August 1, 2007
Jonah Goldberg has a good sense of humor, and it comes across in his posts at The Corner, which tend to display his wry wit. That's why, when I read his column for yesterday's Los Angeles Times, I suspected he may have been kidding about competency tests for voting. If not, then Jonah has forgotten some painful civil-rights history: Can you name all three branches of government? Can you name even one? Do you know who your congressman is? Your senators? Do you even know how many senators each state gets? If you know the answers to these questions (and you probably do because you're a newspaper reader), you're in the minority. In fact, the data have long been settled. A very high percentage of the U.S. electorate isn't very well qualified to vote, if by "qualified" you mean having a basic understanding of our government, its functions and its...
Apparently the Democrats have resolved to wait until September to offer a withdrawal bill -- and John Murtha stomped off the floor when he learned about their plans. He had planned to offer a bill which would have required withdrawal to start within 60 days but not demand an end date, and the anti-war faction balked: A proposal by Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) for the House to vote on withdrawal from Iraq without a timetable has been nixed, several lawmakers and aides said. The opposition of the Progressive Caucus also apparently doomed a proposal by Reps. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii) and John Tanner (D-Tenn.) demanding a redeployment plan from President Bush. The measure will not get a vote this week. Progressive Caucus lawmakers met Tuesday morning and agreed they would not support any Iraq measure that does not include a firm timetable for withdrawal. ... “We don’t want to see any...
The UN will finally intervene in Darfur, thanks to a unanimous Security Council vote last night, but it will have a restricted mandate that will essentially do nothing. Up to 26,000 troops, primarily African, will deploy to Sudan over the next several months under the command of the UN, but will only have authority to use force while not "usurping" the Sudanese government: The full force, the largest authorized by the U.N., will take about a year to muster and could cost $2 billion, said peacekeeping chief Jean-Marie Guehenno. He added that a substantial number of troops will arrive before year's end. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called the resolution "historic and unprecedented" and said it would help "improve the lives of the people of the region and close this tragic chapter in Sudan's history." The resolution is the culmination of a 9-month-long fight with the Khartoum government over sending troops to...
Democrats have decided that they have to support changes requested by the White House to the FISA law in order to protect vital national-security programs, the New York Times reports. They fear leaving themselves open to charges of being weak on terrorism as well as impeding vital signal intelligence efforts to keep the nation safe from another attack (via Memeorandum): Under pressure from President Bush, Democratic leaders in Congress are scrambling to pass legislation this week to expand the government’s electronic wiretapping powers. Democratic leaders have expressed a new willingness to work with the White House to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to make it easier for the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on some purely foreign telephone calls and e-mail. Such a step now requires court approval. ... In the past few days, Mr. Bush and Mike McConnell, director of national intelligence, have publicly called on Congress to...
Earlier, I pointed out the folly of the new UN mission to Sudan. The force is too small, the mission too narrow, and the rules of engagement too restrictive to accomplish anything other than provide a sideshow for the genocide. Also, the history of UN peacekeeping forces in that region more than suggests that the troops themselves will perpetuate some of the unsavory practices on the victims that the UN wants to end. Putting those issues to one side for a moment, the UN and the advocates of this intervention have for the most part railed against the American presence in Iraq. At Heading Right, I look at the prevailing arguments for the futility of our mission in Iraq and for complete withdrawal there, and compare it to the situation in Darfur. Which mission has the best chance for success?...
Last year at this time, the world watched as Israel tried to drive Hezbollah out of the sub-Litani region in a large but tentative invasion of Lebanon. Leaders from the UN and the West worked tirelessly to restrain Israel, finally brokering a truce to end the fighting. According to a Hezbollah officer, it came just in time to save the Iranian-backed terrorists from a complete collapse: "The cease-fire acted as a life jacket for the organization [at the end of the Second Lebanon War]," a Hizbullah officer said in an interview aired by Channel 10 on Tuesday. In the interview, the unnamed officer said Hizbullah gunmen would have surrendered if the fighting last summer had continued for another 10 days. ... The officer shown on Channel 10 said the organization's gunmen had been running low on food and water and facing rapidly diminishing arms supplies. It turns out that Hezbollah...
A source on Capitol Hill tells me that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell plans to force consideration of Judge Leslie Southwick's nomination to the appellate court in the next few minutes. Stay tuned! UPDATE: It looks like the debate on this has already started. Pat Leahy is arguing that the Republicans have not asked him to put Southwick's nomination on the agenda, but that he has done so for tomorrow anyway. He says Republicans "pocket vetoed" 61 Clinton administration appointees, and used one of them -- unnamed -- to accuse them of racism. UPDATE II: McConnell introduced an amendment asking for the sense of the Senate on Southwick's nomination. McConnell apparently wants to show that Southwick would gain a majority for his confirmation on the Senate floor....
The man who helped create the market for conservative talk radio celebrates 19 years in the business today. Rush Limbaugh has changed broadcast radio history and continues to produce the most popular political talk show in America after all these years. He's opened up doors for conservatives that had been shut tight before he appeared on the scene and transformed talk radio. Besides that, he's a good friend and a great guy. Thanks again, Rush, for all you do. Happy anniversary, and many more ahead, we hope. (via The Corner)...
