May 1, 2007
File this one under Conservative Red Meat -- John McCain wants to form a League of Democracies to take action when the UN fails to do so. Warning that the US has to find a global structure for its security policies, McCain told a Stanford University audience that lasting peace comes from spreading freedom: Republican presidential candidate John McCain envisions a "League of Democracies" as part of a more cooperative foreign policy with U.S. allies. The Arizona senator will call for such an organization to be "the core of an international order of peace based on freedom" in a speech Tuesday at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif. "We Americans must be willing to listen to the views and respect the collective will of our democratic allies," McCain says, according to excerpts his campaign provided. "Our great power does not mean we can do whatever we...
Hugo Chavez announced last night that Venezuela would withdraw from both the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Claiming that Western financial assistance prolongs poverty rather than relieve it, he demanded that the two organizations return Venezuelan assets. At the same time, Chavez has proceeded to seize oil-production facilities from Western corporations, primarily those based in the US: President Hugo Chavez announced Monday he would formally pull Venezuela out of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, a largely symbolic move because the nation has already paid off its debts to the lending institutions. "We will no longer have to go to Washington nor to the IMF nor to the World Bank, not to anyone," said the leftist leader, who has long railed against the Washington-based lending institutions. Chavez said he wanted to formalize Venezuela's exit from the two bodies "tonight and ask them to return what they...
That's right, put a big fat question mark at the end of that sentence, because so far the only source on record for that assertion comes from the Iraqi Interior Ministry, which has a track record of overenthusiasm with kill reports. Abu Ayyub al-Masri, the successor to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, reportedly died in a battle today with other insurgents: The leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, was killed on Tuesday in an internal fight between insurgents, the Interior Ministry spokesman said, but the U.S. military said it could not confirm the report. Spokesman Brigadier-General Abdul Kareem Khalaf told Reuters: "We have definite intelligence reports that al Masri was killed today." He said the battle happened near a bridge in the small town of al-Nibayi, north of Baghdad. Another source in the ministry said Masri had been killed in what he described as "probably score-settling within al Qaeda...
The New York Times finally weighs in on Fred Thompson, the conservative hope for the 2008 Republican presidential primaries, and they hit below the belt. Actually, that's true literally but not figuratively, as their profile actually remains balanced and positive, with the one exception about discussing his personal life between marriages: Making speeches at carefully chosen appearances, doing an occasional interview and fielding questions from Republican congressmen, Mr. Thompson, 64, is running something of a guerrilla exploratory effort. He even weighed in recently on a conservative blog to offer a detailed defense of his ideas on federalism. Behind the scenes, Mr. Thompson has been consulting with his inner circle — including former Senators Bill Frist and Howard H. Baker Jr. of Tennessee and experienced Washington aides like Mark Corallo, a former Justice Department official — about how he could pull together the money and staff he would need to run....
As CQ readers know, I think Alberto Gonzales has proven himself an incompetent Attorney General, and would do this administration a huge favor by resigning -- especially after his disastrous testimony before Congress in April. His continued presence enables every new significant detail in the firings of eight US Attorneys to become a major media sensation. That said, I'm hard pressed to find the scandal in the latest revelation by the National Journal's Murray Waas, who breathlessly informs us that Gonzales delegated hiring and firing decisions for non-civil service positions to his aides (via Memeorandum): Attorney General Alberto Gonzales signed a highly confidential order in March 2006 delegating to two of his top aides -- who have since resigned because of their central roles in the firings of eight U.S. attorneys -- extraordinary authority over the hiring and firing of most non-civil-service employees of the Justice Department. A copy of...
Two new studies on marijuana may provide a stumbling block for legalization activists. ABC News reports that British and American researchers have found evidence that THC, one of the two active ingredients in cannabis, provoke psychotic reactions even in healthy people. How will this impact the legalization argument? I discuss that at Heading Right this morning, and with any luck, my co-bloggers and I will give new meaning to the term "talking heads" as we debate this topic....
Editor & Publisher has released the latest circulation numbers for the newspaper industry -- and they show that the decline in hard-copy readership continues. Almost all major metropolitan broadsheets lost significant ground in the last year, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, and my local Minneapolis Star-Tribune: Blame the big metro papers -- again. The Audit Bureau of Circulations released the spring numbers this morning, revealing more plunges in daily and Sunday circulation. As in the past, the losses are steep while gains are minimal. This is the fifth consecutive reporting period that overall newspaper circulation experienced big drops, despite easing comparisons. For all papers reporting daily circulation, the Newspaper Association of America said that daily circ fell 2.1% while Sunday tumbled 3.1%. All daily averages reported are for Monday through Friday. The comparisons are based on the six-month period ending March 2007 and the six-month period ending...
Congress passed its Iraq war supplemental bill last week, but the White House still has not received it. The holdup, according to Congressional Quarterly (via National Review), is that Nancy Pelosi has not yet signed the bill. And the reason for the delay? Apparently, Pelosi has no idea what Congress passed: The conference report on the bill (HR 1591 - H Rept 110-107) was adopted by the House and cleared by the Senate last week, but Pelosi, D-Calif., wanted time to personally read it and sign it before sending it to Pennsylvania Avenue. "It's a major piece of legislation and you have to go through it word for word and line by line," Pelosi spokesman Nadeam Elshami said Monday. "She believes this is very important legislation, which she will sign and the president will receive Tuesday." The White House had wanted to get the bill and send it back, complete...
Unconfirmed reports from Iran say that the Iranian government has freed former FBI agent Robert Levinson and will deport him to either Frankfurt or Dubai today. Levinson had gone to Iran to conduct a private investigation into the murder of a former Iranian official in Washington: Friends of the former FBI agent believed to be in custody in Iran, Robert Levinson, say he could be released as early as today based on what they describe as two unconfirmed reports from Tehran. "We have received a call that he is free, and we have people at airports in Frankfurt and Dubai where we have been told he could show up," one of Levinson's friends told The Blotter on ABCNews.com. U.S. officials could not confirm the report, but FBI spokesman John Miller said, "We are hearing the same thing, but we have no way to judge the credibility of that information." Levinson...
In today's installment of CQ Radio, I will be reviewing a blogger conference call with the White House and Tony Snow. I'll review the hot stories of day, and announcing the Heading Right debate coverage for Thursday. I may have a couple of surprise guests as well, so tune in! Join the conversation by calling 646-652-4889. BREAKING: The President will make a statement today at 6:10 PM ET today explaining why he will veto the supplemental. The White House will transmit the veto to Congress tomorrow, and the House will vote to override in the morning. They'll lose, and the White House will meet the Congressional leadership later that day to determine how to proceed....
Today is the fourth anniversary of George Bush's speech on the USS Abraham Lincoln -- the one Democrats and anti-war activists call the "Mission Accomplished" speech. The crew of the carrier flew the banner because their mission had indeed been accomplished -- they had successfully supported the invasion of Iraq and the fall of Saddam Hussein's government, and were returning to the United States. Instead, everyone has attributed the banner's message to George Bush. All that proves is that they didn't listen to what he had to say four years ago. As A Better Where To Find points out, Bush hardly communicated anything remotely like "the war is over": We have difficult work to do in Iraq. We're bringing order to parts of that country that remain dangerous. We're pursuing and finding leaders of the old regime, who will be held to account for their crimes. We've begun the search...
One of the points in dispute about the Iraq war supplemental bill about to get vetoed by the President is whether the delay has affected military operations. Harry Reid said that the current funding will cover operations until mid-July, while the White House insists that it has already begun degrading operations and readiness. A Congressional Research Service analysis supports the Democrats -- but only by saying that robbing Peter to pay Paul will still have impact on a broad range of activities (emphases mine): If the Army temporarily tapped all this transfer authority, it could have a total of $60.1 billion available rather than $52.6 billion. Based on projections of monthly obligations rates, the Army could finance the O&M costs of both its baseline and war program for almost two additional months or through most of July 2007, if it tapped all of this transfer authority (see Table 2). It...
Pam at Atlas Shrugged had this earlier, but the Jerusalem Post has a fresh report on the latest threat from Palestinians against the West. The Speaker of the Palestinian Authority parliament has called Palestinians to the task of murdering all Americans, in addition to the mission of wiping Jews off the face of the Earth: Sheik Ahmad Bahr, acting Speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council, declared during a Friday sermon at a Sudan mosque that America and Israel will be annihilated and called upon Allah to kill Jews and Americans "to the very Last One". Following are excerpts from the sermon that took place last month, courtesy of MEMRI. Ahmad Bahr began: "You will be victorious" on the face of this planet. You are the masters of the world on the face of this planet. Yes, [the Koran says that] "you will be victorious," but only "if you are believers."...
May 2, 2007
Iranian security officials arrested former nuclear negotiator Hossein Mousavian, a political ally of former president Hashemi Rafsanjani. Replaced by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Mousavian had extensive contacts in Europe while fending off any attempts to put an end to Iran's nuclear program: A top Iranian former nuclear negotiator Hossein Mousavian has been detained, according to sources in Iran who did not want to be named. It is not clear why Mr Mousavian, who has also served as Iran's ambassador to Germany, was arrested. Eight security officials reportedly took him from his house on Monday. The inner workings of the Iranian political elite are as murky as ever, and this is no exception. Mousavian apparently works at a government-run think tank, so he had not fallen from favor. Despite his electoral defeat two years ago, Rafsanjani had remained influential; he's one of the richest men in Iran. Those riches could be part of...
Last year, millions of people marched in the streets to push for comprehensive immigration reform. Holding signs that demanded open borders, telling Southwestern cities that the land underneath them was really Mexican, and flying Mexican flags, the demonstrations had the short term effect of publicizing their agendas -- which had the long-term effect of strengthening anti-immigration hardliners. Congress never passed the comprehensive reform they demanded, and instead passed a border fence intended to restrict illegal immigration. Not surprisingly, the immigration rallies this year did not come close to the scale seen last year: Waving U.S. flags and demanding citizenship for undocumented immigrants, tens of thousands of jubilant protesters marched through the streets of Los Angeles on Tuesday during a mostly peaceful day that ended with clashes between police and demonstrators in MacArthur Park. Fifteen police officers were among those hurt. About 10 people were taken from MacArthur Park by ambulance...
With George Bush delivering only the second veto of his presidency, the question of funding the mission in Iraq became even more acute. Eighty-six days after the start of the 110th Congress, the military still has not received funding for operations in Iraq this year, and the process has to start from Square One while the Pentagon has to start juggling the books: President Bush vetoed a $124 billion measure yesterday that would have funded overseas military operations but required him to begin withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq as early as July, escalating the most serious confrontation between the White House and Congress over war policy in a generation. Bush carried through on his veto threat just after the legislation arrived at the White House, calling the timetable a "prescription for chaos and confusion" that would undercut generals. "Setting a deadline for withdrawal would demoralize the Iraqi people, would encourage...
Ronald Reagan inspired many analyses of his performance, from historically brilliant to accidentally successful, and worse. Journalists used him as a blank canvas for the most part, projecting their own biases and agendas onto Reagan and missing the essence of the man. Fortunately, Reagan faithfully kept up his diaries until the end of his presidency, and Harper Collins will publish extracts by historian Douglas Brinkley in The Reagan Diaries later this month. I've posted some excerpts at Heading Right from Howard Kurtz' article in the Washington Post, and we find out that Reagan is as we essentially knew him: witty, honest, passionate, and intelligent. In a front-page story, the placement of which speaks volumes about Reagan’s legacy, the wisdom of the 40th president remains trenchant and compelling today....
The first Republican presidential primary debate airs tomorrow night at 7 pm CT -- and Blog Talk Radio and Heading Right will team up to cover it. The entire team at Heading Right will be posting live at the site, offering a running conversation as the 90-minute debate progresses. Over a dozen top conservative BTR hosts will debate the debate, live, at the site. Some will also live-blog the debate on their home blogs. At 9 pm CT, about thirty minutes after the end of the event, we will launch Debate Central, a new debate forum for BTR. I will moderate a post-debate roundtable with a number of BTR hosts for 30 minutes. We'll talk about the highs and lows, who gained and who lost ground, and the impact on the early primary efforts. We can even take your calls, live, to address how you felt about the debates --...
The US Army has promulgated a new set of rules for operational security that puts restrictions on the ability of soldiers to write about their experiences in combat theaters. In fact, the change will be so restrictive as to have the practical effect of eliminating active-duty milbloggers, and silencing the voices from the front who have most actively promoted the war effort (via Michelle Malkin): The U.S. Army has ordered soldiers to stop posting to blogs or sending personal e-mail messages, without first clearing the content with a superior officer, Wired News has learned. The directive, issued April 19, is the sharpest restriction on troops' online activities since the start of the Iraq war. And it could mean the end of military blogs, observers say. Military officials have been wrestling for years with how to handle troops who publish blogs. Officers have weighed the need for wartime discretion against the...
The debate over gun rights has taken an interesting and complex twist in Texas. Governor Rick Perry, in reaction to the massacre in the "gun-free zone" of Virginia Tech, now says that Texas state law should allow licensed gun carriers to bring their firearms everywhere -- churches, schools, and businesses. Perry's initiative would render moot signs on buildings forbidding entry to those who carry concealed weapons, as long as a permit had been issued (via Hot Air): Texans who have concealed-weapon permits should be allowed to carry their guns anywhere in the state, including churches, courthouses and bars, Gov. Rick Perry said Monday. Currently, state law prohibits concealed weapons in certain places, including private property where signs are posted disallowing the guns. But after meetings with U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt about the rampage at Virginia Tech, Mr. Perry took issue with the idea of barring weapons...
