April 1, 2007
I have met Matthew Dowd, Bush's chief electoral strategist, on two occasions. The first time we met came at the Republican National Convention, when he briefed the bloggers on the first day, talking about campaign strategies and how the GOP would eventually prevail over John Kerry. After that, we met briefly during the Alito hearings, when the Senate Republican Caucus invited bloggers to cover that from within the Hart building. He has always struck me as a straight shooter and a reasonable man, someone whose loyalty to the Bush administration rested on rational rather than emotional bases. For that reason, the New York Times article on his disaffection both surprised and disappointed me (via TMV): A top strategist for the Texas Democrats who was disappointed by the Bill Clinton years, Mr. Dowd was impressed by the pledge of Mr. Bush, then governor of Texas, to bring a spirit of cooperation...
The European Union declined last night to provide any substantial support to Britain in its standoff with Iran over the captured sailors and Marines. While the European foreign ministers called for Iran to release its captives, they refused to offer any sanctions on the Iranians: European foreign ministers failed last night to back Britain in a threat to freeze the €14 billion trade in exports to Iran, as the hostage crisis descended into a propaganda circus. Tony Blair could only issue a new statement of disgust as Iran tormented him with another sailor’s video confession and a fresh letter from the young mother detainee. ... EU foreign ministers meeting in Germany called for the sailors to be freed but ruled out any tightening of lucrative export credit rules. The EU is Iran’s biggest trading partner. British officials are understood to have taken soundings on economic sanctions before the meeting but...
The Iraqi government will start relocating Arabs from Kirkuk, where Saddam Hussein put them in an effort to dilute Kurdish claims to the city. The move could create a flash of ethnic violence, as the provenance of the oil-rich area has implications for Kurdish autonomy and the unity of Iraq as a nation: The Iraqi government will soon begin relocating Arabs who were moved to Kirkuk under an edict by Saddam Hussein to force Kurds out of the disputed northern city, officials said Saturday. The controversial step for the oil-rich city could help determine whether it becomes part of an autonomous Kurdish region, but critics warned that it would stoke sectarian tensions. Iraq's cabinet on Thursday endorsed a committee's recent recommendation to compensate eligible Arabs who voluntarily leave the city, said Sadiq al-Rikabi, a political adviser to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Those who choose to move will receive about $15,000...
An internal audit has discovered that twenty computers have disappeared from a critical counterintelligence agency tasked with protecting America's nuclear secrets. Fourteen of the computers contained classified material, marking yet another in a string of embarrassments for the Department of Energy: The office in charge of protecting American technical secrets about nuclear weapons from foreign spies is missing 20 desktop computers, at least 14 of which have been used for classified information, the Energy Department inspector general reported on Friday. This is the 13th time in a little over four years that an audit has found that the department, whose national laboratories and factories do most of the work in designing and building nuclear warheads, has lost control over computers used in working on the bombs. Aside from the computers it cannot find, the department is also using computers not listed in its inventory, and one computer listed as destroyed...
Tony Blair had better dust off his study material about the Jimmy Carter presidency. It looks like the Iranians have begun another embassy standoff: About 200 students threw rocks and firecrackers at the British Embassy on Sunday, calling for the expulsion of the country's ambassador because of the standoff over Iran's capture of 15 British sailors and marines. Several dozen policemen prevented the protesters from entering the embassy compound, although a few briefly scaled a fence outside the compound's walls before being pushed back, according to an Associated Press reporter at the scene. The protesters chanted "Death to Britain" and "Death to America" as they hurled stones into the courtyard of the embassy. They also demanded that the Iranian government expel the British ambassador and close down the embassy, calling it a "den of spies." The British say that the police presence has kept the compound secure, but that supposedly...
Three House Republicans paid a visit to Bashar Assad today to open up their own diplomatic channels. strengthening Syria's hand against the US and providing cover for Nancy Pelosi's attempt to do the same: U.S. House members meeting with President Bashar Assad Sunday said they believed there was an opportunity for dialogue with the Syrian leadership. The U.S. House members, who included Virginia Republican Frank Wolf, Pennsylvania Republican Joe Pitts and Alabama Republican Robert Aderholt, also said they had raised with Syrian officials the issue of stopping the alleged flow of foreign fighters from Syria to Iraq. In a statement issued by the U.S. Embassy in Damascus, the congressmen said they had talked about "ending support for Hezbollah and Hamas, recognizing Israel's right to exist in peace and security, and ceasing interference in Lebanon." "We came because we believe there is an opportunity for dialogue," the statement said. "We are...
Add another entrant to the 2008 Republican Presidential Sweepstakes, and another Thompson. Former Wisconsin governor Tommy Thompson has entered the primary race, declaring himself the "reliable conservative" in a race that has seen a few candidates claim that mantle: Former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson on Sunday joined the crowded field of Republicans running for the White House in 2008 and proclaimed himself the "reliable conservative" in the race. Thompson, who was health and human services secretary during President Bush's first term, also said he is the only GOP candidate who has helped assemble both a state and federal budget. Since announcing last year he was forming a presidential exploratory committee to raise money and gauge support, Thompson has lagged behind better-known rivals. Thompson, 65, has focused his strategy on Iowa, which holds the nation's first caucuses for presidential nominees. He has made weekly visits to the state and sought to...
Barack Obama made clear that Senate Democrats will wind up voting for an Iraq supplemental without the mandatory timetables for withdrawal. Saying that the Democrats would not "play chicken" with the troops, he told the AP in Iowa that the entire exercise was designed to pressure Bush into changing policy: If President Bush vetoes an Iraq war spending bill as promised, Congress quickly will provide the money without the withdrawal timeline the White House objects to because no lawmaker "wants to play chicken with our troops," Sen. Barack Obama said Sunday. "My expectation is that we will continue to try to ratchet up the pressure on the president to change course," the Democratic presidential candidate said in an interview with The Associated Press. "I don't think that we will see a majority of the Senate vote to cut off funding at this stage." ... Given that Bush is determined to...
The First Mate has made remarkable progress in the last 24 hours. Yesterday, she had little energy and felt exhausted, but today she was a bundle of energy. It's a good thing, too, because the donor and his family came down from the floor above hers to spend some time with us. The Little Admiral finally got to visit her grandma, and the FM was delighted with the company. Today they removed her NG tube, which allowed her to start on a liquid diet. She tolerated that well, so we're hoping she will move to solid food tomorrow. She got out of bed and sat up in a chair for part of the morning, and tomorrow will begin walking. Her creatinine levels had been over 10 before the surgery, which is very bad. Yesterday they were down to 4, and today it came in at 2.2. We're hoping for a...
April 2, 2007
One of the fired US Attorneys got ousted for protesting an FBI policy that forbids taping interrogations of suspects in most criminal investigations. According to the New York Times, Paul K. Charlton tried to demand taped interviews before filing criminal charges in his district in order to press the agency to change its policy. Instead, after a couple of high-profile plea bargains, Charlton found himself out the door: Paul K. Charlton, the United States attorney in Arizona, was ousted after spending months protesting a Federal Bureau of Investigation policy that, for practical purposes, forbids the taping of almost all confessions, in stark contrast to the practice of many local law enforcement agencies in Arizona and other locations across the country. Mr. Charlton blamed the F.B.I. policy for the resulting plea bargain in the Navajo reservation assault case, as well as the acquittal of a defendant in a child sexual abuse...
The invaluable Michael Barone takes a look at the latest polling and sees trouble for the Republicans in 2008. Over the last five years, party identification in the US has shifted in favor of the Democrats. Part of it, Barone says, comes from a lack of demonstrated competence on the part of the administration, which erodes one of the GOP's key arguments for Republican rule. Will this allow the Democrats to sweep the 2008 elections? Barone looks at a similar situation in Britain and thinks not: In the early 1990s, Britain's Conservatives were regarded as nasty but competent. Then, Britain was forced to devalue its currency. Mortgage payments shot up, and the Conservatives' reputation for competence vanished. The result: Tony Blair's Labor Party won huge victories in 1997, 2001 and 2005. The scenario here would be for Democrats to enlarge their congressional majorities and sweep to a 40-state presidential victory...
The case of William Jefferson continues, although the media has not given it much attention of late. The Louisiana Congressman who hid $90,000 in his freezer until an FBI raid discovered it, still fights the subsequent raid on his House offices as unconstitutional. In this effort, Jefferson has attracted a number of strange bedfellows: Embattled Rep. William J. Jefferson (D-La.), the target of a two-year public-corruption probe, is finding himself with strange bedfellows these days. Former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), former House minority leader Robert Michel (R-Ill.) and Scott Palmer, former chief of staff for Rep. J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), are among those who have filed friend-of-the-court briefs in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, backing Jefferson's argument that the controversial FBI raid on his office last May was unconstitutional. "These former leaders of the House had concerns about the integrity and independence of the institution,...
Now that they have settled into their offices, the Democrats now want to focus even more on their main enemy. They plan to challenge the Bush administration on a host of issues, most of which have direct correlation to key special interest groups that form their base: Even as their confrontation with President Bush over Iraq escalates, emboldened congressional Democrats are challenging the White House on a range of issues -- such as unionization of airport security workers and the loosening of presidential secrecy orders -- with even more dramatic showdowns coming soon. For his part, Bush, who also finds himself under assault for the firing of eight U.S. attorneys, the conduct of the Iraq war and alleged abuses in government surveillance by the FBI, is holding firm. Though he has vetoed only one piece of legislation since taking office, he has vowed to veto 16 bills that have passed...
Missouri took the first steps among the states to divest their portfolios of any foreign corporations doing business with Iran, a move they started last year. Now eight other states have begun to follow suit, and the latest state may make the biggest impact of all. California has just passed legislation that would transfer billions of dollars away from foreign investments: It is the kind of political movement that fits handily on a bumper sticker: Divest Iran. Over the past year, one state, Missouri, has opted to do just that, while several others, including New Jersey, have also begun to write or to consider legislation to divest. But the nascent movement took on decidedly more weight last week with the preliminary success of a bill in the California Legislature. The measure would force two of the nation’s largest pension funds — devoted to the state’s public employees and its teachers,...
Hillary Clinton has announced the results of her fund-raising efforts for the first quarter of 2007, and it smashes the old record for contributions in the first quarter of a year prior to an election. Of course, many candidates will be able to say that this year due to the unprecedented early start of the 2008 primaries, but Hillary did pull in an impressive amount: Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination said Sunday that it had raised $26 million during the first quarter of this year, about three times as much as the previous record at this stage of a presidential race. Officials from several other Democratic primary campaigns voluntarily announced their fund-raising totals as well, just hours after the quarter closed at midnight on Saturday night. Former Senator John Edwards raised over $14 million, about twice what he raised in the same quarter for his...
In a surprising turn, the biggest fundraiser in the Republican primary race turns out to be Mitt Romney. Earlier today, the Romney campaign announced that they had raised $23 million in the first quarter of 2007, far outstripping frontrunner Rudy Giuliani, who didn't get his money machine into full swing until last month: Republican Mitt Romney reported raising $23 million for his presidential campaign during the first three months of the year, shaking up the GOP field and rivaling the total reported a day earlier by Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton. Meanwhile, the Republican front-runner in the polls, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, said his donations totaled $15 million — including more than $10 million raised during March alone. Both Republican numbers blew away past party presidential fundraising standards, while Romney's figure put the former Massachusetts governor in competition with Clinton, the Democratic front-runner. The New York senator on Sunday...
Stephen Taylor, one of my blogger pals from our northern neighbor, has covered the Canadian parliament for quite a while, and has built a well-deserved reputation for professionalism in Canada. He requested and received access to several secure areas of Parliament Hill in order to interview various MPs from the Speaker of the House. While exercising that access by speaking with and taking photographs of his subjects, members of the Canadian press decided that they had had enough of an upstart blogger -- and had him removed, passes and all: I left the hallway outside of the foyer and walked over to the railway room to interview some 'stakeholders' of the budget. This went off without incident and during that time, I cheerfully chatted with some reporters that were in the same room. Having completed my interviews with the stakeholders, I left and headed on over to the Rotunda where...
It seems that those darned Iranians just keep surprising people with their plucky can-do attitude. For years, Iran managed to fool everyone into thinking that it had no nuclear program at all. Once we discovered that those rascals had been burning the midnight oil to study up on applied nuclear physics, we figured that they could never master the mechanics. Even after Pakistan extended a helping hand by selling them prototype centifuges and weapons designs, Informed Experts told us to relax -- the Iranians would need 5-10 years before they could enrich enough uranium to actually build the bombs. Well, those enterprising little devils have managed to surprise us again! Iran has more than tripled its ability to produce enriched uranium in the last three months, adding some 1,000 centrifuges which are used to separate radioactive particles from the raw material. The development means Iran could have enough material for...
April 3, 2007
ABC News interviewed Hall of Fame baseball player Dave Winfield on an intriguing question: what has happened to black baseball players? After Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier, African-American children wanted to follow in his cleat steps, and many of them did. As ABC and Winfield note and the latter laments, that has not been the case for decades now. After peaking at 27% in 1974, the percentage of blacks among major-league ballplayers has fallen to a paltry 9%. So what happened? The children have moved to football and basketball, but ABC and Winfield miss one of the most important reasons why: Baseball is no longer the sport of choice for America's children. Gone are the days of sandlot pickup games and summer afternoons filled with playing catch and home run derbies. Kids — especially in urban areas — today dream of dunking like Shaquille O'Neal, throwing the winning touchdown...
