March 1, 2006
George Bush made a surprise stop on his tour of South Asia today as he flew into Kabul to meet with Afghanistan's president, Hamid Karzai, as well as the American troops stationed in the newly-liberated country: US President George W. Bush arrived in Afghanistan for his first visit since US-led forces toppled the Taliban regime in 2001. Bush made the surprise stopover, landing at the US military base at Bagram north of Kabul, as he headed to India to begin a maiden trip to South Asia. He flew by heavily armed helicopter to the capital where he was given a red-carpet welcome by an honour guard before talks with President Hamid Karzai at the presidential palace. Bush apparently wanted to be present at the opening of the new US embassy in Kabul, taking place today, in addition to paying his first state visit to the nation. The stopover on the...
As anyone who has spent time with youth sports programs knows, some parents push their children into competitive sports as a means of living vicariously through them. These parents will berate their children, insult other parents and league officials, and become very demanding and very tiresome. They don't usually turn deadly, as one French father did in ensuring that his children won their tennis matches: For former military officer Christophe Fauviau, tennis was more than just a game, especially when his two children were on court. Even if they were competing in a minor tournament it was not enough for them to take part - they had to win. Today Colonel Fauviau will appear before a judge accused of going to extraordinary lengths to make sure they did - by poisoning their rivals with sedatives. It was a tactic that went horribly wrong when one young player into whose water...
Yesterday, Vermont had to defend campaign-finance limits that have been challenged all the way to the Supreme Court, where the state found a rather cold reception. Chief Justice John Roberts had Vermont's attorney general, William Sorrell on the defensive and sounding somewhat evasive as Roberts wondered why Vermont's electorate just doesn't throw corrupt people out of office: The chief justice challenged the attorney general's assertion that money was a corrupting influence on Vermont's political system, the state's main rationale for its law. "How many prosecutions for political corruption have you brought?" he asked the state official. "Not any," Mr. Sorrell replied. "Do you think corruption in Vermont is a serious problem?" "It is," the attorney general replied, noting that polls showed that most state residents thought corporations and wealthy individuals exerted an undue influence in the state. The chief justice persisted. "Would you describe your state as clean or corrupt?"...
The New York Times issues a warning about an impending civil war in Iraq that sounds a couple of false notes. Its editorial this morning attempts a historical review of the Iraqis that misses a couple of germane points while it scolds the administration indirectly for causing the problem by toppling Saddam Hussein: Iraq has moved perilously close to civil war. Everyone who knows anything about the tortured history of that country, cobbled together from disparate parts by British colonial officials less than a century ago, has always dreaded such an outcome. Fear of civil war stayed the hand of the first President George Bush, when he turned back American troops and left Saddam Hussein in power. It generated much of the opposition to the current President Bush's invasion in 2003. Yet many critics of the invasion, including this page, believed that the dangers from civil war were so dire...
Mark Tapscott has stayed on the story of Joel Hinrichs, the Oklahoma University student who blew himself up outside the football stadium, long after the FBI dismissed it as a suicide brought on by depression. His vigilance has paid off, as it now appears that the FBI jumped to an erroneous conclusion and that Hinrichs meant to kill a lot more people than just himself: The FBI reported in November that 0.4 pound of TATP was found inside Hinrichs' apartment. TATP is the most unstable explosive known and is "the explosive of choice" in the Middle East, Mauldin said. "It is so volatile, even a small amount on the tip of a finger will explode if it comes within 8 inches of a match," Mauldin said. Investigators also found a quantity of acetone and hydrogen, components necessary for manufacturing TATP, inside the student's apartment. ... Officers also removed "a lot"...
The Democrats have seized the center stage for opposing the Dubai ports deal, claiming that the questionable decision to approve the transfer of port operations to state-owned Dubai Ports World shows that the Bush administration puts profits ahead of national security. Hillary Clinton in particular has assailed the decision and promised to push legislation to block the deal. Perhaps sje should consult with the man who helped the UAE firm defend the deal ... former President and current husband, Bill Clinton: Bill Clinton, former US president, advised top officials from Dubai two weeks ago on how to address growing US concerns over the acquisition of five US container terminals by DP World. ... It came even as his wife, Senator Hillary Clinton, was leading efforts to derail the deal. Mr Clinton, who this week called the United Arab Emirates a “good ally to America”, advised Dubai’s leaders to propose a...
Apparently, the duties of oral arguments at the Supreme Court no longer engages Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The controversy over Texas redistricting apparently didn't generate enough interest to keep her attention (h/t J. Crater): The Supreme Court had put the Texas cases on the fast track, scheduling an unusually long two-hour afternoon session. The subject matter was extremely technical, and near the end of the argument Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg dozed in her chair. Justices David Souter and Samuel Alito, who flank the 72-year-old, looked at her but did not give her a nudge. The court has struggled in the past to define how much politics is acceptable when states draw new boundaries to reflect population shifts. I know the idea of a two-hour meeting might seem long to AP reporters and some jurists, but in the real world, we have business meetings that go on all day. Most of...
March 2, 2006
Most news agencies have reported on the AP's tape of a meeting involving President Bush, Michael Brown, and a number of other FEMA officials and local and state politicians during Hurricane Katrina. In the tape, most of the reports claim, Bush specifically heard warnings about levees being breached. However, that's not what the tape shows, at least the portion aired by the AP and NBC on their broadcast last night (available at MS-NBC at the above link). What is does show is an expert saying to the group, "At this point, we don't know whether the levees will be overtopped or not." As Dafydd ab Hugh at Big Lizards points out, breaching and overtopping are two very different events. Neither are particularly desirable, of course, but overtopping would result in the release of excess water from Lake Pontchatrain, while the breaches released an exponentially larger volume, resulting in far more...
In a spectacularly misguided effort, the European Union has released a report scolding members for allowing the CIA and other American agencies to operate unfettered on the Continent in its search for Islamofascist terrorists, failing to mention at all the fact that so many can be found there: Europe has become "a happy hunting ground" for foreign intelligence agents looking to kidnap terrorist suspects, the leader of the continent's top human rights group said Wednesday, urging European governments to crack down on operatives working for the CIA and other spy services. Terry Davis, chairman of the Council of Europe, also criticized several European countries for not being more forthcoming about whether they have helped the CIA carry out extralegal counterterrorism operations on their soil. These include the secret detention and abduction of suspected members of al-Qaeda. "I strongly support cooperation between Europe and the United States of America on all...
For those who want to see the transcripts themselves of the video conferences, the New York Times has them for the August 28th and August 29th briefings. The transcript for the 29th makes one garbled mention of the levees around New Orleans (page 6). After making the point that the storm surge would cause the greatest devastation in the Gulfport area of Mississippi, going as high as 21 feet, Max Mayfield then turns to New Orleans: MAX MAYFIELD: ... The rest of the track we have 10 to 15 feet, in a few areas up to 16 feet. At least glimpsed it out, and Louisiana can talk a little bit more about this than I can, but it looks like the Federal levies [sic] around the City of New Orleans will not have been (incomprehensible) any breaches to. That certainly doesn't sound like a warning -- and this was on...
The principals in the Able Danger story have filed suit to restrain the Department of Defense from retaliating against Tony Shaffer and to allow these witnesses to retain counsel during the closed hearings that Congress has scheduled into the data-mining program. Mark Zaid, representing Shaffer as well as contractor J. D. Smith, filed the suit on Monday against the DoD, DIA, the Army, and their attorneys in the DC district court. I've copied the text into the extended entry of this post. Most of those who have followed Able Danger will not be surprised by the allegations in the lawsuit. However, the extent of obstructionism should raise some eyebrows in Congress, who may wonder why the DIA will not allow these witnesses to share the fruits of the Able Danger effort with their committees, even in closed session: 25. In September 2005, both Shaffer and Smith were scheduled to testify...
Continue reading "Able Danger, The Lawsuit" »
George Bush won an important diplomatic victory, one he has long sought, in bringing India into close ties with the United States. He and Indian PM Manmohan Singh signed a deal to support nuclear energy initiatives in the world's largest democracy despite earlier sanctions arising from India's nuclear testing eight years ago, prompting Singh to declare the US-Indian relationship healthier than ever before: The agreement between the world’s oldest and largest democracies allows India to buy nuclear technology and fuel from the US to power its fast-growing economy. It marks a major shift in American policy towards India, which Washington punished with sanctions after it conducted nuclear weapons tests in 1998. “Things change,” Mr Bush said as he announced the deal with Manmohan Singh, the Prime Minister of India.“It’s in our interests that India have a civilian nuclear industry to help take the pressure off of the global demand for...
March 3, 2006
Six animal-rights activists that ran a front group for pipe-bombers discovered that the nation has lost patience with violent protests, and now face as much as 23 years behind bars for their connections to vandalism, bombings, and death threats against medical researchers. The verdict is the first conviction under a law passed fourteen years ago to stop attacks on research facilities and their staffs: An animal rights group and six of its members were convicted of terrorism and Internet stalking yesterday by a federal jury that found them guilty of using their Web site to incite attacks on those who did business with or worked for a British company that runs an animal testing laboratory in New Jersey. The case was the first test of the Animal Enterprise Terror Act, enacted in 1992 to curb the most aggressive tactics used by activists. The verdict, which came after 14 hours of...
Russia incurred the criticism of the West by inviting Hamas to the Kremlin, arguing that engagement with the terrorist group would alllow them to moderate their stance towards Israel. Hamas, in turn, used its diplomatic opening today to announce that it will never recognize Israel's existence: Hamas' political leader, on a groundbreaking visit to Russia, rejected on Friday any discussion about the militant group's refusal to recognize Israel's right to exist, dealing a setback to Moscow's efforts to persuade it to soften its stance. "The issue of recognition (of Israel) is a decided issue," said Hamas' exiled political leader, Khaled Mashaal, upon arrival in Moscow for talks with Russian officials. "We don't intend to recognize Israel." ... After arriving in Moscow, Mashaal accused Israel of blocking the Mideast peace process and said Israel's "occupation" of Palestinian lands will top the agenda in the Moscow talks. "No conditions will be put...
The BBC reports the failure of "eleventh-hour" negotiations between Iran and the EU to stop nuclear-weapons development in the Islamic Republic, a tiresome description made possible by the inertia in the international community that has delayed any meaningful action against the mullahcracy: Last-minute talks between Iran and EU nations over Tehran's nuclear programme have broken up without agreement. The discussions were called by Iran in a last-ditch bid to avoid possible UN action over its nuclear programme. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN's nuclear watchdog, will decide on Monday if action is needed. ... At Friday's talks, officials from the UK, France and Germany - the so-called EU3 - said they were there to listen to Iran, but they presented no new plans of their own. A letter from the EU3 to Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, warned Iran earlier this week that any progress would be...
Michael Totten has returned from a trip to Iraq, where he toured one of Saddam's torture facilities -- this one apparently specifically designed for Kurdish victims. He posts several pictures (work safe) and writes eloquently about his experiences: Suleimaniya is the most liberal city in Iraqi Kurdistan, partly because of its long-standing and deep ties to nearby Iran, one of the most culturally liberal countries in the Middle East. The Iraqi Kurds I met who have been to Iran wanted me to know – and they want you to know, as well – that the distance between the Iranian people and their hideous regime is galactic. I heard the same refrain over and over again: "Persians are just like us." In other words, they are liberal, secular, pro-Western, and fed up with tyrants. "Iranians love America," the Kurds told me. "They have nothing to do with Ahmadinejad." All the way...
Howard Kurtz reviews the raging storm over the media coverage on Katrina and the supposedly new revelations that Bush was somehow warned about levee breaches without the word "breach" ever being mentioned. He also notes that the "newly uncovered" video footage actually had been in the possession of all the networks for months: Since the AP released the videotaped Katrina meetings, liberals have been ripping the president for claiming he didn't know the extent of the devastation in those crucial early hours. This is in no way a defense of the absolutely awful administration response to the hurricane, but the tape doesn't quite show Bush being told the levees were breached or were about to be breached. A government official named Max Mayfield says there is great concern "whether the levees will be topped or not," which is still a huge deal, but not a full-scale breach. In fact, we've...
Given that I'm feeling under the weather today and am trying to recover from a nasty cold, I though this might be a good day to try a live chat for CQ readers. I'll be discussing any topic that interests those who join the session, which will run from 1 - 2 pm Eastern time. I'll be hosting this chat on AOL Instant Messenger, so if you want to join, either leave your screen name in the comments of this post or send it to me in an e-mail with the subject "CQ Chat" (so I can find it easily). I'll invite you to the chat as soon as I start setting up the chat. If I can figure out how to do it, I'll post the session as an update to this post. UPDATE: The chat room title is "CQ Chat", but I think I still need to invite...
CNN published an interview with the managers of a flight school here in Eagan, MN -- CQ's home port -- that tipped the FBI to Zacarias Moussaoui and his bizarre behavior. Tim Nelson and Hugh Sims describe Moussaoui's behavior in terms that hardly paints the al-Qaeda operative as a James Bond type: He spoke fluent Arabic but rusty English. He had plenty of cash, but didn't seem like the playboy type. He said he wanted to learn to fly a jumbo jet simply to impress his pals. But when al Qaeda operative Zacarias Moussaoui asked a flight instructor how to turn off the oxygen and transponder on a jet, two managers at the flight school had a hunch something was up. That hunch may be the reason that Moussaoui -- the only person indicted in the U.S. in connection with the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks -- is awaiting a...
