May 1, 2006
Join The 101st Fighting Keyboardists! (Bumped)
** Scroll down for updates -- script for blogroll in Update V! ** Our friends on the port side of the blogosphere have had quite a time tossing around funny little nicknames for those of us who support the war on terror and use our blogs to express our convictions about it. We've seen the names here at CQ in the comments section -- the term "chickenhawk" has appeared more than once, and others in the blogosphere have assigned us to a unit called the 101st Fighting Keyboardists. I've thought about that for a while, wondering what exactly about both epithets appear so fascinating to left-wing bloggers. As a middle-aged grandfather supporting a chronically ill wife, I have few options for doing my part in the war on terror. After 9/11, I spent weeks looking into different options for service while trying to balance my family obligations. Our family found...
How Big Will The Walkout Get?
Today's planned boycott and walkout on behalf of illegal immigrants garnered plenty of press in the past week, but some question just how many will actually risk exposure and the loss of their jobs. The Washington Post notes the divisions within the ranks of immigration activists and their trepidation at the bedfellows that have hitched a ride on this issue: Some local activists predicted that thousands of Washington area immigrants would participate in a national economic boycott today, but immigrant groups who have spoken out against the boycott said they fear that the immigration reform movement is being commandeered to promote political causes beyond immigration. The public tug of war, which continued in the Washington area yesterday on Spanish-language radio, could result in more limited participation in the region than is expected in Dallas and Los Angeles, where the organizers of last month's massive protests have been more unified in...
Sino-Saudi Economic Ties Strengthening
An editorial by a Saudi economics professor in today's Arab News points out the growing ties between the oil-rich Middle Eastern nation and the growing economic behemoth of the East, mainland China. Dr. Mohamed Ramady argues that while enetrgy will provide the Saudi entree to Beijing, the potential for Sino-Saudi relations goes much farther (via Newsbeat1): Between the pomp and ceremony of state visits and senior level meetings of Saudi and Chinese officials, there is indeed much to be pleased about concerning the blossoming relations between the world’s major oil producer, Saudi Arabia, and the emerging manufacturing superpower, China. It is no coincidence that President Hu Jintao of China came to Saudi Arabia straight after his state visit to the US in late April. The earlier state visit to China by Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah had already set the stage for an emerging economic bond between...
When Gas Meets Hot Air
We can now file the $100 gasoline rebate idea into the political remainder bin, as no one appears to want to buy this pandering as policy. While the Democrats have been careful not to directly oppose it -- they claim that it could form part of an overall response to high energy prices -- the GOP's base has busied itself ridiculing it, and rightly so: The Senate Republican plan to mail $100 checks to voters to ease the burden of high gasoline prices is eliciting more scorn than gratitude from the very people it was intended to help. Aides for several Republican senators reported a surge of calls and e-mail messages from constituents ridiculing the rebate as a paltry and transparent effort to pander to voters before the midterm elections in November. "The conservatives think it is socialist bunk, and the liberals think it is conservative trickery," said Don Stewart,...
Another Reason To Thank Canada
One point I missed in my review of United 93 yesterday is one of the lesser-known complications of our actions in grounding air traffic on 9/11. In the movie as in real life, FAA operations manager makes the decision to ground all aircraft immediately, ordering every plane in American airspace to land at the nearest airport. Despite the fact that it will cost the airline industry billions (and later created a large federal bailout package), Sliney knows it's the right action to take, and every plane in America was on the ground by 12:06 PM on 9/11. One of the consequences of closing American airspace was the denial of landing rights to all inbound international flights. Sliney's decision made it necessary for those flights to return home, or if that could not be safely done, then to find somewhere else to land besides the US. Sliney had no idea if...
Sun Still Setting In The West
It appears that the nationwide strike by illegal immigrants and their supporters caused some headaches but little immediate economic impact, as outside of Denver, Chicago, and Los Angeles most demonstrations attracted significantly fewer numbers than earlier rallies. Despite numbering in the tens of millions, the demonstrations only mustered a few hundred thousand opponents to the get-tough approach taken by the House, forcing local employers to shut down but hardly causing a blip in the routine for most Americans: Police estimated 400,000 people marched through Chicago's business district and tens of thousands more rallied in New York and Los Angeles, where police stopped giving estimates at 60,000 as the crowd kept growing. An estimated 75,000 rallied in Denver, more than 15,000 in Houston and 30,000 more across Florida. Smaller rallies in cities from Pennsylvania and Connecticut to Arizona and South Dakota attracted hundreds not thousands. In Los Angeles, protesters wearing white...
CQ On The Air Tonight
I will be appearing on The World Tonight with Rob Breckenridge at Calgary's CHQR at 8:30 CT. Be sure to tune in -- we'll be discussing illegal immigration....
Saddam Produced Nerve Gas Detectors In 2000
Joseph Shahda has translated yet another of the captured Iraqi government documents, and this one shows that Saddam Hussein's government produced banned nerve gas detectors in 2000. Shahda's discovery shows that Saddam never intended on stopping his WMD programs nor planned on complying with UN resolutions that supposedly "contained" Saddam (via Power Line): Beginning of Translation of page 5 of document CMPC-2003-016083 In the Name of God the Most Merciful The Most Compassionate TOP SECRET The Republic of Iraq The Presidency of the Republic The Military Industrialization Commission Number 2/4/44 Date 13/1/2001 To: THE PRESIDENTIAL SECRETARIAT Subject: Detection Equipment Your top Secret letter number AA’/128 on 10/12/2000, we would like to show the following: 1. On 10/12/2000 a laboratory test was done on the new equipment and the results of the test was similar to the required quality compared with the Russian equipments 2. On the light of the above...
May 2, 2006
Condoms And Catholics In The Age Of AIDS
The Vatican has undertaken a review of its teachings on condom use, as the conservative Pope Benedict reconciles the church's mission to protect life within the age of AIDS. The Pope requested a report from theologians about the doctrinal implications of condom usage within marriage when one partner carries HIV or has developed full-blown AIDS: Even at the Vatican, not all sacred beliefs are absolute: Thou shalt not kill, but war can be just. Now, behind the quiet walls, a clash is shaping up involving two poles of near certainty: the church's long-held ban on condoms and its advocacy of human life. The issue is AIDS. Church officials recently confirmed that Pope Benedict XVI had requested a report on whether it might be acceptable for Catholics to use condoms in one narrow circumstance: to protect life inside a marriage when one partner is infected with H.I.V. or is sick with...
Even The Law-Enforcement Model Gets Panned
A New York Times report shows that even a law-enforcement model for conducting the fight against terrorism will not satisfy some people. William Rashbaum reports on the testimony of a paid informer who reported conversations and activities at a Brooklyn mosque to New York detectives, which led to the unraveling of a plot to bomb the Herald Square subway station: The paid police informer who is the central witness at the trial of a Pakistani immigrant charged with plotting to blow up the Herald Square subway station testified yesterday that he collected a wide range of information on his visits to two city mosques, from the tenor of the sermons to how many people attended the services. The informer, Osama Eldawoody, 50, secretly recorded roughly two dozen conversations about the plot with the immigrant, Shahawar Matin Siraj, in the summer of 2004 — many of them incriminating. He was questioned...
Did We Say 'I Told You So' Yet?
When the Bush administration started off its second term by focusing its domestic agenda on entitlement reform, primarily on Social Security, it warned that the fiscal stability of these entitlements was eroding at a faster rate than predicted and pointed out the need for reform now, rather than waiting for the coming collapse. Democrats pounded the administration for its "scare tactics" and insisted that the programs had plenty of stability. Now the administration has released new numbers indicating that the erosion has picked up a little speed: The financial condition of Medicare and Social Security deteriorated in the last year, the Bush administration reported Monday, and it warned again that the programs were unsustainable in their current form. Medicare's hospital insurance trust fund, a widely watched gauge of the program's solvency, will run out of money in 2018, two years earlier than projected in last year's report, the trustees said....
Examiner Excoriates McCain
After John McCain made a statement last week on the Don Imus Show that he would trade the First Amendment for "clean government", one would have expected the industry enabled by that portion of the Bill of Rights to speak out against such talk. Oddly, not one major newspaper addressed the issue until today, when the Washington Examiner takes the Senator to task for his minimization of free political speech: James Madison, the prime mover behind the U.S. Constitution, and his colleagues among the Founders rightly feared arrogant men like Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., so they limited the central government to a few, well-defined powers. As further protection, Madison and the first Congress approved the First Amendment to the Constitution to protect forever the right of every American to freedom of speech, religion, press, assembly and petition. ... McCain incited a blogstorm Friday with this comment, which epitomizes political arrogance:...
The Intellectual Bankruptcy Of Some Bloggers
Mitch Berg wrote a provocative post yesterday on the enduring popularity of immaturity: It's a good thing I have Cap'n Ed and King on the air with me on the NARN show. They are both very diligent in reminding me that when I slag on leftyblogs that there are exceptions to the rule; when I refer to leftybloggers who've been comedically outmaneuvered as "shrieking like a cagefull of poo-flinging monkeys", both were very conscientious about reminding me that there are exceptions. Josh Marshall, Matt Yglesias, Jeralynn Meritt, Flash - they tend to be able to separate the fever from the swamp. ... Sponge seems to assume that anyone involved in the "101st" thinks the joke is in any way analogous to miltiary service. ("Yes, ladies and gentlemen, a midwest call center manager/blogger is comparing a hastily put-together jpeg and internet list with actual military recruitment.") Sponge? Is that really what...
101st Fighting Keyboarders: A Centcom Endorsement (Updated)
Sneakeasy's Joint joined the 101st Fighting Keyboarders and posted about his decision to join up -- which prompted a surprising e-mail from US Central Command: Hi, Kiril: I caught your post about the 101st Fighting Keyboardists. Good luck with the project! I’m not sure if you have been to the US Central Command website but we regularly post news, photos, audio and video from Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom. You (and your fellow bloggers) are welcome to use any materials you find on our site. If you’d like to receive the weekly electronic newsletter and monthly Coalition Bulletin, just ask. If you could add a link to CENTCOM, it’d be appreciated (I’m trying to spread the word about our site!). I’ve attached the CENTCOM logo, should you want to use it with the link. Thanks! SPC C. Flowers CENTCOM Public Affairs I have had some correspondence with SPC...
Tories Outpolling Separatists In Quebec
In a rather stunning political development, the Conservative Party has pulled ahead of Bloc Quebecois, according to a poll taken by La Presse. The reversal of years of decline in Tory fortunes comes as a shock to the separatists, who had almost reached majority support just a few months ago (via Newsbeat1): The Conservatives are rapidly gaining support in Quebec and are now more popular than the province's separatist party, according to a new poll published on Tuesday. The CROP poll for La Presse put the Conservatives at 34 percent in Quebec, up from the 25 percent the party won during the January 23 election. The separatist Bloc Quebecois, which a few months ago was flirting with 50 percent backing, dropped to 31 percent from 42 percent on January 23. The Conservatives, led by Stephen Harper, unexpectedly took 10 of Quebec's 75 seats in the election, helping them win a...
Illegal Immigrants Get Their Answer
The May Day protests by activists for illegal immigrants have resulted in an utterly predictable backlash, according to the Washington Post. Voters have sent bricks to their Congressional representatives as donations for a border barrier, and even those who considered themselves liberals want the government to start rounding up illegals and send them packing: While a series of marches focused much of the nation's attention on the plight of illegal immigrants, scores of other Americans quietly seethed. Now, with the same full-throated cry expressed by those in the country illegally, they are shouting back. Congressional leaders in Washington have gotten bricks in the mail from a group that advocates building a border fence, states in the West and South have drawn up tough anti-immigrant laws, and ordinary citizens, such as Janis McDonald of Pennsylvania, who considers herself a liberal, are not mincing words in expressing their displeasure. "Send them back,"...
May 3, 2006
A Step Back For Porkbusters
The effort to put an end to earmarks -- the technical term for pork-barrel projects in the federal budget -- hit a snag yesterday when the US Senate voted to keep such unrelated projects out of emergency spending legislation on hurricane relief and the Iraq war effort. In a related development, Robert Byrd vehemently opposed a modified versions of the line-item veto that he supported during the Clinton administration: The Senate voted Tuesday to protect home-state projects added by some of its most senior members to an Iraq war and hurricane relief funding bill as the tide turned against efforts by spending hawks to strip them out. ... The price tag of the bill, therefore, has grown to more than $108 billion, despite Bush's promise to veto any measure that exceeds his request of $92.2 billion for the war and hurricane relief and another $2.3 billion to combat avian flu....
Hizzoner Likes Eminent Domain
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a man who became a billionaire through the free-market trading of private property, has decided that he likes having the ability to confiscate it from other people now that he's in office. He escalated his campaign to stop Congress and the New York legislature from imposing stricter limits on the use of eminent doman after the dreadful Kelo decision last year: Mayor Bloomberg is stepping up his campaign to prevent lawmakers in Albany and Washington from restricting the city's power to seize private property for redevelopment. In recent weeks, Mr. Bloomberg has traveled to Washington to meet with members of Congress on the issue. He also convened a group of 100 Manhattan-based political donors for a lunch at which he handed out a wallet card of priorities, including "Eminent Domain - Oppose legislation that would cripple affordable housing and responsible re-development (like Times Square)." Yesterday,...
The West Does Not Need To Rescue Palestinians From Their Own Folly
An integral part of democracy and free elections is the responsibility one assumes for the government that results. If an electorate lifts idiots to power, then they need to experience the consequences of that choice, or otherwise they will keep electing idiots without regard to the results. Unfortunately, former Quartet envoy James Wolfensohn doesn't agree and insists that the West must bail out the Palestinians from the consequences of electing a terrorist group to govern them: JAMES WOLFENSOHN, the international envoy to the Middle East, has resigned and issued a warning of the dangers ahead if the West cuts everything but humanitarian aid to the Palestinians. Mr Wolfensohn, a former head of the World Bank, also cautioned that the UN, charities and humanitarian organisations will not be able to fill the gap if the Palestinian Authority collapses under financial pressure. Speaking in Washington after he ended his posting as envoy...
Moussaoui Gets Life In Supermax
A jury declined to give Zacarias Moussaoui the death penalty for his refusal to tip federal officials about the 9/11 terrorist plot, even after they found him legally responsible for at least one death in connection to the attack. The jury unanimously chose the lesser sentence of life without the possibility of release in the only criminal trial resulting from the worst attack on American soil: A federal jury decided today that Sept. 11, 2001, conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui should be sentenced to life in prison, rejecting government arguments that he should be executed for his role in the deadliest terrorist strike on American soil. "America, you lost. I won!" Moussaoui yelled as he was escorted from the U.S. District courtroom in Alexandria after the verdict was read. He clapped his hands as he left. ... U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema is scheduled to formally sentence Moussaoui at 10 a.m....
Talking Business And Politics With ExxonMobil
I had the opportunity to take part in a conference call earlier this evening with several fine bloggers and Ken Cohen, Vice President of Public Affairs at ExxonMobil. As you might imagine, Mr. Cohen has a busy job these days fending off calls for federal investigations and explaining free-market economics to anyone who bothers to listen. The purpose of this conference call was to allow bloggers an opportunity to ask Big Oil questions about their issues and to get some perspective on the volatile energy market. Cohen started off with a very short statement, preferring to move quickly to a Q&A rather than a prepared presentation. He spoke of the lack of education most consumers have about the nature of the energy markets and the effects that politics and global tensions have on pricing. Oil is a commodity, just the same as oranges, pork bellies, and a range of other...
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Fox: One Toke Over The Line
Mexico's Vicente Fox surprised legislators by reversing his public stance and refusing to sign a bill that would have decriminalized drug possession for personal use. Without mentioning fierce American criticism and a warning from the US government about the effect on "drug tourism", Fox sent the bill back to the Mexican Congress with instructions to keep criminal penalties in: Mexican President Vicente Fox refused to sign a drug decriminalization bill Wednesday, hours after U.S. officials warned the plan could encourage "drug tourism." Fox sent the measure back to Congress for changes, but his office did not mention the U.S. criticism. Fox will ask "Congress to make the needed corrections to make it absolutely clear in our country, the possession of drugs and their consumption are, and will continue to be, a criminal offense," according to a statement from the president's office. On Tuesday, Fox's spokesman had called the bill "an...
Endorsing The Online Integrity Coalition
Captain's Quarters endorses the Online Integrity coalition: The Online Integrity Statement of Principles is simple: # Private persons are entitled to respect for their privacy regardless of their activities online. This includes respect for the non-public nature of their personal contact information, the inviolability of their homes, and the safety of their families. No information which might lead others to invade these spaces should be posted. The separateness of private persons’ professional lives should also be respected as much as is reasonable. # Public figures are entitled to respect for the non-public nature of their personal, non-professional contact information, and their privacy with regard to their homes and families. No information which might lead others to invade these spaces should be posted. # Persons seeking anonymity or pseudonymity online should have their wishes in this regard respected as much as is reasonable. Exceptions include cases of criminal, misleading, or intentionally...
Cohen: Colbert "A Bully"
The debate over the performance of Stephen Colbert has already lasted long past its expiration date, but Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen's shares his reaction to the performance. The reliably liberal Cohen correctly identifies Colbert for what he was at the White House Correspondents Dinner: ... Colbert was not just a failure as a comedian but rude. Rude is not the same as brash. It is not the same as brassy. It is not the same as gutsy or thinking outside the box. Rudeness means taking advantage of the other person's sense of decorum or tradition or civility that keeps that other person from striking back or, worse, rising in a huff and leaving. The other night, that person was George W. Bush. Why are you wasting my time with Colbert, I hear you ask. Because he is representative of what too often passes for political courage, not to mention...
May 4, 2006
Immigration Activists Lose African-Americans
The backlash against the immigration demonstrations continues as the strident language of activists has provoked some anger from the African-American community, which sees few parallels between their struggle as American citizens and the demands of illegal aliens for amnesty from prosecution and deportation. The New York Times reports that a broad swath of the Democratic Party's most important demographic component has grown increasingly hostile towards an amnesty on the basis of civil rights: In their demonstrations across the country, some Hispanic immigrants have compared the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s struggle to their own, singing "We Shall Overcome" and declaring a new civil rights movement to win citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants. Civil rights stalwarts like the Rev. Jesse Jackson; Representative John Lewis, Democrat of Georgia; Julian Bond and the Rev. Joseph E. Lowery have hailed the recent protests as the natural progression of their movement in the...
Did The Germans Pay Ransom To Terrorists?
First the Italians paid millions to get its hostages out of Iraq, and now Germany appears to have done the same, despite professing strong support for refusing to negotiate with terrorists. The Guardian (UK) and Der Spiegel both report that the German government paid "a large amount of money" for the recent release of two Germans held hostage by terrorists: Two German hostages kidnapped in Iraq arrived home yesterday as Iraq's ambassador to Germany claimed a "load of money" had been paid to secure their release. Alaa al-Hashimi, said the German government had handed over a "large amount" to the kidnappers of René Bräunlich and Thomas Nitzschke, who were freed on Tuesday after 99 days in captivity. "Regarding the payment of ransom, I don't know. But I assume it was a large amount of money," the ambassador told Germany's ARD public television station. The Iraqi government had no part in...
Taliban Man Ups The Ante
The admission of former Taliban ambassador-at-large Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi into a non-degree program at Yale has caused an eruption of anger at the storied Ivy League institution. Despite catcalls from the press and alumni, Yale has refused to reconsider its supposedly prestigious "get" in light of his service to a brutally oppressive regime. Now Hashemi has escalated the stakes for Yale and its detractors by applying for admission into a degree program, creating another tripwire for further controversy: A student at Yale University who was once a roving ambassador for the Taliban regime in Afghanistan has applied for admission to a degree-granting program, putting new pressure on university officials in an emotionally charged political debate over his presence at Yale. The student, Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi, 27, began taking courses at Yale last summer in a nondegree program for untraditional students. After an article about his experience appeared in The New...
France Wants Moussaoui Back
The French have apparently not let the ink dry on the jury submission from yesterday's sentencing recommendation in the Zacarias Moussaoui trial before starting to interfere with its implementation. Le Monde reports today that French officials have contacted the US in hopes of transferring Moussaoui to France in order to serve his sentence (h/t: CQ reader Leo T): Un éventuel transfèrement de Zacarias Moussaoui en France, contre qui un jury américain a requis la prison à perpétuité, pourrait être examiné dans le cadre de conventions judiciaires avec les Etats-Unis, a affirmé jeudi le ministère des Affaires étrangères français. "La France et les Etats-Unis d'Amérique sont liés par deux conventions sur le transfèrement des personnes condamnées, une convention bilatérale du 25 janvier 1983 et une convention du Conseil de l'Europe entrée en vigueur le 1er juillet 1985", a déclaré à la presse le porte-parole du Quai d'Orsay, Jean-Baptiste Mattéi. My high-school...
The Strange Case Of Patrick Kennedy
Word got out today that Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-RI) crashed his car in the wee hours this morning. Despite suspicions on the part of the responding officer that Kennedy was intoxicated, other officers drove him home without ever conducting a field sobriety test or a Breathalyzer, causing an eruption of criticism about law enforcement in the capital: Rep. Patrick Kennedy crashed his car near the Capitol early Thursday, and a police official said he appeared intoxicated. Kennedy said he had had no alcohol before the accident. ... Kennedy appeared to be intoxicated when he crashed his car into a barrier on Capitol Hill early Thursday morning, said Louis P. Cannon, president of the Washington chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police. Cannon, who was not there, said the officers involved in the accident were instructed by an official "above the rank of patrolman" to take Kennedy home. No sobriety tests...
Why Zarqawi Is In Management
Well, this video has to be the funniest development in the war on terror -- not that there have been a lot of events competing for that honor. Al-Qaeda leader and terrorist mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi apparently cannot master the weapons he brandishes for chilling effect on his video statements: The U.S. military command Thursday released previously unseen images of a video purportedly posted by Al Qaeda in Iraq's leader, showing him decked out in American tennis shoes and unable to operate his machine gun. ... The video, discovered in a series of raids in April on purported Al Qaeda in Iraq safe houses in the Youssifiyah area, 12 miles southwest of Baghdad, gave a view of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi that the Jordanian-born militant chose not to show the world, said Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, spokesman for the U.S. command. Al-Zarqawi is "very proud of the fact that he can...
Tapscott: Both Parties Pick Porkers For Conference Committee
Mark Tapscott notes in two posts that both Republicans and Democrats named chronic pork supporters to the conference committee reconciling the emergency spending legislation from both chambers of Congress: THE PRESIDING OFFICER: UNDER THE PREVIOUS ORDER, THE CHAIR APPOINTS THE FOLLOWING AS CONFEREES ON THE PART OF THE SENATE. THE CLERK: SENATORS COCHRAN, STEVENS, SPECTER, DOMENICI, BOND, McCONNELL, BURNS, SHELBY, GREGG, BENNETT, CRAIG, HUTCHISON, DeWINE, BROWNBACK, ALLARD, BYRD, INOUYE, LEAHY, HARKIN, MIKULSKI, REID, KOHL, MURRAY, DORGAN, FEINSTEIN, DURBIN, JOHNSON, AND LANDRIEU. Mark calls this a Porkers Hall of Fame, and then provides the data to back it up. It turns out that this group has individually voted to retain pork almost three times as often as they have voted for its elimination. Denny Hastert has declared the Senate version a dead letter in the House, balking at the $17 billion in increased spending it delivers, but he may wind up...
CFR Explains Basic Oil Economics
The Council on Foreign Relations has released a short primer on oil economics to its website. After our conference call with ExxonMobil's Ken Cohen yesterday, CQ readers had many questions about the data Cohen provided us. CFR, a think tank on foreign policy and economics that tends towards the center-left, may have more credibility on this topic for some readers than an oil-company executive. Lee Hudson Teslik explains the effects of global supply and demand: How does global oil supply affect the price of American gasoline? Given the extent to which the price of crude oil affects the price of gasoline, any fluctuation in the world's crude market can have a significant impact on the gasoline market. In 1960, many of the world's largest oil suppliers formed an organization through which they could coordinate production and ensure consistent supply, thereby providing stability in an otherwise very volatile market. This group,...
May 5, 2006
Danish Resolve Stiffens Over Cartoon Threats
Denmark responded yesterday to the many attempts at intimidation directed at their country since the publication of the editorial cartoons portraying Mohammed, announcing that they plan to maintain their deployment in Iraq to defy the terrorists: Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen said yesterday that the furor over cartoons of the prophet Muhammad had "strengthened our resolve for the long haul" and that Danish troops would remain in Iraq. In an interview with The Washington Times in his Copenhagen office, Mr. Rasmussen brushed off a Danish television report of plans to cut Denmark's 530-man deployment in Iraq by nearly one-fifth in July. "It is clearly our intention to stay in Iraq as long as we are requested by the Iraqi government, as long as our presence is based on a U.N. mandate, and as long as we believe we can make a positive difference on the ground," the center-right Danish...
