, little man.

UPDATE: Just to let the Exempt Media off the hook in this one instance, this does not appear to be a case of the NY Daily News twisting Robertson's words. While ABC wants to charge $20 for a transcript of the show -- uh, sure -- Google's new video transcript service shows quite clearly that the exchange took place just as the Daily News reported it:

GS: ... Democrats will appoint judges who don't share our values and the out-of-control Judiciary in "courting disaster" is the most serious threat America has faced In more than 400 years of history. More serious than Al qaeda and nazi Germany and Japan and more serious than the civil war?

PR: George, I really believe that. I [th]ink they are destroying the fabric that Holds our nation together. There is an assault on marriage. There's an assault on human sexuality. As judge Scalia said, they've taken sides in the culture war, and on top of that, If we have a democracy, the democratic processes should be that we can elect representatives who will share our point of view And vote those things into Law.

As I stated above, Robertson continues to prove that his primary accomplishment in opening his mouth is usually a change of feet.

Requests for delays on trials for Jean Brault and Chuck Guité may result in the lifting of the publication ban currently in place for Guité's testimony. Lawyers for the two key Adscam figures requested continuances until September to prepare their defenses, with Justice Gomery due to rule on releasing embargoed testimony tomorrow or Wednesday:

Lawyers for Jean Brault and Chuck Guité have requested that their clients' joint trial on fraud and conspiracy charges be delayed until September.

Jury selection is currently scheduled for June 6 but lawyers for the two men say the sponsorship inquiry will still be sitting at that time.

A judge will decide Wednesday whether to grant the request.

Just as before, the proximity of the criminal trial provided one of the key rationales for Gomery's publication ban. He based the blackout for Canadian citizens on the notion that with a trial so close to the inquiry hearings, the jury pool risked getting tainted by free reporting of what politicians and the media have already heard. With that proximity eliminated, Gomery has little excuse to keep the proceedings hidden from the Canadian citizenry.

In fact, Brault tried getting a postponement during his inquiry testimony to the fall, but only succeeded in pushing the trial back an extra few weeks instead. Perhaps with Guité also requesting an extension, the two may be more successful in opening the summer up for a potential election campaign. If Guité's testimony proves as explosive as that of Brault, it could touch off another wave of voter revulsion that might finally crumble the supports for Paul Martin and the long-time reign of the Liberal Party.

The Exempt Media has decided to take another whack at bloggers and the exercise of free speech, this time in the Washington Post. Brian Faler writes in tomorrow's edition about the upcoming Congressional action exempting bloggers from the FEC's upcoming Internet regulations, and his article heavily emphasizes the notion that bloggers can serve as Trojan horses for political campaigns:

The FEC requires candidates to disclose their expenditures, including any payments to bloggers, in periodic reports to the government. Some bloggers also disclose their financial relationships with candidates, but they are not obliged to reveal those payments, and the agency recently said it is not proposing requiring them to do so.

Some election law experts want the FEC to reverse that policy, saying it gives campaigns the opportunity to use ostensibly independent blogs as fronts to create the illusion of grass-roots support, mount attacks on their opponents and disseminate information to which candidates do not want their names attached.

"The concern is that somebody is blogging at the behest of a campaign and nobody knows it," said Richard L. Hasen, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles who maintains a blog on election law.

"If, for example, you are a U.S. Senate candidate and you have a blogger who you're paying to write good things about you and bad things about your opponent, it will eventually come out. But that may not come out until after the election," Hasen said.

"But even if it comes out, there's something to be said for having the information right there, so when you click on the Web site you see it says 'Authorized by Smith for Congress,' " he added. "Voters rely on those pieces of information as cues in terms of how much stock they should put in what someone is saying."

Of course, this is why I urge people to fight for complete and immediate disclosure of all contributions and disbursements as the only effective campaign-finance reform possible. If campaigns had to disclose that information as they went along -- on a weekly or even a monthly basis -- then we would know who got paid what money and for what reason almost immediately, not when it's too late to make judgments about it. It would put an end to the necessity of 527s and such silly distinctions between "hard" and "soft" money, and the cash would flow directly to the candidate, who would then have no choice but to take responsibility for how it was raised and spent. Instead, we have politicians like John McCain who pass legislation supposedly taking the money out of politics while having his campaign staff remain at his beck and call through their employment at Reform Institute, funded by left-wing groups and individuals such as George Soros.

