January 1, 2006
A Cold Winter In Europe
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,...
Open Season On Hostage Appeasers In Yemen
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...
More Desperation At The Gray Lady
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...
Connecting Dots Alarms The Washington Post
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...
Scheuer-Die Zeit Interview Translated
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...
A Classless Exit Staged By Low-Rent Ownership
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...
The Triangle Strategy End Game
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...
January 2, 2006
More Russian Hot Air Over Ukrainian Gas
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...
Journos Reckon With Empowered Readership, Still Mostly Clueless
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...
The NFL Starts Playing The Head Coach Shuffle
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...
A Plaintive Cry For Relevancy
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...
Fiesta Bowl Live Blog
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...
January 3, 2006
Not One Dime's Candidate Gaining Ground
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...
Sunnis And Kurds Near Political Arrangement
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...
Tories Pull Ahead In Canada
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...
The New Democratic Meme: Self-Immolation
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...
Patrick Henry's Dirty Little Secret
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...
Let The Chips Fall Where They May
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...
Congress Told Of Expanded NSA Efforts In 2001
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....
January 4, 2006
Russia Passes On Gas War, Uses Middleman
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....
One Final Cruelty In The Mines Of West Virginia
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...
Alito Opposition Fails To Find Any Traction
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...
Predictions Of Fallout From Abramoff
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...
Tories Open A Gap On Grits: SES
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...
Quick Hits
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...
Palestinian Gratitude
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...
Which Tragedy?
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...
January 5, 2006
Clinton Pleads Out In Paul Fundraiser Case
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....
Kennedy Stays Bought
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,...
Anti-Alito Forces Get Personal In Desperation
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,...
Another Liberal Scandal On The Horizon?
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...
The Next Liberal Scandal Breaks
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...
January 6, 2006
The Syrian Tipping Point
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...
Buyer's Remorse
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...
Confirmation Follies To Reach Their Crescendo This Weekend
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....
Why The RCMP Got Interested In Cold Case
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...
Anti-Alito Witness Backs Off
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...
Alito Colleagues Come To His Rescue
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...
January 7, 2006
Ramblin' Man Bares All
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,...
DeLay Steps Down
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...
Saddam Trained Terrorists By The Thousands
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,...
Alito's Former Pupil Defends Him In The NYT
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...
January 8, 2006
Another Arrest In UNSCAM
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...
Everyone Loved Jack
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...
Justice Sunday III: The Pre-Show
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...
Justice Sunday III: Press Conference
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...
Justice Sunday III: The Yahoo Factor
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...
Justice Sunday III: The WaPo Response
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......
JSIII: The Protest
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...
JS III: The Warm-Up
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....
JS III: The Event
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....
Back To DC
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...
January 9, 2006
Tories Ride The Wave To Top
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...
Osama Bin Dyin'?
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...
The RNC Blogger Forum
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....
RNC Blogger Forum: GOP Strategy
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 --...
RNC Blogger Forum: The e-Campaign
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...
RNC Blogger Forum: Polling
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...
RNC Blogger Forum: Upcoming Races (Update and Bump)
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...
RNC Blogger Forum: Hearing Live-Blog, Day 1
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...
RNC Blogger Forum: Alito's Statement
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....
RNC Blogger Forum: Economic Strategy
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...
RNC Blogger Forum: Nat'l Direction
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...
RNC Blogger Forum: Surprise Visitors
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...
The Leaders Debate, And Yell, And Scream ...
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...
January 10, 2006
Matt Richtel, Call Your Editor
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...
RNC Blogger Forum: The Meaning Of Consensus
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 --...
Did The Tories' Lead Jump To Double Digits?
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...
RNC Blogger Forum: Day 2 Live Blog, Specter & Leahy
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...
RNC Blogger Forum: Senator Bill Frist
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...
RNC Blogger Forum: Senator John Cornyn
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...
RNC Blogger Forum: Operation Outcry
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...
RNC Blogger Forum: Senator Orrin Hatch
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...
RNC Blogger Forum: Alito's Clerks
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...
RNC Blogger Forum: Alito's Contemporaries
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...
RNC Blogger Forum: Day 2 Live Blog, Feingold
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....
Alito 1, Schumer -35
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 ByrdTM 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...
January 11, 2006
Senate Blogger Forum: Day 3 Live Blog - Durbin, Brownback
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...
Senate Blogger Forum: Senator Grassley
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...
Senate Blogger Forum: Round 2, Specter
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...
Senate Blogger Forum: Former Alito Clerks, Group 2
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...
Senate Blogger Forum: Day 3 Arrival (Update And Reconsideration)
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...
Senate Blogger Forum: Kennedy (McCarthy) Redux
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...
Continue reading "Senate Blogger Forum: Kennedy (McCarthy) Redux" »
Senate Blogger Forum: Orrin Hatch
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...
Senate Blogger Forum: Jon Kyl
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...
Senate Blogger Forum: The CAP Trap
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...
How To Know You're Back In The Twin Cities
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....
January 12, 2006
The Split Widens
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,...
At Long Last, They Have No Shame
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...
Al Capone's Vault, Take 2
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,...
First Mate Update
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...
CQ On The Air Tonight
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...
You're Not Your Brothers, Senator Kennedy
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...
The Incredible Cluelessness Of Senator Schumer, Continued
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...
January 13, 2006
WaPo Exercises Relativity, Scolds Both Sides For Hearing
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...
Conservatives Headed For Majority
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...
Justice Dept Study Urges Canada To Legalize Polygamy
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...
An Appeal from Center-Right Bloggers
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...
#2 AQ BBQ Residue?
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....
50 Ways To Lose Your Power
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...
January 14, 2006
AQ #2 Not Residue, Locals Say
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...
Grits Plan To Start Campaign ... Real Soon
With ten days left before the Parliamentary elections in Canada and the Tories firming up a lead that indicates a possible majority government, the Liberals now say they're ready to start campaigning. They have attack ads that they plan to run during the final week of the election campaign, even though many have already voted in the advanced polling that started this weekend: Liberal strategists believe they can turn around the last week of the campaign by continuing to broadcast their attack ads and going hard after Conservative Leader Stephen Harper, hoping that something will stick. Liberal Leader Paul Martin executed part of that strategy yesterday as he hammered away at the Conservative policy platform, arguing that the numbers don't add up and it is a throwback to the Mulroney era. On Monday, Mr. Martin begins a race across the country to shore up the Liberal vote, as he did...
Shame On CNS For Murtha Attack
CNS News Service reports on questions regarding the validity of the Purple Heart medals received by John Murtha during his service in Viet Nam, recalling the fight against John Kerry and his run at the Presidency. The strange and pointless investigation appears to have started when Murtha began his public campaign against the Bush administration and his Iraq policy: Having ascended to the national stage as one of the most vocal critics of President Bush's handling of the war in Iraq, Pennsylvania Democratic Congressman John Murtha has long downplayed the controversy and the bitterness surrounding the two Purple Hearts he was awarded for military service in Vietnam. Murtha is a retired marine and was the first Vietnam combat veteran elected to Congress. Since 1967, there have been at least three different accounts of the injuries that purportedly earned Murtha his Purple Hearts. Those accounts also appear to conflict with the...
CQ On The Air Today
The Northern Alliance Radio Network expands today into its new four-hour timeslot starting at 11 am CT, with a few format changes. Our friends at Fraters Libertas and Power Line will take over the first two hours, and today feature an inteview in the second hour with Stephen Hayes, whose work in reporting on the captured Iraqi Intelligence Service files has shown that the Saddam regime trained Islamist terrorists by the thousands. In the third and fourth hours, Mitch Berg and I will review the news of the week, including my reporting on the week I spent in Washington covering the Alito confirmation hearings. King Banaian of SCSU Scholars would normally join us in hours 3 and 4, but he is on assignment this weekend. Mitch also will cover the ongoing issues of the smoking ban in today's show. For those of you in the Twin Cities, we can be...
Is AQ An Equal Opportunity Employer?
One of the documents revealed yesterday in the case of Jose Padilla, now that his case has been transferred to civilian court, was an application to join al-Qaeda. The government found his application -- known to AQ as a "mujaheddin data form" -- in Afghanistan shortly after the October 2001 invasion that pushed the Taliban from power and set AQ leadership running for the hills. It comprises one part of the evidence that the DoD is willing to use publicly in order to gain a conviction against Padilla for conspiracy to commit terrorism: After the U.S. military invaded Afghanistan to oust its Taliban rulers, authorities found a locker full of applications to join al Qaeda's holy war overseas. Among the alleged applicants: José Padilla, the former ''enemy combatant'' who once lived in Broward County. A prosecutor produced the alleged document for the first time Thursday in Miami federal court, where...
Coming To A Head On Iran
The day of reckoning with Teheran comes ever closer, as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad refuses to stop their nuclear research even when facing the threat of UN sanction: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Saturday painted the United States and other Western nations as bullies with "a medieval view of the world" and insisted his nation has the right to conduct nuclear research. "A few Western states ... have nuclear arsenals, they have chemical weapons. They have microbiological weapons. And every year they establish tens of new nuclear power plants. Now they are criticizing the Iranian nation ... because they think that they are powerful," Ahmadinejad said, apparently referring to the United States and the EU-3 -- Britain, France and Germany. Talks between the EU-3 and Iran stalled last year, and Iran on Tuesday resumed research at its Natanz uranium enrichment plant -- an act viewed with suspicion by the United States...
January 15, 2006
Have We Given Up On Iran?
That's what The Scotsman reports, stating that European and American officials have resigned themselves to a nuclear Iran. After a good cop/bad cop approach by the EU and America, neither group believe sanctions will have any affect and Europe will not support military action as an alternative: Officials in London and Washington now privately admit that they must face the painful fact that there is nothing they can do, despite deep suspicions that Tehran is seeking to develop nuclear weapons under cover of researching nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. Yesterday a defiant Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said his country would not be deflected from its right to develop nuclear technology by referral to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions. ... Publicly, the US and Britain, the two countries that have adopted the most hawkish stance, are pressing for international action to stop Iran. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice...
Even The Media Gives Up On The Filibuster
Two of the most important liberal newspapers editorialize against using a filibuster on the confirmation of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court. The Los Angeles Times takes the opportunity to call out one specific Democratic member of Judiciary while reminding his party that elections have consequences -- and one of them is the ability to shape the federal bench: WHO SAYS YOU DON'T LEARN much from judicial confirmation hearings? We learned an awful lot about Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) last week. He was among the senators who seemed to use more of their time lecturing instead of listening to the Supreme Court nominee, Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. ... Alito would not have been our choice to replace Sandra Day O'Connor on the court. It is understandable that, unlike now-Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., he may not win many Democratic votes. Conversely, there are no legitimate grounds...
Feinstein: Forget The Filibuster
Dianne Feinstein stuck a fork into Democratic plans to delay the Alito confirmation earlier today, officially running up a white flag in the Democrats' war on judicial nominations for the time being. The California Senator and one of the few Judiciary Democrats to not embarrass herself during the hearings disregarded the advice of her leadership and declared that Samuel Alito deserves his up-or-down vote from the full Senate: A Democrat who plans to vote against Samuel Alito sided on Sunday with a Republican colleague on the Senate Judiciary Committee in cautioning against a filibuster of the Supreme Court nominee. "I do not see a likelihood of a filibuster," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. "This might be a man I disagree with, but it doesn't mean he shouldn't be on the court." She said she will not vote to confirm the appeals court judge, based on his conservative record. But she...
Steelers Survive Steal, Referees To Beat Indy
The Pittsburgh Steelers stunned the Indianapolis Colts today, 21-18, knocking the Colts out of the playoffs just a month after the Colts had challenged the 1972 Dolphins for the only perfect season in NFL history. The Steelers had to hold off a late charge from Peyton Manning as well as two bad calls by the referees, one which almost handed the game to Indianapolis: The Pittsburgh Steelers gave the Colts every opportunity to steal their playoff game Sunday. In the zany, final moments of a true thriller, Indy couldn't figure out how to take it. So the Steelers survived a goal-line fumble by Jerome Bettis and one of the most mysterious replay reversals in NFL history to shatter the Colts' dream season with a 21-18 win. Pittsburgh (13-5) became the first sixth seed to make a conference championship game and will journey to Denver next Sunday for a shot at...
January 16, 2006
The Subtext Of The Alito Hearings
Both the New York Times and Washington Post attempt to capture the subtext of the Alito confirmation hearings, with the former trying to tackle the question seriously and the Post taking a more playful attitude with the question. The New York Times's analysis concludes that the dubious spectacle has created much more room for debate on the legal status of abortion than either side thought possible after the 2004 election: Just a little over a year ago, senators of both parties said publicly that it would be almost impossible for a Supreme Court nominee who disagreed openly with the major abortion rights precedents to win confirmation. ... The shift in the politics of the abortion rights issue was clear early in the hearings. On the first day of questioning, when the parties laid out their arguments and public opinion began to form, only two Democratic senators, Ms. Feinstein and Charles...
Non-Fatal Combat Casualties Down Over A Quarter In 2005
USA Today reports that a key measure of combat dropped significantly in Iraq last year, showing that the number of attacks on US troops fell significantly in Iraq between 2004 and 2005: The number of U.S. troops wounded in Iraq fell by more than a quarter in 2005 from a year earlier, Pentagon records show. Military officials call that a sign that insurgent attacks have declined in the face of elections and stronger Iraqi security forces. The number of wounded dropped from 7,990 in 2004 to 5,939, according to the Defense Department. There hasn't been much change in the number of deaths, however. Pentagon figures show 844 U.S. troops were killed in the Iraq war during 2005, compared with 845 in 2004. The DoD attributes the steady number of combat deaths with the use of more sophisticated and powerful bombs by the enemies in Iraq. These result in more deaths...
Katzenbach Wants To Disarm America For Repentance Of His Own Sins
Today's LA Times contains an essay from former Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach, writing on the occasion of Martin Luther King Day to do penance for his sins against the martyred civil-rights leader. It is a curious kind of penance, however, that rationalizes Katzenbach's sins while forcing the entire nation to do his penance for him. Katzenbach played a key role in the FBI tapping of King's telephones in the 1960s, but now -- forty years afterwards -- wants to eliminate wiretaps altogether while we're at war with Islamist terrorists: In October 1963, Hoover requested Atty. Gen. Kennedy to approve a wiretap on King's telephone. At that time, taps had to be approved by the attorney general and did not require court approval in the form of a warrant. The basis for the tap was King's close association with Stanley Levison, who Hoover said was a prominent member of the Communist...