A Flash Of The Obvious
The AP reports that the major reason for George Bush's erosion in the polls has been a loss of support among conservatives instead of the center. The poll reveals that conservatives help drive the "wrong direction" number in the political polls: Angry conservatives are driving the approval ratings of President Bush and the GOP-led Congress to dismal new lows, according to an AP-Ipsos poll that underscores why Republicans fear an Election Day massacre. Six months out, the intensity of opposition to Bush and Congress has risen sharply, along with the percentage of Americans who believe the nation is on the wrong track. ... • Just 33 percent of the public approves of Bush's job performance, the lowest of his presidency. That compares with 36 percent approval in early April. Forty-five percent of self-described conservatives now disapprove of the president. • Just one-fourth of the public approves of the job Congress...
Delivering A Message To Russia
Dick Cheney gave a speech yesterday that included pointed references to Russia, a nation that the administration once hailed as a key strategic partner but now acknowledges as a potential problem for the US. Cheney made clear that the US would no longer gloss over actions by Russian president Vladimir Putin to nationalize industries and suppress dissent, especially since Russia has proven itself obstructionist in addressing Iranian nuclear proliferation and corrupt in its previous dealings with Saddam Hussein: Vice President Dick Cheney today delivered the Bush administration's strongest rebuke of Russia to date, saying the Russian government "unfairly and improperly restricted" people's rights and suggesting that it sought to use the country's vast oil and gas resources as "tools of intimidation or blackmail." "In many areas of civil society — from religion and the news media, to advocacy groups and political parties — the government has unfairly and improperly restricted...
Party Or Principle?
Earlier today I posted on the declining job-approval ratings for President Bush and Congress, slippage that Ipsos attributes to dissatisfaction among the GOP base. Fox News has a poll showing a five-point rebound in the last three weeks, but it still has Bush below 40% and a solid majority disapproving of his performance. It comes as no surprise to traditional Reagan or Goldwater conservatives that the key GOP base has become so restive, and I pointed out a few of the reasons why dissatisfaction runs so high for both the administration and Congress. More than a few of the disillusioned have insisted that they will not support GOP candidates this fall. They propose to either vote for third-party candidates or to stay home and vote with their silence. These sound like good solutions, but in a binary political system – which is what we have, whether we approve or not...
Goss Abruptly Quits, Leaves Questions Behind
After only twenty months on the job, Porter Goss has resigned as head of the CIA, which at one time he considered the pinnacle of his career. What would make this longtime Congressional representative and one-time agency operative suddenly leave in the middle of revamping the intelligence agency? No one who's talking knows, and no one who knows is talking: CIA Director Porter J. Goss said today that he is "stepping aside" after less than two years on the job, ending a tumultuous tenure at an agency shaken by recent intelligence failures, internal turmoil and a massive reorganization that reduced its leadership role in the U.S. intelligence community. In an appearance with Goss at the White House, President Bush announced that the director "offered his resignation" this morning and that "I've accepted it." Neither the president nor Goss, who sat to Bush's right as he made the announcement in the...
Who Comes After Goss?
While many still wonder what prompted the resignation of Porter Goss from his position as CIA Director, others have already started looking ahead to his eventual replacement. Goss has offered to remain in place while George Bush selects his successor, but the process will likely take place over the weekend. Sources within the White House have already warned the press to be ready for an announcement as early as Monday. The AP reports late this evening that the search will likely narrow to a handful of possibilities: Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden; Frances Fragos Townsend; David Shedd, Negroponte's chief of staff; and Mary Margaret Graham, Negroponte's deputy for intelligence collection. The common thread among four of the five are that they work for the current Director of National Intelligence, John Negroponte. Only Townsend works outside of Negroponte's control, an interesting dynamic and one which may impact Congressional hearings down the...
May 6, 2006
Hayden May Have Helped Goss Out The Door
According to news reports over the past day, it appears that Porter Goss got helped out the door rather than leaving on his own accord. According to CNN, General Michael Hayden will get the nod to replace Goss, but an article in the Los Angeles Times this morning says that Hayden and his boss, John Negroponte, had a critical role in creating the opening in the first place. Doyle McManus and Peter Spiegel report that Goss fell victim to efforts by Negroponte and Hayden to win a turf battle over the component intelligence agencies of the National Intelligence directorate: After a little more than a year in his newly created job, John D. Negroponte, the director of national intelligence, has won an initial battle to establish authority over the vast U.S. intelligence community — Porter J. Goss, who resisted Negroponte's moves to limit the autonomy of the CIA, is gone....
Be Careful What You Wish For
My friend John Hinderaker at Power Line feels that a confirmation-hearing spectacle for General Michael Hayden to succeed Porter Goss as CIA director would provide a boon for Republicans. He relishes the thought of Democrats attacking Hayden on the NSA surveillance program: To all of this I say: great! Hardly anything would give the Republican faithful a bigger boost than the spectacle of Senate Democrats attacking an Air Force general for trying to protect America against terrorism. Please, Democrats, please don't deny us this opportunity. And could we possibly schedule the hearing closer to November? I hope he's correct, if Hayden actually gets the nod. However, given the nature of Goss' departure and the hostility the NSA program has created among members of both parties in Congress, I suspect that any Hayden hearing will rapidly become a debacle. All one has to do is to review the committee that will...
We Found The Oil Conspiracy!
Ever since prices began spiking at the gas pumps last year, people have demanded an investigation into why the costs of filling one's tank has skyrocketed. Conspiracy theories have abounded, especially in the blogosphere, complete with energy executives deliberately overbidding for crude oil and artificially holding down refinery capacity. Now, however, the New York Times has found the conspiracy in Washington DC, where they meet every day under a big dome and plot to run our lives and spend our money: Nine months after Congress passed major energy legislation, one provision affecting gasoline formulas is helping to drive the price of gas up much faster than the rising price of crude oil. And because the new gasoline recipe contains less energy, mileage per gallon is declining. On Friday, the 270th day after President Bush signed the Energy Policy Act of 2005, the law ended the requirement that gasoline sold in...
Captain's Caption Contest: Intelligence Edition
With all of the kerfuffle over the resignation of Porter Goss and the possible selection of General Michael Hayden as his successor, it gives us an opportunity to revisit an old CQ tradition -- the caption contest! Here we see Hayden conferring with his boss, DNI John Negroponte, oblivious to the suspicious pitcher of water sitting between them: What do you imagine is going on in this conversation? Leave your best caption in the comments section, which will remain open until The Sopranos airs on Sunday evening. As always, make sure you put your entries in our comments section -- NO e-mailed entries, please! E-mailed entries will be intercepted by the NSA and delivered to black helicopters in your neighborhoods awaiting Karl Rove's next command. Let the games begin!...
France Creaks Towards Collapse
The French government, already on the ropes after the riots earlier this year, has suffered another blow to its credibility and now has the nation talking about its collapse. Dominique de Villepin may have to resign his position as Prime Minister in reaction to voter anger over an elite political class that has little contact with the electorate: A burgeoning political scandal of alleged dirty tricks involving the cabinet's two top ministers has tainted the entire French government, pushing it to the brink of paralysis and collapse in the final year of President Jacques Chirac's administration, according to government officials and political analysts. Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin faces daily calls for his resignation. Flanked by somber-faced ministers, he told reporters at a packed news conference Thursday that the corruption investigation would "not deter me one second from my mission." What's known as the Clearstream scandal centers on whether Villepin...
Northern Alliance Radio Today
The Northern Alliance Radio Network is already on the air, speaking with Ramesh Ponnuru regarding his book Party of Death with Brian and Chad from Fraters Libertas and John from Power Line. Mitch Berg and I will take over at 1 pm CT, discussing the Porter Goss resignation, Patrick Kennedy, the sentencing of Zacarias Moussaoui, Stephen Colbert, the emergency-spending bill that the Senate larded up with pork, and perhaps we can even squeeze in the Catholic review of its condom policy in the age of AIDS. We're also going to look at local issues, specifically the GOP convention in CD6 from which King Banaian will provide live reports, and the expansion of the sales-tax increase for the stadium project. Listen to us on AM 1280 The Patriot, and join the conversation at 651-289-4488!...
Minnesota CD-6: Bachman Jumps To Commanding Lead
King Banaian and Andy Aplikowski report from the GOP convention in the Sixth Congressional District that Michele Bachmann has received 56% of the first-round ballots, coming close to the 60% needed for endorsement. Phil Krinkie, who had been considered a front-runner, only mustered 12% on the first vote and no one else got above 18%. The convention is about to hold its next vote, but one has to presume that the impulse for unity will push Bachmann over the top. She will likely face off against Patty Wetterling in November in the race to replace Mark Kennedy, who gave up his seat to run for the Senate. Stay tuned. UPDATE 2:52 CT: Michele Bachmann won on the third ballot....
The Spectre of Specter Descends On Hayden
Earlier today I wrote that the nomination of General Michael Hayden would present Democrats in the Senate a golden opportunity for mischief, and also noted that a few Republicans might be tempted as well. Tomorrow's Washington Post confirms the latter, as Arlen Specter told an interviewer that he planned to hold up Hayden's confirmation as leverage for a more complete briefing on the NSA surveillance program: Not only Democrats expect to use a Hayden nomination to revisit the legality of the surveillance, however. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), who has held four hearings on the matter, said he may try to hold up Hayden's confirmation if the administration does not provide more information about the eavesdropping. He said he would try to persuade fellow senators to use the confirmation as "leverage." "I was briefed by General Hayden and I got virtually no meaningful information," Specter said in an...
May 7, 2006
Gaza Uprising Against Hamas
Hamas faces a dangerous situation in the Gaza Strip, once its base of power, as Palestinians went on strike and staged demonstrations over their overdue paychecks. The ruling party in the Palestinian Authority has rapidly dissipated its mandate as its support for terrorism has isolated it from the nations that had been paying civil servant salaries in the territories: Hundreds of Palestinians staged strikes and demonstrations Saturday in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to demand payment of overdue salaries to government workers — the first public signs of discontent with the Hamas-led Cabinet's handling of a growing financial crisis. The unrest occurred ahead of a meeting in Gaza late Saturday between Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas and moderate President Mahmoud Abbas. The two, involved in a power struggle since Hamas defeated Abbas' Fatah Party in January's legislative elections, failed to resolve their differences during four hours of talks...
Democratic Agenda: The Two-Year Republican Hate-In
The Democrats have announced their agenda if they succeed in taking back the House in November, and as predicted, it focuses on exactly what the Democrats have done for the past six years: hating Republicans. Rather than having much of a legislative agenda, the Democrats plan to run on the promise to launch endless investigations of Republicans and the administration: Democratic leaders, increasingly confident they will seize control of the House in November, are laying plans for a legislative blitz during their first week in power that would raise the minimum wage, roll back parts of the Republican prescription drug law, implement homeland security measures and reinstate lapsed budget deficit controls. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) said in an interview last week that a Democratic House would launch a series of investigations of the Bush administration, beginning with the White House's first-term energy task force and probably including the...
Israel Saves Abbas
In a strange, ironic twist, Israel saved Mahmoud Abbas from assassination at the hands of Hamas, the London Times reports this morning. The armed wing of the "political party" had planned on murdering Abbas on a visit to his office in Gaza before Israeli intelligence discovered the plot and stopped Abbas from walking into the trap: A HAMAS plot to assassinate Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, has been thwarted after he was tipped off by Israeli intelligence. Hamas’s military wing, the Izza Din Al-Qassem, had planned to kill Abbas at his office in Gaza, intelligence sources said. Abbas, who became president of the Palestinian Authority last year after the death of Yasser Arafat, was formally warned of the danger by the Israelis and cancelled a planned visit to the territory. The murder plan is the clearest sign yet of the tensions inside the Palestinian Authority between Hamas, which swept to...
The Hayden Flier Hits Serious Turbulence
The nomination of General Michael Hayden to succeed Porter Goss as CIA Director generated some surprising opposition today by an influential Republican Congressman. Peter Hoekstra, the chair of the House Intelligence Committee and a reliable supporter of the war on terror, objects to military leadership at the CIA: A leading Republican came out against the front-runner for CIA director, Gen. Michael Hayden, saying Sunday the spy agency should not have military leadership during a turbulent time among intelligence agencies. ... Despite a distinguished career at the Defense Department, Hayden would be "the wrong person, the wrong place at the wrong time," said the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich. "There is ongoing tensions between this premier civilian intelligence agency and DOD as we speak," Hoekstra said. "And I think putting a general in charge — regardless of how good Mike is — ... is going to...
Referral Stat Of The Week
I often check my referral stats to check on the availability of the site as well as which sites send readers to CQ. Occasionally I see surprises in the logs, as I did just now. One intrepid Internet voyager came to CQ based on a Google search for "Playboy mate 2005". Google returns this post as its top match for that search. Well, welcome to CQ. I hope you get over your disappointment....
Bush: We'll Close Gitmo Jail
George Bush told a German interviewer today that he wants to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay but must await a Supreme Court decision on how to try the remaining detainees. Reuters reports from the transcript of the television station ARD that Bush insists that detainees will get their day in court: President George W. Bush said on Sunday he would like to close the U.S.-run prison at Guantanamo Bay -- a step urged by several foreign leaders -- but was awaiting a Supreme Court ruling on where suspects held there might be tried. ... Bush was asked by the German public television station ARD how the United States could restore its human-rights image following reports of prisoner abuse. "Of course Guantanamo is a delicate issue for people. I would like to close the camp and put the prisoners on trial," Bush said in comments to be broadcast on...
Clift: Hillary Is The New Reagan
Newsweek's Eleanor Clift reports on the nascent Hillariphobia creeping through the ranks of Democrats as they begin to seriously consider their presidential prospects in 2008. Clift tries to sell the idea that Hillary Clinton somehow represents the Democratic version of Ronald Reagan, divisive yet full of courageous leadership that her party can ill afford to discard at this political juncture: The late great Jerry Garcia used to say the Grateful Dead were like black licorice. People who loved them loved them a lot. People who hated them really hated them. "Hillary Clinton is black licorice," says a Democratic strategist. "There's a huge upside, and there's a huge downside. And we don't know how it will balance out." When was the last time we had such a dominant front runner this early who raises such anxiety about electability? The answer is Ronald Reagan. It took a leap of imagination to believe...
Alaa Arrested
Egyptian blogger and democracy activist Alaa has been arrested by Egyptian authorities, and worse. I'll let Sandmonkey say it in his own words: Alaa, blogger, co-founder of the egyptian blog aggregator Manalaa and democracy activist, got arrested today during a protest to support the Judiciary's branch fight for independence. He, and about 10 others, were rounded up in the street, beaten up and thrown in a police car. Amongst those who got arrested were at least 3 girls, and the police beat up at least another 2 girls as well. The way it worked, the police made sure to press the demonstartors close to the egyptian musem, where they cordoned them and wouldn't let them leave, while continiously hurling insults at them. The demonstartors tried to get the police to let them go for half an hour, but no avail. The Police cordon then opend where a group of plainly...
Caption Contest Winners!
With The Sopranos about to start, it's time to announce the winners of the latest Caption Contest. Just to remind everyone, the subject was this photograph of John Negroponte and Michael Hayden conferring over a pitcher of water: Here are the winners: 1st place -- Keaukina: "It's a very important test-- you drink it all down, then they see if you leak..." 2nd place -- Hurricane567: Here we see DNI John Negroponte and Gen. Michael Hayden bracing themselves for Washington's 6th Annual Head Butt Days. 3rd place -- Bar Code King: "Pardon me, do you have any Grey Poupon... er, Minoxodil?" Honorable Mention #1 -- Billyoblog: "Oh, by the way, you're not related to anybody named Tom, are you ?" Honorable Mention #2 -- Liberal Goodman: "Let's try it again. First lean right together, then left TOGETHER." Comments will remain open to honor the winners, slander the judge, come up...
May 8, 2006
The New York School For The Irony-Challenged
Former Senator Bob Kerrey has spent his time since retiring from politics as president of the New School University, formerly known as The New School for Social Research (which is the name of one of its subsidiary colleges now). The progressive institution has benefited from Kerrey's political connections, and when he arranged to have one of his former colleagues, now running for President, as a graduation keynote speaker, it seemed an impressive achievement. However, the progressive students and faculty at this progressive college have made it clear that they cannot abide a conservative appearing on their campus for a speech -- because John McCain isn't open-minded enough: Hundreds of New School students, staffers, and faculty members want the university to rescind its invitation to Senator McCain, who is set to receive an honorary degree and give the keynote speech at the graduation ceremony in two weeks. The campaign against the...
Dear Satan, How Are You? I Am Fine ...
The news services are abuzz with the announcement from Teheran that Iran will end 25 years of silence between the Islamic Republic and the US. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will write a letter to George Bush in an attempt to ease tensions between the two nations: Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is writing to U.S President George W. Bush in an attempt to ease mounting tensions between Tehran and the West, an Iranian official said on Monday. ... Government spokesman Gholamhossein Elham said a letter from Ahmadinejad to Bush would be delivered later on Monday to the Swiss Embassy in Tehran, which represents U.S. interests in the Islamic Republic. "In this letter, he has given an analysis of the current world situation, of the root of existing problems and of new ways of getting out of the current delicate situation in the world," he told a weekly news conference. Ahmadinejad had said earlier...
UN Aid Workers And Peacekeepers Still Tricking Out Girls
The BBC reports that the United Nations still has not stopped its aid workers and peacekeepers from turning female refugees into prostitutes in order to secure food and water. Some of the victims are as young as eight years old, and the problem is widespread, according to Save The Children: Young girls in Liberia are still being sexually exploited by aid workers and peacekeepers despite pledges to stamp out such abuse, Save the Children says. Girls as young as eight are being forced to have sex in exchange for food by workers for local and international agencies, according to its report. The agency says such abuse is becoming more common as people displaced by the civil war return to their villages. This behavior was first revealed four years ago, and two years ago the scope of the problem became common knowledge, thanks to a series of reports in the British...
Carter: Give Money To Elected Terrorists
Jimmy Carter, writing in the International Herald-Tribune, demonstrates the knack for foreign relations that got us the Iranian hostage crisis and limited him to a single, embarrassing term in office. He argues that the suspension of foreign aid to the Palestinians not only hurts innocent citizens but damages prospects for peace by failing to fund terrorists: Innocent Palestinian people are being treated like animals, with the presumption that they are guilty of some crime. Because they voted for candidates who are members of Hamas, the United States government has become the driving force behind an apparently effective scheme of depriving the general public of income, access to the outside world and the necessities of life. Overwhelmingly, these are school teachers, nurses, social workers, police officers, farm families, shopkeepers, and their employees and families who are just hoping for a better life. Public opinion polls conducted after the January parliamentary election...
Examiner: Time To Veto
The Washington Examiner exhorts George Bush to take an unprecedented step for this administration and veto any emergency spending plan that includes $20 billion in pork. The editorial argues that the White House must establish its authority in spending now or lose it for the rest of the term: President Bush has frequently portrayed many of his most controversial actions as necessary to protect executive branch prerogatives against usurpations of power by Congress. So it is especially curious that Bush has yet to use the most potent weapon the Founders gave occupants of the Oval Office against Congress: the veto. If Bush is truly serious about protecting the powers and prerogatives of his office, he will set aside his veto reservations and slam-dunk the emergency funding bill if it comes to his desk in anything remotely resembling the form in which the Senate passed it last week. Bush originally asked...
Meet Hillary's Backers, Dear John Edition (Bumped!)
Hillary Clinton may have owe a few explanations for the company she kept on her path to the Senate and her presumed presidential bid in 2008. The explanation for John Burgess and International Profit Associates will make for an interesting read, as the company's owner -- a convicted thief and john of an underage prostitute -- has emerged as one of Hillary's most prominent contributors: John R. Burgess makes for an improbable courtier of presidents, or of a senator who might become one. A disbarred New York lawyer with a criminal record for attempted larceny and patronizing a 16-year-old prostitute, Mr. Burgess owns International Profit Associates, a management consulting company in Illinois. Federal authorities are pressing a sexual harassment suit against the company on behalf of 113 former female employees. The Illinois attorney general is investigating accusations of deceptive marketing tactics, officials say, and the company has been the subject...
Courage And Cowardice (Updated and Bumped)
Please see Update III below -- the identification in the London Times was incorrect. The London Times reports on the final days of Atwar Bahjat, an Iraqi woman viciously murdered by terrorists of one type or another for her courage in reporting on events in her native Samarra. Bahjat, a television reporter for al-Arabiya television, had built a following for her work in covering the violence in Iraq until kidnappers abducted her while a group of Samarrans did nothing to assist her. Bahjat's body was found later along with those of her cameraman and sound man, and the presumption was that she had been shot to death. Not so. In fact, Bhajat experienced the worst of the terrorist depravity in he final moments, made clear when a video recording of her execution was sent to her family: First she was stripped to the waist, a humiliation for any woman but...
Captured AQ Documents: "Every Year Is Worse Than The Previous Year"
CENTCOM announced today that they had captured al-Qaeda correspondence in Iraq that discusses the state of the insurgency, especially around Baghdad but also around the entire country. Far from optimistic, the documents captured in an April 16th raid reveal frustration and desperation, as the terrorists acknowledge the superior position of American and free Iraqi forces and their ability to quickly adapt to new tactics. In these passages, the AQ terrorist author -- described as a person "of significance" due to the extensive analysis applied -- often refers to the elected Iraqi government as the "Shi'ites": A glance at the reality of Baghdad in light of the latest events (sectarian turmoil) 1. It has been proven that the Shiites have a power and influence in Baghdad that cannot be taken lightly, particularly when the power of the Ministries of Interior and Defense is given to them, compared with the power of...
Feinstein: I'm Inclined To Support Hayden
Neil Cavuto interviewed Senator Dianne Feinstein about the nomination of General Michael Hayden as the replacement of Porter Goss at the CIA. Far from hostile to the appointment, Feinstein praised Hayden as a "superb choice" for the Director position. She claimed than anyone familiar with the intelligence community would have listed Hayden as one of the three top picks for the position, and that while she would not commit to any vote before a thorough hearing, at the moment she was "inclined" to support Hayden's nomination. Here is a rough transcript of the interview: DF: ... Good to be here, Neil, but I think you have that a little bit wrong. I haven't been blasting that choice at all. As a matter of fact, I think that he is a very competent intelligence professional, which I think the CIA needs at this particular point in time. The only problem with...
May 9, 2006
The World According To Mahmoud
The letter hailed as a potential breakthrough in the Iranian nuclear impasse turned out to contain no new initiatives towards a resolution to the crisis, according to various news reports quoting Condoleezza Rice and a number of unnamed sources within the administration. In fact, it never mentioned Iran's nuclear program directly, instead attempting to give George Bush a perspective on history from an Islamist perspective. The New York Times reports that the letter didn't make much of an impression: The letter, described in Tehran as the first direct communication from an Iranian leader to an American president since 1979, was said by the spokesman to analyze "the roots of the problems" with the West. But American officials said it was a meandering screed that proposed no solutions to the nuclear issue. ... American officials said the letter, which was not released, was 16 pages in Persian and 18 pages in...
Cuba Giving China And India Access To Caribbean Oil
The US and Cuba have had a pact in place for almost thirty years dividing the Florida Straits between the two nations for ownership of the oil and natural gas underneath the ocean. Up to now, Cuba has been unable to drill for the resources, and the US has been unwilling to do so. Now, with energy prices skyrocketing due to rising demand, Cuba has leased its field to China and India. Both will begin drilling within sight of the US, giving Cuba much-needed hard currency while demonstrating the lack of US resolve in mustering its own resources: With only modest energy needs and no ability of its own to drill, Cuba has negotiated lease agreements with China and other energy-hungry countries to extract resources for themselves and for Cuba. Cuba's drilling plans have been in place for several years, but now that China, India and others are involved and...
Smoother Landing For Hayden?
The New York Sun reports that although the nomination of General Michael Hayden to be director of the CIA has aroused some complaints, few Democrats have openly and directly opposed his appointment. David Donadio writes that a retirement from the Air Force might be enough to get a relatively painless confirmation: Although committee members were hesitant about expressing their support for General Hayden yesterday, few Democrats offered serious reservations to his nomination, and several Republicans expressed wholehearted support. There was a widespread feeling, however, that General Hayden might smooth his passage through the committee if he were to resign from the military. "General Hayden is more than qualified for the position of CIA director," Senator Bond, a Republican of Missouri, said. "The job of CIA director is to track down and stop terrorists. That's exactly what General Hayden has been doing. His exemplary military background and his recent assignment running...
Will Rage Undo The Democrats?
Two items from prominent opinion journalists point to a meltdown in the Democratic base even as they close in on a vulnerable GOP in midterm elections. Jonah Goldberg and Richard Cohen have one thing in common: irrational e-mail. However, while the conservative Goldberg received one ludicrous rant regarding the Jewish conspiracy to control oil, Cohen received thousands of hysterically angry e-mails denouncing him as an administration stooge -- for writing that Stephen Colbert bombed at the White House Correspondents Dinner. Cohen responds in amazement in today's column, "Digital Lynch Mob": It seemed that most of my correspondents had been egged on to write me by various blogs. In response, they smartly assembled into a digital lynch mob and went roaring after me. If I did not like Colbert, I must like Bush. If I write for The Post, I must be a mainstream media warmonger. If I was over a...
101st Fighting Keyboardists Update!
