April 1, 2006
The controversy over Dean Johnson's lies to a group of pastors regarding assurances he supposedly received from state Supreme Court justices on how they would rule on gender-neutral marriage has escalated, thanks to two seperate requests for ethics investigations. A former judicial candidate and court critic has joined a Republican state representative in demanding an accounting for either judicial malfeasance or deliberate deception on the part of the Minnesota Senate majority leader: A legislator and a longtime critic of the judicial system filed separate ethics complaints Friday asking a board to determine whether several state Supreme Court justices held improper conversations about Minnesota marriage law with Senate Majority Leader Dean Johnson. Johnson, DFL-Willmar, said he discussed the law with justices but they offered him no assurances on how they might rule if it were challenged. The justices have denied talking to him about the law. In his complaint, Rep. Tom...
The New York Times notes that the call to censure President Bush for his approval of a program to conduct surveillance on an enemy in wartime without treating it as a law-enforcement project has made lots of headlines but won few converts, even among Bush's opposition in the Senate. David Kirkpatrick reports that Russ Feingold's push to officially scold Bush has Democrats oddly silent: Although few Senate Democrats have embraced the censure proposal and almost no one expects the Senate to adopt it, the notion that Democrats may seek to punish Mr. Bush has become a rallying cause to partisans on both sides of the political divide. Republicans called the hearing to give the proposal a full airing as their party sought to use the threat of Democratic punishment of the president to rally their conservative base. Five Republicans at the hearing took turns attacking the idea as a reckless...
The demonstrations this week do not have any relation to the American civil-rights movement, Joe Hicks writes in today's LA Times Op-Ed section. Hicks, a former director in the West Coast contingent of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference -- Martin Luther King's organization -- has spent his life working for civil rights but makes clear that those who cross the border illegally are, well, criminals by definition: THE DEBATE over illegal immigration has reached a vigorous boil, with contrasting bills in the House and Senate and hundreds of thousands of protesters demonstrating nationwide. The complexities of this debate seem lost on many of the protesters. Many claim that what lies beneath reform efforts is raw racism, leading to the view that the recent protests signal a new civil rights movement. It's simply not true. This nation's civil rights movement of the 1960s broke the back of white supremacy that prevented...
One of the pleasures of having a vibrant local press is the colorful stories about the community that get missed when focusing on the national and international news. The St. Paul Pioneer Press reports today on an agricultural fraternity at the University of Minnesota that has been suspended and may be disbanded for violating the university's ban on hazing. The FarmHouse Fraternity apparently has pushed the Midwestern envelope a little too far -- say, all the way to San Francisco: Hazing by the suspended FarmHouse Fraternity at the University of Minnesota included hitting members on their backside with a leather strap and taking them to livestock barns for the apparent purpose of having sex with animals, a university report says. The university suspended the agriculturally oriented fraternity, located on the St. Paul campus, on Wednesday and outlined various requirements for the lifting of the suspension in the fall of 2007....
Brian Maloney notes an appearance by Al Franken on yesterday's Today Show that reveals the utter lack of a sense of humor by the supposed comedian. After riffing on the supposed exhaustion of outgoing White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card and his replacement, Joshua Bolten, Franken got very cranky indeed when Michael Smerconish turned the barb back on Franken himself. Newsbusters has the transcript, with Scott Whitlock's commentary: Lauer: "Andrew Card, five and a half years as chief of staff, out. Was he shown the door? And if so, is change good?" Franken: "He was exhausted. I think he's been exhausted since, pretty much, since day one...You know, they point to lousy decisions made recently, but they've been making lousy decisions since, pretty much since- I think they just stayed up too late at the first inaugural." [Franken went on to say that Josh Bolten taking over as chief...
The excellent Canadian magazine Western Standard now faces a lawsuit from an Islamic cleric in Calgary for publishing the Prophet cartoons in its coverage of the massive riots around the world earlier this year. The suit was presented in "human rights court", an apparent dodge in which to silence criticism of radical Islam's political goals through the squelching of legitimate satire. The cost of defending the lawsuit may prove too much for the magazine, estimated at $75,000. CQ readers can assist the Western Standard in its fight for free speech. The information for their legal defense fund can be found here. If we want to prevail against the forces that would silence us and force us to live in dhimmitude either of their making or ours, now is the time to be heard....
The Northern Alliance takes to the airwaves today in two separate locations. Brian, Chad, and John will man the studio for the first two hours (11am - 1pm), debating the topics of the day and revealing their new feature, "The Week In Gatekeeping". For the second half of the show, Mitch and I will be live at the White Bear Lake Superstore, hanging out with the cars and talking about the week's events. Topics will probably include the McKinney circus, the emergence of Lynn Swann in Pennsylvania, as well as the immigration controversy. Be sure to listen to the entire program at AM 1280 The Patriot, on the stream if you're not in the Twin Cities. If you're in the Twin Cities, stop by the WBLSS and say hello. Join in the conversation by calling 651-289-4488 or sending an e-mail to comments -at- northernallianceradio.com. We hope to hear from you!...
Jill Carroll has released a statement through the Christian Science Monitor, now that she has safely left Iraq and the clutches of her captors, that repudiates the video that the kidnappers forced her to make: During my last night in captivity, my captors forced me to participate in a propaganda video. They told me they would let me go if I cooperated. I was living in a threatening environment, under their control, and wanted to go home alive. I agreed. Things that I was forced to say while captive are now being taken by some as an accurate reflection of my personal views. They are not. The people who kidnapped me and murdered Alan Enwiya are criminals, at best. They robbed Alan of his life and devastated his family. They put me, my family and my friends--and all those around the world, who have prayed so fervently for my release--through...
April 2, 2006
France has ground to a halt with its recent strikes over the government's attempt to invigorate the jobs market by allowing employers to termnate younger workers who do not succeed in their jobs, easing job-security regulations for the first two years of their employment. Sadly and predictably, the very people this program intends on helping have responded by threatening revolution, rioting and destroying property while protesting the administration that had the temerity to attempt to treat them as responsible adults. While these events threaten to kill what's left of the French economy, the culture has once again sunk to targeting Jews as the traditional center of European anti-Semitism rises once again. The student protests have gone on for weeks, following on the heels of Muslim riots that saw thousands of cars burnt and mobs rampaging through their ghettoes. Everything that Jacques Chirac and his cabinet tries appears to backfire, including...
The Washington Post wants to sound a cautionary note in their front-page report on the consequences of military action against Iran. Dana Priest writes that any attempt to eliminate Iran's nuclear capacity through military strikes would result in an eruption of terrorist attacks against Western assets, especially American and Israeli: As tensions increase between the United States and Iran, U.S. intelligence and terrorism experts say they believe Iran would respond to U.S. military strikes on its nuclear sites by deploying its intelligence operatives and Hezbollah teams to carry out terrorist attacks worldwide. Iran would mount attacks against U.S. targets inside Iraq, where Iranian intelligence agents are already plentiful, predicted these experts. There is also a growing consensus that Iran's agents would target civilians in the United States, Europe and elsewhere, they said. ... The Iranian government views the Islamic Jihad, the name of Hezbollah's terrorist organization, "as an extension of...
Condoleezza Rice and British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw made an unannounced visit to Iraq today in order to send an unusually public message to the political factions that have stalemated the formation of a new government. Both bluntly told the press that they want to press for a unity government now, not two months from now, in order to end the political vacuum that has Iraqis losing patience with their national assembly: The top U.S. and British diplomats told Iraqi leaders on Sunday they cannot afford to "leave a political vacuum" and must work quickly to form a new unified government. The surprise visit by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw highlighted the allies' growing impatience with the Iraqis' failure to set up a governing coalition nearly four months after elections. Rice told reporters she and Straw conveyed the same message to each of the...
John McCain appeared on Meet The Press this morning and spoke about the relationship between the administration and a powerful political figure. No, it wasn't Jerry Falwell, although his comments on the preacher has his former admirers on the left rather annoyed today. McCain told MTP that Bush should isolate Russia and Vladimir Putin by shunning the G-8 meeting in Moscow, advice which Bush declined: Sen. John McCain said Sunday the United States should respond harshly to Russia’s anti-democratic actions and suggested that President Bush is reconsidering his assessment of Russian President Vladimir Putin. After meeting Putin for the first time in June 2001, Bush said he had been able to gain “a sense of his soul” and had found Putin to be “very straightforward and trustworthy.” Recalling Bush’s assessment just months after taking office, McCain said: “Look, we all say things that are stupid. ... I’m sure that the...
April 3, 2006
The Iranians either want to escalate their bluffs on military capability or they have some extraordinary timing on R&D. Teheran announced the test of another missile within a week of what they claim to have been a successful test of a multiple-target Fajr-3 missile, only this weapon aims at naval forces: Iran said Sunday that it had test-fired what it described as a sonar-evading underwater missile just two days after it announced that it had fired a new missile that could carry multiple warheads and evade radar systems. The new missile is among the world's fastest and can outpace an enemy warship, Gen. Ali Fadavi of the country's elite Revolutionary Guards told state television. General Fadavi said only one other country, Russia, had a missile that moved underwater as fast as the Iranian one, which he said had a speed of about 225 miles per hour. State television showed what...
The New York Times reports today on a prosecution against a midwife for delivering babies in defiance of legislation requiring attendants to be licensed nurses or doctors. Adam Liptak writes that the triggering event in this prosecution was the death of a child during birth, but that the charges have been limited to practicing without a proper license: Angela Hendrix-Petry gave birth to her daughter Chloe by candlelight in her bedroom here in the early morning of March 12, with a thunderstorm raging outside and her family and midwife huddled around her. "It was the most cozy, lovely, lush experience," Ms. Hendrix-Petry said. According to Indiana law, though, the midwife who assisted Ms. Hendrix-Petry, Mary Helen Ayres, committed a felony punishable by up to eight years in prison. Ms. Ayres was, according to the state, practicing medicine and midwifery without a license. Doctors, legislators and prosecutors in Indiana and in...
Vin Scully has seen and heard it all in baseball, and has lent his wonderful voice and skills as perhaps the game's greatest announcer ever to reporting it. Scully provided the play-by-play when Henry Aaron broke Babe Ruth's home-run record thirty-two years ago this month as Dodger pitcher Al Downing left a slider over the plate in Atlanta for number 715. He delights in that experience, but dreads the thought of calling the homer that will break Aaron's record of 755 lifetime home runs: In 1974, when Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth's all-time home run record in a game against the Dodgers, Scully called it. But at the start of a season in which Barry Bonds could pass Ruth and then Aaron for perhaps the most cherished mark in American sports, the Dodgers' Hall of Fame announcer wants no part of that history. "I would just as soon it not...
The Kurds of Iraq have enjoyed their taste of freedom so much that they wish to extend it to their cousins across the border. The Washington Times reports on the efforts of a secular, Western-sympathetic band of insurgents that have targeted the Iranian military in a region of the Islamic Republic that has four million Kurds living under the mullahcracy's thumb: A little-known organization based in the mountains of Iraq's Kurdish north is emerging as a serious threat to the Iranian government, staging cross-border attacks and claiming tens of thousands of supporters among Iran's 4 million Kurds. The Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan, better known by the local acronym PEJAK or PJAK, claims to have killed 24 Iranian soldiers in three raids against army bases last month, all staged in retaliation for the killing of 10 Iranian Kurds during a peaceful demonstration in the city of Maku. Three...
Cynthia McKinney, the one-woman gang that can only hit straight, faces possible arrest for assaulting a Capitol Hill police officer after failing to properly identify herself or stop at a security checkpoint. Predictably, she and her supporters continued to throw more gasoline on the fire instead of simply shutting up and letting the entire incident pass: Capitol Hill police on Monday asked a federal prosecutor to approve an arrest warrant for Rep. Cynthia McKinney for her role in a scuffle with a police officer last week, the prosecutor's office confirmed. Capitol Police had no immediate comment so it's not yet known whether the intent is to file felony or misdemeanor assault charges against McKinney, a DeKalb County Democrat. Coz Carson, a spokesman for McKinney, said the requested warrant should be dismissed if "this is a prosecutor who's not a politician." "Any prosecutor with any sense can look at this thing...
Yesterday marked the anniversary of a CQ post that started a wave of indignation and anger in Canada, as the Gomery Commission attempted to close its doors to blockbuster testimony to all but the powerful and connected. Titled "Canada's Corruption Scandal Breaks Wide Open", it gave ordinary Canadians an opportunity to learn about the specifics of the Sponsorship Programme scandal that had been deliberately withheld from them by a publication ban -- although the witnesses were testifying in an open hearing. By the time I posted the second in a series on the testimony, more than a million Canadians had flocked to CQ to read what their pressed had been banned from reporting to them. Much has changed in the twelve months since that post. The Liberal stranglehold on power crashed on the news of their high-level involvement in Adscam, although former Prime Minister Paul Martin finagled his way through...
Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay will resign from Congress this summer according to reports in Time Magazine's website and the New York Times. At turns defiant and nostalgic, DeLay told Time that although he thought he could win in November, he didn't want to run in a race that would turn out to be a personal referendum: "I'm going to announce tomorrow that I'm not running for reelection and that I'm going to leave Congress," DeLay, who turns 59 on Saturday, said during a 90-minute interview on Monday. "I'm very much at peace with it." He notified President Bush in the afternoon. DeLay and his wife, Christine, said they had been prepared to fight, but that he decided last Wednesday, after months of prayer and contemplation, to spare his suburban Houston district the mudfest to come. "This had become a referendum on me," he said. "So it's better for...