Funny that Brian Faler doesn't write about that, or that Professor Hasen doesn't appear terribly concerned about it either. McCain and RI took in over $100,000 from George Soros in 2004, and like amounts from other leftists groups, while Thune paid a couple of bloggers a few thousand as consultants. Which of the two poses a greater danger of corruption to the political process? I suppose we should feel flattered that the Post considers blogging to have such an impact on politics that merely hiring a couple of local bloggers made the difference in the campaign -- even though they wrote the same type of posts before they were hired as afterwards.

This article wants to scare people, and Congress, into fighting the proposed exemption for bloggers by creating a strawman of rampant corruption in the blogosphere that doesn't exist. Even if campaigns decided to start "buying" bloggers, it would only reflect their ignorance of the marketplace. After all, why buy what one can get for free? Most of us write for our own purposes, not that of a candidate or party, and what revenue we need to justify our expense and time we generate through advertising. Buying a blogger might be more arguable for disclosure simply as a sign of cluelessness.

The so-called reformers reveal themselves again as more frightened of the power of free speech and the inability of former media elites toe control the information flow. They want to regulate us into silence and clear the field for the Exempt Media to once again tell people what to believe. Fortunately for the rest of us, those days have long since gone by.

Stephen Harper came out of a Conservative caucus meeting tonight vowing to table a no-confidence motion as soon as possible, adding that the Tory caucus had unanimously backed his strategy:

Conservative Leader Stephen Harper emerged from a caucus meeting late Monday night, saying his party cannot support the government and that a vote of confidence should take place as soon as possible.

Harper called the decision "unanimous," declaring that his party remains committed to defeating a Liberal government "mired" in corruption scandals.

"It is also apparent that the Liberal party does not today have the support of the majority of members of the House of Commons," he said. "It should face the House of Commons in a vote at the earliest possible opportunity."

Harper had a number of difficulties in getting to the point where a no-confidence vote could be introduced, and he's not there yet. Earlier, of course, the NDP aligned itself with Paul Martin in order to block Harper's momentum towards elections. Before that, the Liberals postponed all but one Opposition Day. Monday, Liberal MPs led by Tony Valeri apparently blocked an attempt for Harper to get one through to the floor, wanting to force Harper to use his only guaranteed Opposition Day to call the vote. That will create summer elections, which apparently all parties dislike and the electorate will likely resent, to the Tories' disadvantage.

Harper has few options. Waiting for Gomery to finish his report will mean almost a year between now and the next election, and his own hesitation will amount to a tacit endorsement of the notion that the Adscam corruption did not rise to a level requiring the removal of the government. With the Liberals pulling out all stops to keep a no-confidence vote from being tabled despite the inevitability of the effort, he needs to take advantage of the limited openings he will get. A midsummer election may be the price he has to pay. It appears that his caucus understands this as well.

The attempt to ensnare House Majority Whip Tom DeLay in ethics violations may be backfiring on House Democrats, whose own ethical closets have a skeleton or two making an appearance. Two Democratic Congressmen have accepted travel money from the same lobbyist that involved one of DeLay's aides, and now Democratic outrage has given way to a series of rationalizations:

At least two aides to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and two Democratic congressmen received travel expenses initially paid by lobbyist Jack Abramoff on his credit card or by his firm, internal records of the lobbying firm show.

Longtime House ethics rules that applied to the 1996 and 1997 trips to the Northern Mariana Islands have strictly prohibited lawmakers and their staffs from accepting any congressional trips from lobbyists or their firms.

DeLay's office and one of the lawmakers, Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., said they had no knowledge that Abramoff or his firm paid the expenses. The office of Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., did not return several calls seeking comment.

Abramoff, whose lobbying is under criminal investigation, pressed his clients, the Northern Marianas government, to reimburse him for the travel because of concerns the payments might draw scrutiny from the House committee that investigates lawmakers' conduct, the documents obtained by The Associated Press show.

While the Abramoff violations involve only two of DeLay's aides, they directly implicate Clyburn and Thompson, who accepted over five thousand dollars in travel expenses each for the trip. The delegation traveled to the Marianas with Abramoff eight years ago, and the lobbyist still has not been reimbursed for the money he laid out for airfare and hotel expenses. That makes everyone who accepted money guilty of ethics violations -- which, curiously enough, does not appear to include DeLay personally.

Now that Democrats have opened this Pandora's Box, they want to do their best to close it. Clyburn never heard of his benefactor, or so it seems:

The records state Preston Gates [Abramoff's lobbying firm] paid hotel and airfare for Thompson and Clyburn for travel to the island in January 1997. The two lawmakers filed reports to Congress saying a private, nonprofit group, not Abramoff's firm, paid the travel.