A quick update on the status of the 101st Fighting Keyboardists: we have now grown to a membership of over 300 bloggers, with a number of reader pledges as well. The blogroll contains men and women from the military, including active-duty, reserve, retired, and their families. In fact, the list has grown so long that I may have to limit the display to the 100 most-recently updated blogs. For those who wish to join, please either drop a comment on this post or send me an e-mail. The Fighting Keebees, as one of our members called it, is strictly a volunteer organization. We just ask that you support the troops and support civilian control over foreign policy and the military, and have a really good sense of humor. It's all in fun and meant to irritate all the right people. Speaking of which, this blogger certainly has his knickers in...
Iran Expert: Ahmadinejad Letter A Defiant Challenge
The German magazine Der Speigel interviewed an expert on Iran regarding the letter from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to George Bush and its purpose. Wahied Wahdat-Hagh tells Der Spiegel that far from an act of potential conciliation, the Iranian president sent the letter as an act of defiance -- and warns that Ahmadinejad is not bluffing in this crisis: SPIEGEL ONLINE: Mr. Wahdat-Hagh, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wrote a letter to US President George W. Bush. In the letter, he once again questions Israel's right to exist, accuses the US of lying about Iraq and insists on his country's right to use nuclear technology. What message is Ahmadinejad trying to communicate? Wahdat-Hagh: The purpose is to show strength. It's Ahmadinejad's way of saying: "We are powerful! You are a cowboy! Islam, though, is the true democracy and your system will collapse." Former Iranian President Khatami used to give interviews to CNN. But...
Loyalty Oaths At HUD?
Government bureaucracies serve at least one benign purpose in democracies -- they should ensure that citizens will get impartial treatment when it comes to services and contracts. Unfortunately that system failed according to one of the men supposedly in charge of a good-sized section of one, and now the Bush administration has to answer why its HUD Secretary steered contracts according to the political preferences of their recipients: Once the color barrier has been broken, minority contractors seeking government work may need to overcome the Bush barrier. That's the message U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson seemed to send during an April 28 talk in Dallas. Jackson, a former president and CEO of the Dallas Housing Authority, was among the featured speakers at a forum sponsored by the Real Estate Executive Council, a national minority real estate consortium. After discussing the huge strides the agency has made in...
May 10, 2006
GOP Finally Agrees On Tax Cuts
With a roaring economy and 4.7% unemployment fueled by a recovery launched by George Bush's tax cuts, one would suppose that extending these reductions would be almost assumed in Congress, or at least by the Republicans that enacted them in the first place. However, in a measure of how rudderless the GOP caucus has become, party leaders finally reached an agreement on extending the cuts while Democrats objected to its costs: House and Senate Republican negotiators reached a final agreement yesterday on a five-year, nearly $70 billion tax package that would extend President Bush's deep cuts to tax rates on dividends and capital gains, while sparing about 15 million middle-income Americans from the alternative minimum tax. Republican leaders hope to pass the agreement swiftly. House consideration is scheduled for tonight, with the Senate likely to send the measure to the White House for the president's signature by the end of...
Morality At Turtle Bay
The United Nations validated every argument yesterday about the efficacy of its so-called reform when it announced that Cuba, China, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Azerbaijan would sit on its Human Rights Council: Six nations with poor human rights records were among those elected to the new Human Rights Council on Tuesday, although notorious violators that had belonged to the predecessor Human Rights Commission did not succeed in winning places in the new group. China, Cuba, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Azerbaijan, countries cited by human rights groups as not deserving membership, were among the 47 nations elected to the council. But in a move hailed by the same groups, both Iran and Venezuela failed to attract the needed votes. ... Nations running for the council had to meet more demanding standards than in the past. The previous commission was long a public embarrassment to the United Nations because countries...
Israel Draws A Line While West Draws Back
Israel has set a deadline for the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority to recognize Israel's right to exist and agree to negotiate for a permanent settlement and the two-state solution. Otherwise, Israel's new prime minister warns, Israel will set the final borders unilaterally: Israel will give the Palestinians until the end of the year to prove they are willing to negotiate a final peace deal, and will unilaterally set its final borders by 2008 if they don't, Israel's justice minister said Wednesday. The statement by Justice Minister Haim Ramon, a close associate of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's, was the first by an Israeli official to set a deadline for the Hamas-led Palestinian government to disarm and recognize the Jewish state. ... "Through the end of this year, 2006, there will be honest attempts to talk to the other side," Ramon told Israel's Army Radio. "If it becomes clear by the end of...
On My Desk: Can She Be Stopped?
I have started reading John Podhoretz' new look at the next presidential election and Hillary Clinton's chances to reach the White House, and it's an excellent read so far. Can She Be Stopped? argues that the Democratic nomination is Hillary's to lose, unless the Republicans can get their act together in a manner which has clearly escaped them this year. John also analyzes the deep divisions within both parties and how Hillary can exploit them. John also lays out a plan for the GOP to follow in order to corner Hillary and dent her electoral prospects -- and then names the one salvation from a second Clinton administration. When I've finished, I'll write a full review, but so far Can She Be Stopped? is a great read. I highly recommend it for anyone interested in the 2008 elections....
Podcasting At No Left Turns
Earlier this evening, I had a chance to chat with Dr. Peter Schramm, the director of the Ashbrook Center for Public Affairs and the center's blog No Left Turns. I first met Peter last month at the Heritage Foundation Resource Bank meeting, but only got the chance to introduce myself as I was leaving the Broadmoor for the airport. Peter had just received the Henry Salvatori Prize for American Citizenship, and we heard the moving story of his declaration that he was born an American -- just in the wrong place. We had an engaging and (I believe) entertaining conversation regarding blogging, the upcoming elections, the inroads that the GOP hope to make in the African-American community, and most of all the Al-Qaeda documents that show the Zarqawi network in complete disarray. I believe the podcast will get hosted at this link when Peter has it ready for publication. I...
Jackson: You Can Trust Me Now
After telling a Dallas audience that he had killed a deal with a contractor because of his political affiliation, HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson found himself in the middle of a firestorm of criticism. After several House and Senate members called for an investigation into Jackson's contract awards practices at HUD and demanded his resignation, Jackson now denies he ever denied any contract on the basis of politics. In a press release at the HUD website, Jackson does his best Emily Litella impression by essentially saying, "Never mind": I deeply regret the anecdotal remarks I made at a recent Texas small business forum and would like to reassure the public that all HUD contracts are awarded solely on a stringent merit-based process. During my tenure, no contract has ever been awarded, rejected, or rescinded due to the personal or political beliefs of the recipient. In other words, Jackson wants to have...
British Judge: Hacker Should Get Extradited
A Scotsman who hacked into US military and government computers in the wake of 9/11, causing damage and creating a security scare while America tried to defend itself from terrorism, has lost a battle in avoiding extradition from the UK. Gary McKinnon faces 70 years in a US prison for what the Department of Justice calls the "biggest military hack of all time": A SCOTS-born computer hacker who has been accused of the "biggest military hack" ever detected should be extradited to the United States to face trial, where he could face up to 70 years in jail, a judge has ruled. Gary McKinnon, 40, who said he had hacked into NASA and US military systems to check for material on UFOs, has six weeks to submit evidence to John Reid, the Home Secretary, who will make the final decision. McKinnon was arrested last June following charges by US prosecutors...
Catholics Won't Be Demanding Beheadings And Assassinations
The German magazine Der Spiegel reports on the launch of a new television series, Popetown, that pokes fun at the Vatican and Catholics in general. German Catholics have protested the series, but Der Spiegel goes hyperbolic when it states that the controversy provides a companion piece to the Prophet cartoon madness: A new MTV pilot cartoon making fun of the pope has stirred up religious outrage in Germany. Can one really show the pope hopping through the Vatican halls on a cross-shaped pogo stick? Prepare for the sequel to the Muhammad caricature controversy. ... The controversy generated by "Popetown" is reminiscent of the outrage sparked across the Muslim world by the publication of a series of cartoon drawings of the prophet Muhammad. The publication of the cartoons in a Danish newspaper last autumn, and the decision by a number of other European papers to reprint them, led to European consulates...
New AQ Capture The Man In The Centcom Memo?
The Iraqi News Agency reported last week that the military captured a high-ranking member of the al-Qaeda network in Karbala. The description given of this former Saddam Hussein army commander sounds familiar: High-ranking leader of terrorist organization Al Qaeda was detained today in Iraqi province of Karbala during military operation, Iraqi news agency INA reports. Abdel Fatih Isa, a.k.a. Abu Aisha, was arrested in a private home where he had been hiding for a long time. The arrest was made after a few houses in the town had been searched through. The terrorist is among the chief organizers of terrorist acts in capital Baghdad. According to military sources Abu Aisha was an officer from the Iraqi army during Saddam Hussein’s rule, the agency notes. I thought that the description of an AQ commander spending most of his time hiding sounded familiar. In the captured AQ document that Centcom released this...
May 11, 2006
Palestinian Unity Breakthrough?
Fatah and Hamas have proposed a platform which would bring both factions into the government and allow for meaningful talks with Israel on a two-state solution, the AP reports this morning. Leaders of both groups imprisoned by Israel for terrorism conducted the delicate negotiations, and the product has been embraced by Mahmoud Abbas on behalf of Fatah, while the Hamas leadership in the West Bank and Gaza study it: After months of tensions, senior members of the rival Hamas and Fatah factions have forged a joint platform, including acceptance of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, said Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. However, it was unclear whether Hamas, particularly the group's hardline leaders abroad, will back the program, which would signal a major softening of positions. Until now, Hamas has balked at the West's demands that it renounce violence, recognize Israel and accept existing peace agreements. ... "This document is very important....
Have Conservatives Washed Their Hands Of Bush?
The Washington Post draws the correct conclusion of the low approval ratings for George Bush and his administration by reporting on the discontent among conservatives that have sunk his presidency to near-historic lows. Although Bush has not reached the nadir seen by two other wartime presidents (Nixon and Truman both descended to 23%), the loss of conservative support has dealt a body blow to presidential influence in this midterm election: Disaffection over spending and immigration have caused conservatives to take flight from President Bush and the Republican Congress at a rapid pace in recent weeks, sending Bush's approval ratings to record lows and presenting a new threat to the GOP's 12-year reign on Capitol Hill, according to White House officials, lawmakers and new polling data. Bush and Congress have suffered a decline in support from almost every part of the conservative coalition over the past year, a trend that has...
Another Delay On Iran
Condoleezza Rice announced another delay on consideration of the Iranian portfolio by the UN Security Council, with the US agreeing to allow the EU to present another proposal to Iran intended to provide them with positive motivations to drop their nuclear program: The US Secretary of State has said that efforts to pursue a tough UN Security Council resolution on Iran's nuclear programme will be delayed. Condoleezza Rice said European countries would resume diplomatic efforts to persuade Tehran to change its position. ... "We agreed...we would wait for a couple of weeks, while the Europeans design an offer to the Iranians that would make clear that they have a choice that would allow them to have a civil nuclear programme if that is indeed what they want," she said. Speaking on American television, Ms Rice said the EU3 wanted to show Iran that it had two options. It could either...
Iraq To Unify Baghdad Force
The new Iraqi government has decided to remove the confusion of having various security forces for different ministries operating in the greater Baghdad area and consolidate all such units into one cohesive force. The concern over confusion between actual government forces and the sectarian militias has crescendoed with the recent violence in the capital, and a unified command would resolve those issues immediately: Senior Iraqi leaders are preparing a major restructuring of the capital's security brigades that would place all police officers and paramilitary soldiers under a single commander and in one uniform, in hopes of curtailing the sectarian chaos that is ravaging the city. The reorganization calls for a substantially reduced presence of American soldiers on the capital's streets, although not necessarily in their numbers nationwide. The plan, disclosed Wednesday in interviews with senior Iraqi leaders, would substantially alter Baghdad's landscape, now permeated by tens of thousands of police...
Needles, Haystacks, Phone Calls, And NSA
Today the blogosphere has focused on the supposedly new revelation by USA Today reporters that the National Security Agency has built a database of telephone records from the exchanges of most (not all) major phone providers in the United States. The NSA collected basic information on origination and destination on millions of phone calls, both domestic and international, creating a database of call records that data miners can exploit to determine calling patterns when intelligence and law-enforcement agencies suspect a phone of being used for terrorist purposes: The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY. The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans — most of whom aren't suspected of...
Ahmadinejad Plays Cat To Media Mouse
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad got more headlines tonight by hinting that he would accept indirect negotiations with the United States on the nuclear program pursued by Iran, but only when the US quits issuing threats. The AP reports that the Iranian president also relied on the normal anti-Israeli diatribe when addressing his Indonesian hosts: Iran's president said Thursday he was ready to hold talks over his country's nuclear program, but he warned that efforts to force Tehran to the negotiating table with threats could backfire. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also launched a scathing attack on Israel and told more than 1,000 cheering Muslim students in the Indonesian capital that the West was being hypocritical in pressing Iran to stop its uranium enrichment program. ... Asked what it would take to begin talks to resolve the standoff, Ahmadinejad told the station Iran was "ready to engage in dialogue with anybody." "But if someone points...
Pelsoi: What, Us Impeach?
Nancy Pelosi has backpedaled on her coy remarks about the possibility of impeaching George Bush if the Democrats win control of the House in November. She told the Washington Post last week that "you never know where [investigations] lead to," when asked about impeachment with her demand for numerous Congressional investigations into the Bush administration. When that touched off a roar of protest from Republicans and even some Democrats anxious to avoid rallying conservatives to the polls in the midterms, Pelosi meekly changed course: Seeking to choke off a Republican rallying cry, the House's top Democrat has told colleagues that the party will not seek to impeach President Bush even if it gains control of the House in November's elections, her office said last night. Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) told her caucus members during their weekly closed meeting Wednesday "that impeachment is off the table; she is not interested...
May 12, 2006
Immigration Deal In Senate
The Senate reached a compromise on the immigration-reform bill that will allow for Republican amendments and soon create a conference committee to hash out a compromise on the effort for reform. Key to the final version will be the members from both houses to the conference committee, and at least one opponent of amnesty from the Senate will be included: Senate leaders reached a deal yesterday on reviving a broad immigration bill that could provide millions of illegal immigrants a chance to become American citizens and said they will try to pass it before Memorial Day. The agreement brokered by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) breaks a political stalemate that has lingered for weeks while immigrants and their supporters held rallies, boycotts and protests to push for action. ... Key to the agreement is who will be negotiating a compromise with the...
Once Burned
The Washington Examiner spells out conservative angst in its latest editorial, "Conservatives Won't Be Fooled Again". The Examiner notes the increasing disconnect between the administration and the conservative agenda, and warns Karl Rove that base-inflaming rhetoric will not work in these elections absent a concrete return to conservative principles in government: Bush won two presidential elections thanks in large part to conservatives to whom he appealed as the true heir to the Reagan Revolution. But the Gipper wouldn’t recognize Bush’s version of “conservative” government: Federal spending and debt have exploded. Ditto the unfunded liabilities of major entitlement programs. Federal regulation has been vastly expanded in education and health care. As National Taxpayers Union President Dr. John E. Berthoud told The Examiner, “You can’t tax like Reagan while spending like Dean.” Even worse, Bush’s refusal to veto pork-barrel spending has compromised the efficacy of his tax cuts. Indeed, “limited government” never...
British Court Refuses To Extradite Hijackers
A British court insisted that nine hijackers from Afghanistan should receive asylum rather than deportation for their takeover of a flight in order to escape the Taliban. The High Court even penalized the Home Office for its insistence on prosecuting the deportation: Nine Afghan asylum seekers who hijacked a plane at gunpoint to get to Britain should have been admitted to the country as genuine refugees and allowed to live and work here freely, the High Court ruled yesterday. In a decision that astonished and dismayed MPs, the Home Office was accused of abusing its powers by failing to give the nine formal permission to enter Britain, in breach of their human rights. ... The judge ordered the Home Office to pay legal costs on an indemnity basis - the highest level possible - to signify his "disquiet and concern". So far, the whole affair, including legal fees, asylum processing...
CQ Fundraiser For Marriage Encounter (Bumped!)
Many CQ readers know that the First Mate and I volunteer our time at Twin Cities Marriage Encounter, a non-profit that holds weekend retreats for married and engaged couples to work on communication in their relationships in a non-denominational Christian approach. The organization does not provide counseling or advice, but instead assists couples with communication techniques that help resolve conflict and increase commitment between spouses. While we discuss religion and Christian thought on marriage, the weekends are open to all faiths. We have seen the good results that Marriage Encounter provides. While it doesn't solve all problems, Marriage Encounter has strengthened thousands of marriages and helped numerous young couples prepare for marriage in a realistic and positive manner. Many of the couples that have an encounter weekend come back to lead weekends for other couples. We believe that by strengthening marriages, we help to support the basic unit of human...
Weapons-Grade Uranium Found In Iranian Military Site
The IAEA announced preliminary results of tests made on residue found at an Iranian military site that indicates Iran has weapons-grade enriched uranium (also here), not just the low-level enrichment they announced earlier. The report undermines the explanation given earlier by Iran when similar residue was found at a civilian facility: The U.N. atomic agency found traces of highly enriched uranium at an Iranian site linked to the country's defense ministry, diplomats said Friday, adding to concerns that Tehran was hiding activities aimed at making nuclear arms. The diplomats, who demanded anonymity in exchange for revealing the confidential information, said the findings were preliminary and still had to be confirmed through other lab tests. But they said the density of enrichment appeared to be close to or above the level used to make nuclear warheads. Still, they said, further analysis could show that the traces match others established to have...
No Sitting, Just No Dimes
I have written extensively on the malaise and disaffection rising in conservative ranks, a trend reflected in declining approval ratings for both George Bush and Congress. I wrote yesterday that movement conservatives may be washing their hands of the Bush administration, frustrated by its big-government approach and its vacillation on border security. Some took this as an indication that I have joined an effort to convince conservatives to sit on their hands this November -- in other words, to boycott the midterm elections in order to teach the GOP a lesson. Nothing could be further from the truth. As I wrote a week ago, we have no particular requirement to keep our voices silent when any of our elected representatives enact bad policy or fail to act in what we see as the best interests of the nation. In fact, we have a duty to do so when we can...
May 13, 2006
On The 'Lesser Of Two Evils'
After my post yesterday on the responsibility of making a meaningful choice in the November election, quite a few commenters made a point about refusing to choose between the "lesser of two evils". I want to address that thought and start a new comment thread for your reaction. The phrase "lesser of two evils" gets a lot of use in politics, but it gets taken too literally in order to make an excuse for inaction. In the literal sense, it almost never applies anyway. Not many political figures in American history have been downright evil. We have had incompetents, malcontents, benighted fools, the hopelessly naive, and Jimmy Carter, but thankfully only a handful of outright crooks and genuinely evil men and women. The odds of having two choices in an election where both are evil are very, very slim. Perhaps if David Duke ran against Tom Metzger for Congress, that...
CQ, The NY Post, And The NSA
The New York Post has adapted my lengthy post about the NSA phone-call database into a column for today's edition titled "Sacrificing Here". I argue that both sides have a point about the program, but that the sacrifice is not only limited and reasonable for the war effort, but that it's practically been the only one we've been asked to make: Ba[s]ically, the NSA is building a powerful tool for determining the behavior of people inside the United States (and outside, as well). Is such a tool reasonable under the circumstances we face now? That's ultimately a political question, not a legal one - and the answer depends on whether people see a greater danger in terrorists or their government. In my opinion, the effort is reasonable and limited. The calls themselves go unmonitored, and the records contain no billing information or even names in their raw form. With the...
Falkenrath: NSA Programs Show Hayden As The Right Man For War
Richard Falkenrath, the former deputy Homeland Security advisor to the President and now a fellow at the center-left Brookings Institute, writes a passionate defense of the NSA phone-call database in today's Washington Post. He also pushes back against the notion that the involvement of General Michael Hayden in the two controversial NSA surveillance programs disqualify him to lead the CIA. In fact, as Falkenrath explains, it underscores his potential value at Langley: The potential value of such anonymized domestic telephone records is best understood through a hypothetical example. Suppose a telephone associated with Mohamed Atta had called a domestic telephone number A. And then suppose that A had called domestic telephone number B. And then suppose that B had called C. And then suppose that domestic telephone number C had called a telephone number associated with Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The most effective...
You Can't Trust Too Far One Who Writes Of 'Purple Stars'
One of the more humorous and yet revealing corrections seen in a major newspaper appeared in yesterday's New York Times, as my friends at Power Line point out: An article and a picture caption yesterday about the funeral of Sgt. Jose Gomez of Queens, who was killed on April 20 in Iraq, referred incorrectly to the Army representative who comforted his mother. She was a sergeant first class an enlisted woman, not an officer. The article also misstated the name of a service medal that a general presented to Sergeant Gomez's mother. It is a Purple Heart, not a Purple Star. This contains two highly embarrassing mistakes for any publication that considers itself authoritative on military issues and news. As John Hinderaker points out, the Purple Heart may well be the most recognized military decoration, and one of our oldest. George Washington created the award as a way of...
Troops On The Border?
With George Bush announcing a major national address on Monday night regarding immoigration policy, many wonder whether he has any new initiatives to announce or whether he will simply re-emphasize the themes that have so far failed to resonate with the restive GOP base. The Washington Post reports that one new initiative may have National Guard troops deploy in greater numbers to the southern border, reinforcing the DHS' Border Patrol: President Bush will push next week for a broad overhaul of the nation's immigration laws and plans to tighten security on the borders, possibly with a wider deployment of the National Guard, White House officials said yesterday. The officials said Bush will use a prime-time television address Monday to outline his plans and then visit the U.S.-Mexico border on Thursday to highlight the problem of illegal immigration. Officials say he is considering substantially increasing the presence of National Guard troops,...
Northern Alliance Radio Today
The Northern Alliance Radio Network is already on the air, with Brian and Chad from Fraters Libertas and John from Power Line. Mitch Berg, King Banaian, and I will take over at 1 pm CT, discussing the pressing issues of the day, including the latest on the NSA story, the immigration debate, and much much more. Listen to us on AM 1280 The Patriot, and join the conversation at 651-289-4488! UPDATE: King says to tune in or the dog gets it....
And The Lame Shall Run From The Police
McQ at QandO has this priceless CNN report of the miraculous healing power of the Las Vegas Police Department: A wheelchair-bound Los Angeles woman, who has repeatedly filed lawsuits over access for the disabled, got up and ran after police arrested her for fraud, authorities said Thursday. Laura Lee Medley, 35, had sued in at least four California cities over injuries she claimed she sustained while trying to navigate her wheelchair before she was suspected of fraud. Medley, who claimed to be paralyzed from a drunk driving accident, was tracked to Las Vegas where police there took her into custody and then, when she complained of medical issues, to a local hospital, Long Beach prosecutor Belinda Mayes said. ... Medley sprinted through the hospital corridors but was quickly apprehended by police and booked pending extradition to San Bernardino, California, where she is facing charges of filing false documents, attempted grand...
May 14, 2006
Mark Kennedy: No Pay For Campaigning
With Mark Kennedy polling within the margin of error against Amy Klobuchar for Mark Dayton's open Senate seat, the Congressman wants to start differentiating himself from the Hennepin County District Attorney. He got his wish yesterday when he pledged to refuse his Congressional salary while campaigning, a promise that Klobuchar's campaign scornfully refused to match: U.S. Rep. Mark Kennedy said Friday that he would not accept his congressional pay on days he misses votes in Washington because of his U.S. Senate campaign. Kennedy, the Republican candidate for the seat being vacated by Democrat Mark Dayton, was one of only nine U.S. House members not to miss any congressional votes in 2005. But Kennedy said the demands of the Senate race could force a few missed votes this year. ... Klobuchar's campaign manager, Ben Goldfarb, criticized Kennedy's move as a "phony gimmick" and said the campaign wouldn't respond further. He did...
Northern Ireland Slowly Returns To Home Rule
The Stormont will meet for the first time in four years Monday, restarting the bitterness-plagued home rule project in Northern Ireland. In what appears to be an unintentionally symbolic start, no business will be conducted for the first week. Instead, the assembly will spend its time trying to generate enough consensus to form an executive, a goal that the Stormont appears unlikely to achieve: The Northern Ireland Assembly will sit on Monday for the first time since it was suspended in 2002 following allegations of a republican spy ring operating at the parliamentary buildings in Belfast. The London and Dublin governments are hoping the province's Catholic and Protestant political parties can resolve their differences between now and November 24 to restore the power-sharing administration. But the 108 members of what critics say is a "powerless" legislature will not be deluged in paperwork when they return to the Stormont debating chamber...
Democrats To Attack Right Flank On Immigration
A short report by Dan Balz in today's Washington Post gives a warning to the Republicans about the likely battle over immigration should Congress fail to pass reform legislation in this session. Democratic centrists plan to argue that the Bush administration has failed to enforce existing immigration laws in an effort to peel hard-line immigration conservatives away from the GOP: A new analysis by the centrist Democratic group Third Way concludes that the administration has failed to enforce existing laws and that the president should be held accountable for those failures in the political debate now raging in Washington. "The report shows that the administration, despite their tough talk, is failing at border security and enforcing the employer sanctions provision," New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson said. "It makes them vulnerable in what is their biggest and strongest argument -- that they are enforcing the law against illegal workers and are...
