January 1, 2007
The London Telegraph reports on a new series of requirements for travelers from Europe to the US which appear to push the boundaries of privacy further than ever. An agreement with Brussels will now require all European carriers to make passenger credit accounts and other information available to American security officials before the passengers can get clearance to enter the US: Britons flying to America could have their credit card and email accounts inspected by the United States authorities following a deal struck by Brussels and Washington. By using a credit card to book a flight, passengers face having other transactions on the card inspected by the American authorities. Providing an email address to an airline could also lead to scrutiny of other messages sent or received on that account. The extent of the demands were disclosed in "undertakings" given by the US Department of Homeland Security to the European...
Too often, the world of crime intrudes on the world of sports, and this time it's even more of a tragedy. Darrent Williams, who hours earlier had a sack and a forced fumble as a cornerback in Denver's loss to San Francisco, died in a hail of bullets, a victim of a drive-by shooting: Denver Broncos cornerback Darrent Williams was killed in a drive-by shooting early Monday morning in downtown Denver. Denver Broncos spokesman Jim Saccomano confirmed the fatal shooting and said that police called the Broncos organization at 3 a.m. and told them that Williams had died. ... Williams, 24, was riding in a stretch Hummer limousine on Speer Boulevard near 11th Avenue just after 2 a.m., when the shooting occurred. The shots came from another vehicle and two other people in the limo -- a man and a woman -- were also hit. Their conditions were not known....
Radical Islamists have given up their last stronghold in Somalia, chased out by the Ethiopian Army that has spent the last two weeks crushing them. The Ethiopians and the Somialian transitional government liberated Kismayo as the Islamists beat a hasty retreat towards Kenya: Somali government troops backed by Ethiopian tanks and fighter jets captured the last major stronghold of a militant Islamic movement Monday, while hundreds of Islamic fighters — many of them Arabs and South Asians — fled the town. To cheering and waving crowds, well-armed troops drove into Kismayo after clearing roads laced with land mines that had been left by an estimated 3,000 hard-line Islamic fighters fleeing a 13-day military onslaught by government troops backed by Ethiopian tanks and MiG fighter jets. "We have entered and captured the city," Maj. Gen. Ahmed Musa told The Associated Press while riding aboard a truck into Kismayo, where the Islamic...
The political situation continues to deteriorate in Zimbabwe, even as it improves in Somalia. Dictator Robert Mugabe has ordered the closure of a newspaper opposed to his rule by stripping its publisher of his Zimbabwean citizenship: Robert Mugabe's government has moved to close Zimbabwe's remaining independent press by stripping newspaper owner Trevor Ncube of his citizenship. The action against the publisher comes as Mr Mugabe, 82 and president for 26 years, pushes for an extension to his term of office by a further two years. Frustrated by unprecedented resistance from within his Zanu-PF party, he appears to be trying to silence all of his critics. Yesterday an outspoken opponent, Lovemore Madhuku, accused the police of failing to investigate a fire at his home, which he said was arson. "It is very clear that the government is trying to silence all critical voices, including Trevor Ncube and his newspapers, and me....
January 2, 2007
Note: This post originally ran during the Christmas holiday, and is being repeated for those who may have missed it. 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...
Note: This post originally ran during the Christmas holiday, and is being repeated for those who may have missed it. 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...
Note: This post originally ran during the Christmas holiday, and is being repeated for those who may have missed it. 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...
The French have spent their New Year in much the same manner they have spent the last few that preceded it -- by the glow of the fires of their vehicles. In a disturbing new tradition, residents of the Muslim banlieus have set fire to over 300 vehicles: A car burns after a huge police operation involving 25,000 officers failed to quell one of the most entrenched new year rituals in France, with vandals — many of them children — setting on fire 313 vehicles throughout the country. The worst-hit region was Alsace, where 106 vehicles were set ablaze, including 28 in Strasbourg. The attacks are seen as a product of tension on the suburban estates that are home to the bulk of France’s five-million-strong immigrant community. Most of the cars were burnt in areas with unemployment rates of up to 40 per cent. The national average is 8.7 per...
Michigan and its fans spent a lot of time over the last few weeks arguing that they should have gone to the BCS championship game against Ohio State. Instead, they faced off against the two-loss Trojans of USC in the Rose Bowl, ranked five places below the Wolverines. Instead of making the case that the BCS stiffed them, Michigan played like stiffs in losing the Rose Bowl to USC: There were no Heismans or national titles up for grabs for Southern California in this one. Given the way Dwayne Jarrett, John David Booty and that suffocating USC defense played, it was hard to tell. Jarrett, the sensational USC receiver, caught 11 passes for 205 yards and two touchdowns to help the eighth-ranked Trojans finish their season with a statement Monday in a 32-18 Rose Bowl romp over Michigan. Booty threw for 391 yards and four scores to land himself on...
With their newly-minted majority just hours away from inauguration, the Democrats have made many plans on how they will run Congress over the next two years. However, the New York Times reminds us that the new majority has some fractious potential thanks to the large percentage who have never served in the majority -- and thanks to another factor the Times neglects to mention: Those divergent outlooks over how best to fulfill the Democratic promise to clean up the House are just one illustration of a friction that could develop in the new Congress as the party takes control after 12 years in exile. While most attention will be focused on the divide between Republicans and Democrats, members of the new majority have their own differing perspectives, corresponding largely to length of service, that could ultimately prove more crucial to their success or failure. Of 233 Democrats who will be...
It's not often that a newspaper columnist uses his platform to attack the news division at his own paper, but Richard Cohen uses his first appearance of the year to do just that. Without naming the reporter, Cohen blasts the Post for its insulting and capricious coverage of Monica Lewinsky's master's degree from the London School of Economics: In the various books I've read about the Bill Clinton impeachment scandal -- a scandal because of what was done and a scandal because the president was impeached for it -- the same story is told over and over again. When the prosecutors or lawyers or whoever finally got to meet the storied Monica Lewinsky, they were floored by her. She was smart, personable and -- as the record makes clear -- dignified. This is more than can be said about some of the people who write about her. I will not...
With the new Democratic majority sounding off about cleaning up Congress, one might think they would consider their own proposed leadership first. After trying to push Alcee Hastings and John Murtha into the upper echelons of the House, Nancy Pelosi now has to consider the newly-admonished House Judiciary chair's future. If Pelosi is serious about cleaning up Congress, the Examiner says that John Conyers must go: Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., is scheduled to become chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, but only because he agreed when Pelosi previously made clear that she intended him not to waste time on impeachment proceedings against President Bush. But now we learn that Conyers has his own problems with obeying the law. There is so much wrong with the Conyers situation that Pelosi shouldn’t have to think twice about nixing Conyers’ chairmanship. ... Pelosi should withdraw Conyers’ appointment as chairman of the House Judiciary...
I'll be appearing on Jack Riccardi's Into The Night radio talk show at 8:20 pm CT this evening. Jack broadcasts to San Antonio out of KTSA, and he's been kind enough to have me on once before. You can catch us on his Internet stream here. It should be fun; we're going to discuss the upcoming Congress and the stumbles on ethics we've seen at the beginning. Hope you can join us! UPDATE: I hope some CQ readers got a chance to listen to the segment. Jack's a good guy, and San Antonio is lucky to have him. Hopefully it will get released as a podcast on the site....
A handful of radical Islamists fleeing the collapse of their grip on Somalia have fallen into Kenyan custody as they attempted to cross the border. Two of the ten captured carried Canadian passports, the CBC reports: As many as two Somali Islamic fighters who claim to be Canadian were among 10 fighters arrested by Kenyan police, according to separate reports Tuesday. The 10 were arrested on Monday at the Liboi border crossing in Kenya as they tried to flee Somalia, the Kenya Daily Nation reported. Two were reportedly carrying Canadian passports, while the remaining eight were said to have Eritrean passports. According to the newspaper, all 10 militants were being detained in the Kenyan town of Garissa. It is not known whether they have been charged. Canada Press reported just one of the men held a Canadian passport. Still, Canadian authorities have to wonder how many more of the UIC...
January 3, 2007
The state-owned Russian energy corporation Gazprom succeeded in its quest to capture a half-interest in the pipeline through Belarus as well as getting the price hikes it wanted from the former Soviet republic. As Der Spiegel notes, this latest power play by Vladimir Putin puts Europe in a difficult position: Natural resources juggernaut Gazprom has scored yet another victory in its gas pricing war, gaining 50 percent of the Belarusian pipeline network. The deal demonstrates Gazprom's ruthlessness in securing power over neighboring former Soviet satellite states and raises questions about how reliable the Russian company is as an energy supplier to western Europe. It was deja vu all over again. Just as Moscow twisted the valve on the pipeline carrying natural gas from Russia to Ukraine one year ago, it threatened to cut off supplies to Belarus on New Year's Day. In the end, however, Minsk averted disaster by agreeing...
This change promises a return to common sense at Turtle Bay, and will likely drive Kofi Annan fans up the nearest wall. Newly-inducted UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon defended Iraq's imposition of the death penalty as a question of sovereignty and reminded protestors around the world about the nature of the man whose death they lament: U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon said Tuesday that Iraq and other countries have the right to impose the death penalty, adding that the world should never forget Saddam Hussein's "heinous crimes." Ban's first public reaction to Hussein's execution signaled a sharp break from his predecessor, Kofi Annan, an ardent death-penalty critic who opposed U.N. participation in the Iraqi war crimes tribunal that sentenced Hussein to die. Human rights advocates expressed concern that Ban's comments lend credibility to what they see as a flawed trial of the former Iraqi leader, and complained that he...
The end of the radical Islamist grip on Somalia has had many words written about it, but the images and sounds coming from the nightclubs of Mogadishu cement the reality of freedom for young Somalians. Playing music that would have been banned by the Union of Islamic Courts and showing dance moves that would have brought beatings or worse from the Islamist moral enforcers, Somalians danced in celebration and defiance: There was not a hijab or niqab in sight as clubbers at the Global Dance Hall worked up a sweat to gangsta rap and Kenyan hip-hop. Instead, women shook their hair and stole glances at the men lining the wall. Quite what Mogadishu’s Union of Islamic Courts would have made of the occasional flash of ankle beneath the long dresses is anyone’s guess. But no one cared as they celebrated their new freedom. For six months this liberal northern corner...
Here's a story that managed to fly under the radar during Christmastime. Suzanne Magaziner, the wife of Clinton friend and organizer Ira Magaziner and herself a major activist with ties to the new Governor in Massachusetts, got her drunk-driving charges mysteriously dismissed despite failing a Breathalyzer and field sobriety tests (via Newsbeat1): A politically wired campaign fund-raiser with ties to Gov.-elect Deval Patrick and former President Clinton has been cleared of drunken driving charges, despite allegedly failing sobriety tests and blowing over the legal limit on a Breathalyzer. Suzanne Magaziner, a Patrick campaign organizer married to ex-Clinton adviser Ira Magaziner, was busted April 4 in Mansfield after a trucker spotted her swerving on Interstate 95, the Sun Chronicle of Attleboro reported. State police who pulled over Magaziner, 54, said she had bloodshot eyes, alcohol on her breath and failed sobriety tests. She also reportedly blew a .12 on a breath-alcohol...
With all of the assaults on free political speech that have come as a result of the McCain-Feingold Act (or the BCRA), one has to wonder how much farther we can go before reversing the damage becomes impossible. Mark Tapscott shows us just how far this law reaches by relating how the BCRA affected a NASCAR racing team. No, I'm not kidding: How does one know when the critical point in a Republic's loss of its basic liberties like freedom of speech has been passed? A Dec. 22 notice from the Federal Election Commission looks very much like that point for America. The notice concerned a complaint the FEC received from one Sydnor Thompson that Kirk Shelmerdine had improperly committed an independent expenditure on behalf of the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign during the 2004 race. Do you want to know what that "independent expenditure" was? Shelmerdine put a Bush-Cheney bumper sticker...
On the eve of the transition in Congress, George Bush has written a rare opinion piece in today's Wall Street Journal. In it he challenges the Democrats to working in a bipartisan manner on national security and fiscal responsibility, but the Democrats may have their own ideas on both subjects: In the days ahead, I will be addressing our nation about a new strategy to help the Iraqi people gain control of the security situation and hasten the day when the Iraqi government gains full control over its affairs. Ultimately, Iraqis must resolve the most pressing issues facing them. We can't do it for them. But we can help Iraq defeat the extremists inside and outside of Iraq--and we can help provide the necessary breathing space for this young government to meet its responsibilities. If democracy fails and the extremists prevail in Iraq, America's enemies will be stronger, more lethal,...
... is that they should be handled discreetly. However, the tabloidesque nature of national politics over the last generation has eliminated discretion, and it appears the next example of this will be Barack Obama. The Washington Post manages to both raise Obama's youthful choices on drugs and then question their applicability to a man two decades past their use: Long before the national media spotlight began to shine on every twist and turn of his life's journey, Barack Obama had this to say about himself: "Junkie. Pothead. That's where I'd been headed: the final, fatal role of the young would-be black man. . . . I got high [to] push questions of who I was out of my mind." The Democratic senator from Illinois and likely presidential candidate offered the confession in a memoir written 11 years ago, not long after he graduated from law school and well before he...
