Captain's Quarters -

The latest Rasmussen poll delivers bad news to Republicans hoping to hold or expand their majority in the US Senate. Incumbent and key conservative Rick Santorum has fallen far behind his challenger, Robert Casey Jr, with only five months left in the campaign:

The latest Rasmussen Reports election poll in Pennsylvania shows Republican Senator Rick Santorum solidifying his standing as most vulnerable congressional incumbent this election season.

Santorum now trails Democratic challenger Bob Casey 56% to 33% (see crosstabs). Our latest survey of the governor's race also brings good news for the Democrat in that contest.

Last month, Santorum trailed by thirteen percentage points. The incumbent began 2006 down by 20 points and closed to within single digits by March. That was before the Primary Election solidified Casey's position as the Democratic nominee.

Santorum continues to flounder with his base, attracting support from only 67% of GOP voters. Casey now attracts 87% of Democrats, a ten-point gain since our April 20 poll.

Rasmussen produces consistently reliable results on national polls, which makes this hard to dismiss. About the only bright spot left by these results are that Casey only drew 56% support, leaving 11% undecided. Santorum has poor internals as well, with five percent higher unfavorable responses than favorable (47%-42%). The head-to-head numbers have declined to their worst state so far this year, which indicates that Santorum has all the wrong kind of momentum.

What happened? We knew that Santorum would have a difficult re-election campaign, but I don't think that even Mark Dayton would get these kind of polling numbers in Minnesota, and everyone knew he could not possibly win another term (everyone, including Dayton himself). When an incumbent only draws 33% in a two-man race, something significant has happened. Right now, Santorum has been caught up in a residency dispute which may have eroded whatever crossover appeal he had. The bigger problem is among the GOP base. Only 67% of Pennsylvania Republicans support Santorum, as opposed to 87% of Democrats supporting Casey.

Lynn Swann has returned to earth in his race to unseat Governor Ed Rendell in PA. He has dropped eighteen points below Rendell in the latest Rasmussen poll, after leading within the margin of error before the primaries. Swann, a novice running for his first political office, still has to define himself more clearly with voters, and he may have hit some Santorum turbulence as well; only 59% of Republicans support him so far. Unlike with Santorum, whose incumbency identifies him clearly, this gap may portend better results for Swann, as he can still win the remainder over during his campaign as he defines himself and his agenda.

If the Republicans cannot win in Pennsylvania in these midterms, it makes it more difficult to carry the state for the national ticket in 2008. The GOP had better call an emergency strategy meeting for Santorum's campaign and get their party energized quickly if they want to hold that seat.

UPDATE: The fine folks at FreePA say that this is an extension of the Pennsylvania Earthquake that kicked out more than a dozen incumbents in the primary. Swann had supported one of the biggest targets, State Sen. Jubelirer. Santorum, meanwhile, has never mended conservative fences after supporting Arlen Specter against Pat Toomey, according to PennConservative, and the state GOP hasn't forgiven him for it.

This comes down to a bit of housecleaning by Pennsylvania conservatives, and I applaud that. I would caution them about getting too enthusiastic about it, however, unless they like the sound of Governor Rendell and Senator Casey for the next several years. For Lynn Swann especially, I think conservatives would do better through engagement with this political neophyte rather than an electoral shunning.

The UN again demonstrates its fecklessness by insisting that the world owes the Palestinians refuge from their own bad choices, requesting emergency aid donations to stave of a financial crisis of their own making. The UN wants almost $400 million to replace what the Palestinians threw away when they elected terrorists to control their protostate:

The UN has appealed for a near doubling of emergency aid to the Palestinian territories to alleviate a crippling economic crisis after the freezing of foreign funds to the Hamas government and Israeli sanctions against the Palestinians. It has revised the amount it wants foreign governments to donate this year from $215m (£115m) to $385m to prevent the collapse of services such as health and education, and to provide food and medicines.

The appeal document said the UN had taken the unprecedented step of asking for more money because of the "extremely bleak" humanitarian outlook for the occupied territories that is "predicted to worsen dramatically in coming months". "We're seeing people cut back on food and basic expenses," said David Shearer, head of the UN's office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs. "The situation in Gaza is the most acute."

An existing economic crisis has been compounded by the freezing of about $1bn in foreign aid from the EU and US after the Hamas election victory in January, and Israel withholding taxes it collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority.

When we say that the UN exists only to ensure that change never occurs, this is exactly what we mean. The Palestinian elections gave the Palestinians an opportunity to decide whether they wanted to move forward in peace, or whether they wanted to endorse more terrorism. They chose the latter, despite knowing that their Western benefactors would not engage Hamas while the terrorist group refused to recognize Israel. It got worse once their government took power, as Hamas announced that they would not recognize any previous agreements with Israel or anyone else, and that any negotiations had to start from scratch.

The Palestinians know what they need to do to restart aid; they need to have Hamas recognize Israel, forswear terrorism and violence, and agree that previous agreements are binding. The last is especially important. If we had to renegotiate agreements from scratch every time a government changed hands, we would have no basis of trust on which to proceed. If the Palestinians want to argue that their word is worthless, then let them do so. It's only that much more reason not to support them economically or politically.

The Palestinian approach will not change while groups like the UN insist on buffering them from the consequences of their choices. They elected Hamas freely -- more freely than they elected Mahmoud Abbas as president -- and that choice carries consequences. If they do not like those consequences, it is up to them to pressure their government to respond in such a way that the international community can re-engage them economically. If we keep treating them as helpless children, they will continue to act that way. When they grow up, then we can lend a helping hand.

We've spent most of the last two decades pouring money into the Palestinian protostate, and it has resulted in nothing but two intifadas and the election of Hamas. Having them fend for themselves can hardly produce worse results than an election victory by an Islamist terrorist group.

The trouble with using elections to clean house is keeping even worse choices from reaching office. Voters can see this dynamic in play in Northern California, where a former Congressman has decided to challenge House Resources Committee chair Richard Pombo for his seat in the Republican primary. However, Pete McCloskey has a lot of his own baggage to carry:

A former congressman and longtime critic of America's alliance with Israel is hoping voter anger over bribery and ethical breaches in Washington will help him unseat a powerful committee chairman in a Republican primary in California next week.

Paul McCloskey Jr., 78, known as "Pete," is challenging Richard Pombo, 45, who has spent seven terms in Congress and presides over the panel that oversees energy and public land issues, the House Resources Committee.

In an interview with The New York Sun yesterday, Mr. McCloskey, who served in Congress between 1967 and 1983 and was among the first to call for the impeachment of President Nixon, said he decided to run again because of his sense of an ethical decline among Republican leaders.

"After 12 years in power, I think they've been corrupted," he said. "They've done precisely what the Democrats have done during their period in power."

Sounds great so far, right? I've advised conservatives to get active in the primaries and offer better alternatives to incumbents who do not support the conservative agenda, although I am unsure whether that applies to Pombo or not. Even if it does, sometimes the cure is worse than the disease, as we can see from the New York Sun's further exploration of McCloskey's past:

While some press accounts of the race have drawn parallels between Mr. McCloskey's vocal opposition to the Vietnam War and his outspoken criticism of the war in Iraq, news coverage of the current contest has made almost no mention of the ex-congressman's long history of clashes with Jewish groups.

Mr. McCloskey is a co-founder of a group aimed at revamping America's "collusive relationship" with Israel, the Council for the National Interest. The group recently took out an ad in the New York Times promoting an academic paper in which professors at Harvard and the University of Chicago claimed that a pro-Israel lobby has a stranglehold on American foreign policy.

In 2000, Mr. McCloskey spoke at a conference organized by the leading Holocaust denial organization in America, the Institute for Historical Review.