Air Force Investigating Alternative Fuels
The New York Times has an interesting report on an effort by the US military to develop alternate fuel sources for the Air Force. The branch spends almost $5 billion a year on fuel and has the most vulnerability to price swings. Developing a safe and effective alternative could allow the military to decrease its dependence on crude oil, and one of the leading candidates for its replacement can be found in abundance in the US: When an F-16 lights up its afterburners, it consumes nearly 28 gallons of fuel per minute. No wonder, then, that of all the fuel the United States government uses each year, the Air Force accounts for more than half. The Air Force may not be in any danger of suffering inconveniences from scarce or expensive fuel, but it has begun looking for a way to power its jets on something besides conventional fuel. In...
Saddam Was Into RVs (Updated And Bumped)
Joseph Shahda has uncovered another document of interest from the files of intelligence captured by US forces during the fall of Saddam Hussein. This document addresses a still-controversial topic -- the mobile laboratories cited by Colin Powell as one of Saddam's WMD capabilities and discovered during the 2003 invasion. Later investigators determined these trailers to be hydrogen-gas production facilities although some experts still dispute that conclusion. The document translated by Shahda does not provide many details itself, but does show that the project for which the labs were built attracted high-level interest for equipment supposedly only suitable for meteorological research: Beginning of the translation of page 1 In the name of God the Most Merciful the Most Compassionate Presidency of the Republic Military Industrialization Commission Ibn Rushd General Company Number 10025611018 Date 11/11/2002 To: Military Industrialization Commission/Department of Projects Subject: Investment Plan for the year 2003 In regards from the...
One Sick Child Away From Being Fired
Ruth Marcus looks at an issue for mothers in the workplace that often gets little coverage from the media. With media conglomerates aiming for prized demographics, usually any discussion of workplace challenges for mothers revolve around high-powered executives hitting glass ceilings as they attempt to balance family and career concerns. For most working women, that dilemma would represent a slice of heaven, for more often they worry about keeping their jobs at all when family emergencies hit: As the author, law professor Joan C. Williams, writes, "The media tend to cover work/family conflict as the story of professional mothers 'opting out' of fast-track careers" -- an "overly autobiographical approach" that, however unintentionally, misrepresents the full nature of the problem and skews the discussion of potential solutions. Guilty as charged. Williams studied almost 100 union arbitrations that, she writes, "provide a unique window into how work and family responsibilities clash in...
Michael Yon Interview
I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing intrepid independent journalist Michael Yon, back in the US after another tour of Iraq and a short stint in Afghanistan. I had hoped to catch Michael a couple of weeks ago, but the timing never worked out quite right -- and we almost missed each other tonight by accident when we had some confusion due to time zone differences. Fortunately, we made our connection and we spoke for about a half-hour earlier this evening. I've podcasted our interview in three parts. In section 1, Michael and I discuss his impressions of Afghanistan. Michael only spent about a fortnight in Afghanistan, operating completely on his own, without embedding among US or Western forces. He had little good news for us about his limited experience there. The nation still operates on a tribal basis, only now the poppy harvest has hit record numbers, which fuels...
May 15, 2006
Behind The USA Today Poll
Two major polls attempted to take the temperature of the American electorate in the immediate aftermath of the revelation of NSA data-mining through billions of phone call records. The Washington Post reported that 63% of all Americans did not mind that the telephone carriers, excepting Qwest, had voluntarily given those records to the NSA. Almost in the same time frame, a USA Today/Gallup poll showed a bare majority against it -- but even that poll had contradictory internal information: A majority of Americans disapprove of a massive Pentagon database containing the records of billions of phone calls made by ordinary citizens, according to a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll. About two-thirds are concerned that the program may signal other, not-yet-disclosed efforts to gather information on the general public. The survey of 809 adults Friday and Saturday shows a nation wrestling with the balance between fighting terrorism and protecting civil liberties. By 51%-43%,...
Saddam Faces More Charges
The trial of Saddam Hussein resumes today, but before the proceedings started the court charged Saddam with even more crimes stemming from his efforts against the Iraqi Shi'a in Dujail. Saddam refused to enter a plea on charges that he tortured and killed hundreds of men, women, and children in punishment for the aborted Shi'ite uprising: Saddam Hussein refused to enter a plea at his trial on Monday after he was formally charged with ordering the killing and torture of hundreds of Shi'ite villagers, telling the judge he was still Iraq's president. The detailed charges read out by Judge Raouf Abdel Rahman stemmed from the killing of 148 Shi'ites after an attempt on Saddam's life in 1982 in the village of Dujail. The ousted president was accused of ordering the killing and torture of hundreds in the village, including women and children, and that he sent helicopters and planes to...
Immigration Activists To Snatch Defeat From The Jaws Of Victory
One constant in the immigration protests this year has been the ability of the activists to sabotage their own position. With the White House and the Senate poised to deliver most of their agenda, they overreacted to the House proposal and staged a number of demonstrations that proved so provocative that it undermined their allies in both places. Many of these protests specifically targeted George Bush, although he opposed the House bill and had worked for normalization for years. Now, with President Bush about to make a prime-time Oval Office speech intended to rescue his immigration reform plan, the same activists are about to do it again, planning a loud and angry response to tonight's speech: As President Bush prepares to address the nation tonight about immigration, a newly formed network of groups that organized demonstrations for illegal immigrants is conference calling, brainstorming and consolidating its forces so that it...
Immigration Speech Preview (UPDATE: Full Speech Preview)
The White House has released excerpts from the speech which George Bush will give tonight, and it looks like Bush may try to play his cards as broadly as possible. For the optimists, his speech contains something for everyone -- border security, normalization, ID cards, prosecution of employers, and so on. For those who have adopted a more glass-half-empty approach -- understandable, given the lack of action thus far -- the attempt to find a consensus will look like more of a capitulation and will probably leave them unconvinced. Bush will start out by reminding the nation of the steps he has already taken to secure the border, but admit that it has not been enough to do the job properly: Since I became President, we have increased funding for border security by 66 percent, and expanded the Border Patrol from about 9,000 to 12,000 agents. . . .we have...
Immigration Speech Media Alerts
I will have a busy evening tonight. First I plan to live-blog the immigration speech if possible this evening, depending on dialysis schedules. Afterwards, I will appear on The World Tonight with Rob Breckenridge on Calgary's CHQR talk radio station. If you're not in Calgary and can't tune in 770 AM, be sure to listen on the stream at CHQR's website. After that, Mark Tapscott, Stephen Bainbridge, and I will conduct a round table on the immigration speech and conservative disaffectation in general, and what options conservatives have to re-energize the movement. I will podcast that later this evening -- and we're hoping that Michelle Malkin may join us, although she will undoubtedly be in high demand. I believe I may be outnumbered, and it should make for a lively round-table discussion!...
Immigration Speech: Reaction
I apologize; circumstances kept me from live-blogging the speech, but I did hear the entire event along with having read the speech just before its delivery. My initial reaction? President Bush tried reaching for the center -- a position he has occupied on this issue all along. He tried a one-from-column-A, two-from-column-B approach that probably will leave all sides more or less dissatisfied. His declaration that catch-and-release would end was the most welcome news in the entire speech. He delivered that well and sounded forceful and presidential, but most people will wonder why this practice didn't end on September 12, 2001. His tone remained measured and firm and he insisted that Congress pass a comprehensive plan that includes both tight security and normalization. How will that sell? Predictably. Tom Tancredo and Peter King, both House Republicans, tore the speech apart. Immigration activists Raul Hinojosa and Cecilia Munoz, the latter with...
Interview: Mark Tapscott On Immigration And The Conservative Rebellion
Earlier today I arranged to conduct a round-table discussion on George Bush's immigration speech as well as the conservative rebellion that threatens the Republican Party's dominance in Congress in the upcoming mid-term elections. Unfortunately, two of our potential conferees could not make it, Michelle Malkin because of her commitments to Fox News tonight, and Stephen Bainbridge because of technical difficulties that he tried mightily to overcome but could not. Fortunately for me and for the CQ community, Mark Tapscott and I had a great one-on-one conversation instead. Besides being an outstanding blogger, Mark had spent years at the Heritage Foundation integrating bloggers into their efforts to great effect, and now serves as editorial page editor for the Washington Examiner. Mark has been fighting for the conservative movement for decades, and he has a unique perspective on the crossroads conservatives face, ironically because of their electoral successes. We first talked about...
Reprehensible
Unfortunately, while Bush underwhelmed the conservative movement on immigration tonight, certain conservatives busied themselves by embarrassing us much more than Bush could ever have. Vox Day, whose provocative writing I normally enjoy, has lost all sense of perspective in his latest effort at World Net Daily. He suggests that we learn a lesson from the Nazis in dealing with illegal immigrants in our midst: And he will be lying, again, just as he lied when he said: "Massive deportation of the people here is unrealistic – it's just not going to work." Not only will it work, but one can easily estimate how long it would take. If it took the Germans less than four years to rid themselves of 6 million Jews, many of whom spoke German and were fully integrated into German society, it couldn't possibly take more than eight years to deport 12 million illegal aliens, many...
May 16, 2006
Canadians Want Gun Registry Program Scrapped
A new poll by Ipsos-Reid delivers more bad news to the Liberals in Canada. One of their pet projects, the national gun registry, now has a clear majority across the nation declaring that the program doesn't work, is badly organized, and should be eliminated -- and they blame the Liberals for the mess: A new Ipsos Reid survey for CanWest/Global News reports that most Canadians (54%) feel the “gun registry is badly organized, isn’t working properly, and should be scrapped” – a level of opinion essentially unchanged from what was recorded nearly four years, and two Prime Ministers ago (53% expressed this opinion in a December 2002 Ipsos Reid survey). And, if the Auditor General of Canada produced a report that indicated that there had been widespread mismanagement and waste within the gun registry itself: * 56% say they would most blame “the former Liberal Government and elected politicians who...
Lorie Byrd Leaves Polipundit
Lorie Byrd has left Polipundit over a dispute in the editorial policy of the group blog: The fact is that I believe this is the last time I will be blogging at Polipundit. I received a lengthy email from Polipundit tonight alerting us to an editorial policy change that included the following: "From now on, every blogger at PoliPundit.com will either agree with me completely on the immigration issue, or not blog at PoliPundit.com." I would provide additional context, but Polipundit has asked that the contents of our emails not be disclosed publicly and I think that is a fair request. There has been plenty written in the posts over the past week alone to let readers figure out what happened. Polipundit ended a later email with this: "It's over. The group-blogging experiment was nice while it lasted, but we have different priorities now. It's time to go our own...
Mfume Lashes Out At Democrats
Kweisi Mfume has trailed fellow Democratic candidate Benjamin Cardin for the nomination to replace Senator Paul Sarbanes in November's midterm election since both candidates declared for the race, and Mfume now believes that the party has deliberately favored Cardin. The former NAACP gave an angry interview to the Washington Times in which he hinted that the Democrats may wind up sacrificing his support if he loses: Maryland U.S. Senate candidate Kweisi Mfume said yesterday that Democrats risk losing the senatorial election because "old-line party bosses" are undermining his campaign and alienating black voters. Mr. Mfume also would not say whether he would endorse Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin, the front-runner for the Democratic Senate nomination, if he should lose to the lawmaker in the September primary. "I can say that there will be people who will feel disaffected [if I am not the nominee]," Mr. Mfume told editors and reporters at...
Minnesota GOP Holds As Democrats Drop
In a surprising result from the Star-Tribune's Minnesota Poll, the GOP has surpassed the Democrats in party affiliation by standing firm while voters abandon the DFL. The Minnesota Poll shows that 29% of all Minnesota adults self-identify as Republicans, while the Democrats lost six points since last year, dropping to 25%: A new Minnesota Poll shows that Minnesota's political landscape is almost equally divided between Republican and Democratic voters. In the poll, conducted last week, 29 percent identified themselves as Republicans, exactly the same percentage as a year ago, despite President Bush's record-low approval ratings and the conventional wisdom that Republicans are likely to suffer net losses in this fall's election. Those who identified themselves as Democrats stood at 25 percent, close enough to be considered even, given the margin of sampling error, but down from 31 percent a year ago. Given that this poll does not have a reputation...
Two Components Of Bush Border-Security Plan Seem ... Insecure
George Bush tried to reassure conservatives and others concerned about the lack of action on border security that the administration takes those concerns seriously. In his speech, he laid out specifics intended to bolster support for his comprehensive immigration reform policies that would reassure people that the border would get effective attention. The two chief proposals comprised the deployment of National Guard troops to support the Border Patrol and the establishment of a fence in high-traffic areas and a system of barriers and electronic surveillance in others. However, within hours of the speech, holes began to appear in both elements. The New York Times reports that the governors of the border states that would have to authorize the deployment of the National Guard did not get consulted on the plan ahead of time: Among the most important voices will be those of the governors of the four states abutting the...
Hatch: Courts Informed Of NSA Programs
Senator Orrin Hatch answered charges surrounding the NSA surveillance programs by revealing that at least two FISA judges have been kept informed of at least the NSA phone call database. The revelation answers critics of the Bush administration's efforts to use datamining to detect terrorist sleeper cells: Two judges on the secretive court that approves warrants for intelligence surveillance were told of the broad monitoring programs that have raised recent controversy, a Republican senator said Tuesday, connecting a court to knowledge of the collecting of millions of phone records for the first time. ... Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said that at least two of the chief judges on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court had been informed since 2001 of White House-approved National Security Agency monitoring operations. "None raised any objections, as far as I know," said Hatch, a member of a special Intelligence Committee panel appointed to oversee the NSA's work....
May 17, 2006
The Smoke Trail, Explained
The Pentagon authorized the release of video and stills taken from a security camera that captures the attack on 9/11 by the hijackers of American Airlines Flight 77, after a FOIA lawsuit by Judicial Watch. The released images do not show all that much more than what we saw on television in the aftermath of the attacks, which disappointed those who hoped the new footage would stamp out the various paranoid conspiracy theories about the attacks. Two bloggers have posted screencaps of the video and noticed something odd. Both Allahpundit at Hot Air and Kevin at Wizbang! remark on the smoke trail evident in the right-hand side of the frame in the moments before the attack. A few commenters (not the bloggers themselves) say this is evidence that the attack was a missile and not a fully-loaded 767, and offer by way of further proof the long-standing assertion that the...
China Jails Dissident Blogger For Twelve Years
The repressive government of China continued its battle against on-line efforts at democratization and intellectual freedom yesterday by jailing a blogger for twelve years. Yang Tianshui provoked the regime's ire by posting essays to his website supporting free elections and calling for a velvet revolution: CHINA sentenced a veteran dissident writer to 12 years in jail for subversion yesterday, after he posted essays on the internet supporting a movement by exiles to hold free elections. The sentence on Yang Tianshui, 45, is one of the harshest to be handed down to a political dissident since the trials that came after the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown on students demanding greater democracy. It underscores the determination of the ruling Communist Party to brook no opposition and to maintain a tight grip on the internet. Yang is one of several writers and dissidents to be tried over the content of internet postings. He...
Term Limits For Appropriators?
The New York Sun reports on a new initiative by tax activist Grover Norquist to rein in spending -- rule changes in both the House and Senate that limit the tenure on appropriations committees. Norquist wants to have more fresh faces each session in order to combat the descent of otherwise rational politicians into a spendthrift groupthink: Grover Norquist, president of the advocacy group Americans for Tax Reform, is advancing a new approach to fighting government corruption: term limits for members of congressional appropriations committees. Speaking to The New York Sun yesterday, Mr. Norquist claimed that members of appropriations committees developed a sort of groupthink over time, and regardless of their partisan affiliations, eventually began thinking like appropriators. ... Mr. Norquist has recently traveled with Rep. Tom Feeney, a Republican of Florida, who supports the idea and will help introduce it into the House. "We'll do it after the next...
The Victory In Primaries For Conservatives
Over the past week, many of us have written on the frustration felt by conservatives (especially fiscal conservatives) over the past few years. Some believe that the only manner in which to serve notice on the GOP that it cannot take conservative votes for granted is a massive walkout, a boycott of the 2006 midterms and perhaps even the 2008 presidential elections. Others, such as myself, believe that conservatives will marginalize themselves by doing so and will prove themselves incapable of being reliable partners in any kind of ruling coalition. Today we have an example of what can be accomplished through active engagement rather than disengagement. In Pennsylvania, primary voters have unseated the two Republican leaders in the state Senate that gave the body an unpopular pay raise, joining thirteen of their incumbent House colleagues in getting the boot: Angry taxpayers on Tuesday tossed out the two Republican Senate leaders...
Immigration Center Advances
The Senate continued to follow George Bush in a relentless effort to the center on immigration today, passing amendments that fund a border fence, lock out illegals with one felony or three misdemeanor convictions, and provide for guest-worker and citizenship programs. The amendments make it more likely that the House will compromise in conference to deliver the comprehensive reform plan that Bush has demanded, although James Sensenbrenner has announced his opposition already: The Senate agreed to give millions of illegal immigrants a shot at U.S. citizenship and backed construction of 370 miles of triple-layered fencing along the Mexican border Wednesday, but prospects of election-year legislation clearing Congress were clouded by a withering attack against President Bush by a prominent House Republican. "Regardless of what the president says, what he is proposing is amnesty," said Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and the lawmaker who would lead...
In Defense Of Mark Tapscott
Over the past couple of weeks, many conservative bloggers have debated the future of the conservative movement and the potential electoral strategies that we feel will most benefit the cause. Over the course of that time, the bloggers have appeared to separate us into two camps: Geraghtyites (from Jim Geraghty at TKS) and Tapscottians (from Mark Tapscott at the Washington Examiner and Tapscott's Copy Desk). While I fall rather squarely into the realist Geraghty camp, I must say a few words in Mark's defense. First, I think people have misinterpreted Mark's position. What people call Tapscottian really follows more closely to the writings of Stephen Bainbridge. The professor has already announced his intention to withdraw his support from the GOP this fall and potentially in 2008 as a protest against their performance on a range of issues over the past few years. I don't agree with Stephen, but he's entitled...
May 18, 2006
What, Me Impeach?
Congressman John Conyers redefines disingenuity in today's Washington Post by proclaiming Republicans dishonest when they say that he wants to impeach the President. All he wants, he says, is some answers from the Bush administration: As Republicans have become increasingly nervous about whether they will be able to maintain control of the House in the midterm elections, they have resorted to the straw-man strategy of identifying a parade of horrors to come if Democrats gain the majority. Among these is the assertion that I, as the new chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, would immediately begin impeachment proceedings against President Bush. I will not do that. I readily admit that I have been quite vigorous, if not relentless, in questioning the administration. The allegations I have raised are grave, serious, well known, and based on reliable media reports and the accounts of former administration officials. ... So, rather than seeking...
Even The Gray Lady Gets The Message In PA
The New York Times recognized the Pennsylvania Earthquake which removed at least thirteen Republican incumbents in Tuesday's primaries from a state legislature that rejected conservative values. Jason DeParle reports that conservatives nationwide have taken heart from this victory, and even includes a mention of CQ: A revolt among Pennsylvania conservatives gained national attention on Wednesday after challengers toppled at least 12 state lawmakers they deemed insufficiently committed to small government and fiscal restraint. Among those losing their positions in a Republican primary on Tuesday were the two State Senate leaders, Robert C. Jubelirer and David J. Brightbill, who had 56 years of incumbency between them and vastly outspent their upstart rivals. Facing a tire salesman with little political experience, Mr. Brightbill, the majority leader, outspent his opponent nearly 20 to 1 and still captured just 37 percent of the vote. ... The results drew cheers from conservatives nationally, many of...
Engaging The Private Sector In Border Security
After decades of incompetence on the Rio Grande, the Bush administration aims to expand the effort to secure the southern border by engaging the private sector for real solutions. The New York Times reports that the Department of Homeland Security has sent out RFPs to the three main defese prime contractors for the building of physical and "virtual" barriers to deploy on the Mexican border: The quick fix may involve sending in the National Guard. But to really patch up the broken border, President Bush is preparing to turn to a familiar administration partner: the nation's giant military contractors. Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman, three of the largest, are among the companies that said they would submit bids within two weeks for a multibillion-dollar federal contract to build what the administration calls a "virtual fence" along the nation's land borders. Using some of the same high-priced, high-tech tools these...
Murtha Leaping To Conclusions
Rep. John Murtha has decided to skip the investigation and leapt directly to conclusions regarding allegations that US Marines shot and tossed grenades at Iraqi civilians in revenge for an ambush suffered by their unit in Haditha: Rep. John Murtha, an influential Pennsylvania lawmaker and outspoken critic of the war in Iraq, said today Marines had “killed innocent civilians in cold blood” after allegedly responding to a roadside bomb ambush that killed a Marine during a patrol in Haditha, Iraq, Nov. 19. The incident is still under investigation by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service and Multi-National Forces Iraq. The Marine Corps originally claimed that a convoy from the Camp Pendleton, Calif.-based Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines, hit a roadside bomb that killed Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas, 20, of El Paso, Texas, and the ensuing firefight killed 15 Iraqi civilians — casualties the Corps at first claimed were killed in...
The Night Of The Living Trackbacks!
For those of you who have shared my frustration on trackbacks at CQ for the past several months, I have some excellent news. Thanks to two volunteers, we have resolved the issues that have strangled trackback pings, at least for the time being. Richard and Tim from Hyscience and FreedomsZone got as frustrated as the rest of us earlier this week and asked me if they could help me solve the problem. I gratefully accepted their assistance, and between the three of us and Hosting Matters, we found out that the problem was a sustained and pernicious series of spambots that had throttled the background process. Tim made some internal adjustments to shield the process from the spammers, and we saw the trackbacks start working almost immediately. You should start seeing your trackbacks on my posts from now on, and if you do, be sure to thank Richard and Tim....
The Six Percent Non-Solution (Updates)
We conservatives have spent a lot of time talking about the disillusionment that we have experienced with the current Republican leadership, especially in Congress, but also with the administration on several issues including immigration. However, according to the NBC affiliate in San Diego, Border Patrol agents have experienced much more disillusionment than we can claim as the failure to prosecute illegal aliens has demoralized the force: An internal document obtained by The Associated Press shows the vast majority of people caught smuggling immigrants across the border near San Diego are never prosecuted for the offense, demoralizing the Border Patrol agents making the arrests. The report says, "It is very difficult to keep agents' morale up when the laws they were told to uphold are being watered-down or not prosecuted." The report offers a stark assessment of the situation at a Border Patrol station responsible for guarding 13 miles of mountainous...
Hamas Defies Abbas, Deploys Terrorist Army
Hamas made good on its threat to field its own armed force in Gaza, defying Mahmoud Abbas and his presidential veto of their militia. Abbas responded by sending his own Fatah forces into the streets, setting the stage for a gang war: The Hamas-led Palestinian government on Wednesday deployed a new security force in the Gaza Strip, a direct challenge to the authority of President Mahmoud Abbas, who last month vetoed the creation of the force. Mr. Abbas, who has been traveling in Europe this week, responded Wednesday night by ordering a large number of members of the security forces under his command to be placed on the streets in Gaza, Reuters reported. In another sign of Palestinian infighting, a Hamas militant was killed in a drive-by shooting near Gaza City, the second such killing of a Hamas member in two days. No one claimed responsibility, though Hamas and Mr....
John Howard, America's Friend
Our friends in Canada the pleasure of hosting Australian PM John Howard, who spoke to a joint session of the Canadian Parliament and gave high praise to America and its role in world affairs. Parliamentarians gave Howard a rousing reception as he reminded his audience of the importance of an engaged US: “Australia, as you know, is an unapologetic friend and ally of the United States,” Mr. Howard told a Commons chamber that's heard all-too-frequent criticism of Washington in recent years. Fresh from a visit to the White House, Mr. Howard told a chamber packed with Tory MPs, staffers, lobbyists and party functionaries — but noticeably light on Liberal Opposition MPs — that the U.S. “has been a remarkable power for good in the world. “And the decency and hope that the power and purpose that the United States represent in the world is something we should deeply appreciate,” Mr....
The Pattern On The Kyl Amendment
One of the interesting aspects of the immigration debate is how much of it gets influenced by electoral politics, even in subtle ways. Take, for instance, the defeat of the Kyl amendment that would have ensured that the temporary guest workers that came to the US remained ... temporary. The Senate tabled the amendment (in the US, this means defeating it) by a vote of 58-35. A number of Republicans voted to kill the Kyl amendment, including Minnesota's Norm Coleman, a disappointing performance. Other notables are Chuck Hagel, Richard Lugar, Sam Brownback, and Ted Stevens. Practically the entire contingent of the GOP faction in the Gang of 14 voted to kill the amendment except for Lindsay Graham, who managed to miss this vote. More interesting, however, are the Democrats who voted to support Kyl's amendment. They were Robert Byrd of West Virginia, Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, and Ben Nelson...
