October 1, 2006
The Times of London has new video of the 9/11 hijackers from more than a year prior to the attacks. Unlike other martyrdom videos that have been released, these tapes appear to have been less formal affairs. Without a soundtrack for some reason, no one can be sure what al-Qaeda's intent was in taking them, but they look more like home movies than anything produced for a specific purpose: It is the first time that a videotape has appeared of Mohammed Atta — who flew an American Airlines plane into the north tower of the World Trade Center — at a training camp in Afghanistan. It fills in a significant gap in the timing of the build-up to the attacks on the United States. Dates on the tape show Atta was filmed on January 18, 2000, together with Ziad Jarrah, the pilot of United Airlines flight 93, which crashed in...
Richard Clarke takes to the pages of the New York Times to deliver a lesson that everyone should have learned after 2004. The controversial former counterterrorism chief reminds Americans that we cannot secure the nation through blame games, and that the time has long since passed for us to exercise hindsight and start looking forward: For most Americans the history is clear and well told in the 9/11 commission report: Almost 3,000 people were killed. In the years before that terrible day, the Clinton administration prevented some attacks and tried to destroy Al Qaeda and its leadership, but was unable to do so, in part because the institutional bureaucracy did not believe the magnitude of the threat. As for the Bush administration, it deferred action on Al Qaeda until after 9/11, and then took a number of steps in response, including invading Iraq, but was also unable to destroy Al...
Newsweek's Lally Weymouth conducts an intriguing interview with Abdullah Gul, Turkey's foreign minister, in which he warns Iraq and the US to curb Kurdish terrorists -- or Turkey will do it themselves. Gul has plenty to say on Iraq's internal security troubles, and issues a warning to America about withdrawing from Iraq: Q. So, would Turkey invade northern Iraq to bring the PKK under control? A. We will do whatever is necessary to fight this organization. I want to give the message that if our friends don't help us, we will do the job ourselves. ... Q. In the United States many people believe the time has come to withdraw. A. How can you leave a vacuum over there? Then, what will happen? All the neighbors of Iraq and the U.S. should work hand in hand with the Iraqi government and the different tribes in Iraq to bring stability. I...
With Pervez Musharraf appearing to retreat in the war on terror and Hamid Karzai demanding results, the situation in Afghanistan and the Waziristan region appears to be inexplicably troublesome of late. Musharraf and Karzai have more trouble than just borders in this situation, though, and what we are now seeing may be a nationalist movement that has escaped Western attention until now. The Toronto Sun's Eric Margolis explains the problem, and Swaraaj Chauhan at The Moderate Voice produces an interesting map to underscore his point. In order to understand the difficulties, Margolis argues, one has to understand the tribalism in play: Tribal politics lie at the heart of their dispute. The 30 million Pashtuns (or Pathans), the world’s largest tribal society, are divided between Afghanistan and Pakistan by an artificial border, the Durand Line, drawn by divide-and-conquer British imperialists. Pashtuns account for 50-60% of Afghanistan’s 30 million people. The Taliban...
Ever wonder how caucuses in the House choose their leadership? In the Senate, it comes from seniority. In the House, they determine it like a multi-level marketing plan. As the New York Times reports, money talks ... loudly: To move up the ladder in Congress, you must do more than win votes. You are, quite literally, expected to pay your dues. If you are a rank-and-file member of the House, the amount is up to $100,000. If your ambitions are to preside over a powerful committee, the duty is $300,000. For a top party leader, the tally can climb beyond $600,000. Make those checks payable to the Republican or Democratic Congressional campaign committees. ... Four years after Congress tried to reduce the influence of money in politics by rewriting the rules of how campaigns are financed, Republicans and Democrats alike have found myriad replacements for the river of financial contributions...
The London Times asks if Kofi Annan has blood on his hands as he prepares to end his term as United Nations Secretary-General. Apparently the Times does not consider this a rhetorical question, as it provides a rather lengthy answer: Srebrenica is rarely mentioned nowadays in Annan’s offices on the 38th floor of the UN secretariat building in New York. He steps down in December after a decade as secretary-general. His retirement will be marked by plaudits. But behind the honorifics and the accolades lies a darker story: of incompetence, mismanagement and worse. Annan was the head of the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) between March 1993 and December 1996. The Srebrenica massacre of up to 8,000 men and boys and the slaughter of 800,000 people in Rwanda happened on his watch. In Bosnia and Rwanda, UN officials directed peacekeepers to stand back from the killing, their concern apparently to...
My friend John from Power Line spent the better part of today cleaning up and re-editing the captured video from the al-Qaeda training facility. (I blogged about it this morning.) John's efforts can be viewed through this Power Line News link. Be sure to check it out -- if the earlier Times of London version gave you downloading headaches, John's version should play much more smoothly....
October 2, 2006
Russia appears to be on the verge of war with the former Soviet republic of Georgia after watching four of its citizens arrested on espionage allegations. Vladimir Putin put his forces in Georgia on high alert and instructed them to defend their bases, a major point of contention between the two nations. He also warned Georgia that it couldn't count on American support if hostilities broke out: Infuriated by the arrests of four Russian officers on spying charges, Moscow has put its troops in Georgia on high alert and ordered them to "shoot to kill" to defend their bases in the former Soviet republic. In his first public comments on the escalating crisis, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, yesterday accused Georgia of "state terrorism" and compared the arrests to the repressions of Stalin's secret police chief, Lavrenty Beria. The commander of Russian military forces in Georgia, General Andrei Popov, said...
Think of it as the hangover after an awards celebration. In the aftermath of winning the Republican National Convention, the magnitude of the security preparations has dawned on state and local officials. Estimates of personnel go between 5,000 and 10,000 police officers, while the Twin Cities currently employ 1,400 combined: Security will be the biggest concern -- and the biggest expense -- for the convention, with plans for as many as 10,000 officers to be deployed and $50 million to be spent to protect delegates, media and high-profile politicians. "Everything we do is different after 9/11," said Rob Allen, a deputy chief with the Minneapolis Police Department. "A Twins playoff game, a Vikings game, a parade, all are different. You can't turn back the clock on how you do security." Although the Twin Cities has attracted larger crowds -- such as at the 1992 Super Bowl -- it has never...
It came down to the end of the baseball season, but the two teams I follow both made the playoffs, which means I will have to watch some playoff games this year. For my favorite baseball team, the Los Angeles Dodgers, the wild card spot tasted even sweeter as they clinched it at the end of a San Francisco sweep. The Dodgers finished off their traditional rivals and got to celebrate on their turf: Los Angeles beat San Francisco 4-3 in what might've been Barry Bonds' last game for the Giants, and ended up even in the standings with San Diego. The Padres held the tiebreaker based on head-to-head record and earned the West crown. "We're looking forward to getting this thing started," Los Angeles manager Grady Little said. "What's taken place here started last year. Everything has been positive." The Dodgers could have won the divisional championship had San...
The Guardian reports that Western intelligence agencies have discovered a new source of jihadists in Afghanistan, and it comes as a bit of a surprise. The Sunni-based Taliban have apparently received a boost in personnel from the Shi'ites in Iran: Knock-kneed with fear, the young prisoner perched on the edge of his chair in the windowless Afghan intelligence office. Eyes bloodshot and hands trembling, he blurted out his story. Abdullah had reached the end of a pitifully short career as a Taliban fighter. He had been arrested hours earlier, just 10 days after signing up to the insurgency. But the 25-year-old with a soft face and a neat beard had something unusual that aroused the intelligence agents' curiosity. "I come from Iran," he said in a quavering voice, wringing his hands nervously. "They told me the Americans had invaded Afghanistan and I should go and fight jihad. But I was...
The power of appropriators to shape legislation in all other areas of policy gets amplified through the use of pork-barrel politics, and John Murtha in particular has mastered this technique. The New York Times profiles Murtha and gets him on the record, bragging about his effectiveness in using pork to gain power: Members have watched with envy as Mr. Murtha has used earmarks to remake Johnstown, Pa., an impoverished former steel town that now includes a Murtha highway, a Murtha airport and Murtha health centers. He has steered billions of dollars to his district over the years, including more than $80 million in the defense spending bill passed Friday, according to a preliminary tally. Mr. Murtha’s patronage has transformed Johnstown into a national hub of the defense business, attracting giants like Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. He even built one contractor from scratch. In 1988, Mr. Murtha asked the chancellor...
Condoleezza Rice will have a new tool in her pocket in the showdown with Iran over its nuclear ambitions. The Senate quietly passed a new Iran policy on Saturday, one which President Bush is expected to sign, that allows for sanctions on any business that supports Iran's nuclear or advanced weapons programs. When she travels to Cairo tomorrow, Rice intends on unveiling the implications of the new policy in an attempt to further isolate Teheran: Bolstered by a new sanctions bill against Iran, Secretary of State Rice will press Arab foreign ministers tomorrow in Cairo to instruct banks in the region to cut ties to any entities contributing to Iran's nuclear program, support for terror, or pursuit of advanced conventional weapons. If the gambit in Cairo succeeds, it will boost American efforts to punish Iran for its defiance of international resolutions on its nuclear program. In the last 18 months,...
One of the most jaw-droppingly dishonest ads that I have seen in years comes from the Patty Wetterling campaign in Minnesota's Sixth Congressional District. The ads have appeared on prime-time television throughout the state, and not only display dishonesty but sheer ignorance. Wetterling accuses Michelle Bachmann of wanting to raise taxes through an increase in the sales tax: Michele Bachmann says she's for lowering taxes, and yet she supports replacing the income tax with a national sales tax," says Wetterling. Under a national sales tax, all taxable goods and services - including daily basics like milk, bread, groceries, clothing, new tires and prescription drugs - could cost 23% more. Lower and middle-class Minnesotans would pay more taxes under this plan, up to $4,077 more per year," says Wetterling. "I find it incredible that Michele Bachmann wants to place a heavier burden on the people who can least afford to pay...
An earlier AP report on Bill Frist and comments he made on the status of Afghanistan had some Republicans reaching for their hemlock, but as it turns out, Frist claims that the report misquotes his remarks. Here's what the AP reported: U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Monday that the Afghan guerrilla war can never be won militarily and called for efforts to bring the Taliban and their supporters into the Afghan government. The Tennessee Republican said he had learned from briefings that Taliban fighters were too numerous and had too much popular support to be defeated by military means. "You need to bring them into a more transparent type of government," Frist said during a brief visit to a U.S. and Romanian military base in the southern Taliban stronghold of Qalat. "And if that's accomplished we'll be successful." ... The senator said he had been warned to expect...
A couple of local bloggers have tracked down one of the Democratic operatives responsible for stealing Maryland Lt. Governor Michael Steele's confidential credit report last year. My NARN colleague Michael Brodkorb found Katie Barge, late of the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, now working for Media Matters: Prior to founding Media Matters, David Brock met with a number of leading Democratic Party figures, including Senator Hillary Clinton, former Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota, and former Vice President Al Gore. Today, more than a few of the organization’s roughly 30 staff members are Democratic operatives. Among these are Media Matters’ chief communications strategist Dennis Yedwab, who is also the Director of Strategic Resources at Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Brock’s personal assistant, Mandy Vlasz, is a Democratic pollster and a veteran consultant to Democratic campaigns, including the 2000 Gore/Lieberman campaign. Katie Barge, the Director of Research at Media Matters, formerly presided over...
October 3, 2006
A coroner's inquest in the UK concluded that two British soldiers, captured by Iraqis in March 2003, were executed by Saddam's officers after a few hours of torture. The finding confirms accusations made by Tony Blair during the operation: IRAQI officers loyal to Saddam Hussain filmed their cold-blooded murder of two British bomb disposal officers who were captured after a roadside ambush. An inquest was told that Staff Sergeant Simon Cullingworth, 36, and Sapper Luke Allsopp, 24, thought that they were being taken to hospital for treatment, but instead they were moved to a compound run by Saddam’s military intelligence. The harrowing ordeal lasted for hours until Iraqi agents killed the pair. The soldiers were buried in a shallow grave. The Geneva Conventions do not appear to have helped Allsopp and Cullingworth. Iraq entered into the covenant in 1956, and so operated under its strictures, at least in theory. Neither...
An eleventh-hour offer to resolve the nuclear standoff has come from Iran's negotiators, the Jerusalem Post reports this morning. Picking up on a concept from early in the conflict, the deputy chief of Iran's nuclear agency suggested that another country handle uranium enrichment for Iran, only this time Mohammed Saeedi has proposed the French instead of the Russians: A top Iranian nuclear official proposed Tuesday that France create a consortium to enrich Iran's uranium, in a bid to satisfy the international community's demands for outside oversight of Tehran's nuclear program. "To be able to arrive at a solution, we have just had an idea. We propose that France create a consortium for the production in Iran of enriched uranium," Mohammad Saeedi, deputy chief of Iran's Atomic Energy Agency, told France-Info radio. "That way France, through the companies Eurodif and Areva, could control in a tangible way our enrichment activities," he...
Hamas appears prepared to act as reasonably as ever, the Jerusalem Post reports. Egypt announced that Hamas had refused to accept a deal to free captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, even after the Mubarak government tried offering up to 1,100 Palestinian prisoners in exchange: Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit said on Monday that Israel had offered to release up to 1,000 prisoners in exchange for captured soldier Cpl. Gilad Shalit, but Hamas had turned down the proposal. "[There was] a deal that could have freed 900 to 1,000 prisoners, but sadly they have decided to keep holding him," he told Al-Arabiyeh Television. Egypt has been mediating between Israel and Hamas over the release of Shalit, who was abducted at Kerem Shalom on the Gaza border on June 25. Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz told Israel Radio on Sunday that the IDF might step up military operations in...