"I came because I respect the thesis of this organization - the thesis being that there should be a reexamination of whatever governments say or politicians say or political entities say," he told the group, according to its Web site. "The Jewish community has the power to suppress, either by advertising or control of the media, news reports that are hostile to Israel...The Jewish community is dedicated to preserve that state, and to destroy those who speak against it."

McCloskey later said that he had no affiliation with the IHR, claiming to have written them a letter advising them to "get off the anti-Holocaust kick"; McCloskey either has no clue or deliberately evades the point that Holocaust denial is the primary reason for the IHR's existence. He also denies that he is an anti-Semite, despite his repetition of paranoid theories of Jewish media control. It would be funny if it weren't so pathetic.

We need to keep our options open in primaries and use them to make our candidates as sharp as possible for the general election. We don't need to push nutcases past their expiration date into the mix. Republicans should shut down the McCloskey Rant Campaign forthwith.

The latest ABC poll shows that House Speaker Denny Hastert miscalculated badly by erupting with outrage over the raid on Rep. William Jefferson’s offices. An overwhelming majority of Americans approve of the search performed by the FBI regardless of party affiliation:

In the rift between Congress and the Justice Department, Americans side overwhelmingly with law enforcement: Regardless of precedent and the separation of powers, 86 percent say the FBI should be allowed to search a Congress member's office if it has a warrant.

That view is broadly bipartisan, this ABC News poll finds, ranging from 78 percent among Democrats to 94 percent of Republicans. …

Sixty-five percent of Americans give a negative rating to the ethics and honesty of members of Congress. More, 54 percent, rate their own member's ethics positively, but that's down from 69 percent in a 1989 poll.

Nonetheless, support for FBI searches is about equally high whether people see Congress as honest or not. That suggests that the interests of law enforcement to investigate wrongdoing simply prevails in the public's mind over concerns about separation of powers, precedent, and the possibility prosecutors could use such searches to try to intimidate lawmakers. The question in this poll described both sides of the argument.

This shows that Hastert’s hysterics over separation of powers failed to convince anyone to turn Capitol Hill into a sanctuary for wayward politicians. Americans have much more concern over politicians selling their votes than in an arcane (and legally insupportable) argument over the potential for intimidation. Perhaps that comes from a couple of decades of legislative action that has produced asset seizures prior to convictions in drug cases, federal intervention in land rights due to overzealous prosecution of endangered-species regulations, and the blizzard of Congressional subpoenas directed at the executive branch for an unending series of hyperventilated investigations.

Or, maybe, it’s that the American public will not endorse the notion that election to public office grants an immunity from subpoenas and search warrants.

Hastert and Nancy Pelosi have yet to comprehend the paradigm shift in American politics and culture. We demand accountability from our elected officials. When they demand special privileges designed to block that accountability, we no longer remain silent.

After a chorus of apologists insisted that Harry Reid would have broken the law by buying his own tickets to boxing matches, the AP reports that Reid has now acknowledged that he misstated Senate ethics rules in defending his acceptance of tickets from the Nevada Athletic Commission. Reid's staff now says that he will no longer accept gifts from the NAC:

Reversing course, Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid’s office acknowledged Wednesday night he misstated the ethics rules governing his acceptance of free boxing tickets and has decided to avoid taking such gifts in the future. ...

The announcement came after The Associated Press confronted Reid’s office early Wednesday with conclusions from several ethics experts that the Senate leader misstated congressional ethics rules in trying to defend his actions. ...

Manley said Wednesday night that Reid “misspoke when he said the rule applies only to senators who represent the state agency.” But he added he believes Reid still could ethically accept the tickets.

“It was therefore entirely permissible for Senator Reid — a senator from Nevada — to have attended a major Nevada sporting event as a guest of Nevada officials,” Manley said.

Several ethics experts disagreed, criticizing Reid’s rationale that he felt obligated to take the tickets to ensure boxing was being conducted properly in his home state.

“He is no more obligated to go to boxing matches than he is to a Celine Dion concert in Vegas,” said Melanie Sloan, a former Justice Department prosecutor and head of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

The reaction to the original story was enlightening. Partisans attacked the AP for supposedly having a vendetta against Reid, parsed the ethics rules to find a reason why Reid didn't violate them, and then postulated that Reid had a legal responsibility to accept the freebie. Even Reid didn't go that far, and now Reid's office has pulled the rug out from under his hysterical defenders.

Not one of them asked the question as to why Reid needed a free ticket to a boxing match to determine his vote on increased federal regulation in the first place. He spent years in the industry, as a boxer and later as a judge. What possible information could he glean from sitting ringside to watch Oscar de la Hoya and Bernard Hopkins duke it out? If he wanted to research the boxing industry, that would be the least revealing method in which to do so. As Melanie Sloan says, it would be equivalent to investigating payola scandals by sitting in the front row of a Celine Dion concert.

Anyone buying this line about research and Reid's legal obligation to accept freebies should have their heads examined. It's precisely this kind of excuse-making that perpetuates the ethical morass in DC. Politicians do not get paid to accept freebies from any special-interest group, regardless of their nature, when the groups have legislation pending before our representatives. Perhaps if we can all agree on that, we could start cleaning up national politics. Reid's example was hardly the most egregious ethical transgression we've seen, but we shouldn't be grading on the curve, either.

And I note that we still have no response to Reid's multiple ties with Jack Abramoff.

UPDATE AND BUMP: In response to a comment left by new CQ reader Muddy Mo, I reviewed the commentary at the TPM Muckraker about the supposed media bias that has unfairly tarnished Reid's reputation. Paul Kiel argues that John Solomon left out a key detail that exonerates Reid:

Yesterday, we reported that there was a major detail missing from Solomon's story: Reid didn't pay for the seats to the boxing matches because they were credentials given to him by the Nevada Athletic Commission - not tickets. Credentials are not for sale. In fact, it is against Nevada state law for the commission to accept money for them. ...

[Promoter Bob] Arum is saying that Reid didn't pay for credentials, because he couldn't. But when he got tickets, which he could pay for, he did.

Solomon looks at that, ignores the whole tickets versus credentials issue, and makes Reid's decision to pay or not pay a matter of when he became Minority Leader.

I'm excerpting here, but I would encourage readers to review Paul's post in its entirety ... because it boggles the mind that he thinks this distinction makes any difference. Kiel has argued for two days now that because the NAC gave Reid credentials rather than tickets, it somehow relieves Reid of his ethical obligations. Using Kiel's logic, the fact that the NAC cannot sell credentials makes them worthless -- even though it allowed Harry Reid to occupy seats that cost over a thousand dollars each.

Let's play that game a little further. If I sat on the Transportation Committee and had accepted a Cadillac Escalade from General Motors, I could excuse it by saying that I wanted to study CAFE standards, and the SUV was a dealer vehicle anyway and not for sale. Perhaps, if I sat on the Foreign Relations committee, I could get a trip to St. Andrews for a round of golf from a lobbyist, and argue that I needed to study Scots Home Rule and the private jet had an extra seat no one was using.

Under these definitions, no gift would ever be unethical, as a moment's reflection would confirm.

This is such an obviously faulty argument, I'm surprised that Paul even bothered making it. Reid and his apologists can call this anything they want, but Reid got free admittance and ringside seats that had a value in thousands of dollars from an agency that had business before the Senate. I note that John McCain paid for his admittance -- and that means the NAC and Reid knew damn well how phony this "credentials" argument is.

I do blame Solomon for failing to mention this more prominently in his reporting. It exposes the NAC, boxing promoters, Harry Reid, and everyone who flacks on his behalf as seriously lacking in integrity.

UPDATE II: Decision '08 isn't impressed by this argument, either.

I should say that TPM Muckraker is usually intelligent and provocative, but it falls down hard here.