I'm getting some e-mail and comments about the David Keene essay in The Hill regarding Dianne Feinstein regarding the multiple conflicts of interest between her Appropriations subcommittee assignment and her husband's businesses. Two days ago, Keene noted that her status as a "Cardinal" in the Appropriations process, combined with her position on the Senate Rules committee, left her able to oversee the issuance of contracts to businesses that enriched her family: California Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D) chairs the Senate Rules Committee, but she’s also a Cardinal. She is currently chairwoman of the Interior, Environment and Related Agencies subcommittee, but until last year was for six years the top Democrat on the Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies (or “Milcon”) sub-committee, where she may have directed more than $1 billion to companies controlled by her husband. If the inferences finally coming out about what she did while on Milcon prove...
Today on CQ Radio, we will speak with Josh Holmes, the spokesman for the Senate Republican Communication Office, to talk about the veto, the Iraq war funding, and what we can expect over the next few days. You can speak with Josh and myself by calling 646-652-4889 between 2-3 pm CT this afternoon! UPDATE AND BUMP: The House failed to override the veto. I'll post the final vote. If Nancy Pelosi couldn't hold the original 218 votes, that will be a significant defeat for her. UPDATE II: Pelosi actually picked up four votes. The House voted 222-203 to override the veto, far short of the two-thirds necessary....
When I first wrote about the Supreme Court's decision to strike down a sodomy law in the case of Lawrence v Texas, I warned that the basis of the decision -- a privacy right to sexual conduct between consenting adults -- would produce a wide range of mischief in subsequent decisions. I noted that polygamy, prostitution, and adult incest could be justified under such reasoning, and that although the law in question in Lawrence was indeed foolish and unwise, it did not violate the Constitution. Many CQ readers initially scoffed at this warning -- which is OK, because I actually enjoy scoffing -- but in November, polygamists began organizing challenges to the legal ban using Lawrence as a template. Today, Jeff Jacoby reports at the Boston Globe that we should prepare ourselves for cases involving adult incest, too: When the justices, voting 6-3, did in fact declare it unconstitutional for...
May 3, 2007
The arrest of former nuclear negotiator Hossein Mousavian has people scratching their heads, as I noted yesterday. Now the Guardian reports that Iranian authorities have charged Mousavian with leaking secrets from the Iranian nuclear program to the West: A senior Iranian diplomat who played a prominent role in negotiations on the country's nuclear programme was arrested in Tehran on security charges, it was reported yesterday. Hossein Mousavian was taken from his home on Monday by security officials and charged with passing on information on Iran's nuclear industry, the news agency IRNA reported, without saying who allegedly received the information. Mr Mousavian had served as the deputy head of the Iranian delegation in talks with the west on Tehran's nuclear ambitions, and had also been ambassador to Germany. Since the election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad he had left the government, and was working at a Tehran thinktank at the time of...
Estonia angered the Russians by recently removing a monument to the Red Army which occupied the Baltic state for decades. Vladimir Putin has poured gasoline on the fire of the controversy, demanding the restoral of the monument, and threatening Estonia if they fail to do so. Estonia's ambassador to Russia got assaulted by mobs, as did Sweden's, and the EU scolded Russia for not providing the proper security to diplomats in Moscow. Putin responded by escalating the tensions even further. Just as he did with Ukraine and Belarus, Putin has cut off energy supplies to the Estonians, presumably until they restore the memorial: Russia’s conflict with Estonia over the removal of a monument to the Red Army escalated yesterday after pro-Kremlin activists in Moscow tried to assault the Baltic republic’s ambassador. The EU entered the confrontation, calling on Russia to uphold commitments to protect foreign diplomats. A mob also attacked...
The Iraqis have announced another big takedown from al-Qaeda, and this time it looks like the US military will confirm the kill. Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed leader of the Islamic State of Iraq, has gone to meet his 72 virgins, courtesy of a joint US-Iraq operation: U.S. and Iraqi forces have killed the head of the self-styled Islamic State in Iraq, an al Qaeda-led militant group that has claimed many major attacks in the country, Iraq's deputy interior minister said on Thursday. Hussein Kamal said Abu Omar al-Baghdadi had been killed in a battle north of Baghdad. He declined to say when but said authorities had recovered Baghdadi's body. "Abu Omar al-Baghdadi was killed north of Baghdad by Iraqi and American forces. He died as a result of wounds sustained in clashes. The Interior Ministry has his body to carry out further checks," Kamal told Reuters by telephone. U.S....
Democrats and Republicans began the process of reaching a compromise on funding the military operations in Iraq yesterday, with Democrats apparently making the first big concession. The Washington Post reports that the demand for withdrawal timelines will be dropped -- and in return, the Republicans will back benchmarks tied to non-military aid for Iraq: President Bush and congressional leaders began negotiating a second war funding bill yesterday, with Democrats offering the first major concession: an agreement to drop their demand for a timeline to bring troops home from Iraq. Democrats backed off after the House failed, on a vote of 222 to 203, to override the president's veto of a $124 billion measure that would have required U.S. forces to begin withdrawing as early as July. But party leaders made it clear that the next bill will have to include language that influences war policy. Senate Majority Leader Harry M....
Atlantic Monthly's Andrew Sullivan has spent the last few years raging about the Bush administration and its predilection for torture. He has also written extensively on the supposedly degrading effect the television show “24″ has on the nation, and how it fits into a Fox/neocon mentality and to desensitize us to the horror of torture. Unfortunately, this predisposed Andrew to fall for a rather obvious hoax at a website devoted to entertainment satire. Has Andrew jumped the snark? Join us at Heading Right to discuss!...
Yesterday, CNN reported on the disastrous consequences that a precipitate American withdrawal would create for Iraq. Today, the Los Angeles Times follows suit, describing the delicate process of training a national army from scratch, and the collapse that would ensue if America bugs out: For almost three years, training the Iraqi army has been among the top priorities for the U.S. military. And for nearly that long, U.S. officials have considered it among their chief frustrations. Now, with President Bush under steady pressure to begin pulling U.S. troops from Iraq, the administration once again is emphasizing the need to train Iraqi forces to take over the country's security. But despite some signs of progress, both Iraqis and their American advisors at this training range are blunt about how much work remains: If a U.S. pullout comes anytime soon, most say, the Iraqi army will collase. "Honestly put, I think Iraq...
You have to love the American media and its love of lists. They feel compelled to categorize the top 100 most, least, biggest, most beautiful of just about anything that talks, walks, or crawls -- and they almost always manage to get it completely wrong when doing so. Time Magazine has just published its list of the 100 Most Influential People In The World, and guess who got left out? Just the leader of the Free World, that's all (via Mac at Heading Right): Heartthrob Leonardo DiCaprio and envelope-pushers Rosie O'Donnell and Sacha Baron Cohen are among the entertainment newsmakers on Time magazine's list of 100 people who shape the world. The list of 100 most influential, on newsstands Friday, also includes Queen Elizabeth II, presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, YouTube founders Steve Chen and Chad Hurley, director Martin Scorsese and model Kate Moss. It does not include...
On the eve of the first televised debate for the Republican presidential contenders, Quinnipiac shows that the race continues to fluctuate in the early primary season. Rudy Giuliani has lost significant ground over the last month to the undeclared Fred Thompson, but neither John McCain nor Mitt Romney has taken advantage: Giuliani leads the Republican field with 27 percent, down from 40 percent, followed by 19 percent for Arizona Sen. John McCain, 14 percent for former Sen. Fred Thompson and 8 percent each for former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. The Democrats have not changed positions much at all. Hillary Clinton leads the pack with a substantial 14-point lead over Barack Obama (32%-18%), despite other polling that indicated Obama had caught up to Hillary. Al Gore comes in third with 14%, meaning that the #3 person in both parties is an undeclared candidate -- not...
Robert Novak has a long career in punditry, so perhaps he has written a more despicable column than today's effort to link Mitt Romney to a massacre -- in 1857. Novak uses the release of a film that depicts the early Western atrocity conducted by Mormons on a band of travelers that coincidentally happened on September 11th, 150 years ago: Opening Friday, a motion picture called "September Dawn" depicts a brutal American massacre that has been forgotten. On Sept. 11, 1857, in Utah Territory, Mormons slaughtered more than 120 California-bound settlers from Arkansas. Retelling at this time the Sept. 11 carnage of 150 years ago does not help Mormon Mitt Romney's presidential campaign. The basic facts of the Mountain Meadows Massacre are not in dispute. Mormons mobilized Paiute Indians, accompanied by Mormons disguised as Indians, to attack a peaceful wagon train. The settlers beat back the attack but were left...
Today on CQ Radio, we will be talking with Robert Bluey of the Heritage Foundation and also of Bluey Blog in the second half of the show. We'll talk about his new efforts at Heritage and discuss the GOP primary race ahead of tonight's debate. We will also cover other topics in the first half, as well as take calls from you the entire hour. Be sure to call 646-652-4889 to join the conversation! UPDATE: You can be sure that we will be discussing Robert Novak's unbelievably despicable column in the first part of the show today. See below....
Yesterday, Wired reported on new Army operational-security regulations that would have meant an end, for all practical purposes, to milblogging from the front lines. Today, the Washington Times' Jon Ward asked Tony Snow about the new OpSec regulations, and the White House says the change is "overreported". Here's the video, and a transcript of the key portion: Q: A follow-up, a second question would be, the Pentagon has required all military bloggers to seek approval for their blogging and their -- I think also their e-mail. Some bloggers and military and conservative commentators have said the government is shutting down -- MR. SNOW: Well, that's -- from what we -- from what we understand, that is being overreported a little bit in the following sense. First, I'm not sure that that is operational, that request. No. 2, to the extent that they have asked -- and I would refer you...
Tonight, the first Republican presidential primary debate airs at 7 pm CT -- and Blog Talk Radio and Heading Right will team up to cover it. The entire team at Heading Right will be posting live at the site, offering a running conversation as the 90-minute debate progresses. Over a dozen top conservative BTR hosts will debate the debate, live, at the site. Some will also live-blog the debate on their home blogs. At 9 pm CT, about thirty minutes after the end of the event, we will launch Debate Central, a new debate forum for BTR. I will moderate a post-debate roundtable with a number of BTR hosts for 30 minutes. We'll talk about the highs and lows, who gained and who lost ground, and the impact on the early primary efforts. We can even take your calls, live, to address how you felt about the debates --...
Were live-blogging the debate at Heading Right. Come by and join us! We're starting the post-debate discussion at 9 pm CT -- be sure to join us!...
The first Republican debate has finished, and the analysis and spin will begin in earnest. I'm sure that by morning, my e-mail will be filled with messages insisting on promoting one candidate over another, but I already have a few conclusions to share with CQ readers and to inspire debate in this comment thread. * Who won? -- Mitt Romney won this debate. He looked relaxed, answered clearly, showed real warmth and a sense of humor, and actually answered the questions asked of him -- even the stupid ones, to which I'll return shortly. After Romney, one has to think that Jim Gilmore and Mike Huckabee may have made some strides in breaking out of the third tier. They also showed that they could connect emotionally to the audience and give clear, thoughtful answers. * Who lost? -- Not everyone who didn't win lost, but a couple of candidates obviously...
May 4, 2007
Last night, I had the pleasure of analyzing the debate with my excellent co-bloggers at Heading Right as it happened, and then recapping it at Debate Central in a half-hour roundtable which has now been podcasted by BlogTalkRadio. Afterwords, National Review offered me the opportunity to participate in their Symposium on the Reagan Library Debate, along with Yuval Levin, Kathleen Parker, John F Pitney Jr, Peter Robinson, Lisa Schiffren, and of course, Kathryn Jean Lopez. The consensus appears to be that the debate format was so awful as to make it almost inconsequential. Everyone agreed that Rudy did not help himself, although apparently Survey USA's snap poll showed Rudy winning the debate among California watchers. Perhaps that was because he didn't get to talk as much as the other candidates, as Chris Matthews at times seemed to play keep-away from Rudy. After that, the responses vary, and all are intriguing....
UPDATE: I expected
this kind of stupidity, but I didn't expect it from Shaun Mullen ...
I hate to point out the obvious, but that's not what I wrote. It's not okay to beat up
anyone. It doesn't make a beating worse if the victim happens to be gay, or obese, or a Democrat. I defy Shaun to identify where I said anything different. Talk about jumping the shark ...
Hugo Chavez, apparently not content to nationalize the oil industry alone, has now threatened to take over the banking and steel industries in Venezuela as well. Unhappy with the investment policies and outsourcing, the dictator sent envoys to the leaders in both industries to demand lower prices and total cooperation with his economic plans: President Hugo Chavez on Thursday threatened to nationalize the country's banks and largest steel producer, accusing them of unscrupulous practices. "Private banks have to give priority to financing the industrial sectors of Venezuela at low cost," Chavez said. "If banks don't agree with this, it's better that they go, that they turn over the banks to me, that we nationalize them and get all the banks to work for the development of the country and not to speculate and produce huge profits." ... Chavez also warned that the government could take over steel producer Sidor, which...