For those who have been waiting for the Palestinians to stop supporting terrorism and to accept a two-state solution, good news will come your way. The Palestinian Authority's foreign minister told French newspaper Le Monde that Hamas is ready to change: Hamas is undergoing a massive transformation and is "ready to change," the Palestinian Authority foreign minister said in an interview published in a French newspaper Monday. Ziad Abu Amr, on a three-day visit to France, met Monday with French counterpart Philippe Douste-Blazy and was holding talks Tuesday with Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin. ... Abu Amr, an independent, said he thought Hamas was willing to change its ideology in order to remain a political player. "I must admit I'm both surprised and impressed with the speed and the magnitude of Hamas's transformation," he is quoted as saying. He cited Hamas's willingness to accept a future Palestinian state contained within...
Nouriya al-Sabeeh became the second female minister in Kuwait history, after Maasuma al-Mubarak's appointment followed the May 2005 grant of full political rights to women. Today al-Sabeeh became the first to forgo a head cover, causing consternation among the men of Kuwait's parliament: Kuwait’s new Education Minister Nouriya Al-Sabeeh took the oath in Parliament yesterday amid protests by some lawmakers that she was not wearing a head cover or hijab. As Sabeeh began reading the oath, MP Daifallah Buramia, supported by a few others, shouted out that she should not be sworn in unless she complied with Islamic regulations. “She should not be allowed to take the oath without complying with Sharia regulations,” Buramia shouted as Speaker Jassem Al-Khorafi refused to allow him access to the microphone. ... Sabeeh appeared unbothered as she completed taking the oath to applause from some 50 women supporters in the public gallery, most of...
The key state in the last two presidential elections has been Florida, and pollsters have focused more attention on the Sunshine State the last few years to test the electoral mettle of candidates declared and presumed. Quinnipiac takes the latest look at Florida's political temperature, and it finds Rudy running hot: Former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani has opened double-digit leads over top 2008 Democratic presidential contenders in Florida, beating either New York Sen. Hillary Clinton or former Sen. John Edwards 50 - 40 percent, and topping Illinois Sen. Barack Obama 52 - 36 percent, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today. This compares to a 47 - 42 percent Giuliani lead over Sen. Clinton in a March 7 survey by the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University. ... In this latest survey, Giuliani leads the Republican pack with 35 percent, followed by Arizona Sen. John McCain with 15 percent, former...
Barack Obama assured America that the Democrats would fund the troops in Iraq if the White House vetoed the current supplemental two days ago. Speaking with the AP in Iowa, he said that the Democrats would not "play chicken" with the troops and would drop the mandatory timetables in the next supplemental. Apparently Obama forgot to tell Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid about this strategy, because he announced that a veto would bring a defunding bill to the floor: Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid yesterday endorsed the Senate's toughest antiwar bill yet, a bid to cut off funding within a year, sending a clear signal to President Bush that the Iraq debate will continue in Congress regardless of whether he carries through on his veto threats. Reid (Nev.) announced that he had teamed up with Sen. Russell Feingold (Wis.), one of the Democrats' strongest war critics, on legislation to...
This blog wrote extensively about the Orange Revolution in late 2004 and early 2005, which propelled pro-Western Viktor Yushschenko to power after a sham election had denied him his rightful place as Ukraine's leader. At the time, the reformers held all the momentum, and the Muscophiles led by Viktor Yanukovich found themselves in political retreat. However, two years later, disunity and betrayal have plagued the reformers, and now Yanukovich is the one banging on the doors of the Ukrainian parliament: Thousands of Ukrainian protesters streamed into the capital Tuesday in the most serious confrontation between the prime minister and the president since the two men faced off during the Orange Revolution. Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych's supporters set up a tent camp outside the parliament, presenting a scene not unlike the 2004 street demonstrations that propelled Viktor Yushchenko to the presidency — and cost Yanukovych the office. The president's supporters responded...
The United Nations faces another embarrassing scandal, as the New York Sun's Benny Avni reports today. Despite its earlier denials, UN officials not only knew about North Korea's counterfeiting operation -- it helped Pyongyang hide the evidence in Turtle Bay safes: As federal investigators examine how the leading U.N. agency in North Korea illegally kept 35 counterfeit American $100 bills in its possession for 12 years, documents indicate that more officials were aware of the existence of the fake currency — and earlier — than the agency has reported. Spokesmen for the United Nations Development Program have said top officials at the agency's New York headquarters learned in February that their safe in Pyongyang contained the counterfeit bills and immediately reported it to American authorities. But several documents shown recently to The New York Sun indicate that higher-ups knew much earlier that the safe held counterfeit money. ... One "safe...
Jonathan Singer at MyDD published an interview with John Kerry today that has sent ripples through the blogosphere. In the interview, Kerry claimed that John McCain approached him about being Kerry's running mate in the 2004 election, contrary to a number of published reports at the time: Jonathan Singer: There's a story in The Hill, I think on Tuesday, by Bob Cusack on the front page of the paper talking about how John McCain's people -- John Weaver -- had approached Tom Daschle and a New York Congressman, I don't remember his name, about switching parties. And I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about what your discussions were with him in 2004, how far it went, who approached whom... if there was any "there" there. John Kerry: I don't know all the details of it. I know that Tom, from a conversation with him, was in...
The First Mate has returned home this evening after her kidney transplant, about two days earlier than I expected. She has done so well that the doctors had nothing more to add to her therapy at the hospital, and told us she could recuperate better at home. For anyone who has spent any time in a hospital, this is not hard to imagine. She's tired and weak, but much healthier than any time in the past year. She'll rest at home but may be well enough for a family dinner on Easter. We have a lot of work to do to make sure she stays healthy, but it's a lot more satisfying than the efforts we had to make before to just keep her from getting worse. She wants to thank everyone for their prayers and good wishes. For that matter, so do I....
April 4, 2007
John McCain took a lot heat this week for asserting that the security situation has improved since the beginning of the surge. Michael Ware at CNN especially ridiculed his comments, and scenes of McCain touring Baghdad with a heavy security detail brough more derision. However, Terry McCarthy at ABC News reports that McCain may have been correct after all: CHARLIE GIBSON: Our man in Baghdad, Terry McCarthy, noticed that the troop surge is having a large and positive effect. TERRY MCCARTHY: It's been about seven weeks since the US troop surge into Baghdad began, and so far about half of the 30,000 troops have arrived. ... The locals told us that things are getting better. Children's playgrounds are filling up, shopping streets are busier, and people have time to drink a cup of tea, or eat an ice cream. McCarthy shows a couple of unfortunately familiar scenes of attacks and...
Michael Chertoff tells the London Telegraph that the US and the West has to do more to protect themselves from "clean-skin" terrorists -- those born in the West who become disaffected enough to align themselves with radical jihadists. He also insists that the US has "every right" to toughen its visa policies, a move that has been unpopular in Europe: In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Michael Chertoff, who arrives in Britain tomorrow for talks with John Reid, the Home Secretary, said the US was determined to build extra defences against so-called "clean skin" terrorists from Europe. "We need to build layers of protection, and I don't think we totally want to rely upon the fact that a foreign government is going to know that one of their citizens is suspicious and is going to be coming here," he said. Mr Chertoff insisted that the US required additional information,...
Well, talk about making lemonade out of lemons. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has announced a "pardon" for the 15 British sailors and Marines just a few moments ago, and promises to have them flown out of Iran within the next couple of hours: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says Iran will pardon and set free 15 British sailors and marines being held in Iranian custody. "I declare that the people of Iran and the government of Iran -- in full power to place on trial the military people -- to give amnesty and pardon to these 15 people and I announce their freedom and their return to the people of Britain," Ahmadinejad told a news conference. He said the Britons would be taken to the airport after the news conference. The action was a goodwill gesture for the Iranian new year which began last week, he said. A spokesperson for British Prime Minister...
I had to read Ronald Brownstein twice today to make sure the Los Angeles Times had not started a new satire section. The Times' political analyst writes an entire column decrying the lack of intimacy in the 2008 Presidential primary race, and blames ... well, everybody: And yet the size, scope and speed of the 2008 race are transforming the process of picking the president in discouraging ways. Intimate events aren't extinct; Democratic contender Barack Obama, who has drawn the largest crowds, heard impassioned and sometimes wrenching pleas for a single-payer healthcare system at a forum limited to 100 people in Portsmouth on Tuesday afternoon. But even in Iowa and New Hampshire, the traditional citadels of person-to-person politics, such opportunities for close encounters with a candidate are diminishing. Just as important, the top candidates are losing the chance to spend quiet time listening to the problems and concerns of voters...
In a strange version of Newspeak, the Penn State College of Communications has transformed the ombudsman role into that of media critic, and awarded Byron Calame its Bart Richards award. Calame made headlines when he reported that his own bosses refused to speak to him about the paper's role in blowing a national-security program designed to intercept communications between terrorists abroad and potential sleeper cells in the US, which won him the award: The Bart Richards Award, presented annually by the College of Communications at Penn State, recognizes outstanding contributions to print and broadcast journalism through responsible analysis or critical evaluation. The award is intended to recognize constructively critical articles, books and electronic media reports; academic and other research; and reports by media ombudsmen and journalism watchdog groups. This year’s award honors work produced during the 2006 calendar year. It will be presented Thursday, May 24, at the National Press...
Tom Tancredo announced his intention to run for President this week, which initiated the question of credibility. After all, Tancredo is mostly known for his hard-line views on illegal immigration and his threat to bomb Mecca, and most candidacies of sitting Congressmen have amounted to little more than vanity tours. Tancredo appears to have answered that in an interview with Hugh Hewitt and his reaction afterwards: Of over 25 radio programs that Tancredo was on yesterday, it was Hugh Hewitt Show that had the chance to illuminate an issue that millions of Americans support us on, but instead he chose to educate Tancredo about the merits of supporting an illegal alien amnesty bill. After talking with Congressman Tancredo he told me his response to Hewitt's show: "Why would we come back on his show? I know it makes good radio to be engaged in an hour for a yelling match...
As some of you have probably surmised, I've stayed home to take care of the First Mate today. I expected her to come home later in the week, when the Admiral Emeritus and his wife will be here for a week to help us out. Unfortunately, I didn't get anyone committed to being here while she's recuperating today and tomorrow, so I'm working from home the next couple of days in the meantime. Of course, this is great preparation for April 16th, when I start my new job as Political Director for Blog Talk Radio. More announcements will be coming about a new, daily slot for CQ Radio, as well as other exciting developments. As you can see, I'm hard at work acclimating myself to the rigors of the job: Actually, I am multitasking here. The left-most laptop is from my current job, for which I'm running some analytical databases...
Barack Obama has raised $25 million for his presidential bid, coming in only a million behind Hillary Clinton's record-breaking performance. What makes it even more impressive is the number of donors who contributed to the total: Sen. Barack Obama raised at least $25 million for his presidential campaign in the first quarter of the year, putting him just shy of Sen. Hillary Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner, who made a splash with her announcement Sunday that she had drawn a record-breaking $26 million. Obama (D-Ill.) appears to have surpassed Clinton in several ways: He raised $6.9 million through donations over the Internet, more than the $4.2 million than Clinton (N.Y.) raised online. He reported donations from 100,000 people, double the 50,000 people who gave to Clinton. And of Obama's overall receipts, $23.5 million is eligible for use in the primary contests. Clinton officials have declined to disclose how much of her...
One of the more annoying tendencies of modern culture is to elevate euphemisms to daily usage in order to diminish the unpleasant. Problems became "issues", and "issues" became "opportunities", and so on. The Washington Post's Jonathan Weisman introduces a new euphemism to help us feel better about pork-barrel spending, while noting its universality. He calls them "unrelated items": To President Bush, they are "pork-barrel projects completely unrelated to the war," items in the House and Senate war-spending bills such as peanut storage facilities and aid to spinach farmers that insult the seriousness of the conflict and exist only to buy votes. But such spending has been part of Iraq funding bills since the war began, sometimes inserted by the president himself, sometimes added by lawmakers with bipartisan aplomb. A few of the items may have weighed on the votes for spending bills that have now topped half a trillion dollars,...
The Iranians apparently caught everyone by surprise when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad unexpectedly 'pardoned' the 15 British sailors and Marines they captured in Iraq waters two weeks ago. The Times of London reports that the sudden concession by the mullahcracy springs from a victory of pragmatist factions over hardliners, and that the Iranians saw no benefit from the further isolation a prolonged battle over the detainees would bring: The extremists wanted to put the British on trial or at least hold them as a bargaining chip for the release of five Iranian officials arrested by US forces in Iraq in January who are still in custody. The more moderate elements advised the opposite. Iran is already reeling from sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council and in all likelihood faces further measures this year if it is does not halt its controversial nuclear programme. The British might not have been in...
What a shame; Rudy Giuliani had been doing so well in convincing conservatives that he could represent them even while differing on social policy. He had advanced the argument that he would appoint strict constructionist judges to the federal bench, relying on textual references for Constitutional debates rather than "living document" notions that have driven conservatives up the wall. All of that work appears to have flown out the window with this CNN interview today: Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani told CNN Wednesday he supports public funding for some abortions, a position he advocated as mayor and one that will likely put the GOP presidential candidate at odds with social conservatives in his party. "Ultimately, it's a constitutional right, and therefore if it's a constitutional right, ultimately, even if you do it on a state by state basis, you have to make sure people are protected," Giuliani said...