I'm waiting for the opening kickoff of the Sugar Bowl after having worn my Notre Dame sports shirt all day today. They LSU Tigers just won the coin flip and will let the Fighting Irish get the ball first, so we should see some fireworks from Brady Quinn shortly. While that goes on, I have a few stories I want to note ... First, let's offer our best wishes and prayers to Michelle Malkin and Curt from Flopping Aces in their upcoming trip to Iraq. Eason Jordan has proven as good as his word, in this instance at least, in honoring his offer to Michelle and extending it to Curt to search for the elusive Captain Jamil Hussein, the AP source that the wire service still insists is legitimate. Michelle and Curt plan to do more than poke around for the suddenly-missing AP source. They're also going to embed with...
Michael Ledeen covered the latest news from Iraq yesterday, which Eli Lake reported for the New York Sun. New intelligence has produced evidence of Iranian support for both the Shia and the Sunni insurgencies, a feat that completely undermines the ISG's notion that Iran has no interest in chaos in Iraq: Iran is supporting both Sunni and Shiite terrorists in the Iraqi civil war, according to secret Iranian documents captured by Americans in Iraq. The news that American forces had captured Iranians in Iraq was widely reported last month, but less well known is that the Iranians were carrying documents that offered Americans insight into Iranian activities in Iraq. An American intelligence official said the new material, which has been authenticated within the intelligence community, confirms "that Iran is working closely with both the Shiite militias and Sunni Jihadist groups." The source was careful to stress that the Iranian plans...
Holllywood and music mogul David Geffen recently offered $2 billion to the Tribune Company for the Los Angeles Times. Tribune has put him off for a while as they want to sell the entire company and not just its components, but perhaps Geffen should reconsider the bid. If you read Patterico, it's obvious that the LA Times is overpriced: It is time for this blog’s fourth annual review of the performance of the Los Angeles Times, which long-time Patterico readers know as the Los Angeles Dog Trainer. The first annual review was posted here. The second annual review was posted in two parts, here and here. The third annual review was posted here. This year’s installment covers a number of topics, including the Michael Hiltzik sock-puppetry controversy; the alleged Ramadi airstrike; the paper’s decision to reveal the Swift counterterror program; the firing of the paper’s editor and publisher; the Iraq...
January 4, 2007
Remember how critics of the execution of Saddam Hussein expressed their outrage that the Iraqis had profaned the Eid celebrations? Recall how people argued that Muslim celebrations of this holiday are marked by a suspension of all hostilities and a focus on unity and peace? Perhaps some Muslims didn't get the memo: Outraged in-laws slashed the nose and ears of a Pakistani college student who married a woman without the consent of her higher-caste family, and then fractured his legs with blows from an ax, police and the victim said. Mohammed Iqbal told The Associated Press on Wednesday about 30 male relatives of his wife stormed into his mother's village home during the Islamic festival of Eid al-Adha, demanding vengeance for the "dishonor" the marriage had brought to their family. "You have mixed our honor with dirt," Iqbal, 22, speaking from his hospital bed, recounted the attackers chanting as they...
After Belarus caved on New Year's Eve to Russian demands for a rate hike on gas supplies as well as a piece of Belarus' action on pipeline service to the West, the dispute looked over. Belarus, however, just declared a new round in the battle: Belarus has imposed big taxes on Russian oil pumped through its pipelines to customers in Europe. The move comes three days after Belarus reluctantly agreed to demands by the Russian state energy giant, Gazprom, to a doubling of gas prices. Belarus says it will charge Russia $45 (£23) per tonne of oil. Analysts said the move was unlikely to affect world oil prices but could cause short-term disruption to refiners in countries like Germany. Every day Russia transports around a fifth of its oil exports - or one million barrels - through Belarus, mainly to refiners in Poland and Germany. This will prove interesting. The...
John Negroponte has given up his Cabinet-level position in order to work for Condoleezza Rice at State. Replacing him will be another retired military officer, which may revive some of the concerns regarding military control of the intelligence community: John D. Negroponte, whom President Bush installed less than two years ago as the first director of national intelligence, will soon leave his post to become the State Department’s second-ranking official, administration officials said Wednesday. Mr. Negroponte will fill a critical job that has been vacant for months, and he is expected to play a leading role in shaping policy in Iraq. But his transfer is another blow to an intelligence community that has seen little continuity at the top since the departure of George J. Tenet in 2004 as director of central intelligence. ... On paper, the director of national intelligence outranks the deputy secretary of state, raising questions about...
Some people question whether the charges against Richard Nixon regarding his abuses of power in office had more to do with politics than with real abuses. CNN reports on newly-released information that demonstrates Nixon's abuse, although its report focuses on another incident with much less import: The former president's darker side was further revealed on Wednesday by newly released FBI files which show the agency ran criminal background checks on Senate witnesses critical of William Rehnquist's nomination to the Supreme Court in 1971 at the request of the Nixon administration. The disclosures were among 1,561 pages released by the bureau under the Freedom of Information Act. The New York Sun picks the story up as well, although they also relegate it to a minor position: The files also describe the FBI's efforts in 1971 to support Rehnquist's nomination as an associate justice. The bureau conducted background checks on two Phoenix,...
In the end, the prognosticators got this one correct. Notre Dame didn't have the speed or the strength to match up against LSU, although they made it interesting in the first half: JaMarcus Russell thoroughly outplayed Brady Quinn and made a compelling case that the mammoth quarterback's next pass should come in the NFL. As for Notre Dame, it was a familiar meltdown at bowl time. The Sugar Bowl returned to New Orleans with a Cajun-style party put on by No. 4 LSU, which dominated college football's most storied program in a 41-14 rout Wednesday night that had the Superdome rockin'. It also gave the 11th-ranked Fighting Irish a most unwanted spot in the record book. The school of Touchdown Jesus and Knute Rockne now has a more ignominious distinction: nine straight bowl losses, breaking a tie with South Carolina and West Virginia for the most in NCAA history. And...
Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats have placed a significant minimum-wage increase at the top of their agenda for the 110th Congress. President Bush has signaled his willingness to approve it, using the increase as a lever for tax relief on small businesses. One would imagine that this show of bipartisanship springs from a national crisis, but George Will explains that the effort will benefit only a few, and not even the few that the politicos assume: Democrats consider the minimum-wage increase a signature issue. So, consider what it says about them: Most of the working poor earn more than the minimum wage, and most of the 0.6 percent (479,000 in 2005) of America's wage workers earning the minimum wage are not poor. Only one in five workers earning the federal minimum lives in families with earnings below the poverty line. Sixty percent work part time, and their average household income...
The UN has announced yet another investigation into yet another series of allegations of sexual abuse of refugees under the protection of UN peacekeepers. The London Telegraph had earlier reported on the systemic abuse of children in Sudan, and Turtle Bay has once again promised a full and open probe, blah, blah, blah: The United Nations said last night that it was launching an investigation into allegations reported in The Daily Telegraph that its peacekeepers and staff have abused children in southern Sudan. ... The Daily Telegraph yesterday reported allegations of blue berets paying children as young as 12 for sex in the mission in southern Sudan, known as UNMIS. The abuse allegedly began two years ago when the mission moved in to help rebuild the region after a 23-year civil war. The UN has up to 10,000 military personnel in the region, of all nationalities, and the allegations involve...
I haven't blogged much about this, but it has been quite a cause in the blogosphere over the last few weeks. Bloggers have researched reporting by the Associated Press in Iraq and found 61 single-sourced stories regarding some of the most violent atrocities of the insurgencies in Iraq. When pressed for more information on their named source, the AP proved less than forthcoming, and the game was afoot. Several bloggers accused the AP of manufacturing the source, especially when both the Iraqi interior ministry and the US military could not locate a Jamil Hussein, and the AP has steadfastly insisted that Hussein, supposedly a captain in the Iraqi police, did exist. Today, after several weeks, someone finally found Jamil Hussein -- and the Iraqis claimed that they would arrest him for speaking to reporters: The Interior Ministry acknowledged Thursday that an Iraqi police officer whose existence had been denied by...
When the US announced that they had found and detained high-ranking Iranian intelligence officers in Iraq, working with Shi'ite factions in an attempt to influence the Iraqi government, leading Iraqis protested that the men had received diplomatic invitations to Iraq. The US released the men to the Iraqis, who let them leave the country, and many criticized the US for provoking an international incident for no good reason. Now, however, the BBC reports that the Iranians were indeed spies on a mission to undermine Iraqi self-governance: Five Iranians detained by US forces in Baghdad last month were senior intelligence officers engaged in a covert political mission to influence the Iraqi government, the BBC said. "There were five senior officers in various intelligence organisations... It was a very significant meeting... These people have been collared, relatively speaking, up to no good," one unnamed British official told the broadcaster. US forces detained...
ABC News is reporting tonight that Kim Jong-Il has prepared for a new nuclear test. According to their sources, North Korea has "everything in place": North Korea appears to have made preparations for another nuclear test, according to U.S. defense officials. "We think they've put everything in place to conduct a test without any notice or warning," a senior U.S. defense official told ABC News. The official cautions that the intelligence is inconclusive as to whether North Korea will actually go ahead with another test but said the preparations are similar to the steps taken by Pyongyang before it shocked the world by conducting its first nuclear test last Oct. 9. Two other senior defense officials confirmed that recent intelligence suggested that the North Koreans appear to be ready to test a nuclear weapon again, but the intelligence community divides over whether another test is likely. The equipment apparently has...
January 5, 2007
Bill Cowher, who has spent the last 15 years as head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers, will announce his resignation today at a press conference at the Steelers headquarters, the AP reports. Steelers fans will hope that their source turns out to be Jamil Hussein, but in this case the AP likely has their story straight: Bill Cowher is returning to the Pittsburgh Steelers - to say goodbye. The Steelers will begin a coaching search Friday to replace the departing Cowher, a person familiar with Cowher's status said Thursday night. Cowher called owner Dan Rooney on Thursday to tell him of his decision, and the team announced a Friday news conference not long after that. Cowher is expected to attend. The 49-year-old Cowher, one of the NFL's most recognizable faces and most successful coaches for 15 seasons, has weighed resigning since shortly after the Steelers finally won the Super Bowl...
The Vatican has suddenly found itself in the middle of Poland's tension over its Communist past. Their candidate for the open position of Archbishop of Warsaw apparently collaborated with the Communists before Poland's liberation, naming priests in the Church who worked against the Soviet-puppet government, according to recently released files from the Polish secret police: The Catholic church in Poland has been convulsed by claims that the priest who is due to be sworn in this weekend as Archbishop of Warsaw, one of the leading posts in the hierarchy, spied for the communist secret police. Stanislaw Wielgus is under pressure to withdraw from Sunday's ceremony or request its postponement after Polish newspapers accused him of collaborating for two decades with a communist regime that the Catholic church staunchly opposed. ... "The new archbishop of Warsaw was a secret and conscious collaborator with the SB [Security Service] for more than 20...
No one ever accused Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi of good taste or mental stability: With much of the Arab world up in arms over the hanging of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein on Saturday, it didn't take long for Libya to jump into the fray. The government in Tripoli announced on Thursday that it was planning to erect a statue of Saddam, depicting him standing on the gallows. He will join a similar monument to the Libyan freedom fighter Omar Mukhtar, a national hero who was executed in 1931 after fighting against the Italian occupation. "The revolutionary committees have decided to erect a statue of Saddam Hussein standing beside Omar Mukhtar on the gallows," the government said in a press release. Following Saddam's execution, Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi declared three days of mourning and flags on government buildings were flown at half mast. One day prior to Saddam's death, Gadhafi...
The resignation of John Negroponte has produced criticism of his stewardship of American intelligence as DNI from members of Congress that insisted on creating the position. The Los Angeles Times reports that Negroponte has wanted to leave the position for weeks due to the lack of authority over the component intelligence agencies, although that did not keep Negroponte from doing some empire-building as DNI: Negroponte's departure as national intelligence director has been rumored for weeks, and officials close to him have said that the career diplomat is eager to return to the State Department, particularly in such a senior role. Negroponte is expected to play a leading role in revamping the State Department's Iraq policy by putting more pressure on the fledgling government there and enlisting more help from regional allies. Intelligence veterans said it was clear that Negroponte had been chafing under the limitations of his position as intelligence...
It looks like the Republicans have found their theme for the next two years of Democratic control of Congress. A slew of press releases from the GOP yesterday focused on the spectre of tax-raising by Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and their controlling caucuses. Meanwhile, Mitt Romney became the first top-level Republican primary candidate to sign the Tax Pledge, joining most of the Republican caucuses in Congress: Seeking to broaden his appeal as a presidential candidate beyond those Republicans attracted by his reputation as a social conservative, Governor Romney is making a play for economic conservatives by focusing on taxes. Moments before Mr. Romney, whose term as governor ended this week, entered the offices of his presidential exploratory committee for the first time as a private citizen, he warned that the new Democratic Congress would succumb to raising taxes. "The Democratic agenda seems to be surrounding the idea of raising taxes...
Bill Ardolino of INDC Journal filed his first report as an embed for the Examiner today. Bill reports on the medics that keep everyone alive in the Iraq theater, including many Iraqis: Corpsman HN Jerad “Doc J” Jurgensmier bandaged the exit wound with an abdominal pressure dressing. HM3 Joshua “Scuba Steve” Watson located the pinhole-sized entrance wound in the man’s lower back — an unlucky inch below the body armor’s ceramic protection — and put gauze over it. He then wet the abdominal bandages to keep the exposed organs moist, tied back his legs with two green cravats and threw a bag of charcoal under them for elevation. With the wound dressed and the patient stabilized, the Iraqi Police carried their wounded comrade down to an Iraqi Police patrol truck (ambulances are juicy targets for insurgents) and transport to Camp Fallujah Surgical. It’s likely that the Iraqi policeman will live....