Perhaps the debate over whether to persevere in Iraq has become too brittle to accept anyone else's opinion, but the foreign minister of Iraq gives it a game try. In today's Washington Post, Hoshyar Zebari implores Americans and the world not to abandon Iraq to the terrorists and sectarian lunatics. Zebari explains that Iraq has changed profoundly since liberation, and the media paint a distorted picture of his country: Last weekend a traffic jam several miles long snaked out of the Mansour district in western Baghdad. The delay stemmed not from a car bomb closing the road but from a queue to enter the city's central amusement park. The line became so long some families left their cars and walked to enjoy picnics, fairground rides and soccer, the Iraqi national obsession. Across the city, restaurants are slowly filling and shops are reopening. The streets are busy. Iraqis are not cowering...
The Democrats have always had it in their power to end the Iraq war simply by defunding it, and forcing the Pentagon to retreat from the terrorists and insurgents in Baghdad, Anbar, and leave the Iraqis to the tender mercies of radical Islamists. They chose not to do so, but to dally for 85 days before producing timetables for withdrawal that everyone knew George Bush would veto, a veto that Congress could not possibly override. Now they have apparently decided to rethink the funding bill to exclude withdrawal requirements and take a different tack. Hillary Clinton and Robert Byrd want to amend the 2002 AUMF to place a five-year sunset provision that will force Bush to withdraw from Iraq: As Democrats in Congress search for new ways to bring an end to the conflict in Iraq while producing a funding bill that President Bush will sign, the front-runner for the...
No one expected Don Imus to stay silent for long. Less than a month after CBS fired him from his morning radio show, syndicated nationwide, Imus has begun his public campaign to re-establish himself by claiming that he delivered what CBS specifically desired -- and he wants $120 million in damages. At Heading Right, I discuss the First Amendment implications, and predict a quick return to the airwaves for Imus....
Today on CQ Radio we will be debating the debate. NZ Bear will join us to discuss the debate, the results, the spin, and the meaning of last night's event. We will also discuss the performance of MS-NBC and The Politico, which may have staged the worst-ever presidential debate. Also, we'll talk about Hillary Clinton's new effort to de-authorize the war, which may start making its way through the Senate after Congress and the White House reach agreement on a supplemental spending bill for Iraq. I also want to talk about the new hate-crimes expansion bill that Bush has vowed to veto. NZ and I will talk with James Walker, president of Watchman Fellowship, to discuss his issues with the entire notion of hate crimes. Be sure to join the conversation at 646-652-4889 and keep the debate going!...
I see the Los Angeles Times has spent decades living in and reporting on the film community without learning anything about acting. In their Celebrity News section, Tina Daunt wonders whether voters will confuse Fred Thompson the politician with the roles performed by Fred Thompson the actor. She speaks with a USC professor who apparently doesn't understand the difference, either (via Hot Air): But in the age of YouTube, this performance could raise an intriguing political question: How does a performer eyeing a presidential run deal with a video history that can be downloaded, taken out of context, chopped into embarrassing pieces and then distributed endlessly though cyberspace? Some conservative political blogs are already considering the problem. "Not only do politicians have to worry about getting comfortable with a crowd and saying something that might be caught on tape," said USC professor Leo Braudy, a pop culture expert, who has...
Rasmussen has a new poll that measures the paranoia level in America, and unsurprisingly, BDS sufferers exhibit more than almost any group. When asked the question "Did Bush Know About the 9/11 Attacks in Advance?", almost as many Democrats say Yes as say No (via Memeorandum): Democrats in America are evenly divided on the question of whether George W. Bush knew about the 9/11 terrorist attacks in advance. Thirty-five percent (35%) of Democrats believe he did know, 39% say he did not know, and 26% are not sure. Republicans reject that view and, by a 7-to-1 margin, say the President did not know in advance about the attacks. Among those not affiliated with either major party, 18% believe the President knew and 57% take the opposite view. Overall, 22% of all voters believe the President knew about the attacks in advance. A slightly larger number, 29%, believe the CIA knew...
May 5, 2007
I've watched The Sopranos ever since it first started, and it remains one of the two episodic shows that I refuse to miss each week (South Park is the other, when they show new episodes). While it does feature violence, sex, and very raw language, it also has had compelling characters, intelligent writing, and intriguing themes and story arcs that keep me watching to see what happens next. One person described it as a soap opera for men, and there is some truth to that, but the First Mate follows the show as closely as I do. One sequence this season was unexpectedly disturbing, and I suspect it was for David Chase and the Sopranos team as well. The episode which aired the Sunday after the Virginia Tech massacre had a story line involving a disturbed young man of what appeared to be Korean or Chinese descent, who violently attacks...
A strong majority of troops in Iraq disavow the use of torture, even to save the life of their fellow soldiers, a new study shows. Only 10% in the anonymous survey admit to even mild forms of abuse, such as unnecessarily destroying private property. One might consider that good news, but the Washington Post takes the glass-one-third-empty approach in reporting it: More than one-third of U.S. soldiers in Iraq surveyed by the Army said they believe torture should be allowed if it helps gather important information about insurgents, the Pentagon disclosed yesterday. Four in 10 said they approve of such illegal abuse if it would save the life of a fellow soldier. In addition, about two-thirds of Marines and half the Army troops surveyed said they would not report a team member for mistreating a civilian or for destroying civilian property unnecessarily. "Less than half of Soldiers and Marines believed...
The Democratic leadership of the 110th Congress promised a change in style and substance from the so-called "do-nothing" 109th. They expanded the work week and laid out an ambitious agenda of legislative priorities that they would accomplish in the first 100 hours of Congress. Democrats almost immediately started hedging their pledges by clarifying that they meant 100 legislative hours, but even that pretense has evaporated. The Washington Post reports that four months after the Democrats took control of Congress, they have accomplished almost nothing: In the heady opening weeks of the 110th Congress, the Democrats' domestic agenda appeared to be flying through the Capitol: Homeland security upgrades, a higher minimum wage and student loan interest rate cuts all passed with overwhelming bipartisan support. But now that initial progress has foundered as Washington policymakers have been consumed with the debate over the Iraq war. Not a single priority on the Democrats'...
The Chicago Tribune reports that Democrats will produce a supplemental bill for the Iraq war that will not have fixed timelines for withdrawal, in order to ensure that George Bush will sign it. Dick Durbin will reach out to Republicans to fashion a compromise that will allow the surge to work through September -- and some Republicans may bail if the situation doesn't show improvement (via TMV): President Bush appears poised to win months more of funding for troops in Iraq. But if conditions don't improve there by fall, he could lose support from a battalion of congressional Republicans. Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill, while still debating details, say they are likely to pass a bill that would tie war spending to a set of benchmarks for Iraq's progress but no deadlines for troop withdrawal, which caused Bush to veto a funding bill this week. They would then address the...
UPDATE: Due to an issue at home today, I will not be on the air -- but make sure you tune in to the show!! The Northern Alliance Radio Network will be on the air today, with our six-hour-long broadcast schedule starting at 11 am CT. The first two hours features Power Line's John Hinderaker and Chad and Brian from Fraters Libertas. Mitch and I hit the airwaves for the second shift from 1-3 pm CT, and King Banaian and Michael Broadkorb have The Final Word from 3-5. If you're in the Twin Cities, you can hear us on AM 1280 The Patriot, or on the station's Internet stream if you're outside of the broadcast area. Today Mitch and I will likely discuss the Rasmussen study that shows a third of Democrats believe George Bush had advance knowledge of 9/11. Fifty-four percent believe we'll also discuss the apparent retreat of...
I want to calm the fears of our British friends: Queen Elizabeth was never in any danger of being assaulted with a snapped towel, nor does she need to wear plastic to avoid getting hit with tobacco spit. The snobs at the New York Times notwithstanding, Texans know how to act at formal balls and state dinners. The condescension and belittlement in what is supposed to be a news story reveals that the level of Bush Derangement Syndrome at the Gray Lady approaches hysteria: How does George W. Bush, a towel-snapping Texan who puts his feet on the coffee table, drinks water straight from the bottle and was once caught on tape talking with food in his mouth prepare for a state dinner with the queen? I suppose ... by not doing those things. He certainly managed it in Britain four years ago when the queen hosted him and Laura...
Fred Thompson appeared last night at the Lincoln Club, an influential group of California power brokers in the GOP, giving a speech which broadly outlines his agenda. Given that the Lincoln Club could have invited almost any of the 2008 primary candidates to speak at their annual dinner, the choice of Thompson gives the impression of a tacit endorsement of his candidacy -- and the Lincoln Club’s endorsement (tacit or otherwise) carries a powerful weight to anyone fortunate enough to receive it. The speech itself serves as an excellent entrée into the race. On the Iraq war, he remained steadfast in its central importance to American global security. On economics and taxes, he stayed close to the federalist philosophies that have become his hallmark. Thompson also attacked government waste, red tape, and its intrusion into areas without a Constitutional mandate -- and its poor performance when it does. I've extensively...
George Tenet has received plenty of criticism about his new book, At the Center of the Storm, ranging from poorly researched anecdotes to excoriation over the long delay and changing stories after he left the agency. Now one of his senior management team has flatly told Jeff Stein at CQ Daily that Tenet is a liar: Lehrer asked about the half dozen former CIA officials who signed a joint letter deploring Tenet’s book, as well as Michael Scheuer, former head of the agency’s Osama bin Laden unit, who wrote in The Washington Post that, “We shouldn’t buy his attempts to let himself off the hook.” “Well, Jim, none of them were — none of those six worked with me,” Tenet said. But one who did has now come forward to call Tenet — more in sorrow than anger — a liar. Tyler Drumheller, head of the Clandestine Service’s Europe Division...
May 6, 2007
Mike Nifong faces disbarment and almost certainly a flurry of lawsuits over his negligent and malicious handling of the Duke lacrosse players accused of rape by a mentally unstable woman. He may not be the only one on the hot seat, however, as the Durham police department apparently also failed to follow its own procedures and imcompetently investigated the charges. Police chief Steve Chalmers will finally issue a report on how his department investigated the woman's allegations, and it appears he has much to defend: The allegations of misconduct against District Attorney Mike Nifong have taken center stage, but an examination of police and prosecutorial records raises questions about whether the police ceded control of the investigation, violated their own policies, created false records and failed to pursue basic investigative leads. ... On March 31, Nifong directed Gottlieb and Investigator Benjamin Himan to show Mangum pictures of all 46 white...
It's been a slow morning today, as I spent most of last night fighting insomnia and decided to sleep later than usual when I finally got my 40 winks. I dragged myself out of bed and had just began to eat when I heard my cell phone alert me to a new message. My father, the Admiral Emeritus, had left me a terse "call me back when you get this" voicemail, so I immediately called him back. This was the conversation: AE: What's going on? Me: Huh? AE: Is there a problem? Is everyone OK? Me: I'm tired, I didn't sleep well, but that's it. AE: Oh, OK. I thought something was wrong. Me: Why? AE: Because by this time in the morning, you usually have a half a dozen posts up on your blog. I guess I usually do ... so it's difficult to blame him for being worried....
Readers can tell that the media has begun to take Fred Thompson seriously as a candidate, because the profiles on him have become more sharp and land on the front pages. Today, the Washington Post takes a turn at Fred, noting the similarities between his positions and that of his friend and colleague, John McCain -- and wonders why the base pines for Fred and mostly eschews McCain: Fred Thompson fervently backed the Iraq war, railed against an expanding federal government, took stands that occasionally annoyed his party and rarely spoke about his views on social issues during his tenure as a senator from Tennessee or in his writings and speeches since leaving office. In short, the man some in the GOP are touting as a dream candidate has often sounded like the presidential hopeful many of them seem ready to dismiss: Sen. John McCain (Ariz.). With some in the...
Newsweek publishes a breathless account of how George Bush's approval rating has dropped to 28%, and how leading Democrat contenders now outpoll the Republicans across the board for the 2008 presidential race. Coincidence, Newsweek asks? They should have asked that question of their pollsters: It’s hard to say which is worse news for Republicans: that George W. Bush now has the worst approval rating of an American president in a generation, or that he seems to be dragging every ’08 Republican presidential candidate down with him. But According to the new NEWSWEEK Poll, the public’s approval of Bush has sunk to 28 percent, an all-time low for this president in our poll, and a point lower than Gallup recorded for his father at Bush Sr.’s nadir. The last president to be this unpopular was Jimmy Carter who also scored a 28 percent approval in 1979. This remarkably low rating seems...
It appears Nicolas Sarkozy has won the French presidential election today, as results have leaked to various media groups and to the gathered supporters of the French center-right candidate. Meanwhile, the mood at his opponent's headquarters has turned grim, which indicates that the results have leaked to both sides: Supporters of Nicolas Sarkozy erupted in cheers Sunday, celebrating unconfirmed reports of a resounding victory for the rightwinger over Socialist Segolene Royal in France's presidential election. After a day which saw a huge voter turnout at the climax of the hardfought campaign, supporters chanted "we won!" at a Paris concert hall where Sarkozy was to deliver a speech after the official results were given. The mood was grim at the Socialist Party headquarters where about 300 Royal supporters waited. French law forbids the publication of projections until the last polling stations close at 1800 GMT although the figures are distributed to...
Palestinian Authority officials have blamed al-Qaeda for an attack on a school celebration, in part because the terrorists believed that girls and boys would dance together at the event. They allege that AQ has established a foothold in Gaza, and more attacks will follow: Palestinian Authority security officials accused supporters of al-Qaida in the Gaza Strip of carrying out Sunday's attack on a UNRWA-run school in Rafah in which one person was killed and six others were wounded. "There is no doubt that al-Qaida is operating in the Gaza Strip," a senior PA security official said. "Today's attack carries the fingerprints of al-Qaida." Witnesses told The Jerusalem Post that at least 70 Muslim fundamentalists participated in the attack on the Omariya School, where UNRWA and PA officials were attending a celebration. The director of UNRWA operations in the Gaza Strip, John Ging, was inside the school at the time. He...