Bobby Kennedy Jr has a turgid expose at Rolling Stone which purports to blow the lid off the 2004 presidential election by claiming that 350,000 Ohio voters were prevented from reaching the polling stations. This, unsurprisingly, has excited the entire port side of the blogosphere. However, when one begins to read through the argument, supported by a slew of citations but no evidence at all, it sounds like a very tired rehash of all the conspiracy theories we heard between November 2004 and January 2005, when the Electoral College made the results final.

Kennedy's lead argument gives readers enough excuse to stop on the first page. He argues that exit polls are "exquisitely accurate", and therefore since the pollsters are infallible, their early returns must have been the truth:

Over the past decades, exit polling has evolved into an exact science. Indeed, among pollsters and statisticians, such surveys are thought to be the most reliable. Unlike pre-election polls, in which voters are asked to predict their own behavior at some point in the future, exit polls ask voters leaving the voting booth to report an action they just executed. The results are exquisitely accurate: Exit polls in Germany, for example, have never missed the mark by more than three-tenths of one percent.(17) ''Exit polls are almost never wrong,'' Dick Morris, a political consultant who has worked for both Republicans and Democrats, noted after the 2004 vote. Such surveys are ''so reliable,'' he added, ''that they are used as guides to the relative honesty of elections in Third World countries.''(18) In 2003, vote tampering revealed by exit polling in the Republic of Georgia forced Eduard Shevardnadze to step down.(19) And in November 2004, exit polling in the Ukraine -- paid for by the Bush administration -- exposed election fraud that denied Viktor Yushchenko the presidency.(20)

News flash: mathematics is an exact science. Polling isn't, and for at least one basic reason -- you can't force people to participate. The only people answering exit polls are those inclined to share their opinions. It also relies on the skill, integrity, and execution of the actual polltakers, many of whom are hired with little training. Moreover, reporting results in the middle of the sample almost always guarantees bad conclusions.

And interestingly enough, that's exactly what two research firms looking into the exit poll debacle found:

Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International found that the Democratic challenger's supporters were more likely than President Bush's supporters to participate in exit polls interviews. They also found that more errors occurred in exit polls conducted by younger interviewers, and about half of the interviewers were 34 or under. ...

They noted that in a number of precincts, interviewers were kept 50 feet or more away from polling places, potentially skewing results toward people motivated to go out of their way to participate in exit polls. They also found suggestions that interviewers may not have carefully followed rules for selecting voters at random, which may have skewed results.

Kennedy never addresses the ridiculous notion that a sample poll will have exquisite accuracy, while the real vote somehow is unreliable. As we often say, the only poll that really matters is taken behind the curtain and doesn't rely on a pollster to conduct it. And his argument about the US government endorsing exit polling's exquisite reliability is also fallacious. The government uses exit polling to look for massive vote fraud on a scale far outside the margin of error for exit polling, not to determine the accuracy of results to the tenth of a point. Only when exit polls show a remarkably different result than the vote counts do they come into play at all. The Ukrainian fraud did not involve a couple of percentage points, but rather a ten-point swing -- and other obvious polling irregularities had already been documented, such as armed raids on polling centers.

Kennedy flat-out lies at least once, in this assertion:

In its official postmortem report issued two months after the election, Edison/Mitofsky was unable to identify any flaw in its methodology -- so the pollsters, in essence, invented one for the electorate. According to Mitofsky, Bush partisans were simply disinclined to talk to exit pollsters on November 2nd(34) -- displaying a heretofore unknown and undocumented aversion that skewed the polls in Kerry's favor by a margin of 6.5 percent nationwide.(35)

The Edison/Mitofsky report showed several flaws in methodology, as noted above. They identified several factors that contributed to the errors in reporting the results, including reporting interim results on inadequate sample sizes.

Why would Kennedy put on his tinfoil hat in this manner? We find out in his second unsupported pillar of the stolen-election conspiracy theory -- Ken Blackwell, the conservative Republican running for governor:

But in the battle for Ohio, Republicans had a distinct advantage: The man in charge of the counting was Kenneth Blackwell, the co-chair of President Bush's re-election committee.(43) As Ohio's secretary of state, Blackwell had broad powers to interpret and implement state and federal election laws -- setting standards for everything from the processing of voter registration to the conduct of official recounts.(44) And as Bush's re-election chair in Ohio, he had a powerful motivation to rig the rules for his candidate. Blackwell, in fact, served as the ''principal electoral system adviser'' for Bush during the 2000 recount in Florida,(45) where he witnessed firsthand the success of his counterpart Katherine Harris, the Florida secretary of state who co-chaired Bush's campaign there.(46)

Blackwell -- now the Republican candidate for governor of Ohio(47) -- is well-known in the state as a fierce partisan eager to rise in the GOP. An outspoken leader of Ohio's right-wing fundamentalists, he opposes abortion even in cases of rape(48) and was the chief cheerleader for the anti-gay-marriage amendment that Republicans employed to spark turnout in rural counties(49). He has openly denounced Kerry as ''an unapologetic liberal Democrat,''(50) and during the 2004 election he used his official powers to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of Ohio citizens in Democratic strongholds. In a ruling issued two weeks before the election, a federal judge rebuked Blackwell for seeking to ''accomplish the same result in Ohio in 2004 that occurred in Florida in 2000.''(51)

Kennedy's two witnesses for the persecution on this pillar: Dennis Kucinich and John Conyers. And Kennedy excoriates Blackwell as a "fierce partisan"? The Confederate Yankee isn't fooled; he calls this piece an attempt "to smear a black fiscal and socially conservative candidate that has charisma, integrity, and cross-cultural appeal--in short, a real chance of winning."

I note that Kennedy never once mentions Wisconsin, where real election-day dirty tricks and voter fraud occurred and actually resulted in prosecution. Perhaps that's because voter fraud that benefits Democrats fails to interest Kennedy. I look forward to his expose on the 1960 election that made his uncle President.

As I suspected, Condoleezza Rice's offer of direct American participation came as she solidified an agreement with Russia and China on a carrots-and-sticks proposal for Iran which will carry sanctions for a refusal to comply. The acquiescence of the two nations presents a brief, perhaps transitory moment of unity that might give Teheran reason to reconsider its intransigence:

The United States, Russia, China and the leading nations of Europe announced agreement tonight on a general formula designed to resolve the nuclear crisis with Iran, but officials declined to specifically describe the package of incentives and punishments before it can be presented to Iran.

"I am pleased to say that we have agreed a set of far-reaching proposals as a basis for discussion with Iran," said Margaret Beckett, the British foreign secretary. "We believe that they offer Iran the chance to reach a negotiated agreement based on cooperation."

She said the nations represented at the talks "are prepared to resume negotiations should Iran resume suspension of all enrichment related and reprocessing activities as required by the I.A.E.A., and we would also suspend action in the Security Council."

But she warned that "further steps would have to be taken in the Security Council" if Iran does not comply. Ms. Beckett's statement avoided any mention of sanctions or other specific measures.

Iran has already said that they will refuse to participate in talks with the precondition of ceasing their uranium enrichment. However, they can change their mind, and the US has reiterated that they would honor their offer if Iran reverses itself. This would probably benefit Iran more than the West by pretending to demonstrate some reasonableness and flexibility. Unfortunately, the mullahcracy has painted itself into a corner domestically by pumping up public fervor for their sovereign right to the nuclear cycle. Backing down from that position might create a great deal of tension at a time when unrest has already reached a serious level.

An Iranian refusal will push Russia and China to either abandon their Iranian ally or to explicitly discredit the UN Security Council once again. Nuclear non-proliferation has been the responsibility of the UNSC for decades, and this test will either rejuvenate its power to effect positive change, or provide another reason for the US to discount it as any kind of helpful forum.