Democrats have been demanding a withdrawal from Iraq for the past two years, and Barack Obama knows exactly what he'll do with the troops once they withdraw. He'll send them on an invasion of Pakistan: In a strikingly bold speech about terrorism scheduled for this morning, Democratic presidential candidate Illinois Sen. Barack Obama will call not only for a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, but a redeployment of troops into Afghanistan and even Pakistan -- with or without the permission of Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf. "I understand that President Musharraf has his own challenges," Obama will say, according to speech excerpts provided to ABC News by his campaign, "but let me make this clear. There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out...
Today on CQ Radio (2 pm CT), we have two excellent guests. In the first half, we'll talk with Sara Banaszak, API's senior economist, about the proposed taxes on oil licenses in the Gulf of Mexico and how that will affect gas prices and the efforts for energy independence -- as well as any questions you may have. In the second half, author Michael Mannske joins us to talk about his new novel, Foreign and Domestic: Campaign II--Battle for the Middle States, as well as his experiences in the military and the issues surrounding Iraq, Iran, and the UN. UPDATE: I'll also ask Ms. Banaszak about Rolling Stone's explosive article on ethanol. It's interesting; I'll blog about it later tonight. Call 646-652-4889 to join the conversation! Did you know that you can listen to CQ Radio through your TiVo service? Click here for the instructions. Also, you can subscribe...
Apparently, I miscoded something on my CQ Radio post which made everything else fail out. I've fixed the problem, and the rest of the site should be accessible now. I apologize for the inconvenience....
The Muslim special-interest group CAIR has attempted to intimidate the Young America's Foundation into cancelling a speaker at their conference this week. Reacting to frequent CAIR critic Robert Spencer's invitation to address their National Conservative Student Conference, CAIR's attorney demanded that the event get shut down: You should be aware that Mr Spencer, a well-known purveyor of hatred and bigotry against Muslims, has a history of false and defamatory statements. Several of those statements have falsely accused CAIR of activity that would constitute a federal criminal offense. Interestingly, the attorney (Joseph E. Sandler) never actually produces the supposedly false statements, nor indicates when or where Spencer supposedly made them. Nevertheless, Sandler demands that Spencer be silenced: For those reasons, we demand that YAF cancel the subject session, or else take steps to ensure that false and defamatory statements are not disseminated at that session. This seems to be the main...
One of the most-traveled freeways in the Twin Cities -- a span over the Mississippi River -- collapsed about an hour ago. At the time, the highway had bumper-to-bumper traffic in the middle of rush hour, and dozens of cars have gone into the river or been caught in the rubble: The Interstate Hwy. 35W bridge over the Mississippi River collapsed during the evening rush hour Wednesday, dumping at least eight cars and a truck into the water and onto the land below, creating a horrific scene of damage, fire, smoke, injuries, frantic rescuers and terrified motorists. It was not clear how many people might be hurt or killed, but witnesses said at least 20 cars were involved. The crumpled green wreckage of the bridge lay on the east bank of the river, and a huge section of concrete roadway lay on the west bank. Down below in the river...
August 2, 2007
The morning after the bridge collapse in Minneapolis, authorities await sunrise to continue their efforts to search the wreckage for any unaccounted victims. By this time, most expect this to be a recovery rather than a rescue effort, and the death toll has risen to nine, and twenty people are known to be missing: Nine people were confirmed dead as of 4 a.m. today. Sixty were taken to hospitals and 20 people were still missing this morning. Authorities said they expected the death toll to rise. Hennepin County Sheriff Rich Stanek told the Associated Press at about 1 a.m. today that all search efforts had been called off for the night and that searchers did not expect to find any survivors. "It's dark, it's not safe with the currents in the water and the concrete and rebar," he said. "At this point it is a recovery effort." The "missing" figure...
Normally, in the wake of a catastrophe, the details become clear only slowly and fitfully. Last night we heard that the 35W bridge had passed all of its inspections and that the collapse completely surprised everyone. Today, the Pioneer Press reports that inspectors had warned of a problem with this particular bridge, although the state overall had done an excellent job in bridge maintenance: Bridge inspectors had noted structural problems over the years in the Interstate 35W bridge over the Mississippi River that collapsed Wednesday evening, but it was unclear whether obvious warning signs had been ignored. ... In 2005, inspectors from the Minnesota Department of Transportation deemed the bridge "structurally deficient," in data submitted to the Federal Highway Administration's National Bridge Inventory. Inspectors gave the bridge a sufficiency rating of 50 percent on a scale of 0 to 100 percent. A rating of 50 percent or lower means the...
UPDATE: Here's the video (via Hot Air): CNN has the video from a security camera near the 35W bridge that catches the collapse. It shows it in the typical four-frames-per-second style of security video, but it quite clearly catches the sequence of the collapse. The bridge appears to break, as one might guess from the pattern of the rubble, not in the center but as the span goes over the water of the river. The center section drops straight down, and the video briefly shows the cars that went down with it. A few seconds later, that first third of the bridge follows it down. In that first couple of frames, the steel structure buckles dramatically. One point to note: it does not show the entire span of the bridge. The collapse could have started on the right of the camera, which is not shown. That would be the south...