Details are sketchy at the moment, but police in this sleepy Minnesota town have uncovered a plot to bomb public buildings, threaten judges and prosecutors, and target the police. Two brothers are in custody as well as a large cache of arms and explosives: Officials in Faribault, Minn., say they have uncovered what appears to be a plan to bomb public buildings and threaten judges, prosecutors and law enforcement officials. The plan came to light in a follow-up to a drug investigation when officers searched a farm last November, Rice County Sheriff Richard Cook said Monday. The county courthouse and law enforcement center were among potential targets, Cook said. One man, Allan Weatherford, 44, was arrested Friday and made a first appearance in court today. He was charged with attempted first-degree arson, possession of explosive devices and being a felon in possession of firearms. His brother, Mark Weatherford, 34, was...
April 4, 2006
Jack Shafer at Slate reports on a new study that delves into the reasons journalism gets slanted in the American market. The study explains that news which has quick resolution and immediate accountablility get more straightforward treatment, while those stories which take significant time for resolution -- tax policy, war, and so on -- have the most susceptibility to overt and institutional bias: 1) If a media outlet cares about its reputation for accuracy, it will be reluctant to report anything that counters the audiences' existing beliefs because such stories will tend to erode the company's standing. Newspapers and news programs have a visible incentive to "distort information to make it conform with consumers' prior beliefs." 2) The media can't satisfy their audiences by merely reporting what their audience wants to hear. If alternative sources of information prove that a news organization has distorted the news, the organization will suffer...
The traditional Communist holiday of May Day has been selected for a boycott protesting the push to secure the southern border of the United States, the Washington Times reports this morning. The timing is not coincidental, as the Stalinist sympathizers International ANSWER has led the effort to stage the economic protest: Immigration rights organizers today will call for a nationwide boycott of work, school and shopping on May 1 to protest congressional efforts to clamp down on illegal aliens as part of pending immigration-reform legislation. he "Great American Boycott of 2006" is only one in a series of large-scale events the protesters hope will sway lawmakers to put millions of illegal aliens on track toward permanent residency and U.S. citizenship. "The massive March 25 march and rally in Los Angeles of well over one million immigrant workers and their supporters -- along with protests and student walkouts throughout the United...
EJ Dionne poses an interesting take on the recent campaign-finance legislation that the FEC has finally produced. Dionne hails the blogger exemption that the FEC delivered while maintaining the regulations regarding Internet advertising as a win-win: The new FEC rule is not that complicated, but it did involve some careful balancing. The commission, under pressure from a court decision, decided that paid advertising on the Internet should be subject to the same regulations as paid advertising on television, radio or in newspapers. The restrictions on the use of unregulated "soft money" that apply to the old media would apply to the new media, too. At the same time, bloggers won what they had long sought: exemptions from regulations on what they can say that are akin to those that apply to what is now quaintly called the "old media." For bloggers, it was a Let Freedom Ring moment. The decision...
Michelle Malkin has an e-mail from Dateline NBC that tries to create artificial situations where the supposedly latent American hatred of Muslims can be caught on tape. This particular section, from a Muslim that NBC purportedly asked to help find subjects for their "investigation", tells everyone all they need to know about the agenda journalism at NBC's news magazine show: They recently taped two turbaned Sikh men attending a football game in Arizona to see how people would treat them. They set them up with hidden microphones and cameras, etc. They want to do the same thing 2 or 3 other times (in various parts of the USA) with one or two Muslim men in each setting. They are looking for men who actually "look Muslim". They want a guy with no foreign accent whatsoever, a good thick beard, an outgoing personality, and someone willing to wear a kufi/skullcap during...
One of the frustrations surrounding the revelation of the Able Danger program is the knowledge of what might have been -- how we could have potentially stopped the 9/11 attacks and saved thousands of American lives. Had the American intelligence community been allowed to coordinate with each other and with law enforcement properly to constitute an effective defense against terrorism, the data that Able Danger produced would have captured Mohammed Atta and his core pilot cell in plenty of time to stop al-Qaeda's biggest victory. Even afterwards, the willful disregard of the successes of Able Danger has led many to question in growing frustration why the Pentagon has not put another program in its place. With the threat still high for retaliatory strikes from AQ sleeper cells, a data-mining program like Able Danger seems more necessary than ever. In a new program, however, the Pentagon would need to integrate it...
Earlier today, I wrote about the funding of a new program the promises to use the "engine" of Able Danger to develop leads on potential terror cells, both here and abroad. The new program, Able Providence, wants to produce data as a shared resource for all intelligence and law-enforcement agencies, placed under the joint supervision of the DNI and the Joint Chiefs. For those of us who have followed the Able Danger effort and worried that a vital effort had been abandoned, this is exceptionally good news. However, it is not a shock, as the intelligence-community magazine Government Community News (GCN) wrote a little-noted article about the Able Providence proposal last October: A draft proposal floating behind closed doors would reconstitute and improve upon a former Army data-mining program called Able Danger. Able Providence, as the new program has been dubbed, would establish “robust open-source harvesting capabilities” to give military...
I'm in the nation's capital this evening for an event, so blogging will be light. I'll have more to say about the event itself later this evening. It should be a night to remember, though ......
Now that the event has concluded, I can reveal why I came to Washington DC tonight. The Week Magazine selected me as Blogger of the Year for 2005, following in the footsteps of my friends from Power Line, who won the honor last year. The magazine flew me out here earlier today and put me up at an excellent hotel, and then brought me to the Andrew Mellon Auditorium for dinner and the presentation. The announcement has not been posted at their site yet, but the story that garnered the most attention of the judges was the Adscam scandal in Canada and my coverage of the testimony during the Gomery hearings. The Week also had kind words for the overall effort at CQ even outside of that story. I have the dead-tree version of the article, but as soon as it's posted at The Week, I'll link back to it....
April 5, 2006
It appears that imagination has run wild in the Iranian mullahcracy the past couple of weeks. The Iranians have announced successful tests, unverified by outside sources, of a stealth MIRV platform and a sonar-evading underwater missile that travels so fast that the cavitation alone would make it easily identified. Now Teheran announced that they have also successfully tested a stealth 'flying boat', which they insist cannot be detected by radar: Iran said Tuesday it had tested what it called a "super-modern flying boat" capable of evading radar. State TV showed a brief clip of the boat's launch. "Due to its advanced design, no radar at sea or in the air can detect it. It can lift out of the water," the television said. It said the boat was "all Iranian-made and can launch missiles with precise targeting while moving." On Monday Iran said it tested a second new radar-avoiding missile...
Russ Feingold has decided to embrace the far-left fever swamp in hopes of building momentum for his run at the Presidency in 2008, and yesterday announced his support for gay marriage as another step in that strategy. The Washington Post reports that Feingold blames Republicans for using the controversy as a wedge issue, but also notes that his fellow Democrats have not lined up in support of gender-neutral marriage either: Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.), a prospective 2008 presidential candidate, said yesterday that he thinks bans on same-sex marriages have no place in the nation's laws. Feingold said in an interview that he was motivated to state his position on one of the most divisive social issues in the country after being asked at a town hall meeting Sunday about a pending amendment to the Wisconsin state constitution to ban same-sex marriages. Feingold called the amendment "a mean-spirited attempt" to single...
I'm not sure what's going on at the Department of Homeland Security, but significant background checks certainly are not. The agency first slated to be run by Bernard Kerik until the press performed his background check instead of the White House has another winner on its hands, a deputy press secretary with a late-night hobby: Brian J. Doyle, DOB 4/7/50, the Deputy Press Secretary for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Office of Public Affairs in Washington, D.C., was arrested this evening at his residence in Silver Springs, Maryland, on 23 Polk County charges related to the use of a computer to seduce a child and transmitting harmful materials to a minor. Doyle's arrest is the result of a joint investigation by the Polk County Sheriff s Office, working with Florida’s 10th Judicial Circuit State Attorney Jerry Hill s office, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Inspector General s...
One of the Able Providence briefing slides shows that the Pentagon did learn something from the 9/11 Commission debacle and the subsequent ruination of the American intelligence community -- don't trust the bureaucracy. In a graphic designed to show the flow of information out of the new data-mining project in the war on terror, this note conspicuously appears: Bypass but inform bureaucracy. That directive aims at the action-validation process, which under the current DNI would have to go through multiple levels of bureaucrats, thanks to the 9/11 Commission recommendations that slapped an entirely new bureaucracy on American intelligence. Able Providence would go to the Joint Chiefs and/or the DNI directly for approval on field ops, with an AP "away team" coordinating with the AP team at home. This is a much-improved model over the existing morass of intel agencies. Someone's listening and learning. NOTE ON SOURCING: A few commenters have...
Mark Tapscott continues his excellent watchdog duties as he prepares to leave the Heritage Foundation for greener pastures at the Examiner newspaper chain (coming to a town near you, and soon). Mark posts the latest hostile reaction to Porkbusters by the former Senate Majority Leader, Trent Lott: Former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, the Republican from Mississippi, has had it to here with Porkbusters and other critics of pork barrel spending like Sen. Tom Coburn, R-OK, who think the federal government has better things to do with $700 million of the taxpayers money than tear up a just-repaired coastal rail line and replace it with a new highway. Said Lott when asked by an AP reporter about criticism of the project he has long championed and which was just funded in a Senate Appropriations Committee bill to pay for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as additional Hurricane...
Last week, when the raunchy cartoon series South Park killed off Chef after Isaac Hayes complained about the show's religious intolerance, some CQ readers noted that Matt Stone and Trey Parker had never taken on Muslims. Actually, Mohammed made an appearance in the "Super Best Friends" episode, where Big Mo teamed up with Moses, Jesus, Buddha, Joseph Smith, and Sea Man to stop a giant stone Abraham Lincoln -- by creating a giant stone John Wilkes Booth. They also skewered al-Qaeda in an episode where the boys go to Afghanistan to return a goat sent to them by four boys who received their one-dollar donation. However, in this week's episode, the duo take on Islamists and the cowardice of the media in confronting their intolerance. The episode begins with the town going insane and stampeding towards the community center for shelter-- because Family Guy is going to depict Mohammed in...
Paul Mirengoff quoted Arianna Huffington from the panel discussion at The Week's awards banquet in DC last night as saying that William F. Buckley had written that the war in Iraq was "the greatest foreign policy disaster in US history." Apparently, Arianna now says that she only said that Buckley called for an acknowledgement of defeat. Arianna feels that Paul implies that she made the quote up. I recall this moment on the panel, because my jaw dropped when she said it, and Paul got the quote right. Now, when people speak off the cuff on a panel discussion, it's very easy to get quotes and citations mixed up. Arianna is correct when she says that Buckley believes the war in Iraq was a mistake, but as I wrote when Buckley's column appeared, Buckley opposed the war from the beginning anyway. I don't recall Arianna even mentioning William Odom --...
April 6, 2006
One of the most contentious issues of the Iraq War is whether the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein served as a distraction from the war on terror or as an integral part of the overall war itself. This is no mere academic question; the answer not only impacts the political future of those who supported and opposed the invasion, but also has real implications for the American resolve to stay in Iraq to see the effort through to completion. A new document from the captured Iraqi files in Baghdad now appears to show that Saddam Hussein's regime not only had ties to al-Qaeda and financed terrorist efforts but also explicitly attempted to recruit people to attack American interests. According to Laurie Mylroie, page 6 of the document is a memo from the command of an Iraqi air force base asking for volunteers for suicide missions: In the Name of God...
The House passed a bill slamming the lid on 527 advocacy groups of the kind that proliferated in the last presidential election and removed the limits for national parties to coordinate funds with specific candidates. The measure passed on a party-line vote, 218-209: The House approved campaign finance legislation last night that would benefit Republicans by placing strict caps on contributions to nonprofit committees that spent heavily in the last election while removing limits on political parties' spending coordinated with candidates. The bill passed 218 to 209 in a virtual party-line vote. Lifting party spending limits would aid Republican candidates because the GOP has consistently raised far more money than the Democratic Party. Similarly, barring "527" committees from accepting large unregulated contributions known as "soft money" would disadvantage Democrats, whose candidates received a disproportionate share of the $424 million spent by nonprofit committees in 2003-2004. The 527 committees, named for...
As the New York Times reports this morning, the issue of school vouchers has become a lost opportunity for the Bush administration to make solid inroads into the African-American electorate on the basis of policy. School vouchers formed the core of the original education-reform efforts of the White House until a compromise with Ted Kennedy scotched them from the No Child Left Behind program and revamp of the Department of Education. Instead, federal funding for other educational efforts rocketed up by 58% while still leaving inner-city children in failing schools. Now we can see what we traded away: Amie is one of about 1,700 low-income, mostly minority students in Washington who at taxpayer expense are attending 58 private and parochial schools through the nation's first federal voucher program, now in its second year. Last year, parents appeared lukewarm toward the program, which was put in place by Congressional Republicans as...