The Jerusalem Post notes that the Israeli Prime Minister's office had to issue a "clarification" after Nancy Pelosi attempted to deliver a message from Ehud Olmert to Syria's Bashar Assad. The PMO's statement contradicts Pelosi and points up the problems when amateurs attempt to involve themselves in sensitive diplomacy: The Prime Minister's Office issued a rare "clarification" Wednesday that, in gentle diplomatic terms, contradicted US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's statement in Damascus that she had brought a message from Israel about a willingness to engage in peace talks. According to the statement, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert emphasized in his meeting with Pelosi on Sunday that "although Israel is interested in peace with Syria, that country continues to be part of the Axis of Evil and a force that encourages terror in the entire Middle East." Olmert, the statement clarified, told Pelosi that Syria's sincerity about a genuine peace...
The new surge security plan in Iraq has performed so well, the Iraqi government will now expand the strategy to Mosul, where Petraeus first conceived it. The results in Baghdad have Iraqi officials optimistic enough to start ending curfews and removing concrete barriers: Iraq says it is extending the current security drive beyond Baghdad to areas outside the capital. Efforts to bring the security plan to the northern city of Mosul began on Tuesday, officials said, and Baghdad's outskirts would also be targeted Officials have expressed optimism about reduced sectarian violence in Baghdad, and have decided to ease the curfew. How well has Petraeus's plan performed? Moqtada al-Sadr fired two of his deputies for not leaving a banquet when Petraeus arrived. Salam al-Maliki and Qusai Abdul-Wahab represented Sadr's faction in the Iraqi National Assembly, at least until they broke bread with the American commander. Petraeus used some of the same...
April 5, 2007
Senate Democrats are outraged over the recess appointment of Sam Fox by President Bush, just a few days after the White House withdrew his nomination for Ambassador. Fox, who contributed to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign in 2004, ran afoul of John Kerry on the Foreign Relations committee: President Bush, defying Senate Democrats, gave recess appointments yesterday to three controversial nominees, including, as ambassador to Belgium, Republican donor Sam Fox, who had contributed to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the group whose ads helped doom Sen. John F. Kerry's 2004 presidential bid. Kerry (D-Mass.), who grilled Fox about his $50,000 contribution to the group during testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in February, had complained that Fox never disavowed his actions and that he should not be confirmed. "It's sad but not surprising that this White House would abuse the power of the presidency to reward a...
Nancy Pelosi's amateurish fumble in Syria left the Washington Post less than impressed. In an editorial titled "Pratfall in Damascus," the Post doesn't stop at scolding Pelosi for demonstrating why egotistical Representatives should not insert themselves into diplomacy. It also questions her motives and accuses her of attempting to create a shadow presidency: Ms. Pelosi was criticized by President Bush for visiting Damascus at a time when the administration -- rightly or wrongly -- has frozen high-level contacts with Syria. Mr. Bush said that thanks to the speaker's freelancing Mr. Assad was getting mixed messages from the United States. Ms. Pelosi responded by pointing out that Republican congressmen had visited Syria without drawing presidential censure. That's true enough -- but those other congressmen didn't try to introduce a new U.S. diplomatic initiative in the Middle East. "We came in friendship, hope, and determined that the road to Damascus is a...
After Rudy Giuliani's surprising statement on federal funding for abortions yesterday, several commenters expressed reservations about the credibility of CNN to report what Rudy said honestly. Here is the transcript from the relevant portion of the interview, so that we can see the remark in context: BASH: There's something on -- you know, on YouTube from 1989. It's flying around the Internet. It's -- it's a clip of you. [tape]GIULIANI: There must be public funding for abortions for poor women. We cannot deny any woman the right to make her own decision about abortion because she lacks resources. [applause] I have also stated that I disagree with President Bush's veto last week of public funding for abortions. BASH: Is that also your -- going -- going to be your position as president? [live]GIULIANI: Probably. I mean, I have to reexamine all those issues and exactly what was at stake then....
The 15 Royal Navy personnel held captive by the Iranians for a fortnight returned home today on a British Airways flight. Less than 24 hours after their "pardon" from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the sailors and Marines flew business class, with parting gifts from the Iranian mullahcracy: Fifteen Royal Navy personnel detained at gunpoint in the Gulf were heading home to Britain today, seated in business class on a British Airways flight from Tehran with shiny new suits and goody bags filled with traditional Iranian gifts. The eight sailors and seven Marines were released yesterday in a stunning piece of political theatre by President Ahmandinejad, who brought a bizarre but welcome end to a 13-day stand-off that had held out the possibility of violent escalation. ... But despite widespread relief at their release, the group may face questions as to their behaviour in captivity. Colonel Bob Stewart, who became famous as a...
Johnny Walker Lindh wants the Hicks treatment, his lawyer announced today. Lindh, whose capture in Afghanistan after 9/11 made headlines, pled guilty to lesser terrorism charges rather than face charges that could have resulted in the death penalty. Now that the Australian at Guantanamo Bay, David Hicks, got a better deal, Lindh wants a second bite at the apple: The lawyer and parents of American-born Taliban soldier John Walker Lindh asked President Bush to commute his 20-year prison term, citing the case of an Australian man who was sentenced to less than a year for aiding terrorism. Lindh, 26, was captured in Afghanistan in November 2001 by American forces sent to topple the Taliban after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. He was charged with conspiring to kill Americans and support terrorists but pleaded guilty to lesser offenses, including carrying explosives for the now-defunct Taliban government. Lindh's lawyer and father said...
Max Boot writes from Iraq of his surprise over John McCain's comments regarding the Iraqi security situation. While he acknowledges that McCain wore body armor and had armed personnel guarding him, Boot points out the obvious -- that McCain makes a good target, but that other assumptions should not be drawn from it. Boot also tells his readers that McCain was right: Though only three of the five extra brigades scheduled to be deployed have yet arrived in Baghdad, the offensive has already paid big dividends. A semblance of normality is returning in some neighborhoods, markets are reopening, sectarian murders and ethnic cleansings have been dramatically reduced. The situation still isn’t great, but at least the downward trend has been stopped. There have been a few big suicide bombings lately that obscure this improvement, but most of these have been outside Baghdad, where the current security operation is focused. Needless...
The New York Sun reports that recent polling has encouraged Fred Thompson to seriously consider a run for the Republican Presidential nomination. Jim Geraghty, the blogger behind NRO's HillarySpot, says that Thompson fills a void left by the unexpected loss of George Allen in last year's midterm elections: When George Allen fell to Jim Webb in the Virginia Senate race, it opened up a slot in the upcoming Republican presidential primary: the role of the reliable longtime lawmaker who has no serious disagreements with the conservatives who make up the party's base. That slot is moving closer to being filled by a former senator of Tennessee, Fred Thompson. The potential candidate is about "50–50" on running "because the polls have caught his eye," a source close to Mr. Thompson told National Review. The AP suggested this week that a bid by the former "Law and Order" actor would be hindered...
It appears that Rudy Giuliani, intelligent man that he is, understands the damage he did to his efforts to connect with conservatives in his CNN interview yesterday. As Kathryn Jean Lopez posted at The Corner, Giuliani has started to climb down from his support of funding abortions with tax dollars: MAYOR GIULIANI: What I said yesterday is what I've been saying throughout, I think in the last number of months publicly and privately for quite some time, which is I'm against abortion, I hate it, I wish there never was an abortion and I would council a woman have an adoption instead of an abortion but ultimately I believe an individual right and a woman can make that choice. I also, on public funding or funding of abortion said I would want to see it decided on a state by state basis. And what that means is I would leave...
We're going to have a great show tonight on CQ Radio. Debra Burlingame, one of the founders of 9/11 Families for America and the sister of murdered pilot Charles "Chic" Burlingame, will join me tonight at the top of the show. We'll be discussing the John Walker Lindh demand for a reduced sentence, but will focus more on the John Doe controversy involving the Traveling Imams and their attempts to sue people who report suspicious activity. After that, we will either have another guest or discuss the stories of the day. We can talk about the resolution to the Iranian hostage crisis, Rudy Giuliani's conflicting messages on federal funding for abortions, Nancy Pelosi's shadow presidency, and more. Be sure to join the debate! You can call 646-652-4889 to join the conversation. UPDATE: James Boyce and Nathan Wilcox have done a nice job revamping Heading Left for the port side...
April 6, 2007
Today is Good Friday, the remembrance of the sacrifice of Jesus of Nazareth which Christians believe redeemed all of us from sin. On Sunday, we will celebrate His resurrection, which promises new life and victory over death for those who believe. Two billion people will join in this millenia-old celebration of faith -- but some will see this as a continuing decline towards an abyss of intolerance and genocide. One of my favorite center-left columnists, E.J. Dionne, tackles the neo-atheists in an excellent Washington Post piece by pointing out that these aggressive anti-religionists seem as attached to dogma as those they criticize: The new atheists -- the best known are writers Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins -- insist, as Harris puts it, that "certainty about the next life is simply incompatible with tolerance in this one." That's why they think a belief in salvation through faith in God, no matter...
A Texas radio host made a Texas-sized blunder during a debate about a bill in the state legislature that would issue a formal apology for slavery. Michael Berry, in an attempt to apply the apology efforts elsewhere to oppose it, wondered why Native Americans should get enormous welfare benefits after getting "whipped in a war". I suppose it might have made sense if (a) Indian tribes actually got enormous welfare benefits, and (2) that had anything to do with apologizing for slavery. Berry came to the same conclusion after checking his facts -- and he manned up immediately afterwards: A Houston City Council member and conservative radio host has apologized for saying taxpayers are paying large amounts of welfare to American Indians who are "whining" about having been "whipped in a war." Michael Berry said Thursday that he posted the apology on his station's Web site the night before "not...
The US has determined that the release of 15 British Navy personnel reflects no great change in the Iranian diplomatic posture. The New York Times reports that the White House believes that the order for the capture came from lower levels, and the decision to release them came only after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wrung as much publicity as he could without any negative consequences: The Bush administration said Thursday that the release of 15 British sailors and marines held by Iran for two weeks created no new openings in dealing with Tehran, and it urged American allies to return their attention to enforcing new sanctions against Iran. In public statements and background interviews, White House and State Department officials said that they saw no indications that the release indicated a change of attitude by Iran’s leadership. Neither did they see any more willingness to discuss suspension of its enrichment of uranium...
Minneapolis will have to end its use of cameras to ticket and fine drivers who run red lights and commit other infractions of traffic regulation. The state Supreme Court shut down the system in a decision yesterday, ruling that state law overrides the city's decision to use the cameras (via Mitch Berg): The state Supreme Court agreed Thursday with the lower courts that the city's so-called PhotoCop cameras at a dozen intersections are preempted by state law and therefore illegal. State law puts liability for traffic offenses on the driver, while the city ordinance fined the owner of a car caught running a red light. Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak vowed to press on for the legalization of the cameras. "We've proven that this makes streets safer," said Rybak, who pointed out that accidents were down 31 percent at intersections with cameras during eight months of operation. "Too many people are...
The New York Times appears willing to damn Romney for being rich and both using his own money for his presidential campaign and not using his own money for his presidential campaign. In seeking to explain Romney's success at fundraising, David Kirkpatrick doesn't give Romney much benefit of the doubt in an article headlined, "Romney Used His Wealth to Enlist Richest Donors": Mitt Romney, the multimillionaire founder of a giant private equity firm, knew he did not need other people’s money to mount a presidential campaign. But as they began planning a campaign more than two years ago, Mr. Romney and his advisers wanted to avoid the fate of two other millionaires, Steve Forbes and Ross Perot, whose self-financed campaigns went down as quixotic indulgences. “By Mitt or anyone else self-funding, you don’t have a lot of people making investments in you,” said Spencer Zwick, 28, the campaign’s fund-raising director...
Jules Crittenden scores a bulls-eye today in a post regarding the recess appointment of Sam Fox as Ambassador to Belgium. After all the screeching from Democrats about firing prosecutors over their politics, John Kerry and his allies attempted to deep-six Fox for his engagement against Kerry in 2004, and Jules wonders where the Democrats draw lines: If it’s wrong for the president to fire political appointees over their politics, doesn’t that make it wrong for senators to oppose political appointees over theirs? Wait a minute. I’m getting confused. The president fired them over their performance, but the Senate only gave a damn about Fox’s politics. So much crap flying around these days, its hard to sort out what’s what. But I think the Dem Cong might need to start holding hearings about itself. But when I see moves like this, I realize I’m starting to really enjoy the Dem Cong....
Did Rudy blame bloggers for his tough week after his remarks on abortion and federal funding? Some apparently believe so, including Matt Lewis , who read Roger Simon's report for The Politico. Roger asked Rudy about whether he realizes how tough the race will get, and he got this response (via The Corner): Has it crossed your mind that this may be an extremely rough primary in 2008? I asked him. "It has, and it will be," Giuliani replied. But he also said he did not think the attacks would come directly from other Republican presidential candidates. "I think more of this comes from the atmosphere in the blogging atmosphere, in the instant news atmosphere, and the minute analysis atmosphere," he said. If Rudy spoke in reference to the abortion debate this week, then I would agree with Matt. It's hardly an "attack" to discuss the policy positions of the...
Michelle Malkin notes another case of provocative behavior in an airport that recalls the Traveling Imams incident here in the Twin Cities. Two women, one of whom was on probation for waving a fake grenade, have been arrested for suspicious behavior near Dallas' Love Field: Dallas police and federal terrorism officials are investigating two women, both dressed in camouflage pants under their traditional Muslim robes and scarves, who were seen conducting what appeared to be surveillance and acting suspiciously at Dallas Love Field. One of the women, Kimberly "Asma" Al-Homsi, 42, of Arlington, who is on probation for a 2005 Garland road rage incident involving a fake grenade, is said to have long-range assault rifle and explosives training, according to a Dallas police intelligence bulletin issued March 5. "I'm a trained sniper and proud of it," Ms. Al-Homsi said in an interview Thursday after first refusing to comment on whether...