Yesterday, key Adscam figure Jean Brault pleaded guilty to almost all of the charges filed against him but curiously chose to fight the conspiracy charge that remained. This curious legal strategy intrigued the Canadian press, who discovered that he did not get a deal from prosecutors in exchange for the plea: Jean Brault, an advertising executive who founded Groupaction Marketing, has pleaded guilty to five of six fraud-related charges against him in the sponsorship scandal. Brault is one of three high level executives who face charges in the scandal. Brault pleaded not guilty to the remaining charge of conspiracy and will go to trial on that charge at a later date. Brault did not seek a plea bargain, said his lawyer, Jacques Dagenais. "There was no bargain,'' Dagenais told the Canadian Press after the court appearance. "As you can see the charges are all there.'' This seems rather strange. Why...
Air America Radio has struggled since its inception on almost all fronts -- financial, creative, and access. In its early days, AAR found itself shut out of the lucrative Los Angeles and Chicago markets for a period of time due to financial shenanigans that resulted in a $1.5 million lawsuit for unpaid leased air time. Now it looks like AAR has failed to maintain itself in the #1 radio market, New York City, where its political orientation should have created its best success. Brian Maloney has the details: While Air America Radio's loss of two affiliates in Phoenix and Missoula, Montana is generating news this week, the company itself probably hasn't been able to give either city a second thought. Why? In a development sure to rip the heart right out of the liberal radio network's already ailing body, it appears extremely likely their leased New York City flagship station...
The AP started a firestorm with its report that transcripts from emergency meetings somehow proved George Bush lied when he said that no one imagined the levees around Lake Pontchartrain would be breached in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. After its report got picked up by every news source in the US, and after the discovery that these transcripts and videos never contained any warnings about breaches, the AP has finally decided to actually read the transcript and watch its video: Clarification: Katrina-Video story ASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON (AP) _ In a March 1 story, The Associated Press reported that federal disaster officials warned President Bush and his homeland security chief before Hurricane Katrina struck that the storm could breach levees in New Orleans, citing confidential video footage of an Aug. 28 briefing among U.S. officials. The Army Corps of Engineers considers a breach a hole developing in a levee rather...
As I drove the First Mate home from her dialysis session on Wednesday evening, I almost drove off the road when I passed a billboard along the highway outside of the office. It was so peculiar that I took my camera along today when I picked her up and took a picture of the advertisement: What the hell is "Mr. Happy Crack"? What advertising genius thought that sounded like a good name for a corporate mascot? I read the sign to the FM, who needed a good laugh. We speculated on all of the products or services that might best be represented by a Mr. Happy Crack mascot, and no profession we could imagine would need or want to put up a billboard avertisement. I'm sure the company itself is a fine establishment with an excellent staff and great customer service ... but I find it hard to believe that...
March 4, 2006
As much as we use the editorial board at the New York Times as a punching bag on this blog, and deservedly so, we have to note when the get the big issues right -- and today is that day. The Times makes an excellent argument today on aid to the Palestinians that could have been written here, with one minor exception: America cannot bankroll a Hamas government that preaches and practices terrorism, denies that Israel has any right to exist, and refuses to abide by peace agreements signed by previous Palestinian governments. That should be blindingly obvious. America is engaged in a global armed struggle against terrorism. It is firmly allied with Israel and is committed to Israel's survival. Hamas won the recent Palestinian election fair and square. American officials, who say they are so forcefully committed to the cause of expanding democracy in the Middle East, should not...
A federal judge in San Diego gave Randy "Duke" Cunningham eight years in prison for bribery, tax evasion, and mail and wire fraud for his corruption as a Republican Congressman and influential member of House committees on defense. Cunningham pleaded guilty and hoped to avoid the ten-year maximum allowed under his plea deal: U.S. District Judge Larry Allan Burns in San Diego spared the disgraced Republican lawmaker the 10-year maximum sentence sought by prosecutors, the maximum available under a court-approved plea agreement, but ordered the longest term ever given to a congressman. Cunningham, who was taken into custody immediately, also was ordered to pay $1.8 million in restitution. ... In November, Cunningham admitted to federal charges of mail fraud, wire fraud and income-tax evasion, acknowledging he underreported his income in 2004. He resigned from Congress after his guilty plea, and in a tearful statement to reporters at the time, said...
The Pentagon released its documentation on the detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, after a lengthy court battle to keep the information classified. The DoD released transcripts of the tribunals for each of the detainees rather than a list of those held at the prison: After four years of secrecy, the Pentagon released documents on Friday that have the names of detainees at the American military prison at Guantánamo Bay. The Bush administration had hidden the identities, home countries and other information about the men, who were accused of having links to the Taliban or Al Qaeda. But a federal judge rejected administration arguments that releasing the names would violate the detainees' privacy and could endanger them and their families. The release resulted from a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by The Associated Press. The names were scattered throughout more than 5,000 pages of transcripts of hearings at Guantánamo...
The president of Iraq stated that American forces will remain in Iraq as long as necessary to ensure stability, undercutting arguments that the Iraqis want the Americans out: President Jalal Talabani on Saturday underscored the need for a unity government in Iraq after a spasm of sectarian killing and said he had been assured U.S. forces would remain in the country as long as needed — "no matter what the period." His comments came after a bomb exploded at a minibus terminal during morning rush hour in a southeastern Baghdad suburb, killing seven people and wounding 25, one of a string of explosions in the capital and elsewhere. ... Talabani spoke to reporters after meeting with Gen. John Abizaid, chief of U.S. Central Command. The terrorists in Iraq want to drive the US out of Iraq in order to destabilize the new Iraqi security forces and initiate a dissolution of...
When one uses a blog to scold people for a lack of education, it's best to ensure that the post has been thoroughly checked for spelling and grammar. This lesson apparently escaped Barbra Streisand, along with most of the English classes she attended, according to Beautiful Atrocities: "Over the last 5 years, Bush's leadership has resembled that of a dictatorship. The arrogance of this C student [Bush has Harvard MBA, Streisand has high-school education] who maligns his opponents’ crediblity [sic] by calling them flip floppers, is the biggest flip flopper himself! When debating Al Gore during the 2000 presidential elections, Bush spoke against nation building, yet went into Irag [sic] a year later [sic] to national build [sic]…" Here's a sample of this same rant by the critic of Bush's intellect: The party that holds the majority in both the House and the Senate controls the entire congressional agenda. Everything...
Earlier today I posted about the release of documentation of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay and a study performed by one of the attorneys representing two of the accused terrorists. Mark and Joshua Denbeaux had a group of Seton Hall law students review more than 5,000 pages of material about the 517 detainees left at Gitmo and provided an analysis which I noted in the post. That analysis raised questions about the necessity of detaining some of these individuals. In a quick review, I read through about a dozen Summaries of Evidence. In each one, the government presented at least an argument for some act of hostile intent as shown by the presence of Paragraph 3b. According to the study, I should have noticed at least a few without such allegations. That's not a large enough sample with which to draw a conclusion, but it will take weeks at this...
March 5, 2006
To no one's great surprise, except for the EU, Iran now brags about the wool they pulled over European eyes during the nuclear talks that the EU-3 held with the mullahcracy. The Iranians apparently feel secure enough in their weapons project to tell Muslim clerics just how clever they were: In a speech to a closed meeting of leading Islamic clerics and academics, Hassan Rowhani, who headed talks with the so-called EU3 until last year, revealed how Teheran played for time and tried to dupe the West after its secret nuclear programme was uncovered by the Iranian opposition in 2002. He boasted that while talks were taking place in Teheran, Iran was able to complete the installation of equipment for conversion of yellowcake - a key stage in the nuclear fuel process - at its Isfahan plant but at the same time convince European diplomats that nothing was afoot. "From...
Adam Cohen tries his hand at ironic farce in today's New York Times op-ed page in previewing tonight's Oscar presentations. He writes that -- wait, I have to wipe the tears from my eyes -- the Academy Awards have a history of avoiding politics! This year's best picture nominees include a gay cowboy movie, and one about racial conflict in contemporary Los Angeles. There's a movie about the cycle of violence in the Middle East; one about a writer whose homosexuality, if not his journalistic ethics, is treated sympathetically; and one about a crusading TV newsman who took on a right-wing demagogue. These films have something in common besides small budgets and low box office: left-of-center approaches to some of the day's most controversial issues. Hollywood rallying to the liberal cause may sound like non-news. As a Democratic friend said with a shrug when the nominations were announced, the Academy...
Virginia Postrel has decided to donate a kidney to her friend Sally Satel: Last fall, my friend Sally Satel wrote about the issue in general and her own search for a kidney donor. Between the time she wrote the article and the time it appeared in the NYT, I heard about her situation and volunteered as a donor. Our tissues turned out to be unusually compatible for nonrelatives and, when her Internet donor dropped out, I moved from backup to actual donor. We have our surgeries tomorrow morning. As surgeries go, the procedure is safe and straightforward--far more so than people think. A donor can live a completely normal life with one kidney. The recipientis not so lucky, since a foreign organ requires a lifetime of immunosuppressant drugs. But that's a lot better than the alternative. The donor's experience isn't exactly a breeze, either, so don't let Virginia sell her...
The London Telegraph reports that the US and British forces in Iraq will be withdrawn within twelve months. Sean Rayment writes that sources within the British government have made it known that both countries will withdraw back to their bases over the coming months in preparation for a full withdrawal in 2007: All British and United States troops serving in Iraq will be withdrawn within a year in an effort to bring peace and stability to the country. The news came as defence chiefs admitted privately that the British troop commitment in Afghanistan may last for up to 10 years. The planned pull-out from Iraq follows the acceptance by London and Washington that the presence of the coalition, mainly composed of British and US troops, is now seen as the main obstacle to peace. According to a senior defence source directly involved in planning the withdrawal, Britain is the driving...
The Washington Post uses its front page today to note that the Bush administration has taken a hard line on leaks of classified information, apparently taking the law more seriously than previous administrations. In this lengthy complaint about the aggressiveness of the administration in protecting classified information during wartime -- Nixon gets more than one mention here -- the Post gives hardly any attention to the fact that the press started the entire effort with its hysteria over the Plame leak: The Bush administration, seeking to limit leaks of classified information, has launched initiatives targeting journalists and their possible government sources. The efforts include several FBI probes, a polygraph investigation inside the CIA and a warning from the Justice Department that reporters could be prosecuted under espionage laws. In recent weeks, dozens of employees at the CIA, the National Security Agency and other intelligence agencies have been interviewed by agents...
Last night, I issued a call for a blogswarm study of the newly-released documentation on the detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to determine the validity of an analysis done by attorneys representing two of the detainees. So far, we have had a large number of volunteers, and around a third of the documents have been assigned. I'm still getting volunteers, but more are needed, so be sure to send me a note if you're willing to participate. Put "Gitmo project" in the subject line and be sure to include a link to your blog, if you have one. I've already received one survey back from Slightly Loony at JamulBlog. He included the following note: After scanning this summary it was obvious that, as I expected, there was not enough information to reach an independent judgment. So I adopted this attitude as I read: I accepted the statements of fact as...
I will be continuing the CQ tradition of live-blogging the Academy Awards tonight, starting at 7 pm CT, or perhaps a little before to catch the pre-event reporting. None of the films competing really engaged me at all last year, and a couple of them -- Munich, especially -- I'll be actively rooting against. This year I'm in it for the cynicism. Keep checking on this post for live-blog updates! 6:21 PM CT - Okay, I'm watching the pre-show show, which seems like attending pre-meeting meetings at work, except less entertaining. I just saw Keanu Reeves do an interview along with Sandra Bullock and utter all of three syllables. The next interview with three film critics had more energy than Reeves. 6:23 - Some commenters wonder why I should bother live-blogging the Oscars. I've been watching this show for over 25 years, and at least this makes me think I'm...
In case anyone still has any illusions about the intent of radical Islamists, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made it clear when meeting with government officials on his state visit to Malaysia. The Russian news agency Itar-Tass reports his remarks: Islam will soon be the domineering force in the world, placing first in the number of its followers among all other religions. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad expressed this confidence here at the end of his state visit to Malaysia. Following a meeting with Sultan Jamalullail I, the supreme head of the federation of nine states where Islam was proclaimed the state religion, he pontificated: “The world will be in the hands of Islam over the next few years.” I wonder what the Iranian equivalent of the "Horst Wessel Song" might be? (hat tip: CQ reader Jim O)...
March 6, 2006
Aviation Weekly reports that the US has mothballed an aircraft capable of space flight that has operated secretly for over a decade but now finds itself the victim of shrinking budgets. The unacknowledged plane can, according to sources that AW has worked for years without receiving evidentiary proof, enter space with a two-stage booster system and insert satellites into low orbit (h/t: Jim O): For 16 years, Aviation Week & Space Technology has investigated myriad sightings of a two-stage-to-orbit system that could place a small military spaceplane in orbit. Considerable evidence supports the existence of such a highly classified system, and top Pentagon officials have hinted that it's "out there," but iron-clad confirmation that meets AW&ST standards has remained elusive. Now facing the possibility that this innovative "Blackstar" system may have been shelved, we elected to share what we've learned about it with our readers, rather than let an intriguing...
The news that a former Taliban official has enrolled at Yale had many people scratching their heads, wondering what the Ivy League university's admissions department was thinking when they allowed Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi to attend classes. The former deputy foreign secretary of the brutal regime claimed that he had grown up since the fall of the Taliban and wants to pursue his continuing education. However, as John Fund notes, the 27-year-old Islamist apparatchik has not exactly turned over a new leaf: He does say that some of his views have changed. "I was very young then," Mr. Rahmatullah, now 27, told the Yale Daily News last week. "At that age, you don't really have the same sensibilities that you may have later." He has told fellow students he now believes in free speech and the right of women to vote. He told the New York Times the Taliban were bad...