Clyburn said in an interview he had never heard of Abramoff at the time, and provided a copy of letter showing he was invited by the nonprofit foundation. "That's all I know about it," he said.

Ignorance of the law usually provides no defense, nor does ignorance of a violation -- except in Congress, where ignorance is not only accepted, but practically revered. The AP quotes a legal expert in Congressional ethics that advises readers that ethics regulations only apply to those members who actually display competence:

Jan Baran, a Washington lawyer who specializes in ethics rules and campaign finance, said lawmakers and their aides probably would avoid any findings of wrongdoing by demonstrating they had no knowledge of the lobbyist payments.

"If a member generally doesn't know what's going on, it's hard to see how the member would be held to violate ethics rules," he said.

Of course, that's the entire reason that DeLay finds himself in the middle of these allegations of unethical conduct. He has been a tremendously effective legislator and political infighter, and the Democrats want him sidelined. However, as DeLay himself warned, he has done nothing that Democrats haven't also done, and in this case, apparently a few things less than that. Democrats tried to nail him for hiring his family as staff when many of their own members do the same thing, and spend the same amount of money doing so. Now they attack the travel records of his aides and in doing so, nail two of their own Congressmen in the process.

No wonder DeLay wanted the ethics probe to continue. At this rate, he may well neutralize ten or twenty representatives on the other side of the aisle before anyone lays a glove on him.

The Washington Post publishes an odd obituary today on the suicide death of Edward von Kloberg III, a lobbyist who relished working for some of the twentieth century's worst leaders and most bloodthirsty tyrants. Kloberg jumped to his death two days ago in Rome, leaving behind a lengthy suicide note and apparently a town fascinated by his appalling line of work:

As part of Washington's image machinery for more than two decades, Edward von Kloberg III did his best to sanitize some of the late 20th century's most notorious dictators as they sought favors and approval from U.S. officials.

A legend of sorts in public relations circles, he counted as clients Saddam Hussein of Iraq; Samuel K. Doe of Liberia; Nicolae Ceausescu of Romania; the military regime in Burma; Guatemalan businessmen who supported the country's murderous, military-backed government; Mobutu Sese Seko of the former Zaire; and, in a figurative coup of his own, the man who overthrew Mobutu and renamed the country the Democratic Republic of the Congo. ...

Washington is a city of advocates and image enhancers, but only a few have staked their reputations as representatives of despots, dictators and human rights violators. For von Kloberg, the job was a social exercise as well as an all-consuming effort. As he wooed potential clients, he often highlighted his own bad press. There was a lot.

Epithets abounded. The authors of "Washington Babylon," a muckraking book about powerbrokers, wrote: "Even within the amoral world of Washington lobbying, [he] stands out for handling clients that no one else will touch." Washingtonian magazine once named him one of the city's top 50 "hired guns."

By far the most outrageous and lasting public impression of von Kloberg came from a notorious "sting" operation by Spy magazine. For a story the satirical journal titled "Washington's Most Shameless Lobbyist," a staff writer posed as a Nazi sympathizer whose causes included halting immigration to the "fatherland" and calling for the German annexation of Poland.

According to the magazine, von Kloberg expressed sympathy for the fake client -- and her $1 million offer. And then he was drubbed in print. Shortly afterward, he showed up at the opening of Spy's Washington office with a first-aid kit and sported a trench helmet, "so I can take the flak," he announced.

Friends of von Kloberg saw the article as a revolting caricature of a man whose grace and charm were displayed at intimate dinner parties he threw to unite disparate voices -- 3,500 dinners, each with 12 guests, he estimated.

Perhaps his friends have an appreciation for the morbid and the cynical that inspired Spy's criticism, but Von Kloberg's work should have inspired nothing but disgust. While lawyers must often defend people they know to be guilty of terrible crimes in order to ensure that the justice system works, nothing says lobbyists must represent all clients. It isn't as if Von Kloberg took on a couple of clients that later turned out to be embarassments. He went out of his way to represent mass murderers, brutal tyrants, and genocidal madmen. In fact, he delighted in it, if Adam Bernstein is to be believed.

Of course, those who collaborate with such monsters always have their rationalizations. Von Kloberg insisted that his work helped to spread democracy, although trying to take on a client that wanted to "annex Poland" to the Fatherland in the 1980s stretches that explanation far past the breaking point. Ceausescu allowed Bibles to be printed in Romania for the first time in decades after Von Kloberg got him a few trade concessions, but the dictator never modified his Stalinist mode of rule and wound up dying like Mussolini after his country overthrew his despotic government. Most egregiously, he publicly backed Saddam Hussein's gassing of Kurds as part of an effort to stem the spread of Arab fundamentalism, even though Kurds are not Arabs and the Iraqis are, even acknowledging himself the travesty of his work.