May 7, 2007
Here at CQ, we're always looking for ways to tinker with the system in order to improve performance. I'm testing a new comment interface that works outside of the Typekey login. Typekey still works with the comments section, but at least for a test period, it will not be required. I'm using another form of spam blocking, and hopefully this will work well enough to eliminate the Typekey requirement, which has never worked particularly well with this blog. Let me know what you think. I'll update everyone on the performance of the system to keep spam out of the comments sections. UPDATE, BUMP: Still doing some tinkering. I'm trying to find solutions that won't require Typekey but will not create a lot of work for me to clear comments from spam filters. This may take some time and could create delays in comments posting on threads. I'm also trying to...
I don't subscribe to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, mostly because I no longer feel the need to get dead trees dropped on my driveway each morning to remain informed. I also don't feel that the Strib does a particularly good job of informing anyone outside the natural audience for their bias, but that's a complaint for another day. The paper no longer provides much even in entertainment, but what they had in that respect came almost entirely from the efforts of James Lileks. Now the Strib, in the midst of post-acquisition downsizing, has apparently decided that they can sell even more newspapers by becoming even less entertaining -- a decision that would shock anyone who hasn't had to endure the repeated stupidities of the Strib: In short, it’s everything I’ve been looking for. All these worlds are mine, except Europa! There are union rules about that, I gather. Hah! Just kidding....
Europe appears in shock today as the center of European socialism has rejected the Socialists and moved to the right. The victory of Nicolas Sarkozy in the French presidential election has the continent abuzz, trying to discern its meaning and its impact for the rest of Europe. Der Spiegel reports that France "lurched" to the Right, and warns of social conflict as a result: Perhaps it wasn't exactly a landslide, but it was certainly an unambiguous result: France's 44 million voters have chosen Nicolas Sarkozy, the strong man of the governing UMP, with a resounding majority and a record turnout. They have chosen his vision of a radical revitalization of the Republic and a return to the nation's patriotic foundations. Sarkozy's convincing win is the triumph of political individualism over the rival worldview of the Socialist candidate Ségòlene Royal and her vision of a "participatory democracy" -- which too often...
The New York Times reports that California has reaped benefits from its decision to move its primary from June to February. The candidates have to address issues near and dear to California hearts, such as Net neutrality, redistricting, use of public lands, and much more. As other states see their influence suffer as a result, what keeps them from leapfrogging California, and California from leapfrogging again? At Heading Right, I argue that Congress has a role in setting elections for federal offices -- and that the time may have come for a more orderly and fair primary process that allows all states to have a significant say in nominating presidential candidates. Also, be sure to read Rick Moran on what we can learn from the French presidential election process -- and not just in terms of turnout....
UPDATE: Not a terrorist attack. See below. State and federal authorities have swarmed over the Luxor Hotel after an explosion in its parking ramp this morning. A man carried a backpack into the second level of the parking garage and it exploded, killing the man carrying it and injuring another: A backpack exploded in a parking garage attached to a Las Vegas hotel early Monday, killing a man who had picked it up and injuring another person, authorities said. The man had removed the backpack from atop his car when it exploded shortly after 4 a.m. on the second floor of a parking behind the Luxor hotel-casino, said Officer Bill Cassell, a police spokesman. The second person was taken to an area hospital. Aerial video showed no apparent damage to the parking structure, where entrances were blocked while police, firefighters and federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agents...
Bill Richardson, the Democrat whom the Republicans should fear most, will appear on BlogTalkRadio today at 1 pm ET. The hosts will take calls live for Governor Richardson at 646-652-4803. I've written about Richardson before. He has the best resumé of all the Democrats and most of the Republicans, and his extensive experience runs through both the legislative and executive branches. If the Democrats have a Bill Clinton in the wings, it's probably him. That doesn't mean Richardson is someone I would support; far from it. Richardson has run to the left so far with his campaign, but even his previous brand of moderation relies far too heavily on government solutions. However, he has generally avoided being a polarizing figure, and his ability to attract moderates and independents has been proven in New Mexico. If the Democrats are smart enough to nominate him, it would probably force the GOP to...
Bill Richardson made his appearance on BlogTalkRadio's Heading Left show this afternoon, and he spoke about his position on the Iraq war. Not surprisingly, he favors a complete deauthorization of the war, along the lines proposed by Hillary Clinton and Robert Byrd. However, Richardson would go even farther than most Democrats. He would pull American troops out of Baghdad, but also from Anbar and Diyala, where they face al-Qaeda terrorists and where we have made a lot of progress in engaging the local tribes. Here's Richardson on his vision for Iraq: What I would do is call for a deauthorization on the war, on the basis of the authorization is now, I believe invalid, because there were no weapons of mass destruction, as that language indicated, in the initial war authorization. So I would deauthorize the war, I would set a timetable of all troops out by the end of...
Today on CQ Radio, we'll be talking with Rick Moran of Right Wing Nut House. He and I both posted about the relocation of presidential primaries, and where that process will lead us. We'll also talk about the Fred factor and the latest polling in the race, including the laughable Newsweek survey. Rick has his own BlogTalkRadio show, and Rick will update us on his upcoming show. Be sure to join the conversation at 646-652-4889 and keep the debate going! BUMP: To top, and be sure to read the post about Richardson. I'm hoping to play the clip for the show....
I'll be appearing on the Hugh Hewitt show tonight at 5:30 pm. We'll be talking about the Lileks story, which should come as no surprise, since James has been a contributor to Hugh's show for years. Be sure to tune in, and you can also catch the live stream at AM 1280 The Patriot! UPDATE: The Strib announced what we knew was coming -- 145 positions will be cut: The Star Tribune announced plans Monday to reduce its workforce by about 145 employees across the company, primarily through voluntary buyouts. ... “Revenue has been declining since 2004 and we need to respond to that reality.” Ridder said in a prepared statement. “The newspaper business model has changed and this restructuring will allow us to align more resources with what readers and advertisers are demanding from us. Through this process we will be increasing resources focused on local content and advertising...
We have heard plenty of people talk about the idea of splitting Iraq into three autonomous cantons in order to allow each of the three main demographics groups to run a portion of the country. Senator Joe Biden has pushed this idea for months, claiming it to be the only way out of Iraq. Recently, Sam Brownback endorsed that plan and wants to team up with Biden to present it to the Senate. According to the plan's advocates, a partition will provide the only framework for enabling the Sunnis, which has a lower level of population than the majority Shi'a or the already-transitioned Kurds. However, the leader of the Sunnis in the Iraqi National Assembly has threatened to walk out and take his coalition with him until the Iraqi government rejects this notion completely: Iraq's top Sunni official has set a deadline of next week for pulling his entire bloc...
After the election of Nicolas Sarkozy, many analysts expected unrest in the banlieus, the Muslim ghettoes that have percolated with unrest for the last several years. Overnight, the French have seen hundreds of cars burnt and hundreds of rioters arrested (via Memeorandum): French police have arrested a total of 592 people across the country as bands of rioters protested conservative Nicolas Sarkozy's presidential election victory Sunday, French media reported. The police said a total of 730 vehicles were torched and 28 police officers were injured in violent incidents from Sunday night to Monday morning. Police fought stone-throwing rioters with tear gas, but it was not clear how many rioters were injured, according to Radio France. Segolene Royal deserves some blame for this. She tried playing the fear card in the week before the runoff that made Sarkozy the new president, and signalled the would-be rioters that the expected response would...
My friend Scott at Power Line, who writes beautifully and with such depth about music and musicians, tonight talks about Canadian folk singer Gordon Lightfoot. In his post, "For Lightheads Only," he discusses the phenomenon of Lightfoot's popularity on tour maybe 20 years after he stopped charting songs: I identify completely. I've been a fan of Lightfoot's since I was a teenager. I saw him perform at Dartmouth, if I'm not mistaken, in the winter of 1970 right after "Sit Down Young Stranger" (as it was originally called) had been issued. I saw him again a few years back when he came through Minneapolis after the four-disc box set recapping his career was released in 1999. As I approached the cash register to fork over the $50 or so necessary to purchase the box set in 1999, the store clerk mockingly struck up an exaggerated version of "The Wreck of...
May 8, 2007
Much has been written about China's one-child policy that punishes married couples who commit the crime of multiple procreation. Forced abortions and jail time face most of China's poor population who conceive a second or subsequent child. However, the nouveau riche have discovered that even in China's supposedly classless society, money can buy them love, or at least its byproduct: China's new rich are sparking a population crisis by disregarding the nation's one-child rule. Under the controversial policy introduced in 1979, families face fines if they have two or more children. But rising incomes, especially in the affluent eastern and coastal regions, mean that more people can afford to pay to have as many offspring as they like. According to a recent survey by China's National Population and Family Planning Commission, the number of wealthy people and celebrities deciding to have more than one child has increased rapidly, despite fines...
After the stalemate in the sub-Litani war against Hezbollah and the failure to win the release of the IDF soldiers taken hostage, the Israelis blamed Ehud Olmert for the result. People rallied to demand his resignation, and a report sharply criticized both his decision to go to war and the manner in which he conducted it. No one expected his government to survive. Surprise!: Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has survived three no-confidence motions in parliament, in the latest backlash over his handling of the 2006 Lebanon war. The Knesset voted against the motions with wide margins - with votes against totalling 60-62 compared to 26-28 for. A majority of 61 of the 120 members in the Knesset is needed to force the government to resign. Last week tens of thousands of Israelis rallied in Tel Aviv calling for Mr Olmert to resign. This will shock Israelis and people around...
Political analysts sometimes refer to the space between the two coasts as "flyover country," a space so uninteresting and unimportant that it bears little consideration until someone needs votes. The Midwest, with the exceptions of Chicago and perhaps the Twin Cities, get little credit for sophistication or intellectual interest. For the most part, people make jokes about cows and corn and consider the coastal megalopolises the center of American thought. Michael Barone, writing in today's OpinionJournal, says that has changed in practice, if not yet in thought. More native-born Americans have left the coastal megalopolises for flyover country, stratifying the big American cities on the coasts and in effect abandoning them to immigrants: Start with the Coastal Megalopolises: New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Chicago (on the coast of Lake Michigan), Miami, Washington and Boston. Here is a pattern you don't find in other big cities: Americans moving...
EJ Dionne takes a clear-eyed view from the center-left at the French presidential election, and what it means in the context of political change in Europe. He notes that with the center-right strengthening in Germany, Sweden, eastern Europe, and now France, the socialist-leaning Left has lost the thread of political change in the West. It has become a reactionary movement, as the campaign and defeat of Segolene Royal shows. How so? I examine that at Heading Right, and show how Royal's campaign fits within Socialism as a whole -- and why both took a beating....
Has a new day dawned in Belfast? The Stormont opens today after years of closure following the temporary collapse of the Good Friday agreements. Northern Ireland's experiment with home rule begins once more, and this time, the antagonists appear ready to accept the disarmament and good faith of both sides: Protestant firebrand Ian Paisley and IRA veteran Martin McGuinness formed a long-unthinkable alliance Tuesday as Northern Ireland power-sharing went from dream to reality — and all sides expressed hope that bloodshed over this British territory would never return. Paisley, who spent decades refusing to cooperate with Northern Ireland's Catholic minority, conceded he had often refused to budge in years past but was ready now. He lauded the Irish Republican Army's moves to renounce violence and disarm, and Sinn Fein's decision to cooperate with the province's mostly Protestant police as genuine. ... Sinn Fein deputy leader McGuinness, 56, accepted the post...
Please read update below. Usually I address silly or misleading comments within the thread itself, or an update to the original post. However, in reference to the foiled plot against Fort Dix by a cell of jihadists captured yesterday by the FBI, I found one comment so asinine that it deserves its own thread. Commenter iraqwarwrong wrote: Ok so, let, me get this straight. Were allowed to go over there and kill like a whole hunk of them every day, but they're not even allowed to come here and try to kill are soldiers? Newsflash- soldiers is waht are for killing in war's. That's legimate targets. Well, duh. So was the Pentagon on 9/11 but that didn't give al-Qaeda the right to attack it (and the use of civilian aircraft violated the rules of war, too). The military is a legitimate target during wartime ... by an opposing military in...
The US Attorney's office in New Jersey says that a raid yesterday netted six radical Islamists in the Garden State before they had a chance to conduct a terrorist attack. Their target -- Fort Dix (via Hot Air): Six people were arrested on Monday in connection with an alleged plot to murder soldiers at Fort Dix, the U.S. attorney's office said. Michael Drewniak, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in New Jersey, said the men are from the former Yugoslavia and were planning to "kill as many soldiers as possible." Five of them lived in Cherry Hill, he said. Drewniak said the six were scheduled to appear in federal court in Camden later Tuesday to face charges of conspiracy to kill U.S. servicemen. During a secret meeting, the men allegedly attempted to purchase AK-47s from an arms dealer working with the FBI and were arrested in New Jersey after...
UPDATE: If you didn't get a chance to listen to this show live, you definitely want to hear the podcast. Fausta and Val gave plenty of information about Castro's Cuba, and I had a great time just listening to the two of them talk passionately about the subject. This may be one of the most fun shows I've had. Today on CQ Radio (2 PM CT), we will be talking with Fausta of Fausta's Blog and Val Prieto of Babalublog. Today's topic -- the Cuban propaganda films that Princeton has decided to show at its Human Rights Film Festival. The first, The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil, argues that Cuba has somehow managed to successfully shift its economy from a petroleum-based energy solution. That seems to fly in the face of recent attempts by Cuba to expand its drilling in the Caribbean, which we noted here almost...
