Captain's Quarters -

The dispute between Russia and Ukraine over natural-gas pricing has resulted in a cut-off of supplies to the West-leaning Ukraine, a development that started today as that nation refused to accept a quadrupling in price as a result of their closer poltical alliance with Europe. And since Russian supplies to Europe have to pass through Ukraine to get there, the spigot has run empty to the rest of the Continent despite Russia's insistence that the dispute would have no effect on its exports:

In a move that could hit fuel availability across Europe this winter, the state-controlled Russian firm Gazprom started reducing pressure in the gas pipeline to its neighbour before the deadline for agreement, set at 10am local time, had passed.

Gazprom supplies 25 per cent of western Europe's gas, much of which comes via Ukraine.

The company said today that deliveries to western Europe would not be affected, but the Italian oil and gas firm Eni said it had been warned by Gazprom that supplies could be disrupted.

Poland now confirms that the disruption has moved beyond the theoretical. Their gas company, PGNiG, announced within the hour that they expect to lose 14% of all their natural-gas supplies:

Supplies of natural gas to Poland have been hit by cuts imposed by Russia on the amount of gas entering the pipeline system in neighbouring Ukraine, Poland's gas company PCNiG has said.

"Today at 11:00 am (1000 GMT), PGNiG was informed by the National Gas Directorate of a fall in pressure at the connection point at the Polish-Ukrainian border at Drozdowicze," PGNiG said in a statement. "This indicates a fall in supplies originating in Ukraine and is a consequence of the decision by Russia's Gazprom to restrict deliveries of Russian gas to Ukraine."

The restrictions on Russian supplies to Ukraine would affect 14 percent of the overall volume of natural gas used in Poland, the statement added Sunday.

Ninety percent of the natural gas imported into Poland comes from the east.

Perhaps Russian diplomats truly are naive, or else they thought that the rest of Europe would be stupid enough to believe that Russia could cut off gas supplies to Ukraine while still transiting gas across Ukrainian pipelines to its other customers. Viktor Yuschenko has called the Russian bluff on this little game of chicken that Vladimir Putin has suddenly decided to play.

The reason that Russia can transit gas to customers across the continent is that Ukraine allows them to use their land. In return for that access, through which Gazprom makes its profits, it has given Ukraine steep discounts on their use of natural gas. Yuschenko had expressed a willingness to pay more for it, an increase of about 60%, without getting into a diplomatic/economic war over it. Russia refused to budge, but still told its European clients that it could deliver natural gas without a problem even if the Ukrainian defiance did not change. Apparently, the Russians expected people to believe that Ukraine would sit back and allow their taps to run dry while gas got pumped across their land to Gazprom's other customers. Not even the Russians believed that, however.

And Yuschenko holds the next ace card, too. The Russians need Ukrainian ports in the Black Sea for its navy. So far, Yuschenko has not yet threatened to evict the Russians, probably because they spend good money while docked there. However, if the winter gets much colder there, expect the stakes to get hotter.

In the meantime, Europe has a big problem with energy this winter. The decline in supply will either force them to do without or to replace the supply with other sources of energy. That could push petroleum prices higher in the short run, and it will surely drive natural-gas pricing through the roof in Europe. The European economy, which hasn't been a big performer anyway, will not absorb this blow easily. Expect rationing and a handful of stories about the destitute freezing to death this winter if neither Russia nor Ukraine blinks. My prediction? Russia already regrets pushing it this far; expect them to rethink their pricing structure before Ukraine takes an axe to the trans-national pipeline and permanently cuts Russia off from its Western money supply.

A pattern appears to have developed among hostage-takers in the Middle East -- a growth in market-based decisions, if you will. Yemeni tribesman have discovered that it pays to kidnap people whose governments cut deals with terrorists in order to free hostages. The latest example comes just hours after the Germans negotiated the release of a former diplomat and his family. Now tribesman have kidnapped a group of five Italians and expect the Yemeni government to negotiate their release:

Tribesmen kidnapped five Italians in northern Yemen on Sunday, a day after the government negotiated the release of five Germans held hostage, security officials said.

The Italians were kidnapped just hours after Yemen's president pledged to hunt down the "outlaws" taking hostages.

The Italians were seized in the northern province of Ma`rib, security officials said. The kidnappers belonged to the al-Zaydi tribe and wanted the government to release eight tribal members detained in connection with disputes with another tribe, police and tribal officials said.

Italy's Foreign Ministry said it had activated "all useful channels" to verify the kidnappings. Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini was monitoring the developments.

The abductions came a day after the release of a former top German diplomat and his family, who were held along with three Yemeni assistants for three days in eastern Shabwa province. The kidnappers had demanded that the government release five members of their al-Abdullah bin Dahha tribe who are standing trial for allegedly killing two members of the rival tribe in October.

Let's recall the history of both nations when it comes to dealing with kidnappers and terrorists. Germany just negotiated with Iraqi terrorists to win the release of Susanne Osthoff. It turned out that Osthoff didn't exactly pine for the safer havens of Germany, and opted instead to stay in Iraq. Meanwhile, they gave Hezbollah terrorist and murderer of American naval diver Michael Stethem, Mohammed Ali Hamadi, a free flight to Beirut instead of the US. What did Germany get for its trouble? It won a reputation for being a soft touch and saw more of its citizens get targeted as a result.

As for the Italians, while they have been resolute in keeping their commitment with troops in Iraq, they have proven much less resolute about eschewing negotiations with terrorist kidnappers. The Italians paid off the Iraqi terrorists with a reputed multi-million-dollar ransom to free leftist reporter Giuliana Sgrena, who then got shot when the Italians failed to coordinate her extraction with the Americans or even with each other.

Now both nations have to deal with the inevitable lesson that they taught the terrorists -- that when it comes to attacking German and Italian civilians abroad, crime pays, and so do they.

The New York Times leads with yet another update on its NSA-intercept program, which has shown more holes than substance once subjected to review. Its latest installment proves no different, as the paper attempts to pump a bit of adrenaline back into the story with the breathless headline, "Justice Deputy Resisted Parts of Spy Program". It sounds very damning, until readers make it through the entire article -- and realize that Eric Lichtblau and James Risen once again fail to even allege a single act of wrongdoing.

Here's the core of the story:

A top Justice Department official objected in 2004 to aspects of the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program and refused to sign on to its continued use amid concerns about its legality and oversight, according to officials with knowledge of the tense internal debate. The concerns appear to have played a part in the temporary suspension of the secret program.

The concerns prompted two of President Bush's most senior aides - Andrew H. Card Jr., his chief of staff, and Alberto R. Gonzales, then White House counsel and now attorney general - to make an emergency visit to a Washington hospital in March 2004 to discuss the program's future and try to win the needed approval from Attorney General John Ashcroft, who was hospitalized for gallbladder surgery, the officials said.

The unusual meeting was prompted because Mr. Ashcroft's top deputy, James B. Comey, who was acting as attorney general in his absence, had indicated he was unwilling to give his approval to certifying central aspects of the program, as required under the White House procedures set up to oversee it. ...

What is known is that in early 2004, about the time of the hospital visit, the White House suspended parts of the program for several months and moved ahead with more stringent requirements on the security agency on how the program was used, in part to guard against abuses.

The concerns within the Justice Department appear to have led, at least in part, to the decision to suspend and revamp the program, officials said. The Justice Department then oversaw a secret audit of the surveillance program.

Hmm. We have Ashcroft going to the hospital for a serious medical condition in 2004 after having signed off on the NSA intercept program every 45 days since 9/11, and after ranking members of Congressional intelligence committees from both parties had received numerous briefings on the efforts. With Ashcroft in the hospital, the administration went to James Comey, who had some concerns about the program. The White House went to Ashcroft afterwards, who concurred with Comey. The White House then voluntarily suspended the program and worked with the DoJ to revamp the program to satisfy their concerns and once again get the necessary sign-off for its resumption, and the DoJ then started doing regular audits to ensure that its concerns remained addressed.

So what's the problem? It doesn't appear that the White House did anything remarkable. They followed the FISA law in getting the certification of the Attorney General, and when that couldn't be done, they stopped the program. They proved willing to make adaptations that would satisfy the AG, who then certified the program for a restart. The administration continued briefing Congressional committees on the program and its progress, and except for one note from John Rockefeller, never received any objections. To this day, not one of the people briefed on the NSA intercepts has called for cancellation of the program.

Lichtblau and Risen continue to push this as a major criminal enterprise without producing even the hint of a crime. They want to paint the White House as an imperial Presidency, running roughshod over the law, when their own account shows the White House following procedure, maintaining the necessary approvals, and suspending the program when it couldn't secure the approvals. So far, the only story here is that the New York Times has apparently gone into business to shill books written by its reporters, and that the editors of the paper won't even hold themselves accountable to their own ombudsman, let alone their readers.

This meme has become pathetic.

CQ reader and commenter Coldwarrior left some interesting comments in this thread regarding the possible origin of the leak. His information centers around disaffected Air Force personnel who had an axe to grind for the prosecution of an AF officer in a vandalism case; the officer defaced cars with pro-Bush bumper stickers. It doesn't have anything to do directly with whistleblowing but rather just an attempt to embarrass the White House. He predicts that we will see this resolved very quickly -- perhaps within a week.

In the second non-scandal today, the Washington Post runs a Walter Pincus revelation that the NSA intercerpts from Bush's program have been shared with law-enforcement agencies and other intelligence services in order to track people deemed threatening to the security of the US. Once again, we have another would-be exposé that fails to include even a general allegation of any wrongdoing, instead relying on the readers to supply their paranoia to what amounts to a success story for American defense in the war on terror:

Information captured by the National Security Agency's secret eavesdropping on communications between the United States and overseas has been passed on to other government agencies, which cross-check the information with tips and information collected in other databases, current and former administration officials said.

The NSA has turned such information over to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and to other government entities, said three current and former senior administration officials, although it could not be determined which agencies received what types of information. Information from intercepts -- which typically includes records of telephone or e-mail communications -- would be made available by request to agencies that are allowed to have it, including the FBI, DIA, CIA and Department of Homeland Security, one former official said.

At least one of those organizations, the DIA, has used NSA information as the basis for carrying out surveillance of people in the country suspected of posing a threat, according to two sources. A DIA spokesman said the agency does not conduct such domestic surveillance but would not comment further. Spokesmen for the FBI, the CIA and the director of national intelligence, John D. Negroponte, declined to comment on the use of NSA data.

Does Pincus give us any indication that this data has been abused, or that the agencies involved have either used it illegally or conducted wholesale invasions of privacy with it? No. Instead, Pincus reminds people that forty years ago, the Johnson and Nixon administrations spied on domestic political opponents in a complete non-sequitur:

Since the revelation last month that President Bush had authorized the NSA to intercept communications inside the United States, public concern has focused primarily on the legality of the NSA eavesdropping. Less attention has been paid to, and little is known about, how the NSA's information may have been used by other government agencies to investigate American citizens or to cross-check with other databases. In the 1960s and 1970s, the military used NSA intercepts to maintain files on U.S. peace activists, revelations of which prompted Congress to restrict the NSA from intercepting communications of Americans.

Pincus refers to "today's controversy over domestic NSA intercepts" in one part of the story, even though the supposed scandal involves the international intercepts performed without warrants. Domestic intercepts have been performed with FISA warrants, according to the Times reporting. Pincus tries again in that paragraph to tie the NSA program to the abuses from forty years ago, but again provides not one single case to prove his point.

Instead, as Instapundit points out, it only demonstrates that the Bush administration learned from the 9/11 disaster. It has made sure that its alphabet-soup of law enforcement and intelligence agencies have learned to share data and to work together on investigations and analysis. This meets the demand made by Congress and the 9/11 Commission. This story actually confirms that the NSA intercept program authorized by Bush has developed good intel on terrorist assets within the US, and that the program has allowed the FBI and other agencies to shadow them and develop even more information on their threat profile and domestic contacts.

No wonde, then, that Bush's polling numbers go up every time the Post and the NYT attempt to smear him with baseless charges of imperialism and Orwellian behavior. The only point they keep making is that Bush has worked within the law to ensure that everything possible has been done to keep us safe. The Pincuses, Lichtblaus, and Risens of the Exempt Media have done a wonderful job proving that four years of terror-attack-free life has been no fluke, no coincidence at all.

UPDATE: Make sure you take a good look at Joe Gandelman's round-up of opinions on this story.

Melchior at Simplicius Redivivus has begun translating the entire Die Zeit interview with former CIA operative Michael Scheuer, and has posted part one of five at his blog. Melchior has read the entire interview and alerts me that the DZ chat gives a significantly different view of the rendition program than what has been reported by the American media:

ZEIT: Who invented the system of "extraordinary renditions"?

Scheuer: President Clinton, his security advisor Sandy Berger, and his terrorism advisor Richard Clarke tasked the CIA in Fall 1995 with destroying al-Qaida. We asked the President: what should we do with the people we've apprehended? Clinton: that's your concern. The CIA objected: we aren't prison guards. We were again told that we should solve the problem somehow. So we developed a procedure, and I was a member of this task force. We concentrated on al-Qaida members who were wanted in their home countries or who had been convicted there in absentia.

ZEIT: How did you decide who should be apprehended?

Scheuer: We had to present a huge amount of incriminating evidece to a group of lawyers.

ZEIT: Lawyers? In the intelligence services?

Scheuer: Yes, lawyers everywhere. In the CIA, in the Justice Department, in the National Security Council. We developed our list of targets under their supervision. Then we had to catch the person in a country that was prepared to cooperate with us. Finally, the person had to come from a country that was prepared to take him back. A terribly cumbersome process for a very limited group of targets. ...

ZEIT: Did the interrogations take place in the destination countries?

Scheuer: We always submitted our questions in writing.

ZEIT: The CIA was never present at the interrogations?

Scheuer: Not that I ever heard. The lawyers forbade us from that.

Melchior will have more to come. Now we can understand why the US wanted to adapt the rendition program, too. We needed to interrogate these people and get reliable information about their contacts. That's why we wound up finally giving the CIA the resources to detain and interrogate captured terrorists -- so we wouldn't have to rely on recalcitrant "allies" to interrogate terrorists, even if they were inclined to do so.

Mike Tice has never been one of my favorite coaches -- his tenure as head coach for the Vikings has had a lot more to do with his cheap contract than any success on the field for any of his teams. He should have been fired after the revelation that he had set up a ticket-scalping operation involving his players over several years, but the new ownership elected to keep Tice and his cheap salary around, even after the Love Boat scandal earlier this year.

After all of that, and after Tice led the Vikings back into respectability in the second half of the season and thumped the Chicago Bears at home today, owner Zygi Wilf couldn't even wait until tomorrow to announce that he had fired Tice:

The Minnesota Vikings fired coach Mike Tice after Sunday's victory over Chicago.

Owner Zygi Wilf announced he would not renew Tice's contract in a statement less than an hour after the Vikings' 34-10 win over the Bears in the regular season finale. Tice, who compiled a 33-34 overall record -- including a 1-1 record in the postseason -- had already addressed the media before the move was made public. The announcement came via press release after most players had left the Metrodome.

"I don't know who was more shaken by it, him or me," Tice said of what he called an emotional meeting with Wilf.

I'm not disputing the decision. I think the Vikings need better leadership on several levels. However, the coach just won a game in a rout against a division rival -- against their second-stringers, but a big win nonetheless -- and finished the season with a winning record after a 2-5 start. In my opinion, that earns Tice a couple of days to enjoy the victory and hang out with his players as something other than the man cleaning out his office.

It shows that the current ownership will extend an unfortunate streak of classlessness for the foreseeable future. I guess it can't all be blamed on the players.

Predictably, the Palestinians have called an end to the "truce" with Israel as the latter has continued to respond to the provocations supplied by Islamic Jihad. In this case, however, the notorious triangle strategy of the Palestinians has backfired on Mahmoud Abbas, as his own al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade has betrayed his leadership and aligned itself with Islamic Jihad:

Palestinian armed groups ended a year-long truce with Israel yesterday in a move which could lead to new violence and derail elections in the West Bank and Gaza already threatened by lawlessness and political infighting.

The so-called "cool down" by militants has been frequently interrupted by rocket attacks launched from Gaza, and Islamic Jihad has continued to carry out suicide bombings on Israeli targets.

From the Israeli side, the "cool down" or truce has been non-existent. IJ terrorists have launched rockets from Gaza since Fatah and Hamas supposedly agreed to stop the violence. As I have often remarked, this classic triangle strategy allows the Palestinians to claim that Israel victimizes them whenever they try to achieve peace through negotiations, but the Israeli pullout from Gaza shows how ridiculous that argument has been all along. Now Abbas has to explain how he couldn't even control his own faction in upholding the truce.

I've said it before, and the Palestinians keep proving me correct: they want an all-out war with Israel, and they keep demanding leadership that will give it to them. One of these days, the West will finally allow Israel to give them what they want, and Egypt and Jordan will need to start preparing the refugee camps now for that day.

The Russo-Ukrainian gas crisis that threatens to engulf Europe escalated this morning as Gazprom's customers noticed a significant drop in deliveries. That prompted Russia to accuse Ukraine of diverting the flow of Russia's production -- which comes as no surprise, since the gas transits across Ukrainian pipelines and Ukrainian territory:

Russia's state-controlled natural gas monopoly on Monday accused Ukraine of diverting about $25 million worth of Russian gas intended for other European countries, a day after Moscow halted deliveries to Kiev in a price dispute.

Ukraine in turn accused Russia of trying to undermine its economy, calling for a resumption of gas price negotiations, this time including international experts.

Russia's OAO Gazprom halted gas deliveries to Ukraine on Sunday after Kiev balked at paying quadruple the amount it previously paid for Russian gas, which accounts for about a third of the consumption in the country of 48 million people.

Ukraine denies siphoning off any gas from Gazprom. They claim that they have switched to using strategic stores of their own natural gas and imports from the Bizarro land of Turkmenistan, where they recently reconfirmed pricing with Sapurmurat Niyazov, the narcissistic Stalinist that runs Turkmenistan as a personality cult. In truth, Ukraine will not long allow the transit of gas production across its country unless Russia gives them deep discounts on imports. The Ukrainians will eventually disrupt the deliveries by openly dismantling the pipeline in the final instance and evicting the Russians from their Black Sea naval bases.

The Russians, already cash-strapped as they are, cannot afford to allow this to continue for a long period. European nations will start making other arrangements for natural gas if the situation does not stabilize in the next few days; they cannot afford to have people freezing in their homes just to wait out the crisis. Yuschenko appears ready to play this game of chicken to the bitter, freezing end, and Putin had better decide whether his pocketbook can take the strain, as well as the loss of economic prestige just as he takes over the presidency of the G-8.

One wonders whether his new Gazprom director, Gerhard Schroeder, was supposed to smooth this path from the beginning. We have yet to hear from the former German Chancellor about the crisis.

The media revolution of the past three years has introduced a level of empowerment to the consumers of mass media unlike anything that has ever existed before, and that empowerment comes primarily through the blogosphere and the Internet. The New York Times' Katherine Seelye explores some of the impact felt by journalists and editors at having to make themselves accountable to their readers:

Never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel, or so goes the old saw. For decades, the famous and the infamous alike largely followed this advice. Even when subjects of news stories felt they had been misunderstood or badly treated, they were unlikely to take on reporters or publishers, believing that the power of the press gave the press the final word.

The Internet, and especially the amplifying power of blogs, is changing that. Unhappy subjects discovered a decade ago that they could use their Web sites to correct the record or deconstruct articles to expose what they perceived as a journalist's bias or wrongheaded narration.

But now they are going a step further. Subjects of newspaper articles and news broadcasts now fight back with the same methods reporters use to generate articles and broadcasts - taping interviews, gathering e-mail exchanges, taking notes on phone conversations - and publish them on their own Web sites. This new weapon in the media wars is shifting the center of gravity in the way that news is gathered and presented, and it carries implications for the future of journalism.

Seelye gets close to the nature of the revolution without ever quite getting it into her sights. The difference between now and twenty years ago has to do with the Internet and the blogosphere, but she misses the manner in which they're used to emulate a "mirror media", if you will. What the technology allows people like me to do is to become our own newspaper, our own media outlet, with the entire blogosphere acting as oversight to my posts. It takes the same basic activities that reporters perform -- fact-gathering, quote-gathering, interviews on occasion, and publication -- and then subjects the result to a peer-review process that the media long since gave up.

It's that crucial component that Seelye misses in her article, and that the media misses when it considers the impact of the blogosphere. Blogs get their assumptions wrong and facts incorrect as well, but the natural peer-review process exposes it pretty quickly -- and our credibility suffers if we don't acknowledge it. The Exempt Media doesn't bother to do peer review or act in any kind of competitive manner at all, except in narrow geographic areas where newspapers and local TV stations compete for consumer attention. Competition keeps all actors in any activity accountable -- and it's that accountability that journalists resent the most from the revolution of the media consumer.

Seelye even unconsciously displays this in this statement:

But the power of blogs is exponential; blog posts can be linked and replicated instantly across the Web, creating a snowball effect that often breaks through to the mainstream media. Moreover, blogs have a longer shelf life than most traditional news media articles. A newspaper reporter's original article is likely to disappear from the free Web site after a few days and become inaccessible unless purchased from the newspaper's archives, while the blogger's version of events remains available forever.

Well, there's a remedy for that -- quit charging consumers for access to archived stories! The Times and other newspapers can argue that the storage of such data costs money, but we know that data storage does not actually cost very much at all. Hard drive costs have plummetted over the past decade. The Times sells advertising on its Internet editions, and the archives would carry the same ads as their more recent articles. If the newspaper truly feels that the archiving of stories gives bloggers an unfair advantage, then adapt to the new reality. Either that, or emulate the dodo bird and go out of business.

Seelye includes more cluelessness from those opposed to public accountability for their public performances:

Interview subjects are "annoyed that they're quoted out of context, or they did a half-hour interview and only one sentence got used. Or sometimes they're just flattered that a reporter called them," [Rebecca MacKinnon] said. "If you're one of a growing number of people with a blog, you now have a place where you can set the record straight."

Danny Schechter, executive editor of MediaChannel.org and a former producer at ABC News and CNN, said that while the active participation by so many readers was healthy for democracy and journalism, it had allowed partisanship to mask itself as media criticism and had given rise to a new level of vitriol.

"It's now O.K. to demonize the messenger," he said. "This has led to a very uncivil discourse in which it seems to be O.K. to shout down, discredit, delegitimize and denigrate the people who are reporting stories and to pick at their methodology and ascribe motives to them that are often unfair."

Schecter should be the last person complaining about partisanship. I receive his newsletter on a regular basis but find it almost unreadable as it regularly indulges in partisan sniping on the war, Hurricane Katrina, and so on. Where else would one continue to read the paranoid rantings of Wayne Madsen, the man who wrote about George Bush's "Christian Blood Cult"? Who else has a website that claims as its mission this statement:

With the Bush administration on the defensive, with rationalizations for the war fading, with public opinion shifting, with talk of troop withdrawals all the buzz even as the Pentagon hardens "permanent" bases in the mess it has made of ‘Messopotamia,’ it's time for those who oppose the war to think about where our pressure and protest might hasten the war's end.

If Seelye wanted to make a point about partisanship in the media, she should have picked a better source to discuss it. It's this kind of activity that created the need for the blogosphere in the first place. Papers like the NY Times select sources without revealing their own biases and in this case, their own vitriolic approach to politics. Instead, Seelye uses Schechter to attack the people who would hold her accountable. In truth, MacKinnon hit the nail on the head, and Seelye just gave an unintended demonstration of how right she was.

Seelye's article shows that the Exempt Media has awakened to the new reality. It also shows that it doesn't understand it very well.

Other NFL shoes started hitting the carpet today, a day after the official end of the 2005 season. As expected, Mike Martz lost his position with the St. Louis Rams today after missing most of the 2005 season with a heart ailment. Mike Sherman unexpectedly joined him on the unemployment line, fired after his first losing season in seven years with the Green Bay Packers:

Just one day after completing the franchise's worst season since 1991, the Green Bay Packers on Monday dismissed head coach Mike Sherman, ESPN.com has confirmed.

The move, which will be announced at a morning news conference, came despite the fact the Packers awarded Sherman a two-year contract extension worth about $6.4 million last summer. It also fuels speculation about the future of quarterback Brett Favre, who said several times during the season that he would not return in 2006 if Sherman was not retained by Packers officials.

Green Bay concluded the '05 season with a victory over the Seattle Seahawks on Sunday in a game that might have been Favre's swan song. There was also speculation it might have been the finale for Sherman as well, and general manager Ted Thompson apprised the head coach Monday morning that he would not return.

This shows rather clearly that the Pack wants to start over in 2006, clear of both Sherman and Favre, whose inherent wildness escalated as the injury list grew and his reliable teammates got replaced with journeymen and inexperienced rookies. The chants of "one more year" during the Seahawks game yesterday afternoon apparently had little effect on the Packers' front office.

The next move with come from Brett Favre. If he decides to return even after Sherman's firing, the Pack can hardly refuse to take Favre back. Their fans would eat them alive if they treated their greatest player in a generation with anything but effusive respect and affection. However, it would be hard for Favre to miss this message. Most people would probably have given Sherman a pass for 2005 after having to deal with the deluge of injuries that crippled Green Bay's effort this year. My guess is that Favre takes the hint and retires with his dignity intact -- but that the Packers will not be able to count on Favre for much in the way of public support from this point forward. He has too much class to air this publicly, but Favre will look at this as a slap at him and his worth to the club ... and he'll be right.

Martz, on the other hand, will not be shocked to see the pink slip. He has been on the outs all year with Rams management, who have not been satisfied with the team's direction for a while. He probably needs to assess his own health to determine whether he can withstand the rigors of more years as an NFL head coach, or whether he might do better in a less-consuming role as a TV analyst or booth color man. Martz has a good track record for either direction.

Note that these teams found it unnecessary to announce within an hour of their final games -- all victories -- that they were firing their head coaches. It seems that some teams still have a sense of class about the timing of such announcements.

