December 1, 2006
The 2008 Lineup Looks Pretty Centrist So Far
My friend John at Power Line has an interesting look at the Republican contenders for the presidency in 2008, and wonders where the conservatives might turn. It's a little too long to excerpt to any good effect, so be sure to read it in its entirety. Conservatives appear to have some slim pickings, at least thus far. John McCain, who could reasonably compete as one, instead had better hope for independent and centrist support after his campaign reform legislation curtailed political speech, and his Gang of 14 shenanigans derailed more than a couple of fine judicial nominees. John refers to his willingness to sell out the Republicans in order to feed his own self-interest, and that's certainly the perception. Even if I was not willing to go as far as John, and I probably am, he's certainly proven himself fairly unpredictable, even on core issues such as tax cuts. Romney...
Poaching? Maybe Just A Little
The Republican Governors Association meeting attracted attention from a wide range of people ... even presidential aspirants who have never served as governor. While many expected the RGA meeting to serve as another platform for outgoing Massachussetts executive Mitt Romney for his presidential bid, John McCain raised a few eyebrows by spending heavily on receptions and leaning on his personal connections to steal a little of Romney's thunder: Last anyone checked, Senator John McCain of Arizona is not — and has never been — a governor. But no matter. Mr. McCain turned up on Thursday morning at the Doral Golf Resort and Spa here for a guerrillalike visit to the annual meeting of the Republican Governors Association. That is a group headed by Mitt Romney, the Massachusetts governor who is widely viewed as Mr. McCain’s chief rival for their party’s 2008 presidential nomination. As Mr. Romney gamely presided over the...
Get A Piece Of The Rock
The British have a crisis in prison capacity, as their Treasury has refused to finance construction of badly-needed new facilities. Their prison population topped 80,000 in England and Wales, and they have no more cells in which to put new prisoners. Instead of levying new taxes to pay for new prisons, the Labour government has proposed an investment scheme for citizens looking to build a rental-property portfolio that has little risk of extended vacancies: The public may be able to purchase shares in new prisons under a "buy to let" scheme being considered by the Home Office. With the prison system in crisis and inmates being held in police stations as jails overflow, Home Office finance directors hope to persuade private investors to pay for the urgently needed cells. The new jails would then be rented out to private prison operators, providing a guaranteed return from the rental income. ......
Another Example Of Democrats Reforming Congress?
Justin Rood at TPM Muckraker asks whether Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats will have another corruption issue in caucus leadership. Alan Mollohan (D-WV) served as ranking member of the House Appropriations Subcommittee for Science, State, Justice, Commerce and Related Agencies and under normal circumstances would take the chair from Frank Wolf, the current Republican chair. However, Rood points to an ugly conflict of interest that would immediately present itself if he does: The FBI's probing Mollohan for possible violations of the law arising from his sprawling network of favors and money which connects him to good friends via questionable charities, alarmingly successful real estate ventures, and hundreds of millions of dollars in earmarked funds. The investigation appears to be active and ongoing. We're told that the Feds continue to gather information on the guy. Yet the Democrats look poised to make Mollohan the chairman of the panel which controls the...
Why Haven't We Done This Yet?
We have long since understood that heightened security is a requirement in the post-9/11 world. What we want, however, is effective security, especially at airports, not just silly procedures that do nothing to reveal real threats. Instead of time-consuming and random patdowns, we would want something more efficient that will check everyone for contraband in an efficient manner. According to USA Today, we have had this capability for almost four years now, but have not deployed it because of privacy concerns: The federal government plans this month to launch the nation's first airport screening system that takes potentially revealing X-ray photos of travelers in an effort to find bombs and other weapons. Transportation Security Administration screeners at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport will test a "backscatter" machine that could vastly improve weapons detection but has been labeled a "virtual strip search" by the American Civil Liberties Union. Backscatter can show...
A Long Chat With Peter
Normally I like to do the interviewing, but last week during my vacation I spent a little time with Peter at Hi-Wired .... actually, a lot of time, close to an hour. Peter had asked me some time ago to get together for an interview for the blog, and I took the opportunity to do it while the First Mate was in dialysis. Originally it was supposed to last about 20 minutes, but I think both of us had too much fun to shut it down that quickly. We covered a wide range of topics in this interview, and I have to say it was one of the most interesting I've done. Peter has it posted on his site, as well as through iTunes. He also lifted a picture of me from the first month I was blogging, when I went as Zorro to work on Halloween. Hope you enjoy...
Movie Review: The Nativity Story
One of the more anticipated films for us this season has been The Nativity Story, which the First Mate had first known from listening to Relevant Radio. New Line Cinema, which produced Lord of the Rings, goes for another epic story, but in this case they focus less on the epic nature of the Nativity and more on the human story behind it. The story starts with Herod's order to slay every firstborn male child in Bethlehem, and the images are grim, chaotic, and dark. Herod, played with some ferocity by the outstanding Ciaran Hinds (Rome's Julius Caesar), makes it clear with almost every syllable that he will not brook a rival to his power, prophecy or no. He intends on ruling his adopted people -- Herod was an Arab, not born a Jew -- until his final breath, as his son Antipas notes. After that, the film returns us...
December 2, 2006
Mowergate?
The latest story on Mitt Romney has the appearance of an early opposition attack on his presidential hopes, and in this case a rather silly attack. Echoing the travails of Kimba Wood, Bill Clinton's first nominee for Attorney General, the Boston Globe reported yesterday that Romney employed illigal immigrants as landscaping workers: As Governor Mitt Romney explores a presidential bid, he has grown outspoken in his criticism of illegal immigration. But, for a decade, the governor has used a landscaping company that relies heavily on workers like these, illegal Guatemalan immigrants, to maintain the grounds surrounding his pink Colonial house on Marsh Street in Belmont. The Globe recently interviewed four current and former employees of Community Lawn Service with a Heart, the tiny Chelsea-based company that provides upkeep of Romney's property. All but one said they were in the United States illegally. Wood had to withdraw her nomination when reporters...
Muslims Want Prayer Room At Minneapolis Airport
The fallout from the US Air decision to bar six Muslims from a flight last week continues. Now local Muslims want Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport to provide them with a room for their prayers in order to keep other passengers from seeing them as a security threat. MSP officials might agree to a non-denominational "meditation space" as a compromise: Area Muslim religious leaders have asked for a prayer room at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport after six Muslim leaders were escorted off a plane last week because of security concerns. The local imams, who prayed on the mezzanine level before meeting with airport officials Friday afternoon, said a prayer room is essential because of the need to pray several times a day. The act itself is nonintrusive, they said. "We as Muslims, we are part of this country," said Abdulrehman Hersi, a Minneapolis imam. "You have to pray wherever you are. Our...
Postponing The Immaterial
The Boston Globe reports that John Kerry has decided to postpone the decision on his expected run for the presidency in 2008. Sources claim that the fallout of calling servicemen lazy idiots has stunned him: Senator John F. Kerry's election-eve "botched joke" about the war in Iraq -- and the fierce denunciations his comments drew from fellow Democrats -- has led him to reevaluate whether to mount a run for the presidency in 2008 and has led him to delay an announcement about his decision, according to Kerry associates. The Massachusetts Democrat is now leaning toward waiting until late spring before declaring his intentions, even as other candidates jump into the race and begin building organizing and fund-raising teams in early-primary states. Before the joke derailed his comeback, Kerry had signaled that he would decide whether to run by the end of January. Kerry -- who had methodically resurrected his...
Northern Alliance Radio Today
Mitch and I will be on the air at 1 pm CT for the Northern Alliance Radio Network. We'll be discussing the remarkable reform efforts of the Democrats as they prepare for their new majority status in Congress, the Flying Imams, Keith Ellison's use of the Qur'an for his oath of office, and perhaps even the cultural implications of the Britney-Lindsay-Paris Axis of Beavil. Be sure to tune into AM 1280 The Patriot, or listen to the Internet stream from the station if you're outside the Twin Cities. Call us to join the conversation at 651-289-4488....
Trimming The Tree
My sister flew into town on her way from New York to California for a couple of days, so we spent the day doing Christmas decorating with the Little Admiral. I put together the Christmas tree, always a frustrating business and more so today since the built-in lights didn't work. I started to inspect each of the bulbs to see if I could find the problem, but then I realized I could fix it with $5 at Walgreens tomorrow with a couple of new strings instead of spending the next three hours figuring it out. I took a few pictures of the action, and here's my granddaughter with a new ornament from her aunt: We only got part of the way through the tree-trimming, though, because we decided to watch our collection of Christmas television specials, which we got on DVD last year. These still have plenty of charm for...
December 3, 2006
The Meaning Of Rumsfeld's Leak
Many bloggers have written about the leaked Rumsfeld memo published by the New York Times on Friday and confirmed by the Pentagon later the same day, but no one has a better political analysis than Andy McCarthy at NRO's The Corner. Calling this the herald of a "train-wreck" two years of lame-duck status for the Bush administration, McCarthy shows exactly how this will be seen by the people who comprise it: The memo itself is extraordinarily interesting, even to us non-military types, especially given (a) how little regard Sec'y Rumsfeld seems to have for a lot of the strategy either currently being employed or likely to be proposed by the Iraq Study Group; and (b) how Rumsfeld seems a lot more interested in quick strike capability against al Qaeda and Iran elements than having U.S. forces enmeshed in Iraq's sectarian infighting. ... If high officials — in wartime, no less...
Liberals Move Left
Canada's Liberal Party has chosen its new leader almost a year after its electoral debacle that saw its majority disappear from the Adscam scandal. Instead of selecting front-running moderate Michael Ignatieff, Liberals chose the more liberal Stephane Dion to lead them into the next elections: Stephane Dion has won the Liberal leadership in an upset win over Michael Ignatieff, who had been the front runner coming into this convention. The final battle between the two former professors was not decided until the fourth ballot. Mr. Dion had surged into the lead on the third ballot and went on from there, winning a clear majority of 54.7 per cent of the final vote. Mr. Dion was the only candidate from Quebec. He now becomes the third party leader in a row from the province. The BBC had more on the background of the candidates. Ignatieff ran into some problems because of...
December 4, 2006
God Rest Ye Merry, Merchants
With my sister in town for the weekend, we decided to really tempt fate and risk our lives yesterday ... shopping at the Mall of America. Actually, we went to two different malls in an attempt to get all of our Christmas shopping done in one fell swoop, and we managed to live to tell the tale. Popular culture makes Christmas shopping seem like one of the joys of the holidays, when in fact it seems like a bad reality show in which your credit cards try to vote you off the island. That's true for the employees as well. I chatted with a manager and a sales rep at a jewelry store when I bought the First Mate's gift (I'm no dummy!), and the manager told me that last year he had to work 320 hours in December. Now that he's the manager, he's being a nice guy and...
It's The Electability, Stupid
Rumors have swirled around HIllary Clinton regarding her presumed run for the presidency in 2008, with some saying that a Barack Obama run will keep her out of the race and that she has not discovered the inner fire for the grueling campaign, a la Mark Warner. Now, however, she's begun meeting with Democratic power brokers, indicating that she's plowing ahead -- but Democrats do not appear completely thrilled by the prospect. So who's meeting with Hillary? Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton has begun a calculated series of meetings with top New York Democratic officials to signal that she is likely to run for the presidency in 2008 and to ask for their support if she does, according to one state Democratic official who spoke with her and two others who have been briefed on her plans. Senator Clinton met last week with Charles B. Rangel, the dean of the New...
How Desperate Are The Democrats?
As I note below, Hillary Clinton has sucked most of the oxygen out of the discussions over the Democratic nomination for the presidency in 2008, despite some major misgivings. A significant portion of the party wants to find some alternative to Hillary, and Barack Obama has materialized to help fill that need. Using terms like "rock star", Democrats have boosted Obama as a potential savior who can help bridge constituencies: Senator Barack Obama’s announcement that he might run for president is altering the early dynamics of the 2008 Democratic nominating contest. The move has created complications for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton as she steps up her own preparations and is posing a threat to lesser-known Democrats trying to position themselves as alternatives to Mrs. Clinton, Democrats said Sunday. The declaration six weeks ago by Mr. Obama, an Illinois Democrat, has set off a surge of interest in Democratic circles, which...
Momentum For More Troops Building
Over the last few weeks, a momentum appears to have built for the deployment of more troops to Iraq within the White House, rather than beginning a withdrawal from the country and its efforts to provide security for itself. The departure of Donald Rumsfeld and the nomination of Robert Gates, a member of the Iraq Study Group that is expected to recommend a slow retreat, supposedly signaled an exit for George Bush. Instead, as the Wall Street Journal reports, it may have freed him to try one big push to secure Baghdad: Outside the military, most of the debate is focused on a U.S. troop withdrawal. But inside the Pentagon, the recent dismissal of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has given some new life to arguments by military officers who say the U.S. must pour more troops and money into the country to expand the Iraqi army -- the one institution...
The BCS Bowl Battle
Preparations for the annual Bowl Championship Series battle have already gotten under way, as tradition demands, after the final week of college football games. No, I'm not talking about teams strategizing for their opponents and bowl management promoting the matchups. I'm talking about the usual hue and cry that occurs when the BCS announces its matchups. This year promises more than its share, as Michigan finds itself aced out of the national championship and an opportunity to avenge its one loss of the year: After a month of wild upsets in college football, after all the voters cast their ballots and the computers finished computing, the Bowl Championship Series produced a touch of nostalgia to go with the usual controversy. The final BCS standings had Florida leaping over Michigan for the No. 2 spot on Sunday, sending the Gators to face top-ranked Ohio State in the title game on Jan....
Has Bush Surrendered On Presidential Prerogative?
Two changes in the Bush administration's key foreign policy posts make it appear that the White House has signalled a full retreat on its executive prerogative. Ambassadors John Bolton and Zalmay Khalilizad have tendered their resignations, from the UN and Iraq respectively, withdrawing from the two most controversial posts in the foreign service. Following the abrupt departure of Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense, the Bush hardliners seem to be exiting stage right in reaction to the mid-term losses for the Republicans. Bush had a few words about Bolton's departure: President Bush, in a statement, said he was "deeply disappointed that a handful of United States senators prevented Ambassador Bolton from receiving the up or down vote he deserved in the Senate." "They chose to obstruct his confirmation, even though he enjoys majority support in the Senate, and even though their tactics will disrupt our diplomatic work at a sensitive...
Fiji Suffers A Coup
The island nation of Fiji has apparently seen its government fall to a military coup, according to its prime minister. The Fijian president dissolved the national assembly and sent the army after Laisenia Qarase, who insists that the move has no legitimacy: Fiji's president dissolved parliament on Tuesday and sanctioned the military to remove embattled Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase, said New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark, who immediately imposed sanctions against Fiji's military. Qarase, who is holed up in his residence in the capital Suva, said the military was staging a coup and he would not resign but would have to be forcibly removed from office. ... Military commander Frank Bainimarama has repeatedly threatened to topple Qarase's government, which won a second five-year term in May, claiming it is corrupt and soft on those behind Fiji's last coup in 2000. This is the third Fijian coup since 1987 and the...
December 5, 2006
The Brits Finger The Kremlin
The British intelligence services have concluded that the assassination of Alexander Litvinenko had to be an operation of the FSB, the successor agency to the KGB. This points the finger directly at Vladimir Putin in the midst of several suspicious deaths of Putin critics: Intelligence services in Britain are convinced that the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko was authorised by the Russian Federal Security Service. Security sources have told The Times that the FSB orchestrated a “highly sophisticated plot” and was likely to have used some of its former agents to carry out the operation on the streets of London. “We know how the FSB operates abroad and, based on the circumstances behind the death of Mr Litvinenko, the FSB has to be the prime suspect,” a source said yesterday. The involvement of a former FSB officer made it easier to lure Mr Litvinenko to meetings at various locations and to...
Dutch Distribute Badges Of Dishonor
Remember the Battle of Srebrenica, where the UN set up a sanctuary for Bosnians during the war against the Serbs? The city had been garrisoned by troops from The Netherlands, who provided security for the city as part of the UN contingent. I'm sure you recall the brave stand by Dutch peacekeepers that saved the refugees from being massacred by the Serbians in reprisal for attacks by the Bosnian Army ... right? What? You don't remember it that way? Well, apparently the Dutch do, because they're issuing an insignia commemorating their participation in the mission that allowed the massacre of thousands of refugees (h/t: CQ reader Mr. Michael): The Dutch government said the troops deserved recognition for their behaviour in difficult circumstances. Presenting the insignia to some 800 soldiers from the Dutch battalion (Dutchbat) at a military barrack in Assen, Dutch Defence Minister Henk Kamp said they had been unjustly...
When Muslims Decide The Composition Of Holocaust Panels ...
... then we will truly have lost the war on terror. Yesterday CAIR issued a statement demanding the removal of Dennis Prager from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council for a matter completely unrelated to the Holocaust. Prager had objected to newly-elected Muslim Congressman Keith Ellison's plans to use a Qur'an for his oath of office rather than the Bible: In a syndicated column last week, Mr. Prager asserted that a new Democratic congressman from Minnesota, Keith Ellison, was tearing at the bulwarks of American society by seeking to use the Muslim holy book at his swearing-in next month. "He should not be allowed to do so — not because of any American hostility to the Koran, but because the act undermines American civilization," Mr. Prager wrote. "Insofar as a member of Congress taking an oath to serve America and uphold its values is concerned, America is interested in only one...
Dancing Girls Undermine Ahmadinejad?
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may have more Western tendencies than we first realized. He has come under fire from the radical Islamists he represents for watching a display of dancing girls in the opening ceremonies of the Asian Games: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, who flaunts his ideological fervour, has been accused of undermining Iran's Islamic revolution after television footage appeared to show him watching a female song and dance show. The famously austere Mr Ahmadinejad has been criticised by his own allies after attending the lavish opening ceremony of the Asian games in Qatar, a sporting competition involving 13,000 athletes from 39 countries. The ceremony featured Indian and Egyptian dancers and female vocalists. Many were not wearing veils. ... Religious fundamentalists, usually Mr Ahmadinejad's keenest supporters, are asking why he attended a ceremony that violated his own government's strict interpretation of Shia Islam. The Baztab website, considered close to Mohsen Rezaee,...
Kim's New Racket: Insurance
Kim Jong-Il has expressed indignation, fury, and even tested a nuclear device in his attempt to get the US to back down from banking sanctions that has put a damper on his counterfeiting ring, one of the few sources of hard currency North Korea had. Now Kim has a new racket to generate some badly-needed cash, and this time he's targeted the insurance industry: The cash-strapped regime of North Korea, which has a worldwide reputation for its criminal dealings in weapons sales, drugs and near-perfect counterfeit U.S. $100 bills, may have found a new illicit source of hard foreign currency: international reinsurance fraud. A growing number of major underwriters around the world strongly suspect that communist dictator Kim Jong-Il's regime is running an elaborate major insurance and reinsurance scam on them, to the tune of tens of millions of dollars or more. The alleged fraud involves a wide variety of...
Harman Starts Looking Better To The Left?
One has to wonder what strategy Nancy Pelosi has decided to pursue in the next session of Congress. After a couple of major missteps in the days following the Democratic Party's midterms successes, she has managed to transform what had they described as a mandate for clean government and an end to the American involvement in Iraq into a serious muddle. First she champions two men for key leadership posts that have serious questions of corruption in their backgrounds. Now the man she selected to replace one of them wants to back the Pentagon and expand the American commitment in Iraq (via Hot Air): In a surprise twist in the debate over Iraq, Rep. Silvestre Reyes, the soon-to-be chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said he wants to see an increase of 20,000 to 30,000 U.S. troops as part of a stepped up effort to “dismantle the militias." The soft-spoken...
Cardscam
The provincial government in Ontario has a burgeoning corruption scandal making headlines, costing taxpayers millions with little likelihood of recovery. Unlike Adscam, the notorious Liberal Party fraud in the Sponsorship Programme, this appears to have little to do with partisan politics and more to do with traditional bureaucratic corruption: Millions of dollars charged to taxpayer-funded credit cards in Ontario are unaccounted for, the province's Auditor General Jim McCarter reported on Tuesday. A number of Ontario's public sector workers, and managers overseeing expense accounts, are unable to account for the cash, he said. ... Staff at Hydro One, the massive transmission utility, purchased $127-million worth of goods and services using corporate charge cards, but Mr. McCarter's annual report found few credit card slips or paperwork to justify those charges. ... Staff at Ontario Power Generation failed to produce any receipts at all to support $6.5-million in expenditures. Managers at the government-owned...
That Was Quick
Robert Gates made a bungee appearance at the Senate Armed Forces Committee today for his confirmation hearings to replace Donald Rumsfeld at the Pentagon. Some expected the hearings to provide some fireworks and an opportunity for grandstanding -- but in the end, it looks like all sides just wanted to get it done quickly: Robert M. Gates, President Bush’s nominee to be defense secretary, won unanimous approval today from a Senate panel after testifying that the United States was not winning in Iraq and that American failure there could ignite “a regional conflagration” in the Middle East. At one point, Mr. Gates said it was “too soon to tell” whether the American invasion in 2003 had been a good idea. He added: “My greatest worry if we mishandle the next year or two and leave Iraq in chaos is that a variety of regional powers will become involved in Iraq,...
December 6, 2006
Attente Avec Le Souffle Chipé
Bonjour, mes amis! That may be the first words uttered by the new sensation in Internet news gathering. France 24, Jacque Chirac's long-awaited answer to the BBC and CNN for global news domination, debuts in just a few hours in both French and English. The latest state-run program to assuage French feelings of inferiority, the channel will eventually expand to offer identical broadcasts in Arab and Spanish as well ... if it can find enough money to pay for it: Jacques Chirac's dream of a global TV news network á la française, to counter Anglo-Saxon global media dominance, becomes reality tonight as France launches a bilingual 24-hour news service. After months of preparation and weeks of dry runs, France 24, the new state-funded network, will go live on the internet at 7.29pm GMT, with a 12-minute news bulletin including "internationally renowned guests," and updates every half hour. ... Two back-to-back...
Civil War In The Kremlin?
The assassination of Alexander Litvinenko has put Vladimir Putin under a bright spotlight, as the former KGB/FSB agent is only the latest in a series of Putin critics who have died under suspicious circumstances. The British believe that Putin has masterminded the murders as a means of convincing potential foes of the health benefits of silence. However, Der Spiegel questions that analysis and points to an alternate theory -- that the FSB has gone rogue and now operates outside of Putin's control: As they were leaving the church after the service, Litvinenko said: "It's quite clear that they are working down a list of targets. The state has become a serial killer." But unlike his dead friend, who, until his last breath, had accused the Russian president directly of having ordered the murder, Nekrasov finds it difficult to believe that Vladimir Putin was directly responsible for ordering the poisoning. Instead,...
The, Er, Dramatic Return Of Saddam
Saddam Hussein has ended his boycott of his trial for genocide against the Kurds of Iraq. However, people can be forgiven if they had not heard of his extended absence from the courtroom, because it started the day before his return. One day after announcing he would not attend the proceedings because of repeated "insults", the former dictator surprised everyone by dutifully taking his place in the dock: Former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein has appeared in court, despite saying a day earlier that he would refuse to attend further hearings of his genocide trial. On Tuesday, he had said he could no longer put up with "continued insults" by the chief judge and prosecutors. ... He entered the courtroom smiling, and took his place to hear a Kurdish medical worker describe how he treated victims of gas attacks in 1987. Of course he was smiling. He can't pass up an...