The Iranians surely know this. Expect them to try to split this new alliance with more declarations of sovereignty, mixed with offers to talk on the basis of status quo. Right now, it appears that the Russians and the Chinese will not fall for it ... but things will likely change soon.

... but probably won't get it, for a couple of reasons. The New York Times reports that some Congressional Republicans want to wait until after the election to reconcile the House and Senate versions of immigration reform, and the Washington Times predicts that a turf war over revenue will delay conference committee action. Meanwhile, Bush changes rhetorical tactics somewhat in a concession to hard-liners:

Beginning a public relations offensive intended to prod divided Congressional Republicans into overhauling the nation's immigration laws, President Bush rebuked conservative opponents of his plan on Thursday and warned that there is "no excuse" for delay.

With Congress set to return to Washington on Monday after a one-week recess, some Republicans have suggested they may fare better at the polls in November if the House and Senate wait until after Election Day to reconcile their vastly different immigration bills.

But Mr. Bush made clear in a speech at the United States Chamber of Commerce that he did not want Congress to wait. Next week, the president will take his case for what he calls "comprehensive immigration reform" on the road, with appearances in New Mexico and Nebraska.

Bush may get surprised by two inconvenient truths during his road trip. First, his speeches on immigration reform may not sell as well as he might imagine in New Mexico and especially in Nebraska. The latter state just rejected a popular politician, legendary Huskers coach Tom Osborne, for supporting Bush's immigration package during his primary run for governor. And while New Mexico has a high percentage of Hispanic citizens, they tend to view illegal immigration somewhat less hospitably than Bush.

The second inconvenient truth is that Bush isn't running for re-election again, ever. However, the Republicans in Congress and a third of them in the Senate do have to face voters this fall, and so far Matthew Dowd hasn't given them much confidence in their chances if they create an amnesty-lite program in conference. They have heard a crescendo of angry voices demanding that the federal government start enforcing the law rather than create complicated and costly schemes to avoid doing so.

Bush offered an olive branch in his remarks towards this end, but it wound up sounding out of place:

President Bush told the nation's most prominent business group yesterday that "unscrupulous" employers have contributed to the illegal immigration crisis in the United States by knowingly hiring undocumented workers, and called for steep new penalties on those exploiting the shadow economy. ...

"Businesses that knowingly employ illegal workers undermine this law and undermine the spirit of America," the president said during a speech against a backdrop of U.S. flags, images of the Statue of Liberty and the slogan "Comprehensive Immigration Reform." "And we're not going to tolerate it in this country." Although most businesses abide by the law, he said, "there are some unscrupulous folks who want to take advantage of low-cost labor."

Bush is undoubtedly correct on this point; conservatives have demanded that businesses be held accountable for their hiring practices, arguing that once the jobs dry up, the illegals will return home. However, coming from the man who has long extolled the work ethic of the illegals and their willingness to do the jobs Americans won't do, this argument makes little sense. If Bush is correct and the illegals fill a critical need that Americans won't perform for ourselves, and if that's as beneficial as Bush claims, then how exactly are the businesses "unscrupulous"?

The lack of scruples comes from employers exploiting illegal immigrants to keep wages low and to avoid transition to higher-tech solutions. Bush tacitly admits this in his statement, which would be news only because he has so far steadfastly avoided that obvious conclusion throughout this debate. Pressure in labor markets force businesses to either offer more compensation or to invest in technological solutions that reduces the need for the labor. The free flow of immigrants and the lack of government enforcement allow these businesses to avoid either kind of investment. The scruples shortage exists in both the businesses that exploit cheap labor and the government that allows it.

Bush may have to put up with some delay anyway, as the version that passed the Senate has Constitutional issues of an unusual type:

A key feature of the Senate bill is that it would make illegals pay back taxes before applying for citizenship, a requirement that supporters say will raise billions of dollars in the next decade.

There's just one problem: The U.S. Constitution specifically prohibits revenue-raising legislation from originating in the Senate. ...

Republicans -- including the bill's supporters -- say this will kill the bill, and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist says he's offered a simple solution. He wants to attach the immigration bill to a tax bill that has already passed the House. It would then proceed as planned to a "conference committee," where negotiators from the House and Senate hammer out differences between the two chambers' immigration bills.

While this kind of hiccup would normally get ignored in conference, House Republicans looking for a fight might well jump on this technicality to scupper the bill altogether. Frist's solution might avoid that, but so far Harry Reid refuses to agree to it, saying that the Republicans should deal with it in conference instead. Some Republicans likely will deal with it, in unpleasant and final terms, and maybe Reid wanted that all along. If that happens, he and the Democrats can claim with some justification that the GOP killed immigration reform.

Bush may want immediate action on CIRA, but the more coverage this gets, the more likely we won't see any real action until the rump session after the election.

E.J. Dionne notes the extension of the hysteria in Congress over the raid on William Jefferson's Capitol Hill office, and likens it to a baseball game. The Congressional Republicans think they are employing a brushback pitch, but in this case they look more like the St. Louis Cardinals in the final game of the 1985 World Series. They have melted down beyond all sense, conducting silly hearings and making threats of impeachment against officials in the Department of Justice, in an attempt to intimidate anyone with the temerity to investigate corruption in DC:

In baseball, the hurler intimidates the batter with a brushback pitch. In soccer, the official warns an unruly player by pulling out a yellow card.

Politicians in legal jeopardy thunder and moan, threatening prosecutors while cloaking their pressure tactics in the grand language of constitutional rights and democracy. ...

The hearing was dominated by talk of abuses of power by long-dead monarchs and the need of the people's representatives for untrammeled communication with their constituents.

But Rep. James Sensenbrenner's committee was really sending a message as the House confronts a far-reaching corruption investigation: Nice little Justice Department you have there, Mr. Attorney General. Too bad if anything were to happen to it. Stop messing with us before we mess with you.

Why are the Republicans continuing to shoot themselves in the foot over this perfectly legal execution of a search warrant? Now we have the spectacle of GOP leadership in James Sensenbrenner and Darrell Issa threatening to impeach the Attorney General for investigating corruption. Nice. And not a word about the fact that the House sat on the subpoena that occasioned the search warrant for nine months.

Dionne suggests that the reason Republicans seem so interested in demanding immunity from the Justice Department is a worry that Republicans might also be under investigation. Well, that's certainly possible, but in this case political stupidity probably explains more than political cupidity. They want to show their independence from an unpopular White House in time for the upcoming election. Notice that none of this bellowing has emanated from the Senate, where Republican leadership has more political sense, and apparently owns a copy of the Constitution.

If Hastert, Sensenbrenner, Issa, and the rest of the GOP House leadership thinks this will help them get re-elected, they are deluding themselves. Only 27% of the voters think Congress has any integrity at all, and this high-profile attempt at intimidating investigators will only drive that number in the wrong direction. We already face a throw-the-bims-out electorate this fall, and now these GOP geniuses want to tell 86% of the American public that supported the execution of the search warrant that they have contributed to building an American dictatorship -- simply because a Congressman had to abide by the same laws as the rest of us?

If this really were a baseball game, I'd have concluded that this team deserves to lose.

I'd almost like to see Issa attempt an impeachment against Gonzalez. I, for one, would gladly contribute whatever I could afford to Issa's opponent in the fall election, regardless of party affiliation. If Issa and Sensenbrenner want to see how chin music really works, let them continue to crowd the plate and demand a free pass from the umpires when a pitch hits them.