This morning, I received the replacement Gateway laptop from the Corporate team -- who, by the way, has been very responsive -- and after lunch, I began to test it. As we had planned, I took the hard drive from the original laptop and swapped it into the new laptop, which had received a full day of testing by the Corporate team. Since the two systems were identical, the hard-drive swap made no difference at all to the system, and it immediately connected me to the wireless network. And, 30 minutes later, it failed again in the exact same way. I decided to take advantage of having both systems on hand, and I powered up my original Gateway with the other hard drive. After wading through the pop-up screens for the newly-imaged drive, I loaded my network key and connected into the wireless system. And it's still working. This is...
The Carpetbagger Report linked to me earlier today and has sent a fair amount of traffic to an old post I wrote about the Ten Worst Americans in history. I enjoyed that challenge and spent quite a bit of time on it, but found it curious that someone would link to it today. It turns out that the blog linked to a Roll Call article that reported a reference by a Republican Congressman to the military wisdom of Nathan Bedford Forrest, the founder of the Ku Klux Klan: On Monday, Rep. Ted Poe took to the House floor to discuss foreign policy matters. To make a point, the Texas Republican invoked the words of Civil War Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest: “Git thar fustest with the mostest.” The quotation got some floor watchers’ attention pretty quickly. Forrest is a controversial figure who was one of the Klan’s first grand wizards....
Glenn Reynolds points out a provocative Cathy Young article in Reason magazine, an excellent libertarian publication that should be on everyone's reading list. Cathy asks what I think is the ultimate libertarian question: why is prostitution illegal? Yet prostitution is perhaps the ultimate victimless crime: a consensual transaction in which both parties are supposedly committing a crime, and the person most likely to be charged—the one selling sex—is also the one most likely to be viewed as the victim. (A bizarre inversion of this situation occurs in Sweden, where, as a result of feminist pressure to treat prostitutes as victims, it is now a crime to pay for sex but not to offer it for sale.) It is sometimes claimed that the true victims of prostitution are the johns' wives. But surely women whose husbands are involved in noncommercial—and sometimes quite expensive—extramarital affairs are no less victimized. Young addresses the...
May 9, 2007
We have heard plenty about the sectarian fighting in Iraq, as ethnic and religious differences have inspired militia attacks that focus primarily on Baghdad and its environs. To the south, the Shi'ites comprise the vast majority of the population, and the concern there has not so much been sectarian violence as it has been about Iranian influence on a monolithic block of Shi'a. Yesterday's bombing in Kufa, however, indicates that the Shi'ites have significant fractures as well: A suicide car bomber attacked a crowded market in this holy Shiite city Tuesday, killing at least 16 people, injuring more than 70 others and further stoking tensions between rival Shiite militias. The bomb was detonated in a gray sedan beside a restaurant and across the street from a girls primary school. ... The incident was a continuation of a series of showdowns in recent days between the two groups in far-reaching sections...
When evaluating leadership, people usually value two traits the most -- getting the facts straight and remaining calm enough to absorb them. Barack Obama failed in both yesterday, as he used the Kansas tornadoes as a talking point on the campaign trail and informed the audience that 10,000 people had died in them( via QandO): Barack Obama, caught up in the fervor of a campaign speech Tuesday, drastically overstated the Kansas tornadoes death toll, saying 10,000 had died. The death toll was 12. "In case you missed it, this week, there was a tragedy in Kansas. Ten thousand people died - an entire town destroyed," the Democratic presidential candidate said in a speech to 500 people packed into a sweltering Richmond art studio for a fundraiser. His campaign manager later said that Obama had meant "at least ten". Well, why not just get the facts straight and say twelve? That...
Yesterday I linked to an EJ Dionne column which analyzed the loss of Segolene Royal in France as an indicator of an overall problem with the Left among Western nations. Dionne correctly linked the rightward move in France with similar shifts in eastern Europe, Sweden, Germany, and even Britain, where the Tories won in local elections. He advised the international Left that the movement needed to recast its vision rather than just rely on tactical changes in the future. The Left isn't listening to Dionne -- in fact, they don't even acknowledge a problem exists. In today's Guardian, Jonathan Freedland tells readers to disregard the Royal debacle, because the Left is experiencing a "global awakening": Europeans speak of the Anglo-Saxon or Anglo-American model as a synonym for turbo-charged, take-no-prisoners capitalism. Yet there are some signs, tentative for now but noticeable all the same, that movement is under way even in...
The Democrats have moved closer to using their actual Constitutional power to defund the Iraq war in a compromise bill being floated in the House. In the new supplemental, funding for the troops in Iraq would only be unconditional for two months. After that, it would cease entirely unless the Iraqis passed an oil revenue sharing plan and other restructuring bills that have not progressed as planned: A House Democratic proposal introduced yesterday that would give President Bush half of the money he has requested for the war effort, with a vote in July on whether to approve the rest, hinges on progress in meeting political benchmarks that Iraq has thus far found difficult to achieve. The House measure, which could come to a vote as early as tomorrow, would substantially raise the pressure on Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government to meet lagging commitments -- including new laws on...
Steven Stalinsky notices a strange trend in international relations in today's New York Sun. A marriage of convenience has begun to grow between two factions that seem entirely incompatible in all respects but one: Over the past year, multiple international conferences have featured leaders of the anti-global left and Islamist groups working together. Go to any anti-war or anti-globalization demonstration in the West and chances are you will see the flags of Hezbollah and Hamas waved by people wearing Che Guevara T-shirts. And at some of these meetings, members of such radical Islamist groups as the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and Hezbollah have enjoyed starring roles. The roster of Islamist-left alliances quietly grows every day: Massachusetts Institute of Technology linguistics professor Noam Chomsky praises Hamas and denounces America on Hezbollah's Al-Manar television. London Mayor Ken Livingstone invites a leading Islamist, Sheikh Yosef Al-Qaradawi, who is known for supporting suicide attacks, to...
Rick Moran of Right Wing Nut House has posted a rebuttal to my post about prostitution at Heading Right. Rick argues that my argument about "commodification" doesn't convince him: Libertarians can reduce all human interaction to either individual choice or the choice made by two or more individuals in compact. Yes a single, unattached man isn’t hurting anyone by going to a prostitute nor is a single drug addict with no children. But is that how you promulgate law? I think not. And Ed’s human worth argument has a few holes too. People may not be “commodities” but we all have jobs where we are paid money for the skills we possess. Is there really a difference between being a good programmer and a talented prostitute? Each is paid according to their “worth” or whatever the market will bear. I agree with Ed that you can’t qualify sex and put...
George Bush does not appear to have bought into the idea of a sixty-day revolving credit line on funding the troops in Iraq. Today, Bush warned Congress that he would veto any bill that provided funding on such a short time line, and Gates joined him in underscoring the disruptive nature of these machinations on the supplemental: President Bush would veto any bill drafted by House Democratic leaders that would fund the Iraq war only into the summer months, his spokesman said Wednesday. And Defense Secretary Robert Gates told a Senate committee that such short-term funding would be very disruptive and "have a huge impact" on contracts to repair and replace equipment. The Defense Department, he said, just doesn't "have the agility to manage a two month appropriation." Gates also told the Senate Defense Appropriations panel that if the military begins to see progress in Iraq later this fall, including...
Today on CQ Radio (2 pm CT), we'll be talking with a friend and a colleague of mine in the world of syndicated radio, Duane Patterson -- known as the Generalissimo on the Hugh Hewitt show. Duane and I will talk about the talk industry and the attempts by Democrats to kill it with the Fairness Doctrine, his views on the direction of political talk, as well as the Al Sharpton comments about Mormons, the Fort Dix terrorist plot, and other topics as well. Be sure to call 646-652-4889 to talk to Duane and me! UPDATE: We've got great guests for the rest of the week already lined up, too. Tomorrow Dr. Steven Bainbridge joins me to talk about his new book, a guide to Sarbanes-Oxley called, prosaically enough, The Complete Guide To Sarbanes-Oxley. On Friday, Matt Margolis of GOP Bloggers will talk about his newly-released look at the...
Jim Boyd, the deputy editorial director of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, will take a buyout and leave the paper after 27 years. Is he leaving because the new ownership wants to move the paper at least a little towards the center after Boyd's relentless leftward drift? Not at all -- in fact, Boyd says that the outgoing McClatchy management forced him to accept conservative columnists against his will: If you've ever heard the Star Tribune called the Red Star, you can probably blame Jim Boyd, at least in part. As deputy editor of the paper's editorial page, he's one of a handful of editorial writers who plots out its official stance on issues from Iraq to a statewide smoking ban to political endorsements. This morning, Minnesota Monitor confirmed that Boyd will be taking a voluntary buyout and leaving the paper after nearly 27 years of service, and that the editorial...
May 10, 2007
Rudy Giuliani has had a tough four weeks on one particular issue. In trying to make his pro-choice positions more palatable, he has damaged the image of consistency and toughness that makes his candidacy compelling in the first place. During the last debate, he fumbled on a question about whether a repeal of Roe v Wade would be beneficial, which made him look confused. Apparently, Rudy has had enough of ducking and weaving, and has decided to hit the abortion issue head-on in an attempt to get it behind him: After months of conflicting signals on abortion, Rudolph W. Giuliani is planning to offer a forthright affirmation of his support for abortion rights in public forums, television appearances and interviews in the coming days, despite the potential for bad consequences among some conservative voters already wary of his views, aides said yesterday. At the same time, Mr. Giuliani’s campaign —...
The lack of energy from the Iraqi government of Nouri al-Maliki has added what might be a final straw to Republican discontent about the progress of the war. A delegation of Congressional Republicans met with President Bush last night at the White House, and they delivered the message that GOP support had its limits, and those limits are approaching quickly: House Republican moderates, in a remarkably blunt White House meeting, warned President Bush this week that his pursuit of the war in Iraq is risking the future of the Republican Party and that he cannot count on GOP support for many more months. The meeting, which ran for an hour and a half Tuesday afternoon, was disclosed by participants yesterday as the House prepared to vote this evening on a spending bill that could cut funding for the Iraq war as early as July. GOP moderates told Bush they would...
I will appear on the Laura Ingraham show at 9:30 CT, roughly an hour from now, to talk with substitute host Tammy Bruce about my post yesterday on the alliance between radical Islam and the far Left. It should make for great morning conversation, so be sure to tune in on your radios or through Laura Ingraham's website....
A letter circulated by Moqtada al-Sadr and signed by more than half of the Iraqi National Assembly demands a timetable for American withdrawal from Iraq and a cap on the number of troops allowed into the country. If the Assembly passes this as a resolution, it could have devastating consequences on American policy for Iraq. I look at the implications at Heading Right this morning, especially in light of growing discontent among war supporters of the Iraqi commitment to reform. UPDATE: John Aravosis is angry that Democrats will back away from the games they have been playing on the Iraq war supplementals, but he's missing the bigger picture: It's time to replace some conservative Democrats in Washington, DC. I just heard from an impeccable source that there is serious concern on the Hill that conservative Democrats in the House will vote with the Republicans to strip any and all restrictions...
Robert Novak reports that the Democrats, who have squealed loudly over the supposedly unilateral foreign policy of George Bush, snubbed one of the few allies we have left in Latin America. Colombian president Alvaro Uribe returned to Bogota in shock as Democrats blocked trade agreements over old human-rights issues, while Hugo Chavez rallies the other nations to opposition against the US: Colombia's president, Alvaro Uribe, returned to Bogota this week in a state of shock. His three-day visit to Capitol Hill to win over Democrats in Congress was described by one American supporter as "catastrophic." Colombian sources said Uribe was stunned by the ferocity of his Democratic opponents, and Vice President Francisco Santos publicly talked about cutting U.S.-Colombian ties. Uribe got nothing from his meeting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic leaders. Military aid remains stalled, overall assistance is reduced, and the vital U.S.-Colombian trade bill looks dead....
It's difficult to imagine that anyone takes Michael Moore seriously any more, but the Department of the Treasury does consider the economic embargo on Cuba worthy of enforcement. The DoT has opened an investigation of Moore after they discovered that he took ailing 9/11 rescue workers to Cuba for treatment of their symptoms. Moore made the trip as part of a new movie called Sicko which will apparently expose Moore's ignorance of the health care industry in two nations: Academy Award-winning filmmaker Michael Moore is under investigation by the U.S. Treasury Department for taking ailing Sept. 11 rescue workers to Cuba for a segment in his upcoming health-care documentary "Sicko," The Associated Press has learned. ... In February, Moore took about 10 ailing workers from the Ground Zero rescue effort in Manhattan for treatment in Cuba, said a person working with the filmmaker on the release of "Sicko." The person...
Today on CQ Radio (2 pm CT), we'll be speaking with Dr. Steven Bainbridge -- author, blogger, and wine connoisseur extraordinaire -- about the release of his new book on Sarbanes-Oxley requirements, The Complete Guide To Sarbanes-Oxley. Having just escaped from corporate America, I have my own horror stories (well, more like annoyance stories) about SOX compliance and the burden it places on publicly-owned companies. I have not yet had a chance to read the book, but it sounds terrific, and we can pick the Professor's brain on how to make SOX compliance a less unpleasant affair -- if that's possible. We'll start with a short visit from Kit Jarrell of Euphoric Reality and the BTR show The Front Line. Kit found an interesting item about the entry point for some of the Fort Dix Six, and we'll talk about that as well as what we can expect from...