CQ Nominated In 2006 Weblog Awards
Captain's Quarters has been selected as a finalist for Best Conservative Blog in the 2006 Weblog Awards, the annual readers' poll conducted by Wizbang's Kevin Aylward. I'll have some stiff competition: Ace of Spades Little Green Footballs Hugh Hewitt Michelle Malkin Mary Katherine Ham Patterico's Pontifications Red State The Jawa Report Power Line They're all excellent blogs, and I read all of them myself. I recommend all of them to anyone who wants to follow intelligent conservative thought ... so whoever gets the nod will definitely deserve the honor. I'm happy to be included! Voting starts tomorrow. Vote once a day in each category for your favorites, and believe me, there are plenty of candidates and plenty of worthy blogs. Most of all, take the opportunity to check out a few blogs you may have missed along the way -- that's the best part of these awards! UPDATE: A...
Changing The Work Ethic
The Democrats scored a front-page hit today with Steny Hoyer's announcement that House members will work a full-time schedule while Congress is in session. The new Majority Leader has designed a schedule that will require members to work from Monday evening to Friday afternoon, a plan that has some members of both parties grumbling: Rep. Steny H. Hoyer, the Maryland Democrat who will become House majority leader and is writing the schedule for the next Congress, said members should expect longer hours than the brief week they have grown accustomed to. "I have bad news for you," Hoyer told reporters. "Those trips you had planned in January, forget 'em. We will be working almost every day in January, starting with the 4th." The reporters groaned. "I know, it's awful, isn't it?" Hoyer empathized. For lawmakers, it is awful, compared with what they have come to expect. For much of this...
Carrots For Dear Leader
The US has made an explicit offer of aid and trade to North Korea in an attempt to get them to verifiably abandon their nuclear weapons program, an effort made outside the stalled six-party talks. The plan calls for assistance in energy and food while Kim Jong-Il dismantles his nuclear infrastructure: The United States has offered a detailed package of economic and energy assistance in exchange for North Korea’s giving up nuclear weapons and technology, American officials said Tuesday. But the offer, made last week during two days of intense talks in Beijing, would hinge on North Korea’s agreeing to begin dismantling some of the equipment it is using to expand its nuclear arsenal, even before returning to negotiations. ... The combination of incentives and demands was the focal point of three-way meetings on Nov. 28 and 29 involving Assistant Secretary of State Christopher R. Hill; North Korea’s vice foreign...
'Allahu Akbar Was Just The Opening Act'
Debra Burlingame has written on airline security topics ever since her brother, American Airlines Capt. Charles Burlingame, died in the 9/11 attack at the hands of Islamist terrorists. Today she takes on the topic of the "flying imams" of Minneapolis in the pages of the Wall Street Journal: Given that Islamic terrorists continue their obsession with turning airplanes into weapons of mass destruction, it is nothing short of obscene that these six religious leaders--fresh from attending a conference of the North American Imams Federation, featuring discussions on "Imams and Politics" and "Imams and the Media"--chose to turn that airport into a stage and that airplane into a prop in the service of their need for grievance theater. The reality is, these passengers endured a frightening 3 1/2-hour ordeal, which included a front-to-back sweep of the aircraft with a bomb-sniffing dog, in order to advance the provocative agenda of these imams...
These Are The Realists?
The Iraq Study Group released its long-awaited report today, and while it has some important information on the current state of our operation in Iraq, its recommendations descend from some strange Utopian vision of peace and brotherhood that only exists in the fevered imagination of the so-called realists. The ISG calls for a "support group" of nations surrounding Iraq and relies on their supposed self-interest in a stable and functional Iraq: RECOMMENDATION 3: As a complement to the diplomatic offensive, and in addition to the Support Group discussed below, the United States and the Iraqi government should support the holding of a conference or meeting in Baghdad of the Organization of the Islamic Conference or the Arab League both to assist the Iraqi government in promoting national reconciliation in Iraq and to reestablish their diplomatic presence in Iraq. ... The Support Group would not seek to impose obligations or undertakings...
It's Still Bad, Especially For Israel
I've had more of a chance to look through the ISG report ... and it really doesn't get any better. The fundamental problem with the ISG is to misunderstand the entire war on terror. When we invaded Afghanistan, we did it because it sheltered and promoted terrorism, specifically the terrorists that had killed almost 3,000 Americans on 9/11. Iran and Syria do the same; they shelter and promote the terrorists that have killed American troops in Iraq as well as our allies in Israel. Syria allows them to cross their border with Iraq at will to organize, train, and hide, and Iran provides them with weapons. What the Baker/Hamilton group proposes is nothing less than an endorsement of their tactics. By going to Teheran and Damascus to ask for their assistance, we will have proven that their terrorism and interference pays dividends -- or did the ISG believe that they...
Float Driver Tanks Up
This story is just too weird to ignore. A float driver in a South Carolina parade got drunk and led police on a three-mile chase after swerving out of line during the event -- carrying 18 terrified riders on the float the entire way: A man driving a float in the Anderson Christmas parade has been charged with drunk driving after he passed another float then sped down Main Street, police say. When officers caught up to 42-year-old David Allen Rodgers, he had an open container of alcohol in the truck he used to haul the children and adults on the float for the Steppin' Out Dance Studio, Anderson Police spokeswoman Linda Dudley said. Witnesses said Rodgers was driving in line in Sunday's parade when he pulled out to pass a tractor in the float. Rodgers sped down Main Street and ran a red light, while a witness on the...
December 7, 2006
Can Brady Quinn Pull Off The Upset?
The Notre Dame quarterback didn't manage to score an upset against USC last month, but Brady Quinn has an opportunity to score one for the Heisman. The celebrated senior received word that he was selected as one of three Heisman finalists, but he faces stiff competition from another senior QB: Troy Smith booked his trip to the Heisman Trophy ceremony before the invitations went out. Why wait? Smith, the heavy favorite to win college football's most prestigious award, was selected as a Heisman finalist Wednesday, along with Notre Dame quarterback Brady Quinn and Arkansas running back Darren McFadden. ... The senior quarterback entered the season with plenty of Heisman hype and then backed it up with brilliant play for the unbeaten Buckeyes. Smith is fourth in the nation in passer rating (167.9) with 2,507 yards, 30 touchdown passes and only five interceptions. He might be the biggest reason No. 1...
The Consequences Of Withdrawal
The Times of London spells out the consequences of an American withdrawal on the many Iraqis who trusted us to see the mission through to completion. Speaking to several Iraqi Army non-commissioned officers, Ned Parker reports that several of them plan to flee their native land if the Americans pull out: The Iraqi sergeant has dodged bullets from the al-Mahdi Army and traded fire with Sunni insurgents. Yet in his years with the Iraqi Army he has learnt one simple lesson: once the US military pulls back in Iraq, he should leave the country if he wants to survive. “As soon as it happens, I will quit my job and live outside Iraq,” the sergeant told The Times. “We need to give the Americans back all the authority over the Iraqi Army like before.” Concerns abound that Iraq’s Defence Ministry is being manipulated to serve the interests of powerful Sunni...
Divided Loyalties?
The new Liberal Party leader has found himself at the center of a new controversy that might impact his national standing. Stephane Dion has dual citizenship in Canada and France through his mother and refuses to renounce it. That will create the prospect of electing a Prime Minister with at least the appearance of divided loyalties in the next national elections: Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion says his loyalty to Canada is unquestioned, despite the fact he holds French citizenship. "My loyalty is for Canada. Period," Dion said yesterday. The newly crowned opposition leader holds dual citizenship thanks to his mother, who was born in Paris. Faced with questions on whether he should relinquish his French citizenship because of his new position, Dion — who is one of Canada's leading defenders of federalism — shrugged and asked why. "If nobody is questioning my loyalty, what is the point?" he said, adding...
Giuliani, McCain Reject Israel-Iraq Linkage
At least two presidential aspiranta have publicly opposed the Iraq Study Group and its linkage of the situation in Iraq with the Palestinian conflict. Rudy Giuliani called some of the ISG's recommendations "useful", but told Dennis Prager that leaving Iraq would be a "terrible mistake", while John McCain scotched the notion of a regional conference dominated by two terror-supporting states: "The idea of leaving Iraq, I think, is a terrible mistake," the former mayor said. The group's report, however, stresses that America should not make an "open-ended" commitment of troops and links the presence of troops to milestones met by the Iraqi government. Mr. Giuliani also rejected the panel's recommendation that America tie the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian Arab conflict to stabilizing Iraq. When asked about this linkage on Mr. Prager's radio show, Mr. Giuliani said, "Israel and Palestine is an important issue. Sometimes it's used as an excuse to...
Hamas Shoots Its Mouth Off (Updated And Bumped)
Earlier today, the Jerusalem Post ran a story on Hamas' smuggling efforts to avoid the sanctions placed on the Palestinian Authority since they came to power. They have successfully imported $66 million, but that wasn't what caught the eye of The Anchoress when she read the article. Her jaw dropped at this: Hamas officials have managed to smuggle more than $66 million in cash through the Rafah border crossing in the past eight months, a member of the Hamas-led government revealed Wednesday. Meanwhile, sources close to the Hamas-led government claimed that Hamas representatives recently held talks with officials from the US Democratic Party at a secret location. The sources told the Bethlehem-based Maan News Agency that Hamas representatives have also been holding secret talks with European government officials, including Britain and France. However, a funny thing happened to the story in the intervening hours between The Anchoress' post and now...
Hospiblogging To George Michael
Today the First Mate has an angiogram/heart cath procedure that moves us one step further in the transplant process, and so I'm working from the hospital for at least part of the day. We're hoping that she has had no further occlusion than she did two years ago, when they saw about 50% narrowing of the cardiac arteries. If they do, they'll either perform an angioplasty or insert stents while she's on the table. That will mean an overnight stay; if she doesn't need any intervention, we'll head home this afternoon. I'm logging into the Internet through the guest network that Fairview has thoughtfully provided for its patients. It works very well; even after I rebooted my laptop twice this morning, it didn't force me back through the login sequence. I may be very productive on the blog today as a result, or I might just catch up with my...
Remember Reform?
The Democrats came back to the majority in both chambers of Congress in good part due to their ability to tie Republicans to lobbying scandals and petty (and not so petty) corruptions. Nancy Pelosi promised to "clean up Congress" as one of her top priorities when she takes the gavel in January. Apparently, that leaves her a few weeks to let the Democratic caucus to cozy up to lobbyists: Democrats may be promising a clampdown on lobbyist freebies once they take control of Congress. But ahead of that push, party leaders are collecting lobbyists' checks, while Democratic staffers angle for jobs inside their well-appointed offices.Verizon Communications Inc. earlier this week sponsored a reception for newly elected Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill. Illinois Democratic Rep. Melissa Bean was the beneficiary of a Tuesday night fund-raiser in the new Capitol Hill offices of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. In addition to retiring Ms....
A Baby! Stone The Crows!
Somehow the national crisis of Mary Cheney's pregnancy escapes me. The news that Vice President Dick Cheney's lesbian daughter is expecting her first child has activists across the political spectrum in a strange dither: Conservative leaders voiced dismay Wednesday at news that Mary Cheney, the lesbian daughter of Dick Cheney, is pregnant, while a gay-rights group said the vice president faces "a lifetime of sleepless nights" for serving in an administration that has opposed recognition of same-sex couples. Mary Cheney, 37, and her partner of 15 years, Heather Poe, 45, are expecting a baby in late spring, said Lea Anne McBride, a spokeswoman for the vice president. ... Family Pride, which advocates on behalf of gay and lesbian families, noted that Virginia last month became one of 27 states with a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. ... "Unless they move to a handful of less restrictive states, Heather will never...
Pearl Harbor at 65
About this time 65 years ago, Imperial Japan conducted a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in their bid to knock America out of the Pacific. Japan actually intended to give Cordell Hull their declaration of war an hour prior to the attack, part of a coordinated offensive that would hit US installations throughout the Pacific over a matter of hours. A delay in gaining an audience with the Secretary of State created the conditions for the perfidious bombing at Hawaii. No matter -- the attack successfully crippled the Pacific Fleet, at least for a short time. The picture below comes from the Naval Archives, a color photograph from a film shot of the USS Arizona as its ammunition magazines exploded: This also marks what appears to be the last meeting of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association. Too many of their members have passed away or have become too infirm to...
Cleanse The Code
I had the opportunity to participate in a conference call with Senators Larry Craig and Ron Wyden regarding the Cleanse The Code project, a tax reform effort to simplify the ungainly regulations that currently exist. I've taken notes of the opening remarks: Ron Wyden (D-OR): There have been 15,000 changes in the tax code since the last revision, and now stretches out to 55,000 pages. None of this has made tax compliance any easier; we spend more on tax compliance than education. We either have to keep adding more regulations or "drain the tax swamp". We need a one-page 1040, which the adminstration wants as well. This is a natural opportunity for bipartisanship, and much of the activist model comes from 1986, another bipartisan effort. The last tax reform took place during the second term of a Republican president working with a Democratic Congress. It can happen again. Larry Craig...
First Mate Says Hello
Thanks for all of your e-mails and comments today in support of the First Mate. She wanted me to pass along her thanks to all of you as well. She's doing well, resting comfortably after the insertion of the stents, and she'll be out of the hospital tomorrow morning. Interestingly, I spotted an article on this very topic as I went through the various feeds. USA Today reports that drug-coated stents do not cause more heart attacks than the norm: Drug-coated stents that prop open the arteries of about 3 million people in the U.S. don't increase the risk of heart attack or death when used as labeled but may put patients at risk for blood clots, health advisers said Thursday. While the panel of experts broadly dismissed the more serious risks, they split on characterizing the degree of the increased clotting risk in comparison with older, bare-metal stents. They...
December 8, 2006
If You're In The Voting Mood ...
... please be sure to drop by the 2006 Weblog Awards and cast a vote for Captain's Quarters as Best Conservative Blog. It looks like Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs is running away with this category, and it's hard to argue with anyone who chooses LGF -- or any of the other great blogs in this category. I'll have an endorsement list later, but I do want to throw in a special mention for The Moderate Voice as Best Centrist Blog. In my opinion, Joe Gandelman and his co-bloggers practically define centrist blogging, and he deserves the nod. Unfortunately, that puts me at odds with another one of my favorites, QandO, which isn't really centrist but libertarian. They didn't have a group blog category this time, so QandO appears in competition with TMV. Most of all, be sure to select a new blog every day to read!...
A Shadow Attorney General?
After narrowly losing his race for governor, most of us expected Mike Hatch to take an extended vacation and then go into private practice. Instead, his replacement as Attorney General has suggested that Hatch could work for her and help run the office, which raises questions about whether Hatch arranged to effectively run for two offices at the same time: Attorney General Mike Hatch will vacate his big office in the west wing of the State Capitol when his term ends in early January, but there's a chance he'll stay on as a staff member under Attorney General-elect Lori Swanson, who has been his long-time top deputy and confidante as solicitor general. The arrangement would be unusual and potentially controversial, say some observers, creating a perception that Hatch is still in charge of an office that he held for two terms and often has described as his life's passion. Swanson...
Not Exactly A Hit Abroad
The Iraq Study Group played well inside the Beltway yesterday, but it tanked on the road, according to the Times of London. If James Baker and Lee Hamilton expected swoons of delight from abroad, then they will have to prepare themselves for disappointment: The recommendations of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group were broadly welcomed by most Republicans and Democrats in Washington yesterday, but received a far cooler reception in Iraq, Iran, Israel and from the US military. The report, which calls for the withdrawal of all US combat troops from Iraq by early 2008, negotiations with Iran and Syria, and a renewed Middle East peace initiative, was a rare triumph of political compromise in Washington. But for those directly affected by the Iraq war and the wider regional instability — the Iraqis themselves, Israel and the US troops on the ground — the report was widely seen as unrealistic and...
Perhaps Not Such A Hit At Home, Either
Earlier, I wrote that the Iraq Study Group proposal bombed with the nations most directly involved in its recommendations, especially with Iraqis. The report seemed to fare much better inside the Beltway, but it turns out that even there people question the report's policy recommendations: Members of Congress yesterday questioned the practicability of recommendations from the Iraq Study Group about how to reverse the chaos in Iraq, but they praised the panel's stark assessment of conditions there. ... Democrats were guarded in their treatment of the report, especially its call for engaging Syria and Iran in diplomacy. In comments after a hearing yesterday with the co-chairmen of the Iraq Study Group, Levin suggested that "there could be some kind of effort to generally support the recommendations." But Republicans and Democrats alike on the Senate Armed Services panel quizzed former secretary of state James A. Baker III and former congressman Lee...
Sun Rises In East, Taxes Get Collected, And ...
... Hamas insists that it will never recognize Israel nor abide by previous agreements of the Palestinian Authority. It's hardly breaking news; Hamas has said this repeatedly even before winning control of the PA early this year. However, their latest venue does warrant a second look: Haniyeh arrived in the Iranian capital on Thursday for a four-day visit for talks with Iranian leaders including President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who has called for Israel to be "wiped off the map." ... Haniyeh called Iran, a longtime ally of Hamas, the Palestinians' "strategic depth" because they were together in their fight against Israel. "They (Israelis) assume the Palestinian nation is alone. This is an illusion. ... We have a strategic depth in the Islamic Republic of Iran. This country (Iran) is our powerful, dynamic and stable depth," he said. Iran has provided the Hamas-led Palestinian government with US$120 million (€90.25 million) this year...
Wannabe Jihadi, Take 2
Six months ago, the FBI took down a ring of wannabe jihadis with large aspirations for terrorism and small mental capacities to conduct it. Apparently, they discovered another benighted aspirant to radical Islam in the person of Derrick Shareef, whose brilliant cunning allowed him to get caught in a sting before he ever bought his first hand grenade: A man has been arrested by federal agents on charges of planning to set off hand grenades at an Illinois shopping mall on Dec. 22 as part of his plan to commit "violent jihad" against civilians. Derrick Shareef, 22, of Rockford, was arrested when he carried out a rendezvous with an undercover agent in a parking lot to trade a set of stereo speakers for four grenades and a handgun. Federal officials said he planned to place the grenades in garbage cans at the CherryVale shopping mall in Rockford, about 90 miles...
December 9, 2006
Oh, When They Get Behind Closed Doors ... Watch Out
Oh, no one knows what goes on behind closed doors ... I'm old enough to remember the old Charlie Rich ballad when it was a huge crossover hit. While the song talked about private love, the new session of the Senate may need the same reference to talk about its new approach to public policy. Harry Reid has called for a closed-door session of the entire Senate to kick off the 110th Congress, excluding the press and the public: Senate Democrats, who campaigned on a pledge of more openness in government, will kick off the 110th Congress with a closed meeting of all 100 senators in the Capitol. Sen. Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), who will be the majority leader when the new Congress convenes Jan. 4, announced yesterday "a joint caucus meeting" for senators only, to be held that morning in the old Senate chamber, a cozy, seldom-used room. ......
Romney's Past Catching Up?
Mitt Romney has worked to position himself as a conservative alternative to John McCain and an ideological opponent of the more liberal Rudy Giuliani in the 2008 Presidential sweepstakes with Republican voters. He has successfully challenged both enough to get himself into the top tier for the nomination in these early days. However, the emergence of correspondence between Romney and the Log Cabin Republicans of Massachussetts in 1994 threatens to make Romney look like a (gasp!) libertarian: Gov. Mitt Romney, the Massachusetts Republican who has built a presidential campaign on a broad appeal for conservative support, is drawing sharply increased criticism from conservative activists for his advocacy of gay rights in a 1994 letter. Mr. Romney’s standing among conservatives is being hurt by a letter he sent to the Log Cabin Club of Massachusetts saying that he would be a stronger advocate for gay rights than Senator Edward M. Kennedy,...
Iran: We'll Help US Retreat
Iran has decided that it will help the US retreat from Iraq -- as long as we are willing to pay the price. So far, the opening will require us to forego opposition to their nuclear program, but that's only the beginning: Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki has said Tehran is willing to help the US withdraw from Iraq. But he added that Iran would only assist if the Americans changed their attitude towards Tehran. The BBC's Frances Harrison in Tehran says Mr Mottaki did not spell out the change of attitude required. But she adds that Iran probably wants the US to drop its insistence that it freeze its nuclear programme before any kind of talks. ... Speaking in Bahrain, Mr Mottaki said the key issue in solving the problems in Iraq was the withdrawal of foreign forces. "If the United States changes its attitude, the Islamic Republic of...
Progress On Oil Revenue
The thorny issue of Iraqi oil revenues appears closer to resolution, although it may still take more negotiations to finalize. The Kurds may find themselves on the short end of this debate as a result: Iraqi officials are near agreement on a national oil law that would give the central government the power to distribute current and future oil revenues to the provinces or regions, based on their population, Iraqi and American officials say. If enacted, the measure, drafted by a committee of politicians and ministers, could help resolve a highly divisive issue that has consistently blocked efforts to reconcile the country’s feuding ethnic and sectarian factions. Sunni Arabs, who lead the insurgency, have opposed the idea of regional autonomy for fear that they would be deprived of a fair share of the country’s oil wealth, which is concentrated in the Shiite south and Kurdish north. ... Officials cautioned that...
Wasn't He On The Intel Committee Already?
Nancy Pelosi has struggled through a headache of her own making ever since tossing Jane Harman out of the House Intelligence Committee chair. She attempted to place Alcee Hastings into the slot, even though Hastings got impeached from the federal bench for corruption in the late 1980s. When her caucus rebelled, she instead selected Silvestre Reyes, who surprised the caucus with his support of an expanded US presence in Iraq. Now, according to CQ's Jeff Stein, Reyes has little understanding of America's explicit enemy in the war on terror: ... Reyes can’t answer some fundamental questions about the powerful forces arrayed against us in the Middle East. It begs the question, of course: How can the Intelligence Committee do effective oversight of U.S. spy agencies when its leaders don’t know basics about the battlefield? ... The dialogue went like this: Al Qaeda is what, I asked, Sunni or Shia? “Al...
Northern Alliance Radio On The Air Today
Mitch and I will be on the air at 1 pm CT for the Northern Alliance Radio Network. We'll be discussing the ISG report, Silvestre Reyes' appointment as House Intel chair, the new closed-door approach of Harry Reid, and much, much more. Be sure to tune into AM 1280 The Patriot or tap into their Internet stream. Join the conversation by calling us at 651-289-4488. Also, if you haven't done so already, be sure to cast your votes for your favorite blogs in the 2006 Weblog Awards. I'm still in a big struggle for second place in the Best Conservative Blog category, so I can use all the help I can get. Don't forget to read one new blog each day in this contest!...
December 10, 2006
So Much For Negotiations With 'Insurgents'
The Times of London reveals that the American consulate in Iraq spent two months in high-level negotiations with the insurgencies in Iraq, including some groups previously thought to be associated with al-Qaeda. The talks collapsed earlier this year when Nouri al-Maliki, sympathetic to Iran, formed the government -- a move which the insurgents saw as a betrayal: SECRET talks in which senior American officials came face-to-face with some of their most bitter enemies in the Iraqi insurgency broke down after two months of meetings, rebel commanders have disclosed. The meetings, hosted by Iyad Allawi, Iraq’s former prime minister, brought insurgent commanders and Zalmay Khalilzad, the US ambassador to Iraq, together for the first time. After months of delicate negotiations Allawi, a former Ba’athist and a secular Shi’ite, persuaded three rebel leaders to travel to his villa in Amman, the Jordanian capital, to see Khalilzad in January. “The meetings came about...
The Freezer Money Wasn't Needed, Apparently
In a sign that people will vote for crooks as long as they consider them a member of the team, William Jefferson has won re-election to the House of Representative. The Louisiana Democrat won 57% of the vote in a runoff against a fellow Democrat despite having been caught with $90,000 cash in his freezer during a federal corruption investigation: Voters looked past a federal bribery investigation of Rep. William J. Jefferson (D-La.) and reelected the eight-term congressman in a runoff election Saturday. Jefferson grabbed a commanding lead over state Rep. Karen Carter, a fellow Democrat, almost as soon as the polls closed in the New Orleans district. With 44 percent of the precincts reporting, Jefferson, had 61 percent of the vote. Louisiana's 2nd District was one of the nation's last unresolved midterm races, and the runoff election put Jefferson in danger of becoming the only Democratic incumbent to lose...