The European Union has never been terribly friendly to Israel, and now they want to push the Israelis into a unilateral commitment to follow Oslo, even while Hamas refuses to commit to the agreement. An EU Commissioner insists that the Israelis continue tax transfers to the Palestinian Authority, even though those transfers only started under the treaty that Hamas refuses to recognize: Israel should release customs duties of 60 million euros ($72 million) per month to the Palestinian Authority's interim government, the European Union's head of external relations said in an interview on Monday. "It would be important that the Israelis are paying out what is actually Palestinian money -- the customs duties," the European Commission's Benita Ferrero-Waldner said in an interview with Austria's daily newspaper Der Standard. Israel has decided to stop handing over the customs revenues it collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority following the victory in...
Kenneth Turan is angry that Oscar didn't anoint Brokeback Mountain as its Best Picture winner, and he's certain he knows why it didn't -- all that latent homophobia running around Hollywood. It couldn't be anything else ... right, Kenneth? Sometimes you win by losing, and nothing has proved what a powerful, taboo-breaking, necessary film "Brokeback Mountain" was more than its loss Sunday night to "Crash" in the Oscar best picture category. Despite all the magazine covers it graced, despite all the red-state theaters it made good money in, despite (or maybe because of) all the jokes late-night talk show hosts made about it, you could not take the pulse of the industry without realizing that this film made a number of people distinctly uncomfortable. More than any other of the nominated films, "Brokeback Mountain" was the one people told me they really didn't feel like seeing, didn't really get, didn't...
We still have more room for our blogswarm study of the documentation released by the DoD on the detainees at Guantanamo Bay. See this post for details!...
We're just starting to get on the First Mate's regular dialysis schedule at the local DaVita center, where she will spend around four hours three times a week until a new donor can be found. This is an excellent facility with a wonderful staff who have made the FM feel very much a part of the family here. They've even allowed me to use their conference room for blogging business while the FM dialyzes and tries to get some rest. It allows me to be on hand while she's plugged into the machines in case she needs anything while having a chance to relax and feel a little productive. (Her last dialysis center was another DaVita center and they were just as nice.) I'll be reviewing the news and my e-mail, but if you'd like a little stress relief like me, try paying a visit to INDC Journal, where Bill...
ABC News reports tonight that Iran has shipped improved explosive devices capable of defeating the body armor employed by US soldiers to the insurgents in Iraq. Brian Ross will tell ABC's World News Tonight that Iran is "knowingly killing US troops", according to former counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke: U.S. military and intelligence officials tell ABC News that they have caught shipments of deadly new bombs at the Iran-Iraq border. They are a very nasty piece of business, capable of penetrating U.S. troops' strongest armor. What the United States says links them to Iran are tell-tale manufacturing signatures -- certain types of machine-shop welds and material indicating they are built by the same bomb factory. "The signature is the same because they are exactly the same in production," said explosives expert Kevin Berry. "So it's the same make and model." U.S. officials say roadside bomb attacks against American forces in Iraq...
After suffering what turned out to be a massive stroke yesterday, family members removed Kirby Puckett from life support today and he passed away at 44: Twins Hall of Famer Kirby Puckett died tonight. Puckett suffered a massive stroke Sunday morning at his home in Scottsdale, Ariz., and underwent surgery. He had been transferred to St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix. Family members assembled at the hospital Monday to make the decision on life support. The people with knowledge of Puckett’s condition said he was expected to be removed from the life support sometime Monday. Puckett had two children and was engaged to be married this summer. Although I have been a Dodgers fan all of my life, Kirby was the kind of player that all baseball fans loved. His joy and enthusiasm for the game and the fans came across wherever he went and whenever he played....
March 7, 2006
The AP started a major controversy with its report on President Bush's response to Hurricane Katrina last week. It supposedly discovered new video and transcripts showing that Bush was warned that the levees surrounding New Orleans would break and that the White House was so disengaged that it didn't even bother to ask any questions during the last pre-landing briefing. After stirring up a firestorm, the AP waited until 7 pm on a Friday night to issue a half-hearted correction acknowledging what anyone who actually watched the video or read the transcripts already knew -- that neither were new at all, and neither contained any warnings at all about breaches. It turns out that the second part of the AP's mistaken report was also untrue, and today the Washington Post became the next organization to emulate Emily Litella and say, "Never mind!" In the March 4 editorial "Caught on Tape,"...
It looks like President Bush's visit to Pakistan may have paid off, as Musharraf appears to have re-energized his campaign in Waziristan against al-Qaeda and the Taliban remnants that have taken refuge there. In a protracted battle near the Afghanistan border, Pakistani forces have killed scores of the Islamist terrorists: Pakistani security forces battled pro-Taliban rebels holding out in a town near the Afghan border on Monday, killing 19 of them as the toll from three days of clashes rose to more than 120, the military said. The rebels launched attacks on government positions in Miran Shah on Saturday as President Bush met Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, in the capital. The fighting has raged since. ... Militants launched attacks and seized government buildings Saturday in Miran Shah in revenge for a government attack Wednesday that killed 45 fighters. The toll from the first day of fighting rose from 46...
After six years of wondering what happened to the GOP's reputation for fiscal sanity, House conservatives have prepared an alternative budget that aims to uphold what brought Republicans to power in the first place -- an insistence on smaller government and significant reductions in federal spending: With Congress heading into a politically perilous budget season, influential House conservatives plan this week to propose an austere alternative spending plan that would pare more than $650 billion over five years, balance the budget and drastically shrink three cabinet agencies. The legislation, part of a push by some Republicans to re-establish themselves as champions of fiscal restraint, was taking shape as President Bush struck a similar theme on Monday by asking Congress to grant him line-item veto power to eliminate federal spending that he might judge wasteful. ... Senior aides say the conservatives' plan would wring about $350 billion from Medicare, Medicaid and...
Terrorism, in its most objective definition, is the use of violence or the threat of violence against civilian populations in order to advance a political or religious philosophy. Under this definition, doesn't the admission of Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar make his attempt to murder dozens of people with his rented SUV an act of terrorism? So far, the FBI and prosecutors still won't say: University of North Carolina graduate from Iran, accused of running down nine people on campus to avenge the treatment of Muslims, said at a hearing Monday that he was "thankful for the opportunity to spread the will of Allah." Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar was accused of driving a sport-utility vehicle through the Pit, a popular campus gathering spot, injuring nine people Friday. None of the victims was seriously hurt. University Police Chief Derek Poarch said Taheri-azar told investigators he intentionally hit people to "avenge the deaths of Muslims...
South Dakota apparently set off a trend in state legislatures with its comprehensive abortion ban, signed into law yesterday by Governor Mike Rounds. Since Roe, no legislature has dared to so openly flout the Supreme Court's dictate on abortion rights. Now, however, states have queued up similar legislation in an effort to follow South Dakota into the battle against judicial activism: Leaders on each side of the abortion debate said South Dakota's law had stirred new support and fervor for their causes. Abortion rights advocates reported a flood of donations, volunteers and membership requests since the abortion bill began drawing national attention last month. Opponents said they, too, had had a flood of calls, including numerous donations to a defense fund to fight what is expected to be expensive litigation on behalf of South Dakota. Already, the state's move seems to have emboldened legislators opposed to abortion elsewhere. For months,...
The online magazine Salon has had some tough times making it as a subscriber publication in a medium that prizes open-source sensibilities. It has had to force nonsubscribers to sit through tedious advertising before allowing them to read its nondescript essays, which don't have any more inherent quality than the volumes of essays more readily available at other publications. Even its one innovative nod to the blogosphere, Peter Daou's The Daou Report, violates the free and easily-networked nature of its target audience. Apparently all of this has left Salon struggling for revenue from its readership. NZ Bear at the Truth Laid Bear, once a subscriber himself, reports on the latest effort at luring former subscribers back to the fold -- by promising to run hundreds of additional photos of abuse at Abu Ghraib: Dear former Salon Premium member, Three weeks ago, Salon released 18 photos from Abu Ghraib prison that...
Texas Republicans in CD-22 have sent a message to Ronnie Earle and the media by overwhelmingly selecting Tom DeLay to run for re-election to Congress. The former Majority Leader trounced his three GOP challengers, taking two-thirds of all votes and outpolling the closest candidate by over 35 points: Rep. Tom DeLay won the GOP nomination to the House on Tuesday, beating three challengers in his first election since he was indicted and forced to step aside as majority leader. With 14 percent of precincts reporting, DeLay had 10,005 votes, or 64 percent. His closest challenger, environmental attorney Tom Campbell, had 4,049 votes, or 26 percent. "I have always placed my faith in the voters, and today's vote shows they have placed their full faith in me," DeLay said in a statement. "Not only did they reject the politics of personal destruction, but they strongly rejected the candidates who used those...
A coalition of Democrats have begun an effort to wrest control of the Democratic Party away from the train wreck of Howard Dean's chairmanship. This coalition, led by former Clintonista Harold Ickes and funded by George Soros, has selected Ickes to head a data-mining project intended on giving better voter information to key Congressional campaigns: A group of well-connected Democrats led by a former top aide to Bill Clinton is raising millions of dollars to start a private firm that plans to compile huge amounts of data on Americans to identify Democratic voters and blunt what has been a clear Republican lead in using technology for political advantage. The effort by Harold Ickes, a deputy chief of staff in the Clinton White House and an adviser to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), is prompting intense behind-the-scenes debate in Democratic circles. Officials at the Democratic National Committee think that creating a...
March 8, 2006
The Washington Post runs an interesting story about the unease felt by many Iranians about their government's increasingly confrontational stance with the world regarding its pursuit of nuclear technology. Iranian civilians question the wisdom of inflaming world opinion against them and potentially working their way into economic sanctions that will only make their lives even more difficult: Iranians are expressing unease about the international showdown over their country's nuclear program, as broad public support for atomic power is tempered by growing misgivings about the cost. ... The misgivings emerge as the International Atomic Energy Agency, meeting this week in Vienna, considers reporting Iran to the U.N. Security Council for defying demands to suspend specific nuclear activities. The council could impose sanctions or otherwise penalize the government and, in the process, further isolate Iranians already feeling the chill of international disfavor. "One thing is obvious: If more foreigners come to this...
For those who profess outrage at the use of the NSA's intercept program on international communications, the ABC news report on the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui explains why our intelligence services should not get hamstrung by the law-enforcement mentality when the US is under attack: The number 050-520-9905 is what several of the 9/11 hijackers dialed to establish contact with Mustafa al Hawsawi, a senior al Qaeda member in the United Arab Emirates. Prosecutors said today that Hawsawi was one of the key financial contributors and travel coordinators for several of the 9/11 hijackers, and that the 9/11 investigation shows that Mohammed Atta was in regular contact with him in the weeks before the attack. In laying out for the jury the specifics of how the 9/11 plot was hatched, prosecutors showed the jury a series of money transfer orders and records of calls to Hawsawi from Mohammed Atta, which...
Dana Milbank writes about the animosity within the Cato Institute's form on public policy that featured Bruce Bartlett and Andrew Sullivan. Both speakers have long been critics of the Bush administration, with the latter eventually endorsing John Kerry in the last presidential election. Milbank sounds somewhat surprised by the lack of rhetorical defenders on display at Cato: If the ancient political wisdom is correct that a charge unanswered is a charge agreed to, the Bush White House pleaded guilty yesterday at the Cato Institute to some extraordinary allegations. "We did ask a few members of the Bush economic team to come," explained David Boaz, the think tank's executive vice president, as he moderated a discussion between two prominent conservatives about President Bush. "We didn't get that." Now why would the administration pass up such an invitation? Well, it could have been because of the first speaker, former Reagan aide Bruce...
The Wall Street Journal discusses the historical precedent to the 1982 Dujail massacre that Saddam ordered after an assassination attempt on his life failed nearby. The unsigned essay discusses the more successful assassination of Reinhard "Hangman" Heydrich, the architect of the Holocaust, and the Nazi revenge taken on the small Czech mining town of Lidice and its similarities to Dujail: As with Lidice, Dujail was razed and its orchards bulldozed. Also like Lidice, the purpose of the massacre was not to dispense justice but to make an example of the villagers. "You people of Dujail, we have disciplined Iraq through you," Mr. Mohammad recalled one of the torturers saying. Now come to the present. Last week, Saddam acknowledged in court that he had ordered the summary trial that led to the execution of the villagers and the destruction of their farmland. "Where is the crime?" he asked, claiming that as...
Please send your congratulations to The Heritage Foundation's Mark Tapscott, who has been named to the National Freedom of Information Hall of Fame. This honors Mark's commitment to keep information in the public forum, and in fact Mark is one of the few conservatives so named. It's a well-deserved honor for a great blogger and an even better friend....
House Republicans on the Appropriations Committee abandoned the effort by the White House to give the Dubai Ports World deal a second, more thorough security review and voted 62-2 to amend an emergency appropriation bill with language specifically making any attempt to engage DP World in port operations illegal. The GOP joined all of the committee Democrats in slamming the door on any further negotiations with the UAE port-management firm: In an election-year repudiation of President Bush, a House panel dominated by Republicans voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to block a Dubai-owned firm from taking control of some U.S port operations. By 62-2, the Appropriations Committee voted to bar DP World, run by the government of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, from holding leases or contracts at U.S. ports. Bush has promised to veto any such measure passed by Congress, but there is widespread public opposition to the deal and the...