All that it takes to allow evil to flourish, a proverb teaches, is for good men to do nothing. However, before it reaches that stage, evil requires the efforts of little functionaries like Von Kloberg rationalizing and packaging evil as anything else but what it is, so that good men do not recognize it until it is too late. Adam Bernstein shouldn't be writing paeans to a man like Von Kloberg; the Post should be writing exposés to shame them back into the shadows, where they belong with the other roaches and rats.

I have received a number of e-mails questioning why I am not posting testimony that is subject to the publication ban. I have explained this in previous posts, but the number of these e-mailed queries appears to be increasing, which demonstrates pretty clearly that Canadians have reached a high level of frustration with Justice Gomery's blackouts.

I am not in Canada, and I am not attending the hearings. I do not have firsthand access to the testimony. I did have a source for that kind of access during the Jean Brault testimony, but that source has since stopped sending that material. I do not know whether he/she feels as though the Canadian government had tracked them down and need to be much more discreet, or whether they just don't have access to the testimony any more. I have yet to find another source -- but if I can find one who will provide me with reliable information, I will publish the information on this site.

Just to be clear, I have never been threatened or even approached by law enformencement agencies regarding this testimony, either Canadian or American. I apologize for the disappointment of my Canadian readers; I assure you that I am disappointed as well.

A Conservative MP with the memorable name Inky Mark claims that the new Liberal survival strategy will rely on buying Tory MPs in order to undermine Stephen Harper. Mark told the Canadian media in several interviews that the Grits attempted to induce him to switch parties in exchange for an appointment to the foreign service or to the Senate:

Conservative MP Inky Mark says the Liberal party is trying to woo him by offering him an ambassadorship or Senate position.

Mr. Mark said in several interviews Tuesday that he was approached by an unnamed cabinet minister who offered him a position in a phone call last Friday.

"The suggestion was that well, maybe, well, there must be something that I want, right?" Mr. Mark said in an interview with CBC Newsworld Tuesday in Ottawa.

"The minister said this?" the reporter asked him.

"The minister said that. Perhaps I would like to be an ambassador for Canada. I said, no, I travel enough. I don't think I want to do that," Mr. Mark answered. He did not disclose who it was.
He repeatedly declined the offer, saying he was not interested, he said.

Then the Liberals implied that a Senate position could come his way, Mr. Mark told CTV Newsnet.

The Liberals appear to have a habit of offering lifetime appointments in exchange for political favors, a manuever that may not be completely illegal but certainly has ethical shortcomings. The approach reminds one of Benoit Corbeil's allegations almost two weeks ago, when he told CBC that federal judgeships were used to reward Liberal Party activists for their work. Now faced with the collapse of their government, the Liberals have fallen back to the same cronyism, but this time with Tories as the beneficiaries.

It doesn't take a mathematician to realize that removing no more than two or three Tory MPs from Parliament would make it almost impossible for Harper to carry a no-confidence vote. In this case, Mark would not have even needed to switch parties; accepting the new position -- especially the Senate appointment -- would have made him ineligible to vote on the no-confidence motion. Paul Martin's shabby deal with Jack Layton created the almost-even split of seats which makes this kind of bribe worthwhile to the Grits, and apparently having made that arrangement, selling off ambassadorships and Senate appointments follows rather easily.

Inky Mark went public with his bribe offers. In doing so, he may have spooked any other Tory MP that might have been tempted to accept such an offer from Martin's Monty-Hall administration. We may not know that for sure until a head count can be done when the no-confidence motion gets tabled. Don't be too surprised to see a couple less Tory MPs than expected when Harper finally gets his opportunity.

UPDATE: Corrected Benoit Corbeil's information to reflect it came from an interview, not sworn testimony. (h/t: Wedgie)

The American military has seized a letter intended for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi which chastises the terrorist leader of the Iraqi "insurgency" for huge failures and plummeting morale of the jihadis. The letter, written by another al-Qaeda figure, starts by greeting Zarqawi respectfully but quickly dresses him down for poor performance:

The letter -- which never refers to al-Zarqawi by name -- is written to Sheik Abu Ahmad, a name not known to be used by the militant leader or his followers. But supporters often call al-Zarqawi the Sheik or Sheik Abu Musab in letters and on Web sites.

"What has happened to myself and my brothers is an unforgivable crime, but God will punish the oppressor," the letter reads. "I swear by God that you will be asked about what happened to us because you have not asked about the situation of the migrants. Morale is down and there is fatigue among mujahedeen ranks.