Tories Pass Accountability Act
It took almost a year, but the Tories in Canada have made good on their campaign promises to clean up government. IThe Federal Accountability Act survived an attempt by the Liberals to delay it past a contribution deadline, a maneuver that brought condemnation from the NDP: The House of Commons passed on Friday the Conservatives’ much-touted Federal Accountability Act. The Tories promised during the last election to bring ethics and accountability to Ottawa, and the bill was the first piece of legislation introduced by Prime Minister Stephen Harper. The omnibus bill was brought to the House of Commons in April and was then scrutinized by the Senate throughout the summer and fall. The Conservatives accused Liberal senators of holding up the legislation so the party wouldn’t be subject to new donation rules during its recent leadership campaign. This was the fruit of Adscam, the corruption of the Sponsorship Programme that...
Greenwald Pounds Emanuel
In the wake of the final Ethics Committee report on the Mark Foley scandal, we have discovered what we expected -- that the Republicans shrugged off the scandal until it blew up in their faces, and that the Democrats knew about it long before the October Surprise release (in September, in this case) prior to the midterms. It shows both parties in a poor light, both of them sublimating ethical concerns and the safety of the pages to electoral interests. On page 76 of the report, the Ethics Committee makes clear that the Democratic House leadership had copies of the e-mails as early as October 2005 -- and withheld them. Today, no lesser liberal blogger than Glenn Greenwald blasts the Democrats, and especially Rahm Emanuel, for lying about their involvement in the scandal: At the height of the Mark Foley scandal in October -- when Democrats were pounding Denny Hastert...
Murphy's Law
In my experience, any time one goes to work for the government, it conducts a proctological background check that takes weeks or months to complete. They ask for every piece of information that one could possibly imagine, including all of the places one has lived for what seems their entire life, the names of neighbors and co-workers, and the nature of all the positions one has held. That kind of check gets conducted for entry-level positions where any kind of security clearance is required; it gets more involved the higher the clearance gets. So it comes as a rather large and unpleasant surprise that the White House and the Pentagon had no idea one of their top lawyers had been disbarred in Texas: A top Air Force lawyer who served at the White House and in a senior position in Iraq turns out to have been practicing law for 23...
Lactose Intolerance
Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door. Ralph Waldo Emerson's advice has informed American self-perception of their economy: inventive, individualistic, and dynamic. However, milk apparently gets different treatment than mousetraps, as Dutch immigrant and dairyman Hein Hettinga just discovered: In the summer of 2003, shoppers in Southern California began getting a break on the price of milk. A maverick dairyman named Hein Hettinga started bottling his own milk and selling it for as much as 20 cents a gallon less than the competition, exercising his right to work outside the rigid system that has controlled U.S. milk production for almost 70 years. Soon the effects were rippling through the state, helping to hold down retail prices at supermarkets and warehouse stores. That was when a coalition of giant milk companies and dairies, along with their congressional allies, decided to crush Hettinga's initiative. For...
Maliki Out?
It appears that events have begun to pick up pace in Iraq. First a broad agreement seems to have coalesced around revenue sharing for Iraq's oil production, and now it looks like Nouri al-Maliki might be getting the heave as Prime Minister: Major partners in Iraq's governing coalition are in behind-the-scenes talks to oust Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki amid discontent over his failure to quell raging violence, according to lawmakers involved. The talks are aimed at forming a new parliamentary bloc that would seek to replace the current government and that would likely exclude supporters of the radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who is a vehement opponent of the U.S. military presence. The new alliance would be led by senior Shiite politician Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, who met with President Bush last week. Al-Hakim, however, was not expected to be the next prime minister because he prefers the role of powerbroker, staying...
The Hidden Granddaughter
We spent this afternoon getting a little Christmas spirit with the Little Admiral. She took part in a church Christmas show, for which she had practiced the last two weeks. Grandpa took the video camera hoping to get some memories on tape, but the Little Admiral decided that she wanted to hide behind the other kids. I did manage to get a few cute shots; in this clip, she's singing "Away in a Manger": I've been meaning to play around with YouTube for some other blogging projects; this was as good of an excuse as any other....
December 11, 2006
Connecting A Few Dots With The Flying Imams
Kathryn Kersten decides to do what her employer has thus far refused through its news division and report on the terror connections of the Flying Imams. In her latest Star Tribune column, Kersten notes the affiliations of the six imams who got booted from a US Air flight for their suspicious behavior: Who are the parties involved here, who seem so interested in linking airport security with racial bigotry? The Council on American-Islamic Relations, the imams' legal representative, is an organization that "we know has ties to terrorism," Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said in 2003. And the Muslim American Society, which is also supporting the imams? It's the American arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, according to the Chicago Tribune, which called it "the world's most influential Islamic fundamentalist group." How about Omar Shahin, the imams' spokesman and also president of the North American Imams Federation? He is a native of...
Cat's Out Of The Bag In North Korea
After years of regime propaganda, North Koreans have started discovering just how poor they are in comparison to their cousins in the South. The London Telegraph reports that refugees now understand their economic position in the world before they flee Kim Jong-Il and his worker's paradise: Many North Koreans are now aware of the poverty of their country and are voicing discontent after years of near-starvation, according to the fullest study yet conducted of refugees from the Stalinist dictatorship. While the popular image of North Koreans is of a nation living in blissful ignorance of the outside world and unquestioning loyalty to the leadership of Kim Jong-il, refugees interviewed while in hiding in China reported that there were increasing signs of dissent. Eighty per cent of those questioned said North Koreans no longer believed official propaganda that living standards were better than in capitalist South Korea. In reality, income per...
Holocaust Scholars Are Not Welcome In Iran
The Iranian regime hosts its Holocaust denial conference this week, the long-promoted effort of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The Iranian president says he wants an unbiased look at the evidence of the Nazi genocide of European Jews during World War II, and he's inviting every nutcase in the Northern Hemisphere to attend the conference. However, one Palestinian has found his invitation withdrawn: An outspoken Palestinian lawyer was hoping to challenge Holocaust deniers during a provocative conference that opens in Iran today. The international gathering will question whether six million Jews were actually slaughtered by the Nazis in the Second World War. But yesterday Khaled Kasab Mahameed learnt from the Iranian Foreign Ministry — which had invited him to speak — that he would not receive a visa. No reason was given. Mr Mahameed suspects that it was because he has an Israeli passport. It may also have been because he has made...
GOP Straw Poll For December
GOP Bloggers has their monthly Presidential Straw Poll running again, square in the middle of voting season here on the blogs. Once again, blog readers can cast their votes from their favorite blogs in order to allow analysis from each blog about their readers' choices. It looks like the latest entrants into the race have been added this time: Speaking of voting, John Hawkins has the results of his Warblogger Awards for 2006. CQ gets a few honorable mentions, for which I thank the judges, so be sure to check out the winners. And, as long as we're talking about voting, don't forget to cast your ballots for your favorites in the 2006 Weblog Awards. CQ is running in third place for Best Conservative Blog. The folks at The Moderate Voice have repeatedly boosted my blog for the awards, but they seem to have decided to end their own run...
So This Was Our Intel Priority In The 1990s?
The Observer dropped a bombshell yesterday when it revealed that American intelligence had Princess Diana bugged and under surveillance the night of her death. It adds yet another strange aspect to the freak show that her demise has inspired, but opens some questions about American priorities: The American secret service was bugging Princess Diana's telephone conversations without the approval of the British security services on the night she died, according to the most comprehensive report on her death, to be published this week. Among extraordinary details due to emerge in the report by former Metropolitan police commissioner Lord Stevens is the revelation that the US security service was bugging her calls in the hours before she was killed in a car crash in Paris. In a move that raises fresh questions over transatlantic agreements on intelligence-sharing, the surveillance arm of the US has admitted listening to her conversations as she...
Obama Campaigns In New England
The coyness continues from Barack Obama, who took his "aw, shucks" campaign to New Hampshire this weekend. In two appearances, he appeared humble and somewhat mystified about his sudden popularity -- but he used it to attempt to move the debate to the left: Senator Barack Obama came to New Hampshire for the first time in his life on Sunday, selling a message of hope while proclaiming himself wary of the wave of hype that surrounded his visit. His visit gave Democrats in two sold-out halls a chance to inspect the man who has emerged as their party’s strongest alternative to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton as a presidential contender. “It is flattering to get a lot of attention, although I must say it is baffling,” Mr. Obama said here late Sunday afternoon. “I think to some degree I’ve become a shorthand or symbol or stand-in for a spirit that the...
A Rough Start For Mahmoud's Festival Of Ignorance
Pity poor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Here he goes to all the trouble of serving up some prime red meat to the Jew-haters of Islam, and they treat him like ... well, like an ignorant and dangerous dictator. In the opening moments of the Holocaust Festival of Ignorance in Teheran, during which he called the Nazi genocide a "myth", students made it clear that they weren't buying what Mahmoud was shoveling: ran on Monday opened a conference on the Holocaust, saying it would not be an attempt to deny the World War II genocide but merely to discuss it in an unrestricted atmosphere. However, the conference was initiated by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has described the Holocaust as a "myth" and called for Israel to be wiped off the map. Students from a Teheran university cut off Ahmadinejad as he addressed the conference, shouting slurs like "corrupt," "liar," and "death to the...
Kofi: I Learned Projection
Kofi Annan has an op-ed column in today's Washington Post that must be read to be believed. The column, which serves as a valediction of sorts, talks about what Annan has learned from his time at the United Nations. If his rule hadn't resulted in such worldwide misery and despair, it would be one of the funniest pieces of opinion journalism so far this year. The laughter reaches its apex here: My fourth lesson, therefore, is that governments must be accountable for their actions, in the international as well as the domestic arena. Every state owes some account to other states on which its actions have a decisive impact. As things stand, poor and weak states are easily held to account, because they need foreign aid. But large and powerful states, whose actions have the greatest impact on others, can be constrained only by their own people. That gives the...
Kennedy Backs Away From Kerry
John Kerry took another body blow to his hopes for another presidential run in 2008. With almost no one but John Kerry taking the idea seriously, Ted Kennedy strongly hinted that he has read the writing on the wall: Senator Edward M. Kennedy Monday dropped his public commitment to support Senator John F. Kerry in a 2008 presidential race, saying that he won't wait "indefinitely" for Kerry to declare his intentions while the Democratic primary field takes shape. Kennedy said he doesn't currently plan to endorse another candidate and still might support Kerry if Kerry decides to run. But in an hourlong interview with the Globe's Washington bureau, Kennedy offered strong praise for two of Kerry's possible presidential rivals: senators Barack Obama of Illinois and Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, calling them "formidable figures" who are connecting with rank-and-file Democrats. Kennedy said his oft-stated commitment to support Kerry again...
December 12, 2006
Insert Dick Cheney Joke Here
For those who do not know, the First Mate is totally blind -- no sight whatsoever. Nevertheless, she handles lots of tasks that people might assume she would find impossible. She's an accomplished cook -- as anyone who sees me would immediately assume -- and takes care of all the household tasks. She gardens when she's healthy, and she sometimes works in a church day-care center. She hates it when people say it, but she's amazing. However, even as amazing as she might be, I'd be hard pressed to put a gun in her hands and expect her to hunt for our dinner: The blind will be able to go hunting if a Texas Bill becomes law. They would have to be accompanied by a sighted hunter, who would help to guide their shots, and carry proof that they were legally blind. The law will also allow them to use...
Seattle Restores Christmas Trees
Here's one small victory for Christmas: The nine Christmas trees at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport were supposed to come down quietly over the weekend, in an attempt to avoid litigation and publicity. But it didn't quite work out that way. "We've created quite a national media sensation," said Seattle Port Commissioner John Creighton, whose agency ordered the trees removed after a rabbi threatened to file a lawsuit unless the airport displayed a menorah, as well as the trees, within 24 hours. Rabbi Elazar Bogomilsky, with the Seattle chapter of Chabad-Lubavitch, had requested that the Port of Seattle include an electric menorah as part of the airport's holiday display this year. But authorities decided to remove the trees, rather than be subject to accommodating all requests. Now, because of publicity and public outcry, the trees will soon be back. This is actually a defeat for small-minded bureaucrats rather than any explicit animus...
Governor Moonbeam Becomes AG Sunbeam?
When Californians returned former Governor Jerry Brown to statewide office, this time as Attorney General, pundits around the nation waited in anticipation for any hint of a return to his old ways, which earned him the nickname Governor Moonbeam. It apparently didn't take long, as everyone at the California Department of Justice discovered yesterday when they opened their e-mail. Brown wants the staff to clearly understand his priorities as chief law-enforcement officer in the Golden State. CQ's inside source sent over the full text of the e-mail (emphases mine): To everyone within the Department of Justice: I am very much looking forward to joining you on January 8, 2007, as your new Attorney General. These are busy weeks, as I wind up my work as Mayor of Oakland and get ready to assume office. Bill Lockyer and key members of his executive staff have been extraordinarily helpful in smoothing the...
Coming Home To Roost
Golda Meir once said, "Peace will come only when the Palestinians love their children more than they hate Jews." Unfortunately, Hamas has apparently decided that they hate Palestinian children almost as much as the Jews -- if the children belong to Fatah officials. Three children died in a deliberate assassination at the hands of Hamas, a murder that has shaken the territories: Fatah supporters blamed their rivals in the Hamas movement for the murder of the three children of a senior intelligence officer. Hamas denied responsibility and promised an investigation, but Fatah activists were unconvinced. As they attended an emotionally charged funeral for the children in Gaza City they shouted slogans blaming the Islamic movement for the killings. Coming a day after the Hamas interior minister survived an assassination attempt, the killings are expected to prompt more tit-for-tat violence between the two main Palestinian factions. ... In a region supposedly...
Is Saud A Goner? Or Abdullah?
The Washington Post reports that Saudi ambassador Turki al-Faisal has abruptly left the United States and ended his 15-month tenure at the embassy. He left so quickly and with so little notice that none of the niceties of diplomatic protocol could be observed -- and with no explanation offered: Prince Turki al-Faisal, Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States, flew out of Washington yesterday after informing Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and his staff that he would be leaving the post after only 15 months on the job, according to U.S. officials and foreign envoys. There has been no formal announcement from the kingdom. The abrupt departure is particularly striking because his predecessor, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, spent 22 years on the job. The Saudi ambassador is one of the most influential diplomatic positions in Washington and is arguably the most important overseas post for the oil-rich desert kingdom. Turki,...
No Reduction In Troops: Military
President Bush heard from his military experts about the situation in Iraq and the way forward to win the war. While they agreed with the Iraq Study Group's report on the current woes of the mission, they disagreed strongly with the ISG's recommendations for resolving them: President Bush heard a blunt and dismal assessment of his handling of Iraq from a group of military experts yesterday, but the advisers shared the White House's skeptical view of the recommendations made last week by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, sources said. The three retired generals and two academics disagreed in particular with the study group's plans to reduce the number of U.S. combat troops in Iraq and to reach out for help to Iran and Syria, according to sources familiar with the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the session was private. The White House gathering was part of...
The Secretly Gay Crop
Last month, I warned CQ readers about the reliability of World Net Daily, a wire and pundit service that aims for conservative readers. In that case, their news report claimed that illegal immigrants committed as many as 12 murders a day, which would make them responsible for over 25% of all non-negligent homicides committed in the United States. Today, we find out from one of their regular contributors that a crop known for its low price and health benefits will turn red-blooded American men into fashion designers and interior decorators: If you're a grownup, you're already developed, and you're able to fight off some of the damaging effects of soy. Babies aren't so fortunate. Research is now showing that when you feed your baby soy formula, you're giving him or her the equivalent of five birth control pills a day. A baby's endocrine system just can't cope with that kind...
The Rosett Rewrite
When Kofi Annan penned a column for the Washington Post yesterday in advance of his valediction at Turtle Bay, I wrote that his article read like a parody written by Claudia Rosett. Instead, the tireless researcher and critic of the United Nations and Annan rewrote Annan's speech for the pages of National Review. Rosett tries something that Annan avoided -- the truth: Thank you for that generous introduction. I don’t deserve it. Please hold your applause until you hear what I have to say. This is not false modesty. I am quite serious — I don’t deserve the honor of speaking here today. At least once in every life there comes a moment of honesty, and for reasons I cannot fathom — perhaps the shock of looking back at just what a self-serving failure I have been — this is mine. During my decade as secretary-general, and indeed for some...
December 13, 2006
Day By Day: Too Sexy For My Blog?
I have run the Day By Day cartoon by Chris Muir for around two years at Captain's Quarters, and I constantly receive e-mail on the strip. It's about evenly split; I get equally passionate missives about its content in either direction. Yesterday, however, Chris depicted the 40ish female character Sam in nothing but a thong and a come-hither look, which brought an especially impassioned set of e-mails from CQ readers. I correspond with Chris on occasion, which I enjoy immensely; he's a great guy. He contacted me earlier this week because another blogger denounced me for displaying DBD, calling me a phony conservative. Chris wanted to find out my state of mind and explain what he wants to do with his creation, and I appreciated the contact. Obviously, Chris wants to push boundaries with DBD, and I think he does it well and intelligently. Normally that's a good thing. Conservatives...
They're Getting The Message
Potential witnesses to the murder of Alexander Litvinenko have suddenly begun to make themselves scarce. As more and more agencies involve themselves in the probe, fewer and fewer people remain to interrogate: Key witnesses in the Alexander Litvinenko investigation are missing, with their families claiming that they fear for their lives. The sudden disappearance of a number of leading figures linked to the affair will make it even harder for British detectives, whose inquiry has now spread across five countries. Interpol joined the hunt for the murderer yesterday, saying that it hoped to exchange information coming from Britain, France, Italy, Germany and Russia. Scotland Yard was struggling to gain access to vital witnesses with former associates of Litvinenko claiming that they are too scared to come forward. Evgeny Limarev, who told the former KGB officer that he was on a death list just hours before he was poisoned, was reported...
Feds Raid Swift
The Department of Homeland Security raided six Swift processing plants yesterday in an effort to end the theft of legitimate Social Security numbers by illegal immigrants. The meatpacker complained bitterly about the raids, but sounded defensive over an issue for which they have no blame: Federal officials raided six meatpacking plants across the country Tuesday in the culmination of a 10-month investigation triggered by allegations that illegal immigrants were using the stolen identities of U.S. citizens. The raids, all at plants operated by Swift & Co., resulted in arrests of workers on immigration violations and some existing criminal warrants, with charges of aggravated identity theft possible at a later date, officials said. The number of arrests was not immediately known. The company was not charged. The action targeted the use of legitimate Social Security numbers by illegal immigrants -- what Jamie Zuieback, spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, called "a...
A McCain-Pawlenty Ticket?
Jim Geraghty looks at the dynamic between Senator and presidential hopeful John McCain and Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, and reaches a conclusion that I suggested almost two weeks ago. Pawlenty's early commitment to endorse McCain and his work on McCain's exploratory committee looks like a partnership meant for larger purposes -- and McCain himself seems to hint that Pawlenty could be his running mate in 2008: Mr. Pawlenty's presidential buzz was silenced by his political near-death experience this year. Despite the St. Paul Pioneer Press declaring: "Gov. Tim Pawlenty was a Republican rock that withstood a Democratic tidal wave washing across the state and nation Tuesday," talk of his presidential aspirations abruptly ended. In the meantime, the Republicans committed to holding their 2008 convention in St. Paul. The early contours of the GOP's 2008 strategy suggest that it wants to win over the remaining blue parts of the Upper Midwest...
Iranian Provocation
The end of the two-day Holocaust denial convention in Teheran gave Mahmoud Ahmadinejad one last opportunity to provoke the Israelis, and he did not allow it to pass unfulfilled. In language that has become too familiar from Iran, Ahmadinejad repeated his assertion that Israel would not long survive: A two-day gathering of Holocaust deniers and white supremacists ended Tuesday with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad meeting participants and telling them Israel would not survive long. “The Zionist regime will disappear soon, the same way the Soviet Union disappeared,” Mr. Ahmadinejad said, according to ISNA, a government-financed news agency. Thus, “humanity will achieve freedom.” Iran has transformed into quite the Orwellian experience over the last three decades. Humanity will achieve freedom through the annihilation of the Jews -- in favor of radical theocracies that oppress their subjects and spread terrorism throughout the region. The Islamic Republic has become nothing more than a clanging...
Saudis: Don't Leave Iraq
The Saudis have warned the United States against pulling out of Iraq, telling American officials that a retreat would set off a bloodbath. In fact, the Saudis feel so strongly about it that they told the US that an American withdrawal would prompt them to fund a sectarian arms race to protect the Sunni minority: Saudi Arabia has told the Bush administration that it might provide financial backing to Iraqi Sunnis in any war against Iraq’s Shiites if the United States pulls its troops out of Iraq, according to American and Arab diplomats. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia conveyed that message to Vice President Dick Cheney two weeks ago during Mr. Cheney’s whirlwind visit to Riyadh, the officials said. During the visit, King Abdullah also expressed strong opposition to diplomatic talks between the United States and Iran, and pushed for Washington to encourage the resumption of peace talks between Israel...
December 14, 2006
A Saudi Split
The abrupt departure of Saudi ambassador Turki al-Faisal indicates deep divisions within the Saudi royal family, according to the Times of London. Turki flew out of Washington not to prepare for changes at home, but because King Abdullah wanted a change in Washington: Saudi Arabia’s Ambassador to the United States has returned to Riyadh after resigning abruptly because his posting was not renewed by King Abdullah. ... Prince Turki’s resignation also hinted at splits within the ranks of the secretive Saudi Royal Family. The Times has learnt from Saudi sources that he resigned because King Abdullah had not renewed his four-year service contract, which is the normal condition for all serving Saudi ministers and ambassadors. The King’s unusual decision was seen as a diplomatic way of disguising what was, in effect, the Ambassador’s dismissal. But Prince Turki was warned that his term would not be renewed, and so took the...
Pray For Tim Johnson (Updated)
Tim Johnson, the senior Senator from our neighbor South Dakota, has taken ill and may have suffered a stroke: Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S. D., has been hospitalized with symptoms described as stroke-like. The seriousness of his illness has not been disclosed. ... Johnson became disoriented during a call with reporters at midday, stuttering in response to a question. He appeared to recover, asking if there were any additional questions before ending the call. Johnson spokeswoman Julianne Fisher said he had walked back to his Capitol office after the call with reporters but appeared to not be feeling well. The Capitol physician was called and Johnson was taken by ambulance to the George Washington Univeristy Hospital in D.C. for evaluation. A statement released by Johnson's office said, "Senator Tim Johnson was taken to George Washington University Hospital this afternoon suffering from a possible stroke. As this stage, he is undergoing a...
Judge Upholds Detainee Law
In an important victory for the Bush administration, a Clinton appointee to the federal bench upheld the new detainee law that bars Guantanamo prisoners from using American civil courts to challenge their detention. The same judge, James Robertson, first ruled against the Bush administration in 2004, necessitating the new law Congress passed this year and upheld in this latest decision: A federal judge dismissed yesterday a challenge from Osama bin Laden's driver over his more than four years of detention at the Guantanamo Bay military prison, saying a new anti-terrorism law approved by Congress this fall removes the lower court's jurisdiction in the matter. U.S. District Judge James Robertson is the first to rule on the controversial Military Commissions Act (MCA), which authorizes military trials of alleged enemy combatants and removes their right to try to bring their cases before federal judges. Robertson dismissed Salim Ahmed Hamdan's petition because he...
Is McCain Inevitable?