With all of the international cries for the US to release the remaining prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, it may surprise some that not everyone wants to take back the terrorists we have detained for the past five years. The UK has rejected the return of nine British subjects at Guantanamo, objecting to American demands for ongoing security aimed at keeping the freed detainees from rejoining the jihad: The United States has offered to return nearly all British residents held at Guantánamo Bay after months of secret talks in Washington, the Guardian has learned. The British government has refused to accept the men, however, with senior officials saying they have no legal right to return. Documents obtained by the Guardian show US authorities are demanding that the detainees be kept under 24-hour surveillance if set free - restrictions that are dismissed by the British as unnecessary and unworkable. Although all are...
The Washington Times' Tony Blankley has joined a small chorus of voices calling for the resignation of Denny Hastert as Speaker of the House: The facts of the disgrace of Mark Foley, who was a Republican member of the House from a Florida district until he resigned last week, constitute a disgrace for every Republican member of Congress. Red flags emerged in late 2005, perhaps even earlier, in suggestive and wholly inappropriate e-mail messages to underage congressional pages. His aberrant, predatory -- and possibly criminal -- behavior was an open secret among the pages who were his prey. The evidence was strong enough long enough ago that the speaker should have relieved Mr. Foley of his committee responsibilities contingent on a full investigation to learn what had taken place, whether any laws had been violated and what action, up to and including prosecution, were warranted by the facts. This never...
Brian Riedl at the Heritage Foundation has taken a look at the growth in federal spending, and sounds the alarm in a new analysis. Riedl points out the shell game played by Congress in this session that has allowed spending to increase at the highest rate in sixteen years: Federal spending in 2006 is set to rise 9 percent, the largest increase since 1990 and enough to earn Congress near failing grades from the Heritage Foundation’s third quarter report card.[1] Most families facing steep new expenses would cut back on additional spending. However, the Senate is preparing to bust fiscal year (FY) 2007 discretionary spending caps by at least $32 billion to: 1. Reimburse the Pentagon for the $9 billion raided from its budget earlier this year and given to domestic programs, as well as fund additional defense and border security programs ($26.8 billion in total); 2. Fund another massive...
Three years. 8,156 posts. Over 109,000 comments and 16,000 trackbacks. 23 million visits. And the best blog community in the 'sphere. It all started with this post: Welcome to the Captain's Quarters! So, naturalists observe, a flea Hath smaller fleas which on him prey And these have smaller still to bite 'em, and so proceed ad infinitum. Thus every poet, in his kind, Is bit by him who comes behind. -- Jonathan Swift I love this quote, and I've had it memorized since I first read it in Tom Burnham's Dictionary of Misinformation. In fact, I think it explains blogs and their popularity, and in some degrees their incestuousness. Glenn Reynolds or Andrew Sullivan read a news story, and they post a commentary, and then other blogs post commentaries to their commentaries, and so proceed ad infinitum. Don't get me wrong - I think that's terrific! We need an open...
After having salacious messages to teenage boys exposed by ABC News last week, disgraced former Congressman Mark Foley disappeared, later turning up at a mental-health facility claiming that he suffers from alcoholism. When that apparently didn't turn down the heat, his lawyer dragged out another pop-culture form of victimhood in a supposedly "blockbuster" press conference: Former Rep. Mark Foley's attorney said Tuesday that his client was molested between the ages 13 and 15 by a clergyman. Foley had represented the West Palm Beach district for 12 years and was seeking re-election until his sudden resignation last week after the disclosure of lurid online communications with teenage congressional pages. "This is part of his recovery," Roth said, declining to identify the clergyman or the church. Ah, yes. Alcoholism has become rather passe' these days, what with Bob Ney ostentantiously checking himself into a treatment center after his guilty verdict for corruption....
I had a chance to take a look at a website that will delight porkbusters across the political spectrum. The good folks at OMB Watch, in conjunction with The Sunlight Foundation, will launch FedSpending.org on October 10th. FedSpending actually steals a march on the Coburn-Obama federal database by putting all of the federal contracts and grants in the federal budget in a searchable database. And let me tell you, if the federal government makes it work one-tenth as well as this, we've spent our money well indeed. FedSpending didn't just restrain itself to FY2005. They assembled spending data for every year since FY2000, and the amounts account for the majority of federal spending. Just as the government directed, FS separates contracts and grants into two separate databases. Users will be able to sort spending by state, Congressional district, recipient, and by program. Porkbusters can look up individual contractors and grantees...
Continuing rumors of ancient atrocities led German authorities to excavate a site that some thought contained the bodies of Nazi victims from World War II. This gossip proved all too accurate; they discovered a mass grave that the Nazis used to bury its youngest and most helpless victims: Authorities in western Germany have found a mass grave containing 35 bodies, many of them of young children, and are checking whether they may have been victims of Hitler's program of forced "euthanasia" that killed tens of thousands of people with physical and mental disabilities. The search of the site in a cemetery in the town of Menden near Dortmund began last week after rumors and eyewitness testimony that the cemetery contained the bodies of Nazi victims. Among the bodies found so far are 20 skeletons of children believed to have been aged between one and seven. Most of them were buried...
October 4, 2006
The Washington Post offers up a typical doomsday scenario in order to highlight the lack of progress on comprehensive immigration reform, but winds up demonstrating everything wrong about the reformers' economic arguments. Sonya Geis allows growers full vent about their disappearing work force, but never quite makes the connection between their labor shortfall and the compensation they offer: Bins of Granny Smith apples towered over two conveyor belts at P-R Farms' packing plant. But only one belt moved. P-R Farms, like farms up and down California and across the nation, does not have enough workers to process its fruit. "We're short by 50 to 75 people," said Pat Ricchiuti, 59, the third-generation owner of P-R Farms. "For the last three weeks, we're running at 50 percent capacity. We saw this coming a couple years ago, but last year and this year has really been terrible." Farmers of all types of...
The Office of Management and Budget will host the new Coburn-Obama database, and they want to continue in the reform spirit. In that effort, the OMB wants to draft bloggers to support its other clean-government initiatives: The Office of Management and Budget is turning to bloggers for help in pushing the OMB's government reform plans after last week's success of its pet project, the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act, also known as the Coburn-Obama bill. ... Bush signed the bill last week, flanked by the bloggers who had led the charge, including those from Porkbusters.org, Townhall.com, Instapundit.com and Human Events Online's Right Angle blog. Soon afterward, OMB Deputy Director Clay Johnson III spent an hour with the bloggers. Right after that, OMB Director Rob Portman and Johnson appeared at a luncheon to talk about OMB's government performance push. Portman also talked about the blogger fest, saying, "Clay asked them,...
Britain has decided that the Iranian negotiations have run aground and plan to pursue sanctions. The Guardian reports that Javier Solana's briefing on Iranian intransigence provided the straw that broke the camel's back: The British government signalled yesterday the latest round of negotiations with Iran had failed and that it will begin a push within the next fortnight for targeted UN sanctions against Tehran. ... The British official, talking to journalists in London on condition of anonymity, said Javiar Solana, the EU foreign policy chief, had at the weekend briefed the five permanent members of the security council - the US, Britain, France, China and Russia - plus Germany and reported that Iran had failed to suspend uranium enrichment as the UN had demanded. Mr Solana, on a visit to Finland yesterday, said a telephone call to Ali Larijani, Iran's leading nuclear negotiator, yesterday failed to produce any breakthrough. The...
Last night, I had the opportunity to participate in a round-table discussion with a few excellent bloggers of the Right regarding the Foley debacle and its implications. The conference call was hosted by Conservatives With Attitude and is now podcasted here. Joining hosts Michael Ross and Michael "A.J. Sparxx" Illions were myself, Lorie Byrd of Wizbangblog, Betsy Newmark of BetsysPage and John Hawkins of RightWingNews. I enjoyed the discussion, even though I was in the minority on the issue. We talked for about forty minutes or so, and I think CQ readers will enjoy the debate. We decided afterwards that we would like to make this a semi-regular affair, so keep your eyes peeled for more podcasted debates with this panel in the future....
Kim Jong-Il apparently figured the spotlight of world attention had strayed too far from the Korean Peninsula for too long. Yesterday, Kim threatened to conduct a test of his nuclear weapons, an act that received immediate worldwide condemnation -- but little else: World leaders lashed out at North Korea's vow Tuesday to test a nuclear bomb sometime "in the future," but offered no clear plan for dealing with aggravated tensions over the dictatorship's nuclear weapons ambitions. U.S. intelligence officials said they had been monitoring recent movement of people and vehicles around at least one suspected test site. But because North Korea has never conducted a nuclear test, it is difficult for intelligence agencies to determine how close the regime may be to setting off a bomb. The North Koreans did not elaborate on when a test would occur or whether it would be conducted below ground, which experts say is...
Google has made itself into the essential tool for Internet research, a success that all free-market fans applaud. Now one of its executives wants to expand its use into "truth predictor" functions that would assess the honesty of politicians: Imagine being able to check instantly whether or not statements made by politicians were correct. That is the sort of service Google Inc. boss Eric Schmidt believes the Internet will offer within five years. Politicians have yet to appreciate the impact of the online world, which will also affect the outcome of elections, Schmidt said in an interview with the Financial Times published on Wednesday. He predicted that "truth predictor" software would, within five years, "hold politicians to account." People would be able to use programs to check seemingly factual statements against historical data to see to see if they were correct. "One of my messages to them (politicians) is to...
It's early, but it's consistent with other polling taken over the last few months. The front-runners for the 2008 nominations are Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani, and only Giuliani gets majority support in a general election, according to the latest Marist poll. Republicans who want to hold the White House need to look at these numbers; they're amazing. Giuliani gets majority support for his political views across almost all political demographics, and a plurality of Democrats. Thirty-two percent of Democrats want him to run in 2008. His candidacy has gained support from last year, something that only Newt Gingrich can say, and then only from fourth place. John McCain has suffered a significant drop in his support from February; perhaps his new emphasis on conservative values has caused some revisionism among his former fans on the Left. I like Rudy, but his positions on guns bother me. I'm not as...
Patty Wetterling has done few things right in her latest campaign to win a seat in Congress. She seriously misrepresented Michele Bachmann's position on taxes this past weekend in an ad so poor that even the Star Tribune noticed. The Mark Foley scandal seemed tailor-made to Wetterling' she made her name as a tireless advocate for missing and exploited children after the tragic loss of her own child in the 1990s. She could have been expected to contrast Foley's now-suspect interest in the subject with her own bona fides, leveraging that track record to scold the Republican leadership for not protecting the teenaged pages on Capitol Hill. Unfortunately, she has managed to remind voters of her ongoing problems with the truth. After posting a tough but largely accurate statement on her site yesterday, Wetterling fabricated details for her latest television and radio ads: It shocks the conscience. Congressional leaders have...
October 5, 2006
When Democracy for America invited me to participate in a panel debate about the war in Iraq on the fifth anniversary of 9/11 at Macalester College, I wondered whether the staunchly liberal setting would result in some sort of donnybrook due to my defense of the war. I needn't have worried; Macalester proved itself polite, classy, and welcoming, if predictably unenthusiastic about my point of view. No one chased me from the dais, and no one interrupted our debate. Unfortunately, Columbia University didn't demonstrate the same class and etiquette when Jim Gilchrist tried to speak about his Minutemen organization last night. Eliana Johnson reports in the New York Sun that a mob of students assaulted Gilchrist, shut down the event, and then cheered their version of free speech: Students stormed the stage at Columbia University's Roone auditorium yesterday, knocking over chairs and tables and attacking Jim Gilchrist, the founder of...
It seems that Israel has found its analogy to Douglas MacArthur. Just as the legendary American general forced his own cashiering onto Harry Truman by intimating that the President lacked the will to win in Korea, Major General Yiftah Ron-Tal criticized his superior publicly and got a discharge for his trouble: Israel's army chief fired a top general Wednesday over his criticism of the war in Lebanon and government policy, the army said. The dismissed officer, Maj. Gen. Yiftah Ron-Tal gave unauthorized interviews to several Israeli news media earlier Wednesday, an army statement said. Ron-Tal said army chief of staff Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz must "accept responsibility" for the shortcomings of Israel's 34-day war with Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas, which ended Aug. 14. Halutz, in a letter to Ron-Tal, said he was terminating the general's stay in the military immediately. Halutz said Ron-Tal's decision to make public statements was "unacceptable," the...
The Russians do not want to let go of a grudge. They have apparently started a de facto pogrom against Georgians within their borders after the arrest of four alleged spies in Tbilisi this week. The release of the suspects has apparently done nothing to slake the Russian thirst for revenge: Georgians living in Russia felt the Kremlin's wrath yesterday as it retaliated against its neighbour following the spying row between the two countries last week. Police raided Georgian restaurants and other businesses in Moscow, apparently looking for minor legal violations in order to force their closure or criminalise their owners. The Kristall casino and Golden Palace entertainment complex were closed down after it was discovered that their Georgian owners were "criminal bosses" according to Russian state TV. Russia imposed an economic embargo on Georgia following the crisis, which also saw Moscow hint at military action against its neighbour after...
After Judge Anna Diggs Taylor's relentlessly mediocre ruling that ordered an end to the NSA's warrantless surveillance of terrorist communications, many experts believed that the ruling would not survive an appeal. Taylor herself appeared to forestall a reversal by refusing to stay her ruling pending the appeal. The Sixth Circuit resolved it themselves yesterday in a unanimous ruling granting the stay pending their review of the case, dropping a broad hint as to their inclinations: The Bush administration can continue its warrantless surveillance program while it appeals a judge's ruling that the program is unconstitutional, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday. The president has said the program is needed in the war on terrorism; opponents argue it oversteps constitutional boundaries on free speech, privacy and executive powers. The unanimous ruling from a three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals gave little explanation for the decision. In the...