"There is discrimination by some of the brethren emirs. God would not accept such actions, and a simple mistake delays victory, so what about big mistakes and gross guilts? Many underestimate them and are lenient toward them."

The letter is dated April 27, the military said.

The author of the letter also "admonishes 'the Sheik' for abandoning his followers" after last year's U.S. siege on Falluja, west of Baghdad.

It appears that all is not well among the fanatics, who have the same issues of esprit de corps that any other unit has. The fact that such criticism exists within a notoriously top-down organization speaks volumes about the effectiveness of the counterinsurgency in Iraq. The brazenness of correcting Zarqawi by letter shows that his credibility among the lunatics of AQ may already be seriously damaged.

Zarqawi's retreat from Fallujah represented a major defeat for the insurgency, even if Western news agencies were slow to recognize it. The terrorists had staked their reputation on defending what they called the City of Mosques, practically daring the Americans to drive them off. Their prestige soared when the Americans backed off an offensive last spring designed to free the city, instead agreeing to allow Fallujah to operate autonomously with a militia ostensibly loyal to the interim Iraqi government. It quickly became apparent that the city remained in control of Zarqawi's lieutenants and became a base of operation for terrorist missions throughout Iraq.

In November, a joint Iraqi-American task force made mince meat of the terrorist bands controlling Fallujah in a few days. Instead of holding out to the last man as promised, Zarqawi fled the City of Mosques and saved his own hide while hundreds, if not thousands, of his followers wound up dead or captured. That humiliation presaged the decline of the overall insurgency, which led to the need to scold Zarqawi for his poor performance as an AQ mastermind.

Under the circumstances, it's easy to see why military sources have become more confident that they will capture or kill Zarqawi soon. Arabs understand and respect power, but they won't abide a coward or incompetent, and so far it looks like Zarqawi qualifies as both. He's killing Iraqis and Arabs instead of so-called infidels, and even the terrorists know that will spell certain doom for their efforts and themselves, and sooner rather than later. It won't be long before someone tips the Iraqis off to where he can be captured, or before someone simply puts a bullet into the back of his head to end the misery immediately.

Twenty-five years ago this week, Saddam Hussein first tested the mettle and will of the West by covertly launching a terrorist attack against an Iranian embassy in London, ostensibly by Iranian rebels against the Ayatollah Khomeini. Six terrorists took over the embassy at Princes Gate on April 30, 1980, touching off a six-day standoff that ended after the crack British commando squad SAS saved all but two of the hostages and killed all but one of the terrorists.

The Scotsman publishes a retrospective today of Operation Nimrod, the rescue plan which the SAS implemented almost flawlessly and which still remains one of the most successful counterterrorist operations ever. Michael Howie spoke with operation designed Clive Fairweather to review the politics involved, both before and after, and the effect that Saddam's attack and the SAS response had on global politics.

A number of aspects of the Princes Gate attack continue to shape events to this day. For one thing, Princes Gate tested the will of Margaret Thatcher, up to that time a somewhat unknown quantity as a world leader. Her predecessor, Edward Heath, had caved in to terrorist demands earlier and had paid a huge political price for doing so. No one expected Thatcher to allow the terrorists to leave the country, but in the aftermath of Nimrod, a legend developed that Thatcher ordered the deliberate killing of the terrorists to send a message to others so inclined:

According to one SAS assault soldier shortly afterwards, a highly sensitive message was passed on from Thatcher just before the attack began. It was relayed, verbally, to the assault team.

The soldier claimed: "The message was that we had to resolve the situation and there was to be no chance of failure, and that the hostages absolutely had to be protected. The Prime Minister did not want an ongoing problem beyond the embassy - which we took to mean that they didn’t want anybody coming out alive. No surviving terrorists."

While this caused a sensation in Europe, transforming Thatcher's image into a bloodthirsty vigilante, the result was that foreign terrorists steered clear of the Iron Lady (alhough the IRA had no such hesitation). Both Iran and Iraq interpreted Operation Nimrod as an indication that Britain would tolerate no Jimmy Carter-style dithering, as was happening with the American embassy hostages in Teheran. Neither would challenge Thatcher directly again, and when America elected Thatcher-like Ronald Reagan to replace the hapless Carter, both would rely on only the most indirect of efforts against American interests.