Bloggers operate on credibility, just like anyone else, and have to answer for their missteps. Ten days ago, I linked to a story from radio host Scott Hennen that displayed a photo of John Kerry sitting at a mostly-empty mess hall table in Iraq. After his snarky comment about getting "stuck in Iraq", we laughed when the troops there apparently did not embrace Senator Kerry as enthusiastically as they did others. Although I did not post the picture, I certainly participated in the snark, which caused an eruption of criticism and counter-criticism. After some arguments over the provenance of the picture, which dissipated, Greg Sargent did some legwork at TPM Muckraker that pretty much demolishes the notion that Kerry couldn't buy a friend in Iraq: I'm here to report that I've now contacted at least two people who say they were at the table with Kerry. And it's clear that...
January 6, 2007
The Northern Alliance Radio Network will be on the air today, with our six-hour-long broadcast schedule starting at 11 am CT. The first two hours features Power Line's John Hinderaker and Chad and Brian from Fraters Libertas. Mitch and I hit the airwaves for the second shift from 1-3 pm CT, and King Banaian and Michael Broadkorb have The Final Word from 3-5. If you're in the Twin Cities, you can hear us on AM 1280 The Patriot, or on the station's Internet stream if you're outside of the broadcast area. Be sure to join us as we discuss the stories of the week. Call 651-289-4488 to add your own voice to the debate! UPDATE: Gary Gross says Andy Aplikowski is filling in for Michael Broadkorb today. Guess I missed the memo!...
NOTE: CNN left something out of this report. See update below. Yesterday, a Republican Congresswoman alleged that the American military in Iraq had most of its high-value enemy targets in detention at one point or another, but released them without properly identifying them: The U.S. military already knows what half of its most-wanted terrorist targets look like because they have been apprehended and photographed in the past, a Republican congresswoman said Friday. The United States is operating "a catch and release program for al Qaeda in Iraq," said Rep. Heather Wilson, a member of the House intelligence committee. In remarks at the National Press Club, the New Mexico lawmaker said a senior official told her that the U.S. military already has photographs of "fully half of the high-value al Qaeda targets in Iraq" presently being hunted. "They're wearing orange jumpsuits in the mugshots we took of them when we captured...
Mahmoud Abbas raised the stakes in the slow-motion approach to civil war in the Palestinian territories today by declaring Hamas' militias illegal: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Saturday declared Hamas' paramilitary militia in the Gaza Strip illegal, raising the stakes in his standoff with the Islamic movement. Abbas made the announcement two days after members of the Hamas force attacked the home of a senior security commander in Gaza, killing the man and seven of his bodyguards. The man was a member of the Preventive Security force, which is loyal to Abbas' Fatah party. Abbas' office said the decision was made "in light of continued security chaos and assassinations that got to a number of our fighters … and in light of the failure of existing agencies and security apparatuses in imposing law and order and protecting the security of the citizens." Technically, Abbas has this right. If the Palestinian...
Ever since the ISG made its recommendations to the White House last month, the administration has considered a surge in deployments to Iraq as a short-term boost to turn the corner on violence there. President Bush has not yet announced his new Iraq strategy, but by now most people believe it will comprise some form of the surge, especially with his replacement of the top military commanders in the theater, who opposed both the deployment of more troops and the "phased redeployment" of troops out of Iraq. However, the nature of the surge seems rather murky, especially when John McCain addressed the issue yesterday: McCain seems to be launching his 2008 campaign by taking the role of foremost advocate of sending significantly more troops for long-term deployment to Iraq. “There are two keys to any surge of U.S. troops: to be of value, it must substantial and it must be...
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki announced today that his government will take immediate action against sectarian militias of all stripes in Baghdad. His announcement comes as the Bush administration appears ready to shift more troops to the capital, at least temporarily, and as confidence ebbs that Maliki would ever address the largest problem in Iraqi politics: Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said on Saturday that Iraq's armed forces are set for an assault on Baghdad to take out militias and rogue security forces. Aided by multinational troops, the Iraqi forces "will hunt down all outlaws regardless of their sectarian and political affiliations," al-Maliki said at an Iraqi Army Day parade. "We will also severely punish those [security forces] who do not carry out orders or operate in a partisan or sectarian way," he said. Forces will search out insurgents neighborhood-by-neighborhood, The Associated Press reported, and will start the assault this...
Hillary Clinton appears to be the overwhelming favorite to win the Democratic nomination for the 2008 Presidential campaign, but she has not won over the most activist part of her party. ABC reported yesterday that protestors picketing speeched by John McCain and Joe Lieberman did not spare Hillary from criticism: "I'm scared to death of Hillary Clinton," said Kirsten Loken of Falling Waters, W.Va. "She is a divider." Loken, a self-described feminist who has supported the National Organization for Women for many years, said she would "absolutely love" to see a female president of the United States. "But not Hillary Clinton," she said, "not Hillary Clinton." Loken is one of four West Virginians who met in 2004 while helping Sen. John Kerry's (D-Mass.) general-election campaign against Bush. The four women, who traveled by car for more than an hour to Friday's protest organized by MoveOn.org, said they would "love" to...
Earlier this week, the Washington Post reported on the efforts of the Fairfax County public libraries to create shelf room for best sellers by culling out the classics that have received little attention. Research on the library computer system reported on titles that had not been loaned to readers in over two years, but among those titles are classics of literature and letters: You can't find "Abraham Lincoln: His Speeches and Writings" at the Pohick Regional Library anymore. Or "The Education of Henry Adams" at Sherwood Regional. Want Emily Dickinson's "Final Harvest"? Don't look to the Kingstowne branch. It's not that the books are checked out. They're just gone. No one was reading them, so librarians took them off the shelves and dumped them. Along with those classics, thousands of novels and nonfiction works have been eliminated from the Fairfax County collection after a new computer software program showed that...
January 7, 2007
The Israelis have plans to conduct lightning strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities that include the use of low-yield tactical nuclear weapons, the Times of London reports this morning. The revelation has many predicting a bloodbath in the Middle East, but the Times leaves it unclear whether this is an actual plan or merely a training exercise: ISRAEL has drawn up secret plans to destroy Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities with tactical nuclear weapons. Two Israeli air force squadrons are training to blow up an Iranian facility using low-yield nuclear “bunker-busters”, according to several Israeli military sources. The attack would be the first with nuclear weapons since 1945, when the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Israeli weapons would each have a force equivalent to one-fifteenth of the Hiroshima bomb. Under the plans, conventional laser-guided bombs would open “tunnels” into the targets. “Mini-nukes” would then immediately be fired...
Stanislaw Wielgus had planned to take office today as the new Archbishop of Warsaw, replacing the legendary Jozef Glemp. Instead, he transformed his installation Mass into a resignation ceremony after evidence arose that he collaborated with the Communist secret police, informing on priests within the church in the years before Poland's Solidarity movement liberated the nation: The newly-appointed archbishop of Warsaw resigned on Sunday after admitting he spied for Poland's former communist regime, in a major embarrassment for the Vatican and the powerful Polish Catholic Church. Archbishop Stanislaw Wielgus read out his resignation, which came at the request of Pope Benedict who appointed him just a month ago, at a special mass in Warsaw Cathedral replacing a formal ceremony that was to have sworn him in. "In accordance with (Canon law) I submit to your Holiness my resignation as the Metropolitan Archbishop of Warsaw," said Wielgus, who on Friday backed...
Last February, I wrote about the expensive tastes of Daniel Sassou-Nguesso, the ruler of the desperately poor African nation of Congo and the president of the African Union. In a September 2005 stay in New York, the man who keeps demanding Western aid also demanded a lot of room service. He dropped over $190,000 in cash as a down payment on a $326,000 bill for a week's stay during a UN session for Sassou-Nguesso and his entourage. Now the Times of London reports that Sassou-Nguesso ran up another bill in 2006 which belies the abject poverty of his subjects: IN two short visits to New York last year the leader of one of Africa’s poorest countries spent $400,000 (£207,000) on hotel bills as members of his entourage drank Cristal champagne and charged tens of thousands of dollars of room service to accounts paid by the Republic of Congo’s mission to...
As CQ readers know, I am a rabid Notre Dame fan and have a lot of fun taking shots at our nemesis, USC. However, we know that this is all in the fun of a classic rivalry and that the game brings us together more than anything else. When tragedy strikes, no one remembers the rivalry, but we all mourn the loss of those far too young to leave us. Yesterday, USC's reliable place kicker Mark Danelo was found dead, apparently after having fallen off of a cliff in San Pedro: Southern California kicker Mario Danelo was found dead Saturday about 120 feet down a rocky cliff near Point Fermin lighthouse in the city's San Pedro section. The body was reported by a passer-by at about 4:30 p.m., said Martha Garcia of the Los Angeles Police Department. Danelo, the 21-year-old son of former NFL kicker Joe Danelo, appeared to have...
While many of us distrust the New York Times and its reporting on Iraq, John Burns has consistently provided the most objective and fascinating accounts of the war throughout most of the American media establishment. He has written a narrative of the process that led to the execution of Saddam Hussein that exemplifies his skill and insight: In interviews with dozens of American and Iraqi officials involved in the hanging, a picture has emerged of a clash of cultures and political interests, reflecting the widening gulf between Americans here and the Iraqi exiles who rode to power behind American tanks. Even before a smuggled cellphone camera recording revealed the derision Mr. Hussein faced on the gallows, the hanging had become a metaphor, among Mr. Maliki’s critics, for how the “new Iraq” is starting to resemble the repressive, vengeful place it was under Mr. Hussein, albeit in a paler shade. The...
Al Gore has banned coverage of an event again, this time in our neighboring South Dakota. Gore joined the Columbia School of Journalism as a lecturer in 2001 after his loss to George Bush and placed a gag order on his students, an ironic twist for students steeped in First Amendment principles. Now Gore has excluded journalists and TV cameras from his appearance at Augustana College for his latest lecture on the environment (via TMV): Reporters and TV news cameras will be banned from almost all of former Vice President Al Gore's appearance Jan. 23 in Sioux Falls. Gore is the Boe Forum speaker at Augustana College and plans a talk called "Thinking Green: Economic Strategy for the 21st Century." Kalee Kreider, a Gore staffer in Nashville, confirmed by e-mail that news media will be asked to leave his talk after the introduction and that Gore will not hold a...
The controversy over stem cells has now thrown its shadow over three national elections. While adult and umbilical stem cells have contributed to actual therapies, embryonic stem cells have not -- and yet their flexibility has presented a tantalizing subject for medical researchers for several years. The leadership of the Democratic Congress is widely expected to propose federal funding for human embryonic stem-cell (hEsc) research, setting up a showdown with the Bush administration. Now, however, researchers at Harvard have found stem cells with the same flexibility as hEsc, but without the need to damage embryos in any way: Scientists say they have discovered a new source of stem cells that could one day repair damaged human organs. The Harvard University team say they have recovered functioning stem cells from amniotic fluid - the liquid that surrounds the baby in the womb. ... The Harvard scientists say the stem cells they...
January 8, 2007
The Doha Round of trade talks is scheduled to restart today, and according to the Times of London, George Bush could either usher in a new era of freer agricultural markets or allow the WTO to essentially fail on globalizing agriculture. The effects of a collapse could mean a further retreat into poverty for developing nations, and Bush is running out of time to make them a success: Global trade talks that are intended to improve the lives of billions of poor people stand on the brink of failure, Peter Mandelson, the European Trade Commissioner, has told The Times. At a meeting today, Mr Bush can either breathe new life into trade negotiations that were suspended last July because of international disagreement over cutting tariffs and farm subsidies, or he can effectively kill the five-year process, said Mr Mandelson. The financial consequences of failing to liberalise World Trade Organisation rules...
Jacques Chirac, who recently began talking as though he might run again for a third term as president of France, may have effectively killed any small chance of viability for continuing in office with a scheme to rent out the masterpieces of the Louvre. French artistic circles accuse Chirac of prostituting the nation's cultural heritage, but Chirac has his eyes on a billion-dollar deal from the Arabs: Leading figures from the French art world have accused the Louvre of cultural prostitution for signing a multimillion-pound deal to exhibit works in Atlanta and negotiating a second deal to build a branch of the museum in Abu Dhabi. Critics say that the Louvre is being turned into a vulgar brand name to fill state coffers. The row pits purists, who believe that art must stand high above politics or business, against modernisers, who say that globalisation requires a new approach to cultural...
After the expulsion of the Islamist government in Mogadishu and their flight through Kismayo into dissipation, the question remains as to how to rebuild Somalia into a viable state. The clan rule that has led to fifteen years of chaos will return unless the transitional government can take control of the streets without appearing to be an Ethiopian puppet state. Meanwhile, the Islamists still want a piece of Somalia's future: The road ahead for Somalia begins in places like Kismayo, dusty, chaotic, forlorn wrecks of cities where the list of dire needs like food, water, shelter, a fire department, law, order — and hope — is so overwhelming that people just shake their heads and smile when asked where they would begin. In just two weeks, the Somali political world has been turned upside down, bringing ambitious governance and reconstruction issues into focus for the first time in 16 years....