Opie and Anthony are two shock jocks with a long history of controversy. In 2002, they lost their jobs in New York after staging a sex contest, complete with live coverage of a couple, er, coupling in Saint Patrick's Cathedral. After outraged Catholics protested against the desecration of their church, the duo went looking for other employment. They wound up at XM Radio, the satellite subscription radio service that has millions of listeners -- including me. I've never bothered to listen to them, and today, they proved me right. In a completely tasteless and offensive bit, the pair joked with an in-studio guest about raping Condoleezza Rice: Warning: Extremely Vulgar Language. XM Shock Jocks Opie and Anthony engage in discussion about forced sex with the Secretary of State. A studio guest, Homeless Charlie, begins describing the scenario as the hosts laugh and encourage him. Anthony talks about the horror for...
Murray Waas has another scoop today on the continuing saga of Alberto Gonzales, eight federal prosecutors, and a carnival of incompetence. However, it looks like this news is at least two months old, and a secondary revelation of other withheld documents involves Gonzales and Justice rather than the White House: The Bush administration has withheld a series of e-mails from Congress showing that senior White House and Justice Department officials worked together to conceal the role of Karl Rove in installing Timothy Griffin, a protégé of Rove's, as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas. The withheld records show that D. Kyle Sampson, who was then-chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, consulted with White House officials in drafting two letters to Congress that appear to have misrepresented the circumstances of Griffin's appointment as U.S. attorney and of Rove's role in supporting Griffin. In one of the letters...
House Democrats passed another version of the Iraq war supplemental this evening, voting to supply funds for only 60 days of operations in the theater. The vote split along party lines, meaning that the Senate will have to find another formula if the funds are to get to the troops in time: The Democratic-controlled House voted Thursday night to pay for military operations in Iraq on an installment plan, defying President Bush's threat of a second straight veto in a fierce test of wills over the unpopular war. The 221-205 vote, largely along party lines, sent the measure to a cool reception in the Senate, where Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., is seeking compromise with the White House and Republicans on a funding bill. Under increasing political pressure from Republicans, Bush also signalled flexibility, offering to accept a spending bill that sets out standards for the Iraqi government to meet....
CBS News hired morning-show star Katie Couric as their nightly news anchor in the hope that a fresh face and a lighter touch on hard news would rejuvenate the Tiffany Network's dime-store ratings. So far, she has made quite an impact -- by driving the numbers to lows not seen in twenty years. Now Couric faces criticism and the network a lot of questions over their choice, and one CBS executive thinks she knows where the problem lies: Brian Montopoli: You told me, a little while back, that you were "the first woman at every job I had at CBS News." And that includes in 1971, when you were the first female field producer for The CBS Evening News With Walter Cronkite. I'm curious your take on Katie Couric's experience as the first solo female nightly news anchor. Linda Mason: I'm just surprised at how, almost 30 years after I...
May 11, 2007
The UN has a habit of giving the worst offenders in a particular issue a leadership position in overseeing it. One look at the Human Rights Council shows Turtle Bay's odd sense of humor in this regard, as it features some of the worst human-rights offenders in the world, such as Cuba and China -- and this is the reformed human-rights panel at the UN. Now it looks like the organization will expand its commitment to comedy into its efforts to protect the environment by placing one of the worst offenders in Africa in charge of the Commission on Sustainable Development: African countries sparked outrage yesterday after they nominated President Robert Mugabe's regime for the leadership of a United Nations body charged with protecting the environment and promoting development. Zimbabwe, which is enduring economic collapse and environmental degradation, could become chairman of the UN's Commission on Sustainable Development when a...
For those who believe the federal government has grown too large and its budget a threat to the nation's economic health. neither party has offered much in the way of good news over the last few years. The Republicans offered tax cuts while increasing spending at an astonishing rate for supposed small-government conservatives. The Democrats have been worse, wanting to rescind the tax cuts so they can spend the extra money they believe the new taxes will raise. However, as bad as both parties have been, John Edwards promises something new and different. He promises to make it worse by adding so much new spending that it would create a budget 36% larger than FY2007, within just eight years: Presidential candidate John Edwards is offering more policy proposals than any other candidate in the primary and his ideas are winning loud applause from Democratic audiences. The question is whether other...
In the wake of the Virginia Tech massacre, many people have questioned the state's decision to make the university a "gun-free" zone, especially when it did nothing to prevent the attacker from bringing the weapons on campus. Noting the impossibility of securing a 2600-acre campus, the forced disarming of the student body and faculty has created a debate about the Second Amendment and the ability of law-abiding citizens to defend themselves. The debate has highlighted the differences between assuming roles as activists and victims. Locally, the well-regarded Hamline University took the latter approach. After the shooting, the university offered counseling and coping assistance, even though the shooting had taken place 1500 miles away. Grad student Tony Scheffler took exception to that, and replied to the e-mail that perhaps a better solution would be to allow Hamline students the ability to defend themselves. As Mitch Berg notes, that's when Hamline decided...
If one sees Democratic politicians gathered for photo ops around gas pumps, then spring has finally arrived. Gas prices have risen above $3 per gallon again, and the new Democratic majority wants to do something about it. Unfortunately, the policies they promise have little to do with the actual problem, and the solutions that would work are ones they will never consider. It demonstrates that the Democrats have little understanding of business practice, supply and demand, or commodities markets. I explain the problem at Heading Right, and lay out the solutions....
Congress and the White House appear to have two years of bloody brawling ahead of them, a fruit of the Democratic takeover in last year's midterm elections. No one expects too many opportunities for bipartisan solutions, especially those which continue allocated executive power in significant strength. However, yesterday proved an exception to the partisan turf wars: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), joined by congressional leaders and two Bush administration officials, announced a new bipartisan trade policy Thursday that will ease passage of pending trade agreements with Panama and Peru and could pave the way for renewal of the president's authority to "fast-track" trade agreements through Congress. "Today marks a new day in trade policy," Pelosi told a news conference, standing between Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. and U.S. Trade Representative Susan C. Schwab. The new framework, she said, incorporates labor and environmental standards into trade agreements, a change...
A new study by the Karolinska Institute in Sweden shows that the American health care system outperforms the socialized systems in Europe in getting new medicines to cancer patients. The difference saves lives, and the existing Western European systems force people to die at higher rates from the same cancers, although the Telegraph buries that lede (via QandO): The researchers studied Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Japan, South Africa and the US, as well as 19 European countries, with a total population of 984 million, and looked at access to 67 newer cancer drugs. They found that the proportions of female cancer patients surviving five years beyond diagnosis in France, Spain, Germany, Italy were 71 per cent, 64 per cent, 63 per cent and 63 per cent respectively. In the UK it was 53 per cent. Among men the proportions still alive at five years in the same countries were 53...
Today on CQ Radio (2 pm CT), we'll be speaking with Matt Margolis of GOP Bloggers to discuss his newly-released look at the new Democratic Congressional majority, titled Caucus of Corruption, which I have already begun to read. It's partisan, snarky, and a lot of fun. Be sure to join the conversation by calling 646-652-4889! On Tuesday, May 15th, CQ Radio will welcome Major John Heil, currently serving in Iraq in the 3rd MEDCOM as Public Affairs Officer. Major Heil joins us through a partnership with DVIDS, which assists in getting the front-line information out to Americans and people all over the world. We'll have plenty more guests coming your way through DVIDS, so keep an eye on our programming. One more note: Nader Elguindi has authored a book that details his experience in overcoming adversity and devastating physical injuries to requalify as a US Navy submariner. Titled My...
ABC News reports today that American and German security agencies have gone on high alert for a terrorist attack. The target -- US military personnel or the German tourist industry: U.S. and German officials fear terrorists are in the advanced planning stages of an attack on U.S. military personnel or tourists in Germany. Law enforcement officials tell the Blotter on ABCNews.com that U.S. air marshals have been diverted to provide expanded protection of flights between Germany and the United States. "The information behind the threat is very real," a senior U.S. official told ABC News. German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schauble told reporters, "The danger level is high. We are part of the global threat by Islamist terrorism." Of particular concern, according to U.S. and German law enforcement officials, is Patch Barracks, the headquarters for U.S. European Command, near Stuttgart. This is an unusual warning, both in its existence and its...
For various technical reasons, I'm unable to receive e-mail on most of my accounts at the moment, and my ability to post here will be limited for the next few hours. I'll post at Heading Right while we work out some bugs here, so be sure to check in there from time to time. I will post an update when we're back up and running....
May 12, 2007
The Northern Alliance Radio Network will be on the air today, with our six-hour-long broadcast schedule starting at 11 am CT. The first two hours features Power Line's John Hinderaker and Chad and Brian from Fraters Libertas. Mitch and I hit the airwaves for the second shift from 1-3 pm CT, and King Banaian and Michael Broadkorb have The Final Word from 3-5. If you're in the Twin Cities, you can hear us on AM 1280 The Patriot, or on the station's Internet stream if you're outside of the broadcast area. Today, Mitch and I have a couple of very interesting guests. First, we'll have Troy Scheffler in studio with us at 1:30 to discuss his sudden suspension from Hamline University for his dissident views on concealed carry and diversity programs. After that, we'll talk with Roger Rapoport, author of the book Citizen Moore. We will go over the other...
Remember when lobbying reform was all the rage in Washington, and how all the best people demanded it? Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid talked about the "culture of corruption" and how they would clean up this here one-horse town, if the American people would just put them in charge of it. Now it appears that lobbying reform has the same fashion sense as grunge bands and Miami Vice pastels: House Democrats are suddenly balking at the tough lobbying reforms they touted to voters last fall as a reason for putting them in charge of Congress. Now that they are running things, many Democrats want to keep the big campaign donations and lavish parties that lobbyists put together for them. They're also having second thoughts about having to wait an extra year before they can become high-paid lobbyists themselves should they retire or be defeated at the polls. The growing resistance...
If Hamline University used the Soviet method to silence conservative Troy Scheffler last month, Tufts University must have decided to use a softer means to squelch dissent on its campus. Instead of declaring the editors of a conservative newspaper insane, they declared their criticism of Islam "harassment" and treated them like criminals. And as in the Scheffler case, the university apparently didn't like criticism of diversity programs, either: Showing profound disregard for free speech and freedom of the press, Tufts University has found a conservative student publication guilty of harassment and creating a hostile environment for publishing political satire. Despite explicitly promising to protect controversial and offensive expression in its policies, the Tufts Committee on Student Life decided yesterday to punish the student publication The Primary Source (TPS) for printing two articles that offended African-American and Muslim students on campus. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), which has...
Continue reading "Another University Exception To Free Speech" »
When nationally-known columnist and blogger James Lileks revealed that the Star Tribune had axed his column and assigned him to local news, we wondered what the Strib could be thinking. After all, the new management has a failing newspaper on its hands, and instead of using one of its most valuable assets to improve their situation, they buried Lileks in an assignment which makes no use of his national standing. At the time, we thought that the Strib might be pushing Lileks out because of his connections to the conservative blogosphere. Now, though, it looks much more like a case of complete managerial incompetence, because the new editors have most of the Strib's reporters playing musical chairs: As many as 100 newsroom staffers at the Star Tribune in Minneapolis may be taken off their current beats and forced to apply for new assignments when a week-long shake-up is finished, according...
If politicians insist on using sports analogies, they should at least tailor them for the audience they intend to impress. Unfortunately, Sam Brownback may have learned that lesson the hard way today. The presidential aspirant from Kansas called an Indiana quarterback the best ever in front of a Wisconsin crowd, and got booed as a result: Note to Sen. Sam Brownback: When in Packerland, don’t diss Brett Favre. The Kansas Republican drew boos and groans from the audience at the state Republican Party convention Friday evening when he used a football analogy to talk about the need to rebuild the family. “This is fundamental blocking and tackling,” he said. “This is your line in football. If you don’t have a line, how many passes can Peyton Manning complete? Greatest quarterback, maybe, in NFL history.” How did Brownback manage to get this one wrong? I'd bet that at least 10% of...
Quite a few people have noticed that some changes have been made behind the scenes today at Captain's Quarters. It's been a long couple of weeks, and it resulted in a change in hosting services that supports CQ. Most of this has been transparent, but as some noticed today, it resulted in difficulties in commenting on the threads I posted. I have been with the same hosting service for over three years, and I didn't really want to move. However, I had a number of problems posting over the last two weeks, and when I asked for assistance, I was told that they considered me a problem for their other customers. I asked several times for assistance in helping to solve problems with runaway processes, but was told that they had other customers to service. Over the years they had been supportive and generous with me, but this kind of...
Ever since Watergate, presidential candidates have released their tax records in order to show that they have nothing to hide. Only one major candidate refused to do so in the last twenty years, and Bill Clinton changed his mind for his re-election bid in 1996. This year, however, it looks like anyone releasing that information will be the exception rather than the rule (via Instapundit): In a break with the tradition of recent presidential campaigns, most of the major presidential candidates aren't releasing their income-tax filings. Edwards has indicated that he will keep his tax returns private, and while Romney is still considering his options, he has never released his returns in previous runs for office. Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., aren't saying whether they will or not, but neither has released income tax forms filed this year. That means voters are likely to know less...