However, as it turns out, the vigilante image resulted from a fundamental misunderstanding of Thatcher's orders, as Fairweather recalls for the first time since Nimrod:

"The Home Secretary, Willie Whitelaw, issued everyone with a clear set of orders," he says. "They were that we had to play it long, that the rule of law must prevail throughout, that the police must be in charge and that only minimum force could be used with the aim of rescuing all the hostages. His last instruction to us was that no terrorists were to leave the country. A lot of people, with a wink and with eyebrows raised, thought that last one meant ‘kill them’.

"Not so. That simply meant we could have taken them out of the embassy and taken them to Heathrow but that no-one was leaving the country’s airspace.

"People thought the message from Thatcher was ‘waste them’, but that wasn’t the case. The message was to rescue the hostages, not kill terrorists."

From the very start, Fairweather insists, the plan was to avoid bloodshed. "The police, who had controlled the operation throughout the six days superbly well, always wanted it to end peacefully.

"The terrorists wanted publicity for their cause, which they got. But they literally lost the plot when they started trying to get other Arab countries involved in the negotiations. They must have been exhausted.

"They would probably still be alive today had they not opened fire on one of the hostages. At the end of the day, police had no option but to commit the SAS to the assault. It should be said that the SAS played a very small part in the operation compared to the police."

That hasn't stopped people on the Left from smearing Thatcher and the SAS as thugs who deliberately busted into the embassy to murder the terrorists. One such person is Chris Cramer, who started off on April 30th as a hostage but faked a heart attack to convince the terrorists to let him go. Cramer, at the time a BBC employee, spoke years later (2002) about his experience at Princes Gate (emphases mine):

I won't roll out the victim syndrome for you at all -- well, maybe I will for two or three minutes. My own humbling experience was 20 years ago last week. Not, of course, as I remember it. It was actually last Wednesday at about 4 o'clock in the afternoon. Not, of course, that I remember it because it has no affect on me. Tomorrow I fly to London for a reunion, the first in 20 years. And I'll come back to you and let you know how that feels next year, if you like.

My experience was very brief. I was stupid enough to apply for a visa inside the Iranian Embassy in London in April 1980. I was stupid enough to be there when Iraqi terrorists stormed it. I was there for a very, very short time. I was there for precisely 28 hours. Not that I remember it, because I'm a member of your profession. We don't do PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder].

I was fortunate enough to have a slightly troubling stomach condition, having been in Zimbabwe, which manifested itself in a very short space of time. It's a most incredible heart attack. And I do fantastic heart attacks. I do great heart attacks. So convincing with my heart attack that the people there were embarrassed and threw me out.

And I was released after 27 hours into the hands of the Metropolitan Police in London and two days later into a dreadful bunch of terrorists called the SAS, who were probably worse than the terrorists inside the Iranian embassy.

And four and a half days later, Maggie Thatcher, in one of her rare moments of triumph, deployed the SAS in broad daylight to storm the embassy and they rescued all but maybe one or two of the hostages. Two were murdered. The SAS conveniently took out five members of the terrorist group and forgot to take out the sixth. So that was my brief, humbling experience.

Despite the successful rescue of his soundman, Sim Harris, Cramer has repeatedly told people that the real terrorists that day were the SAS instead of Saddam's henchmen, which certainly set the stage for the next twenty-five years of news coverage by Western media of Saddam Hussein and his genocidal rule. Without bothering to learn the facts, the media assumed that Thatcher had ordered the SAS to kill everyone in the embassy, when in fact she intended only to ensure that the terrorists not be allowed to leave the country. And despite the years since Princes Gate, not much has ever been reported about Saddam Hussein's involvement in staging the attack, nor have the media ever covered the Iraqi dictator without playing a similar moral equivalency card or deliberately averting their eyes from his crimes. Eason Jordan famously admitted on the cusp of Iraq's liberation that he deliberately withheld reports of Saddam's crimes from his CNN audiences in order to gain access to Baghdad -- even on at least one occasion forcing his reporters to use regime-provided copy as CNN's supposedly independent report about Iraqi activity.

And where is Chris Cramer these days? He now heads CNN International.

It appears that Western conservatives learned the correct lessons from Nimrod and Princes Gate. The Exempt Media and the Left remain as clueless as ever.

Be sure to read the entire Scotsman piece on Nimrod.

Hugh Hewitt noted the case of Amanda Twellman-Dieppa, a young woman facing a terminal cancer diagnosis after suffering since her teen years through extensive chemotherapy and radiation. She has tried everything to beat the cancer but has not been lucky enough to be successful. Her family has discovered that a New Jersey pharmaceutical company, Medarex, is developing a new drug (MDX-060) that targets lymphoma receptor CD30, which might help Amanda survive her cancer and take up her active lifestyle once again.