The showdown between Muslim taxi-drivers and their passengers gets more out-of-state attention this morning from the New York Sun's Youssef Ibrahim. The refusal of a large number of Islamic cabbies to transport passengers with alcohol in their luggage or service dogs for the blind and handicapped, and the local fatwa on which they rely for their position, has led to a showdown with the Metropolitan Airport Commission: At a meeting Wednesday of the Metropolitan Airports Commission (MAC), airport staff members asked the commission to give the go-ahead for public hearings on a tougher policy that would suspend the licenses of drivers who refuse service for any reason other than safety concerns. Drivers who refuse to accept passengers transporting alcohol or service dogs would have their airport licenses suspended 30 days for the first offense and revoked two years for the second offense, according to a proposed taxi ordinance revision. ......
Perhaps al-Qaeda figured that the US had focused so much on the 9/11 attacks that it had forgotten about one of its earlier attacks on American assets. If so, the terrorists have just discovered that both elephants and donkeys have long memories in America. The US Air Force has attacked the UIC remnants fleeing the Ethiopian Army in southern Somalia, targeting at least two AQ leaders that masterminded two suicide-bombing attacks on American embassies in 1998: A U.S. Air Force gunship has conducted a strike against suspected members of al Qaeda in Somalia, CBS News national security correspondent David Martin reports exclusively. The targets included the senior al Qaeda leader in East Africa and an al Qaeda operative wanted for his involvement in the 1998 bombings of two American embassies in Africa, Martin reports. Those terror attacks killed more than 200 people. The AC-130 gunship is capable of firing thousands...
Ohio State went into tonight's national championship game favored to beat Florida in a wipeout. Some people questioned whether the Gators even belonged in the game at all. They proved it by reversing expectations and blowing out Ohio State, 41-14: Not even close. Florida -- yes Florida -- owned the field it wasn't supposed to be on, embarrassing Heisman Trophy winner Troy Smith and No. 1 Ohio State 41-14 on Monday night to run away with the national championship. Chris Leak and Tim Tebow showed off coach Urban Meyer's twin quarterback system to perfection as the No. 2 Gators became the first Division I school to hold football and basketball titles at the same time. I managed to watch the whole game, even though little doubt remained about the outcome after halftime. Ohio State scored on the opening kickoff and managed one decent drive, but otherwise the Gators dominated the...
January 9, 2007
Yesterday, the Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal from seven men charged with supporting terrorism through fund-raising for terrorist-linked organizations. The appeal came after the 9th Circuit had rejected the defense argument that their contributions to the MEK represented free speech: The Supreme Court refused Monday to block the trial of seven Los Angeles residents charged with raising money for an Iranian opposition group that was designated a "foreign terrorist organization" by the U.S. government. Lawyers for the seven had argued the charges were unconstitutional because they had a free-speech right to raise money for a political group. That claim was rejected by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which noted the Iranian opposition group -- the People's Mujahedeen, also known as the MEK -- had a record of supporting assassinations and bombings. "Sometimes money serves as a proxy for speech, and sometimes it buys goods and services...
Governor Mitt Romney conducted the first big fund-raiser of the 2008 Presidential campaign, and the Romneyites surprised even themselves with a spectacular success. They collected $6.5 million from their Boston Convention event, far surpassing their goal: White House hopeful Mitt Romney and 400 of his backers raised more than $6.5 million on Monday in a glitzy fundraising blitz that will force all Republican rivals to take notice. "They've come together and blown us away today, and humbled us at the same time," said the former Massachusetts governor as he clutched the hand of his wife, Ann. The figure dwarfed the $2 million that Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., raised and the $1 million collected by former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Like Romney, the two have created committees exploring bids for the GOP's presidential nomination. While Romney said he was not trying to send a message to anyone but his supporters,...
The new Democratic majority in Congress has made ethics reform one of their centerpiece issues for the 110th session, and they have some good ideas about how to clean up the legislative branch. One of their proposals contains a ban against the use of corporate jets at commercial rates, a huge discount on charter rates. Unfortunately, Democrats in the Senate have exhibited less enthusiasm for this reform: Senators are ready to relinquish lobbyist-paid steak dinners and skybox seats at sports arenas. But giving up the use of corporate jets at bargain prices might be one reform too many for them. While a ban on using corporate jets flew through the House last week, it faces strong political headwinds in the Senate, which began debate Monday on its own ethics reforms. ... Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who as the new Senate Rules Committee chairwoman will play a central role in the...
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed mandatory universal health-care coverage for all Californians, a plan that will get its funding from taxes on small businesses and medical-industry professionals. California would become the third state to require all residents to carry health insurance, and Schwarzenegger plans on enforcing it through wage garnishments if necessary: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) on Monday proposed a system of universal health insurance for Californians that would make the nation's most populous state the third to guarantee medical coverage for all its residents. "Prices for health care and insurance are rising twice as fast as inflation, twice as fast as wages. That is a terrible drain on everyone, and it is a drain on our economy," Schwarzenegger said. "My solution is that everyone in California must have insurance. If you can't afford it, the state will help you buy it, but you must be insured." ... Schwarzenegger's plan would...
The dispute between Russia and its former satellite republic Belarus escalated again yesterday, and now Europe will pay part of the price for the standoff. After Belarus slapped a high duty on oil as a reaction to a massive hike in energy prices from their Russian suppliers, Russia cut off all deliveries through the pipeline to Poland and Germany: Russia halted oil exports to Europe via Belarus yesterday as a bitter trade dispute escalated, renewing concerns that Moscow is bent on pursuing aggressive energy diplomacy. Taps were turned off on pipelines to Poland and Germany but the European Commission said there was no immediate risk of shortages in either country because of ample stocks in refineries. The commission was also investigating whether the supply was cut on another branch of the 2,500-mile pipeline feeding Slovakia, Hungary and the Czech Republic. This has now escalated into something much larger than a...
I'm not sure how many more of these stories the American media can produce, but the Boston Globe seems intent on telling us -- again -- that John Kerry still has not decided to run for President in 2008: After sending strong signals for two years about a second run for the presidency, Senator John F. Kerry has held no public political events in more than two months, even as his potential rivals ramp up their own campaigns. Behind the scenes, Kerry has been more active, hiring several top operatives and hosting several major fund-raisers with Democratic activists, including a breakfast yesterday in New York City and a birthday event at his Beacon Hill home last month, where he raised $250,000. Aides to the Massachusetts Democrat said he is still mulling whether he should run again for president in 2008. A decision is likely to be made before the end...
Jordanian forces have killed one al-Qaeda operative and captured another in an operation that foiled a pending terrorist attack against the Hashemite Kingdom: Police killed one suspected al-Qaida member and detained a second in a crackdown Tuesday that foiled a terrorist plot against Jordan, the state news agency and officials said. ... A unit comprised of elite police and intelligence forces stormed the cell's hideout because of "information on plans by al-Qaida targeting the Jordanian arena," Petra said, quoting an unidentified security official. It did not elaborate. Security officials told The Associated Press that the two men opened fire at the special security forces that came to arrest them. Police shot one man dead, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the operation was under way. The other man is in police custody, they said. The dead man is presumed to be a Palestinian, as he entered...
January 10, 2007
The Baseball Writers Association of America has a message for today's baseball players: steroids may keep them out of the Hall of Fame. Mark McGwire, whose home-run chase reignited fan support of the national pastime and whose lifetime total easily outstrips many other Hall members, only mustered less than a quarter of the ballots for his first year of eligibility: Mark McGwire's Hall of Fame bid was met with a rejection as emphatic as his upper-deck home runs. While the door to Cooperstown swung open for Cal Ripken Jr. and Tony Gwynn on Tuesday, McGwire was picked by less than a quarter of voters — a result that raises doubts about whether Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa or other sluggers from baseball's Steroids Era will ever gain entry. McGwire, whose 583 home runs rank seventh on the career list, appeared on 128 of a record 545 ballots in voting released Tuesday...
China usually works hard to avoid admitting internal conflicts in their workers' paradise, so when they go public with operations against any kind of dissidents, it's significant. Beijing announced today that they had conducted a military operation against a terrorist training camp in its Xinjiang province, close to Central Asian republics struggling with al-Qaeda and other Islamists. However, as with all pronouncements by China, not all is as it seems: China revealed the depth of its fear of Islamic-linked violence yesterday when police disclosed that they had killed 18 terrorists and captured another 17 after a fierce battle at a secret training camp in a remote northwestern region. It was the first time that China had announced the discovery of such a camp in its territory. Officials said that they had uncovered links between the activists and international terrorist groups, hinting at connections to al-Qaeda. The clash in the Pamir...
Venezuela's Hugo Chavez threatened yesterday to nationalize key industries and demanded dictatorial powers, accelerating the OPEC member's move towards Castroism. Global investors reacted by beginning to bail out of corporations at risk from Chavez' attempts to seize assets: Verizon Communications had been looking to lighten its exposure to Latin America for some time when it struck a deal in April to sell investments in three properties in Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and Venezuela. Now, it probably wishes it had disconnected its Latin lines even sooner. The company could possibly lose up to several hundred million dollars, thanks to President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, who threatened to nationalize the country’s main telephone and electricity companies. Investors reacted with alarm here and in markets in the United States and throughout Latin America on Tuesday as they measured the impact of the plan by Mr. Chávez to nationalize crucial areas of the...
Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe has conducted a massive campaign of theft against gold panners in his nation, arresting as many as 20,000 of them over the last few weeks. Mugabe wants to seize control of gold supplies from people that have already been dislocated once, from the farms that used to produce both food and labor opportunities: As many as 20,000 miners have been arrested in police raids across Zimbabwe. Their detention, in one of the largest police actions in the country's recent history, has left thousands of family members without any support at a time of rampant inflation and a desperate shortage of maize meal, the staple food. Many of those arrested are legally registered as miners with the mines ministry. The government has claimed it is detaining illegal gold panners selling ore on the black market and causing massive environmental damage. Mugabe's government forces the miners to sell the...
Bill Ardolino files another of his embed reports from Iraq, the second of a series for The Examiner, and this focuses on the challenges of creating a stable society in Fallujah. An IED attack on an Abrams tank demonstrates the challenges for the American effort to engage the civilians of the city in an environment of terrorist attacks: The political situation is at another key turning point. Insurgents currently maintain the ability to disrupt the government because they are willing and able to pursue aggressively the two respected currencies in Iraq: money and violence. In contrast, U.S. and Iraqi government forces are limited in their efforts to establish a competing center of power, and many locals are caught in the middle. Americans don’t have the support of — but aren’t necessarily opposed by — many locals, don’t know the language or area and lack the backing from our political leaders...
President Bush will take to the airwaves tonight to unveil his new strategy in Iraq, attempting to build enough support to shift more troops for at least a limited engagement against sectarian militias that threaten to undermine the Iraqi government. In preparation, Bush spent hours polishing his speech and meeting with lawmakers of both parties to ensure he strikes the right tone: President Bush spent hours Tuesday practicing in front of cameras, preparing to make his case for increasing the U.S. military commitment in Iraq in a prime-time address to the nation tonight, even as congressional Democrats readied legislation to block any increase in the number of troops. Members of Congress who met with Bush said he appeared to understand that, after years of upbeat rhetoric and positive assessments that belied a lack of progress inside the country, his credibility was on the line. "He told us what he planned...
The US airstrikes have scored a success against one of their intended targets. Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, who planned the attacks on American embassies in Tanzania and Kenya that killed over 200 people (mostly Africans), died in the US attack on Islamists fleeing Somalia in the wake of their collapse against the Ethiopians: The suspected al-Qaeda militant who planned the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in east Africa was killed in an American airstrike in Somalia, an official said Wednesday. "I have received a report from the American side chronicling the targets and list of damage," Abdirizak Hassan, the Somali president's chief of staff, told The Associated Press. "One of the items they were claiming was that Fazul Abdullah Mohammed is dead." ... Mohammed allegedly planned the attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 225 people. He is also suspected of planning the car bombing of a beach...
With just a few hours left before George Bush delivers his speech on the shift in Iraq war policy, politicians have already queued up to declare themselves in support or opposition to the plan. Unsurprisingly, most Democrats oppose it, but a few Republicans have joined them. Senator Sam Brownback, who has made it clear that he wants to run for the 2008 nomination as a staunch conservative, made the biggest splash among GOP naysayers: Kansas Republican Sen. Sam Brownback came out against President Bush's expected call tonight for a surge of 22,000 more troops into Iraq. "I do not believe that sending more troops to Iraq is the answer," Brownback said while traveling in Iraq. "Iraq requires a political rather than a military solution." Brownback had previously supported a short-term surge of troops if it could help achieve long-term political stability, which the Bush Administration has said it hopes a...
I will live-blog the President's speech, which starts as 8 pm CT, at this link. 7:32 PM CT - I will appear on CHQR's The World Tonight with Rob Breakenridge at 8:40 pm CT. We'll be discussing the speech and its implications. CHQR broadcasts on 770 AM in Calgary, but CQ readers can listen to the station's Internet stream. 7:34 - The Anchoress sends a link to this Newsweek item showing a Democratic flip-flop on the surge. I agree with her that the Democrats seem to use the automatic-gainsay strategy with Bush about Iraq, but I do recall this article -- and it was remarkable because Silvestre Reyes came out so strongly opposed to the Democrats' policy of defeat and retreat. Has Reyes repudiated his support for the surge today? I haven't heard. Also, Sister Toldjah has more thoughts along these lines ... 7:45 - Drudge has the speech up...