Tim Pawlenty just appeared on KSTP to answer questions about the bridge collapse yesterday afternoon. As I noted earlier, the Pioneer Press and other local news outlets have begun to report that the bridge had been rated as "structurally deficient", which would normally have flagged it for higher-priority maintenance or possibly replacement. Governor Pawlenty told KSTP that the experts had not recommended either: Q: I understand that you're waiting to hear from President Bush. What kind of federal help do you expect to receive? A: We've received offers of help from the federal government, and I'm sure that will take the form of cash, assistance, and personnel. We have federal officials already on site, and more coming. But we just want everybody to know across the country and across Minnesota that our thoughts and prayers are first and foremost with the families who have lost a loved one, somebody that...
President Bush made an obviously impromptu appearance just now to make a statement about the bridge collapse. He promised a "robust" federal response, not just in the recovery and investigation, but also in rebuilding the bridge. He didn't spend much time talking about details, other than to say that the Secretary of Transportation has flown to Minneapolis to ensure the best possible coordination with state officials already on the ground. This shouldn't require a huge effort in those regards. This hardly compares to Hurricane Katrina, after all. It's a localized and comparatively small tragedy. It won't require FEMA, but it will require the resources of the NTSB for the investigation, and that has to be coordinated now. Bush's statement did emphasize one point that has understandably been missed while we focus on rescue and recovery, although my clear-thinking radio partner Mitch Berg has already blogged about it. This section of...
The Senate takes up ethics reform on the floor this morning, and given the overwhelming vote in the House yesterday, it seems certain to pass. The roll-call vote will take place this afternoon: The Senate debated Thursday whether to make lawmakers disclose more about their efforts to fund pet projects and raise money from lobbyists, a move that reform groups say is overdue. Senate leaders said they hoped to win a showdown vote later in the day to end debate and ready the bill for final passage. A two-thirds majority is needed to end debate because the bill would change Senate rules, but a simple majority would suffice on final passage. The measure "is the most sweeping reform bill since Watergate," Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said as the debate began Thursday morning. That may be damning with faint praise. It had real teeth in its earlier version, especially on earmarks,...
National Review extended a kind invitation for an essay about the Minneapolis bridge collapse, and they have already published it on their web site. "Into The River" looks at the dynamics of the collapse here in Minnesota and looks at the road ahead: Nevertheless, Minnesotans already want to know how the unthinkable happened to one of its most critical traffic structures. The power of the Digital Age started showing itself in the first hours of the tragedy. News organizations found reports on prior bridge inspections on the Internet, one of which noted the bridge “has many poor fatigue details on the main truss and floor truss system.” Other reports came to light shortly afterwards, including more recent inspections that classified the bridge as “structurally deficient.” State officials quickly clarified that engineers didn’t recommend any immediate action as part of those inspections, but the issue will not disappear quietly. Minnesotans have...
Today on CQ Radio (2 pm CT), Stephen Hayes joins us to talk about his new book, Cheney: The Untold Story of America's Most Powerful and Controversial Vice President. We'll talk about Hayes' unprecedented access to the fanously private Vice President, what he learned about Cheney and the Bush administration, and much more. Call 646-652-4889 to join the conversation! Did you know that you can listen to CQ Radio through your TiVo service? Click here for the instructions. Also, you can subscribe to CQ Radio through iTunes now by clicking this link:...
If you missed today's CQ Radio show with Stephen Hayes, you missed a great piece of fascinating history. Hayes, author of Cheney: The Untold Story of America's Most Powerful and Controversial Vice President, talked at length about the selection process that put Cheney on the ticket with George Bush in 2000. Cheney had not told Stephen who else had been considered for the position while Cheney headed the search committee prior to his own selection, but the biographer managed to find out through other channels -- and in an inadvertent exclusive, Hayes told me that one of the names was ... Chuck Hagel. If you listen to the interview, Stephen puts it into good context. Hagel has a long history of conservative votes, and at the time was considered a comer in the GOP. Imagine the ways in which history may have changed -- and how that would have affected...
The fast-moving waters of the Mississippi River have hampered the recovery efforts at the collapsed bridge in the center of Minneapolis, and the operations have been suspended. Also, Governor Tim Pawlenty ordered fresh inspections of all state bridges with similar construction: Divers were pulled from the murky and fast-moving waters of the Mississippi River Thursday afternoon before any bodies could be recovered from the wreckage of Wednesday's I-35W bridge collapse. At about the same time, Gov. Tim Pawlenty ordered an immediate inspection of all Minnesota bridges that have a design like the one that collapsed Wednesday in Minneapolis. Pawlenty said he did not know how many bridges have that design. ... The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers lowered the water level of the Mississippi by about 1 foot today in an attempt to give emergency workers better access to vehicles at the site of the bridge. The initial plan called...
Earlier today, NZ Bear from the Victory Caucus joined me in two interviews today with Republican presidential candidates. First, we had Mitt Romney for about ten minutes to discuss his new Surge of Support for military personnel and families. While I had him available, I asked him about Barack Obama's contention that he would send American troops into Pakistan if Pervez Musharraf didn't shape up. Romney laughed at Obama's bluster: ROMNEY: I think Barack Obama has been demonstrating through his statements over the past several weeks a very limited understanding of the nature of conflict and diplomacy. Hillary Clinton, whom I rarely agree with, said that he's showing a naivete that is quite alarming I think naive is the right word in this case. He had a few choice words for Obama's pledge to visit Fidel Castro, among others. Be sure to catch this interview later today. Also, Mike Huckabee...