April 7, 2007
The economy continues its growth under the stewardship of the Bush administration. Unemployment fell to 4.4%, a five-year low, as the nation added 180,000 jobs last month. Wages also rose faster than inflation in March, indicating continuing strength and real gains for workers: It just keeps going. The job market showed little sign of losing its vigor last month as wages climbed and job growth rose, the Labor Department reported yesterday. Economists said the numbers were consistent with an economy that was being supported by strong consumer spending, with considerable hiring in businesses like restaurants, bars, department stores and educational services. In all, the Labor Department said that employment outside the farming sector grew by 180,000 in March. And in another sign of the job market’s resilience, employment growth in January and February was stronger than the government first reported. The national unemployment rate also edged down last month to...
Der Spiegel reports that Indonesia's ostensibly secular government faces increasing pressure from the Islamists in their midst. The Muslim nation may start down the road towards a Taliban-Lite government as radical Islamists gain more seats in their assembly and demand a greater imposition of shari'a law: With 221 million inhabitants, of which 194 million are Muslims, the island nation is not only Southeast Asia's most populous country, but is also home to the world's largest Muslim population. And that population looks to be growing increasingly devout. Significantly more women wear the headscarf today than a decade ago, and the number of Indonesians making the pilgrimage to Mecca grows year after year. Alcoholic beverages are disappearing from the shelves of supermarkets, and in some places those who violate the Islamic ban on alcohol already face public whipping -- a brutal spectacle that is even broadcast on local television stations. Since two...
Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro have joined in criticizing the United States for its efforts to find alternative fuel sources. They claim that ethanol and other biofuel technologies take food out of the mouths of the poor: Cuba and Venezuela have launched an offensive against biofuels, warning that the US-backed rush towards ethanol will worsen global hunger and poverty. Fidel Castro has written two newspaper articles in a week voicing alarm at the prospect of countries boosting sugar and corn crops to make ethanol, a fuel that can be used an additive or a substitute for petrol. By diverting crops to feed cars rather than people, the price of food would rise and the world's poor would go hungry, Mr Castro wrote in the Communist party's official newspaper, Granma. ... Mr Castro's ally, the Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, also attacked biofuels in a sharp U-turn that put the two leaders...
The Northern Alliance Radio Network will be on the air today, with our six-hour-long broadcast schedule starting at 11 am CT -- but it will be a "Best Of" broadcast through all six hours. We are taking our traditional Easter weekend break and replaying some of our previously-recorded material. I'll be listening on AM 1280 The Patriot, or on the station's Internet stream if you're outside of the broadcast area. If you've missed some of our recent shows, it's a great chance to catch up to the hijinks of the NARN. We'll be back next week with live programming. In the meantime, happy Easter to all of our readers and listeners!...
The Guardian reports that the Bush administration offered a series of military options to the Blair government at the beginning of the hostage crisis, but the British asked the Americans to hold off on any response. The exact list remains classified, but it included one option of "aggressive patrols" over Revolutionary Guard locations: The US offered to take military action on behalf of the 15 British sailors and marines held by Iran, including buzzing Iranian Revolutionary Guard positions with warplanes, the Guardian has learned. In the first few days after the captives were seized and British diplomats were getting no news from Tehran on their whereabouts, Pentagon officials asked their British counterparts: what do you want us to do? They offered a series of military options, a list which remains top secret given the mounting risk of war between the US and Iran. But one of the options was for...
I know CQ readers often complain about the lack of i-Pods for kids today. This community has always understood the relationship between i-Pod users and the world around them, and how educational these devices are when worn in a teaching environment. That's why I know CQ readers will fully support Michigan lawmakers when they propose to buy an i-Pod for every student, despite a $1 billion state budget deficit -- just like the editorial board of the Detroit News, who titled their editorial, "An iPod for every kid? Are they !#$!ing idiots?": We have come to the conclusion that the crisis Michigan faces is not a shortage of revenue, but an excess of idiocy. Facing a budget deficit that has passed the $1 billion mark, House Democrats Thursday offered a spending plan that would buy a MP3 player or iPod for every school child in Michigan. No cost estimate was...
John McCain's campaign will try to re-establish itself after a tough first quarter, the Wall Street Journal reports, and as the WSJ notes, he needs the re-set. His fundraising hasn't met expectations, and McCain's efforts to support the war has apparently alienated some of the moderates he hoped to attract: In short order, John McCain has gone from Republican presidential front-runner to political death watch. On Wednesday, the Arizona senator kicks off a month of high-profile events, seeking a resurrection of sorts. He badly needs it. Mr. McCain just reported raising $12.5 million for the first-quarter -- behind Republican rivals Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani, as well as Democrats Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards. Most analysts won't go so far as to bury Mr. McCain, citing his Republican rivals' own baggage: Both Mr. Romney and Mr. Giuliani are suspect among social conservatives for their records supporting abortion and...
We Minnesotans have a lot of experience with Northwest Airlines, as they own 70% of the gates at our international airport. We rely on them for almost all of our non-stop service, thanks to the hub-and-spoke system -- and for the most part, they provide reasonably good service. However, it seems that if a pilot lands more headlines than airplanes, it's usually an NWA pilot. We've seen pilots arrested for drunken operation of aircraft and a plane that landed at the wrong airport ... well, actually, a military base, to be exact. Now it appears we have the first case of potential air rage: A Northwest Airlines flight was canceled because the pilot was yelling obscenities during a cell phone conversation while people were boarding, and cursed one passenger, a federal official said Saturday. The pilot of the Las Vegas-to-Detroit flight was apparently in a heated cell phone conversation in...
Fred Thompson, who has flirted with the notion of entering the Republican presidential primary race as a conservative savior, has his first blog post on Redstate today. He digs right into the war on terror and national security, the focus of GOP voters in this primary season, by going after the Iranian mullahcracy: Tony Blair doesn't appear to be in much of a mood for celebrating. I don't know how he could be, given the troubling spectacle of British soldiers shake the hand of their kidnapper as a condition of release. In the old days, they would have kissed his ring -- but wearing Iranian suits and carrying swag more appropriate to a Hollywood awards ceremony may have been as embarrassing. Ironically, Blair's options are fewer by the day as his own party moves to mothball the British fleet, once the fear of pirates and tyrants the world over. Some...
April 8, 2007
After demanding sanctions for months and years on North Korea -- and finally getting the UN to acquiesce, in some fashion -- the US allowed North Korea to sell exactly the kind of war materials we wanted sanctioned. The customer makes the difference, the New York Times reports, as the US needed to ensure that the Ethiopian military had enough materiel to assist in the war against radical Islamists: Three months after the United States successfully pressed the United Nations to impose strict sanctions on North Korea because of the country’s nuclear test, Bush administration officials allowed Ethiopia to complete a secret arms purchase from the North, in what appears to be a violation of the restrictions, according to senior American officials. The United States allowed the arms delivery to go through in January in part because Ethiopia was in the midst of a military offensive against Islamic militias inside...
Dallas police have begun investigating Amsa al-Homsi and Aisha Abdul-Rahman Hamad for allegedly provocative acts at and near Love Field airport in Dallas. Security cameras captured both women, dressed partly in camouflage, acting suspiciously in the airport, apparently deliberately pacing off distances inside the terminal. Later, al-Homsi was seen watching aircraft take off with binoculars near the runway at an air museum, sitting on the hood of her car. Currently on probation for threatening people with a fake grenade, al-Homsi has other, more significant connections that creates some suspicion for her motives in these incidents. It turns out that one of her close friends was Osama bin Laden's personal secretary: One of the subjects of a Dallas police intelligence bulletin, Asma Al-Homsi, says she's known convicted terrorist Wadih el Hage and his wife for more than two decades. Mr. el Hage, a former Arlington resident and naturalized U.S. citizen, was...
If anyone expresses shock over the latest report from The Telegraph, they expose themselves as having no sense of history. The British newspaper reports that the Iranians plan more hostaging as a result of the successes they scored during the crisis over the last two weeks (via Memeorandum): Hardliners in the Iranian regime have warned that the seizure of British naval personnel demonstrates that they can make trouble for the West whenever they want to and do so with impunity. The bullish reaction from Teheran will reinforce the fears of western diplomats and military officials that more kidnap attempts may be planned. The British handling of the crisis has been regarded with some concern in Washington, and a Pentagon defence official told The Sunday Telegraph: "The fear now is that this could be the first of many. If the Brits don't change their rules of engagement, the Iranians could take...
Moqtada al-Sadr has decided to finally acknowledge that the surge strategy in Baghdad will undermine the basis of his power in Iraq, and has ordered the Mahdi Army to resist American and Iraqi forces trying to put him out of business. In a missive to his forces today, Sadr told his minions to focus their attacks on American forces where possible in order to keep from losing all political standing in Iraq: The renegade cleric Muqtada al-Sadr urged Iraqi forces to stop cooperating with the United States and told his guerrilla fighters to concentrate their attacks on American troops rather than Iraqis, according to a statement issued Sunday. The statement, stamped with al-Sadr's official seal, was distributed in the Shiite holy city of Najaf on Sunday — a day before a large demonstration there, called for by al-Sadr, to mark the fourth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad. ... In...
The First Mate and I wish all CQ readers a blessed and happy Easter. We hope that you all have the opportunity to spend it with friends and/or family, and that the blessings of our Lord, Jesus Christ, shower down upon you all. For those CQ readers who do not belong to the Christian faith, we hope that this day brings fellowship and rest. Today, we are blessed to have the Admiral Emeritus and his wife with us, who are helping the FM to recover this week as I finish my last week at the present day job. All of us will spend time with my son's in-laws, a wonderful family that has opened their arms to us every day we have known them, but especially on holidays, as our families are in California. We're going to take it easy and make sure that the FM doesn't overdo it, but...
Comic strips used to be one of my passions. I learned to read from Peanuts strips and books, and ever since, my subscriptions to the newspapers in the various places I have lived had as much to do with the comics section as the op-ed pages and news articles. In a way, the comic strips created the passion for news that has led me to becoming a full-time blogger. One of those comic strip artists I particularly enjoyed was Johnny Hart, who wrote "B.C." and co-wrote "The Wizard of Id". Hart passed away yesterday at 76: Cartoonist Johnny Hart, whose award-winning "B.C." comic strip appeared in more than 1,300 newspapers worldwide, died at his home on Saturday. He was 76. "He had a stroke," Hart's wife, Bobby, said on today. "He died at his storyboard." "B.C.," populated by prehistoric cavemen and dinosaurs, was launched in 1958 and eventually appeared in...
April 9, 2007
The Los Angeles Dodgers had started off the season with two straight losses, and fans -- even out here in Minnesota -- wondered how they could climb off the canvas against their most hated rivals, the San Francisco Giants. The team rebounded in the road series, taking Barry Bonds and the Bay Area for a sweep this weekend: Luis Gonzalez hit his first two home runs in Dodger Blue and Randy Wolf gave the Dodgers a third straight standout pitching performance to pull off a three-game sweep of the San Francisco Giants during a 10-4 victory this afternoon. Gonzalez connected for a solo shot and three-run homer in his 26th career multihomer game, and Wolf (1-1) outpitched $126-million fellow left-hander Barry Zito in the Dodgers' eighth consecutive victory in San Francisco. Matt Kemp had three hits, two RBIs and scored twice for the well-rounded Dodgers, who have dominated in the...
Newt Gingrich became the latest and most high-profile Republican to call for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to resign. In an interview with Fox's Chris Wallace, Gingrich assailed for mishandling an "artificial" crisis and wondered aloud how Gonzales could remain an effective force for the Bush administration: Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House of Representatives, today became the latest Republican to criticize Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales for the controversial dismissals of eight United States attorneys and said Mr. Gonzales should consider stepping down. “This is the most mishandled, artificial, self-created mess that I can remember in the years, in the years I’ve been active in public life,” Mr. Gingrich said on “Fox News Sunday.” “You know, the buck has to stop somewhere, and I’m assuming it’s the attorney general and his immediate team,” Mr. Gingrich went on. Asked by the interviewer Chris Wallace whether Mr. Gonzales should resign,...
The British government has overridden its own rules and granted the 15 Royal Navy personnel released by Iran this week permission to sell their stories to the media. The move comes as the detainees face criticism over their cooperation with Iranians and comparisons to earlier generations of sailors, who only gave name, rank, and serial number: Two days after they were paraded as heroes with a story to tell, some of the 15 British sailors and marines captured and released by Iran seemed Sunday to have decided they have a story to sell. In a highly unusual decision, Britain’s Ministry of Defense — normally tight-lipped, to say the least — acknowledged Saturday that it had agreed to permit them to offer their experiences for sale to newspapers and television stations. Such transactions are common enough among civilians, some of whom have traded the rights to their stories for considerable sums...
George Bush will start working on the one issue where he finds sympathy from the Democratic majority Congress -- immigration. The new campaign starts in Yuma, Arizona, where Bush will speak near the Mexican border about the need to both secure the frontier between Mexico and the US, as well as resolve the status of millions of illegal immigrants: In his speech in Yuma, Bush will stress four elements that he has to see in an immigration bill: more border security; better enforcement of immigration laws in the interior, especially laws against the hiring of undocumented workers; a temporary-worker program to address labor shortages; and "resolving without amnesty and without animosity the status of the millions of illegal immigrants that are here right now," White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said. A recently leaked White House presentation, devised after weeks of closed-door meetings with Republican senators, suggests some hardening of Bush's...