The Pat Robertson Of New Orleans?
Perhaps the people of New Orleans can appreciate the irony of Ray Nagin and his outbursts, but it doesn't appear to play very well on a national stage. Nagin managed a daily double of foot-in-mouth disease today, first by declaring that hurricanes were God's punishment for the war in Iraq and also unnamed sins of the black community, and then used Martin Luther King Day to declare that New Orleans would once again be a "chocolate city": Mayor Ray Nagin suggested Monday that Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and other storms were a sign that "God is mad at America" and at black communities, too, for tearing themselves apart with violence and political infighting. "Surely God is mad at America. He sent us hurricane after hurricane after hurricane, and it's destroyed and put stress on this country," Nagin, who is black, said as he and other city leaders marked Martin Luther...
Iran Blinks?
In an apparent reversal of their previous stance, Iran has now welcomed a Russian proposal to enrich Iranian uranium themselves and thus control the fuel cycle, allowing Iran to generate power without creating fissile material for a weapon. The Iranians had rejected an identical Russian overture earlier, arguing that they had a sovereign right to enrich their own uranium: A POTENTIAL breakthrough in the nuclear stand-off with Iran came last night when the Iranian ambassador in Moscow praised a proposal to move Tehran's uranium enrichment programme to Russia. As Britain, the United States, Russia, France and China met in London yesterday to discuss how to handle Iran's illegal nuclear development, the country was facing the growing certainty that it would be referred to the UN Security Council. While China remained resolutely silent on the possibility of sanctions - a move which it has the power to veto - Russia made...
January 17, 2006
Which Is It?
The New York Times updates its NSA exposé today in yet another self-contradictory follow-up that points out yet again the bias of the reporters at the heart of the story, and perhaps the bias of their sources as well. The Risen/Lichtblau story gets thinner and thinner even as the editors of the Gray Lady do their best to dress it up. In an installment titled "Spy Agency Data After Sept. 11 Led F.B.I. to Dead Ends", Lichtblau & Co. do their best to minimize the benefits of the program: In the anxious months after the Sept. 11 attacks, the National Security Agency began sending a steady stream of telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and names to the F.B.I. in search of terrorists. The stream soon became a flood, requiring hundreds of agents to check out thousands of tips a month. But virtually all of them, current and former officials say, led...
The Masque Slips
Whenever politicians outside the US find themselves in poll trouble, desperation appears to drive them towards one strategy that has shown itself most fallible: anti-Americanism. Gerhard Schroeder tried it and it eventually buried him. Now Paul Martin, drowning in an unprecedented popular collapse in Canada, has let his anti-US face show in the waning hours of his grip on power in Ottawa: Amid growing signals of panic in the Liberal ranks, the party has launched a series of crudely anti-American commercials. One stated that victory for the 47-year-old Tory leader, Stephen Harper, would "bring a smile to George W Bush's face". Another described Mr Harper as "pro-Iraqi war, anti-Kyoto, socially conservative... Bush's new best friend". But despite strong anti-Americanism among voters, the adverts have had little effect on the polls. Voters appear far more concerned about domestic issues such as corruption. ... The latest polls give the Conservatives a 10-point...
Hillary On MLK Day: Senate Democrats Are Slaves
Hillary Clinton told a crowd gathered for her Martin Luther King Day speech in Al Sharpton's Harlem church that Congress under Republican control is the same as slavery and that the Republican leadership act as the overseers: Martin Luther King Jr. fought four decades ago to free black Americans from the legacy of slavery. Yesterday, Senator Clinton compared the Republican leadership of the current House of Representatives to the very idea the civil rights leader dedicated his life to fighting. "When you look at the way the House of Representatives has been run - it has been run like a plantation," she said. "You know what I'm talking about." Mrs. Clinton, who was addressing a packed house at the Reverend Al Sharpton's annual Martin Luther King Day event at Canaan Baptist Church in Harlem, continued: "It has been run in a way so that nobody with a contrary point of...
First Mate Update: Bad News
I'm afraid today hasn't been a good day for the First Mate and I. Today she started her third week of treatment for her polyoma virus infection, and her blood pressure and creatinine levels have gone up rather dramatically since last week. The doctors informed us today that the FM will need a new kidney and that we probably can't expect too much more function from the current transplant. The average wait for a cadaver donor in this part of the country is four to five years, which means that she'll need to go back on dialysis if the treatment can't recover at least some part of the current transplant's function. Fortunately at this point, it doesn't appear that she has a problem with the pancreas transplant, so she doesn't have to go back on insulin. She will have to continue with the IV treatments this week, and then she...
That's One
Ben Nelson of Nebraska became the first Senate Democrat to declare himself in support of Samuel Alito for confirmation to the Supreme Court. Nelson, who has to defend his seat this year in a state that went to Bush by over 30 points in 2004, will probably not start an overwhelming trend but will prevent a filibuster nonetheless: Ben Nelson of Nebraska, a moderate voice in the U.S. Congress, on Tuesday became the first Senate Democrat to announce his support for conservative Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito, who is expected to be confirmed later this month by the full Republican-led Senate. "I have decided to vote in favor of Judge Samuel Alito," Nelson said in a statement issued by his office. "I came to this decision after careful consideration of his impeccable judicial credentials, the American Bar Association's strong recommendation and his pledge that he would not bring a political...
Jon Stewart On The Democratic Campaign
Normally I'm not a big fan of Jon Stewart, but I left The Daily Show on tonight while I worked on a couple of other tasks. Stewart reviewed the pandering done by Hillary Clinton and Ray Nagin yesterday, as well as the shoutdown Nancy Pelosi received on Saturday when she (rationally) suggested to her constituency that their concerns on the war would best be addressed electorally in 2006 during a visit to San Francisco. At the end of the segment, titled "Donkey Show", Stewart noted this: So the Democratic platform appears to be ... Democrats are our government's slaves [Hillary added to graphic] ... New Orleans can't be rebuilt without Willy Wonka [Nagin added to graphic] ... and voting is for pussies [Pelosi added to graphic]. Good luck in 2006, everybody!...
January 18, 2006
The Dishonesty Of The New York Times
The New York Times puts out another article attacking the inclusion of the notorious "sixteen words" in the 2003 State of the Union address that the Bush administration long ago conceded should not have been in the speech. These 16 words started the CIA on its mission to discredit George Bush by sending its partisan, spook spouse and former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, to Niger for a couple of drinks with the country's Prime Minister. On his return and oddly unencumbered by the normal non-disclosure agreements that the CIA requires for other contractors, he leaked his impressions through Nicholas Kristof at the Times and Walter Pincus at the Washington Post before writing an op-ed under his own name, declaring that Bush had lied about uranium sales to Iraq. Once again, Eric Lichtblau and the NYT rehash this issue, and once again, they handle it dishonestly: A high-level intelligence assessment by the...
Pakistanis Concede Terrorists Among Damadola Dead
The Pakistanis now concede that despite its initial denials, the airstrike on the house in Damadola from unmanned CIA drones killed a number of AQ terrorists that had come to dinner in the village of Damadola. At first they insisted that the dead comprised nothing but local civilians, but yesterday changed their claim: The provincial government said Tuesday that in addition to 18 civilians, four or five foreign militants were killed by the American airstrikes on the village of Damadola on Friday, but that their bodies were removed from the scene by companions. In all, 10 to 12 militants had been invited to a dinner in the village that night, it said. The findings, the first official statement that militants had been among those killed, were from a preliminary joint investigation at the scene by government agencies. The initial investigation found the attack was "directed against some foreign terrorists who...
Lobby Loophole Should Get Closed First
The Washington Post notes a rather large loophole in the new ethics package touted by the GOP for reforming Congress, one which could generate even more lobbying cash for the coffers of DC politicians, if handled correctly. While the proposal bans gifts and specific kinds of travel reimbursements, it ironically leaves others in place as long as lobbyists supplement them with cash: Lawmakers are about to bombard the American public with proposals that would crack down on lobbyists. Several prominent plans, including one outlined yesterday by House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), would specifically ban meals and privately paid travel for lawmakers. Or would they? According to lobbyists and ethics experts, even if Hastert's proposal is enacted, members of Congress and their staffs could still travel the world on an interest group's expense and eat steak on a lobbyist's account at the priciest restaurants in Washington. The only requirement would...
The Bomb Maker Who Missed Dessert
After the CIA dropped a bomb on a compound in Damadola, Pakistani sources tried to play off that the American attack had killed a family of jewelers as they sat down to dinner. Tonight we find out that one of the gems who didn't make it to dessert was none other than chief al-Qaeda WMD and explosives expert Midhat Mursi, also known as Abu Khabab al-Masri, the terrorist leader who trained shoe bomber Richard Reid: ABC News has learned that Pakistani officials now believe that al Qaeda's master bomb maker and chemical weapons expert was one of the men killed in last week's U.S. missile attack in eastern Pakistan. Midhat Mursi, 52, also known as Abu Khabab al-Masri, was identified by Pakistani authorities as one of four known major al Qaeda leaders present at an apparent terror summit in the village of Damadola early last Friday morning. The United States...
Clinton Cover-Up In Barrett Report: Daily News
The New York Daily News reports that the long-awaited Barrett report on the investigation into Henry Cisneros will claim that the Clinton administration actively covered up a tax-fraud case against the former HUD Secretary, and that the Hillary crony in charge of the IRS at that time played a key role in killing the investigation: A special prosecutor's long-delayed report charges that a coverup at senior levels of the Clinton administration killed a tax fraud case against ex-cabinet member Henry Cisneros, the Daily News has learned. David Barrett's 11-year, $23 million probe, which will be released tomorrow, states in stinging terms that this Clinton coverup succeeded. Cisneros was forced to admit in 1999 that he had made secret payments to a mistress before serving as Clinton's secretary of Housing and Urban Development. Barrett investigated tax fraud charges stemming from those under-the-table payments. Then-IRS Commissioner Peggy Richardson, a close friend of...
January 19, 2006
UN Peacekeeping Via The Murtha Method
The Ivory Coast erupted into chaos yet again overnight, with opposing gangs roaming the streets and committing violence despite the presence of United Nations peacekeepers tasked with defending a cease-fire between the two sides of the Ivorian civil war. One UN contingent finally opened fire to protect themselves, killing four Ivorians, while another shot weapons in the air and fired teargas to cover their retreat: IVORY COAST, once one of the wealthiest countries in Africa, was close to its second civil war in five years yesterday as gangs of armed thugs loyal to President Gbagbo ran amok across the southern half of the country. A 300-strong contingent of Bangladeshi UN troops was forced to withdraw after an attack on their base at Guiglo, 300 miles west of Abidjan, the commercial capital. At least four people died when the peacekeepers opened fire to defend themselves. Another contingent of 70 international peacekeepers...
EU Starts Pressing For IAEA Referral On Iran
European diplomats, apparently agreeing with Condoleezza Rice's diagnosis on the usefulness of further talks with Iran on nuclear disarmament, have started circulating a draft resolution demanding that the IAEA refer Teheran to the United Nations Security Council for further action: EU powers began circulating a draft resolution on Wednesday for a February 2 meeting of the U.N. nuclear watchdog asking it to report Iran to the Security Council, but Russia was seeking moves that stopped short of a formal referral. ... The governing board of the International Atomic Energy Agency will hold an emergency meeting that day on Iran's nuclear work at the request of European Union powers, an IAEA spokesman said. France, Britain, Germany and the United States are expected to push to have Tehran referred to the U.N. Security Council after it resumed research that could be used for generating electricity or making atomic bombs. But EU foreign...
Does John McCain Stand For Anything?
Senator John McCain, widely expected to run for President in 2008 and likely to garner significant support, has a reputation in the media as both a conservative and a "maverick" for opposition to his party's policies. He legitimized the Gang of 14 rebellion in the Senate last year and extended the standoff over Senate filibusters. McCain also pushed through one of the worst pieces of legislation ever to come out of Congress -- the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, which violates the First Amendment by curtailing political speech by every organization except newspapers within 60 days of an election. He teamed up with George Soros and sucked up a lot of money for himself and his staff in that effort to end checkbook politics. Despite all of this, McCain still carries the patina of conservativism due to his staunch pro-life views. Or does he? In a new development, it seems that...
The Problems Of Success
It appears that the Conservatives might run into self-imposed limitations of success in Quebec, where their sudden popularity surprised even the most optimistic of party leaders. Vaulting over the Liberals for second place in popular polling, the Tories do not have the ground support for GOTV efforts -- and that might limit their gains to a dozen ridings in the province: Conservatives say they may have difficulty cashing in on their new-found popularity in Quebec because they don't know who many of the voters are and they face problems getting some of them to the polls. The lack of organization will force the party to focus hard on 10 to 12 seats it thinks it can win, but it will have to rely on momentum to take a second tier of seats where it has little or no organization. ... Recent opinion polls have the Tories hovering around 30 per...
The Three Calls
The blogosphere made a bit of history today in an effort to push a reform effort onto the GOP by engaging three candidates for a critical leadership position in public campaigning for the effort. Usually, party leadership gets chosen in closed processes, elected among members of the House or Senate via back-channel negotiations, arm-twisting, vote-counting, and back-slapping. With a major ethics scandal staring the Republicans in the face, however, the blogosphere and talk radio (especially Hugh Hewitt) have demanded that the candidates address their wider constituencies and conduct the election in the open. Today that process resulted in unprecedented conference calls between leading House candidates for Majority Leader and center-right and conservative bloggers. Reps. John Shadegg, John Boehner, and Roy Blunt (current majority whip and front-runner for ML) held separate calls with a changing list of bloggers. CQ fortunately caught all three, but even had I not been able to...