UPDATE: Should have been Mike Sherman, not Ray. And now we can add Jim Haslett (Saints) and Dom Capers (Houston Texans) to the unemployment line. That leaves seven openings for head coaches with the earlier retirement of Dick Vermeil (KC), and the firings of Mike Tice and Steve Mariucci (Lions). Norv Turner might make it eight today after he hears from The Prince of Darkness, Al Davis (Oakland) today.

The AP notes with an overindulgence of respect the continuing efforts of John Kerry to run for president -- in any election that will tolerate him:

It's almost as if Sen. John Kerry never stopped running for president. He still jets across the country, raising millions of dollars and rallying Democrats. He still stalks the TV news show circuit, scolding President Bush at every turn.

His campaign Web site boasts of an online army of 3 million supporters.

The Massachusetts Democrat, defeated by Bush in 2004, insists it is far too early to talk about the 2008 race, but some analysts assume he has already positioning himself for another shot at the White House.

He still appears on national TV, but he still talks in the same lawyerly, noncommittal way about his own policies -- a habit that lost him the 2004 election. Kerry still hasn't formulated a coherent war policy, despite having over two years to do so now. He might increase troop strength, or he might start withdrawing troops. At one point, he proposed doing both, and so on. Blah, blah, blah.

The army of 3 million supporters? That's his e-mail list from 2004, a fact that the AP neglects to explain. Most of those will support whoever wins the Democratic primary; most have no particular attachment to John Kerry.

He still hasn't explained to those supporters and his fellow Democrats why he wound up the campaign with $15 million still left in the war chest. He still hasn't explained how he managed to lose to the most polarizing figure in politics, one that Democrats assumed would easily get defeated through the fanning of irrational Bush-hatred that energizes their own party. Until Kerry can give clear and precise answers on what changes he can make to turn himself into a winner and to overcome the negatives that emerged during his presidential campaign, the Democrats will stick with Hillary or perhaps Mark Warner.

Kerry can run all he wants. The Democrats will not provide a finish line for his lonely race.

I've started this a bit late -- I kept falling asleep waiting for the game to start when I was going to prep for this post.

4:10 PM CT - Two minutes into the game, and the Irish have driven the field for an impressive score. Brady Quinn got a couple of chances to air it out, and the Irish topped it off with a long run off-tackle for the score. 7-0 Irish, 12:59 left in the first quarter!

4:15 - OSU picks up a first down, but only after all the receivers got covered ...

4:17 - Troy Smith hits a wide-open receiver (Ginn) for six points. Tied up at 7-7, 10:02 left Q1. Looks like a shooting match here today, folks.

4:27 - So far, the difference to me is that the Irish have been able to run the ball -- and they've stopped the Buckeyes on the ground. We'll see if that continues.

4:30 - OSU holds at about midfield - first punt of the day fair-caught at the 10. ND needs a three-and-out.

4:31 - The Nokia commercial about the "lady" who gets offended by a man offering his number for her cell phone is ... weird, man. What's that supposed to teach us about Nokia -- it's for losers?

4:34 - The Irish need a spy on Troy Smith. They did a nice job picking up the screen on the next play, though.

4:38 - The Irish get the first break of the game -- Troy Smith fights off a sack he should have taken and winds up coughing up the ball. The Irish live off these turnovers and they have ony 15 yards to go for a TD.

4:40 - OSU defense stiffens, forces a 4th down ... and the Irish fail to convert. Bad move. Should have taken the easy points at this stage of the game.

4:41 - I was wondering what Hugh was doing, but he doesn't appear to be live-blogging the game. His co-blogger, the lovely and talented Mary Catherine Ham, is spending today learning about good winterizing and the virtues of wood-burning fireplaces, and the limits of influence that a blog award brings.

4:45 - OSU has started running the ball a bit more effectively now, but they commit a stupid penalty after getting a first down.

4:51 - Ginn starts off the second quarter with reverse for 68 yards and a TD. He almost hot-dogged it too early, but made two remarkable cutbacks to fake out the pursuing Irish defenders and stumble into the end zone. OSU 14-7. Dang.

4:58 - Notre Dame gives up a three-and-out -- not a good way to answer the score. A good punt still gives OSU decent field advantange. The Irish have to continue to run the ball -- it's worked so far during the game. Why they used three straight passes on this series is kind of baffling.

5:03 - Note to Krum: it's always the retaliation that gets called. IOW, stop being stupid and FOCUS ON THE GAME, not the trashtalking.

5:09 - The option is really effective against the Irish defense. If they can't get a turnover here, OSU could really put them behind the eight-ball.

5:10 - As I was writing that, the option pitch coughs up the ball and the Irish recover.

5:17 - Yeah, I wouldn't believe me either, but it was the truth ...

5:17 - Brady tosses it deep as a reminder to OSU not to get to comfortable coming in close on defense.

5:20 - Weis has spotted something on the slant; it seems to have suddenly opened up for the Irish.

5:25 - Good punt coverage puts the ball on the two. The Irish need a defensive hold here.

5:27 - I've never heard of that before -- the ref stopped play and used the public address system to scold ABC for its camera placement! OSU gets the first down, and then scores on the next play. Not looking good for God's Team.

5:37 - OSU wants to go in for the kill at the end of the half. They own the big play today, no doubt ...

5:43 - The Irish block the chip-shot field goal to take something positive into the halftime locker room. HALFTIME.

5:57 - That was a great moment during halftime when Tostitos brought Lt Vera home and surprised his girlfriend -- and then he surprised her again by proposing on national TV. Good thing she said "yes". It brought a tear to my eye, but who among us didn't have a moment of thinking, "What if she says 'No'?"

6:11 - The Irish finally force OSU to punt after Brent Musberger noted that the Buckeyes had converted all of their third downs in the first half.

6:16 - Can we stop talking about Brady Quinn's sister being AJ Hawk's girlfriend? Brady's sister is cute, but I didn't wait six weeks for this game just to live it vicariously through her angst.

6:26 - "Can Baby Brother and the Quarterback Guru regroup?" BLEAGH. I have always despised Brent Musberger, and now I remember why. The Irish special teams, however, come up big with a second blocked kick to keep it to a two-touchdown gap.

6:31 - Going back to the slant, it's still working ...

6:35 - The Irish take advantage of the short game that OSU allowed and drove the field for a TD. The Irish blew the PAT, but still stay within a TD and a 2-point conversion despite getting thoroughly outplayed so far. 21-13.

6:42 - Is it a fumble or an incomplete? Looks like a fumble to me, but I'm biased. The Irish defense is still playing with some heart ...

6:46 - No fumble, and the Buckeyes get a FG finally on their third try. 24-13. We're still in it, but I'm not sure we deserve to be. OSU has outplayed the Irish on both sides of the ball, and only through some scrappy play and turnovers have we remained in the game.

6:53 - Last quarter, and the Irish can still come back, but they'd better play better than the first three if they're going to do it.

7:07 - OSU adds a field goal, but that only puts the game out to 14 points -- still a two-TD game. Unfortunately, I may have to run out before the game finishes. I have a dinner date with my granddaughter, of which she just called to remind me. ("Grandpa, when are we going to eat pizza?") I may have to catch this on the radio the rest of the way.

7:13 Samardziaj finally pulls one in and puts the Irish back into the long game...

7:22 - Gotta run. Granddaughters trump the Irish. It looks like the Irish may be ready to score, and I'll be listening on the radio. Thanks for hanging in there with me!

The Not One Dime campaign's first endorsed candidate, Stephen Laffey, has generated quite a bit of interest in his bid to unseat Lincoln Chaffee of Rhode Island. The New York Sun profiles Laffey in a Josh Gerstein article today, noting that Laffey's pro-Israel stance has helped boost his visibility:

The mayor of Cranston, R.I., Stephen Laffey, 43, is hoping to unseat Lincoln Chafee, a Republican who was appointed to the Senate in 1999 after the unexpected death of his father, John Chafee, and who won election to his father's former seat the following year.

The main fund-raising arm for Senate candidates, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, is coming to Mr. Chafee's defense. About 11 months before the September 12 primary, the committee launched a series of television ads attacking Mr. Laffey's record on taxes and tarring him as a "slick" ally of the oil industry. The latter charge is taken as a slur by many environmentally conscious Rhode Islanders.

Mr. Chafee, 52, has made enemies of some political activists, though, with his votes against President Bush's tax cuts, against the Iraq war, and against a law authorizing sanctions on Syria. In 2004, the senator flirted with leaving the Republican Party and pointedly declined to vote for President Bush. Mr. Chafee told the Providence Journal that he wrote in the name of President George H.W. Bush as a "symbolic protest."

Those moves have produced support for Mr. Laffey.

"We've certainly hit a nerve," Mr. Laffey said of the intervention in the race by the National Republican Senatorial Committee. "They obviously are very, very nervous."

And it's why Republicans should say Not One Dime! to the NRSC and instead contribute directly to GOP campaogns. I've already sent a donation to Laffey's campaign to make up for the fact that a national GOP organization would go on the attack against Republican primary challengers. To me, that's worse than supporting Chaffee, the most unreliable GOP caucus member of the Senate. Since when should our contributions go to attacking other Republicans?

Chaffee has done almost nothing for the GOP in this session of the Senate. He has proven himself a hurdle for George Bush's legislative agenda, frequently voting against tax cuts and the Bush foreign policy initiatives. No one knows why the NRSC has decided to attack Republicans on Chaffee's behalf, but we should make sure that we put an end to it. It looks like Chaffee might not be such a slam dunk after all, and our focus should be on finding and supporting those Republicans that will act like they belong to the same party. If nothing else, the NRSC should have kept its hands off the Rhode Island primary once a credible GOP challenger had been found to Chaffee.

UPDATE: Lincoln, not John; I made that mistake two times. Thanks to Jim for the heads-up.

The growth of political dealmakiing grows in Iraq, as the largest Sunni group announced that it had reached preliminary agreement with the Kurds to create a framework for a coalition government, one they could implement as soon as the election commissions review the voting process from last month' elections. The move would provide either a sizable addition to a coalition government, or a stable opposition bloc to the Shi'ite plurality within the National Assembly and could induce the insurgency to recede as Sunni influence in the new government grows:

The largest Sunni Arab political group in Iraq unexpectedly moved toward agreement with Kurdish leaders Monday on a broad framework for a coalition government. The group, the Iraqi Consensus Front, said it would abandon claims that national elections last month had been rigged once international election monitors finish their review of the allegations.

The move drew a rebuke from other Sunni Arab political leaders who accused the Sunni consensus party of violating an agreement to press ahead with claims of Sunni disenfranchisement during the vote on Dec. 15 and to not bargain on their own for a role in the new government. ...

A Sunni consensus party official, Ahmad Rushdi, said that meetings in Iraqi Kurdistan between the party and the Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani yielded "an agreement that the results from the international monitoring committee" - which is examining the vote - "would be approved." After results are final, he said, "discussion will continue about the formation of the upcoming government."

If the Kurds and Sunnis eventually did reach a political agreement, any deal to ultimately be part of a coalition government would be shaped by the dominant Shiite political alliance, which is expected to control nearly half the seats in parliament.

This surprising development promises something more -- a first agreement between the Kurds and the Sunni on political alliance shows a remarkable shift between the former oppressors and the people they oppressed. If the Kurds feel comfortable partnering with the Sunnis, it shows that decades of enmity can be set aside in a new democratic process -- and it proves to the Sunnis that they will comprise an important part of Iraqi politics. That kind of inclusiveness will motivate even further Sunni participation in Iraqi politics and discourage the destabilizing insurgencies that already appear to have lost the imagination of the Iraqi people.

The Conservative Party has jumped out to a slight lead in the election campaign in Canada, according to polling taken mostly after the RCMP announcement of a criminal investigation for the insider-trading allegations surrounding current Finance Minister Ralph Goodale. For the first time, Ipsos reports that the Tories now lead the Liberals on a national basis:

With the federal election now entering 2006 and its final stage, a new national Ipsos Reid survey, conducted on behalf of CanWest News Service/Global News, shows that while the Conservative and Liberal parties are in a virtual tie when it comes to vote support the underlying dynamics suggest that it is the Conservative campaign which has traction and momentum.

According to the survey, if a federal election were held tomorrow, 33% of voters would cast their ballot in support of the Conservatives (+1 point from last week’s survey), 32% would vote for the Liberals (32%, -1 point), 18% would vote for the NDP (+2 points), and 5% would vote for the Green Party (unchanged). In Quebec, the Bloc Quebecois attract more than half of federal votes (52%, -2 points).

Currently four in ten Canadians (42%, +5 points) agree with the statement “I'd be comfortable voting for Stephen Harper and the Conservatives to form the government in the next election because we'll probably have another minority which will keep them in check” - 44% of Ontarians agree with this statement.

The news gets worse for the Liberals and PM Paul Martin. For the first time, the Grits may be losing Ontario. The new Ipsos polling shows for the first time that support for Liberals has fallen behind that of the Conservatives. The Tories have a razor-thin 2-point lead in the province that normally provides the Liberals their base of support. Absent that, they have leads in the Maritimes and BC, but without Ontario they have no hope of winning a large enough plurality to control the Commons.

The Grits have three weeks to turn things around, and with a brand-new investigation hanging over them like some Sword of Damocles, I doubt that even Martin is slippery enough to pull the wool over the eyes of Canadian voters one last time.

Markos Moulitsas has lost it -- and the candidates who pay him for his services might have some explaining to do about their views on national security in the future. Kos wrote today that Republicans want to protect the United States out of a sense of cowardice (h/t: The Corner):

When our nation was founded, we had men of real character and courage fighting for their nascent America, one in which liberty and freedom trumped the authorative tendencies of the monarchy. Patrick Henry gave words to those efforts:

"Give me liberty or give me death!" ...

These blowhards pretend they are macho even as they piddle on themselves in abject terror from every "boo!" that comes out of Osama Bin Laden's mouth. They like to speak about how tough they are, even though they send others to fight their battles and couldn't last a day in places like Iraq, or Sudan, or the El Salvador of my youth, or any other war-torn nation....

The breathtaking cowardice of the 101st Fighting Keyboardists knows no bounds. They hide behind the American flag and our genuinely brave men and women in uniform. It's bad enough that they wouldn't deign to join the boots in the ground in Iraq. But now they make a mockery of our Constitution, for the very values that motivated our Founding Fathers to put their lives on the line to combat the unchecked powers of the British monarchy.

Patrick Henry, however, did not utter those words to urge Americans to withdraw from the world or to "redeploy" to a horizon position. He gave us that grand mission by urging Americans to rise up and fight the British to shake off the bonds of the monarchy that held us without representation in Parliament and without recourse to the very liberties Moulitsas accuses us of giving up. Nor did Henry say, "Let any man who agrees with me but does not fire a weapon be called a chickenhawk." Henry believed in civilian control of the government, not a military dictatorship where only soldiers and those who had served could enter the world of self-government.

In other words, the allegory is drizzly Kos bulls**t.

Kos loves freedom of speech when that speech agrees with him. He loves civilian control of the military when those civilians belong to MoveOn, but not when they belong to the Republican Party. In fact, Kos doesn't like American values at all -- he only uses them when convenient to his argument, but in fact would rather have a Starship Troopers (the movie) government made up of military bureaucrats making all of our decisions for us. He has no respect for those who did go to Iraq to help with security -- recalling his infamous "Screw 'em" to the civilians who did believe in the mission enough to go over and help out, smearing them as "mercenaries" -- and then calls those who stay home and support the mission 'cowards'.

I will pray every night that Howard Dean and the rest of the Democrats take Kos' advice and adopt this as their meme, because I'm sure people feel like they would rather not see New York nuked than to take action within the law to defend this nation. Even most of the Democrats in this country would have a problem with candidates adopting the "Let DC Burn As Long As International Calls Don't Get Checked" platform. I, for one, would rather have the NSA checking on valid leads on al-Qaeda terrorists here in the US than to have my granddaughter vaporized by Islamofascists at the Mall of America. And if Markos doesn't like the fact that I use my freedom of speech to make that clear, then Markos can kiss my entire ass. Screw him and anyone who supports him.

UPDATE: Clarified my reference to Starship Troopers, and removed reference to Heinlein -- not quite the same thing.

Pssst ... do you want to know a dirty little secret about Markos Moulitsas' hero du jour, Patrick Henry? The man that Kos notes approvingly in terms of character, writing that "When our nation was founded, we had men of real character and courage fighting for their nascent America, one in which liberty and freedom trumped the authorative tendencies of the monarchy. Patrick Henry gave words to those efforts: 'Give me liberty or give me death!'"

It turns out that Henry never served in the Revolution -- and even when given a commission and a command, he declined to serve:

1775 August 26: Although Henry had no military experience, he was elected colonel of the First Virginia Regiment and commander-in-chief of the Virginia militia.

1776 February 28: Henry resigned his military appointment.

Wow -- who knew that Kos would celebrate such a chickenhawk!

Of course, that slur would be ludicrous to use on Patrick Henry. Instead of picking up a gun and commanding an army, Henry relied on his better skills and went into politics and rhetoric to fight for freedom. He urged the armed uprising as one of the leading pundits of his age, from his seat in the Virginia Assembly and as governor of the independent Commonwealth of Virginia. His proclamation for liberty or death did not mean that he intended on grabbing his pistol and run out into the nearest battle he could find. It did mean that he made liberty, freedom, and democracy his life's work -- and in doing so, he helped form the basis of the mandate of Americans to throw off the British monarchy and engage in the world's greatest experiment in self-rule. His contribution to American freedom is no less honorable for his refusal to serve in the Revolutionary Army, and no less important.

All Kos did with his screed is demonstrate that he has nothing more than a facile understanding of both American history and the nature of civilian-based democratic government rather than military juntas.

UPDATE: Roger Ailes and CQ reader Duckman rightly point out that Patrick Henry did take part in one engagement, a raid to secure powder a few days after Lexington in May 1775 -- before he received his commission, in fact. Mea culpa. However -- and this is my point -- Patrick Henry's worth to the American Revolution has little or nothing to do with this one uncontested military effort on Henry's part. If that qualifies Henry as a hero in Kos' eyes, then why wouldn't flying two years of defense missions in a notoriously unreliable jet protecting the homeland qualify as well? Especially since the latter person requested a transfer to combat while the former resigned his commission just as the war started to heat up? Rather than "denigrating" Henry, as Duckman says I did, I pointed out that Henry's greatness had nothing to do with whether he served in a combat position at any point in his life, but in the work he did to push for the creation of this nation of freedom and liberty. He used his best skills to the fullest extent to perform great work. That isn't validated by his presence at one single engagement just as it isn't invalidated by his resignation of his commission after the war started -- as I argued.

The nitpickers get one fact right (and I got one wrong, of course) while managing to miss the entire point. Debating war policy based on the worthiness of one's prior service to the nation is a stupid, juvenile exercise, very much akin to measuring genitalia to determine manliness. Try focusing on the policy itself rather than the military experience of those who debate it.

Congratulations should come from all Americans to Department of Justice prosecutors who got lobbyist Jack Abramoff to agree to a plea deal by acknowledging a years-long string of corrupt activity in Washington DC. The prosecutors got Abramoff to plead guilty to a wide range of offenses, guaranteeing that he will either cooperate to the bitter end or spend the rest of his life in prison:

"I plead guilty, your honor," Abramoff said in flat, unemotional tones, accepting a plea bargain that said he had provided lavish trips, golf outings, meals and more to public officials "in exchange for a series of official acts."

In one case, he reported payments totaling $50,000 to the wife of a congressional aide to help block legislation for a client. The aide worked for DeLay, according to officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Public corruption aside, Abramoff admitted defrauding four Indian tribes and other clients, taking millions in kickbacks from a one-time business partner, misusing a charity he had established and failing to pay income taxes on millions of ill-gotten gains.

He is expected to plead guilty to additional charges on Wednesday in Florida in connection with charges stemming from the 2000 purchase of a fleet of gambling boats.

At the Justice Department, officials said they intend to make use of the trove of e-mails and other material in Abramoff's possession as part of a probe that is believed to be focusing on as many as 20 members of Congress and aides.

Regardless of which politicians get proven corrupt -- and that means proven in court, not just allegations and indictments -- both Republicans and Democrats will be well rid of them. Since the Republicans have controlled Congress for the past decade or more, we can fully expect this to ensnare more GOP politicians than Democrats. Money always finds its way to those whose power runs highest and whose ethics run lowest. And even if an honest and fair investigation and prosecution only convicts Republicans -- I'm still looking forward to the housecleaning. Politicians enriching themselves on the public trust deserve to spend some quality time at Club Fed.

However, if Democrats think this might provide them with the Fitzmas they failed to get late last year, they will be somewhat disappointed. Abramoff, like any good lobbyist, has members of both parties in his Rolodex (or Blackberry -- betraying my age on the Rolodex comment, I think). CQ readers should already be familiar with the cast of Democratic characters likely to be conferring with counsel tonight:

* Reps James Clyburn (D-SC) and Bennie Thompson (D-MS) - 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. 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.

* Indian tribe money, which appears to be at the center of Abramoff's conviction today, went to many Republicans -- but also made its way into the following Democratic pockets:

Rep. Patrick Kennedy: $128K
Senator Harry Reid: >$40K
Senator Tom Daschle: >$40K
Rep. Dick Gephardt: $32.5K

* Harry Reid has a special problem with Abramoff, as the above link detailed last June. Not only did Reid get in excess of forty grand from Abramoff's clients, but that Abramoff hired one of Reid's political aides, who simultaneously helped raise funds for Reid. As the Post article reported in June:

James Patrick Manley, Reid's spokesman, also asserted that Reid's connection to tribes was remote from Abramoff. He said that Reid does not know Abramoff. But Abramoff did hire as one of his lobbyists Edward P. Ayoob, a veteran Reid legislative aide. Manley acknowledged that Ayoob helped raise campaign money for his former boss. Lawyers close to the Abramoff operation said that Ayoob held a fundraising reception for Reid at Greenberg Traurig's offices here.

* Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) had been the ranking member on the Senate oversight committee that should have caught Abramoff's influence peddling. Instead, Dorgan drank deep from Abramoff's glass:

New evidence is emerging that the top Democrat on the Senate committee currently investigating Jack Abramoff got political money arranged by the lobbyist back in 2002 shortly after the lawmaker took action favorable to Abramoff's tribal clients.

A lawyer for the Louisiana Coushatta Indians told The Associated Press that Abramoff instructed the tribe to send $5,000 to Sen. Byron Dorgan (news, bio, voting record)'s political group just three weeks after the North Dakota Democrat urged fellow senators to fund a tribal school program Abramoff's clients wanted to use.

The check was one of about five dozen the Coushattas listed in a tribal ledger as being issued on March 6, 2002, to various lawmakers' campaigns and political causes at the instruction of Abramoff, tribal attorney Jimmy Fairchild said Monday.

When we're talking about systemic corruption, we have to remember that it rarely, if ever, happens on a partisan basis. The idea that one party has a "culture of corruption" is ludicrous. Power corrupts, and regardless of current status, both parties wield power in Washington. The corruption will have followed both in proportion to their power. Expect to see enough takedowns to thoroughly embarrass everyone.

But regardless, as I wrote earlier, let the chips fall where they may. The DoJ has done a good job thus far at keeping it professional and balanced, and I trust them to continue to do so. And for a great round-up of reaction, check out Michelle Malkin, who says the same thing. If you love your country, you have to demand prosecution of the corrupt, even if they share your political viewpoints.

Despite recent protestations of Congressional outrage over the NSA program to intercept international communications from known and suspected al-Qaeda assets inside and outside of the US, it turns out that more members of Congress were told of the program than have let on. General Michael Hayden briefed members of both intelligence committees in October 2001 specifically to detail how the NSA would expand its reach in regards to FISA -- and the only concern given at the time was whether the NSA had gotten the proper presidential authority to proceed:

Congressional intelligence committees had at least a hint in October 2001 that the National Security Agency was expanding its surveillance activities after the 9/11 attacks, according to a letter released Tuesday by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

The California Democrat had raised questions to Gen. Michael Hayden, then the NSA director, about the legal authority to conduct the eavesdropping work.

In the October 2001 letter, Pelosi said she was told in a briefing that month that the agency "had been operating since the Sept. 11 attacks with an expansive view" of its authorities "to the conduct of electronic surveillance under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and related statutes, orders, regulations and guidelines."

"I am concerned whether, and to what extent, the National Security Agency has received specific presidential authorization for the operations you are conducting," Pelosi, then the top Democrat on the intelligence panel, wrote Hayden. ...

But it appears that Hayden may have at least alluded broadly to the new surveillance work with a wider audience of House and Senate intelligence committee members during the classified October briefing. According to Pelosi's letter, Hayden spoke about the agency's new posture to expand its operations.

Hayden, who is now the nation's No. 2 intelligence official, told Pelosi he wanted to clarify ambiguities. "In my briefing, I was attempting to emphasize that I used my authorities to adjust NSA's collection and reporting," he wrote on Oct. 18, 2001.

Now we know that the intelligence committees had full knowledge of the NSA plan and its relationship to the FISA regulations and presidential authority. According to Pelosi's own letter, the only real issue that Congress had was whether the President himself had authorized the NSA to expand its intercepts -- an explicit acknowledgement that the authority remained within the President's scope of power, especially given the war-powers resolution Congress had just passed.

The outrage we hear today from people like Howard Dean should get directed to the members of Congress who have long known of this program and declined to object. Even today, we hear no voices from the intelligence panels that want this program to end. That shows that they understand the necessity and the legality of this crucial part of the American defense against al-Qaeda and other Islamofascist terrorists who will kill Americans by the thousands if they are given the opening to do so.

UPDATE: Actually, this story gets even better. It turns out that Hayden operationally took responsibility for expanding NSA operations in the wake of 9/11, and Pelosi wanted to ensure that Presidential authorization took place:

Ms. Pelosi, then the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said, "I am concerned whether, and to what extent, the National Security Agency has received specific presidential authorization for the operations you are conducting."

The answer, General Hayden suggested in his response to Ms. Pelosi a week later, was that it had not. "In my briefing," he wrote, "I was attempting to emphasize that I used my authorities to adjust N.S.A.'s collection and reporting."