The New York Times reports on an effort that has percolated in the blogosphere over the last couple of weeks to clean up the on-line debate. Spurred by threats made against a female blogger over the propriety of deleting abusive comments, the new standards would more or less compel bloggers to eliminate offending comments and to discourage anonymous comments: Chief among the recommendations is that bloggers consider banning anonymous comments left by visitors to their pages and be able to delete threatening or libelous comments without facing cries of censorship. A recent outbreak of antagonism among several prominent bloggers “gives us an opportunity to change the level of expectations that people have about what’s acceptable online,” said Mr. O’Reilly, who posted the preliminary recommendations last week on his company blog (radar.oreilly.com). Mr. Wales then put the proposed guidelines on his company’s site (blogging.wikia.com), and is now soliciting comments in the...
Carl Levin and Harry Reid seem to be on different pages in the battle over funding and withdrawal timetables for the war in Iraq. Just a couple of days after Harry Reid threatened to defund the war effort if Bush did not accept mandatory time triggers for troop withdrawals, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee insisted that the Democrats would not follow the Majority Leader's lead on funding: The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee said Sunday that the Senate would not cut off funding for the Iraq war but would keep pressing President Bush for a settlement among Iraqi leaders to end the violence. Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), appearing on ABC's "This Week," disagreed with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who said last week that he would co-sponsor legislation to cut off almost all money for the war in Iraq by next March. "Well, we're...
The New York Times features yet another editorial by yet another journalist giving yet another slate of advice for Mitt Romney to address his "Mormon problem". This time Newsweek's Kenneth Woodward, their reporter on religion, offers all of the reasons that Americans are apparently hysterical about the prospect of having an LDS president: IN May, Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor and 2008 Republican presidential hopeful, will give the commencement address at Pat Robertson’s Regent University. What better opportunity for Mr. Romney to discuss the issue of his Mormon faith before an audience of evangelicals? When John F. Kennedy spoke before Protestant clergymen in Houston in 1960, he sought to dispel the fear that as a Catholic president, he would be subject to direction from the pope. As a Mormon, Mr. Romney faces ignorance as well as fear of his church and its political influence. More Americans, polls show, are...
Don Imus, the national radio talk-show host for NBC, got himself into some hot water last week when he used racially derogative terms to describe a women's college basketball team. Calling them "nappy-headed ho's", Imus compared them unfavorably to a supposedly "cute" and predominantly white competing team. Today, Imus attempted to apologize to Al Sharpton on the latter's own radio show, but Sharpton didn't let him off the hook: Don Imus said on his nationally syndicated radio show today that he was a “good person who said a bad thing” by way of explaining his comments about the Rutgers University women’s basketball team that many critics have called racist. ... Later in the day, the Rev. Al Sharpton, who has been calling for Mr. Imus’s resignation, upbraided him on his own radio show, “Keepin It Real,” as the two discussed his comments. “This is not about whether you’re a good...
Once again, the analysts that predicted a 5-10 year development period for Iran before the mullahs could produce a nuclear weapon have underestimated the industriousness of the Islamic Republic. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced today that Iran has 3,000 centrifuges on line and producing fissile material -- a cascade that could produce weapons-grade material in less than two years: Iran announced Monday that it has begun enriching uranium with 3,000 centrifuges, defiantly expanding a nuclear program that has drawn U.N. sanctions and condemnation from the West. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said at a ceremony at the enrichment facility at Natanz that Iran was capable of enriching nuclear fuel "on an industrial scale." Asked whether Iran has begun injecting uranium gas into 3,000 centrifuges for enrichment, top nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani replied, "Yes." He did not elaborate, but it was the first confirmation that Iran had installed the larger set of centrifuges after months...
Earlier, I had removed the URL for trackback pings because of heavy spamming recently. All of the spam had been caught in my filter, but a few legitimate pings get caught in the filter as well. I have been rescuing legitimate pings from the junk process up to now, and I wanted to stop the flood of actual spam pings in order to approve the others. It didn't work out the way I planned. I couldn't quite get the descriptions correct, and pings went to the wrong posts. I've restored the display of the trackback URL, so that problem should be eliminated. However, I will no longer check the junk filter for legitimate pings, and will force them to delete in 24 hours after detection. Almost without exception, the trapped pings get flagged because of a mismatch between the IP address in the ping and the IP address for the...
April 10, 2007
The apparent reversal of the British Navy on the sale of stories from their 15 sailors and Marines captured by Iran undoubtedly pleased many, but maybe none so oddly as The Guardian's Simon Jenkins. Jenkins decried the tabloid bidding war not primarily because of its impact on military discipline, but because stories of abuse and torture would make it harder for Britain to conduct diplomacy with Iran. No, really: We need dialogue with Iran. By pumping up the propaganda war with the sale of captives' stories, that only becomes harder The Royal Navy's decision to let its personnel sell stories of their failed military operation beggars ever more belief. Even the most ardent student of government openness must wonder at the thought processes involved. The navy may no longer rule the waves, but it waives the rules when it sees the glint of money. Last night it appeared to admit...
Jonah Goldberg warns conservatives not to ignore John McCain in the presidential primary race in his latest LA Times column. Conceding that McCain has angered the Republican base on a number of occasions, he also advises that McCain has a long track record of supporting most of the conservative agenda. And on the all-important issue of terrorism and the war, Goldberg asks which of the present candidates has put more on the line to support it than Barry Goldwater's successor in the Senate: In the eyes of his conservative detractors — among whom I've long counted myself — McCain has a maddening habit of proving his political independence by winning accolades from the New York Times editorial board. On campaign finance reform, global warming and opposition to tax cuts, the "maverick" has too often racked up points by scoring against his own team. Sometimes he stands to the right of...
George Bush launched his 2007 campaign for comprehensive immigration reform, and as the Los Angeles Times reports, has aimed it at conservatives in an attempt to get a broader coalition. Bush himself remained vague on the details, but subsequent briefings by White House officials shows a plan that would put more hurdles in place for citizenship and limiting access to workers only, a move that will lose some of his support from the Left: Although the president was vague about the details of his new effort, proposals being discussed among White House officials and GOP lawmakers seem designed to bring recalcitrant Republicans aboard. For instance, one plan would require illegal immigrants wishing to remain in the United States to return to their country of origin first and pay a $10,000 fine to obtain a three-year work visa. The visas would be renewable, at a cost of $3,500. Also, illegal immigrants...
John Podhoretz, who has supported Rudy Giuliani since he wrote Can She Be Stopped? about Hillary Clinton early last year, wants to brace America's Mayor after a tough two weeks. John writes an open letter to Rudy in today's New York Post, making it clear that Giuliani has to show his normally encyclopaedic grasp of issues and details and demonstrate a high degree of competency if he hopes to win conservatives in the Republican primary: So where is it now? The vision seems to be there. But not the competence. ... [T]he answer to your pro-choice difficulty with social conservatives on the matter of abortion isn't to blather about how much you "hate it" and then ruminate on whether the government should be responsible for helping pay for one. That's what you did last week, and you must never, ever do anything like it again - if, that is, you...
Democrats have once again gone running in fright from Fox News Channel for a political debate -- or more accurately, have run from fear of their anti-war base. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama join John Edwards in refusing to appear on Fox for a debate sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus: Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.) yesterday joined former North Carolina senator John Edwards (D) in deciding to skip a debate scheduled for September that Fox News is co-sponsoring with the Congressional Black Caucus. Liberal activists, particularly the online group Moveon.org, have called for Democratic presidential candidates not to participate in debates by Fox, which they say is biased against Democrats. Clinton campaign aides said she would participate only in the six events sanctioned by the Democratic National Committee and two other events she had already agreed to. Several candidates, including Edwards, last month withdrew from...
... and the challengers fall back. According to Gallup's latest surveys on the presidential primaries, Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton put more distance between themselves and their nearest challengers, despite missteps by both candidates since the last polling. The results tend to contradict some of the analyses published since the first-quarter fundraising numbers got released last week. First, the GOP: The April 2-5 Gallup Poll finds 38% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents favoring Giuliani for the 2008 nomination, well ahead of his closest pursuer, McCain (16%). Two unannounced but potential candidates -- Gingrich and Thompson -- tie for third at 10%. The remaining 10 candidates tested in the poll all score below 10%, led by Mitt Romney at 6%. Romney had drawn the most money out of Republican donors in the last cycle, while McCain had finished weakly, but it has not changed Romney's relative position at all. Despite his...
I'm an avid reader of E.J. Dionne, not because I sometimes agree with what he writes, but because he writes one of the most reasoned liberal columns. Today, Dionne looks at what he sees as a tragic transformation of John McCain, and laments McCain's missed opportunity to tell truth to power: There is another tragic element: McCain suffered mightily during the 2000 presidential primaries at the hands of George W. Bush's political machine, which smeared the senator on everything from his time as a prisoner of war in Vietnam to the racial identity of his adopted daughter. Yet McCain is being dragged down now by his loyalty to the very same Bush and his policies in Iraq. Earlier in the war, McCain was a fierce critic of the president's strategy and tactics. But those criticisms count for little now. Bush destroyed McCain's candidacy by design the first time and is...
Yesterday, Elizabeth Edwards made headlines by declaring that she would treat her "rabid Republican" in an uncivil manner, despite never having met the man. Tonight, you can do what Elizabeth Edwards refuses to do -- meet her neighbor. Eric Dondero will have John Montgomery on his Blog Talk Radio show tonight: You may have caught this story yesterday. It made AP nationally. Seems Dem Presidential Candidate John Edwards and his wife Elizabeth have a slight little problem. They hate their neighbor. He's a gun-toting, property rights advocating, root 'n tootin' libertarian Republican. My Co-Host Andre Traversa called him up last night. And this guy is a hoot! He's country to the core. John Montgomery will be on our show tonight "Libertarian Politics Live" to discuss his "slight little problem" with the Edwards. Be sure to tune in at 9:30 pm CT tonight!...
April 11, 2007
The Italian government endured international criticism for freeing five Taliban fighters last month for one of its journalists after his abduction. When Romano Prodi got Afghanistan to deal for Daniele Mastrogiacomo's release, Prodi defended their actions by noting that "the life of a person is very precious," and that the exceptional circumstance "will never happen again." The Italians proved they were as good as their word by apparently leaving Mastrogiacomo's translater behind -- for the Taliban to murder: The government of Prime Minister Romano Prodi came under fierce attack on Monday after the Taliban said it had killed an Afghan hostage who was a colleague of the Italian journalist freed last month in a prisoner swap. That journalist, Daniele Mastrogiacomo of La Repubblica, was freed on March 19 in exchange for five Taliban fighters released by the Afghan government. Italy had lobbied Afghanistan to make a deal. At the time,...
The Taliban had promised that their 2007 spring offensive would have the West's forces reeling backwards and out of Afghanistan. Someone's reeling, but it isn't NATO or Pakistan. The Taliban has a different fight on its hands -- more like a civil war: When spring came and the snows began to melt in the mountains of Waziristan, Pakistani troops braced themselves for the seasonal upsurge in fighting along the porous border with Afghanistan. But, when it came, Pakistani soldiers were surprised, and relieved, to see the Taleban loyalists and the militants linked to al-Qaeda who seek sanctuary in this lawless region firing rockets and mortars not at them but at each other. For the first time since 2001, the Waziri tribesmen who probably harboured Osama bin Laden and remain loyal to the Taleban are fighting against the foreign militants in their midst. In the past two weeks an estimated 250...
Peter Brixtofte won lavish praise for his unique ideas on socialism, which included free vacations for retirees and personal computers for schoolchildren. He served as mayor of Farum, Denmark for 16 years as a result of his beneficence and popularity. Now he gets to serve two years as a guest of the state for using the city's bank accounts to pay for all of those wildly popular programs: A free-spending Danish mayor who became hugely popular for offering free vacations to retirees and computers to school children was convicted Tuesday of abusing his office and sentenced to two years in prison. Peter Brixtofte, who was once hailed as a visionary for his unconventional welfare programs in the small town of Farum, was widely discredited after town coffers ran dry due to his lavish spending. The city court in Hilleroed, north of Copenhagen, found Brixtofte guilty of fraud, and said he...
Don Imus has created a firestorm of criticism for his comments about the Rutgers women's basketball team last week, in which he called them "nappy-headed ho's". Many critics have called for CBS and NBC to fire Imus for his remarks, while some feel that terminating his show would go too far for the offense given. Michael Meyers, the former head of the New York Civil Rights Commission and an officer in the NAACP, even calls such demands an infringement on free speech: Defending Don Imus's on-air racial idiocy is impossible -- but defending free speech, even in the form of sick humor, ought to be considered anew in the wake of a storm of protest from censorious activists who are demanding that Imus be fired. There is an audience out there that is hungry for the ribald and the offensive. It is an audience that will not go away and...
The Senate will once again attempt to loosen the restrictions on federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research, applied in September 2001 by the Bush administration. They expect to gain a veto-proof majority for the upper chamber, but the House will likely split much more closely, and Bush has pledged to veto the legislation once it gets to his desk: Launching an emotional political and ethical drama that is widely expected to climax with the second veto of George W. Bush's presidency, the Senate yesterday began a two-day debate over the use of taxpayer dollars for embryonic stem cell research. The Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act, to be voted on late today or tomorrow, would loosen Bush's Aug. 9, 2001, ban on federal funding for research on stem cells that were isolated from human embryos after that date. The House passed a nearly identical bill in 2005, as did the Senate...