Osama Bin Trucin'
Osama bin Laden finally came up for air this afternoon with an audio tape that alternately threatened and cajoled the American people to end the war on terror. Bin Laden claimed that attack preparations continue to proceed apace regardless of our efforts to stop them, but offered a "long-term truce" if we promised to withdraw from the Middle East and rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan: Osama bin Laden warned in an audiotape aired Thursday that his fighters are preparing new attacks in the United States but offered the American people a "long-term truce" without specifying the conditions. ... The CIA has authenticated the voice on the tape as that of bin Laden, an agency official said. The al-Qaida leader is believed to be hiding in the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Beyond confirming that bin Laden remains alive, the tape could be aimed at projecting an image of strength to...
Swann Takes Flight In PA
Former Pittsburgh Steeler great Lynn Swann has overtaken Governor Ed Rendell in the Rassmussen poll by two percentage points, after being down to Rendell by two touchdowns last November. This provides an ill omen for Democrats and their national strategy over the next two years if the Swann momentum continues: Our latest poll of the race for Pennsylvania governor shows Republican Lynn Swann, the former receiver for the Pittsburgh Steelers, narrowly leading Democratic Governor Ed Rendell 45% to 43%. Fifty-four percent (54%) of voters view Swann favorably; 47% view Rendell favorably. Swann formally declared his candidacy just two weeks ago, on January 4. But he has enjoyed early success in securing endorsements from two of six regional caucuses in his quest for the party nomination. The Republican state Committee will endorse a candidate on February 11. ... Although Swann has just announced his candidacy in a formal sense, he has...
January 20, 2006
The DoJ Defends The Administration On Intercepts
Raw Story acquired a draft of an official Department of Justice memorandum that gives the legal justifications for the warrantless NSA intercepts authorized by the President. Raw Story has the PDF as a link on its site, but in the interest of splitting the bandwidth investment, I'll host it here as well. Readers who have followed the story here as well as at Power Line or The Volokh Conspiracy won't find anything terribly surprising, but those who have not followed the actual legal arguments might find themselves surprised just how much supporting precedent exists for the authorization and subsequent approvals by the Attorney General. The text of the summary includes these arguments: As the President has explained, since shortly after the attacks of September 11, 2001, he has authorized the National Security Agency (“NSA”) to intercept international communications into and out of the United States of persons linked to al...
G&M Playing With Polls?
Today's Globe & Mail reports that Stephen Harper has suddenly lost ground in polling this week as the Monday election draws near -- but then puts the Tory lead at the same nine-point margin that has been the consensus for over two weeks: The Conservative Party's lead in the polls has narrowed to nine percentage points as voters in Ontario and Quebec have second thoughts about a Stephen Harper government. The latest poll for The Globe and Mail and CTV by the Strategic Counsel shows national support for the Conservatives has dropped to 37 per cent from 41 per cent, while support for the Liberals has risen to 28 per cent from 25 per cent. Backing for the New Democratic Party dipped one percentage point to 16 per cent. The race has tightened in the face of a Liberal advertising attack on Mr. Harper and an anti-Tory offensive in Quebec...
Jawa Report Celebrates 2nd Blogiversary ... In Style
How many weblogs get a chance to celebrate an anniversary by helping to catch a would-be Islamist terrorist? Well ... at least one! Congratulations, Rusty, and happy 2nd blogiversary!...
Dems Admit Election-Day Sabotage
Four of five Democratic activists charged with election-day sabotage took an eleventh-hour plea deal that convicted them of misdemeanors for slashing tires on GOP-rented vans on Election Day 2004. Despite doing over $5,000 worth of damage and perhaps keeping hundreds of voters from getting to the polls, the quartet will not have to serve any prison time in exchange for their guilty pleas (via The American Mind, who has a good roundup of reaction): In an unexpected twist in the Election Day tire-slashing trial, four former Kerry-Edwards campaign staffers, including the sons of U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Milwaukee) and former Acting Mayor Marvin Pratt, have agreed to plead no contest to misdemeanors. The plea agreements came in the middle of jury deliberations after an eight-day trial on felony property damage charges that carried potential 3 1/2 year prison terms upon conviction. The fifth defendant in the case was acquitted by...
Is This Zawahiri's Eulogy?
A Islamist website posted an audiotape today of a recording by Ayman al-Zawahiri, the first since a Hellfire missile took out at least three of his lieutenants last week. A new tape would have confirmed a miss against the attack's primary target, but the tape contains no references to current events. In fact, the only references made in the tape were to martyrs of the battles that immediately followed 9/11 and from the invasion of Iraq in 2003: An audiotape from al-Qaida's second in command, Ayman al-Zawahri, was posted Friday on an Islamic Web site, but U.S. officials said the recording does not appear to have been made recently and may even date back years. In the audiotape, al-Zawahri read a poem praising "martyrs of holy war" in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere. The tape made no mention of a Jan. 13 U.S. airstrike in Pakistan that was targeting al-Zawahri and...
Even Liberal Leadership Fleeing To Tories
The election-eve weekend started off rather strangely for Canadians, or perhaps not, considering the circumstances of the election itself. In a late move, the Liberal president of an Toronto riding has endorsed the Conservative candidate as a protest against Liberal Party tactics: The president of a west-end Toronto Liberal riding association resigned Friday, saying he can no longer back the party's candidate Michael Ignatieff. Ron Chyczij, of the Etobicoke-Lakeshore Federal Liberal Association, said he was now endorsing Conservative candidate John Capobianco adding he could no longer "in good conscious" support Ignatieff. "After the nomination fiasco, I've purposely waited on the sidelines to see if Michael Ignatieff can in some way redeem himself as a credible Liberal candidate in this riding. I regret to conclude this has not happened," Chyczij said in a statement. Members of the local riding association have cried foul over the Liberal party's strategy of parachuting the...
January 21, 2006
Rove Outlines 2006 GOP Strategy
Leaving no doubt that he once again commands the strategy of the GOP, Karl Rove joined RNC chair Ken Mehlman for the winter meeting to lay out the battle plan for this year's midterm elections. Unsurprisingly, the GOP will push national security as its main theme: White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove offered a biting preview of the 2006 midterm elections yesterday, drawing sharp distinctions with the Democrats over the campaign against terrorism, tax cuts and judicial philosophy, and describing the opposition party as backward-looking and bereft of ideas. "At the core, we are dealing with two parties that have fundamentally different views on national security," Rove said. "Republicans have a post-9/11 worldview and many Democrats have a pre-9/11 worldview. That doesn't make them unpatriotic -- not at all. But it does make them wrong -- deeply and profoundly and consistently wrong." ... It was four years ago...
Iraq Elections Force Compromise
As expected, the Shi'ites have won an overwhelming plurality in the National Assembly from their elections last month, but failed to carry an outright majority. Instead, Iraqi political leaders will try to fashion a national-unity coalition that includes Shi'ites, Kurds, and Sunnis, the latter of whom imrpoved their showing to finish second: The first official results in Iraq's landmark December elections showed Friday that the Shiite and Kurdish coalitions once again dominated the voting, but came up just short of the two-thirds majority needed to form a government on their own. Sunni Arab parties won 58 of the new Parliament's 275 seats - the second-largest bloc of seats - giving them a much stronger political voice than they had before. That raised hopes that the Sunnis, who dominate the insurgency, might choose the political process over violence, and underscored the looming question of what role they would play as Iraq's...
Final Ipsos Poll Shows Tory Lead At 12
Ipsos has come out with its final polling for the Canadian election, and the numbers show Stephen Harper and the Tories rolling to a resounding victory in two days. The Tories now have a twelve-point gap over the Liberals and still have an edge in Ontario, the Liberal power base: As the 39th general election enters its final days, it now seems almost certain that when the votes are counted on Election Day, Conservative Leader Stephen Harper and his family will have a new home address at 24 Sussex Drive in Ottawa as he becomes the new Prime Minister of Canada. A new national Ipsos Reid survey of 2000 Canadians, conducted for CanWest News Service/Global News from January 17-19th, frames the Conservatives holding 38% of federal votes (+1 point) and taking a 12-point lead over the Liberals (26%, -3 points) into the final election weekend. The NDP at 19% (+1...
Liberal Misstep On Anti-Americanism
Canada may suddenly be hip with Americans, but it might surprise people on both sides of the border that Americans still retain some popularity among Canadians. The Washington Post reports on the upcoming Canadian election today by covering the backlash from Paul Martin's clumsy attempt to leverage the relatively low anti-American sentiment in Canada to turn his disastrous campaign around: Polls show a deep antipathy among Canadians toward the Bush administration, made more acute by the invasion and occupation of Iraq. That has carried over to a more general anti-Americanism, and academics here have made a cottage industry of talking about the divergence of values between Canadians and Americans. Martin sought to corral that sentiment by portraying Harper as dangerously pro-American. But the strategy appeared to backfire in this campaign, exacerbating his slide in the polls. "In the last campaign, those attack ads worked. This time they won't. People are...
The CQ Interview & Podcast: Rep. J.D. Hayworth
Earlier this afternoon, I had an opportunity to interview Rep. J.D. Hayworth (R-AZ), who came to Congress during the heady days of the Contract With America and the rise of the Republican majority. Rep. Hayworth has written a new book that has just been released by Regnery, Whatever It Takes: Illegal Immigration, Border Security, and The War On Terror. The Congressman took an hour out of his day to talk to CQ about illegal immigration, the guest worker proposal, and how the open border in the south presents a clear and present danger to American security. It's fair to say that Hayworth has a front-row seat to the many issues that illegal immigration causes. He has lived most of his adult life in Arizona, one of the front-line states in the massive long-term invasion (as he sees it) across the Mexican border. The lack of action from the federal government,...
January 22, 2006
NY Times Talks Pre-Emption Against Iran
In a strange coincidence, right after Senator Hillary Clinton criticized the Bush administration for its lack of unilateral, imperial action against Iran, the New York Times has suddenly developed an interest in the possibility of a pre-emptive attack on the Islamic Republic and its nuclear facilities. David Sanger picks up what Democrats hope to use as the party line against Republicans to prove their national-security mettle: If diplomacy fails, does America have a military option? And what if it doesn't? "It's a kind of nonsense statement to say there is no military solution to this," said W. Patrick Lang, the former head of Middle East intelligence at the Defense Intelligence Agency. "It may not be a desirable solution, but there is a military solution." Mr. Lang was piercing to the heart of a conundrum the Bush administration recognizes: Iran could become a case study for pre-emptive military action against a...
US To Pakistan: Either You Do It Or We Will
The US intends on sending Pakistani PM Shaukat Aziz back home with a message that should have been clear from the action two weeks ago in Damadola -- either Pakistan has to get serious about taking out al-Qaeda leadership or we will do the job ourselves, regardless of national borders: US leaders are expected to call for more intensive efforts by Pakistan to flush out Osama bin Laden in meetings with Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz here this week. Believed hiding in northwestern Pakistan, Al-Qaeda chief bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri taunted President George W. Bush last week in new messages, glorifying the terror network's bloody actions and warning of more to come. ... Another US concern is the jump in suicide bombings and roadside blasts in Afghanistan, attributed to an influx of foreign militants across the Pakistan border, said Strategic Forecasting Inc. (Stratfor), a private US intelligence firm....
Media Notes Rove Appearance At Blogfest
Newsweek's Holly Bailey reports on Karl Rove's appearance at the RNC blogger function for the Alito confirmation hearings two weeks ago. Rove, as CQ readers know, met with us for an off-the-record chat but did allow us to mention his appearance at the Hay-Adams hotel where a number of White House policy managers had come to brief us on the administration's efforts for 2006. Baily reports: The Republican National Committee organized a forum for conservative bloggers earlier this month, telling attendees they'd be briefed by RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman and other party operatives on the 2006 political outlook. But a surprise guest arrived. "Karl Rove is in the house!!!" wrote Matt Margolis, who was live-blogging the event for his site, Blogs for Bush. While Rove implored the group to keep the substance of his remarks off the record, some bloggers posted photos and snippets of their talk with the president's...
Steelers Get To The Super Bowl In Style
The Pittsburgh Steelers became the first team in NFL history to make it to the Super Bowl from the sixth seed position, having to beat the first, second, and third seeded teams in order to do so: Big Ben, The Bus and all those Terrible Towels sure are traveling well this postseason. Next stop, the Super Bowl, the final destination of a Pittsburgh road trip the Denver Broncos were powerless to derail. Ben Roethlisberger had a brilliant afternoon, throwing for 275 yards and two scores, and Jerome Bettis extended his career one more game, lifting the Steelers to a dominating 34-17 victory in the AFC title game Sunday. ... They became the first team to win three away games to make it to the Super Bowl since the 1985 New England Patriots. The Steelers have looked unstoppable since losing three when Ben Roethlisberger went out with a knee injury and...
Lunch With Legends
Those who know me and read my blog know that there isn't too much that could tear me away from an AFC Championship game with my beloved Pittsburgh Steelers vying for a chance to play in the Super Bowl. Herb Suerth is an exception to the rule, however. Suerth is the president of the E Company Association, the company made famous in the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers. Suerth joined the company as a replacement in December 1944, which he noted in our conversation today as "sort of a bad place to come in." Shortly after joining E Company, they deployed to a town in the Ardennes named Bastogne and found themselves surrounded by Germans in the Battle of the Bulge. General Anthony McAuliffe's famous reply to a German request for surrender, "Nuts!", came up in our conversation. Suerth recalled that "there was a lot of discussion about what the...
January 23, 2006
Italian Atheist Sues Catholic Priest For Fraud
Some people never get over being told the Easter Bunny doesn't exist. An Italian atheist has filed a lawsuit against a Catholic priest for claiming that Jesus of Nazareth actually existed, asking the court to impose damages on the priest for fraud and dishonesty: LAWYERS for a parish priest in a small Italian town have been ordered to appear in court after he was accused of unlawfully asserting what many people take for granted: that Jesus Christ existed. Father Enrico Righi was named in a complaint filed by life-long atheist Luigi Cascioli, after the priest wrote in a parish bulletin that Jesus existed and that he was born of a couple named Mary and Joseph in Bethlehem and lived in Nazareth. Mr Cascioli claims this violated two Italian laws: so-called "abuse of popular belief", in which someone fraudulently deceives people, and "impersonation", in which someone gains by attributing a false...