It is not clear whether General Hayden referred at the briefing to the idea of warrantless eavesdropping. Parts of the letters from Ms. Pelosi and General Hayden concerning other specific aspects of the spy agency's domestic operation were blacked out because they remain classified. But officials familiar with the uncensored letters said they referred to other aspects of the domestic eavesdropping program.

Bush administration officials said on Tuesday that General Hayden, now the country's No. 2 intelligence official, had acted on the authority previously granted to the N.S.A., relying on an intelligence directive known as Executive Order 12333, issued by President Ronald Reagan in 1981. That order set guidelines for the collection of intelligence, including by the N.S.A.

"He had authority under E.O. 12333 that had been given to him, and he briefed Congress on what he did under those authorities," said Judith A. Emmel, a spokeswoman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. "Beyond that, we can't get into details of what was done."

Once again, the Times mischaracterizes the program as a "domestic" operation. All of the Times reporting indicates that the warrantless NSA intercepts concerned international communications, not domestic -- which would under FISA have to both originate and end within the US. But more importantly, it again shows that Congress explicitly acknowledged the authority of the President to approve this expanded program. It also shows that the Democratic leadership had no problem with the program itself, but rather that it received the proper authorization from the President before proceeding much farther.

And again, note that none of the people involved in this briefing ever bothered to object to the expanded NSA effort until after the Times published its story.

In the game of chicken Kyiv that Viktor Yuschenko has played with Vladimir Putin over natual gas, the Russian autocrat finally blinked and settled for the limited price increase that Yuschenko initially offered to pay. In order to save face, the state-dominated Gazprom hid behind a middleman to meet Ukraine's demands:

Russia and Ukraine reached a deal Wednesday to resume gas shipments to Ukraine under a complex price scheme, ending a standoff that raised fears of long-term shortages in Europe. ...

Under the agreement, Russia's Gazprom will sell gas to a trading company for $230 per 1,000 cubic meters and Ukraine will buy gas from the company for $95. The trading company, Rosukrenergo, can charge Ukraine lower prices because it receives cheaper gas from Turkmenistan.

"We are fully satisfied with the agreement," Gazprom chief Alexei Miller said.

Gazprom spokesman Sergei Kupriyanov said the agreed price was $230 as of Jan. 1 but that it would fluctuate with the market. He did not indicate how often the price would be adjusted.

Yeah, it gets "adjusted" often enough. Expect an adjustment to come within weeks of the initial sale, and bank on the price coming a lot closer to the $95 resale mark. Every business model that comes to mind does not support a $230 product being profitable when resold for $95, no matter how much one cuts it with another source.

Obviously, Putin caved, and for obvious reasons; Yuschenko held the ace cards. Not only does Yuschenko control the territory that Russian gas has to transit to reach the vast bulk of its customers, but he also has their political support -- and Ukraine controls the warm-weather ports for the Russian Black Sea navy. As long as Russia tried to send gas to its other customers, Ukraine could tap the supply, which they admitted to doing late yesterday. Ukraine could also have started dismantling the pipeline or turned it off, which would have made the Russians lose one of their few reliable sources of hard currency.

Chalk up another win for the Ukrainian upstart against his former Russian masters. Yuschenko may have his faults, but a lack of nerve isn't among them.

The story of the thirteen trapped miners ended in cruelty and tragedy this morning, after a mistaken announcement left family and friends celebrating what they thought had been a miraculous rescue of twelve miners. Instead, rescuers only found one man barely alive, and the others all dead:

Great joy turned suddenly to deep sorrow Wednesday morning when stunned family members were told that 12 of the 13 miners trapped 13,000 feet into a mountainside since early Monday were dead rather than alive, as they, and the world, had been told hours earlier.

The first announcement, of a "miracle," was the result of a "miscommunication," a company official said.

The new announcement came at roughly 3 a.m., interrupting and then silencing celebratory church bells in this small town and leaving relatives of the miners in shock, grief and anger.

The new announcement, officially made by Ben Hatfield, CEO of the International Coal Group, was that one miner was alive, in critical condition at a local hospital. He was found near a vehicle in the mine, somewhere near the site of an apparent explosion Monday.

Our prayers are with the people of Sago and Tallmansville this morning. This news comes about as cruelly as anyone could have contrived. When I went to bed last night, unfortunately very late, the news had come across the wires that the men had been located alive but in need of medical attention -- not surprising, under the circumstances. The television showed pictures of the families and communities celebrating with tears of joy, and it was easy to join them. How that could have gotten screwed up remains to be seen, but they are now irate as well as devastated by their loss -- made double by their celebrations.

How awful. Keep them in your thoughts and prayers.

On the brink of his confirmation hearings, Judge Samuel Alito still has the backing of the American people for his selection to the Supreme Court according to every major poll, the Washington Times reports today. With the nation's political attention diverted by the NSA intercepts and the Abramoff plea, it's unlikely that Alito opponents will get much media oxygen to reverse it before testimony begins next Monday:

Despite a major coordinated campaign, liberal interest groups have failed to convince the American public that the Senate should reject Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito Jr.

Every major poll indicates that far more voters think Judge Alito should be confirmed than think he should be rejected. Though that support generally is lower than it was for John G. Roberts Jr. before his confirmation for chief justice in the fall, it is on par with the public support for Supreme Court nominees during the past 20 years.

"Since the nomination of Samuel Alito, left-wing groups have lashed out at him through a number of avenues in an attempt to derail his nomination," conservative activists Sean Rushton and Joseph Cella said in a memo to supporters. "The left's campaign has involved television, radio, print and Internet campaigns, public statements, the issuing of reports, and a van-based road tour. In all these media, the left failed to generate any substantive opposition to Judge Alito."

A poll conducted by The Washington Post just before Christmas, for instance, found 54 percent in favor of Judge Alito's confirmation, compared with 28 percent opposed. A CNN poll last month similarly found 49 percent favoring Judge Alito and 29 percent opposed.

I will be attending the first couple of days of the hearing, along with the First Mate, after live-blogging Justice Sunday III as a blog-reporter. Unless the hearings produce a Harriet Myers moment, I doubt that anything said while Alito testifies will change any minds at all. His opponents needed to make their case before the start of the hearings, and it isn't as if they didn't have ample time to drum up whatever they could. The extended scheduling of the confirmation hearings in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee gave every nutcase an extra four weeks to gin up the most ludicrous charges, all of which have fallen away from Alito.

Most humourously, the so-called Rolling Justice tour has been a spectacular flop. The touring protest organized by People for the American Way and the Alliance for Justice has attracted ... almost no one. The Washington Times reports that its impact "was not clear", but what was clear was the massive throngs of people who declined to show up when they arrived in any town. PFAW's Ralph Neas still claims that the anti-Alito forces comprise the "most formidable progressive coalition" since Robert Bork got pilloried, not exactly a great touchstone for comparison.

People have gotten tired of the PFAW/AJ circus every time Bush nominates someone to the appellate court or above; most of them recognize his prerogative to nominate qualified conservatives to the bench as he sees fit and understand that elections have those kinds of consequences. Neas still hasn't caught up to democracy, but the Alito confirmation may finally make it clear.

With the plea deal in place and the prospect of decades of hard time staring him in the face, Jack Abramoff has little choice but to cough up as many of his co-conspirators in the halls of power as he must in order to minimize his prison time, and to make that time as comfortable as possible. I doubt he will err on the side of discretion when calculating what he has to do to ensure his future life outside of the federal penal system, and so we can expect that all of the Abramoff skeletons will come tumbling out of the closet. That will lead to a strange season in national politics, with the Congress reeling from the scandal and the executive holding the field by default rather than by design.

What does this mean for 2006 and 2008? Right now, here's how I see it:

* All politics are local -- I agree with Dafydd that the scandal is unlikely to affect the balance of power in Congress all by itself, except for those specific legislators that get nailed for corruption -- and even then, the lack of real competition will still mean a different Republican or Democrat will replace the one removed for malfeasance. Only if Abramoff never implicates a single Democrat -- unlikely, given the circumstances -- will the House roll to the Dems in '06. If so, the GOP will deserve it for not cleaning their own house first.

* Alito and other nominees get through -- The Abramoff scandal so far completely involves Congress and not the executive. When the complete list of legislators tainted by connection to Abramoff gets reported by the DoJ instead of the Washington Post and New York Time, thought to be as many as 300, these politicians will busy themselves with scouring their reputations through positive public works, not negative partisan attacks. Congress will lose much of its influence in the coming weeks thanks to Abramoff and this investigation, and its popularity will descend even further than once thought possible going into the 2006 elections.

* No insiders for President in 2008 -- The most significant development from this scandal will be the almost-certain disqualification for serious Presidential runs by anyone currently on the Hill, including Hill(ary) herself. Abramoff's stench will touch everyone currently noted for front-runner status, except possibly the most radical of Democrats, such as John Kerry -- who isn't going to get a second chance anyway. The next President of the US will be someone in a governor's seat now, and someone who hasn't served in Congress before. It could very well be Mitt Romney against Bill Richardson or Mark Warner.

We'll see how it develops, but if the Abramoff corruption goes as deep as prosecutors say, look for an unprecedented series of power shifts in the next two cycles -- not partisan, but demographic, as American voters start looking for fresh choices.

According to SES Research, whose polling usually tends towards the Liberals, Paul Martin now finds himself in deep trouble with less than three weeks to go before the election. The Tories have now opened up a gap nationwide on the Liberals, and outside of Quebec enjoy a nine-point advantage and poll over 40%. Even in the Liberal bastion of Ontario, where Martin and his party has to do well in order to gain the plurality needed to retain power, the Conservatives have actually pulled slightly ahead.

SES polling among decided Canadian voters shows the national breakdown:

CP 36% (+7)
LIB 33% (-4)
NDP 15% (NC)
BQ 13% (-1)
GP 4 (-1)

However, 17% of all respondents say that they have not yet made up their mind, giving the Liberals some hope for a rescue. The trend, though, points towards voters abandoning the Grits and deciding to support the Tories. After taking Quebec out of the equation, where Tory ally Bloc Quebecois will win the majority of seats and Liberals will likely take most of the rest, the gap almost puts Stephen Harper into majority-rule territory. The Tories now lead the Liberals 43-34, a six point gain for Harper and a five point drop for Martin since December 1st.

The momentum seems to have shifted strongly to Harper and the Tories. With financial scandals breaking out all around the Liberals, it now looks like Canadians have decided that Harper and his supposed "hidden agenda" doesn't scare them nearly as much as Paul Martin's continued access to the public purse.

A few notes from around the blogosphere while I catch up on the news of the day ...

* Mark Tapscott notes that the tiny Baltic nation of Estonia can teach the world about the advantages of free-market capitalism. Mark, who does great work at the Heritage Foundation and has been tremendously supportive of CQ, has links to tons of economic data.

* Speaking of economic data, King at SCSU Scholars (and a good buddy of mine) has plenty of background for the new Russian-Ukrainian compromise on natural gas. King spent time working with Viktor Yuschenko several years ago and knows the Ukraine like no one else. On economics as in politics, King is a must-read.

* And speaking of must-reads, my friend the Anchoress has a lengthy, gentle, but firm scolding for the press over the botched reporting on the Sago mine disaster. In my mind as well, this is the fruits of the emotionalism that the press congratulated itself for displaying during its Katrina coverage -- while getting almost all of the facts wrong on the ground. Instead of trying so hard to make themselves stars, perhaps the reporters should start focusing on getting the facts of the story straight first.

* Professor Bainbridge sums up the challenge of removing corruption from government particularly well. Want to get the money out of politics? Get it out of government. If we limit the federal government the way the founding fathers intended, the lobbyists would have no reason to buy federal legislators. They instead would flock to the states, but then the states could put more effective law-enforcement resources on the problem. Or, perhaps, they would also see the value of limited government -- but the decision would be theirs.

Back to the news feeds ...

After having their daughter give her life in a misguided attempt to assist Palestinians in keeping their weapon-transit tunnels open, Rachel Corrie's parents might have labored under a perception that the Palestinians might have some gratitude for their sacrifice ... or at least prove themselves worthy of her death on their behalf. Instead, to show just how civilized they can act when they have their own territory, members of the ruling Fatah faction tried to kidnap the Corries as they also blew up part of the Gaza-Sinai border, killing two guards:

PALESTINIAN society disintegrated further yesterday as gunmen from the ruling Fatah movement tried to kidnap the parents of an American activist who died trying to halt the demolition of Gaza homes, while other militants destroyed part of Gaza's border wall with Egypt - killing two guards.

Both actions, and the takeover of seven government offices in the town of Rafah, were undertaken by the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade in order to put pressure on the Palestinian Authority to release a militant arrested on Tuesday for alleged involvement in the kidnapping last week of the British human rights worker Kate Burton and her parents, Helen and Hugh.

Spokesmen for the gunmen appeared on al-Jazeera television unmasked and announced that there would be no voting in Rafah on 25 January, the day of parliamentary elections, unless the suspected kidnapper, Alaa al-Hams, is released.

It now looks like Ariel Sharon may have struck the most devastating blow against Palestinian statehood by allowing them to have Gaza all to themselves. Sharon, who may be dying at this very moment, gave the world a fishbowl for the Palestinians to demonstrate the endgame of their nihilism. They have now made a ruin of Gaza, attacked Egypt, kidnapped the parents of one of their own folk heroes, and turned the territory into a gangland instead of a state. Egypt has yet to respond to the murder of its guards, but one doubts that Cairo will react with brotherly love to a government that it insisted be given this golden opportunity to prove it could run Gaza as a state.

Even the PA now admits that the statehood project has been a catastrophe and that its failure has little to do with Israel, according to The Scotsman. The Palestinian people have used democracy to repeatedly validate a mandate for war. The political factions involved in the territories have refused to disarm. The Palestinian Authority, an oxymoron if ever there was one, has proven itself impotent without the old terrorist Yasser Arafat at its head. The lack of law and order has reduced the entire area to little more than a free-fire zone and terrorist's delight -- and the only authority that could possibly control the violence has no more incentive to intervene, thanks to decades of scolding for providing that service without any recognition of its necessity.

If Sharon passes away tonight, he can go with a satisfaction of forcing the Palestinians themselves to prove themselves unworthy of the world's concern.

UPDATE: AP also reports that Corrie's parents were the target of the attempt, but that their identity eventually saved them from capture:

Elsewhere, Palestinian gunmen burst into a Rafah house early Wednesday and tried to kidnap the parents of Rachel Corrie, who was killed in 2003 as she protested the impending demolition of a house in the southern Gaza town, according to a witness.

The five gunmen appeared to be affiliated with the Fatah movement, according to Samir Nasrallah, the Corries' host. The gunmen eventually relented after being told who their targets were, he said.

The Egyptians had to withdraw a half-mile from the Rafah crossing until orders finally came to fire on the hundreds of Palestinian gunmen swarming over the border. They have cut the electricity to Rafah now. Do you suppose they have an inkling what Israel had to tolerate now?

The USA Today headline speaks volumes about the sad state of today's American media in on-the-spot recording when it states, "Media forced to explain inaccurate reports on tragedy" -- and we're forced to ask, "Which tragedy?" In this case, USA Today is speaking about the tragic reporting that gave a nation false hope that twelve miners had miraculously survived an explosion in another tunnel:

Newspapers, wire services and cable news networks all failed in one degree or another to do their jobs properly when they reported that 12 men had survived the coal mine disaster in West Virginia, media critics and chastened editors say.

The collective failure was most apparent Wednesday morning on front pages across the nation. Headlines, including in about 45% of USA TODAY's 2.2 million copies, proclaimed the miners were alive. Other newspapers that put similar reports on their front pages in at least some editions include The New York Times, the Star Tribune of Minneapolis and The Washington Post. ...

Few of those stories raised doubts about the report's credibility. Most did not make clear to readers, for instance, that the news was based on secondhand accounts from family members of the trapped miners just before midnight ET Tuesday. Officials from the company that owned the mine had not confirmed that the men were alive. ...

"The job of reporters and editors is to stop and say 'we've got some possible good news, but it's not confirmed yet,' " Mitchell said later Wednesday in an interview. "That really didn't happen."

Mitchell thinks reporters and editors "got carried away" by what appeared to be miraculous news. Newspapers were also under deadline pressure, he said. Many were in the process of printing Wednesday's edition as the news was breaking.

What happened? A foreman heard a report from the rescue team on the squawk box and misunderstood what was meant by the report. He then called relatives by cell phone, who happened to be at the church with other family and friends of the lost miners, and word of the "miracle" spread like wildfire. The families told the reporters, who forgot that they are supposed to verify rumors before putting them on air as fact. Some even heard from the mine company that they would not confirm that anyone had survived but reported the miracle anyway. As the Anchoress noted, the reporters again showed a preference for emoting rather than reporting -- a tactic they celebrated during their so-called "reporting" of Hurrican Katrina.

And that's where the headline could just as easily have applied. Let's recall the number of myths reported by the Exempt Media during Katrina and the aftermath, a collection of disproven memes that still cloud the actual facts of what happened during the worst natural disaster in at least twenty years:

* Children getting raped and killed in the Superdome: urban legend
* Black people turning cannibal to survive: myth started by Randall Robinson
* Toxic flood waters that kill on contact: never happened
* Levees overflowed: myth
* The poor and black died disproportionately: false
* Snipers on a bridge targeting rescuers: shot down

So again, I ask in response to USA Today's headline -- which tragedy requires the explanation of media incompetence? I'd say both.

UPDATE: Lori Byrd explains why we won't get any explanations about Katrina reporting.

Avoiding the coming rush on contribution cases coming with the Abramoff plea deal, Hillary Clinton struck a deal of her own yesterday, quietly settling the Hillywood Fundraiser albatross for the moderate sum of $35,000:

A fund-raising committee for Senator Clinton's 2000 campaign has agreed to pay a $35,000 civil penalty and to concede that reports it made to the federal government understated by more than $700,000 donations to a California celebrity gala held to benefit her Senate bid.

The agreement between the committee, New York Senate 2000, and the Federal Election Commission ends the campaign finance regulation agency's inquiry into a complaint filed in 2001 by an entrepreneur who financed the fund-raising concert, Peter Paul.

"The civil payment assessed to New York Senate 2000 resolves the question of underreported in-kind contributions, and there will be no further action on this matter," an attorney for the fundraising committee, Marc Elias, said.

The conciliation agreement, ap proved at a Federal Election Commission meeting last month, has not yet been made public. However, three sources with knowledge of the terms outlined the deal to The New York Sun. Under the agreement, the committee will amend its public reports to show that Paul's in-kind gifts to the fund-raising concert were understated by $721,895. The committee and its treasurer, Andrew Grossman, agreed that there was probable cause to believe that the filings violated federal campaign finance law. However, the committee claimed that it relied on "reasonable processes" to verify the data it filed.

This provides partial vindication for Paul in his quest to get a court remedy for the pounding he took after the fundraiser. He is currently working with federal investigators on this issue, and the resolution appears to back his contention that the Clinton campaign was aware of the discrepancies and hid them from the FEC in order to claim that they only realized $57,000 from the multi-million-dollar fundraiser. Given the current political climate on the Hill, the FEC finding of malfeasance doesn't help Hillary's image much either, but right now she's not even facing anyone of significance for her re-election bid.

In the end, this probably doesn't hurt anyone too much, but it should remind voters of two important issues. One: the Clintons always seem to trod through the outer fringes of election law when it comes to raising money. Two: These Byzantine rules for designating cash in elections only delight attorneys and accountants, and in that order.

Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-RI) has decided to buck the current fashion of donating the money given to him linked to Jack Abramoff clients to charity, while the rest of Kennedy's colleagues distance themselves from Abramoff-directed contributions as fast as possible. Kennedy insists that he has nothing to hide -- since he's been taking Indian gambling money for ten years and acting on their behalf for, coincidentally, the same amount of time:

Rep. Patrick Kennedy, citing his support for American Indian causes, says he has no plans to return any of the $42,500 he took from tribes represented by GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

"He's proud to have their support," Kennedy chief of staff Sean Richardson said Wednesday. "He's got direct personal relationships with tribes. ... He looks at it as a human and civil rights issue, the fact that they're still not treated with the dignity and respect they deserve."

Kennedy, D-R.I., was the top congressional Democratic recipient of Abramoff-linked funds, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a campaign watchdog group that analyzed contributions from 1999 to 2005. He was eighth overall among members of Congress. ... The congressman has received contributions from 110 tribes and visited about a dozen reservations, Richardson said. Kennedy has accepted donations from Indian gambling interests since he first came to Congress a decade ago.

Well, one has to respect a man who stays bought once the money gets into the bank, but it seems a rather risky way to make a point. Kennedy claims that Abramoff never lobbied him on behalf of the tribes in question but that they donated to him outside of Abramoff's direction. Why? Kennedy says that he already delivers on their needs -- in effect, admitting that he acts on their behalf as long as the donations keep coming. His spokesman made clear that Kennedy has actively gone forth to ask for those donations.

It takes some imagination, however, to believe that Abramoff controlled these tribes to such an extent that he defrauded them, but they then retained so much of their autonomy from his advice and control that they threw even more money at politicians that Abramoff didn't bother to even visit. The amount isn't a drop in the bucket; Kennedy ranks eighth among all politicians for contributions from the Abramoff client list.

Kennedy wants to bluff his way through by claiming that contributions don't equal influence, while his peers want to argue the exact opposite for GOP contributions and actions. It's a bluff that should get called soon.

UPDATE: Buma and Rocketman wonder why I think the money should get returned or donated to charity if it didn't get used to bribe someone. Rocketman says that the politicians should stand up and say that they weren't bought at all. The problem is that Abramoff has admitted in court to defrauding clients out of their money and using it to buy influence. At best, the money that the politicians refuse to unload are likely the results of fraud and deceit.

And yes -- if the White House has donations from Abramoff's clients involved in the fraud, then they should cough it up right now.

The desperation of the anti-Alito forces has become obvious in their eleventh hour. They have released their pre-hearing advertising designed to convince Americans that Judge Alito should not get confirmed to the Supreme Court. Thanks to the ABA's unanimous decision yesterday to give Alito its highest rating -- "well qualified" -- the only avenue left to PFAW and AJ is character assassination:

The battle over the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. turned personal Wednesday with the announcement of new commercials that sharply escalated liberal attacks on him, moving beyond his legal views to attack his character and credibility instead. ...

Separately, the American Bar Association on Wednesday rated Judge Alito "well qualified" for the court, its highest rating, as expected. His supporters hailed the rating. Liberal groups said their complaint was his judicial philosophy, not his professional qualifications.

A commercial by one of the liberal groups, MoveOn.org Political Action, depicts Judge Alito as an actor receiving makeup and coaching.

Liberal groups have now admitted that the only opposition to Alito comes based on his politics, but instead of attacking those in advertising -- a sure turnoff for what most people still want to have handled in a non-partisan fashion -- they attack Alito's character instead. Not even the New York Times buys this approach, as David Kilpatrick skewers their insinuations:

The "job application" mentioned in the commercial refers to a 1985 memorandum Judge Alito wrote as a lawyer for the Reagan administration seeking a promotion. Judge Alito did express disagreement with the constitutional right to abortion, but the closest thing to the "excuse" described in the commercial is a statement attributed to Judge Alito by Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, after they met.

"He said, 'I was an advocate seeking a job,' " Mrs. Feinstein recounted. " 'It was a political job. That was 1985. I am now a judge.' " She said he added: " 'It is very different. I am not an advocate. I don't give heed to my personal views. What I do is interpret the law.' "

In the same memorandum, Judge Alito said he was a member of Concerned Alumni of Princeton, a defunct conservative organization that the commercial asserts "wanted to restrict African-Americans admissions to your college."

The group never explicitly sought to limit admissions of black students, but it did oppose the school's affirmative action admissions policies and urged the admission of more children of alumni.

There is no other record of evidence of Judge Alito's involvement besides the 1985 memorandum. In answering a Senate judicial questionnaire, Judge Alito wrote that he had "no recollection of being a member."

In other words, MoveOn and its allies want to fight Alito's nomination, for which the ABA notes he is eminently qualified, with half-truths and outright lies. And yet these people want us to question Alito's character?

Politics is like dating. When people start catching the stench of desperation, it turns off everyone but the weirdoes. That sounds like a perfect description of MoveOn and its allies in the mudslinging against Alito.

A source within Canadian political and media circles informed CQ earlier this afternoon that the media will break a story on an almost-forgotten scandal involving Options Canada, where $4.8 million disappeared without much oversight from the Liberal government in 1995. The money came from the Heritage Canada office, which disbursed the grant in three rushed payments on the eve of the 1995 referendum on autonomy for Quebec. The Ottawa Citizen reported in 2000 that the Liberal government had buried the scandal and closed its investigation without ever determining what happened to the millions of dollars given to Options Canada, which later merged into the No campaign on the referendum:

The federal government has quietly closed the books on a controversial $4.8-million grant to an obscure Montreal federalist group, but how the money was spent is still a mystery.

The grant, made in three hastily arranged payments to Options Canada by Heritage Canada on the eve of the 1995 referendum, violated most of the department's key accounting rules.

An internal Heritage audit was launched two years ago after reports about the grant began appearing in the Montreal media. The audit noted that the money had been issued on an "urgent" basis and found that it had been handed over in a way that "lacked the rigour and scrutiny one would expect for such large sums of money being given to a new unproved client."

The internal auditor's report said the grant had been processed with unusual speed. "In most cases, it was a matter of several days to receive (applications) and approve funds with little justification being asked for in regard to the funds already advanced," said the report. "In all, only thirty-three days were needed to receive, consider, recommend and approve three submissions totaling $4,810,000 ... the whole process suffered from a lack of sufficient attention to detail." ...

When the controversy over the grant first broke in the media three years ago, it was suggested that Options Canada was a front for the Council for Canadian Unity, a well-established organization that stood to lose its favourable tax status if it engaged in openly partisan politics.