May 19, 2006
Westphalia vs Utopia
Charles Krauthammer wonders why border security has been dismissed as a concern only to conservatives in the current debate over immigration reform. It's a question that organized labor might want answered as well: Bush's enforcement provisions were advertised as an attempt to appease conservatives. This is odd. Are conservatives the only ones who think that unlimited, unregulated immigration is a detriment to the republic? Do liberals really believe in a de facto policy that depresses the wages of the poorest and most desperate Americans, African Americans most prominently among them? Do liberals believe that the number, social class, education level, background and country of origin of immigrants -- the kinds of decisions every democratic country makes for itself -- should be taken out of the hands of the American citizenry and left to the immigrants themselves and, in particular, to those most willing to break the very immigration regulations the...
Hamas Under Fire And Losing Money
Hamas took two hits today in its bid to spread its terrorism throughout the Middle East. The combined effects of losing almost a million dollars in cash and the provoked hostility of the Jordanian government threaten to put the terrorist group into a political death spiral. First, the Fatah police have relieved a Hamas envoy of his cash as he attempted to enter Gaza: Palestinian border police have confiscated more than $800,000 (£427,000) from a Hamas official trying to enter the Gaza Strip from Egypt. The Hamas-led government says it is hard to transfer cash to Palestinian territory as banks fear US sanctions for dealing with the militant group. ... A European Union observer at the crossing identified the Hamas official as spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri, a well known figure in the Arabic media. "Sami Abu Zuhri did not declare the money. The Palestinian security and customs officials found it...
The Hammer Drops On Big Legal
A federal grand jury returned an indictment alleging fraud, corruption, and kickbacks at one of the most prominent legal firms in the class-action lawsuit industry. Milberg Weiss also has two of its partners under personal indictment for a criminal racketeering conspiracy, and the feds want over $200 million in restitution: The future of one of the country's leading class-action law firms, Milberg Weiss, is in grave doubt after a federal grand jury returned a criminal indictment yesterday accusing the firm of engaging in a secret, 25-year-long conspiracy to kick back attorneys fees to investors who served as named plaintiffs in more than 150 lawsuits brought against publicly-traded American companies. Two top Milberg Weiss Bershad & Schlman LLP partners, David Bershad and Steven Schulman, were charged personally with criminal racketeering conspiracy. In addition, prosecutors are demanding that the firm forfeit $216.1 million, the sum Milberg Weiss earned in cases allegedly tainted...
Teheran To Reimpose The Nuremberg Laws? (Update: Unlikely)
Conflicting reports have clouded the story, but Canada's National Post reported in two different articles that Iran has passed legislation requiring non-Muslims to wear colored ribbons in order to identify infidels in their midst. The law, reminiscent of the notorious Nuremberg laws that forced Jews to wear a yellow Star of David (among other oppressive regulations), will allow Muslims to keep themselves pure by avoiding the touch of an infidel: The law mandates the government to make sure that all Iranians wear "standard Islamic garments" designed to remove ethnic and class distinctions reflected in clothing, and to eliminate "the influence of the infidel" on the way Iranians, especially, the young dress. It also envisages separate dress codes for religious minorities, Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians, who will have to adopt distinct colour schemes to make them identifiable in public. The new codes would enable Muslims to easily recognize non-Muslims so that...
Stepping Out With The Colonel (Updated)
Blogging will be light tonight as I will be attending a Veteran Appreciation Dinner sponsored by AM 1280 The Patriot, featuring Col. Oliver North as the guest speaker. Amendment X from The Savage Republican invited me as his guest, for which I'm grateful indeed. I will update you on the dinner when I return. UPDATE: I just got back from the event, which was entertaining. Unlike some other events by the station, this one was more intimate; the price was higher and they deliberately kept the room small to ensure that everyone had a chance to talk with the guest of honor. I spoke with John Fund and a few of the attendees, and the feedback on the format was so positive that they may continue to use it in future events. I would assume that when they present Salem Radio hosts, they will stick with the bigger venues. (Hey,...
May 20, 2006
Iraqis Join The Club
Iraq officially launched its first popularly elected government this morning after its National Assembly swore in the ministers of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Cabinet. Two key security posts remain unfilled while negotiations continue, but the governance of Iraq has now passed to a permanent set of democratic institutions for the first time: Iraq's new government of national unity was sworn in before a special session of parliament on Saturday, three years after the fall of Saddam Hussein. The new ministers took the oath of office after parliament approved the Cabinet presented by incoming Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. ... The session began more than two hours late because of last-minute haggling, finally opening with readings from the Quran. The 37-member Cabinet is made up of members from all of Iraq's religious, sectarian and ethnic groups. It took months of negotiations to form after the Dec. 15 elections and is Iraq's first...
Congress Shocked To Discover Problems With Air Marshals
A report released to the AP last night will inform Congress of what readers of CQ and Michelle Malkin have known for eighteen months -- that the management of the Federal Air Marshal Service has repeatedly undermined the mission through robotic insistence on dress codes and travel policies that do everything except tape a "Kill Me First" sign on the backs of supposedly covert agents. The House Judiciary Committee has finally addressed the complaints of air marshals who have watched in utter frustration while FAMS places every obstacle they can find between the agents and their mission: A report to be taken up by Congress next week is harshly critical of the Federal Air Marshal Service, concluding that more steps need to be taken to preserve the anonymity of the marshals. The draft report by the House Judiciary Committee, a copy of which was provided to The Associated Press on...
This Bud's For Du
Germans thrilled at the prospect of hosting this year's World Cup have had their enthusiasm dimmed by the business deal made with Budweiser. In the nation that defines beer purity, the sponsorship of the American beer behemoth has set German teeth grinding: IT IS brown-gold and alcoholic but, then, in the scathing verdict of German beer fans, so is paint thinner. The Germans are furious that Budweiser will be the official tipple for the World Cup, which starts next month. The American lager has secured a near-monopoly of beer sales inside World Cup stadiums and within a 500m radius of the grounds, supplanting more than 1,270 domestic breweries. And what most upsets the fans is that Budweiser — advertised as the “King of Beers” in the US — fails to meet the ancient German standards for purity, which stipulate that beer can be brewed only from malt, hops and water....
A Revealing Lack Of Consistency
Why is it that the same people who claim to stand for diversity and the dignity of the individual manage to deride their political opponents in the most bigoted and degrading terms? I understand that many people do not find Michelle Malkin to their taste. Michelle is fearless, passionate, and unrelenting when covering stories or writing columns. She writes in an aggressive and provocative style which attracts certain readers and repels others. I put myself foursquare in the former group, but others can and do fall into the latter, and that's fine. Michelle can take the criticism, just as we all do. However, what we find is that Michelle's critics continuously reveal themselves as immature, chauvinistic, and sexually frustrated. Like clockwork, when she started v-blogging, a blogger had to make a reference to it as some sort of pornography, only this time the blogger is Alex Pareene, one of the...
May 21, 2006
It's Nagin In New Orleans
Ray Nagin managed to win re-election as mayor of New Orleans despite his record of incompetent decisions in the immediate run-up and aftermath of Hurricane Katrina after one of the most polite campaigns the city has ever seen. Nagin, who described himself as "humbled" often in his campaigning, will lead the city in its rebuilding efforts after the worst American natural disaster in decades: C. Ray Nagin, the unpredictable mayor who charted a sometimes erratic course for his city through Hurricane Katrina and after, won a narrow re-election victory here Saturday. Mr. Nagin, who will now lead the city through four crucial rebuilding years, fended off a strong challenge from Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu, the scion of one of Louisiana's leading political families, in a vote that see-sawed all night. With all of the city's 442 precincts reporting, Mr. Nagin had 52 percent of the vote, while Mr. Landrieu received...
Germans Try Taxing Their Way To Prosperity
Faced with spiraling deficits and a moribund economy, Germany has once again decided that the government provides the answer to financial stress. The Bundestag passed the largest tax increase in post-war history and targeted the tax on retail transactions: Parliament passed Germany's largest postwar tax hike on Friday. The country's value-added tax (VAT) will rise from 16 to 19 percent in January to help cut the deficit. But there are worries it will hit the already weak growth of the world's third largest economy. Hoping to control a spiralling budget deficit, Germany's lower house of parliament, the Bundestag, on Friday passed the biggest tax increase in the country's postwar history. The new package calls for a 3 percentage point jump in the value added tax -- from 16 to 19 percent. Proponents want to raise about $25.5 billion more per year starting in 2007, but critics say the hike will...
Saudis Renege On Reform
After 9/11, the Saudis publicly acknowledged that their education system promoted radicalism in Islam and indoctrinated hatred among their children from the earliest days of their schooling. The Saudis promised to reform their system, spending millions of dollars on expensive advertising campaigns in the US to paint themselves as friends to America and the West and promoting an image of reform and moderation. President Bush held hands (in the Arabic tradition) with a Saudi prince in order to help promote that image of friendship. Did they actually reform that system? According to the Washington Post, nothing changed in the slightest: A 2004 Saudi royal study group recognized the need for reform after finding that the kingdom's religious studies curriculum "encourages violence toward others, and misguides the pupils into believing that in order to safeguard their own religion, they must violently repress and even physically eliminate the 'other.' " Since then,...
Able Danger Documents Discovered?
The Able Danger blog has news from a FOIA request filed by Scott Malone of NavySeals.com and Christopher Law of PublicEdCenter.org that has produced an interesting response from the Pentagon. When they demanded the release of all information regarding the Able Danger project, the DoD rejected the request after a bit of bureaucratic misdirection. However, they acknowledged the existence of over 9500 pages of documentation -- apparently the same paperwork that they told Congress no longer existed: In two possibly related developments in the past week, the Pentagon denied access to almost 10,000 pages of classified documents relating to a top-secret intelligence program senior officials have three times previously testified were destroyed or unable to be located. And the attorneys for the secret team members who disclosed the existence of the data-mining counter-terrorism program, called ABLE DANGER, have argued in a new court filing that they be “cleared” to review...
Caught Red-Handed (Update: Jefferson's National Guard Story Connected?)
Video killed the radio star, the song tells us, and it holds its dangers for politicians on the take as well. The AP reports that the FBI has video of Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA) taking bribes, the latest in a series of setbacks to Democratic attempts to paint corruption as a one-party problem: A congressman under investigation for bribery was caught on videotape accepting $100,000 in $100 bills from an FBI informant whose conversations with the lawmaker also were recorded, according to a court document released Sunday. Agents later found the cash hidden in his freezer. At one audiotaped meeting, Rep. William Jefferson, D-La., chuckles about writing in code to keep secret what the government contends was his corrupt role in getting his children a cut of a communications company's deal for work in Africa. As Jefferson and the informant passed notes about what percentage the lawmaker's family might receive,...
May 22, 2006
'I Am Above All'
The trial of Saddam Hussein resumed this morning, with fireworks launched from the start. The presiding judge had a defense attorney bodily thrown out of the courtroom after readmitting her moments before, and Saddam earned himself a sharp rebuke after proclaiming the court beneath him: The squabble began when chief judge informed defense lawyer Bushra Khalil that she would be allowed to return to the court after being removed from a session in April for arguing with the judge. But when she tried to make a statement, he quickly cut her off, saying, "Sit down." "I just want to say one word," she said, but Abdel-Rahman yelled at guards to take her away. Khalil pulled off her judicial robe and threw it on the floor in anger, then tried to push the guards who were grabbing her hands, shouting, "Get away from me." As she was pulled out of the...
Israel And Fatah Meet In Egypt
Mahmoud Abbas met yesterday with Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni in Egypt to find some manner in which to restart peace talks as the Palestinian protostate came closer to civil war. Abbas also announced that he would begin talks with Hamas to calm the tensions in Gaza after the ruling party attempted two assassinations on government officials from Fatah: MAHMOUD ABBAS, the Palestinian President, met Tzipi Livni, the Israeli Foreign Minister, yesterday in the first high-level contact between the two sides since Hamas, the Islamist group, won the Palestinian elections in January. The meeting, in Egypt, came amid increased tensions in Gaza, where assassination attempts on two Palestinian security officials prompted Mr Abbas to warn against civil war between his secular Fatah and its Islamist rival. ... Mr Abbas said that he would begin talks with Hamas this week. “We have to look for a solution,” he said, warning that...
Conservative Angst A Product Of Unrealistic Expectations?
The Washington Post ran a column yesterday by Richard Vigurie titled "Bush's Base Betrayal" that listed the bill of particulars of conservative outrage. Vigurie appears to have left nothing off the list in his attempt to nail his theses to the virtual Witenburg Castle Church as he advances the argument for a philosophical split within the GOP. Unfortunately, Vigurie lets conservatives off the hook with a bit of revisionist history: Republicans were desperate to retake the White House, conservatives were desperate to get the Clinton liberals out and there was no direct heir to Reagan running for president. So most conservatives supported Bush as the strongest candidate -- some enthusiastically and some, like me, reluctantly. After the disastrous presidency of his father, our support for the son was a triumph of hope over experience. Once he took office, conservatives were willing to grant this Bush a honeymoon. We were happy...
Kurtz: The Truth Is Out
After announcing that Karl Rove had been indicted, Jason Leopold at TruthOut has insisted that the story is true even after a week has passed since he claimed the indictment would be announced. As the details of Leopold's story fail to connect, Leopold has increasingly relied on a blame-Fitzgerald approach, stating that the prosecutor has no obligation to publicize the indictment -- although no one can figure out any benefit for keeping it secret. Howard Kurtz takes a look at Leopold's credibility and finds more reasons to dismiss his predictions: The claim that President Bush's top political strategist had been indicted in the CIA leak investigation was written by a journalist who has battled drug addiction and mental illness and been convicted of grand larceny. That didn't stop more than 35 reporters -- from all the major newspapers, networks and newsmagazines -- from calling Luskin or Rove's spokesman, Mark Corallo,...
CQ Interview: Bernard Goldberg
Bernard Goldberg has a new paperback edition of his book, The 100 110 People Who Are Screwing Up America (And Al Franken Is #37), coming out tomorrow and available now through Amazon and through his own website. He has added ten new entries to his list, expanded his opening comments, and discussed some of the experiences he had last year when promoting the book the first time around. CQ readers will remember that I interviewed Bernard last year on the first release. I just concluded a terrific interview with him this evening and will be posting a long article based on the interview. (Podcasting will not be possible due to some technical problems with the recording.) Stay tuned! Bernard Golderg Interview When we started out, I knew that Bernard would have some time constraints. He had very graciously allowed me to reschedule to the evening while still giving me the...
Quick Links
After a long interview, here are a few links to other bloggers working late into the night: Lorie Byrd has found a new home at Wizbang! She has her first welcome post up there now. I think they're both lucky to have each other, and Wizbang! looks more and more like the happening group blog these days ... The Anchoress finds herself writing about politics again, despite her better judgment. She takes fingers to keyboard in defense of George Bush, reminding Republicans of a few things we may have forgotten ... Michael Yon notes the sacrifice of time and energy by underrated actor Gary Sinise on behalf of veterans. Sinise has a rock band named after his Forrest Gump character, the Lt. Dan Band, and he has performed many hours for their entertainment and benefit. If you want to see why Gary Sinise might be one of the best actors...
Sharpton, The Voice Of Democratic Reason?
How sad is it when Al Sharpton has the moral high ground among Democratic politicians? Alabama Democrats should get rid of a candidate who denies the Holocaust and another who has advocated killing illegal immigrants, activist Al Sharpton said Monday. While state party officials say they are powerless to remove the pair from the ballot because the June 6 primary is so close, Sharpton said: "There's no room for these two men in our big tent." Larry Darby, seeking the party's nomination for attorney general, denies the Holocaust occurred and recently spoke at a gathering of National Vanguard, which describes itself as a "pro-white" organization. Harry Lyon, who wants to become the Democrats' gubernatorial candidate, has advocated killing illegal immigrants as a way to keep them out of Alabama. Every party attracts its share of lunatics. It wasn't that long ago that Republicans had to disavow David Duke, and a...
May 23, 2006
Israel Captures Their Top Enemy
The Israelis dealt Hamas a significant blow and perhaps a fatal loss of prestige when they captured the top commander of its terrorist wing this morning. Ibrahim Hamed surrendered without firing a shot when the IDF surprised him in a pre-dawn raid on his apartment building, forcing him to strip to his underwear and capitulate rather than get buring in the destruction of the building: Ibrahim Hamed emerged from the building before dawn and troops told him over a loudspeaker to strip to his underwear, witnesses said. Hamed complied, was cuffed and taken to a nearby building. Army officials said Hamed was armed and alone at the time of his capture. The army said Hamed, 41, masterminded attacks that killed 78 Israelis and wounded hundreds. Hamed has been on Israel's wanted list since 1998, frequently evading capture. Hamed, a university graduate and influential leader, became the West Bank's commander of...
The Tory Revolution
Stephen Harper has led perhaps the quietest revolution in Anglosphere poliitics. In just four short months, he has vaulted the Conservative Party -- only a couple of years past a difficult merger with Reform -- into a movement that now threatens to swamp even the Bloc Quebecois in the fractious province of Quebec. A new Ipsos poll shows that the Tories now have enough voters to get a majority in Parliament if elections were held today: According to a new Ipsos Reid survey conducted on behalf of CanWest/Global, the current Conservative Party government is enjoying their highest levels of federal vote support in nearly 20 years, since Brian Mulroney’s majority in November of 1988. Currently, 43% of federal voters support the Conservative Party (+5 points since a mid-March Ipsos Reid poll), giving them an impressive 18-point lead over their chief federal rival, the Liberal Party (25%, -3 points). The NDP...
Veterans Victimized By Bureaucrats
After risking their lives and health to defend their nation, one would expect that the Department of Veterans Affairs would take care of the records of our fighting men and women. However, one would have to acquire a Pollyanna-ish faith in bureaucracies to be shocked to learn that an analyst had the sensitive indentity information of over 26 million veterans in his home -- and that burglars inadvertently stole it: The federal government is warning every living veteran discharged since 1975 to watch banking and credit card statements closely after sensitive personal data on all 26.5 million of them was stolen this month. Monday, Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson acknowledged the information was stolen from the home of a department analyst who wasn't authorized to remove it from the office. Privacy experts say the theft is one of the largest breaches of identity security ever. The stolen data include Social...
Center Right Candidate Surges In Mexico
A shift has taken place in the lengthy presidential campaign in Mexico. The center-right candidate from Vicente Fox's party has suddenly surged to the lead after retooling his campaign to emphasize more centrist concerns. Felipe Calderón's new message appears to have resonated with Mexican voters, leaving his leftist opponent sputtering about polling samples after having led the same polls for most of the campaign: After six months in second place, Mr. Calderón has surged past the front-runner, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, with a stream of attack advertisements portraying him as a dangerous and violent leftist who will bankrupt the country. Now, a month before the vote, the race is a contest between Mr. Calderón, a free-trade advocate backed by business leaders, and Mr. López Obrador, a leftist who draws most of his support from poor people who feel that free-trade policies have failed to help them. For his part, Mr....
Troop Withdrawal To Speed Up: Guardian
The British newspaper The Guardian reports that Tony Blair and George Bush will shortly announce a schedule for an expedited troop withdrawal from Iraq. The coalition leaders plan to hand over entire provinces to the newly-installed Iraqi government and their security forces, perhaps in as many as 16 of the 18 provinces comprising Iraq: George Bush and Tony Blair are to discuss in Washington this week a programme of troop withdrawals from Iraq that will be much faster and more ambitious than originally planned. In a phased pullout in which the two countries will act in tandem, Britain is to begin with a handover to Iraqi security forces in Muthanna province in July and the Americans will follow suit in Najaf, the Shia holy city. Other withdrawals will quickly follow over the remainder of the year. Officials in both administrations hope that Britain's 8,000 forces in Iraq can be down...
Moussaoui's Character Witness
A new tape from al-Qaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden hit the internet earlier today, and the Tall Sheikh apparently wants everyone to know that he's keeping up with the news. In fact, he decided to offer testimony, albeit belatedly, in the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui. Osama announced that Moussaoui had no connection to the 9/11 plot, and if Osama thought Club Fed's latest guest had any knowledge of their plans, he would have cancelled the operation immediately: Osama bin Laden purportedly said in an audio tape Tuesday that neither Zacarias Moussaoui — the only person convicted in the U.S. for the Sept. 11 attacks — nor anyone held at Guantanamo had anything to do with the al-Qaida operation. "He had no connection at all with Sept. 11," the speaker claiming to be bin Laden said in the tape posted on the Internet. "I am the one in charge of the...
White House Wins The Staredown
For those who thought the Bush administration had run out of steam, they may want to check the gauges again. Despite an outcry over his involvement in two controversial NSA surveillance and analysis programs, the Senate Intelligence Committee approved General Michael Hayden's appointment as Director of the CIA. In the end, only three Democrats opposed the appointment, a stunning victory for the White House after being accused of doubling down on the NSA programs by nominating the man who ran them: Gen. Michael Hayden moved a step closer Tuesday to becoming the nation's 20th CIA chief, where he will take over a spy agency looking for a leader to steer it through troubles ranging from al-Qaida to Washington politics. The Senate Intelligence Committee recommended confirmation, 12-3, with three of the panel's seven Democrats voting against him. If the Senate approves him before Memorial Day, as expected, Hayden could be sworn...
Moscow Waning
The Kremlin has suffered a major blow to its prestige, as four of the former Soviet republics have now repudiated their membership in the Commonwealth of Independent States. The rebelling members will form their own alliance, which will emphasize democracy: ONE of the last vestiges of the Soviet Union appeared to be crumbling yesterday, when four former republics signalled that they were pulling out of the organisation established to keep the Kremlin connected with its lost empire. At a meeting in Kiev the leaders of the pro-Western states of Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine pledged to form their own association to promote democratic values. They also hinted that they would leave the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), which was created 15 years ago as a group representing most of the former Soviet republics. ... Viktor Yushchenko, the Ukrainian President, said: “Our citizens are giving us a mandate to develop strong...
What The AP Discarded
The AP ran an earlier story on the Osama bin Laden tape that included an admission implicating two Gitmo detainees in the 9/11 attack. However, the the AP later ran "excerpts" of the Bin Laden tape, that admission curiously went unreported -- even though it would have a significant impact on the debate over the fate of Gitmo detainees. This is what ran in the original piece by Maamoun Youssef, which I have also cached here: The terror mastermind did indicate that two suspects had links to the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon: "All the prisoners to date have no connection to the Sept. 11 events or knew anything about them, except for two of the brothers," bin Laden said [emphasis mine -- CE]. But he did not provide names or elaborate further and it wasn't possible to determine if or where they were held. However, that...
May 24, 2006
Saddam The Populist
The defense continued today at the trial of Saddam Hussein, but not without a stern warning from the chief judge about courtroom dramatics. That did not keep Saddam from once again challenging the court's authority, although more briefly this time than before, but it did keep the defense attorneys from engaging in hysterics: Chief judge Raouf Abdel-Rahman opened the session with a sharp warning to the defense lawyers and eight defendants that he would not allow insults to the court. In the previous session, Abdel-Rahman threw out a woman defense lawyer when she tried to speak after he warned her not to. "From the beginning, we have said that this court is a transparent one and the defense team and defendants are allowed to express their attitude in a democratic way. No one is allowed, whoever he is and under any name, to attack the court, its employees and the...
Subpoenas Not Enough?
The corruption case of William Jefferson took a strange turn yesterday when several Republican members of Congress objected to the execution of a subpoena on the uncooperative subject of the investigation. House Speaker Dennis Hastert questioned the constituionality of the FBI search, and House Majority Leader John Boehner predicted that the Supreme Court would have to decide the issue: Justice Department and FBI officials yesterday vigorously defended a weekend raid on the Capitol Hill office of Democratic Rep. William J. Jefferson (La.), arguing that the unprecedented tactic was necessary because Jefferson and his attorneys had refused to comply with a subpoena for documents issued more nine months ago in a bribery investigation. ... House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) complained directly to President Bush yesterday about the FBI raid, while House Majority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) predicted a constitutional showdown before the Supreme Court. "My opinion is that they...
ACLU: Now We Like Speech Codes
In a development that really plumbs the depth of hypocrisy, the American Civil Liberties Union now wants to impose speech codes on its own board while decrying restrictions on free speech everywhere else. Under new guidelines that the ACLU has taken under serious consideration, directors will be urged to make happy or keep their mouths shut: The American Civil Liberties Union is weighing new standards that would discourage its board members from publicly criticizing the organization's policies and internal administration. "Where an individual director disagrees with a board position on matters of civil liberties policy, the director should refrain from publicly highlighting the fact of such disagreement," the committee that compiled the standards wrote in its proposals. "Directors should remember that there is always a material prospect that public airing of the disagreement will affect the A.C.L.U. adversely in terms of public support and fund-raising," the proposals state. This comes...
Earmarks Take Relief From The Needy
Don't say we didn't sound the alarm early on pork-barrel politics and their destructive potential to GOP midterm hopes. The Washington Post has an article that shows how victims of Hurricane Katrina remain homeless while the Republicans in the Senate pork up the emergency relief bill with hundreds of millions of dollars for their corporate pals: BILOXI, Miss. -- This city's east side remains largely abandoned, a bleak panorama of empty lots and abandoned homes left behind by the tradesmen, shrimpers and casino workers who once lived here. Hundreds had little or no insurance. For people such as 83-year-old Elzora Brown, a retired dry-cleaning presser whose little frame house was waterlogged up to the eaves, there's not enough federal disaster aid for repairs. "Whatever the Lord sees fit, that's what I'll have," she said. Just down the coast in Pascagoula, defense contractor Northrop Grumman Corp. similarly didn't have enough insurance...