The CQ Blogswarm Study Group have been busy this week, reviewing the source documents on the Guantanamo Bay detainees and filling out the Excel spreadsheets with the data needed. I have already discovered one unsettling fact -- the documents provided by the DoD only include 122 SOEs, not 517. The Denbeaux study appeared to claim that it had 517 SOEs, but unless they received them separately from the DoD (which is certainly possible, since Mark Denbeaux represents two of the detainees), their researchers apparently attempted to reverse-engineer the SOEs from the testimony. Our study group did not do that. The SOEs will eventually be reviewed by nine volunteers, with each SOE reviewed by three different people. They will count the listings in Paragraph 3 to determine how many hostile acts and connections to terrorism can be found, and I will use the average of all three as the number used....
With all of the attention that the Iranian nuclear crisis has drawn, its fellow member of the Axis of Evil has apparently gotten jealous. North Korea reminded the world that it has claims on the title of Most Insane Regime by firing a couple of short-range missiles in Japan's general direction: North Korea launched a pair of short-range missiles Wednesday, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said. Japan's Kyodo News Agency, which quoted "sources knowledgeable about the matter," said the surface-to-air missiles were launched near North Korea's border with China. "Indications are that North Korea launched two short-range missiles," McClellan said. "The regime has conducted similar tests in the past." According to Kyodo, there was some confusion over whether the missiles were test-fired or launched by mistake. The agency quoted a Western military source as saying they were short-range missiles fired to the east from the eastern coast. At least one...
March 9, 2006
When Poland finally freed itself from the grip of Soviet tyranny and brought back democracy to its government, the nation expressed a strong desire to integrate itself into the European Union as a way to strenthen those institutions. Now, however, the Poles have decided that a tight integration no longer serves those purposes but rather the aggregation of power by the larger nations of the EU: When Poland was negotiating its entry to the European Union, its diplomats indicated that joining a politically integrated Europe was the best way to protect national interests. This belief in the power of community was shared by the other aspiring countries from the former Soviet bloc, which as a group greatly expanded the union in May 2004. "Poland was a strong supporter of more integration," said Piotr Buras, a European policy specialist at the Willy Brandt Center in Wroclaw, in southern Poland. He said...
All Things Beautiful points readers to a Ha'aretz report on the Iranian nuclear program that shows Iran has not only used the ostensible effort for domestic nuclear power as a front for its weapons program, but that the Iranians have been developing this weapons program for longer than first thought. Western experts have studied the plutonium that it found during the IAEA inspections and determined that the enrichment occurred years earlier than first thought: In concurrence with growing diplomatic tension over Iran's nuclear program, on Thursday it emerged that intelligence services in the West are convinced that Iran is taking covert means to develop nuclear weapons, in addition to the nuclear program under the partial supervision of the IAEA. Russian intelligence is believed to agree with this assessment. According to the IAEA interim report from late February, a document was found that alludes to Iranian attempts to create the components...
No doubt Congress needs to set ethical standards and hold members accountable to them in regard to their relationships with lobbyists, especially when it comes to gifts, travel, and contributions. The prevailing attitude that our representatives can be bought produces a corrosive cynicism in the American electorate that decreases the enthusiasm for oversight and actually increases the opportunities for corruption. However, it's hard to take this effort seriously when it starts by forcing politicians to pick up the tab for dinner: Facing accusations that lawmakers are not serious about breaking the tight bond between Capitol Hill and K Street, the Senate voted Wednesday to bar members of Congress and their aides from accepting gifts and meals from lobbyists. The meals and gifts ban, approved unanimously by voice vote, was the full Senate's first major decision on lobbying law changes in the wake of the Jack Abramoff scandal. The ban is...
Alan Greenspan has just received $8.5 million for his memoirs, the second-highest advance for a nonfiction book. Given his record of inscrutability achieved through the dizzying amount of detail he produced as Federal Reserve chair, do you wonder how he would write his autobiography? Comedian and newly-minted country singer Rick Moranis shares his thoughts in the New York Times: IT was the best of times but it might also have quite possibly led to the worst of times. One thing was for sure: it was a beautiful day. It felt like, oh, around 63 or 64 degrees Fahrenheit. I estimated, assessing the precise time of day, the mean annualized temperature, all available barometrics (which were hovering at about 30.2 and appeared to be falling), and the constantly changing, though only partial, cloud cover which seemingly would have to have been caused by prevailing winds, that it might get up to...
The New York Sun reports the stunning news that an FBI agent whose investigations led to the convictions of several key Mafia figures may be indicted on murder charges. R. Lindley DeVecchio faces prosecution for passing information along to his contacts in the mob that fingered other informants, leading to their execution, including one woman: In a case with stunning implications for both law enforcement and some convicted gangsters, prosecutors have decided to seek murder charges against a former mob-busting FBI agent for involvement in at least three Brooklyn Mafia hits between 1984 and 1992, Gang Land has learned. The Brooklyn district attorney's office has concluded a six-month probe of the scandalous allegations against R. Lindley DeVecchio and will soon ask a grand jury to vote on murder charges against the retired agent, sources said. The move could come as early as today. According to evidence before the panel, Mr....
Posted by Dafydd Captain Ed has been collecting victims to review -- I'm sorry, requesting volunteers to review the unclassified case files of various detainee tribunal hearings. He wants us to determine if there is good reason in these files to still be holding these people in Guantanamo Bay, or whether it appears as though a miscarriage of military justice has occurred. This post will be cross-posted to Big Lizards; abandon all hope, ye who enter here. The first point to make -- and it's a biggie -- is that we only get to see the unclassified information. The tribunals are also given access to classified evidence from the case files. Clearly, the most damning evidence would most likely be present only in the classified evidence, as that is where all the intel from American and Coalition agents, witness identifications, and classified documentary evidence is kept. So I cannot really...
Dubai Ports World has just put an end to the controversy generated over its purchase of P&O and the operations contracts held in six major American ports. They have agreed to sell the American business to a "US entity", allowing all of the hot air to escape this debate: A Dubai-owned company said Thursday it is giving up its management stake in some U.S. ports, a move made as congressional leaders warned President Bush that both the House and Senate appeared ready to block the takeover. ... "Because of the strong relationship between the United Arab Emirates and the United States and to preserve that relationship, DP World has decided to transfer fully the U.S. operation of P&O Operations North America to a United States entity," DP World's chief operating officer, Edward H. Bilkey, said in the statement that Warner relayed to other senators. The announcement did not specify which...
With the announcement that Dubai Ports World will sell off its American contracts acquired during the purchase of P&O, the embarrassing episode appears to have drawn to a close. Some people failed to get the message even after John Warner delivered it on the Senate floor, however. Harry Reid, who acted like a petulant child denied his dessert, insisted that a Senate vote be held on a deal that no longer existed so that Senate Democrats could express themselves. Saying that the "devil is in the details", the Senate Minority Leader angrily told a press conference that the Republicans insisted on up-or-down votes on judicial nominees and the Democrats want the same for their legislation -- ignoring that Reid has blocked votes for a dozen nominees, and none of them were as dead as the DPW takeover of American port operations. Reid is just the latest person to make a...
The Spanish investigation into the March 11 bombings in Madrid has concluded that the planners and perpetrators were home-grown Islamists and not connected to al-Qaeda, the AP reports tonight. The assignment of this action to AQ came in the days after the bombing, when the terror network supposedly claimed responsibility for the attack. However, the reality is apparently somewhat murkier: A two-year probe into the Madrid train bombings concludes the Islamic terrorists who carried out the blasts were homegrown radicals acting on their own rather than at the behest of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network, two senior intelligence officials said. Spain still remains home to a web of radical Algerian, Moroccan and Syrian groups bent on carrying out attacks — and aiding the insurgency against U.S. troops in Iraq — a Spanish intelligence chief and a Western official intimately involved in counterterrorism measures in Spain told The Associated Press. The...
March 10, 2006
This weekend ends the longest hiatus in recent memory for a television series as The Sopranos returns for its sixth and final season on HBO. Having watched the series since its inception -- and maintaining my subscription to HBO largely because of it -- the anticipation of the final season and the resolution of its many story lines has created a strong possibility of creating almost impossible expectations for the creators and cast to meet. According to the New York Sun, however, the last twenty shows deliver in every way on the promise built up over the series' first five seasons: It's every man for himself in the final season of "The Sopranos." The New Jersey crew of captains, thugs, and murderers, led by its charismatic general, no longer manages its mid-range Mafia business with precision; the money doesn't flow the way it used to, and neither does the blood....
The New York Times tries mightily to attach Jack Abramoff to George Bush in today's paper but misses wildly. Despite headlining Philip Shenon's report with "$25,000 to Lobby Group Is Tied to Access to Bush", the money never went to Bush or any funds connected to him, and all it got was an invitation to an event in which George Bush gave a speech: The chief of an Indian tribe represented by the lobbyist Jack Abramoff was admitted to a meeting with President Bush in 2001 days after the tribe paid a prominent conservative lobbying group $25,000 at Mr. Abramoff's direction, according to documents and interviews. The payment was made to Americans for Tax Reform, a group run by Grover G. Norquist, one of the Republican Party's most influential policy strategists. Mr. Norquist was a friend and longtime associate of Mr. Abramoff. The meeting with Mr. Bush took place on...
Chris Matthews reports at MS-NBC that John McCain plans to instruct delegates at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference to vote for George Bush as a write-in candidate instead of voting for him as the preferred nominee for 2008. Matthews says that McCain asks this to show support for the President, presently in a rough patch, and to keep the GOP's focus on 2006: It's early on at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference down here, but already we've learned some big news. Sources tell me that Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., plans to shock his supporters tonight by asking them to NOT vote for him in the presidential straw poll that will be conducted by The Hotline on Saturday. Instead, McCain will urge his followers to write in President Bush's name. McCain will tell his supporters that this is not about 2008, but rather about 2006 and supporting the president. According to...
March 11, 2006
Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic died last night of apparent natural causes in his cell at a UN detention center in Amsterdam. The AP reports that the subject of the often-delayed war crimes trial died of natural causes: Slobodan Milosevic, the former Yugoslav leader who orchestrated the Balkan wars of the 1990s and was on trial for war crimes, was found dead in his prison cell near The Hague, the U.N. tribunal said Saturday. Milosevic, 64, apparently died of natural causes, a tribunal press officer said. He was found dead in his bed at the U.N. detention center. Milosevic has been on trial since February 2002, defending himself against 66 counts of crimes, including genocide, in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo. The trial repeatedly was interrupted by Milosevic's poor health and chronic heart condition. It was recessed last week until Tuesday to await his next defense witness. His death comes less than...
Some men never get the hang of fatherhood; they make the effort but never quite figure out how to parent a child. Others just never give a damn from the start: A man who was released from jail so that he could donate a kidney to his ailing son was being sought in Mexico yesterday after he went on the run before the organ could be removed. Byron Perkins from Kentucky was awaiting sentencing for drugs and firearms offences and facing a minimum 25 years in prison. But he was allowed out after tearfully convincing officials that he wanted to help his son, Destin, 15, who has dialysis twice a week. Perkins was not wearing an electronic ankle bracelet because doctors told the judge who approved his release it would interfere with medical tests. "He was crying, he was just literally begging the judge," a police spokeswoman told reporters. "He...
March 12, 2006
In the first event of the 2008 presidential run for the GOP, Bill Frist won the Southern Republican Leadership Conference straw poll as expected, with 36% of the vote going to the Tennessee native in Nashville. However, instead of supposed frontrunner John McCain or southern favorites George Allen or Mike Huckabee grabbing the second spot, Governor Mitt Romney of Massachussetts rolled in right behind Frist with 14%: Frist won 36.9 percent of the 1,427 ballots cast here by delegates to the Southern Republican Leadership Conference. The shocker of the evening was that Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney placed second, besting far better-known rivals Arizona Sen. John McCain and Virginia Sen. George Allen. Romney finished with 14 percent of the vote. Third place was shared by Allen and President Bush, each of whom won 10.3 percent of the ballots cast. Bush, who of course is not eligible to run again for president,...
I missed this report yesterday in the London Telegraph, but it bears repeating -- especially since it didn't get any attention from the American media today. Native insurgents and Iraqi civilians have apparently declared war on the al-Qaeda insurgents led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. They have achieved significant victories against the foreigners, driving them out of Anbar and forcing them back to the border ... the Iranian border: Insurgent groups in one of Iraq's most violent provinces claim that they have purged the region of three quarters of al-Qa'eda's supporters after forming an alliance to force out the foreign fighters. If true, it would mark a significant victory in the fight against Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the head of al-Qa'eda in Iraq, and could partly explain the considerable drop in suicide bombings in Iraq recently. Wait! Suicide bombings in Iraq have dropped considerably? Our media hasn't told us this. I wonder...
So much for the Russian initiative in the Iranian crisis. This morning, the Iranian Foreign Ministry declared that the Russian compromise to avert a Security Council showdown was no longer under consideration, delivering a slap in the face to Vladimir Putin and the naive Westerners who thought Iranian consideration of it sincere: Iran said Sunday it had ruled out a proposal to move its uranium enrichment program to Russia, further complicating the international dispute over the country's nuclear program. Russia has sought to persuade Iran to move its enrichment program to Russian territory to allow closer international monitoring. The U.S. and the European Union had backed the idea as a way to ensure Iran would not misuse the process to make nuclear weapons. Iran had insisted that the plan was negotiable and reached basic agreement with Moscow, but details were never worked out. "The Russian proposal is not on our...