Medarex, however, initially refused to provide MDX-060 to Amanda, as it still is going through trials and is considered experimental. The company has made it through Phase II FDA trials, however, and the FDA would allow emergency use for the drug as long as Medarex agreed to its use. The drug was between trials, and told Amanda to wait for the next trial, which was supposedly a few weeks away from starting. Unfortunately, new trials were apparently delayed, and yet Medarex would not allow for the emergency use.

Late-breaking developments have Medarex's president taking up the issue personally, and hopefully a resolution can be reached tomorrow which will allow Amanda to try MDX-060. Drug companies dealing with oncological remedies must have overwhelming interest in their products from the desperately ill, so the bureaucratic response is understandable to a point. However, telling a dying woman that she has to wait for an unspecified trial period when even the FDA would be willing to certify it for her treatment demonstrates a lack of compassion that thankfully appears to be an isolated case at Medarex.

If you get a chance, drop Medarex an e-mail encouraging them to reach an accommodation with Amanda. It could save her life.

It isn't often that one reads an endorsement of George Bush's foreign policy in the pages of the British left-wing newspaper The Guardian, even with a string of caveats and wait-and-see admonitions. Today, however, the Guardian runs an opinion piece by Max Hastings warning the British Left that dismissing the efforts of Bush and the so-called neocons on transforming the Middle East risks ignoring the real progress that has been made:

The greatest danger for those of us who dislike George Bush is that our instincts may tip over into a desire to see his foreign policy objectives fail. No reasonable person can oppose the president's commitment to Islamic democracy. Most western Bushophobes are motivated not by dissent about objectives, but by a belief that the Washington neocons' methods are crass, and more likely to escalate a confrontation between the west and Islam than to defuse it.

Such scepticism, however, should not prevent us from stepping back to reassess the progress of the Bush project, and satisfy ourselves that mere prejudice is not blinding us to the possibility that western liberals are wrong; that the Republicans' grand strategy is getting somewhere. ...

Those who say that Iraqis are incapable of making a democracy work may well be proved right. But until we see what happens on the ground over the months ahead, we should not write off the possibility that the Iraqi people will forge some sort of accommodation. A premature coalition withdrawal promises catastrophe for them, not us.

This gives a taste of the literary ass-covering that Hastings attempts to convey as a warning to his political allies. He also includes many red-meat references to Bush's "simplistic" policies, "crass" execution of such, and the supposed naivete of the American administration. However, in the face of the successful elections of January and the belated formation of a democratic government in Baghdad, Hastings now has to admit that these blundering Americans may have done something that all of the decades of European sophistication and previous American neglect failed to produce: real change that actually attacks the root causes of dangerous radicalism.

Nowehere does Hastings hold to the leftist defenses as he does with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, on which he uses his rhetoric as a veritable Maginot line, and to similar effect:

Today, deprived of Iraqi support and with Syria also in retreat, the Palestinians are chiefly dependent for their own future upon international goodwill; a doubtful commodity. Israelis have always believed that their own security is best served by ensuring that the Palestinians are as weak as possible. Washington seems to acquiesce in this view.

Many of us, by contrast, believe that the best chance of peace lies in creating a settlement that offers a Palestinian state the chance of political, economic and social viability. Today the new Palestinian leadership is talking, because there is nothing else it can do. The litmus test is whether Israel accepts an ultimate commitment to withdraw from the West Bank. If this remains unlikely, it seems naive to suggest that peace prospects are improving, merely because violence is temporarily eclipsed.

Despite what Hastings believes, the issue has never really been whether Israel will fully withdraw from the West Bank. If nothing else, American pressure could guarantee that result if it actually meant that the Palestinians would stop making war on Israel. In this case, it's Hastings' turn to be simplistic and naive. The Palestinians were given that opportunity during the Clinton Administration's final months, when Ehud Barak risked his political career to offer them 95% of the territorial demands they made, excepting only Jerusalem and trading Israeli land for a few major WB settlements. Arafat declared a second intifada as an answer to Barak's offer.

The Palestinians do not want a negotiated peace for the West Bank. The Palestinians and their terror-based leadership want nothing less than the destruction of Israel and the exile of the Jews living there now. Until those circumstances change, the only peace possible will necessarily be temporary cease-fires designed to undermine the radicals and the bombthrowers until a Palestinian middle class with economic and social stakes in peace get strong enough to push the terrorists from power. So far, the Palestianians have shown little inclination to make that transition, electing Hamas and Fatah politicians who differ only in tactics, and not at all in the long-term aim of Israeli extinction.