It's All About Ideology For The Left
Today's New York Times editorial implores the Senate to vote against the confirmation of Judge Alito to the Supreme Court once debate starts this week in the Senate. Like the rest of those who have come out in opposition to his confirmation, the only basis for their rejection is ideological, transforming the process into an election rather than an appointment: If Judge Samuel Alito Jr.'s confirmation hearings lacked drama, apart from his wife's bizarrely over-covered crying jag, it is because they confirmed the obvious. Judge Alito is exactly the kind of legal thinker President Bush wants on the Supreme Court. He has a radically broad view of the president's power, and a radically narrow view of Congress's power. He has long argued that the Constitution does not protect abortion rights. He wants to reduce the rights and liberties of ordinary Americans, and has a history of tilting the scales of...
Canada's Day Of Reckoning
Canadians go to the polls today to select a new Parliament, and all indications show that they will bring in a new government for the first time in 13 years. As both the New York Times and the American Spectator surmise, the new Conservative government could bring closer ties to the United States as both cooperation and the tone of the relationship will improve with Stephen Harper over the vacillating and accusatory Paul Martin: Unless every national poll here is amiss, what has been perhaps the world's winningest political party is heading toward a humiliating defeat on Monday. Stephen Harper, 46, an economist and social conservative who is writing a history of ice hockey, appears poised to lead his Conservative Party to victory over the Liberal Party of Prime Minister Paul Martin, something that seemed highly improbable just a few weeks ago. The Liberals won the last four national elections,...
Leftists Against Free Speech And Dialogue
One of the least-welcome developments of the Internet has been the rise of e-graffiti, especially at places like Amazon.com, where the victims overwhelmingly have been conservative writers. It appears that those who oppose conservative thought have little love for free speech when practiced by those who disagree with them, and their only intellectual recourse is to deface websites that sell the books written by conservatives. Kate O'Beirn's book, Women Who Make The World Worse attracted not just the usual flood of phony reviews from Kate's detractors but also a hacked picture of the book's cover. That hack job, in all senses of the word, is not only obvious but childishly so. One could make an argument -- a specious argument, but at least an argument -- that Kate's approach to her subject generates the ill will it received. However, Fred Barnes' book about George Bush, the newly-released Rebel In Chief,...
Canadian Election Live Blog
6:30 - I'm off to a late start, thanks to a last-moment emergency at work. Now that I'm home, the First Mate has me fixed up with dinner and I'll be eating while blogging. (Excuse typos for a while, IOW.) We're still two hours ahead of poll closings in Canada, and I'm a bit behind on my e-mail. C-SPAN 2 will have Canadian TV coverage at 8:30 CT. CTV has their explanation of the publication ban already posted. I'll be back in a few ... 6:58 - It looks like the first results are starting to come in. I'm trying to make sense of the data I'm seeing, but it looks like the first handful of ridings that can be called are going to the Liberals more than the Tories. They're leading in 15 ridings and four of those look solid enough to call, while the the Conservatives lead in...
January 24, 2006
Harper Calls For Unity, Martin Quits
The first consequences of Canada's major political realignment came within minutes of the polls giving their final numbers as the two major party leaders gave their valedictory speeches for the 2006 election. Stephen Harper, the triumphant Tory, called on Canada's political parties to unite for the good of the country, while outgoing Prime Minister Paul Martin quit his post as party leader, avoiding an almost certain dismissal by the losing Liberals: Conservative Leader Stephen Harper, Canada's next prime minister, pledged to work with all parties in the next Parliament after Canadians elected a Tory minority government Monday, ending a 12-year reign of Liberal rule. "Tonight friends, our great country has voted for change. And Canadians have asked our party to take the lead in delivering that change," Harper told his supporters in Calgary. Harper acknowledged that Canadians have not given any one party a majority and have asked all parties...
Wild Night
I want to thank all of the CQ readers, the regulars and the first-timers, who hung in there last night through the election results. We had our biggest live-blog event ever, not surprising for those who have come to know the Canadians as anything but politically apathetic. That misjudgment should disappear forever, especially if one looks at my Sitemeter stats. We had over 115,000 unique visits yesterday and over 130,000 page views, mostly between 6 pm to midnight. That made for some pretty slow load times, particularly in the first two hours. I saw that Hosting Matters had to do some quick work in getting the network to respond to the traffic flow. CQ shares a server with other blogs, and I could see a few HM-hosted sites start to have problems due to our traffic. (I had time to look at that because I couldn't pull up my own...
Bush Offered Blair An Out For Iraq
George Bush offered Tony Blair a pass on participating in the invasion and liberation of Iraq, afraid of the political effect it would have on the British PM's stability, Bush revealed yesterday in a speech at Kansas State University. The London Telegraph reports on Bush's statement for the benefit of British voters: President George W Bush has revealed he offered Tony Blair the chance not go to war in Iraq, but the Prime Minister turned it down. Mr Bush said he made the offer amid concerns about the stability of the Labour Government in the months before the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. "He [Blair] was worried about his Government and so was I, and I told him one time, 'I don't want your Government to fall, and if you're worried about it just go ahead and pull out of the coalition so you save your Government'," said Mr...
Dionne Comes Close To The Answer
The Washington Post's E. J. Dionne comes close to unlocking the mystery of Democratic incompetence in dealing with Republican electoral strategy. Dionne notes that Karl Rove, the GOP's master of electoral politics since 2000, has always shown a rather remarkable openness and honesty about how the Republicans plan to handle the electoral battle, and the Democrats have never come up with an answer: Perhaps it's an aspect of compassionate conservatism. Or maybe it's just a taunt and a dare. Well in advance of Election Day, Karl Rove, President Bush's top political adviser, has a habit of laying out his party's main themes, talking points and strategies. True Rove junkies (admirers and adversaries alike) always figure he's holding back on something and wonder what formula the mad scientist is cooking up in his political lab. But there is a beguiling openness about Rove's divisive and ideological approach to elections. You wonder...
Hell No, I Won't Show ... Support
Several members of the CQ community, as well as Hugh Hewitt, Michelle Malkin, and Glenn Reynolds, noted a most unfunny column by "humorist" Joel Stein in today's Los Angeles Times. Titled "Warriors and Wusses", Stein uses his column inches to announce that his support for Americans who serve in the armed forces only extends to the political correctness of their mission: I do sympathize with people who joined up to protect our country, especially after 9/11, and were tricked into fighting in Iraq. I get mad when I'm tricked into clicking on a pop-up ad, so I can only imagine how they feel. But when you volunteer for the U.S. military, you pretty much know you're not going to be fending off invasions from Mexico and Canada. So you're willingly signing up to be a fighting tool of American imperialism, for better or worse. Sometimes you get lucky and get...
UN Peacekeeping Via The Murtha Method, Part II
The United Nations adopted the Jack Murtha method of peacekeeping deployment in Congo today, evacuating its troops after having several of them killed in a gunbattle with Ugandan rebels. The reason the UN gave for withdrawing the peacekeepers? They couldn't find the rebels, even though the rebels had found them easily enough: The United Nations pulled its remaining peacekeepers out of the national park where eight Guatemalan peacekeepers were killed in an apparent gunbattle with Ugandan rebels, a U.N. spokesman said Tuesday. Hans-Jakob Reichen, U.N. military spokesman for eastern Congo, said the peacekeepers were withdrawn because they had completed a two-week mission to clear Garamba National Park of rebel forces. "It was decided to pull peacekeepers out of the park since any suspected rebels had melted into the jungle," Reichen said. ... The 105-strong special forces contingent of Guatemalan peacekeepers was added to the 16,000-strong U.N. mission in Congo because...
Europe Finds Nothing But What It Reads In The Papers
An investigative panel researching the supposed "rendition centers" in Europe alleged by American newspapers has turned up no evidence of their existence -- but still filed a report consisting of newspaper clippings from the US to support continuing their efforts, a report that even Europe couldn't countenance: An inquiry by the Council of Europe into allegations that the C.I.A. has operated secret detention centers in Eastern Europe has turned up no evidence that such centers ever existed, though the leader of the inquiry, Dick Marty, said there are enough "indications" to justify continuing the investigation. The report added, however, that it was "highly unlikely" that European governments were unaware of the American program of renditions, in which terrorism suspects were either seized in or transferred through Europe to third countries where they may have been tortured. Drawing from news reports, Mr. Marty contended that "more than a hundred" detainees have...
January 25, 2006
Coleman, The Cat Who Laughed Last
Somewhere in Washington, Senator Norm Coleman has the satisfaction of the last laugh. After the Left proclaimed George Galloway the winner in his appearance before Coleman's investigative committee on the UN Oil-for-Food scandal -- mostly because Galloway was rude and arrogant, two popular qualities among the MoveOn crowd -- Coleman patiently got Galloway to lie on record and under oath, ensuring that a case could be built against him for fraud and conspiracy. The Guardian (UK) reports today that the other shoe will drop in the next few days on the other side of the pond: George Galloway faces the prospect of a criminal investigation into his activities by the serious fraud office, which has collected evidence relating to the oil-for-food corruption scandal in Iraq. A four-strong SFO team returned from Washington with what a source close to US investigators calls "thousands of documents" about the scandal. The team is...
A Tribute To Ground State
... who selected the perfect icon for his link to Hugh Hewitt. A man with his excellent taste belongs on my blogroll -- so now he's there. Keith, in case you missed it, this one's for you from the CQ archives: I still think that the colors suit Hugh much better than that dingy orange/brown combination that looks like a reject from James Lilek's Interior Desecrations ......
Democrats Catching Up To Hillary's Negatives (Updated And Bumped)
Hillary Clinton may cruise to re-election for the Senate in New York, but the Democrats have grown increasingly nervous about the prospect of her run for the Presidency in 2008. The New York Sun reports that internal and external polling show that Clinton faces a hostile electorate, particularly in the South and Midwest, and would lose against most Republicans despite her predicted strength in the primaries: Senator Clinton's emergence as the early and perhaps prohibitive favorite for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008 is fueling anxiety among Democratic strategists and operatives who are worried she would lose to a Republican in the general election. Recent polling underscores some of those worries. In a CNN/USA Today/ Gallup poll made public yesterday, 51% of voters said they would definitely not vote for Mrs. Clinton if she chooses to run for president in 2008. In a separate nationwide poll conducted this month for...
Palestinians Split Vote Between Terrorist Organizations
It's not like the Palestinians gave themselves much in the way of choice for their first Parliamentary elections in ten years, but in a surprise, the hardline Hamas terrorists took a bigger slice of the vote from the more moderate terrorists of Fatah in today's vote. Exit polling shows that Hamas will likely trail Fatah by a handful of seats in the new assembly, forcing the new government into the uncomfortable position of adding Hamas to its cabinet when most peacebrokers consider them part of the problem: Hamas fared better than expected in Palestinian elections Wednesday, exit polls showed, raising the prospect that the ruling Fatah Party might be forced to form a coalition with the Islamic militant group that calls for Israel's destruction. The outcome could put Mideast peacekeeping at risk. Fatah had said before the first parliamentary contest in a decade that it would rather team with small...
January 26, 2006
The Return Of Raese
John Raese officially announced his return to electoral politics tonight, almost twenty years after his last effort to unseat a corrupt GOP governor in a primary, to take on Robert Byrd's re-election campaign for the Senate: A multimillionaire businessman entered the GOP race to challenge Sen. Robert C. Byrd on Wednesday, hoping to deny the 88-year-old incumbent Democrat a record ninth term. John Raese, 55, said he would campaign on a platform touting free enterprise and reduced regulation, among other issues. "What I'm going to run on is a rebirth of capitalism," he said. The National Republican Senatorial Committee heralded the filing by Raese, a former state GOP chairman who has sought office before. Raese, in fact, sought office in 1984 by squaring off against Byrd's colleague Jay Rockefeller for what was then an open Senate seat. Rockefeller outspent Raese 6-1 and wound up winning by a whisker over the...
Welcome To War
Exit polling turned out to be optimistic for the now-defunct Palestinian Authority, dominated by Fatah since its founding by Yasser Arafat. The supposedly reformed terrorist kept the government as a sinecure for his PLO comrades, and made sure that any elections held in the occupied territories only served to confirm his power and that of his faction, Fatah. Those days are over. Hamas has won a majority in yesterday's election, taking perhaps as many as 80 seats in the new Parliament, and claiming a mandate for its insistence on armed conflict with Israel: Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei has announced his resignation, saying Hamas must form the next government following the parliamentary elections. ... Hours before official results were due to be released, Fatah officials privately admitted that Hamas had won. Hamas claimed it had won at least 70 seats in the 132-member parliament, while EU election observer Richard Howitt...
Beware The Iranian Stall Tactic
The Iranians have shown renewed interest in the Russian proposal to enrich their uranium for civilian-power potential, a proposal the Islamic Republic rejected late last year. The New York Times reports that Iranian negotiators now say that the proposal is "positive" and want to explore it further. However, the negotiations will only take place after the next IAEA meeting, in which Iran warned that any action to refer the standoff to the UN will end any consideration of the Russian proposal: Iran's top nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, said here on Wednesday that he welcomed a Russian proposal to defuse the confrontation between Iran and the West over its nuclear programs by establishing a joint venture to enrich uranium in Russia. But he indicated that no agreement had been reached and that significant details remained to be negotiated. "Our attitude to the proposal is positive," Mr. Larijani, the secretary of the...
The Tory Test Drive
I make my return to my regular rotation in the Daily Standard this week with a look at the Canadian election and the lessons it has for politicians north of the 49th. Titled "Test Drive A Tory Today," it argues that the Canadian electorate turned out to be more intelligent, engaged, and nuanced than anyone predicted: The thin plurality means that the Conservatives will have to work with the other three parties to pass their legislative agenda, which will force them to keep a moderate approach. Harper will have to convince Layton or Gilles Duceppe of the BQ to support the creation of any new programs or the curtailment of existing ones before attempting to push his budget and policies through Parliament. His only alternative will be to work directly with the new Liberal leadership by broad consensus. Either way, the scare-mongering of Liberal electioneering will not come to pass;...
Did We Mention That He's Facing Re-Election?