The upcoming presidential election will hinge on the use of technology and the rapid response to potentially damaging imagery. When a video clip from Mitt Romney's debate with Ted Kennedy in 1994 got YouTubed, opening another question about his pro-life credentials, Romney turned to Glenn Reynolds and a Podcast to set the record straight. Be sure to check out the Glenn & Helen Show....
January 11, 2007
The global leader of Hamas finally admitted that a nation calling itself Israel exists, even if he's not happy about it. Khaled Mashaal says that he wants a Palestinian state based on 1967 borders, an implicit acknowledgement of the fact that Israel exists on the other side of the line: The hardline leader of Hamas, the militant Palestinian group, accepted the existence of Israel yesterday and acknowledged that the Jewish state was likely to remain a reality. In a clear softening of his position, Khaled Meshaal, the Hamas leader based in Damascus, even held out the possibility that he would one day recognise Israel formally, once Palestinians had a state of their own. “There will remain a state called Israel. This is a matter of fact,” he said. “The problem is not that there is an entity called Israel,” Mr Meshaal said. “The problem is that the Palestinian state is...
President Bush selected General David Petraeus as his new commander in Iraq in part because of his success in pacifying his sector of the Iraq theater in 2003. Petraeus learned the tactics as a student of British experience in imperial military counterinsurgency operations, a point that the Times of London believes will make a significant difference: The new US ground commander picked by President Bush to direct the military “surge” into Iraq believes that the war can be won with a radical change of tactics: those used by the British in Malaya and Ulster. Lieutenant-General David Petraeus, handed perhaps the toughest US military assignment since the Vietnam War — to stabilise Iraq and defeat its militias — is one of the Army’s premier intellectuals and a devoted student of counter-insurgency techniques used by the British and French during the last century. General Petraeus, who has spent 2½ of the past...
The New York Times filed a story at 1:37 am this morning (the time on the RSS feed timestamp) from John Burns and Sabrina Tavernise that paints the Iraqi government as leery of the proposed increase of troops in Baghdad. According to the Times, the Maliki government doesn't want more troops, as it will force them to deal with Shi'ite bad actors: As President Bush challenges public opinion at home by committing more American troops, he is confronted by a paradox: an Iraqi government that does not really want them. The Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has not publicly opposed the American troop increase, but aides to Mr. Maliki have been saying for weeks that the government is wary of the proposal. They fear that an increased American troop presence, particularly in Baghdad, will be accompanied by a more assertive American role that will conflict with the...
The case of PFC Corey Clagett took a bizarre turn yesterday when his attorney found himself under arrest for money laundering and running a prostitution ring out of a nightclub. The former federal prosecutor and Abu Ghraib defense attorney could face decades of prison time: Paul Bergrin, who spent seven years as a New Jersey local and federal prosecutor, allegedly took over the NY Confidential escort service when the self-described "king of all pimps" Jason Itzler was arrested in 2005. Mr. Bergrin helped launder more than $800,000 in credit card payments for "escorts" who often cost $1,000 an hour, the district attorney of Manhattan, Robert Morgenthau, said. ... Prosecutors also said Mr. Bergrin falsely told New Jersey parole officers that Itzler — a former client on parole from a 2001 ecstasy-smuggling conviction — was a paralegal in the Abu Ghraib defense case so Itzler could receive a more lenient curfew....
In another indication that the Iraqi government may have less problems with the surge than the New York Times predicts, Nouri al-Maliki has told the Shi'ite militias to disarm now or deal with the Americans by themselves. This includes Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army despite the influence the radical cleric has on the current government: Iraq's prime minister has told Shiite militiamen to surrender their weapons or face an all-out assault, part of a commitment U.S. President George W. Bush outlined to bring violence under control with a more aggressive Iraqi Army and 21,500 additional American troops. Senior Iraqi officials said Wednesday that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, under pressure from the U.S., has agreed to crack down on the fighters even though they are loyal to his most powerful political ally, the radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Previously, al-Maliki had resisted the move. The Iraqis still want to have overall command...
Each month, the GOP Bloggers blog conducts a straw poll to take the temperature of the blogosphere for the upcoming Republican presidential primaries. They generally update the list each time to capture any new potential candidates; for instance, Jim Gilmore. the former Governor of Virginia, is included this time. The poll allows bloggers to conduct a survey of their own readership, which always produces some intriguing results. Keep checking back to see the results, and I will probably review them in the next 24 hours....
The case of the Duke non-rape has gotten even stranger, if such a thing could be possible. The lawyers defending the Duke University students accused of the sexual assault have filed a motion that outlines all of the ways in which the accuser has changed her story since her allegations made national headlines: The statement layers new and contradictory accounts over the woman's previous statements: * In her latest statement she said the attack ended at midnight. In previous accounts, the woman said the gang-rape ended shortly before she left in the car driven by Kim Roberts, the second dancer. Roberts called 911 as she was driving away at 12:53 a.m., according to police records. This new account leaves 50 minutes unaccounted between the end of the rape and the departure from the party. The new statement runs contrary to time stamped photos of the party, which show the two...
After I left work this evening, I drove to AM 1280 The Patriot to do an interview with Brooke Gladstone of NPR. I received a request to do a short interview on credibility issues in the media and the blogosphere, touching on but not limited to the Jamil Hussein story. NPR wanted to ensure that the sound quality remained high, and the folks at The Patriot -- where we broadcast our Northern Alliance radio shows on Saturday -- kindly agreed to provide the facilities. NPR really only wanted a five-minute segment, but Brooke and I wound up going for more than thirty minutes, challenging each other from our different perspectives. I have no idea how they will edit that down to five minutes, and we shared a laugh about that when we finally finished our conversation. I hope at some point the entire half-hour gets published, because I found it...
January 12, 2007
Not everyone opposes the Bush administration's surge plan for Iraq, not even in the Middle East. Arab nations that do business with the US have quietly pressed the White House to find ways to stay engaged in Iraq, fearful of both the collapse of the keystone nation in the region and the rise of Iran: Arab allies have quietly put serious pressure on President Bush to remain in Iraq, fearing premature evacuation will turn the country over to Iranian-backed militia, sources said Wednesday. "What concerns us is the instability and uncertainty in the area," Egyptian Ambassador Nabil Fahmy told the New York Daily News. "We need to stabilize the situation before the next step, otherwise it will become complete chaos." Several other Sunni Arab nations that are valuable U.S. allies - including Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt, the Emirates - are concerned about Iran's influence and the growing power of...
So I presume that the Bush administration meant what they said when they rejected the Iraq Study Group's recommendation for diplomacy with Iran. Or perhaps they decided to apply the kind of armed diplomacy that would get Iran's attention yesterday when they raided an Iranian consular office in Irbil and detained six of its employees in a cordon-and-knock operation: American troops backed by attack helicopters and armored vehicles raided an Iranian diplomatic office in the dead of night early Thursday and detained as many as six of the Iranians working inside. The raid was the second surprise seizure of Iranians by the American military in Iraq in recent weeks and came a day after President Bush bluntly warned Iran to quit meddling in Iraqi affairs. There was a tense standoff later in the day between the American soldiers and about 100 Kurdish troops, who surrounded the American armored vehicles for...
The Democrats selected Denver as their host city for their 2008 national convention, bypassing New York City in order to bolster their Western credentials. The move reflects shifting fortunes for both parties and follows Howard Dean's efforts to build national credibility for the Democrats: The Democratic Party chose Denver over New York on Thursday as the site for its next national convention, capping months of debate about which city had better logistics, deeper pockets and a more compelling backdrop to frame the party’s message. “If we’re going to have a national party, we’re going to have to have Westerners vote for us on a consistent basis,” the Democratic national chairman, Howard Dean, said in a telephone news conference. “At the end of the day,” Mr. Dean added, “that’s what tipped it to Denver.” Denver economic development officials said that by one important measure, the convention, to be held Aug. 25-28,...
The American embassy in Athens got hit by an RPG fired from across the street. Instead of the usual Islamist sources, this attack came from a Golden Oldie of terror -- the rabid European Marxist type: Suspected leftist guerrillas fired a rocket at the U.S. embassy in Athens on Friday but no one was hurt in the blast, police and government officials said. In the most serious attack against the mission in 10 years, the small rocket launched from across the street shattered windows and woke up nearby residents in the central Athens area at 5:58 AM (0358 GMT). "There are one or two anonymous phone calls which claim that the Revolutionary Struggle was behind the attack," Public Order Minister Byron Polydoras told reporters outside the embassy. "Most likely, it is an act by local perpetrators." The leftist guerrilla group has emerged as the most serious domestic threat since the...
NATO forces surprised Taliban remnants in an overnight raid, killing 150 and putting a major dent in an expected offensive from the Islamist forces. For the first time since Pervez Musharraf signed a peace deal with Waziristani tribal leaders, Pakistan took part in the attack: Nato Forces in Afghanistan claimed yesterday to have thwarted a major Taliban border incursion from Pakistan by killing up to 150 insurgents in a night-time operation. As part of what was thought to be a precursor to a Taliban spring offensive, Nato officials said that two columns totalling some 200 insurgents crossed into the Afghan border province of Paktika on Wednesday night. Pakistani forces were informed of the movement of Taliban fighters and the Pakistani military claimed that it bombed and destroyed trucks used by the Taliban on its side of the border. If so, it was the first military action by the Pakistani military...
Somalian warlords that turned the Horn of Africa nation into an easy example of a failed state have agreed to disband their militias and join the transitional government. The agreement, produced at a summit meeting of the major factions of the nation, clears the path for the new government to end street violence that threatened to extend the Somali nightmare: Somalia's warlords have agreed to disarm their militia and join a new national army, a government official said Friday. The announcement followed a meeting between President Abdullahi Yusuf and clan warlords that proceeded even as, just outside, clan gunmen fired a rocket-propelled grenade and briefly exchanged gunfire with government troops. The violence left at least six dead and 10 wounded. "The warlords and the government have agreed to collaborate for the restoration of peace in Somalia," said government spokesman Abdirahman Dinari. By disbanding the militias and joining the national army,...
The Washington Times reports that Hillary Clinton is slipping in polls for the first states in next year's presidential primaries, and that populists such as John Edwards and Barack Obama appear to be eclipsing her. One pollster draws comparisons between Hillary and the previous Democratic nominee that hardly intend to flatter her: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's popularity in Democratic presidential-preference polls has fallen in the nation's first caucus and primary states in the face of increasing support for her chief rivals for the 2008 nomination. Pollsters said her weaknesses in Iowa and New Hampshire were the result of the growing popularity of two major opponents -- former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama -- and their populist economic messages, as well as a deepening antipathy toward her among Democratic-leaning independents who dislike her support for the war in Iraq and who question her electability. "I think...
January 13, 2007
The Northern Alliance Radio Network will be on the air today, with our six-hour-long broadcast schedule starting at 11 am CT. The first two hours features Power Line's John Hinderaker and Chad and Brian from Fraters Libertas. Mitch and I hit the airwaves for the second shift from 1-3 pm CT, and Michael Broadkorb and Andy Apliowski (filling in for King Banaian) have The Final Word from 3-5. If you're in the Twin Cities, you can hear us on AM 1280 The Patriot, or on the station's Internet stream if you're outside of the broadcast area. Today Mitch and I welcome Senator Norm Coleman, Republican moderate and one of the sharpest people I've met in politics. It's always a pleasure to hear from Senator Coleman, and we'll get a good perspective on the follies at the beginning of the 110th Congress. Be sure to join us as we discuss the...
The final organized base of the Union of Islamic Courts fell to Ethiopian and Somali forces last night, completing the lightning rout of what had been an ascendant radical Islamist force. Ras Kamboni had been the last organized redoubt for the UIC, and now they have fled into to forests on the Kenyan border: Somali government troops backed by Ethiopian soldiers have captured the last stronghold of the Union of Islamic Courts, the defence minister says. Col Barre Aden Shire said the town of Ras Kamboni, in south-eastern Somalia, fell after several days of fighting. Remnants of the militia are now reported to be hiding in dense forest along Somalia's border with Kenya. Ethiopia has led a military campaign against the Islamists, who controlled much of Somalia for six months. For those six months, people pointed to their tightening grip on power and determined that nothing could stop the wave...
Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong, under fire for a series of unethical acts in his pursuit of a rape and sexual assault case against three Duke University students, asked to have the state replace his office on the case. Nifong's own legal troubles with the state Bar over his actions has made it impossible for him to continue as prosecutor: Durham, N.C., District Attorney Mike Nifong has requested that he have himself removed from prosecuting the Duke lacrosse rape investigation. ABC News broke the story, first reporting Nifong's recusal Friday afternoon. Three Duke lacrosse players, Reade Seligmann, Collin Finnerty and David Evans, were indicted in 2006 on charges of rape, sexual assault, and kidnapping after a lacrosse team party on the night of March 13. Rape charges were dropped in December after the accuser could not recall key details of the alleged attack. A source close to the investigation said...
Yesterday I wrote about Hillary Clinton's troubles in the 2008 presidential campaign and how she has lost ground to the populists in Iowa and New Hampshire. Her deliberate centrism has undermined enthusiasm for her run at becoming the nation's first female President, and nothing touches off the MoveOn faction more than her support for the war in Iraq. It didn't take long for Hillary to start trying to turn that around, apparently: In an exclusive interview with ABC News in Baghdad, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., called the situation in Iraq "heartbreaking" and said she doubts Congress and the American people believe the mission here can succeed. "I don't know that the American people or the Congress at this point believe this mission can work," she said. "And in the absence of a commitment that is backed up by actions from the Iraqi government, why should we believe it?" Clinton spoke...