Prosecutors investigating the assault by Rep. Cynthia McKinney on a Capitol Police officer last week have decided to present the case to a grand jury to determine whether an indictment is warranted, CNN reported last night: No more he-grabbed-she-slapped -- whether U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney should be charged over a confrontation with Capitol Police last week will be decided by a grand jury, perhaps as soon as next week, said federal law enforcement sources familiar with the case. Prosecutors have decided to present the case, and the grand jury will begin hearing testimony Thursday, the two sources said. Senior congressional sources said that two House staff members -- Troy Phillips, an aide to Rep. Sam Farr, D-California, and Lisa Subrize, executive assistant to Rep. Thaddeus McCotter, R-Michigan -- have been subpoenaed to testify. The Justice Department and the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, which is handling the case,...
Today marks my return to the pages of the Daily Standard with a column reviewing the recent Media Research Center's analysis of broadcast network coverage of the Saddam Hussein trial. Saddam has had better luck with the Goering Gambit than did Hermann Goering himself, thanks to the hopelessly misdirected priorities of the Big Three's news divisions: If Saddam has calculated that the Goering gambit will work better for him, he may be right. Saddam is betting that his disruptions will play better than the evidence and testimony of genocide, which is so lacking in entertainment value. According to a study performed by the Media Research Center (MRC), the media is playing right into Saddam's strategy. After reviewing the coverage provided by the three American broadcast networks, MRC calculated that less than twenty percent of the news coverage reported on evidence, testimony, and the background of the case--when they could be...
Hugh Hewitt has asked his listeners to come up with themes for the bump music he uses for his syndicated radio show. The bump music is what plays when a radio show goes into and out of its commercial breaks, and except for the top of the hour, that changes in every show. I sent Hugh my list of a dozen or so songs that fit the Cut And Run Theme, and he tells me that they will be using it today. Be sure to listen to find out what songs I selected for this theme -- and if you have any suggestions, be sure to note them in the comments. Don't forget to pick up Hugh's Painting The Map Red -- I have my copy and have already started to read it, after checking the index to see if CQ gets a mention. (I'm not saying ... you'll have...
One of the earliest commenters on CQ has a new home. Linda, the proprietor of the thoughtful liberal blog Auterrific, had engaged in a number of excellent debates in the early days of CQ before deciding to focus on other projects. One of those projects has now come to fruition; she and her husband Joe have started a new blog devoted to one of life's greatest pleasures -- spicy food. Titled The Hot Zone Online, the blog covers everything you want to know about habanero chiles but were afraid to taste. Linda and Joe may just corner the market on spicy blogging ... well, at least clean spicy blogging, ifyouknowwhatImean. Drop by The Hot Zone and scald your eyeballs as well as your taste buds, and tell Linda that CQ says hello....
The New York Sun reported today that I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby has testified that he released information from a National Intelligence Estimate in 2003 to a reporter prior to its publication. Predictably, the media and the blogosphere has overreacted, proving once again that most people do not understand classified materials, unclassified materials, and the process used to classify documents. The Josh Gerstein article is pretty straightforward: A former White House aide under indictment for obstructing a leak probe, I. Lewis Libby, testified to a grand jury that he gave information from a closely-guarded "National Intelligence Estimate" on Iraq to a New York Times reporter in 2003 with the specific permission of President Bush, according to a new court filing from the special prosecutor in the case. The court papers from the prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, do not suggest that Mr. Bush violated any law or rule. However, the new disclosure could...
In the hours after the announcement of a compromise on immigration reform, it seems that details have been might scarce -- never a good sign when legislators announce an agreement. If the deal actually satisfied anyone, the politicians would have had the wonks out in force in an attempt to impress the media and calm the passionate. The lack of detail signals that the compromise may be little more than an easy way out of a contentious battle. The Washington Post and the New York Times both cover the story but neither has much on the particulars of the deal. The Post notes that the compromise keeps the temporary worker program and the path to citizenship: The compromise would give illegal immigrants who have been in the United States for more than five years a chance to legalize their status and, eventually, to become U.S. citizens if they pay a...
April 7, 2006
One has to wonder about the timing of the editorial in today's Washington Post regarding Saddam Hussein's admission of ordering the deaths of 148 Dujail residents after the failed assassination attempt on his life. The Post's editors rightly note the significance of this revelation, but appear to have discovered it from a magazine in the lobby of their dentist's office: THE TRIAL of Saddam Hussein achieved a rare and important moment of accountability this week. The former Iraqi leader acknowledged that he ordered the deaths of 148 civilians from the town of Dujail after a 1982 assassination attempt against him there. "That is one of the duties of the president," he testified under cross-examination. ... Still, it is no small thing when a former dictator in the dock looks the world in the face and does not pretend that his crimes did not happen, merely that he had the lawful...
The more we find out about this immigration "compromise", the more the term sounds exactly applicable. Kris Kobach, an attorney representing plaintiffs in court cases against states that defy immigration law by handing out government benefits to illegals, warns us in the New York Post about the fine print in this Senate bill that threatens to surrender the southern border to all comers: With a few exceptions, today's immigration judges (who serve for life) are dedicated to enforcing the law, and they do a difficult job well. This bill forces all immigration judges to step down after serving seven years - and restricts replacements to attorneys with at least five years' experience practicing immigration law. Virtually the only lawyers who'll meet that requirement are attorneys who represent aliens in the immigration courts - who tend to be some of the nation's most liberal lawyers, and who are certainly unlikely as...
The ever-reliable Charles Krauthammer gets to the heart of the Senate abdication on national security yesterday in his new column titled "First A Wall -- Then Amnesty". Krauthammer correctly identifies border security as the element of immigration most in need of reform and its rightful position as the highest legislative priority of the issue: Every sensible immigration policy has two objectives: (1) to regain control of our borders so that it is we who decide who enters and (2) to find a way to normalize and legalize the situation of the 11 million illegals among us. ... If the government can demonstrate that it can control future immigration, there will be infinitely less resistance to dealing generously with the residual population of past immigration. And, as Mickey Kaus and others have suggested, that may require that the two provisions be sequenced. First, radical border control by physical means. Then, shortly...
CQ is honored to lend its platform to Merrilee Carlson, whose son Michael died in the service of our country in Iraq. Merrilee is the chair of Minnesota Families United, which wants to get the media to use the anniversary of the liberation of Iraq on April 9th to focus on the good works performed by Michael and his comrades. Update: I was quite remiss in not linking to Patrick from Ankle Biting Pundits for arranging this blogosphere effort. Sorry, Patrick! My Son Died to “Liberate People from Oppression” in Iraq I was recently on captainsquarters reading your commentary about Jack Shafer’s study about slanted journalism. As for me, I don’t know what the reasons are, but I do now that many Americans have seemed to lose our resolve in the War on Terror, at least partly because of a steady diet of media negativism. My son, Michael, served and...
The compromise legislation announced by Senators from both parties has collapsed in today's session, garnering less than forty votes in a procedural vote that required at least sixty: The Senate sidetracked sweeping immigration legislation Friday amid partisan recriminations, leaving in doubt prospects for passage of a measure that offered the hope of citizenship to millions of men, women and children living in the United States illegally. The bill gained only 38 votes on a key procedural test, far short of the 60 needed to advance. The vote marked a turnabout from Thursday, when the Senate's two leaders had both hailed a last-minute compromise as a breakthrough in the campaign to enact the most far-reaching changes in immigration law in two decades. But Republicans soon accused Democrats of trying to squelch their amendments, while Democrats accused the GOP of trying to kill their own bill by filibuster. The filibuster threat came...
Raw Story posts an inside scoop from the Washington Post that their on-line site will hire two bloggers to replace the disgraced Ben Domenech -- one liberal and one conservative. This means that Jim Brady has not given up on his efforts to engage the blogosphere, good news for both the newspaper and bloggers: The paper’s ombudsman, Deborah Howell, has informed RAW STORY that Jim Brady, executive editor of washingtonpost.com, is looking for a liberal blogger, along with a conservative one, to replace Ben Domenech who resigned after only three days of blogging, when his earlier writings were discovered by mostly liberal bloggers to be racially insensitive and – in multiple cases – plagiarized. The paper doesn’t plan on making any formal announcement, but the news should be welcome to many critics on the left who felt that it was unfair to hire just a conservative blogger in the first...
One of the three key Sponsorship Programme figures facing criminal charges in the fraud conspiracy has had a prison sentence imposed on him after prosecutors appealed his initial sentencing. Paul Coffin, who pled guilty to 15 counts of fraud stemming from the $1.6 million of taxpayer money he collected from taxpayers, got sentenced to 18 months in prison earlier today (via Newsbeat1): Montreal advertising executive Paul Coffin was sentenced to an 18-month prison term in a Quebec appeals court on Friday for his role in defrauding the federal government out of $1.5 million in sponsorship funds. In May, Coffin pleaded guilty to 15 counts of fraud for his involvement in the sponsorship fiasco. He initially received a two-year less a day conditional sentence of community service. However, the Crown appealed that decision, saying the sentence was not enough to deter others from doing the same in the future. I wrote...
April 8, 2006
Cynthia McKinney used to be a big hitter in DeKalb County, where Atlantans have sent her to Congress since 1992. In recent years, however, her increasingly erratic behavior and rhetoric has cooled the ardor of voters in one of Georgia's most populous counties; they even retired her for a cycle in 2002 after her claim that George Bush had advance knowledge of the 9/11 attacks . They elected her again in 2004 when the woman who beat her in '02 ran for the Senate instead (and lost). Now the Los Angeles Times reports that DeKalb voters have once again begun to consider McKinney a liability: The lawmaker has received little if any support from colleagues of either party, and a federal grand jury is mulling whether to bring criminal charges against her. In McKinney's suburban Atlanta district, the altercation has created doubts about her fitness for office. Khalil King, a...
On Wednesday, I wrote about the scandal at the DHS surrounding Brian Doyle, the deputy press secretary for the agency who got caught trying to seduce a 14-year-old girl over the Internet. My post criticized the Bush administration for its inability to vet candidates for positions with public exposure, so to speak. A number of commenters reasonably disagreed, making a good point about the difficulty of vetting for personal perversions that necessarily remain in the shadows. Unfortunately for Doyle, the Bush administration, and those of us who support Bush, Doyle's hobbies had already been exposed prior to his 2001 hiring for the Transportation Safety Administration. His former employer, Time Magazine, had to discipline Doyle in 2000 for using company computers to collect adult pornography, according to fellow Time-Warner media outlet CNN: A Department of Homeland Security spokesman charged with soliciting a minor over the Internet was disciplined in a previous...
The Venezuelans have apparently watched Animal House too many times as pro-government protestors pelted the American ambassador with fruit and vegetables when he attempted to distribute baseball equipment to poor children in Caracas: Brownfield was handing out baseball gloves, bats and catchers' equipment to 140 youths at a sports stadium when several dozen protesters showed up and began throwing objects at the ambassador, U.S. officials said. An official who identified himself as police commander Luis Villasana then approached Brownfield and ordered him and his staff out of the stadium. Brownfield was accompanied by two former Major League Baseball players from Venezuela and had addressed a crowd that included the youths' parents. Before leaving, he told reporters at the scene that his intention had been to show baseball "as transcending politics." Protesters on about 12 motorcycles then chased the ambassador's motorcade after he left the stadium and continued to throw objects...
The student protests and riots in France have spilled over into a third month with no end in sight, as the Chirac government refuses to withdraw its new "employment contract" law that allows French employers greater flexibility in terminating younger employees. The students refuse to compromise, demanding that French law remain the barrier to youth employment that it has been thus far: Hall B at the Faculty of Rennes 2 University was the starting point for the mass student movement against the French government's new youth employment law which has plunged the country into crisis. On February 7, thousands of students stormed the building, closing it down and staging a "sit-in". All classes have been stopped and the building is now run by about 5,000 students. About 200 protesters sleep in the lecture theatres each night. Almost every protest they stage in Rennes ends in clashes with the riot police....
An editorial in the Investors Business Daily scolded Congress and the White House for not putting more of an official effort into translating the tens of thousands of documents captured during the fall of Iraq in 2003. CQ reader Angry Dumbo points out one passage that stands out regarding the efforts made by the blogosphere (especially at Free Republic, which translated the document I posted earlier this week): Equally embarrassing to our spies is another newly released document from 1999 detailing plans for a "Blessed July" operation. According to the English translation on the Foreign Military Studies Office's Joint Reserve Intelligence Center Web site, Saddam's older son Uday ordered 50 members of the fanatical "Fedayeen Saddam" group to stage bombings and assassinations in Iraq and Europe — including London, where 10 people were assigned. Excerpts from a long, recently declassified report by the U.S. Joint Forces Command's Iraqi Perspectives Project...
The Northern Alliance Radio Network is already on the air at AM 1280 The Patriot, on the stream if you're not in the Twin Cities. The first half has Bill James, the extraordinary baseball statistician, on the air now in a rare live interview with the diamond genius. Between 1-3 pm CT, Mitch, King, and I will be discussing the latest translation of documents from the Iraqi Intelligence Service files, as well as McKinney Gone Wild!, NBC's Candid (Muslim) Camera, Katie Couric, and immigration. We will be joined by Rob Fulton from Ramsey County Public Health to talk about preparations for the impending arrival of the bird flu. Please join in the conversation by calling 651-289-4488 or sending an e-mail to comments -at- northernallianceradio.com....