Interestingly, Claude Dauphin ran Options Canada in 1995, and went from there to run the Council for Canadian Unity, according to this biography (en Francais, je le regrette). Claude Dauphin also worked for Paul Martin in 1997, two years after the $4.8M went to Dauphin's group, as "Senior Advisor for Quebec to Finance Minister Paul Martin" and has been rumored to be an active political advisor to Martin since.

All of that is the background. Watch the news for more recent developments in the next couple of days -- especially, I'm told, the Globe & Mail -- on the Options Canada grant money.

As I noted earlier today, the Globe & Mail reports that the RCMP has opened another review into Liberal Party management of government finances. This investigation makes the second major criminal inspection of Liberal governing during this election cycle, both focusing on the abuse of government funds for personal gain, and counting Adscam, the third serious circumstance of widespread corruption among Liberal leadership:

The RCMP is looking into a controversial $4.8-million grant that was awarded to a pro-Canada group at the time of the 1995 referendum on Quebec sovereignty, officials have told The Globe and Mail.

The money went out more than 10 years ago in three disbursements to a little-known group called Option Canada, which has since been disbanded.

On Dec. 23, 2005, the RCMP quizzed two officials at the department of Canadian Heritage about the 1995 expenditure. It remains unclear to how the entire grant was used, but a source said that there are questions surrounding the distribution of an amount, believed to be $300,000.

The pending release of a book on the Options Canada financial scandal apparently jolted the RCMP into action, after more than five years of letting the issue remain dormant. Options Canada also figures into the Adscam investigation; the Gomery report notes that advertising agency BCP received $2.6 million of the funds from OC for "media and advertising related services". BCP also got $160 million of government money in 1997 and 2000, according to the Gomery Report, and made over $120,000 in donations to the Liberals in return. BCP never signed a contract for their work in handling all media contacts for the Sponsorship Programme, which Gomery says suggests that "favouritism was involved".

Now, with that important connection to Adscam and the supposed limits of that scandal to Jean Chretien, the Options Canada scandal breaks out in earnest once more, and once more we have government money flowing through a Canadian government program designed to keep Quebec in the union to the advertising group BCP. Only this time, the instrument of that money is not a Chretien crony but a Martin associate, Claude Dauphin. Dauphin claims that even though he headed Options Canada and later its descendant organization, Council for Canadian Unity, that he had nothing to do with the day-to-day management of either group. That makes it very convenient for Dauphin, since he later worked for Paul Martin during his tenure as Finance Minister -- again, very coincidentally, at the same time that Adscam took millions of dollars out of the Canadian treasury and into Liberal Party coffers and the pockets of Liberal supporters.

During this election season, that may be three coincidences too many. Options Canada could very well provide the bridge from Adscam to Paul Martin whose existence the current Prime Minister has always denied. It also will prove that rather than a limited fluke, Adscam is part of a greater pattern of Liberal corruption that includes Options Canada and the income-trust insider trading. The RCMP has its work ahead of them to keep up.

The tipping point for Syrian tyranny may have come yesterday as former regime vice-president Abdul Halim Khaddam announced publicly that he wants to lead a popular revolution to oust the Bashar Assad dictatorship and to see the former opthalmologist in prison for the murder of Rafik Hariri. Meanwhile, he made clear, he remains available to the UN if it really wants to investigate Syrian crimes:

Former Syrian Vice-President Abdul Halim Khaddam wants to oust President Bashar al-Assad through a popular uprising, he told an Arabic newspaper.

Mr Khaddam told the Pan-Arab al-Sharq al-Awsat that the pressure for change had to come from within Syria.

On Thursday, he said Mr Assad should go to prison for complicity in the murder of former Lebanese PM Rafik Hariri. ...

Mr Khaddam said he had not asked other nations to help Syria's opposition.

"I did not contact anybody because change has to come from within. If the main vector for change is external, then the interests of the country are harmed."

Earlier, when democratic protests had first appeared in the streets of Beirut, some stirrings of domestic protest had been rumored in Damascus as well. They never coalesced into the kind of revolution seen in Lebanon or even in Egypt, where strongman Hosni Mubarak had to make some concessions to remain in power. The lack of a central figure inspiring loyalty could have been a missing ingredient in Syria -- and now anti-Assad forces may well have found one. Unfortunately, Khaddam is somewhat of a cipher. Is he expressing a desire to free Syria and introduce democracy, or does he just propose to replace Assad while keeping the same mechanisms of Syrian oppression at his own fingertips?

Unfortunately, we won't know that for sure until we see Khaddam in action. Considering Syria's track record on everything from interference with our mission in Iraq, funding for Hezbollah, threat to Israel, and the new strategic alliance with Iran, he could hardly be worse than Assad is now. Besides, if he isn't serious about democracy, then he should beware calling for a popular uprising. Those tend to get away from people who want to use them merely for a different brand of oppression.

At any rate, Khaddam's outspoken rhetoric may well spark a flame that will spell the end of Assad and his henchmen. Expect Assad to overreact and attempt to kill Khaddam, making him that much more of a martyr and causing an explosion of anger and protest that will make the Cedar Revolution look like an Easter parade.

The Democrats in Congress who have repeatedly been briefed on the NSA program on warrantless international intercepts appear to have contracted some weird kind of buyer's remorse. After more than four years of updates, during which they raised few objections to the program and issued no requests for its termination, suddenly one such member wants her money back. Jane Harman made headlines yesterday by writing a letter to the White House calling the program "illegal", a charge which mystified her Republican counterpart at many a briefing in the past:

In a sign of growing partisan division over domestic eavesdropping, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee on Thursday defended the Bush administration's limited briefings for Congress on the secret program and accused the committee's top Democrat of changing her position on the issue. ...

The Intelligence Committee chairman, Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, was responding to a statement Wednesday by Representative Jane Harman, Democrat of California, that the law requires that the full House and Senate Intelligence Committees be informed of the N.S.A. program. By briefing only the Republican and Democratic leaders of both houses and of the committees, the administration violated the law, Ms. Harman wrote in a letter to the president.

In a letter to Ms. Harman, Mr. Hoekstra said the briefings were in compliance with the National Security Act of 1947, which says the committees should be informed of intelligence activities, though "with due regard for" the need to protect secrets.

"The committee has been informed, in good faith by the president of the United States," through briefings he and Ms. Harman attended, Mr. Hoekstra wrote.

He said he was "surprised and somewhat bewildered" by Ms. Harman's letter because she had not previously complained about the briefings. Mr. Hoekstra told Ms. Harman that he found her letter to the president "completely incongruent" with her previous position. "In the past," he said, "you have been fully supportive of this program and the practice by which we have overseen it."

Harman certainly never called for an end to the program, and even in her letter now doesn't actually demand that the NSA stop reviewing warrantless intercepts. Like so much of what the Democrats say on national security, they want to complain about the sausage-making process while gorging on the bratwurst that results. Since the New York Times revealed the program's existence weeks back, Congressional Democrats have produced only two letters expressing any kind of reservations about the program -- and one of them endorses the White House view that presidential authorization was the only approval needed for it to continue.

In the meantime, since the story appears to have gone nowhere in terms of damage to the administration -- if anything, it's helped bolster his image as a wartime president protecting America -- the Democrats and the media want to start going on a fishing expedition. Earlier, Andrea Mitchell suggested that the NSA might have spied on a CNN reporter using a cell phone overseas without explaining what evidence gave rise to that hypothesis. Yesterday, perennial Congressional crackpot John Conyers got 26 other paranoids in the House to join him in demanding to know whether the NSA listened to international communications involving politicians or media:

Also Thursday, 27 House Democrats sent a letter to President Bush asking for information about the National Security Agency eavesdropping program, including whether communications from or to members of Congress and journalists were intercepted. ...

The security agency's program, disclosed last month in The New York Times, involves eavesdropping without court warrants on the telephone calls and e-mail messages of people in the United States who officials say have been linked to terrorism suspects overseas. ... Representative John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, released the 27 Democrats' letter. It asks for copies of all legal opinions on the spying program; the numbers of Americans singled out; and the names of agencies getting the information the agency collected.

The Times report has been specific about the kinds of communications captured and shared by the NSA under the program, reporting that the communications involved at least one end being outside the United States and involving people who have been linked to al-Qaeda or other recognized terrorist organizations by another source. Once that information came through, NSA has shared the data with other intelligence and law-enforcement agencies such as the DIA and the FBI -- just like the 9/11 Commission and Congressional reviews of 9/11 scolded the intelligence services for not doing prior to the devastating attacks. Not one of the people who have been briefed on this program for the last four years has reported or suggested even once that the program deviated from those very limited parameters, and even the Times reported that the NSA sought warrants on anything else.

Conyers and his fringies want to change the terms of the debate on the NSA program by misrepresenting it. Having failed to convince Americans that Bush should get impeached for using the NSA to keep track of international communications involving known or suspected Islamofascist terrorists, he wants to make everyone believe that the overworked NSA really used its limited resources to spy on Congress for George Bush. That's the purpose of these grandstanding letters to the White House and the press references to "domestic" spying, when the warrantless intercepts involved only international communications. It's a dodge, a flim-flam, an outright lie and a vicious smear -- but coming from Conyers, whose long list of paranoid conspiracy allegations almost outstrips his re-election record, it won't surprise anyone.

This kind of tail-chasing is what the New York Times has done for the security of the nation during a time of war. They may not have directly given aid and comfort to our enemies, but they have played enabler to the paranoid screwballs at the fringes of our politics. Perhaps that makes them feel proud, but it seems an awfully strange mission statement to me. (CNN link from Just One Minute)

We can expect the circus surrounding the nomination of Judge Sam Alito to the Supreme Court to pick up the intensity over the weekend. That may already have begun to some small extent with a warning from the loudmouth of the Democratic caucus on the Judiciary Committee, Chuck Schumer, explaining that Alito has to give more complete answers than anyone else:

Alito's hearing before the Judiciary Committee, scheduled to begin Monday, will last a week if it tracks last year's confirmation process for Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. A Democratic member, Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.), said yesterday that senators will ask extensive questions and insist that Alito answer them fully -- even if it means pushing the hearing into the following week.

All judicial nominees are required to respond to senators' queries, Schumer said in a speech in Washington. "The obligation, however, is greater for some nominees," he said. "It is greater when a nominee has taken a clear position on a legal matter."

Well, wait a minute. Wasn't Schumer one of those who argued that John Roberts had a greater requirement because he hadn't generated a public track record? The entire Democratic caucus made that argument repeatedly, both before and during Roberts' confirmation hearing. They complained about Roberts being a "stealth" candidate, devoid of any substantive judicial track record or public writings, and so demanded not just an overabundance of candor during his testimony before the committee but access to documents covered under attorney-client privilege. Now Democrats want to argue that the same holds true for a candidate with fifteen years of experience as a federal appellate jurist and a long track record of public writings.

Not that anyone expects Democrats to make sense or remain consistent in anything but knee-jerk antagonism for this administration, but one would think that the contradiction would be so apparent even to the slow-witted Democrats on Judiciary that such an argument would embarrass them. Apparently not.

In the meantime, both Schumer and his colleague Ted Kennedy maintained their pre-hearing sense of balance and open-mindedness. Kennedy told the press:

"We here in the United States are not going to stand for monarchial tyranny," he said, protesting Alito's support for "unfettered, unlimited power of the executive." He faulted Alito for belonging to a group that was "anti-black and also anti-women." Kennedy wondered if "the average person is going to be able to get a fair shake" under Alito.

Briefly, Kennedy rewrote the outcome of the 1964 election. "This nominee was influenced by the Goldwater presidency," he said. "The Goldwater battles of those times were the battles against the civil rights laws." Only then did Kennedy acknowledge that "Judge Alito at that time was 14 years old."

A questioner pointed out that Kennedy sounded like a sure bet against Alito. "I haven't reached a final conclusion," the senator demurred.

So Kennedy would be OK supporting an allegedly anti-black, anti-women nominee that argues for monarchical tyranny ... under exactly what circumstances? If a Clinton nominated him or her?

As I mentioned earlier, the First Mate and I will be traveling to Philadelphia this weekend to cover the action at Justice Sunday III, the event held by pro-Bush evangelicals the night before a Supreme Court nominee faces his or her Judiciary Committee hearings. Several bloggers will be on hand for the event, including La Shawn Barber, Stacy Harp, and Right Wing Sparkle, with Charmaine Yoest providing the coordination. We're hearing that Planned Parenthood and ACT-UP both plan to protest at JSIII, which should provide a bit more spice than the rather tepid (but well-mannered) protest at JSII in Nashville last fall. Afterwards, we will go to DC to cover the first couple of days of the hearings themselves, hopefully getting a chance to speak with some of the principals themselves but at least visiting a few good friends while we're there.

Look for a short but intense burst of dish-throwing from the Left to grab a few headlines. I doubt that it will amount to much else.

One of the questions regarding the sudden re-emergence of the Options Canada scandal is what suddenly prompted the RCMP to take another look for the missing $4.8 million. We assumed that the upcoming release of a new book on the controversy over Liberal management of government money, The Secrets of Options Canada by separatist journalist Normand Lester, might have put pressure on them to at least review their data. A source within political and media circles, however, says that the RCMP received more information indirectly from Lester's own investigation.

The book, which will only publish in French, includes juicy details about the apparent theft of $300,000 by somebody who had acted as a bookkeeper to Options Canada, and an attempt to cover this up. Apparently, the bookkeeper and Options Canada signed a hush-hush agreement which allowed the bookkeeper to keep the money as long as he (or she) remained quiet about its origins. Lester got ahold of a copy of this agreement, and somehow, a copy of it was leaked back to Heritage Canada bureaucrats late last year. It was these bureaucrats who, in a CYA move, decided to call in the RCMP.

In other words, the thieves at the top needed to keep the thieves at the bottom from blowing the entire scam -- and foolishly committed an agreement to paper. If this bears out, it would almost certainly mean at least one criminal investigation for corruption, and perhaps another for conspiracy to obstruct justice.

Stay tuned ...

One of the Democrats' key character assassination witnesses has suddenly withdrawn his name from the list expected to be called after Judge Samuel Alito testifies for his confirmation hearings, Fox News is reporting. Stephen Dujack had been expected to testify that Concerned Alumni of Princeton, a group in which Alito noted his membership on a resume, had leadership that exhibited racism, sexism, and "dirty tactics". However, Dujack's other writings may have led to a major credibility crisis:

A key witness to the character of Judge Samuel A. Alito has been removed from the Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats' testimony list, FOXNews.com has learned.

Stephen R. Dujack, editor of The Environmental Forum magazine and fellow Princeton University alumnus, was expected to testify about a controversial student organization that counted Alito as a member. Dujack confirmed to FOXNews.com late Friday that he was no longer testifying, but said he could not elaborate.

A spokesman for Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn, a committee member, said he had been notified of the list change shortly before 7 p.m. EST. Earlier on Friday, Cornyn's office circulated a 2003 Los Angeles Times editorial in which Dujack compared animals killed for food to victims of the Holocaust. Whether the editorial factored into the decision to drop Dujack from the witness list was not clear. ...

If Dujack is not replaced by another witness familiar with CAP, Democrats opposed to Alito's confirmation may have lost some ammunition. Phone calls to Kennedy's and ranking Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy's offices were not immediately returned.

Dujack apparently had no knowledge of Alito participating in or endorsing racist or sexist behavior, and the CAP platform had a broad political reach; Alito supposedly joined over a concern about Princeton freezing out the ROTC but never became active within the group In short, Dujack intended on smearing Alito by association. However, since Dujack would then have to explain his own political screeds written just two years ago equating steak with European genocide, someone finally thought better of the notion that he should deliver this testimony.

The Anchoress noted the strategy earlier today:

Frankly, I think if the Dems try this, Alito will eat them for lunch.

But that’s besides the point. This is downright indecent. Yes. Indecent. To try to destroy someone on something this flimsy, in the name of partisan politics is, finally, INDECENT.

And it hypocritically smacks of the sort of “McCarthyism” the Democrats are SUPPOSED to deplore. Think back to all of those stories you read about writers in the 1930’s, (and again in the 1950’s) who joined the Communist party because they wanted to impress a girl, or because they wanted a business contact, or simply because they just were attracted to its ideals - and had their careers ruined, unjustly, over those associations. We’ve been told for years that those people had been treated unjustly - that they were victims of an out-of-control ideology, remember? We were told that such victimization was a BAD thing, an ugly thing that weakened the very fabric of America and made a mockery of the Bill of Rights. Back when I was a Democrat, such stories were routinely held out as examples of “small-minded mob mentalities,” and fascist-leaning conformists. Now, suddenly, fascist tactics are acceptable? As long as they are politically expedient?

In the last analysis, all this demonstrates is the depth of desperation anti-Alito forces are feeling tonight. They have fifteen years of judicial opinions and records, and they can't find anything to disqualify Alito. The ABA unanimously voted him "well qualified" in all areas, including ethics and temperament. The only people they can find to sling mud at Alito are the kind of lunatics that equate eating meat with the genocide of six million Jews. That should tell them something about their chances of stopping Alito, and should convince them to admit that Bush has nominated a well-qualified jurist who deserves confirmation.

The Democrats on the Senate Judiciary may have bitten off more than they can chew in their attempts to smear Samuel Alito. In a surprise move, Alito's colleagues on the appellate bench will testify on his behalf as character witnesses, expecting to rebut a series of witnesses that do not know Alito but will attempt to hijack (or is that Dujack) the confirmation hearing in its final days:

In an unusual move, several federal appeals court judges intend to testify as Republican-sponsored witnesses next week at Senate confirmation hearings for their fellow jurist, Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito.

"They will testify about his approach to judging, as to whether he has an agenda, whether he is ideological, whether he pushes any specific point of view," Sen. Arlen Specter (news, bio, voting record), R-Pa., said Friday. Specter will wield the chairman's gavel at the Judiciary Committee hearings. ...

Republicans disclosed their list of witnesses for the hearings as IndependentCourt.org, a group of abortion rights, civil rights and other organizations opposed to Alito, announced new commercials that criticize him as a threat to individual rights.

"Your rights. Your privacy. Can Samuel Alito be trusted to protect them?" the commercial asks.

Recall the deer-in-the-headlights performances of the Democrats during the last confirmation hearing when they attempted to square off against John Roberts. Now try to picture them debating ethics with a gaggle of legal experts who have forgotten more about ethics than Joe "The Plagiarist" Biden, Ted "Chappaquiddick" Kennedy, and Chuck "Credit Record" Schumer have demonstrated in their entire careers.

I wish I'd taken two weeks off for this one now ...

The First Mate and I completed the first leg of our Judiciary Tour today, flying into Washington DC and driving to Philadelphia to report on the Justice Sunday III rally nearby on Broad Street tomorrow evening. I'll be live-blogging the event while the FM soaks up the atmosphere inside. We're going to try to squeeze in a visit to Independence Hall and the Betsy Ross House tomorrow morning, if possible, but it's going to be tight.

In the spirit of full disclosure, CQ readers should know that my flight and my room expenses have been covered by the Family Research Council. I'm neither rich enough nor fortunate enough to travel without checking the finances first, and they want to have bloggers play a major role in debating the effectiveness of their approach. No one has asked me to endorse or shade my opinions in return for this -- in fact, they've treated me all along as though I was doing them a favor by being here -- but just as with the last time, you are entitled to know where the money originated. I am not being paid for my blogging, and I will reimburse the FRC for the FM's flight when I return. I'm paying for my own rental car, and I was lucky enough to get a free upgrade to a Jeep Cherokee, too. Very nice ride from DC, thanks to Enterprise ...

As far as the live-blogging event for the committee hearings themselves, that has been arranged by Patrick Ruffini at the Republican National Committee. The RNC will not be covering any expenses on this trip, so that portion of the trip comes right out of my pocket -- really, just the hotel and the car rental, since we're flying in and out of DC for the JSIII event. No one at the RNC has asked me to slant my coverage at all in return for access at their HQ.

Have I covered all the disclosures? Hmmm ... no animals were hurt in the filming of this blog. Now I think I'm finished. Back to work.

Tom DeLay officially made clear what the House Republican caucus had already begun to realize -- that current political conditions make it impossible for him to return to his leadership position regardless what happens with his legal issues in Texas. In a letter to House Speaker Dennis Hastert, who may also be replaced soon, DeLay officially and permanently resigned from GOP leadership:

"During my time in Congress, I have always acted in an ethical manner within the rules of our body and the laws of our land," the Texas lawmaker told fellow Republicans in a letter informing them of his decision.

Still, referring to criminal charges he faces in his home state, he added, "I cannot allow our adversaries to divide and distract our attention."

DeLay temporarily have given up his leadership post after he was charged, but always insisted he would reclaim his duties after clearing his name.

His turnabout cleared the way for leadership elections among Republicans buffeted by poor polls and by lobbyist Jack Abramoff's confessions of guilt on corruption charges in connection with congressional wining and dining.

Most Republicans, including me, had readily stood by DeLay while Ronnie Earle pursued one of the most partisan public kneecappings of all time. However, the sudden plea deal from Jack Abramoff makes DeLay's position untenable. DeLay and Hastert share responsibility for the access given to Abramoff as part of their K Street makeover plan, a good idea gone bad with Abramoff's admitted offenses creating a crisis for the party. That, more than anything else, justified ending DeLay's run at the helm; he rightly took responsibility for putting the Republicans in their current position.

As much as the resignation might annoy us because of the delight it will cause Earle, the GOP needed DeLay to leave the field open for new blood. Dafydd disagrees with me, and writes about how regional considerations might play a role in the sudden welcome of DeLay's resignation. Others may protest that DeLay has not been found guilty of anything and should not need to resign at all. However, leadership positions are all about politics, not legal status; if one is reduced to saying "I haven't been convicted", there's already a problem, especially when the power broker that politico introduced to everyone as his good buddy suddenly pleads out to numerous felonies regarding corruption in multiple courts.

The AP says that Hastert's grip on power is secure, but I wouldn't take that bet. Not too many people have been impressed with Hastert's run as Speaker, and the K Street project involved him almost as much as DeLay. The GOP should be focusing on cleaning house and electing legislative leadership that Americans can trust to do so. I don't think Bill Frist and Denny Hastert have household names for anti-corruption efforts. We need a Giuliani of the House and Senate to lead by example and bring ethics back to the forefront of GOP legislative reform.

Stephen Hayes continues his signal work on behalf of Americans, pressing a recalcitrant government to fully disclose the millions of documents uncovered in Iraq that paint quite a different picture of the Saddam regime than the media has reported. Finally able to gain access to the data but not the documents, Hayes writes in this week's Weekly Standard that the US has plenty of evidence that Saddam had deep connections with terrorists -- having trained thousands of them himself:

THE FORMER IRAQI REGIME OF Saddam Hussein trained thousands of radical Islamic terrorists from the region at camps in Iraq over the four years immediately preceding the U.S. invasion, according to documents and photographs recovered by the U.S. military in postwar Iraq. The existence and character of these documents has been confirmed to THE WEEKLY STANDARD by eleven U.S. government officials.

The secret training took place primarily at three camps--in Samarra, Ramadi, and Salman Pak--and was directed by elite Iraqi military units. Interviews by U.S. government interrogators with Iraqi regime officials and military leaders corroborate the documentary evidence. Many of the fighters were drawn from terrorist groups in northern Africa with close ties to al Qaeda, chief among them Algeria's GSPC and the Sudanese Islamic Army. Some 2,000 terrorists were trained at these Iraqi camps each year from 1999 to 2002, putting the total number at or above 8,000. Intelligence officials believe that some of these terrorists returned to Iraq and are responsible for attacks against Americans and Iraqis. According to three officials with knowledge of the intelligence on Iraqi training camps, White House and National Security Council officials were briefed on these findings in May 2005; senior Defense Department officials subsequently received the same briefing.

The photographs and documents on Iraqi training camps come from a collection of some 2 million "exploitable items" captured in postwar Iraq and Afghanistan. They include handwritten notes, typed documents, audiotapes, videotapes, compact discs, floppy discs, and computer hard drives. Taken together, this collection could give U.S.
intelligence officials and policymakers an inside look at the activities of the former Iraqi regime in the months and years before the Iraq war.

Even now, Hayes tells us, only 2.5% of these documents have been translated, and even those rarely get used to investigate anything but the failure to find WMD. Rep. Peter Hoekstra, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, has expressed frustration that the only response he gets when he demands to know the status of expoiting these documents is "we're getting around to it". Yesterday, he got an additional response from John Negroponte, the new Intelligence czar -- it's at the top of Negroponte's list. And that check? Yeah, it's in the mail, Pete.

Read the whole essay by the indispensable Hayes, and then be sure to press your Congressmen and Senators to put pressure on the supposedly-now-nimble intelligence services to get their resources in gear now.

Liberal trial attorney Caren Dean Thomas has some advice for her fellow Democrats regarding the nomination of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, advice she offers in the opinion pages of the New York Times today:

The president took the high road on this nomination. He juggled his politics and his public relations, and while I don't like either, I have to be grateful for the quality of lawyer, and individual, who emerged as the nominee.

We have to decide whether the unfortunate tradition begun with Robert Bork's nomination should be continued indefinitely or whether, with the wisdom of hindsight, we exhume it only when absolutely warranted. Liberals among us have got to get real - to press for the finest jurists a conservative administration is willing to offer, and to spend our capital in that pursuit.

Unlike the nutcases like Stephen Dujack that Democrats have scraped out from under the rocks to represent their opposition to Alito, Thomas actually knows what she's talking about. Thomas knew Alito during his days at Yale Law School, along with a cute couple named Bill and HIllary. She also had Robert Bork as one of her professors, and explains why she believes that the Democrats were correct to attack Bork while being way off the mark about Alito:

Professor Bork coupled a distaste for the Bill of Rights with a devotion to the Commerce Clause that made it the centerpiece of our entire semester. The privilege against self-incrimination, we were told, should have been limited only to cases of physical intimidation and torture - certainly it should not be invoked to protect a defendant from verbal self-incrimination on the witness stand. Charming and articulate, Professor Bork told us that he had left the practice of law to pursue the more intellectual aims of teaching because, frankly, he just didn't care that much about people. ...