When Nouri al-Maliki negotiated a deal with tribal leaders in Anbar to fight terrorists, some wondered whether the tribes would follow through on their pledges. That question appears answered, according to the LA Times, which reports that they have responded with surprising enthusiasm to the government's call for assistance: U.S. officials say the decision of some tribal leaders to begin going after insurgents reflects growing public anger over attacks that have killed or injured more than 8,000 Iraqis, according to local government figures. They also say there has been growing alarm on the part of some tribal leaders over insurgents' demands for adherence to strict Islamic law. U.S. military leaders say that alarm has inspired a sense of partnership that didn't exist earlier. "It's only frankly been the last six months that they've recognized two things: One, they can't do it themselves, and two … they had much more in...
The Iranian Supreme Leader has a lot on his mind these days. With the nuclear standoff, the spread of Islamist power, managing Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad, and propping Moqtada al-Sadr up in Iraq, Ayatollah Ali Khameini has little time to spare on less important matters. However, he apparently considers self-gratification a pressing (ha!) matter of state: Deliberate masturbation during the month of Ramadan renders a fast invalid, Iranian Supreme Leader Sayyid Ali Khameini has ruled. Khameini, who is Iran's most powerful political and religious figure, was asked on his website : "If somebody masturbates during the month of Ramadan but without any discharge, is his fasting invalidated?" "If he do not intend masturbation and discharging semen and nothing is discharged, his fasting is correct even though he has done a ḥarām (forbidden) act. But, if he intends masturbation or he knows that he usually discharges semen by this process and...
E-mail response and blogging may be light over the next 24 hours or so, as the First Mate has experienced another little bump in the road, although one that was not completely unexpected. As we continued to throw off the viral infections that have plagued her since the beginning of the year, we had to keep an eye on her pancreas function to ensure that it didn't reject. We've been pretty lucky up to now, as the transplant managed to survive without immunosuppression for longer than we anticipated. However, her labs have shown some disturbing trends of late; I'd like to explain it, but the mechanics of this escapes me. I'd start sounding like that song that goes, "The knee bone's connected to the leg bone," except in this case it's "the amylase is connected to the lipase, and the lipase is connected to the glucose". It's got a lousy...
Earlier this morning, I took a few minutes to participate in a chat session hosted by the AP's Otis Hart on ethics in national politics. I joined Nick Gillespie from Reason and Judd Legum from Think Progress, and we managed to put aside partisan battles -- for the most part -- to talk about how ethics impact elections and politics: asap: OK: We hear a lot about the term "ethics" in connection to politics. What sorts of things do you think voters are thinking of when they worry about ethics? Morrissey: I think that local races will still focus mostly on policy ... Morrissey: but the ethics issues will certainly be part of that consideration, as it should be. Gillespie: ethics and politics are like oil and vinegar. you need a mix of both, but they separate as soon as they hit the plate. Legum: I think it goes to...
October 6, 2006
The California appellate court has denied an attempt to overturn the state's "one man, one woman" rule on marriage through judicial. In an unfortunately remarkable decision, they upheld an appeal on an earlier decision by a San Francisco judge overturning the law, and told the plaintiffs from the original case that the judiciary cannot create new rights: In the latest turn to a long and winding legal fight over same-sex marriage, a California appeals court on Thursday upheld the state’s ban against it. The 2-to-1 decision, which reversed a lower court’s finding that the ban violated the California Constitution, said the plaintiffs in the case were asking the courts “to recognize a new right,” a step it said only the Legislature or the voters could take. “Courts simply do not have the authority to create new rights,” said the decision, written by Justice William McGuiness, “especially when doing so involves...
The Palestinians have continued tunneling under the Gaza-Egypt border, presumably to smuggle arms across the border without attracting attention. They managed to literally blow that today, and the illicit weapons they smuggled into the tunnel apparently provided their undoing: An explosion collapsed a tunnel under the Gaza-Egypt border early Friday, trapping five terrorists inside and killing at least one, Palestinians said. The Aksa Martyrs' Brigades said the five were members. The group refused to say what they were doing. The group said the explosion was not caused by an IAF air strike, after first blaming Israel. They refused to say what they were doing in an illegal tunnel that inexplicably blew up? Why would they need to spell it out for anyone?...
Islamists planned to round up dozens of Czech Jews and kill them in a spectacular raid on a synagogue, Reuters reports. The radical Islamists planned to target the small remaining Jewish community surviving after the Holocaust: Islamic extremists planned to kidnap dozens of Jews in Prague and hold them hostage before murdering them, the daily Mlada Fronta Dnes reported on Friday. The Czech Republic's leading newspaper quoted unidentified sources close to intelligence agencies as saying the captives would have been held in a Prague synagogue while the captors made broad demands that they knew could not be fulfilled. When those demands -- which were not specified by the sources -- were not met, the extremists would blow up the building, killing all who were inside, the paper added. The Czechs refuse to give any details to the plot, which they apparently foiled on September 23rd. On that day, Czech security...
A rambling, disjointed editorial by a man known as Kim Jong-Il's "unofficial spokesman" tells Asia Times readers that North Korea does not intend to build its nuclear weapons to use as bargaining chips. Kim will build them to turn American cities into "towering infernos": The first message is that Kim Jong-il is the greatest of the peerless national heroes Korea has ever produced. Kim is unique in that he is the first to equip Korea with sufficient military capability to take the war all the way to the continental US. Under his leadership the DPRK has become a nuclear-weapons state with intercontinental means of delivery. Kim is certainly in the process of achieving the long-elusive goal of neutralizing the American intervention in Korean affairs and bringing together North and South Korea under the umbrella of a confederated state. Unlike all the previous wars Korea fought, a next war will be...
A disturbing report in the Times of London raises the question about whether terrorists have increased their efforts to find nuclear material, or whether the West has improved its ability to stop them. Confirmed incidents of nuclear trafficking have increased sharply since 2002, with most of the material falling into the "dirty-bomb" category: SEIZURES of smuggled radioactive material capable of making a terrorist “dirty bomb” have doubled in the past four years, according to official figures seen by The Times. Smugglers have been caught trying to traffick dangerous radioactive material more than 300 times since 2002, statistics from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) show. Most of the incidents are understood to have occurred in Europe. The disclosures come as al-Qaeda is known to be intensfiying its efforts to obtain a radoactive device. Last year, Western security services, including MI5 and MI6, thwarted 16 attempts to smuggle plutonium or uranium....
In all of the heat surrounding the NSA warrantless surveillance program and SWIFT banking intelligence, we seem to have lost track of the uncontroversial communication taps allowed by law. The Washington Post reminds us in an editorial that we have no bar to reviewing prisoner communications, and yet the imprisoned terrorists already in our custody have little problem sending mail to their jihadist friends unmolested: THE BUSH administration has pushed aggressively for expanded surveillance powers, military commissions and rough interrogation techniques. When it comes to fighting the war on terrorism, just about anything goes. Except, that is, those routine steps with no civil liberties implications at all that might significantly interrupt terrorism -- such as, say, reading the mail of convicted terrorists housed in American prisons. The federal Bureau of Prisons, Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine wrote, "does not read all the mail for terrorist and other high-risk inmates...
Earlier today, I received a nice e-mail from Glenn Greenwald, informing me that Playboy had selected their Top Ten Political Blogs -- and that Captain's Quarters made the list. Pam Spaulding at Pam's House Blend got the advance look at the feature from the November issue (Pam contributes to Pandagon, one of the other blogs nominated). Glenn's blog also made Playboy's list, and I appreciate his heads-up. The other blogs selected by Playboy are: * Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish * Power Line * Daily Kos * TPM Cafe * Hit & Run * Tapped * The American Scene Here's what Daniel Radosh wrote about CQ: The swaggering Ed Morrissey puts his back into blogging. His ability to dig up stories make him a must-read in right-wing circles beyond the blogosphere -- Rush Limbaugh reads Morrissey's posts on the air. Radosh wrote about CQ once before, almost exactly a year ago,...
October 7, 2006
The US announced yesterday that a deal had been reached with the other permanent members of the UN Security Council to apply sanctions against Iran for their failure to comply with UNSC resolutions demanding a halt to their enrichment program. None of the nations announced any specific steps, but the New York Times reports that they have all agreed in principle to a reversible, phased application that will isolate Iran economically and diplomatically: The United States said it had won agreement on Friday from the other four permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and Germany to seek sanctions against Iran over its refusal to shut down a nuclear enrichment program that could be used to build bombs. While the State Department praised the agreement, which was reached at a one-day meeting here of senior officials from the six nations, American diplomats conceded that there could still be long...
With Kim Jong-Il threatening a nuclear test and his neighbors demanding that he stop the preparations for it, tensions have mounted at the DMZ separating North and South Korea. This morning, an incursion by a handful of DPRK soldiers resulted in warning shots by South Korean troops: On the frontier between North and South Korea, South Korean soldiers fired warning shots after five North Korean soldiers crossed a boundary in the Demilitarized Zone separating the countries' forces, South Korean military officials said. It was unclear whether the North Korean advance, which happened shortly before noon local time, was intended as a provocation, an official at South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said on condition of anonymity, citing official policy. No one was hurt, and the North Koreans retreated. "It's not clear whether it was intentional or whether it was to catch fish," he said, adding four North Koreans were unarmed...
The near-ubiquitous concrete pillars in front of buildings in American cities have quietly started to disappear, even in high-risk terrorist targets in New York. The New York Times reports that building owners have begun removing them as their efficacy came under question in dense urban centers: They started appearing on Manhattan streets immediately after September 11: concrete and metal barriers in front of skyscrapers, offices and museums. Some were clunky planters; others were shaped artfully into globes. They were meant to be security barriers against possible car or truck bombers in a jittery city intent on safeguarding itself. But now, five years later, their numbers have begun to dwindle. After evaluations by the New York Police Department, the city’s Department of Transportation has demanded that many of the planters and concrete traffic medians known as jersey barriers be taken away. So far, barriers have been removed at 30 buildings out...
The Northern Alliance Radio Network is back on the air at AM 1280 The Patriot. John Hinderaker will be on from 11 am - 1 pm CT with Brian and Chad from Fraters Libertas. Mitch and I will take over from 1-3, and King and Michael get in the Final Word from 3-5. Colonel Joe Repya, who just returned from Iraq, joins us at 2 pm to discuss the war and the progress being made. If you're not in the Twin Cities, The Patriot has an excellent Internet stream at its website. This morning, we got a caller from Finland, and we've taken calls from China on occasion. Join us wherever you are by calling 651-289-4488!...
Readers of CQ know that I follow Canadian politics and have become something of a Canada-phile ever since the Gomery Inquiry. Canadians, I have found, are friendly, gracious people, and their country has a well-deserved reputation for hospitality. I have a great deal of respect and admiration for the Canadian military, which has a long tradition of honorable service, and they are currently adding to and enhancing that reputation in Afghanistan in the fight against radical Islamist terrorists. Too many Americans seem disinterested in our northern neighbor and close ally. I'm always delighted when Americans take an interest in Canadians -- even when those Americans are Democrats. Michelle Malkin reports that the Democratic Party made a big show of "supporting the troops", and to be fair, they didn't specify their nationality: That picture looked pretty strange to one of Michelle's military readers, and a little poking around turned up where...
October 8, 2006
Earlier today, Mitch Berg wrote a post about a Star Tribune article on Republican Congressional candidate Alan Fine, who is competing for Martin Sabo's MN-05 seat against Keith Ellison. The Strib highlighted a years-old arrest of Fine for domestic abuse, one which later got expunged as the charges were withdrawn: Minneapolis congressional candidate Alan Fine was charged with domestic violence in 1995 and nine years later had his record expunged, in a case in which he and his first ex-wife give different versions of the events that led to him ending up in the Hennepin County jail. His wife at the time, Rebecca Wexler, dropped the abuse charge, and Fine succeeded in having the case removed from Hennepin County court and police records, according to documents recently obtained by the Star Tribune. Fine, who is the Fifth District Republican candidate, said in a recent interview that he never struck Wexler....
Dahianna Heard became a widow this past March, when her husband Jeffrey got killed in an ambush delivering supplies to American troops near Fallujah. Jeffrey worked as a contractor in Iraq after serving in both the Army and the National Guard. She and her one-year-old son will have to live without him, and in a particularly cruel twist of fate, will have to do so while being deported back to her native Venezuela: Dahianna and Jeffrey Heard often talked of their life after the war as a dream they would live together: buy a house, raise a family, travel abroad. But Jeffrey, a Casselberry contractor for a security company supporting U.S. troops in Iraq, was shot to death this spring during an ambush of his convoy near Fallujah. Now his wife, a Venezuela native raising their 1-year-old son, faces possible deportation. One reason: They hadn't been married long enough. She...
The visit to the US by former Iranian president Mohammed Khatami had approval from the highest levels of government, the London Telegraph reports, and it served a clandestine American purpose. The US contacted Khatami on his trip to carry a message back to Iran's Guardian Council, the real power of the Islamic Republic, in an attempt to manuever around Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: The Bush administration made secret overtures to former Iran president Mohammed Khatami during his visit to the United States last month in an attempt to establish a back channel via the ex-leader. American officials made the approach as part of a strategy to isolate Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Mr Khatami's hard-line successor, by using the former president as a conduit to the Iranian people. They also hoped that Mr Khatami would report his conversations to senior members of Iran's theocratic regime who are wary of the current president. Diplomatic sources said...
Herb Keinon sheds some light on the murky efforts by Condoleezza Rice in confronting the radicalism in the Middle East, especially as it relates to the Israeli-Palestinian mess. His length analysis points out the progress Rice has made in the past several weeks in convincing the existing regimes that democratization presents a far less significant threat, especially in the long term, than Iranian- and Syrian-backed radical Islamists. This slow realization has begun paying dividends as the Arab states now see organizations such as Hezbollah and Hamas as threats to their own survival as well as Israel's: Remember, as well, that unlike the days when Colin Powell led the State Department, now there is largely one source of foreign policy power in Washington, and it rests with Rice. She needs some kind of achievement. Forming a coalition of moderate Arab states to counterbalance Iran, Hizbullah, Syria and Hamas would fit the...
Mickey Kaus has checked the calendar and wondered if George Bush might issue a passive-aggressive veto on the Secure Fence Act passed last week by Congress. Normally, bills passed by Congress become law if the President signs them or does nothing for ten days, but the Constitution also provides an exception for this in Article I, Section 7: Every Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it become a Law, be presented to the President of the United States; If he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, with his Objections to that House in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the Objections at large on their Journal, and proceed to reconsider it. If after such Reconsideration two thirds of that House shall agree to pass the Bill, it shall be sent, together with the Objections,...
The Democratic Party website has been changed since the discovery that they used a picture of a Canadian soldier on the page that proclaimed their support for "our troops". Apparently, though, they still can't find a picture of an American soldier to support: Does anyone at the DNC know what an American soldier looks like? They accuse the Republicans of hiding behind the flag all too often. This appears to be a much more blatant example than anything I've seen from the GOP. UPDATE: Even the photo at the top of the page is suspect. Fred, in the comments, notes that the people cheering with fists upraised comes from a stock-photo website....
October 9, 2006
North Korea conducted a nuclear test today that has set the world on edge, according to Pyongyang's announcement and confirmation through seismic monitors. The yield, however, looks almost impossibly small: North Korea said Monday it performed its first-ever nuclear weapons test, claiming it set off a successful underground blast in a "great leap forward" that defied international warnings against the communist regime. The reported nuclear test sparked condemnation from regional powers who said that, if confirmed, it would be a serious threat to regional stability. The U.S. called for immediate U.N. Security Council action. ... South Korea's seismic monitoring center said a magnitude 3.6 tremor felt at the time of alleged North Korea nuclear test wasn't a natural occurrence. The size of the tremor could indicate an explosive equivalent to 550 tons of TNT, said Park Chang-soo, spokesman at the Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources — which would...
Both the New York Times and the London Times indulged in a little speculation about the advice James Baker will give the White House after his Iraq Study Group concludes its research into war policy. The NYT focuses more on the open nature of the inquiry, while the British newspaper believes a decision has already been made: James A. Baker III , the Republican co-chairman of a bipartisan commission assessing Iraq strategy for President Bush, said today that he expected the group to depart from Mr. Bush’s call to “stay the course.” In an interview on the ABC News program “This Week,” Mr. Baker said, “I think it’s fair to say our commission believes that there are alternatives between the stated alternatives, the ones that are out there in the political debate, of ‘stay the course’ and ‘cut and run.’ ” Mr. Baker, who served Mr. Bush’s father as secretary...
The seismic record of today's nuclear test by North Korea reveals a very small impact, almost so small that nuclear experts wonder if it isn't a hoax by Kim Jong-Il. Russia, however, wants everyone to know that they're very impressed by the test: Russia's defense minister said Monday that North Korea's nuclear test was equivalent to 5,000 tons to 15,000 tons of TNT. That would be far greater than the force given by South Korea's geological institute, which estimated it at just 550 tons of TNT. By comparison the bomb the United States dropped on Hiroshima during World War II was equivalent to 15,000 tons of TNT. The AP reports that Pyongyang alerted Russia to the test two hours before the test took place. Perhaps Russia is working from their pledged yield. In the meantime, one has to believe that South Korean seismologists would have a better position with which...
The New York Times, never one of Rudy Giuliani's fans, does a profile of the former mayor today that reports on an intriguing quality Giuliani seems to have gained after 9/11. His performance under fire appears to have forged a political suit of Teflon for Rudy, one that deflects a number of issues that would derail other candidates: For many loyal Republicans — and more than a few independents and Democrats — his national security message seems to work, blotting out the central question facing his candidacy: whether a supporter of legal abortion, gay civil unions, immigrants’ rights and gun control; a thrice-married, Catholic New Yorker whose split with his second wife took place publicly and none too neatly, can win Republican presidential primaries and caucuses. “I’m well to the right of Rudy on social issues,” said Sid Dinerstein, chairman of the Republican Party in Palm Beach County, Fla., after...
Yesterday I analyzed the possibility that the lack of a presidential signature on the Secure Fence Act (HR 6061) might be an attempt at a pocket veto. President Bush has never given very enthusiastic support to any border solution that didn't include a plan for normalization for illegal immigrants already inside the US. Mickey Kaus started counting the days since Congress passed the bill and wondered whether the White House had decided to simply ignore the bill to death. I took a few minutes at my lunch break to contact a senior staffer on the Hill who has worked the immigration issue. He told me that, as some CQ commenters had speculated, Congress has not formally sent the bill to the President. That means the clock has not started for his signature. The 10-day period starts only after Congress formally prints and delivers the bill for the President to sign...
CQ reader Consabo decided that we needed a moment to lighten up, and he sent this parody of Star Wars now appearing on YouTube. Normally I don't go in for too much of the parodies on the site, but this one is simply too good to let pass unremarked. If you wonder what happened behind the scenes of the Galactic Empire, this short movie explains everything (rated TV-14, I'd say): Hope you enjoy the brief moment of geekery here at CQ!...
Hugh Hewitt points to a speech by Nancy Pelosi that seems rather interesting in light of today's nuclear test by North Korea -- but also in another way that Hugh missed. Pelosi spoke in April 2003 to accept an award -- to which we'll soon return -- from the Global Security Institute. In that speech, she gives her perspective on missile defense, even post-9/11, which the Democrats might want to bury: "Some of our most significant foreign relations achievements over the last 30 years were our agreements with the former Soviet Union to reduce the size of our nuclear arsenals – the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the START treaties. "Yet by shredding the ABM Treaty and flirting with the unthinkable – 'usable' battlefield nuclear weapons – the Bush Administration turns the clock back on three decades of arms control. "The United States must not create new nuclear weapons and ignite new...
Bill Gertz writes in tomorrow's Washington Times that the nuclear test performed by North Korea may not have been nuclear at all. American intelligence has begun reviewing the seismic data and are increasingly convinced that the test was either a failure or a hoax: U.S. intelligence agencies say, based on preliminary indications, that North Korea did not produce its first nuclear blast yesterday. U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that seismic readings show that the conventional high explosives used to create a chain reaction in a plutonium-based device went off, but that the blast's readings were shy of a typical nuclear detonation. "We're still evaluating the data, and as more data comes in, we hope to develop a clearer picture," said one official familiar with intelligence reports. "There was a seismic event that registered about 4 on the Richter scale, but it still isn't clear if it...
October 10, 2006
The nuclear test by North Korea yesterday may have produced results which Kim Jong-Il did not anticipate. China issued an unusually harsh response to their client state, and the London Times reports that Beijing may reconsider its relationship with the impulsive Stalinist: CHINA responded with rare fury to neighbouring North Korea’s nuclear test, resorting to language generally reserved for imperialist opponents rather than communist friends. Beijing’s response was unusually swift. “The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has ignored the widespread opposition of the international community and brazenly carried out a nuclear test,” it said. Long gone are the days when China and North Korea described their relationship as being “as close as lips and teeth”. Indeed, North Korea’s test has delivered China to a diplomatic crossroads: it can choose to act tough with a troublesome neighbour or to stick with the cajoling and persuasion that have now been seen to...
Ted Stevens, who championed the infamous Bridge to Nowhere and threatened to quit the Senate if denied his pork, has quietly undermined another attempt at pork reform. Robert Novak reports that Stevens stripped a key requirement in the Defense appropriation that would have required a review of all earmarks: Sen. Ted Stevens, considered the Republican king of pork, just before the pre-election congressional recess killed a requirement for the Defense Department to evaluate unauthorized earmarks imposed by members of Congress on the Pentagon. Freshman Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma had won Senate passage of the ''report card'' as part of the Defense appropriations bill. The evaluation would show that the military really does not want most of the estimated $8 billion in earmarks added by Congress this year. However, Stevens succeeded in stripping the reform from the final version of the bill before it was signed by President Bush. Coburn...
Kim Jong-Il either needs a hug or a straitjacket. North Korea followed its rogue nuclear test by issuing an explicit threat to attack the US with a nuclear missile unless we allowed Pyongyang to operate its counterfeiting business without interference: A North Korean official threatened that communist nation could fire a nuclear-tipped missile unless the U.S. acts to resolve its standoff with Pyongyang, Yonhap news agency reported Tuesday. "We hope the situation will be resolved before an unfortunate incident of us firing a nuclear missile comes," the unnamed official said on Monday, according to a Yonhap report from Beijing. "That depends on how the U.S. will act." Yonhap didn't say how or where it contacted the official, why no name was given or why it delayed reporting until Tuesday. ... "We have lost enough. Sanctions can never be a solution," the official said. "We still have a willingness to give...
The Australians have stepped up to the plate, as they always do when tyrants threaten global security, in the wake of the North Korean nuclear test. They didn't bother to wait for the UN Security Council to slap sanctions on the Kim Jong-Il regime, and told the UN that they had better snap to it themselves: Australia will impose a range of measures on North Korea, including curtailing visas and supporting any U.N. sanctions, in response to the country's nuclear test, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said Tuesday. ... "We were urging our friends and allies in the United Nations to pass a resolution imposing sanctions," Downer told reporters. Downer said the nuclear test had made the region less secure, and that North Korea had "humiliated" its biggest ally, China. Australia has diplomatic relations with North Korea, restoring them six years ago after Pyongyang insisted that it would behave itself and...
Mexico wants to take the border fence authorized by Congress last month to the UN, in order to get it stopped. Foreign Minister Luis Ernesto Derbez says that Mexican lawyers will research their cause to determine whether the UN can intervene: Mexico's foreign secretary said Monday the country may take a dispute over U.S. plans to build a fence on the Mexican border to the United Nations. Luis Ernesto Derbez told reporters in Paris, his first stop on a European tour, that a legal investigation was under way to determine whether Mexico has a case. The Mexican government last week sent a diplomatic note to Washington criticizing the plan for 700 miles of new fencing along the border. President-elect Felipe Calderon also denounced the plan, but said it was a bilateral issue that should not be put before the international community. ... "What should be constructed is a bridge in...
E. J. Dionne tackles the controversy over electronic voting machines that has arisen since their rushed implementation following the 2000 presidential election. Dionne argues that a little paranoia isn't always a bad thing: Sometimes, paranoids are right. And sometimes even when paranoids are wrong, it's worth considering what they're worried about. I speak here of all who are worried sick that those new, fancy high-tech voting systems can be hacked, fiddled with and otherwise made to record votes that aren't cast or fail to record votes that are. I do not pretend to know how large a threat this is. I do know that it's a threat to democracy when so many Americans doubt that their votes will be recorded accurately. And I also know that smart, computer-savvy people are concerned about these machines. The perfectly obvious thing is for the entire country to do what a number of states...
The trial of Saddam Hussein continued today, and the testimony painted a grim picture of life and death under his regime's grip: Prison guards under Saddam Hussein used to bury detainees alive and watch women as they bathed, occasionally shooting over their heads, a former female prisoner testified Monday in the genocide trial of the ex-president. Speaking in Kurdish through an Arabic interpreter, the 31-year-old witness recalled what she saw as a 13-year-old girl who was detained during Saddam's offensive against the Kurds in the late 1980s. ... A prison warden she identified as Hajaj - whose name has been given by earlier witnesses in the trial - "used to drag women, their hands and feet shackled, and leave them in a scorching sun for several hours." "Soldiers used to watch us bathe," said the woman. The guards also fired over the women's heads as they washed. The woman said...
Please welcome Senator John McCain as a guest poster at Captain's Quarters. He delivers a tough, no-nonsense reponse to the latest provocation from North Korea. Time for Decisive Action on North Korea Korea doubts the world’s resolve. It is testing South Korea, China, Russia, Japan, and the United States. They launched seven missiles in July, and were criticized by the Security Council, but suffered no serious sanction. We have talked and talked about punishing their bad behavior. They don’t believe we have the resolve to do it. We must prove them wrong. I am encouraged by the Security Council’s swift and strong condemnation of the act on Monday, but the permanent members must now follow up our words with action. We must impose Chapter 7 sanctions with teeth, as President Bush has proposed. China has staked its prestige as an emerging great power on its ability to reason with North...
Japan has announced that they suspect North Korea conducted another nuclear test in the last couple of hours. Details are sketchy and contradictory, but Japan said they detected a tremor from North Korea: The Japanese government detected tremors on Wednesday that led it to suspect North Korea had conducted a second nuclear test, officials and news reports said. Shortly after Japan said it suspected another test had been conducted, the country's meteorological agency reported a magnitude-6.0 earthquake shook northern Japan. U.S. and South Korean monitors said they had not detected any new seismic activity in North Korea on Wednesday. It may have sensed a pre-quake tremor from its own territory which confused their sensors. A nuclear test that caused a 6.0 earthquake in Japan could never have been missed by South Korea. Still, Japan's quake may have been coincidental to a nuclear test. More as this develops ... UPDATE: It...
October 11, 2006
Kim Jong-Il seems determined to have himself a little war, whether anyone else wants it or not. This morning, the North Korean Foreign Ministry warned that any applications of sanctions against them would result in "physical" responses: North Korea said Wednesday it would respond with "physical" measures to counter U.S. pressure against the communist regime after its claimed nuclear test. "If the U.S. keeps pestering us and increases pressure, we will regard it as a declaration of war and will take a series of physical corresponding measures," the North's Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency. The North didn't specify what the measures would be. "We were compelled to prove that we have nuclear weapons to prevent the increasing threat of war by the U.S. and protect our sovereignty and survival," the North said, criticizing an alleged nuclear threat from Washington and sanctions....
I haven't followed the latest controversy in the Allen-Webb campaign for the Virginia Senate seat, mostly because I found it less than compelling. Apparently, so do Virginia voters; they have Allen up by six points according to last week's Rasmussen poll despite the Webb campaigns weird smears of Allen as a secret Jewish racist. This kerfuffle revolves around stock options owned by Allen in 2000 that supposedly didn't get disclosed. The Webb campaign, boosted by Bloomberg News, claims that they were worth $1.1 million dollars at one point (emphasis mine): In March 2000, Allen held 60,000 options when Xybernaut shares closed at an all-time high of $23.75. That would have made the options worth $1.1 million, less commissions and fees, had Allen exercised them. At that time, Allen could have paid $5.47 and $1.56 respectively for two groups of options, sold them and pocketed the difference. He was awarded another...
South Korea has decided to continue its policy of appeasement despite the obvious results shown with North Korea's nuclear test. President Roh Moo Hyun eschewed urgent action and instead called for a period of extended "coordination" between the nations trying to convince Kim Jong-Il to return to the bargaining table: THE prospects for tough, swift action against North Korea were scuppered yesterday when it became clear that South Korea will not abandon its policy of engagement with its totalitarian neighbour, in spite of North Korea’s claimed nuclear test. As the US and Japan called for tough punishment for Monday’s test and experts predicted that a second may be imminent, leaders in Seoul appeared to have accepted that they will have to live with a nuclear North Korea — at least until Washington can be persuaded to engage in direct talks with the isolated Stalinist state. ... Diplomats said last night...
Catholics celebrated Mass for centuries in the primarily Latin rite of the Tridentine Mass. In order to understand the Mass, Catholics had to learn Latin, as vernacular was used for nothing except the homily. Forty years ago, the Catholic Church decided to use vernacular for all portions of the Mass in order to make Catholicism more personal and approachable for modern Catholics, many of whom never learned Latin and found the Tridentine Mass too frustrating and incomprehensible. Predictably, the reform urge took on a very autocratic nature, and Rome demanded an end to all Tridentine Mass celebrations except those specifically authorized by the Church. That may be changing. The Times of London reports that Pope Benedict XVI will authorize all priests to celebrate the Tridentine Mass, only forbidding it when bishops explicitly forbid it in writing: THE Pope is taking steps to revive the ancient tradition of the Latin Tridentine...
America has not built a new refinery in almost 30 years, and the increaded demand for gasoline has our existing refineries operating at near-maximum capacity. The Bush administration has often proposed easing environmental rules that handcuff refiners from opening new facilities in order to meet the new and varied demands for different mixtures for regional requirements, but to no avail. Now a massive new refinery has been built for American production of gasoline, but Americans might be surprised to discover its location: Sitting on the edge of the water in the Gulf of Kutch on India's western shore is one of America's dirty secrets. A mass of steel pipes and concrete boxes stretches across 13 square miles (33sq km) - a third of the area of Manhattan - which will eventually become the world's largest petrochemical refinery. The products from the Jamnagar complex are for foreign consumption. When complete, the...
Bill Clinton got elected on the James Carville slogan, "It's the economy, stupid." Fourteen years later, it's the media playing stupid, as a roaring economy has been treated with more secrecy than national-security programs by newspapers and television news channels. Michael Barone points out the hypocrisy: The Labor Department Friday announced that the number of jobs increased between April 2005 and March 2006 not by 5.8 million but by 6.6 million. As an editorial in the Wall Street Journal notes, "That's a lot more than a rounding error, more than the entire number of workers in the state of New Hampshire. What's going on here?" The most plausible explanation, advanced by the Journal and by the Hudson Institute's Diana Furchgott-Roth in the New York Sun, is that lots more jobs are being created by small businesses and individuals going into business for themselves than government statisticians can keep track of....
My earlier posts on North Korea has created a debate about when the Kim regime began its cheating on the 1994 Agreed Framework. This has taken up a large part of the comments thread on John McCain's guest post from yesterday. The Brookings Institution, hardly a apologist for conservatives, makes the timeline pretty clear in a review that has plenty of sympathy for the Clinton administration (emphases mine): When entering office, President Bush understandably wanted to revise the Clinton administration's approach to North Korea. The latter had a number of important accomplishments over roughly a five-year stretch from 1994 to 1999, but it had stalled by 2000. The Clinton administration helped produce the important 1994 Agreed Framework, under which North Korea effectively froze its major nuclear programs and promised effectively to undo whatever nuclear weapons progress it had earlier made at its small research reactor (the same one now at...
GOP Bloggers have a new straw poll, and these are getting more and more sophisticated. We will be able to track responses by CQ readers as the poll continues. I'll check on it later this evening and update my post with the trends. UPDATE 9 PM CT: In 14 hours, CQ readers have cast over 4200 votes, and the results are interesting. In the votes for acceptability, Giuliani and Romney come close to a tie (2685-2650, Romney). However, in the first-choice selections, Giuliani leads substantially with 35.9% of all CQ readers. Romney drops back to 20.9%, barely ahead of Newt Gingrich with 19.9%. George Allen gets 6.8%, and everyone else winds up in the hash. The highest unacceptability ratings came from a surprising source. 54.2% of all CQ readers found Chuck Hagel unacceptable. George Pataki got 45.6% disapproval, and John McCain came in third at 42.3%. Bill Frist got 23.8%...
Once again, we discover why the Democrats quietly dropped their "culture of corruption" theme for the upcoming midterms. The AP catches Harry Reid without a disclosure on real-estate deals that netted him $700,000 in profit: Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid collected a $1.1 million windfall on a Las Vegas land sale even though he hadn't personally owned the property for three years, property deeds show. In the process, Reid did not disclose to Congress an earlier sale in which he transferred his land to a company created by a friend and took a financial stake in that company, according to records and interviews. The Nevada Democrat's deal was engineered by Jay Brown, a longtime friend and former casino lawyer whose name surfaced in a major political bribery trial this summer and in other prior organized crime investigations. He's never been charged with wrongdoing - except for a 1981 federal securities...
October 12, 2006
Americans have grown used to a tort system that zealously protects free speech involving criticism and reporting involving public figures. In the US, any public figure that sues for defamation, libel, or slander has the burden of proof to show that the speech intentionally and maliciously defamed and damaged the plaintiff. However, even in other Western nations, the protection on free speech varies widely, and has been loosest in Britain. The UK requires defendants to prove their published allegations in court or to pay damages. One of the most famous examples of this dynamic is George Galloway, who won a judgment against the London Telegraph for their reporting on his connections to the Oil-For-Food program. That kind of award may soon be in the past. The Law Lords have overturned a judgment against the Wall Street Journal Europe and stated categorically that the law should protect journalism on stories of...
Japan unilaterally imposed severe sanctions on North Korea in response to its nuclear test earlier this week, and the Kim regime responded by promising "strong countermeasures". Pyongyang warned Japan to keep its eyes open for the specifics, saying that North Korea does not issue empty threats: The Japanese government decided on a package of additional economic sanctions against North Korea on Wednesday in response to the regime's claim of a nuclear test, including a ban on all imports from the country and the docking of North Korean ships in Japanese ports. The sanctions are expected to go into effect after they are approved by Japan's Cabinet Friday. "We will take strong countermeasures," Kyodo quoted Song Il Ho, North Korea's ambassador in charge of diplomatic normalization talks with Japan, as saying in an interview on Wednesday when asked about fresh sanctions by Japan. "The specific contents will become clear if you...
Gaza has begun its descent into all-out civil war as the economy continues to tank and no one has the political will to solve the problem. Hamas has committed summary executions of protesting government workers unhappy with the lack of pay, and Fatah has struck back with attacks of its own: As Yusuf Siam stood to greet mourners, a boy arrived with a handful of papers marked from the al-Aqsa Brigade, a Fatah-affiliated militant group, and handed them out. The letter offered condolences to the family and then vowed revenge. "For the families of the people who lost their sons at the hands of Hamas we swear that their blood will not be spilt for nothing," it said. "We will give a lesson to Hamas." There are signs that this is more serious than rhetorical rivalry between militants. "The Palestinian situation is marred by sharp divisions and battling; it is...
The French police have suffered 14 injuries a day trying to quell riots in the Muslim housing projects as the nation has started to recognize that they face an organized, armed resistance. While management says that the confrontation involves organized crime, the boots on the ground say the issue has evolved into a less secular conflict than the politicians care to acknowledge: Radical Muslims in France's housing estates are waging an undeclared "intifada," or uprising, against the police, with violent clashes injuring about 14 officers each day. As the Interior Ministry announced that nearly 2,500 officers had been wounded this year, a police union declared that its members were "in a state of civil war" with Muslims in the most depressed "banlieue" estates. Banlieue, which means outskirts, is the commonly used euphemism for the low-income housing projects heavily populated by unemployed youths of North African origin. The police union said...
After ridiculing George Bush as a unilateralist cowboy for most of his term in office, the New York Times demands more unilateralism from the White House in its editorial today. The Gray Lady wants Bush to start bypassing the United Nations on a range of issues, a rather startling 180-degree turn: Closing our eyes for another two years isn’t an answer. Washington needs to assert its leadership, no matter how tattered, on all these fronts. We suspect that cargo inspections and a cutoff of military and luxury trade will not be enough to get North Korea to back down. But having started there, Mr. Bush now needs to tell China and Russia that all future relations will be judged on how they hold the North to account. Beijing and Moscow would find it harder to say no if Mr. Bush made a clear pledge — no caveats and no fingers...
Harry Reid, stung by the AP's exposure of his complicated land deals with a lobbyist he helped make rich through his personal interventions in Congress, has told the Senate Ethics Committee that he will file amended disclosure statements that would reveal his business relationships for the first time. Reid claims the amendment would be "technical": The Senate Democratic leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, said his office contacted the Senate ethics committee on Wednesday and offered to correct his financial disclosure statements if they misrepresented his ties to a land deal in his home state in which his family made a profit of about $700,000. In a statement, Mr. Reid did not acknowledge errors in the disclosure forms but said he was ready to make a “technical correction” if the ethics committee determined that adjustments were needed. ... In 2001, the timeline showed, ownership of the land was transferred to a...
The Rightroots campaign started by a handful of conservative bloggers, including yours truly, has raised over $200,000 for the slate of candidates in competitive elections. The money will come in handy for these Republicans in their efforts to keep control of Congress with the GOP. However, time has almost run out for contributions to these campaigns, as fellow founder Wizbang! notes: You can still make a difference, but time is short. It takes time for ABC Pac and the campaigns to do the paperwork on the money that's received, so for contributions sent into Rightroots to have a chance to make an impact in this election cycle, they really should be received by October 15th. We have our deadline -- so be sure to make those final contributions before the clock runs out. Thank you for your continued support!...
October 13, 2006
The usual suspects of appeasement took center stage again last night at the UN after the US circulated a draft resolution imposing sanctions on North Korea. Russia and China objected to the use of Chapter VII language in the proposed sanctions, which could later support military action against Kim Jong-Il, but John Bolton said he would not back away from the reference this time: The American push to win Security Council backing for tough, swift sanctions against North Korea appeared to be set back by China and Russia on Thursday, in an echo of the obstacles the United States faces in a similar push to punish Iran. The United States circulated a softened draft resolution to the Security Council in response to North Korea’s assertion that it conducted a nuclear test on Monday. The United States pressed for a vote by Friday, but China and Russia immediately signaled their opposition...
Nick Gillespie of Reason's Hit and Run and Judd Legum of Think Progress joined me in another chat-room debate hosted by the Associated Press' ASAP, moderated by Otis Hart. Last week the topic was ethics, and this week we took on immigration -- and it got pretty lively. In fact, Otis had to pare down a few of the exchanges in order to stay on topic and to stay within his word-count limitations, and he did a fine job. Here's a taste of the exchange: asap: Do you think there should be a border fence dividing the U.S. and Mexico? Nick Gillespie: absolutely not. one of the great moments of the 20th century was when the berlin wall fell... one of the most disturbing of the current century -- a century of globalization and increasing integration of the world -- is a fixation on keeping mexicans out of america. Nick...
Virginia Governor Mark Warner bowed out of the 2008 presidential race yesterday, stating that he wanted to spend more time with his family rather than pursue the White House. By vacating the center, Warner has left a hole in the party's offerings -- and an opportunity for at least one Democrat to seize the moderate position: Mr. Warner, who five years ago became the first Democrat elected governor of Virginia since 1989, had drawn broad interest among party leaders assessing the potential 2008 field, both as a centrist elected in a Southern state and as a wealthy entrepreneur able to finance his own campaign. But at a news conference in Richmond and in a subsequent interview, he said he had increasingly turned against the idea of running as he found that the obligations of even exploring a candidacy were consuming him and taking him away from family obligations. He said...
I spent most of the evening last night performing some research into the various machinations of the Harry Reid real-estate transactions that netted him a 175% return on his initial $400,000 investment, and the manner in which he hid his partnership with Jay Brown from the Senate. In this research, I discovered a Los Angeles Times article from June 2003 that outlines a lot of the structure that appears to have allowed Reid to ensure his success in his real-estate ventures. Not surprisingly, it shows Reid and his family at the center of efforts to promote developments that benefitted Reid and his cronies: Over the years, Reid has used legislation to move federal land into private hands and private land into the public realm. He says he has done so to preserve scenic and environmentally sensitive areas while freeing up more land for urban growth. Such was the case with...
Kim Jong-Il has made a career lately of issuing threats and rattling sabers, but Westerners who do business in North Korea report that the populace has little inkling of war on the horizon. In fact, recent reforms have allowed capitalism to gain some momentum after the massive famine nearly leveled the nation: Western businessmen who work inside North Korea, including several from Britain, provide a very different view of the country from the goose-stepping parades and patriotic dance festivals that are its most celebrated public face. Many say that behind the military rhetoric of its relations with the United States is a country that is keen to reform itself economically and many of whose residents seem increasingly "normal" to outsiders. ... Visitors to Pyongyang report that private markets, once banned, now sell a variety of consumer items such as television sets and a wider range of food, albeit expensive, than...
The New York Sun reports that two college students decided that planting fake bombs in the subway would be a humorous way to blow off some midterm steam. New York City officials are less than amused: Police have arrested two college students for placing five fake bombs around the city's subway system as a hoax. Officials said none of the packages – including backpacks, duffel bags, and a plastic tube used to transport documents – contained hazardous material. Robert Barrett, 21, of Angola, N.Y., and Jaime Davis, 21, of Allentown, Pa., were each charged with five counts of placing a false bomb, police said. Police said the satchels were discovered September 28 between noon and 3 p.m., the day police allege they were planted. Subway passengers and transit workers reported the bags inside subway cars and various stations throughout Manhattan and Brooklyn, police sources said. At least one was reported...
Earlier this morning I wrote about Rory Reid, Harry Reid's son, and his position on the Clark County Board of Commissioners around the same time that his father's Patrick Lane LLC benefited from a zoning change that allowed commercial/retail development of their parcels. It turns out that the district Rory represents includes Patrick Lane, and the Las Vegas Review Journal noted that in an October 2004 article on the development of a new Wal-Mart. This comes from Lexis-Nexis and has no link, but the article is dated October 5, 2004 (note: CQ reader Dennis S provides this link): A controversial Wal-Mart Supercenter probably will be built on public land next to McCarran International Airport, but one county representative hopes he will score points with residents if a new soccer complex is included in the project. County Commissioner Rory Reid, who oversees the older neighborhood, sent developer Marnell Corrao Associates away...
October 14, 2006
We have heard a great deal about identity theft over the last few years, and the ever-increasing risk in the age of the Internet of having our names and credit ruined by imposters. An entire industry of cybersecurity generated from the hype. These fears crescendoed when reports of lost and stolen laptops from various federal agencies arose over the past few months, computers which held the personal data of hundreds of thousands of taxpayers. But does the problem really exist on the level claimed by the security providers and the media that reports breathlessly on identity theft? In today's Washington Post, Professor Fred Cate of Indiana University says the risk has been vastly overrated by government and industry officials. The researcher for cybersecurity says that most identity theft comes from more mundane sources: Identity theft is getting a lot of attention these days -- from news stories about missing laptops...
One of the more unfortunate and utterly predictable reactions to Pope Benedict XVI's speech at the University of Regensburg -- which called for dialogue between faiths -- was the violence, death threats, and demands for submission by Muslims worldwide. Moderate Muslims scolded the Pope for daring to criticize apparent inconsistencies in Islam, and even some Westerners who purport to uphold freedom of speech told the Pope he should have kept his mouth shut. The Muslim reaction resulted in at least one murder, a rather chilling response to a call for open and honest dialogue. After a series of apologies and clarifications, some Muslim scholars have finally answered the Pope's call. Islamica Magazine has created a panel of dozens of Islamic scholars, and they have crafted a scholarly response to the Regensburg speech: An open letter to the Pope from 38 top Muslim clerics in various countries accepts his expressions of...
On October 3rd, I posted about the coming Internet sensation for pork-barrel spending foes: FedSpending.org. The interactive database provided by OMB Watch and the Sunlight Foundation holds five years of federal spending on contracts and grants, sortable by congressional district and containing plenty of details on the projects the money supported. The data comprises six years of spending, allowing for the proper historical context. OMB Watch and the Sunlight Foundation spent a lot of time and money on this project when the Coburn-Obama federal budget database seemed very unlikely to pass, and now it serves as a benchmark for pork investigators to demand from the federal site when it launches. When I wrote the post, I had been given access to the beta site, but only on the condition that I didn't reveal any of the data -- which was really frustrating, because the site provided so many interesting nuggets...
Mitch Berg and I will be taking to the airwaves again today for the Northern Alliance Radio Network, starting at 1 pm CT on AM 1280 The Patriot. We'll be discussing the events of the past week, including Harry Reid and his land deals and the prospects of the upcoming election. If you're not in the Twin Cities, listen to the Internet stream on the station web site, and join the conversation by calling 651-289-4488....
The US says that the five permanent members of the UN Security Council have reached agreement on the final language for the resolution that will impose sanctions on North Korea. The agreement comes just before the scheduled UNSC vote: The United States, Britain and France overcame last-minute differences with Russia and China on a U.N. resolution imposing punishing sanctions on North Korea, U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said Saturday. "We are very pleased at this outcome and look forward to the council's imminent adoption of the resolution, co-sponsored by all 15 council members," U.S. Ambassador John Bolton told reporters after a brief closed council meeting. The Security Council was expected to approve the resolution unanimously Saturday afternoon. The language will have an explicit disavowal of military action, but Kim Jong-Il has said he will consider any such resolution an act of war. China's support for the sanctions might convince him otherwise....
We're a little more than three weeks out from the midterm elections, and a sense of pessimism can be sensed from the Right. It's expressed best, although briefly, by Power Line, which takes a look at the polling reports at Real Clear Politics and sees a "sea of blue". Dafydd at Big Lizards sees most of the races that give Power Line the blues as too close to call. Hugh Hewitt remains as optimistic as ever, but Hugh is an undying font of optimism anyway. I'm inclined to lean towards Dafydd's analysis, which you should read in full. The GOP will no doubt lose seats in the midterms, but I'm not sure that the Democrats have enough momentum to wrest control of either chamber. The Senate races are more of a national campaign, but the Democrats have to pick up six seats -- and they're likely going to lose New...
Guess who wants to come back to the table? North Korea wants six-party talks on the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula to continue, Deputy Russian Foreign Minister Alexander Alexeyev said Sunday following talks with his North Korean counterpart, Russia's Interfax news agency reported. "The North Korean side repeatedly insisted that the six-sided process should continue, that it is not rejecting six-sided negotiations, and that the aim of the full denuclearization of the Korean peninsula remains," Alexeyev said. He made the comments in Beijing en route to Seoul from Pyongyang, where he held talks with his North Korean counterpart Kim Ky-kwan, the news agency said. "My North Korean colleagues said several times that Pyongyang would not under any circumstances pass on its nuclear capabilities to another country, or use them against anyone," Alexeyev said. Is Kim running short on that French brandy already?...
October 15, 2006
The South Koreans have pressed for engagement with North Korea and the Kim Jong-Il regime for decades. They have protested against the American military presence in their nation and tried to appease their northern neighbor into playing nice on the peninsula. Kim's latest nuclear test appears to have finally demonstrated the folly of that approach. In less than a week, public opinion has shifted profoundly towards a hard-line policy and even arming the South with nuclear weapons: In less than a week since North Korea claimed to have tested a nuclear weapon, public opinion in the South has turned sharply against a South Korean policy of engaging the enemy in the belief it will eventually bring peace on the divided peninsula. A JoongAng newspaper poll, several days after the reported nuclear test Monday, found 78 percent of respondents thought South Korea should revise its policy, and 65 percent said South...
Harry Reid's financial shenanigans have caused a bigger stumble than he first thought. After hanging up on an AP reporter who asked about the undisclosed transaction that hid his partnership with a controversial Las Vegas attorney, Reid has sounded a much more humble tone. He now promises to cooperate with the Ethics Committee on the Patrick Lane LLC land deal that netted him a 175% profit on his six-year investment in real estate, during a time when he pushed hard for freeing federal land in Clark County to spur development. The Las Vegas Review-Journal sounds unconvinced in its editorial today: The Associated Press on Wednesday reported that our own Sen. Reid may have violated Senate rules by failing to report the 2001 transfer of land he owned "to a partnership in which he maintained a personal stake." Three years later, Sen. Reid made $700,000 when the partnership sold the real...
Whether or not one agrees with the war in Iraq, no one can dispute the courage and honor of the American citizen soldier/sailor/airman, the volunteers that serve our country and defend liberty and freedom around the world. The latest example of the selflessness that these men and women demonstrate comes from Michael Mansoor, a Navy SEAL who gave his life to save his comrades. When an Iraqi insurgent tossed a grenade into a position occupied by Mansoor and four others, Mansoor instinctively dove -- on top of it: Petty Officer 2nd Class Michael A. Monsoor had been near the only door to the rooftop structure Sept. 29 when the grenade hit him in the chest and bounced to the floor, said four SEALs who spoke to The Associated Press this week on condition of anonymity because their work requires their identities to remain secret. "He never took his eye off...
Looking decidedly un-Presidential this weekend is Hillary Clinton and her camp, after Maureen Dowd related a quote from one of the Senator's advisors that belittled John McCain for a tape his North Vietnamese captors forced him to make while a POW. The Daily News blog pointed out the quote on its site yesterday: Privately, Hillary’s camp was not overly upset by the McCain swipe because it suspected he was doing the bidding of the White House and that he ended up, as one adviser put it, “looking similar to the way he did on those captive tapes from Hanoi, where he recited the names of his crew mates.” The "McCain swipe" was McCain's reaction to Hillary blaming the North Korean nuclear test on the Bush administration. McCain pointed out that the Kim regime had been violating the Agreed Framework signed by the Clinton administration as far back as 1997 according...
The Northern Alliance Radio Network will be attending the Patriot Rally this evening in the Twin Cities. Hugh Hewitt will host an evening that intends to rally Republicans and to review the issues at stake in the mid-term elections. The Patriot will have Senator Norm Coleman as a special guest, plus the potential for a couple of surprise guests. I'll try to live-blog from the event, and I'll have the camera along with me. UPDATE, 7:30 PM: I just got a connection to the Internet here at intermission. I'm here with a lot of terrific people from the MOB, including Brad, The Lady Logician, the Buddhist Republican, and many more, including my NARN compatriots. We've just heard a great slate of Republican candidates, including Mark Kennedy, Alan Fine, and Michele Bachmann. Michele had a tremendous motivational speech reminding us of the stakes involved in the election; she's always inspirational on...
October 16, 2006
The US, fresh from its Security Council victory, has now begun to ensure it maintains its success in isolating North Korea. John Bolton told the UN that China had a "heavy responsibility" to police their joint border and inspect all shipments crossing it, while Beijing complained that those expectations are too high: In an unusual show of regional unity, Japan, South Korea, China and Russia lined up to back the US-drafted measures, which aim to punish Pyongyang for its claimed nuclear bomb test last Monday. ... China called for calm and emphasised that the UN resolution did not permit military force. Academics said Beijing is reluctant to check all cargo crossing its long land border with North Korea or to take any step that might lead to a collapse of its neighbour and an exodus of refugees. "China will carry out the decision of the security council," said Zhou Yongsheng,...
The New York Post runs a column I wrote this weekend covering the Harry Reid land deal that has exposed his murky connections to Nevada developers and the legislation that he sponsors to benefit them. Titled "Reid's Smelly Windfall: Back-$cratching With Developers", it brings a wider audience to the controversy: Reid has now told the Senate Ethics Committee that he'll amend his past disclosure statements to for the first time cover the business relationships that AP has exposed. But he calls the amendment "technical" - which suggests it won't explain why his original "disclosures" misled the public on the nature of a partnership that made him a $700,000 windfall. ... What Reid failed to disclose was his 2001 transfer of ownership of two parcels of land to Patrick Lane LLC - an entity in which he was partnered with one Jay Brown. AP notes that Brown is a lobbyist, with...
Lynne Stewarts faces sentencing today for acting as a conduit for terrorist Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, the "blind sheikh" who helped organize the first terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in 1993. She transmitted his commands to his followers while in an American prison, helping to launch a terrorist network, and Stewart got convicted for providing material support. She has spent most of the intervening time traveling the nation and speaking out against the government, claiming she did nothing wrong and that the Bush administration wanted to silence her. Now, however, the New York Sun reports that she will change her tune significantly for her sentencing hearing: The New York lawyer who was convicted of material support for terrorism after carrying messages for her client, terrorist sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, is scheduled to be sentenced today to as much as 30 years in prison. She and her allies are...
The New York Times has a new election-projection site that covers the Senate, House, and governor races from all around the country. Dan at Riehl World View points out that the Gray Lady seems to have a much different analysis than what we've seen from conventional wisdom, and that the GOP seems to be in the thick of it yet. In the Senate, the NYT shows that the GOP has 47 solid seats with two leaners: Virginia and Arizona. That might come as a surprise to Arizona Senator Jon Kyl, where he has held a solid lead on Jim Pederson the entire campaign. Rasmussen has Kyl with a double-digit lead in its last two polls. Democrats only have 40 solid seats, with eight leaners, including Minnesota. The latest MinnPoll shows Klobuchar up by over 20 points, which is laughable, and even the NYT understands that. Other leaners include Pennsylvania, Ohio,...
For decades after the end of World War II, no one dared mention the acquisition of nuclear weapons in Japan. This taboo came from having suffered the only use of nuclear weapons in wartime as well as a revulsion to any offensive military capability after the atrocities Japan perpetrated in the first half of the 20th century. However, with Kim Jong-Il rattling his own nuclear saber, the taboo has begun to lift for the Japanese: Shoichi Nakagawa, chairman of the Liberal Democratic Party's policy research council, said he believed Japan would adhere to its policy of not arming itself with nuclear weapons but added that debate over whether to go nuclear was necessary. "We need to find a way to prevent Japan from coming under attack," Nakagawa told a television program, referring to what Tokyo should do following North Korea's reported nuclear test. "There is argument that nuclear weapons are...
If the Democrats take over either or both chamber of Congress, the commitee chairs will obviously switch, in most cases to the existing ranking member of each panel. For the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, which determines tax policy, a Democratic majority would place Charles Rangel in charge. Robert Novak gives Chicago Sun-Times readers a taste of what people can expect from a Rangel-led committee: Republican-oriented tax lobbyists are interpreting late-campaign solicitations as a requirement for a ticket to enter the office of Rep. Charles Rangel as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee in a Democratic-controlled House. Both free-lance and corporate lobbyists have received telephone solicitations for Rangel's leadership PAC (political action committee), which distributes funds to Democratic congressional candidates who need them. Rangel is virtually unopposed in his Harlem district. The lobbyists, who give almost exclusively to Republicans, are told that the contribution would be ''a nice...
Reuters and a Spanish newspaper have claimed that the US has another 9/11 conspirator in custody. Mustafa Setmarian allegedly trained the 9/11 attackers in Afghanistan and helped plot the Madrid bombings, and El Pais reported yesterday that he has been transferred to US custody: A suspected Al Qaeda leader accused of being involved in the Sept. 11 attacks and planning the 2004 Madrid train bombings has been imprisoned in a secret U.S. jail for the last year, Spain's El Pais newspaper reported Sunday. Mustafa Setmarian, 48, a Syrian with Spanish citizenship, was captured in Pakistan in October 2005 and is held in a prison operated by the Central Intelligence Agency, Pakistani and European security service officials told the newspaper. ... The capture of Setmarian, the alleged founder of Al Qaeda's Spanish network, was reported in May of this year. The Spaniards would like to get their hands on Setmarian, and...
Today's sentencing of Lynne Stewart, who turned herself into a conduit for an Islamic terrorist who had already conspired to attack the United States once, demonstrates the fecklessness of pursuing terrorists through the civil courts. A federal judge sentenced Stewart to 28 months in prison for assisting Omar Abdel Rahman in activating his terrorist network while the US held him in custody -- and then temporarily released her on her own recognizance: A firebrand civil rights lawyer who has defended Black Panthers and anti-war radicals was sentenced Monday to nearly 2 1/2 years in prison — far less than the 30 years prosecutors wanted — for helping an imprisoned terrorist sheik communicate with his followers on the outside. ... The judge said Stewart was guilty of smuggling messages between her client and his followers that could have "potentially lethal consequences." He called the crimes "extraordinarily severe criminal conduct." But in...
Over the weekend, we had an opportunity to interview Rochelle Olson from the Minneapolis Star Tribune, who wrote a rather amazing article about the Republican candidate for Minnesota's Fifth Congressional District, Alan Fine, a little over a week ago. The interview exposed the thinking behind the editorial decisions of the local media, in the stories they cover and the stories they do not, and the facts they decide to publish and those they do not. We'll come back to that story in a moment. Today's Front Page Magazine article provides an example of the sins of omission in the local media on this race. Over the weekend, DFL candidate Keith Ellison attended an event sponsored by the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) in Pembroke Pines, Florida. One might wonder why a politician from Minnesota running for Congress in Minneapolis would take a weekend off less than a month before...
October 17, 2006
Rep. Curt Weldon, who had championed the investigation into the Able Danger project and had been a strident critic of the 9/11 Commission, faces a grand jury investigation into allegations of corruption involving his daughter and a Russian energy corporation. FBI agents raided the houses of his daughter and a close political ally, while Weldon insisted that the investigation was politically motivated: Federal agents raided the homes of Rep. Curt Weldon's daughter and one of his closest political supporters yesterday as part of an investigation into whether the veteran Republican congressman used his influence to benefit himself and his daughter's lobbying firm, according to sources familiar with the investigation. The investigation focuses on actions the Pennsylvania congressman took that may have aided clients of the business created by his daughter, Karen Weldon, and longtime Pennsylvania political ally Charles Sexton, according to three of the sources. ... The investigation focuses on...
Many people have derided the Republican efforts to establish tough border security and hard-line policies on illegal immigration as simple election-year rhetoric. Critics have called it fear-mongering. Democratic candidates, however, have increasingly embraced the supposedly right-wing position in this year's midterms: In Washington, the Democratic leadership in Congress has maintained a united front on immigration, demanding legislation that would legalize illegal immigrants and create a guest worker program to ensure a reliable legal flow of foreign workers. ... The vast majority of Democrats in Congress support their leadership’s call for legislation that would grant legal status to illegal immigrants and toughen border security. And politicians of all stripes go against their party leaders, on occasion, to address regional concerns. But the appearance of some candidates vying to be tougher than Republicans on border security, particularly in tight races in conservative states, shows how divisive the immigration issue remains. The tough...
Apparently, Kim Jong-Il's nuclear surprise last week didn't just upset the various democracies in the Pacific. The Australian reported yesterday that Beijing has begun to consider a move that would have outraged the world fifteen years ago, but which might get tacit support now that North Korea has gone nuclear: THE Chinese are openly debating "regime change" in Pyongyang after last week's nuclear test by their confrontational neighbour. Diplomats in Beijing said at the weekend that China and all the major US allies believed North Korea's claim that it had detonated a nuclear device. US director of national intelligence John Negroponte circulated a report that radiation had been detected at a site not far from the Chinese border. ... The balance of risk between reform and chaos dominated arguments within China's ruling elite. The Chinese have also permitted an astonishing range of vituperative internet comment about an ally with which...
Harry Reid went on offense yesterday ... of a sort. Claiming that his failure to properly disclose his partnership with Jay Brown -- an attorney with ties to a zoning-commission bribery case and reported links to organized crime -- amounted to a Republican plot to make him look dishonest, Reid filed amended disclosures five years after the fact to note the transfer of his properties into his and Brown's LLCs. His big offensive ground to a halt, though, when he revealed two other land transactions that had never been disclosed, and another mini-scandal erupted involving his use of campaign funds: Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid has been using campaign donations instead of his personal money to pay Christmas bonuses for the support staff at the Ritz-Carlton, where he lives in an upscale condominium. Federal election law bars candidates from converting political donations for personal use. Questioned about the expenditures by...
Joseph Shahda has continued his excellent work at the Free Republic forum in translating captured documents from the Iraqi government. He has taken a close look at document CMPC-2003-006758, translating it from the Arabic and revealing the intent of Iraq to attack American interests. The memo from the IIS complains about the election of "Bush the Son" and talks about the need to exhort terrorists to attack America: In the name of God the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate The Presidency of the Republic The Intelligence Service Mr: The Respectful Assistant Director of the Apparatus Operations. Subject: The New American Policy Toward Iraq Aside is a notice for the 10th Directorate and attached is a note from the respectful Mr. Director of the Apparatus on 24/3/2001 that your Excellency and the two gentlemen directors of the 4th Directorate and 10th Directorate to study in what is issued on the 10th...
Some people have begun to claim that further opposition to North Korea's nuclear weapons programs is pointless and advise acceptance and containment as an ongoing policy. That might make some sense in a vacuum, especially if no one wants to perform the tough tasks ahead in enforcing sanctions on the Kim regime. However, the AP reminds us of the stakes involved in this question, and that North Korea's defiance hasn't taken place in a vacuum at all: The head of the U.N. nuclear agency warned Monday that as many as about 30 additional countries could soon have technology that would let them produce atomic weapons "in a very short time," joining the nine states known or suspected to have such arms. Speaking at a conference on tightening controls against nuclear proliferation, International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei said more nations were "hedging their bets" by developing technology that is...
October 18, 2006
Apparently, the Left hates gays and believes that private sexual preferences belong on the front page. BlogActive, a site known for outing closeted gays in politics, now claims that Senator Larry Craig (R-ID) has engaged in homosexual activity in the bathrooms of Union Station. Michael Rogers writes: I have done extensive research into this case, including trips to the Pacific Northwest to meet with men who have say they have physical relations with the Senator. I have also met with a man here in Washington, D.C., who says the same -- and that these incidents occurred in the bathrooms of Union Station. None of these men know each other, or knew that I was talking to others. They all reported similar personal characteristics about the Senator, which lead me to believe, beyond any doubt, that their stories are valid. He'd better hope they're correct, or he will have one hell...
Alan Dershowitz, writing in the New York Sun, complains of a double standard applied by the media to him and Bill Clinton. Dershowitz elicited a wave of criticism and outrage when he argued that American law should set up a narrow exception to the laws against torture in order to allow accountability for it. However, when Bill Clinton made the exact same argument during an NPR interview, the media never bothered to report it: In a recent interview on National Public Radio, Mr. Clinton was asked, as someone "who's been there," whether the president needs "the option of authorizing torture in an extreme case." This is what he said in response: "Look, if the president needed an option, there's all sorts of things they can do.Let's take the best case, OK.You picked up someone you know is the No. 2 aide to Osama bin Laden. And you know they have...
Here in the Twin Cities, we have gotten used to the rich fantasy life of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune's Minnesota Poll. I covered the folly of the MinnPoll last July, showing that the poll has consistently and significantly underrepresented Republican support. In fact, over the last twenty years, its final analysis prior to an election has underestimated Republican support by an average of over seven points. In only one race in 20 years has the MinnPoll overestimated the Republican votes. My good friend King Banaian at SCSU Scholars dissects the problem in the latest "analysis" from the Star Tribune's polling. Earlier, they had shown DFL candidate Patty Wetterling ahead of Republican Michele Bachmann by eight points in Minnesota's 6th District, a district that had voted for Bush by 57% two years ago. How could the district have shifted that much? Apparently, it came from an exodus of men. The Star Tribune's...
Mahmoud Abbas may appoint a new Cabinet of technocrats to replace the Hamas government that has drawn economic santions from former benefactors in an attempt to get money flowing to the Palestinians. Instead of appointing politicians and faction leaders to the ministries, Abbas wants to handpick Palestinian professionals for the jobs: Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday promoted the idea of a Cabinet of technocrats as a way to ease crippling Western sanctions, but pledged not to force it on Hamas, who reacted coolly to the idea. Abbas addressed reporters for more than an hour at his headquarters in Ramallah on Tuesday evening. In his strongest endorsement yet of the technocrat idea of a Cabinet made up of professionals instead of politicians, he said it should be "considered seriously" as a way out of the current deadlock. ... The idea was endorsed earlier Tuesday by a group of academics,...
The Iranian mullahcracy has made some strange decisions regarding access to information, but if they wanted to alienate their younger generation, they may have hit on the perfect way to do so. Iran's government has banned Internet access speeds above 128 kilobytes per second, roughly equivalent to twice the speed of dial-up, in order to keep Western culture from polluting the Islamic Republic: Iran's Islamic government has opened a new front in its drive to stifle domestic political dissent and combat the influence of western culture - by banning high-speed internet links. In a blow to the country's estimated 5 million internet users, service providers have been told to restrict online speeds to 128 kilobytes a second and been forbidden from offering fast broadband packages. The move by Iran's telecommunications regulator will make it more difficult to download foreign music, films and television programmes, which the authorities blame for undermining...
Condoleezza Rice wants to make sure that the application of sanctions do not create an opportunity for unnecessary confrontation, hoping to avoid provoking North Korea into a military response. In what might be a sop to China, Rice has asked nations to inspect North Korean goods on their own territory rather than stopping shipping or attempting to bar material at a border: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will urge the countries of northeast Asia to create a strict system of radiation monitoring and inspections to prevent North Korea from smuggling nuclear materials into or out of the country, a senior State Department official said Tuesday. But in what appears to be an effort to cajole China to enforce the new United Nations sanctions against North Korea aggressively, the United States will ask the countries to focus their efforts on conducting inspections in their own territories, including ports, and on suspicious...
My radio partner Mitch Berg takes on the task of editor for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, a job that apparently became obsolete several years ago at the Twin Cities newspaper. In our interview with Rochelle Olson regarding her October 7 article on Alan Fine, the reporter declared that all of the facts that provided the proper context for Fine's arrest could not fit within the space limitation of the article. Considering that the article ran to a length of 1,214 words, this seems like such a silly argument that neither Mitch nor I could believe she used it. A newspaper leaves out key facts out of a 1200-word article because they don't fit the paper's view of the story, not because it won't fit into that kind of essay length. To give readers a sense of what that kind of space means, most of the op-ed columns I write have...