ABC News reports that the North Carolina Attorney General will drop all charges against the Duke lacrosse players originally accused of raping an exotic dancer at a party over a year ago. After the DNA produced no matches for the students and the victim kept changing her story, prosecutors belatedly discovered that they had no case: The office of North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper will announce that he is dismissing all charges against three Duke Lacrosse players, ABC News has learned from sources close to the case. The three players, Reade Seligmann, David Evans and Collin Finnerty, were facing charges of first degree kidnapping and first degree forcible sexual offense. The charges stem from an off-campus party on the night of March 13, 2006. ... The reasons that will be cited for the dismissal are not yet known, though the case has been riddled with criticism and colored by...
Katie Couric's ascension to Dan Rather's seat promised a change in mood, if not an improvement in substance over the man who continues to insist that the Bill Burkett memos were genuine. It turns out that Couric also produces memos and articles that lack genuineness, as a plagiarism scandal exposed her as ghost-written on her own "notebook": Katie Couric did a one-minute commentary last week on the joys of getting her first library card, but the thoughts were less than original. The piece was substantially lifted from a Wall Street Journal column. CBS News apologized for the plagiarized passages yesterday and said the commentary had been written by a network producer who has since been fired. The CBS anchor "was horrified," spokeswoman Sandy Genelius said. "We all were." The "Katie's Notebook" items are distributed to CBS television and radio stations, including WTOP (103.5 FM and 820 AM) in Washington, and...
See below for updates. Fred Thompson, whose potential entry into the 2008 presidential race has him already third in Republican polling, announced today that he has a manageable form of lymphoma: Republican Fred Thompson, the actor-politician who is considering a bid for president, said Wednesday he has lymphoma, a form of cancer. In an interview with Fox News, the former Tennessee senator said he is in remission and the diagnosis shouldn't affect his life expectancy. Thompson, 64, told Fox News Channel's Neil Cavuto that he has non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, but hasn't been ill or had any symptoms. ... Some of these subtypes are termed "indolent," meaning they typically respond well to treatment — patients often go into remission for long periods, but the disease is not cured and may need to be battled back again periodically. This may throw some cold water on the Thompson boomlet. Some voters have expressed reservations...
I took part in a blogger conference on my lunchbreak today with Senator John McCain on the topic of Iraq. McCain, who gave a speech on Iraq at the Virginia Military Institute earlier today, wanted to reach out to New Media sources for his perspective on the progress of the war, the critical nature of our effort there, and the need to persevere until we succeed. McCain did not pull many punches in this call. Speaking as bluntly as I have heard in some time, he acknowledged the credibility deficit of the Pentagon and White House on the war. Saying that “too often, we misled the American people in the past” about deadenders, mission accomplished, and so on, McCain said that the press has become too reluctant to report actual progress in Iraq. He feels that bloggers and radio hosts can help get real information to the American people and...
The Democrats won majorities in both chambers of Congress in part by promising that they would change the way Congress conducts business, both in terms of ethics and productivity. Calling the Republican-led 109th a "Do-Nothing Congress", Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid promised more action, longer work weeks, and a blockbuster first 100 days. How has that worked out? Not particularly well. The 110th has managed to get all of two bills passed into law by the end of their first 100 days: H.J.Res.20 - Revised Continuing Appropriations Resolution, 2007 (02/15/07) NATO Freedom Consolidation Act of 2007 (04/10/07) That's it -- one continuing appropriation and the NATO act. The continuing resolution was itself a leftover from the 109th Congress, about which the Democrats complained endlessly in the opening weeks of the 110th. At least it gave them something to do. CQ readers might ask what previous Congresses did in their first...
A few days ago, I wrote about the bill proposed by Michigan Democrats in the state legislature to buy an i-Pod for every Michigan student, supposedly for educational purposes. The plan would cost an already-strapped state government an additional $36 million, adding to their billion-dollar deficit, causing many observers to wonder where Democrats Matt Gillard and Andy Dillon came up with the idea. Today, the Detroit Free Press answers that question. It turns out that Apple paid for their travel to visit their corporate offices in California: Two state lawmakers backing a controversial plan to buy iPods for every schoolchild in Michigan were among a group of politicians who made a trip to California that was paid for at least in part by Apple, the maker of iPods. The 2 1/2 -day trip earlier this year covered a range of issues and interaction on topics related to Michigan. It included...
Let's take a moment to update three stories from today after the major developments that occurred in all three. First, the Attorney General of North Carolina dropped all charges against the Duke lacrosse players as expected, but he went much farther than that. Roy Cooper did everything but confirm that Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong committed prosecutorial misconduct: We believe that these cases were the result of a tragic rush to accuse and a failure to verify serious allegations. Based on the significant inconsistencies between the evidence and the various accounts given by the accusing witness, we believe these three individuals are innocent of these charges. We approached this case with the understanding that rape and sexual assault victims often have some inconsistencies in their accounts of a traumatic event. However, in this case, the inconsistencies were so significant and so contrary to the evidence that we have no credible...
April 12, 2007
Nicolas Sarkozy leads the field for the first round of voting for the presidency of France, but the current Elysee occupant presents him with a problem. The endorsement of Jacques Chirac has fueled speculation that Sarkozy agreed to protect the incumbent from a prosecution that has waited for his term of office to end. Sarkozy denied that he has cut that deal: Nicolas Sarkozy, the favourite to become France's new president, denied allegations yesterday that he had struck a deal with the outgoing president, Jacques Chirac, to protect him from prosecution in return for his support. After weeks of speculation, a report in the Paris-based satirical magazine Le Canard Enchaîné claimed that Mr Sarkozy agreed to help Mr Chirac, so long as he backed him as his successor. Mr Chirac, who became president in 1995, has been linked with a number of scandals, but presidential immunity has protected him throughout...
A husband and wife, struggling through unemployment, place a resumé on line, and a placement firm notices it and invites the couple to an interview. The husband completes an application and a first interview, and everything seems fine. However, when the placement firm calls back, they want the wife to accompany the husband for the second interview, which seems rather strange -- until the "counselor" gets to the point at the end of the presentation. After regaling the couple with tales of how difficult it is to find placement, and how traditional headhunters (who get paid by the employer) eat into the compensation plan offered by companies, the placement firm tells the couple that for just over $4,000, they are 90% sure they can find the husband a job. Sound like a scam? That's what Katherine Coble thought, too, and she blogged about her experiences with Tennessee placement firm JL...
CQ reader Mr. Michael, a Seattle resident, noticed that the city's school district has expanded its curriculum to include a particular seminar for the first time. Knute Berger reports at Crosscut Seattle that the district will send students to a "White Privilege" conference at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs next week, first noted by our old friend Stefan Sharkansky at Sound Politics. What would a conference on "white privilege" teach those Seattle students fortunate enough to attend? Let's see: The annual White Privilege Conference (WPC) serves as a yearly opportunity to examine and explore difficult issues related to white privilege, white supremacy and oppression. WPC provides a forum for critical discussions about diversity, multicultural education and leadership, social justice, race/racism, sexual orientation, gender relations, religion and other systems of privilege/oppression. WPC is recognized as a challenging, empowering and educational experience. The workshops, keynotes and institutes not only inform...
Daniel Henninger lends his normally rational, free-market voice to the matter of blogger civility in today's Opinion Journal -- and opts for the communal approach. Henninger wants a code of conduct imposed on the blogosphere, even voluntarily, to reverse the tide of uncivility in modern discourse: And so it came to pass in the year 2007 that a little platoon came forth to say unto the world: Enough is enough. Two leading citizens of the Web, Tim O'Reilly and Jimmy Wales, have proposed a "Bloggers Code of Conduct." The reason for this code is the phenomenon of people posting extremely nasty verbal comments about other people on Web sites devoted to political and social commentary. For Mr. O'Reilly, a publisher and activist for open Web standards, the last blogospheric straw involved a friend whose suggestion that it was OK to delete offensive comments from Web sites earned her a backlash...
Joe Biden wants American troops to intervene in Darfur in order to prevent the genocide that is occurring there: Joseph Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a Democratic presidential candidate, called Wednesday for the use of military force to end the suffering in Darfur. ''I would use American force now,'' Biden said at a hearing before his committee. ''I think it's not only time not to take force off the table. I think it's time to put force on the table and use it.'' In advocating use of military force, Biden said senior U.S. military officials in Europe told him that 2,500 U.S. troops could ''radically change the situation on the ground now.'' ''Let's stop the bleeding,'' Biden said. ''I think it's a moral imperative.'' Interesting. Is this the same Joe Biden who wants to pull out of Iraq and let similar forces conduct their own version...
The Democrats may stage an homage to Chicago 1968 in Denver for their 2008 convention. The AP reports that the party's union base objects strongly to the selection of the right-to-work city for the convention and are threatening to disrupt the proceedings if Denver doesn't start using closed shops: The Democrats' choice of Denver to anoint their presidential nominee in 2008 has stirred up angst among unions, one of the party's core groups, because of Colorado's reputation as an unfriendly place for organized labor. ... Last month, the AFL-CIO threatened to force Democrats to abandon Denver after Colorado's Democratic Gov. Bill Ritter vetoed a bill making it easier to set up all-union workplaces. "Unless we can be assured that the governor will support our values and priorities, we will strongly urge the Democratic Party to relocate the convention," said the AFL-CIO's executive council. Teamsters President James Hoffa chimed in last...
This will bode ill for supporters of the war in Iraq. An apparent suicide bombing has killed two members of the Iraqi parliament within the Green Zone as they ate in the Assembly's cafeteria: A bomb exploded in the Iraqi parliament's cafeteria in a stunning assault in the heart of the heavily fortified Green Zone Thursday, killing at least two lawmakers and wounding 10 other people. The blast in the parliament building came hours after a suicide truck bomb blew up on a major bridge in Baghdad, collapsing the steel structure and sending cars tumbling into the Tigris River, police and witnesses said. At least 10 people were killed. The bomb in parliament went off in a cafeteria while several lawmakers were eating lunch, media reports said. In addition to the two dead, state television said at least 10 people were wounded. The bombing came amid the two-month-old security crackdown...
Katherine Kersten reports in today's Minneapolis Star-Tribune that the state of Minnesota bars Christians from any expression of their faith on state- and city-run colleges -- but are ready and willing to create prayer facilities for Muslims. The addition of foot-washing basins for their daily ablutions contrasts with their heretofore stringent policy of promoting or favoring religions: Separation of church and state is clearest at the college during the Christmas season. A memo from Cusick and President Phil Davis, dated Nov. 28, 2006, exhorted supervisors to banish any public display of holiday cheer: "As we head into the holiday season ... "all public offices and areas should refrain from displays that may represent to our students, employees or the public that the college is promoting any particular religion." Departments considering sending out holiday cards, the memo added, should avoid cards "that appear to promote any particular religious holiday." Last year,...
It seems like a slow day on the blogs, so the time is right for some lunch-hour fun. AM 1280 The Patriot has recorded a series of commercials promoting the credibility of the various Northern Alliance hosts for our Saturday programs. Download and listen to mine, and just feel the credibility that this builds. And just to underscore the message -- I'm not wearing a Notre Dame jersey today. You have been warned....
The Los Angeles Times reports on its latest polling for the Republican presidential primaries, and the only one who should be smiling is the scowlin' Volunteer, Fred Thompson. Rudy Giuliani polls at less than 30%, while McCain drops behind his good friend into a distant third place: Sen. John McCain, once considered the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, has fallen to third place in a new Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll, and is running behind Fred Thompson, an actor and former senator who has not even entered the race. Former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani leads the crowded field of announced and potential contenders with support from 29% of probable Republican primary voters surveyed, followed by Thompson with 15% and McCain with 12%. Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor and a fundraising powerhouse, had 8%. The Arizona senator's showing in the poll is his lowest in any national survey...
Normally, I'd be preparing another installment of the weekly CQ Radio show. However, I'm presently working to transition CQ Radio to a new daily show. We launch on Monday, April 16th, at 2 pm CT. The show will air at that time every weekday as part of my new position as Political Director of Blog Talk Radio. I'll be interviewing bloggers, authors, and political players and introducing new Blog Talk Radio hosts. Tuesday, I'll have a taped interview with author and journalist Bernard Goldberg, who has a new book out: Crazies to the Left of Me, Wimps to the Right: How One Side Lost Its Mind and the Other Lost Its Nerve, which launches the same day. I'll be off the air tonight while I prepare the transition. But since you have an extra hour, why not check out some of the other Blog Talk Radio shows? BTR chief Alan...
Don Imus will no longer appear on CBS Radio. A day after losing his MS-NBC televised simulcast of his show, CBS president Les Moonves terminated Imus and left him unemployed a week after his offensive remarks about the women's basketball team at Rutgers: CBS brought the tumultuous weeklong crisis over racially insensitive remarks by the radio host Don Imus to an end late this afternoon when it canceled the “Imus in the Morning” program, effective immediately. The move came one day after MSNBC, which has simulcast Mr. Imus’s radio program for the past 10 years, removed the show from the cable network’s morning lineup. The two moves together mean that Mr. Imus, who has been broadcasting his program for more than 30 years, no longer has a home on either national radio or television. ... In a statement, Mr. Moonves said, “Those who have spoken with us the last few...
April 13, 2007
One of the captured Taliban detained at Guantanamo Bay has returned to Afghanistan -- and appears to be taking up where he left off. Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef got handed to the US by Pakistanis after the fall of the Taliban government, and now that he has returned to Afghanistan, he wants Hamid Karzai toppled and a "unity government" installed: Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, the former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, has been released from Guantanamo. Though under close observation by the government, he's already creating a stir in Kabul. The black-bearded mullah's expression betrays disgust and rage. "The people don't want (President Hamid) Karzai's government, and they don't want foreigners here in Afghanistan either," says Abdul Salam Zaeef. ... Zaeef has in no way renounced the teachings and attitudes of his former companions. Why shouldn't chopping off hands and the public execution of women in stadiums be acceptable forms of...