When I finished law school I clerked for Leonard P. Moore, a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. The contrast with Professor Bork was stark. Judge Moore checked his ego at the courthouse door. He was politically conservative, but his great integrity, restraint and personal devotion to the law made him a fair and sensitive jurist. He hired clerks irrespective of their political views - indeed, he relished the exchange of ideas with clerks whose ideas were different from his own. He was open-minded in his discussions with us and weighed all viewpoints carefully.

Sam Alito's character suggests he'll follow the tradition of Judge Moore. In our class Sam was respected for his intellectual ability. He was quiet, but when he did speak his remarks were thoughtful and to the point. He wasn't showy or pretentious. He listened to others. I can't recall Sam prejudging an issue or reaching arbitrary conclusions. He worked hard and was never ashamed of that, even at a school that favored the appearance of effortless brilliance.

I disagree with Thomas about Bork; I still think he was treated terribly by people who couldn't carry Bork's briefcase in terms of ethics and intelligence, especially Ted Kennedy, who masterminded the first "borking". However, her support of the block thrown at Bork makes her defense of Alito all that more compelling -- as does her description of Bork the professor, actually.

Thomas wants the Democrats to come to the understanding that they risk losing their credibility if they cannot come to grips with the fact that elections have consequences, and that turning every judicial confirmation into a proxy election harms political and judicial processes. Too bad the Judiciary Democrats have chosen instead to take counsel from people who equate meat eaters with genocidal Nazis.

The FBI arrested a South Korean businessman that reportedly has been trying to reach a deal with federal investgators in return for testimony on the Oil-for-Food scandal. Tongsun Park apparently reached that deal late last week and will begin outlining his involvement in UN corruption and bribery:

The indictment, released on Friday, refers to attempts to buy the influence of two unnamed UN officials. A separate investigation - led by Paul Volcker, a former Federal Reserve chairman - into the scandal concluded that Mr Park and another accused man tried to pass $1 million to the former UN secretary-general, Boutros Boutros-Ghali.

The report said there was no evidence that Mr Boutros-Ghali received or agreed to receive the money. The Volcker commission also found that in 1997 Mr Park invested $1 million in a Canadian company linked to the son of Maurice Strong, a close aide to Kofi Annan, the current secretary-general, in an attempt to secure his help for Iraq. The report found no evidence that Mr Strong was involved.

"Park's arrest is an important step in the federal government's efforts to bring to justice those who broke US law in undermining the humanitarian purpose of that programme," said Michael Garcia, the US attorney in Manhattan.

He said Mr Park arranged meetings in 1993 between himself, a UN official and another co-operating witness, including one at the official's Manhattan apartment. Mr Park and the other witness also allegedly arranged a meeting in 1993, in Geneva, between the official, identified as "UN Official No 1", and two Iraqi representatives.

The FBI said in a court document that at a New York restaurant in 1996 the government witness met Mr Park, an Iraqi official and another high-ranking figure (referred to as "UN Official No 2"), who left the meeting early.

While the Volcker Report gives the public some good information on the scope and nature of the corruption at Turtle Bay, clearly it has done nothing to resolve it. The parallel investigation by the United States, meanwhile, has resulted in several guilty pleas by some smaller fish and secured their testimony on the actions of the big fish. The methodical and relentless pursuit of the corrupt has already demonstrated what a joke the so-called "containment" of Saddam Hussein became, as his jailers over time readily and greedily became his co-conspirators, while UN executive management either did nothing to stop it or, more likely, took part in its profitability.

Now we have Boutros Boutros-Ghali on the hook. Kofi Annan has to wonder when his turn is coming.

The Democrats intend on using the ongoing scandal surrounding Jack Abramoff as a way to talk about the supposed "culture of corruption" surrounding the GOP, and have referenced the disgraced lobbyist's donation lists to exploit the catchphrase, "[Republican] knew Jack". Well, according to CapitalEye, a whole lot of people knew Jack, and not just Republicans. CQ reader John K sends the link tonight with the list of Democrats to which Abramoff's attention was given.

Make no mistake; the list contains more GOP politicians, and more money went to Republicans. That follows from the fact that the GOP controls more power, and has since the midpoint of Clinton's first term. But rather than it being a 20-1 phenomenon, the data shows it to be much closer to 2-1. Here's a summary of the last four electoral cycles:

Cycle .......... Dems ..........GOP
2000 .......$216,470........$409,513
2002........$552,230.......$1,478,740
2004........$620,503........$843,835
2006........$152,470.......$177,500

In fact, the ratio comes almost exactly 2-1 during this period, with Abramoff-linked donations accounting for $2.9 million to Republican coffers and $1.5 million for Democrats over this period. Over the last four cycles, the trend has not been towards the GOP, either; the Democrats got an ever-increasing share.

This doesn't exonerate the GOP for its association with Abramoff. But if people think that Abramoff represents a "culture of corruption" that relates only to Republicans, they obviously don't know Jack.

UPDATE: CQ reader and frequent commenter Monkei says: "Great. Let's have a big party and get all of them at once. Either party, either right or left wing. How does that sound to you?" It sounds good to me, which has been my point all along.

We're all here at the Greater Exodus Baptist Church in Philadelphia, preparing for the start of Justice Sunday III. The bloggers are all here on hand, the church has completed its security sweep, and our wireless looks terrific. I'm joining La Shawn Barber, Right Wing Sparkle, and Stacy Harp (as well as the First Mate) discussing the earlier church service. We're prepping for the press conference and having a blast.

I even ran into a little protest while putting my car permit on the dashboard. I ran into Joey Steel from World Can't Wait, which wants to warn the world of the impending theocracy that George Bush wants to impose on the US. Mr. Steel seemed particularly incensed that the Family Research Council has selected a primarily African-American church to stage JSIII -- as if the church itself didn't choose to support this cause themselves. He seemed non-psychotic, so I spent a minute with him and took a couple of his flyers into the church to show the other bloggers. He wants to warn the world of the coming fascist upheaval in the US.

It seems that something about people of Christian background getting together to exercise their right to political speech that frightens the people of World Can't Wait. So who are these people that get frightened by one televised rally? A look at their advisory board shows a few names of interest:

Lynne Stewart, attorney
Rosemary Candelario, pro-choice activist
Boots Riley , hip hop performer
Gore Vidal, writer
Warren Hern MD, Physician and pro-choice activist
Sunsara Taylor, writer
Mark Crispin Miller, professor & writer
Thomas Olmos, attorney
Mark Leno, CA State Assembly

Lynne Stewart, people will recall, got convicted of assisting Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman in getting messages to his followers that resulted in several deaths from terrorist attacks in Egypt. Sunsara Taylor is also known as Revolutionary Worker #1265. Mark Crispin Miller wrote the blockbuster you never read, Fooled Again: How the Right Stole the 2004 Election and Why They'll Steal the Next One Too (Unless We Stop Them). In other words, this isn't really even the mainstream Left we're seeing outside right now. I assured Joey I'd mention his concerns on my blog, and CQ readers can decide for themselves what they want to believe -- whether free speech belongs only to the atheists, or if Christians can be allowed to speak on their political beliefs.

We're going to get the presser going in a moment, and I'll be live-blogging it.

3:01 ET - Activity has started to build in the media room at the Greater Exodus Baptist Church. It doesn't appear to be centered around the food table as it has been for the past hour, so it looks like we might get going soon ...

3:02 - Yeah, I know, the bloggers got to the table first, but that's the New, Younger, More Nimble Media for you ...

3:02 - Start is delayed for ten minutes due to a sound issue. Attention returns to the free food.

3:12 - Problem solved; we'll start in three minutes.

3:18 - Tony Perkins starts (President, FRC): Congregation excited about the opportunity to host JSIII. Runs down the list of grievances that "present a clear and present danger" to the exercise of free religion. Explicitly denies that he wants to impose a theocracy on the US.

3:23 - Dr. Herbert Lusk says the family in the US is "on the ropes" and says an alliance between GEPC and the FRC is obvious. "It's not about Herb Lusk ... It's about Jesus." He reminds the media that he played for the Eagles just long enough to be able to study for his mission. He loves the city; "I mean them no harm -- I mean them justice." Dr. Lusk spoke softly but eloquently, and spontaneously; he didn't have any notes for the presentation.

3:25 - Colin Hanna, President, Let Freedom Ring: Says that this is not a political reality, but a demand for a return to the liberty of free speech. He spearheaded the effort for Chester County, PA to get the 3rd Appellate Circuit to unanimously rule that government entities could indeed display the Ten Commandments on public grounds.

3:33 - Charmaine Yoest, VP FRC: We have every right to speak out and we intend to do so. Dr. Lusk adds to his comments -- "This is not a right issue or a left issue; it's a righteous issue."

3:35 - Question about this site as the selection for JSIII. Perkins notes that Philadelphia is central to American liberty and they wanted to stage the event in that kind of setting.

3:37 - Tom Edsell from the WaPo says that the churches usually win the cases, so there should be no cause for the concern. Perkins replies that the cost and effort to win at the appellate level is so onerous as to intimidate people from expressing their religion.

3:45 - USA Today wonders why Jerry Falwell did not get invited to speak at the first two Justice Sunday rallies but got included in this. Perkins responded by noting what a nice man Falwell is -- "a big teddy bear", Perkins calls him.

3:47 - Kim Hefling wants to know how this will support Alito. Perkins notes that the FRC has taken no position on Alito's confirmation and won't prior to his confirmation. Perkins follows up by saying that the FRC hopes Alito gets a fair shake and an honest vote.

3:49 - Dr. Lusk interrupts, saying that his greatest hope will be to show those people who have never been in an African-American worship service how his community celebrates their faith. Stacy asks about the reported break-in from last night, but Dr. Lusk clarifies that the incident involved someone interrupting his service yesterday evening. He got a good laugh when he said, "Of course, when he spoke out, we laid hands on him -- and he soon departed." The intruder shouted something about the separation of church and state, but no one knows if the man represented an organization.

One of the advantages of attending these events in person along with the other media folks is a chance to see how news gets presented from the ground up. The present case in point: headline writers. Kimberly Hefling from the AP filed a report on the press conference and the run-up to the event. Despite the straightforward report she wrote, which outlined the event on a clearly factual and non-biased basis, this was the headline in the Yahoo! feed:

Conservatives Split Ahead of Alito Hearing

I recognized Kimberly's name and walked over to where she's sitting, and introduced myself. I asked her if she knew anything about the headline, and she looked at her own AP feed. The headline that came from the AP itself just noted that "Conservatives Rally On Eve Of Alito Hearings". It seems that Yahoo! must read between the lines to see a conservative split that doesn't exist on Alito, and certainly doesn't exist here at the JSIII event.

Don't blame Kimberly Hefling for this one, or even the AP. This one belongs to the yahoos at Yahoo!

Another moment of media sausagemaking -- expect the Washington Post report on JSIII to lead with implied criticism of Dr. Herbert Lusk, the pastor of the Greater Exodus Baptist Church, for staging this event after garnering over a million dollars in federal government grants for community-building projects. Those grants, covered last week by the New York Times, come from the Bush effort to channel more money through established community groups such as churches so that the funds go directly to solving problems rather than recreating another bureaucracy. No one has offered any evidence that Dr. Lusk has not used the money effectively or kept it for himself, but the implication will be there nonetheless.

Watch for it tomorrow or tonight...

The assorted bloggers decided to take on the throng of protestors outside the Greater Exodus Baptist Church around 5:30 this afternoon, so the four of us trekked across the street in the 30-degree weather to talk to all five of them. Actually, when we started, only three protestors stood across the street from the church, but two more joined in once we got there.

Stacy and Sparkle got photos and LaShawn got audio of the casual interviews, while I just more or less chatted with them. They represented no organization, just themselves, although they had laser-print signs that they obviously made at home. The first three all seemed very young, and two of them had little to say about the event other than they "hated those people" (the Christians, not specifically the GEBC). One of them appeared somewhat passionate about his protest, but he still mostly talked in slogans. His sign read "Want a Theocracy? GO TO IRAN!" and like Joey Steele earlier today, he somehow equated Christians giving their opinion on politics to an impending theocracy.

The two newcomers turned out to be a gay couple in their thirties that wanted to protest against Bush's anti-gay policies. They turned out to be much more lucid about their intent, as well as their chances of changing anything with this event. I spoke at length with one of the two men, who lamented the poor turnout for any kind of protest and wondered where the Alito opposition went tonight. Gay marriage was his partner's main cause, and I found out that Pennsylvania does not allow for domestic partnerships, either. According to the two men, Ed Rendell pushed partnerships through as mayor of Philadelphia but has apparently refused to stand up for them statewide now that he's governor. I'm about as tepid as can be on gay marriage -- I don't oppose it as long as it becomes law through non-judicial means -- but domestic partnerships should present few issues for conservatives who believe in freedom to enter into contractual relationships.

Fortunately, when we returned, Charmaine Yoest brought in hot coffee from a local Dunkin' Donuts. Man, it's cold out there.

We're listening to the choir (and watching them now on the live feed from the media center), and I can at least promise potential viewers that the music is going to be better than JSII. Not to denigrate the efforts of the last event, but the music tended far too much to the tame. The choir here has already sung a couple of heart-stirring songs, and this is just warm-up.

We have the schedule in front of us for tonight. This will be a shorter program than the marathon that JSII became. Senator Santorum will speak at around 7:04 pm ET, but I'm looking forward more to Dr. Lusk at 7:20. He's taking eight minutes and I think he's been winding up all afternoon to deliver a blazing fastball tonight. He's warming up the crowd right now, but an audio problem kept it from coming into the media center.

Dr. Lusk held Tony Perkins' hand up and said, "You know what makes the Devil mad? This!!" This should be a resounding success for the GEBC and the FRC, just on enthusiasm alone.

7:02 - Dr. Lusk opens up the festivities on the same note that he left the crowd, and he gets the crowd on their feet to greet Tony Perkins. Perkins thanks congregations and pastors around the nation that have tuned in for the JSIII event.

7:04 - The protestors have swelled to about 75 or so and have pushed into traffic, drawing attention from the Philadelphia police department. ACT-UP appears to comprise most of the additional protestors, who have brought the usual effigy of George Bush.

7:05 - Santorum notes that William Penn spent his life establishing religious freedom in Pennsylvania. He is focusing on judicial activism and the destructive, corrosive nature of it on representative democracy. He challenges the audience to answer "No!" to Democratic efforts to "drag the hearings into the gutter". Not a bad speech, really, and pretty darned short.

7:13 - Martin Luther King's neice, Dr. Alveda C King, starts off with a song and a reading from Leviticus. She quotes a warning from her uncle that America has left God behind, an unconscious act stemming from our material pursuits. She derides the "little gods that are here today and gone tomorrow". She gives a powerful rendition of MLK's speeches. She finishes with "We Shall Overcome", which raised a couple of eyebrows in the media center.

7:17 - So far, the FRC has learned a lesson from the last event. The speakers have focused on the specific issue of religious freedom and the problem of judicial activism, instead of getting hung up on homosexuality.

7:21 - Dr. Lusk comes back for his speech, starting with Psalms. He moves to gay marriage, perhaps a mistake, but Democrats should note the big response it gets from the congregation.

7:25 - "I may not speak for all black people ... but I speak for some black people!" That gets an ovation. And that's just the warm-up. "The church has worn out a million hammers ... the more you hit us, the stronger we get." This man knows how to get people up out of their seats. He does not disappoint. "Take a look at the graveyard. All the men who have put their names above Jesus have passed away, only known for the desolation they have left behind." That could be the epitaph of the 20th century.

7:32 - Just looked at the Steeler score and startled the other bloggers. The Iron City Gange leads the Bengals 31-17 with 4:03 left in the game.

7:34 - Dr. Dobson takes the stage. This time he's at the event; for JSII he could only attend via video. He starts off by thanking Dr. Lusk and says, "Wherever you're fighting, I want to be standing beside you."

7:39 - He gives a tepid speech but a grim and detailed description of partial-birth abortion. He may not have the style to hang with Dr. Lusk -- he seems oddly off his game tonight as a speaker -- but the speech itself is pretty good. This time, he's focusing on the fact that the court has bypassed the legislature and the people in deciding on issues like gay marriage (rejected in every state where the question has been posed) and partial-birth abortion. This is a more effective presentation than the last event, which tended to go off about the "agenda" of the homosexual lobby in dark and scary tones. This presents the argument more objectively.

7:43 - Right Wing Sparkle laughs at me for giving a silent fist-pump. She knows I just peeked at the final score for the Steelers game -- 31-17 Pittsburgh.

7:45 - Jerry Falwell comes up next. I'm curious on how he will be received here, and what kind of speech he wants to give.

7:50 - "If the pulpit is not to address [moral] issues, then what are we to address?" He wants to celebrate the culmination of a 30-year effort to bring conservatism back into the mainstream, and it's hard to argue that he hasn't succeeded. In 1976, people thought Ronald Reagan too extreme to ever get nominated, let alone elected -- and at the time, they were right, but not about Reagan. Reagan had to wait until the Left had destroyed its credibility before people realized that Reagan wasn't extreme at all. And the Left has done the same thing over its desperation over John Roberts and Sam Alito.

7:54 - Falwell gives a better speech than Dobson, using a warm, inclusive, and sunny disposition to make up for the lack of fervor that easily contrasts him with Dr. Lusk.

7:56 - Some of you may wonder why I haven't included any photos on my posts this time. Unfortunately, I misplaced my digital camera. Stacy, however, has posted a number of great photos of the event and the protests.

8:02 - So far, I think this event has been more successful in pushing through a positive message. It hasn't focused on a negative, us-vs-them sort of rhetoric.

8:04 - The latest cause, the ACLU suit against the Indiana state house's tradition of prayer in opening its sessions, gets an interesting audible comment from La Shawn. When the taped presentation lays out the case and the ACLU's efforts to keep Christians from uttering the name Jesus Christ in public venues, she asks, "Who are the real fascists here?"

8:10 - Bishop Wellington Boone proves to be a terrific finish for the evening. There will be a close by Tony Perkins, but the emotional close comes with Bishop Boone. What a powerful speaker! To the liberals: "Don't spit in my face and call it rain!" I hope everyone has a chance to watch this man on the FRC site. It's an amazing speech.

8:15 - Time to do what they have spent all night urging us to do -- pray!

The First Mate and I made the drive from Philly to DC just after the Justice Sunday event closed up. I have to tell you, the people at the Greater Exodus Baptist Church did a marvelous job hosting and securing the event; they put on quite a professional show. The FM and I also found our one-night stay at the Marriott Residence Inn in downtown Philly to be quite nice; the staff there went out of their way to keep asking if they could do anything for us and wishing us a nice vacation. (If they only knew ....) We did get a couple of hours this morning to see historic Philly, including a hansom carriage ride, the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, and the Betsy Ross House. The latter attraction had a wonderful charm to it, and the people who play the characters on the tour took very good care to assist the FM and to work around a couple of tricky staircases for us. At $4 a pop, the self-guided audio tour is a bargain. Be sure to see it if you visit the city.

Big, big thanks to the FRC and to Charmaine Yoest, who coordinated the event for the bloggers.

Tomorrow I'll be blogging from the RNC offices starting around 9 am. In the meantime, I'm going to sleep.

The Conservatives have ridden the wave of momentum coming from multiple financial scandals to the top of the polls, according to the Globe & Mail this morning. Their new polling shows a national lead for Stephen Harper and his Tories of eight points over Paul Martin and the suddenly hapless Liberals:

Stephen Harper's Conservatives have opened up an eight-percentage-point advantage over the Liberals, the biggest gap of the campaign going into tonight's crucial debate, a new poll shows.

The survey, conducted for The Globe and Mail and CTV News by the Strategic Counsel, also shows that voters believe the Conservatives hold values that are closest to theirs, a turnaround from the first week of the campaign when Canadians identified more closely with Liberal values.

"This is huge," said Allan Gregg, chairman of the Strategic Counsel. "This really does show . . . that by virtue of the kind of campaign they've run, an issues-based, measured, moderate campaign, they have slowly convinced the population that they are not kind of offside the mainstream of Canada.

"If they can maintain this, they have basically taken the Liberals' trump card away."

If that is the basis for the gap, it could well come from a fury about the scandal-ridden governance of Paul Martin more than anything else. While people may want the government to provide them with cradle-to-grave services, they have begun to see that the cost results in a lack of accountability and even a shield from any kind of consequences for all but the most corrupt governments. The only way to keep politicians from raiding the till is to reduce the amount of money and power they can access -- and that fundamental value changes the calculation on all the others.

That lesson applies to Americans as well as Canadians, as both electorates have found out yet again.

The G&M poll shows the Tories up over the Liberals, 37-29, getting close to the range where Harper could wind up with a majority government. Even more important, the NDP has faded in Ontario along with the Liberal majority, and the Tories now own a 41-40 edge over the Liberals in their power base. That could mean a slew of new seats for Harper and deadly trouble for both Martin and NDP leader Jack Layton. That will be the key inside number to track in two weeks when the election results start coming in. If Ontario goes to the CPC, look for a majority government for Harper -- a stunning turn of fortune for the man who has endured repeated slurs about "hidden agendas" and was seen as unready for leadership as recently as two months ago.

And Martin has one last worry: if Harper gets his majority, the investigations into Adscam, Option Canada, and the income-trust insider trading will truly begin in earnest, as well as any other malfeasances. As one commenter from the Canadian capital put it, shredders in Ottawa have begun working overtime now.

According to Katherine Jean Lopez, Michael Ledeen (and Dr. Zin), al-Qaeda terror chief Osama bin Laden died three weeks ago from kidney failure and was buried in Iran:

It seems clear, however, that there is a greater rapidity of change, accompanied — inevitably — by the passing of the leaders of the old order. This is particularly clear in the Middle East, where seven key figures have been struck down in the past six years: King Hussein of Jordan in February, 1999. King Hassan of Morocco in July of the same year. Syrian dictator Hafez al Assad in June of 2000. Yasser Arafat of the PLO in April, 2004. King Fahd of Saudi Arabia in May of last year. Ariel Sharon of Israel was incapacitated by a stroke in early January. And, according to Iranians I trust, Osama bin Laden finally departed this world in mid-December. The al Qaeda leader died of kidney failure and was buried in Iran, where he had spent most of his time since the destruction of al Qaeda in Afghanistan. The Iranians who reported this note that this year's message in conjunction with the Muslim Haj came from his number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, for the first time.

If true, it would explain why Osama passed up the chance to make the address that Zawahiri made, but would press the Bush administration to escalate its confrontation with Iran. After all, a key part of the Bush Doctrine was to go after those nations that harbor our enemies, and none was bigger in a symbolic sense than Osama. On the other hand, if he's dead now, that may actually play against action against Teheran to a limited sense, although no one doubts that their technical and monetary support for Islamofascist terror groups like AQ and Hezbollah will suddenly dry up anytime soon.

The article finishes with this summation:

The architect of 9/11 and the creator of Palestinian terrorism are gone. The guiding lights of our terrorist enemies are sitting on cracking thrones, challenged by young men and women who look to us for support. Not just words, and, above all, not promises that the war against the terror masters will soon end with a premature abandonment of what was always a miserably limited battlefield. This should be our moment.

Only if we have the will and the courage to grasp it...

Here's the lineup of bloggers for the forum, courtesy of Mary Katherine Ham:

• Tim from Townhall Capitol Report
• Michelle Malkin
• Capt. Ed
• Matt Margolis
• Ian Schwartz of The Political Teen
• Flip Pidot
• Pat Cleary of NAM
• Justin Hart of Rightside Redux
• Bob Hahn of RedState
• Mark Noonan of GOP Bloggers

Quite a lineup ... check them all out.

Our first event of the day was a meeting with RNC chair Ken Mehlman, who reviewed the strategy for the GOP in the upcoming electoral cycle. He opened the conference with some background remarks and then dove into the specifics of electoral and legislative strategy and took a number of questions from the assorted bloggers here at the RNC Blogger Forum.

I'll post this and update as we go ....

1. Positive agenda for change -- Defending the status quo won't do.

Need to be seen as reformers -- leadership already turning towards that. We need a smaller government to combat this kind of corruption. Reduce government, reduce corruption. But then how do we reform lobbying and government? Full and quicker disclosure. Keep in mind that what Jack Abramoff did was theft and kickbacks, and that should always be aggressively prosecuted.

2. Election is a choice, not a referendum -- Easier than in 2004, and that probably gets back into local choices.

3. Motivate and persuade simultaneously -- Still have to excite the base while finding new voters for the GOP.

Immigration will prove a major problem for motivating the base. Need more money, technology, and people at the border. "If you're not protecting the border, you're not protecting the country in a post-9/11 world." Guest-worker programs enforce the law; supply and demand disincentivizes people from following the law. We need to integrate the demand into the reform to leverage as much support as possible.

4. Remind people who the Democrats are.

5. Run better local campaigns

Other notes:

Entitlements are the true long-term economic problem, not deficits; the short-term deficit is only 2.6% of the GDP. However, our unfunded liabilities from Medicare and other programs threaten our long-term fiscal stability. We need entitlement reform based on market economics and ownership. Mehlman uses Medicare as a model, and he acknowledges Social Security came first because it already had bipartisan support.

Why are energy prices high? More global competition for energy means prices will go higher, unless more supply comes on line. People looking for higher taxes do not understand that this is a market issue, simple supply and demand.

Alito -- higher qualifications than anyone in 70 years. An outrageous effort to smear Judge Alito --"[Nan Aron] is the puppet master, and the Democrats are the puppets." The Vanguard issue has been repeatedly reviewed by ethics panels and found to be no problem. The ABA rating gets based on ethics, and Vanguard obviously formed part of that evaluation -- and he got the highest qualification unanimously.

Arnold Schwarzenegger is trying to invest in California; one can disagree with some of the specifics, but Mehlman believes that the Governator is working towards a positive result in California. On Susan Kennedy, Mehlman says that she is a "professional" and notes that strategy gets set by the leader and implemented by the professionals. He says Kennedy will work on Arnold's behalf, and not on her own agenda. He points to her market-based approach with her work on energy issues in California.