Believing that Palestinians will suddenly embrace the existence of Israel if the world treats them with respect and kindness ignores the entire decade of the 1990s, when Bill Clinton hosted Yasser Arafat more often than any other world leader in an attempt to do what Hastings suggested. It didn't work, not because the world didn't treat them nicely, but because they didn't get what they wanted. When they stop wanting the elimination of Israel, then they will have peace.

That's the difference between European and supposed neocon diplomacy today. One deals in naive, wishful thinking, and the other understands the dynamic of power. Hastings makes the mistake of identifying the two incorrectly.

There are times when one has to feel a bit of sympathy for Vladimir Putin. The beleagured Russian president scored a diplomatic triumph when he successfully arranged to have George Bush and other world leaders visit Moscow for the sixtieth anniversary of the end of the European phase of World War II this week. However, Bush has changed the itinerary for his travel to include visits to former Soviet republics Georgia and Latvia to celebrate the democracy movements flourishing on Russia's border, and Bush can claim that Putin practically forced him to do so:

President Bush's attendance, by the side of Russian President Vladimir Putin, at next week's Red Square parade celebrating the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe is meant to recall the great wartime alliance that defeated Nazi Germany.

It's a coup for Putin. But Bush is making stops on the way to Moscow and back that are much less pleasing to the Russian leader. The president starts and ends his trip in ex-Soviet republics, Latvia and Georgia, that will be the backdrops for rhetoric on the power of democracy.

Bookending his Russia stay with visits to two countries with continuing frictions with their enormous neighbor has Bush walking a diplomatic tightrope. He must showcase the young democracies on Moscow's doorstep without further inflaming an already tense U.S.-Russia relationship, where cooperation is needed on challenges like North Korea and Iran.

Experts on Russia say Bush couldn't do it any other way. With the American president venturing into the neighborhood for the Moscow ceremony and its inevitable references to the Soviet Union's brutal wartime dictator, Josef Stalin, he had no choice but also to support loudly a couple of the burgeoning democracies that emerged from the failed U.S.S.R..

"It's actually quite cleverly planned. It would be disastrous for him to only go to Moscow," said Anders Aslund, the director of the Russia and Eurasian program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The mission to Latvia has triply sensitive connotations, since Bush will meet with all three Baltic leaders. Estonian and Lithuanian leadership have refused to attend the Moscow ceremonies because of Putin's unwillingness to acknowledge the illegality of the Soviet annexation of their countries in the days after Stalin's victory over the Germans. They do not see Soviet victories as events to celebrate, but simply as markers of one foreign dictator driving another out of their country. Their absence from the Kremlin parades was meant to embarass Putin, and Bush's meeting with them prior to the celebration will only emphasize that.

Georgia remains an open issue for Putin as well. Russian troops still occupy part of Georgia despite its independence and well after the rejection of Kremlin puppet Eduard Shevardnadze. Georgians have little use for Vladimir Putin and will ensure that Bush gets a rousing reception in Tbilisi, the flashpoint of the democracy movement.

However, Putin's invitation left Bush little choice but to make some acknowledgment of the democratic movements in the area. Domestically, ignoring all of the former satellite states in favor of making Putin feel good would put Bush on the defensive regarding his foreign policy goals of pushing democratization, and rightly so. Overseas, it would have been a signal that Bush only meant his inaugural speech as pretty words, but that Scowcroftian realpolitik had reasserted itself in American policy. Obviously Bush could tolerate neither.

Putin will get his big parade for V-E Day. He'd better enjoy it; the price tag will be enormous.

The Pakistanis arrested a senior al-Qaeda leader who not only ran the terrorist network in Pakistan but also allegedly masterminded two assassination attempts on Pervez Musharraf. Abu Farraj al-Libbi has been held for several days by security forces, who held off on announcing his arrest until this morning:

Pakistani security forces have arrested the al Qaeda mastermind who planned assassination attempts against President Pervez Musharraf, Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said on Wednesday. ...

Al-Libbi, a native of Libya who authorities say is a close associate of terror mastermind Osama bin Laden and acted as al Qaeda's operational chief in Pakistan, was arrested earlier this week, Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed told The Associated Press. ...

Al-Libbi is accused of masterminding two bombings against President Gen. Pervez Musharraf in December 2003. The military leader escaped injury but 17 others were killed in one of the attacks.

He is accused of taking over as al Qaeda's operational chief in Pakistan after the March 1, 2003, arrest of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the terror network's alleged number three. Mohammed was later handed over to U.S. custody and his whereabouts are unknown.

The Pakistan