The urge of Democrats to tinker with their primary season continues unabated. The Rules and Bylaws Committee has decided to schedule more caucuses ahead of the New Hampshire primary, which by their rules has to hold the first primary election in the party's presidential run. The introduction of more caucuses will dilute the impact of New Hampshire's primary, leading to a threat of escalation by the Granite State: The Democratic Party's Rules and Bylaws Committee yesterday dealt a blow to New Hampshire Democrats hoping to keep their coveted place in the presidential nominating schedule, agreeing by voice vote to a plan that would place one or two caucuses between the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 14, 2008, and the New Hampshire primary eight days later. The proposal, which grew from recommendations by a commission studying how to make the nominating process more diverse both racially and geographically, would also add one...
Tonight HBO airs the first episode of the last season of The Sopranos. It starts at 9 pm ET with Episode 66, "Members Only", a title with more than one point of reference. Since this season is the assured valedictory for one of the best television series ever aired, no character is safe from the button man -- or the writers. In that spirit, CQ offers readers a poll to predict who gets the rest of the season off: Who Gets Whacked On Tonight's Sopranos?Vito Spatafore , the gay MafiosoMeadow's fiance Finn, who knows Vito's secretPhil LeotardoBobby Baccala, the family schlemielLittle Carmine Lupertazzi (does he try to upend Johnny Sack?)Johnny "Sack" Sacramoni (in jail)Janice Soprano Baccala (and who would miss her?)Christopher MoltisantiSomeone else? Free polls from Pollhost.com At the end of last season, the final two characters to make their curtain call were Adriana LaCerva and Tony Blundetto, killed by consigliere...
March 13, 2006
The new Canadian Prime Minister paid a visit to his troops on the front lines in Afghanistan, defying security concerns in staying overnight in order to show his solidarity with the Canadian contingent of the Coalition. Stephen Harper told his soldiers that although some at home might question their mission, Canada would not cut and run on his watch: Prime Minister Stephen Harper spent his second day in turbulent Afghanistan on Monday with a clear message to doubters back home that Canada won't be a pushover. "You can't lead from the bleachers. I want Canada to be a leader," he told about 1,000 Canadian soldiers at the base of the multinational mission led by a Canadian general. Harper's surprise visit to Afghanistan, which began on Sunday, is meant to lend support to troops facing twin problems: a stubborn insurgency that has claimed the lives of 12 Canadians since 2002 and...
French prime minister Dominique De Villepin finds himself drowning in political waters after the ugly student protests and their forced end at the Sorbonne that resulted from his reform plan to solve youth unemployment. With over 20% of young French out of a job, DeVillepin attempted to give employers more leeway in terminating employees so that they would take more risks in hiring young workers, but the students wanted their guarantees more than the jobs themselves: Dominique de Villepin, France's prime minister, was fighting for his political survival last night after a week of protests over his flagship youth employment scheme, culminating in students occupying the Sorbonne for the first time since May 1968. Facing his sternest test since taking up office last June, Mr de Villepin said on France's main television news programme last night that his Bill "will be applied" but intimated that it could be tweaked. His...
Condoleezza Rice responds today to critics of the new treaty that George Bush signed recently with India, guaranteeing access to their nuclear facilities while bolstering their production of nuclear energy for domestic uses. Some questioned whether the deal would undermine efforts to confront Iran and North Korea on proliferation, but Rice writes that India presents a unique opportunity to strengthen those efforts: Our agreement with India is unique because India is unique. India is a democracy, where citizens of many ethnicities and faiths cooperate in peace and freedom. India's civilian government functions transparently and accountably. It is fighting terrorism and extremism, and it has a 30-year record of responsible behavior on nonproliferation matters. Aspiring proliferators such as North Korea or Iran may seek to draw connections between themselves and India, but their rhetoric rings hollow. Iran is a state sponsor of terrorism that has violated its own commitments and is...
John Fund wrote about the former Taliban official now enrolled at Yale, Sayed Ramatullah Hashemi, last week in an article critical of Yale's admission of the Islamist. After Fund wrote about the subject, others openly criticized Yale for its acceptance of a man who participated in one of the most brutally oppressive governments in recent history, and some of those critics are alumni of Yale. In response, Yale Law School's assistant director of giving (which means, in the Orwellian lingo of academia, receiving) sent an e-mail to two alumni asking them if they had suffered brain damage: Mr. Surovov, a Yale alumnus who has worked in its development office for three years and is on the board of the Yale Club of New Haven, wrote Mr. Taylor and Ms. Bookstaber at their private email addresses with the subject heading: "Y [sic] do you hate Yale." Here is his email in...
Senator Russ Feingold attempted to start his 2008 presidential campaign with a bang. In a move anticipated for the past few days, the Wisconsin Senator followed his opposition to the Patriot Act with a motion to censure George Bush for his approval of the NSA intercept program that has helped keep America safe from attack since 9/11. As soon as he introduced the motion, he fled the well of the Senate as the Republicans attempted to schedule an immediate vote on the censure: Democrats distanced themselves Monday from Wisconsin Sen. Russell Feingold's effort to censure President Bush over domestic spying, preventing a floor vote that could alienate swing voters. A day of tough, election-year talk between Feingold and Vice President Dick Cheney ended with Senate leaders sending the matter to the Judiciary Committee. Republicans dared Democrats to vote for the proposal. "Some Democrats in Congress have decided the president is...
The Twin Cities suffered a setback for diversity in the news media with the announcement that McClatchy would purchase Knight Ridder for $4.5 billion. McClatchy already owns the dominant broadsheet in the area, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, with its decent stable of reporters and its frequently-unhinged editorial and opinion writers. With the purchase of KR, they will briefly control the only other significant newspaper in the market, the Saint Paul Pioneer Press. Editor & Publisher notes that the control will be short-lived: McClatchy said it will now sell 12 KR papers, including the two Philadelphia papers and former flagship San Jose Mercury News. The company said in a statement that these papers are located in cities that "do not fit the company's longstanding acquisition criteria, chiefly involving growing markets." The other papers to be divested by McClatchy are: the Akron (Ohio) Beacon Journal; Wilkes Barre (Pa.) Times Leader; Aberdeen (S.D.) American...
Jim Walsh of the Courier Post learned an important lesson last week, one he relates to his readers in his column today. After listening to former CBS anchorman Dan Rather speak to a Cherry Hill audience about the need for improvement in reporting, Walsh took an opportunity to ask Rather to talk about a specific instance where media failed -- and wound up censored for his efforts: Here's the scene: Former CBS anchorman Dan Rather is in Cherry Hill, giving a speech about the need for journalists to do better. "What's gone out of fashion is the tough question and the follow-up," he tells an admiring audience of about 600 people at Cherry Hill's Star Forum. So how can I, the guy covering Rather's remarks, just sit there? When he finishes, I hurry to a floor mike to ask Rather about an issue that will be part of my story....
Isaac Hayes has left South Park and his role of Chef, one of the original characters in the series. Hayes says that he disapproves of the religious mockery that has long been part of the show, but the show's creators have declared shenanigans on Hayes: Isaac Hayes has quit "South Park," where he voices Chef, saying he can no longer stomach its take on religion. Hayes, who has played the ladies' man/school cook in the animated Comedy Central satire since 1997, said in a statement Monday that he feels a line has been crossed. "There is a place in this world for satire, but there is a time when satire ends and intolerance and bigotry towards religious beliefs of others begins," the 63-year-old soul singer and outspoken Scientologist said. "Religious beliefs are sacred to people, and at all times should be respected and honored," he continued. "As a civil rights...
March 14, 2006
An informant for the prosecution in the case of the alleged Lodi al-Qaeda cell says that AQ's second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, visited in the Lodi area in the late 1990s as the local mosque established itself as a center for radical Islamists. Naseem Khan, the prosecution witness that has testified to the activity inside the mosque, picked out the Egyptian doctor-turned-terrorist leader from a photo during his initial interrogation: In a surprising twist, the FBI informant in the terrorism case against a Lodi man and his father said in federal court Monday that he encountered Al Qaeda's No. 2 leader in the small Central Valley farm town a few years before the Sept. 11 attacks. Defense attorneys for Hamid Hayat and his father, Umer, said outside court that the statement by the government's key witness raised serious questions about the informant's credibility. And a former president of the Lodi...
Matt Drudge leaked a portion of an article appearing in the new Vanity Fair which quotes Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee as confirming that Richard Armitage, the right-hand man to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, was the first government official to leak Valerie Plame's status to the press. Armitage has been one of the prime suspects for those who, like Tom Maguire, have followed the case closely. However, Bradlee's own paper delivers quite a walkback in today's report from Jim VandeHei: In an article to be published in the magazine today, Bradlee is quoted as saying: "That Armitage is the likely source is a fair assumption." Armitage was deputy secretary of state in President Bush's first term. In an interview yesterday, Bradlee said he does know the identity of Woodward's source and does not recall making that precise statement to a Vanity Fair reporter. He said he has no...
The Washington Post reports that the Republicans have run into trouble in maintaining their drive for fiscal sanity, with moderate members balking at budget cuts during an election year. Jonathan Weisman writes that several Homeland Security priorities will get more funding than their initial budget requests, putting pressure on Congress to raise taxes: House and Senate Republicans will seek this week to increase spending on port security, homeland defense, health care and education in a clash with GOP leaders struggling to regain the mantle of fiscal discipline for their party. With the Senate taking up a budget blueprint for 2007 and the House voting on a $91 billion emergency spending bill, lawmakers on both sides of the Capitol will face key tests of their budget-cutting mettle in the coming days. The federal budget deficit is expected to reach $371 billion this year, despite robust economic growth. But GOP leaders insist...
Senator Russ Feingold has discovered the key difference between leadership and grandstanding. The former involves motivating a group of people to follow your lead by engaging the group's enthusiasm for your direction. The latter involves making decisions for others without bothering to consult them. Democrats have made clear that Feingold is a party grandstander and not a leader: Wisconsin Sen. Russell Feingold accused fellow Democrats on Tuesday of cowering rather than joining him on trying to censure President Bush over domestic spying. "Democrats run and hide" when the administration invokes the war on terrorism, Feingold told reporters. Feingold introduced censure legislation Monday in the Senate but not a single Democrat has embraced it. Several have said they want to see the results of a Senate Intelligence Committee investigation before supporting any punitive legislation. Republicans dismissed the proposal Tuesday as being more about Feingold's 2008 presidential aspirations than Bush's actions. On...
March 15, 2006
An era of promise and disappointment came to a close yesterday in Eden Prairie as the Minnesota Vikings traded Daunte Culpepper to the Miami Dolphins. When Culpepper started seven years ago, he replaced Brad Johnson and now it looks like Brad Johnson will replace Culpepper for the 2006 season: Chances are the smile returned to Culpepper's face Tuesday for the first time in months, when the Vikings quietly traded him to Miami for a second-round pick in next month's NFL draft. The move closed another dark chapter in the franchise's turbulent history, sending Culpepper to a plum destination and leaving the Vikings with little to show for their seven-year investment in a 29-year-old quarterback they believed would lead them into the next decade. The Vikings confirmed Tuesday night that they will receive the Dolphins' No. 51 overall pick, three spots after their own second-round choice. One of the most immediate...
The US will vote against Kofi Annan's plan to reform the Human Rights Commission at Turtle Bay after the initial proposal got watered down to please the abusers it meant to keep from the council. The US position will force an actual vote rather than approval by consensus, opening the floor to amendments and debate: The United States will call for a General Assembly vote on the proposed Human Rights Council on Wednesday, and vote against it, a senior Bush administration official said Tuesday. "We tried very hard to see if we could support this, but in the end we just didn't think this initiative met the very high bar we set for an effective council," said R. Nicholas Burns, the undersecretary of state for political affairs. "The U.N. needs a stronger body to fight human rights abuses in places like Darfur and Burma." ... Jan Eliasson, the General Assembly...
Saddam Hussein took the stand in his own defense today, calling the trial a "comedy" while admitting most of the allegations surrounding the destruction of Dujail and the deaths of scores of its residents: Saddam Hussein formally took the stand in his trial for the first time on Wednesday after earlier acknowledging in court that he gave orders which led to the killing of 148 Shi'ite men in the 1980s. He called the court a "comedy against Saddam Hussein and his comrades." ... During his last appearance on March 1, Saddam said he had ordered the 148 to be tried but justified the sentences as entirely legal, saying: "Where is the crime?." He also acknowledged razing farmland around Dujail owned by those alleged to have carried out the attack on him. Saddam took his comedy act on the road, however, when he tried to speak about the current wave of...
Dana Milbank manages to eschew the orange stocking cap today in order to bring us a delightful look at the rarest of species -- Democratic politicians with nothing to say: Democratic senators, filing in for their weekly caucus lunch yesterday, looked as if they'd seen a ghost. "I haven't read it," demurred Barack Obama (Ill.). "I just don't have enough information," protested Ben Nelson (Neb.). "I really can't right now," John Kerry (Mass.) said as he hurried past a knot of reporters -- an excuse that fell apart when Kerry was forced into an awkward wait as Capitol Police stopped an aide at the magnetometer. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) brushed past the press pack, shaking her head and waving her hand over her shoulder. When an errant food cart blocked her entrance to the meeting room, she tried to hide from reporters behind the 4-foot-11 Barbara Mikulski (Md.). "Ask her...
The New York Times reports that the hard line espoused by George Bush and the West against Iran may have caused a significant rift in Iranian domestic politics, undermining the hyperbolic Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the clerics that installed him as president. The Iranians apparently did not expect to see a unified opposition to their attempt to build nuclear weapons and have been most disturbed by a lack of Russian diplomatic support: Just weeks ago, the Iranian government's combative approach toward building a nuclear program produced rare public displays of unity here. Now, while the top leaders remain resolute in their course, cracks are opening both inside and outside the circles of power over the issue. ... One senior Iranian official, who asked to remain anonymous because of the delicate nature of the issue, said: "I tell you, if what they were doing was working, we would say, 'Good.' " But,...