Senator Robert Byrd, a man whom I've often criticized, managed to get two things right today on the Senate floor -- and in doing so, demonstrated the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of his fellow Democrats in the body as a whole and especially on the Judiciary Committee. The Political Teen has the video, and Michelle Malkin has the transcript of Byrd's remarks in supporting Samuel Alito's confirmation while scolding Democrats for their outrageous conduct during his hearing: Regardless of any Senator's particular view of Judge Alito, I think we can all agree that there is room for improvement in the way in which the Senate and indeed the nation have undertaken the examination of this nominee. Let me be clear. I mean no criticism of the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee or any particular member of that ccommittee. I feel compelled to address this issue. Not to point fingers....
The Massachussetts Comedy Duo Call For Filibuster
Like a couple of bad comedians who remain clueless about their timing, the Senators from Massachussetts teamed together to call for a filibuster even while two more Democrats announced their support for Samuel Alito, one of whom scolded the senior member of the comedy team for conducting an "outrage and a disgrace" in the Judiciary Committee hearings: Leading Democrat Senators John Kerry and Ted Kennedy said they would try to block Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito by preventing a vote on him with a filibuster. Former presidential candidate Kerry announced from Switzerland that he wanted to block President George W. Bush's conservative nominee with the stalling tactic to prevent "an ideological coup" on the high court. "Judge Alito will take America backward, especially when it comes to civil rights and discrimination laws," Kerry said is a statement. Kennedy, Kerry's fellow Massachusetts senator, also called for a filibuster on Alito when...
How Many Buttons Will This Story Push?
Colombian authorities have broken up a counterfeit ring that manufactured passports for al-Qaeda and Hamas terrorists, used by the lunatics to enter the United States, according to the Colombian attorney general in charge of the investigation. The first hint that the ring existed came when three Iraqis traveled to Colombia on faked Israeli passports in 2002: Colombia has dismantled a false passport ring with links to al-Qaida and Hamas militants, the acting attorney general said Thursday after authorities led dozens of simultaneous raids across five cities. The gang allegedly supplied an unknown number of citizens from Pakistan, Jordan, Iraq, Egypt and other countries with false passports and Colombian nationality without them ever stepping foot in the country. An undisclosed number of those arrested are wanted for working with the al-Qaida terror network and the militant Palestinian group Hamas, said acting Attorney General Jorge Armando Otalora. The counterfeit Colombian, Spanish, Portugese...
January 27, 2006
Gore Attacks Canadians For Exercising Democracy
Former American VP Al Gore, who managed to lose a can't-miss chance for election in 2000 in part by proving too radical for his home state to support, has inexplicably decided to scold Canadians for voting out the scandal-plagued Liberals from government. In a fresh tirade yesterday, he claimed that Canadian voters got duped by "Big Oil" into allowing the minority Tory government to take power, a mystifying allegation given Canada's political-contribution limits: Former U.S. vice-president Al Gore has accused the oil industry of financially backing the Tories and their "ultra-conservative leader" to protect its stake in Alberta's lucrative oilsands. Canadians, Gore said, should vigilantly keep watch over prime minister-designate Stephen Harper because he has a pro-oil agenda and wants to pull out of the Kyoto accord -- an international agreement to combat climate change. "The election in Canada was partly about the tar sands projects in Alberta," Gore said...
I Know We're Forgetting Something ...
Quick quiz: when one builds a war memorial, what one subject should not be overlooked? If you answered "the war", then you're at least two steps ahead of the French designers of a D-Day memorial in Normandy. The London Times reports today that the Memorial Museum in Caen manages to mention multiculturalism, feminism, and Father Christmas, but it neglects to focus on that big armada of ships that parked itself off of the shores of Normandy in June 1944: THE museum set up by the French authorities to commemorate the D-Day landings is struggling under a mountain of debt amid a sharp decline in the number of visitors. The Memorial Museum in Caen, Normandy, has been accused of mismanagement for turning its back on the Second World War to concentrate on subjects from feminism to Father Christmas. In recent months the museum has focused efforts on transforming itself into a...
NYT/CBS Poll Undersamples Republicans, Still Shows Approval For NSA Program
The New York Times reports this morning on "mixed support" for the NSA surveillance program it exposed last month just as the Patriot Act came up for renewal. Fifty-three percent of all respondents support electronic monitoring of communications without warrants if necessary to protect national security and save lives: In a sign that public opinion about the trade-offs between national security and individual rights is nuanced and remains highly unresolved, responses to questions about the administration's eavesdropping program varied significantly depending on how the questions were worded, underlining the importance of the effort by the White House this week to define the issue on its terms. The poll, conducted as President Bush defended his surveillance program in the face of criticism from Democrats and some Republicans that it is illegal, found that Americans were willing to give the administration some latitude for its surveillance program if they believed it was...
Yodeling Past The Graveyard
John Kerry has plunged his party into an internecine squabble this afternoon by pushing for a filibuster on Samuel Alito's confirmation, a sure losing strategy even with Dianne Feinstein's late reversal on her pledge to give Alito an up-or-down vote. The pandering to Planned Parenthood, NARAL, and People For The American Way has dragged Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer back to the parliamentary procedure they'd hope to save for a possible retirement by John Paul Stevens or Ruth Bader Ginsburg and set off a public argument over the foolishness of fighting lost causes in an election year: Long-smoldering Democratic dissension flared openly Friday as liberals sought support for a last-minute filibuster of Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito against the advice of leaders worried about a backlash in the 2006 elections. .... Two of the party's Senate leaders, Harry Reid of Nevada and Charles Schumer of New York, privately made clear...
January 28, 2006
Hamas: No, We Weren't Kidding
As the world pontificated about how the responsibility of governing would prove a moderating influence for Hamas and that the West would wind up having to come to terms with the terrorists as statesmen. The only fly in that ointment is Hamas itself, which had to reaffirm today for the doubters that, once again, it really does hate Israel and wants to see it destroyed: Militants from Fatah and Hamas capped a tense and emotional day with violent clashes on Friday, while a Hamas leader said the group had no intention of recognizing Israel's right to exist or changing its charter, which calls for Israel's destruction. "Why are we going to recognize Israel?" said the leader, Mahmoud Zahar. "Is Israel going to recognize the right of return of Palestinian refugees? Is Israel going to recognize Palestine with Jerusalem as its capital?" ... Until now, Hamas has refused to take part...
John Kerry, Blog Boy Of The Left
The Washington Post discerns a strategy emerging from John Kerry and his actions this week in yodeling a filibuster demand from the Swiss Alps to block the confirmation of Samuel Alito. Kerry has decided that the blogs and the leftist activists that control them own the Democratic Party future and has aligned himself with them for better or worse, as seen in Jim Vandehei's report in today's Washington Post: Liberal activists seemed to have slightly more influence with their campaign to persuade Senate Democrats to filibuster the Supreme Court nomination of Samuel A. Alito Jr. Despite several polls showing that the public opposes the effort, Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) on Thursday strongly advocated the filibuster plan -- and wrote about his choice on the Daily Kos, a Web site popular with liberals. Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.), a leading liberal and critic of the Iraq war, told reporters Kerry's...
Post Editorial Scolds Losers For Anti-Americanism
The Washington Post notes that the Liberals in Canada became the second victims of their own strategy to use anti-Americanism as an electoral tactic. The Post sees this as a potential tide-turning moment in global politics, where simply insulting Americans does not provide the credentials necessary for election: Mr. Martin becomes the second G-8 leader in four months to exit from office after discovering that anti-U.S. demagoguery is no longer enough to win an election. Gerhard Schroeder, the former German chancellor, also tried to rescue his political career last fall by parading his differences with Mr. Bush; the result was the victory of Angela Merkel, who has moved swiftly to repair relations with Washington. Interestingly, both Mr. Schroeder and Mr. Martin won previous campaigns by playing anti-American cards, in 2002 and 2004 respectively. While it's not clear that the level of ill feeling toward the United States or its president...
The WSJ Almost Gets It Right
The latest Wall Street Journal editorial on pork once again sounds all the right alarms in dealing with the profligate spending in Washington and the ensuing corruption that it brings. It starts off by scoffing at an earmarked subsidy from the US Navy on a "waterless urinal" -- we used to call those pipes, by the way, and they didn't cost two million dollars -- and goes on to urge an end to all earmarks and a line-item veto: Now for the good news. Amid the humiliating publicity about the bridge to nowhere in Alaska, maple syrup research in Vermont and blueberry subsidies in Massachusetts, nearly everyone in Congress is suddenly swearing off pork. All three Republicans running for House Majority Leader have pledged to end the abuse of "earmarks." And so has Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, though she too has used her political clout to steer millions of dollars...
...And Generalissimo Franco Is Still Dead
The AP updates us on the process of moderation that Hamas has undertaken: Following their resounding election victory, the Islamic militants of Hamas met the question of whether they will change their stripes with a loud "no": no recognition of Israel, no negotiations, no renunciation of terror. But the world holds out hope that international pressure can make them more moderate. At stake is the future of Mideast peacemaking, billions of dollars in aid and the Palestinians' relationship with Israel, the United States and Europe. Hamas' victory — winning 76 of 132 parliament seats in Wednesday's election — has created a dizzying power shift in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, overturning certitudes and highlighting the failure by Palestinian leaders, Israel and the international community to ease growing desperation in the Palestinian territories. The AP gets its editorial voice into a news report with that last paragraph, blaming Israel and...
Gifts From The Left
Apparently, Dianne Feinstein's reversal on the filibuster of Samuel Alito didn't pacify Cindy Sheehan enough. The former Bush gadfly now wants to take on the California Senator in a primary fight for her re-election: Cindy Sheehan, the peace activist who set up camp near President Bush's Texas ranch last summer, said Saturday she is considering running against Sen. Dianne Feinstein to protest what she called the California lawmaker's support for the war in Iraq. "She voted for the war. She continues to vote for the funding. She won't call for an immediate withdrawal of the troops," Sheehan told The Associated Press in an interview while attending the World Social Forum in Venezuela along with thousands of other anti-war and anti-globalization activists. "I think our senator needs to be held accountable for her support of George Bush and his war policies," said Sheehan, whose 24-year-old soldier son Casey was killed in...
January 29, 2006
If It Walks Like A Duck ...
The Arlington police department has a strange idea of what terrorism means, according to this report from the Star-Telegram. Police found two "sophisticated" pipe bombs in a hotel room rented by a man who died in an Arlington hospital, but deny that the man was a terrorist. CQ readers can make up their minds from this description: Management at the InTown Suites, an extended-stay hotel in the 1700 block of Oak Village Boulevard, called 911 about 6 p.m. Friday to report a duffel bag filled with ammunition and two pipe bombs in the room of a man who died at an Arlington hospital about two days ago, Deputy Fire Marshal Darin Niederhaus said. ... The pipe bombs were about 15 inches long, about 3 inches in diameter and connected to each other by 10 to 12 feet of wire. The bombs were filled with black powder, gunshot pellets and enough...
Munich Mastermind: 'I Regret Nothing'
One of the first terrorist attacks to achieve global attention came in 1972 at the Munich Olympics, when Palestinian terrorists held 11 Israeli athletes hostage for two days, trying to pressure Israel into freeing captured comrades. The incident ended tragically, with all 11 Israelis murdered by their captors at the airport during a botched attempt to rescue them. The man who organized the terrorist attack, Mohammad Oudeh, told a German that he doesn't have any remorse for his acts: A former Palestine Liberation Organization guerrilla who was one of the masterminds of the 1972 terrorist attack on the Munich Olympics in which 11 Israeli athletes were killed said he "regrets nothing" about the incident. Speaking to Germany's Spiegel TV in an interview released Saturday, Mohammed Oudeh, better known as Abu Daoud, said it was up to Palestinians to "fight as long as it takes Israel to recognize our rights." "I...
January 30, 2006
Why Don't We Just Give Each Other A Big Hug?
John Arquilla, identified as a professor of defense analysis at the Naval Post-Graduate School in Monterey, CA, demonstrated an almost childlike naiveté in the pages of the San Francisco Chronicle yesterday. He argues that Osama bin Laden sincerely offered us a truce, and that we should have gladly accepted it: When the audiotaped proposal was made 10 days ago, the White House dismissed it out of hand. That was a politically logical move, given the need to appear tough on terror at all times. An image of strength and determination may be particularly important in the months ahead because Republican Party leaders have put security issues at the heart of their 2006 congressional election campaign strategy. But there are reasons why bin Laden's overture should be carefully weighed and thoughtfully debated. The moral imperative that should drive us is a sincere desire to end the long suffering of the people...
Forgetting The Lessons
Debra Burlingame, the sister of one of the pilots murdered on 9/11, writes in today's OpinionJournal about the way we have changed our attitude about 9/11 and the failures of law enforcement and intelligence to "connect the dots" that could have prevented part or all of the terrorist plot. She rails against the politicization of the PATRIOT Act and the NSA intercept program, which the 9/11 Commission not long ago called on the administration to provide: The Senate will soon convene hearings on renewal of the Patriot Act and the NSA terrorist surveillance program. A minority of senators want to gamble with American lives and "fix" national security laws, which they can't show are broken. They seek to eliminate or weaken anti-terrorism measures which take into account that the Cold War and its slow-moving, analog world of landlines and stationary targets is gone. The threat we face today is a...
The Reluctant Filibusterers
Senate Democrats went to the airwaves yesterday to express their dissatisfaction with Samuel Alito's nomination, but also with the filibuster that their base has pushed them into attempting. So-called "rock star" Barack Obama of Illinois blamed Democrats for an overreliance on procedural tactics and an inability to convince voters of the erosion of their "values": "We need to recognize, because Judge Alito will be confirmed, that, if we're going to oppose a nominee that we've got to persuade the American people that, in fact, their values are at stake," Obama said. "There is an over-reliance on the part of Democrats for procedural maneuvers," he told ABC's "This Week." ... Obama cast Alito as a judge "who is contrary to core American values, not just liberal values." But Obama joined some Democrats, including Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and Charles Schumer of New York, in expressing his unhappiness with the...