Robert Novak sees the beginnings of a GOP effort to consolidate itself behind one candidate for 2008 even this early in the primary process, paralleling similar efforts in 1996 (Robert Dole) and 2000 (George Bush). In this case, the "corporate" choice might be John McCain: Some 30 invited corporate representatives and other lobbyists gathered at the Phoenix Park Hotel on Capitol Hill Tuesday morning to hear two senior mainstream Republican senators pitch the 2008 presidential campaign of Sen. John McCain. They were selling him to establishment Republicans as the establishment's candidate. Nothing could be further from McCain's guerrilla-style presidential run in 2000, which nearly stopped George W. Bush. Invitations to Tuesday's event were sent by Trent Lott, the newly elected Senate minority whip. Over coffee, Lott and Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) pushed McCain, though neither previously was seen as a McCainiac. They were not for McCain in 2000, and neither...
Egypt Rounds Up Muslim Brotherhood
Speaking of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Egyptian government has decided that the Islamist group has overstepped itself once again and has arrested scores of its leaders. One of the detainees is a top lieutenant to MB leader Muhammed Akef: One of the top leaders of Egypt's opposition Islamist movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, has been detained. Police also rounded up about 10 other prominent members and dozens of students in dawn raids. Khairat al-Shatir is one of two deputies to Brotherhood leader Muhammad Akef, and was taken from his home in north-eastern Cairo, the capital. The group is officially banned, but its supporters make up parliament's largest opposition group and it is tolerated. This reminds me of the joke about mixed feelings, which involved seeing one's mother-in-law going over a cliff in one's new Cadillac. Having Cairo crack down on an opposition political group is not good news, except when it...
Flying Imams A Campaign Stunt
The obvious nature of the provocation made by six Muslim clerics on a US Air flight last month has people wondering what purpose it served for them. Did the imams intend to make a name for themselves in the Muslim victimhood campaign? Did they want to test the security procedures of the airline to determine their capabilities? Kathryn Kersten has a different answer in today's Star Tribune column -- and it's one that encompasses many of the guesses: On Dec. 1, a curious report on the grounded-imams incident at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport appeared on the website of the Iranian Quran News Agency. The report quoted extensively from Madhi Bray, executive director of the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation. The foundation is the American arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, "the world's most influential Islamic fundamentalist group," according to the Chicago Tribune. Bray's initial statement about the incident had an...
Guess Who's Back In Business?
After the meltdown of Eason Jordan in 2005, we expected him to disappear into academia. After almost two years, though, Jordan has returned with his own small news organization. Iraqslogger, named after one of Donald Rumsfeld's remarks, promises to aggregate all of the news stories that others miss, as well as providing original reporting from Iraq: For the past four years there has been no shortage of news and views on Iraq and the long-running war there. What’s been missing: a one-stop-shopping clearinghouse for nonpartisan information, including material coming out of Iraq itself from natives of that country, not from foreign correspondents. Now that need is finally being addressed in the form of IraqSlogger, in Beta at www.iraqslogger.com, but due to be officially launched next week. Its director is the former CNN news division chief, Eason Jordan, who quit that post suddenly in 2005 after 23 years with the company....
A Little Link Love For A Cold December Night
... except it's not so cold out here right now, and maybe I just jinxed it. We had an unseasonably warm day for mid-December, getting into the high 40s on a sunny day -- a rare pleasure. Unfortunately, I worked through most of it, but took a quick drive at lunch with the window rolled down to enjoy it, sans jacket. The First Mate and I finished up the Christmas shopping, for the most part anyway, and enjoyed it until the rain started to fall. Now I'm back and catching up on a few things, including rest. However, I want to hit a few links before getting down to more serious work. First, speaking of serious, Thinking Right has an interview with a National Guard soldier currently serving in Iraq. Jim gets that all-important boots-on-the-ground opinion of the war, and you might be surprised about what you find. Next, we...
December 15, 2006
The Legend Of The Bactrian Gold
Do you enjoy Indiana Jones films, Humphrey Bogart mysteries, and patriotic fervor? No, I'm not writing another film review -- I'm talking about a real-life story that has more drama than any showing at the local cinema. It's the story of the legendary Bactrian gold, and how we owe its existence today to the bravery of seven men, including one very unlikely hero: It was a mystery of legendary proportions. When a 2,000-year-old treasure trove went missing from Afghanistan's National Museum in the 1980s, the rumors abounded: Did the Soviets take it? Was it looted and sold on the black market? Were 22,000 pieces of gold, jewel-encrusted crowns and magnificent daggers melted down and traded for weapons? As it turns out, none of these plausible scenarios ever happened. Instead, a mysterious group of Afghans had stowed the so-called Bactrian gold underground and guarded its secret for over two decades of...
How Not To Establish Media Credibility
The first rule of Media Club is don't make things up. The second rule of Media Club is that if you break the first rule, don't create such a fantastic hoax that its collapse enrages an entire nation. The third rule of Media Club is that if you break the first two rules of Media Club ... start your own Internet news service. You think I'm kidding? Ask the executives at RTBF, the French-language Belgian broadcaster, who may find themselves with plenty of time to go the full Eason Jordan after their latest stunt: Thousands of Belgians were thrown into a panic by news that the Flemish half of the country had declared independence. A two-hour live television report on the break-up of the nation showed images of ecstatic Flemish nationalists waving flags on the streets and queues of French speakers heading for the “border”. The panic turned to anger...
Bagman, Terror Man, Beggar Man, Chief
Ismail Haniyeh got stopped at the Gaza border yesterday for attempting to smuggle as much as $35 million in cash into the sanctions-hit territories. The border stop pushed tensions to the breaking point, and Hamas lashed out at both Fatah and the Egyptians on both sides of the line: In a bizarre standoff that lasted more than seven hours on Thursday, Israel barred the Palestinian prime minister, Ismail Haniya, from returning home to the Gaza Strip, saying he was carrying tens of millions of dollars in cash that could be used for terrorist attacks. Mr. Haniya was finally allowed to cross from Egypt into the southern Gaza Strip late Thursday night, but only after leaving the money with Hamas officials who stayed behind in Egypt. During his lengthy wait, dozens of angry gunmen from his Hamas movement shot up the Rafah border terminal, clashing first with Palestinian security forces on...
Scandal On The Edge Of Tomorrow
Barack Obama has enjoyed a boomlet in the opening days of the 2008 Presidential campaign, becoming the not-Hillary of the moment. He has positioned himself well for at least a shot at the VP slot on the ticket, and despite his lack of experience and youth (two years in national office and 45 years old) has become a serious contender for the top position. He generates crowds and energy, and the money will not be long in following. However, he has a potential scandal that has nibbled on the edges of political consciousness for the last few months. John Dickerson in Slate brings it a little closer to the center of debate for the 2008 race, wondering if it will prove damaging enough to Obama's hopes that it stops him: The Chicago Tribune broke the story back in November. It begins in 2004 with Obama's $1.9 million book advance for...
A New Era At The UN ... We Hope
The long international nightmare of the Kofi Anna era ended yesterday when his successor, Ban Ki Moon, took his oath of office. He started his Secretariat with a joke about the daunting nature of his mission to restore faith and trust in the United Nations, and he continued by distancing himself from his predecessor's outbound remarks: Ban Ki-moon of South Korea was sworn in Thursday as the next secretary general of the United Nations, and he pledged to rebuild faith in an organization that has been tarnished by scandal and riven by disputes between rich and poor nations. “You could say that I am a man on a mission, and my mission could be dubbed ‘Operation Restore Trust’: trust in the organization, and trust between member states and the Secretariat,” he said. He added, “I hope this mission is not ‘Mission: Impossible.’ ” After praising Annan for his work at...
As If They Need An Excuse
The deteriorating health of Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, the "blind sheik" imprisoned for his role in planning the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, has touched off a terror warning by the FBI: The health of terrorist cleric Omar Abdel-Rahman, known as the Blind Sheik, is deteriorating renewing fears that his death in prison could trigger an attack on the United States, officials said Thursday. There is no credible indication that an attack on the U.S. is imminent, said several law enforcement officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the situation. ... Officials said the bulletin served merely as a reminder that Abdel-Rahman had called for retaliation by terror sympathizers if he died in prison. It cited a May 1998 news conference in which al-Qaida members distributed his last will and testament, in which Abdel-Rahman pleaded for followers to "extract the most violent revenge"...
HostGator Will Not Stand Up For Clients' Free Speech
UPDATE III: Apparently, the bloggers at Pandagon have a reading disability. I know that Jonathan Swift was Irish, I know that he didn't want the English to eat Irish children -- which is why I described A Modest Proposal as effective satire.
Two States Suspend Executions
California and Florida suspended executions today after controversy erupted from a botched lethal injection earlier this week. While the officials who implemented the moratoria in each state said the stoppage should be temporary, it might create pressure to rethink executions in both states: Gov. Jeb Bush suspended all executions in Florida after a medical examiner said Friday that prison officials botched the insertion of the needles when a convicted killer was put to death earlier this week. Separately, a federal judge in California extended a moratorium on executions in the nation's most populous state, declaring that the state's method of lethal injection violates the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment. U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel ruled in San Jose that California's "implementation of lethal injection is broken, but it can be fixed." In Florida, medical examiner Dr. William Hamilton said Wednesday's execution of Angel Nieves Diaz took 34 minutes...
The Book Closes On Judith Regan
Last month, HarperCollins and its Regan imprint shocked and angered the nation by announcing the publication of a book by OJ Simpson titled If I Did It. The firestorm of criticism surrounding that decision eventually caused HarperCollins to cancel the publication and the Fox Network to cancel its two-part interview with imprint executive Judith Regan and Simpson. Now the other shoe has dropped: O.J. Simpson's would-be publisher, Judith Regan, was fired Friday, her sensational, scandalous tenure at Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. ending with the tersest of announcements. "Judith Regan's employment with HarperCollins has been terminated effective immediately," HarperCollins CEO Jane Friedman said in a statement. "The REGAN publishing program and staff will continue as part of the HarperCollins General Books Group." Regan's firing comes less than a month after Murdoch's cancellation of Simpson's hypothetical murder confession, "If I Did It," a planned book and Fox television interview that was greeted...
December 16, 2006
A Conspiracy To Defraud
I have not written much about the Matt Nifong debacle unfolding in Durham, NC over the past few months. Other bloggers like Jeralyn Merritt and Tom Maguire have done an excellent job in covering the fiasco, and I've enjoyed keeping up with their work. Today, however, the local Raleigh paper exposes a conspiracy on the part of Nifong to commit prosecutorial misconduct and keep exculpatory evidence from the defendants: The head of a private DNA laboratory said under oath today that he and District Attorney Mike Nifong agreed not to report DNA results favorable to Duke lacrosse players charged with rape. Brian Meehan, director of DNA Security of Burlington, said his lab found DNA from unidentified men in the underwear, pubic hair and rectum of the woman who said she was gang-raped at a lacrosse party in March. Nurses at Duke Hospital collected the samples a few hours after the...
Not Our Problem Any More
Anders Gyllenhaal will leave the Minneapolis Star-Tribune in March to take the reins at the Miami Herald, another McClatchy-owned newspaper. His departure ends a rocky period of the local paper in which his editorial guidance appeared to include the willful ignorance of two major stories regarding local Muslims: Anders Gyllenhaal, editor and senior vice president for news at the Star Tribune, is leaving the job he has held for nearly five years to become executive editor of the Miami Herald. Gyllenhaal, 55, will replace Tom Fiedler in Miami starting in March. Both the Star Tribune and the Herald are owned by the McClatchy Co. The Herald, Florida's second-largest newspaper, was acquired by McClatchy earlier this year as part of its $6 billion purchase of Knight Ridder Inc. ... Gyllenhaal has supervised a newsroom of 380 people and also has been responsible for news content for the 15th-largest newspaper in the...
On The Whole, I'd Prefer 'Happy Holidays' (Updated)
Many people get exercised about the reluctance of retailers and politicians to say "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Chanukah" of late, and cringe when they hear "Happy Holidays" instead. Critics see this as a secular erosion of the religious nature of the holiday, and some of the more militant advocates refer to it as the Christmas War. I don't find the secular greeting offensive, but I do appreciate the acknowledgment of Christmas when it occurs. Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen has decided to up the ante, however, in his choice of imagery for his official Christmas cards: Gov. Phil Bredesen has given an unusual twist to his family's Christmas card: He is marking a Christian holiday with a card depicting a Muslim girl. The card's cover is a print of a painting by the governor of a young woman he met when he toured Afghanistan in March. "May the peace and joy...
Ghouls In Search Of A Story
After suffering a stroke and surviving surgery, Senator Tim Johnson has begun his recovery and appears to be improving. Reports have him conscious and communicating with family and doctors, which indicates that he will recover significantly from the incident. No further surgeries are expected, according to the medical staff. One would think that all of the above would have ended the speculation about replacing Johnson and affecting the partisan balance of the Senate. However, the New York Times simply cannot stop itself from journalistic ghoulishness in pursuing an increasingly remote chance that any of that will be necessary: In the tornado of talk about Senator Tim Johnson’s political future after his surgery to stem bleeding in the brain, one man has stayed mostly out of sight and mostly silent but for conveying his prayers through spokesmen. Gov. Mike Rounds, a Republican whose duty it would be to appoint a replacement...
Claudia Rosett On NARN Today!
Mitch and I go on the air today at 1 pm CT for our regular NARN broadcast, with a special guest to discuss the changes at the UN. Ban Ki Moon still remains a relative mystery to most Americans. Who is this new leader, and will he make the UN relevant again -- a force for freedom and liberty, rather than a tool of dictators and kleptocrats? In order to find the answers, we will have the intrepid Claudia Rosett on the Northern Alliance Radio Network this afternoon at 2 pm CT/3 pm ET. Be sure to tune in at AM 1280 The Patriot or listen to the station's Internet stream as we ask the media's best expert on the UN and its surrounding scandals how Moon can change the culture at Turtle Bay and who he has been until now. You can pose your own questions by calling 651-289-4488...
Podcast With Claudia Rosett
Mitch and I had a blast today talking with Claudia Rosett about the latest shenanigans at the United Nations, including Kofi Annan's valediction and Ban Ki Moon's inauguration. I've broken the two segments into separate podcasts: Segment One Segment Two Hope you enjoy listening to the interview as much as we did conducting it!...
December 17, 2006
Amnesty For The Ba'athists
One of the pressing problems in Iraq has been the exclusion of the Sunnis since the fall of the Saddam Hussein regime. The new Iraqi government needs to find a way to get the Sunnis engaged in the governance of Iraq without allowing them to dominate it as they have done throughout the nation's history. Nouri al-Maliki has taken a step in that direction this weekend, throwing open the doors to former members of Saddam's security forces, a move that has unnerved Maliki's Shi'a allies and even some Sunnis: Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki and his Shiite-dominated government reached out to former members of Saddam Hussein's regime Saturday, inviting them to claim government pensions and rejoin the army in a gesture meant to calm the country's sectarian passions. "The Iraqi army opens its doors to officers and soldiers from the former army who wish to serve the country," Maliki said...
Guilty Of Acting In Our Own Interest
Easily one of the most amusing articles of this year appears in today's Observer regarding a pattern that analysts have discovered in our foreign-aid allocations. It seems that the US allocates more aid to nations when they serve on the UN Security Council for two-year terms than at other times, and the Observer isn't happy about that at all: The US uses its aid budget to bribe those countries which have a vote in the United Nations security council, giving them 59 per cent more cash in years when they have a seat, according to research by economists. Kofi Annan, the outgoing UN Secretary-General, expressed his frustration at the power the US wields over the UN in his parting speech last week. In a detailed analysis of 50 years of data, Harvard University's Ilyana Kuziemko and Eric Werker provide the clearest evidence yet that money is used by the council's...
Maybe They'll Supply Them With Polonium, Too
Russia has announced that it will move forward with plans to supply the Iranians with nuclear fuel for their reactors, despite Iran's refusal to adhere to UN Security Council resolutions demanding an end to uranium enrichment. Following suit, Iran has told visiting diplomats that it plans on transferring its nuclear technology to other nations as soon as it perfects its own processes: RUSSIA is to begin supplying Iran with nuclear fuel early next year despite mounting concern in the West that this could accelerate Tehran’s plans to build a nuclear bomb. Sergei Shmatko, head of Atomstroyexport, Russia’s state nuclear fuel exporter, said last week that preparations to send fuel to Iran would start next month and the first consignment was expected to reach the Islamic republic in early spring. The announcement, at a time when Russia is asserting itself as an energy power, has caused anxiety in western countries which...
Person Of The Year, Suck-Up Version (Updated And Bumped)
I'm not much of a fan of the Time Magazine Person of the Year fuss. They usually do a decent job of picking someone significant enough to qualify, but often miss the best choices. Of course, sometimes they completely misfire, such as in 1982 when they selected the computer, or in 1988 when they chose "Endangered Earth". Of late, they have tended to select choices that within a few years makes readers say, "Who?" Those examples came in 1996 (David Ho), 1997 (Andy Grove), 1999 (Jeffrey Bezos), and one complete suck-up choice in 1991 (Ted Turner). This year, they have made their second complete suck-up choice ... everyone: The "Great Man" theory of history is usually attributed to the Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle, who wrote that "the history of the world is but the biography of great men." He believed that it is the few, the powerful and the famous...
The Real Civil War (Updated)
The Palestinians have slid closer to outright civil war after Mahmoud Abbas attempted to end the current Hamas-led government and call for new elections. Hamas responded by rejecting any participation in early elections, and Fatah responded by attempting to assassinate the Hamas foreign minister: Gunmen attacked the convoy of the Palestinian foreign minister and raided a training base for an elite security forces unit Sunday, stepping up factional violence over a decision by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to end nine months of Hamas leadership and call early elections. A 19-year-old woman and a Palestinian security officer were killed in the chaos, while at least 13 people were wounded in gun battles across Gaza City. In one symbolic attack, Abbas' empty residence came under fire. Militants also fired two mortar shells at Abbas' nearby offices. Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas, in a first response to Abbas' decision, said the Islamic...
December 18, 2006
The $10 Million Man
In the speculation surrounding the death of Alexander Litvinenko, people keep coming back to the central fact: the assassination method. The poison used eliminates all but the most powerful suspects, and not just because of its relative rarity. As the Times of London points out, the amount of polonium used would cost its assassins millions of dollars: British investigators believe that Alexander Litvinenko’s killers used more than $10 million of polonium-210 to poison him. Preliminary findings from the post mortem examination on the former KGB spy suggest that he was given more than ten times the lethal dose. Police do not know why the assassins used so much of the polonium-210, and are investigating whether the poison was part of a consignment to be sold on the black market. They believe that whoever orchestrated the plot knew of its effects, but are unsure whether the massive amount was used to...
Dissent In Iran And Its Aftermath
Last week we noted the bravery of Iranian students that challenged Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his Holocaust denial at his Festival of Ignorance. This week, the same students have gone on the run, in fear of the Iranian president: Iranian student activists who staged an angry protest against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last week have gone into hiding in fear for their lives after his supporters threatened them with revenge. One student fled after being photographed holding a banner reading, "Fascist president, the polytechnic is not for you", during Mr Ahmadinejad's visit to Tehran's Amir Kabir university. At least three others have gone underground after being seen burning his picture. Vigilantes from the militant Ansar-e Hezbollah group have been searching for them. In a startling contrast to the acclaim Mr Ahmadinejad has received in numerous recent appearances around Iran, he faced chants of "Death to the dictator" as he addressed a gathering...
You First
Kim Jong-Il has rejoined the six-party talks aimed at ending his nuclear-weapons program and opening North Korea for foreign aid and trade. The other parties have promised an end to sanctions and economic assistance if Pyongyang ends its development of nukes, but the Kim regime has challenged them to act first: North Korea has said it would only consider scrapping its nuclear weapons when all international sanctions against it are lifted, as disarmament talks resumed here after a 13-month break. Declaring itself "satisfied" with becoming a nuclear power following its first-ever atomic test on October 9, North Korea offered no signs of compromise at the six-nation talks Monday, according to officials who were at the forum. Instead North Korean chief envoy Kim Kye-Gwan called, in his opening remarks to the talks, for United Nations and US sanctions to be lifted, as well as repeating long-held demands for help in developing...
Everyone First
Thanks to the compressed news cycle and the impatience of the political class, we have seen the earliest serious launch of a presidential season in long memory. Normally candidates play coy until no more than eighteen months before a presidential election, but this cycle already has declared candidates and exploratory committees abound. In this rush to commitment, Newt Gingrich has decided to take a different and somewhat novel approach: A former speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, said yesterday that he will consider entering the race for the Republican presidential nomination only if no other potential candidate looks to be a prohibitive favorite by September 2007. In an interview on NBC's "Meet The Press," Mr. Gingrich also praised several Republican politicians who are expected to make announcements soon about their presidential plans, Governor Romney of Massachusetts, Mayor Giuliani, and Senator McCain of Arizona. "Romney's had a good year. He's emerging...
Did Hillary Snub French Socialist?
French Socialist sensation Ségolène Royal postponed a tour of the US, purportedly because of exhaustion. However the London Telegraph reports that Royal planned to meet Hillary Clinton as a way to highlight two female presidential candidates, but that the Democratic front-runner wanted nothing to do with the French or Socialists at the beginning of her candidacy: Ségolène Royal, the French Socialist presidential candidate, postponed a "triumphant" US tour planned for this week after Hillary Clinton declined to meet her, it was claimed yesterday. Miss Royal, the first Frenchwoman with a realistic chance of becoming president in elections in April, officially put off her tour until late January or February due to fatigue after visits to the Middle East and Portugal. But in reality the decision appears to have been influenced by her failure to secure what would have been a symbolic meeting with Mrs Clinton, the Democrat senator whose ambition...
How Foreign Aid Hurts Rather Than Helps
For long-term disasters like famines, one can usually find a political problem that keeps food and medicine from the people who need it, rather than a purely environmental issue. This has been true of African catastrophes like Ethiopa and Somalia, where the means for food production have fallen victim to dictatorships that use food as a weapon against their enemies. It turns out that the same dynamic can be found in shorter-term disasters -- like tsunamis, for instance. The massive aid sent to Aceh in the aftermath of the killer tidal waves of two years ago has not funded relief, but instead enabled a new shari'a police that have subjugated the women of Aceh: WHEN people around the world sent millions of pounds to help the stricken Indonesian province of Aceh after the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004, few could have imagined that their money would end up subsidising the...
Widgeting On A Monday Night
I've been tinkering with the blog tonight, and you may have already noticed the new addition to CQ. At the bottom of each post you will notice a new link titled "Sphere It". If you click on the link, it will display a two-column Java pop-up window. The left side of the window will display related posts from CQ, and the right side will show links to posts at other blogs in the Sphere universe. Clicking the links will open up a new window, so you do not have to navigate away from CQ to follow the threads. This is an initial version; Sphere will add more content as we go along. Give it a try, and let me know what you think....
December 19, 2006
Blair Rejects Hamas
Tony Blair made clear yesterday that he considers the Hamas government to have no legitimacy in the Palestinian Authority. Blair endorsed Mahmoud Abbas' call for early elections despite uncertainty of his authority to do do: Rival Palestinian factions ignored an overnight truce and resumed fighting in Gaza as Tony Blair placed himself in the middle of the nascent civil war. Hamas fighters abducted a senior Fatah official, who was later released, and another Fatah supporter was killed. “This ceasefire risks being blown away in the wind,” a Fatah spokesman said. The fighting came hours after Mr Blair publicly backed President Abbas, head of the secular Fatah party, in his power struggle with Hamas, his Islamist rivals. Mr Blair declared Hamas to be an obstacle to peace because of its refusal to recognise Israel. “Nobody should have a veto on progress,” he said. Standing alongside Mr Abbas in Ramallah, the Prime...