Yousef Ibrahim reports that the next clash between secular Muslim governments and jihadist radicals may come in Tunisia. His column in today's New York Sun describes the efforts of that moderate nation to "rationalize" Islam, and the portents for violent backlash this program carries:

The next confrontation between secular dictators and Islamic jihadists in the Arab world may happen in Tunisia. The country's interior minister, Hedi Mhenni, has spoken of plans to issue an electronic identity card to Muslim worshippers, pairing them with the mosques nearest to their homes in what he termed "the rationalization of religion."

The crudely named initiative is an effort to restrict the political activities of Islamic fundamentalists, who for decades have used mosques as a staging ground to recruit, organize, and launch potential jihadists at home and abroad.

When it comes to battling fundamentalists, nothing done by Tunisia's president, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali - or two other current and former prominent Arab secularist dictators, President Mubarak of Egypt and the imprisoned Saddam Hussein of Iraq - would ever surprise me. They are dictators all right, but tenacious secularists, too. ... These men, disdainful as they may be of human rights, make a pretty good argument for why jihadists are a cancer far more lethal than their contempt for democracy

Ibrahim makes a case for Tunisia and the brand of benevolent despotism that has allowed it to become, in his description, the most modern of Islamic states. Women have integrated into government and business roles, and they do not have the forced humiliations of polygamy and the veil. As of now, Tunisia also has shown remarkable stability, and its secular nature has ingrained itself into the cultural fabric of the nation. Ibrahim argues that such benevolent despotism may have more value in its imposition of secular values than a democracy which gives free expression to Islamist impulses.

Ah, but there's the rub: actually getting a benevolent despot. Two of the people that Ibrahim references in this article have all indulged in torture and violence to maintain their grip on power. Saddam send hundreds of thousands of his own people into unmarked mass graves in order to maintain his brand of despotism. Mubarak's police beat and imprison people for exercising free speech, even of a secular nature. Ben Ali may or may not be different, but this list of complaints by Human Rights Watch indicate at least some issues with the level of benevolence he exercises. Tunisians may not even read this post, as Tunisia apparently censors Internet traffic and jails Internet writers for their dissent.

However benevolent a despot may be, the inability to speak out against abuses ensures that abuses continue and escalate. Those abuses, as well as the frustration of the natural desire for self-determination, gives rise to more radical movements, whether they be democratic as in the Cedar Revolution, or Islamist as in the Iranian revolution of 1979. In fact, the Shah is a perfect example of this phenomenon; he had attempted a reform of his autocratic rule and his secret police, and got overthrown by the forces that he had allowed to build over the years. Saudi Arabia exports more jihadists than anywhere else, primarily because of the absolute Wahhabist dictatorship. Syria, whose Ba'athist dictatorship most closely resembles Saddam's, has never stamped out its jihadist elements, but has managed to redirect their anger towards Israel and not the government that massacred thousands of them over twenty years ago.

The Middle East is chock-full of despots, and most of them have no measure of benevolence at all. Despots retain power through the use of force, and applied force creates radical reactions. The only solution for radicalism in the Muslim world is rational self-determination. All else is simply delay and pressure cooking. Tunisia might remain stable for a year or five years, but sooner or later Ben Ali or another despot will have to go too far in order to maintain power. I suspect, as does Ibrahim, that this mosque-assignment plan may just be that occasion -- and then we will see how well his dictatorship disarms radical Islamists.

Daniel Henninger warns of the impending war fatigue in his column today for the Wall Street Journal's Opinionjournal. Instead of Viet Nam Syndrome, we will increasingly shut out news rather than allow ourselves to react to it -- and that will spell the end of the American prosecution for the war on terror:

In El Paso, Texas, the father of Marine Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas, whose death from a roadside bomb is the event said to have precipitated the Marine shootings at Haditha, said simply: "I don't even listen to the news." This may be the widespread reaction as the Haditha story overwhelms all else--enough, I don't want to hear about it.

And there begins the Iraq Syndrome.

Some elements of the newly ascendant Democratic left may welcome it, but no serious person in American politics should.

The Vietnam Syndrome, a loss of confidence in the efficacy of American military engagement, was mainly a failure of U.S. elites. But it's different this time. This presidency has been steadfast in war. No matter. In a piece this week on the White House's efforts to rally the nation to the idea of defeating terrorism abroad to thwart another attack on the U.S., the AP's Nedra Pickler wrote: "But that hasn't kept the violence and unrest out of the headlines every day." This time the despondency looks to be penetrating the general population. And the issue isn't just body counts; it's more than that.

The missions in Iraq and Afghanistan grew from the moral outrage of September 11. U.S. troops, the best this country has yet produced, went overseas to defend us against repeating that day. Now it isn't just that the war on terror has proven hard; the men and women fighting for us, the magnificent 99%, are being soiled in a repetitive, public way that is unbearable.

The greatest danger at this moment is that the American public will decide it wants to pull back because it has concluded that when the U.S. goes in, it always gets hung out to dry.

Other nations, notably Australia, has repeatedly warned of this dynamic. They have argued that the world needs an engaged US, simply because no one else has the resources necessary to handle nuclear proliferators and out-of-control despots. The UN has already abandoned the US once in this war, and the question will be, as Henninger points out, whether we will be inclined to assist them when they call the next time. Will we bother to go to Darfur or East Timor when no one would recognize the effort anyway, and would probably look for ways to discredit it? Would we trust ourselves to do it right when the press seems hell-bent on magnifying the actions of the few who may or may not have committed war crimes?

Hopefully, the answer would be yes, regardless of the anklebiters on the world stage. However, as we slowly lose the will to fight for ourselves, fighting for others will certainly not rejuvenate it. Through a continual focus on what less than 0.01% of our troops have done wrong, the nation appears ready to give up on the 99.9% of our men and women who perform magnificently in their country's service. That confidence will take another generation to recover, and when we do, we may find our enemies have multiplied -- as they did the last time.

The DHS awards of block grants for the Homeland Security Grant Program (HSGP) touched off a fiery round of criticism, with some calling for George Bush to fire DHS chief Michael Chertoff after seeing funding cut to New York City and Washington, DC. However, a look at the numbers calls the accuracy of this blamethrowing into serious question.

First, the reaction:

New York City will receive $124 million — the largest amount under the Urban Area Security Initiative. But that's just 60 percent of the $208 million given in 2005. The cut comes primarily because the Homeland Security Department determined that New York has no national monuments or icons. ...

Rep. Peter King, a Republican from New York and chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, called the cut in funding “indefensible and disgraceful.”

“As far as I’m concerned the Department of Homeland Security and the administration have declared war on New York,” King added. “It’s a knife in the back to New York and I’m going to do everything I can to make them very sorry they made this decision.”

The Urban Area Security Initiative is meant to help cities and urban areas prepare for and respond to terrorist attacks and other disasters. About $710 million is being allocated to 46 cities in 2006, compared to nearly $830 million last year.

Chertoff responded by saying that threats and intimidation would not make him change his mind. He also pointed out that NYC, DC, and LA have received the lion's share of DHS grant money for four years, allowing them to progress quite far in their preparedness. Chertoff argued that other cities need to catch up, and that at some point the federal government has to start considering potential secondary targets as well.

The New York Times reports that some ineptitude on the city's part may explain some of the cutback:

The federal agency distributing $711 million in antiterrorism money to cities around the nation found numerous flaws in New York City's application and gave poor grades to many of its proposals.

Its criticism extended to some of the city's most highly publicized counterterrorism measures.

In a report that outlines why it cut back New York City's share of antiterrorism funds by roughly 40 percent, the Department of Homeland Security was so critical of some highly viewed local measures — like Operation Atlas, in which hundreds of extra police officers carry out counterterrorism duties around the city each day — that the Police Department and other city agencies must now seek further federal approval before drawing on the money they were given to pay for those programs.