April 9, 2006
Now that we have established the translation of the memo from the Iraqi Air Force general to all units requesting volunteers for suicide missions against American "interests", the timing of the memo appears to fit into a disturbing sequence in the months prior to 9/11. This memo is dated March 17, 2001, less than six months prior to the coordinated al-Qaeda attack on the US, at a time when the AQ plotters and pilots appeared to be in close proximity to Iraqi intelligence agents in Europe. In a series of posts I wrote last year, I pointed out activity in Germany by the Iraqi Intelligence Service that the 9/11 Commission missed. Specifically, the Germans arrested two IIS agents in late February for their operation of an espionage ring in their country. Their intelligence estimate in 2002 would later claim that Iraq had reached out to extremists Islamist groups to coordinate...
After forty-eight hours of hyperbole and hypocrisy surrounding allegations that George Bush "leaked" portions of the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq in July 2003, the AP now reports that Bush never asked anyone to divulge the information via a private conversation and never had Scooter Libby in mind as a conduit. Instead, the President declassified the information and delegated the release to Dick Cheney: President Bush declassified sensitive intelligence in 2003 and authorized its public disclosure to rebut Iraq war critics, but he did not specifically direct that Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, be the one to disseminate the information, an attorney knowledgeable about the case said Saturday. Bush merely instructed Cheney to "get it out" and left the details to him, said the lawyer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case for the White House....
CQ reader Sapper sends along a new document from the captured files of the Saddam Hussein regime, one that had just been released on Friday, that has notations indicating where WMD stockpiles might be found. The information on the memo has not been translated but the notations themselves sound breathtaking: Please see Iraqi map to locate Al-Rasheed area on this page important information that the Iraqi regime has Transported the chemical and biological weapons to al-Rashad area, and pronounced a Military Prohibited area this area is completely covered with trees & bushes Has anyone at CENTCOM followed up on this memo, or have they even seen it in the deluge of material from which this came? Someone looked at this at some point, but not long enough to provide a translation, unlike some of the other documents from the release. It certainly looks important enough to pursue in greater detail....
Today is the third anniversary of the fall of Baghdad, and in honor of the efforts of our troops, Captain's Quarters has an interview with Merrilee Carlson. Merrilee is a Gold Star mother from Minnesota who has led the effort to support the troops through Minnesota Families United, a chapter of the national support group. Merrilee wrote a guest post for CQ on Friday, and that evening I interviewed her about a range of subjects on the war and the support coming from the home front. The interview is available for download here. It's about twenty-five minutes and will download slowly. Later I will post the transcript, but for now I'd like Merrilee to speak with her own voice. Don't forget to sign their letter when you visit their website....
John McCain still garners the most media attention of all prospective Republican candidates for the presidential nomination in 2008. His long-cultivated relationship with the media and his reputation as a "maverick" has provided endless fascination and a large boost to his prospects for capturing the ticket. However, now that he has to come to terms with his party, McCain now risks the very assets that propelled him to the top of the media dance card. The New York Times profiles McCain in transition in its Sunday edition: Senator John McCain began his week by embracing the Rev. Jerry Falwell, the conservative religious leader he once denounced as polarizing. He ended it by joining Senator Edward M. Kennedy, the liberal Massachusetts icon, in a fight for an immigration bill opposed by many conservatives. Mr. McCain has long sought to present himself as a singular sort of American politician — straight-talking, iconoclastic...
The Washington Post editorial board injects a little honesty from the media in the so-called leak kerfuffle today, in contrast to its peers in journalism. The unsigned editorial accepts that the administration not only has the right to declassify the kind of information it did, but was right to have it published: PRESIDENT BUSH was right to approve the declassification of parts of a National Intelligence Estimate about Iraq three years ago in order to make clear why he had believed that Saddam Hussein was seeking nuclear weapons. Presidents are authorized to declassify sensitive material, and the public benefits when they do. But the administration handled the release clumsily, exposing Mr. Bush to the hyperbolic charges of misconduct and hypocrisy that Democrats are leveling. After beating up on Dick Cheney for a paragraph for choosing to have Scooter Libby send the information through quiet channels, the Post reminds its readers...
It appears that one of Bill Clinton's power bases has soured on Hillary and her bid to win back the White House. The Observer (UK) reports that the glitterati in Hollywood have turned their backs on the putative Democratic front-runner, considering her too unreliable as a liberal to support: With its liberal politics and radical attitudes, Hollywood should be one place in America where Hillary Clinton can count on fervent and loyal support. But as the former First Lady gears up for a run at the White House her nascent campaign has hit an unexpected roadblock. A lengthening list of top Hollywood celebrities have publicly criticised her ambitions. From George Clooney to Sharon Stone to Susan Sarandon, the Beverly Hills set has turned on Clinton. Nor are they alone. Vast swaths of American liberals have begun to snipe at their former heroine, attacking her for supporting the war in Iraq...
A local blogger has a political scoop this weekend involving Joe Lieberman. The ConnecticutBLOG reports that Senator Lieberman just upped the ante on Democrats hoping to replace him in the primary with a more leftist candidate: Joe Lalli: Ned Lamont has already stated that he would support you if you won the Democratic nomination and Zell Miller once stated that he would always be a member of the Democratic party. Can you make similar promises? LIEBERMAN: Will I always be a member of the Democratic party? I hope there's not a primary. I'm confident if there is one, I'll win it, but I'm not gonna rule out any other option for now because I feel so strongly that I can do better for the State of Connecticut for the next six years in the United States Senate that I want to give all the voters a chance to make that...
April 10, 2006
A few days ago, I posted a translation of a document culled from the captured Iraqi documents that the US found during Operation Iraqi Freedom. This particular memo, dated March 17, 2001, comes from a brigadier general in the Iraqi Air Force and requests a list of volunteers from all units under his command for suicide attackers. The memo explicitly explains the targets for these terrorist attacks, as the original translation from Joseph Shahda shows: The top secret letter 2205 of the Military Branch of Al Qadisya on 4/3/2001 announced by the top secret letter 246 from the Command of the military sector of Zi Kar on 8/3/2001 announced to us by the top secret letter 154 from the Command of Ali Military Division on 10/3/2001 we ask to provide that Division with the names of those who desire to volunteer for Suicide Mission to liberate Palestine and to strike...
The French government has capitulated on their proposal to allow greater flexibility to employers in hiring and terminating younger workers in order to allow for more risk-taking, after protests and riots staged by the people the new policy would have helped most. Ten weeks of sit-ins, burning cars, and talk of ending the Fifth Republic has forced Jacques Chirac to withdraw the policy altogether: French President Jacques Chirac announced that his government was abandoning a youth jobs plan that has sparked million-strong protests and replacing it with new measures to help young people into work. "The president of the republic has decided to replace Article 8 of the law on equal opportunities with measures in favour of the professional insertion of young people in difficulty," the presidency said in a statement on Monday. The text said that Chirac's decision was taken "based on a proposal from the prime minister, after...
The Taliban once again confirmed what little military strategy that Islamofascist terrorists can muster when faced with professional troops in the field in an interview with the Canadian Press wire service. Their spokesman informed reporters from Canada that the terrorists only needed to kill enough Canadians to make the nation weary enough of war to withdraw: As MPs gather in Ottawa to discuss Canada's more combative role in southern Afghanistan, a senior Taliban official and coalition commanders painted two disparate images Sunday of where the war is headed. In a weekend interview with The Canadian Press, insurgent spokesman Qari Yuosaf Ahmedi said the Taliban are convinced the resolve of the Canadian people is weak. As suicide attacks and roadside blasts increase, the public will quickly grow weary, he said. “We think that when we kill enough Canadians they will quit war and return home,” Mr. Ahmedi said in an interview,...
The European Union's regulative nature may wind up killing off the Irish wake, thanks to a new rule that proposes to ban formaldehyde as an embalming agent. The restrictions on embalming will force caskets to remain closed as the bodies will decompose too much to allow for extended viewing of corpses, the centerpiece of the traditional Irish celebration of the deceased's life: The Irish custom that sees corpses kept in an open coffin so the deceased can be viewed during the wake has been endangered by an edict issued by Stavros Dimas, the EU environment commissioner. He wants chemicals used by embalmers to preserve the cadaver withdrawn under a new biocides directive. Such a move would see the end of the age-old ritual of "laying out" the body while games are played and food and drink are consumed to the accompaniment of dancing and fiddle music. ... The directive, which...
Due to a mild back injury, I'm home officing today, and so I had an opportunity to participate in a conference call with Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA) on a range of topics, including immigration, earmark reform (porkbusting), Iran, Iraq, energy independence, and more. What follows below are the rough notes on the call, which I found fascinating and enlightening. Pay special attention to what Rep. Kingston has to say about enthusiasm for earmark reform; apparently some politicians pay lip service rather than push for real reform. (What a shock!) Also, the Congressman makes a very important point about applying earmark reform to all committees within the House and not just Appropriations. Here are my notes. The first few paragraphs cover Kingston's opening statement, and the rest come from the questions asked of the gaggle: Represents five military installations, ~25,000 in Iraq. Making economic and military progress – have 241,000 soldiers...
The Los Angeles Times reports on a movement to end so-called speech codes at public schools, universities, and in the workplace that infringe on unpopular speech, especially that which argues against multiculturalism. In what some call a civil-rights movement for Christians, a number of groups have filed suit across the country to protect their right to speak out for their beliefs, even when others find those beliefs offensive: Ruth Malhotra went to court last month for the right to be intolerant. Malhotra says her Christian faith compels her to speak out against homosexuality. But the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she's a senior, bans speech that puts down others because of their sexual orientation. Malhotra sees that as an unacceptable infringement on her right to religious expression. So she's demanding that Georgia Tech revoke its tolerance policy. With her lawsuit, the 22-year-old student joins a growing campaign to force public...
Last week, I wrote about bloggers jumping to conclusions. This week, we have an example of what happens when the media jumps to conclusions. When allegations of gang rape and assault got leveled at the Duke University lacrosse team, the assumption in the media was that some of the men on the team were guilty of the charges. Now, however, DNA evidence shows that the semen found in and on the woman at the center of the allegations does not match anyone on the team: DNA testing failed to connect any members of the Duke University lacrosse team to the alleged rape of a stripper, attorneys for the athletes said Monday. Citing DNA test results delivered by the state crime lab to police and prosecutors a few hours earlier, the attorneys said the test results prove their clients did not sexually assault and beat a stripper hired to perform at...
The Anchoress wondered if Islam has a tradition similar to Christianity that encourages its followers to ignore insults and pray for the insulter instead of lashing out in revenge. In order to answer that question, she engaged in a conversation with Ali at Unwilling Self Negation, a self-described moderate Muslim. The result deserves a read from everyone, and kudos to both for talking with each other rather than at each other....
Laurie Mylroie notes that Michael Barone had some very kind remarks about me and CQ yesterday and pointed his US News & World Report back to my two posts on the Iraqi Air Force memo and the implications of its timing. As Mr. Barone states, we still don't know whether Iraq had any connection to the 9/11 attacks, but the memo and the surrounding context of the 9/11 plot suggests that some may exist: Ed Morrissey of Captain's Quarters makes his living as manager of a call center. But he also blogs brilliantly and thoroughly. Those who insist that there could never have been a collaboration between the Saddam Hussein regime and al Qaeda on 9/11 need to read Ed's following blog entry, in full. It doesn't prove the case, or claim to, but it makes very interesting reading. I am always amazed at those who claim, with absolute certitude,...
April 11, 2006
Joe Lieberman once represented the Democratic Party on a national ticket that came within an ace of winning the White House. He donated a million dollars back to the Connecticut Democratic Party in the same year when he won re-election to the Senate while just missing as Vice-President. He has, for the most part, voted with his caucus, usually deviating only when the nutcases and die-hard obstructionists take over. What does Lieberman get in return? The brother of the national chairman campaigning for a primary rival: At the Connecticut Democratic Party's annual Jefferson Jackson Bailey fund-raising dinner last month, James H. Dean was among the guests invited to sit at the table of Ned Lamont, a Greenwich cable television executive who is planning a primary challenge to Senator Joseph I. Lieberman over the senator's support for the war in Iraq. ... Mr. Dean lives in Fairfield, near Greenwich, and he...
In the contretemps over the (latest) Cynthia McKinney incident, one could see a predictable dynamic play out. First would come the denunciations of the Congresswoman for attacking a police officer doing his duty at a security checkpoint. Next would come McKinney's claim to have been victimized by official racism. After that, people would chide McKinney for making race an issue ... and then would come the meme that McKinney's race-card exploitation has a point. Ruth Marcus carries the ball for the unconscious-guilt lobby in today's Washington Post: Even before the latest altercation, McKinney was known -- accurately -- as a hotheaded conspiracy theorist inclined to play the race card at the drop of a congressional ID pin. The details of McKinney's run-in with an officer who stopped her as she walked around a security checkpoint aren't yet known, but it's already obvious that McKinney needs to read "All I Really...
A United Nations study reveals that 25% of all married Syrian women have been beaten by their husbands, the New York Times reports this morning: Syria's first comprehensive field study of violence against women has concluded that nearly one married woman in four surveyed had been beaten. The study was released last week as part of a report on Syria by the United Nations Development Fund for Women. The findings have been published in local news media, helping to draw attention to topics, like domestic abuse and honor killings, that have long been considered taboo in this conservative society. The study was carried out under the supervision of the quasi-governmental General Union of Women, which oversees the welfare of Syria's women. The study included nearly 1,900 families, selected as a random sample, including a broad range of income levels and all regions. The men and women in each family were...