Hamas: Send Us Money, But Don't Tell Us What To Do
Hamas made a plea today for continued funding of the Palestinian government it now heads by Western nations, but refused to reconsider its stand on the destruction of Israel: A Hamas leader asked the international community on Monday not to cut aid to the Palestinian Authority, insisting the money would go toward helping the Palestinian people and Hamas was willing to have its spending monitored. ... He spoke ahead of Monday's meeting of the so-called Quartet of Mideast mediators — the United States, the European Union, the United Nations and Russia — to discuss the repercussions of Hamas' election victory. The United States and European nations have said they will cut off aid to a Hamas-led government unless the group recognizes Israel, renounces violence and adheres to interim peace deals with Israel. ... Haniyeh urged the West to reconsider cutting off aid, saying it must recognize the result of the...
The Sad, Pathetic State Of Filibusterers
I don't know if this site actually has any influence on the Senate Democratic caucus, but when people start imploring politicians to exploit wounded soldiers for partisan gameplaying, they've lost all credibility. It's even worse when they celebrate an opposition Senator's injuries in a car accident that will keep that member from casting a vote. If your cause boils down to tactics such as these, then everyone associated with it should be embarrassed by the connection. Hopefully, an intrepid news crew will wait outside of Walter Reed to see any Democrats inclined to endorse methods such as those urged by this blogger....
The 25% Mainstream
The Left saw the effects of the true mainstream on the Senate Democratic caucus this afternoon, as the realists finally decided to put an end to the filibuster lunacy once and for all. Nineteen Democrats split away from twenty-four who took obstructionism to its bitter end, ensuring an end to debate on Judge Samuel Alito's confirmation to the Supreme Court and a final roll-call vote tomorrow morning: In the end, only 24 of the chamber's 44 Democrats went along with the filibuster, a maneuver allowed under Senate rules to block a vote by extending debate indefinitely. It was also supported by the chamber's lone independent, Sen. Jim Jeffords of Vermont. Arguing against cutting off debate, Sen. John Kerry -- who spearheaded the filibuster effort with his fellow Massachusetts Democrat, Sen. Ted Kennedy -- said Alito's record during his 15 years on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has given...
The Godwin Candidate
I live in Minnesota's second Congressional district and have the honor of being represented by John Kline, a twenty-five year veteran of the Marine Corps and a man who has served honorably in the US Congress. On two occasions I have had the pleasure of meeting and speaking with Mr. Kline and found him to be an affable, intelligent, and erudite representative. Of course, he and I see eye to eye on many issues, while principled people may disagree with both of us on how best to run the country and represent the Second. Those principled people who do not care for John Kline's view on the issues should get better representation than former FBI agent and whistleblower Coleen Rowley. She has descended far into the fever swamp during her brief yet notorious campaign to unseat Mr. Kline. When last CQ heard from Ms. Rowley, she had just missed her...
January 31, 2006
Isn't This What Got Abramoff In Trouble?
Amid stories of Congressional influence using expense-paid junkets and gifts, the AP reports on an odd meeting yesterday in which it paints lobbying efforts involving both in a much different light. A group of rich New Orleans residents, irritated that most of Congress has not yet come to the devastated city to see the destruction for themselves, passed out bonbons and offered all-expenses-paid trips to the Crescent City to get more money for reconstruction: "You ask us who we are? I'll tell you. We're nobody," said the handsomely coifed blonde from New Orleans. Her self-effacing demeanor disarmed House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who smiled and appeared relaxed as Anne Milling, 65, moved in for the kill. "We're no one. We're a group of nonpolitical, nonpartisan ladies who are passionate about New Orleans. We're mothers and housewives and businesswomen — and we can't believe that 87 percent of the House of...
Iran Faces Isolation
Iran suddenly finds itself alone in the diplomatic world as the United States and Europe convinced Russia and China to refer the Iranian IAEA file to the UN Security Council late yesterday. The surprise decision by Iran's two Asian allies effectively isolates the mullahcracy and sets up a March reckoning for potentially crippling economic sanctions: Key powers have agreed to refer Iran to the UN Security Council over its nuclear programme at a UN nuclear watchdog board meeting on Thursday. British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw announced the decision after a meeting of the five permanent council members and Germany in London. Talks with Iran earlier in the day failed to produce a breakthrough. President George W Bush earlier said the US and its allies would remain united in their dealings with Iran. The permanent five - the UK, US, France, China and Russia - plus Germany, met in London on...
How To Tell When You're Over
You're a former presidential candidate from one of the major political parties and a member of the Senate. You've called for a party-line vote on a major issue against the opposition, investing your reputation and your credibility into the effort. However, you can only convince half of your caucus to vote with you, and even half of those tell reporters what a stupid idea it was from the outset. What happens afterwards? Kerry: Am I done? Yes, Senator, you're done. We only wish you'd realize it. (h/t: The Corner)...
SOTU Psychotics On Parade
The inevitable parade of nutcases will be in full flower tonight as the President delivers his State of the Union speech, as Stephanie Mansfield reports for the Washington Times. She also covered a couple of pre-speech events that sound absolutely hilarious, in a clueless-1960s-flashback manner: Liberal activists -- among them graying leftovers from the Vietnam-era antiwar movement -- plan to gather near the Capitol tonight, banging pots and pans to drown out President Bush's State of the Union address. Yesterday, opponents of the Iraq war kicked off their latest round of demonstrations with an "Impeachment Forum" held downtown in a private dining room at Busboys and Poets. Featured speakers were 78-year-old former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark; longtime war protester Marcus Raskin, 71, who is head of the Institute for Policy Studies; and Cindy Sheehan, mother of an American soldier killed in Iraq. ... Last week, the group "World Can't...
WaPo Gives Op-Ed Space To Terrorists
Today's Washington Post gives prime op-ed space to an indicted terrorist, arguing for diplomatic engagement with Hamas. All one needs to know about Mousa Abu Marzook can be found at the end of the article: The writer is deputy political bureau chief of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas). He has a U.S. doctorate in engineering and was indicted in the United States in 2004 as a co-conspirator on racketeering and money-laundering charges in connection with activities on behalf of Hamas dating to the early 1990s, before the organization was placed on the list of terrorist groups. He was deported to Jordan in 1997. Despite these "qualifications", the Post apparently considers Marzook a legitimate spokesman for the Hamas movement, an interesting indictment all by itself. Throughout the entire essay, Marzook implores the West to view the Hamas victory as a cleansing moment, an effort by the Palestinians to reform their society...
Quick Notes ...
Congrats to Lance at Red State Rant on his first blogiversary. He gives me too much credit for his start, but I'll take what I can get .... The Bird Dog also celebrates his first blogiversary. Gee, lots of people missed the presidential election. No wonder they seem sane ... Lorie at Polipundit wants to organize a thank-you campaign for the 58 Senators who did what they were supposed to do in confirming Alito. Sounds like a nice idea to me ... I'll be live-blogging the State of the Union speech later tonight -- and so will Drumwaster. Hey, run two browsers and keep up with us both! .... Brian at Iowavoice has had a run of bad luck, and could use a hand. If you have a couple of bucks and are so inclined, hit his tip jar. One never knows when a blogger can use a hand ......
CQ On The Air Tonight
I'll be appearing on Rob Breckrenridge's show, The World Tonight, on CHQR in Calgary later tonight to discuss the State of the Union and the Alito confirmation. Canadians can listen on AM 770, but everyone else can catch us on the Internet stream on their website. I should be on at 9:30 PM Central Time. Rob has a terrific show, and it's always a pleasure to be on as his guest....
Louisiana Turned Down Katrina Help For Evacuations
A new memo has surfaced from the investigation into the response to Hurricane Katrina which shows that state and local officials turned down federal help in evacuating hospitals and nursing homes until it was too late: A ranking Louisiana health official turned down federal offers to help move or evacuate patients as Hurricane Katrina bore down on New Orleans, a newly released document shows. But the state's top medical officer said Louisiana coordinated with the federal Health and Human Services Department in evacuating hospitals and nursing homes after Katrina hit. Two days before the Aug. 29 storm, HHS was told by the state's health emergency preparedness director that the help was not needed, according to an e-mail released Monday by a Senate panel investigating the government's response to Katrina. The state official, identified in the Aug. 27 e-mail as Dr. Roseanne Pratts, "responded no, that they do not require anything...
State Of The Union: Live Blog
I'll be live-blogging the State of the Union at this post starting at 8 pm CT. Keep checking back ... 7:12 CT - Michelle has a number of links to other live-bloggers, but her son's stomach bug will consume her attention during speech-time. 7:15 - Hugh Hewitt talks about Cindy Sheehan's acceptance of a pass to sit in the gallery for the State of the Union speech, and he's soliciting responses for George Bush if she tries to disrupt the speech. Call him at 800-520-1234 for your suggestions ... 7:41 - Cindy Sheehan's invitation came from Rep. Lynn Woolsey, not from the White House ... 7:42 - La Shawn Barber will be checking on references to illegal immigration at her excellent blog ... 7:46 - I just read my secondary e-mail account and discovered that Hosting Matters will be moving CQ to a new server, since our traffic has caused...
About
Ed Morrissey has blogged at Captain's Quarters since 2003, and has a daily radio show at BlogTalkRadio, where he serves as Political Director. Called "Captain Ed" by his readers, Ed is a father and grandfather living in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota, a native Californian who moved to the North Star State because of the weather.
My Other Blog
The Crows Nest
State Of The Union: Live Blog
I'll be live-blogging the State of the Union at this post starting at 8 pm CT. Keep checking back ...
7:12 CT - Michelle has a number of links to other live-bloggers, but her son's stomach bug will consume her attention during speech-time.
7:15 - Hugh Hewitt talks about Cindy Sheehan's acceptance of a pass to sit in the gallery for the State of the Union speech, and he's soliciting responses for George Bush if she tries to disrupt the speech. Call him at 800-520-1234 for your suggestions ...
7:41 - Cindy Sheehan's invitation came from Rep. Lynn Woolsey, not from the White House ...
7:42 - La Shawn Barber will be checking on references to illegal immigration at her excellent blog ...
7:46 - I just read my secondary e-mail account and discovered that Hosting Matters will be moving CQ to a new server, since our traffic has caused problems for other blogs on my current server. We may see some interruptions as a result, but hang in there -- I'll still be making notes ...
7:47 - By the way, Hosting Matters has been a great service for blog hosting. They've treated me wonderfully for over eighteen months ...
8:03 - I notice that it takes the Cabinet longer to make their way through the Congressional well-wishers than any other group. The Supreme Court went straight tp their seats almost without acknowledging the huge reception they received on their announcement ...
8:07 - The Corner and a couple of readers report that Cindy Sheehan got herself arrested before the speech, apparently for unfolding a banner in the balcony ...
8:10 - Bush gives a spry jump up to the podium, and the Congress comes to order until Hastert introduces him. What a shock -- just like every other SOTU. He opens with an acknowledgement of the death of Coretta Scott King, eloquently speaking of a long-awaited reunion with her husband, Martin Luther King.
8:19 - A good start to the speech. Bush started with a strong call for honorable debate on the Hill, and then spoke about the choice between isolationism and engagement. He makes it clear that the US is committed to engagement and the fight against terrorism -- "We will never surrender to evil." He also makes clear that he intends to remain on the offensive against terror networks.
8:21 - Once again, he reviews the plan for victory in Iraq. It's not that it's a complicated plan, conceptually; it's just that his opponents refuse to listen to him when he explains it, and then claims he has no plan.
8:23 - FYI, the server move has been put off until later tonight -- the folks at Hosting Matters don't want to interrupt my live-blogging. Told you they were aces!
8:24 - A strong call to stop defeatist talk in Congress gets a huge reception, although I don't see Jack Murtha on C-SPAN.
8:27 - Like SOTUs past, Bush has focused the opening on the war and foreign policy. That used to be his strength, and he wants to recapture that momentum. He's doing well with this speech, I believe. He needs to speak more often like this, and I think 2006 will see Bush engaging in the debate more often.
8:34 - Getting some problems with the traffic load, but hang in there ...
8:35 - "We will not sit back to wait to be hit again." That's why the hue and cry over the NSA program is such a loser for the Democrats. It's also the flaw in using a law-enforcement model for fighting terrorism.
8:40 - "We hear claims that immigrants are somehow bad for the economy – even though this economy could not function without them. All these are forms of economic retreat, and they lead in the same direction – toward a stagnant and second-rate economy." Well, I like immigrants too, being a third-generation American on one side and a sixth-generation American on the other. However, I prefer legal immigration. Can we distinguish between the two, please?
8:41 - "This year my budget will cut it again, and reduce or eliminate more than 140 programs that are performing poorly or not fulfilling essential priorities. By passing these reforms, we will save the American taxpayer another 14 billion dollars next year – and stay on track to cut the deficit in half by 2009." Okay, great, $14B isn't anything to sneeze at, just like earmark reform and the line-item veto. However, entitlement explosion is the problem, and Bush makes a great stab at it. He also scolded the Democrats who stood and cheered when Bush noted that Congress didn't act on Social Security reform by reminding them that they made the problem worse by ignoring it ...
8:48 - "America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world." He's going to increase funding at the DoE by 22 percent to pursue alternative energy sources. He's also still pushing hydrogen and ethanol, the latter of which will make farmers pretty darned enthusiastic...
8:50 - He wants to make our dependence on Middle Eastern oil a thing of the past. If we could drill in ANWR and offshore in California and Florida, we might already be there ...
8:54 - Bush looks very relaxed and confident at the podium tonight. He has moved well at the podium, spoke engagingly, taken his time, and hasn't rushed his applause lines. He's used humor and he's shown resolve.
8:57 - A nice tribute to Sandra Day O'Connor, the most over-feted person in DC this season. She's served honorably for 24 years. She isn't Saint Sandra.
8:58 - A good and courageous argument against human cloning and the sale of human embryos.
9:01 - NZ Bear welcomes George Bush to Porkbusters. I hope he's right ... but I'd keep that open for review, NZ ...
9:05 - A strong finish to one of Bush's better speeches. This speech seemed to emphasize a particular theme, of moving forward to engage the world rather than waiting for the world to engage us. That theme ran across all of his subjects, from terrorism to the economy to energy reform. He reminded people of the missionary concept of American exceptionalism, a Wilsonian note for a man who six years ago seemed to hew more towards his father on foreign policy.