Mehlman fully supports Mike Pence and Operation Offset. The most important thing we can do in the long run, Mehlman says, is to eliminate single-payor systems in public policy and replace them with market-based solutions. "The Left hates monopolies in the private sector but loves them in the public sector." Conservatives should be the party of markets in both arenas.

The GOP wants to expand its reach through the blogosphere, as a senior strategist explained to us in the next segment. They want to be part of the larger conversation, which is why they have expended so much effort to connect to bloggers during this past year. They see the future in blogs that start focusing on narrower and more local races.

We can expect the GOP to roll out more tools for bloggers to use for elections in the coming year in order to get the word out or expand fundraising. They don't want to turn us into shills for the RNC, but they want to give us the tools we need to get out the parts of the message we support.

One of the problems that we have will be the credibility hit people take with close proximity to organized politics. If the GOP provides tools with no strings attached -- which they appear to understand -- then it will make sense.

We now go to background with key Republiscan strategists on polling. The numbers look better than reported in the press. The exact numbers are off the record, but they certainly seem compelling -- as long as the data doesn't put you to sleep. The GOP has had success over the Democrats in keeping their base happy, and the election will once again hinge on turnout. Even on specific issues, the numbers have recovered since the latest effort to get the news out to the GOP base. Alito has also gained respect from Americans on Alito, at least until today's hearings start.

Summary --

Pros: Solid base that has grown
Fewer ticket splits
Stronger confidence on issues

Cons: Voters want change
Low presidential approval (although improving)
Low Congressional approval

Our second briefing comes from a GOP strategist that gives us an idea of the 2006 electoral battleground on a national and state-by-state basis. The Senate races get the first review, especially the Casey/Santorum race in Pennsylvania; the GOP expects it to be "very intense", and will make a lot of use of the Internet. The GOP expects to see a lot of money get thrown behind Casey and for the Democrats to treat it as their Daschle race.

Ohio and DeWine shows a problem with the GOP state scandals and a very unpopular Republican governor. They're hoping for a catfight in the primary between the Democrats.

Missouri has Talent, who barely won the last time and is tied at the moment. It's a swing state that Bush carried in 2004, but still a risk for the GOP.

Montana has another "testy" primary for the Democrats, but this may be an Abramoff-touched election with Conrad Burns defending his seat. Rhode Island will have a primary fight between Chafee and Laffey.

Tennessee will have a tough primary and will face Harold Ford in the end. Three very good candidates will vie for that chance.

Maryland has Michael Steele, a terrific candidate going after an open Democratic seat. The Democrats have a late primary and may lose momentum that Steele can maintain -- and spend money that Steele doesn't need to spend.

Washington -- the GOP is bully on former Safeco exec McGavick (sp?), but Cantwell has a big lead right now.

Minnesota -- they're very excited by Mark Kennedy, and they should be. He's a great candidate.

Nebraska -- It will be surprisingly tough to knock off Ben Nelson, even though the state went to Bush by 33 points in 2004. They have three good candidates lining up for the primary, but it will be an uphill battle; Nebraskans comfortable.

West Virginia - No candidate against Byrd yet, but expecting one soon.

Why does the NRSC and RNC spend money against Laffey and in support of the RINO Lincoln Chafee? Short answer: he supports Senator Frist as Majority Leader.

House

Only 18 GOP seats at risk, only 22 open seats overall -- the numbers do not give much hope to Democrats who want to take over the House. A quick run through all of the various races tend to blur together. The upshot: no one expects more than 30 seats overall to be in flux and the GOP fully expects to maintain majorities in both chambers of Congress.

UPDATE and BUMP: More insider information from GOP strategists on the House races. Since 1854, there have been six six-year midterms, and the average seat loss for the party in power is 41 seats. The only one to gain seats was Bill Clinton, and the RNC says their strategy was to blame. They ran a national theme race on corruption and got spanked. Instead, they have learned now that all politics are local, a realization that has allowed them to outperform expectations the last three cycles. Now the Democrats appear poised to run the 1998 GOP playbook, and this strategist says he's really not surprised. The DCCC has spent a great deal of its hard-to-raise hard money in 2005 on several trial runs for national themes, and all of them have bombed.

Another problem is incumbency and the depressive nature it has on finding new talent, even in a party's own safe districts. Beating an incumbent is almost impossible at the moment, and it stacks up new blood. Interesting.

12:10 ET - We're under way with the hearing, and Arlen Specter is using his time to explain the process. He spoke about the "subtle minuet" surrounding the answering of questions by Senators. He says that Chief Justice Roberts' performance so far suggests that the court will not shift its political orientation.

12:13 - It appears that Specter is back on the reservation. He went out of his way to say that based on his conversations with Alito, the nominee would give proper consideration to stare decisis and noted the hysterical reaction by Planned Parenthood to the Souter nomination.

12:18 - Pat Leahy waited until his second sentence to mention Harriet Miers and her "forced withdrawal by a narrow faction" within the GOP.

12:21 - On the other hand, he waited until the 3-minute mark to mention the "disturbing memorandum" -- IOW, the cover letter he wrote for his resume over 20 years ago. I guess Leahy couldn't find any problems with his judicial record.

12:22 - Once again, O'Connor comes up in Leahy's address as Saint Sandra. Hey, she was a fair and decent Supreme Court justice, but she hardly qualifies as a model. He also decries that Alito is a white guy instead of ... some other flavor. So much for focusing on Alito's qualifications.

12:27 - "There are narrow and extreme factions who demand that they get nominees that will vote the way they want. That's why I will ask you specific questions on the issues." Apparently, Leahy just put himself in the company of those who want specific votes on issues.

12:32 - Orrin Hatch notes that since Alito currently sits on the federal bench, he's already bound by judicial ethics that contrain him from giving his opinion on issues that likely will come before the court.

12:38 - Kennedy takes the microphone. He starts off by applauding Alito's life story. "Will a nominee uphold ... equal justice under the law?" Again with O'Connor; "even one justice can advance or reverse the progress of our journey." Alito's record "troubles me deeply"; Alito's support for an "all-powerful presidency" is "deeply troubling". Kennedy continues to proclaim (erroneously) that the President spies on "American citizens". He not only misstates the crime, he misstates the purported victims.

12:44 - "In an era when more people are losing their jobs..." What? Has he not gotten the employment stats in the last three years or so? Does Kennedy even pay attention to hard data any longer?

12:45 - Judge "Alioto". Okay. Go back and play with Splash, Senator.

12:48 - Senator Grassley: "I have a much more positive view of Judge Alito." Gets a smile from the nominee and a laugh from the bloggers here.

12:51 - Grassley notes that 54 of his law clerks across the political spectrum endorsed him for his confirmation, saying that he never prejudged a case in their long experience with Alito.

12:54 - Grassley notes that Democrats have called the ABA rating the "gold standard", but have ignored Alito's unanimous "well-qualified" rating. Grassley notes that the factions have twisted facts to "give the nominee a black eye before these hearings have even started".

12:58 - Grassley did a nice job of letting a little passion get into his defense of Alito and still sound like the voice of reason. Unfortunately, he was followed by Joe Biden. Now because Alito reads the National Review and American Spectator and belongs to the Federalist Society, Biden expects him to answer questions he defended Ginsburg for not answering during her confirmation hearing.

1:04 - "It's not your fault that you're replacing the first woman nominated to the Supreme Court." Well, then why bring it up? If the confirmation hearing bears on Alito's qualifications, why should he defend his gender or his selection? Biden should ask that question of the White House.

1:06 - Biden, to no one's surprise, is running over his time, by stating for the record that he can't fathom why judges shouldn't prejudge issues that will come before the court. I believe him. I don't think Biden fathoms much of anything, and his questions will reveal that.

1:15 - Jon Kyl notes the long experience of Samuel Alito and then notes the standard of the ABA and its support from Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Kyl is always such an excellent speaker, one wonders when he will finally step into a more national role within the GOP.

1:35 - Dianne Feinstein invokes Sandra Day O'Connor in the first sentence, and then she spends her time criticizing the Rehnquist court.

1:42 - Feinstein pretty much spent her time saying, "I hope you'll spend your time with us breaking judicial ethics by committing to ruling on upcoming cases." Sounds like a replay of the Roberts hearings. This should be rather tiresome, but if the Democrats want to behave like idiots -- again -- that's their prerogative.

1:52 - The Political Teen points out that I switched to Central Time halfway through this post. I call it Senate Delayed Time ...

1:53 - They almost forgot to call Russ Feingold. No doubt that would have been a blow to the proceedings ...

2:00 - A 15-minute recess, wherein the Senators get to go to the yard and play dodgeball. Ted Kennedy usually gets selected last for this event.

After a lengthy afternoon of pontificating Senators, we finally get to hear from the nominee himself for the first time. He seems very calm and reserved. He gives a self-deprecating joke to start about his approach to his confirmation, and then speaks movingly about his family. His father fought in WWII and became a teacher thanks to the kindness of someone in his community giving him a $50 scholarship.

Alito also talks about the honor of representing the government, and of spending the last fifteen years as an appellate jurist, and commiserates with anyone who had to read through his hundreds of opinions ...

Not much in terms of blockbusters in Alito's speech. The best part of it was its brevity, second only to his refusal to take himself so seriously.

Our afternoon session started off with Keith Hennessey, Deputy Director of the President's Economic Council, who wanted to touch base with us on the day we topped 11,000 on the Dow Jones. He stressed that government does not create growth, but it can set the conditions for it -- and that is what Bush has tried to do with his economic policy.

Productivity will remain the focus of the economic policy. Current projections show that productivity growth rate will continue at around 2.7%, ensuring shorter turnaround times for doubling the standard of living in the US.

Social Security - Bush talked about this last Friday and the White House expects to continue its public push to address reform. There are two pieces to this puzzle: long-term solvency and transforming the program to an ownership model soon. Productivity does not address all of those problems -- IOW, we cannot grow ourselves out of the problem.

Mr. Hennessey assures us that the White House has now discovered that it needs to continuously communicate its achievements on economic growth, and not lay back and allow the Exempt Media or the political opposition to define success as failure. I asked specifically whether he thinks that the problem is a staffing problem or just a reluctance to toot one's own horn at the White House, and he replied that they understand now more than ever that continuous communication is critical for their long-term success.

Great talk, and I think Keith made a big impression on the group.

The GOP has kept track of the president's approval rating and have been encouraged by the recent increase in support, according to a political strategist on the White House senior staff. The extreme polarization leads the White House to believe that the numbers won't flex in real terms much more above or below the current 45% or so that he currently has at the moment.

Because the war will remain the central topic and economy will also be on everyone's mind, this polarization will tend to work towards the GOP's favor. All other topics will wind up relating to these two touchstones -- and both, it is implied, will be net pluses for Republicans by the time the 2006 elections roll around. The staff still knows its history, and that maintaining its full edge in Congress may be tough. As earlier, the White House expects to still have a majority in both houses. As a Minnesotan, I can report that three key strategists are extremely high on Mark Kennedy and his chances to take the empty Mark Dayton seat.

Thirty-six governors face election, and 22 of those seats belong to the GOP. The effort on governors does not have much to do with grooming any candidates for 2008's presidential campaign. We got assured that the White House does not want to look past 2006 at the moment.

In the afternoon session, the RNC moved us from their offices in a tony section of DC to an even tonier hotel, the Hay-Adams, to continue meeting with various strategists and political players inside the GOP. Being from out of town, I had no idea what a nice place the Hay-Adams was. As I explained to Patrick Ruffini, I'm more used to hotel employees holding doors to kick me out to the street than to welcome me inside. Nor was that the only surprise the RNC had in store for us.

At the end of a series of meetings with strategists, we met with the most senior strategist one can find in the White House: Karl Rove. He spent quite a bit of time with us discussing different issues, but we did promise to keep the specifics off the record. I can tell CQ readers that Mr. Rove comes across as warm, engaging, thoroughly knowledgeable, and very gracious. He knew most of our blogs well, and hoped to come up to speed on the rest. He teased me about not being Canadian -- I think I can reveal that much -- and he also mentioned that CQ has a spot on his browser favorites, along with Red State and Town Hall.

He spent most of his time answering our questions rather than coming with a speech, and being mindful that bloggers get few opportunities for this kind of access, we talked quite a bit with him and his staff about the general politics of the war, the legislature, and the upcoming election cycle. I think I speak for everyone when I say that he had our complete attention during the meeting, and quite frankly, I think we all found ourselves a little surprised to have received that kind of attention. (Some CQ readers will assume the meeting was to do a chip upgrade for Mr. Rove's implant in my brain. If so, it seems to have worked well.)

Our second surprise followed immediately afterward, when Fred Barnes closed out our session. He brought copies of his new book, Rebel-in-Chief: Inside the Bold and Controversial Presidency of George W. Bush. As Mr. Barnes is not just one of my pundit/literary favorites but also now my boss -- I write a weekly column for the Daily Standard -- I was delighted to finally meet him in person. He brought each of us a copy of the new book and talked at length about his analysis of Bush as president. The book itself only takes 55,000 words, a fairly quick read for political analyses these days; he told us that he thinks books that go much longer than that usually require better editing. The discussion led into a much more general discussion about what we thought Bush's legacy might be, the state of politics inside the Beltway, and the decline of seriousness in the mainstream media, especially in their demand that the American president serve as emoter-in-chief. The book looks very interesting, and I'm hoping to devour it on the flight home on Wednesday.

I'd love to tell more about the sessions this afternoon, but right now I'm at dinner with the First Mate, who is getting exhausted from a long day and needs to hit the sack soon. Besides, I'm getting a message from the implant that says I'd better wrap this up ... I must obey ...

UPDATE through the laughter: I love the idea currently cropping up in the comments that I have lost all credibility because I told everyone we met with Karl Rove yesterday for an off-the-record chat. Since I can't tell you what we spoke about, everyone assumes (a) Karl did all the talking, (b) all of us nodded our heads and agreed with him, and (c) we've done something different than every reporter in town. Would you have considered me more credible if I never told you that we met with Rove, or less? And would it have been off the record if Karl had just wanted to emphasize the Republican talking points, or would he have wanted us to go out and promptly blog it, or post it right from the room where we met?

You guys crack me up sometimes ...

While I'm traveling in DC, I presupposed that I would not necessarily get a chance to follow the flow of Canadian politics during my absence from home. Fortunately and by chance, the hotel offers C-SPAN2 and I happened to catch the Leaders Debate, about which John from Newsbeat1 reminded me earlier today. I started watching this around a half-hour ago, and it's just now wrapping up with closing comments. The only word I can use to describe what I'm watching is debacle, especially as it relates to Gilles Duceppe and Paul Martin.

The Montreal forum gave all four candidates to show their best side to their fellow Canadians. Instead, Martin and Duceppe acted like neighbors on the verge of a feud, with a glum-faced Duceppe almost spitting in disgust whenever he denounced the actions of the Liberals and Paul Martin, who reacted with hilarious facial expressions right out of bad vaudeville stage acting, hand-wringing, and wildly exaggerated gestures. The Liberal leader bobbed and weaved more than Mike Tyson at any time of his career, and I'm not sure why; did he think that being on television meant he had to constantly be in motion? For a couple of moments, I had to turn down the TV while I spoke on the phone, and the combination of the two party leaders looked like comedy.

That performance automatically made Stephen Harper and Jack Layton look good. However, Layton had put himself in an untenable position by taking a deal with the same Liberals that he accused of checkbook politics, where the NDP got an amendment on more spending for their priorities in exchange for not supporting a no-confidence motion in May that kept the Liberals in power. That made it easy to laugh at the uptight and somewhat prissy NDP leader when he accused the Tories of being in bed with the Liberals by trying to outbid them for voters. Jack Layton managed to sell out Canada in May to make kingmakers out of the NDP. S

The only one who did well, mostly, was Harper. He stayed above the fray as much as possible, and remanied above the bickering of the others. I think it turned out to be a overall win for the much-maligned CPC leaders.

It's not often that a newspaper reporter gets to cover a public event, ridicule his subject matter, and still have his copy published in the New York Times. (At least, not when it's about something other than the Bush administration.) Matt Richtel got his big chance today when he reported from Las Vegas on the 23rd annual adult-film awards, the AVNs. Richtel gives the awards the serious treatment they deserve:

Saturday night, though, was an unapologetic, hearty celebration, with a flashbulb-drenched red carpet entrance and awards presented in 104 categories, including best performances in a wide range of explicit acts and sexual positions. The more conventional were for best director, supporting actor and actress, screenplay and the most anticipated award of the evening: best feature.

That went to "Pirates," a relatively high-budget story of a group of ragtag sailors who go searching for a crew of evil pirates who have a plan for world domination. Also, many of the characters in the movie have sex with one another.

Evan Stone, the stage name of the man who won the award for best actor as the good ship's captain, said a crucial component of the movie's success was its authenticity. A consultant instructed the cast on proper ship etiquette, he said, like never letting the captain steer the vessel, a job that belongs to the first mate. ...

[C]ertain things rule out a nomination. One is "if you can still hear the director's voice," Mr. Fishbein said. Another no-no is "if it's clear the cameraman is not paying attention." ...

Ms. Daniels, who said she wished people would stop judging one another, does have her own pet peeve: tired plots.

"There's nothing worse then when the pizza boy rings the doorbell, the girl says she doesn't have a tip, and then they get it on," she said. Ms. Daniels also won an award for best screenplay for a parody, "Camp Cuddly Pines Power Tool Massacre," which presumably had a storyline more in keeping with her tastes.

If you need an extended edition of snark with your morning tea, be sure to catch Richtel's coverage of the AVNs; it's hilarious. And someone should ask his editor why Richtel got the fun assignment this year.

We're watching C-SPAN ahead of the start of the hearings this morning, and Bruce Shapiro of The Nation is appearing for call-in questions -- and not surprisingly, he's coming up with some eyerolling pronouncements. When a self-confessed former "radical feminist" made the excellent point that since half of the American people describe themselves as "pro-life", it hardly puts Alito out of the mainstream if he has the same beliefs. She challenged Shapiro to respond as to why his magazine and the Left react so hysterically whenever a pro-life candidate comes up for confirmation. Shapiro responded that he wouldn't want a jurist to rise to the Supreme Court that would throw out decades of "consensus".

Consensus? The entire problem with Roe is that it kept abortion from going through the political process to reach some sort of consensus. It froze the argument in amber by making it an absolute right -- more absolute than free political speech after the BCRA, for instance. No one who has lived through the abortion debate can possibly imagine that America has had any consensus on this issue. What the argument for judicial originalism begs is to return the issue and others like it to the legislature where it belongs. Vacating Roe would not make abortion illegal; it would force the legislatures to grapple with the question as the representatives of the people, and to reach the consensus that Shapiro imagines exists now.

Talk about missing the forest for the trees!

A poll showing that the Conservative Party extended their lead to double digits over the plummeting Liberals was deliberately withheld from the Canadian public as the pollster expanded the sample, the Ottawa Citizen reports this morning. The Toronto Star and Montreal's La Presse pulled publication of the poll in order to keep it from being public knowledge before the English-language debate last night:

Two major newspapers and a pollster decided to sit on the results of a weekend poll that showed a double-digit breakthrough by the Conservatives over the Liberals because they felt it would be irresponsible to release the "stunning" numbers on the day of the English debate.

Calling it a "difficult decision," Frank Graves, the president of Ekos Research Associates, said he and his media clients, the Toronto Star and Montreal's La Presse, agreed to do further polling yesterday to increase the sample size to 1,200 respondents. He confirmed the weekend findings -- from a sample of 500 calls -- indicated Stephen Harper and the Conservatives were on their way to forming a majority government similar to the ones enjoyed by Brian Mulroney in 1984 and Jean Chretien in 1993.

"In a normal setting we would have released it, but in the context of a 500-case poll with the results we had in last night, we didn't think it would be responsible on the day of the debate," Mr. Graves said.

By waiting an extra day and polling an additional 700 respondents, the margin of error falls to 2.9 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, from plus or minus 4.5 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

The newspapers did not release the results from the smaller sample yesterday because they planned to publish the results from the larger sample today.

That poll, now published by the Star today, shows that the Tories may well capture a majority of seats in the next Parliament and rule alone. It shows that Stephen Harper has led his party to a 39.1% - 26.8% lead over the currently governing Liberals, led by a badly faltering Paul Martin. Anything over 40% usually indicates an impending majority for the triumphal party, thanks to the unusual dynamics of four-party politics.

This news should have come out yesterday. The act of withholding it from the public to recast the sample to something different than they normally use shows at least a possibility of bias from the newspapers involved. What about those numbers frightened the newspapers? The editors should answer the critics and hold themselves accountable for a strange decision indeed. (Thanks to CQ reader Tom B)

9:36 - Alito has already agreed with Griswold and Eisenstadt, and now speaks to the generalities of stare decisis and the specific of "reliance". It sounds like he's going to take the same position as Roberts did. Specter keeps cutting off his answers, but Alito is remaining firm that the Court should not "sway in the wind of public opinion at any time," but stay focused on the law.

9:46 - "Super precedent" as a term is like laundry detergent. Specter meanwhile pulls out the same chart he used in the Roberts hearing to argue for upholding Roe.

9:49 - Alito emphasizes that he has to put aside the work he did as an attorney and an advocate once he puts on the judge's robes. Alito notes that he held the view that the Constitution did not hold a right to an abortion in 1985, but his views at this point are immaterial.

9:55 - It looks like Alito has run the abortion gauntlet with Specter. This appears to have been one of the "subtle minuets" that got mentioned in yesterday's hearing. Specter ran through the questions rather quickly after hearing the components of answers that made Alito appear most moderate on the question. An old prosecutor himself, I expect that Specter knew exactly what answers he would get from Alito -- yet another indication that Specter is back on the reservation.

10:00 - The memo on presidential powers gets the last part of Specter's attention. Alito talked about the fact that the memo was a rough draft for an advocacy position, and that the advocates had a responsibility to pursue all hypotheticals before signing off on an opinion.

10:04 - Leahy says "We'll have the chance to listen to you." Not hardly, if the Roberts hearing gives any indication.

10:10 - Senator Frist has dropped in for a visit ... (moved section to new post.)

10:10 - Senator Frist has dropped in for a visit ...

10:13 - Blogs can help explain the procedural issues and questions that come up.

10:14 - Alito deserves a "fair and dignified hearing, and then a fair up-or-down vote". Nature of politics is that we can expect some protest, but that we keep the process moving. He will use "all the tools", but believes it "premature" to speak to the specifics of those tools at this point. Democrats will pull out "old ways" to defeat progress in America, and says we'll get some hints this week. More obstruction through procedural tools will arise - not necessarily filibusters, but slowdowns and postponements.

10:18 - The hold on Brett Kavanaugh: Senator Frist says he can't comment on the record at the moment for that, but he will likely address the process of "holds" in the coming year.

10:19 - Frist says they will be looking at lobbying reform, but also procedural reform, this session. The lobbying reform will probably come up with entirely new laws rather than tougher enforcement and expansion of existing laws.

10:20 - Frist thinks we'll get the confirmation vote by the 20th of this month.

10:21 - He will NOT take a position on the House leadership races. [Big laugh]

10:28 - Senator Frist confirms for me that no one who got briefed on the NSA intercept has, to his knowledge demanded an end to this program. He confirmed that he was one of the leaders briefed on the program over the years. When I asked him if the program had stopped attacks on this country, he immediately and unequivocally said, "Yes."

10:31 - Should not read anything into Frank Lautenberg's intro of Samuel Alito to the committee. He doesn't think that necessarily commits Lautenberg to supporting Alito.

10:33 - Speaks to the legislative priorities facing the Senate and the impact that postponement will have on it. The PATRIOT Act: The current bill has stronger protections than the previous bill, so "killing" it is an act of irresponsibility. The Senator wanted an extension to get that better bill eventually adopted.

10:39 - I asked if any Democratic legislative agenda exists to use as leverage, and Senator Frist says no -- which puts him at a disadvantage in terms of leverage, but demonstrates the lack of ideas and energy coming from the Democrats.

11:04 - We missed most of Leahy and Hatch, but getting access to this information was well worth it. I want to make sure that we emphasize that Senator Frist was one of the eight leaders of Congress getting briefed on the NSA program, and that we have stopped attacks on America as a result of this effort. That is not hypothetical.

11:20 - Senator John Cornyn, TX. So far, hearings have gone well, done a good job of laying out his family history. Observing the Ginsburg standard, he should reserve his judgment on specific issues, but he has answered questions extensively. Good common-sense answers have shown Alito obviously well-qualified for the position.

11:22 - Bloggers force the MSM to deal with "inconvenient facts"; we're making a difference in coverage, which he feels is critical.

11:23 - Historically, presidential nominees have had the presumption of confirmability. Democrats want to change that to a presumption of non-confirmability, which sets up a double standard for Bush's nominees.

11:26 - This is turning into a trial, with everyone playing cross-examiner.

11:27 - Almost all of the Democratic resistance is fund-raising; Schumer is the chair of the DSCC and can't afford to do anything but obstruct.

11:28 - The process isn't designed to elicit information; it's designed to make speeches.

11:32 - Senator Cornyn thinks that Specter's focus on abortion in the first round has to do more with defusing tough issues. His own strategy will be to deconstruct the notion of Alito as an alleged supporter of an imperial presidency.

11:36 - O'Connor was a critic of Roe, saying that Casey was a stopgap designed to get around the bad law analysis in Roe. Wait for Cornyn to attack the "bogus construct".

11:38 - Cornyn would like to have seen a woman appointed to the position, and he thinks that Bush will have at least one more opportunity. He's more concerned with the excellent qualifications that Alito has for the job. He will also bring up the ABA treatment of the Vanguard issue, showing its empty nature.

We got a visit from Operation Outcry, which represents 1900 women who have come forward after having had an abortion and regretted it afterwards. They have arrived at the Capitol to support Alito and other jurists that rule on law instead of policy. They don't base their support on any presumed promise of Alito overturning Roe, but just their belief that he will rule on Constitutional issues on the basis of the law.

Julie Thomas, Georgia - National Leader: spoke about her personal experience with abortion and how it impacted her family life. She says that women are deceived into having abortions by the demeaning of the foetus as something other than human, and tell them that it won't have any emotional impact on their lives. She says that their guilt drives them to destructive behavior later in life as they run away from their pain and shame.