Earlier today I learned that the media magazine The Week has nominated me for their Blogger of the Year award. The Week provides an excellent review of the major news stories and opinion pieces from around the world each week and annually honors those who have provided the best in journalism and editorial writing. Last year, my good friends at Power Line were recognized for their excellent and influential work in the blogosphere in 2004, especially for their deconstruction of the Killian memo fiasco at CBS. Four other bloggers have also been nominated for the 2005 award: Michelle Malkin John Aravosis at Americablog Brendan Loy Arianna Huffington It's wonderful to have been nominated with all of these bloggers, but especially so with Michelle, one of the nicest people and best media bloggers in the 'sphere. John Aravosis and I have traded a couple of e-mails and once appeared together (via...
It's hard to understand how the AP (and MS-NBC, which hosts this story) could have possibly come up with a headline "Mass. Governor Offers Gay Adoption Bill" when the report describes action taken by GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney to allow Catholic Charities to operate its adoption service without violating its religious beliefs. Later, the headline changed to "Mass. governor proposes bill on gay adoption", a slight variation but still one that leaves an impression at odds with the reporting: Republican Gov. Mitt Romney proposed legislation Wednesday that would allow Catholic Charities to refuse to arrange adoptions for gay couples. The Protecting Religious Freedom bill would exempt religious groups from a state anti-discrimination law that requires them to consider gay couples when placing children for adoption and foster care. Catholic Charities, the social services arm of the Boston Archdiocese, has been finding adoptive homes for children for a century but...
Jeff at Protein Wisdom found a report in the India Telegraph claiming that a Pakistani newspaper bragged about the nation's payoff of the 9/11 Commission. The Friday Times reports that their foreign office paid lobbyists "tens of thousands of dollars" to ensure that the final report painted Pakistan in the best possible light: The Pakistan foreign office had paid tens of thousands of dollars to lobbyists in the US to get anti-Pakistan references dropped from the 9/11 inquiry commission report, The Friday Times has claimed. The Pakistani weekly said its story is based on disclosures made by foreign service officials to the Public Accounts Committee at a secret meeting in Islamabad on Tuesday. It claimed that some of the commission members were also bribed to prevent them from including damaging information about Pakistan. The magazine said the PAC grilled officials in the presence of foreign secretary Riaz Mohammad Khan and...
March 16, 2006
John Negroponte has finally begun releasing the captured Iraqi Intelligence Service papers that the US has held since Baghdad fell almost three years ago, after pressure from the White House and Congress. In one of the first releases by the intelligence chief, the papers reveal that not only did al-Qaeda exist in Iraq before the invasion but that they had an active and successful recruitment program to bring new Iraqi fighters to Afghanistan: The Bush administration Wednesday night released the first declassified documents collected by U.S. intelligence during the Iraq war, showing among other things that Saddam Hussein's regime was monitoring reports that Iraqis and Saudis were heading to Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks to fight U.S. troops. The documents, the first of thousands expected to be declassified over the next several months, were released via a Pentagon Web site at the direction of National Intelligence Director John Negroponte....
Hillary Clinton has attended fund-raisers for her Senate re-election campaign that were hosted by a South Korean businessman tied to a slush-fund scandal in Seoul, Meghan Clyne reports in today's New York Sun. The accusations involve the use of a cultural-exchange program aimed at improving relations with Pyongyang but actually operated as an illegal funding source for South Korean politicians: The contributions in question come from a New York-based real estate investor, Hyung Young "Daniel" Lee. According to records on file with the Federal Election Commission, Mr. Lee, 44, donated $4,100 to Mrs. Clinton's 2006 Senate re-election campaign through Friends of Hillary in May 2005. His wife, Eva, donated $5,100 in four separate contributions between August 2004 and May 2005. FEC documents show that the Clinton campaign refunded Mrs. Lee $1,000; FEC regulations cap donations to a candidate at $4,200 for an individual contributor during an election cycle. According to...
Just a week ago, George Bush appeared to be on the political ropes. Thanks to conservative disappointment, his approval ratings had sunk to the dreadful level of the mid-30s, and his own party had administered a legislative rebuke on a national-security matter. The Democrats had the rare opportunity of having the GOP at war with itself rolling into the midterm elections and for the first time had considered the possibility of retaking control of the House after twelve years of minority status. And then along came Russ Feingold: Republicans, worried that their conservative base lacks motivation to turn out for the fall elections, have found a new rallying cry in the dreams of liberals about censuring or impeaching President Bush. The proposal this week by Senator Russell D. Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, to censure Mr. Bush over his domestic eavesdropping program cheered the left. But it also dovetailed with conservatives'...
Congress, having learned nothing from the debacle of the 9/11 Commission, has launched yet another independent investigatory body in an effort to avoid political responsibility. The latest effort in futility will focus on the war in Iraq and even comprises some of the same people from the laughably inept panel on 9/11: Congress unveiled an independent panel on Wednesday assigned to study the U.S.-led war in Iraq and to make policy recommendations for both Capitol Hill and the White House. The bipartisan Iraq Study Group -- led by former Secretary of State James Baker, a Republican, and former Democratic congressman Lee Hamilton -- is designed to focus "fresh eyes" on the war debate from people who "love their country more than their party," said Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Virginia, during a Capitol Hill news conference. ... "Our purpose is to undertake a bipartisan, forward-looking assessment of the current and prospective situation...
RNC chairman Ken Mehlman and GOP e-Campaign Director Patrick Ruffini have flown to Minnesota to conduct a roundtable conference on the latest in Republican efforts for the midterm elections and 2008 presidential campaign. A gaggle of bloggers have come to the state Republican headquarters in St. Paul, where we will live-blog the conference and the Q&A afterwards. We're about to get started ... 5:25 PM - Ron Carey, Minnesota GOP chair, is introducing everyone. After a brief welcome and an affirmation of the importance of blogging for getting the Republican message past the mainstream media, Patrick spoke about the commitment to technology. 5:27 - Mehlman talks about the movement from mass marketing to mass customization and then to mass collaboration. He considers this the future of political communication and organization. 5:29 - Ken sets out the stakes. He also notes that bloggers serve as "umpires" -- we make sure that...
The documents released by John Negroponte and hosted on a military website at Leavenworth promise to rewrite the long history of Iraq and its place in the war on terror. Just the first few documents have shown links between Saddam's regime and terrorism, including a strong reference to the 9/11 attack by Saddam's own intelligence service. ABC News has begun their own translation of the key documents, as have others in the blogosphere. Let's start with the document that mentions 9/11, a report from the IIS regarding a conversation with a Taliban official: Our source in Afghanistan No 11002 (for information about him see attachment 1) provided us with information that that Afghani Consul Ahmad Dahestani (for information about him see attachment 2) told him the following: 1. That Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban in Afghanistan are in contact with Iraq and it that previously a group from Taliban...
It has the reputation as the last dicatorship in Europe, and this week Belarus and its throwback Soviet-style government demonstrated why. With its upcoming elections seen as a sham, the opposition to Belarussian strongman and Kremlin favorite Aleksander Lukashenko had planned to hold rallies to protest the rigged polls. That has brought a warning from Lukashenko's KGB chief that protestors would be considered terrorists and subject to the death penalty: OPPOSITION supporters in Belarus were warned yesterday that they could face the death penalty if they took part in a protest after the presidential election on Sunday. Stepan Sukhorenko, head of the KGB secret service, accused the Opposition of planning to use the rally to stage a coup against Aleksander Lukashenko, the President, who has ruled the former Soviet republic since 1994. "We will not allow the seizure of power under the guise of presidential elections," Mr Sukhorenko told a...
How can a leftist politician tell when he's gone too far? If Minnesota senator Mark "Brave Sir Robin" Dayton criticizes him as a grandstander, that says something pretty significant about the credibility of the politician: Sen. Russell Feingold's move to censure President Bush caused a bout of shyness among some Democrats this week, but Minnesota Sen. Mark Dayton is not among them. On Thursday, he called the resolution irresponsible and dangerous, and accused Feingold of grandstanding. "I thought it was premature and overreaching and primarily motivated by his 2008 presidential candidacy rather than the best interests of our caucus and the nation," Dayton said of the measure introduced by his colleague from Wisconsin that would formally rebuke Bush for his domestic spying program. Dayton said Democrats were "blindsided" by the move. "I think it's very dangerous territory for the democracy that we have in this country to be playing around...
March 17, 2006
Several national polls have declared George Bush's approval rating to have collapsed into the mid-30s, dropping downwards preciptously during the Dubai Ports World debate. However, at least some of these have had questionable methodology, especially the CBS poll that had a 13-point disparity between Democrats and Republicans in their sample. Yesterday, Rasmussen Reports put out a little-noticed press release stating that their daily tracking poll shows a much different story: Forty-two percent (42%) of American adults now approve of the way George W. Bush is performing his role as President. That's just two points above the lowest level ever measured by Rasmussen Reports. Fifty-seven percent (57%) disapprove. The President earns approval from 44% of men and 40% of women. That's not great news, of course, and a 15-point deficit between approval/disapproval would not get anyone elected. However, Rasmussen does not show the dramatic erosion that other polls have claimed, and...
State Senate Majority Leader Dean Johnson has had to fall back on Roget's Thesaurus in order to describe his allergy to the truth regarding his conduct in a recent appearence. Following a claim that three of the seven sitting justices on the state Supreme Court would not rewrite Minnesota law and order gender-neutral marriage legalized, the DFL leader has had to backpedal in embarrassment when the Chief Justice called Johnson a liar: Senate Majority Leader Dean Johnson said Thursday that he "embellished" a conversation he had with a state Supreme Court justice to placate clergy who challenged his assurances that the court wouldn't overturn a Minnesota law and allow same-sex marriages. Johnson sought to explain a recorded conversation with clergy in January, when he described an earlier discussion he had with Chief Justice Kathleen Blatz about the state's marriage law. In the recording, Johnson says Blatz told him, "We're not...
The Congressional Hispanic Caucus has split after an internecine fight between Democrats on how funds have been allocated to candidates. Six members of the caucus have disassociated themselves from their fundraising committee after its chair, Joe Baca (D-CA), directed its PAC contributions to the campaigns of local races instead of federal races -- and the local candidates in question just happen to be Bacas: Rep. Joe Baca, D-Calif., who chairs the Building Our Leadership Diversity Political Action Committee, or BOLDPAC, defended the decision to give $3,300 each to Joe Baca Jr., a member of the California Assembly who's running for state Senate, and to Jeremy Baca, who is running for California Assembly. "We should not discriminate against any member who has a family member who wants to serve in public office, whether it's mine or anyone else's," said Baca. He said the decision to give to his sons was made...
The new prime minister for the Palestinian Authority, Hamas activist Ismail Haniyeh, hinted at recognition for Israel but only if it gave up Jerusalem and returned to the 1948 borders -- but had earlier said that the Palestinians would only support a long-term truce under those conditions and not a lasting peace. Meanwhile, Fatah has decided to let Hamas run the government on its own, opting out of any power-sharing agreement: Asked in an interview with CBS News aired Thursday if he could foresee a day when he would be invited to sign a peace agreement with Israel, Ismail Haniyeh replied: "Let's hope so." But Hamas, which won Palestinian parliamentary elections in a landslide in January, has rebuffed Israel's conditions for talks, namely, that the group disarm and recognize the Jewish state's right to exist. Haniyeh told CBS that Hamas wouldn't meet those conditions for talks unless Israel "recognized a...
That's original Irish for Happy St. Patrick's Day! Some of you will celebrate with green beer, others with green milkshakes from that ubiquitous Irish-named restaurant, while others will just wear the green in happy solidarity. For my part, I intend on relying on Bishop Flynn's dispensation tonight and enjoying an artery-plugging helping of corned beef. (Fellow Catholics should note that I intend on forgoing the cabbage as my substitute sacrifice.) For a story about a St. Patrick's Day celebration to remember, check out Mitch Berg and his cautionary tale of starting a wee bit too early. Don't forget to have a designated driver or a taxi on hand when the beers get you a little too green....
I have received most of the surveys back from the blogswarm that undertook a review of the newly-released documents regarding the Guantanamo Bay detainees. Most of the study's volunteers have remarkably similar comments about the information provided in the documents. The Denbeaux study which prompted this blogswarm reached a number of conclusions that appear now to be highly subjective assumptions. For instance, the Duke wrote after his review: There is simply little information here on actual evidence to determine many of these. I feel the "something major is missing" syndrome in play in almost every one of them. I am attaching my CSRT review, however, I am doubtful that we are actually proving anything here without more information. If the information contained in these brief interviews is the basis for the recent report on these, then it is woefully inadequate for such purpose. Some found some strange stories in the...
One of my Canadian readers directed me to a CBC report about an exchange of letters between an American family protesting the harvesting of baby seals and a senator who used the occasion to let her anti-Americanism fly. After the McLellan family of Minnesota wrote to Canadian politicians that they would not spend vacations with our northern neighbors because of what they see as approved animal cruelty, Céline Hervieux-Payette wrote back that the McLellans had no business criticizing the hunt because Americans execute blacks and kill Iraqi civilians: A Liberal senator has replied to a family in Minnesota upset about Canada's seal hunt with a letter denouncing the United States for executing prisoners at home and killing people in Iraq. The McLellan family had written to Canadian senators to say they cancelled a vacation in Canada because of the hunt, which they called "horrible" and "inhumane," Montreal's La Presse reports....