The Palestinians have appealed to the UN Security Council to stop Israel's efforts to target the leadership of terrorist organizations that conduct attacks on Israel. They want the UNSC to restrain Israel while they do nothing to restrain the terrorists operating in their territory: The Palestinians called on the U.N. Security Council Monday to take urgent action to stop what it called an escalating military campaign by Israeli forces that has led to a dramatic increase in Palestinian casualties in recent days. The Palestinian U.N. observor, Riyad Mansour, said in a letter to the council that at least 17 Palestinians have been killed since Friday and scores more wounded in a barrage of military attacks and "extrajudicial executions." Mansour told reporters that Arab nations would meet to decide what action its members want the Security Council to take. The options range from holding an open meeting on the latest upsurge...
... perhaps someone might want to keep the plans for Air Force One off the Internet....
The Week Magazine has posted its awards issue on line. This is the digital version of the handout we received at the awards dinner, a wonderful memento from the evening. The blogger award announcement can be found here. I especially liked the artist's rendition of yours truly, but the one on the cover with Nick Kristof, Mike Luckovich, and me panning for gold is even better. Thanks again to the entire CQ community; you made this possible, and words cannot express my appreciation. Addendum: Well, they could have drawn me with more hair, I suppose ......
Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad threw a party in Teheran today, complete with tribal dancers, musicians, and party streamers to announce that Iranian researchers had succeeded in enriching uranium -- the first step towards nuclear energy and nuclear weapons: Iran has succeeded in enriching uranium to new levels, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tuesday, proclaiming a technical breakthrough that advances both the country's nuclear program and the international controversy surrounding it. "I'm announcing officially that Iran has now joined the countries that have nuclear technology," Ahmadinejad said in a carefully staged presentation televised live across Iran. "This is a very historic moment, and it's because of the Iranian people and their belief. And this is the start of the progress of this country." Standing before a sweeping backdrop featuring doves around an Iranian flag, Ahmadinejad said the country was moving toward enriching uranium on an industrial scale to supply nuclear fuel...
The AP reports that House Republicans are considering modifications in their immigration-reform bill that will make it easier for the Senate to absorb it into whatever version they can pass. The changes involve the two most controversial parts of the House effort, making "illegal presence" a felony and broadening the notion of accessory to potentially include religious outreach and charity workers: Following huge nationwide protests, Republicans on Tuesday moved to possibly change two key provisions in a get-tough immigration bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives. One would turn millions of illegal immigrants into felons and the other has raised concerns that people who provide them humanitarian relief would be punished. Top Republicans insisted that neither is their intent. Their verbal commitments to revisit those provisions came a day after hundreds of thousands of people held demonstrations nationwide, provoked by the bill that would also erect a fence along...
Khaleej Times reports that the Saudis sent Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the former Saudi ambassador in Washington, to Moscow on a mission to enlist Russian opposition to any American action against the Iranian mullahcracy. Prince Bandar asked the Russians to block any further UNSC action that might give the US a basis for military strikes on Iranian nuclear sites (via Memeorandum): Saudi Arabia, fearing that US military action against Iran would wreak further havoc in the region, has asked Russia to block any bid by Washington to secure UN cover for an attack, a Russian diplomat said on Tuesday. During a visit to Moscow last week, the head of the Saudi National Security Council “urged Russia to strive to prevent the adoption of a UN Security Council resolution which the United States could use as justification to launch a military assault to knock out Iran’s nuclear facilities,” the diplomat told...
April 12, 2006
Those waiting for the Fitzmas That Never Came must suffer from terrible disappointment, and this week they have yet more reason to be morose. Patrick Fitzgerald delighted them with an extraordinary court filing that accused Scooter Libby of misrepresenting the National Intelligence Estimate and the uranium-procurement story as a consensus analysis by American intelligence. It turns out that St. Fitz did some misrepresentation of his own: The federal prosecutor overseeing the indictment of Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, yesterday corrected an assertion in an earlier court filing that Libby had misrepresented the significance placed by the CIA on allegations that Iraq attempted to buy uranium from Niger. Last week, Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald wrote that, in conversation with former New York Times reporter Judith Miller, Libby described the uranium story as a "key judgment" of the CIA's 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq,...
Hillary Clinton may want to run for president as a banner-carrier of populist fervor -- can Democrats run as anything else these days? -- but her corporate ties may trip her campaign before it even gets running. The New York Times reports today on her cozy relationship with Corning, a major employer in New York and one of her biggest contributors. It turns out that the benefits have flowed bidirectionally between Hillary and Corning: In April 2003, a month after Corning's political action committee gave $10,000 to her re-election campaign, Mrs. Clinton announced legislation that would provide hundreds of millions in federal aid to reduce diesel pollution, using, among other things, technology pioneered by Corning. It was one of several Congressional initiatives Mrs. Clinton has pushed that benefit the company. And in April 2004, Mrs. Clinton began a push to persuade the Chinese government to relax tariffs on Corning fiber...
Anne Applebaum has a remarkable interview with Viktor Yushchenko, the man who lead Ukraine to independence from Moscow and away from corrupt clan rule a little over a year ago. Now, facing the reality of ruling over a former Soviet republic where many still prefer closer ties to Moscow, Applebaum gets to the essence of Yushchenko's conundrum: In any country, poor relations with a larger neighbor could damage a president's political career. But for Yushchenko they pose a particularly difficult problem. Far from omnipotent, he is surrounded by corrupt officials, many of whom are easily won over by a Kremlin awash in oil money, most of whom are still loyal to the previous, pro-Russian, post-communist regime. As president in a parliamentary system, his powers are limited in any case, but in Ukraine, where secret information his police officers intercept is more likely to be sent to Moscow than given to...
The Guardian reacted with trepidation at the news of Iranian enrichment of uranium, not for its implications in the Middle East as much as for its political implications in the US. The leftist British daily predicts that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's triumphalism will bolster the hawks in American politics who favor a military solution, if for no other reason than to underscore Iran's need to end their nuclear program before our bombs fall: The Security Council had been waiting for a UN report at the end of the month on Iran's nuclear intentions, before deciding on further measures. But after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's triumphal announcement yesterday - accompanied by chants of "Death to America", "Death to Israel" and "Death to Counter-Revolutionaries" - some UN members were drawing their own conclusions. Not for the first time, US diplomats found themselves grateful that President Ahmadinejad had made the work of persuading other UN members of...
The Washington Post runs a deceptive and dishonest report about the evaluation of the Iraqi trailers that had been identified as biological weapons labs prior to the invasion in March 2003. Their front-page story announces breathlessly that the Bush administration ignored the findings of a team of experts who concluded that the trailers could not have acted as portable bioweapons platforms prior to a Bush announcement of exactly the opposite -- but below the fold, they tell a different story. Let's take a look at the lead first: On May 29, 2003, 50 days after the fall of Baghdad, President Bush proclaimed a fresh victory for his administration in Iraq: Two small trailers captured by U.S. and Kurdish troops had turned out to be long-sought mobile "biological laboratories." He declared, "We have found the weapons of mass destruction." The claim, repeated by top administration officials for months afterward, was hailed...
ABC News will air an interview with Sheikh Sattam al-Gaood, a crony of Saddam Hussein and a supporter of the native insurgency in Iraq, who claims to have disbursed a ransom paid for the release of reporter Jill Carroll from terrorists: The man behind Jill Carroll's release tells ABC News in an exclusive interview that kidnapping the American journalist was a mistake. Sheikh Sattam al-Gaood reveals what it took to free her — and why he supports the insurgency. Al-Gaood was one of three people specifically thanked by Carroll's family after her release. He was once one of Saddam Hussein's closest business associates, and now says he is a proud leader of the Iraqi insurgency. "They are defending their country," he said in an interview at his summer house outside Amman, Jordan. "They are an honest resistance. And sometimes they do mistakes." The "mistake", as al-Gaood puts it, was kidnapping...
When will Iran have the capability to produce a nuclear weapon? Some experts have said that Iran is a decade or more away from a viable nuclear device, and with only a 164-centrifuge cascade available, that might appear reasonable. However, Iran announced yesterday that it would soon expand its cascade to 3,000 centrifuges at its Natanz facility, and today said that it would expand its program to 54,000 centrifuges: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tuesday that Iran for the first time had succeeded on a small scale in enriching uranium, a key step in generating fuel for a reactor or fissile material for a bomb. The U.N. Security Council has demanded that Iran stop all enrichment activity because of suspicions the program's aim is to make weapons. Iran's small-scale enrichment used 164 centrifuges, which spin uranium gas to increase its proportion of the isotope needed for the nuclear fission at the...
The final episode of the Cartoon Wars satire aired tonight, and it started off by faking the audience briefly into thinking that Matt Stone and Trey Parker had satirized Comedy Channel by announcing that Part II had been pre-empted by a Terrence & Phillip episode. When the flatulent duo encountered a censored Mohammed on horseback, we knew that the game was most certainly on. This was a worthy follow-up to last week's hilarious and provocative episode. South Park brought in Bart Simpson as a foil for both Kyle and Cartman and continued using George Bush to score points on the media. Check out the show's dead-on rendition of a White House press conference, complete with the gaggle accusing Bush of sneaking a previously unknown right to free speech on them. Does Cartman succeed in stopping Family Guy from airing its Mohammed episode? You can bet that in the end, Kyle...
Bilal Hussein has worked for the Associated Press during most of the Iraq War, bringing pictures of insurgents that call into question his access to their plans, among other issues. Michelle Malkin reports that the AP's lensman has been caught with a weapons cache and has been detained by the US military. She has links to the complete back story; be sure to review it carefully and thoroughly. I think the AP may have some explaining to do....
April 13, 2006
The more things change, the more they stay the same... Just as with the amnesty program that Simpson-Mazzoli gave us in 1986, the Senate's plan to track guest workers into American citizenship has had an effect on illegal immigration, but not the one the Senate intended. MS-NBC reports that border crossings have jumped in the past few days as people attempt to get into the country in time to take advantage of this latest flavor of amnesty: At a shelter overflowing with migrants airing their blistered feet, Francisco Ramirez nursed muscles sore from trekking through the Arizona desert — a trip that failed when his wife did not have the strength to go on. He said the couple would rest for a few days, then try again, a plan echoed by dozens reclining on rickety bunk beds and carpets tossed on the floor after risking violent bandits and the harsh...
The DHS agency in charge of immigration enforcement makes a strange assumption in a case that sounds like a big problem in the war on terror. After shutting down a conspiracy that smuggled dozens of people from India and Pakistan into the US, Immigration and Customs Enforcement says that none had any connection to terrorism. Read the AP's description of this smuggling ring and decide for yourselves: U.S. and Canadian authorities announced Wednesday that they have broken up a human smuggling ring suspected of illegally shepherding dozens of Indian and Pakistani nationals into Washington state from British Columbia. To date, a federal grand jury in Seattle has indicted 14 U.S. and Canadian men for their roles in the alleged scheme. Twelve had been arrested as of Wednesday. Leigh Winchell, special agent in charge of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Seattle, said investigators on both sides of the border have...
In the wake of the announcements from Iran of its success in uranium enrichment and its plan to immediately expand its cascade to 3,000 centrifuges, one might expect the United Nations Security Council to speak out strongly against Iran's intransigence and defiance of its unanimous resolution. One might also expect Europe to react to the humiliation Iran delivered to its diplomatic corps, which had worked for years to reach a negotiated solution on non-proliferation with the mullahcracy. Well, if one expected those actions, one would have to live with disappointment: Leading countries on the U.N. Security Council expressed dismay Wednesday over Tehran's announcement that it had produced enriched uranium, although there was little sign of consensus among them on how to respond. ... Russia and China, also key members of the council, struck a more equivocal tone, raising concerns about Iran's actions but also warning against any precipitous international action....
North Korea reacted predictably to the attention Iran has received over the past few days by issuing threats of its own, apparently somewhat jealous of losing the world's focus: North Korea said on Thursday it might boost its nuclear deterrent if six-country talks on ending its atomic programs remained deadlocked, but said it would return if Washington met a demand to unfreeze it assets. Pyongyang's top envoy to the stalled negotiations told a news conference in Tokyo the United States must lift what the North considers to be financial sanctions against it. ... In an official media report on Thursday, North Korea reiterated it has been building a nuclear deterrent to counter what it views as Washington's hostile policy toward it. Washington has clamped down on a Macau-based bank it suspects of assisting Pyongyang in illicit financial activities, including money laundering. "Hey, look at me! Over here!" That's the message...
The Arizona state legislature voted to enact a bill that would require its law-enforcement agencies to arrest illegal immigrants for violating state laws against criminal trespass, a measure that would trump resistance to cooperating with federal agencies in rounding up illegal immigrants. The bill now goes to Democratic governor Janet Napolitano, who has made veto noises on this issue: Two days after a big immigration march in Phoenix, the Arizona Legislature on Wednesday approved legislation to make illegal immigrants subject to the state's criminal trespassing law. The Senate approved the bill on a 17-12 vote and the House followed with a 33-27 vote, with both Republican-led chambers voting nearly along party lines. Supporters of the bill contend it would provide "a second line of defense" behind the border patrol by enabling state and local law enforcement officers to arrest illegal immigrants. ... The bill was sent to Democratic Gov. Janet...