9:13 - "The United States could have accepted the permanent division of Europe, and been complicit in the oppression of others." Er, well, we did accept it for 40 years. It took another practical Wilsonian to bring that to an end, as well as a Pope willing to make a stand against that oppression after living through it himself and having no illusions about the so-called "social justice" of Communism.
9:16 - Tim Kaine gives the response. His message: "We do great things when we work together. Some of our leaders in Washington forget that." Some of Kaine's leaders on the Judiciary Committee embodied that last week and this week; not exactly a great way to start.
9:18 - "There's a better way." That's the theme. Expect Kaine to beat it into the ground. He's already said it three times.
9:19 - The administration's No Child Left Behind Act had wide bipartisan support, including Ted Kennedy, when it was first introduced.
9:22 - Er, what's with the arched eyebrow?
9:23 - Five times now ... "There's a better way." The administration wants to cut veteran's benefits? No, they just didn't increase them as much as Democrats wanted.
9:24 - Six times now! "There's a better way." Holy cow, no one could come up with better filler than that?
9:25 - So far, what we've heard from Kaine is a litany of criticisms of administration efforts, which is fine, but what we're not hearing is what Democrats propose to do in their place. No plans, no programs ... just some empty platitudes about change.
9:28 - Kaine spoke well, better than Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi ever did, or even Tom Daschle. I can understand why they selected Kaine to deliver the response. However, it was nothing but criticisms and empty rhetoric, laughably deriding a "culture of partisanship" one day after having Ted Kennedy screaming on the Senate floor about the End Of All Civilization if Samuel Alito got confirmed to the Supreme Court. No one who watches Washington even superficially will buy that the problem with partisanship emanates from the GOP.
9:33 - On the air right now with CHQR and Rob Breckinridge ....
10:02 - Wrapping up the speech: I think it was one of his better efforts, a cohesive and coherent theme of continuing forward engagement. He had explicit goals and policies to meet them, which the Democratic response lacked. Most importantly, he delivered it with resolve and confidence.
Louisiana Turned Down Katrina Help For Evacuations
A new memo has surfaced from the investigation into the response to Hurricane Katrina which shows that state and local officials turned down federal help in evacuating hospitals and nursing homes until it was too late:
A ranking Louisiana health official turned down federal offers to help move or evacuate patients as Hurricane Katrina bore down on New Orleans, a newly released document shows.But the state's top medical officer said Louisiana coordinated with the federal Health and Human Services Department in evacuating hospitals and nursing homes after Katrina hit.
Two days before the Aug. 29 storm, HHS was told by the state's health emergency preparedness director that the help was not needed, according to an e-mail released Monday by a Senate panel investigating the government's response to Katrina.
The state official, identified in the Aug. 27 e-mail as Dr. Roseanne Pratts, "responded no, that they do not require anything at this time and they would be in touch if and when they needed assistance," wrote HHS senior policy analyst Erin Fowler.
Once again, the evidence for the failure of emergency relief in Louisiana keeps pointing back to the state and local officials who responded without referencing their own emergency plans, who left assets to sink under the flood waters, and who sat around pointing fingers and mouthing off to the cameras instead of doing their jobs. Their refusal to ask for federal help -- indeed, for telling the feds that no help was necessary -- cost dozens of lives.
These investigations will not make Ray Nagin or Kathleen Blanco look good. If the Exempt Media gives it any kind of coverage at all, it will recast the Katrina relief story significantly, and to the detriment of their reputations.
CQ On The Air Tonight
I'll be appearing on Rob Breckrenridge's show, The World Tonight, on CHQR in Calgary later tonight to discuss the State of the Union and the Alito confirmation. Canadians can listen on AM 770, but everyone else can catch us on the Internet stream on their website. I should be on at 9:30 PM Central Time. Rob has a terrific show, and it's always a pleasure to be on as his guest.
Quick Notes ...
Congrats to Lance at Red State Rant on his first blogiversary. He gives me too much credit for his start, but I'll take what I can get ....
The Bird Dog also celebrates his first blogiversary. Gee, lots of people missed the presidential election. No wonder they seem sane ...
Lorie at Polipundit wants to organize a thank-you campaign for the 58 Senators who did what they were supposed to do in confirming Alito. Sounds like a nice idea to me ...
I'll be live-blogging the State of the Union speech later tonight -- and so will Drumwaster. Hey, run two browsers and keep up with us both! ....
Brian at Iowavoice has had a run of bad luck, and could use a hand. If you have a couple of bucks and are so inclined, hit his tip jar. One never knows when a blogger can use a hand ...
The Duke of DeLand has some thoughts on Roberts, Alito, and a revisit of Kelo. Perhaps David Souter might be the next plaintiff to get cert ...
WaPo Gives Op-Ed Space To Terrorists
Today's Washington Post gives prime op-ed space to an indicted terrorist, arguing for diplomatic engagement with Hamas. All one needs to know about Mousa Abu Marzook can be found at the end of the article:
The writer is deputy political bureau chief of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas). He has a U.S. doctorate in engineering and was indicted in the United States in 2004 as a co-conspirator on racketeering and money-laundering charges in connection with activities on behalf of Hamas dating to the early 1990s, before the organization was placed on the list of terrorist groups. He was deported to Jordan in 1997.
Despite these "qualifications", the Post apparently considers Marzook a legitimate spokesman for the Hamas movement, an interesting indictment all by itself. Throughout the entire essay, Marzook implores the West to view the Hamas victory as a cleansing moment, an effort by the Palestinians to reform their society from the corruption of Fatah. He even invokes Judaism and Christianity to make his argument:
Our society has always celebrated pluralism in keeping with the unique history and traditions of the Holy Land. In recognizing Judeo-Christian traditions, Muslims nobly vie for and have the greatest incentive and stake in preserving the Holy Land for all three Abrahamic faiths. In addition, fair governance demands that the Palestinian nation be represented in a pluralistic environment. A new breed of Islamic leadership is ready to put into practice faith-based principles in a setting of tolerance and unity.
So far, we've been very impressed with Islamist attitudes towards Jews and Christians, especially as uttered by the mouthpieces of Hamas activists. Uh-huh. The Islamists have been famous for multiculturalism. Hey, wasn't it the Islamist Taliban who blew up the ancient Buddhist statues in Afghanistan? Wasn't it al-Qaeda that blew up Christian churches in Iraq? Isn't it the Iranian Islamists that pay Hamas that deny the Holocaust ever occurred?
If Marzook wants the West to support Hamas, then they need to change their charter to recognize Israel and to abide by Palestinian Authority agreements on the road map. So far, Hamas continues to refuse both paths. Until they change their minds, the West has little choice but to respect the Palestinian electoral results and assume that they prefer the state of war that Hamas wants with Israel over negotiations for a permanent two-state solution and to direct their aid in concurrence with that reality. When people other than money-launderers and terrorists start speaking for the Palestinians, then perhaps the aid can flow once again.
SOTU Psychotics On Parade
The inevitable parade of nutcases will be in full flower tonight as the President delivers his State of the Union speech, as Stephanie Mansfield reports for the Washington Times. She also covered a couple of pre-speech events that sound absolutely hilarious, in a clueless-1960s-flashback manner:
Liberal activists -- among them graying leftovers from the Vietnam-era antiwar movement -- plan to gather near the Capitol tonight, banging pots and pans to drown out President Bush's State of the Union address.Yesterday, opponents of the Iraq war kicked off their latest round of demonstrations with an "Impeachment Forum" held downtown in a private dining room at Busboys and Poets.
Featured speakers were 78-year-old former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark; longtime war protester Marcus Raskin, 71, who is head of the Institute for Policy Studies; and Cindy Sheehan, mother of an American soldier killed in Iraq. ...
Last week, the group "World Can't Wait -- Drive Out the Bush Regime" was denied a permit to gather on the Mall for security reasons. The group won a federal lawsuit and has been given permission to bang away while Mr. Bush speaks to a joint session of Congress at 9 p.m. The group's Web site has gathered endorsements from left-leaning celebrities such as Susan Sarandon, Jane Fonda, Harry Belafonte and Sean Penn, but it's unlikely that any stars will show up for tonight's protest.
That's a shame; the evening would have had so much more atmosphere had a limousine-liberal sighting gone along with the pots-and-pans protest on the Mall. (Would Sarandon have brought a maid to bang the pots and pans?) When last we saw the "World Can't Wait" protestors, they had gathered outside of the Greater Exodus Baptist Church to protest Justice Sunday III -- all two of them, as I recall. Here's a link to their advisory board, which lists as its first member Lynne Stewart, the attorney convicted of passing messages from her terrorist clients to their followers, resulting in several deaths.
However, the best part of the article reviews the events already held by the group, including a luncheon yesterday. To demonstrate their overall cluelessness, one of their featured speakers was former Attorney General Ramsey Clark. He told the gathering that George Bush "is the greatest threat to peace and human rights." Of course, one has to recall that Clark flew in from Baghdad, where he's presently representing Saddam Hussein and trying to keep him from getting executed for his genocides.
Instead of banging pots and pans, I will be live-blogging tonight's speech and the reactions afterwards. Keep checking back here at CQ for running commentary.
How To Tell When You're Over
You're a former presidential candidate from one of the major political parties and a member of the Senate. You've called for a party-line vote on a major issue against the opposition, investing your reputation and your credibility into the effort. However, you can only convince half of your caucus to vote with you, and even half of those tell reporters what a stupid idea it was from the outset. What happens afterwards?
Kerry: Am I done?
Yes, Senator, you're done. We only wish you'd realize it. (h/t: The Corner)
Iran Faces Isolation
Iran suddenly finds itself alone in the diplomatic world as the United States and Europe convinced Russia and China to refer the Iranian IAEA file to the UN Security Council late yesterday. The surprise decision by Iran's two Asian allies effectively isolates the mullahcracy and sets up a March reckoning for potentially crippling economic sanctions:
Key powers have agreed to refer Iran to the UN Security Council over its nuclear programme at a UN nuclear watchdog board meeting on Thursday.British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw announced the decision after a meeting of the five permanent council members and Germany in London.
Talks with Iran earlier in the day failed to produce a breakthrough.
President George W Bush earlier said the US and its allies would remain united in their dealings with Iran.
The permanent five - the UK, US, France, China and Russia - plus Germany, met in London on Monday night to co-ordinate their position ahead of an emergency board meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on Thursday.
The Iranians are not taking this quietly. They hope to influence the IAEA board to disregard the input of the six nations with whom the Iranians have negotiated for adherence to the non-proliferation agreements, chiefly by belligerent threats. They have already threatened to completely break loose from all diplomatic restraints on their nuclear program if referred to the UNSC:
"Reporting Iran's dossier to the U.N. Security Council will be unconstructive and the end of diplomacy," said Iran's leading nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani. State television quoted him as sayiny Iran still believes the issue can be resolved peacefully.Vice President Gholamreza Aghazadeh, who also runs Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation, said it was difficult to predict how the IAEA meeting on Thursday would develop, the semi-official Iranian Students News Agency reported.
"The biggest problem for the West is that they can't find any (legal) justification to refer Iran to the U.N. Security Council," ISNA quoted him as saying. ... "Europeans should pay more attention. Iran has called for dialogue and is moving in the direction of reaching an agreement through peaceful means," Larijani said.
Breaking the seals on their facility turned out to be a bad move on Teheran's part. The mullahs apparently thought that Russia and China would never follow the EU and the US on a UNSC referral for political reasons. They underestimated the reluctance of any nation to allow Islamists access to nuclear weapons, a thought which has an apparently sobering effect on political calculations, even in Moscow and Beijing. Neither are likely to give any support to a military strike on nuclear sites in Iraq, but at least it gets the ball rolling by imposing some penalties for Iranian intransigence.
Economic sanctions, if not undercut by other nations, may prove more effective than military action anyway. Iran's restive population has much more ability to rise up against the mullahcracy than the Iraqis did against Saddam Hussein, in part -- and ironically -- because in some ways, the Iranians have a more open system than pre-liberation Iraq. A tough sanctions regime will hurt the people of Iran before it hurts the mullahs, and that might serve to finally rouse enough resentment to topple the Islamist power structure. With luck and some effort by the West, that could happen before the mullahs get their hands on a nuke and either fire it themselves or give it to like-minded terrorists for detonation elsewhere.
As Michael Ledeen says ... faster, please.
Isn't This What Got Abramoff In Trouble?
Amid stories of Congressional influence using expense-paid junkets and gifts, the AP reports on an odd meeting yesterday in which it paints lobbying efforts involving both in a much different light. A group of rich New Orleans residents, irritated that most of Congress has not yet come to the devastated city to see the destruction for themselves, passed out bonbons and offered all-expenses-paid trips to the Crescent City to get more money for reconstruction:
"You ask us who we are? I'll tell you. We're nobody," said the handsomely coifed blonde from New Orleans. Her self-effacing demeanor disarmed House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who smiled and appeared relaxed as Anne Milling, 65, moved in for the kill."We're no one. We're a group of nonpolitical, nonpartisan ladies who are passionate about New Orleans. We're mothers and housewives and businesswomen — and we can't believe that 87 percent of the House of Representatives and 70 percent of the Senate have not come to see the devastation."
Five months after Hurricane Katrina made landfall, toppling New Orleans' aging levees and submerging 80 percent of the city, only 55 representatives and 30 senators have visited the decimated city. Pelosi is not among them.
Underneath the elegant conference room table in her House office, the California Democrat clenched her hands in her lap. She bit her lower lip. But Milling pressed on, and soon Pelosi was accepting a box of bonbons and an invitation for a 36-hour, expense-paid trip to New Orleans. "I'll be there," she said before the women walked out.
At least she agreed to go without conditions. Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA), whom CQ readers last saw in May 2004 chewing out one of his constituents for daring to criticize him, told the women that he wouldn't come unless they rounded up at least four Republicans first. Does Stark get lonely without GOP company?