Rep. John Doolittle (R-CA) has terminated his relationship with his wife's consulting business for fundraising after having barely retained his seat in the midterm elections. Julie Doolittle took commissions from the contributions made to the Congressman's re-election campaigns, essentially allowing 15% of all political donations to end up in the Doolittle family checking account: Rep. John T. Doolittle (R-Calif.) said yesterday that he will no longer employ his wife as his campaign fundraiser, an arrangement that allowed her to collect a 15 percent cut of donations to his campaign and political action committees -- more than $100,000 since 2003. Doolittle, who has drawn criticism for links to disgraced lobbyist Jack A. Abramoff, said he will hire an outside fundraiser. He made the announcement in a commentary article he distributed to newspapers in his Northern California district, noting his tough battle for reelection. ... The change was one of 10 steps...
Senator Norm Coleman, one of our friends at the Northern Alliance, gave a speech in the Senate that announced his opposition to the Bush administration's plans for a troop surge in Baghdad and Anbar. As with most of Coleman's speeches, it is a must read -- nuanced and effective, even if people disagree with his conclusions. Coleman insists that he supports the war on terror, and agrees with the White House about the growing use of the insurgencies by Iran as proxies in a war against the United States. However, he believes that the sectarian strife is ultimately a political problem and cannot be solved through military action: It is for this reason that I oppose the proposal for a troop surge in Baghdad, where the violence can only be defined as sectarian. A troop surge proposal basically ignores the conditions on the ground, both as I saw on my...
Continue reading "Coleman Opposes The Surge" »
I've podcasted the interview Mitch and I conducted with Senator Norm Coleman about his opposition to the Bush administration's surge strategy. As always, Senator Coleman made his point with eloquence and careful thought -- but I'm still in disagreement with him. Listen to both portions and decide for yourself, but be sure to read his speech and more of what went into his decision at his website. Coleman Interview - Part I Coleman Interview - Part II...
January 14, 2007
The Washington Post reports this morning on a blogger who decided to write a post about one of the customers he served at work and got fired over the aftermath. Two days before Christmas, Chuckles of Freelance Genius (real name Charles Williamson) wrote the following about Tucker Carlson after he and his companion rented movies at his video store: Tucker Carlson opened an account last night at my video store. I thought the name seemed familiar but I couldn't figure out why. It was after he left that I realized he was on the list of Gigantic Cobagz. I could tell you what he and his ridiculously wasped-out female companion (wife?) rented if you really want to know. I won't tell you where he lives, though. That would be wrong and stupid. I will also not be running around ordering 10,000 copies of America: The Book and having it sent...
The fight over health-care costs keeps centering on employers, and now the largest of them may decide to operate health clinics directly in order to reduce their financial exposure. Toyota, Pepsi, and a host of other large corporations have opened their own primary care centers, allowing their employees free access in the hope that the companies can hold costs to a minimum and focus their insurance on more specialized treatment and hospitalizations: Frustrated by runaway health costs, the nation’s largest employers are moving rapidly to open more primary care medical centers in their offices and factories as a way to offer convenient service and free or low-cost health care. Within the last two years, companies including Toyota, Sprint Nextel, Florida Power and Light, Credit Suisse and Pepsi Bottling Group have opened or expanded on-site clinics. And many employers are adding or planning to add even more clinics, which were experimented...
Turkey has issued another warning about the Kurdish insurgency in its eastern provinces, threatening to invade northern Iraq to put an end to the provocations. Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has dismissed American assurances of cooperation, coming close to a diplomatic ultimatum against Iraq: Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan on Friday reaffirmed Turkey's right to send troops into Iraq to crush Kurdish rebels there and chided U.S. officials for questioning it. "The Turkish Republic will do whatever is necessary to combat the terrorists when the time comes, but it will not announce its plans in advance," Erdogan told a news conference after a meeting of his ruling AK Party. "We say we are ready to take concrete steps with the Iraqi government and we also say these steps must be taken now." In sharp language underscoring Turkish anxiety about the chaos in Iraq, Erdogan said it was wrong for Washington -- "our...
While many of my friends await the season premier of 24, tonight holds more of a classic tone for me. The second season of the brilliant miniseries Rome makes its debut in a matter of minutes. I just bought Season One on DVD, and for quite a while I had supposed it would be the only season. However, we will shortly see the aftermath of the assassination of Gaius Julius Caesar, the fall of Marc Antony, and the rise of Octavian played out in another twelve-episode miniseries. It will make a great end to a day of shopping, church, and good food that the First Mate and I enjoyed....
January 15, 2007
Last week, NPR invited me to do an interview with On The Media co-host Brooke Gladstone, for what was supposed to be a five-minute segment. Brooke and I ended up sparring for thirty minutes in a spirited debate, which I think we both enjoyed. NPR had to cut it down to five minutes, and I believe they did a good job in capturing the essence of both perspectives: Granted, a lot of the conversation from both of us got cut out. The only point I wish they would have left in the mix, but which took too long for the segment length, was my specific objection to using a single source for such explosive stories without even asking their clients in Iraq to confirm them. The burning mosque story only had the one source, Jamil Hussein, and the AP's other clients in Iraq never heard anything about this story. I...
Two of the remaining men on the execution list in Iraq for crimes against humanity in the Saddam Hussein regime were executed overnight, ending speculation on when the Nouri al-Maliki government would proceed with the hangings. The Iraqis forced witnesses to pledge to behave themselves, but one of the defendants lost his head, literally: American military officials, who had custody of Mr. Hussein, were particularly upset and pushed hard to ensure that the execution of his co-defendants, Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, former head of the Mukhabarat secret police and the younger half-brother of Mr. Hussein, and Awad Hamad al-Bandar, who was chief judge of the revolutionary court under Mr. Hussein, was carried out properly. The government spokesman who announced the executions, which took place at 3 a.m., Bassam al-Husseini, said both the executioners and the witnesses had to sign statements promising to behave in a dignified manner. In what government officials...
The Bush surge has more to it than just the deployment of 20,000 more troops for Baghdad and Anbar. One of the less-debated aspects of the new strategy is a higher investment in money and personnel for the rebuilding effort in Iraq. The number of teams will double and go further out into the Iraqi communities that they will attempt to revive: As part of its latest plan to stabilize Iraq, the United States intends to more than double the number of regional reconstruction teams and to add nearly 400 specialists for existing and new teams, in fields from politics and the rule of law to agribusiness and veterinary care, according to an official outline of the plan. The document calls for the measures to be taken swiftly, in three phases, with waves of new teams and personnel expected to be put in place in March, June and September. The...
Two Twin Cities brothers heard a faint sound while camping in New Mexico's Gila National Forest, strange enough to prompt them to investigate. They found Carolyn Dorn, a 52-year-old woman reported lost five weeks earlier, the subject of a search abandoned two weeks ago: A faint sound made Albert and Peter Kottke stop and look around as they hiked out of the Gila Wilderness at the end of backpacking trip. A figure moved on the other side of the Gila River. As it drew closer, the two university students saw a woman, hunched over and moving slowly. The Kottkes crossed the river to find Carolyn Dorn, 52, who had been alone in the Gila National Forest for five weeks after becoming trapped on the wrong side of the rain- and snow-swollen river. The search for her had been called off two weeks ago. The brothers said they realized Dorn was...
Condoleezza Rice will extend her contacts with Ehud Olmert to include Mahmoud Abbas in the near future in order to prompt movement in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. The moderate Arab governments have pushed the US to get more involved in the mediation, and hold out a carrot for us: US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice concluded a private three-hour meeting with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Monday morning, part of her diplomatic visit to the Middle East. The two decided to hold three-way talks that would include Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, after which they would aim for direct peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. A senior US official in Rice's delegation said the "trilateral meeting" will be aimed at "having a conversation about the political horizon leading to the establishment of a Palestinian state." He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to...
Earlier today, I posted an interview between myself and Brooke Gladstone of NPR on media credibility, specifically regarding the Associated Press and its reporting in Iraq. Brooke and I sparred about the relative reliability of the AP as opposed to bloggers, and I said that the AP normally does a good job but failed to follow its own rules in its Iraq reporting, using single sources for some very inflammatory stories and applying pseudonyms without noting them. Today, however, brings a more mundane example of either poor research, outright bias, or both. Instapundit noted this earlier today: When it comes to squandering the earth's natural resources, residents of this desert land of chilled swimming pools, monster 4x4s and air-conditioned malls are on a par with even the ravenous consumption of Americans, according to the World Wildlife Fund. The average person in the Emirates puts more demand on the global ecosystem...
Pakistan has scored more hits on al-Qaeda operations, this time in South Waziristan. Their army announced the successful missions tonight, which resulted in several AQ casualties: Pakistan's army destroyed three suspected al-Qaida hideouts in an air strike near the Afghan border on Tuesday, killing several members of the terror group, an army spokesman said. The military carried out the operation in South Waziristan tribal region after receiving information that 25 to 30 al-Qaida members were hiding there, said army spokesman Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan. "We believe most of them were killed, but we don't have a body count," he said. Unfortunately, the Pakistanis do not believe than any high-value targets were among those killed. Although Pervez Musharraf signed a deal with North Waziristan to keep the army out, no such agreement exists with South Waziristan. Tribal leaders there have not agreed to Musharraf's demands, and so he has kept the...
January 16, 2007
A strange document floated out of the postwar period yesterday that documented French efforts to effectively end their national identity in the 1950s. Guy Mollet, then Prime Minister, proposed a union of Britain and France in 1956 that would have returned France to the British Crown: French prime minister Guy Mollet suggested a Franco-Anglo union to his English counterpart Anthony Eden in 1956, reports the BBC, citing newly-released documents from the British National Archives. The formerly secret government cabinet paper dated Sept. 10, 1956 reads: "When the French prime minister, Monsieur Mollet was recently in London he raised with the prime minister the possibility of a union between the United Kingdom and France." The extraordinary suggestion was turned down, however, meaning that the prospect of a new Anglo-French country would remain an intriguing historial hypothesis." The Times of London picks up the story from there: A Cabinet official recorded the...
The British Navy has joined the US in bolstering its presence in the Persian Gulf. Although the ships consist of two minehunters in support of a frigate, in reality they are there for communications -- sendind a message to Teheran: Two Royal Navy minehunters have arrived in the Gulf to reinforce a naval frigate on patrol in the area. “We are going after their [Iran’s] networks in Iraq,” Zalmay Khalilzad, the outgoing US Ambassador to Baghdad, said. The aim was to change the behaviour of the Islamic regime in Tehran, he added. ... The USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier group entered the Gulf in December. It will be joined by the USS John C. Stennis carrier group. This is the first time since the invasion of Iraq four years ago that the US has deployed two carrier strike groups in the Gulf at one time. In addition, President Bush...
Spanish Prime Minister Jose Zapatero came to office on the backlash against his predecessor for blaming the Basque separatist group ETA for the 3/11 Madrid bombings in 2004. After his election, he pulled Spain out of the Iraq coalition and then announced that he would honor the ETA cease-fire and negotiate with the Basques. However, after ETA killed two people in a bombing at the airport in Madrid, Zapatero found himself having to apologize for his naivete: "All Spaniards heard me say on December 29 that I had the conviction that things were better for us than five years ago and that in a year's time things would be even better," Mr Zapatero told a special session of the Spanish parliament. "Although it is not frequent among public leaders, I want to recognize the clear mistake I made before all Spanish citizens." Despite allegations that he had been "fooled" by...
The Orange Revolution dramatically moved Ukraine from the Russian orbit under the corrupt hand of Leonid Kuchma and his hand-picked successor Viktor Yanukovich to the Westophile government of Viktor Yushchenko on a wave of massive, peaceful protests by Ukrainians, fueled by anger from an election Yanukovich fixed. Two years later, Yanukovich has eclipsed the man who led the Orange Revolution, turning him into a figurehead with the help of Yushchenko's Orange ally: The man who led Ukraine's orange revolution two years ago has been transformed into a lame-duck president following a humiliating parliamentary vote that effectively strips him of all powers. Viktor Yushchenko, Ukraine's opposition leader turned president, no longer has the power to veto the choice of prime minister or foreign minister. ... The president lost his responsibilities after his ally-turned-rival Yulia Timoshenko decided to vote with the party of Ukraine's pro-Russian prime minister, Viktor Yanukovich. In late 2004,...
Last week I featured the monthly straw poll at GOP Bloggers, and once again CQ readers turned out in force to cast their ballots. Over 12,000 votes got cast for the January poll, and almost a third of them came from this blog -- and the results are a little surprising. Both among CQ voters and overall, Mitt Romney moved ahead of Rudy Giuliani, Newt Gingrich, and especially John McCain. The overall percentages are: Romney - 27.6% Gingrich - 24.3% Giuliani - 21.1% CQ polling shows a little different order: Romney - 31.7% Giuliani - 25.4% Gingrich - 23.2% In candidate acceptability, Romney won by a landslide among CQ readers. His rating, 63.2%, outstrips his nearest competitors by almost 10 points. In fact, only the top three candidates had positive acceptability ratings. John McCain had a -23%, but Chuck Hagel and George Pataki continue to score even worse than McCain....