At the same time, federal officials said yesterday that the city not only did a poor job of articulating its needs in its application, but it also mishandled the application itself, failing to file it electronically as required and instead faxing its request to Washington, where it had to be entered manually into a computer system. City and state officials denied making that mistake.

A look at the actual dollars granted by DHS shows that NYC, DC, and LA/OC still get over a third of all grant monies ($263.51M, or 37%). In FY '05, the three areas combined for $366.11M, or roughly 43% of all grant monies. Bear in mind that this is not funding for federal resources in these cities that provide for national security, but block grants for the cities themselves to use for their proposed security initiatives. In the fifth year post-9/11, shifting some of that funding for other cities isn't exactly unreasonable, especially since the program itself lost about 17% of its funding -- and that decision came from Congress.

The entire block grant program got cut even more by Congress, going from $2.5B in FY '05 to $1.7B this year, a drop of 32%. Again, this funding comes from Congress, not the DHS, which has to administer the program based on the monies allocated by Congress. Considering the overall hit to the program, DHS redirected a greater proportion of funds to urban areas than last year, even as it tried to spread it out to areas overlooked in past years.

Perhaps the amounts allocated could have been adjusted, but I see nothing inherently unreasonable in this outlay. New York City still gets 18% of all UASI funds for FY '06 (24.3% in FY '05) despite holding about 3% of the nation's population. The LA/OC area gets 12.8% despite accounting for the same percentage of the population. Should they get more? It depends on how they planned to spend the money and how they justified it, and it appears that they did poorly at that task -- and still wound up with almost a fifth of the grants available.

Is a six-percent drop in their share really worth all of this hew and cry?

UPDATE: Added a forgotten link to FY '05, cleaned up a little grammar.

UPDATE II and BUMP: This is the kind of irresponsible reporting that leads to this hysterical reaction:

The city was stunned yesterday to find that its share of federal anti-terror funds was slashed nearly in half by bureaucrats who said it has no national icons to protect and lousy defense plans.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff determined, however, that cities that have never been targeted by Al Qaeda — like Louisville, Atlanta and Omaha — deserve whopping increases.

"This is a knife in the back," fumed a furious Rep. Pete King (R-L.I.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee. "As far as I'm concerned, the Department of Homeland Security has declared war on New York."

NYC's share was not halved; its share went from 24% to 18% of all grant monies given to urban areas across the nation. That's a reduction of 25% in their share. Someone needs to send Michael Saul and Michael McAuliffe back to math class.

And someone needs to give Peter King an ice bath. After 9/11, I thought we all would put aside stupid war analogies when we saw what happens when an enemy really does declare war on the US. If that's what Peter King thinks the DHS has done to New York City by giving them one-fifth of all urban block grants available, then I suggest he get himself to a treatment center and get fitted for a new jacket with extra-long sleeves. If he wanted New York City to get more money, then perhaps Congressman King could have gotten the House to allocate more for the program.

Using the material at the Department of Homeland Security website, I have created a spreadsheet listing the grant allocations on state and urban area levels for both fiscal year 2006 and FY 2005. The data on these years tell an interesting story. While New York and Washington DC have howled the loudest about the reduction in grants to their cities, eight urban areas saw bigger cuts by percentage. And although the two cities' percentage lost from FY 2005 allocations to both cities is substantial (40.4% each), their combined share of the Urban Area Security Initiative grants still accounts for a quarter of all UASI grants this year.

The following cities have seen higher percentages of the FY05 UASI grants disappear in FY06:

Phoenix - 60.79%
Denver - 49.76%
New Orleans - 49.60%
Pittsburgh - 49.46%
Buffalo - 48.53%
San Diego - 45.96%
Dallas/Ft Worth/Arlington - 43.22%
Columbus - 42.96

Fifteen out of forty-four urban centers got the same or increased grants, and only three urban areas got new funding in FY06: Orlando, Ft. Lauderdale, and Memphis. At least in the case of Orlando, one can understand the rationale, as Disney World hosts tourists from around the world and would provide a spectacular target for terrorists. The other are also major population and travel centers. Memphis serves as a hub for Northwest Airlines, and Ft. Lauderdale is a "focus city" for US Airways. Of the fifteen which saw their funding increase over FY05, the greatest percentage increases went to:

Jersey City/Newark - 79.06%
Louisville - 70.4%
Charlotte - 63.71%
Omaha - 61.8%
Atlanta - 42.25%

These numbers are somewhat misleading, however. The only substantial actual dollar increase in the top five went to Jersey City ($15M). That increase still surpasses the amount of extra grant money for the other four combined. The next substantial increase went to the LA/Long Beach area ($11.3M, 16.43%) and Chicago ($7M, 16.13%). The amount given in increases to the eighteen urban areas, $85M, just barely surpasses what New York lost ($83.1M). No city got particularly rich in FY06, and twenty-eight saw their funding cut.

When reviewing the total DHS grant allocations by state -- not just the UASI program -- the plight of New York looks very different indeed. The overall program got cut by 33.61%, and New York saw its total state allocation cut just a bit higher than that at 38.44%. However, New York came in at 31st place in terms of percentage loss from FY05. DC finished 24th. In fact, every state and territory lost funding in the overall DHS allocations between FY05 and FY06, except for American Samoa, which got an increase of $415,717. The top ten states/territories for funding decreases are:

Puerto Rico - 69.31%
Minnesota - 62.06%
Mississippi - 61.38%
Arkansas - 61.31%
Utah - 59.57%
Tennessee - 57.79%
Virginia - 55.77%
New Mexico - 55.29%
Maine - 53.13%
New Hampshire - 52.99%

When viewed in this manner, it seems clear that a number of states have borne a far greater loss of their share of DHS funds than New York, and that the percentage loss for the Empire State roughly equals that of the overall program decrease. Also, for those who think that the loss of funds for New York was political, take a look at that top ten one more time. Notice anything? Six of the nine states went for George Bush in 2004, and at least three of these states have important Senate races in the fall. I would also note that the one territory that saw its share of funding cut the most is the only one with an active terrorist organization.

We can argue about the methodology of prioritization and the amount of overall funding for DHS grant programs, but what seems obvious from these numbers is that DHS did not act capriciously or with malicious intent. The state of New York received an overall percentage of DHS funds commensurate with its slice from FY05, decreasing slightly from 11.8% to 10.9% of overall grant allocations. Any accusations to the contrary are nothing more than misinformed hyperbole.

Several Canadian CQ readers have sent this update on Joe Volpe, candidate for the Liberal leadership post, who ran into some embarrassment when two of his major contributors turned out to be 11-year-old twins of a drug company executive. Volpe raised $54,000 from two families that had everyone contribute the maximum $5400, including underage children in apparent violation of Canada's campaign finance laws. The Liberal Party insists that the contribution came from the children and not from their parents, which would violate the strawman ban on using other people to launder contributions.

The Liberals just can't seem to shake their reputation for financing shenanigans, and now it looks like they've decided to enhance it by attempting to silence Volpe's critics. A satirical website, youthforvolpe.ca, attempted to poke fun at Volpe's predicament by posing as a contribution website for civic-minded Canadian youngsters. Not seeing the humor, Volpe reacted by having the website shut down:

It was all the buzz in official Ottawa yesterday -- a hilarious political whodunit in this age of websites, platforms and templates.

Overnight, someone built a website spoofing Liberal leadership candidate Joe Volpe and his acceptance of thousands of dollars in campaign donations from children, including the 11-year-old twins of a former vice-president of a generic drug company.

By early yesterday afternoon, the Volpe team had the website pulled down. ...

Mr. Volpe's campaign had the site shut down without knowing, it seems, who put it up: "Hi Everyone," wrote Brenden Johnstone, who is with the Volpe campaign, in an e-mail to other leadership campaigns. "There has been concern about how the issue of the Volpe donations was reflecting on the leadership race.