Ed Meese On Immigration
I just finished a conference call arranged by the Heritage Foundation with former Attorney General Edwin Meese regarding the immigration debate. Gen. Meese wrote a column in today's New York Times noting the similarities between the current Senate proposal and the 1986 Simpson-Mazzoli Act, which granted amnesty and failed to provide the border security it promised. He reminds us of what that amnesty demanded: In exchange for allowing aliens to stay, he decided, border security and enforcement of immigration laws would be greatly strengthened — in particular, through sanctions against employers who hired illegal immigrants. If jobs were the attraction for illegal immigrants, then cutting off that option was crucial. Beyond this, most illegal immigrants who could establish that they had resided in America continuously for five years would be granted temporary resident status, which could be upgraded to permanent residency after 18 months and, after another five years, to...
Hospiblogging - The Revenge
Several CQ readers have been asking about the First Mate, and today's a good time for an update. She has had continuing issues with her anemia and energy level while on dialysis, and last week she needed two units of blood for a transfusion. That went well and her hemoglobin levels rose, but over the weekend she started feeling pretty poorly. After fighting what looks like the flu for the past three days, her doctors had her admitted to the hospital at the U of M. It looks like she may have picked up a case of the flu from the transfusions. She will probably stay there for the next couple of days, and that means my blog productivity may slow until after the weekend. Thanks for your understanding in advance....
Hamas Attempts Slow-Motion Coup
After winning control of the Palestinian parliament, the terrorist group Hamas has now resorted to its traditional strategy to remove the executive branch from the proto-state. The third assassination attempt in the last two weeks netted Hamas its second Fatah scalp, this time a security commander in Gaza, athough Fatah certainly provided the provocation: A security force commander loyal to the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, was killed in an attack on his car in the Gaza Strip yesterday, sharpening tensions between Hamas and Fatah that have now claimed 10 lives this month and prompted warnings of civil war. Nabil Hodhod, the commander for the central region of the Gaza Strip for the elite Preventive Security Service, was killed by an explosion that was suspected to be either a hand grenade thrown into his vehicle or a bomb planted under it. Two of his colleagues were wounded. The PSS and other...
Post: Hastert, Boehner Have No Clue
The Washington Post provides an analysis of the Congressional privilege asserted by Speaker Dennis Hastert and Majority Leader John Boehner which finds no grounds for their objections to the search warrant executed by the FBI earlier this week. In fact, as Charles Lane points out, the Supreme Court has repeatedly made clear that the Speech and Debate clause of the Constitution cannot shield members from legitimate investigations into corruption: "An official legislative act is immune, but interference with anything beyond that" is not covered by the constitutional provision that shields Congress from executive and judicial branch interference, said Michael J. Glennon, a former legal counsel to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who teaches at Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. The precise materials sought in the raid were blacked out in a publicly released copy of the search warrant, but Jefferson (D-La.) said in a court filing yesterday...
Great Minds, Thinking Alike
George Bush won support for his immigration policies tonight, but the odds of this brightening the President's evening appear rather small. The support came from former President Jimmy Carter, a public statement that Bush' conservative opponents on immigration reform will not fail to note: Former president Carter, a Democrat and frequent critic of President Bush, sees eye-to-eye with him on immigration. Carter on Wednesday called the Republican president's commitment to immigration reform "quite admirable," saying he agrees with Bush's support of a system that would eventually grant citizenship to some illegals. ... The law should secure the nation's borders while "at the same time treating those who are here with respect and giving them some hope for the future," Carter said. Somehow I don't see this as making it any easier to get the House to support the administration's policy on amnesty/earned citizenship and a guest-worker program....
May 25, 2006
Hamas Plans 9/11-Style Attack On Israel While Gray Lady Wants Engagment
The duly elected political party of Hamas has started planning the purchase of aircraft for suicide missions against Israeli skyscrapers, their "resistance" commander revealed yesterday. The New York Sun reports that Abu Abdullah, the commander of Hamas's Izzedine al-Qassam Martyrs Brigades, told a WorldNet Daily interviewer that all targets within their "dear Palestine" were legitimate for suicide attacks using airplanes as guided missiles, and that Hamas had already started investigating the necessary purchases: Hamas is seeking the ability to attack Israel using small airplanes laden with explosives to be flown September 11-style into important targets, possibly Tel Aviv skyscrapers, a leader of Hamas's so-called military wing, Abu Abdullah, told World Net Daily yesterday. ... Mr. Abdullah said Hamas would fly the planes into Jewish targets, possibly Tel Aviv skyscrapers. "The goal is to have these planes carry maximum quantities of explosives and that they will be able to hit the...
Hamas Losing Arab Support?
Accoridng to the Washington Times, Hamas has damaged relations with key states in the Middle East, a development that could mean difficulties in their offensive against Fatah and their desired war on Israel. Jordan and Egypt have both determined that Hamas has masterminded plots against them, and now seek to curtail their operations: Two recent events deserve considerably more attention then they have been receiving thus far: Jordan's announcement last month that it had uncovered a Syrian-backed Hamas plot to attack the kingdom; and Egypt's announcement on Tuesday that the terrorists who carried out the April 24 bombings that killed 24 people in Dahab, a Sinai resort town trained for the operation in Gaza. Hamas' most serious problem is with Jordan, where security forces last month arrested 20 of its members. Amman accuses Hamas of smuggling detonators, rocket launchers and explosives into the country from Syria, and of attempting to...
FBI Ramps Up Public-Integrity Investigations
The FBI has added more than 200 agents to their task force on investigations of public corruption, an increase of 50% over 2004, in preparation for the upcoming midterm elections. The Hill reports that an explosion in such cases in the last national election has convinced them to add more staff to focus specifically on election law: Illegal fundraising schemes appear to have grown in number and sophistication as candidates have needed to raise more and more money to be competitive. Several members of Congress have recently found themselves caught up in fundraising controversies. In the past year and a half, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has reassigned nearly 200 agents to the problem of public corruption, bringing to 600 the total number of agents working on public-integrity cases. While the Justice Department’s increased focus on public corruption has been talked about in Washington, the FBI’s elevation of such...
California Bests France, Again
Thirty years ago, a blind taste test horrified French wine aficionadoes when they selected California wines as the superior varieties. The Times of London reports that the French finally got their rematch yesterday -- and still selected California wines as the victor: The nose-off began in 1976, when Steven Spurrier, an Englishman who owned a wine shop in the French capital, invited a panel of French experts to a blind tasting of some of their own classic vintages against some Californian reds. To the horror of the entire French wine industry, the Americans won hands down. Last night Mr Spurrier and a group of British, French and American tasters took part in the 30th anniversary re-enactment to discover whether the shocking defeat for what was then the undisputed world leader in viticulture could be reversed. A simultaneous sampling of the same wines was staged in the Napa Valley, California’s main...
Post: Congress Hysterical (Update: Someone's Listening)
The Washington Post scolds Congressional leaders for their hysterical overreaction to the execution of a duly authorized search warrant on the offices of William Jefferson, and underscores the point by noting that the subpoena hardly came as a surprise to anyone on Capitol Hill: THE UPROAR over the FBI's search of Rep. William J. Jefferson's congressional office is understandable but overblown. A demand yesterday by House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) that the Justice Department return the papers it seized goes way too far. Constitutional provisions designed to protect lawmakers from fear of political retribution, such as the speech-and-debate clause, counsel restraint and caution in circumstances such as these. They do not transform congressional offices into taxpayer-funded sanctuaries. No one wants to have FBI agents pawing through lawmakers' files. Prosecutors and agents need to exhaust other avenues of obtaining evidence before doing so. If...
First Mate Update
I just returned from visiting the First Mate, and she sends her greetings to everyone and thanks you all for the kind thoughts and prayers. She is still feeling poorly and it appears she will be in the hospital for a few days. We had some good news and bad news today. The hospital did CT scans of her head, chest, and abdomen, and they found nothing unusual in terms of abcesses or infections. That resolved the big worry about an acute infection that could overwhelm her system; it looks like that isn't the case. The bad news -- and it's not that bad -- is that she has a cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection. This is not unusual among transplant patients when their immune systems get overly suppressed. Many people carry CMV but while healthy will never develop symptoms. This is far more dangerous for babies than it is for adults,...
Senate Passes Immigration Bill
The Senate has passed the comprehensive immigration reform bill championed by George Bush and ushered into existence by John McCain and Ted Kennedy. Both support and opposition for the bill were bipartisan affairs, with the 62-36 final tally a victory for the centrists: The 62-36 vote cleared the way for arduous summertime compromise talks with the House on its immigration measure focusing on border enforcement with no guarantee of success. Republicans and Democrats said energetic participation by Bush would be critical. ... In more than a week of debate, the Senate made a series of changes in the legislation. Still, the key pillars were preserved when opponents failed to knock out the guest worker program or the citizenship provisions. A new program for 1.5 million temporary agricultural workers also survived. To secure the borders, the measure calls for the hiring of an additional 1,000 new Border Patrol agents this year...
Bush Provides Ladder For Congressional Climbdown
George Bush tossed a lifesaver to Denny Hastert and the rest of the imperial Congress today by temporarily sealing the evidence seized from the legislative offices of Rep. William Jefferson, the target of an FBI corruption investigation. Sealing the records gives both branches more time to work out their differences, Bush said, but made clear that prosecutors would eventually gain access to the material: President Bush personally ordered the Justice Department today to seal records seized from the Capitol Hill office of a Democratic congressman, marking a remarkable intervention by the nation's chief executive into an ongoing criminal probe of alleged corruption. ... In a six-paragraph statement, Bush said he issued the order to give the Justice Department and angry lawmakers more time to work out an agreement on how to resolve the conflict. The materials, which have been described in court filings as two boxes of documents and copies...
NARN Loses A Friend
The Northern Alliance Radio Network owes a lot to a number of people for the success we have had over the last 27 months, including just about everyone who works or has worked at AM 1280 The Patriot. One of those people has passed away, Mitch Berg tells us, and he shares a few good stories about the NARN's first producer: I worked with Joe twice - at KDWB-AM, back in 1990-92, and again for the first year when he was the engineer/producer for the Northern Alliance. He's most familiar to people in the Twins, of course, as Tom Mischke's producer "The Jackal", and especially as Jason Lewis' longtime producer and foil. ... Joe had already been a "road warrior" when we met at KDWB-AM in 1990; he'd worked all over Minnesota. Contacts had gotten him a job as a board operator at KDWB-AM - a miserable,slumming gig, watching the...
A Note On Consultation (Updated)
Like many in the conservative blogosphere, I am generally unhappy with the final version of the Senate comprehensive-reform plan that will now head into conference committee, where hopefully the House will strip it of its silliness and present something respectable to the joint session. One particular amendment, offered at the last minute by Senator Chris Dodd has caused an uproar, seemingly giving Mexico a veto on the construction of border barriers: (a) FINDINGS-- (1) There are currently between 10-12 million illegal immigrants in the United States in 2006. (2) As many as 70% of such migrants are citizens of Mexico. (3) More than 1 million illegal migrants are apprehended annually in the United States southern border area attempting to illegally enter the United States, with an additional 500,000 entering undetected. (4) Despite Operation Gatekeeper which began in 1994 with the construction of fencing in urban crossing areas and other efforts...
May 26, 2006
Abbas: Let's Vote On Peace
Mahmoud Abbas gambled what remains of his power and influence yesterday on the Palestinian desire for peaceful coexistence with Israel, demanding that Hamas either recognize Israel or put the matter to a plebescite: The president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, said Thursday that he would call a referendum on a proposal for a Palestinian state that would recognize Israel, if the governing Hamas party failed to accept the plan within 10 days. In laying down his challenge, Mr. Abbas seems to be gambling that he can force his Fatah party, Hamas and some smaller factions to agree on a broad framework for dealing with Israel, which Hamas now refuses to recognize. But he runs the risk of provoking a political showdown at a moment when the Palestinians are already plagued by infighting and a worsening financial crisis. ... "We are not afraid of a referendum," said a Hamas legislator,...
Galloway: Assassinations Justified
George Galloway told an interviewer for the magazine GQ that an assassination of Tony Blair would have justification considering Blair's political positions and decisions, providing the latest in a series of embarrassments for the British Parliament. Galloway also embraced Cuba's Fidel Castro on Cuban television, pronouncing the dictator as a lion among monkeys: The Respect MP George Galloway has said it would be morally justified for a suicide bomber to murder Tony Blair. In an interview with GQ magazine, the reporter asked him: "Would the assassination of, say, Tony Blair by a suicide bomber - if there were no other casualties - be justified as revenge for the war on Iraq?" Mr Galloway replied: "Yes, it would be morally justified. I am not calling for it - but if it happened it would be of a wholly different moral order to the events of 7/7. It would be entirely logical...
Blair's Next Project: UN Overhaul
Tony Blair has decided that the next Anglo-American project will be the overhaul of the United Nations, whose own reform efforts have been undermined by corruption and scandal. Blair will announce at an appearance today that the UN no longer functions as an effective organization in the post-Cold War era and must transform to retain any relevance: Prime Minister Blair, whose close friendship with President Bush was forged in the heat of the war on terror, on Friday will urge radical reform of the United Nations, the culmination of that other great Anglo-American war partnership, between President Franklin Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill. Mr. Blair will argue that the various world institutions, set up 60 years ago to better facilitate a peaceful resolution of conflicts between states, are no longer suited to the present world's needs. He will question the role and membership of the Security Council and will plead...
Does Congress Even Read What They Pass Into Law?
I'm doing a little lunchtime browsing, and this story almost made me spit out my sandwich. The Wall Street Journal reports on the hysteria brewing in the halls of Congress over the raid on Rep. William Jefferson's office, rehashing mostly what we already know. Later in the article, however, Jeanne Cummings and Brody Mullens tie the story to the expansion of the FBI's public integrity unit to underscore the discomfort members of Congress feel right now. The report quotes a Republican close to the House caucus that apparently reveals a strain of illiteracy among our elected representatives: Frustration between the House and the Justice Department stems in part from the probe of lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Mr. Abramoff in January pleaded guilty to trying to bribe members of Congress, and has been cooperating with federal investigators. Much of the evidence that has emerged suggests Mr. Abramoff curried favor with lawmakers by...
Haditha Makes Abu Ghraib Look Like A Picnic (Update)
When the story on Abu Ghraib broke, the coverage and hyperbole regarding the supposed "atrocities" at the notorious prison blew the abuses far out of proportion. As many remarked at the time, no one died from wearing panties on their heads, and the pathetic perpetrators of the abuses found themselves tried, convicted, and sentenced to justifiable prison terms. Abu Ghraib was an embarrassment arising from a lack of unit discipline. Haditha, on the other hand, turns out to be a real atrocity, the kind of shameful event that will justifiably haunt the US for years: Marines from Camp Pendleton wantonly killed unarmed Iraqi civilians, including women and children, and then tried to cover up the slayings in the insurgent stronghold of Haditha, military investigations have found. An administrative inquiry overseen by Army Maj. Gen. Eldon Bargewell found that several infantry Marines fatally shot as many as 24 Iraqis and that...
Dowd to GOP: Stop Worrying And Love The Reform
Matthew Dowd, the RNC senior strategist who has proven himself prescient on campaigns and issues in the past, has told GOP leadership that rank-and-file Republicans overwhelmingly support comprehensive immigration reform, combining border security with normalization for existing illegals already inside the US. National Journal's Hotline reports that Dowd has reviewed the results of a number of media polls, and concluded that the Senate's CIRA will not only get support from Republican voters but also bring Hispanics to the party: RNC senior adviser/BC04 senior strategist/Ron Fournier co-author Matthew Dowd urges Republican Nat'l Committee members to favor a "comprehensive" solution to immigration, which the public believes is is "unifying -- not polarizing." ... Dowd's memo says that an internal RNC poll conducted by Jan Van Louhuzen finds that "pverwhelming support exists for a temporary worker program. 80% of all voters, 83% of Republicans, and 79% of self-identified conservatives support a temporary worker...
May 27, 2006
Hastert Grabs The Lifesaver As Gonzalez Threatens To Quit
George Bush has successfully quelled the Congressional grab for perpetual immunity from criminal prosecution as well as a potential rebellion at Justice, deftly using a cooling-off period to allow both sides to climb down from their hard-line positions. House Speaker Denny Hastert, having presumably checked his In box and re-read the Constitution, now agrees that the FBI can conduct searches of Congressional offices when armed with a valid search warrant: House leaders acknowledged Friday that FBI agents with a court-issued warrant can legally search a congressman's office, but they said they want procedures established after agents with a court warrant took over a lawmaker's office last week. "I want to know exactly what would happen if there is a similar sort of thing" in the Senate, Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., said Friday, shortly after summoning Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to his office. House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., concurred: "I...
A Cheer For Bill Frist
We have not shied away from offering criticisms of the Republican leadership in Congress when they have failed to deliver on the GOP agenda. Fairness dictates that we recognize their effort in delivering victories as well. Senator Bill Frist deftly navigated a large amount of hostility towards two Bush appointees while getting them confirmed. Brett Kavanaugh heads to the 4th Circuit and General Michael Hayden will take over the CIA after Frist pushed their nominations through the Senate. On Kavanaugh, Frist managed to avoid the filibuster than some had threatened: White House aide Brett M. Kavanaugh won Senate confirmation as an appeals judge yesterday after a three-year wait, a new victory for President Bush in a drive to place a more conservative stamp on the courts. Bush said Kavanaugh who was confirmed 57 to 36, will be "a brilliant, thoughtful and fair-minded judge." Kavanaugh had been praised by Republicans but...
They're Baaa-aaack!
A day after pulling their armed forces off the streets of Gaza while attempting to negotiate with Mahmoud Abbas, Hamas sent their militia back again, raising the prospects for a bloody fight with Fatah for control of the Palestinian territories. They intend to take fixed positions in the streets and begin "patrols" immediately: The Hamas-led government sent its private militia back into the streets of Gaza on Saturday, a day after withdrawing the force to help calm an increasingly bloody standoff with forces loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas. Hamas officials said the move wasn't meant as a provocation. But Abbas' Fatah movement said the deployment raised the chances of new fighting. Fatah officials also said the move threatened negotiations on the president's ultimatum to the militants to accept a plan that would implicitly recognize Israel. The 3,000-strong Hamas militia has been at the center of the Palestinian infighting, and Hamas'...
A Disintegration In Party Branding?
A number of us have debated over the last couple of weeks whether conservatives can get true representation within the Republican Party. The debate has caused many to despair over the upcoming midterm elections, fearing that the infighting in the GOP may hand Democrats control of the House. However, the Los Angeles Times reports that Democrats have similar internal stresses that may leave them unable to take advantage of the opportunity this fall: The liberal challenge to Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) escalated Friday when the political arm of MoveOn.org, an influential online advocacy group, endorsed the political newcomer opposing his bid for renomination. Gaining the support of MoveOn's political action committee was Ned Lamont, a businessman who wants to unseat Lieberman largely because of the veteran lawmaker's staunch support for the war in Iraq. The group announced its backing after polling MoveOn's members in Connecticut. MoveOn has emerged as a...
First Mate Update And Prayers For The Anchoress
Before I give my update on the First Mate, I want to send my condolences and prayers to The Anchoress, whose family has suffered another loss. Her beloved brother-in-law and lifelong friend died, leaving her bereaved sister alone. This follows on the heels of the loss of her brother, a double blow to both sisters. Please keep her family in your thoughts and prayers tonight. Our news is somewhat better. The FM still cannot keep any food down, but seemed a little better today. We have my sister, the Admiral Emeritus, and his wife in town for the double-birthday celebration of our son and our granddaughter tomorrow. We all went to the hospital to visit the FM today, and we spent an hour outside in the courtyard enjoying the beautiful day, which perked the FM up a little more. I found out more about the CMV infection. This has the...
May 28, 2006
Iran Shifting To War Footing
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made it clear that he sees European opposition to his nuclear program a threat, and returned one in kind. Speaking to the German magazine Der Spiegel, the Iranian president warned Europe that they will "suffer the consequences" if they did not capitulate: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad warned Europe that it should support his country's nuclear program or "suffer the consequences." In an interview to be published in the German Der Spiegel on Sunday, Ahmadinejad also expressed his doubt regarding the Holocaust, saying that even if it had occurred, the Jewish state should have been established in Europe, not in Palestine. The article in DS has not yet been released, but the Jerusalem Post blurb indicates that Iran's president has not yet tired of following the playbook of Adolf Hitler in dealing with the West. Alternating between veiled threats and offers of diplomacy, Ahmadinejad has attempted to split the...
Why Kerry Is The Democrat's Nightmare
The New York Times reports that John Kerry wants to re-fight the Swift Boat debate, two years after his serial exaggerations and outright lies about his military service cost him the presidential election. The only possible reason for raising this issue would be to clear the decks for another presidential run in 2008, but like 2004, it shows that Kerry's only strategy for elections is to live in a refashioned past: Three decades after the Vietnam War and nearly two years after Mr. Kerry's failed presidential bid, most Americans have probably forgotten why it ever mattered whether he went to Cambodia or that the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth accused him of making it all up, saying he was dishonest and lacked patriotism. But among those who were on the front lines of the 2004 campaign, the battle over Mr. Kerry's wartime service continues, out of the limelight but in...
LA Times: Hillary Should Eschew Presidency For Bill To Lead UN
In one of the most bizarre editorials seen recently from a major newspaper, the Los Angeles Times' editorial board requests that Hillary Clinton declare an end to her presidential aspirations -- so that Bill Clinton can take over the United Nations when Kofi Annan leaves. Telling readers that the world needs Bill more than the US needs Hillary, the editors urge the UN to consider Bill the man to lead a rapprochement with Washington and the West: The U.N.'s reputation has been tattered by peacekeeper sex scandals, the Iraq oil-for-food fiasco and other leadership failures. Nearly everybody agrees that reforms are desperately needed, but no one has emerged who can unite the competing factions and bring about real change. The United States — the most potent force for spreading freedom and democracy around the world — is thoroughly disillusioned with the United Nations. Americans are largely disengaged with the organization's...
A Birthday Party With A Missing Guest
We celebrated the Little Admiral's fourth birthday today, along with our son's 22nd birthday, making for a special father-daughter party. Last year, the LA wanted an Incredibles party, but this year she wanted a Princess theme. Since she is the first and only grandchild on both sides of her family, we were happy to oblige, and probably overoblige. (Hey, what are grandparents for, anyway?) However, I'm glad to report that she never fails to appreciate all of the attention she gets, and hasn't let it spoil her -- a testament to my son and daughter-in-law. Even after a long day of swimming and an almost endless parade of presents, she still had enough delight in hearing everyone sing Happy Birthday for this moment: We all had to wear that tiara at some point during the day, by the way. Unfortunately, the First Mate could not be with us today, making...
May 29, 2006
Frist: Congress Not Above The Law
Showing more political acumen than his House counterpart, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist waited a few days before publicly commenting on the raid on Rep. William Jefferson's offices. Frist put that time to good use, and instead of accusing the executive branch of assuming dictatorial powers for simply executing a judicially-approved search warrant, he acknowledged that members of Congress have no privilege that allows them to ignore court orders or that turn Capitol Hill into a sanctuary for wayward politicians: After a week of bipartisan outrage over an FBI raid on a congressman's office, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist weighed in yesterday, saying that he was "okay" with the search and saw no constitutional problems with it. "No House member, no senator, nobody in government should be above the law of the land, period," Frist said of the search of the office of William J. Jefferson (D-La.), who has been...
Times: 20 Terrorist Plots Active In Britain
The Times of London reports that MI-5 and the police have found themselves stretched to the limit from a score of active terrorist bomb plots. The Home Secretary has told the nation that so many Islamist conspiracies are afoot that the security agencies have no time to participate in an inquiry regarding the Tube bombings last year: TWENTY “major conspiracies” by Islamist terrorists in Britain have been uncovered by the security services, John Reid, the home secretary, has disclosed. ... Reid revealed the existence of the plots — far more than have previously been reported — at a meeting with some of the victims’ relatives and survivors of the attacks last week. He failed to give further details but the claim appears to fit in with briefings by MI5 which suggest that as many as 1,200 potential terrorist suspects may now be in the UK. One of the operations is...
Decoration Day
Our national holiday of Memorial Day began as Decoration Day, proclaimed by General John Logan in 1868 to honor the dead of both sides of the Civil War. It later changed names, but the purpose of the day remains a recognition of the last full measure of devotion on the part of America's true heroes. Today, CQ thanks and honors all of those who have fallen in our country's service, and the families they left behind. In honor of all of them, I present you the story of SFC Paul Smith, a recent Medal of Honor recipient. The President of the United States of America, authorized by Act of Congress, March 3, 1863, has awarded in the name of Congress the Medal of Honor to Sergeant First Class Paul R. Smith United States Army For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call...