The Senate Judiciary Committee finally voted to recommend confirmation of Judge Leslie Southwick to the appellate court this afternoon, on a 10-9 vote where Dianne Feinstein crossed the party line. Mitch McConnell's office sent out the following statement: “With today’s vote to send Judge Southwick’s nomination to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to the full Senate, the Judiciary Committee took a step forward in ensuring we are able to confirm qualified judges to our nation’s courts. Judge Southwick is an outstanding jurist, and a bi-partisan majority judged him on his record of service. “Judge Southwick, an Iraq war veteran, is superbly fit to continue serving his country, this time on the Fifth Circuit. His colleagues know this, as do his home-state senators. The American Bar Association knows this; it has twice given him its highest rating, ‘well-qualified.’ Even Democrats on the Judiciary Committee know this; just last fall all...
I'll be making two appearances on radio shows this evening to discuss the Minneapolis bridge collapse story. First, I'll join Hugh Hewitt at 6:40 pm CT. Hugh will probably run with this story for most of his show. At 9:35 pm CT, I'll be on The World Tonight with Rob Breakenridge on Calgary's CHQR....
It's not that I completely disagree with Nick Coleman in today's Star Trribune. In some ways, I agree with what he has to say. But was this the time to say this? The death bridge was "structurally deficient," we now learn, and had a rating of just 50 percent, the threshold for replacement. But no one appears to have erred on the side of public safety. The errors were all the other way. Would you drive your kids or let your spouse drive over a bridge that had a sign saying, "CAUTION: Fifty-Percent Bridge Ahead"? No, you wouldn't. But there wasn't any warning on the Half Chance Bridge. There was nothing that told you that you might be sitting in your over-heated car, bumper to bumper, on a hot summer day, thinking of dinner with your wife or of going to see the Twins game or taking your kids for...
August 3, 2007
The undisputed king of pork in the House has another championship trophy for his wall. Despite a game effort by Rep. Bill Young (R-FL), who actually got more earmarks into the upcoming defense appropriation bill, John Murtha outscored him on total dollars spent on protecting his incumbency. The King spent $150 million of our money on his pet projects: Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), chairman of the House Appropriations defense panel, has secured the most earmarked dollars in the 2008 military spending bill, followed closely by the panel’s ranking member Rep. Bill Young (R-Fla.). Even though Young secured 52 earmarks, worth $117.2 million — and co-sponsored at least $27 million worth of others — Murtha’s 48 earmarks amount to a total of $150.5 million, according to a database compiled by the watchdog organization Taxpayers for Common Sense (TCS). The House is expected to take up the $459.6 billion defense appropriations bill...
On Tuesday, I linked to a report from Australian researchers that found laser-printer particulates in high amounts in offices. The report suggested that laser printers could present a health hazard with such high levels in areas where people work long hours. I suggested that it sounded more like a great new market for personal-injury litigation. Hewlett-Packard contacted me late yesterday and asked to respond publicly to the study here at Captain's Quarters. The statement comes from Tuan Tran, HP's Vice President of marketing for supplies: After a preliminary review of the Queensland University of Technology research on particle emission characteristics of office printers, HP does not agree with its conclusion or some of the bold claims the authors have made recently in press reports. HP stands behind the safety of its products. Testing of ultrafine particles is a very new scientific discipline. There are no indications that ultrafine particle (UFP)...
MnDOT officials had concerns about the I-35W bridge over the Mississippi River last winter, focusing on the same fatigue and potential cracking that has grabbed the focus of the post-collapse coverage. Engineers debated whether to apply patches to the more worrisome points of fatigue, but in the end, opted to continue inspections instead: Structural deficiencies in the Interstate 35W bridge that collapsed Wednesday were so serious that the Minnesota Department of Transportation last winter considered bolting steel plates to its supports to prevent cracking in fatigued metal, according to documents and interviews with agency officials. The department went so far as to ask contractors for advice on the best way to approach such a task, which could have been opened for bids later this year. MnDOT considered the steel plating at the recommendation of consulting engineers who told the agency that there were two ways to keep the bridge safe:...
The bitter partisanship in Congress will apparently get a lot worse after some shenanigans by Democratic leadership in the House last night. According to the Politico, the Democrats have not only attempted a revote after an embarrassing loss on an agriculture bill, but they've changed the records to expunge any mention of the vote they lost: In a massive flare-up of partisan tensions, Republicans walked out on a House vote late Thursday night to protest what they believed to be Democratic maneuvers to reverse an unfavorable outcome for them. The flap represents a complete breakdown in parliamentary procedure and an unprecedented low for the sometimes bitterly divided chamber. The rancor erupted shortly before 11 p.m. as Rep. Michael R. McNulty (D-N.Y.) gaveled close the vote on a standard procedural measure with the outcome still in doubt. Details remain fuzzy, but numerous Republicans argued afterward that they had secured a 215-213...
The man who decries the "Two Americas" while building a 28,000-square-foot mansion strikes again. John Edwards' presidential campaign has become so desperate that he has started running against Rupert Murdoch, who isn't running for office. He now demands that all of his opponents for the Democratic nomination pinky-swear that they will snub Murdoch and Fox News -- after Edwards took close to a million dollars from the man (via Memeorandum): John Edwards, who yesterday demanded Democratic candidates return any campaign donations from Rupert Murdoch and News Corp., himself earned at least $800,000 for a book published by one of the media mogul's companies. The Edwards campaign said the multimillionaire trial lawyer would not return the hefty payout from Murdoch for the book titled "Home: The Blueprints of Our Lives." The campaign didn't respond to a question from The Post about whether it was hypocritical for Edwards to take money from...