Early Setback For Brownback
In an attempt to set himself apart from the GOP field in the upcoming Presidential race, Brownback put a hold on a judicial nomination for her attendance at a same-sex union ceremony. However, Brownback overreached when he demanded that Janet Neff recuse herself from all cases regarding gender-neutral marriage issues: Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas, who blocked the confirmation of a woman to the federal bench because she attended a same-sex commitment ceremony for the daughter of her long-time neighbors, says he will now allow a vote on the nomination. Mr. Brownback, a possible contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, said in a recent interview that when the Senate returned in January, he would allow a vote on Janet Neff, a 61-year-old Michigan state judge, who was nominated to a Federal District Court seat. Mr. Brownback, who has been criticized for blocking the nomination, said he would also...
Annans Ace Out Low-Income New Yorkers
One runs the United Nations and has a spouse from a wealthy Swedish family. Another serves as the Ghanian ambassador to Morocco and holds gala parties at their residence there of the last several years. Claudia Rosett wonders, then, why brothers Kofi and Kobina Annan have managed to hold onto a Roosevelt Island flat for more than a decade despite its being intended for low-to-middle-income New Yorkers on a list with a four-year waiting period: As Secretary-General Annan prepares to leave his post at the United Nations, a mystery is surfacing surrounding his apartment on Roosevelt Island, subsidized by New York taxpayers, which is still in use by the family of his brother, Kobina Annan. The apartment was where Mr. Annan and his wife lived before 1997, when he became secretary-general. The Roosevelt Island home is part of an estate of low-rent state-regulated housing. For years, the Annans saved considerable...
Democrats Disappoint Bono
Acclaimed U2 rocker and aid activist Bono tried getting the Democrats to support George Bush's commitments to African aid after they take control of Congress, but left disappointed. It seems that Bono has discovered the blessing and curse of divided government: Meetings in Washington last Thursday between rock star Bono and Democrats, including Senate leader Harry Reid of Nevada, yielded a nice photo-op but not much else, according to Bono. Bono, the U2 frontman and anti-poverty activist, was on Capitol Hill to seek assurances that $1 billion in planned U.S. spending to fight AIDS and malaria in Africa would not be lost if Congress freezes agency budgets in the coming year. Bono said he also was seeking to close a "commitment gap" between what President Bush has requested for anti-poverty efforts and what Congress has agreed to spend in the past. After meetings with incoming Senate Majority Leader Reid, House...
What Happened To Fruitcake?
Remember when people gave each other fruitcake for Christmas? No one ever ate it, of course, but we all gave it like it was manna from heaven. Even if the fruitcake inevitably exited the house in much the same condition it entered -- harder, perhaps, but intact -- at least it didn't come pre-ingested: In this season of strange presents from relatives, Dorothy Ferreira got a doozy the other day from her 82-year-old sister in Waterloo, Iowa. It was ugly. It weighed four pounds. There was no receipt in the box. Inside she found what looked like a gnarled, funky candle but could actually be a huge hunk of petrified whale vomit worth as much as $18,000. “I called my sister and asked her, ‘What the heck did you send me?’ ” recalled Ms. Ferreira, 67, who has lived here on the eastern tip of Long Island since 1982. “She...
Buck Passing As An Art Form
One of the more egregious developments of the Watergate era has been the rise of the "independent investigator". Having burned both parties, one might expect such constructs to fall out of favor in Washington, but that would underestimate the desire of politicians to shirk responsibility for difficult tasks. An unsigned OpinionJournal editorial today covers the proposed expansion of the buck-passing state: Congressional mores could certainly use an upgrade, but it pays to beware of reformers promising to clean up politics by letting someone else do the dirty work. Exhibit A is the strange new enthusiasm for an "independent" office of public integrity for Congress. One warning sign is that the proposal is being marketed by the same folks who gave us "independent counsels" such as Lawrence Walsh and Ken Starr for the executive branch, as well as the glories of "campaign finance reform." Instead of the current practice of having...
December 20, 2006
No Blood For Blood
Have the Palestinians finally begun to reject the terrorism that they have championed for more than four decades? The London Times reports that they have started sending a message that they have had enough of bloody violence -- by refusing to replenish what's been spilled: As gunmen spilt it and warring politicians hailed its sanctity, ordinary Palestinians showed their disgust for feuding Hamas and Fatah gunmen by refusing to donate blood. Doctors at Gaza City’s main hospital are used to a plentiful supply of volunteers queuing up to donate blood for victims of Israeli attacks. But faced with the selfinflicted wounds of the nascent Palestinian civil war, that supply has all but dried up. “We are all frustrated and depressed,” said Dr Jumaa al-Saqqa, director of publicity at the Shifa hospital. ... “We have a shortage of blood in the bank now. During Israeli incursions hundreds of people come to...
A Limit To Media Bashing
Rich Lowry wrote a provocative column at National Review Online yesterday -- a challenge of sorts to his conservative readers regarding their war against the mainstream media. Lowry warns against building up an image of the media as a vast liberal conspiracy, an image as false as the media's own self-image of objectivity: The conservative campaign against the mainstream media has scored notable successes. It exposed Dan Rather’s forged National Guard memo and jumped all over Newsweek’s absurd report of a Koran-flushing incident at Guantanamo Bay. The mainstream media is biased, arrogant, prone to stultifying group-think and much more fallible than its exalted self-image allows it to admit. It also, however, can be right, and this is most confounding to conservatives. ... The “good news” that conservatives have accused the media of not reporting has generally been pretty weak. The Iraqi elections were indeed major accomplishments. But the opening of...
End Of The Country Club At LSC ... Maybe
Three months ago, I wrote about the financial shenanigans at the Legal Services Corporation, which provides low-income Americans with legal assistance. The LSC had used its Congressional mandate and ever-increasing budgets to get itself some fancy Georgetown digs and treat its lawyers to limousines for cross-town traffic in DC instead of cabs. They leased the new offices specifically for the spacious meeting rooms, but instead held their conferences in resort destinations like San Juan. The days of wine and roses (and expensive Death by Chocolate desserts) have come to an end, however: The $13 per person "high tea" service and $12 bagel breaks will be gone from the January directors meeting of the government's legal aid program for the poor. And the meeting will be held at the headquarters conference room rather than the upscale hotel used in the past. After severe criticism from Congress, stinging reports from a financial...
His Record Is Enough
Barack Obama has had a dramatic effect on the blogosphere since dropping his fat hint that he might run for president in 2008. I've written about Obama on more than a few occasions, since I think Obama will be with us for the long run, especially given the political balance in Illinois and his potent speaking skills. The port side of the blogosphere has mostly swooned over his steadfast support for the liberal party line, while the starboard side has started to look unhinged over his potential candidacy in 2008. The latest round started with Debbie Schlussel, who insists that Obama is a closet Muslim: I decided to look further into Obama's background. His full name--as by now you have probably heard--is Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. Hussein is a Muslim name, which comes from the name of Ali's son--Hussein Ibn Ali. And Obama is named after his late Kenyan father,...
The Kurds Respond To The ISG
The Iraq Study Group delivered its recommendations for changing strategies in Iraq at the beginning of the month, a report that has received criticism from all sides -- liberals for not demanding an immediate withdrawal, and conservatives for its recommendation to turn to the sponsors of terror to "stabilize" Iraq. Some of the strongest criticism came from Iraq itself, and today the Washington Post hosts a column from Mansour Barzani, a leading Kurd, on the lack of credibility of the ISG: Our federal constitution, which the majority of the Iraqi people voted for, is treated flippantly, as though it were a negotiable document rather than the hard-fought result of lengthy negotiation among those willing to participate in the new Iraq. Further, the study group's approach is driven by the concerns of the countries in this region rather than by the concerns of the Iraqi people. Many Iraqis, especially the Kurds,...
Do We Need A Bigger Military?
President Bush reversed course from his six-year effort to make the military smaller and more nimble by saying that America needs a more robust military. In an interesting interview with the Washington Post, Bush also backtracked from his earlier insistence that the US is winning the war in Iraq: President Bush acknowledged for the first time yesterday that the United States is not winning the war in Iraq and said he plans to expand the overall size of the "stressed" U.S. armed forces to meet the challenges of a long-term global struggle against terrorists. As he searches for a new strategy for Iraq, Bush has now adopted the formula advanced by his top military adviser to describe the situation. "We're not winning, we're not losing," Bush said in an interview with The Washington Post. The assessment was a striking reversal for a president who, days before the November elections, declared,...
Now Digg This
Among the changes I've made over the last couple of days has been the addition of a Digg icon on each post. Digg is an aggregator of news articles and blog posts that allows Digg users to add articles and vote for them; the more votes, the higher up the rankings the articles go. CQ readers can help bring new readers to the site by clicking on the icons and casting votes for each blog post they deem worthy of a larger audience. Also, don't forget the new Sphere widget. That's more for the readers than for the blog, as it will display a pop-up window that shows CQ posts related to the topic, and blog posts from other blogs that discuss the topic as well. I've found it a bit addictive, and I hope you find it helpful and entertaining. Sphere will be adding even more content after they've...
A Little Song, A Little Dance, National-Security Documents Down Your Pants
The Inspector General of the National Archives has released his report on the security breach committed by Sandy Berger. Unlike the characterization given for the theft of classified data from the Archives by his political allies, the IG clearly accuses Berger of intentionally stealing the documents for their later destruction: Inspector General Paul Brachfeld reported that when Berger was confronted by Archives officials about the missing documents, he said it was possible he threw them in his office trash. The report said that when Archives employees first suspected that Berger _ who had been President Clinton's national security adviser _ was removing classified documents from the Archives in the fall of they failed to notify any law enforcement agency. ... "In total, during this visit, he removed four documents ... Mr. Berger said he placed the documents under a trailer in an accessible construction area outside Archives 1 (the main...
December 21, 2006
The Common Ground In 2007
George Bush held a press conference today to smooth the way for better relations between Democrats and Republicans in the last two years of his presidency. In a performance that recalled his old promise to be a uniter in Washington, Bush talked about the common ground that could be found between Congress and the White House -- and it has a familiar ring to it: Eager to show he heard the message of voters who stripped his party of majorities in both the House and Senate in the November elections, Bush said he'll work hard on what he called "an interesting new challenge" — trying to find common ground with Democrats who will lead Congress for the first time in his presidency. "I don't expect Democratic leaders to compromise on their principles, and they don't expect me to compromise on mine," he said. "But the American people do expect us...
Could Ahmadinejad Be In Serious Trouble?
For a man who came out of near-oblivion to the presidency of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad appears to face serious restlessness among his subjects. Despite having the backing of the hardliners in the Guardian Council who arranged his victory, or perhaps because of that support, Ahmadinejad has become the center of widespread scorn and dissastisfaction among Iranian students, a volatile and powerful force for radical change in the nation. Combined with a humiliating setback in local elections, Ahmadinejad may find himself on the same career path as the Shah: As protests broke out last week at a prestigious university here, cutting short a speech by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Babak Zamanian could only watch from afar. He was on crutches, having been clubbed by supporters of the president and had his foot run over by a motorcycle during a less publicized student demonstration a few days earlier. But the significance of the...
Subsidizing The Elimination Of The Small Farmer
When the topic of farm subsidies arises, it evokes an image of a subsistence small operator, barely keeping up with the bills, while employing and supporting a large family. Politicians from my region of the country sell this narrative when funding massive subsidy programs for agriculture, telling voters across the country that the federal government has to secure the food supply by supporting price structures to keep the small farmer from bankruptcy. However, as the Washington Post reports, this portrait of the American farmer has more in common with Norman Rockwell than modern-day agriculture -- and these very subsidies are the reason: Today, most of the nation's food is produced by modern family farms that are large operations using state-of-the-art computers, marketing consultants and technologies that cut labor, time and costs. The owners are frequently college graduates who are as comfortable with a spreadsheet as with a tractor. They cover...
Turkmenbashi Shuffles Off
One of the last of the Soviet-era strongmen and a genuine oddity has finally died. State-run television announced the death of Turkmenistan's Saparmurat Niyazov, and given his personality cult, that says volumes: Turkmenistan's authoritarian president Saparmurat Niyazov, who ruled the Central Asian country for 21 years, has died aged 66, state TV has reported. Niyazov, who named cities and airports after himself in a bizarre personality cult, left no designated successor. Turkmenistan, which has large gas reserves, now faces an uncertain future with rival groups and outside powers scrambling for influence, analysts say. Niyazov died at 0110 local time (2010 GMT Wednesday) of a heart attack. For those who think Kim Jong-Il is a master of the personality cult, Niyazov may be the all-time champion. He has more facilities named after him than Robert Byrd, and his rule in the post-Soviet era was absolute and relentlessly personal. In fact, it...
Sadr Reconsiders, Part 37B
With the US talking about sending more troops to Baghdad and Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani organizing a coalition to strip Nouri al-Maliki of his position as Prime Minister, Moqtada al-Sadr has apparently blinked yet again. The radical Shi'ite cleric has begun to consider a unilateral cease-fire in the sectarian war that he has masterminded in an attempt to bolster his political viability in Iraqi politics: Radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who heads a militia feared by Iraq's Sunnis, is considering a one-month unilateral cease-fire and may push his followers to rejoin the political process after a three-week boycott, officials close to him said. The issue is expected to come up at a meeting Thursday in the holy city of Najaf between al-Sadr and a delegation representing the seven Shiite groups that form the largest bloc in Iraq's parliament, the Shiite officials said on condition of anonymity because of the secrecy...
Not All Obama Nonsense Resides On The Right
It's refreshing, if a little disheartening, to see that the nonsense about the true identity of Barack Obama is not limited to the fringes of the conservative blogosphere. Agence France Presse provides an interesting analysis of Obama's early support, which does not include the demograhic one would assume: US political darling Barack Obama has received enthusiastic support for a possible 2008 presidential bid -- except from fellow African-Americans, a group many believed would be among his staunchest backers. In contrast to the effusive reception Obama has received from white Americans, many US blacks so far have been cool, saying that while they may share skin color with Obama, they do not have a common culture or history. "Obama did not -- does not -- share a heritage with the majority of black Americans, who are descendants of plantation slaves," wrote African-American newspaper columnist Stanley Crouch last month in an article...
Two Essays From Right And Left
Two worthy essays written today should get your attention. First, we have our good friend and fellow CQ reader Michael Ledeen writing about the meaning of the recent vote in Iran. I wrote about the precarious political position in which Mahmoud Ahmadinejad finds himself, and Michael goes into more detail at the American Enterprise Institute: The first step toward understanding the Iranian “elections” is that they weren’t. Elections, that is, at least in our common understanding of the term, namely the people vote and the counters count those votes and so we find out what the people want. That’s not what happens in Iran, where both the candidates and the results are determined well in advance of the casting of ballots. Yes, people get mobilized and go to the polls and mark their ballots and put them in the ballot box. But then Groucho comes into play: “I’ve got ballots....
First Hit On The BCRA
The fundamental attack on free speech that McCain-Feingold foisted upon America has finally received recognition from the federal judiciary. Portions of the BCRA got struck down today in a lawsuit filed by a right-to-life group, as a judge ruled that the campaign-finance restrictions violated the First Amendment: A federal court on Thursday loosened restrictions on corporations, unions and other special interest groups that run political advertising in peak election season. The 2-1 ruling said groups may mention candidates by name in commercials as long as they are trying to influence public policy, rather than sway an election. The ruling came in a challenge to the so-called McCain-Feingold law designed to reduce the influence of big money in political campaigns. The law banned groups from using unrestricted money to run advertisements that name candidates two months before a general election or one month before a primary. Wisconsin Right to Life, an...
December 22, 2006
But Will He Wait 120 Days?
The UN will finally address the failure of Iran to comply with the UN Security Council resolution demanding an end to its uranium-enrichment activity. The UNSC will pass limited sanctions on Iran, which has pledged to retaliate: The United Nations security council is finally expected to pass a resolution today to impose international sanctions on Iran for the first time since the 1979 revolution, a punitive move that will heighten diplomatic tensions and risks a military confrontation in the Gulf. Iran has threatened immediate retaliation, even though the proposed sanctions have been significantly watered down this week. Tehran's options include withdrawal from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN nuclear watchdog, which would mean Iran would conduct its nuclear programme free from international monitoring, and possible closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the channel for 20% of the world's oil supplies. Western diplomats think that the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,...
Iraqi Shi'ites Deal For End To Insurgencies
Two of the major Shi'ite factions in Iraq have agreed on a deal to end the Shi'ite insurgencies that have fueled the death and destruction in Baghdad. The Dawa and Sciri parties have thrown down a gauntlet to both Moqtada al-Sadr and the Sunni parties that have backed their own insurgents: Two of the senior Shia political leaders in Iraq agreed in principle to crack down on death squads within their own ranks yesterday. The rival Shia factions struck the deal in an attempt to salvage the country from collapse, said Haidar al-Abadi, a Shia MP in the Dawa party, who is close to Nouri al-Maliki, the Prime Minister. The Dawa and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri) agreed that the national unity Government had been rendered impotent by the failure of the Shia coalition to take on militants who have been killing Sunnis and fuelling...
Trusting Jezebel
The New York Times takes the extraordinary step today of offering its readers an op-ed column about an op-ed column. Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann wrote the original column about the Bush administration's failure to engage Iran after 9/11 when it appeared that the mullahcracy might be open to a general improvement in relations. However, when the two submitted the column to the CIA for national-security review, it came back with a heavy treatment of black ink: HERE is the redacted version of a draft Op-Ed article we wrote for The Times, as blacked out by the Central Intelligence Agency’s Publication Review Board after the White House intervened in the normal prepublication review process and demanded substantial deletions. Agency officials told us that they had concluded on their own that the original draft included no classified material, but that they had to bow to the White House. Indeed, the deleted...
No Agreement On North Korea
The six-party talks have adjourned without any agreement, the BBC reports: Despite five days of negotiations in Beijing, the talks broke up and no date for a resumption has been announced. The talks involved the US, North Korea, China, South Korea, Japan and Russia. They had resumed after a 13-month break, and two months after North Korea sparked international condemnation by carrying out a nuclear test. Chinese envoy Wu Dawei released a statement that simply reaffirmed an agreement from September 2005 that the North would agree to disarm in return for aid and guarantees of security. The US accused the Kim regime of failing to take the talks seriously, which in this case is akin to noting the sunrise in the East. Kim Jong-Il wants his nukes, and diplomatic niceties will not shake him from his pursuit of WMDs. Only China can put enough pressure on him to achieve that...
Another Conviction On UN Corruption
Federal prosecutors have successfully concluded another case of corruption at the United Nations, this time getting a guilty plea from an Indian businessman who coughed up favors in order to garner millions in procurement contracts: A businessman representing an Indian state-owned company pleaded guilty to bribing a former senior U.N. official with an unspecified amount of cash, a cellphone and a discounted Manhattan apartment in exchange for more than $50 million worth of business contracts, federal authorities announced Thursday. Michael Garcia, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement that Nishan Kohli, 30, admitted making the illicit payments to Sanjay Bahel, then a high-ranking U.N. purchasing official, as compensation for steering business to Kohli from 1998 to 2003. Kohli faces a maximum of 10 years in prison. Bahel last month pleaded not guilty to related charges. Kohli's attorney, Jacob Laufer, declined to discuss his...
Zawahiri To Democrats: You're Not All That
Al-Qaeda's number two nutcase sent a new message to the West as expected, and this time he had a special message for the winners of America's last election. Ayman al-Zawahiri wants Democrats to understand that they owe a debt of thanks to radical Islamist terrorists for their control of Congress, and he expects some gratitude ASAP: "The first is that you aren't the ones who won the midterm elections, nor are the Republicans the ones who lost. Rather, the Mujahideen -- the Muslim Ummah's vanguard in Afghanistan and Iraq -- are the ones who won, and the American forces and their Crusader allies are the ones who lost," Zawahri said, according to a full transcript obtained by ABC News. Zawahri calls on the Democrats to negotiate with him and Osama bin Laden, not others in the Islamic world who Zawahri says cannot help. "And if you don't refrain from the...
December 23, 2006
Northern Alliance Radio Takes A Break
The Northern Alliance Radio Network will not broadcast today on AM 1280 The Patriot. We're taking a break this holiday weekend to spend some time with our families, but we will return next week at our regularly scheduled slots. Mitch and I will actually be doing a live remote with our friends at White Bear Lake Superstore, so if you're near the east side of Saint Paul, be sure to join us on the showroom floor between 1-3 pm CT. Posting at CQ will likely be light through Tuesday, but I will have a few posts to share with everyone, so keep checking back. I'm hoping to do something special for a Christmas greeting for all of my friends in the CQ community. In the meantime, I hope you all enjoy this time of year with your families and friends. The First Mate and I wish you a very merry...
Lufthansa Bars Air Marshals On Flights
If you're flying betwen the US and Europe, you may want to avoid flying Lufthansa. According to Der Spiegel, the German airliner has begun denying Germany's air marshals the expensive seats near the cockpit where they can protect the flight crew -- and often refuses to give them any tickets at all: The officer swore an oath of secrecy on becoming a sky marshal, so his name can't be revealed -- in fact no sky marshal has spoken about his work since the German government created the jobs in October 2001, shortly after 9/11. "Inspektion 6," the sky-marshal unit of the Federal Police Authority at Frankfurt airport, is the most secretive German police organization next to the elite GSG9 force. But the situation for sky marshals has never been as depressing as it is now, says the officer and a one of his colleagues. Official figures claim that 200 police...
The Deadbeat Does Not Go On
Some of the mystery surrounding the odd departure of Turki al-Faisal as Saudi ambassador to the US has begun to unravel. The Washington Post reports that Turki left millions in unpaid bills and found himself undercut by Bandar bin Sultan, his predecessor, as Bandar apparently conducted higher-level diplomacy than Turki: Eighteen months ago, Prince Bandar bin Sultan ended a legendary 22-year career as the face of Saudi Arabia in the United States. Word at the time was that he was bored, preferring his palatial Aspen, Colo., lodge to Washington. As it turns out, however, Bandar has secretly visited Washington almost monthly over the past year -- and is at least as pivotal today in influencing U.S. policy as he was in his years as ambassador. Last week, his successor, Turki, abruptly resigned from the post -- partly, sources close to the royal family said, because of Bandar's back-channel trips to...
Major Blow For Taliban
The Taliban has taken a body blow in its continuing war with NATO and democratic Afghan forces. Coalition forces killed their chief of operations, Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Osmani, in fighting near the border this week: A top Taliban military commander described as a close associate of Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Omar was killed in an airstrike this week close to the border with Pakistan, the U.S. military said Saturday. A Taliban spokesman denied the claim. Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Osmani was killed Tuesday by a U.S. airstrike while traveling by vehicle in a deserted area in the southern province of Helmand, the U.S. military said. Two associates also were killed, it said. There was no immediate confirmation from Afghan officials or visual proof offered to support the claim. A U.S. spokesman said "various sources" were used to confirm Osmani's identity. Osmani, regarded as one of three top associates...
Michelle's 'Whatever-Happened-To' For 2006
One of the blessings of having Michelle Malkin in the blogosphere is her journalistic sensibilities. Yesterday, she posted a follow-up to several of the most affecting stories that she had covered in 2006. Be sure to read it all....
Sistani Balks
The carefully-laid plans to form an ecumenical political coalition in Iraq hit a major snag today when Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani refused to endorse it. Sistani wants nothing to do with any project that undermines the unity of Shi'ites: Iraq's most revered Shiite cleric withheld support Saturday for a U.S.-backed plan to build a coalition across sectarian lines, Shiite lawmakers said, jeopardizing hopes that such a show of political unity could help stem the country's deadly violence. Members of the United Iraqi Alliance, the Shiite coalition that dominates parliament, met with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in Najaf after traveling to the holy city over the past few days. Al-Sistani holds no political post and rarely emerges from his home and adjacent office, but he has strong influence over Shiite politics. Some members of the Shiite alliance have sought a coalition that would include Kurds and Sunnis, and sideline Muqtada al-Sadr,...
Guess Who's Coming To Dinner?
It's good to have the weekend to relax, enjoy the company of good friends, and talk about everything they have in common: Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas held a long-overdue summit Saturday, reviving hopes that peace talks can resume after years of fighting, hostility and distrust. Israeli officials say agreement reached on some issues in Olmert-Abbas summit, but no deal on releasing Palestinian prisoners. The meeting, announced just hours before it began, marked the first substantial talks between Israeli and Palestinian leaders in 22 months. It comes at a time when both men are facing serious political problems at home and stand to gain domestic support with a peace breakthrough. Olmert emerged from his official residence in Jerusalem to greet Abbas.The two shook hands and also kissed each other on the cheek. Abbas as then introduced to Olmert's wife Aliza, an artist known for her...
December 24, 2006
The $100 Million Barbecue
The weekend barbecue hosted by Ehud Olmert for his neighbor, Mahmoud Abbas, turned out to be more expensive than the cost of a beef brisket and a few brews. The long-awaited meeting between the head of the Palestinian Authority and the PM of Israel resulted in the transfer of $100 million in taxes and duties to the PA, with the promise of more to come: Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert made several concessions to the Palestinians on Saturday, including the release of $100 million in taxes and duties Israel had collected for their treasury but withheld for months, in a bid to revive a peace process stalled for years. Olmert also promised, in a dinner meeting at his office with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, to begin easing travel restrictions on Palestinians in the West Bank and allowing more trucks through Israeli cargo crossings to and from the West Bank...
They're Still Devastated Two Years Later
Last Monday, the Times of London reported on the rise of shari'a police in Aceh, funded by the billions of dollars pouring into Indonesia after the tsunamis of Decmber 2004. These forces have attacked women and established a far more repressive society than existed before the tsunamis, thanks to the money that the local government received. One might hope that this constitutes a single bit of bad news in an otherwise successful campaign to lift the victims of this catastrophe out of their misery, but apparently it's just the beginning of the story. The Times once again reports on the lack of progress made in assisting the victims despite the largest outpouring of international aid in history: Part of the problem is that in some of the worst affected areas, physical access is difficult and skills are in short supply. Bringing in large quantities of bricks and other building materials...
Pre-Emption, Ethiopia-Style
Ethiopia decided to join the war on radical Islamist terror by launching a series of airstrikes on jihadi-held sectors of Somalia this morning. The new front will complicate the Islamists' attempt to consolidate the power they seized a few months ago in Mogadishu: Fighting escalated in Somalia Sunday as Ethiopian planes and helicopter gun ships attacked Islamist targets in several central provinces. One area that came under heavy attack was the town of Baledweyn, 220 miles south of the capital Mogadishu, the Shabelle Media Network of Mogadishu reported. In Addis Ababa, Ethiopia's information minister said his country had launched "self-defensive measures" against the Islamic Courts Union in Somalia, known as the UIC. On Saturday, the UIC issued a worldwide call for Islamist fighters to join the jihad, or holy war, in Somalia. The situation in the Horn of Africa has been unstable for years, and the Islamist triumphs this year...
A Little Holiday Snark For Monica
Even eight years after her stained blue dress made international headlines and almost destroyed Bill Clinton's presidency, Monica Lewinsky still inspires some of the silliest commentary across the political spectrum. Today's example appears in the Washington Post, where Libby Copeland uses Lewinsky's award of a post-graduate degree as an occasion for a large dose of holiday snark: Lewinsky, 33, is known more for her audacious coquetry than for her intellectual heft, and the notion of her earning a master of science degree in social psychology at the prestigious London university is jarring, akin to finding a rip in the time-space continuum, or discovering that Kim Jong Il is a natural blond. Even more staggering, the same bubbly gal who once described the act of flashing her thong at the president as a "small, subtle, flirtatious gesture" has now written a lofty-sounding thesis. Its title, according to Reuters: "In Search of...
December 25, 2006
Naughty Or Nice?
For Christmas Eve, the First Mate and I invited a friend of ours over whose family went out of town for the holidays, for dinner and a late Mass at Saint Peter's in Mendota. After a tasty turkey-and-stuffing dinner and some great conversation, we all trekked to Minnesota's oldest Catholic parish for the 10:00 services. Saint Peter's still has its original structure, but it is no longer in use for anything but special ceremonies. It doesn't seat more than 100 people, and that might be pushing it. For a long time, the congregation met in the office building, where they had built a small and humble church. Over the last few years, though, the parish has raised enough funds to build a brand-new church, which opened either late last year or early in 2006. Thanks to cell-phone technology, I snuck a picture of the Cross and the beautiful internal architecture:...
Merry Christmas To The CQ Community!
The First Mate and I wish all of our friends in the CQ community a Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, and a terrific new year! We've been blessed to have you with us, and hopefully this video Christmas card will express our gratitude -- especially to our readers in places like Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere putting their lives on the line for our nation. You are all in our prayers, as always. UPDATE: Bumping to the top. I won't be doing much blogging today, but I do have at least one new post below on the topic of Christmas. I'll be back on schedule tomorrow. Neo-Neocon wonders whether bloggers can keep their Christmas promises to stay off the computer; I'm skeptical, even of myself!...
December 26, 2006
Islamist Forces Retreating In Somalia
Ethiopian advances have forced the Islamists in Somalia to fall back, abandoning some of their bases and towns. Their reverses prompted the weak Somalian government to offer amnesty for surrender, but the Islamic Courts Union has thus far refused: Islamic fighters were in a tactical retreat Tuesday, a senior Islamic leader said, as government and Ethiopian troops advanced on three fronts in a decisive turn around in the battle for control of Somalia. Somalia's internationally backed government called on the Council of Islamic Courts to surrender and promised them amnesty if they lay down their weapons and stop opposing the government, spokesman Abdirahman Dinari said from Baidoa, the seat of the government. ... Islamic troops withdrew more than 50 miles to the southeast from Daynuney, a town just south of Baidoa. The retreat along the western front follows the bombing by Ethiopian jets of the country's two main international airports....
British Turn Against Basra Police
One of the differences between the British and American zones in Iraq has been the more laissez-faire approach taken by the British in the South when it comes to the Shi'ite militias. They have infiltrated the local police forces in greater numbers in that region, turning what should be law-enforcement positions into vigilante gangs attempted to seek retribution for decades of Sunni oppression. The British have apparently tired of this, and this week they have taken action against the worst of the offenders: About 1,000 British and Iraqi troops raided a police station in the southern city of Basra on Monday, killing seven gunmen and taking custody of more than 100 prisoners who were believed to be marked for execution by a renegade police unit. Many of the prisoners at the Jamiat police station showed signs of torture, including cigarette and electrical burns, gunshot wounds in their legs and knees,...
NSA Wiretaps 17-1 In Court
The fight over the NSA warrantless surveillance program has continued quietly in federal courtrooms, and perhaps part of the reason for the quiet has been the results. The NSA has won seventeen challenges to the program thus far: Defense lawyers who had hoped that the public disclosure a year ago of the National Security Agency's wiretapping program would yield information favorable to their clients are being rebuffed by the federal judiciary, which in a series of unusually consistent rulings has rejected efforts by terrorism suspects to access the records. In at least 17 criminal cases, federal district judges nominated to the federal bench by presidents Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Clinton, and George W. Bush have ruled against requests to force the government to tell defendants, most accused of terrorism-related crimes, whether the NSA eavesdropped on them without a court warrant. ... Still, even in cases in which the NSA program...
'A Measure Of Law To A Lawless Country'?
CQ reader LS Mope sends this interesting look at the AP, which has had its share of credibility problems of late in reporting on Islamist terrorism. I missed this passage in the AP report: The Islamic militia, which grew out of a network of ad hoc Muslim courts, has brought a measure of law to a lawless country: The international airport reopened in July after being closed for a decade. This passage by Salad Duhul did not leap out at me at first -- and LS told me the reason why: the AP deleted it from its report after its first publication. The original can be found at the Washington Post, which ran the original content of Duhul's reporting. Kudos to the AP for editing this out, but one has to wonder about the supposed journalistic objectivity of anyone who would write that passage. No one doubts that Somalia has...
Unable Danger?
The Able Danger story has come to an end, at least for the moment, as the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has dismissed claims made by former Rep. Curt Weldon and members of the AD team about their data before 9/11. The SSIC says that the claim that the AD effort had identified Mohammed Atta resulted from a confusion of names and that the effort actually identified none of the 9/11 attackers not already known to intelligence agencies (h/t CQ reader LEJ): The Senate Intelligence Committee has rejected as untrue one of the most disturbing claims about the Sept. 11 terrorist strikes — a congressman's contention that a team of military analysts identified Mohamed Atta or other hijackers before the attacks — according to a summary of the panel's investigation obtained by The Times. The conclusion contradicts assertions by Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.) and a few military officers that U.S....
Strib Goes In A Half-Price Fire Sale
The Minneapolis Star Tribune got sold by its owner, the McClatchy Company, for half of what McClatchy spent to buy it. A private investment group with other media interests will take over its operations in the next few months: A private equity firm has reached an agreement to buy the Star Tribune from the McClatchy Co., publisher Keith Moyer announced today. Avista Capital Partners, an investment group focused on media, health care and energy companies, will pay $530 million for the newspaper, which Sacramento, Calif.-based McClatchy bought from Cowles Media Co. in 1998 for $1.2 billion. Avista has offices in New York and Houston. The deal is expected to close formally sometime in the early spring. Chris Harte, a member of Avista's advisory board, will serve as chairman of a board overseeing the Star Tribune. Harte is a former publisher of newspapers in Akron, Ohio; Portland, Maine and State College,...
Swingin' Saddam
Saddam Hussein may have an expedited date with the hangman. In a move that surprised no one, the highest Iraqi appellate court upheld Saddam's conviction and death sentence in the Dujail case, forcing the Iraqi government to execute him within 30 days: Iraq's highest appeals court on Tuesday upheld Saddam Hussein's death sentence and said he must be hanged within 30 days for the killing of 148 Shiites in the central city of Dujail. The sentence "must be implemented within 30 days," chief judge Aref Shahin said. "From tomorrow, any day could be the day of implementation." ... Under Iraqi law, the appeals court decision must be ratified by President Jalal Talabani and Iraq's two vice presidents. Talabani opposes the death penalty but has in the past deputized a vice president to sign an execution order on his behalf _ a substitute that was legally accepted. Raed Juhi, a spokesman...
One Is The Loneliest Number (Updated!)
NOTE: Be sure to read the updates. It seems that the troops who got "stuck in Iraq", according to John Kerry, have not accepted the explanation Kerry gave for his little joke before the midterm elections. Radio host Scott Hennen got an e-mail from a serviceman in Iraq that shows Kerry having a private lunch in a mess hall full of soldiers: "This is a true story.....Check out this photo from our mess hall at the US Embassy yesterday morning. Sen. Kerry found himself all alone while he was over here. He cancelled his press conference because no one came, he worked out alone in the gym w/o any soldiers even going up to say hi or ask for an autograph (I was one of those who was in the gym at the same time), and he found himself eating breakfast with only a couple of folks who are obviously...
Gerald Ford Passes
CNN and FOX is now reporting that Gerald Ford has died (via Michelle Malkin). No links yet, but CNN is covering it wall to wall at the moment. We can expect plenty of analysis of Ford's impact on American politics, but to me he will always be the Accidental President. Plucked from near-obscurity to be Nixon's VP in the wake of Spiro Agnew's resignation, he never appeared at ease in the glare of presidential scrutiny. He soon garnered an undeserved reputation as a klutz, thanks to Chevy Chase, but in truth he was a star athlete. His was the first presidency to get defined by video bites and cheap shots, but unfortunately he was not the last. His first action as President pretty much ensured his defeat in the 1976 election. He pardoned Richard Nixon, an act that still inspires debate among people all along the political spectrum. Critics accused...
December 27, 2006
Win A Date With Saddam! (Necktie Required)
Apparently, the Iraqi unemployment situation must be fairly dire, as men would kill to get a job. More accurately, they would kill one specific person: An advisor to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki told ABC News that hundreds of Iraqis have inquired about the job as Hussein's hangman, even though officially, no such position exists and the government has not advertised for it. Bassam al-Husseiny said he receives eight to 10 phone calls a day, and 20 to 30 e-mails by those who want the assignment. The interested Iraqis, he said, come from all three of the country's major religions and ethnicities and from high-level government officials to "the tea boy." One of those interested, a Shiite Muslim named Abdul, said there is not a house in Iraq that has not held a funeral because of Hussein. He explained that he is "not the only one" who wants to execute...
Maybe They Were Serious
The Pakistani agreement with tribal chiefs in the North Waziristan region called into question Pervez Musharraf's will to fight the Taliban he once supported in Afghanistan, now that they have most likely crossed the border into his nation to use it as a launching pad for cross-border attacks. That question may have found an answer in Musharraf's latest proposal: Pakistan has told its army to examine a plan to fence off and mine part of its long and porous border with Afghanistan, a move likely to further fuel tensions between the two countries. Foreign secretary Riaz Muhammad Khan told a press conference yesterday that safe-transit passages along the newly fortified stretches of the 1,490-mile border would allow the cross-border movement of both Afghans and Pakistanis. However, he gave no timetable for carrying out the work. Pakistan is not a signatory to the anti-landmines Geneva Convention and other international agreements that...
Should Ford Have Pardoned Nixon?
One of the most contentious decisions in American political history will get thoroughly revisited in the coming days now that Gerald Ford has passed away at the grand old age of 93. The Accidental President had enjoyed a polite and unspoken consensus among political pundits not to thrash out that question too much while he was alive, but it will no doubt get more analysis now. In fact, in the blogosphere, two people from both sides of the divide have already asked the question. Jeralyn Merritt from TalkLeft (via TMV) and Jack Yoest from Reasoned Audacity (via The Corner) both feel that Ford short-circuited a needed path to justice, while Charmaine Yoest in the same Reasoned Audacity post believes Ford did the right and necessary thing to move us past Watergate. Certainly, I think Ford pardoned Nixon for the purpose Charmaine notes. Ford built a reputation for a tough but...
Will Assad Flip?
The Washington Times reports this morning that Syrian dictator Bashar Assad might be considering a change in foreign policy that would move him out of the Iranian orbit and closer to the other Arab states. Recent visits to American allies in the region and a snub towards Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has observers buzzing with anticipation: Recent visits by Syrian President Bashar Assad to U.S.-allied Yemen and the United Arab Emirates are prompting speculation that Syria is seeking to leave the Iranian orbit and pursue closer ties with the West. Such a move would fulfill a major recommendation of the Iraq Study Group, headed by former Secretary of State James A. Baker III and former Rep. Lee H. Hamilton, which suggested it might be possible through diplomacy to pry Syria away from Iran. ... Mr. Assad's talks in Yemen 11 days ago reportedly dealt with regional issues, including the infighting in the...
So The Message Got Delivered, Then
Iran has acknowledged that its oil industry has fallen on hard times, and guess who they blame for their troubles? The Great Satan, this time, might not mind: Oil Minister Kazem Vaziri Hamaneh has lamented that the development of Iran's oil industry was suffering from US pressure. "Iran has been under different sanctions for years and many companies have not been able to cooperate with our country for fear of US pressures," Vaziri Hamaneh said, according to the semi-official news agency Fars on Tuesday. "They even do not easily deliver some dual-purpose equipment that we had previously bought. They cause trouble for us under different pretexts," he said. Thanks for confirming the receipt of our messsage, Vaziri! Their own government has made it clear that they see us as an enemy at conferences where attendees were asked by their president to imagine a world without America and Israel. I guess...
Sane, Relatively Speaking
With the Minneapolis Star-Tribune changing hands from the McClatchy Company to the private investment group Avista Capital Partners, one has to wonder what effect the Strib's readers will see as a result. As I noted yesterday, the group's website gives little indication of their political bent; they describe their media acquisition strategies thusly: Avista targets companies that have strong, often proprietary, positions in attractive niche sectors of the content-creation, content-packaging and content-distribution segments of the media industry. These businesses are characterized by stable cash flows, attractive margins and low capital-expenditure and working-capital requirements. Avista prefers media businesses with lower technology risk and those that offer the opportunity to capitalize on Avista's operating expertise to build more robust revenue growth. In addition, Avista has particular interest in well-branded companies that can exploit additional and emerging distribution channels and/or improve the geographic reach of their content. Avista believes attractive investment opportunities will...
Belarus Gets The Ukrainian Treatment From Its Pal
Despite its insistence on remaining the last dictatorship of Europe and a lackey of Russia, Belarus has found out the limits of friendship with Vladimir Putin. It turns out that Putin wants to stop charging the Belarussians "friend" rates for natural gas, charging them double now and forcing them to give half of its revenue for pipeline services to the Russians (via The Florida Masochist): Residents of Belarus's capital stocked up on warm clothes and electric heaters as fears rose Tuesday that Russia would soon cut off the natural gas supply on which the country depends. Russia says Belarus must pay more than twice as much for gas next year -- and even more later -- and turn over a half-share in its pipeline system, a major transit route to Europe, if it wants to avoid a New Year's gas shutoff. ... The dispute strongly echoes last year's crisis between...
Reid On Ford Funeral: I'm Busy
The death of a former President usually means that the leadership of all three branches of the government gather to mourn on behalf of the nation and to pay final respects to those once chosen to lead it. These events come rarely and allow for a moment of ceremonial unity in the political world. Not every politician attends, but leadership is expected to make their appearances. However, incoming Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and his chief deputy Dick Durbin apparently can't be bothered. They had a junket scheduled to tour Macchu Picchu, and by golly, no dead President will convince them to reschedule: Incoming Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will miss the state funeral for former President Gerald Ford at the Capitol Rotunda on Saturday night, opting instead to lead a delegation to South America with an expected stop at the Machu Picchu Inca ruins. Reid, D-Nev., left Wednesday afternoon...
December 28, 2006
Belarus Doubles Down
Belarus has decided to call Vladimir Putin's bluff on the standoff over energy prices and transit rights. Instead of acquiescing to Putin's demand for half of Belarus' revenues from its pipeline service to Europe and a doubling of their own energy prices, Belarus has threatened to shut off the pipe altogether, interrupting service to Europe and cutting off revenues to Gazprom: Belarus has implicitly threatened to stop Russian gas deliveries through its pipelines to Western Europe unless Russia's gas monopoly Gazprom takes back its demand that Minsk pay steep price increases in 2007. "We are inter-dependent. If I don't have a domestic gas supply contract, Gazprom won't have a transit deal," Belarus's Deputy Prime Minister Vladimir Semashko said at Minsk airport late on Tuesday after his return from failed talks in Moscow. About 80 percent of Russian exports to Europe are pumped via Ukraine, with the rest going through Belarus....
Islamists Disappear From Mogadishu
In a lightning-fast collapse, the Islamists in Somalia have apparently disappeared. The largest city in the nation has erupted in gang warfare as tribal chiefs retracted their support for the radical Islamist forces that just days ago issued a call for jihadis around the world to attack Ethiopia: The Islamist forces who have controlled much of Somalia in recent months suddenly vanished from the streets of the capital, Mogadishu, residents said Wednesday night, just as thousands of rival troops massed 15 miles away. In the past few days, Ethiopian-backed forces, with tacit approval from the United States, have unleashed tanks, helicopter gunships and jet fighters on the Islamists, decimating their military and paving the way for the internationally recognized transitional government of Somalia to assert control. Even so, the Islamists, who have been regarded as a regional menace by Ethiopia and the United States, had repeatedly vowed to fight to...
Iran Pays For Kassam Attacks In Israel
The Iranian proxy terrorist group Hezbollah transfers thousands of dollars for every Kassam rocket attack launched by Palestinian terrorists from Fatah and Islamic Jihad, the Jerusalem Post reports. The scale escalates if the attack kills or wounds Israelis, and the money originates in Iran: According to Israeli intelligence information, Hizbullah is smuggling cash into the Gaza Strip and paying "a number of unknown local splinter groups" for each attack. Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) sources said the Islamist organization paid several thousand dollars for each attack, with the amount dependent on the number of Israelis killed or wounded. ... According to the officials, while Islamic Jihad was behind most recent rocket attacks - including the one on Tuesday night that critically wounded 14-year-old Adir Basad in Sderot - several splinter terrorists groups are also involved and have received direct funding from Hizbullah. ... Islamic Jihad gets the money via its...
Message Delivered
The US has delivered a message to Moqtada al-Sadr in the ongoing struggle to contain the violence in Baghdad and end the sectarian militias. A raid by US and Iraqi Army forces killed a high-ranking aide to Sadr who had supplied IEDs used in attacks against Iraqi forces: A top deputy of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr was killed Wednesday during a raid by U.S. and Iraqi troops in the southern holy city of Najaf, sparking protests from Sadr's followers and complicating an already tense relationship with the powerful anti-American leader. Hurling rocks and shouting expletives, thousands of angry Sadr loyalists marched through the streets of Najaf after Sahib al-Amiri was shot and killed by a U.S. soldier during an early morning raid. "Agents and stooges!" protesters shouted at Iraqi soldiers and local authorities. U.S. military officials declined to confirm that Amiri was a Sadr aide, saying only that he had...
Ford On Iraq
The blogosphere is abuzz today about the Bob Woodward interview that took place in July 2004 with now-deceased former President Gerald Ford about Iraq and other topics. In the interview, Ford criticized the Iraq invasion, opposing the decision and claiming that he would have looked harder for other options: Former president Gerald R. Ford said in an embargoed interview in July 2004 that the Iraq war was not justified. "I don't think I would have gone to war," he said a little more than a year after President Bush launched the invasion advocated and carried out by prominent veterans of Ford's own administration. In a four-hour conversation at his house in Beaver Creek, Colo., Ford "very strongly" disagreed with the current president's justifications for invading Iraq and said he would have pushed alternatives, such as sanctions, much more vigorously. In the tape-recorded interview, Ford was critical not only of Bush...
State Dept Confirms Arafat Masterminded Murder Of American Diplomats
A newly declassified report from 1973 shows that Yasser Arafat personally commanded the terrorist attack that resulted in the murders of Ambassador Cleo Noel and his deputy George Moore, as well as a Belgian diplomat. Moreover, the two murders appear to have been the entire point of Arafat's attack: The Khartoum operation was planned and carried out with the full knowledge and personal approval of Yassir Arafat, Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the head of Fatah. Fatah representatives based in Khartoum participated in the attack, using a Fatah vehicle to transport the terrorists to the Saudi Arabian embassy. Initially, the main objective of the attack appeared to be to secure the release of the Fatah/BSO [Black September Organization] leader Muhammed Awadh (Abu Da'ud) from Jordanian captivity. Information acquired subsequently reveals that the Fatah/BSO leaders did not expect Awadh to be freed, and indicates that one of the...
Grassroots Lobbying 'Disclosure'?
Mark Tapscott and Brad Smith both warn about a new initiative from Nancy Pelosi to require disclosure of grassroots "lobbyists" in the next Congress. Instead of disclosing contributors, it appears that Pelosi wants the names of the individuals involved. Smith has written several essays warning that disclosure, in this case, can chill dissent: In proposals to disclose grassroots lobbying, we are witnessing two canons of political law on an apparent collision course: that government corruption is cured by disclosure; and that the right of individuals to speak and associate freely depends upon their ability to do so anonymously. But the conflict is a false one — a byproduct of fuzzy thinking — because each canon, when properly applied, protects citizens from abusive lawmakers. Disclosure of campaign contributions protects citizens from lawmakers who can confer benefits on large contributors (and pain on opponents) through legislation. Disclosure of true lobbying activities, that...
December 29, 2006
Nifong In Trouble
Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong faces charges of ethical violations at the North Carolina Bar Association due to his inflammatory and misleading comments to the press during the rape investigation of three Duke lacrosse team members. The statements that the NCBA highlights look especially questionable, given the withdrawal of the specific counts of rape last week, and the complaints could result in Nifong's disbarment: The North Carolina Bar Association filed ethics charges Thursday against the prosecutor in the Duke University rape case, accusing him of saying misleading and inflammatory things to the media about the lacrosse players under suspicion. The punishment for ethics violations can range from admonishment to disbarment. Among the four rules of professional conduct that District Attorney Mike Nifong was accused of violating was a prohibition against making comments "that have a substantial likelihood of heightening public condemnation of the accused." The comments made by Nifong come...
Chavez To Shut Down Independent Television
Even after winning his re-election bid in Venezuela, Hugo Chavez wants to eliminate any hint of dissent. He has ordered an end to the broadcast license of Radio Caracas TV, which opposed him and supported a 2003 strike in protest of his regime: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has said he will not renew the licence for the country's second largest TV channel which he said expired in March 2007. In an address to troops, Mr Chavez said he would not tolerate media outlets working toward a coup against him. Radio Caracas Television, which is aligned with the opposition, supported a strike against Mr Chavez in 2003. RCTV also came out in support of the coup that briefly removed Chavez from power, a coup for which Chavez blames the US. The two editorial positions as well as consistent criticism of his regime has long irked the Castro acolyte, and he has...
Supplying The Means Of Their Destruction
Ehud Olmert has decided to go all out for his new bestest buddy, Mahmoud Abbas, with the blessing of the United States. Olmert has arranged for Abbas and his Fatah faction to receive new guns and equipment from Egypt in an attempt to tilt the balance of Palestinian power away from Hamas: After coordination with Israel and the United States, Egypt has sent a shipment of weapons and ammunition into the Gaza Strip to forces loyal to the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah, Israeli officials said today. Senior Palestinian officials denied the report, including the spokesman for Mr. Abbas, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, calling the story “Israeli propaganda aimed at aggravating the situation between Fatah and Hamas.” But Israeli officials confirmed a report in the Haaretz newspaper that the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, approved the shipment in his meeting Saturday evening with Mr. Abbas. Four trucks with some 2,000...
Three Years Later, A 'Rush'
A little more than three years after Saddam Hussein meekly came out of his spider hole, the Iraqis have finally removed the last obstacle to his execution. Saddam attempted, with some success, to transform his trial into a political showpiece, using it to rail against the American occupation and to inspire the Ba'athist remnants to terrorist attacks. Despite having several members of the court assasinated or attacked, the tribunal convicted Saddam for crimes consistent with the evidence. And yet, this is not enough for the New York Times: The important question was never really about whether Saddam Hussein was guilty of crimes against humanity. The public record is bulging with the lengthy litany of his vile and unforgivable atrocities: genocidal assaults against the Kurds; aggressive wars against Iran and Kuwait; use of internationally banned weapons like nerve gas; systematic torture of countless thousands of political prisoners. What really mattered was...
Saddam To Transfer To Iraqis Today
The confusion in Baghdad regarding custody of Saddam Hussein appears to have lifted somewhat. After a rumor circulated that the US had handed over the genocidal dictator to the Iraqi government, officials in Washington have told ABC News that they will complete the transfer later today: A senior official in Washington tells ABC News that Hussein will be transferred to Iraqi custody by the end of today. The actual date for the execution is still a closely guarded secret, and will be decided on solely by Iraqis, the official says. Prime Minister Nouri Kamel al-Maliki was quoted on Iraqi television this morning, saying there should be no delay in implementing the sentence, but he said nothing about the timing. Hussein's lawyers say they have been told to prepare to pick up his personal effects, but they do not know when they should do that. My guess is that they should...
The Execution Is A Go For Tonight ... Perhaps
The execution of Saddam Hussein will take place within hours, as I predicted, according to "top Iraqi officials". Meanwhile, Saddam's lawyers try a more friendly court system to get him a stay of execution: The witnesses to Saddam Hussein's impending execution gathered Friday in Baghdad's fortified Green Zone in final preparation for his hanging, as state television broadcast footage of his regime's atrocities. A top Iraqi official said Saddam will be executed before 6 a.m. Saturday, Baghdad time, or 10 p.m. Friday EST. ... "Saddam will be executed today or tomorrow," Haddad said. "All the measures have been done. ... There is no reason for delays." That puts the execution at 9 pm CST, which will make this a prime-time execution. One can suppose the cable news networks will go wall to wall with Saddam coverage, and the broadcast networks may even be tempted to pre-empt their entertainment schedules. However,...
It's Over (Live Blog)
Three Arabic news stations and MS-NBC are broadcasting the report that Saddam Hussein has been executed this evening, right around 10 pm ET. Right now, without any text reports, MS-NBC is telling viewers that a delegation of seven witnesses saw Saddam hanged a few minutes ago. The witnesses included members of the tribunal that convicted and sentenced him as well as a doctor to declare him dead. They also report that the Iraqi government recorded the event, and that the images and/or video will eventually be released to demonstrate that the former dictator and genocidal monster has truly died. Sic semper tyrannis? Unfortunately, no, although it's certainly an appealing thought. I'll settle for an "et tu, Brute?" from each of them, if we can get it. Here's the first wire report -- from Reuters, reporting on an al-Hurra TV broadcast: U.S.-backed Iraqi television station Al Hurra said Saddam Hussein had...
December 30, 2006
Northern Alliance Radio Live Today
The Northern Alliance Radio Network goes back to live broadcasting today after the Christmas break. That means that all six hours will be fresh, but none so fresh as Mitch and I broadcasting live from the showroom of White Bear Lake Superstore! The six-hour block starts at 11 am CT on AM 1280 The Patriot (and on the Internet stream at that link), but Mitch and I will go live between 1 - 3 PM CT. If you're on the east side of the Twin Cities, make your way to the best car dealership and say hi to Paul Reuben and the gang -- especially if your New Year's resolution is to upgrade the ride. So what will we be discussing? I'd say Saddam's execution will be the hot topic today, but we'll also cover the revelation that our own State Department knew for decades that Yasser Arafat had murdered...
And Then The Second Half Arrived
When one hears that a college football team suffered a historic fourth-quarter collapse, one only thinks of two teams, both of them in the Big Ten: Michigan State and Minnesota. Last night, it was the Golden Gophers who gave their opponent an entree into the record books, as they have up a 31-point lead in the second half to lose the Insight Bowl in overtime to Texas Tech: The Gophers football team played arguably its finest half of football this season before halftime and built a 38-7 lead against the Texas Tech Red Raiders in the third quarter of the Insight Bowl ... And then gave it all away. Shannon Woods' 3-yard touchdown run in overtime capped the largest comeback in NCAA Division I-A bowl game history as Texas Tech stunned Minnesota 44-41 before an announced crowd of 48,391 at Sun Devil Stadium. "Needless to say, that was a game...
Don't Call Hitchens For My Eulogy
Christopher Hitchens has begun to build a reputation as an anti-eulogist, the kind of pundit who gets contrarian whenever a significant political figure passes away. In the midst of the mourning over Ronald Reagan, Hitchens released a scathing attack on the deceased President, dredging up the tired memes of his purported idiocy, although he managed to find a few stinging examples of his rhetorical mistakes. Now Hitchens remembers Gerald Ford in much the same manner: One expects a certain amount of piety and hypocrisy when retired statesmen give up the ghost, but this doesn't excuse the astonishing number of omissions and misstatements that have characterized the sickly national farewell to Gerald Ford. One could graze for hours on the great slopes of the massive obituaries and never guess that during his mercifully brief occupation of the White House, this president had: 1. Disgraced the United States in Iraq and inaugurated...
'Iraq Without Me Is Nothing'
The final moments of Saddam Hussein found their way to the pages of Newsweek, as a Michael Hastings interview with witness Ali al-Massedy hit the Internet within hours of the event. For all of the breathless coverage of yesterday, the Hastings article feels like an anti-climax: Ali Al Massedy was 3 feet away from Saddam Hussein when he died. The 38 year old, normally Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's official videographer, was the man responsible for filming the late dictator's execution at dawn on Saturday. "I saw fear, he was afraid," Ali told NEWSWEEK minutes after returning from the execution. Wearing a rumpled green suit and holding a Sony HDTV video camera in his right hand, Ali recalled the dictator's last moments. "He was saying things about injustice, about resistance, about how these guys are terrorists," he says. On the way to the gallows, according to Ali, "Saddam said, ‘Iraq...
'Assassinated'?
Earlier today, I wrote about my reluctance to celebrate the well-deserved execution of Saddam Hussein. However, I also don't intend to protest it or call it anything other than justice. CQ reader Stoo sends this YouTube of an anchor at WESH, an NBC affiliate in Orlando, who called the event an "assassination": Uh, no. Saddam got convicted in a trial in which he put on a defense, although he used the "I'm in charge and therefore everything I do is legal by definition" defense that Nixon tried, with even worse results. An Iraqi court sentenced him to die for the mass and serial murders of Dujail residents, and deserved it for the hundreds of thousands of others he committed. Executed, yes. Killed, if you like. But "assassinated"? Absolutely ridiculous, and yet another example of the media's abject failure to cover Saddam Hussein with any intelligence or objectivity. CORRECTION: It's WESH...
December 31, 2006
Can We Endure Free Speech?
George Will lends his considerable talent for derision to the effort to "reform" political speech, which met its latest setback in federal court two weeks ago. He notes that the effort to reform political speech has finally received recognition -- albeit small -- that it tends to violate the First Amendment: A three-judge federal court recently tugged a thread that may begin the unraveling of the fabric of murky laws and regulations that traduce the First Amendment by suppressing political speech. Divided 2 to 1, the court held -- unremarkably, you might think -- that issue advocacy ads can run during an election campaign, when they matter most. This decision will strike zealous (there is no other kind) advocates of ever-tighter regulation of political speech (campaign finance "reformers") as ominous. Why? Because it partially emancipates millions of Americans who incorporate thousands of groups to advocate their causes, groups such as...
Saddam Buried, But Lives Again (Briefly) On Video
The Iraqi government gave the corpse of Saddam Hussein to tribal leaders in Tikrit, and he has been buried near his sons in his homeland. However, like a spectre, he haunts the Internet after his death thanks to a bootleg video of his entire execution taken by a cell phone (via Hot Air, Vince, Curt, and Jawa Report): Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, hanged for crimes against humanity on Saturday, has been buried in the village where he was born 69 years ago. In a sparsely attended ceremony in Awja, in the Tikrit region north of the capital, the former Iraqi leader was laid to rest in a family plot. His sons Uday and Qusay, killed by US troops in 2003, are also buried there. In this case, the US acted as a courier. We flew the body to Tikrit and apparently made the arrangements for the handover. Saddam had...
An Unseemly Eulogy
The New York Times gives its readers a blow-by-blow description of Saddam Hussein's final moments, which seems especially helpful now that the bootleg video of the execution has hit the viral network. However, the tone of this piece is more suited to the valediction of a national hero than a genocidal dictator, and it makes the Times look as though they are mourning the loss of Saddam Here are a few of the relevant points in the prose: Saddam Hussein never bowed his head, until his neck snapped. ... His executioners wore black ski masks, but Mr. Hussein could still see their deep brown skin and hear their dialects, distinct to the Shiite southern part of the country, where he had so brutally repressed two separate uprisings. ... When he rose to be led back to the execution room at 6 a.m., he looked strong, confident and calm. Whatever apprehension...
An Overlooked Legacy?
The Washington Post notes an overlooked part of the George Bush presidency, one that gets almost no attention despite the constant focus on the region. Under Bush, the US has tripled aid to Africa, with even more increases proposed for the next two years: President Bush's legacy is sure to be defined by his wielding of U.S. military power in Afghanistan and Iraq, but there is another, much softer and less-noticed effort by his administration in foreign affairs: a dramatic increase in U.S. aid to Africa. The president has tripled direct humanitarian and development aid to the world's most impoverished continent since taking office and recently vowed to double that increased amount by 2010 -- to nearly $9 billion. The moves have surprised -- and pleased -- longtime supporters of assistance for Africa, who note that because Bush has received little support from African American voters, he has little obvious...
Ed Koch's Hero
Ed Koch has apparently agreed to start blogging for the Jerusalem Post, and his first entry covers the man he considers his hero. To the readers of JPost's blog it may come as a surprise, but not to people who have followed Hizzoner for the past few years: President George W. Bush, vilified by many, supported by some, is a hero to me. Why do I say that? It's not because I agree with the President's domestic agenda. It's not because I think he's done a perfect job in the White House. George Bush is a hero to me because he has courage. The President does what he believes to be in the best interest of the United States. He sticks with his beliefs, no matter how intense the criticism and invective that are directed against him every day. The enormous defeat President Bush suffered with the loss of both...
Cowher's Last Bow?
The longtime head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers will reportedly consider leaving his job after 15 seasons, the longest current tenure in the NFL. If he has coached his last game for the Steelers, he made it count by knocking division rival Cincinatti out of the playoffs in a thrilling overtime win: Joey Porter tried to end the suspense and get an answer for the question that all of Pittsburgh is asking. A few minutes after the Steelers knocked the Cincinnati Bengals out of playoff contention with a 23-17 victory in overtime Sunday, the emotional linebacker cornered his head coach — the one he kissed after a victory early in the season — and asked if he was staying. "Today was the first time anybody put him on the spot," Porter said. "I asked him. He said he doesn't know. We love the guy regardless." ... While the Steelers waited...
Happy New Year!
Happy New Year to all of my friends at CQ! I hope you celebrate with people you love, and get home safely. For us, we've just spent the weekend at a suite at the Radisson Plaza hotel in the city for a change of pace, so tonight we took it easy. We did some shopping around the Gaviidae Commons and Nicollet Mall, and we had dinner at M&S Grille. We both tried the blue marlin and loved it, and we split a serving of excellent key lime pie. We noticed several buses parked across the street at the Marriott along with police protection, and we finally assumed that the St. Louis Rams must have stayed there before the game today -- and they must have enjoyed it, because the Rams dismantled the Minnesota Vikings in the season closer. Tomorrow we'll relax around the house and hopefully do dinner with our...
About
Ed Morrissey has blogged at Captain's Quarters since 2003, and has a daily radio show at BlogTalkRadio, where he serves as Political Director. Called "Captain Ed" by his readers, Ed is a father and grandfather living in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota, a native Californian who moved to the North Star State because of the weather.
My Other Blog
The Crows Nest
Happy New Year!
Happy New Year to all of my friends at CQ! I hope you celebrate with people you love, and get home safely.
For us, we've just spent the weekend at a suite at the Radisson Plaza hotel in the city for a change of pace, so tonight we took it easy. We did some shopping around the Gaviidae Commons and Nicollet Mall, and we had dinner at M&S Grille. We both tried the blue marlin and loved it, and we split a serving of excellent key lime pie. We noticed several buses parked across the street at the Marriott along with police protection, and we finally assumed that the St. Louis Rams must have stayed there before the game today -- and they must have enjoyed it, because the Rams dismantled the Minnesota Vikings in the season closer.
Tomorrow we'll relax around the house and hopefully do dinner with our family, but I will be blogging ... so keep checking back at CQ.
UPDATE: Power Line has discovered my secret!
Cowher's Last Bow?
The longtime head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers will reportedly consider leaving his job after 15 seasons, the longest current tenure in the NFL. If he has coached his last game for the Steelers, he made it count by knocking division rival Cincinatti out of the playoffs in a thrilling overtime win:
Joey Porter tried to end the suspense and get an answer for the question that all of Pittsburgh is asking. A few minutes after the Steelers knocked the Cincinnati Bengals out of playoff contention with a 23-17 victory in overtime Sunday, the emotional linebacker cornered his head coach — the one he kissed after a victory early in the season — and asked if he was staying."Today was the first time anybody put him on the spot," Porter said. "I asked him. He said he doesn't know. We love the guy regardless." ...
While the Steelers waited for an answer, the Bengals (8-8) were already deep into hindsight about a season gone horribly wrong.
They were first in line for a wild-card playoff berth with three weeks , but wound up shut out of the playoffs by an 0-3 finish. A week ago in Denver, a bad snap on an extra-point attempt with 46 seconds to play prevented them from clinching a spot.
There were more mistakes galore against the Steelers (8-8), who beat them in the playoffs last season. Shayne Graham was wide right on a 39-yard field goal try with 8 seconds left in regulation.
On the third play in overtime, Ben Roethlisberger threw a pass to Santonio Holmes, who eluded three defenders and dived the final few yards into the end zone, completing a 67-yard touchdown play.
Nothing could be sweeter than going on the road against division rivals and taking away their playoff hopes, especially after having lost an earlier game against the Bengals and finishing out of the running. The defending Super Bowl champs will not get a chance to defend their championship this year, which would make a Cowher exit bittersweet. Cowher won the one last season and had the Steelers close on several occasions, including a tough loss to the Dallas Cowboys a few years back.
The Bengals really knocked themselves out of the playoffs. They had the Steelers reeling from a beating by Baltimore which ended their own thin playoff hopes, they had the home-field advantage, and most of all the Bengals had the game-winning field goal opportunity at the end of the game. Champions make the most of those opportunities, and the Bengals showed that they have not yet risen to that level.
Will Cowher really leave his job? Even he says he's not burned out and would like to coach again, but he has helmed the Steelers for a very long time now. Given the demands of the job, it's natural that he might want a sabbatical of a year, maybe two, to connect with his family and recharge the batteries. He would likely get a plum analyst position with one of the networks; he's articulate and colorful. However, the Steelers will probably try like hell to keep him on the field. They have consistently backed Cowher even after some tough seasons, and an organization with only two head coaches in 35 years obviously values loyalty.
I'm hoping Bill sticks around. I can't think of a coach and a team that fit each other better than Cowher and the Steelers.
Ed Koch's Hero
Ed Koch has apparently agreed to start blogging for the Jerusalem Post, and his first entry covers the man he considers his hero. To the readers of JPost's blog it may come as a surprise, but not to people who have followed Hizzoner for the past few years:
President George W. Bush, vilified by many, supported by some, is a hero to me.Why do I say that? It's not because I agree with the President's domestic agenda. It's not because I think he's done a perfect job in the White House.
George Bush is a hero to me because he has courage. The President does what he believes to be in the best interest of the United States. He sticks with his beliefs, no matter how intense the criticism and invective that are directed against him every day.
The enormous defeat President Bush suffered with the loss of both Houses of Congress has not caused him to retreat from his position that the US alone now stands between a radical Islamic takeover of many of the world's governments in the next 30 or more years. If that takeover occurs, we will suffer an enslavement that will threaten our personal freedoms and take much of the world back into the Dark Ages.
This doesn't surprise me at all. I have linked to several of Koch's statements in support of Bush, all of which emphasize his differences on domestic policy but argue that his foreign policy outweighs those concerns during a time of war. In fact, here's what Koch had to say in an interview we had with him at the 2004 national convention:
But I said, all of the issues are trumped by standing up to and dealing with international terrorism. That is the Bush doctrine, which he enunciated when he came before Congress, that he would go after the terrorists and the countries that harbor them. ... Now, the Democrats don't have the stomach for this. It's regrettable, because I'm a Democrat. I believe I represent more Democrats than Senator Kennedy or a whole host of other people like him. ... He's done good things in his life, but he doesn't represent the heart and soul of the Democratic party ... [Senator Kennedy] is an arch ultra-liberal! ... The party has been taken over by the Deaniacs, which is what the media called them, not me ...
Koch has remained consistent in his support of Bush, and he has started his blogging enterprise with that support. I suspect it will not get too much attention here in the US.
Note: I really posted this to give CQ commenter Monkei an opportunity to post his "waste of skin" comment that he apparently finds so clever. Why not give him one last opportunity to get it out of his system in 2006?
An Overlooked Legacy?
The Washington Post notes an overlooked part of the George Bush presidency, one that gets almost no attention despite the constant focus on the region. Under Bush, the US has tripled aid to Africa, with even more increases proposed for the next two years:
President Bush's legacy is sure to be defined by his wielding of U.S. military power in Afghanistan and Iraq, but there is another, much softer and less-noticed effort by his administration in foreign affairs: a dramatic increase in U.S. aid to Africa.The president has tripled direct humanitarian and development aid to the world's most impoverished continent since taking office and recently vowed to double that increased amount by 2010 -- to nearly $9 billion.
The moves have surprised -- and pleased -- longtime supporters of assistance for Africa, who note that because Bush has received little support from African American voters, he has little obvious political incentive for his interest. ...
Although some activists criticize Bush for not doing more to end the ongoing genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan, others credit him for playing a role in ending deadly conflicts in Liberia, the Congo and other parts of Sudan. Meanwhile, Bush has overseen a steady rise in U.S. trade with Africa, which has doubled since 2001.
I'm not a big fan of traditional aid programs. They tend to go to areas ruled incompetently by autocratic or oppressive regimes suffering from chronic, self-inflicted problems. The aid usually winds up propping up the governments that cause the problems, exacerbating them and making it more difficult to solve the real underlying issues.
In the case of the Bush aid, it has focused on supporting nations that already have reformed their political processes, making the aid both a real benefit to the people of the country and an incentive for other nations to reform themselves. Of course, it is precisely this strategy that attracts the only criticism in the article, this time from Africa Action, an advocacy group in DC. They complain about the requirement for privatization, a requirement that introduces the kind of market forces that will avoid famines in the future, rather than funding and endorsing the kind of government-run debacles that have killed millions of Africans from neglect or deliberate starvation.
And guess who the Post credits with the President's resolve on this issue? Evangelicals, who have been demonized by the mainstream media ever since they helped elect Bush in 2000 and re-elect him in 2004. It turns out that all of those so-called "Christianists" want to do what they can to save Africa from its famines and pandemics and to stop the slaughter of African children from both. They have put their Christianity into action in a manner that has also gone mostly unnoticed by the American media.
Bush has another reason to prioritize African aid, which we have seen in the Horn region. The instability of Africa and its inability to feed itself has allowed radical Islamists to gain a toehold on the continent. Just like any parasitic infection, the weak state of African nations allow the radical Islamists to gain support by blaming everyone but themselves for their sorry state. Eliminating hunger and pandemics will help stabilize the continents, and the clearest manner in which to gain both is to promote market economics, private property rights, and representative democracy, all of which Africa has lacked.
Will it take ten years for people to appreciate this part of the Bush legacy? Perhaps it might take longer than that, if we have to rely on our own media. Kudos to the Post for noticing.
An Unseemly Eulogy
The New York Times gives its readers a blow-by-blow description of Saddam Hussein's final moments, which seems especially helpful now that the bootleg video of the execution has hit the viral network. However, the tone of this piece is more suited to the valediction of a national hero than a genocidal dictator, and it makes the Times look as though they are mourning the loss of Saddam Here are a few of the relevant points in the prose:
Saddam Hussein never bowed his head, until his neck snapped. ...His executioners wore black ski masks, but Mr. Hussein could still see their deep brown skin and hear their dialects, distinct to the Shiite southern part of the country, where he had so brutally repressed two separate uprisings. ...
When he rose to be led back to the execution room at 6 a.m., he looked strong, confident and calm. Whatever apprehension he may have had only minutes earlier had faded. ...
Mr. Hussein was led up to the gallows without a struggle. His hands were unbound, put behind his back, then fastened again. He showed no remorse. He held his head high.