Fidel Castro's medical condition continues to worsen, the Spanish newspaper El Pais reported last night, and the doctors in Cuba have been unable to resolve the problem. An infection in his intestines as a complication of his earlier surgery has the long-standing dictator on death's door -- again: Ailing Cuban leader Fidel Castro is in "very grave" condition after three failed operations and complications from an intestinal infection, a Spanish newspaper said Tuesday. The newspaper El Pais cited two unnamed sources from the Gregorio Maranon hospital in the Spanish capital of Madrid. The facility employs surgeon Jose Luis Garcia Sabrido, who flew to Cuba in December to treat the 80-year-old Castro. In a report published on its Web site, El Pais said: "A grave infection in the large intestine, at least three failed operations and various complications have left the Cuban dictator, Fidel Castro, laid up with a very grave...
If philanderers want to find a cozy hideaway for their assignations, they may want to avoid Michigan, at least for a while. Its appellate court just ruled that thanks to an overzealous prosecutor's application of the law, adultery is now a serious sexual crime (via Memeorandum): In a ruling sure to make philandering spouses squirm, Michigan's second-highest court says that anyone involved in an extramarital fling can be prosecuted for first-degree criminal sexual conduct, a felony punishable by up to life in prison. "We cannot help but question whether the Legislature actually intended the result we reach here today," Judge William Murphy wrote in November for a unanimous Court of Appeals panel, "but we are curtailed by the language of the statute from reaching any other conclusion." "Technically," he added, "any time a person engages in sexual penetration in an adulterous relationship, he or she is guilty of CSC I,"...
The continuing impact of the Democratic takeover of Congress has just gotten worse. In a little-noticed development from this weekend, Dennis Kucinich announced that he would use his position on a House government-reform subcommittee to focus on the Federal Communications Commission -- and that the Fairness Doctrine may make a comeback: Over the weekend, the National Conference for Media Reform was held in Memphis, TN, with a number of notable speakers on hand for the event. Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) made an surprise appearance at the convention to announce that he would be heading up a new House subcommittee which will focus on issues surrounding the Federal Communications Commission. The Presidential candidate said that the committee would be holding "hearings to push media reform right at the center of Washington.” The Domestic Policy Subcommittee of the House Government Reform Committee was to be officially announced this week in Washington, D.C.,...
Two sources within Iraq report that al-Qaeda has begun to flee Baghdad in advance of the American troop surge. Richard Miniter, blogging at Pajamas Media, confirms with US military intelligence a report from an insurgent press outlet quoted by Iraq the Model: Al Qaeda terrorists are fleeing Baghdad in advance of President Bush’s 21,500-man troop surge, a senior military intelligence officer told Pajamas Media today. Under orders from the al Qaeda commander in Iraq, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, fighters are streaming toward the Diyala region of Iraq. This confirms reports posted on Iraq the Model, which cited al-Sabah, a well-known mouthpiece for al Qaeda in Iraq. In speaking with Pajamas Media the military intelligence officer supplied several new details of the al Qaeda retreat. The apparent evacuation of Baghdad by al Qaeda forces comes from direct orders issued by al-Masri, the former soldier who took control of the Iraqi wing of...
Barack Obama sort of ended all the suspense this morning, by doing exactly what everyone expected, only a little sooner. Obama announced that he would create an exploratory committee as the first step towards running for President in 2008: Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, whose best-selling books and political travels generated huge pressure to run for the White House, joined a crowded Democratic field yesterday, vowing to advance "a different kind of politics" in a campaign that could make him the nation's first African American president. Obama, a state legislator just three years ago, announced that he has formed a presidential exploratory committee, accelerating his already rapid emergence in national politics and establishing him as his party's most formidable rival to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, the Democratic front-runner. Obama, 45, portrayed his youth and short tenure in Congress as an asset in a statement distributed via Web...
January 17, 2007
Michelle Malkin has returned from her embed with the US military in Baghdad and has published her first report on her experiences. It's a taste of a series of posts to come, and it underscores the frustration of the troops with both the Bush administration and the anti-war activists: Modern war in the Middle East is no longer as cut-and-dry as shooting all the bad guys and going home. We are fighting a "war of the fleas"--not just Sunni terrorists and Shiite death squads, but multiple home-grown and foreign operators, street gangs, organized crime, and freelance jihadis conducting ambushes, extrajudicial killings, sectarian attacks, vehicle bombings, and sabotage against American, coalition, and Iraqi forces. Cellphones, satellites, and the Internet have allowed the fleas to magnify their importance, disseminate insurgent propaganda instantly, and weaken political will. I came to Iraq a darkening pessimist about the war, due in large part to my...
Despite the involvement of Iran in both sides of the sectarian strife and their development of nuclear weapons, France's Jacques Chirac decided that Iran could partner with him to settle the troubles in Lebanon -- troubles that Iran has deliberately fomented. He resolved to send his diplomats to Teheran despite the sanctions that the UN had just voted to impose on the mullahcracy. It fell to his chief diplomat, Phillipe Douste-Blazy, to tell Chirac that he needed his head examined: At a time when most world powers have forged a united front against Iran because of its nuclear program, President Jacques Chirac arranged to send his foreign minister to Tehran to talk about a side issue, then abruptly canceled the visit earlier this month in embarrassing failure. Mr. Chirac’s troubles stemmed from his deep desire to help resolve the crisis in Lebanon before his term runs out in May. To...
The Philippine franchise of al-Qaeda took a heavy blow yesterday, as the government announced that it had killed one of the leaders of Abu Sayyaf. If confirmed, the terrorists will have lost their leader and chief organizer within a span of weeks: The Philippines said on Wednesday that troops had killed the top planner of the country's most deadly Islamic militant group in a clash at a rebel jungle camp in the southwest. Abu Sulaiman, one of the top five leaders of the Abu Sayyaf militant group and who is believed to have links with al Qaeda, was killed in a gunbattle on Tuesday on the island of Jolo, military chief Gen. Hermogenes Esperon told reporters. "We are confident that with the death of Sulaiman, who is actually the number one planner, most of the activities of the Abu Sayyaf will continue to go down," Esperon said. Late last month,...
One of the more amusing aspects of any presidential campaign is the people who believe they have a chance to win the nomination. This year, we already have one from each party. The Democrats have Chris Dodd, a man so non-descript that even his own constituents have trouble recognizing him. The Republicans now may have its own Don Quixote in Tom Tancredo, who announced the formation of an exploratory committee that will have to include windmills and some heavy-duty tilting: Colorado's Tom Tancredo took his first official step Tuesday toward running for president. The Republican congressman from Littleton - known for his hard-line stance on immigration - announced his plan to file paperwork for a presidential exploratory committee. He set up a website and within four hours, he said, collected about $10,000 in campaign contributions. After spending the weekend in Iowa, where the earliest presidential nominating caucus is to be...
Mullah Omar has eluded capture ever since the end of the Taliban's regime in November 2001, presumably hiding in the mountainous region along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border while conducting a war against the democratic government that replaced his bloody and barbaric rule. Now a captured Taliban spokesman has pinpointed him specifically to a compound run by the Pakistani intelligence service: Taleban leader Mullah Omar is living in Pakistan under the protection of its ISI intelligence agency, a captured Taleban spokesman has said. The spokesman, Muhammad Hanif, made the apparent confession to Afghan agents who videotaped the questioning. Mr Hanif is seen sitting in a dimly-lit room telling agents that Mullah Omar is in the city of Quetta. Correspondents confirm the voice is his. The Pakistanis are in full denial mode, but the Afghan security service has a full-press distribution effort in promoting this video. They are intent on showing that the...
Noticed a drop in prices at the gas pump of late? After approaching or even topping $3 a gallon for gasoline, the prices have steadily fallen in recent weeks; stations here in Minnesota had it at $1.89 per gallon over the weekend. The decline at the pump comes from an unexpected glut in the market, and some OPEC producers had hoped to force a round of production cuts to bolster crude prices. However, Saudi Arabia announced today that it had 3 million bbls/day of spare capacity, and it intends to start using it (via Hot Air): Prices fell in early trading after Saudi Arabia's Oil Minister, Ali al-Naimi, said his country has 3 million daily barrels of spare capacity and will push ahead with projects to expand output. Oil futures plunged yesterday after al-Naimi said he saw no need for an emergency OPEC meeting to consider further cuts in output....
UPDATE II, 3:11 PM: I'll update at the top of this post today. The FM just got out of surgery and all went well. She's in the recovery room at the moment, and will likely be there for an hour or two before going to her room. She lost very little blood and the kidney came out with no problem. I'll add more when I see her in a little while. Posting may either be very light or very heavy today, as the First Mate will be having surgery to remove the previously transplanted kidney this afternoon. It's an expected step in the road to the next transplant, as the BK viral infection in the current transplant still has not fully abated and probably never will. While the BK virus remains, she cannot have another transplant, because the virus would kill the next kidney as well. I'll have updates on...
I got home from the hospital a while ago after spending most of the day there. My son, who attends the University of Minnesota, came over after class and spent a little time with the FM and I, and he and I ate at The Orchid, a Thai/Vietnamese restaurant a block or so away. The food was delicious, although both he an I asked for a 3 on the spicy scale (1-5); next time we'll both try a 2. The FM is doing very well. They found a combination of medicines to avoid the nausea she usually feels after anaesthesia, and she is alert but very tired. She'll have to go through dialysis tomorrow and Friday, and she should be home by Sunday if all goes well. So what's next? Her donor has completed his evaluation and all appears to be in order. She will have to recover from this...
The Bush administration has apparently concluded that fighting to retain the warrantless surveillance program with a Democratic Congress would eventually be unsuccessful, and today announced that the presidential authorization for the program would not be renewed. Instead, the Department of Justice will transfer oversight responsibility to the FISA court, effectively ending the controversy over one of the most contentious counterterrorism projects adopted since 9/11: The Justice Department, easing a Bush administration policy, said Wednesday it has decided to give an independent body authority to monitor the government's controversial domestic spying program. In a letter to the leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said this authority has been given to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and that it already has approved one request for monitoring the communications of a person believed to be linked to al-Qaida or an associated terror group. The court orders approving collection of...
January 18, 2007
A senior Taliban commander finds himself in British hands today after a lightning raid on his home by SAS commandos. Without firing a shot or losing a man, the SAS plucked Mohammed Nabi from his fortified house: A team of SAS soldiers captured a key Taliban commander yesterday in a lightning raid on a heavily-fortified compound in southern Afghanistan. Without a shot being fired, the force of fewer than 30 elite soldiers, backed by Afghan troops, achieved "total surprise" and seized Mohammad Nabi in the early hours of the morning near Gereshk, in Helmand province. Nabi is believed to be a key commander in the Taliban insurgency in the neighbouring province of Kandahar. The compound, which had been under observation by Nato forces for around two weeks, was typical of the heavily-fortified homes favoured by the Pashtun tribes of southern Afghanistan, which often boast battlements and watch towers. Initially, the...
Over the last few weeks, the Iraqi government has quietly rounded up some of the senior leadership of the Mahdi Army in preparation for the tactical shift by the US military. The arrests give hope that the Iraqi government may actually use this opportunity to separate itself from the radical Shi'ites that have influenced its operations, including Moqtada al-Sadr: Facing intense pressure from the Bush administration to show progress in securing Iraq, senior Iraqi officials announced Wednesday that they had moved against the country’s most powerful Shiite militia, arresting several dozen senior members in the past few weeks. It was the first time the Shiite government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki had claimed significant action against the militia, the Mahdi Army, one of the most intractable problems facing his administration. The militia’s leader, the cleric Moktada al-Sadr, helped put Mr. Maliki in power, but pressure to crack down on...
The Washington Post reports today on the wave of anger and outrage sweeping the Arab world after the hangings of Saddam Hussein and two of his key henchment over the last three weeks. The accidental beheading, the rush to the gallows for Saddam, and his execution during Eid have gotten them pretty steamed -- and believing that executions were handled better under Saddam: Beirut's daily an-Nahar newspaper ran a caricature Tuesday of the Iraqi flag adorned with three nooses. At the center of the red, white and black banner, the outline of the coiled ropes appears similar to the word "Allah" in Arabic script. The cartoon appears under the caption "The New Iraq." That gallows humor reflected the swelling tide of Arab anger and revulsion at the Iraqi government's execution Monday of Barzan Ibrahim, who was beheaded as he was hanged, and the cellphone recordings of the taunts and gloating...
The US and North Korea have quietly conducted one-on-one talks in advance of the next six-nation meeting on Kim Jong-Il's nuclear-weapons program. The pre-meeting seems to reverse the Bush administration's position against bilateral negotiations on the issue, but the White House insists that the meetings are intended to just lay the groundwork for the wider forum: Seeking to revive stalled negotiations to end North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, the United States held “substantive” talks with North Korean diplomats here on Tuesday and Wednesday, said the chief American envoy, Christopher R. Hill. The unusual one-on-one sessions, the first to be held outside Beijing during the Bush administration, were signs of progress since negotiations broke off in December after North Korea demanded that Washington lift financial sanctions against it. “It was a substantive discussion,” Mr. Hill said in an interview on Wednesday, though he refused to give details. “The proof of the...