Mark Noonan noted that it's difficult for a man to debate abortion. Anne Newman talks about a man who came to join them because his girlfriend had aborted their child, and then committed suicide. On the other hand, men will gladly counterdemonstrate against these women, shouting them down and calling them "sluts". She also notes that women don't necessarily choose freely to have an abortion, but come under tremendous pressure from husbands/boyfriends, family, and social contacts to get rid of the "problem" the easiest way they see.

They are expanding their organization to Europe and beyond. They want to stop the damage that abortions do. One woman talked about the missing grandchildren, nieces, nephews, that will never attend family functions; her abortions caused too much damage for her to have any children later in life.

If you've never heard of them before, it's because the media will often cover the event but then never publish the stories. It seems to me that any ideas about consensus on abortion, as The Nation supposes exists on its unfettered legalization, discounts the honest experiences of these women. Read their website and give them the respect of being heard.

2:14 - If the Democrats were as interested in fighting terror as they are in fighting Alito, we'd all be safe.

2:16 - Very pleased with Alito's performance; says his demeanor and performance ranks up there with John Roberts.

2:17 - Kennedy and Biden blew the Vanguard issue out of all proportion. He reminded us that the agreement was that Alito would recuse himself from cases in the initial period of his service.

2:20 - Hatch, like Frist, expects a party-line vote.

2:22 - Abortion is the be-all, end-all issue that provides the main identity for Democrats.

2:27 - Hatch says the GOP is ready to counter a filibuster with the Constitutional option. He hopes that the Senate would move away from treating the Supreme Court nominations through a partisan filter. Republicans accepted Breyer and Ginsburg overwhelmingly because they were qualified, regardless of their personal beliefs. He recalled when the Democrats released medical records to smear Rehnquist.

2:32 - Do we just resign ourselves to this kind of partisanship? Hatch says it took us 40 years to take over the majority, and the Democrats don't know how to be in the minority. On the other hand, the GOP often doesn't know how to act like a majority, either. Hatch reminds us that the Senate rules require working across the aisle to get anything done at all. With the Democrats not offering much of anything as a legislative agenda, it makes negotiations difficult.

2:38 - We need 60 Republicans who can stand together, and we could change the world.

2:42 - "Principled conservatives with brains can win anywhere."

2:43 - Abramoff: "Not a good Republican ... I don't know what he was thinking."

2:45 - Hatch is not a fan of the BCRA. "That's gotta be one of the worst bills in history." It takes the money out of the hands of the parties, which can be held accountable for their actions, and into the hands of those who can avoid the accountability.

2:48 - Civil-Rights Act: The effects-test in section II has caused a number of problems with electoral processes. Hatch knew it would turn the South Republican through ridiculous redistricting but fought against it. Abigail Thermstrom joined us without us realizing it and spoke to Hatch's leading work on trying to get the CRA correct. She wants the penalty provisions of the bill lifted from the Act; "It's not 1965 any more, and Bull Connor is dead." (Thurston is the vice-chair of the Civil Rights Commission.)

2:54 - Mitt Romney: "An absolutely brilliant administrator ... what you see is what you get." Hatch points out that, like himself, Romney is Mormon; Hatch filed for the 2000 Presidential race in part to clear a path for Romney.

We had a chance after meeting with Senator Hatch to talk with three former Alito clerks and get their reactions to the attacks on their former boss. Jeff Gottlieb, a Democrat, thinks that the attacks have been effectively defused. When asked if the attacks were fair, Gottlieb says, "Probably not, no."

Reg Brown, a former White House staffer, says the attacks may wind up working to Alito's benefit. "Now, there's an air or presumption of untruth [to attack reports]," due to the wild nature of what they're alleging. Michael Park, another Alito clerk, says that the thin nature of these issues show that Alito can't be challenged on his qualifications, job performance, and judicial temperament.

Brown: "When Bork was nominated, they attacked Robert Bork's America," he notes, but now they can't attack conservatism itself as before.

Jeff Lord, author of The Borking Revolution: "We know now how this works: the ethics charges, followed by the race charges."

Abigail Thermstrom notes that the President learned to never nominate another Robert Bork. "Robert Bork did his best to get defeated," she says, contrasting him with Clarence Thomas, who never invited the treatment he received.

Dana Douglas: "He was a fabulous mentor ... a great experience ... he was very open to mentoring women and minorities. ... It was one of the greatest experiences in my life."

When asked whether they'd like to get nominated for the Court sometime in their profession, they all thought that being a judge would be great, but the process of becoming a judge would certainly give them pause. Isn't that a shame -- we're spending our time pillorying the best of the people we have. What kind of people will we eventually find left to take these jobs when they come up?

Dana Douglas worries that the real Sam Alito may not come through. "He should smile more," Douglas advises. "He's really a very nice man."

UPDATE: Reg Brown dropped me a nice note reminding me that he is a former White House staffer -- actually, as I recall (without prompting), he's a former Assistant Counsel, more senior than the generic "staffer" might suggest. And, by the way, a great guy to meet!

Former Attorney General Robert Del Tufo employed Samuel Alito as a prosecutor. He said that Alito distinguished himself as a litigator as well as a researcher and preparer of briefs. His work consisted of working on organized-crime and white-collar fraud, work that requires the management of teams to get anything accomplished. Del Tufo prosecuted two Russian spies, and Alito did some interesting work in handling questions of diplomatic immunity. He certainly handled some high-profile cases.

Since then, Del Tufo has been practicing law in the private sector but has followed Alito's career closely. "His approach to issues demonstrates his scholarship, doing the research, studying the law to see how it pertains to the issue before him, and using it in a thoughtful way," he says. "Labels don't mean anything with Alito." Del Tufi says careful is a good word in describing Alito, as well as a "fine human being." Del Tufo believes in these times, it is critical to have people of Alito's balance and intellect on the Court.

Professor J.L. Pottenger is a clinical teacher; he represents clients, and his students practice together with him on his cases. Attacks on Alito's character motivated this "liberal Democrat" to come to DC to work on Alito's behalf. He believes that the processes now in place during the confirmation have eviscerated the distinction between law and politics and also believes that to be a dangerous development.

As an ethicist, Pottenger says it would surprise him if the ABA would give a unanimous "well-qualified" rating if any question remained at all about Vanguard. Both he and Del Tufo noted that 300 judges reviewed Alito and came to the conclusion that he had the highest ethics.

How to fix it? Del Tufo emphasizes the need to hold our elected officials responsible for their behavior. Pottenger agreed but says the problem lies with the amount of power we have invested in the courts to make our decisions for us, rather than making legislatures tackle the difficult questions. I agree with both of them -- and that's why, as I have repeatedly argued, originalism gives us the only way out of the box. Originalism will not outlaw abortion, but vacating Roe (as but one example) returns abortion to the legislatures as a policy issue to be solved by the people via a consensus.

By the way, just to give you a taste of this segment, it's hard to imagine any more gravitas in one panel than these two men brought to the room. They were most impressive and very gracious indeed.

I've been watching the testimony on Alito most of the day, or at least in between visits from the luminaries I've highlighted so far today. Most of this has been rather inconsequential, except possibly for the Kennedy portion (transcript here). Kennedy remains in his usual bloviating status, full of sound and fury signifying dementia. However, Russ Feingold slipped over the transom to outright insulting -- perhaps most egregiously because he doesn't present such a ridiculous figure as Kennedy obviously cuts. Feingold did everything but call Alito a puppet mouthing the words of his White House masters.

Alito got mad for the first time, managing to keep it under control, but protested that he had been a judge for fifteen years and he didn't need anyone to feed him answers to anyone's questions.

Feingold responded by changing the subject ... to Vanguard. What a jerk.

I wish I had an automatic transcript device. Judge Alito just blew Chuck Schumer out of the water on abortion. After holding up his Robert Byrd^TM mini-Constitution, Schumer demanded several times whether he still believes as he wrote in his 1985 memo that he doesn't think abortion has Constitutional protection. Alito demurred each time, saying that he would have to weigh each case in light of its facts and its reliance on precedence. Like the bad lawyer he has proven himself to be, Schumer asked one question too many:

SCHUMER: Does the Constitution protect the right to free speech?

ALITO: Certainly it does. That's in the First Amendment.

SCHUMER: So why can't you answer the question of: Does the Constitution protect the right to an abortion the same way without talking about stare decisis, without talking about cases, et cetera?

ALITO: Because answering the question of whether the Constitution provides a right to free speech is simply responding to whether there is language in the First Amendment that says that the freedom of speech and freedom of the press can't be abridged. Asking about the issue of abortion has to do with the interpretation of certain provisions of the Constitution.

SCHUMER: Well, OK. I know you're not going to answer the question…

Case closed. It's like watching the Washington Generals play the Harlem Globetrotters.

UPDATE: I corrected this with the updated transcript, which only differs in the vocabulary used. This transctipt wass provided by Barbara Ledeen.

Dick Durbin gets to start things off, and he starts by going into Brown v Board of Education and Griswold, saying that both rely on interpretations of the Constitution.

9:36 - He misstates Schumer's question. Schumer asked if Alito believed in a Constitutional right to an abortion. It's a small but important distinction. Alito notes that Brown is based on specific language in the 14th Amendment, and that Griswold isn't likely to come before the Court again. Abortion does not come up explicitly in the Constitution and will definitely come before the Court again. Durbin still doesn't seem to get it ...

9:47 - Durbin says that the government wants to "discourage" abortions, and reserve it for women whose lives are in danger. If we've had over 40 million women's lives in danger in 32 years, then America's females should escape our borders as soon as possible. As far as it being rare, what other medical procedures have been performed 40 million times over 32 years? Nose jobs?

9:55 - We moved from CAP and Alito's supposed animus against women and minorities to Bruce Springsteen to racial issues in the justice system. Durbin's segue is pretty lame ...

9:59 - Alito has to explain to Durbin that appellate courts should not revisit findings of fact in a case involving a plaintiff with limited mental capacity alleging sexual attacks -- and that the primary court issued a summary judgement for the defendant.

10:03 - More "crushing hand of fate" from Durbin, but Alito pops him at the end for cherry-picking the cases.

Thank goodness Durbin's off the air. The problem with the end of the first round is that it's mostly a replay of all the other Democratic inquisitions.

10:13 - Brownback pulls out the same displays he used for the Roberts hearing to show that Plessy was also a super-precedent, one that existed for 60 years.

10:16 - It's been five minutes since the last question. Brownback just wants to use his time to make speeches about abortion.

10:28 - Brownback gave Alito a great opening on religious freedom, talking about the case of a schoolchild whose depiction of Jesus got removed even though it fit within the parameters of an assignment he was given. Alito notes that when a school asks a question like "What are you thankful for?", it cannot restrict the speech of the students' responses based on their religion.

We've been joined by Senator Chuck Grassley, a member of the committee, to give us his views on the progress of the hearings.

The demeanor of the Democrats have surprised the newspeople, particularly since they don't seem to be getting the traction they wanted against Alito. Alito is so qualified that Grassley has never seen a nominee with this level of experience. That may have caused the Democrats to turn their demeanor to a more reserved level.

Grassley met with Alito in November ... He is sincered, and he will wait until the last fact is laid before him before making a judgment. He's doing exactly what we expect judges to do -- react mildly and patiently to argument and respond thoughtfully and with an open mind.

Grassley says Alito will be confirmed ...

The incivility that comes at an honest, decent man like Alito distubs Grassley. America has to become a more civil society. Grassley notes all of the different kinds of abuses, and says that our justice system has to have its basis on respect for individuals. That's a great point; all forms of liberty base themselves on the unique nature of, and recognition for, the individual.

Grassley had nine town meetings last week, and in half of them he assured them that Alito would be confirmed.

About Leahy's remarks: Grassley interprets them as a show of effort to demonstrate that the radical Democrats have not yet given up.

Grassley says we might lose a moderate Republican or two, but we should pick up a few moderate Democrats in response.

How can we fix this problem of partisanship? Grassley says the abuse of the "hold" in Senate has to be reined in. The secrecy of the hold is one problem -- "anyone who puts on a hold should have the guts to show himself". The hold allows for a buildup of partisanship which spills over into other processes, like confirmation hearings. ...

Grassley says that he thinks the pressure for the filibuster has receded. My feeling after talking with a number of the committee members and their staffs is that the filibuster has all but disappeared. Alito has performed too well to pull it off without damaging Democrats in the next election.

UPDATE: Alito will be confirmed. Roberts has already been confirmed. That was my mistake, not the Senator's. While he was talking, I was typing a bit behind and he mentioned a comparison between the two hearings.

The second round of questioning for the Alito hearing has already begun with Arlen Specter starting off with the shortened 20-minute timeslice, where the prizes double and the game can get really exciting. Oh, sorry, that's Double Jeopardy. This second round will likely focus on the same questions that came up in the first round, as Pat Leahy's comments at the beginning of today's festivities indicate:

Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee said Wednesday they were troubled by what they see as inconsistencies in Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito's answers on issues ranging from voting rights to ethics to his membership in a conservative organization.

On the third day of confirmation hearings, Sen. Patrick Leahy (news, bio, voting record) of Vermont said Democrats would press President Bush's choice to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on several statements he made in his earlier testimony.

"A number of us have been troubled by what see as inconsistencies in some of the answers," Leahy told Alito.

In other words, Leahy called Alito a liar. Since Senator Lindsay Graham noted yesterday that Congress has no rule against beating dead horses, we can look forward to absolutely nothing changing in the second round.

It started off with a moment of humor, when Specter asked Alito if the courts' reasoning power and methodology have any superiority over those of Congress. When Alito expressed his utmost respect for Congress's reasoning power, Specter asked him if he still believed that after the last two days of the hearing. As the laughter subsided, Alito still affirmed his position, which led Orrin Hatch to proclaim his "disappointment" in the nominee. ...

We've begun to meet with three more of Judge Alito's former law clerks: Jeff Wasserstein, a liberal Democrat who also reads CQ -- and so is one of my favorites thus far -- David Moore, and Keith Levenburg. Mr. Levenburg starts off by talking about the benefit of adding Alito to the Supreme Court as he is not ideologically driven, and has a broad understanding of business law. Mr. Moore says that ideology is not something he brings to his chambers. He fully considers the facts before reaching his decisions.

In a fascinating coincidence, the three served Alito during various partisan crises: Bush v Gore, the Iraq War, and the Monica Lewinsky scandal. All three said that Alito never revealed his thoughts or feelings on a partisan basis, although the clerks themselves felt free to express themselves in social settings around the judge.

Mr. Levenberg does not see a lack of private practice being a problem at the appellate level. In fact, adding someone who has served as a US attorney adds another dimension to the Court. The three also note that Alito has taught on terror-related law, and remarked that it is hard to overestimate the broad knowledge of legal arenas in which Alito qualifies as an expert.

The most disappointing part of the process? The smear tactics used by Democrats on the CAP and Vanguard issues. While Wasserstein tends to give the Senators a pass -- "politicians are politicians" -- he says he will stop supporting some groups based on their disingenuity. Mr. Moore notes that the same politicians who complain that Alito isn't giving answers won't stop talking long enough to ask questions.

Please see the update below.

When we arrived today at the Dirksen Office Building, we saw a disturbance outside the entrance -- and I turned to the First Mate and groaned, "Oh, man, we're going to have to push through some protestors." To my surprise, the protest turned out to be a pro-Alito rally, with most of the people wearing red shirts and chanting pro-Alito messages.

It struck me as somewhat odd, though well intentioned. Chanting slogans just amounts to tribalism or cheerleading. I would have been more impressed by someone standing on a ladder, stating why Alito should be confirmed. Chanting "Alito" in a song first written about a dog named Bingo invites itself to satire, and deservedly so.

It's great that conservatives get together to rally themselves and generate enthusiasm and energy. However, when the world is watching, we should take care to use that opportunity to show that we are the party of ideas and not just sloganeering.

UPDATE: We met with the group that staged this rally later in the morning. They belong to a group called TeenPact, and they are a group of very bright and articulate high-school students. They each gave a one-minute speech, which they delivered well and with good affect. It's terrific to see young people come so far -- from every state in the union -- to participate in any way in this process.

Lesson: dig a little deeper next time, a good lesson to learn.

UPDATE II and BUMP: One of the young women in the program is Ms. Emily Echols, who sued the FEC and won a Supreme Court decision 9-0 allowing minors to contribute to political campaigns. She is now 17 years old and wants to pursue politics. I asked for a show of hands on how many bloggers there were, and I'd say that we're looking at 75%. Outstanding!

I'm not going to live-blog the bloviations from Ted Kennedy in great detail, but I have to add something about Kennedy's pulling out sentences from magazines and newspapers and demanding to know if Alito had ever read them. Isn't this the same kind of treatment that Democrats complain that the PATRIOT Act would do to Americans -- hold them responsible for their reading material? None of this has anything to do with Alito's record as a judge, but because he mentioned the Prospect and National Review as magazines he may have read, now he's being held responsible for every word they have ever published. I read the New York Times, and I hardly agree with anything they write.

Now Kennedy wants to subpoena the records of CAP -- and Specter is getting irate about the attitude of the Senator. Someone needs to explain to Kennedy that subpoenaing the records of a long-defunct group because one disagrees with its political views sets up a very bad precedent. Shall we have subpoenaed all the records of the ACLU during the Ginsburg confirmations? This stinks of Joe McCarthy, another pernicious force who spent far too much time in the Senate soaking up deference while providing nothing but shameful attacks on people who have done nothing to deserve them except give their lives for public service.

Massachussetts should be ashamed of themselves for returning this vacuous boob to represent them in the highest levels of the government.

UPDATE: The transcript from the Kennedy exchange with Alito is in the extended entry.

Continue reading "Senate Blogger Forum: Kennedy (McCarthy) Redux" »

I asked Senator Hatch about the shameful performance by Ted Kennedy and the behavior that smacks of McCarthyism. Hatch won't take it that far, but says that smears are the only tools the Democrats have left. "What is the CAP issue all about? Painting Alito as a racist and a sexist. Anyone who has watched him during this hearing knows that's ridiculous."

Hatch on the demand for an executive session: "It's another one of the bush-league approaches for delay."

One of the bloggers asked if Kennedy has a higher ethical standard than the ABA on recusals? "I'm sure he thinks he does. I'll leave it at that."

"He has 5,000 cases on which he's ruled, and this is the best they [Democrats] can do? Vanguard and CAP?"

Senator Hatch believes now that they will have to go to a third round of questioning due to the Democratic attacks that have cropped up today. That means that witnesses who have traveled to DC (for either side) will have to rework their travel arrangements, and the committee will likely have to meet all weekend to get finished. Bill Frist made that clear yesterday; he would not want the hearings to adjourn until the testimony concludes.

He also reminds us that a lot of this posturing has more to do with fund-raising for extremists like the Alliance for Justice and People for the American Way. He can't determine any other strategy except to toss out as much mud as possible and see what sticks.

On Alito as a witness: "I believe he is substantively better than Roberts. ... Roberts was the brilliant good guy next door. Alito has been the brilliant intellectual next door."

On Feingold's attack: "We've always had murder boards, and they're a good idea...These people aren't political, and they have no idea what they're in for." It doesn't mean that people get told what to say, but in how to approach questions from hostile Senators.

Meeting with Jon Kyl of Arizona -- the article that Senator Kyl mentioned on the floor that showed the threat to the ROTC came out in February 1985, which would tend to support Alito's recollection. And all of this is off the point -- "they keep plowing the same old ground," and he's not going to talk about his Constitutional views on open questions.

I asked Senator Kyle about the analogy between Kennedy's request to subpoena the private papers of a man involved in founding CAP and hauling all of the ACLU's records into the committee during Ginsburg's hearing. He agreed with my analogy, and noted that Kennedy would have been the first to decry an invasion of privacy. He also said that those kinds of subpoenas would have a chilling effect on political speech.

Most disappointing part of the process: "The innuendos today ... I can't believe that the motivation of my colleagues is to smear, but it will have that effect."

Kyl expects to see a third round of questioning. He expects some further delaying tactics, although there isn't really any good reason for it. He doesn't see a filibuster, at least not a successful one.

Kyl thinks that Kohl and even Biden have been courteous and professional, and that Feingold might still surprise people and vote for Alito. He doesn't want to comment further on Democrats.

Senator Arlen Spector just announced that the William Rusher papers will now be made available to the committee voluntarily by Rusher himself, removing the need for the subpoena that Ted Kennedy demanded. Word around the Capitol has it that the New York Times did an extensive research project on the Rusher papers -- and found absolutely nothing. Kennedy is about to come up with major egg on his face when Rusher's papers turn into Al Capone's vault.

In my mind, it still sets a bad example to use someone else's papers to look for smears on a candidate that has no connection to the owner of the records. Perhaps it's marginally eased by the lack of a subpoena, but the notion that somehow Alito can be disqualified by having read the Prospect or the National Review is exactly what the Democrats have argued against in their opposition to the PATRIOT Act. It's a disgusting way to treat a dedicated public servant.

The First Mate and I had to rush out of the day's blogging session in the mid-afternoon in order to get to our evening flight on time back home. Despite a bumpy flight, I slept through most of it, which means I have little appetite for sleep now. When I woke up, the flight attendant addressed the cabin:

"On behalf of the captain and crew, I'd like to thank you for flying Northwest Airlines. We know that you have a variety of choices of bankrupt airlines, and we thank you for flying ours."

Yes, that means I'm home.

The German magazine Der Spiegel reports today on the developing factional rift between the different insurgent groups in Iraq. Increasingly, the native insurgents have concentrated their efforts not against the Americans but against the foreign-based terrorists of al-Qaeda, having belatedly come to the conclusion that the true danger of long-term foreign domination comes from Zarqawi's lunatics:

[T]he split within the insurgency is coinciding with Sunni Arabs' new desire to participate in Iraq's political process, and a growing resentment of the militants. Iraqis are increasingly saying that they regard Al Qaeda as a foreign-led force, whose extreme religious goals and desires for sectarian war against Iraq's Shiite majority override Iraqi tribal and nationalist traditions. ...

According to an American and an Iraqi intelligence official, as well as Iraqi insurgents, clashes between Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and Iraqi insurgent groups like the Islamic Army and Muhammad's Army have broken out in Ramadi, Husayba, Yusifiya, Dhuluiya and Karmah.

In town after town, Iraqis and Americans say, local Iraqi insurgents and tribal groups have begun trying to expel Al Qaeda's fighters, and, in some cases, kill them.

The cause for much of the local/AQ split comes from the same problems that plagued the Coalition during the war: tactical errors that killed the wrong people at the wrong place, followed by an indifference to local custom for repentance, ie, penalty payments. The AQ faction has added a complete disrespect for the Iraqi tribal system, deliberately targeting tribal chiefs in order to intimidate the other clansmen into at least tacit cooperation. Those tactics backfired on AQ, and now the native insurgents have increasingly focused on ridding themselves of the terrorists before the Americans, or at least have no longer targeted Americans in the effort to do the same.

While the insurgents still have no love for the Americans, the awakening to the dangers of AQ domination have provided some of the impetus for the Sunni to start participating in the democratic processes instead of continuing their insurgency. That development, no matter what the motivation, bodes well for the new Iraqi nation. The realization of what an AQ-approved government would entail will remind even the more incalcitrant Sunnis that democracy provides a much better guarantee of protecting them, and not just from the lunatics of the Islamofascist stripe. They have to live with the peoples they dominated for decades, and the structure of laws and government that the Kurds, Shi'ites, and a handful of Sunnis have built will be their only hope against their certain annihilation in a civil war.

The new Iraq is on its way, and al-Qaeda is facing a humiliating defeat from an ad-hoc alliance of Arabs and Westerners together.

I left blogger row yesterday reluctantly, just as the outrageous actions of the Democratic caucus on Judiciary hit its nadir. The smear tactics trotted out to derail the nomination of Judge Alito over the past few weeks had hit their nadir when Ted Kennedy demanded a subpoena for the William Rusher papers to determine whether the National Review publisher may have written something about CAP and Alito. Never mind that this was an entirely off-subject line of questioning from the beginning; Alito's own hiring record proved that he has no animus towards equal opportunity for women or minorities, and the Prospect itself had a woman (Laura Ingraham) and a minority (Dinesh D'Souza) as its editors in chief. Never mind that Alito has had decades of dedicated public service with an impeccable record of excellence, including fifteen years on the appellate court. Never mind that he has not been called before Congress to defend himself on charges but for confirmation to move up to the Supreme Court by invitation of the President.

When what should be a simple confirmation process reduces family members to tears, it shows that one party has degenerated into a secular Inquisition. And let me remind you that it was this party that, on more than one occasion, elected a former Klansman to the post of Majority Leader -- a man who as recently as three years ago defended the use of the "n-word".

In fact, most of the Senators from that caucus are responsible for that election of Byrd to his leadership posts.

I would assume that under their definition, Leahy, Kennedy, Biden, and perhaps Schumer are all racists and genocidists. They're certainly tied much closer to those beliefs than Samuel Alito, and I invite them to explain the difference to the American people.

The Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee wound up looking like the group of boobs that their behavior has demonstrated them to be when the vetting of the William Rusher papers elicited no mention whatsoever of Samuel Alito in connection to Concerned Alumni of Princeton or anything else that could paint him as the bigot that Democrats insinuated he was:

Earlier, the panel's chairman announced that staffers had examined records of a controversial Princeton University alumni group once cited by Alito in a job application, but had found no mention of Alito.

While the alumni group appeared to fizzle out as an issue in the hearings, Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) told Alito that Democrats continue to be disturbed by some of his judicial views, making it "very hard to vote yes on your nomination."

Opening the fourth day of the confirmation hearings, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), the committee chairman, announced the results of a records search that was requested by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and that triggered the sharpest exchanges of the hearings among senators yesterday.

After tossing around threats yesterday of appealing a non-existent ruling of the chair to get the records subpoenaed, Ted Kennedy didn't even bother to bring up CAP in his third round of questioning today. It didn't stop him from issuing statements that continued to smear Alito through guilt by association today, but somehow the senior bloviator from Massachussetts couldn't screw up the courage to actually try confronting Alito again with the questions while he had the chance.