I'm enjoying the relaxations of our local Panera restaurant and its free wi-fi service, courtesy of an area-wide disruption of service at Comcast. Today marks the first full month that I've had with Comcast's Triple Play, and until about 6:30 this morning, I was pretty satisfied with the switch. Comcast had a couple of advantages. It could provide much faster Internet access and it saved me $60 a month over my combined Qwest and DirectTV bills. The picture isn't quite as crisp as with DirectTV, but I love the free on-demand video. The internet speed went from 500K to 6M, and it allowed me to finally start streaming video on my computer. (Before that, YouTube was a rare indulgence.) Unfortunately, when something goes wrong, it really goes wrong with Comcast. The only problem before today was a bad TV box, which they replaced in two days with no fuss. Today,...
The DC federal appellate circuit has ruled a part of the FBI's raid on William Jefferson's Congressional offices unconstitutional. The three-judge panel ordered the FBI to return certain seized documents to Jefferson without accessing them. The Department of Justice warned that the ruling could put public corruption out of the reach of law enforcement, but a close look shows that the court made a specific and reasoned ruling that actually supports most of their position: The FBI violated the Constitution when agents raided U.S. Rep. William Jefferson's office last year and viewed legislative documents, a federal appeals court ruled Friday. The court ordered the Justice Department to return any privileged documents it seized from the Louisiana Democrat's office on Capitol Hill. The court did not order the return of all the documents seized in the raid. Jefferson argued that the raid trampled on congressional independence. The Justice Department said that...
Our community suffered a terrible blow this week when the I-35W bridge over the Mississippi collapsed on Wednesday afternoon. So far, we know of six people who have died, and the latest count of the missing portends at least another eight deaths. Dozens were injured, some critically, and the healing process will take years. One of the comforts we have taken from the tragedy has been the remarkable heroism of our first responders -- police, fire, and paramedics -- as well as the ordinary citizens who risked their lives to rescue others when every instinct told them to run away. Their example has helped unify our community and exemplify the American impulse of individual effort and volunteerism. On the heels of that comes word that these heroes carried an additional burden -- taking the last words of the dying to their families: The first moments after the Interstate 35W bridge...
The bridge that collapsed on the Mississippi ranked in the worst 100 heavy-use bridges in the US -- but still was deemed fit enough for full service The Pioneer Press reports on the apparent contradiction, which calls into question the assumptions on which bridge inspections are based: The Interstate 35W bridge that collapsed Wednesday was not just "structurally deficient," it was among the 100 worst heavily used bridges in the country. It was also deemed perfectly safe. How this bridge could have both labels at the same time seems to defy logic. But the contradiction goes to the heart of a complicated national bridge inspection program meant to ensure we can safely drive across the country's 709,000 bridges every day. ... The I-35W bridge was in particular need of attention. In a comparison with about 4,000 similar bridges nationwide - those carrying more than 100,000 cars per day for a...
Today on CQ Radio (2 pm CT), Duane "Generalissimo" Patterson from the Hugh Hewitt show joins us to review the week's top stories. We'll talk about the bridge collapse here in Minneapolis, as well as the other hot stories this week, including last night's power grab by the Democrats in the House. I'll go over a couple of moments from my interview with Governor Mike Huckabee, too! Call 646-652-4889 to join the conversation! Did you know that you can listen to CQ Radio through your TiVo service? Click here for the instructions. Also, you can subscribe to CQ Radio through iTunes now by clicking this link:...
Now that the first couple of days have passed since the collapse of the I-35W bridge, and even while the recovery of victims remains incomplete, Minneapolis begins its adjustment to the loss of its major traffic artery. The loss will start impacting the community in unexpected ways. For instance, electric service may be disrupted to a good section of the area: Xcel Energy has two cables in the area around the collapsed bridge and they serve the West Bank areas. Those two cables are operational now, Nystuen said, and the company has a contingency plan in place should they fail. The utility is also going to reroute cables away from the bridge area so that they will not be a factor in reconstruction. ... The University of Minnesota has asked students and staff on the campus' West Bank to limit electricity use today and through the weekend as Xcel Energy...
People have made a lot of assumptions in the wake of the bridge collapse here in Minneapolis. Without waiting to find out the actual cause of the collapse, politicians and pundits have assumed that governments on state and federal levels failed to properly fund infrastructure maintenance. One of the memes that has popped up has been that the war in Iraq has somehow drained funds from these responsibilities, offered in this instance by our freshman Senator, Amy Klobuchar: U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat, suggested Bush administration spending on the Iraq war may have crimped funding for domestic projects such as road and bridge construction, and for such infrastructure projects as new levees for New Orleans. "We've spent $500 billion (250 billion pounds) in Iraq and we have bridges falling down in this country," Klobuchar told MSNBC. "I see a connection between messed-up priorities." Someone had "messed-up priorities" by...
August 4, 2007
Yesterday, Senator Amy Klobuchar blamed the collapse of the I-35W bridge on a lack of highway funds -- even though the 2005 highway bill increased federal funding to Minnesota by 46% over its five-year span. Apparently realizing that line of argument wouldn't hold, Rep. James Oberstar accused MnDOT of being too cheap to use advanced technology for bridge inspections. He left out of his accusation that the technology hasn't proven itself for that purpose: On the House floor Friday, U.S. Rep. Jim Oberstar, D-Minn., accused MnDOT of turning down an opportunity to use a $200,000 high-tech inspection technology on the bridge that might have detected a fatal flaw. ... "Technology can discover microscopic cracks not visible to the naked eye and then measure their propagation and do the same with bridges," he said on the House floor. "The Minnesota Department of Transportation was offered the opportunity to use that technology...
The Senate voted to approve the White House-backed changes to the FISA law after failing to muster any significant support for the Democratic alternative. Sixteen Democrats joined all of the Republicans and Joe Lieberman in passing the legislation, giving the Bush administration a rare victory -- but a temporary one: The Senate bowed to White House pressure last night and passed a Republican plan for overhauling the federal government's terrorist surveillance laws, approving changes that would temporarily give U.S. spy agencies expanded power to eavesdrop on foreign suspects without a court order. The 60 to 28 vote, which was quickly denounced by civil rights and privacy advocates, came after Democrats in the House failed to win support for more modest changes that would have required closer court supervision of government surveillance. Earlier in the day, President Bush threatened to hold Congress in session into its scheduled summer recess if it...
The press can't get enough of Jeri Thompson, it appears. They also can't quite get their minds settled on a narrative for her, either. They either consider her a trophy wife, or some sort of manipulative harridan, as this latest non-story from Michael Cooper and Marc Santora proves: One Friday afternoon last month, Jeri Kehn Thompson took attendance at the testing-the-waters presidential campaign headquarters of her husband, Fred D. Thompson. Mrs. Thompson checked to see which staff members were working at their desks, said a Republican close to the campaign, and went on to chide those who were A.W.O.L. The spot-check is just one of many indications that Mrs. Thompson, a former political consultant herself, is taking an active, hands-on role in the effort to propel Mr. Thompson, a former Tennessee senator, into a presidential candidacy. Admirers say the role makes sense, not only because of her background working in...
An eruption of foot-and-mouth disease among Guilford cattle could portend economic disaster for the UK. Six years ago, a similar eruption ruined the livestock markets in Britain and Ireland and even impacted the tourist trade: Britain is facing the prospect of a new foot and mouth epidemic after a case of the disease was confirmed for the first time since the disastrous outbreak of 2001. The Government launched emergency measures after cattle at a farm near Guildford, Surrey, tested positive. All 60 cattle on the farm will be culled. A nationwide ban on the movement of livestock, including cattle and pigs, was imposed immediately. In the summer of 2001, our family traveled to Ireland at the height of the last epidemic. Mild travel restrictions had been imposed in the Republic, but in Northern Ireland and Britain (where we did not go), the governments had tougher rules on access, especially in...
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 be talking about the bridge collapse for most of the first hour, I imagine. In the second hour, we will welcome Stephen Hayes, the author of Cheney: The Untold Story of America's Most Powerful and Controversial Vice President. Stephen will take us behind the scenes and paint a picture of the VP, as well...
Faced with a clear example of vote fraud, the House has agreed to investigate .. itself. The day after Democratic leadership in the House attempted to nullify a completed floor vote, the Majority Leader had to issue an apology and agree to an extraordinary bipartisan panel to probe the actions of House leadership: The House last night unanimously agreed to create a special select committee, with subpoena powers, to investigate Republican allegations that Democratic leaders had stolen a victory from the House GOP on a parliamentary vote late Thursday night. The move capped a remarkable day that started with Republicans marching out of the House in protest near midnight Thursday, was punctuated by partisan bickering, and ended with Democratic hopes for a final legislative rush fading. Even a temporary blackout of the House chamber's vote tally board led to suspicions and accusations of skullduggery. While Democratic leaders hoped to leave...
August 5, 2007
The outbreak of the devastating foot-and-mouth disease in Britain apparently came from a laboratory. The Pirbright facility in Surrey, three miles from the outbreak, is the only laboratory licensed to study the viruses that cause FAM, and the strain discovered in the cattle is not normally found in nature: A biosecurity failure at a research laboratory has been pinpointed as the likeliest source of Britain's foot and mouth outbreak. An inquiry by scientists is centring on fears that the virus escaped from the Pirbright laboratory site in Surrey, the only centre licensed to work with the foot and mouth virus. It is feared that the virus, carried on the wind, infected cattle grazing in a field three miles away. A private pharmaceuticals company, Merial Animal Health, which has been developing a foot and mouth vaccine, shares the Pirbright site with the government-funded Institute for Animal Health, which holds 5,000 strains...
The big story this week for the blogosphere has been the YearlyKos convention, a highly visible amplification of the reach of a blog community into a political force. Presidential and Congressional candidates have spoken to the attendees, and at least to some extent ratified the hard-Left political direction of the YKos crowd among Democratic politicians. Unfortunately, the Democrats in office apparently don't intend to do much more than pander, as the leadership in both chambers of Congress essentially surrendered to the White House on FISA: The Democratic-controlled House last night approved legislation President Bush's intelligence advisers wrote to enhance their ability to intercept the electronic communications of foreigners without a court order. The 227 to 183 House vote capped a high-pressure campaign by the White House to change the nation's wiretap law, in which the administration capitalized on Democrats' fears of being branded weak on terrorism and on Congress's desire...
Bridge inspections have come under scrutiny after the collapse of the I-35W bridge over Mississippi, with Minnesotans wondering how a bridge that passed an inspection in May could collapse less than three months later. The technology involved in bridge inspections may surprise some, as they still rely on hammers, steel chains, and eyeballs for most of the analysis. Also, the design itself may have been the major contributing factor, according to a former New York City bridge safety engineer: As canoeists paddled below, state bridge inspector Eric Evens stood in a cherry picker next to the two-lane steel bridge over the St. Croix River near Scandia on Friday, eyeballing rust, cracks, bolts and rivets. Computer-aided design and other innovations have changed the way structures are built, but bridge inspections haven't changed much over the years. In this high-tech era, the trained eye and the rap of a hammer to listen...
John McCain blamed Congress and the pork in the 2005 transportation bill for the collapse of the I-35W bridge here in Minneapolis. He spoke to a crowd in Ankeny, Iowa, about his anger over the lost opportunity for pork-barrel reform in the ethics bill that just passed, and used the tragedy as an example of potential real-world consequences: Republican John McCain said Saturday that Congress could share in the blame for the Minnesota bridge collapse because lawmakers diverted billions of dollars in transportation money from road work to pet projects. "I think perhaps you can make the argument that part of the responsibility lies with the Congress of the United States," the Arizona senator said. McCain said Congress spent roughly $20 billion on special-interest projects when it approved a new highway bill, signed into law by President Bush. "We spent approximately $20 billion of that money on pork barrel, earmark...
Today, the Washington Post joins the New York Times in its passion to write exposés about Jeri Thompson, the wife of presidential candidate Fred Thompson. With two glaring exceptions, the piece actually appears rather balanced and fair, although it appears that Republican wives get a lot more critical attention than Democratic wives in this cycle: In the nascent Thompson campaign -- anticipated with high hopes by many conservatives unsatisfied with the current crop of GOP candidates -- Jeri Thompson plays a role arguably as influential as those of two better-known spouses of Democratic candidates, Bill Clinton and Elizabeth Edwards. She helps shape her husband's conservative message and image, has been a strong voice urging him to run and recently helped instigate a shake-up that pushed aside Thompson's first campaign manager and his research director. ... The current GOP presidential field provides two examples of the political perils of a controversial...
According to Dominic Kennedy at the Times of London, taking a walk to local shops increases global warming more than taking a car there. In fact, the diesel locomotives used for mass transit do more damage than the individual cars of those who eschew public transit do, and food production is the biggest culprit of all. Starving for Mother Gaia may be the only option left (via Memeorandum): Walking does more than driving to cause global warming, a leading environmentalist has calculated. Food production is now so energy-intensive that more carbon is emitted providing a person with enough calories to walk to the shops than a car would emit over the same distance. The climate could benefit if people avoided exercise, ate less and became couch potatoes. Provided, of course, they remembered to switch off the TV rather than leaving it on standby. The sums were done by Chris Goodall,...
Earlier today, I noted that one focus of the collapse of the St. Anthony Bridge will be the methods used to inspect the bridges in Minnesota and across the nation. The latest inspection, less than three months before the collapse, never indicated that the bridge was in imminent danger of collapse, but the Star Tribune reports that the inspections mainly rely on eyeballs and ears as the highest-tech devices to find structural deficiencies. The technology of bridge inspections remains largely what it has been for the last several decades. My father, Ed Morrissey (Sr), spent 29 years working on the space program, most specifically on the kind of non-destructive testing technology that would replace those eyes and ears on the bridges. He held a high certification level -- high enough to have a successful post-retirement career as a consultant at the same company from which he retired. I asked him...
Have you been having trouble accessing some of your favorite blogs? So have the bloggers that run them. Hosting Matters has had issues this afternoon, so it's not your imagination or some grand conspiracy. (At least, I hope it's not some grand conspiracy.) I'm not sure what the problem was, but it's apparently been resolved....
August 6, 2007
Seoul confirms that the two Korean armies exchanged short bursts of gunshots across the DMZ, one day before disarmament talks expected to set the procedure for permanently disabling the Yongbyon nuclear plant. The exchange could mean that Kim Jong-Il wants a way out of his agreement, or it could have more implications for the role of the DPRK military in the disarmament: North and South Korea briefly exchanged gunshots on Monday in the first such skirmish on their heavily armed border in just over a year, a military official said. There were no reports of any casualties. "A few shots were fired from the North, and a few warning shots were fired (back) from this side," the official with the office of the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff told Reuters. The shooting came a day before the start of working level talks among regional powers, including the two Koreas,...
Minneapolis will take its first tentative steps this week towards normal business after the collapse of the St. Anthony Bridge last week. The city will work with the NTSB to clear the debris of the collapse from the Mississippi River, while MnDOT will open the last of the operable exits of the I-35W on either end of the collapse: Recovery crews using cranes and barges will start pulling cars and other vehicles from the Mississippi River by midweek as part of a $15 million debris-removal plan, Minnesota Department of Transportation officials said Sunday. Meanwhile, the FBI's dive team soon will arrive in the Twin Cities to assist local divers who have been searching for bodies. As of Sunday night, divers had searched several submerged vehicles but had not recovered any bodies in the water. Workers from Carl Bolander and Sons, of St. Paul, will begin moving heavy equipment to the...
Last night, Drudge carried a headline that linked nowhere for hours, announcing that "tons" of paving material had been on the St. Anthony Bridge before its collapse. This morning, the headline finally linked to the New York Times, which published a brief article outlining the obvious: Trucks carrying tens of thousands of pounds of crushed stone were parked on the Interstate 35W bridge, and more stone was sitting on the deck when the bridge collapsed, investigators said Sunday, raising suspicions that the added weight of materials intended for repairs may have played a role in the bridge failure. The chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, Mark V. Rosenker, said investigators had questioned employees of Progressive Contractors Inc., which was doing work on the bridge deck, regarding quantities of various materials, specific equipment they had put on the bridge, and where the materials and equipment were on the bridge. The...
It's almost impossible to keep one's jaw in place while reading Jonathan Alter under the best of circumstances, but his column today requires a bungee cord wrapped around one's head to avoid serious TMJ. Alter endorses "mischief" by state officials attempting to make end-runs around the Electoral College as long as it reflects the "popular will" -- but when Republicans actually offer a referendum to the people for ending the winner-take-all assignment of EC votes, Alter accuses the GOP of trying to steal the next election: Our way of electing presidents has always been fer-tile [sic] ground for mischief. But there's sensible mischief—toying with existing laws and the Constitution to reflect popular will—and then there's the other kind, which tries to rig admission to the Electoral College for strictly partisan purposes. Mischief-makers in California (Republicans) and North Carolina (Democrats) are at work on changes that would subvert the system for...
I'd like to find out if an e-mail problem I'm seeing is a widespread issue. Most e-mail I send out to AOL customers has been bouncing back for the last several weeks. It comes back with a message from the AOL server that states: Delay reason: SMTP error from remote mail server after end of data: host mailin-01.mx.aol.com [64.12.137.249]: 421-: (DNS:NR) http://postmaster.info.aol.com/errors/421dnsnr.html 421 SERVICE NOT AVAILABLE My e-mail service tells me it will retry, and the failure messages continue for 72 hours until the system gives up entirely. Is this happening across the Internet and is AOL's mail service failing, or is this something more localized? I'd like to hear from CQ readers if they have had any of these difficulties. And if you use AOL and have been expecting replies from me, you may not get them until the problem gets resolved one way or another. UPDATE: The problem...
The Politico reports that Iowans have warmed up to a second-tier candidate in the Republican presidential primary race, one with executive experience and conservative bona fides. Governor Mike Huckabee has pulled into a fourth-place tie with John McCain among likely caucus voters, perhaps signaling a move from the pack to the frontrunners: Going into Sunday's Republican presidential debate, most of the Iowans noshing on English muffins in the sun room of the neon-bedecked Drake Diner had never heard of Mike Huckabee, or knew very little about the ex-preacher and former governor of Arkansas. But by the debate’s end, they knew a lot more — and liked what they saw. .... Fetters and Holland were among 29 GOP voters from the Des Moines area assembled here by Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster and political consultant, and by Fox News. “Huckabee is hitting it out of the park with these people,” Luntz,...
Bloggers on the port side of the 'sphere have suggested a new way to organize the chaos that is the blogging community. They propose a union for bloggers, which has some labor organizers salivating but a good number of us scratching our heads. Since when have owners (outside of sports leagues) needed to organize? In a move that might make some people scratch their heads, a loosely formed coalition of left-leaning bloggers are trying to band together to form a labor union they hope will help them receive health insurance, conduct collective bargaining or even set professional standards. The effort is an extension of the blogosphere's growing power and presence, especially within the political realm, and for many, evokes memories of the early labor organization of freelance writers in the early 1980s. Organizers hope a bloggers' labor group will not only showcase the growing professionalism of the Web-based writers, but...
The Washington Post and Rick Moran agree on one thing: the YearlyKos convention looked monochromatic for a multicultural movement. With few exceptions, the gathering could have used Procul Harum's "Whiter Shade of Pale" as its theme song, according to these reports: It's Sunday, day 4 of Yearly Kos, the major conference for progressive bloggers, and Gina Cooper, the confab's organizer-in-chief, surveys the ballroom of the massive McCormick Place Convention Center. A few hundred remaining conventioneers are having brunch, dining on eggs, bagels and sausage. Seven of the eight Democratic presidential candidates have paid their respects this weekend, and some 200 members of the credentialed press have filed their stories. A mere curiosity just two years ago, the progressive blogosphere has gone mainstream. But Cooper sees a problem. "It's mostly white. More male than female," says the former high school math and science teacher turned activist. "It's not very diverse." There...
Accusations have flown over funding priorities almost from the moment of the St. Anthony Bridge collapse last Wednesday. Despite the fact that federal transportation funding increased in 2005 by 46% to Minnesota, some still insist that the bridge collapsed because of a lack of funds for proper maintenance. Perhaps this roster of earmarks for Minnesota projects in that 2005 transportation bill will show what our Congressional delegation considered priorities. In this list, I-35W only gets mentioned twice in 147 separate line items, neither of which had anything to do with the bridge that collapsed. None of them mention the Lafayette Bridge either, which MnDOT considered more problematic than the St. Anthony Bridge before its collapse. So what did get prioritized? Lyndale Avenue Bridge, Richfield ($13 million) TH 169 between Virginia and Winton ($20 million) