Captain's Quarters -

A man who bragged about becoming a provocateur now claims victimization when he fulfilled the promises he made on his website. Mike Stark, a liberal blogger and a law student, tried to rush George Allen and yelled a question about Allen purportedly spitting on his first wife. Hot Air posted the video last night, and the AP reports on his intentions:

Mike Stark, a liberal blogger and first-year University of Virginia law student, approached Allen at an event in Charlottesville, loudly asking, "Why did you spit at your first wife, George?" according to witnesses.

Three men, all wearing blue Allen lapel stickers, immediately grabbed Stark, dragged him backward and slung him to the carpet outside a hotel meeting room, according to video captured by WVIR-TV in Charlottesville.

Allen's campaign said in a news release that Stark "aggressively went after Senator Allen ... screaming that he answer inappropriate questions." ...

In a Monday posting on "Calling All Wingnuts," the blog Stark publishes, he hinted that he would attempt to provoke Allen before the TV cameras.

"Im also trying to `Roger and Me' George Allen whenever I can," Stark wrote, referring to director Michael Moore's 1989 documentary in which he repeatedly tried to confront former General Motors' chief executive Roger Smith about the company's downsizing.

Given American political history, someone who rushes up and onto the backs of campaign workers while yelling at a candidate is going to get screened off, and that's exactly what the men tried to do with Stark. He tried to push his way past them, and that's when they shoved him away, tackling him when he tried to push through them again, shouting at Allen all the while.

And what was so important? Stark wanted to know if Allen had ever spit on his first wife.

Oh, puh-leeeeeeze. Obviously, Stark has an excellent career ahead of him chasing ambulances and advertising for slip-and-fall con artists on late-night television. I guess the Left thinks that they need to defend the honor of Allen's ex-wife, and that the 22-year-old divorce somehow has relevance to the Senate campaign.

Allen's ex-wife does not agree:

Allen's former wife, Anne Waddell, issued a statement calling Stark's question "a baseless, cheap shot."

Waddell, who lives in California, said she and Allen divorced more than 22 years ago, and because it was a personal matter they sealed the divorce records.

Jon Henke has a few links to Stark's posts at Daily Kos at the AllenHQ blog. It seems very clear that Stark has nothing better to offer Virginians than childish taunts and personal attacks, just the kind of electoral tactics that Virginians have witnessed in abundance in this cycle. Stark wants to emulate Michael Moore, but at least in Roger and Me, Moore had a reasonable motivation; he wanted to confront Roger Smith about factory closures in Flint that put a lot of people out of work. Stark wants to know about marital spittle.

This would be a great parody of Leftist activism, if Stark hadn't actually done it. Virginians can look at this and determine which party they believe represents them best. If it's the Marital Spittle Party, then apparently James Webb is the candidate. Otherwise, Virginians may want to stick with George Allen and the Republicans.

The Bush administration found vindication yesterday when North Korea agreed to return to six-party talks without any concessions from the US. The news of Kim Jong-Il's capitulation came through China, whose influence undoubtedly led to the breakthrough:

North Korea agreed Tuesday to resume nuclear disarmament talks, a first sign of easing tensions since the country’s nuclear test this month. But the talks have dragged on inconclusively for three years, and the chances for rolling back the country’s now-proven nuclear capability remained uncertain.

China announced that six-nation talks would reconvene shortly after a hiatus of more than a year, and an American envoy in Beijing said they could take place in November or December.

The agreement was a procedural victory for Beijing, which scrambled to reopen a diplomatic channel even as it joined the United States and other international powers in supporting United Nations sanctions on North Korea after the Oct. 9 test.

But Kim Jong-il, the North Korean leader, has participated in multiple rounds of talks over the past several years while he accelerated his pursuit of nuclear weapons, and some analysts suspect that he agreed to restart talks now to forestall tough enforcement of sanctions and to persuade China and South Korea to ease his government’s growing economic woes.

The New York Times tries throwing a lot of cold water on this diplomatic victory, but it's undeniable. Critics of the Bush administration had called for the US to lift sanctions on Pyongyang's banking activities after Kim started massively counterfeiting US currency, and to agree to bilateral talks.

The White House refused on both counts. Kim has pumped as much as a billion dollars in fake $100 bills into the world market in its desperate attempt to create hard-currency stocks for themselves, so we're unlikely to avert our eyes while he compounds the dilution of our money. And as to bilateral talks, none of the critics have answered Bush's question: what could North Korea request in bilateral talks that they could not in the six-party regional talks?

With Japan, South Korea, China, and Russia, the Bush administration has a diplomatic and economic encirclement of Kim that actually could crush him. Without engaging the regional players, Kim would be able to taunt us without fear of consequences. After all, we don't trade with Kim now, and he knows we will not start a new war with him. He had no risk in bilateral talks. But that wasn't true with China and Russia, both of which keep Kim afloat, especially China. He went too far over the past few months, embarrassing Beijing and making them look impotent -- and the Chinese must have cracked the whip good the past two weeks, looking at the results.

The Bush administration still has a long road to travel with North Korea. The US needs to stay firm on verifiable disarmament, a concept not robustly pursued in the Agreed Framework, and that will require some intrusive inspections. If given with the appropriate incentives, the multilateral negotations could result in the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. It could also result in more game-playing by Kim, which is why verification plays such a critical role in the negotiations.

However, people need to recognize that we would not have any leverage at all had the Bush administration taken advice from its critics. Bush knew he needed sufficient leverage to get North Korean compliance, and he didn't see the point in making useless gestures to a tinpot dictator just to get a few decent headlines in the American press. It's called leadership, and Bush just provided a clear example.

U2's Bono has made a name for himself as an anti-poverty activist, traveling the world to get Western governments to reduce barriers to trade with poverty-stricken African nations and demanding large outlays of aid to these same nations. He has argued that the wealthiest nations have shared little of their largesse with those in need. Bono has actively worked with political players of all ideologies to get a bigger financial commitment to end world hunger.

It's somewhat ironic, as Timothy Noah points out in Slate, that Bono and his bandmates have decided to relocate their publishing business to avoid paying taxes:

A familiar paradox about leftist celebrities in the entertainment industry is that their embrace of progressivism almost never includes a wholehearted embrace of progressive taxation, i.e., the principle that the richer you get, the larger the percentage of your income you ought to pay in taxes. The latest example is U2's Bono, a committed and unusually sophisticated anti-poverty crusader who is taking surprisingly little heat for the decision by his band, U2, to relocate its music-publishing business from Ireland to the Netherlands in order to shelter its songwriting royalties from taxation. ...

"Preventing the poorest of the poor from selling their products while we sing the virtues of the free market … that's a justice issue," Bono said at a prayer breakfast attended by President Bush, Jordan's King Abdullah, and various members of Congress earlier this year. Preaching this sort of thing has made Bono a perennial candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize. He continued:

Holding children to ransom for the debts of their grandparents ... that's a justice issue. Withholding life-saving medicines out of deference to the Office of Patents ... that's a justice issue.

And relocating your business offshore in order to avoid paying taxes to the Republic of Ireland, where poverty is higher than in almost any other developed nation? Bono's hypocrisy seems even more naked when you consider that Ireland is a tax haven for artists.

Well, it used to be a tax haven. Perhaps tired of having the highest poverty rate in the developed world, Ireland put a cap on tax-free income for artists at a reasonable level of $319,000. Within months, U2 had relocated to the Netherlands, which has a more favorable tax climate.

Conservatives at this point might say, "So what?" After all, we insist that lower taxes creates wealth by keeping the money in the hands of people who can create jobs and invest in new businesses. Creating new taxes, as Ireland did, will probably kill investments and lead to greater poverty, not less. All of this is true. However, Bono has made it his mission to get governments to spend the same tax dollars on aid that his band now wants to avoid paying -- more than just a minor bit of hypocrisy.

We're all for lower taxes, and we applaud people who find ways to legally structure their finances in order to minimize their tax burden. However, when these same people then transform into scolds of Western civilization for selfishness and demand that government confiscates more money in order to transfer wealth to corrupt and dictatorial states abroad, their credibility rightly suffers.

Over the last few weeks, I have pointed out that the man Nancy Pelosi wants to head the House Intelligence Committee if the Democrats win control of the House, Alcee Hastings, got impeached and removed for corruption from the federal bench by a Democratic Congress twenty years ago. For a potential Speaker who likes to talk about "draining the swamp" of Republican corruption, giving a disgraced judge the gavel to a committee critical to national security seems not just strange but dangerous in a time of war. However, Ruth Marcus tells a story in her Washington Post column today that explains Pelosi's enthusiasm for Hastings:

The evidence against Hastings is circumstantial, but it's too much to explain away: a suspicious pattern of telephone calls between Hastings and Borders at key moments in the case; Borders's apparent insider knowledge of developments in the criminal case; Hastings's appearance at a Miami hotel, as promised by Borders as a signal that the judge had agreed to the payoff; a cryptic telephone conversation between the two men that appears to be a coded discussion of the bribe arrangement.

Consider: Hastings, a federal judge, gets word from Borders's lawyer that Borders has been arrested for conspiring to bribe him and that the FBI wants to interview him. Instead of calling the FBI agents whose names and numbers he's been given, Hastings leaves his hotel without checking out and heads to the airport outside Baltimore instead of National, where there's an earlier flight. At BWI, Hastings calls his girlfriend, has her call him back at a different pay phone, then asks her to leave the house to call him from a pay phone, then calls her back from a different pay phone. He doesn't speak to the FBI until they track him down at the girlfriend's house later that night.

So that's why Pelosi wants him to lead Intelligence -- he has so much experience at clandestine work!

Marcus scolds Pelosi in her column for allowing Hastings to gain control of the key House panel for nothing more than venal political gain within her party. Marcus covered the trials of Hastings, and although the criminal trial resulted in an acquittal, she strongly believes that the judicial review panel and the Democratic-controlled House and Senate reached the correct conclusion. She reminds readers that the other figure in the case, William Borders, went to prison for the bribery scheme, and also refused to testify to Congress, earning him more time behind bars.

And why is Pelosi so dead set on Hastings? Marcus confirms what I wrote earlier; the Congressional Black Caucus will not support her for the speakership if she doesn't select Hastings. Jane Harman, the current ranking member of the committee, got that slot from Pelosi when the Minority Leader reinstated her seniority and passed over Sanford Bishop, another black representative. They want the same thing done now for Hastings in reverse, regardless of his past corruption, and Pelosi doesn't have the moral courage to refuse them.

The CBC's spokesperson told the Post that its first order of business is to protect its members. Apparently, that takes precedence over protecting America, and the CBC views Intel as just another means to divide spoils. They also insist that Hastings has the knowledge and the experience in intelligence work. If they're referring to his clandestine work, they certainly have a point.

This is what a Democratic majority will bring.

John Kerry may have some spare time to spend with the family. After his ridiculous comments on Monday and the equally ridiculous explanation on Tuesday, Iowa Congressional candidate Bruce Braley has asked Kerry to stay away from their scheduled campaign appearance this week:

A Democratic Congressional candidate from Iowa is canceling a campaign event later this week with Senator John Kerry.

Bruc[e] Braley says Kerry's recent comments about the Iraq war were inappropriate.

Braley is running against Republican Mike Whalen in Iowa's First District congressional race. It's a contest considered to be one of the most competitive House races in the country.

Will we see more of this? Kerry has scheduled events here in Minnesota for Tim Walz and a party-building event for the DFL (Minnesota's Democrats) today. Tonight he goes to Pennsylvania to campaign for Bob Casey, Jr, and the Braley campaign event was scheduled for tomorrow.

Will Walz withdraw his invitation to Kerry as well? Will Casey?

UPDATE: I'm still pretty torn on this controversy. Had Kerry simply come out yesterday and said, Whoops, my bad -- I left out a couple of key words from the punchline and left the wrong impression -- my apologies!, I think the entire story would have died immediately. However, in his typically tone-deaf manner, he decided to brand the entire incident a Republican smear, despite the fact that he had been quoted accurately.

Now he's left with the argument that he misquoted himself while trying to show off his supposed intellectual superiority over George Bush, and that it's all Bush's fault despite being Kerry's intellectual inferior. Really, no one could have scripted a more hilarious scenario, and the longer Kerry continues this line of defense/offense, the more ridiculous a figure he becomes. It demonstrates clearly that the "I was for the $87 billion before I was against it" gaffe was no fluke.

UPDATE II: Kerry won't be campaigning with Tim Walz or the DFL, either. The AP reports that Kerry has canceled all of his Minnesota visits:

U.S. Sen. John Kerry canceled a campaign visit here in the wake of a controversy over remarks he made about students and the war in Iraq, according to a spokeswoman for congressional candidate Tim Walz.

"He wants to make sure the campaign is about the issues we've been talking about the last two years," the spokeswoman, Meredith Salsbery, said of Kerry's decision. "It's important to him that we are able to do that."

Kerry was to appear at 11 a.m. Wednesday at Minnesota State, Mankato, with 1st Congressional District candidate Tim Walz. Walz will still appear at the event, Salsbery said. Walz is trying to unseat U.S. Rep. Gil Gutknecht, R-Minn.

This seems out of character with Kerry's professed passion for fighting back against Republican smears. Perhaps other Democrats managed to talk some sense into Kerry overnight.

Iran has offered a premium to travel agents to induce Americans to visit the mullahcracy that routinely calls our country the Great Satan. Every American delivered to Iran will gain agents $20 cash:

Iran will offer cash incentives to travel agencies to encourage Western tourists to visit the country, giving a premium for Americans, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.

The Islamic republic's political leadership has been trying to reach out to ordinary Americans to show that a standoff over Iran's nuclear ambitions is with the Bush administration -- not U.S. citizens.

The latest initiative comes as the United Nations Security Council deliberates a draft resolution that would impose sanctions on Iran for its disputed nuclear program.

"Iran's tourism department will pay $20 per person to those who attract European or American tourists to the country," the agency on Tuesday quoted Mohammed Sharif Malakzadeh, deputy head of the department, as saying.

Visitors from other countries would earn travel agents $10 per tourist, Malakzadeh said.

What would Americans do in the Islamic Republic -- visit the Teheran embassy where Ahmadinejad and his cohorts kidnapped and held hostage dozens of Americans? Take a tour of the new nuclear power plants? Act as human shields?

This seems as silly as the notion of direct flights between Iran and the US. We do not want to engage Iran economically while they threaten Israel with destruction and develop nuclear weapons. We want them to stop both and end their support for Islamist terrorism. Until they start acting responsibly, direct flights and tourist trade should not exist. Americans inclined to visit a country that reviles us as demons and holds seminars on a world free of the same people whose tourist dollars they now crave should really have their heads examined.

John Kerry has issued an apology, a day after insisting he would never apologize for his joke about George Bush (if you can read his mind) or American troops (if you quote him accurately). Here's the statement in its entirety:

As a combat veteran, I want to make it clear to anyone in uniform and to their loved ones: my poorly stated joke at a rally was not about, and never intended to refer to any troop.

I sincerely regret that my words were misinterpreted to wrongly imply anything negative about those in uniform, and I personally apologize to any service member, family member, or American who was offended.

It is clear the Republican Party would rather talk about anything but their failed security policy. I don’t want my verbal slip to be a diversion from the real issues. I will continue to fight for a change of course to provide real security for our country, and a winning strategy for our troops.

Well, at least he said something, but this is hardly an expression of regret. His statement wasn't misinterpreted; even he admits that he issued a "poorly stated joke", which means Kerry failed to either write it clearly or read it properly. It's the non-apology apology that politicians have accustomed themselves to making when they've thoroughly embarrassed their colleagues -- and Democrats today made their displeasure known.

As it is, I'm inclined to believe that he meant to slam Bush, but screwed up the words. However, the words as he delivered them communicated something completely different, and he still won't acknowledge his responsibility for his own failure. Other politicians would likely have received some benefit of the doubt, but Kerry's track record of criticism for military personnel under fire added to the perception that he was at it again, another point Kerry refuses to acknowledge.

He can't have it both ways. He can't argue that Republicans are intellectually inferior and then blame them for not reading his mind. He can't admit he botched the joke and then get mad when his words get interpreted in some manner other than he intended. Kerry's insistence that the entire episode was nothing more than a Republican smear campaign ignores that no one paid much attention to him in this election cycle, and that a grand conspiracy against Democrats this year would have been pretty unlikely to target a Senator who isn't running for re-election for another two years.

As it is, though, the story's over. It made for some interesting fireworks, but it won't do much to move the needle in either direction this year. The only benefit that will come from it is that we can all be spared the specter of another Kerry presidential run in 2008, a benefit that will be enjoyed by both political parties. Republicans will be better served getting back to the economy and national security, and let Kerry huff and puff his way back to oblivion. With only five campaigning days before the election, the GOP has little enough time to push its message.

The Washington Examiner runs my new Blog Board column today on the transformation of American politics by Ronald Reagan. I touched on this a few days ago and extended my thoughts for the Examiner column:

After an economically and politically disastrous decade, Ronald Reagan won election and immediately began changing the paradigm.

He insisted that government created more problems than it solves and that the power of free markets would always outperform government agencies in creating economic opportunity. His policies transformed the American economy and began a massive growth cycle that has continued with only occasional lulls ever since.

During his time, Reagan received plenty of criticism for his view of government.

Now, however, it appears that the message has finally become accepted wisdom. CNN shows that a majority of Americans believe that government tries to do too much, even now, while only 37 percent believe it does not do enough. The liberal paradigm of Big Government solutions appears to have dissipated among the electorate.

The Reagan legacy will, I believe, only grow in wisdom and influence in the coming years.

If anyone wants to know why Air America can't hack it financially, a read of Jackie Guerra's op-ed piece at ABC News will demonstrate the network's intellectual bankruptcy. Guerra, who hosts the "Workin' It" show on the network, repeats the debunked claim that minorities and the poor are overrepresented in the military:

Serving our country in the military is a great service, one which we all admire and revere, but it's more than that. It's also a job.

And it's a job that many Americans sign up for not only out of a sense of patriotic duty, but also because it often seems the best of few options.

As a Mexican-American from Los Angeles, I find it especially meaningful that Kerry's comments came at Pasadena City College, just a few miles from the high schools of East Los Angeles, where on many campuses, military recruiters outnumber guidance counselors 5-1.

At high schools like these across the country, inner-city and rural students, often from communities of color but almost always poor, do not have many options in George Bush's America.

The former star of WB's "First Time Out" -- which we know because Guerra tells us -- tries to hail John Kerry for his message supporting this contention even as she claims he didn't say it, which is bad enough. However, she is also dead wrong on the facts. If anything, the poor are underrepresented in today's military, as the Heritage Foundation's Tim Kane determined in his extensive analysis last year. Kane reviewed recruiting data for the years 2003-5 and found out that the military attracts mostly middle-class young men and women:

In summary, the additional years of recruit data (2004–2005) sup­port the previous finding that U.S. military recruits are more similar than dissimilar to the American youth population. The slight dif­ferences are that wartime U.S. mil­itary enlistees are better educated, wealthier, and more rural on aver­age than their civilian peers.

Recruits have a higher percent­age of high school graduates and representation from Southern and rural areas. No evidence indicates exploitation of racial minorities (either by race or by race-weighted ZIP code areas). Finally, the distri­bution of household income of recruits is noticeably higher than that of the entire youth population. ...

By assigning each recruit the median 1999 household income for his hometown ZIP code as deter­mined from Census 2000, the mean income for 2004 recruits was $43,122 (in 1999 dollars). For 2005 recruits, it was $43,238 (in 1999 dol­lars). These are increases over the mean incomes for the 1999 cohort ($41,141) and 2003 cohort ($42,822). The national median published in Cen­sus 2000 was $41,994. This indicates that, on aver­age, the 2004 and 2005 recruit populations come from even wealthier areas than their peers who enlisted in 1999 and 2003.

When comparing these wartime recruits (2003– 2005) to the resident population ages 18–24 (as recorded in Census 2000), areas with median household income levels between $35,000 and $79,999 were overrepresented, along with income categories between $85,000 and $94,999. (See Chart 2.) Though the mainstream media continue to portray the war in Iraq as unpopular, this evi­dence suggests that the United States is not sending the poor to die for the interests of the rich.

Guerra wants to pursue the tired stereotype of the military during the draft, a dynamic that disappeared along with compulsory service. During the Vietnam War, college deferments did create a disparity in induction, for an obvious reason: rich and upper-middle-class people could afford to send their young men to college. The disparity caused great resentment (which lingers to this day), and put pressure on the government to end the draft altogether.

As Kane reveals, the policy change made a huge difference in the composition of the military. It not only represents the best of America in terms of the honor and courage of its members, but also represents America demographically.

Guerra misses an important point about the economy with her mindless regurgitation of ancient leftists tropes, too -- the poor do have more choices. Unemployment has hit historic lows, and job creation has exploded over the last three years. She claims that people have few opportunities in "George Bush's America", but the truth is that in many areas, employers have a hard time filling positions for lack of applicants. And that fact can be seen in the underrepresentation of the poor in the military, because if the choices were really that limited and "militry recruiters outnumber guidance counselors by 5-1", we would see a lot more of the poor flooding into the military, and it just isn't happening.

Guerra's entire piece consists of fact-deficient allegations and baseless analysis, and the core of her argument is easily refuted by the specific data. Why does she then insist on denying reality in nationwide opinion pieces? Because that's apparently the Air America business plan -- which explains their financial bankruptcy.

Iran bribed Hamas and Khaled Mashaal in order to convince them to renege on their agreement to release Gilad Shalit, the London Telegraph reports. Israel accused Teheran of paying Hamas and Mashaal 30 million pounds, and have filed an official complaint at the UN:

Israel has accused Iran of scuppering attempts to win the release of Gilad Shalit, the Israeli corporal captured by Palestinian militants near Gaza, by paying the militant Palestinian Islamic group Hamas £30 million not to agree to a prisoner exchange.

Dan Gillerman, Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, said Teheran paid Khaled Meshaal, the hard-line Hamas leader who lives as an exile in Damascus, to ruin any chance of a negotiated settlement to this summer's Gaza crisis. "The Iranians paid him £30 million in order to avert and sabotage an imminent release," the ambassador said in New York.

"I informed the Security Council of news that we received, that we have every reason to believe that the Iranian regime has bribed Khaled Meshaal. I believe that the Security Council is worried about this and I hope that these worries will be translated into action very swiftly." Negotiations brokered by Egypt's intelligence chief appeared to be moving towards a deal two months ago that would have seen Cpl Shalit exchanged for around 1,000 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails, only to collapse suddenly.

Egypt certainly expected Hamas to honor the agreement that would have traded Shalit for 1,000 Palestinian prisoners. They made their displeasure known publicly, an unusual step for Cairo when brokering agreements between the Palestinians and Israel. The collapse of the deal embarrassed Egypt, but their concerns lie with the deteriorating situation in Gaza. Hosni Mubarak wants Israel out of Gaza and the political situation to stabilize so that the border becomes less of a liability for Egypt.

Apparently, Iran wants something else entirely. The mullahcracy must see opportunity in the chaos -- an opportunity to spread the radical Islamism of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The 30 million pounds will buy a lot of weapons for Hamas, as well as more influence in the territories.

Unfortunately, the UN will not likely do much to address Israel's complaint. So far, the Security Council has shown great reluctance to stop Iran from arming itself with nuclear weapons. It's not going to break a sweat over a kidnapped Israeli soldier.

The battle between Venezuela and Guatemala for the Latin American seat on the UN Security Council has finally ended. The winner is ... Panama?

Venezuela and Guatemala have withdrawn their rival bids for a UN Security Council seat from Latin America, diplomats have said.

They say the move opens the way for Panama to take the non-permanent seat.

Nearly 50 rounds of voting failed to resolve the contest between Guatemala and Venezuela. ...

"The two foreign ministers have agreed on two issues," said Ecuador's UN ambassador Diego Cordovez, who was a mediator during the talks.

"Both will withdraw their candidacy to the Security Council, and second, Panama will be the country that the three of us will present to the [Latin American] group" to represent the region, Mr Cordovez said.

Panama seems like a surprise. Some had speculated that Costa Rica might get the nod; Venezuela wanted Bolivia and its new leftist regime, but Guatemala refused. When word of negotiations leaked out, Venezuela denied that it would withdraw from the contest. Apparently, that changed after 47 ballots showed that Hugo Chavez would not get his UNSC seat from which to pester the Bush administration.

The Central American nation has remained on good terms with the United States and should be expected to remain open to American concerns. The Panamanians join a freshman class that does not look as though it will create more problems for the US at the UNSC. The new seats went to Italy, Belgium, South Africa, and Indonesia. The latter, with its increasingly questionable commitment to security, may pose some problems before long. None of them have the potential for the frequently dramatic and ridiculous antics of Hugo Chavez, and for that the US -- and the world -- should be grateful.

Various left-wing bloggers voiced their outrage when blogger/activist Mike Stark got leveled after trying to push his way through to George Allen at a hotel this week. CNN video showed Stark trying to get around campaign staffers to shout at Allen about spitting on his first wife, a charge Allen's former spouse denied and called "baseless". The same staffers tossed Stark to the ground when he refused to back away, prompting accusations of goonery by Allen's campaign.

However, a series of photographs from the event by the Fredericksburg Free-Lance Star shows that Allen's staff had good reason to worry about Stark. He assaulted one staffer in his attempt to get to Allen, something that the CNN cameras wouldn't have caught. Here's a slideshow of Stark's actions before the confrontation that everyone saw on the video (see update below).

Very obviously, Stark had become violent before the altercation we saw on CNN. The staffers afterwards closed ranks around Allen to keep Stark from committing violence against the Senator, and when he continued to push and shove, they physically removed him from the scene. The CNN video provided plenty of justification for the concerns of Allen's staff, and these pictures show that they acted rationally to Stark's irrational behavior.

Nor is that the only smear going on this week in America's dirtiest campaign. Dan Riehl notices a strange allegation by Frank Schaeffer in today's Dallas News. Schaeffer claims that Alen's campaign sent out a broadcast e-mail that called James Webb a "perverted pedophile", and he's leaving the Republican Party as a result.

Now, I have already written about what a mistake Novelgate was, but I've been on the Allen campaign's e-mail list since Day 1, and I never saw anything like this. Neither has Dan Riehl. Dan wonders whether someone sent a hoax e-mail to Schaeffer, or whether Schaeffer has decided to hoax everyone himself; I don't believe the latter could be true, so I'm inclined to believe the former. If someone who supports Allen and has signed up for their e-mail broadcasts has received this e-mail, let me know, but this looks like a last-minute attempt to manipulate voters.

Allen has made mistakes in this campaign, but the Democrats have been nothing short of vicious. They've attacked Allen's mother, they've tried to pry open his divorce records, and they've tried to imply that a couple of summonses for minor infractions amounted to a secret arrest record from 30 years ago. The Democrats have done everything in Virginia except talk about the issues, and that should inform Virginians of what their votes will endorse next Tuesday. I believe Virginians are too smart to support these kinds of electoral tactics, and they will make the right choice -- to return George Allen to the Senate and James Webb to the private sector.

UPDATE: If you came here expecting to see the slideshow, I had to take it down. The Free Lance-Star sent me an e-mail earlier today demanding that I stop using the photographs. Fair enough -- the pictures belong to them, and I didn't think they would object. Just follow the link and look at the first eight pictures in the string.

The US wants to put an American general in charge of United Nations peacekeeping efforts in the Ban Ki Moon administration, the Times of London reports. The French general currently leading the efforts will retire from the position when Kofi Annan steps down, and the Americans want to protect their investment:

The US is in a strong position to get the top peacekeeping job — currently held by a Frenchman — because of its decisive support in electing Ban Ki Moon, the South Korean Foreign Minister, as the next UN Secretary-General.

Mr Ban, who takes over on January 1, is setting up a transition team to select his top officials and is coming under heavy pressure from the big powers to appoint their favourites to key posts.

The Bush Administration is said to want to name a general to the UN post. “What they want is somebody who knows about peacekeeping and who is a good manager, and they think a general is a good manager,” one UN source said.

A US official confirmed yesterday that the Bush Administration was seeking the UN’s top peacekeeping post. The US only has 335 peacekeepers and 330 civilians serving with UN missions around the world, with the largest deployment being 239 police officers in Kosovo and 48 police officers in Haiti.

But Washington pays 26 per cent of the surging UN peacekeeping budget, which could rise from its current $5 billion a year (£2.6 billion) to $6 billion a year.

It seems a little strange that the US would want to assume responsibility for the disgraced UN peacekeeping missions, although they certainly need new management. Blue-helmeted forces have an atrocious track record in actually maintaining peace, and their exploitation of young girls for sex has been documented in several of their deployments. The management position would have to still work with the sovereign nations that control these troops, and while new leadership could clear out the UN personnel that took part in these embarrassments, it would have little influence over the behavior of the troops themselves.

Yet the US supposedly is so keen to get the position, we're willing to relinquish a key post at Turtle Bay to get it. Christopher Burnham will leave his post at the UN management department, a position that should be key to any future reforms of the organization. The US has apparently offered to trade that spot for command of peacekeeping forces. It means that the US may have given up on reforming the entire organization, or that we may have decided to focus on the part most critically in need of attention, now that Annan has left.

The Times thinks that this may be a way for the US to ease itself out of Iraq. They don't have any evidence or even a compelling argument for that theory, and it's hard to see how one relates to the other. If the UN has a problem with the US gaining control of peacekeeping forces because of Iraq, we'd more likely threaten to stop funding the missions rather than retreat from Iraq, at least for that reason. A more likely objection will be that the US might want to use the post in order to extend our intel capabilities, but that doesn't seem very plausible, either. Our funding alone gives us that kind of access, and we wouldn't have to take on the headaches of management in order to get better penetration. Management might make such an objective more complicated.

It's more likely that the Bush administration wants a higher-profile role at the UN. With the situation in Darfur deteriorating every day and the Annan regime unwilling to use the word "genocide" for fear of having to commit resources to it, the White House might want more leverage in order to get some action. They may also want to limit other activities of UN peacekeepers to free up those resources. Most of all, it would put an American in charge of the UNIFIL forces in Lebanon, a key theater where the US sees Syria and Iran as a major threat. An American general would more likely stiffen UNIFIL's rules of engagement than anyone from Europe. If so, it's not a bad idea, and even the more hard-line disengagement advocates might see some value in this move.

In the Upper Midwest, anyone who has pumped their own gas or has some vague knowledge of either agricultural or energy policy has heard of E85. A Google search on the term finds 3.5 million references to it on the Internet, and with gas tax policy a key issue in Minnesota, one would expect candidates for executive office here to at least recognize the term. Apparently all of this is a little too much to ask for Judi Dutcher, the empty suit selected by Democrat Mike Hatch as his running mate in his attempt to unseat Governor Tim Pawlenty:

The DFL lieutenant governor candidate got more attention Thursday than her gubernatorial partner Mike Hatch after a gaffe caught on tape earlier this week. She handed Democrats a self-inflicted wound when she admitted that she'd never heard of an ethanol fuel blend called E-85.

"It's like you've asked me the college quiz bowl question," Dutcher told a TV reporter this week in Alexandria. "What is E-85?"

On a campaign swing through southern Minnesota, Dutcher and Hatch tried to demonstrate that they are in tune with farm issues and spent much of the day fielding questions about her understanding of renewable fuels and other agricultural issues. ...

Everyone in farm country knows E-85 is a blend of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline. Farmers around the Midwest are betting that demand for petroleum alternatives will boost corn prices, and questions about ethanol subsidies are often the first thing politicians hear on rural stops. So Dutcher's gaffe — which hit the airwaves late Wednesday — was the topic of the day in the slugfest between Hatch and GOP Gov. Tim Pawlenty.

Perhaps it isn't Dutcher's fault that she didn't recognize the term. In a lengthy position paper on Mike Hatch's website, he mentions E85 once, and never mentions the word ethanol. On the other hand, Tim Pawlenty notes that he has doubled the amount of ethanol in Minnesota's blend (from 10% to 20%) and ordered all state vehicles to run on E85. Pawlenty has also helped make Minnesota one of the top five producers of ethanol in the nation and the leader in the use of biofuels.

Hatch took an interesting tactic in responding to Dutcher's gaffe. He argued that Dutcher is irrelevant:

"He's not running against Judi Dutcher, he's running against me," Hatch retorted. "He ought to focus on me."

Well, Minnesotans might be very interested to know that Hatch selected a running mate with the thought in mind that she would not make any difference at all. The LG, after all, would run the state in the event that the governor could or would not be able to continue in office. Most Minnesotans expect the #2 to have the ability to take the wheel in short order, and to be able to tell what kind of fuel to put in the car, for that matter. If Hatch thinks that his choice for LG has no bearing on the race, perhaps that will tell Minnesotans a little about Hatch's judgment, too.

A Saudi Arabian court has passed sentence in a brutal rape in which attackers kidnapped a woman, pulled her into their car, and gang-raped her while one of the men used a mobile phone to videotape the attack. The verdict? Guilty -- for the woman, for the crime of being alone with men to whom she was not married:

A Saudi court has sentenced a gang rape victim to 90 lashes of the whip because she was alone in a car with a man to whom she was not married.

The sentence was passed at the end of a trial in which the al- Qateef high criminal court convicted four Saudis convicted of the rape, sentencing them to prison terms and a total of 2,230 lashes. ...

Saudi courts take marital status into account in sexual crimes. A male friend of the rape victim was also sentenced to 90 lashes for being alone with her in the car.

The court heard that the victim and her friend were followed by the assailants to their car, kidnapped and taken to a remote farm, where the raping occurred.

The victim and her friend, both kidnapped, got 90 lashes each. One of the perpetrators received a sentence of 80 lashes, which means that rape and kidnapping generate less punishment for the criminals than being a victim.

In all, the men received sentences between one to five years and between 80 and 1,000 lashes. The brutality of lashing aside, the amount of prison time assigned for kidnapping and rape is mind-bogglingly low. The Saudis execute people for drug trafficking, but rape a woman and the worst they can do is five years. Some rapists can escape with a year in prison. I wonder if they even bothered to confiscate the mobile phone.

The Washington Post reports that the US intends on screening every person who enters the country, regardless of method, in an attempt to identify potential terrorists. The new program will use the data to build terrorist profiles and will retain the data for decades:

The federal government disclosed details yesterday of a border-security program to screen all people who enter and leave the United States, create a terrorism risk profile of each individual and retain that information for up to 40 years.

The details, released in a notice published yesterday in the Federal Register, open a new window on the government's broad and often controversial data-collection effort directed at American and foreign travelers implemented after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

While long known to scrutinize air travelers, the Department of Homeland Security is seeking to apply new technology to perform similar checks on people who enter or leave the country "by automobile or on foot," the notice said.

The department intends to use a program called the Automated Targeting System, originally designed to screen shipping cargo, to store and analyze such data.

"We have been doing risk assessments of cargo and passengers coming into and out of the U.S.," DHS spokesman Jarrod Agen said. "We have the authority and the ability to do it for passengers coming by land and sea."

More than five years after 9/11, one might have thought the DHS would already have done this. However, getting the resources in place took some time, and as the article shows, the enthusiasm for screening every person at the border is somewhat less than universal. Civil libertarians have objected to the new program, claiming that it treats "ordinary citizens" as terrorist suspects.

One of the primary tasks for the federal government, though, is the defense of the nation and the monitoring of the borders. It is entirely appropriate to conduct evaluations of people crossing the border in order to determine their potential for danger. In fact, it's one of the few police duties that finds its basis in the Constitution. The point is not to treat all entrants to the US as terror suspects, but rather to take ordinary security precautions -- precautions that we shrugged off before 9/11 to our peril.

The program looks somewhat like a data-mining system that uses a points system to flag individuals with enough indicators of trouble for further investigation. In this way, it bears similarities to the Israeli airport security program, which uses highly trained interrogators to speak at least briefly with each traveler. Only when enough indicators of untruthfulness pop up do they perform a full security search on the individual, and then only to keep them talking. The US wants to take that system a little further, in building a database of all reviews to determine from whom and where the highest scores come in order to profile better in the future. If this works properly, it should become a self-improving program with each new piece of information that gets added to the database.

There may be some question as to whether DHS has the resources to implement such a plan. The Post quotes Stephen Flynn of the Council on Foreign Relations saying that Customs can barely keep up with their data now. If so, then Congress needs to allocate the proper funding for border security in order to allow DHS to do its job.

CQ reader Roger B says that the New York Times headline on its November surprise should really read, "BUSH DIDN'T LIE: Keller, Kerry, Moore, Dean Resign." I've bumped my post to just below this one so that readers can consider the effect that the revelation of the UN's inspector assessment of Saddam's nuclear program will have on the Iraq debate. Speaking of debate, I joined Nick Gillespie of Reason Magazine and its Hit & Run blog and Judd Legum of Think Progress for a chat on that very topic last night, pre-NYT:

asap: All right ... we're talking Iraq tonight. Apparently just like everyone else.

asap: Should a timeline be set for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, or should withdrawal be contingent on the accomplishment of certain specified goals?

Edward Morrissey: Withdrawal means one of two things: the mission is over and it was accomplished, or the mission is over and it failed. If we want to accomplish the mission, then we need the latter and not the former. If we want to admit defeat, then we need the former and not the latter.

Judd Legum: I think we should have a timeline for withdrawal ... this is the only way to succeed in Iraq... Our presence there is fueling the violence, to some extent, and more than our presence is the perception that we are never going to leave... if you look at the successes that have occurred in Iraq -- election, constitution -- these have occurred on a timetable... but even more than the Iraqis we need to do it for our own security ... we aren't able to focus on the threat from terrorism, which is a global problem.

Nick Gillespie: the first thing we need is a series of statements that define the mission in the first place. Are we there to create a democratic region? to have deposed tyranny in the form of Saddam? what? it's tempting to see the evident failure of the occupation as distinct from the military success of vanquishing Saddam. but in fact... the U.S. never really had a clear set of objectives in mind, which set up the occupation to fail.

Be sure to read the whole chat -- I've had a great time with Nick and Judd, and I think these have been moderated in an excellent fashion by our host, Otis Hart of the AP.

Over the past year or so, I have provided CQ readers with a number of translations from key Iraqi Intelligence Service documents that have been translated by either the FMSO or by Joseph Shahda of the Free Republic website. I even engaged two interpreters to verify one particularly explosive memo last April, after Shahda published his own translation. That memo dealt with IIS plans to get volunteers for suicide missions to 'strike American interests".

One particular criticism that appeared with each new translation was that the documents were never proven genuine, although no one could explain the logic behind the US government hiding these documents in Iraqi Arabic among an avalanche of mundanity, only to shove it onto a shelf for years until Congress authorized their release to the Internet. Now we find another verification of their authenticity, this time from the New York Times, which reports today that the documents constitute a national-security threat:

Last March, the federal government set up a Web site to make public a vast archive of Iraqi documents captured during the war. The Bush administration did so under pressure from Congressional Republicans who said they hoped to “leverage the Internet” to find new evidence of the prewar dangers posed by Saddam Hussein.

But in recent weeks, the site has posted some documents that weapons experts say are a danger themselves: detailed accounts of Iraq’s secret nuclear research before the 1991 Persian Gulf war. The documents, the experts say, constitute a basic guide to building an atom bomb.

Last night, the government shut down the Web site after The New York Times asked about complaints from weapons experts and arms-control officials. A spokesman for the director of national intelligence said access to the site had been suspended “pending a review to ensure its content is appropriate for public viewing.”

Officials of the International Atomic Energy Agency, fearing that the information could help states like Iran develop nuclear arms, had privately protested last week to the American ambassador to the agency, according to European diplomats who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the issue’s sensitivity. One diplomat said the agency’s technical experts “were shocked” at the public disclosures.

The documents, roughly a dozen in number, contain charts, diagrams, equations and lengthy narratives about bomb building that nuclear experts who have viewed them say go beyond what is available on the Internet and in other public forums. For instance, the papers give detailed information on how to build nuclear firing circuits and triggering explosives, as well as the radioactive cores of atom bombs.

This is apparently the Times' November surprise, but it's a surprising one indeed. The Times has just authenticated the entire collection of memos, some of which give very detailed accounts of Iraqi ties to terrorist organizations. Just this past Monday, I posted a memo which showed that the Saddam regime actively coordinated with Palestinian terrorists in the PFLP as well as Hamas and Islamic Jihad. On September 20th, I reposted a translation of an IIS memo written four days after 9/11 that worried the US would discover Iraq's ties to Osama bin Laden.

It doesn't end there with the Times, either. In a revelation buried far beneath the jump, the Times acknowledges that the UN also believed Saddam to be nearing development of nuclear weapons:

Among the dozens of documents in English were Iraqi reports written in the 1990’s and in 2002 for United Nations inspectors in charge of making sure Iraq abandoned its unconventional arms programs after the Persian Gulf war. Experts say that at the time, Mr. Hussein’s scientists were on the verge of building an atom bomb, as little as a year away.

European diplomats said this week that some of those nuclear documents on the Web site were identical to the ones presented to the United Nations Security Council in late 2002, as America got ready to invade Iraq. But unlike those on the Web site, the papers given to the Security Council had been extensively edited, to remove sensitive information on unconventional arms.

That appears to indicate that by invading in 2003, we followed the best intelligence of the UN inspectors to head off the development of an Iraqi nuke. This intelligence put Saddam far ahead of Iran in the nuclear pursuit, and made it much more urgent to take some definitive action against Saddam before he could build and deploy it. And bear in mind that this intelligence came from the UN, and not from the United States. The inspectors themselves developed it, and they meant to keep it secret. The FMSO site blew their cover, and they're very unhappy about it.

What other highlights has the Times now authenticated? We have plenty:

* 2001 IIS memo directing its agents to test mass grave sites in southern Iraq for radiation, and to use "trusted news agencies" to leak rumors about the lack of credibility of Coalition reporting on the subject. They specify CNN.

* The Blessed July operation, in which Saddam's sons planned a series of assassinations in London, Iran, and southern Iraq

* Saddam's early contacts with Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda from 1994-7

* UNMOVIC knew of a renewed effort to make ricin from castor beans in 2002, but never reported it

* The continued development of delivery mechanisms for biological and chemical weapons by the notorious "Dr. Germ" in 2002

Actually, we have much, much more. All of these documents underscore the threat posed by Saddam Hussein and show that his regime continued their work on banned weapons programs. We have made this case over and over again, but some people refused to believe the documents were genuine. Now we have no less of an authority than the New York Times to verify that the IIS documentation is not only genuine, but presents a powerful argument for the military action to remove Saddam from power.

The Times wanted readers to cluck their tongues at the Bush administration for releasing the documents, although Congress actually did that. However, the net result should be a complete re-evaluation of the threat Saddam posed by critics of the war. Let's see if the Times figures this out for themselves.

UPDATE: More at Stop the ACLU and QandO. And Michelle Malkin has a great take on this -- the paper that blew a series of highly classified national-security programs wants to point fingers about the status of these documents?

UPDATE II: Bump to top. And The Anchoress has dreamed up a hilarious dialogue at the NYT -- don't miss it.

UPDATE III: Yes, I understand the difference between 1991 and 2002. What the critics of this post seem to miss is this:

1. Saddam still had all of the relevant documentation to restart his nuclear program, so the UNSCOM and UNMOVIC teams obviously did not "destroy all vestiges" of Iraq's nuclear program. After all, the documentation is what the Times proclaimed as a dangerous breach that would allow Iran to build a bomb.

2. If the FMSO documents on the website are dangerous to publish because they might assist Iran in designing a nuclear weapon, then obviously they were dangerous sitting in Saddam's files. Missing that particular point seems willfully dense at best.

3. Saddam had unexpurgated copies of the IAEA report in his files -- the ones that the UN inspectors are so unhappy about being hosted at the FMSO site. I wonder how that happened?

4. Since the rest of the FMSO documents came from the same locations as the ones that the NYT proclaims as authentic and dangerous, that means that the rest of these documents are authentic as well. That's the primary point of this post -- because when one looks through the documents, it becomes clear that Saddam had many connections to terrorism, and had active WMD programs right through 2002.

John Kerry has made himself the gift that keeps on giving. After supposedly botching a joke about President Bush and telling a college audience that a lack of education and hard work would get them "stuck in Iraq", he took criticism from Republicans and some Demicrats for two days. He finally apologized for both screwing up the joke and the fact that no one understood his genius, and the controversy finally started to recede. However, Kerry -- who has never learned the First Rule Of Holes -- decided to keep right on digging yesterday by posting a Seattle newspaper's editorial on his campaign web site that says he was right in either interpretation:

Republicans evidenced their election desperation by braying about an offhand comment that Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., made at a California college rally.

"Education" Kerry said "-- if you make the most of it and you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq."

Was Kerry making fun of the president, or warning students against the pitfalls awaiting the undereducated in general?

It doesn't matter. Kerry was right either way.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer then contradicts itself by claiming that Kerry didn't call the troops "stupid", which is true; he implied that they were lazy and uneducated, which is technically not identical. If the P-I believes that Kerry was "right either way", and was warning students about the consequences of a poor education, then they're saying that lazy and uneducated people end up in the military. In fact, they say it outright:

Although there are plenty of well-educated people in our armed forces -- Kerry was one of them -- military service has long been an opportunity employer for those with less education and fewer skills than they need to work in the private sector. Indeed, the military sells itself as a place to garner skills and to help pay for higher education.

And wars, including this one, are often fought by those less privileged -- albeit no less smart -- than the sons and daughters of those who lead us into them.

Actually, this proves what happens when people lack a real education, one in which research and fact-finding have been subsumed to the advancement of cliches and unsupported assumptions. The military, as the Heritage Foundation pointed out in its extensive research, has a higher proportion of educated people than the general civilian population, especially in the officer corps. The P-I editorial board obviously doesn't do its homework either, which makes this a laughable entry in the debate.

But all this is separate from the political decision to put this on the Kerry website after insisting that he didn't intend on casting aspersions on the intellectual capacity of the troops. If he really didn't mean to call them lazy and uneducated, then why did he go out of his way to host an editorial on his site that does exactly that?

UPDATE: Here's another priceless picture, courtesy of Blackfive (h/t CQ reader Stoo):

George Bush has hit his stride on the campaign trail, pushing hard to protect the Republican majorities in Congress. He has tried talking up the economy and the war on terror, but he also has not shied from the Iraq war. In fact, in campaign stops, he has advised voters to demand a plan from the Democrats who have criticized the war:

President Bush yesterday said Republicans nationwide are running on a strong record of accomplishment as he ridiculed Democrats seeking to take control of the House and Senate, asking: "What's your plan?"

"The truth is, the Democrats can't answer that question. Harsh criticism is not a plan for victory. Second-guessing is not a strategy. We have a plan for victory," the president said to cheers from 5,000 supporters packed into the Springfield Exposition Center. ...

The president has honed his campaign rally speech into a laundry list of Republican successes and dire warnings about a Democratic majority, but yesterday he added a new twist when he painted Democrats as dangerously unfit to battle terrorism and win the war in Iraq.

"Oh, some of the leading Democrats in Washington argue we should pull out right now. Then you got other voices saying we should withdraw on a specific date, even though the job hasn't been completed. You actually had a member of the House recommend moving troops to an island 5,000 miles away as part of their plan. Nineteen House Democrats introduced legislation that would cut off funds for our troops in Iraq," he said.

"The Democrats have taken a calculated gamble. They believe that the only way they can win this election is to criticize us and offer no specific plan of their own," the president said.

The Democratic Party spokesperson, Stacie Paxton, proved Bush's point with her response. She rejected the allegation that the Democrats lack a coherent strategy for Iraq, but then offered the "new direction" theme. She did, however, mention "phased redeployments" and "benchmarks", but explained neither.

Democrats have rightly targeted Iraq in their campaigning; it's a political weakness for Republicans, and the electorate has become increasingly restive about the money and time that has been spent on Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein. The situation in Baghdad and Anbar does not appear to be improving, and after three years, that has a lot of people wanting new ideas. Unfortunately, the Democrats haven't offered any, at least none for victory, and that's what Bush is emphasizing.

"Phased redeployment" means withdrawal and retreat, and everyone knows that, especially our enemy. When General Walker called his retreat from Chosin an "advance to the rear", no one was fooled then, and no one is fooled now by fancy terms for defeat. Leaving the field to one's enemies is defeat, no matter how one paints it. If that's the plan Democrats have -- to declare defeat -- then they do have a "new direction": reverse.

Democrats had an opportunity to plan for victory. If the Bush administration and Donald Rumsfeld don't have the right strategy and tactics for victory, then tell us the better plan. What strategy and tactics do Democrats have that will win in Iraq? They haven't answered, because they have no answer. They want to cut and run, and they want this election to hinge on that choice for Iraq. If Americans want to vote for defeat, they have that opportunity on Tuesday.

When a lawyer attacks a reporter as a "whore", one has to wonder for whom to root in the conflict, or whether to just grab a bowl of popcorn and enjoy the show. However, when the lawyer is running for Governor and the insult comes in response to a political gaffe made by his running mate, it becomes more concerning to the state's voters, who might at some time need to criticize the candidate if he wins office:

Hatch’s anger overflowed during a Thursday morning telephone interview.

A Forum Communications reporter asked Hatch about Dutcher’s knowledge of ethanol and why she wasn’t available to discuss the issue. Hatch abruptly ended the interview with: “You’re nothing more than a Republican whore. Goodbye.” He then hung up.

Television crews following the Duluth native Thursday reported other sharp comments when reporters pressed him for response to Dutcher’s comments.

Mike Hatch has a reputation in Minnesota as a nasty, unlikeable man who has a fixation on becoming Governor. This is, I believe, his third official run at the office, although it's the first time he's convinced Democrats (DFL here) to actually nominate him. He has routinely run the Attorney General's office as a partisan attack platform during Tim Pawlenty's first term as Governor, which makes this slur even more humorous than it otherwise would be.

Hatch let the mask slip this week, and Minnesotans got a reminder of his brittle personality. Calling a reporter a "whore" for asking about a major gaffe -- ethanol and E85 are a big deal here, regardless of how one views them -- demonstrates Hatch's inability to handle criticism in a mature and professional manner. Rather than answer the question, or avoid it by saying that it didn't have any probative value for voters, Hatch called the reporter an ugly word and hung up on him. (Hatch is lucky that the reporter is a man -- he would never live the insult down if the reporter had been a woman.)

Hatch claims that he called the reporter a "hack", but either way, the incident demonstrates that a Hatch administration would return us to the Jesse Ventura days of open warfare with the press. Minnesotans still recall the circus in Saint Paul during Ventura's strange reign as Governor, where media passes actually got labeled "media jackals" and openly mocking them at official events. While his attacks on journalists at first found some sympathy -- after all, we often criticize the local media, especially the Star Tribune -- it became apparent very quickly that he used the attacks to keep criticism of his incompetent bungling to a minimum.

It looks like Hatch will be cut from Ventura's cloth in that regard. If our elected officials cannot abide probing questions about issues of policy without throwing temper tantrums, then they do not belong in office. Minnesotans understood that after Ventura managed to get himself elected in 1998, and by the time his term was up, we had had enough of his antics. This incident should warn Minnesotans that the DFL wants to re-establish the imperial Governorship four years after Pawlenty restored openness and professionalism to the capital.

Tom Maguire and Mickey Kaus have raised the alert that the firewall that keeps Maureen Dowd, Frank Rich, Bob Herbert, and Paul Krugman from afflicting Internet users will come down for several days, putting news readers in dire jeopardy of brain damage. The shields drop on November 6th and stay down for a week:

The New York Times announced today that it will invite all online visitors to experience TimesSelect content free of charge for one week. From November 6-12, every visitor to NYTimes.com will have access to TimesSelect columns, blogs, video and other online exclusives that are normally available only to TimesSelect members. TimesSelect Free Access Week is presented exclusively by Philips as part of its "Sense and Simplicity" national marketing campaign.

"TimesSelect Free Access Week makes one of the Web's richest resources available to all," said Vivian Schiller, senior vice president, general manager, NYTimes.com. "From the influential opinion of our award-winning Op-Ed columnists, such as Maureen Dowd and Nicholas. D. Kristof, to online-only columnists, such as Maira Kalman and Judith Warner, TimesSelect provides a world of viewpoints that encourage dialogue on today's most pressing matters."

Translation: the Gray Lady can't sell TimesSelect, and they've realized it. At the time, I noted that the Times had settled on a business model that basically paid Internet visitors $50 not to read Dowd, Krugman, et al. I even suggested the motto, "TimesSelect: It's There for your Protection." Not only do they now have to do a one-week loss leader, they had to get Phillips Electronics to underwrite it.

What has TimesSelect done for the paper and its columnists? It made them much less relevant. Instead of having their columns dissected, criticized, and lionized by various bloggers and other pundits, they got ignored in favor of other columnists whose articles readers could easily access. This dynamic afflicted the vapid and the veritable alike in their stable of writers, and their declining influence has to have eroded the Times' market edge for opinion writers. This freebie is intended to convince people that their $50 buys them something unique, but the market has already proven that false.

And who came up with the timing on this offer? We're in the middle of a highly contested midterm election, and one would think that the folks at the Times might have some interesting things to say about it. (I know, I know ... work with me for a moment.) Wouldn't it make more sense to open the firewall for a week before the election, say from October 23-29, or October 30-November 6? I suspect that starting on November 7, political commentary will get significantly less attention than it has for the last couple of months. The marketing geniuses at the Times (and Phillips) apparently didn't consider that point.

At any rate, CQ readers have been warned. Beware of the TimesSelect pages and their stultifying effects next week. The mind you save may be your own.