May 30, 2006
Prayers For CBS Crew Killed, Injured In Bombing
CBS correspondent Kimberly Dozier received severe wounds and two of her crew died yesterday in a car bombing in Baghdad. The Washington Post reports that Dozier is expected to live: A car bomb explosion in central Baghdad Monday killed two CBS News crew members, an Iraqi interpreter and a U.S. soldier, and severely wounded the news team's correspondent, in one of a string of attacks that killed dozens of people in Iraq over the course of the day. Paul Douglas, a cameraman, and James Brolan, a sound man, died in the blast, CBS News said in a statement. Both men were British citizens based in London. Kimberly Dozier, an American correspondent who has covered the war in Iraq for nearly three years, was taken to a Baghdad hospital for surgery. The network said she was listed in critical condition and that doctors were "cautiously optimistic" about her prognosis. Critics of...
Saddam's Kelo
The trial of Saddam Hussein resumed last night, and Saddam and his co-defendants continued presenting their defense witnesses. The new strategy for the defense is to transform the seizure and destruction of farms and orchards in Dujail not as an attempt at genocide, but instead as an economic redevelopment plan: Witnesses for two Saddam Hussein co-defendants accused of taking part in a 1982 massacre of 148 people from Dujayl described the men as fair and merciful, and dismissed destruction of the village's fields and orchards as an economic redevelopment project. Defense witnesses denied that the defendants, former spy chief Barzan Ibrahim Hasan and Awad Hamed Bandar, former head of Hussein's Revolutionary Court, took part in the massacre — even as they acknowledged that they had little direct information about the Dujayl incident. Prosecutors say the two defendants led a retaliatory purge against the predominantly Shiite Muslim residents of Dujayl after...
Ahmadinejad: Send The Jews Back
The German magazine Der Spiegel has published its interview with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and it should disturb anyone who reads it fully. The interview reveals Ahmadinejad as a man obsessed with Jews, and one intent on provoking German resentment over its post-war humiliation to split the West on Israel: Ahmadinejad: Look here, my views are quite clear. We are saying that if the Holocaust occurred, then Europe must draw the consequences and that it is not Palestine that should pay the price for it. If it did not occur, then the Jews have to go back to where they came from. I believe that the German people today are also prisoners of the Holocaust. Sixty million people died in the Second World War. World War II was a gigantic crime. We condemn it all. We are against bloodshed, regardless of whether a crime was committed against a Muslim or...
Canada: The Terrorists Among Us
The Canadian Security Intelligence Service has informed Parliament that many veterans of al-Qaeda's initial war against the Soviet Union live in Canadian cities, and that some have trained since then in terrorist camps: Canada's spy agency says potential terrorists already reside in Canadian cities. The deputy director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service said Monday that there are many people currently living in Canada who fought with al-Qaeda during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. And Jack Hooper says those same people have since trained in al-Qaeda terrorist training camps. The testimony to the Canadian Senate came during hearings on the nation's mission in Afghanistan and how it could affect their domestic security, and that answer does not give much confidence in the status quo. The Globe & Mail did not give any more specifics about Hooper's testimony, nor did it even report whether Hooper had more discrete data on the...
Let's Get Ready To Rumble
Democrats who have busied themselves painting corruption as an exclusively Republican affair have hit a number of obstacles to that message -- Reps. William Jefferson and Alan Mollohan prominent among them. Now the Democrats have to add their own leadership -- again -- as the Senate Minority Leader has been exposed as taking favors from a notoriously corrupt industry while he intervened on their behalf: Senate Democratic Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) accepted free ringside tickets from the Nevada Athletic Commission to three professional boxing matches while that state agency was trying to influence him on federal regulation of boxing. Reid took the free seats for Las Vegas fights between 2003 and 2005 as he was pressing legislation to increase government oversight of the sport, including the creation of a federal boxing commission that Nevada's agency feared might usurp its authority. He defended the gifts, saying that they would never...
First Mate Docks
The First Mate has returned home after six days in the hospital. It almost took an act of Congress to get out of the place; she had a bronchoscopy earlier in the day and they did not like her oxygenation levels. That did not hinder her from telling them in no uncertain terms (and certain salty nautical terms as well, under her breath) that she would not stay another night in the hospital. She's resting comfortably at home now. Tomorrow I get lessons in how to start a home IV for her treatment over the next couple of weeks. Hopefully, I will not incur her wrath from my service ......
Able Danger: Shaffer Fights Dismissal
Mark Zaid, attorney for central Able Danger figure Lt. Colonel Anthony Shaffer, has filed a new supplemental declaration supporting the opposition of the government's motion for dismissal of his lawsuit. The Defense Intelligence Agency has moved to dismiss due to its insistence on refusing access to his attorney to classified material. Two weeks ago, Zaid filed a motion opposing the dismissal, and this new declaration contains some interesting revelations. Here is the text of Zaid's latest filing: 3. Shaffer and the undersigned counsel participated in interview sessions with the defendant Department of Defense’s Office of Inspector General (“DoD OIG”) on May 16, 2006, and May 24, 2006. The DoD OIG is conducting an investigation into, among other issues, the factual circumstances surrounding ABLE DANGER and also whether the defendant Defense Intelligence Agency retaliated against Shaffer. These two meetings, as well as two others that occurred in November 2005, have all...
CQ Joins The Examiner
Earlier today, Washington Examiner editorial-page editor Mark Tapscott informed me that I have been named to the Examiner Newspapers Blog Board of Contributors. As far as either Mark or I know, the Examiner has made itself a pioneer in partnering with the blogosphere in this most substantive manner. I will join other prominent bloggers to comprise a diverse group of voices from the world of citizen journalists. My contributions will begin next week, and I hope that CQ readers will show their appreciation to the Examiner organization with their traffic....
May 31, 2006
Give Us The Pork Database
The Washington Examiner today endorses a Senate bill that would require the government to create a public database that would allow taxpayers to access data for all federal expenditures (except for indivdual assistance). Tom Coburn, a noted pork hawk, authored the bill and has a bipartisan group of co-sponsors which include Barack Obama and John McCain: Abraham Lincoln said, “Let the people know the facts and all will be safe,” so the Great Emancipator would certainly cheer an unlikely group of United States senators who have recently joined forces to push a potentially landmark measure. That measure is designed to put every American citizen within a few mouse clicks of knowing the facts needed to track federal spending as never before. This measure should receive top-priority attention in Congress and be signed by President Bush at the earliest possible opportunity. The proposal is known as the Federal Funding Accountability and...
German Women Volunteer For Suicide Bombings
We noted with alarm the recent interview with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his attempt to inflame Germans against the West by blaming their post-war humiliation on Jews. Apparently Ahmadinejad's attempts to provoke German fringe-dwellers have a ready audience, as Der Spiegel reports that three German women had to be tracked down and arrested after proclaiming their readiness to act as suicide bombers in Iraq: SPIEGEL ONLINE has learned that German intelligence agencies have prevented three German women from travelling to Iraq in recent weeks. The women, who have close contacts to the Islamist scene in Germany and at least one whom has converted to Islam, came to the attention of intelligence agencies after one of them had announced on an Internet site that she intended to blow herself and her child up in Iraq. After the Web posting were spotted, Germany's domestic and foreign intelligence agencies mounted an intense...
What Are They Hiding?
The Democrats have a deep divide on electoral strategy, the Los Angeles Times reports, which has its basis in policy, at least indirectly. Instead of a party debate between moderates and leftists on the nature of the Democratic legislative agenda, however, the party cannot decide whether to be honest with the American public: With President Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress facing bleak approval ratings, many Democrats are increasingly confident that the public is ready to hear the party's alternative policy ideas as the 2006 campaign heats up. The question is whether the Democrats have an alternative ready to present. ... On one side are those who believe the Democrats must present a sharp alternative to Bush's direction — as Republicans did with their "Contract with America" before sweeping into control of Congress in 1994. "It is a time to move toward offense and toward talking about the big things that...
McCain Bypasses Party Building
If a candidate for the presidency had an ambivalent relationship with his party, would he (a) go out of his way to show loyalty to the party by appearing on behalf of its candidates for lower office even when the two disagree on one issue, or (b) stiff the candidate by backing out of a promised appearance over said disagreement? If you answered (a), you're one step ahead of John McCain: Arizona Sen. John McCain on Tuesday canceled an appearance for a Republican congressional candidate who has attacked his opponent for supporting McCain's immigration bill. McCain, R-Ariz., was scheduled to speak Wednesday at a breakfast fundraiser for Brian Bilbray, who is locked in a close runoff race with Democrat Francine Busby for the San Diego-area seat left vacant by disgraced former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham. The event was expected to raise at least $65,000. The winner of the June 6...
What The Senate Didn't Tell You About Immigration
Robert Samuelson explains to his Washington Post readers what the Senate failed to communicate when it passed its Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act (CIRA) last week. Many people wrote about the Heritage Foundation's analysis of the proposal, which estimated that 100 million people would emigrate to the US over the next twenty years under CIRA's provisions. Robert Rector adjusted that figure to 66 million after CIRA passed with several new amendments which provided some limitation to entry. The Heritage study received some criticism for its supposedly pessimistic view of immigration reform. However, Samuelson points out that the White House and the CBO actually have similar numbers: The Senate passed legislation last week that Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) hailed as "the most far-reaching immigration reform in our history." You might think that the first question anyone would ask is how much it would actually increase or decrease legal immigration. But no. After...
Pentagon Understood Haditha Contradictions, Ordered Investigation
The Haditha investigation started earlier than previously thought after a Marine Corps investigator noticed key discrepancies between the physical evidence and the reports from the Marines involved. The New York Times reveals that the Pentagon had already referred the matter to criminal investigators weeks before Time Magazine reported the alleged atrocities at the end of March, from a presentation of the allegations by the magazine: A military investigator uncovered evidence in February and March that contradicted repeated claims by marines that Iraqi civilians killed in Haditha last November were victims of a roadside bomb, according to a senior military official in Iraq. Among the pieces of evidence that conflicted with the marines' story were death certificates that showed all the Iraqi victims had gunshot wounds, mostly to the head and chest, the official said. ... When Colonel Watt described the findings to Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, the senior ground commander...
Iran Presser Live Blog
Since I am homebound for the moment waiting on home health care to arrive to teach me to perform home IVs on the First Mate, I will watch the press conference called by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that will apparently announce direct talks with Iran on the nuclear-proliferation crisis. 10:04 - Iran represents a direct threat to the security of the US and world, and has accelerated its efforts to enrich uranium. So far, this sounds more like an indictment, not a conciliation. 10:05 - Offering a choice for Iran between a "negative choice" - pursuing nuclear weapons at "great costs". The positive and constructive choice would be to immediately suspend enrichment activities and returning to IAEA-based negotiations. 10:07 - This is just a proposal along the same lines as we have seen before, except with the carrot of direct talks. It's significant, but not earth-shaking. Iran won't agree...
Holocaust Deniers Accuse Rice Of Propagandizing
After their president has spent most of the last few months trying to convince people that the Holocaust never occurred in order to gain support for ejecting the Jews from Israel, the Iranian government described Condoleezza Rice's earlier offer for direct talks in exchange for a cessation in uranium enrichment as "propaganda". The state-run news agency IRNA carried Teheran's initial reaction to Rice's offer within a few hours of her press conference today: The official Iranian news agency said Wednesday the U.S. offer to join in direct talks with Iran about its disputed nuclear program was "a propaganda move." The American proposal, a major policy shift after decades without official public contact between the two countries, was made conditional on Iran agreeing to stop its uranium enrichment activities. "It's evident that the Islamic Republic of Iran only accepts proposals and conditions that meet the interests of the nation and the...
Fahrenheit Jimmy Carter? Er, No
The Canada Free Press site has reported that Jimmy Carter's Carter Center has taken a large amount of contributions from the bin Laden family over the past several years, reminding some of the specious lines Michael Moore attempted to draw between Osama bin Laden and George Bush in his film Fahrenheit 9/11. The only problem with this latest revelation is that it uses the same bad assumptions Moore used in smearing Bush for fun and profit on the silver screen: Ex-U.S. President Jimmy Carter is in league with Osama bin Laden. A paper trail shows that more than $1 million has been funneled from Bakr M. Bin Laden on behalf of the Saudi Bin Laden Group to The Carter Center. That’s an impressive bit of investigative journalism that comes your way, not courtesy of the New York Times and company, but from Melanie Morgan, Chairman, Censure Carter Committee. "An investigation...
Fineman Pumps Dodd
Howard Fineman uses his column at Newsweek to pump some much-needed drama into the race for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008, but instead reveals how desperately dull their prospects outside of Hillary Clinton truly are. The candidate Fineman highlights in his look at the Anyone But Hillary sweepstakes is Senator Chris Dodd, a man who exists to make Joe Biden look exciting: In presidential politics there are a series of concentric elections until the final one (in the Supreme Court.…). Money comes just after—and in conjunction with—the creation of buzz. Can Dodd create any? Unless you live in Connecticut, or followed the insider mechanics of the 1996 Clinton re-election race (when Dodd served an unhappy year as party chairman) you probably have no idea who he is. Let me tell you, briefly. At 62, with snowy white hair, Dodd is a lifer in politics and government, an insider’s insider—very...
About
Ed Morrissey has blogged at Captain's Quarters since 2003, and has a daily radio show at BlogTalkRadio, where he serves as Political Director. Called "Captain Ed" by his readers, Ed is a father and grandfather living in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota, a native Californian who moved to the North Star State because of the weather.
My Other Blog
The Crows Nest
Fineman Pumps Dodd
Howard Fineman uses his column at Newsweek to pump some much-needed drama into the race for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008, but instead reveals how desperately dull their prospects outside of Hillary Clinton truly are. The candidate Fineman highlights in his look at the Anyone But Hillary sweepstakes is Senator Chris Dodd, a man who exists to make Joe Biden look exciting:
In presidential politics there are a series of concentric elections until the final one (in the Supreme Court.…). Money comes just after—and in conjunction with—the creation of buzz.Can Dodd create any?
Unless you live in Connecticut, or followed the insider mechanics of the 1996 Clinton re-election race (when Dodd served an unhappy year as party chairman) you probably have no idea who he is. Let me tell you, briefly.
At 62, with snowy white hair, Dodd is a lifer in politics and government, an insider’s insider—very highly regarded within the visible and invisible club of the Senate. He retains a boyish enthusiasm for the old-school arts of bipartisan legislating and serious debate. The guy tends to know what he is talking about.
I like Dodd personally, having watched him for a while and met him once, briefly, but he has all the zing of oatmeal on a cold morning. For Democrats, he's probably at the center of the party right now, but no one would know it because Dodd attracts so little attention. The fact that Fineman had to start out his description by saying, "Let me tell you [who he is]" should tell you everything you need to know about a career politician already in his 60s. He's been in the Senate since 1974, following in his father's footsteps, and yet no one knows who he is.
The need for Dodd is explained earlier in the article by Fineman. Hillary is a strange kind of frontrunner, an almost-conceded winner who almost no one believes can actually win a general election. Fineman cites a panel of his connections within the party -- "a megamillionaire entrepreneur from Boston, an academic from Harvard, a show-biz big wig from New York, an industrial-union leader from Washington" -- in divining Democratic pessimism at Hillary's anointing. Democratic strategists are so skittish that they have tried coming up with candidates that will replace her star power with lower personal negatives, but the most high profile are retreaded losers, such as Al Gore and John Kerry.
The Democrats need a candidate who can bridge the gap between the DLC and MoveOn while appealing to centrists and independents. Dodd could probably accomplish the former with his policy initiatives, but expecting him to appeal to anyone outside of a think tank will only leave the Democrats that much more pessimistic about their chances for recapturing the White House in '08.
Fahrenheit Jimmy Carter? Er, No
The Canada Free Press site has reported that Jimmy Carter's Carter Center has taken a large amount of contributions from the bin Laden family over the past several years, reminding some of the specious lines Michael Moore attempted to draw between Osama bin Laden and George Bush in his film Fahrenheit 9/11. The only problem with this latest revelation is that it uses the same bad assumptions Moore used in smearing Bush for fun and profit on the silver screen:
Ex-U.S. President Jimmy Carter is in league with Osama bin Laden.
A paper trail shows that more than $1 million has been funneled from Bakr M. Bin Laden on behalf of the Saudi Bin Laden Group to The Carter Center.That’s an impressive bit of investigative journalism that comes your way, not courtesy of the New York Times and company, but from Melanie Morgan, Chairman, Censure Carter Committee.
"An investigation by the Censure Carter Committee into the financing for The Carter Center of Atlanta, Georgia founded by President Carter and his wife to advance his "Blame America First" policies reveals that over $1,000,000 has been funneled from Bakr M. Bin Laden for the Saudi Bin Laden Group to the Carter Center," says Censure Carter.Com in a mainstream media-ignored recent media release.
"In fact, an online report accuses former President Carter of meeting with 10 of Osama Bin Laden’s brothers early in 2000, Carter and his wife, Rosalyn followed up their meeting with a breakfast with Bakr Bin Laden in September 2000 and secured the first $200,000 towards the more than $1 million that has been received by the Carter Center."
Judi McLeod warns her readers not to expect Hollywood to correct the story told by Moore in F-9/11 in 2004. However, she may well be incorrect, because the basic premise of her article -- and of Moore's film -- fails because it assumes the Bin Laden Group reflects Osama's worldview and supports his efforts. Nothing in the record substantiates that, and by this time the Censure Carter Committee should know better.
In truth, Bakr bin Laden and the rest of the bin Ladens have had little or no contact with their terrorist-leader relative, and the BLG in many ways represents everything that Osama opposes. Two years ago, Newsweek ran a major rebuttal of Moore's film, calling it "unfair" and titling their article, "More Distortions From Michael Moore" (and here is my post on this article). Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball reminded their readers then that the bin Laden family, apart from Osama, have never had any ties to terrorist activity. It relies heavily on business with the West, and all terrorist activities that pressure their business partners cost them a great deal of money.
With that history, and with many articles and posts defending George Bush against this brainless smear already in archives all over the Internet, the use of this particular connection by the Censure Carter Committee seems very strange indeed. In the first place, using allegations that an organization's likely allies have already repeatedly debunked tends to erode credibility very quickly. Second, it attempts to burn Carter for what may be one of the more positive projects he has undertaken. If we want to transform the Middle East through engagement and democracy, having one of the most powerful Saudi families publicly supporting the Carter Center helps legitimize Western ambitions in that direction.
Most of all, it makes the Censure Carter folks look rather desperate. I have little regard for Jimmy Carter, and I know that we have plenty of material already for which to excoriate him. Why go out on a limb with this tripe? More importantly, why spend all of this money advertising this unimportant episode in an effort to get the mainstream media to notice it? McLeod works her prose into a lather, but it doesn't hide the sad truth that Bakr bin Laden is not Osama bin Laden, the Bin Laden Group is not al-Qaeda, and the Censure Carter Committee is about to spend thousands of dollars destroying its own credibility. The only affect this will produce will be to make Jimmy Carter look good in comparison.
Perhaps Hollywood and the media might spend some time debunking this if the commercials roll. That might bring an unintended side benefit of further discrediting Moore's smear campaign against George Bush. It will certainly raise sympathy for Carter at a time when he has the potential to do tremendous damage to American interests around the world. For that, we will have only the Censure Carter Committee to thank.
UPDATE: DaMav in the comments makes a good point that Carter never defended Bush on this score even though Carter had to have known the allegations were ludicrous from his own experiences with the bin Laden family, nor did he challenge Moore at the 2004 Democratic convention. That wasn't the allegation coming from the Censure Carter Committee, though, and the CCC shows itself in the same league as Moore with this silly campaign.
Holocaust Deniers Accuse Rice Of Propagandizing
After their president has spent most of the last few months trying to convince people that the Holocaust never occurred in order to gain support for ejecting the Jews from Israel, the Iranian government described Condoleezza Rice's earlier offer for direct talks in exchange for a cessation in uranium enrichment as "propaganda". The state-run news agency IRNA carried Teheran's initial reaction to Rice's offer within a few hours of her press conference today:
The official Iranian news agency said Wednesday the U.S. offer to join in direct talks with Iran about its disputed nuclear program was "a propaganda move."The American proposal, a major policy shift after decades without official public contact between the two countries, was made conditional on Iran agreeing to stop its uranium enrichment activities.
"It's evident that the Islamic Republic of Iran only accepts proposals and conditions that meet the interests of the nation and the country. Halting enrichment definitely doesn't meet such interests," IRNA said at the end of a dispatch reporting the offer of talks by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
"Given the insistence by Iranian authorities on continuing uranium enrichment, Rice's comments can be considered a propaganda move," IRNA said.
The Iranians insist that any talks be held without preconditions, but that still leaves them on the defensive diplomatically. With the US willing to meet Iran after three decades of enmity arising from their unlawful sacking of our embassy and taking our staff as hostages, suspending enrichment at least temporarily is a reasonable condition. After all, the entire point of the negotiations is to stop the development of nuclear material until we can have safeguards in place to ensure that the Iranians do not use it for weapons.
The Iranian refusal to meet the US on this rational basis can only lead to two non-exclusive conclusions: either the Iranian leadership is not rational, or they intend on building nuclear weapons regardless of their international agreements. Both are probably true. The only question that remains is what kind of action will effectively communicate global insistence on the end of the Iranian nuclear research program.
Towards that end, the US may have finally bought Russian and Chinese cooperation on sanctions with this offer. Both veto-wielding UN Security Council nations had insisted on negotiations rather than sanctions. Both had criticized the laissez-faire strategy of the US in allowing the EU-3 to conduct talks on its behalf. Now Rice and John Bolton can honestly report that the US attempted to start negotiations with Teheran, only to show that Teheran has no interest in negotiating on nuclear fuel development. Fox reported an hour ago (no link yet, heard it on the FNC through satellite radio) that sources at State have informed them that a sanctions package had received approval from all interested nations, which sounds like Rice brokered a deal.
The statement by Rice has put the diplomatic option back on the table. If the UNSC can get serious about its own resolutions and about nuclear non-proliferation -- one of the main purposes of the UN -- then the combination of world powers threatening Iranian isolation will force the government into conciliation, especially to protect themselves from their own people. If the permanent members continue to exploit the situation for economic and diplomatic gain, then Iran will continue to split the powers and drive towards the realization of its nuclear ambitions. The Russians and Chinese will then be responsible for the war that follows afterward.
UPDATE: Brant at SWLiP notes that the AP had some trouble earlier in comprehending the day's events. The AP reported that the US gave a concession to Iran. One wonders at the color of the sky in the AP's world.
Iran Presser Live Blog
Since I am homebound for the moment waiting on home health care to arrive to teach me to perform home IVs on the First Mate, I will watch the press conference called by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that will apparently announce direct talks with Iran on the nuclear-proliferation crisis.
10:04 - Iran represents a direct threat to the security of the US and world, and has accelerated its efforts to enrich uranium. So far, this sounds more like an indictment, not a conciliation.
10:05 - Offering a choice for Iran between a "negative choice" - pursuing nuclear weapons at "great costs". The positive and constructive choice would be to immediately suspend enrichment activities and returning to IAEA-based negotiations.
10:07 - This is just a proposal along the same lines as we have seen before, except with the carrot of direct talks. It's significant, but not earth-shaking. Iran won't agree to suspend enrichment, and certainly won't agree to the kind of verification necessary to pursue this offer.
10:10 - "If the Iranian nation believes it will benefit from the possession of nuclear weapons, it is mistaken." The example of North Korea to the contrary, of course.
10:11 - Questions ... Any linkage to concessions from Russia and China on sanctions? It appears not. One suspects that the UN Security Council has been rendered moot by this process anyway.
10:18 - Had to change channels; Fox's anchors think they're more interesting than the news conference.
10:19 - The US decided to join the EU-3 talks directly because we feel that the negotiations require our "weight" to check their the further expansion of their program. Translation: The EU has failed to do it themselves.
10:20 - Rice calls out the Iranians for their public vacillations. Good.
10:20 - Not ready for full diplomatic relations yet, but Iran can work towards a better relationship now.
This really doesn't change much except for an American offer to join direct, multilateral talks based on a condition that the Iranians have already said they won't meet. It does provide an effective response to Ahmadinejad's latest PR campaign and puts the onus back on Teheran for progress. I suspect that was the entire purpose of this statement.
Pentagon Understood Haditha Contradictions, Ordered Investigation
The Haditha investigation started earlier than previously thought after a Marine Corps investigator noticed key discrepancies between the physical evidence and the reports from the Marines involved. The New York Times reveals that the Pentagon had already referred the matter to criminal investigators weeks before Time Magazine reported the alleged atrocities at the end of March, from a presentation of the allegations by the magazine:
A military investigator uncovered evidence in February and March that contradicted repeated claims by marines that Iraqi civilians killed in Haditha last November were victims of a roadside bomb, according to a senior military official in Iraq.Among the pieces of evidence that conflicted with the marines' story were death certificates that showed all the Iraqi victims had gunshot wounds, mostly to the head and chest, the official said. ...
When Colonel Watt described the findings to Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, the senior ground commander in Iraq, on March 9, they raised enough questions about the marines' veracity that General Chiarelli referred the matter to the senior Marine commander in Iraq, who ordered a criminal investigation that officials say could result in murder charges being brought against members of the unit.