However, one Democrat may have stumbled onto a solution for the future that will work for everyone. Joe Biden, who in two successive hearings has proven unable to ask a question in less than 1,000 words, has belatedly come to the conclusion that hearings may indeed be a waste of time:

Supreme Court nominees are so mum about the major legal issues at their Senate confirmation hearings that the hearings serve little purpose and should probably be abandoned, Democratic Sen. Joe Biden said Thursday.

"The system's kind of broken," said Biden, a member of the Judiciary Committee considering the nomination of Judge Samuel Alito.

"Nominees now, Democrat and Republican nominees, come before the United States Congress and resolve not to let the people know what they think about the important issues," such as a president's authority to go to war, said Biden.

The blame for that lies squarely with the panel's Democrats. After getting the Roberts nomination last time around, the caucus complained that the administration's predilection for nominating stealth candidates forced them to dig into the background of nominees outside of their judicial experience. They also made clear that conservatives with extensive public records of their standing on issues would face a filibuster, a warning echoed by a handful of moderate Republicans afraid of upsetting Senate "comity". The White House responded by nominating a man with fifteen years of experience on the appellate bench, and even more as a federal prosecutor, all of it exemplary.

How did the Democrats react? By smearing him through the most tenuous of connections to a few stupid articles in a Princeton magazine affiliated with an organization that Alito once belonged before his public work began.

Waiving hearings, under these circumstances, makes for a good suggestion, but let's be clear why that is so. The Democrats on the panel cannot be trusted to act like honest and trustworthy stewards of the nation's business. In fact, most of the time they can't be trusted to act like adults. Joe Biden's suggestion will go a long way to keep that truth from the American people and keep them from playing the part of Geraldo Rivera in Al Capone's vault in the future.

The First Mate went back to the hospital as expected today to continue her outpatient care for the viral infection in her kidney. During our vacation, we noticed a marked increase in her blood pressure and she had some trouble keeping up with the pace of the work, but she's a gamer and hung in there every day.

Unfortunately, that rise in BP does have to do with the function of the kidney, but hopefully it will only be temporary. Her doctors warned us that the aggressive treatment would make the function decrease before it would improve. If so, then we have now begun to see this. More disturbing to us was their recommendation that she go back on the transplant list, just in case the treatment doesn't work. That sounded rather ominous, and along with the elevated BP, we aren't too sanguine about the prospects. She may wind up getting admitted if the BP can't get under control soon.

I have to give my thanks to Patrick Ruffini at the RNC, Tim Petty at the SRC, and all of their colleagues for their kind assistance in making sure that she not only was made comfortable but also made to feel utterly welcome for her stay. I'd also like to thank the other bloggers for the same thing -- everyone without exception showed us nothing but kindness.

I will be appearing on CHQR 770 AM in Calgary and western Canada tonight for Rob Breckinridge's The World Tonight, starting at 9:05 pm ET. We'll be talking about the Alito hearings, the blogging effort that we gave this week in covering the event, some of the more noteworthy points, and Canadian electoral politics as well. Rob's a great radio host and his show is always fun to do as a guest; be sure to tune in, or listen on their Internet stream.

UPDATE: Rob's terrific as always, and he let me ramble on for a good long time. I hope you got a chance to enjoy it, but I do believe they archive The World Tonight if you missed it. It does require a free registration to access the Audio Vault, but it's worth the time and effort. And hey, Stephen Taylor called in -- what better reason to register and check it out?

Today's hearing wrapped up the testimony of Samuel Alito for his confirmation to the Supreme Court. After a short executive session, the committee came back into public session to take testimony from other witnesses. They began with a remarkable series of judges, colleagues of Judge Alito, who took the unprecedented step of defending their peer from the mudslinging that came from the Judiciary Committee this week.

One of the judges that came forward, and one of the first to testify this afternoon, was Ruggeri Aldisert, whose appointment dates back to the Johnson administration. Aldisert served in the Marine Corps in World War II and has spent 40 years on the bench. Aldisert also reminded the committee about who put him on the federal bench:

ALDISERT: When I first testified before this committee in 1968, I was seeking confirmation of my own nomination to the federal circuit court. I speak now as the I speak now as the most senior judge on the 3rd circuit.

And I begin my brief testimony with some personal background.

ALDISERT: In May 1960, I campaigned with John F. Kennedy in the critical presidential primaries of West Virginia.

The next year, I ran for judge, as was indicated, and I was on the Democratic ticket, and I served eight years as a state trial judge.

And as the chairman indicated, Senator Joseph Clark of Pennsylvania was my chief sponsor when President Lyndon Johnson nominated me to the Court of Appeals, and Senator Robert F. Kennedy from New York was one of my key supporters.

Now, why do I say this? I make this as a point that political loyalties become irrelevant when I became a judge. The same has been true in the case of Judge Alito, who served honorably in two Republican administrations before he was appointed to our court.

Judicial independence is simply incompatible with political loyalties, and Judge Alito's judicial record on our court bears witness to this fundamental truth.

I have been a judge for 45 of my 86 years. And based on my experience, I can represent to this committee that Judge Alito has to be included among the first rank of the 44 judges with whom I have served on the 3rd Circuit, and including another 50 judges on five other courts of appeals on which I have sat since taking senior status.

That contained a pretty unsubtle dig at the man who more than anyone else turned these hearings into a joke and a debacle. Judge Aldisert knew and worked with Ted's older and more accomplished brothers, supporting them and accepting their support when it came to working in politics and rising to the federal bench. In this case, the eighty-six-year-old man with 45 years of judicial experience flew all the way in from California, in an unprecedented show of support for a fellow judge before a Senate committee, just to state categorically that the dissolute younger brother of his political heroes had the nominee all wrong.

It reminds me of the Lloyd Bentsen moment in the VP debate in 1988 with Dan Quayle, when the VP nominee told the eventual VP that he was no John Kennedy. The difference in this case was that Teddy didn't have the guts to face Aldisert, having fled the scene when these witnesses came to the bench -- like almost all of his Democratic colleagues.

If Ted Kennedy provided the most bombastic example of foolishness of the Alito testimony, his colleague Chuck Schumer comes in a close second as a fool of the first order. This last day of testimony provided plenty of examples, but I will be happy to show a couple of them -- one with Alito, and the other later in the day with the ABA. In the first, Schumer apparently had his mind set on catching Alito in a contradiction, and wanted to move in for the kill. On the video, viewers could see Schumer's agitation level rise as his hands flew all over the place and his over-the-glasses stare sharpened considerably. He tried to make the case that he allowed the government to make new arguments on appeal when he earlier denied the same process to a "retarded" plaintiff -- but as Alito pointed out, the difference was a Congressional mandate in the former case:

SCHUMER: I understand it's a government case. Let me just make -- I'm going to let you answer it. I just want to make the point here so everybody can understand. The majority in Smith v. Horn to say -- this time it was the government had failed to raise the issue in the district court brief. This time you were prepared to excuse that failure. This time you felt it was appropriate to consider the issue on your own.

I am at a loss to understand the difference. I'm going to give you a chance to explain, but I want to read what the majority in Smith v. Horn had to say about your indulgence of the government for failing to bring up an issue, just as the retarded person in that case did.

They said: "Where the state has never raised the issue at all, in any court, raising the issue ourselves puts us in the untenable position of ferreting out possible defenses upon which the state has never sought to rely. When we do so, we come dangerously close to acting as advocates for the state rather than as impartial magistrates."

SCHUMER: So as far as I can see, the legal principle and procedural rule in each case was precisely the same. The only difference being that the first was a sexual harassment plaintiff who left out an argument, and in the second it was the government who did.

In the first case, you said to that retarded individual, "Sorry, you're out of luck." In the second case, you said to the government, "I'll make your argument for you." And that doesn't seem even handed to me.

Can you explain the difference, please?

ALITO: Yes, Senator.

As I was attempting to explain a couple of minutes ago, there is an important principle called the principle of comity that is involved in habeas cases. And it goes to a critical part of our concept of federalism, and it's something that Congress itself has very strongly recognized in the habeas corpus statute.

What I'm talking about there is the doctrine of procedural default, which is very closely related to the doctrine of exhaustion. They go hand in hand.

And what Congress has said in the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 is that on the issue of exhaustion, the court has to consider that even if the parties don't raise it.

SCHUMER: Now, that applies to the government as well as to the defendant?

ALITO: Absolutely.

The issue of exhaustion must be considered by the federal habeas court, even if the state prosecutor does not raise the issue of exhaustion. And why did Congress say that?

Congress said that because there's something more involved here than a dispute between the state prosecutor and the habeas petitioner; there is respect for the federal system of government involved. There is respect for the state court system involved.

SCHUMER: But the majority didn't agree with you in that situation, did they?

ALITO: The majority -- but what I'm saying, Senator, is that the underlying principle of comity makes this case, makes Smith v. Warren quite different from a dispute between private parties. Now, the Supreme Court has said that it is appropriate in certain circumstances for the court to consider procedural default sua sponte, and that's what I thought we should do there.

And my position on...

SCHUMER: Let me ask you -- I understand your explanation. I'm not sure I agree with it.

Now wouldn't one think that a member of Congress who voted on that law should know that material before asking the question? Moreover, the requirement obviously would apply to both sides of a habeas case. Alito certainly knew the answer.

The second incident came during the ABA's explanation of how it came up with their highest rating for Judge Alito. Schumer's turn to offer questions came late in that round. Again, like any bad lawyer, he asks one question too many:

SCHUMER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just have a brief question because we've heard a lot about the ABA rating, which is something that's prized and important.

Your sheet here that describes it says it describes three qualities: integrity, professional competence, judicial temperament. Is that right?

TOBER: That's correct.

SCHUMER: So it would not get into what somebody's judicial philosophy would be. Is that correct?

TOBER: That's also correct.

SCHUMER: And so, if somebody were very far right or very far left, as long as they had integrity, professional competence or judicial temperament, you would give them -- that's what you would rate them on.

TOBER: Senator, we don't do politics.

What we do is integrity, professional competence and judicial temperament. They are objective standards. And that's what we bring to this committee.

SCHUMER: And if one standard was -- however one defined it, if somebody was out of the mainstream, again, your rating would not give us any inclination whether that was part of it?

TOBER: If the suggestion was that they were out of the mainstream politically, that's correct.

If they're out of the mainstream in terms of their judicial temperament, we might have a different thought.

What did Schumer accomplish here? He got the ABA to emphasize that Alito has a mainstream judicial temperament as well as a high sense of ethics -- and that an extreme temperament would have damaged his rating from the ABA. But even more damaging, the answer that the ABA "doesn't do politics" slaps at the committee's handling of the hearings and the question of the confirmation itself. Politics shouldn't enter into it for two reasons. The first is that the position should be non-political and would remain so if the Court stuck with an originalist approach to Constitutional issues. Secondly this hearing itself shows the danger of allowing the Court to drift into legislative tasks.

The Washington Post editorial board did what it usually does when the Democrats stage outrageous behavior -- find a way to scold Republicans in order to allow themselves to feel good about damning the Democrats as well. In today's unsigned editorial, the board knocks the Republicans for playing fatuous defense counsels while the Democrats engaged in scurrilous character attacks:

The hearings were less illuminating than one might have hoped. Democratic senators often seemed more interested in attacking the nominee -- sometimes scurrilously -- than in probing what sort of a justice he would be. Even when they tried, their questioning was often so ineffectual as to elicit little useful information. Republican senators, meanwhile, acted more as fatuous counsels for the defense than as sober evaluators of a nominee to serve on the Supreme Court. On both sides, pious, meandering speeches outnumbered thoughtful questions. And the nominee himself was careful, as most nominees are, not to give much away. The result is that Americans don't know all that much more about Judge Alito than they did before.

Still, the hearings provided some useful information. For starters, Judge Alito, though not as polished as Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., was fully versed in constitutional and statutory law. When President Bush nominated Harriet Miers, many commentators worried that under the glare of the hearings, she would not seem up to the job of a justice. Judge Alito's intellect and qualifications have never been the subject of similar controversy, and these hearings showed why. He is in command of the diverse subject matter with which federal courts deal, conversant in the details of his own decisions and knowledgeable about constitutional history. This may be a mere baseline qualification for confirmation, but it is an indispensable baseline.

This editorial begs a few points. First and foremost, the need for Republicans to present a defense for the nominee comes from the inability of the hearing process to allow the nominee to effectively defend himself. The only participant not given time to present counterarguments to charges raised in questioning is the nominee, who must literallly sit there and absorb whatever abuse the Senators wish to dole out. It hardly resembles any American process in justice; in fact, it more resembles a show trial in the grand tradition of Joseph Stalin than anything else, with the Democrats stumbling over themselves to play character assassin.

Under those circumstances, the Republican urge to present defenses to these charges -- scurrilous, as the Post manages to admit -- is quite understandable. It would also appear that the Republicans understand and accept the ethics rules about sitting or prospective jurists refraining from issuing opinions on matters likely to come before them in the future. Like the Democrats, they asked prior nominees about issues such as abortion. Unlike the Democrats, they did not hound the nominees about those issues, nor did they disparage them as evasive or dishonorable for failing to act unethically during testimony -- and they overwhelmingly confirmed those nominees both in committee and on the Senate floor.

The Post complains for most of the rest of the article about how useless the hearing proved, not getting answers to supposedly vital political and legal issues. The problem for the Post isn't the hearings but the expectations of their editorial board about what the hearings should provide. In fact, they should have been satisfied to learn exactly what they describe in the second sentence above: that Judge Alito has the temperament, ethics, qualifications, and grasp of the law necessary to perform the job for which the President nominated him. The consideration of politics got settled in November of 2004, when the people elected this President to nominate qualified candidates of his choice to the federal bench. Elections have consequences, something that Democrats and the Washington Post have not yet learned.

In years past, the Senate didn't even bother with confirmation hearings. Those only convened under extraordinary circumstances, even for Supreme Court nominations, usually when a real issue of lack of qualification arose. Byron White's hearing in the early 60s, one of the first regularly-planned confirmation hearings, took 15 minutes -- just an introduction to the Judiciary Committee and a review of his CV.

In the future, the Senate should either promulgate rules of order for this out-of-control character-assassination committee, parameters that allow the nominee to act within the ethical bounds of their profession while being able to defend him/herself from the McCarthyist attacks of any party, or it should bar public hearings for confirmations altogether. The sad spectacle of American jurists being required to sit on television, immobile and unreactive to the slanders of politicians whose own ethics make a mockery of their Inquisition, in order to just get a promotion, hardly reflects the values in which most Americans believe for their justice system.

Canadians appear poised to upend all expectations of the electorate, which just weeks ago appeared to suffer from ennui and a sense of the inexorable nature of Liberal government. Instead, the Tories have pushed the election to the brink of a Parliamentary majority and the Liberals might have trouble qualifying as the Opposition, according to projections from the Globe & Mail:

The Conservative Party will come within a few seats of winning a majority government, if current levels of voter support hold up, according to projections by the Strategic Counsel. ...

The projections, which are calculated by running this week's Strategic Counsel poll of more than 3,500 Canadians through a mathematical formula, are that the Tories will win 152 seats on Jan. 23, followed by 74 for the Liberals, 60 for the Bloc and 21 for the NDP. There are 308 seats in the House, so a party needs 155 to form a majority. ...

The latest poll conducted Tuesday and Wednesday indicates the Conservatives have the support of 39 per cent of the electorate, compared with 27 per cent for the Liberals, 16 per cent for the NDP and 12 per cent for the Bloc. Conservative support in Quebec appears to have stabilized in recent days at 23 per cent, compared with 48 per cent for the Bloc Québécois, 18 for the Liberals and 8 for the NDP.

The twelve-point gap appears to have solidified in most polling now, showing that Canadians may have firmed up their electoral choices with less than ten days to go before the elections. The last Ipsos poll showed the same gap, and also showed the Tories moving ahead of the Grits in their power base of Ontario, a body blow to the hopes of Paul Martin to retain any notion of holding power. SES Research has the gap at around nine or ten points consistently, and an eight-point gap favoring the Tories in Ontario.

With a majority so tantalizingly close, expect a little pullback of the vote between now and January 23rd. Some Canadians may not want to see anyone in the majority, preferring a negotiated minority government that still puts Stephen Harper in charge, but answerable to Gilles Duceppe or Jack Layton. One presumes that this collapse will spell the end of Paul Martin's political career, and so possibly a purged Liberal Party might wind up joining the Conservatives to form a national-unity government -- but that would likely infuriate the BQ and exacerbate separatist sentiment.

Without a doubt, however, Canadians have awoken from their supposed scandal fatigue to deliver a message to would-be leaders of their government. If they cannot hold themselves accountable for their governance, the voters intend on doing so themselves.

No sooner than Canada legalized gender-neutral marriage than a new study commissioned by their Justice Department has concluded that the government should repeal the criminalization of polygamy. In a report that the Canadian Press received confidentially, the Queen's University study not only recommends decriminalization but a regulatory system defining spousal support and inheritance rights based on marriage order and other considerations:

A new study for the federal Justice Department says Canada should get rid of its law banning polygamy, and change other legislation to help women and children living in such multiple-spouse relationships.

“Criminalization does not address the harms associated with valid foreign polygamous marriages and plural unions, in particular the harms to women,” says the report, obtained by The Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act. “The report therefore recommends that this provision be repealed.” ...

Canadian laws should be changed to better accommodate the problems of women in polygamous marriages, providing them clearer spousal support and inheritance rights.

This news hardly helps the outgoing Liberal cause in the upcoming election. With Paul Martin loudly proclaiming his pride in pushing through the gender-neutral marriage legislation during the entire election and attempting to scare voters away from the Tories on the issue, his own Justice Department has proven the slippery-slope argument Tories have made all along. When one attempts to redefine two milennia of Western thought on the meaning of marriage by the simple fiat of transitory plurality rule, it opens the door to all sorts of questions -- and the minimization of tradition required for the first step removes the impediments for more radical action in its aftermath.

Already, Canadian polygamist activists have taken up the same arguments as gay-marriage advocates did. “Why criminalize the behaviour?” [the study's lead author] said in an interview. “We don't criminalize adultery. In light of the fact that we have a fairly permissive society ... why are we singling out that particular form of behaviour for criminalization?”

Well, libertarians might argue, why indeed? They may have a point. Undeniably, though, the advocates for traditional marriage had it right when they argued that redefining marriage would open a Pandora's box for all sorts of other banned behaviors. The paleolibertarian argument will continue ad nauseam until the government will have to allow any combination of consenting adults, regardless of consanguinuity, to form whatever sexual relationships they desire -- and then come up with laws that govern the messy outcomes of the failure of those relationships.

It would seem that the most prudent option would be the use of domestic partnerships using contract law instead of redefining marriage for the whole of society just to satisfy a fringe element. At least the contracts then govern the outcomes of the failed partnerships, and we don't have to chuck out two millenia of Western culture as our touchstone for human progress.

Note: This first appeared on the Truth Laid Bear, who has headed this effort.

We are bloggers with boatloads of opinions, and none of us come close to agreeing with any other one of us all of the time. But we do agree on this: The new leadership in the House of Representatives needs to be thoroughly and transparently free of the taint of the Jack Abramoff scandals, and beyond that, of undue inlfuence of K Street.

We are not naive about lobbying, and we know it can and has in fact advanced crucial issues and has often served to inform rather than simply influence Members.

But we are certain that the public is disgusted with excess and with privilege. We hope the Hastert-Dreier effort leads to sweeping reforms including the end of subsidized travel and other obvious influence operations. Just as importantly, we call for major changes to increase openness, transparency and accountability in Congressional operations and in the appropriations process.

As for the Republican leadership elections, we hope to see more candidates who will support these goals, and we therefore welcome the entry of Congressman John Shadegg to the race for Majority Leader. We hope every Congressman who is committed to ethical and transparent conduct supports a reform agenda and a reform candidate. And we hope all would-be members of the leadership make themselves available to new media to answer questions now and on a regular basis in the future.

Signed,

N.Z. Bear, The Truth Laid Bear
Hugh Hewitt, HughHewitt.com
Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit.com
Kevin Aylward, Wizbang!
La Shawn Barber, La Shawn Barber's Corner
Lorie Byrd, Polipundit
John Hawkins, Right Wing News
John Hinderaker, Power Line
Jon Henke / McQ / Dale Franks, QandO
James Joyner, Outside The Beltway
Mike Krempasky, Redstate.org
Michelle Malkin, MichelleMalkin.com
Ed Morrissey, Captain's Quarters
Scott Ott, Scrappleface
John Donovan / Bill Tuttle, Castle Argghhh!!!

American media sources report that al-Qaeda's number two leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, may have been killed in an attack on a suspected AQ safe house in Pakistan earlier this evening. Estimates of the dead after the American air strike on the compound in Damadola, a remote village near the Afghan border where both he and Osama bin Laden had been rumored to have hidden themselves away from both US and Pakistani forces. ABC News reports:

Today, according to Pakistani military sources, U.S. aircraft attacked a compound known to be frequented by high-level al Qaeda operatives. Pakistani officials tell ABC News that al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's top lieutenant, may have been among them.

U.S. intelligence for the last few days indicated that Zawahiri might have been in the location or about to arrive, although there is still no confirmation from U.S. officials that he was among the victims.

ABC also reports that the forces on the scene have identified five bodies, possibly more, as potential top-level AQ leadership. Forensic experts have started their analysis to determine if the air strike with the unmanned airplane has put an end to the operational mastermind of the Islamofascist network responsible for 9/11:

Villagers described seeing an unmanned plane circling the area for the last few days and then bombs falling in the early morning darkness. Eighteen people were killed, according to the villagers who said women and children were among the fatalities.

But Pakistani officials tell ABC News that five of those killed were high-level al Qaeda figures, and their bodies are now undergoing forensic tests for positive identification.

It will take a day or two for the bodies to be recovered and an identification confirmed. In the meantime, al-Jazeera may soon have to start auditioning people to make new videos for their nightly news. (H/T: Michelle Malkin and Power Line)

The run of luck that the Liberals enjoyed last spring while the Gomery inquiry jumped into the headlines must seem like a lifetime ago to Paul Martin. Tonight, a new scandal has broken out north of the border, as our good friend Kate at Small Dead Animals notes. The Liberals expelled a candidate for a riding in British Columbia after the NDP reported a bribe attempt to get their candidate to withdraw and endorse the Grits:

Liberal Leader Paul Martin dumped one of his Liberal candidates in British Columbia on Friday after the man was accused of trying to bribe the local New Democrat candidate. ...

The move came just a few hours after the NDP publicized a complaint to Elections Canada from NDP federal secretary Eric Hebert alleging Mr. Oliver, the Liberal candidate in Abbotsford, offered NDP rival Jeffery Hansen-Carlson a job in Ottawa and help contesting the next civic election if he publicly threw his support behind the Liberals.

Both Mr. Oliver and his campaign manager, Gordie Kahlon, denied the bribery allegation, especially since the Liberals had no hope of winning the staunchly Conservative riding. ...

In a notarized letter attached to the NDP complaint, Mr. Hansen-Carlson said the offer came at a meeting last Tuesday with Mr. Oliver and Mr. Kahlon, at the Liberal candidate's office.

Mr. Hansen-Carlson said he became suspicious when Oliver's manager said he had heard that the New Democrat had "civic aspirations."

This broke just hours after the Tories had to drop one of their candidates in BC after finding out that he concealed smuggling allegations and formal charges. Instead of making hay with the Conservatives on what could have been a devastating blow to the Tory hopes to capture a majority government. Now the Liberals instead have shot themselves in the foot, snatching defeat once again from the jaws of victory when last spring they used all of their efforts to free themselves of the Essence of Adscam. They almost seem to want to lose power as suddenly and as effortlessly as they once claimed it.

The AP reports that two senior Pakistani officials now say that the people killed in the missile attack on Damadola were locals, not AQ leadership, and that the attack resulted from mistaken intel. The forensics on the bodies that were retrieved have not yet been completed, but the locals claim that the dead were a family of jewelers and not AQ terrorists:

Al-Qaida's second-in-command was the target of a U.S. airstrike near the Afghan border but he was not at the site of the attack, two senior Pakistani officials said Saturday. At least 17 people were killed. ...

The senior Pakistani officials told The Associated Press on Saturday that the CIA had acted on incorrect information, and Ayman al-Zawahri was not in the northwestern village of Damadola when it came under attack. Al-Zawahri is ranked No. 2 in the al-Qaida terror network, second only to Osama bin Laden.

"Their information was wrong, and our investigations conclude that they acted on a false information," said a senior intelligence official who has direct knowledge of the investigations launched by Pakistan to look into the attacks. His account was confirmed by a senior government official, who said al-Zawahri "was not there."

Pakistan's government was expected to formally issue its reaction later Saturday.

An AP reporter who visited the scene in Damadola village about 12 hours later saw three destroyed houses, hundreds of yards apart. Villagers recounted hearing aircraft overhead moments before the attack. By their count at least 30 people died, including women and children.

Attacks using unmanned Predators have a higher risk of going wrong, and the US would prefer to capture targets like Zawahiri alive anyway. Pakistan, however, has not allowed the US to operate very freely in that area for some time now, although we have made it clear that we will take out AQ leadership wherever we think they might be. It's yet another reason why the WOT requires boots on the ground and traditional military operations as well as covert operations. Without having both, the intelligence needed for further operations gets more difficult to find and to confirm. In Iraq, for instance, our presence has allowed the Iraqis to finally understand that we will not leave while AQ remains -- and they remain highly motivated to pass along thousands of tips every month for us to track them down.

The forensic results should be announced by tomorrow on the bodies retrieved immediately after the attack. Hopefully they will prove to have been AQ leadership, especially Zawahiri or even Osama himself. If not, then the CIA has some explaining to do at the White House come Monday morning. However, we should not overreact to the miss or the missed intel (if that is what it proves to have been), nor should we let up in our pursuit of the leaders of the lunatics that conducted the 9/11 plot