How does a older man keep a vivacious young woman like Catherine Zeta-Jones satisfied, anyway? Michael Douglas apparently told Jay Leno his secret: Michael Douglas has explained how he keeps wife Catherine Zeta-Jones interested in the bedroom. His Oscar-winning other half has no need to lay back and think of Wales to conjure up images of her native home. Her 61-year-old husband told chat show host Jay Leno that he impersonates the earthy Welsh accent of Richard Burton. Damn! Who knew all that was needed was to act drunk and chew the scenery? I'll have to find my copy of Exorcist II: The Heretic before the weekend... What Richard Burton line of dialogue would most likely do the trick? Post it in the comments section!...
Earlier, the Media Blog at NRO confirmed that Comedy Central refused to show an image of Mohammed in the two-part episode of South Park that finished with last night's installment. The AP report at the Washington Post provides more detail on the decision made by the Viacom unit to restrain Trey Parker and Matt Stone from using Mohammed to make its point about intimidation and free speech: Parker and Stone were angered when told by Comedy Central several weeks ago that they could not run an image of Muhammad, according to a person close to the show who didn't want to be identified because of the issue's sensitivity. The network's decision was made over concerns for public safety, the person said. Comedy Central said in a statement issued Thursday: "In light of recent world events, we feel we made the right decision." Its executives would not comment further. With this...
Michael Yon has resumed his intrepid travels through Iraq to bring us some of the best reporting available from the front lines, relating the interaction of American troops with the Iraqi people and their engagement against the insurgents. Michael will also be giving us his perspectives on what he thinks of the situation, and given his embedding and his track record, his voice has great credibility. That credibility has gained him a following not just in the blogosphere but also among audiences of radio and television shows. Unfortunately, for at least one radio host, Michael only serves as a conduit for the host's own perspective, and according to Michael has angrily discarded him as soon as his evaluation differed from that of the host: Of course! Ye’ old censorship. Every country practices censorship, in one form or the other. Just this week, Thailand is having a Texas-cage match over censorship,...
April 14, 2006
After having doors slammed in their face and their cash flow cut off, Hamas has decided to recognize Israel under its 1967 border: According to a Thursday report on Al-Jazeera, the Hamas government will recognize Israel if Israel withdraws to the 1967 borders. Hamas officials close to Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh expect Haniyeh to announce the change in the organization's platform in the next few days, Army Radio reported. This would appear to vindicate the hard line approach taken by the US and surprisingly echoed by the EU. Hamas had threatened to get its cash needs fulfilled by other countries in the region, especially Iran, after having the West wash its hands of the Palestinians when they elected Hamas into power. It now looks as though Hamas had its bluff called and perhaps once again proved the historical disregard that Arab nations have always had for the Palestinians....
The Washington Post's EJ Dionne writes about the discovery of the apocryphal Gospel of Judas, a writing known and rejected by Christians since the early days of the Church, but which has achieved new notoriety lately through its textual release after years of study. Dionne addresses the silliness that has accompanied the National Geographic release: The buzz surrounding the Gospel of Judas is that it will threaten the faith. Much the same has been said of "The Da Vinci Code" by Dan Brown, but the Judas Gospel has the additional benefit of being a genuine historical document. It is the product of the Gnostic wing of early Christianity, eventually condemned as heretical, that claims salvation not by faith or works but by special knowledge. ... Judging by the Gospel of Judas, the "knowledge" claim of the book's author or authors is to a rather bizarre cosmology. The detailed description of...
A political crisis in Iraq has been averted, with Shi'ites reversing their earlier position and now agreeing to attend the National Assembly when it meets on Monday. The largest faction in the Iraqi parliament had previously insisted that until key ministerial positions had been filled, the session should not open and they would refuse to participate: Leaders of Iraq's Shiite political alliance said Friday that they will attend next week's parliament session even if they haven't reached agreement on nominations for the top posts in the next government. Members of the alliance will meet this weekend to discuss the posts — including the position of prime minister, which has been the core of the long-standing stalemate, said Sabah al-Saedi, a Shiite politician. He said alliance members would attend the parliament session, scheduled for Monday. "We will meet Saturday and Sunday to discuss the matters of the prime minister nomination and...
The evacuation of Israel from Gaza has left behind a vacuum which both Fatah and Hamas have tried to fill ahead of the other. Now Joshua Mitnick reports that both have started setting up rival military bases in the first stage of what looks like an impending civil war in the Palestinian territories: Militant squatters loyal to rivals Hamas and the Palestinian Authority are turning open lots in the Gaza Strip into ad hoc military bases, a development that some fear will lead to open warfare between rival Palestinian factions. Leaders at the camps say they are acting in the name of the Palestinian uprising against Israel, but the growing presence of what are essentially guerrilla training camps comes at a time of growing instability in Gaza. "Everyone is showing their strength under the umbrella of the resistance," said Tawfik Abu Khoussa, a former spokesman of the Palestinian Interior Ministry....
General John Vines, the commander of the XVIII Airborne Corps, told a policy conference that al-Qaeda terror leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has conceded defeat in Iraq and has begun pulling out, thwarted in his attempt to bring down the elected Iraqi government by his own heavy-handed tactics. Vines told the group assembled at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy that the bloodthirsty and indiscriminate tactics and targeting of AQ's terror network in Iraq has galvanized Iraqi opinion against Islamofascism and has isolated the foreign network under Zarqawi's command: Al Qaeda in Iraq and its presumed leader, Abu Musab Zarqawi, have conceded strategic defeat and are on their way out of the country, a top U.S. military official contended yesterday. The group's failure to disrupt national elections and a constitutional referendum last year "was a tactical admission by Zarqawi that their strategy had failed," said Lt. Gen. John R. Vines,...
Russia has once again undercut the alliance against Islamofascist terror. After meeting with Hamas while the West tried to isolate the terrorists, Russia has now announced that it will supply the funding that the US and EU cut off to pressure Hamas to recognize Israel and abide by existing agreements: Russia has said it will grant the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority urgent financial aid, in opposition to the policy of the EU and the US. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made the pledge to authority President Mahmoud Abbas in a telephone call, Moscow said. The US and EU cut off aid after Hamas took power on 30 March because the militant group refused to renounce violence or recognise Israel. ... A Russian foreign ministry statement said: "Mahmoud Abbas stated his high appreciation of Russia's intent, confirmed by Sergei Lavrov, to grant the Palestinian Authority an urgent financial aid in the nearest future."...
I have struggled the past couple of days about what I think regarding the full-court press by former generals calling for Donald Rumsfeld's resignation. When Rumsfeld took the job as Defense Secretary prior to the war on terror, I fully expected that some generals would retire and fire broadsides at him for his plans to overhaul the DoD. Rumsfeld is a radical innovator, and the changes he proposed to transform the American military from a Cold War barrier to a nimble and flexible rapid-response force in the new global environment was bound to make old-school brass very uncomfortable. The generals that now speak out against Rumsfeld are from that part of the military most likely to have objected to his reforms. Also, the criticisms they have levelled at the SecDef have more to do with the policy of the administration than with Rumsfeld's performance in carrying them out, although not...
April 15, 2006
And now, at least one media outlet brings us the other side of the Rumsfeld debate. The Washington Times reports on three now-retired generals who worked closely with Donald Rumsfeld during the war on terror and who support his continued tenure as Secretary of Defense: "I think what we see happening with retired general officers is bad for the military, bad for civil-military relations and bad for the country," retired Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs under Mr. Bush, said in an interview with The Washington Times. He said he would elaborate his views in an op-ed essay. "I'm hurt," said retired Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Michael P. DeLong, who was deputy commander of U.S. Central Command during the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and briefed Mr. Rumsfeld at the Pentagon. "When we have an administration that is currently at war, with a secretary...
The Democrats may have angered a key component of their political base with their abject pandering to the immigration protests the past few weeks. The head of the largest union has blasted Ted Kennedy for pushing his guest-worker/amnesty plan as an attack on the living standard for American workers: Labor unions, which are among the Democratic Party's most loyal supporters, are deeply at odds with the party's push for a guest-worker program, and many Capitol Hill aides say erosion of labor's support undermined the Senate immigration-reform bill last week. AFL-CIO President John Sweeney says guest-worker programs supported by top Democrats such as Sens. Edward M. Kennedy and Dianne Feinstein are a "bad idea and harm all workers." "They cast workers into a perennial second-class status and unfairly put their fates into their employers' hands," said Mr. Sweeney, whose organization represents 13 million workers in 54 unions. This has split the...
Murray Waas wrote a rather sensational story for the National Journal yesterday about the Scooter Libby case in which he alleges that Dick Cheney told Libby to leak a classified report to the press. Again, as with so much in this case, the truth of the matter depends on reading the full context of the situation, and Waas fails to provide it. Fortunately, Steve Spruiell at NRO's Media Blog stayed on top of it. Waas reports on the pedigree of the "leak" without noting that the same information had already been leaked and misrepresented on several occasions by its author: Vice President Dick Cheney directed his then-chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, on July 12, 2003 to leak to the media portions of a then-highly classified CIA report that Cheney hoped would undermine the credibility of former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, a critic of the Bush administration's Iraq policy,...
Fawaz Turki had worked for the Saudi-based Arab News for almost a decade as an opinion journalist, but when those opinions clashed with management, he found himself unceremoniously shown the door last month. Turki takes to the pages of the Washington Post to decry the intolerance and rigidity of Arabic dialogue and its reluctance to engage in open, honest debate on the issues confronting Arab society: I was unceremoniously fired this month by my Saudi newspaper, a leading English-language daily called Arab News. It didn't matter that I had been the senior columnist on the op-ed page for nine years or that my work was quoted widely in the European and American media, including this paper. What mattered was that I had committed one of the three cardinal sins an Arab journalist must avoid when working for the Arab press: I criticized the government. The other two? Bringing up Islam...
I met Bill Hobbs during Justice Sunday II last year and was impressed by his thoughtfulness and dedication to blogging and to his beliefs in faith and country. Those beliefs will hopefully allow Bill to weather his storm, in which he has resigned from his job as a result of a cartoon he posted on his blog. Bill posted a stick figure planting a bomb with the caption, "Mohammed Blows", as a response to the Prophet Cartoon riots and the Iranian Holocaust-cartoon contest. When a politically-connected local reporter wrote a scathing column regarding Bill's cartoon and his support for the Republican Party candidate for governor, Jim Bryson, and his employment at Belmont University. Faster than one can say dhimmitude, Hobbs has been cut off from the Bryson campaign and his job at Belmont. I can understand why Bryson distanced himself, at least in terms of politics. Why, though, did Belmont...
Today's Washington Post reports on our more extreme left-wing counterparts of the blogosphere and the measured tones of debate they promote. The David Finkel piece focuses on Maryscott O'Connor, whose life provides an example of the balance and stability so evident in the fever swamps: In the angry life of Maryscott O'Connor, the rage begins as soon as she opens her eyes and realizes that her president is still George W. Bush. The sun has yet to rise and her family is asleep, but no matter; as soon as the realization kicks in, O'Connor, 37, is out of bed and heading toward her computer. Out there, awaiting her building fury: the Angry Left, where O'Connor's reputation is as one of the angriest of all. "One long, sustained scream" is how she describes the writing she does for various Web logs, as she wonders what she should scream about this day....
The Washington Post reports that al-Qaeda's executive officer spends his time tapping out e-mail screeds to current and former associates and using the Internet to broadcast his interpretations of Islam and global politics to the Ummah, exhorting them to remain true to the Islamist cause and scolding them when they step out of line. In fact, the description of Ayman al-Zawahiri by Craig Whitlock sounds uncomfortably familiar to bloggers: In January 2003, one of the two most wanted men in the world couldn't contain his frustration. From a hiding place probably somewhere in South Asia, he tapped out two lengthy e-mails to a fellow Egyptian who'd been criticizing him in public. "I beg you, don't stop the Muslim souls who trust your opinions from joining the jihad against the Americans," wrote Ayman al-Zawahiri, deputy leader of al-Qaeda. He fired off the message even though it risked exposing him. "Let's put...
Mitch Berg points with pride to his high score on a grammar and language skills test on OKCupid, so I figured I'd check it out for myself. You can see the results below: English Genius You scored 100% Beginner, 100% Intermediate, 100% Advanced, and 100% Expert! You did so extremely well, even I can't find a word to describe your excellence! You have the uncommon intelligence necessary to understand things that most people don't. You have an extensive vocabulary, and you're not afraid to use it properly! Way to go! Thank you so much for taking my test. I hope you enjoyed it! For the complete Answer Key, visit my blog: http://shortredhead78.blogspot.com/. My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:You scored higher than 54% on BeginnerYou scored higher than 34% on IntermediateYou scored higher than 61% on AdvancedYou scored higher than 92% on...
April 16, 2006
From the Gospel according to John, chapter 20 (NIV): Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, "They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don't know where they have put him!" So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. Then Simon Peter, who was behind him, arrived and went into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the burial cloth that had been around Jesus' head. The...
The Jerusalem Post reports that the Israel will open negotiations with with the US to release convicted spy Jonathan Pollard in exchange for the release of convicted Palestinian terrorist and Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti: Officials in Jerusalem claimed on Saturday that the US would free imprisoned Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard in exchange for Israel releasing jailed Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti. According to Army Radio, Israel is set to offer the proposed prisoner swap deal in the next few months, following the unfolding anarchy in the Palestinian Authority. Seemingly, Israel intends to use Barghouti's release to strengthen the Fatah movement against the background of the much criticized rule of the new Hamas-led Palestinian government. In 2004 Israel suggested a similar move but the initiative was rejected by the US government. Jerusalem officials predict that on this occasion the White House will accept the proposal. This may be one of the dumber...