Colonel Watt's findings also prompted General Chiarelli to order a parallel investigation into whether senior Marine officers and enlisted personnel had attempted to cover up what happened.
From this description, rather than the impression of official denial and cover-up, the Marine Corps took decisive action early to ensure that evidence could be retained and that investigators started working on unraveling the deaths in Haditha. By the time that Time reported this incident publicly in the March 27th issue, the US military had already determined that war crimes had potentially been committed at Haditha. Time Magazine reported as much in its story, noting that it presented the military with the information that started the investigation.
Another key to the investigation was the payment of compensation to the families of Haditha's victims. The military received a lot of criticism for its failure to understand Arab culture in the early days of the Iraq war when it failed to compensate families for the collateral loss of life in villages where we operated. Blood money helps keep peace and avoids the perpetuation of hostilities between tribes for unintended deaths. The Pentagon now has policies in place which allow the military to pay compensation in those instances, allowing the issue to rest rather than fester. The Marines paid $38,000 to the families of those killed at Haditha, despite an initial finding that the victims participated in an attack on US forces, which eliminated their eligibility for compensation. Colonel Watt's investigation uncovered the payment by Major Dana Hyatt, who says he was ordered to make the payment by his superiors. In this case, the advice "follow the money" may apply.
The White House has announced that the investigations will be publicly released once completed:
Press Secretary Tony Snow said that he has been assured by the Pentagon that "all the details" will be made available. "We'll have a picture of what happened," Snow said.
That will help to build some confidence in the process used to determine the validity of the charges. Once the reports have entered the public domain, we can expect the blogosphere to thoroughly vet the documents and the evidence. If they provide as damning a case as we have been led to believe, then charges should be filed and the accused be given a public trial or court-martial for their alleged offenses.
Addendum: An interesting figure has entered this story. Paul Hackett, the Iraq War veteran and attorney that failed to win election in a special election for an Ohio Congressional seat, represents Captain James Kimber, an officer relieved of command after his unit conducted themselves improperly during an interview with a British news team. Hackett emphasizes that Kimber knew nothing of the Haditha incident and that the highest-ranking person under investigation is the staff sergeant who led the convoy when the roadside bomb exploded and started the chain of events.
What The Senate Didn't Tell You About Immigration
Robert Samuelson explains to his Washington Post readers what the Senate failed to communicate when it passed its Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act (CIRA) last week. Many people wrote about the Heritage Foundation's analysis of the proposal, which estimated that 100 million people would emigrate to the US over the next twenty years under CIRA's provisions. Robert Rector adjusted that figure to 66 million after CIRA passed with several new amendments which provided some limitation to entry.
The Heritage study received some criticism for its supposedly pessimistic view of immigration reform. However, Samuelson points out that the White House and the CBO actually have similar numbers:
The Senate passed legislation last week that Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) hailed as "the most far-reaching immigration reform in our history." You might think that the first question anyone would ask is how much it would actually increase or decrease legal immigration. But no. After the Senate approved the bill by 62 to 36, you could not find the answer in the news columns of The Post, the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal. Yet the estimates do exist and are fairly startling. By rough projections, the Senate bill would double the legal immigration that would occur during the next two decades from about 20 million (under present law) to about 40 million.One job of journalism is to inform the public about what our political leaders are doing. In this case, we failed. The Senate bill's sponsors didn't publicize its full impact on legal immigration, and we didn't fill the void. It's safe to say that few Americans know what the bill would do because no one has told them. Indeed, I suspect that many senators who voted for the legislation don't have a clue as to the potential overall increase in immigration. ...
One obvious question is why most of the news media missed the larger immigration story. On May 15 Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama held a news conference with Heritage's Rector to announce their immigration projections and the estimated impact on the federal budget. Most national media didn't report the news conference. The next day the CBO released its budget and immigration estimates. These, too, were largely unreported, though the Wall Street Journal later discussed the figures in a story on the bill's possible budget costs.
The immigration reformers made sure to avoid those numbers when debating the impact of their bill. Instead, we got plenty of lectures about the noble immigrant looking for a better life, as if almost all of us hadn't descended from those exact same kinds of people. We never argued for shutting out all immigration, but what we wanted was controlled and sensible immigration that would benefit us and the world.
What we got instead was the deluge. Even with the White House estimates of 40 million people over the next twenty years rather than the Heritage Foundation's 66 million, we still need to know how this nation will assimilate two million people every year, both economically and culturally. I take that back: we need to know whether this country will assimilate two million immigrants or whether we will allow them to form insular communities instead.
Even with assimilation, that scope provides a daunting one-time task, let alone every year. Minnesota, for instance, only has 5 million citizens. That level of immigration would be the equivalent of adding eight Minnesotas to the nation within a generation without adding any more territory, and that doesn't even take into account the concomitant growth through births. Where will they all go, and what will we do to house and educate them?
By 2026, over ten percent of our population will have emigrated here within the past generation. What kind of impact will that have on our economy, our culture, our politics? Has the Senate even bothered to find out?
Samuelson is right. The Senate failed to inform us of the impact of CIRA, and the media did little to correct the problem. Samuelson argues that this reflects a bias that punishes those who ask critical questions about immigration policy, labeling them as bigots or idiots. Their closed-minded approach to debate instead reveals them as partisan absolutists, and in this case has done a tremendous disservice to their consumers.
McCain Bypasses Party Building
If a candidate for the presidency had an ambivalent relationship with his party, would he (a) go out of his way to show loyalty to the party by appearing on behalf of its candidates for lower office even when the two disagree on one issue, or (b) stiff the candidate by backing out of a promised appearance over said disagreement? If you answered (a), you're one step ahead of John McCain:
Arizona Sen. John McCain on Tuesday canceled an appearance for a Republican congressional candidate who has attacked his opponent for supporting McCain's immigration bill.McCain, R-Ariz., was scheduled to speak Wednesday at a breakfast fundraiser for Brian Bilbray, who is locked in a close runoff race with Democrat Francine Busby for the San Diego-area seat left vacant by disgraced former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham. The event was expected to raise at least $65,000.
The winner of the June 6 special election will fill the remaining seven months left in Cunningham's term.
In an e-mail sent to the Bilbray campaign, McCain spokesman Craig Goldman acknowledged that McCain and Bilbray "disagree on some of the issues related to immigration reform." He said McCain did not want his appearance to distract from Bilbray's campaign.
Let's acknowledge the actions that McCain's campaign did correctly. They reiterated their endorsement of Brian Bilbray over the Democrat, Frances Busby. They also pledged the maximum contribution to Bilbray's campaign, $5000, from McCain's Straight Talk America PAC. While these steps should be the minimum effort for supporting fellow Republicans in tight races, at least they did them.
However, McCain fails to understand the role of the presidential nominee even while he pursues it a second time. The nominee becomes the de facto party leader, and that role carries responsibilities beyond campaigning for the presidency in the general election. The national ticket needs to provide lift for other Republicans on the ticket in lower offices, and is expected to argue on their behalf regardless of individual policy differences. Immigration, while an important issue, is not the only reason we elect representatives to Congress. The failure to elect Bilbray might mean the difference between Democratic and GOP control of the lower chamber in the final two years of McCain's campaign.
A party leader does not cancel appearances out of pique simply because a candidate in a close race disagrees with his pet legislation. Party leaders look after more than just their own narrow interests; they work to ensure that their party remains as united and broad as possible. McCain himself will have to argue for conservative support in any general election by reminding us that if we agree on 70% of the issues, it's better than having someone take office who only agrees with us 30% of the time. How is this any different?
McCain has a reputation among conservatives for being brittle and self-serving. In this case, McCain has reinforced both perceptions. If he cannot see fit to put aside a policy difference over immigration, then he can hardly ask conservatives to do the same in 2008, and on a much larger list of issues than just immigration.
UPDATE: A CQ source in San Diego's North Coast says that the district would not have reacted well to a McCain visit, and that perhaps Bilbray responded to pressure within the local GOP to distance himself from the Senator. Well, maybe, but it was the McCain people who canceled the appearance, and considering his reputation as a reformer, a McCain appearance in Duke Cunningham's district in the aftermath of his removal from office would have carried some weight with centrists in San Diego. If this came from Bilbray and the North Coast GOP, it was pretty short-sighted.
UPDATE II: Another source in the North Coast says that Bilbray didn't cancel the appearance. Bilbray, according to this knowledgeable source, is more of a moderate and would have preferred to have McCain appear at the fundraiser.
What Are They Hiding?
The Democrats have a deep divide on electoral strategy, the Los Angeles Times reports, which has its basis in policy, at least indirectly. Instead of a party debate between moderates and leftists on the nature of the Democratic legislative agenda, however, the party cannot decide whether to be honest with the American public:
With President Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress facing bleak approval ratings, many Democrats are increasingly confident that the public is ready to hear the party's alternative policy ideas as the 2006 campaign heats up.The question is whether the Democrats have an alternative ready to present. ...
On one side are those who believe the Democrats must present a sharp alternative to Bush's direction — as Republicans did with their "Contract with America" before sweeping into control of Congress in 1994.
"It is a time to move toward offense and toward talking about the big things that we stand for," said Eli Pariser, executive director of the political action committee associated with liberal MoveOn.org.
On the other side are strategists who fear that offering too many specifics could allow Republicans to shift focus away from public discontent with how they have governed. Those sentiments appear especially strong among Senate Democrats.
"If you start to [discuss] big government programs … you open yourself up to criticism in all directions, and there's no reason for Democrats to do that now," said one senior Democratic Senate aide, who asked not to be identified when discussing internal party deliberations.
In other words, the Democrats know that their agenda will lose them support in the upcoming elections. They want to offer more big-government, big-spending programs at a time when we can't afford the programs we already have. Democrats don't need a debate to determine this; it appears to be a consensus. Instead, they divide on the tactical wisdom of telling voters who they are and what they will do if elected. Honesty may be the best policy, but dishonesty seems to be the Democratic strategy for the midterms.
That may cause them more headaches than simply acknowledging their affinity for increased government spending -- an affinity shared by some Republicans as well, as we have noted often. If the Democrats offer nothing more than broad strokes about the benefit of positive government action, they will give the Republicans an opening to translate that gibberish into more specific policy implications. The longer the Democrats wait to explain their legislative agenda, the more time Republicans have to parse it out for American voters nationwide.
This reluctance to discuss their policy aims makes it clear that they already know that voters will not support it. This is the odd state of the Democratic party these days, pushed into increasingly radical postures by its powerful but fringe elements, especially MoveOn. They have torpedoed centrist candidates, and even talk of doing the same to the more liberal Hillary Clinton in 2008 for supporting the war in Iraq. Their fundraising goes to far-left politicians like Russ Feingold and Barbara Boxer instead of reaching out to the center. Small wonder that Senate Democrats have pushed especially hard for agenda silence in the mid-terms.
In a way, it's 1972 all over again but with a different, more cynical twist. The McGovernites believed that their policies would resonate with voters and did not hesitate to share them. Thirty-four years later, the Left knows that their ideas will find no resonance -- and so they simply choose to remain silent about their policy objectives. Instead, they want to campaign on Republican negatives, and we have seen the effort in the so-called "culture of corruption". Unfortunately for Democrats, it turns out that corruption knows no party affiliation, and the cases of William Jefferson and Alan Mollohan have almost nullified that argument entirely.
Will this force the Left into actually revealing an agenda for voters to appraise? Not if the Democrats can help it.
German Women Volunteer For Suicide Bombings
We noted with alarm the recent interview with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his attempt to inflame Germans against the West by blaming their post-war humiliation on Jews. Apparently Ahmadinejad's attempts to provoke German fringe-dwellers have a ready audience, as Der Spiegel reports that three German women had to be tracked down and arrested after proclaiming their readiness to act as suicide bombers in Iraq:
SPIEGEL ONLINE has learned that German intelligence agencies have prevented three German women from travelling to Iraq in recent weeks. The women, who have close contacts to the Islamist scene in Germany and at least one whom has converted to Islam, came to the attention of intelligence agencies after one of them had announced on an Internet site that she intended to blow herself and her child up in Iraq.After the Web posting were spotted, Germany's domestic and foreign intelligence agencies mounted an intense search for the three women. One of them was located in Berlin, the other two are believed to come from southern Germany. The Berlin woman's child was taken away from her and she has been put in a psychiatric clinic. The two other women were also prevented from leaving Germany. One of them is also believed to have a child.
It's not clear yet how serious the women were about their claims and how far their plans for an attack had progressed. There has been no official confirmation. Well-informed sources say the women have had contacts with sympathizers of Ansar al Islam, a militant group linked to al-Qaida and suspected of smuggling suicide bombers from Germany to Iraq. The group is also suspected of raising money for the resistance to the US-led forces in Iraq.
Last year, as DS notes, a Belgian woman conducted a suicide bombing in the Baghdad area, and now it appears that Ansar al-Islam wants to recruit Germans on behalf of Arab fanatics. The woman's volunteering of her child as part of her own suicide shows the sickness required to participate in such assignments, but the fact that three German women made that decision and proclaimed it rather publicly has to give concern about Ansar's efficacy in their nation.
Besides the obvious advantage of using Europeans to defuse some of the normal suspicion of people traveling into Iraq, the recruitment of Westerners gives AQ two distinct victories. First, it embarrasses the West, and AQ can use these cases to show that even those who grew up in freedom want to see it end. Second and more important, every Westerner who carries out a suicide mission allows an Arab to avoid it. From an AQ leadership perspective, that's a good trade.
Give Us The Pork Database
The Washington Examiner today endorses a Senate bill that would require the government to create a public database that would allow taxpayers to access data for all federal expenditures (except for indivdual assistance). Tom Coburn, a noted pork hawk, authored the bill and has a bipartisan group of co-sponsors which include Barack Obama and John McCain:
Abraham Lincoln said, “Let the people know the facts and all will be safe,” so the Great Emancipator would certainly cheer an unlikely group of United States senators who have recently joined forces to push a potentially landmark measure. That measure is designed to put every American citizen within a few mouse clicks of knowing the facts needed to track federal spending as never before.This measure should receive top-priority attention in Congress and be signed by President Bush at the earliest possible opportunity. The proposal is known as the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act (S. 2590). Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., is the original architect of the proposal, which was quickly co-sponsored by Sens. Barack Obama, D-Ill., Tom Carper, D-Del., and John McCain, R-Ariz. ...
The Coburn-Obama-Carper-McCain measure stipulates that within 30 days of awarding federal tax dollars, the government would have to post the name of the entity receiving the funds (excluding individuals receiving federal assistance), the amount of funds received by the entity in each of the past 10 years, detailed information about each of the transactions during the previous decade, the location of the entity, where the goods or services purchased with the federal dollars will be performed or purchased, and a unique identifier such as the Dun & Bradstreet number commonly used by the private sector.
The bill itself can be read at OMB Watch, a non-profit described by the Examiner as a liberal advocacy group. OMB Watch enthusiastically supports S2590 but has its issues with the approach taken by S2718, an alternative offered by Sen. John Ensign (R-NV), which it details in its report. In either case, OMB Watch will not wait for the Senate to act. It will create its own searchable database for the federal budget for taxpayers interested in how Congress spends its money, an act that might embarrass Capitol Hill into finally introducing some sunlight into a process that has existed in darkness for far too long.
This proposal has come before the Senate previously in this session. In March, Trent Lott killed an amendment offered by Coburn and Obama which would have attached the requirements of S2590 onto the lobbying reform bill under consideration in the upper chamber. He used Rule 22, which labeled the amendment as irrelevant to the purpose of the bill it amended, even though almost everyone who has urged lobbying reform has made earmarks the centerpiece of why such change is necessary. Lott, on the other hand, felt that earmarks were of no concern to taxpayers and essentially told them to butt out.
At the time, I urged Coburn and Obama to reintroduce the amendment as a separate bill so that parliamentary tricks like Rule 22 would be avoided. Now the Senate has it in front of them once more. If they truly intend to reform appropriations politics, they will allow taxpayers this tool for accurately gauging the influence of lobbyists and special interests in DC.
CQ Joins The Examiner
Earlier today, Washington Examiner editorial-page editor Mark Tapscott informed me that I have been named to the Examiner Newspapers Blog Board of Contributors. As far as either Mark or I know, the Examiner has made itself a pioneer in partnering with the blogosphere in this most substantive manner. I will join other prominent bloggers to comprise a diverse group of voices from the world of citizen journalists.
My contributions will begin next week, and I hope that CQ readers will show their appreciation to the Examiner organization with their traffic.
Able Danger: Shaffer Fights Dismissal
Mark Zaid, attorney for central Able Danger figure Lt. Colonel Anthony Shaffer, has filed a new supplemental declaration supporting the opposition of the government's motion for dismissal of his lawsuit. The Defense Intelligence Agency has moved to dismiss due to its insistence on refusing access to his attorney to classified material. Two weeks ago, Zaid filed a motion opposing the dismissal, and this new declaration contains some interesting revelations.
Here is the text of Zaid's latest filing:
3. Shaffer and the undersigned counsel participated in interview sessions with the defendant Department of Defense’s Office of Inspector General (“DoD OIG”) on May 16, 2006, and May 24, 2006. The DoD OIG is conducting an investigation into, among other issues, the factual circumstances surrounding ABLE DANGER and also whether the defendant Defense Intelligence Agency retaliated against Shaffer. These two meetings, as well as two others that occurred in November 2005, have all been conducted at the unclassified level, particularly - apparently - in order to allow the undersigned to participate.4. During both meetings (and even during the November 2005 sessions), but especially the interview held on May 16, 2006, there were numerous instances where the conversation began to encroach upon “out of bounds” classified areas. For all I know, the conversations actually extended at times into the classified arena. In any event, it is clear to me that the primary focus and core issues at the heart of ABLE DANGER remain classified. This is of concern to me, and I believe should concern this Court for purposes of this litigation and present Motion, on at least two levels.
5. First, I, as Shaffer’s counsel, cannot adequately or effectively provide him sound legal advice since I do not know all the facts of the operation, nor the full scope of Shaffer’s role within the operation. This was more than clear when the conversation involved specific questions and seemingly vague discussions surrounding the legality of operations that Shaffer, and/or ABLE DANGER, might or might not have engaged in. The investigator asking the questions, and Shaffer in providing answers, continually danced around the issue while at the same time ensuring it was abundantly obvious they both knew what they were addressing. The conversation became so alarming to me that I was forced to specifically note on the record that I was concerned for Shaffer’s legal well-being and could not provide either adequate or effective representation, and I advised that both this line of questioning and his answers cease. I cannot judge at this time whether Shaffer is in legal liability or not because of the veil that the Government has purposefully placed over my face while at the same time continuing to pursue matters that potentially expose Shaffer to either administrative, civil or even criminal penalties. This scenario is completely unfair and inappropriate of the defendants to place Shaffer, or anyone, in.
6. Second, it is also clear that specific individuals and organizations, due to their classified or protected nature, are not being discussed or addressed in the investigation (again being danced around during interviews), at least not with Shaffer, who obviously was a key player in most of the relevant events. On multiple occasions I have witnessed first-hand Mr. Shaffer being stopped from providing testimony or sworn information by investigators (and I know of instances involving congressional staff) based on “security classification”. I also know that Shaffer has not been asked, nor has he provided, classified inputs to the DoD OIG investigations on ABLE DANGER. This issue is of grave concern to me as it directly impacts the scope and accuracy of the DoD OIG investigation. It is one thing to protect classified capabilities and avoid discussion due to the presence of uncleared counsel, but it is entirely another to avoid specific relevant areas of inquiry simply because of alleged classification concerns. While I personally presently perceive the conduct of those handling the investigation to be fair and professional, I cannot imagine the investigation can be completed, and more importantly any accurate conclusions reached, without addressing the gaping holes Shaffer can apparently fill and desires to address. Due to the potential administrative and legal liability that Shaffer faces as a result of his participation in ABLE DANGER, it is imperative that the testimony he provides (unless perhaps under some grant of immunity) to the DoD OIG occur in the presence of counsel.
Interesting. While Zaid offers praise for the conduct of the investigators, he clearly senses that the depositions have aimed at making any court action impossible by tying too many classified threads into it. Not only does this confound any prosecution of the lawsuit, but Zaid cannot even be sure that it is deliberate, since he has little frame of reference about the issues at hand. As Zaid says, in this position he can do nothing to protect his client's interests.
First Mate Docks
The First Mate has returned home after six days in the hospital. It almost took an act of Congress to get out of the place; she had a bronchoscopy earlier in the day and they did not like her oxygenation levels. That did not hinder her from telling them in no uncertain terms (and certain salty nautical terms as well, under her breath) that she would not stay another night in the hospital.
She's resting comfortably at home now. Tomorrow I get lessons in how to start a home IV for her treatment over the next couple of weeks. Hopefully, I will not incur her wrath from my service ...
Let's Get Ready To Rumble
Democrats who have busied themselves painting corruption as an exclusively Republican affair have hit a number of obstacles to that message -- Reps. William Jefferson and Alan Mollohan prominent among them. Now the Democrats have to add their own leadership -- again -- as the Senate Minority Leader has been exposed as taking favors from a notoriously corrupt industry while he intervened on their behalf:
Senate Democratic Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) accepted free ringside tickets from the Nevada Athletic Commission to three professional boxing matches while that state agency was trying to influence him on federal regulation of boxing.Reid took the free seats for Las Vegas fights between 2003 and 2005 as he was pressing legislation to increase government oversight of the sport, including the creation of a federal boxing commission that Nevada's agency feared might usurp its authority.
He defended the gifts, saying that they would never influence his position on the bill and he was simply trying to learn how his legislation might affect an important home state industry. "Anyone from Nevada would say I'm glad he is there taking care of the state's number one businesses," he said. "I love the fights anyways, so it wasn't like being punished," added the senator, a former boxer and boxing judge.
Senate ethics rules generally allow lawmakers to accept gifts from federal, state or local governments, but specifically warn against taking such gifts -- particularly on multiple occasions -- when they might be connected to efforts to influence official actions. ...
Several ethics experts said Reid should have paid for the tickets, which were close to the ring and worth between several hundred and several thousand dollars each, to avoid the appearance he was being influenced by gifts.
In a further blow to efforts to paint corruption as Republican, two GOP Senators also attended fights with Harry Reid. John McCain insisted on paying for his tickets at the retail value ($1400) while Reid's fellow Nevadan, John Ensign, recused himself from participating in Reid's pending legislation.
This follows on Reid's four interventions on behalf of clients of Jack Abramoff, actions which closely coincided with large donations from the tribes Abramoff represented. Reid, some will recall, also accepted campaign assistance from a former aide, Edward Ayoob, after Abramoff hired Ayoob to work as a lobbyist. These revelations get little play from the media (the AP mentions both in this story) and none from Democratic partisans who headline almost everything they can about Jack Abramoff, even though they have been known for a year. They excuse this and a number of other Abramoff recipients by rationalizing that Abramoff donated more money personally to Republicans, even though he directed his clients to donate tens of thousands of dollars to Senators Reid and Tom Daschle, Reps. Patrick Kennedy and Dick Gephardt, and at least in the case of Reid in conjunction with specific interventions on their behalf.
Now Reid has been caught taking favors on behalf of an industry with an embarrassing past and a not-much-improved present. I enjoy boxing, but no one who has watched the sport believes that its alphabet soup of associations play straight, nor does the judging always raise its credibility above the level of professional wrestling. Reid's instinct to regulate the sport has a rational basis, even if it would be unlikely to improve anything more than boxer safety. Accepting several thousands of dollars worth of tickets while actively pursuing legislation that would impact this industry is such an obvious ethical violation that Reid's protestations of overreaction are insulting to the intelligence of the voters.
I wrote last year that Democrats would regret their attempts to turn corruption into a partisan campaign issue. That problem relates to power, not party, and corruption affects enough of both parties to require a bipartisan effort to truly contain and end it. Neither party seems willing to commit to such reform, and as long as Democrats continue to screech at corrupt Republicans while excusing the likes of Reid, Kennedy, Jefferson, and Mollohan, then nothing will ever change.
Canada: The Terrorists Among Us
The Canadian Security Intelligence Service has informed Parliament that many veterans of al-Qaeda's initial war against the Soviet Union live in Canadian cities, and that some have trained since then in terrorist camps:
Canada's spy agency says potential terrorists already reside in Canadian cities.The deputy director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service said Monday that there are many people currently living in Canada who fought with al-Qaeda during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
And Jack Hooper says those same people have since trained in al-Qaeda terrorist training camps.
The testimony to the Canadian Senate came during hearings on the nation's mission in Afghanistan and how it could affect their domestic security, and that answer does not give much confidence in the status quo. The Globe & Mail did not give any more specifics about Hooper's testimony, nor did it even report whether Hooper had more discrete data on the threat.
This information comes at an interesting time for the US. We have debated for months about our overall immigration policy, but mostly have focused on the Mexican border. We have two long and mostly unguarded borders that need more attention in time of war, especially against the kind of enemies we face. The key difference between the two is that our northern partner takes border security much more seriously than our southern partner. Ottawa also has no policy encouraging and enabling swarms of migrants to cross the border in order to relieve political pressure at home.
Nevertheless, we need to remain engaged with Canada on security issues, and this should remind everyone why.
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