The situation in Waziristan has become so complicated that one needs a scorecard to know the players. Now the Pakistani government says their army has allied themselves with Taliban-supporting tribes in their fight against al-Qaeda elements in the mountains -- even though AQ supports the Taliban in its fight with the Afghan government: President Pervez Musharraf made a tacit admission yesterday that the Pakistani military has entered into a marriage of convenience with pro-Taliban tribesmen. The tribesmen have been fighting foreign militants linked to al-Qa'eda, who are resident in the country. Pakistani military officials had denied direct involvement in fighting between the tribesmen and the foreigners, who have taken shelter in the lawless area of South Waziristan. However, during a visit by The Daily Telegraph to the region this week Pakistani commanders made it clear that they support local militants who are fighting Central Asians, mainly Uzbeks. All of this...
When a metropolitan area has more than one decent-size daily newspaper, the competition can be fun to watch. The publishers will do everything from juggle the comic-strip lineup to conduct give-aways for subscriptions in order to beat each other. Sometimes it gets uglier than that, and lawyers get to make as much money as the publishers. The two Twin Cities newspapers will make a few more lawyers rich with a new lawsuit after the Star-Tribune supposedly enticed former Pioneer Press executives to break a non-compete contract and share proprietary information: The St. Paul Pioneer Press sued the Star Tribune on Thursday, claiming that Par Ridder, the newspaper's new publisher, violated an employment agreement with the Pioneer Press. The suit asks that he be removed and barred from working for the Star Tribune for at least a year. ... The civil lawsuit accuses Ridder and two executives he recruited from the...
It seems as though the firing of eight federal prosecutors and the bumbling manner in which the administration handled the fallout has no bottom in sight. Like a thread that, once pulled, continues unraveling an entire garment, the situation continues to generate embarrassment and expose poor management -- at best. The latest form that the scandal has taken is the acknowledgement from the White House that some political aides may have used the Republican National Committee e-mail servers for official government business, and that some of the missing e-mails may have pertained to the termination of the US Attorneys: The White House said Thursday that missing e-mail messages sent on Republican Party accounts may include some relating to the firing of eight United States attorneys. The disclosure became a fresh political problem for the White House, as Democrats stepped up their inquiry into whether Karl Rove and other top aides...
Yesterday, I received a number of messages from CQ readers noting significant slowdowns in page loading. Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to work on it much until this morning, when it has taken most of my time investigating. The culprits appear to be the outside content providers for CQ, notably Technorati and Blogads. The Technorati tags on each post now take longer to load than before, which causes the content column to load much more slowly -- because I usually have 25-35 posts on the main page. I have removed the Technorati and Digg tags from the main page posts, but they still remain on the individual-post pages, where people go to read and add comments. The Blogads proxy server appears somewhat slow in responding, too. That doesn't cause as much of a problem, though, because the content loads first, and people can continue reading while the ads load....
... and I feel fine! I will go to the day job as a call center manager for the last time today. On Monday, I start my new full-time position with Blog Talk Radio as Political Director and will provide full-time commentary through my blog and my new daily BTR show. The phrase "dream come true" is hackneyed, but in this case the cliché applies. I have worked in the burg/fire alarm industry for eighteen years, starting in late 1988 as a night shift operator at a Honeywell central station. I took the job after working at Hughes Aircraft in Anaheim Hills as an editor and tech writer for the Technical Publications group for almost four years. It had been my first career, and I loved the work -- even if the writing was dry and repetitive. It allowed me to build my skills, and I would have cheerfully done...
Don Imus started a brushfire of criticism for the latest in a series of racially insensitive remarks last week, ultimateky costing him his broadcasting platforms at CBS and NBC. Much of the demand for his termination came from the efforts of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, two former Democratic presidential candidates (2004 and 1988, respectively), who fired up demands for boycotts against Imus' sponsors. Their success may present a problem for their party, however, as Democrats routinely used Imus to access independent white male voters who comprised a large part of his audience: They came by the hundreds that hot August day in tiny Johnson City, Tenn., gathering on an asphalt parking lot to meet Rep. Harold E. Ford Jr. It was not just that he might become the state's first black senator. More than that, even in Republican eastern Tennessee, the Democratic congressman was a celebrity — a regular...
The ACLU lost a number of members in 1977 when they defended the American Nazi Party when they wanted to stage a demonstration in the town of Skokie, Illinois -- a city where a number of Holocaust victims and their families had settled. Over 30,000 ACLU members staged a demonstration of their own when they marched out of the organization, even after the ACLU won the case, and even though the Nazis never did march in Skokie. Thirty years later, the ACLU proves that they have not learned their lesson. The Ohio chapter has agreed to represent the American Nazi Party again in a conflict over a demonstration permit, this time in a predominantly black neighborhood in Cincinnati. Holly at The Moderate Voice shares the e-mail: On April 20, 2007, the American National Socialist Workers Party of Roanoke, VA—a neo-Nazi group—plans to march through the predominantly African-American neighborhood of Over-the-Rhine...
April 14, 2007
The Department of Justice executed another Friday-afternoon document dump -- that time-honored method for politicians to avoid press coverage of their peccadilloes -- and uncovered yet another refutation of earlier statements by its senior officials. This time, the documents disprove the testimony given repeatedly that the replacements for the fired attorneys had not been selected before the termination of the prosecutors: The attorney general's former top aide identified five Bush administration insiders as potential replacements for sitting U.S. attorneys months before those prosecutors were fired, contrary to repeated suggestions from the Justice Department that no such list had been drawn up, according to documents released yesterday. E-mails sent to the White House in January and May of 2006 by D. Kyle Sampson, then chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, name potential replacements for U.S. attorneys in San Diego, San Francisco, Little Rock and Grand Rapids, Mich. The...
North Korea missed its deadline to shut down the Yongbyon nuclear reactor, as widely expected after Pyongyang refused to act until its funds in Macau were unfrozen. The failure led the chief US negotiator to explain that momentum has dropped from the efforts to resolve the nuclear standoff: The deadline for North Korea to shut down it main nuclear reactor passed Saturday with no action taken by the communist country, leaving the top U.S. nuclear negotiator to surmise that the momentum had escaped disarmament talks. Saturday's missed deadline marked the latest setback for an agreement that when reached in February offered the prospect of disarming the world's newest declared nuclear power. North Korea successfully exploded a nuclear bomb in October. "We don't have a lot of momentum right now. That is for sure," U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill told reporters before meeting his Chinese counterpart, Wu Dawei. The...
The Weekly Standard's Stephen Hayes takes a look at the Fred Thompson phenomenon in the Republican presidential primary race and concludes that he embodies None of the Above, at least for the moment. Make no mistake, Hayes warns -- he won't play that role for long. If conservatives find themselves disheartened by the passive (or nonexistent) conservativism of the Bush era, Thompson promises a more assertive, robust form that could hearken back to Ronald Reagan: The presence of the cigars and the absence of a press chaperone were clues that Thompson is taking a different approach to his potential candidacy. A campaign flack would have insisted on hiding the cigars--Senator, how did you get those Cuban cigars? Isn't there a trade embargo?--and might have dampened Thompson's natural candor. On subjects ranging from Social Security to abortion, the CIA and to Iran, there would be lots of candor over the next...
The incredibly slow loading of CQ has been resolved. The culprit? I had old Blogads code on the site that utilized their proxy servers, rather than their 2.0 platform. Thanks to CQ commenter ForNow and Instapundit, I've fixed the problem and the site loads much more quickly. I will also probably look into reducing the graphics load on the site in order to make it even more responsive. After hearing the response to the removal of the Technorati and Digg widgets from the main display page, I'm going to leave them off. I'm keeping Sphere because I find it personally useful, and because it does a good job of finding related posts both within CQ's archives and around the blogosphere. All of the widgets will remain on the individual post displays, where they will have no effect on page loading....
James Zumwalt, a former Marine and an anti-terrorism activist, calls for legislation protecting ordinary Americans who report suspicious behavior, regardless of whether their information uncovers a terrorist plot or not. His New York Times opinion piece references the TV show Seinfeld as an example: IN an echo of the final episode of “Seinfeld,” which involved a violation of a “good Samaritan law” that required a witness to a crime to come to the victim’s assistance, a recent lawsuit in a United States federal court demands consideration of a related law — with real-life application — to protect good Samaritans. The incident that gave rise to the claim occurred last Nov. 20 at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport. Six Muslim religious leaders, or imams, were removed from a domestic US Airways flight after fellow passengers and airline personnel became concerned about what they deemed suspicious behavior. ... While the imams may or...
It gets disheartening defending the obvious pre-9/11 connections between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda when the White House seems unmotivated to do so, but Thomas Jocelyn and Andy McCarthy haven't been chased off the story by Senator Carl Levin and the Washington Post. When both asserted that no one had found connections between Saddam and AQ, they both reminded readers to follow the money: But Levin's story, which was simply repeated without any real investigation by the Post or even the inspector general's office, relies on a false dichotomy. The senator now pretends that the CIA and other intelligence outfits had reached a rock-solid conclusion that there was no noteworthy relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda in 2002, but Feith's shop improperly pressed on. The Post summarized the inspector general's report as saying: " the CIA had concluded in June 2002 that there were few substantiated contacts between al-Qaeda operatives and...
On Monday, I start my new daily show at Blog Talk Radio, and we're going to start with a bang. We will have Congressman and presidential candidate Duncan Hunter to start the first show, and he will be taking your calls for the first half of the show. On the second half, Fausta will discuss immigration and her own BTR show. Tuesday, we will spend all day with Bernard Goldberg, media and cultural critic as well as journalist for HBO after a long career at CBS News. His new book, Crazies to the Left of Me, Wimps to the Right: How One SIde Lost Its Mind and the Other Lost Its Nerve, hits the bookstands on Tuesday, and you can pre-order it now. I interviewed him today and will play highlights of the conversation during the show. He has plenty of thoughts on Don Imus, about whom he presciently...
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 we will be playing the promos The Patriot recorded for each of us that highlights the credibility we all bring to the NARN. I posted mine on Thursday. Today I can assure you that I will be wearing a jersey, as well as covering the week's hottest topics. Mitch and I will assuredly talk about Don Imus, the...
The legendary singer of "Tiny Bubbles" died this morning of heart failure at the age of 76: Ho entertained Hollywood's biggest stars and thousands of tourists for four decades. For many, no trip to Hawaii was complete without seeing his Waikiki show a mix of songs, jokes, double entendres, Hawaii history and audience participation. Shows usually started and ended with the same song, "Tiny Bubbles." Ho mostly hummed as the audience enthusiastically took over the song's swaying, silly lyrics: "Tiny bubbles/in the wine/make me happy/make me feel fine." "I hate that song," he often joked to the crowd. He said he saved it for the end because "people my age can't remember if we did it or not." The son of bar owners, Ho broke into the Waikiki entertainment scene in the early 1960s and, except for short periods, never left. Few artists are more associated with one place. I...
April 15, 2007
With his Congressional testimony just two days away, Alberto Gonzales has opted for a practice run in today's Washington Post. The beleaguered Attorney General pleads his case directly to the American public. He categorically states that he would never ask for a resignation of federal prosecutors for malign purposes, but afterwards the case gets somewhat weaker: My decision some months ago to privately seek the resignations of a small number of U.S. attorneys has erupted into a public firestorm. First and foremost, I appreciate the public service of these fine lawyers and dedicated professionals, each of whom served his or her full four-year term as U.S. attorney. I apologize to them, their families and the thousands of dedicated professionals at the Justice Department for my role in allowing this matter to spin into an undignified Washington spectacle. What began as a well-intentioned management effort to identify where, among the 93...
Fred Thompson appeared on the pages of the Wall Street Journal yesterday to assess tax policy and its impact on the American economy. To no one's great surprise, Thompson favors tax cuts to incentivize capital investment -- and to no one's great surprise, he articulates that vision very, very well: The results of the experiment that began when Congress passed a series of tax-rate cuts in 2001 and 2003 are in. Supporters of those cuts said they would stimulate the economy. Opponents predicted ever-increasing budget deficits and national bankruptcy unless tax rates were increased, especially on the wealthy. In fact, Treasury statistics show that tax revenues have soared and the budget deficit has been shrinking faster than even the optimists projected. Since the first tax cuts were passed, when I was in the Senate, the budget deficit has been cut in half. Remarkably, this has happened despite the financial trauma...
Hillary Clinton has had a difficult conundrum facing her ever since the beginning of her presidential campaign. Her vote to authorize the use of force against Iraq and Saddam Hussein in October 2002 has the anti-war base revved up to defeat her in favor of a more capitulationist candidate like Barack Obama or John Edwards. She has tried to alternately defend the vote and claim that she was misled as a defense against the activists within her own party. Last night. however, she ran into someone who refused to buy what she's been selling (via Instapundit): After fielding many questions ranging from mental health care to veteran affairs at a Town Hall Meeting in Hampton, NH, Senator Hillary Clinton received a heated question about Iraq. A woman who had traveled from New York asked Sen. Clinton if she had read the report given to her in 2002 on intelligence and...
George Will has few peers in politics and in baseball politics, and he proves it yet again today in his look at the 60th anniversary of Jackie Robinson's first game with the Brooklyn Dodgers. For those confused by the Don Imus kerfuffle, here's what real prejudice and hatred looked like: To appreciate how far the nation has come, propelled by what began 60 years ago today, consider not the invectives that Robinson heard from opponents' dugouts and fans but the way he had been praised. "Dusky Jack Robinson," as the Los Angeles Times called him, alerting readers to the race of UCLA's four-sport star, ran with a football "like it was a watermelon and the guy who owned it was after him with a shotgun." And that was from Robinson's allies in the media. Will continues: Eig is especially informative about the dynamics among the Dodgers, who, like many teams,...