"My Office has had the website suspended through CIRA [Canadian Internet Registration Authority] and CDNS [Canadian Domain Name Services] and it will be down as soon as 6 p.m. I think the issue with the website has been dealt with. . . ."

If Volpe's office thinks that pressuring the hosting service to silence his critics will "deal with" the problem, I suspect they have some naivete on the Internet. More than just showing a thin skin, Volpe and his office will likely provoke a torrent of criticism that will dwarf any consideration of questionable contributions. Does the Liberal Party really stand for government officials bullying hosting services into gagging their critics?

Stephen Taylor, Canada's (future!) blogging Parliamentarian, has a few words to say about this:

This is absurd, censorship and an abuse of power. As a citizen, regardless of your political affiliation, and as a Internet consumer, this should outrage you. The Internet is for free speech, and this fundamental freedom is really only labeled as such because it is one of those elements of our liberty that had to be protected from tyrants with power. If one cannot lampoon a political candidate (the archetype of free speech in a free society) then we aren't truly free. What is perhaps most chilling is that this censorship has come from a candidate for the Prime Ministership.

If you believe in freedom of speech online and abhor the strongarmed actions of Mr. Volpe against Canadians and the Internet citizenry, please trackback this post and pass this on to all of those who might share this concern.

and then... why not send him an email to voice your concerns: Volpe.J@parl.gc.ca

In an update, Taylor confirms that the provider, CADNS.ca, shut down the website due to their fears of exposure to litigation from Volpe and his campaign. That transpired after Volpe's office contacted the registrar and informed them of that possibility. The man who aspires to the Prime Minister's office not only cannot handle criticism, but also has no trouble throwing his weight around to silence it.

After Adscam, is this the kind of public relations the Grits need?

UPDATE: Stephen Taylor has not quite made it to Parliament yet, but we're hopeful. And CQ reader Mr, Michael (one of the readers who tipped me) shows us where we can see the site in PDF format.

Frank Schaeffer gains a scoop in his Washington Post column by relating an incident in the British zone of control, an account of brutality and a potential war crime related by an eyewitness to the incident:

"I saw an ugly sight: a British officer interrogating a civilian, and repeatedly hitting him about the head with the chair; treatment which the [civilian], his face a mask of blood, suffered with stoicism. At the end of the interrogation, which had not been considered successful, the officer called on a private and asked him in a pleasant, conversational sort of manner, 'Would you like to take this man away, and shoot him?' The private's reply was to spit on his hands, and say, 'I don't mind if I do, sir.'

"I received confirmation . . . that American combat units were ordered by their officers to beat to death [those] who attempted to surrender to them. These men seem very naive and childlike, but some of them are beginning to question the ethics of this order.

"We liberated them from the Fascist Monster. And what is the prize? The rebirth of democracy. The glorious prospect of being able one day to choose their rulers from a list of powerful men, most of whose corruptions are generally known and accepted with weary resignation. The days of Mussolini must seem like a lost paradise compared to us."

So it's not much of a scoop, coming sixty-two years late. It comes from British author Norman Lewis, who traveled through newly-liberated Italy after the fall of Mussolini in 1944, and it reminds us that war and brutality go hand in hand. Even in the Good War, as World War II has been called, Allied troops committed terrible crimes, some of which became known, and most of which got buried by the military and political leadership in order to protect the war effort.

In this sense, the pacifists have a point; war is a degrading experience for victor and vanquished alike.

However, what we know now about World War II is that it stopped a brutal genocide that would have killed millions of more people had the Axis powers not been stopped. We also know that the vast majority of our fathers, uncles, and grandfathers fought and behaved honorably, allowing Europe to shake off the shackles of fascism in its varying forms -- or at least Western Europe. Eastern Europe would not gain its freedom for another forty-five years, thanks to an ugly but probably necessary deal that handed half of the continent to a dictator not all that much better than the madman we deposed.

When we hear about the Hadithas that inevitably occur (if in fact Haditha turns out to be a war crime, something we have not yet confirmed), we react viscerally, because we believe ourselves to be good and honorable people. Proponents of the war will hurriedly attempt to excuse it or even justify it, while opponents use it to argue that all troops either have or eventually will behave in a similar manner. We saw both reactions during the Viet Nam War, although much more of the latter, thanks to men like John Kerry and put-up jobs like Winter Soldier.

The truth, as Schaeffer explains, is that there are no Good Wars. War brutalizes people and creates damage that takes years to undo. The question is whether the alternatives are worse, or whether they have proven ineffective. In the case of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan, the answer to both questions was yes -- and especially with Europe, where alternatives had proven ineffective the multiple times they were tried. So too in Iraq, where a dozen years of sanctions and UN resolutions resulted in enriching Saddam Hussein's bank accounts, allowing him to fund Palestinian terror, commit genocide against his own people, and defy all UN resolutions demanding an accounting for his pre-war WMD and an end to his crimes against the Kurds and Shi'ites.

We decided that the alternatives of status quo (Saddam continuing to enrich himself, funding terrorism, defying accountability) were indeed worse than the price of going to war to end them. As in Europe, we deposed the tyrant and remained behind to build a representative government to reduce the risk of a failed state as well as to give the Iraqis a better shot at ruling themselves rather than just trading despots. If it succeeds, and thus far the democratic movement has continually gained strength, then the results of the war will be good indeed.

That does not mean that everything that happened during the war will be good or honorable. As Lewis recorded in his travels, the lack of discipline among soldiers led to terrible crimes against civilian populations in World War II, and not just in Italy, either. Proponents cannot shade their eyes from such events, nor can we pretend that they never occur. However, we cannot allow another Winter Soldier to besmirch the honorable and courageous efforts of the overwhelming majority of our troops in any conflict, regardless of one's position on this war or any other.

Bill Ardolino at INDC needs some legal advice in a case that has implications for all of us. Bill excerpted material from an article posted at Women to Women, a site dedicated to women's health issues, about breast cancer. In his post, Bill excerpted seven paragraphs of 23 to explain to his readers the potential triggers for the disease, complete with a link and block-quoting to show that the material was not original.

That, however, was not good enough for Women To Women, who called this "plagiarism":

The post at http://www.indcjournal.com/archives/002478.php used duplicate content from our following womentowomen website page http://www.womentowomen.com/breasthealth/estrogenbreastcancer.asp, without the author's permission. Moreover, its presence subjects our website to a duplicate content penalty assessed by search engines, directly causing us monetary damage. We do not mind you using our content for discussion purpose. However, please be sure they use the following at the top of the article:

1) Correct article title (verbatim); Causes of breast cancer - the estrogen controversy
2) The author of the article, i.e., Dixie Mills, MD, FACS
3) The following copyright clause, with an active hyperlink back to our site from ?WomentoWomen.com?:

Copyright 2004 Women toWomen.com. All rights reserved.

In addition, we request that you contact us once you have clearly cited and linked back to our site, for confirmation purposes. If we do not hear back from you within 2 weeks or see that this information has been clearly sited and linked to us, we will avail ourselves of legal measures to ensure its removal, in accordance with the Digital
Millennium Copyright Act.

The following link shows the highlighted plagiarized copy of material on your website taken from the women to women website[.]

Bill had linked the article in his post, but did not include the ridiculous citations W2W wants Bill to add to the post. Ironically, Bill linked it approvingly -- in an attempt to help educate readers about the cause W2W holds so dear.

If any CQ readers have legal expertise in this area, please contact Bill as soon as possible. This has obvious implications for all of us.