May 13, 2007
The improbably named Mullah Dadullah, almost certainly the most important field commander in the Taliban, died while fighting NATO forces in Helmand. Coalition forces showed the body to reporters, who immediately recognized Dadullah's amputation and black beard: Afghan government officials showed the body of Mullah Dadullah, the top operational commander for the Taliban insurgency, to reporters here Sunday morning, saying he had been killed in a joint operation of Afghan and coalition forces. Mr. Dadullah, an amputee, was recognizable in part from his missing leg and black beard. He had been shot in the head and in the stomach. He was one of the most wanted Taliban leaders, responsible for numerous assassinations, beheadings and terrorist campaigns, and was thought to be behind many of the suicide bombings that have killed or wounded hundreds of Afghans in the last year and a half. He was seen as probably the most important...
Mitch Berg and I had the opportunity to invite Troy Scheffler to our studio yesterday to talk about his suspension from Hamline University for his protest against the gun-free zone policy of the school. After the Virginia Tech massacre, Hamline had sent out an e-mail to its students offering trauma counseling. Scheffler responded in an e-mail that asked the school to reconsider its position on making the campaus a "gun-free zone" -- and Hamline responded by suspending him and requiring a psychiatric evaluation before he could return. I was curious about what kind of person Troy was, and so I looked forward to meeting with him yesterday after our intrepid producer Matt Reynolds made the arrangements. I didn't think he'd be a Seung-hui Cho type at all, but I was very much surprised when Troy turned out to be as mild-mannered as anyone I had ever met. He didn't harbor...
To my own mother, my mother-in-law, the mother of my granddaughter, and all of the mothers and grandmothers in the CQ community, the First Mate and I wish all of you a happy Mother's Day! Mother's Day is a splendid American tradition. One man who recognized the crucial role of mothers in American society was Theodore Roosevelt, an early prototype of the modern masculine man. Roosevelt gave this speech over 100 years ago on motherhood. He gave this speech to a gathering of women, and while the societal roles have broadened (thankfully) for women, his emphasis on motherhood for the sake of the next generation still resonates: Inasmuch as I am speaking to an assemblage of mothers, I shall have nothing whatever to say in praise of an easy life. Yours is the work which is never ended. No mother has an easy time, the most mothers have very hard...
Washington and Teheran have apparently agreed to hold talks about the security of Iraq and will meet in Baghdad soon. It represents a turnabout for both nations, and both nations have taken pains to ensure that people understand that they only have a mutual interest in Iraq: The U.S. and Iran said Sunday they will hold upcoming talks in Baghdad about improving Iraq's security — a historic political turnabout for the two countries with the most influence over Iraq's future. Expectations of progress remain low, however, with tough issues at stake and mutual suspicions running high. Even as it announced the talks, Iran lashed out at Vice President Dick Cheney's weekend warnings about its nuclear program, saying it would retaliate if the U.S. attacked it. Yet the two sides said they were setting aside such differences to focus on a narrow issue — Iraq's continued violence and sharp political deterioration....
May 14, 2007
Two more shock jocks find themselves on the unemployment lines after offending their audiences with racial humor. CBS News, which fired Don Imus for his offhand comment about the Rutgers basketball team, has now also fired the two hosts of the "The Dog House with JV and Elvis" for a skit that used an Asian restaurant as the butt of a joke about Asians and their accents: One month after CBS Radio fired radio host Don Imus, it has permanently pulled the plug on a pair of suspended New York shock jocks for a prank phone call rife with offensive Asian stereotypes. "The Dog House with JV and Elvis," hosted by Jeff Vandergrift and Dan Lay, "will no longer be broadcast," CBS Radio spokeswoman Karen Mateo said Saturday. The cancellation of the show on WFNY-FM, nearly three weeks after the hosts were suspended, was another indication of the increased scrutiny...
A dangerous life for a military dictator has grown even more precarious this weekend. Pervez Musharraf, who has fought Islamist extremists looking to assassinate him, now faces a burgeoning battle with democractization activists angered by his suspension of the chief justice of the Pakistani Supreme Court (via Memeorandum): Clashes between government supporters and opposition activists flared for a second day Sunday in the country's largest city, bringing the weekend death toll to about 40. The clashes in the southern city of Karachi were prompted by a judicial crisis that has gripped the country since March 9, when the president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, suspended Pakistan's chief justice for alleged abuses of office. Since then, protesters have frequently taken to the streets to rally against what they see as an attempt by Musharraf to snuff out fledgling democratic institutions and ease his way to another term. On Saturday, the judge, Iftikhar Mohammed...
The Jerusalem Post reports from a single source that Libyan strongman Moammar Gaddafi has suddenly slipped into a coma caused by a brain embolism. His family has been called to the hospital, according to the Post, and his prognosis looks murky -- perhaps as murky as the source: Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was rushed to the hospital Sunday after a blood clot was discovered in his brain, and is now in a coma, the Palestinian news agency Ma'an claimed. According to the report, Gaddafi's children, who reside in Europe, were recalled to his bedside in Tripoli. "The condition of the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi is very serious and he was brought unconscious to the hospital," the agency reported. The report cites a European source and has yet to be confirmed. Gaddafi gave the US its biggest foreign-relations victory of the Iraq War when he voluntarily disarmed his nuclear-weapons programs. The...
Tom Grubisch becomes the latest person to succumb to hysteria over the existence of anonymous writers on the Internet. The former Washington Post writer and editor waxes shrill over the amount of attention paid to those who eschew a normal byline and adopt Internet handles for their tirades, demonstrating a curious case of tunnel vision for a journalist: These days we want "transparency" in all institutions, even private ones. There's one massive exception -- the Internet. It is, we are told, a giant town hall. Indeed, it has millions of people speaking out in millions of online forums. But most of them are wearing the equivalent of paper bags over their heads. We know them only by their Internet "handles" -- gotalife, runningwithscissors, stoptheplanet and myriad other inventive names. ... In any community in America, if Mr. anticrat424 refused to identify himself, he would be ignored and frozen out of...
The unity government formed in March by the Palestinian Authority appears on the verge of collapse. The Interior Minister abruptly resigned today from the position which had been the hardest to fill during the negotiations between Hamas and Fatah, while internecine fighting raged anew in Gaza: The Palestinian interior minister, Hani al-Qawasmi, has resigned, causing a crisis in the fragile two-month-old unity government, after the biggest surge in factional fighting in months revived fears of civil war. Two Palestinian gunmen were killed in Gaza in clashes between the rival Hamas and Fatah groups hours before a government official announced that Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh had accepted the resignation. As interior minister, Mr Qawasmi was to have overseen Palestinian security services but officials said the former academic faced competition from powerful Fatah rivals for control of the armed contingents. The resignation cast new doubt on whether the power-sharing partnership between Islamist...
Ever since the Traveling Imams threatened a lawsuit against the people who notified security personnel of their concerns over their pre-flight actions, members of both parties in Congress have spoken of the need to offer legal protection against lawsuits for those who tip off law enforcement about potential terrorist activity. Yet, as Katherine Kersten notes, they have done little to push the legislation to the floor: Last week, we learned that federal authorities have foiled a plot to kill American soldiers at Fort Dix, N.J. The FBI uncovered the plan after an alert Circuit City clerk passed on suspicious video footage that the alleged conspirators had asked him to transfer onto a DVD. The clerk's action was just the kind of citizen vigilance that a new bill before Congress is designed to encourage, and to shield such citizens against intimidation. The bill was inspired by a lawsuit filed in federal...
I will be live-blogging a speech by Norm Coleman at the University of Minnesota about renewable energy, over at Heading Right. Be sure to join me for the speech! UPDATE: It was an interesting and intriguing speech, not so much for its content on renewable energy but because of the secondary nature of that topic in his speech. Coleman talked much more about centrism and compromise, assuring the audience that he approaches issues from an ideologically conservative point of view but with an effort to get results. Getting 100% of nothing is worse than 50% of something, Coleman argued. I'm guessing that Coleman took a hard look at the audience at the U of M and decided to address their skepticism of him as a Republican. Coleman often speaks extemporaneously -- he's brilliant at it -- and it seemed as though he decided to shift gears to match his audience,...
Today on CQ Radio (2 pm CT), we'll be speaking with Denise McCourt, Director of Member Relations at the American Petroleum Institute, to talk about the cause of rising gasoline prices and the flurry of coverage it has received. We'll talk about the op-ed in today's LA Times which charges that Big Oil has bought the state of California and the charges leveled about price gouging. We'll also review the Norm Coleman speech and its reception here at the University of Minnesota. Be sure to join the conversation at 646-652-4889! UPDATE: Great show today; be sure to listen to the download on the sidebar player. Also, FYI: still working on comments and blog speed. My new hosting service, Pair Networks, spent an hour with me today troubleshooting the issues, and I have a handle on the problem now. I will have to make some configuration and procedure changes, and...
It looks as though the going has gotten hotter over at Justice. Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty has announced to aides that he will resign his post. This will put the Bush administration on a path with the Senate Judiciary Committee for a new confirmation hearing, which the White House had tried to avoid: Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty said Monday he will resign, the highest-ranking Bush administration casualty in the furor over the firing of U.S. attorneys, The Associated Press has learned. McNulty, who has served 18 months as the Justice Department's second-in-command, announced his plans at a closed-door meeting of U.S. attorneys in San Antonio, according to two senior department aides. He said he will remain at the department until this fall or until the Senate approves a successor, the aides said. McNulty could not be immediately reached for comment Monday. Justice aides said he has been considering...
Between Pair Networks, my new hosting service, and myself, we seem to have determined the problems with slow loads and errors on comments. It turns out that Movable Type wants to rebuild the entire comment database every time it rebuilds pages (blog posts or comments) on a blog. We have a database of over 140,000 comments at CQ, and that created a database table that topped 160MB. Rebuilding that file every time created an overload on the server that caused their "reaper" programs to kill the processes before they ever had a chance to complete. This was certainly the problem at my former hosting service. However, since they gave me no direction about the reason for the problem -- indeed, told me on more than one occasion that application issues were not their problem -- I had no idea how Movable Type handled rebuilds, and so I could not fix...
May 15, 2007
It's not too early to get some laughs from the presidential primaries. I missed this yesterday, but Chuck Hagel has begun mulling over an independent run for the presidency -- and apparently already has a running mate in mind: The Republican Party has been "hijacked" and led away from its core values, Chuck Hagel, the Republican Senator from Nebraska, said Sunday on Face The Nation. Hagel, who is still considering his options for the 2008 race, left open the possibility of becoming an independent and sharing a ticket with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. "I am not happy with the Republican Party today," Hagel said. "It's been hijacked by a group of single-minded almost isolationists, insulationists, power-projectors." My friends at Power Line already have had their laughs over the "insulationists" part of Hagel's comment, but the rest of it makes no sense either. Hagel complains about isolationism and power...
Hamas attacked a Gaza checkpoint run by Fatah in conjunction with the Israelis earlier today, killing eight and engaging both Fatah and IDF personnel. The escalation comes a day after the resignation of the Interior Minister and appears to announce Hamas' intention to seize power by force: Hamas gunmen on Tuesday ambushed rival Fatah forces near a key crossing along the Israeli border, killing eight people in the deadliest battle yet in three days of factional fighting. The incident briefly drew Israeli gunfire, threatening to drag Israel into the conflict. At least 18 people have died in the infighting, bringing life in Gaza to a standstill and pushing the fragile Palestinian unity government closer to collapse. Hamas and Fatah formed the union in March with the aim of ending months of violence. Monday's fighting erupted when Hamas gunmen approached a training base used by Fatah forces that guard the crossing,...
EJ Dionne reflects on the meaning of Rudy Giuliani's decision to speak plainly about his support for abortion rights and what it means for the Republican Party. Instead of acknowledging that his front-runner status despite his well-known pro-choice views demonstrates a larger tent than the media usually credits the GOP for having, Dionne argues that it reveals a cynical reliance on pro-life emotions to harvest votes: Giuliani will also test the seriousness of those who claim that abortion is the decisive issue in the political choices they make. Will conservative Catholic bishops and intellectuals, along with evangelical preachers and political entrepreneurs, be as tough on Giuliani as they were on John Kerry in the 2004 presidential campaign? If they are not, how will they defend themselves against charges of partisan or ideological hypocrisy? Republicans in power have done remarkably little to live up to their promises to antiabortion voters. Yes,...
Maybe the noise from the mortars dropping on Israeli soldiers have the Palestinians a little hard of hearing, but they seem to have missed the point of Ehud Olmert's invitation to renew the peace process. Olmert invited the Palestinians, including Hamas, to Israel along with the leaders of the 22 Arab governments to discuss the Saudi proposal without preconditions -- but the Palestinians claim that Israel is "not ready": "We are ready to come and to invite" Arab leaders "without preconditions from us or their side," Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told reporters Tuesday after arriving in Petra for talks with Jordan's King Abdullah II, expressing Israel's readiness to discuss the Arab peace initiative and find ways to implement the plan. Olmert later told a conference involving Nobel Laureates and Israeli and Arab youth on ways to solve conflicts in the Mideast that his country was "ready to sit down and...
The Republican presidential hopefuls have one thing in common -- they have all turned hawkish on immigration. According to the Washington Post's Michael Shear, the three front-runners have run away from previously centrist positions in order to bolster their border-security credentials, leaving George Bush without much support for his bipartisan efforts to create a comprehensive reform plan. This will make it harder for Bush to win any victories in the final two years of his term, a situation that suits a large part of the GOP base just fine. I discuss the consequences at Heading Right. Be assured that the candidates will be pressed on this topic at tonight's debate, which will again feature a live blog by the entire Heading Right crew and a roundtable discussion at BlogTalkRadio's Debate Central afterwards....