And so on. If you watch either video, this bears little resemblance to the images seen on television screens or computer monitors. Saddam hardly marched in with his head held high; instead, he looked somewhat nonplussed and nervous, understandably so, as he approached the platform. The entire piece reads like a radical Sunni insurgent history book, circa 2008, and the editors of the Times should have recognized it. Saddam may have faced his execution without tears or begging, but any review of the video shows the descriptions here to be propaganda.
However, the translations of the arguments are certainly worthwhile. The shock at hearing Moqtada al-Sadr's name can be seen in the bootleg, and also the heated nature of the exchanges afterward. The Iraqi prosecutor's efforts to stop the argument should have taken the form of pre-execution instructions to the witnesses. The execution took place in a facility Saddam set up to torture members of the Dawa party, of which Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is a member. The taunting reduced the execution's impact from an orderly imposition of the death penalty to a Sadr rally -- a mistake for which the Iraqi government will suffer some damage, and rightly so.
Without a doubt, all sides will attempt to create their own legends and propaganda from Saddam's execution. It's too bad that the New York Times has decided to join in the effort.
Saddam Buried, But Lives Again (Briefly) On Video
The Iraqi government gave the corpse of Saddam Hussein to tribal leaders in Tikrit, and he has been buried near his sons in his homeland. However, like a spectre, he haunts the Internet after his death thanks to a bootleg video of his entire execution taken by a cell phone (via Hot Air, Vince, Curt, and Jawa Report):
Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, hanged for crimes against humanity on Saturday, has been buried in the village where he was born 69 years ago.In a sparsely attended ceremony in Awja, in the Tikrit region north of the capital, the former Iraqi leader was laid to rest in a family plot.
His sons Uday and Qusay, killed by US troops in 2003, are also buried there.
In this case, the US acted as a courier. We flew the body to Tikrit and apparently made the arrangements for the handover. Saddam had built the graveyard during his regime, and apparently had moved his family plots to it at some point. One might worry that this location and the public knowledge of his resting place would allow Saddamites to use it as a rallying point, but the US and the Iraqi government think that the cult of Saddam has exhausted itself.
The video will not get exhausted so quickly. It started making the rounds less than 24 hours after the trap door swung wide to end the dictator's life, and it has the grainy, shaky quality that will capture the imagination of viewers worldwide. Unlike the quiet edited version released by the Iraqis a few hours after the execution, this features loud voices taunting Saddam as his executioners place the noose around his neck. The videographer had to hide his efforts at two points, but we can clearly see Saddam drop from the platform, and later we see his dead eyes staring up. It's not for the faint-hearted.
Has the Saddam cult run its course? We'll soon see. I think it was a mistake to allow Saddam to be buried in Tikrit, of all places, but certainly even the Sunni insurgents had already moved past the notion of Saddam's restoration towards a more religious dictatorship of the gun and the IED. Some, though, will insist on seeing Saddam as a martyr for Iraqi nationalism, a strange remembrance for a man who killed more Iraqis than anyone else and who fostered the kind of sectarian divide we see now through his genocidal attacks on Kurds, Shi'ites, and Marsh Arabs. (some links via Memeorandum)
Can We Endure Free Speech?
George Will lends his considerable talent for derision to the effort to "reform" political speech, which met its latest setback in federal court two weeks ago. He notes that the effort to reform political speech has finally received recognition -- albeit small -- that it tends to violate the First Amendment:
A three-judge federal court recently tugged a thread that may begin the unraveling of the fabric of murky laws and regulations that traduce the First Amendment by suppressing political speech. Divided 2 to 1, the court held -- unremarkably, you might think -- that issue advocacy ads can run during an election campaign, when they matter most. This decision will strike zealous (there is no other kind) advocates of ever-tighter regulation of political speech (campaign finance "reformers") as ominous. Why? Because it partially emancipates millions of Americans who incorporate thousands of groups to advocate their causes, groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Rifle Association.And Wisconsin Right to Life. It is another organization by which people assemble (see the First Amendment) to speak (see it again) in order to seek redress of grievances (the amendment, one more time). In 2004 Wisconsin Right to Life was distressed because Wisconsin's senators, Russ Feingold and Herb Kohl, were helping to block confirmation votes on some of President Bush's judicial nominees. It wanted to run ads urging people to "contact Senators Feingold and Kohl and tell them to oppose the filibuster."
But Feingold was running for reelection, and the McCain-Feingold "reform" makes it a crime for entities such as Wisconsin Right to Life to use their corporate funds to broadcast an "electioneering communication" within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of a general election. An "electioneering communication" is one that "refers to" a candidate for federal office.
As Will notes, this reversal runs more tepid than hot, as it hinges more on technical applications of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA), better known as McCain-Feingold. It also produced a split decision. The dissenting jurist in this case wanted to establish a series of tests for political speech that should shock Americans; he wanted to allow evaluation of ads for intent and context, both of which would open the door to inspection of e-mails and other private correspondence before an ad could find approval to air.
Imagine, if you will, the Founding Fathers who wrote and established this amendment. The young Republic had failed in its first incarnation under the Articles of Confederation and had just created a Constitution that gave far greater powers to the federal government. The Bill of Rights came in reaction to that increase in power, and first and foremost came the protection for speech and religion in order to counter the power of federal officials. Do you suppose for a moment that they intended the federal government to act as an approving agent for political speech -- or do you think they intended free speech to check federal power?
The fact that a sitting jurist could calculate such a reversal of the intent and meaning of the First Amendment should shake Americans to their core, if we hadn't already been inured to the sight of judges arrogating powers to themselves and the bureaucracy. However, it does point out the erosive effect of the BCRA and how the "reformers" would eventually send us into an autocracy where the very act of writing this blog could be construed as illegal.
The zeal of reformers has proven uniquely dangerous throughout history. All one has to do is turn the pages through the various reform movements to see the abuses that inevitably come. Think Robespierre in the French Revolution, or Oliver Cromwell in England. Consider our own Prohibition, which had a fatally flawed concept of reform from the beginning. Free political speech does not require reform, and it is not incumbent on the citizenry of the United States to bind its freedoms simply because some politicians engage in corruption.
The only problem with campaign finances is a lack of disclosure. We have to eliminate the false categories of money by removing the limits of contributions and the dodges that have to be created to accommodate them. Make politicians for federal office declare all campaign contributions electronically within 72 hours, and force the parties to do the same for soft money. Eliminate the tax-exempt status of the 527s and they will disappear, which will allow the monies to flow to the candidates and the parties, for which they will bear the responsibility and accountability.
'Assassinated'?
Earlier today, I wrote about my reluctance to celebrate the well-deserved execution of Saddam Hussein. However, I also don't intend to protest it or call it anything other than justice. CQ reader Stoo sends this YouTube of an anchor at WESH, an NBC affiliate in Orlando, who called the event an "assassination":
Uh, no. Saddam got convicted in a trial in which he put on a defense, although he used the "I'm in charge and therefore everything I do is legal by definition" defense that Nixon tried, with even worse results. An Iraqi court sentenced him to die for the mass and serial murders of Dujail residents, and deserved it for the hundreds of thousands of others he committed.
Executed, yes. Killed, if you like. But "assassinated"? Absolutely ridiculous, and yet another example of the media's abject failure to cover Saddam Hussein with any intelligence or objectivity.
CORRECTION: It's WESH in Orlando. I misread the screen, and have corrected the text above.
'Iraq Without Me Is Nothing'
The final moments of Saddam Hussein found their way to the pages of Newsweek, as a Michael Hastings interview with witness Ali al-Massedy hit the Internet within hours of the event. For all of the breathless coverage of yesterday, the Hastings article feels like an anti-climax:
Ali Al Massedy was 3 feet away from Saddam Hussein when he died. The 38 year old, normally Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's official videographer, was the man responsible for filming the late dictator's execution at dawn on Saturday. "I saw fear, he was afraid," Ali told NEWSWEEK minutes after returning from the execution. Wearing a rumpled green suit and holding a Sony HDTV video camera in his right hand, Ali recalled the dictator's last moments. "He was saying things about injustice, about resistance, about how these guys are terrorists," he says. On the way to the gallows, according to Ali, "Saddam said, ‘Iraq without me is nothing.’"Ali says he followed Saddam up the gallows steps, escorted by two guards. He stood over the hole and filmed from close quarters as Saddam dropped through—from "me to you," he said, crouching down to show how he shot the scene. The distance, he said, was "about one meter," he said. "He died absolutely, he died instantly." Ali said Saddam's body twitched, "shaking, very shaking," but "no blood," he said, and "no spit." (Ali said he was not authorized to disclose the location, and did not give other details of the room.)
Ali said the videotape lasts about 15 minutes. When NEWSWEEK asked to see a copy, Ali said he had already handed the tape over to Maliki's chief of staff. "It is top secret," he said.
The quote from Saddam should find its way into the history books along Louis XIV's L'etat, c'est moi (see update). He died as so many megalomaniacal dictators do -- believing themselves to be the center of the universe and somewhat nonplussed at the notion that the world will spin without them. He attempted to manipulate events until the last moment, as was to be expected.
Many have taken the occasion to celebrate Hussein's death, but I'm not going to shout huzzahs. I believe the world to be a better place without him, and I think his death was necessary to keep uprisings from focusing on his restoration to power. Even a few Westerners had floated the notion as an answer to the sectarian violence, apparently believing that Saddam's proven willingness to kill everyone would bring a grim equality to Iraq. Still, all this does is put an end to a great evil of our time, which deserves recognition but not a party atmosphere. Andy McCarthy says it best:
This wasn't victory. It didn't end suffering. It was, in the heat of a war that has actually gotten more vicious and more uncertain since Saddam's capture three years ago, the carrying out of an essential but unpleasant duty. It marginally enhances Iraq's propects, and ours. But Saddam's death (as opposed to his deposing) has no impact whatsoever on the deep dysfunction and hatred that is rending what passes for Iraqi society. The unbridled display of dancing and shooting says more about that than the death of one man — monstrous though he was — who has been imprisoned for three years.Saddam's death is a marker worth observing. It is not something to go up in a balloon over.
It did, however, confirm once again the vacuousness of our media. The FM and I have taken the weekend to get away and relax, and she and I watched the coverage on CNN and MS-NBC. The latter was marginally better than the former, where their pre-execution coverage came close to insisting that Saddam was being martyred for the American government. On MS-NBC, we only had to put up with the bubbleheaded anchor seriously floating the notion that the man who had been held for three years and whose identity had been confirmed through DNA analysis and numerous witnesses was really a body double who was going to die in Saddam's place.
The dictator has met his end, at the hands of the people he tormented for decades. He received more justice in a single day of his trial than he ever gave anyone during his reign of terror. Yet the American media covered that trial as if it were the Saddam show, rather than provide coverage of the many witnesses to his genocides and crimes against humanity. This was the most consequential and historic trial of a mass murderer since Nuremberg, and the only points of interest to the American media were the self-serving disruptions of the defendants -- and they questioned the fairness of the trial because the monsters tried turning the trial into a circus.
It wasn't just the execution coverage that was a joke; it was the entire coverage of Saddam Hussein, going back to Eason Jordan's deal with the devil that kept their Baghdad bureau open. The last 24 hours just confirms their soullessness. (via Memeorandum)
UPDATE: L'etat, c'est moi is associated with Louis XIV and not Napoleon, according to Wikipedia, which also calls it inaccurate. Thanks to Mark1971 in the comments.
Don't Call Hitchens For My Eulogy
Christopher Hitchens has begun to build a reputation as an anti-eulogist, the kind of pundit who gets contrarian whenever a significant political figure passes away. In the midst of the mourning over Ronald Reagan, Hitchens released a scathing attack on the deceased President, dredging up the tired memes of his purported idiocy, although he managed to find a few stinging examples of his rhetorical mistakes. Now Hitchens remembers Gerald Ford in much the same manner:
One expects a certain amount of piety and hypocrisy when retired statesmen give up the ghost, but this doesn't excuse the astonishing number of omissions and misstatements that have characterized the sickly national farewell to Gerald Ford. One could graze for hours on the great slopes of the massive obituaries and never guess that during his mercifully brief occupation of the White House, this president had:1. Disgraced the United States in Iraq and inaugurated a long period of calamitous misjudgment of that country.
2. Colluded with the Indonesian dictatorship in a gross violation of international law that led to a near-genocide in East Timor.
3. Delivered a resounding snub to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn at the time when the Soviet dissident movement was in the greatest need of solidarity.Instead, there was endless talk about "healing," and of the "courage" that it had taken for Ford to excuse his former boss from the consequences of his law-breaking. You may choose, if you wish, to parrot the line that Watergate was a "long national nightmare," but some of us found it rather exhilarating to see a criminal president successfully investigated and exposed and discredited. And we do not think it in the least bit nightmarish that the Constitution says that such a man is not above the law. Ford's ignominious pardon of this felonious thug meant, first, that only the lesser fry had to go to jail. It meant, second, that we still do not even know why the burglars were originally sent into the offices of the Democratic National Committee. In this respect, the famous pardon is not unlike the Warren Commission: another establishment exercise in damage control and pseudo-reassurance (of which Ford was also a member) that actually raised more questions than it answered. The fact is that serious trials and fearless investigations often are the cause of great division, and rightly so. But by the standards of "healing" celebrated this week, one could argue that O.J. Simpson should have been spared indictment lest the vexing questions of race be unleashed to trouble us again, or that the Tower Commission did us all a favor by trying to bury the implications of the Iran-Contra scandal. Fine, if you don't mind living in a banana republic.
One might expect a certain amount of piety and hypcorisy from everyone except Hitchens. He scores more points in this screed than in his earlier essay about Reagan, but that is because of way Ford's presidency really faded into nothingness after the end of his term. By comparison, people remember Reagan's terms in office because Reagan made them so consequential; love him or hate him, everyone remembers him. Ford's tenure has largely been forgotten by most people as a brief hiatus between the embarrassments of the two presidencies surrounding his.
Hitchens brings us back to the actual business of governing, and reminds us that Ford made some large unforced errors. Perhaps people cannot recall how we saw freedom activists in the Soviet Union before Reagan, but the Solzhenitsyn snub recalls that more than one administration considered them something of a hot potato, especially when detente was so popular among the Western congescenti. The appeasement of the Indonesians as they conducted their attempt at genocide against East Timor has a more relevant tone, considering the issues of appeasing aggressive Muslim societies these days.
However well or badly Ford managed his presidency, however, it seems more than a little churlish to attack him with the vigor Hitchens demonstrates in this column. During the mourning period, which is short enough even for former Presidents, a little acknowledgment of the challenges of the position should balance the criticism of the mistakes made by each. Afterwards, Hitchens would have plenty of time to set the record straight.
And Then The Second Half Arrived
When one hears that a college football team suffered a historic fourth-quarter collapse, one only thinks of two teams, both of them in the Big Ten: Michigan State and Minnesota. Last night, it was the Golden Gophers who gave their opponent an entree into the record books, as they have up a 31-point lead in the second half to lose the Insight Bowl in overtime to Texas Tech:
The Gophers football team played arguably its finest half of football this season before halftime and built a 38-7 lead against the Texas Tech Red Raiders in the third quarter of the Insight Bowl ...And then gave it all away.
Shannon Woods' 3-yard touchdown run in overtime capped the largest comeback in NCAA Division I-A bowl game history as Texas Tech stunned Minnesota 44-41 before an announced crowd of 48,391 at Sun Devil Stadium.
"Needless to say, that was a game of two different halves," Gophers coach Glen Mason said. "All coaches preach that no lead is sufficient until the clock says it's mathematically impossible to come back."
Unfortunately, I watched the Michigan game in 2001, coached by Glen Mason, and saw pretty much the same thing -- a team that ran up a decent lead and then forgot that football games last 60 minutes. I missed this collapse on TV, but somehow I don't feel badly about that this morning.
The Gophers have their first losing season since that 2001 season. Perhaps it's time for a change.
Northern Alliance Radio Live Today
The Northern Alliance Radio Network goes back to live broadcasting today after the Christmas break. That means that all six hours will be fresh, but none so fresh as Mitch and I broadcasting live from the showroom of White Bear Lake Superstore! The six-hour block starts at 11 am CT on AM 1280 The Patriot (and on the Internet stream at that link), but Mitch and I will go live between 1 - 3 PM CT. If you're on the east side of the Twin Cities, make your way to the best car dealership and say hi to Paul Reuben and the gang -- especially if your New Year's resolution is to upgrade the ride.
So what will we be discussing? I'd say Saddam's execution will be the hot topic today, but we'll also cover the revelation that our own State Department knew for decades that Yasser Arafat had murdered two of its own diplomats. I'm sure we'll have time to discuss the sale of the Star Tribune and its ramifications. And of course, we'll talk about Gerald Ford and perhaps even debate the pardon. If you can't join us at White Bear Lake Superstore, you can call 651-289-4488 and join the discussion.
It's Over (Live Blog)
Three Arabic news stations and MS-NBC are broadcasting the report that Saddam Hussein has been executed this evening, right around 10 pm ET.
Right now, without any text reports, MS-NBC is telling viewers that a delegation of seven witnesses saw Saddam hanged a few minutes ago. The witnesses included members of the tribunal that convicted and sentenced him as well as a doctor to declare him dead. They also report that the Iraqi government recorded the event, and that the images and/or video will eventually be released to demonstrate that the former dictator and genocidal monster has truly died.
Sic semper tyrannis? Unfortunately, no, although it's certainly an appealing thought. I'll settle for an "et tu, Brute?" from each of them, if we can get it.
Here's the first wire report -- from Reuters, reporting on an al-Hurra TV broadcast:
U.S.-backed Iraqi television station Al Hurra said Saddam Hussein had been executed by hanging shortly before 6 a.m. (0300 GMT) on Saturday.
Also, the Iraqi government executed Barzan al-Tikriti and Awad al-Bandar after hanging Saddam. The three were sentenced to death together, and they have now been put to death at essentially the same time.
UPDATE: MS-NBC reports that Americans "were present" at the execution. I assume that means the security detail that delivered Saddam to the gallows. Meanwhile, here's USA Today with a bare-bones announcement and a recap of the activity today.
UPDATE II: 'Hanged', not 'hung', and thanks to Only One Cannoli in the comments. So far, not much new on the internet or on TV about the executions.
9:47 PM CT - May as well make this a live-blog, if you'll pardon the irony. The updated AP wire describes the announcement on Iraqi TV:
Saddam Hussein has been hanged, state-run television reported Saturday. "Criminal Saddam was hanged to death," state-run Iraqiya television said in an announcement. The station played patriotic music and showed images of national monuments and other landmarks.
Perhaps the Maliki government still believes it can use this as a unifying event for Iraqis. It would be nice ...
9:52 - MS-NBC, which I'm forced to watch in my hotel room, now reports that the Iraqi witnesses to the execution were cheering and dancing around the body of Saddam Hussein.
9:56 - Reportedly, the Tikrit area had roadblocks put up all around it. Apparently the Iraqis want to isolate the Tikritis in case they get a little too boisterous in their disapproval. The Iraqis control Tikrit, and the MS-NBC analysts say that it has been a success story for the Iraqi Army.
More ...
10:09 - Not much new in the details, so let's take a look at the politics. Will this help or hurt in Iraq? I think this will be a net positive by a wide margin. In the first place, history has shown that leaving a deposed tyrant alive makes their return likely -- Napoleon would be one example. It at least keeps hope alive among their partisans, and the Jacobites might be an example of that. That cuts two ways; it's not just Saddam's dead-enders who foresaw his return, but also those who would oppose him and those on the fence. His death removes all doubt and clears the deck for the future.
10:13 - How about American politics? I don't think it moves the needle here at home. For one thing, we've just finished a national election, and we won't have another for two years -- and Bush won't be running. It might give a slight bump upward in support of the war for a brief period, but the death sentence has long since figured into the support figures. I don't see it having much of an effect one way or the other.
10:40 - CNN now reports that video and images will be given to the media. I'm going to pack it in for the evening, but I'll check to see what they have in the morning.
The Execution Is A Go For Tonight ... Perhaps
The execution of Saddam Hussein will take place within hours, as I predicted, according to "top Iraqi officials". Meanwhile, Saddam's lawyers try a more friendly court system to get him a stay of execution:
The witnesses to Saddam Hussein's impending execution gathered Friday in Baghdad's fortified Green Zone in final preparation for his hanging, as state television broadcast footage of his regime's atrocities.A top Iraqi official said Saddam will be executed before 6 a.m. Saturday, Baghdad time, or 10 p.m. Friday EST. ...
"Saddam will be executed today or tomorrow," Haddad said. "All the measures have been done. ... There is no reason for delays."
That puts the execution at 9 pm CST, which will make this a prime-time execution. One can suppose the cable news networks will go wall to wall with Saddam coverage, and the broadcast networks may even be tempted to pre-empt their entertainment schedules. However, Saddam's legal team has decided to try the American courts for a restraining order that would prevent US authorities from transferring physical custody of Saddam to the Iraqis:
Hussein's lawyers filed documents Friday afternoon asking for an emergency restraining order aimed at stopping the U.S. government from relinquishing custody of the condemned former Iraqi leader to Iraqi officials, a spokeswoman for a federal court in Washington D.C. said.The documents were being processed and were not immediately made public. The Justice Department had not yet responded to the request.
A similar request by the former chief justice of the Revolutionary Court, Awad Hamed al-Bandar, was denied Thursday and is under appeal. Al-Bandar also faces execution. The Justice Department argued in that case that U.S. courts have no jurisdiction to interfere with the judicial process of another country.
This is a stretch. The Iraqis have legal custody of Saddam and have had it for over two years. They have asked the US to provide physical security, but they can end that arrangement whenever they like, and the courts have no power to restrain the Iraqi government. The Americans would like to maintain physical security of Saddam until the noose is placed around his neck, but that doesn't mean they have to do so, or that courts could force them to do so.
Having the witnesses on alert means that the execution will indeed occur shortly. The story of this genocidal monster is about to come to an abrupt end.
Question: The Iraqis supposedly plan to tape the execution, if not show it live. Do CQ readers believe that American networks should broadcast the execution, either live or on tape?
UPDATE: I'm late in linking to this, but please read Bill Ardolino's look at the "Not To Forget Museum" in Kuwait. It will remind people of a few of the many reasons Saddam should exit this world at the soonest possible moment. While you're at it, toss a few dollars into his tip jar for his embed mission among the troops.
UPDATE II: I didn't notice this before, but Dafydd notes that the request for a restraining order came to the US district court of Colleen Kollar-Kotelly. If you will recall, this is the same Clinton appointee that forced the FEC to regulate Internet political speech. This should be ... interesting.
UPDATE III: Don't forget to keep checking Memeorandum for blogger coverage of the news.
Saddam To Transfer To Iraqis Today
The confusion in Baghdad regarding custody of Saddam Hussein appears to have lifted somewhat. After a rumor circulated that the US had handed over the genocidal dictator to the Iraqi government, officials in Washington have told ABC News that they will complete the transfer later today:
A senior official in Washington tells ABC News that Hussein will be transferred to Iraqi custody by the end of today.The actual date for the execution is still a closely guarded secret, and will be decided on solely by Iraqis, the official says.
Prime Minister Nouri Kamel al-Maliki was quoted on Iraqi television this morning, saying there should be no delay in implementing the sentence, but he said nothing about the timing.
Hussein's lawyers say they have been told to prepare to pick up his personal effects, but they do not know when they should do that.
My guess is that they should do it expeditiously. Technically, the Iraqis have had him in their custody all along, but the US provided the security for his detention. If the US transfers the security responsibility to the Iraqis, it would only be for days or even hours before his execution. We would not run the risk of an escape via some infiltrator into the Iraqi security team until it became absolutely necessary.
Yesterday, MS-NBC reported that Saddam would die by Eid, almost a poetic palindrome. This seems to support the report. It could happen even more quickly than that. Personally, I think this is just a conspiracy to keep Mitch from claiming victory.
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