A funny thing happened on the way to the Tsar-ship. It looks like Vladimir Putin's supposedly enormous popularity in Russia has not kept him from developing a vocal opposition to his increasingly autocratic rule. Yesterday, thousands of Russians rallied against Putin's rule, and police arrested former chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov for his role in leading the demonstration: There were pensioners clutching single roses, students wearing jeans and a young man weaving through Moscow's anarchic traffic on a chopper bike. Ranged against them were 9,000 riot police wielding truncheons and the might of the Russian state. And yet for one moment yesterday the demonstrators got the better of their opponents. After surging down the Boulevard Ring, the protesters began a defiant chant: 'Russia without Putin: Russia without Putin.' The sun burst on to a freezing Moscow morning. There was, it seemed, a whiff of revolution in the air. 'We don't agree,...
Pervez Musharraf has unequivocally stated that Pakistan will not allow US forces to operate in Pakistani territory, not in joint patrols or for any other reason. This conflicts with the more blunt assertion from the US, which noted that American forces will follow retreating Taliban and al-Qaeda forces across the Afghanistan border in "hot pursuit" cases (via TMV): President General Pervez Musharraf has rejected "absolutely and totally" the prospect of a joint US-Pakistan military operation to pursue retreating insurgents inside Pakistan. "The whole population of Pakistan will rise against it," he told CBS news channel in an interview. Musharraf hit out at his Afghan counterpart, saying he was "very angry" at criticism of Pakistani progress in fighting cross-border terrorism. Karzai's reasons for anger at Musharraf seem readily apparent; he wants Pakistan to do more in fighting the terrorists that hide in Pakistan and attack in Afghanistan. Musharraf's anger comes from...
I've decided to get a head start on the new job, which officially starts tomorrow, at Blog Talk Radio. I've posted for the first time at the BTR blog, talking about the opportunities ahead for both myself and BTR: As much as blogging represented that opportunity for writers four years ago, I believe Blog Talk Radio holds out even more opportunities for writers and talkers now. We have just begun operations eight months ago, and already we have a wide variety of shows for listeners to enjoy — and not just in politics. We expand our reach every day into new topics and new issues, and we see no limit. Blog Talk Radio gives everyone a microphone, and more importantly, a solid technical platform that alllows for immediate dialog. Instead of posting an essay and waiting for comments and e-mails, New Media people can interact directly with those who agree...
April 16, 2007
In the midst of the turmoil caused by the collapse of the Ukraine government, one of the firebrands of Ukrainian independence has a message for Moscow: hands off. Yulia Tymoshenko, the woman whose physical attraction and passion for self-determination made her the toast of free peoples everywhere two years ago, appears ready to re-align her party with that of Viktor Yushchenko in order to defeat the pro-Russian forces of former president Viktor Yanukovich, but this time she'll be in charge: Ukraine's opposition leader has vowed to end Russia's influence over her country once and for all. Yulia Tymoshenko may soon be able to act on her promise if she becomes prime minister once more after elections scheduled for next month. Mrs Tymoshenko, named the world's third most powerful woman by Forbes magazine, is perhaps the one politician to have emerged stronger from Ukraine's latest political crisis, sparked by a presidential...
Despite a promise to end the boycott of Israel as a condition of entry into the World Trade Organization, the Saudis have continued to enforce the boycott. The US continues to press the Saudis, but Israeli-made goods cannot enter the kingdom: Despite a promise made to Washington nearly 18 months ago to drop its trade embargo against Israel, Saudi Arabia continues to enforce the Arab League boycott, The Jerusalem Post has learned. In November 2005, Riyadh pledged to abandon the boycott after Washington conditioned Saudi Arabia's entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) on such a move. A month later, on December 11, Saudi Arabia was granted WTO membership. The WTO, which aims to promote free trade, prohibits members from engaging in discriminatory practices such as boycotts or embargoes. Nonetheless, the Post has found, Saudi officials continue to bar entry to products manufactured in Israel or to foreign-made goods containing...
... if the Democrats succeed in scaring people into re-enacting the Fairness Doctrine. According to Adam Thirer in City Journal, the Left believes that Blog Talk Radio might be part of the problem, however. Despite the explosion of communications outlets and choices for the consumer over the last twenty years since the demise of the Fairness Doctrine, Chicken Little on the Left continue their hysteria over media consolidation -- and their solutions will do far more damage to free speech than anything they decry (via Michelle Malkin): Throughout most of history, humans lived in a state of extreme information poverty. News traveled slowly, field to field, village to village. Even with the printing press’s advent, information spread at a snail’s pace. Few knew how to find printed materials, assuming that they even knew how to read. Today, by contrast, we live in a world of unprecedented media abundance that...
The Republicans' dream candidate gave yet a further hint yesterday that he will run for the presidential nomination for the 2008 ticket. Was it Newt Gingrich? Perhaps Fred Thompson got spotted having lunch with Mitch McConnell? Did Jeb Bush change his last name to Reagan? No -- this is even better than that (via Memeorandum): Sen. John Kerry (D-Massachusetts) reopened the door to a possible 2008 presidential campaign during a book signing in Denver and then again, in an interview with 9NEWS. The 2004 Democratic nominee told a crowd of more than 250 at the Tattered Cover bookstore in lower downtown Denver that he had no desire to endorse any candidate for the office right now, choosing to wait to see how they addressed the issue of global warming. ... Afterwards, while answering a question from a viewer on the program YOUR SHOW about why he chose not to run,...
Patricia Taylor Buckley, the beloved wife of conservative godfather William F Buckley and mother of novelist Christopher Buckley (Thank You For Smoking), has passed away this weekend. National Review's The Corner has a number of touching tributes in remembrance. Bob Leibowitz, who knew Mrs. Buckley for many years, writes his personal recollections of the "den mother of the conservative movement". Our prayers go to the two Mr. Buckleys and all of their family and friends. While you say your prayers for the Buckleys, spare a few for The Anchoress as well. My friend is struggling with a chronic illness that has incapacitated her to varying degrees, and right now she is too ill to write. I know she'll deny this, but she's one of the gentlest souls in the blogosphere. When politics got too nasty for her, she consoled herself and all of the rest of us with beautiful Catholic...
Hillary Clinton and her supporters had thought that the 2008 primary race would be nothing less than a coronation march, as the supporters of her husband all came together to return the White House keys to the Clinton family. It turned into a dogfight instead, and some of her husband's former colleagues have decided to back another dog in the fight. Barack Obama has managed to convince some of Bill's big fundraisers to support his candidacy over that of the former First Lady: As Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton seeks to reassemble the Democratic money machine her husband built, some of its major fund-raisers have already signed on with Senator Barack Obama. Among the biggest fund-raisers for Mr. Obama’s campaign are as many as a half-dozen former guests of the Clinton White House. At least two are close enough to the Clintons to have slept in the Lincoln bedroom. At minimum,...
Katherine Kersten follows up today on her column last week regarding the installation of foot-washing basins for Muslims at Minneapolis Community Technical College. Kersten digs deeper into the process by which MCTC will modify its facilities to accommodate the requirements of a specific religion, and discovers the less-than-tolerant agenda of the group advising them (via Power Line): But I also discovered something more important for colleges seeking guidance on "accommodations": Projects like MCTC's are likely to be the first step in a long process. The task force's eventual objectives on American campuses include the following, according to the website: permanent Muslim prayer spaces, ritual washing facilities, separate food and housing for Muslim students, separate hours at athletic facilities for Muslim women, paid imams or religious counselors, and campus observance of Muslim holidays. The task force is already hailing "pioneering" successes. At Syracuse University in New York, for example, "Eid al...
Moqtada al-Sadr has played his final political card in Iraq by withdrawing his ministers from the Cabinet of Nouri al-Maliki. The move puts pressure on Maliki to find other factions to support his majority, and so far, Maliki has refused to buckle to demands for a timetable for the withdrawal of American troops: The head of Moqtada Sadr's Iraqi parliament bloc says the radical cleric has ordered his ministers to withdraw from the cabinet. Mr Sadr's bloc, which has six cabinet ministers, is trying to press Prime Minister Nouri Maliki to set a timetable for a US troop withdrawal. Mr Maliki has refused, saying a pullout depends on conditions on the ground. Analysts say Mr Sadr holds great power among Iraq's Shia majority, but the unity government is likely to survive. If Maliki survives the withdrawal of Sadr's support, Sadr is finished politically. He drew only middling crowds in Najaf...
John McCain, looking for some conservative mojo to break out of an early slump on the stump, will outline his plan to overhaul the federal tax code at a speech today in Memphis. Speaking in the heart of what may soon become Fred Territory, McCain will pledge to end the "Byzantine" tax laws that have created an entire industry out of determining how to pay Uncle Sam: In a major economic policy speech today, Senator McCain will pledge to fix what he calls an "incomprehensible" and "Byzantine" federal tax code, casting himself as the candidate who will fight for changes that others have failed to achieve. The speech to the Economic Club of Memphis is the second in a series of substantive addresses Mr. McCain is delivering in an effort to revive an ailing campaign and recapture the sharp-tongued candor that won him support in his first presidential bid eight...
Duncan Hunter will be my guest on the first installment of the daily CQ Radio show today. The Congressman and presidential hopeful will appear between 2 - 2:30 pm Central Time to discuss his candidacy, national security, and his vision for America. Hunter's candidacy has flown under the media radar thus far, and we'll ask him how he plans to make a move on the frontrunners during 2007. In the second half, Fausta joins us to talk about her own Blog Talk Radio show. She's talking immigration and more on her show, live at 11 am CT. The best part of Blog Talk Radio is that you can join the conversation -- live! Call me at 646-652-4889 to talk with Congressman Hunter, Fausta, or me during the show. UPDATE AND BUMP: I forgot to link to Hunter's website; I fixed that now. And here's the Congressman posing with the...
At least one gunman has killed as many as 20 people at Virginia Tech, according to the BBC: At least 20 people have been killed and more injured after a gunman went on the rampage at the campus of Virginia Tech university in Virginia, US. Police say there were two separate shooting incidents - one at West Ambler Johnston Hall, a student dormitory, and Norris Hall, an engineering building. The incidents were about two hours apart. Police say that the gunman at Norris Hall is dead. Hot Air says the gunman -- so far it looks like only one -- carried an ammo vest and shot students in classrooms indiscriminately. I'll have more as details become available. UPDATE: The two shootings were two hours apart. The first occurred in a student dorm where an ID would be required for access. The second occurred in an engineering building. UPDATE II: The...
The Des Moines Register reported that Rudy Giuliani told a crowd that social conservatives had to "get beyond issues" like abortion in order to elect Republicans. Thomas Beaumont's report sent a few shock waves through the blogosphere: Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani warned GOP activists in Des Moines on Saturday that if they insist on a nominee who always agrees with them, it will spell defeat in 2008. “Our party is going to grow, and we are going to win in 2008 if we are a party characterized by what we’re for, not if we’re a party that’s known for what we’re against,” the former New York mayor said at a midday campaign stop. Republicans can win, he said, if they nominate a candidate committed to the fight against terrorism and high taxes, rather than a pure social conservative. “Our party has to get beyond issues like that,” Giuliani said,...
A few Muslim cabbies at Minneapolis-St. Paul airport had demanded the right to refuse passengers who carried alcohol in their baggage. The Metropolitan Airport Commission tried to mediate the dispute, but the cabbies refused to back down from their demands, forcing the MAC's hand. Today, they gave their answer: Starting May 11, airport taxi drivers who refuse to transport riders carrying alcohol will be suspended for 30 days. And after a second offense, their license would be revoked for two years. The Metropolitan Airports Commission voted 11-0 Monday to approve the crackdown, which some Muslim drivers say violates their religious beliefs. Commissioners called the change reasonable, practical and important for rider safety. "We are sending a message that if you want to drive a taxi at our airport you can't refuse our customers," Steve Wareham, operations manager of Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. Minneapolis has given the Muslim community a rather...
April 17, 2007
With the upcoming presidential election, France appears on the brink of making a momentous choice. The decades-long infatuation with socialism appears to be at an end, the London Telegraph reports, as the electorate has tired of the entrenched economic ennui it has brought. The news will not bode well for Ségolène Royal, the Socialist challenging Nicolas Sarkozy: Rungis is Paris's larder. Those who work there - from socialist porters to Right-wing suppliers of Paris's top kitchens - agree on one thing: France, for so long hampered by stifling employment laws and a groaning welfare system, needs to get back to work. "Socialism, well we've done that. We don't need more of the Left, we have all the social protection we need. If they win, it's the end of the road," said Thierry Dumesnil, 40, shifting huge wedges of brie and other cheeses for his wholesale employer. He intends to vote...
John McCain continues his efforts to assume the mantle of fiscal discipline in the Republican presidential primary. In a speech yesterday in Memphis, he assured his audience that a McCain presidency would exhibit responsible stewardship of the nation's treasury -- and scolded Republicans for becoming the "party of government": Senator John McCain of Arizona acknowledged Monday that his fellow Republicans “forgot who we were” in recent years by spending too much, and said that as president he would rely on low taxes, greater fiscal restraint and free trade to lift the nation’s economy. Mr. McCain, whose presidential campaign has been viewed with suspicion by some conservatives because of his initial opposition to the Bush administration’s tax cuts, used the first major economic address of his campaign to reaffirm his commitment to the free market but said he would move to overhaul the nation’s unemployment programs to help people find jobs...