If the Democrats have had a few laughs looking at approval ratings for George Bush, the laughter has probably stopped this morning after Gallup's latest survey. It shows that Congress has even lower ratings than the President, and the number has dropped consistently since the Democrats first took charge: A new Gallup Poll finds continued low levels of public support for both Congress and President George W. Bush. Twenty-nine percent of Americans approve of Congress, down slightly from last month's reading (33%) and this year's high point of 37%, while Bush's approval rating is holding steady at 33%. Both the ratings of Congress and the president are slightly lower than their respective 2007 averages. Approval ratings of Congress are higher among Democrats than Republicans, while Bush's ratings are much higher among Republicans. According to the May 10-13, 2007, Gallup Poll, 29% of Americans approve and 64% disapprove of the way...
Eugene Robinson asks a contentious question in today's Washington Post about race, identity, and entitlements. Noting that Barack Obama wants to shift the idea of affirmative action from race to class, Robinson thinks both should apply: Obama has repeatedly gone on record as a supporter of affirmative action. But "if we have done what needs to be done to ensure that kids who are qualified to go to college can afford it," he said in the ABC interview, "affirmative action becomes a diminishing tool for us to achieve racial equality in this society." He seemed to side with those who think class predominates when he said, "I think that we should take into account white kids who have been disadvantaged and have grown up in poverty and shown themselves to have what it takes to succeed." It's hard to disagree with that proposition, especially as economic inequality worsens in this...
Reverend Jerry Falwell, who helped organize and galvanize social and religious conservatives in the 1980s, has died suddenly in his offices at Liberty University. Falwell was 73 years old: The Rev. Jerry Falwell, who founded the Moral Majority and built the religious right into a political force, died Tuesday shortly after being found unconscious in his office at Liberty University, a school executive said. He was 73. ... Ron Godwin, the university's executive vice president, said Falwell, 73, was found unresponsive around 10:45 a.m. and taken to Lynchburg General Hospital. Godwin said he was not sure what caused the collapse, but he said Falwell "has a history of heart challenges." "I had breakfast with him, and he was fine at breakfast," Godwin said. "He went to his office, I went to mine, and they found him unresponsive." Our sympathies and prayers go out to the Falwell family and the many...
Today on CQ Radio (2 pm CT), we'll be speaking with Major John Heil, live from Iraq, where he's currently serving with the 3rd MEDCOM as Public Affairs Officer. He will talk about all of the wonderful work being done by the medical infrastructure of the Army in Iraq, as well as discuss other aspects of life among the Iraqis. Major Heil works for the Department of Veteran Affairs in civilian life. Do you want to talk to Major Heil? All you have to do is call 646-652-4889 between 2-3 pm CT! Tonight, Heading Right will live blog the Fox News Republican presidential debate, starting at 8 pm CT. At 10 pm CT, I will moderate a roundtable review of the debate at BlogTalkRadio's Debate Central, featuring some of our Heading Right co-bloggers. Be sure to join us! UPDATE AND BUMP: I've also written a post at Heading Right...
President Bush finally got someone to accept a nomination to the new post of "war czar" to oversee the conduct of the military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute will move from his current position as the Pentagon's director of operations as soon as he can be confirmed: In the newly created position of assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser for Iraq and Afghanistan policy and implementation, Lute would have the power to direct the Pentagon, State Department and other agencies involved in the two conflicts. Lute would report directly to the president and to National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley. Filling the position had become a priority for the White House, after a handful of retired generals told the White House they did not want the job. Among them, retired Marine Corps four-star Gen. Jack Sheehan, who proved an embarrassment to the White House...
Michael Moore challenged Fred Thompson to a debate. Fred Thompson replied --- and once again managed to cast his long shadow over the Republican presidential debate. It's 38 seconds of a down-home rhetorical spanking that manages to both address Moore and belittle him. I'm thinking Jack Palance in City Slickers, telling Bill Crystal, "I crap bigger than you." In Moore's case, though, it would be strictly figurative. Which do you think will have a more positive and lasting impact on Republican voters -- these 38 seconds or anything said in tonight's 90-minute debate? Oh, now, let's not always see the same hands ... UPDATE: Man, I could watch this over and over again. Talk about pitch-perfect ... and if you're wondering who Thompson references, there's a short explanation here. Thompson himself wrote about Guillen almost two weeks ago....
Tonight, the second Republican presidential primary debate airs at 8 pm CT -- and Blog Talk Radio and Heading Right will team up to cover it. The entire team at Heading Right will be posting live at the site, offering a running conversation as the 90-minute debate progresses. Over a dozen top conservative BTR hosts will debate the debate, live, at the site. In fact -- we've already begun! At 10 pm CT, about thirty minutes after the end of the event, we will meet at Debate Central, the new live Internet debate forum for BTR. I will moderate a post-debate roundtable with a number of BTR hosts for 30 minutes. We'll talk about the highs and lows, who gained and who lost ground, and the impact on the early primary efforts. We can even take your calls, live, to address how you felt about the debates -- so...
Team Rudy should send a hundred roses to Ron Paul -- yellow roses, of course -- after the Congressman essentially tossed the debate to Giuliani. Rudy had a pretty good night going anyway, but when Paul as much as said that the terrorists had a point in killing 3,000 Americans, Rudy let fly with the righteous indigation that an entire nation was busily hurling at their television screens. Ron Paul -- the Black Sox of Republican debaters. Rudy needed a good night after a lackluster first debate, and he got it. He also managed somehow to be the only candidate to criticize a Democrat on specific policy stands. However, he wasn't the only candidate who benefitted. John McCain did considerably better than his Angry Man performance in the first debate, coming across as measured and poised. Mitt Romney continued to show that he has mastered the format. Even Mike Huckabee,...
May 16, 2007
Our producer for the Northern Alliance Radio Network, Mathew Reynolds, attended Liberty University several years ago. Yesterday he let us know that he has some remembrances of Jerry Falwell that he would like to share. Here are just a few things I remember most about Dr Falwell. I attended Liberty University from 1998-2000. When I started at the school, I wasn't what you would call a Falwell fan. I would here people talk about him in glowing terms and think, "Yeah right. There's no way that he's like that." After meeting and speaking with Dr. Falwell, my opinion started change. While he made mistakes in what he would say, he would immediately seek to correct those mistakes. One of the first things I noticed about him was that he was genuinely interested in you as a person. He wanted to know how you were and would ask if there was...
After its raid on the Karni crossing yesterday, Hamas could have claimed it to be a mistake and stood down its militia. Rather than avoid a civil war in Gaza, however, Hamas expanded its attacks to include key figures of Fatah leadership, including Mahmoud Abbas, and fired rockets into Israel to create a wider war: Hamas gunmen fatally shot six bodyguards from the rival Fatah movement and fired a barrage of rockets at southern Israel Wednesday, apparently attempting to draw Israel into the fierce Palestinian infighting as the Gaza Strip slid further into chaos. ... Fighting raged close to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' heavily guarded compound, which also was targeted by Hamas mortar fire overnight. Abbas, a moderate from Fatah, was not present. Early Wednesday, Hamas gunmen fired mortars and pipe bombs at the home of Fatah security chief Rashid Abu Shbak, before storming inside and killing six bodyguards, Palestinians...
On Thursday, I wondered whether the controversial remarks on the XM Radio show "Opie and Anthony", where the two shock jocks joined an in-studio guest in joking about raping Condoleezza Rice, would result in the same kind of sanctions against the hosts as Don Imus received for his idiotic remark about the womens' basketball team at Rutgers. We have our answer now; XM has suspended the show for 30 days: "XM Radio deplored the comments aired on “The Opie & Anthony Show” last week. At the time, the company strongly expressed its views to Opie and Anthony, and they issued an immediate apology,” the company said in the statement. “Comments made by Opie and Anthony on yesterday’s broadcast put into question whether they appreciate the seriousness of the matter. The management of XM Radio decided to suspend Opie and Anthony to make clear that our that our on-air talent must...
The New York Times and the Washington Post both report on disturbing testimony from former Deputy Attorney General James Comey about an attempt to get an ailing John Ashcroft to approve an extension of the terrorist surveillance program over his objections and that of the FBI. Alberto Gonzales played a central role in this attempt, rousting Ashcroft from intensive care only to be spurned: Mr. Comey said that on the evening of March 10, 2004, Mr. Gonzales and Andrew H. Card Jr., then Mr. Bush’s chief of staff, tried to bypass him by secretly visiting Mr. Ashcroft. Mr. Ashcroft was extremely ill and disoriented, Mr. Comey said, and his wife had forbidden any visitors. Mr. Comey said that when a top aide to Mr. Ashcroft alerted him about the pending visit, he ordered his driver to rush him to George Washington University Hospital with emergency lights flashing and a siren...
Gallup reports on a survey taken last week on the presidential primary races that shows Rudy Giuliani dipping down to his lowest level of the campaign, while John McCain seems to be rebounding a bit. Rudy took a nine-point hit over the past five weeks, while McCain went up seven: The national front-runners for the 2008 presidential nominations continue to be former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani for the Republican Party and New York Sen. Hillary Clinton for the Democratic Party. Giuliani's pro-choice views were openly vetted during the Republican debate held earlier this month at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California, and he has since tried to clarify them. It is not yet clear whether the resulting controversy has significantly harmed him among Republican voters. ... Some of the changes in Giuliani's and McCain's support levels can be attributed to support for actor and former Tennessee Sen....
The Senate has come closer to a compromise on immigration reform, and at least at first blush, it contains just enough to annoy everyone -- but finally get the situation addressed. At Heading Right, I take a look at the structure of the compromise and conclude that conservatives could have done worse -- and would have last year, had McCain-Kennedy passed: It doesn’t seem that the conservatives do all that badly in this compromise. They get the borders-first approach demanded last year (and ignored by McCain-Kennedy), with an eighteen-month delay for the triggers to get met, as well as a statutory burden to ensure that they are met before continuing with normalization. It keeps in place the fines and requires a “touchback”, forcing the head of household to return to his/her country of origin and applying for legal entry into the US. It excludes felons from the program, and levies...
The Senate blocked a bill from coming to the floor that would have imposed a fixed withdrawal date for American troops in Iraq. Proponents could only muster 29 votes, but as Allahpundit writes, those votes came from an interesting subset of the Democratic caucus: The Senate on Wednesday rejected legislation that would cut off money for combat operations in Iraq after March 31, 2008. The vote was a loss for Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., and other Democrats who want to end the war. But the effort picked up support from members, including presidential hopefuls previously reluctant to limit war funding — an indication of the conflict's unpopularity among voters. The proposal lost 29-67 on a procedural vote, falling 41 votes short of the necessary votes to advance. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, a Democratic presidential front-runner, previously opposed setting a deadline on the war. But she said she agreed to back...
Today on CQ Radio (2 pm CT), we'll talk about last night's Republican debate -- and we have a lot to discuss. Was Ron Paul a nut or a classic Republican? Did Giuliani rise to the occasion, or merely rise to the bait? Did anyone have a breakout night, and can the second tier hope to break through at all? I'd love to hear your thoughts on all of these questions, and more. Call 646-652-4889 and join the conversation! UPDATE: Patrick Hynes from Ankle Biting Pundits will join me for today's show, and you can bet we'll discuss this exchange by Ron Paul and Wendell Goler: REP. PAUL: No. Non-intervention was a major contributing factor. Have you ever read the reasons they attacked us? They attack us because we've been over there; we've been bombing Iraq for 10 years. We've been in the Middle East -- I think Reagan...
Senate Democrats failed to get their firm withdrawal date passed today, but they did manage to change a few minds. Two months ago, 35 Democrats insisted that they would not cut or reduce funding for the troops. They voted for the Gregg Amendment, which said: Resolved by the Senate (the House of Representatives concurring), That it is the sense of Congress that Congress should not take any action that will endanger United States military forces in the field, including the elimination or reduction of funds for troops in the field, as such action with respect to funding would undermine their safety or harm their effectiveness in pursuing their assigned missions. In 60 days, 17 Democrats changed their minds about the Gregg resolution and voted for the Reid-Feingold amendment, which said: (c) Prohibition on Use of Funds- No funds appropriated or otherwise made available under any provision of law may be...
I'm in Madison, Wisconsin, preparing for my appearance at the Online News Association conference tomorrow at the Hilton. I'll be on the last panel, discussing how online coverage will shape the upcoming campaign. I get to join a rather august group -- Tom Bevan of RealClearPolitics, joe Trippi, The Politico's Ben Smith, and Vaughn Ververs of CBS' Public Eye. I'm looking forward to meeting all of them. Posting may be limited tomorrow, but I'm hoping to get some audio for a show or two later ......
May 17, 2007
The Russians have either gone a little stir crazy or they're looking to have an excuse for something in the Baltics. One of those two scenarios has to explain the pre-school meltdown they have indulged ever since Estonia had the unmitigated gall to relocate a monument to the brutal Soviet occupation of almost 60 years to a Russian cemetery: A day after promising to temper the inflammatory rhetoric damaging East-West relations, the Kremlin returned to a familiar theme yesterday. Dashing hopes for a constructive start to an EU-Russia summit tomorrow, Sergei Yastrzhembsky, a senior Kremlin official, attacked Estonia's decision to relocate a controversial Soviet war memorial last month as "barbaric" and gave warning that the European Union's "solidarity" with the Baltic state was akin to tolerating fascism. Moscow's vitriolic reaction to the transfer of the monument, seen in Estonia as a symbol of Soviet occupation, has baffled many in the...