The Washington Post runs a story today trying to analyze the resignations of two FEC lawyers who just landed big-paying positions in the private sector. One might think the reasons for their departure are rather obvious and spelled out in dollar signs, but the Post writes this story as if it were the result of a conspiracy to choke off dissent and free speech at the FEC: The announcement yesterday that the top two lawyers for the Federal Election Commission had resigned helped spread an undercurrent of concern about the diminishing role of a once-prominent public voice on the intersection of money and politics. The stated reasons for the departures of FEC General Counsel Lawrence H. Norton and Deputy General Counsel James A. Kahl was that the two men had landed private-sector jobs at a large firm with offices in six states. Norton and Kahl, reached yesterday, said their resignations...
The BBC reports that Iran made an offer to the US in 2003 that would have given us everything we demand now, in return for normalized relations and the expulsion of a terrorist group from Iraq. Citing "a senior former official" in the State Department, a classified memo details the Iranian offer that Dick Cheney successfully argued against accepting: Tehran proposed ending support for Lebanese and Palestinian militant groups and helping to stabilise Iraq following the US-led invasion. Offers, including making its nuclear programme more transparent, were conditional on the US ending hostility. But Vice-President Dick Cheney's office rejected the plan, the official said. The offers came in a letter, seen by Newsnight, which was unsigned but which the US state department apparently believed to have been approved by the highest authorities. In return for its concessions, Tehran asked Washington to end its hostility, to end sanctions, and to disband...
The First Mate continues to improve after her nephrectomy yesterday, so much so that her doctors expect to send her home around noon tomorrow. She dialyzed today and had a blessedly uneventful run, and her pain doesn't require any substantive control. She is anxious to leave, as she always is, and sounds very chipper indeed. Unfortunately, I only know this by speaking to her on the phone. The windshield spray pump stopped working on my four-year-old Honda CRV, which may not sound like a big deal, but those who have driven in snowy areas understand how problematic that can be. I tried getting the wipers to clear the muddy moisture off my windshield on my way out of work, but it only smeared it and made it more difficult to see. I'm actually blogging from the customer Internet "cafe" at my local Honda dealership to see if they can replace...
In another indication that the Bush administration has more than just one use for the extra troops going to Iraq, US News and World Report has an exclusive on a heretofore clandestine unit tasked with dismantling Iran's web of influence in Baghdad and greater Iraq. Task Force 16, modeled on the group that eventually took out Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, has operated in Iraq for most of the past year, collecting intelligence and now starting covert operations based on their data: The U.S. military has launched a special operations task force to break up Iranian influence in Iraq, according to U.S. News sources. The special operations mission, known as Task Force 16, was created late last year to target Iranians trafficking arms and training Shiite militia forces. The operation is modeled on Task Force 15, a clandestine cadre of Navy SEALs, Army Delta Force soldiers, and CIA operatives with a mission...
The new operation to clean up Baghdad seems to have taken the Mahdi Army by surprise. Mahdi Army leaders tell the AP that even in their Sadr City base they have begun to feel under siege, hiding their uniforms and ending operations to avoid detection by the increasing American forces: Mahdi Army fighters said Thursday they were under siege in their Sadr City stronghold as U.S. and Iraqi troops killed or seized key commanders in pinpoint nighttime raids. Two commanders of the Shiite militia said Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has stopped protecting the group under pressure from Washington and threats from Sunni Muslim Arab governments. The two commanders' account of a growing siege mentality inside the organization could represent a tactical and propaganda feint, but there was mounting evidence the militia was increasingly off balance and had ordered its gunmen to melt back into the population. To avoid capture, commanders...
The 18 men arrested in Toronto this summer intended to shelter two suspected Islamist terrorists from the United States and start a resistance in northern Ontario based on the Chechnyan uprising. Canada's National Post interviewed the mole who infiltrated the group and discovered the extent of their plans against their own nation (via Newsbeat1): A group of young Toronto men were planning to harbour two Americans accused of terrorist activity and protect them by setting up an armed "Chechnya style resistance" in northern Ontario against law enforcement officials, a police informant who infiltrated the alleged local extremist cell said in a CBC news program. Mubin Shaikh, a former army cadet and paid police mole, revealed last night on The Fifth Estate that he helped look for a safe house in Opasatika, Ont. for two Atlanta men who authorities say were planning a terrorist attack in the United States. The U.S....
January 19, 2007
No, this isn't another post about Saddam Hussein. Last night, I decided to relax and watch an old movie that happened to be on at just the right time, Clint Eastwood's Hang 'Em High. This was Eastwood's first film at his Malpaso production company, an attempt to create an American "spaghetti western" of the kind that Sergio Leone had made so successfully. While it's easy to dismiss Eastwood's early career in Westerns as cartoonish and overly stylized, Hang 'Em High deserves more consideration as an early Eastwood masterpiece. It starts off as a simple vengeance story. Eastwood, as Jed Cooper, gets lynched by mistake when a party of vigilantes mistakes him for a criminal. After being rescued, he is determined to find the men responsible for his near hanging and becomes a lawman to do it legally. However, he wants them brought to justice, which means the court of Judge...
The new offensive against Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army continues to creep ever closer to the center of the problem. This morning, US and Iraqi troops arrested his media director and killed the man guarding him, effectively removing Sadr's propagandist from the fight: U.S. and Iraqi forces arrested one of Muqtada al-Sadr's top aides Friday in Baghdad, his office said, as pressure increases on the radical Shiite cleric's militia ahead of a planned security sweep aimed at stemming the sectarian violence ransacking the capital. Sheik Abdul-Hadi al-Darraji, al-Sadr's media director in Baghdad, was captured Friday and his personal guard was killed, according to another senior al-Sadr aide. "We strongly condemn this cowardly act," Sheik Abdul-Zahra al-Suweiadi said. The U.S. military said special Iraqi army forces operating with coalition advisers captured a high-level, illegal armed group leader in Baladiyat, but it did not identify the detainee. It said two other...
North Korea announced that they and the US had reached "a certain agreement" in the lower-level talks between American negotiator Christopher Hill and their envoy, Kim Kye-gwan in Berlin. During the talks, the Kim Jong-Il regime asked what they would get in return for verifiably shutting down their nuclear reactor, and although the answer did not get made public, it apparently pleased the North Koreans: North Korea has expressed interest in a U.S.-backed proposal that it suspend its nuclear program and allow U.N. inspectors to verify the suspension as an initial step toward dismantling its nuclear capabilities, diplomats said yesterday. During three days of talks in Berlin that ended yesterday, North Korea's chief negotiator, Kim Gye-gwan, asked his U.S. counterpart, Christopher R. Hill, what the United States would be willing to do if the North turned off its nuclear reactor. A U.S. response, if any, was not made public. North...
Russia and China have pushed for a ban on weapons in space for the past few years, but the Bush administration has resisted it while the US develops its missile shield program. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US alone retained the ready capability of attacking and destroying satellites in orbit, and no one had actually attempted it in 20 years. That period came to an end yesterday, when the Chinese successfully hit and destroyed one of their older weather satellites, demonstrating clearly that they could do the same to our critical military reconnaissance satellites: China successfully carried out its first test of an antisatellite weapon last week, signaling its resolve to play a major role in military space activities and bringing expressions of concern from Washington and other capitals, the Bush administration said yesterday. Only two nations — the Soviet Union and the United States — have...
The New York Sun reports that some Clinton administration officials have decided to seek employment in other campaigns rather than join their old bosses. While Hillary's campaign says this reflects prior ties to the other candidates, one has to wonder what kind of time frame predates 1993: One of the biggest advantages Senator Clinton enjoys as she launches her presidential bid is the vast web of politically active Democrats who worked in the federal government under her husband, President Clinton. But not everyone who served during the Clinton years is promoting a reprise. A handful of top Clinton administration officials and a smattering of lower-ranking ones have taken up with Mrs. Clinton's rivals for the Democratic nomination. Most cite pre-existing personal or professional loyalties. In some instances, however, the Democratic activists seem to have concluded that they will have more of an impact in the leaner ranks of a rival...
First Amendment issues remain foremost among my concerns, both as a blogger and as an American citizen. So when Congress appears to take action to infringe on my rights to self-expression, I take notice: The following is a statement by Richard A. Viguerie, Chairman of GrassrootsFreedom.com, regarding legislation currently being considered by Congress to regulate grassroots communications: "In what sounds like a comedy sketch from Jon Stewart's Daily Show, but isn't, the U. S. Senate would impose criminal penalties, even jail time, on grassroots causes and citizens who criticize Congress. "Section 220 of S. 1, the lobbying reform bill currently before the Senate, would require grassroots causes, even bloggers, who communicate to 500 or more members of the public on policy matters, to register and report quarterly to Congress the same as the big K Street lobbyists. Section 220 would amend existing lobbying reporting law by creating the most expansive...
I took half a day off from work today to take the First Mate home from the hospital and then get her to her regularly scheduled dialysis treatment. When I dropped her off inside the center, she teased me about what I would do with the unexpected few hours of free time, saying that she figured I'd spend the time blogging, "as usual". I told her that I might take the opportunity to do something different, perhaps even take in a movie. I should have stuck with the FM's suggestion. ** SPOILERS ** The movie that best fit my free time was one that had flown under my radar, a grim apocalyptic movie called Children of Men by Alfonso Cuarón. The film features a fine cast, mostly British except for Julianne Moore as the leader of a terrorist group known as the Fishes, and she doesn't stick around too long....
January 20, 2007
The Northern Alliance Radio Network will be on the air today, with our six-hour-long broadcast schedule starting at 11 am CT. The first two hours features Power Line's John Hinderaker and Chad and Brian from Fraters Libertas. Mitch and I hit the airwaves for the second shift from 1-3 pm CT, and King Banaian and Michael Broadkorb have The Final Word from 3-5. If you're in the Twin Cities, you can hear us on AM 1280 The Patriot, or on the station's Internet stream if you're outside of the broadcast area. Today Mitch and I welcome D.J. Tice of the Star Tribune during our second hour. We'll certainly want to talk with him about the recent sale and what that means for the dominant newspaper in the Upper Midwest. We'll also cover the week's events, including the effort by Dennis Kucinich to resurrect the Fairness Doctrine, and what that will...
The sorry spectacle of the Mike Nifong prosecution of three Duke lacrosse players for sexual assault despite the repeatedly changing story of the accuser and the utter lack of physical evidence has captured the nation's attention for the past several months. One of the secondary issues in the case involves Duke University's abandonment of its students, suspending them after Nifong filed the charges without any consideration to the possibility of their innocence. Duke reversed itself earlier this month, allowing the three students to resume normal actvities at the university, after Nifong's prosecutorial misconduct became too clear to allow Duke's betrayal to stand. Even before that reversal, Duke had not completely washed its hands of the lacrosse players charged in the case. As CQ reader azbookrat discovered, Duke hs no compunction about using them and the case as the subject of a women's studies course in the upcoming semester. Here's the...
For those who love the music of the 1960s, especially the folk-influenced rock that defined the era, the departure of Denny Doherty at 66 is a tough blow. Doherty was a member of the seminal group The Mamas And The Papas, whose brief tenure produced some of the era's most brilliant music: Denny Doherty, one-quarter of the 1960s folk-rock group the Mamas and the Papas, known for their soaring harmony on hits like "California Dreamin'" and "Monday, Monday," died Friday at 66. His sister Frances Arnold said the singer-songwriter died at his home in Mississauga, a city just west of Toronto, after a short illness. He had suffered kidney problems following surgery last month and had been put on dialysis, Arnold said. The group burst on the national scene in 1966 with the top 10 smash "California Dreamin'." The Mamas and the Papas broke new ground by having women and...
In what has to be one of the most anticlimatic campaign announcements since Ronald Reagan in 1979, Hillary Clinton officially announced her candidacy for the 2008 Presidential nomination. The official notice came as a posting on her website: Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton embarked on a widely anticipated campaign for the White House on Saturday, a former first lady intent on becoming the first female president. "I'm in and I'm in to win," she said on her Web site. Clinton's announcement, days after Sen. Barack Obama shook up the contest race with his bid to become the first black president, establishes the most diverse political field ever. Clinton is considered the front-runner, with Obama and 2004 vice presidential nominee John Edwards top contenders. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who would be the first Hispanic president, intends to announce his plans on Sunday. "You know after six years of George Bush,...
The Venezuelan national assembly has followed in the footsteps of the German Reichstag in the 1930s in voting itself into irrelevancy. It gave President Hugo Chavez dictatorial powers, which he says he will use in the short term to nationalize vast swaths of the nation's industry and eliminate any term limits for his reign: Venezuela's National Assembly has given initial approval to a bill granting the president the power to bypass congress and rule by decree for 18 months. President Hugo Chavez says he wants "revolutionary laws" to enact sweeping political, economic and social changes. He has said he wants to nationalise key sectors of the economy and scrap limits on the terms a president can serve. Mr Chavez began his third term in office last week after a landslide election victory in December. The bill allowing him to enact laws by decree is expected to win final approval easily...
California will soon debate whether to make spanking a child of less than 4 years of age a crime punishable by prison time. A bill in the state assembly intends to take the decision for disciplining their children out of the hands of parents, and the Governator says he may well sign it: California parents could face jail and a fine for spanking their young children under legislation a state lawmaker has promised to introduce next week. Democratic Assemblywoman Sally Lieber said such a law is needed because spanking victimizes helpless children and breeds violence in society. "I think it's pretty hard to argue you need to beat a child," Lieber said. "Is it OK to whip a 1-year-old or a 6-month-old or a newborn?" Lieber said her proposal would make spanking, hitting and slapping a child under 4 years old a misdemeanor. Adults could face up to a year...