If the Bush administration used the Condoleezza Rice offer of talks with Iran to seal the deal on sanctions, Iran so far has played directly into their hands. Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad confirmed their refusal to stop uranium enrichment -- as required by both the IAEA and the UN Security Council -- as a precondition for direct talks with the US:

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Friday defied pressure from foreign leaders to accept a package of incentives in return for ending all nuclear activities, saying Iran will pursue its legal right to develop a peaceful nuclear program.

"Any pressure to deprive our people from their right will not bear any fruit," he was quoted as saying on state-run television.

"Their opposition to our program is not because of their concern over the spread of nuclear weapons," he said. "They are worried that Iran would become a model for other independent countries, especially Islamic countries, for access to advanced technology."

The details of the incentive package — approved at a meeting of foreign ministers from the United States, Germany, Britain, France, China and Russia in Vienna on Thursday — have not been made public, but the proposal is expected to be presented to Iran in the coming days. In a statement, the six countries warned that "further steps" would be taken by the United Nations Security Council if Iran did not comply, but avoided any mention of sanctions or other specific punitive measures.

Diplomats emphasized the unanimity of the major nations in drafting a compromise proposal, and in Vienna on Friday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spoke of a shared commitment to the offer. "We also have an alternative path if Iran doesn't negotiate," she said.

Obviously, the entire point of drafting the package and offering talks was to get the other nations on board a sanctions regime if Iran did not comply. Russia and China have spent the last few months claiming that diplomacy could resolve the standoff. They implied that the US would not provide the flexibility needed to offer an honest set of incentives for Iran to budge, and therefore would not agree to escalate the response, regardless of the stakes involved.

Now we have called that bluff. And predictably, Russia and China have become very vague on the consequences of continued defiance, which of course encouraged Ahmadinejad to pursue just that course. Putin ruled out any military force to resolve the standoff, and said it was "too early" to discuss sanctions. He claims that the question is completely hypothetical at this point. "If a grandmother had certain gender characteristics," he said, "she would be a grandfather."

And if Moscow were Tel Aviv, Red Square would have an entirely new meaning once Iran had the bomb.

The gambit played by the White House in their agreement to this incentive package, including talks, is not just to flush out Iran as a rogue nation. It also aims to reveal the nature of the UN Security Council. If Russia and China will still refuse to take any kind of punitive action in support of the UNSC's own resolutions, then it will give us the flexibility to move without the dubious imprimatur of Turtle Bay. Again, that may not mean direct military action, but it will mean gathering a large enough coalition to make sanctions hurt not just Teheran, but also Moscow and Beijing. At the least, it might result in the US Navy taking control of the Straits of Hormuz as a countertactic to any Iranian thoughts of petro-extortion.

That result would clearly disturb the two nations, especially China, whose dependence on oil delivered through the Strait has rapidly increased over the past decade. If the two nations continue to block progress at the UN, however, the US will not stand idly by while the Iranians complete work on the bomb. Their own intransigence will unshackle the US from the limits of the UNSC, the result that Russia and China fear most.

Expect to hear something a bit more welcoming from Ahmadinejad in the near future. His Russian and Chinese allies do not want to risk losing the limits on American power imposed by the UN over Iranian nuclear ambitions.

Canadian authorities rounded up seventeen suspected terrorists in a series of raids overnight, and have unraveled a plot to attack multiple targets in the Toronto area:

Media reports Saturday alleged that the suspects engaged in terror training camps north of Toronto. It was further alleged that a group were plotting to attack targets in Toronto including the headquarters of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. ...

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service aided the RCMP and officers from Toronto, Peel and Durham in detaining the suspects, described by an undercover officer involved in the operation as “terrorists, the ones who hate the West.”

The ethnicity of the group was not clear. A well- placed police source said they are Muslims, but not Arabs, and unconnected to anti-terrorism raids that occurred simultaneously in Britain yesterday.

Quoting anonymous sources, CBC said the targets of the raid are suspected of connections with al-Qaeda. A Canadian Press report said the arrests stemmed from a plot involving explosives.

While the intended target is unclear, the plan was to detonate an explosive device in Ontario, a source who asked not to be named told Canadian Press. “That's the tool of choice for anybody who wants to cause damage.”

Stephen Taylor is live-blogging the press conference now. They confiscated three tons of ammonium nitrate -- the same fertilizer ingredient that Timothy McVeigh used in the Oklahoma City bombing, only three times as much. Of the seventeen, 12 have been publicly identified, while five are apparently underage. The identified suspects are:

1. Fahim Ahmad, 21, of Robinstone Drive, Toronto, Ontario;
2. Zakaria Amara, 20, of Periwinkle Crescent, Mississauga, Ontario;
3. Asad Ansari, 21, of Rosehurst Drive, Mississauga, Ontario;
4. Shareef Abdelhaleen, 30, of Lowville Heights, Mississauga, Ontario;
5. Qayyum Abdul Jamal, 43, of Montevideo Road, Mississauga, Ontario;
6. Mohammed Dirie, 22, Kingston, Ontario;
7. Yasim Abdi Mohamed, 24, Kingston, Ontario;
8. Jahmaal James, 23, of Trudelle Street, Toronto, Ontario;
9. Amin Mohamed Durrani, 19, of Stonehill Court, Toronto, Ontario;
10. Steven Vikash Chand alias Abdul Shakur, 25, of Treverton Drive, Toronto, Ontario;
11. Ahmad Mustafa Ghany, 21, of Robin Drive, Mississauga, Ontario;
12. Saad Khalid, 19, of Eclipse Avenue, Mississauga, Ontario.

Canadian authorities have had this group under surveillance since 2004. They do not appear to be foreigners but instead are "homegrown" Islamist terrorists. As the National Post notes today, presciently, the homegrown jihadists appear to be the next wave of terrorists:

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service acknowledged this week it has been investigating groups of "homegrown" extremists. In candid testimony to the Senate national security committee, the agency went on to say that these young followers of the "al-Qaeda ideology" have been plotting against targets within Canada.

"They are not looking to Afghanistan, the U.K. or anywhere else," Jack Hooper, the CSIS Deputy Director of Operations, testified on Monday.

The exact targets of these young terrorists were not revealed, but it is their profile that is most shocking: young Canadian Muslims who have somehow become radicalized while growing up in Canada.

Europe faces a similar situation, and now the question will be whether the US has something brewing in its mosques as well. We have already uncovered the Lodi mosque and the father-son jihadi team there. Canada has similar cultural flexibility as the US; to think that this could metastasize there but not here would be foolish indeed.

Keep an eye on Stephen Taylor's blog for further updates, and I'm certain Steve Janke will also be all over this.

UPDATE: As will Kate at Small Dead Animals. Confederate Yankee wonders whether a 'domestic spying" effort helped root these terrorists out. It certainly seems plausible, although no one knows at the moment how the Canadians sniffed this one out.

UPDATE II: John Stephenson at Stop The ACLU says that the Canadians used Internet monitoring to identify these terrorists. I'm posting on this separately.

The Minnesota Republican convention overwhelmingly rejected the efforts of the current state legislature to fund a Twins stadium through the imposition of taxes without voter input, with 76% of all delegates adding a platform statement requiring any such revenue device to be put before the voters affected. This answers a bipartisan effort that has saddled the seven-county Metro area with a sales tax addition that will cost Twin Cities shoppers millions of dollars, all going to fund a new playground for millionaires:

A new state Republican Party platform plank calling for voter approval of local sales taxes for professional sports stadiums was overwhelmingly adopted Friday by state convention delegates.

The vote, which received 76 percent of the delegates' support, was a rebuff to Gov. Tim Pawlenty and dozens of Republican legislators who backed a 0.15 percent Hennepin County sales tax for a new Twins ballpark in Minneapolis. Pawlenty signed legislation on May 26 authorizing the county board to increase the tax without a referendum.

State Sen. David Hann, R