Apparently the folks at Blogger have done a pretty horrible job of supporting their customers. Betsy Newmark had her entire site wiped out mysteriously by their system, and then experienced a boatload of frustration when she tried to correct the situation. Her URL also appeared to have been hijacked as well, but now seems like it's back on line. She vented to Glenn Reynolds: My blog disappeared from Blogger some time Tuesday. All I ge is a message that my blog wasn't found on their server. When I go to my Edit page, it doesn't show Betsy's Page as one of my blogs anymore. It's as if my identity was erased. I just get this very irritating message "The blog you were looking for was not found." It doesn't show up on my dashboard at all. Now, somebody has started a blog using my address and hijacked it. This is...
The Minnesota state legislature took up the offensive spectacle of the funeral protests staged by Fred Phelps, the self-described minister whose flock regularly cheers the death of American soldiers at their funerals. Often singing "God Hates America," they claim that the deaths of American soldiers came as a judgment from God for allowing gays to live openly among us, among their barely-coherent rants. These protests embarrass and outrage every community where they occur, as the should. Those who give their lives in defense of our country deserve a respectful farewell, and their families deserve peace and space to mourn. These ghouls use their right to free speech to act like mindless hyenas. However, they do have the same right to free speech, a small technicality that both houses of the state legislature appears to have forgotten in their eagerness to provide a legal solution to a poverty of the soul....
March 18, 2006
Sometimes the press demonstrates such incompetence as to be actually dangerous. The coverage of the latest effort in Samarra in clearing out the terrorists is just the latest example. Operation Swarmer is a significant operation in its scope but mostly for its composition; the Iraqi forces comprise the main battle group of the contingent of 1500 troops and have performed well under the lead of the 101st Airborne. Since its beginning, however, the press has both hyped the operation and attempted to tear it down as a publicity stunt by the White House. Described as the biggest air assault in three years, the press completely misunderstood this as the biggest air strike since the beginning of the war. As Dafydd ab Hugh reports on his Big Lizards blog, the two are completely different military terms: In an article in today's Time Magazine, Brian Bennett and Al Jallam claim that Operation...
Russia announced yesterday that it opposes any fast-tracking of the progress reporting on Iranian nuclear ambitions at the UN Security Council, joking that an expedited progress would only get expedited bombing. The other permanent members want the report in two weeks so that negotiations on the best way to stop the nuclear progression of Teheran can begin in earnest, but Russia and China prefer to wait: Russia's U.N. ambassador on Friday rejected proposals for the U.N. Security Council to demand a quick progress report on Iran's suspect nuclear program, saying — only half in jest — that fast action could lead to the bombing of Iran by June. ... A key sticking point for Russia is a proposal asking Mohamed ElBaradei, the chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, to deliver a progress report in two weeks on Iran's progress toward clearing up suspicions about its nuclear program. Russia and...
The New York Times issued a correction today about their blockbuster story about the man they claimed was the subject of the infamous Abu Ghraib photo, wearing a poncho and connected to wires. The Times had reported that Ali Shalal Qaissi was the victim of American abuse and ran a lengthy profile about his efforts to ensure that Americans would no longer torture innocent Iraqis. Well, Qaissi isn't quite that innocent -- he lied about his identity as the man in the picture (see update): A front-page article last Saturday profiled Ali Shalal Qaissi, identifying him as the hooded man forced to stand on a box, attached to wires, in a photograph from the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal of 2003 and 2004. He was shown holding such a photograph. As an article on Page A1 today makes clear, Mr. Qaissi was not that man. The Times did not adequately...
Stephen Hayes at the Weekly Standard has long pressed for the release of millions of Iraqi intelligence documents captured by the US when Baghdad fell. He argued for years that the trove of correspondence would shed light on critical disputes about the Iraq war and the actual threat presented from Saddam Hussein and his genocidal regime. Hayes gambled that the IIS hid much more than the American media reported -- and it turns out that Hayes has won his bet. New documents released show that the Iraqis funded the Abu Sayyaf terrorists in the Philippines, a band of bloodthirsty Islamists with strong ties to al-Qaeda: ON JUNE 6, 2001, the Iraqi ambassador to the Philippines sent an eight-page fax to Baghdad. Ambassador Salah Samarmad's dispatch to the Secondary Policy Directorate of the Iraqi Foreign Ministry concerned an Abu Sayyaf kidnapping a week earlier that had garnered international attention. Twenty civilians--including...
The Northern Alliance is on the air right now -- and we will be discussing the new documents just being translated from the Iraqi Intelligence Service. Join us at the stream at AM 1280 The Patriot and call us at 651-289-4488 to join us on air....
March 19, 2006
The New York Times never misses an opportunity to re-tell a story if it makes the American military or the current administration look bad, and today it rehashes an oft-told story of prisoner abuse in Iraq that attempts to do both. Eric Schmitt and Carolyn Marshall build a strawman or two along the way as well: The Black Room was part of a temporary detention site at Camp Nama, the secret headquarters of a shadowy military unit known as Task Force 6-26. Located at Baghdad International Airport, the camp was the first stop for many insurgents on their way to the Abu Ghraib prison a few miles away. Placards posted by soldiers at the detention area advised, "NO BLOOD, NO FOUL." The slogan, as one Defense Department official explained, reflected an adage adopted by Task Force 6-26: "If you don't make them bleed, they can't prosecute for it." According to...
A vital trade route for Gaza has taken center stage this morning in the media as both the AP and the Washington Post focus on the passage as a microcosm of the Israeli-Palestinian stalemate. The Karni trade route has been closed for months despite the work of Condoleezza Rice to broker an agreement between the PA and Israel to maintain the flow of goods and money, an example of the catch-22 that the Palestinians have inflicted on themselves in this conflict. The AP reports: With Palestinians facing a dire shortage of bread, milk and other essentials, U.S. officials summoned Israeli and Palestinian negotiators to an emergency meeting Sunday to resolve a standoff over Gaza's main cargo crossing. But the Palestinian's economic misery was liable to deepen as Hamas militants sworn to Israel's destruction prepared to formally present their new Cabinet to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas later in the day. The...
The San Diego Union-Tribune continues its reporting on the bribery scandal that finally derailed -- and jailed -- Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham for corruption. The testimony from Cunningham that he had plenty of company for his malfeasances has led U-T reporter Dean Calbreath to dig deeper, and he has found more evidence of lobbying money ending up in the personal accounts of a lawmaker: A week before former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham was sentenced to prison, he stressed to the court that a number of other lawmakers also helped arrange federal funding for the defense contractors who bribed him. None of the lawmakers Cunningham mentioned by name – Reps. Katherine Harris of Florida, Virgil Goode of Virginia and John Doolittle from the Sacramento suburb of Granite Bay – has been accused of criminal wrongdoing. But each has admitted assisting either Mitchell Wade or Brent Wilkes, co-conspirators in the Cunningham case,...
For those of us who watched the first episode of the new season of The Sopranos, we got a number of surprises to start off. After a rather strange but compelling opening montage accompanied by William Burroughs' 'Seven Souls', the storylines took into account the time gap between this season and the previous one. Uncle Junior has almost completely succumbed to dementia, Janice and Bobby had a baby, Johnny Sack sits in a prison going broke, and Vito Spatafore lost about a hundred pounds. Oddly enough, no one got whacked, although one character (Gene) committed suicide, Ray died of a heart attack in an FBI car, and Uncle Junior shot Tony at the end of the episode, thinking in his senility that Tony was an old nemesis from years back. The New York Times editorial board notes the surprisingly low numbers for the episodes and wonders whether fans of the...
Fathers usually beam with pride when their sons decide to go into the family business and follow in their footsteps. Saddam Hussein must have positively burst with joy when his son Qusai helped devise the defense of Baghdad in the last days of his regime. One of the documents found among the cache captured when Baghdad fell reports an order from Qusai to put Kuwaiti POWs -- apparently from the 1990 invasion that prompted the first Gulf War -- around critical military facilities in order to use them as human shields: Presidential Office/ Special Office The Secretary: Re / Kuwaiti POW’s Regarding the execution of Mr. President, Commander Saddam Hussein’s (God protect him) orders, according to the decision of the Revolutionary Command Council on Friday, March 4, 2003. Transfer all Kuwaiti POW’s / a total of 448 captured Kuwaitis who are located at the Al-Nida Al-Agher Prison and the Intelligence...
Not long ago, ABC News broadcast a number of tapes that recorded meetings of Iraqi officials before the American invasion, including Saddam Hussein and his inner circle. After the tapes aired, the general opinion was that the tapes had some historical and contextual interest but provided no smoking guns on Saddam's instransigence. The DoD and DNI have now posted transcripts of all the tapes, and the information contained within them may change that evaluation. Ray Robison has begun a blogswarm to highlight the review of the documents. Be sure to read his ongoing commentary on the transcripts. For instance, page 6 of this document shows that Saddam was kept informed of the status of three German scientists working in the employ of Saddam: We still have two issues Sir (Saddam-RR). Very simple. What the doctor said about the experts. There held in Germany. They have detailed knowledge of our weaponry....
March 20, 2006
Handwringers in the press have turned Iraq into Viet Nam, calling it a quagmire so often that the repetition has become numbing. However, according to a study done by USA Today of military data, the casualty rate for US troops has dropped to its lowest level in two years, while the Iraqi forces show increasing engagement against the terrorists: U.S. military deaths during the past month have dropped to an average of about one a day, approaching the lowest level since the insurgency began two years ago, according to a USA TODAY analysis of U.S. military data. The decline in U.S. deaths comes as Iraqi casualties are the highest since the U.S. military began tracking them in 2004. In the past month, nearly five times as many Iraqi forces and civilians were killed as troops in the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq, U.S. military data show. The shift from spring 2004,...
I missed this story yesterday, but Michelle Malkin rightly noted it and it has been picked up around the blogosphere. An Afghan man faces the death penalty for the "crime" of conversion to Christianity in a case that underscores the difficulty of preaching tolerance among the intolerant: An Afghan man is being prosecuted in a Kabul court and could be sentenced to death on a charge of converting from Islam to Christianity, a crime under the country's Islamic laws, a judge said yesterday. Abdul Rahman, 41, was arrested last month after his family accused him of becoming a Christian, Judge Ansarullah Mawlavezada said. Mr. Rahman was charged with rejecting Islam, and his trial was held Thursday. During the one-day hearing, the defendant confessed that he converted from Islam to Christianity 16 years ago while working as a medical aid worker for an international Christian group helping Afghan refugees in the...
Earlier I noted the elections in Belarus and the unrest that accompanied the campaign as the "last dictator in Europe", Aleksander Lukashenko, appeared to have the election sewn up in every possible manner. The ruling regime had threatened death to the protestors in a move that appeared to signal desperation on the part of the Lukashenko government, and I predicted that a popular uprising would take over Belarus within months. That prediction appears to be closer to reality as a wave of protest has built after a ridiculous election resulted in 88% of all votes going to Lukashenko: An expected landslide for President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko drew several thousand Belarussians into the streets on Sunday, as protesters ignored swirling snow and official threats of arrest to denounce the election as a clumsily orchestrated sham. With 32 percent of ballots counted shortly before midnight on Sunday, Mr. Lukashenko, a former collective...
The Scotsman reports on a key piece of evidence that ties Saddam Hussein directly to the disgusting genocide of Kurds in Halabja almost twenty years ago. Memos from his personal secretary to military leaders make clear that Saddam wanted to use chemical weapons on Kurdish positions in 1987: SADDAM Hussein ordered plans to be drawn up for a chemical weapons attack on Kurdish guerrilla bases in northern Iraq in 1987, according to a letter signed by his personal secretary. ... The planned attack appears to have been part of the 1987-88 campaign that left more than 180,000 Kurds dead and demolished hundreds of Kurdish villages in northern Iraq. In the most notorious incident, the town of Halabja was bombed with mustard and nerve gas in 1988, killing 5,000 residents. In the papers released by the US, a report from Iraq's military intelligence details the bases of Kurdish rebels, led by...
The Grits seem to have finally lived up to their name, standing up to the NDP and declining to debate or vote on the deployment of Canadian troops to Afghanistan. After reports that deployed Canadian troops had become angry at second-guessers back home, the Liberals have now made it clear that they will not play politics with their membership in the coalition assisting Hamid Karzai's new democratic government: The Liberals appear to be lining up solidly behind the Conservative government over the mission in Afghanistan, rejecting NDP calls for a parliamentary vote on the matter. "We are against a vote because it's a responsibility of the executive and because we should not second-guess when we have an important mission to succeed," Liberal foreign affairs critic Stéphane Dion said yesterday on CTV's Question Period. ... Yesterday, both Mr. Dion and Opposition Leader Bill Graham placed themselves foursquare behind the government, with...
Last month I wrote about the barely-veiled call for a coup d'etat sponsored by the group United for Peace and Justice. The march on the White House that was intended to trigger a popular uprising had originally been scheduled for the 15th of this month, but got postponed ... due to temporary sanity, one supposes. UPJ moved the date to today: The National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance is organizing "From Mourning to Resistance," a March to the Pentagon on Monday, March 20, that will culminate in nonviolent direct action. This March on the Pentagon will begin with a gathering at 9 AM on Daniel French Drive, which is near 23rd and Independence. At 10 AM, there will be a march across the Arlington Memorial Bridge to Lady Bird Johnson Grove, near the Pentagon. At both sites, there will be speakers and music. The speakers are as follows: Bruce Gagnon, a...