The Gaza Palestinians have begun to experience the consequences of electing terrorists to govern their territories, as the Guardian (UK) reports this morning. Hamas has refused to renounce violence, recognize Israel, or agree to abide by previous agreements, and so the Western nations on which the Palestinians rely for economic aid have responded by cutting off the money that pays their bills, including salaries. This has caused the Palestinians to grumble about their new leadership and to openly defy the government Hamas leads: Karni is officially closed because the Israeli army has declared a security alert for the Jewish Passover holiday. Yet it has barely been open this year. The effect is a paralysis of Gaza's commerce and severe shortages of basic foods. Not that the locals are in a position to buy what food there is. There is little money because the European Union, Canada and the United States...
The London Telegraph notes the unrest among Iranian minority groups and the tactics that the hard-line Teheran government have taken to address it. James Brandon and Colin Freeman report that the messianic Ahmadinejad approach has further alienated the diverse populace of Iran, and the decades-old imposition of shari'a has resulted in a growing rebellion that could undermine the mullahcracy: "The Iranian government's plan to create a global Islamic state is destroying our people's culture and -values," said Akif Zagros, 28, a Persian literature graduate who serves on Pejak's seven-strong ruling council. "But we want all nations to be democratic, to live together and learn from each other." Pejak, the Party for Freedom and Life in Kurdistan, is fast becoming a threat to Teheran. The group, founded in 1998, claims to have hundreds of thousands of followers among Iran's estimated four million Kurds, and has been denounced as a terrorist organisation...
George Will writes a powerful eulogy to the Republican claim on protection for Constitutional originalism in today's Washington Post. Unfortunately, he writes it about four years too late and on the wrong effort and applies it to a too-narrow group -- but at least he's fighting the right fight: If in November Republicans lose control of the House of Representatives, April 5 should be remembered as the day they demonstrated that they earned defeat. Traducing the Constitution and disgracing conservatism, they used their power for their only remaining purpose -- to cling to power. Their vote to restrict freedom of speech came just as the GOP's conservative base is coming to the conclusion that House Republicans are not worth working for in October or venturing out to vote for in November. The "problem" Republicans addressed is that in 2004 Democrats were more successful than Republicans in using so-called 527 organizations...
No, that doesn't mean that I spent Easter with The Sopranos and Big Love. Okay, well, I did do that, but most of the day I spent with the Little Admiral and the extended family we received with our wonderful daughter-in-law. In fact, Sean from Everything I Know Is Wrong and his wife Karen hosted the family celebration as they often do at Easter, and we had a grand time with a delicious dinner and an egg hunt that amused everyone. Here's the Little Admiral in her new Easter dress: Her aunt also celebrated her birthday, and the combined events gave me a new excuse to haul out the new Fuji FinePix S5200 digital camera that I bought to replace the Canon A70 I lost in South Bend. This has better resolution than the Canon (5.1 Mp vs 3.2 Mp), and the feel more closely resembles a camera rather than...
April 17, 2006
After running an oft-cited article last week that claimed Iran was ten years away from a nuclear weapon, the New York Times shifts course this morning and reports that the Islamic Republic has a few shortcuts up its sleeve. William Broad and David Sanger explain how Mahmoud Ahmadinejad intends to shave significant time off of their development cycle: Of all the claims that Iran made last week about its nuclear program, a one-sentence assertion by its president has provoked such surprise and concern among international nuclear inspectors they are planning to confront Tehran about it this week. The assertion involves Iran's claim that even while it begins to enrich small amounts of uranium, it is pursuing a far more sophisticated way of making atomic fuel that American officials and inspectors say could speed Iran's path to developing a nuclear weapon. Iran has consistently maintained that it abandoned work on this...
The massive demonstrations of the past few weeks of illegal immigrants and their supporters waving Mexican flags and supporting "la Raza" may have inspired some politicians, like Ted Kennedy, to maneuver themselves to the forefront of the movement for amnesty, attempting to pander to the show of force that the protestors intended. However, it appears from electoral polling that the same demonstrations have propelled hard-line border-security politicians to greater popularity as the protests and their demands for benefits repelled a large segment of the existing electorate: As lawmakers set aside the debate on immigration legislation for their spring recess, the protests by millions around the nation have escalated the policy debate into a much broader battle over the status of the country's 11 million illegal immigrants. While the marches have galvanized Hispanic voters, they have also energized those who support a crackdown on illegal immigration. "The size and magnitude of...
Tel Aviv got hit by a suicide bomber this morning, an attack claimed by Islamic Jihad that killed at least six people in a fast-food restaurant. The terrorist group that had sent rockets into Israel from Gaza pledged a "non-stop" offensive against Israelis in the latest example of the Hamas-Fatah-IJ triangle strategy: A Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up near a fast-food restaurant in a bustling commercial area of Tel Aviv during the Passover holiday Monday, killing six people and wounding at least 35. ... The Islamic Jihad militant group claimed responsibility in a telephone call to The Associated Press. The attack came a day after the group had pledged to carry out more attacks. Hamas and other militant groups have been observing a ceasefire with Israel for more than a year, though the new Hamas-led Palestinian leadership has refused to condemn attacks against Israelis. Islamic Jihad has claimed responsibility...
When The Week Magazine honored me two weeks ago, I had no idea that the two other honorees from that evening were just warming up. The Pulitzer committee has awarded their prestigious Pulitzer Prize to Nick Kristof for his series of reports from Darfur and to Mike Luckovich for his editorial cartoons. I had the opportunity to speak to both the evening of the awards dinner. Nick Kristof and I shared a ride from the hotel to the dinner, and he spoke at length about his experiences in Darfur and his prognosis of the conflict. It was an enlightening ride, but far too short; I would have been happy to have been stuck in traffic for a while longer. Mike and I spoke after the affair, when I had an opportunity to tell him how much I have enjoyed his work over the years. Mike and his wife are charming...
Joseph Shahda has dedicated himself to the arduous task of reviewing the documents captured in Baghdad during Operation Iraqi Freedom and left untranslated by the US military. Joseph has posted these translations at Free Republic and his translations have been confirmed as accurate by independent translators abroad. Today, Joseph posted a translation of military orders commanding the transfer of "special ammunition" from Najaf to Baghdad in the week before the American invasion of Iraq: Document ISGP-2003-0001498 ISGP-2003-0001498 contains a 9 pages TOP SECRET memo (pages 87-96 in the pdf document) dated March 16 2003 that talks about transferring “SPECIAL AMMUNITION” from one ammunition depot in Najaf to other ammunition depots near Baghdad. As we know by now the term SPECIAL AMMUNITION was used by Saddam Regime to designate CHEMICAL WEAPONS as another translated document has already shown. For example in document CMPC 2004-002219 where Saddam regime decided to use “CHEMICAL...
The Hamas-led Palestinian Authority underscored the nature of their regime when they praised the suicide bombing in Tel Aviv, calling the murder of at least nine civilians and the maiming of dozens "self defense": Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas -- whose Fatah Party was ousted in January parliamentary elections -- condemned the Tel Aviv terrorist attack. But Hamas -- the group that came to power -- called the bombing justified. ... Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said the Palestinian people "are in a state of self-defense." "We assure our Palestinian people of the right to defend themselves, and this operation is surely a natural reaction to the continued Zionist crimes carried out against our Palestinian people," said Zuhri. Mahmoud Abbas rejected the argument and condemned the bombing, but the Palestinians under Fatah management never lifted a finger to disarm the terrorist groups or to stop suicide bombers from targeting Israeli civilians....
Michelle Malkin linked to a thuggish effort on the campus of UC Santa Cruz to push military recruiters off campus through physical intimidation last week. Their attempt worked, but now the organizers of this effort have cried foul over Michelle's decision to post their contact information from their own press release on her blog. As usual, the idiots who cannot read a press release blame Michelle for revealing their private numbers and have started the usual racist and sexist insults and threats against her. (None of them are terribly original, and some of them hurl epithets referencing Chinese ethnicity, apparently believing all Asians must be alike.) Even better, leading MS-NBC nutcase Keith Olbermann picked the day when a suicide bomber killed nine people at a falafel stand to choose Michelle as his World's Worst Person of the Day -- for reprinting the information organizers proudly publicized themselves. Even the Daily...
The efforts by anti-war protestors at UC Santa Cruz to run military recruiters off campus, while successful, portends a dangerous trend for the Left. For a generation, universities around the country have kept the ROTC and recruiters off campus, ostensibly due to the ban on homosexuals serving in the military but more clearly due to an anti-military point of view. After the Supreme Court upheld the Solomon Amendment that gives the federal government the ability to cut off federal funding to colleges who block access to military recruiters, the students themselves have escalated the battle by driving them off campus through intimidation, as they did at the home of the Banana Slugs. This represents a short-sighted policy by those on the Left, which comes as a piece from their reflexive dislike for all things military (the Left, as opposed to liberals). When they organize to force the military from their...
April 18, 2006
The centerpiece of the Bush administration's domestic policy in the first term was the No Child Left Behind Act, which headlined a large-scale budget increase for the Department of Education and drew Ted Kennedy into a coalition with George Bush. The program aimed to ensure accountabilty from schools based on student performance and forced a testing regime that would uncover poorly-performing districts and target them for improvement or serious change. The AP reported last night that this system has been undermined by deliberate underreporting of tests taken by the very students it meant to protect: States are helping public schools escape potential penalties by skirting the No Child Left Behind law's requirement that students of all races must show annual academic progress. With the federal government's permission, schools deliberately aren't counting the test scores of nearly 2 million students when they report progress by racial groups, an Associated Press computer...
The Los Angeles Times editorial board can sometimes provide a pleasant surprise, and today it demonstrates this when reviewing the Bush administration's Palestinian policy in light of the latest suicide bombing in Tel Aviv. The LAT utterly rejects Hamas' attempt at moral equivalence and gives a strong endorsement of the isolation policy pushed by the US: THE HORROR OF MONDAY'S SUICIDE bombing in Tel Aviv, which killed the bomber and nine other people and wounded scores more, presented Hamas with an opportunity to break from its history as a supporter of terrorism. Instead, a spokesman for Hamas, which formed a Palestinian parliamentary government last month, described the attack carried out by another group, Islamic Jihad, as an act of self-defense. If there was any lingering doubt that the U.S. and Europe were right to ostracize the Hamas government and cut off economic aid, it has been dramatically dispelled. It remains...
A resolution which would have held Sudanese officials publicly and individually responsible for the ongoing genocide in Darfur got blocked by China and Russia at the United Nations yesterday, leading to a public escalation by Ambassador John Bolton. The so-called silence process would have approved sanctions against four Sudanese government officials without requiring a Security Council vote if the member nations had not objected to the resolution. When China objected and Russia supported the objection, Bolton decided to force the proposal into the open: John R. Bolton, the United States ambassador, said Monday that he intended to offer a Security Council resolution on Tuesday that would publicly identify four Sudanese individuals responsible for atrocities in Darfur and possibly force a vote on whether the panel would impose sanctions on them. ... He said he decided on the move after learning that China and Russia had objected to action against the...
It appears that incoming White House chief of staff Joshua Bolten has a strong mandate from George Bush to make sweeping changes to staff and Cabinet, according to reports by the New York Times and Washington Post this morning. At least for now, it looks as though no one's job is secure among Bush advisors, as the polls continue to show a slide in confidence in the approach to the midterm elections: The new White House chief of staff put the West Wing and official Washington on notice on Monday about potentially substantial changes in the way the White House is staffed and operates. Meeting first thing Monday with senior White House aides, the new chief, Joshua B. Bolten, said it was time to "refresh and re-energize" President Bush's team, the White House press secretary, Scott McClellan, said. Mr. Bolten also said anybody who was considering leaving within the year...
For a company that prides itself on political awareness, Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream sure doesn't know much about research. The manufacturer of the gourmet desserts introduced a new flavor named after a bar drink, but failed to reckon with Irish memories: Ben & Jerry's, the socially aware ice-cream maker, has apologised to Irish consumers for launching a new flavour evoking the worst days of British military oppression. Tubs of Black and Tan ice-cream have gone on sale this month and prompted complaints that the phrase is not just the name for mixing stout with pale ale. Black and Tans, irate customers explained, was the term for an irregular force of British ex-servicemen recruited during the Irish war of independence and renowned for their brutality, including the 1920 massacre of 12 people at a Dublin football match. The new flavour is only available in the US at present. Back when...
It's been a tough 24 hours over here since the First Mate inadvertently wound up playing a new medical game called, "Where The Hell Did That Come From?" Last night at the end of her dialysis run, when she stood up to get her blood pressure measured, her chest access just plopped out onto the floor. Since this had just previously been plugged into a pulmonary artery, the dropped shunt caused quite the commotion in the dialysis center. Two nurses pushed her back into the recliner and laid her out flat while one of them started pressing a bandage into her chest. We thought she'd have to get transported immediately to the hospital, but the bleeding turned out to be minimal. However, she still had a hole in her chest and no access for dialysis, so today we had to get her to the hospital to have a new shunt...