All of this sounds quite noble, and I'm sure the Women of the Storm group have no nefarious purpose other than to maximize the amount and speed of relief to their devastated city. Nonetheless, they represent a lobbying effort that aims to get government money, and they're offering elected representatives expenses-paid travel to convince them to increase the funding for their pet project. This lobbying technique differs little from offering trips for other purposes, such as Indian gaming, nuclear-waste disposal, and so on. It's a technique that two weeks ago, in the first flush of the Abramoff scandal, people demanded that Congress end immediately. Now, however, because a group of elegant (rich) ladies from New Orleans offered trips to Congress to visit New Orleans, the AP never even notes that this is a lobbying effort.
In my opinion, these Congressional representatives should pay their own way to New Orleans and not take a dime from the victims of Katrina. I don't think there's anything corrupt in the offer, but if we're drawing ethics rules, we need to be consistent. Either expenses-paid travel is out of bounds or it isn't, and if it's ethical to take money from hurricane victims to perform one's job -- the argument that politicians make when defending travel and the argument made by the Women of the Storm in their offer -- then it should be just as ethical to receive travel from other lobbyists as well.
Let the ladies keep their money. Pelosi and her peers can pay for a flight to New Orleans and a hotel room for an overnight stay. Pete Stark can pay for the four Republicans without whom he seems unable to travel.
The Godwin Candidate
I live in Minnesota's second Congressional district and have the honor of being represented by John Kline, a twenty-five year veteran of the Marine Corps and a man who has served honorably in the US Congress. On two occasions I have had the pleasure of meeting and speaking with Mr. Kline and found him to be an affable, intelligent, and erudite representative. Of course, he and I see eye to eye on many issues, while principled people may disagree with both of us on how best to run the country and represent the Second.
Those principled people who do not care for John Kline's view on the issues should get better representation than former FBI agent and whistleblower Coleen Rowley. She has descended far into the fever swamp during her brief yet notorious campaign to unseat Mr. Kline. When last CQ heard from Ms. Rowley, she had just missed her chance to draft off of Cindy Sheehan's momentum in Crawford, Texas. Rowley had trekked down to her campout just as Sheehan gave up on her protest. Unfortunately, she has resurfaced to start her campaign -- and in doing so, she decided to depict the Marine Corps veteran as a Nazi:
This is the nadir of Democratic demagoguery, referencing anyone with whom they disagree as a Nazi. This slur is especially egregious when directed at a man who served his country faithfully for 25 years in the Marine Corps and then for two terms in Congress. No one disputes anyone's right to disagree with Rep. Kline's positions, but to call the man a Nazi goes beyond political debate and into character assassination.
Rowley later took the picture off the website but never issued an apology or even an acknowledgment that it had been posted. Fortunately, others did a screen grab of the site before the cowards at Rowley's headquarters went into full retreat. If Minnesota Democrats have any sense of honor and respect, they will call for the immediate withdrawal of Rowley from the race. She disgraces not just the Second District but all of Minnesota with this kind of campaigning.
The 25% Mainstream
The Left saw the effects of the true mainstream on the Senate Democratic caucus this afternoon, as the realists finally decided to put an end to the filibuster lunacy once and for all. Nineteen Democrats split away from twenty-four who took obstructionism to its bitter end, ensuring an end to debate on Judge Samuel Alito's confirmation to the Supreme Court and a final roll-call vote tomorrow morning:
In the end, only 24 of the chamber's 44 Democrats went along with the filibuster, a maneuver allowed under Senate rules to block a vote by extending debate indefinitely. It was also supported by the chamber's lone independent, Sen. Jim Jeffords of Vermont.Arguing against cutting off debate, Sen. John Kerry -- who spearheaded the filibuster effort with his fellow Massachusetts Democrat, Sen. Ted Kennedy -- said Alito's record during his 15 years on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has given "the extreme right wing unbelievable public cause for celebration."
"That just about tells you what you need to know," Kerry said. "The vote today is whether or not we will take a stand against ideological court-packing."
But Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said the move to cut off debate fulfilled a "very straightforward principle -- a nominee with the support of a majority of senators deserves a fair up-or-down vote."
Some of the more prominent Democrats refused to own up to reality. Every Senator who has either declared an interest in running for President or presumed to have an interest in the office voted against cloture and for a filibuster, including Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Joe Biden, Russ Feingold, and Evan Bayh -- the latter who often gets described as a moderate in the Democratic ranks. Their leadership also showed their cluelessness, with Harry Reid and Dick Durbin also supporting the filibuster -- and watching as the rest of their party decided to vote for moderation and tradition, not to mention reality.
What will this mean for the Democrats? It exposes a couple of truths, painful realizations that they have willfully ignored for the past three electoral cycles. First and foremost, the rank-and-file Democrats now understand that organizations like PFAW and NARAL do not represent "mainstream" views, but instead belong on the fringes of an increasingly incoherent left wing. Pressed to back up their rhetoric with a groundswell of public opinion, they ranted and raved on television, radio, and through a road show -- and wound up with Alito still commanding a 2-1 edge for confirmation despite their smear campaigns. They may have belatedly discovered that their worship of abortion on demand has turned off a large number of voters.
Second, the bloviating of people like Ted Kennedy does not inspire the middle to their ranks, but instead repels more and more centrists through the obvious hyperbole and hypocrisy it demonstrates. The disgusting character assassination that Democrats attempted on the Judiciary Committee, propelled onward by the PFAW/NARAL crowd, alienated many who might have had some sympathy with the Democrats' agenda otherwise. Extreme tactics and rhetoric denote desperation and a lack of intellectual support, two conditions not known for their attractiveness in politics.
The party may also have lost the radical-left bloggers and the energy they provide, at least in the short term. The outrage on the Daily Kos site threatens to attack half of the sitting Democratic caucus in the Senate, including every Senator who has to run for re-election in a red state. The blogging by Kerry and Kennedy on Kos' site turned out to be a waste of time, and worse yet, a tease that encouraged the hard Left to energetically campaign for a strategy that half of the Senate didn't follow. They feel betrayed -- and perhaps rightfully so, although John Aravosis at Americablog tried to warn them to back off.
The media predicted a permanent split on the Right over the Harriet Miers nomination, but it might be more likely that the Left will split over the failure of the Alito filibuster. The 2006 election just took an unexpected turn.
The Sad, Pathetic State Of Filibusterers
I don't know if this site actually has any influence on the Senate Democratic caucus, but when people start imploring politicians to exploit wounded soldiers for partisan gameplaying, they've lost all credibility. It's even worse when they celebrate an opposition Senator's injuries in a car accident that will keep that member from casting a vote.
If your cause boils down to tactics such as these, then everyone associated with it should be embarrassed by the connection. Hopefully, an intrepid news crew will wait outside of Walter Reed to see any Democrats inclined to endorse methods such as those urged by this blogger.
Hamas: Send Us Money, But Don't Tell Us What To Do
Hamas made a plea today for continued funding of the Palestinian government it now heads by Western nations, but refused to reconsider its stand on the destruction of Israel:
A Hamas leader asked the international community on Monday not to cut aid to the Palestinian Authority, insisting the money would go toward helping the Palestinian people and Hamas was willing to have its spending monitored. ...He spoke ahead of Monday's meeting of the so-called Quartet of Mideast mediators — the United States, the
European Union, the United Nations and Russia — to discuss the repercussions of Hamas' election victory. The United States and European nations have said they will cut off aid to a Hamas-led government unless the group recognizes Israel, renounces violence and adheres to interim peace deals with Israel. ...Haniyeh urged the West to reconsider cutting off aid, saying it must recognize the result of the Palestinian election. He also said the money would be spent to help the Palestinian people in their daily lives and that Hamas was willing to discuss means of keeping the spending transparent.
Unfortunately for Haniyeh, cutting off aid comes from a recognition of the Palestinian election, not a rejection of it. The Palestinians made their choice at the polls -- and we accept the results as a measure of the desire of the electorate. It does not mean that we will send our money into the hands of bloodthirsty terrorists, no matter how many votes they get from the Palestinians. That result should have been obvious to those who voted for a Hamas victory in last week's elections. Instead, the voters made their choice, and now they have to live with the consequences of that choice.
It won't matter where the money goes. We will not support a Hamas-led anything, let alone a government that wants to build its army out of its terrorist ranks. If they go broke for lack of international aid, then perhaps they will rethink their choices in the next election, if Hamas allows for another election after seizing power. (It took Fatah 10 years to hold a second parliamentary election.) The US won't bolster Hamas' credibility by sending cash, at least not while it still openly calls for the destruction of Israel.
Elections have consequences, as I noted in another context. Part of those consequences is a clear understanding of what the Palestinians want as a people. They voted for the radical terrorists, and more importantly, never bothered to form a separate political party based on peaceful coexistence with Israel. They left themselves a choice between Fatah and Hamas. Had they been serious about peace, the voters would have formed a third party based on that goal and overwhelmingly supported it.
Now they want our money after handing the reins to Hamas. No, thank you.
The Reluctant Filibusterers
Senate Democrats went to the airwaves yesterday to express their dissatisfaction with Samuel Alito's nomination, but also with the filibuster that their base has pushed them into attempting. So-called "rock star" Barack Obama of Illinois blamed Democrats for an overreliance on procedural tactics and an inability to convince voters of the erosion of their "values":
"We need to recognize, because Judge Alito will be confirmed, that, if we're going to oppose a nominee that we've got to persuade the American people that, in fact, their values are at stake," Obama said."There is an over-reliance on the part of Democrats for procedural maneuvers," he told ABC's "This Week." ...
Obama cast Alito as a judge "who is contrary to core American values, not just liberal values."
But Obama joined some Democrats, including Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and Charles Schumer of New York, in expressing his unhappiness with the filibuster bid. "There's one way to guarantee that the judges who are appointed to the Supreme Court are judges that reflect our values. And that's to win elections," Obama said.
At least one Democrat understands that elections have consequences, but Obama doesn't connect the dots all the way. In truth, Alito represents a mainstream school of thought that argues the court has arrogated far too much power to itself over the last several decades, and the only solution for that requires the appointment of judges that will send policy questions back to Congress where they belong. Alito has 2-1 support for confirmation among American voters. Bush won two elections and the Republicans won ever-growing majorities in the Senate based in large part on their views of the judiciary. People want judges like Alito confirmed, and that's the point of saying that elections have consequences.
Other Democrats remain clueless, pledging to block Alito even as they criticize the use of the filibuster. Joe Biden wants to eat his cake and have it too, as he told CNN that he would vote for a filibuster even though it was unwise to do so:
"I think a filibuster make sense when you have a prospect of actually succeeding," Biden said on CNN's "Late Edition." "I will vote one time to say to continue the debate. but the truth of the matter" is that Alito will be confirmed, he said.
That's why Delaware sends you to the Senate, Mr. Biden -- to participate in stupid, empty gestures. It seems that a number of Democrats feel the same way, but they fail to account for their constituents who believe that engaging in McCarthyite smear tactics does not actually fall within the boundaries of Senatorial privilege. Judge Alito's record shows him as a superior candidate for the Supreme Court, more qualified than anyone in 70 years on the basis of his long service on the appellate bench, and the obstructionism of the Democrats is the only part of this process that truly lies outside of the values of the American people.
Forgetting The Lessons
Debra Burlingame, the sister of one of the pilots murdered on 9/11, writes in today's OpinionJournal about the way we have changed our attitude about 9/11 and the failures of law enforcement and intelligence to "connect the dots" that could have prevented part or all of the terrorist plot. She rails against the politicization of the PATRIOT Act and the NSA intercept program, which the 9/11 Commission not long ago called on the administration to provide:
The Senate will soon convene hearings on renewal of the Patriot Act and the NSA terrorist surveillance program. A minority of senators want to gamble with American lives and "fix" national security laws, which they can't show are broken. They seek to eliminate or weaken anti-terrorism measures which take into account that the Cold War and its slow-moving, analog world of landlines and stationary targets is gone. The threat we face today is a completely new paradigm of global terrorist networks operating in a high-velocity digital age using the Web and fiber-optic technology. After four-and-a-half years without another terrorist attack, these senators think we're safe enough to cave in to the same civil liberties lobby that supported that deadly FISA wall in the first place. What if they, like those lawyers and judges, are simply wrong?Meanwhile, the media, mouthing phrases like "Article II authority," "separation of powers" and "right to privacy," are presenting the issues as if politics have nothing to do with what is driving the subject matter and its coverage. They want us to forget four years of relentless "connect-the-dots" reporting about the missed chances that "could have prevented 9/11." They have discounted the relevance of references to the two 9/11 hijackers who lived in San Diego. But not too long ago, the media itself reported that phone records revealed that five or six of the hijackers made extensive calls overseas.
NBC News aired an "exclusive" story in 2004 that dramatically recounted how al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar, the San Diego terrorists who would later hijack American Airlines flight 77 and fly it into the Pentagon, received more than a dozen calls from an al Qaeda "switchboard" inside Yemen where al-Mihdhar's brother-in-law lived. The house received calls from Osama Bin Laden and relayed them to operatives around the world. Senior correspondent Lisa Myers told the shocking story of how, "The NSA had the actual phone number in the United States that the switchboard was calling, but didn't deploy that equipment, fearing it would be accused of domestic spying." Back then, the NBC script didn't describe it as "spying on Americans." Instead, it was called one of the "missed opportunities that could have saved 3,000 lives."
Another example of opportunistic coverage concerns the Patriot Act's "library provision." News reports have given plenty of ink and airtime to the ACLU's unsupported claims that the government has abused this important records provision. But how many Americans know that several of the hijackers repeatedly accessed computers at public libraries in New Jersey and Florida, using personal Internet accounts to carry out the conspiracy? Al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi logged on four times at a college library in New Jersey where they purchased airline tickets for AA 77 and later confirmed their reservations on Aug. 30. In light of this, it is ridiculous to suggest that the Justice Department has the time, resources or interest in "investigating the reading habits of law abiding citizens."
Do I fear the FBI more than al-Qaeda and Islamofascist terrorists? That's the question that Americans have to ask themselves. Before answering, they should also ask themselves which organization do Americans have more control over -- and which organization must answer to elected officials of the US government. In a time of war, I'm inclined to offer my trust to fellow Americans who have tried to operate under the law to protect us than I am inclined to err on the side of potential terrorists. Be sure to read Burlingame's entire essay.
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