Captain's Quarters gets mentioned today in a couple of media outlets ... * First is today's Star-Tribune, where John Reinan gives me a brief mention regarding the efforts to regulate political speech on the Internet. Reinan interviewed me last week and does a nice job of capsulizing the controversy. The Strib doesn't provide links from its web content but it does mention the blog by name. The article also quotes former FEC commissioner Brad Smith on the pending regulation. I enjoyed speaking with Reinan, who used probably the wittiest thing I was able to say while driving on the 494 Eastbound Highway Of Doom. * Our old friend from Salem Communications, Eric Hogue, also mentioned me today on his blog and on his regular morning show in Sacramento. Eric often fills in for Hugh Hewitt when Hugh goes into mourning for his Cleveland Browns -- a regular occurrence -- and...
The Minnesota Senate DFL caucus rallied around their beleaguered leader, Dean Johnson, who claimed in a conversation with clergy that three state Supreme Court justices assured Johnson that they would not rule in favor of same-sex marriage. The Majority Leader had tried to convince the ministers to drop a push to put a constitutional amendment banning gender-neutral marriage up for a referendum with this inside information, but was unaware that the conversation had been taped. When the ministers released the tape, Johnson told the press that he may have "embellished" the conversation, but the members of the Court are having none of this: In a rare conversation with reporters, state Supreme Court Chief Justice Russell Anderson today said flatly that no member of the court -- including former Chief Justice Kathleen Blatz -- ever spoke to Senate Majority Leader Dean Johnson about the state's marriage laws. Anderson's denial came even...
The European Union has transferred sixty-four million euros to the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority after briefly withholding the funds because of Hamas' refusal to accept agreements in place that recognize Israel's right to exist. They gave the money with a warning that the next time it might stop if Hamas doesn't change, a warning that failed to impress Hamas at all: The European Union has handed over 64m euros (£44m) in aid to help the poorest Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. But it said that future aid depended on the incoming Hamas government showing a commitment to work for peace, saying the group was "at a crossroads". The EU is due to give another 60m euros to cover official salaries and energy expenses for the Palestinian Authority. EU commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner underscored the EU's rock-solid stance that they would cut off Hamas ... eventually ... sometime ... just watch...
March 21, 2006
Last night I watched a rerun of South Park -- my TiVo grabs them automatically and nothing much else was on -- when I noticed that the promos for the new season included a new ad in the rotation. This commercial referenced the "return of one of the most beloved characters," and had the four main characters of the show delightedly greeting Chef at the door. This piqued my curiosity, and the First Mate wondered if Isaac Hayes had returned to the show. Apparently not, but it looks like Trey Parker and Matt Stone plan on giving him some payback for leaving: The tenth season of "South Park" will launch on Wednesday with a new episode titled "The Return of Chef!", marking the "triumphant homecoming" of lusty school cafeteria cook James "Chef" McElroy to the show, the network said in a statement. ... [A] network synopsis said the fictional town...
The Palestinians enjoyed the benificence of Saddam Hussein during the regime's long and brutal rule over the Iraqi people. Perhaps singular among Arab tyrants, Saddam gave the Palestinians privileges denied to Iraqis while funneling money to the suicide bombers that continually attacked Israel during the intifadas. In turn, the Palestinians gave Saddam's Iraq their unquestioning support, publicly siding with him when his tanks overran Kuwait and brutalized that nation for months, and celebrating the 9/11 attacks in street demonstrations of ululating joy -- until a frightened and embarrassed Yasser Arafat told them to shut the hell up. Their special treatment caused plenty of resentment among Iraqis during Saddam's regime, and now that Saddam has been removed from power, the Palestinians feel a lot less welcome in the new Iraq: More than 100 Palestinians fleeing violence in Baghdad and seeking refuge in Jordan have been denied entry by Jordanian border officials...
One of my favorite columnists, E.J. Dionne, laments the reduction of liberal Republicans in elective office during the past generation. He cites the retirement of Rep. Sherwood Boehlert, R-NY, as a sign of increasing conservative control over the GOP: Boehlert chose to retire in the year when National Journal, the political world's answer to Sports Illustrated, featured him as the ultimate "Down the Middle" guy. In its Feb. 25 issue, the magazine published its annual ratings, which showed that Boehlert's votes were more liberal than those of 52.2 percent of House members and more conservative than 47.8 percent. Boehlert's district includes the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, and it's hard to move the ball more to the middle of the plate than he does. It's been downhill for his brand of Republicanism from the moment he set foot in Washington as a congressional staffer in 1964. That's the year...
After writing about the interesting manner in which political contributors put money into John Doolittle's family bank account on Sunday, Eric Hogue also questioned the practice on his radio show yesterday. SactoDan noted the exchange between Rep. Richard Pombo and Hogue, as well as a call-in from California state senator Dave Cox -- both of whom (unsurprisingly) defended Doolittle and the practice of paying political spouses commissions on fundraising. SactoDan reports: 11th district US Congressman Richard Pombo of Tracy, interviewed on the Eric Hogue Show on KTKZ Radio (1380AM, 105.5 FM) this morning was asked about the practice. Pombo's wife is involved in his campaign. Pombo confirmed that his wife has received a salary, and at times has received commissions based on the amounts raised. He said if she wasn't doing it, he'd have to hire some other fundraising organization to do it, or if she worked somewhere else, there...
Protests have continued to a third day in Belarus despite the bragging of Aleksander Lukashenko that he had defeated reformers in the crooked elections that saw him garner 83% of the vote: Hundreds of protesters defied Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko for a third day on Tuesday, massing in the capital to protest over his re-election, denounced as flawed by Washington and independent observers. In a protest unprecedented for the tightly-controlled, ex-Soviet state, opposition demonstrators continued an overnight vigil and camped in driving snow on a Minsk central square to back a call for a re-run of a vote they say was rigged. Lukashenko, 12 years in power and criticized by the opposition and in the West for authoritarian Soviet-style rule, swept back into office on Monday with an official tally of 82.6 percent. Nearest rival Alexander Milinkevich, with six percent, called the poll fraudulent, a view shared widely in the...
Join me in congratulating Mark Tapscott of The Heritage Foundation and Tapscott's Copy Desk. I spoke with Mark earlier today, and he told me he had accepted a position with the Washington Examiner and on the national editorial board of the Examiner. Mark will be part of the Examiner's efforts to expand into numerous cities as well as creating a significant on-line presence. Mark has been a tremendous presence at Heritage, especially for bloggers and the effort to bring respect for the work we do. He has also been a good friend to me, and I'm happy to see him get such a wonderful opportunity and interesting challenge. Congratulations to one fine blogger! Media Bistro announced this earlier...
A few days ago, the AP's Jennifer Loven wrote a strange "news" report on George Bush's supposed predilection for strawmen in his speeches. Loven wrote that the usage of the rhetorical device 'some say' indicates a dishonest approach to argument and debate: When the president starts a sentence with "some say" or offers up what "some in Washington" believe, as he is doing more often these days, a rhetorical retort almost assuredly follows. The device usually is code for Democrats or other White House opponents. In describing what they advocate, Bush often omits an important nuance or substitutes an extreme stance that bears little resemblance to their actual position. He typically then says he "strongly disagrees" — conveniently knocking down a straw man of his own making. Of course, this argument is ludicrous. Often in debates, politicians do not want to get specific about the origin of an argument --...
March 22, 2006
The Washington Post editorial board gave George Bush a glowing review on his press conference yesterday, showing the extent to which Bush succeeded in the forum he likes the least. The praise comes as a surprise for the normally critical Post, but the clear ease and openness that Bush demonstrated in this last press conference has them asking for more: PRESIDENT BUSH should hold more news conferences. In his hour-long exchange with reporters at the White House yesterday, he was considerably more effective in explaining and defending his commitment to the war in Iraq than in the three carefully worded speeches he has delivered in the past week. In his sometimes blunt, sometimes joking and sometimes unpolished way, he sounded authentic -- no more so than when he was asked what had become of the "political capital" he claimed after the 2004 election. "I'd say I'm spending that capital on...
The case of Abdul Rahman, the Christian convert in Afghanistan on trial for abandoning Islam, finally got the official attention of the United States yesterday, but unlike in Germany and Italy, the American protest came quietly: The Bush administration yesterday appealed to Afghanistan to spare the life of a man facing the death penalty for converting to Christianity, but said the matter was one for the Afghan government and courts to decide. In a case that has sparked international outrage, the remarks of Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs R. Nicholas Burns were in sharp contrast to condemnations of the trial by lawmakers and by leading European allies. Briefing reporters with Afghan Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah at his side, Mr. Burns said the U.S. government was watching the case of Abdul Rahman closely, but added, "This case is not in the competence of the United States government. It's under the...
It appears that the revolution may be postponed, according to news reports from Belarus and its capital, Minsk. The number of protestors appearing at the daily rallies against the rigged re-election of perpetual President Aleksander Lukashenko has dropped considerably instead of inspiring fellow Belarussians to join the peaceful demands for change: The authorities arrested dozens of protesters on Tuesday, including prominent opposition figures, in an effort to squelch public demonstrations over the declared victory of President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko in the presidential election on Sunday. Protesters gathered for a third day in October Square here after a few hundred had defied official warnings and camped out on the square overnight, unmolested by the police. The arrests, however, appeared to have their intended effect as the size of the protests dwindled considerably after as many as 10,000 assembled on Sunday night in one of the largest public expressions of dissent since...
The UK has decided that military action will be necessary to stop Iran from producing nuclear weapons and has now calculated its foreign policy to prepare a diplomatic and legal case for that option, the London Times reports today. It reveals a letter in which British diplomats plan to win Russian and Chinese support for a Security Council resolution demanding an end to Iranian nuclear efforts, which will allow for military response if not heeded: BRITAIN is pressing for a United Nations resolution that would open the way for punitive sanctions and even the use of force if Iran were to refuse to halt its controversial nuclear programme. In a confidential letter obtained by The Times, a leading British diplomat outlines a strategy for winning Russian and Chinese support by early summer for a so-called Chapter VII resolution demanding that Iran cease its nuclear activities. If the Government in Tehran...
In a move that shows the decline of a once-dominant media empire, CNN has lost Gallup as a partner as the pollster notes the sharp drop in viewership for the cable news service. In a memo to staff, Gallup's CEO explains that they intend on launching their own "e-broadcasts" and will operate independent of any news network: We have had a great partnership with CNN but it is not the right alignment for our future. The longtime partnership has been very helpful to The Gallup Poll as it put us "back big" fifteen years ago when our famous Gallup Poll had lost most of its national coverage. Our CNN partnership helped us make a great comeback. We had a great run as we just cut our 4000th segment this week. ... WHY. 1) CNN has far fewer viewers than it did in the past and we feel that our brand...
I see the Left has gotten desperate for credible voices for its paranoid conspiracies about the Bush admnistration: Actor Charlie Sheen Questions Official 9/11 Story Calls for truly independent investigation, joins growing ranks of prominent credible whistleblowers Oh, okay. Does his credibility stem from the fact that he was stupid enough to write personal checks to pay for his hookers, or has he just watched (and acted in) one Oliver Stone film too many? Priceless....
According to speculation among security officials from both Israel and the Palestinian Authority, al-Qaeda has begun to infiltrate Gaza and the West Bank in an attempt to open a new front in the war on terror. Both have reason for concern over this development, but while the Palestinians continue to elect terrorists to office, Israel continues to provide an effective defense against them: Signs are mounting that al-Qaida terrorists are setting their sights on Israel and the Palestinian territories as their next jihad battleground. Israel has indicted two West Bank militants for al-Qaida membership, Egypt arrested operatives trying to cross into Israel and a Palestinian security official has acknowledged al-Qaida is "organizing cells and gathering supporters." ... Palestinians in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Lebanon have established contacts with al-Qaida followers linked to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, according to two Israeli officials. Al-Zarqawi...
Newly-elected Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper continues to impress in his first few weeks on the job. Not only has he declared himself committed to Canada's participation in securing Afghanistan, but he also has shown that he doesn't fear using his leverage to press the Karzai government on fundamental human rights. Harper called Hamid Karzai today to express his "concerns" about Abdul Rahman, the Christian convert facing the death penalty for his abandonment of Islam (via Michelle Malkin): Prime Minister Stephen Harper phoned Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai Wednesday to express his concerns about an Afghan man facing a death penalty for converting from Islam to Christianity. "President Karzai listened to my concerns and we had a productive and informative exchange of views," Harper said in a written statement. "Upon the conclusion of the call, he assured me that respect for human and religious rights will be fully upheld in this...
I think Isaac Hayes may regret his decision to leave the show in the manner he chose (or others chose for him). Tonight's South Park episode has cut and pasted previous Chef dialogue to turn him into a paedophile -- one brainwashed by an evil group that got its hands on him. I think even Scientology will regret taking on Matt Stone and Trey Parker ... UPDATE: I'm pretty sure that the guys don't want Hayes to return any time soon ... but even in their revenge, they had Kyle deliver a final reminder to remember Chef for all the good times on the show -- and blame the "fruity little club that scrambled his brains" for his betrayal this last week....
March 23, 2006
The decades-long insurgency of Basque separatists has come to a sudden end, with the insurgent group ETA announcing an end to its operations. According to the London Times, the Basque terrorists have quit in the face of Spanish disgust over the tactics used by al-Qaeda as well as being thwarted by Spanish democracy: AFTER four decades spent purveying death, Eta was finally put out of business by someone else’s act of terrorism: the bombing of Madrid commuter trains by Islamic fanatics in March 2004. By then the organisation was already a fading force, but those attacks created such revulsion against terrorism in Spain that they destroyed any residual support for Eta’s violent tactics. The Times draws a comparison to the exhaustion of the ETA and that of the IRA in Northern Ireland, and even has a Gerry Adams quote to toss into the story. However, the exhaustion has come from...