Senator Joe Lieberman told the Jerusalem Post in an interview to be released on Friday that he considers military strikes on nuclear sites in Iran a possibility and an option that must remain on the table. David Horovitz reports that the sole member of the Scoop Jackson wing of the Senate says that Congress holds little hope that the UN will do anything to stop Iran's drive for nuclear weapons: The US is probably incapable of completely destroying the Iranian nuclear program, but as a last resort it could attempt to knock out "some of the components" in order to "delay and deter it," Senator Joe Lieberman, the former Democratic vice presidential candidate and a serving member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has told The Jerusalem Post. Speaking at a time of almost daily declarations from Teheran concerning both progress in the nuclear program and hostility to Israel, Lieberman...
Congressman Mark Kennedy from Minnesota's Sixth District has started campaigning in earnest for the open seat vacated by the retiring (or retreating) Senator Mark Dayton. This seat represents one of two good opportunities for the GOP to pick up a Democratic seat in the Senate for these midterms; Maryland's Michael Steele also has a good shot at Paul Sarbane's seat. If the Republicans intend on staying in the majority next year, this seat has to be a key for the national party. We face some tough races around the country, and Mark faces a tough one here against Minneapolis DA Amy Klobuchar. Kennedy Vs The Machine has a link for contributions to the Kennedy campaign, and the Savage Republican has already done his part. I'm going there now to do mine. If you want to protect the GOP majority in the Senate for the last two years of the Bush...
After the AP reported that as many as two million students, primarily minority children, had their test scores hidden by schools and states in order to avoid the accountability provided by the No Child Left Behind, Congress expressed shock that educators apparently can't add properly -- or thought Congress couldn't. Key House and Senate members have stated that they will review actions by states to exempt themselves from the reporting provisions of NCLB and possibly mandate reporting levels in the future: Congressional leaders and a former Bush Cabinet member said Tuesday that schools should stop excluding large numbers of minority students' test scores when they report progress under the No Child Left Behind law. The Associated Press reported Monday that schools have gotten federal permission to deliberately not count the test scores of nearly 2 million students when they report academic progress by race as required by the law. The...
See if we can sort this out together. Our governor, Tim Pawlenty, has threatened to veto any funding for the Minnesota college system that includes DREAM, new legislation that allows the children of illegal immigrants to take advantage of state-resident tuition fees instead of the rate charged to students from outside Minnesota. This is similar to the DREAM Act that Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) has attempted to work into the Senate version of immigration reform. The Star Tribune reports on the standoff between the Minnesota legislature and the governor: Gov. Tim Pawlenty has asked a House committee to reject a proposal that would allow some illegal immigrants to pay in-state tuition to state colleges and universities. An identical measure died last year when Pawlenty threatened to veto funding bills for the University of Minnesota and the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system (MnSCU) if the provision was included. And this...
April 19, 2006
Israel has decided not to launch a lightning-strike attack on the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority despite holding it responsible for the suicide bombing in Tel Aviv that killed nine people and wounded dozens. Thus far, it appears that Ehud Olmert has decided to bide his time and look for ways to undermine Hamas: Israel said Tuesday that it would increase political pressure on the Palestinian government in response to a suicide bombing the day before, but gave no hint of planning a major military response or singling out members of the Hamas-dominated government for arrest or assassination. ... Israel's prime minister-designate, Ehud Olmert, huddled with senior aides and top security officials on Tuesday and chose to emphasize diplomatic and political pressure rather than a large military response, officials said. The Israeli approach is intended to maintain Western and other international support for boycotting the new Palestinian government, which is struggling with...
Kofi Annan has publicly scolded Iran for its financing and involvement with Hezbollah and their interference with the new democratic government of Lebanon. Benny Avni reports for the New York Sun on a rare outing by the UN of Iran's terror network ties and their efforts to undermine secular movements within Southwest Asia: Secretary-General Annan for the first time has accused the mullahs of Iran of interfering in the affairs of the sovereign state Lebanon and asked that they heed the 2004 Security Council resolution urging the country's complete independence. Mr. Annan last night also expressed his deep concern about the actions of Iran's surrogate militia - the terrorist organization Hezbollah, which operates in Lebanon - and its repeated defiance of the council's call for the disarming of all factions in Lebanon. The language of the report, finalized late yesterday afternoon by the secretary-general's envoy in Lebanon, Terje Roed-Larsen, took...
Hamas has certainly built an impressive track record at the helm of the Palestinian Authority. Just when no one thought they could possibly do worse than the kleptocrats of Fatah that robbed the Palestinians blind for a decade, Hamas has created a nostalgia for the previous government in less than two months. After having their aid cut off and impoverishing their people through diplomatic isolation with the West, Hamas has busied itself by alienating their closest Arab neighbor: Palestinian officials have criticised Jordan's decision to cancel a visit to Amman by Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahhar of the Hamas militant group. Amman announced it had postponed the trip indefinitely after discovering arms and explosives it said were smuggled into Jordan by Hamas members. It said this was proof that Hamas had been saying one thing and doing another in its dealings with Jordan. ... Jordanian officials said the weapons were seized...
Anne Applebaum writes a must-read column in today's Washington Post about modern-day Luddites and the impact they have on energy production in the US. As gasoline nears $3 per gallon again just in time for the summer driving season, one would expect environmentalists and proponents of renewable energy to take advantage of the economics and push for new power production facilities to demonstrate their worth. However, as Applebaum notes, a more sinister force than NIMBYism has throttled the entire field for decades: The problem plaguing new energy developments is no longer NIMBYism, the "Not-In-My-Back-Yard" movement. The problem now, as one wind-power executive puts it, is BANANAism: "Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything." The anti-wind brigade, fierce though it is, pales beside the opposition to liquid natural gas terminals, and would fade entirely beside the mass movement that will oppose a new nuclear power plant. Indeed, the founders of Cape Wind...
Mike Kasper has done a remarkable job in delving into the Able Providence story. Be sure to read his latest analysis here....
The new White House chief of staff Joshua Bolten made two moves today in his new assignment to bring change to the West Wing and a fresh set of faces to national policy. Neither of the two moves came as much of a surprise, as Scott McClellan left and Karl Rove left his policy post as deputy chief of staff to focus on the midterm elections: Karl Rove, the president's most influential adviser and a dominant force in the Bush administration since its beginning, surrendered key policy responsibilities today while press secretary Scott McClellan announced his resignation. Both moves were part of the makeover promised earlier this week by a White House seeking to reverse sagging public opinion ratings. Rove will remain deputy chief of staff to President Bush, but he will drop his portfolio as policy coordinator -- a job he assumed a year ago -- and once again...
April 20, 2006
The hardline government of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has ratcheted up the pressure on their already-restive population by initiating a crackdown on men and women who do not comport themselves to the strict code of Islam. Iran has authorized police to make arrests when women fail to secure their hijab or men wear unusual hair styles, orders that could result in jail time even for walking a dog in public: Iran's Islamic authorities are preparing a crackdown on women flouting the stringent dress code in the clearest sign yet of social and political repression under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. From today police in Tehran will be under orders to arrest women failing to conform to the regime's definition of Islamic morals by wearing loose-fitting hijab, or headscarves, tight jackets and shortened trousers exposing skin. Offenders could be punished with £30 fines or two months in jail. Officers will also be authorised to confront...
The planned walkout of illegal immigrants for May 1 has lost steam according to a report by the Washington Post. Two weeks after the call for the boycott and one-day strike, a panel of immigration activists announced yesterday that they would encourage people to stay at work but to sign petitions and join protests on May 1: A panel of immigration activists said yesterday that it will not encourage workers and families to walk off the job and keep their children from school as part of a May 1 boycott, but will hold voter-recruitment and petition drives instead. The announcement by activists from the District, Chicago and Los Angeles at a news conference in Washington underlined the split among the mostly Latino activist groups that led huge demonstrations in more than 140 cities in recent weeks, and shows that the grass-roots movement is operating at cross purposes toward the same...
Joseph Shahda has translated yet another interesting document from the captured Iraqi files, although this one prompts more questions than it provides answers. The memo dictates goals for the year 2000 that involve the development and improvement of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) that have been the mainstay of the insurgencies in Iraq after the fall of Saddam (via Power Line): In the Name of God the Most Merciful the Most Compassionate The Presidency of the Republic The Intelligence Apparatus Mr: The Respected Director Subject: Projects of a Plan Below are projects of the plan for the year 2000 and according to the budget suggested for it in the spending budget of the year 2000 and as follow: 1. Prepare an armored brief case to protect the VIPs 180 days. 2. Study on the Epoxy used currently in preparing the IEDs and the possibility of finding another type that will not...
The Los Angeles Times columnist and blogger Michael Hiltzik has been suspended from his latter role after he admitted posting comments at other blog sites under names other than his own. Hiltzik has used more than one persona to defend himself from criticism at Patterico's Pontifications, the blog that regularly critiques the LA Times and its reporters. Patrick wrote that he suspected Hiltzik of using the varying identities to create an impression of a larger support for his work than truly existed: In an early post on his L.A. Times-sponsored Golden State blog, Times columnist Michael Hiltzik was criticized by a couple of commenters calling themselves “Chad” and “Booker.” These commenters left juvenile comments mocking Hiltzik for explaining blogs to his readers. A commenter named “Mikekoshi” rose to Hiltzik’s defense, scolding the commenters for criticizing Hiltzik’s column ... If Mikekoshi sounds a lot like Michael Hiltzik, that’s no coincidence. Because...
Posting has been light as I have been attending the Heritage Foundation's annual Resource Bank event. Bridgett Wagner invited me to speak on a forum about the lessons of Hurricane Katrina and its implications for big-government solutions. Joining me on the panel was Ron Utt of Heritage as moderator, Louisiana state representative Steve Scalise, and Forest Thigpen of the Mississippi Center for public policy. Steve started by reviewing in detail the ways that FEMA has mismanaged the funds allocated to long-term recovery in New Orleans. Steve promised me a copy of his presentation, and I hope to collect it tomorrow; he did a wonderful job in relating how the government procurement process has sabotaged the clean-up and rebuilding of New Orleans while the money goes everywhere but where it's needed. I'll give you one example that I recall from my notes. After almost eight months, much of the debris left...
Late word out of Iraq has Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jafaari ending his bid for re-election to the position, paving the way for a national unity government that would signal stability to the Iraqi people: Under intense domestic and American pressure, Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari dropped his bid to retain his job on Thursday, removing a major obstacle to forming a new government during a time of rising sectarian violence. Leaders from each of Iraq's main factions — Sunni Arab, Shiite and Kurd — called the decision a breakthrough. "I believe that we will succeed in forming the national unity government the people are waiting for," Adnan Pachachi, the acting speaker of Parliament, said at a news conference at the Convention Center inside the fortified Green Zone. But while Mr. Jaafari's capitulation after two months of resistance could indeed resolve the stalemate, daunting political challenges lie ahead. Leaders are battling over...
April 21, 2006
The roundup of over 1100 illegal immigrants working for a Houston pallet supply company signals the start of a new effort by the Department of Homeland Security to focus enforcement efforts on the companies that hire illegals. The managers of IFCO face up to ten years in prison after being arrested during the roundup for defying immigration and workplace laws against hiring illegals: The apprehension on Wednesday of more than 1,100 illegal immigrants employed by a pallet supply company based in Houston, as well as the arrest of seven of its managers, represented the start of a more aggressive federal crackdown on employers, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Thursday. Describing the hiring of millions of illegal workers, in some cases, as a form of organized crime, Mr. Chertoff said the government would try to combat the practice with techniques similar to those used to shut down the mob. "We...
A band of polygamists face prosecution from the state of Utah not for their unusual marital arrangements but because they refuse to pay property taxes. In a dispute that resulted from the collapse of their commune, the individual members of the LDS separatists have refused to pay the taxes due and may lose their homes. They have responded by fortifying defenses around the houses and community: Thousands of polygamists are engaged in a highly unusual standoff here over property taxes that could ultimately cost them their houses or thrust them into a mainstream America they fear and despise. In one corner is a group of 8,000 or so adherents of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, an offshoot of the Mormon Church that had long paid the property taxes of its members, sometimes even rolling a wheelbarrow through meetings to collect the needed cash. ... The...
The Hamas government of the Palestinian Authority underscored its terrorist nature by placing one of the more notorious terrorists in charge of its new Islamist security forces. Jamal Abu Samhadana, whose track record includes the murder of US Marines in Gaza during a diplomatic mission, will create and command the new force: The Hamas-led Palestinian Authority on Thursday named a guerrilla leader whose group has attacked Israel, and has been blamed for bombing a U.S. convoy, to head a new security force made up of Islamic militants. Interior Minister Saed Siyam issued a decree appointing Jamal Abu Samhadana, head of the Popular Resistance Committees, as director general of his ministry. Abu Samhadana, a former security officer who was dismissed for refusing to report for duty during the uprising against Israel, was given the rank of colonel. His group is responsible for many of the homemade rockets launched at Israel in...
The morning's second session here at the Broadmoor Hotel featured a discussion on the subject of slowing government growth and returning to limited government. Former attorney general Edwin Meese moderated the panel, which included John Caldara, John Fund, Tracie Sharp, Mark Hillman, and Greg Lindsay. The topic brought out some divergent opinions from the panelists, especially when Caldara said