Please welcome Senator Rick Santorum as a guest blogger to Captain's Quarters. I asked the Senator to give me his analysis of his race and his look at the tone of the election. As you can see from his post, Senator Santorum responds quite clearly on all counts. He's figured out the blogging style as well, and perhaps we can get him to join us again soon. The Fight – We Must Keep It Up The debates are over, and I’m feeling great. Yet, I can’t deny that the heat is on to ensure voters understand the choice they’re making before they go to the polls in 20 days. And campaigning hard we are … yesterday I was in Philadelphia for several events and today I’ll be spending dusk ‘til dawn campaigning back home in Southwest PA. Those reading this blog hopefully understand the stakes in this year’s Election (Btw:...
Venezuela's air force will find itself a dozen planes short after Spain cancelled a sale to Hugo Chavez last night. The deal got scotched through US intervention after Washington refused to allow American technology to be transferred to Chavez: The US has stopped Spain selling 12 military aircraft to Venezuela by refusing to allow American military technology to be used in the planes. Venezuela planned to buy the aircraft from the Spanish company Eads-Casa but US determination to prevent Hugo Chávez building up his armed forces wrecked the deal, according to the deputy president, José Vicente Rangel. ... Mr Rangel said replacing the US technology with French or Israeli parts had made the €500m (£335m) deal too costly. Miguel Angel Moratinos, Spain's foreign minister, confirmed that what would have been his country's biggest arms deal was now just a sale of naval vessels. Spain had also refused to support Venezuela's...
October 19, 2006
A Florida judge exercised judicial restraint and deference to the legislature in an election ruling yesterday, but don't expect the GOP to jump with joy over it. Leon County judge Janet Ferris ruled that polling places cannot post signs explaining that Mark Foley's votes will count for Joe Negron in the midterm election November 7th: A judge on Wednesday barred election supervisors from posting signs in polling places explaining that votes cast for former Representative Mark Foley would go to the substitute candidate. The judge, Janet E. Ferris of Circuit Court in Leon County, issued her decision days before voters can begin casting ballots under the early voting system of Florida. Judge Ferris, ruling on a complaint by the Florida Democratic Party, said the Legislature had not authorized such postings in its law on replacement candidates. The law requires the original candidate’s name to be the ballot if the change...
Some have speculated that the al-Qaeda terror network has dissipated, spent after a series of attacks on Western capitals and financial centers and the American destruction of their proxy state in Afghanistan. However, security sources tell the BBC that AQ has managed to reorganize itself and reorient their strategy to make the UK their primary target -- and they're training on the home team's turf: Al-Qaeda has become more organised and sophisticated and has made Britain its top target, counter-terrorism officials have told the BBC. Security sources say the situation has never been so grim, said BBC home affairs correspondent Margaret Gilmore. They believe the network is now operating a cell structure in the UK - like the IRA did - and sees the 7 July bomb attacks "as just the beginning". The cell-structure organization is nothing new; AQ used the same organization in Europe and the US before 9/11....
Rush Limbaugh spoke at length yesterday on his show, explaining his criticism of Glenn Reynolds for the "pre-mortem" that gave the Instapundit a rare long-form post this past weekend. Rush says that his motives have been misunderstood: Now, I got a couple of e-mails I was checking here during the break from people who say, "Oh, no, Rush! Don't get in a war with conservative bloggers. If the media rips you guys apart, it's all over." I am not at war with conservative bloggers. I quote countless posts from many blogs on this program. I use them as resources. I'm referring to one blog post, and I don't even know who it is. This all got started when I cringed when I saw the use of the term "premortem" on a blog site called Insta-Pundit. It hurt me; it irritated me as much as when Tom Davis, congressman from Virginia,...
A day after Alan Dershowitz noticed a profound double standard on the debate over limited use of torture, it turns out that neither Dershowitz nor Bill Clinton represent an extreme in thinking on its use. A new BBC/PIPA study shows that a third of people worldwide believe that torture should be an option when interrogating terrorists in certain circumstances: Nearly a third of people worldwide back the use of torture in prisons in some circumstances, a BBC survey suggests. Although 59% were opposed to torture, 29% thought it acceptable to use some degree of torture to combat terrorism. While most polled in the US are against torture, opposition there is less robust than in Europe and elsewhere. More than 27,000 people in 25 countries were asked if torture was acceptable if it could provide information to save innocent lives. Some 36% of those questioned in the US agreed that this...
George Will has an excellent column in today's Washington Post that touches on the most frustrating aspect of national election coverage -- the economy. He uses a perfect phrase, "economic hypochondria", to describe the irrational gloom that pervades the coverage of a massive economic expansion: "Worst economy since Herbert Hoover," John Kerry said in 2004, while that year's growth (3.9 percent) was adding to America's gross domestic product the equivalent of the GDP of Taiwan (the 19th-largest economy). Nancy Pelosi vows that if Democrats capture Congress they will "jump-start our economy." A "jump-start " is administered to a stalled vehicle. But since the Bush tax cuts went into effect in 2003, the economy's growth rate (3.5 percent) has been better than the average for the 1980s (3.1) and 1990s (3.3). Today's unemployment rate (4.6 percent) is lower than the average for the 1990s (5.8) -- lower, in fact, than the...
October 20, 2006
A number of CQ readers pointed out a report last night in the Los Angeles Times that indicates that the House Intelligence Committee may have found the New York Times' source for their national-security scoops. An unnamed Democratic staffer to the commitee has been suspended pending an investigation: House Intelligence Chairman Peter Hoekstra has suspended a Democratic staff member because of concerns he may have leaked a high-level intelligence assessment to The New York Times last month. In a letter obtained by The Associated Press Thursday night, Rep. Ray LaHood, R-Ill., a committee member, said that an unidentified staffer requested the document from National Intelligence Director John Negroponte three days before the Sept. 23 story about its conclusions. The staffer received the National Intelligence Estimate on global terror trends on Sept. 21. "I have no credible information to say any classified information was leaked from the committee's minority staff, but...
China has begun to consider an energy embargo on North Korea, a step that almost certainly would cause the Kim regime to face serious domestic pushback in Pyongyang. If Kim does not return to the six-party talks, North Korea will start getting darker than that satellite picture making the rounds: China is prepared to step up pressure on North Korea in coming weeks by reducing oil shipments, among other measures, if the country refuses to return to negotiations or conducts more nuclear tests, Chinese government advisers and scholars who have discussed the matter with the leadership say. If Beijing does take a tougher line on its neighbor and longtime ally, the action is likely to bolster its relationship with the United States. Washington has urged Chinese leaders to use all the tools at their disposal to put additional pressure on Kim Jong-il, the North Korean leader. Among the most potent...
Israel has taken worldwide condemnation for its use of cluster munitions in the war against Hezbollah this summer. Human Rights Watch esitimated that as many as 4 million bomblets got shot ino Lebanon by the Israelis, a quarter of which have yet to be cleaned up and which cause casualties every day. However, HRW didn't disclose until yesterday that both sides used cluster munitions: The Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah fired cluster munitions during its 33-day war with Israel last summer, in strikes that caused one death and 12 injuries, according to a report released this week by the New York-based Human Rights Watch. The group expressed alarm over the rising supply of these controversial weapons to non-state armed groups. "We are disturbed to discover that not only Israel but also Hezbollah used cluster munitions in the recent conflict, at a time when many countries are turning away from this kind...
One of the Republican nightmares of these midterm elections can be expressed in two words: Speaker Pelosi. If the GOP loses control of the House, Nancy Pelosi would move from Minority Leader to the Speaker's chair, and assume the third position in line of succession to the Presidency. Republican candidates have spoken about the need to keep the San Francisco Leftist from that position and hope to inspire conservatives to turn out on Election Day to prevent it. However, the Washington Times reports that Democrats might not elect Pelosi as Speaker if they gain a thin majority: Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's prospects for becoming the nation's first female House speaker depend not only on a Democratic victory in November but also on her ability to prevent any Democrats from voting against her -- primarily centrists opposed to her liberal stances. At least one Democratic House candidate has pledged not to...
Keith Ellison, the DFL candidate for Minnesota's Fifth Congressional District, has had his connections to CAIR and to the Nation of Islam criticized on Twin Cities blogs such as mine and especially Power Line, and CAIR's executives have had enough. The Minneapolis Star Tribune, which has done nothing to cover Ellison's connections to both groups, runs an op-ed piece by CAIR executive director Nihad Awad and CAIR board chair Parvez Ahmed that basically calls us racists: There has been much sound and fury in certain circles about the American Muslim community's support for Keith Ellison and his campaign to represent Minnesota's Fifth Congressional District. A handful of right-wing bloggers, agenda-driven commentators and political operatives have used scurrilous smear tactics in an attempt to derail his campaign and to marginalize American Muslim voters. These smears and distortions send an un-American message of intolerance and bigotry. We are proud of our personal...
Many CQ readers know that the First Mate and I volunteer our time at Twin Cities Marriage Encounter, both as the president couple of the board and as weekend facilitators. This weekend, we will help stage an Engaged Encounter for affianced couples looking for a head start on communication skills. We've not done a weekend in over a year due to our health problems, but we felt that the shorter EE weekend format would work well for us. That means that I will not be blogging again until Sunday, although I may unleash a prepared essay on Saturday just to keep things lively. However, I want to make sure that the CQ community doesn't miss a beat, so I have invited one of my favorite bloggers to take over the ship in my absence. The Anchoress excels at long-form political essays, analysis, and Catholic theology. Most CQ readers probably already...
Earlier this week, Glenn Reynolds posted a "pre-mortem" analysis on the GOP and why they may have trouble motivating voters to the polls. Many criticized Glenn for engaging in defeatism (and not just Glenn), but many do not realize that Glenn has never been much of a Republican. He's more a thinking Libertarian -- what Jon Henke calls neo-Libertarians -- who has voted with the GOP because of their strong national-security stance. I've been reading Glenn for years and understood that, but can also understand those who lacked that context for their reactions to his long post. Those who faulted him for his early analysis might want to take a look at Glenn's latest on the subject. He voted through an early-voting effort in Tennessee, and of course the big race for Volunteers is the election to replace the retiring Bill Frist. Glenn had interviewed Harold Ford and offered praise...
October 21, 2006
I recall in the film Jerry Maguire, Cuba Gooding Jr's character talked about "having the Quan," which had something to do with self-confidence and positive thinking. I however, have the Conn - thanks to the good Captain, Ed Morrissey. This apparently means I am at the helm of his fine vessel. Now that I'm here, I don't know what the man was thinking! I don't know a rudder from a...you know, the thing that shifts a sail? Ah, well. Expect no sea-faring metaphors for this weekend. Ed has graciously handed over control of Captains Quarters Blog to yours truly until sometime Sunday. I was very thrilled and flattered to be asked by Ed to do some guest posting for him while he and his First Mate go help young couples find their sea-legs on an Engaged Encounter Weekend. Ed is my first and favorite Blogfather, a first-rate writer and researcher,...
I wrote this earlier in the week and teed it up for the weekend. As long-time CQ readers know, my nickname came from my love of the various incarnations of Star Trek. It started in the 1970s, when I started watching the original series on re-runs, which inexplicably drove my father (the Admiral Emeritus) up the wall, considering he spent almost 30 years of his life working on the space program (Gemini, Apollo, and the Shuttle). I cheered when the movies came out, grew addicted all over again with The Next Generation, and finally ran out of enthusiasm somewhere in the middle of Deep Space Nine. I never attended the conventions, for a variety of reasons, and now catch a rerun or two occasionally. Even when the various shows were must-see for me, though, I always had some discomfort with the future that ST presented, especially on The Next Generation....
Peggy Noonan wrote a column in this week's WSJ that touched on the artlessness of our current crop of politicos, none of whom seem to posess the deft and graceful footwork of presidents and legislators of the past. She wrote: The dance is where you see the joy of the joust. It's a gifted pro making his moves. It's a moment of humor, wit or merriness on the trail; it's the clever jab or the unexpected line that flips an argument. It's a thing in itself and is so much itself, so distinctive, that whether you are left, right or center, red team or blue, you can look at the moves of a guy on the other side and say with honest admiration: "Man, that was good." FDR, of course, could dance. He gets caught breaking a vow he'd made in Philadelphia when first running for president. What to do?...
The headline is deplorable (she deserves to be named) but I knew immediately that they were writing about the great Oriana Fallaci, here: Atheist gifts pontifical school in will An Italian journalist and self-described atheist who died last month has left most of her books and notes to a pontifical university in Rome because of her admiration for Pope Benedict XVI, a school official said Saturday. Oriana Fallaci had described the pontiff as an ally in her campaign to rally Christians in Europe against what she saw as a Muslim crusade against the West. As she battled breast cancer last year, she had a private audience with Benedict... In one of her final interviews, Fallaci told The Wall Street Journal: "I am an atheist, and if an atheist and a pope think the same things, there must be something true." You'll want to read the whole article, it's pretty good....
Ah, here's the stuff! Someone has uploaded the chilling Commandatore scene of from the 2000 Metropolitan performance of Don Giovanni, with Bryn Terfel as Giovanni, the wonderful Ferruccio Furlanetto as Leporello and Sergei Koptchak as the Commandatore. Some might be familiar with this scene as it was depicted in Milos Foreman's film, Amadeus. This is the part wherein the evil and unrepentant rakehell/rapist/murderer Don Giovanni, having flippantly invited the ghostly statue of the Commandatore (whom he had killed in the opening scene, after trying to rape his daughter) to sup, finds the statue has accepted. The chilling being is an entity Giovanni can neither charm nor best, and it challenges Don Giovanni to face up to his life, repent of his sins and embrace his last chance for salvation. I don't know how the good Captain feels about embedding stuff from youtube, so the link is here. Don Giovanni...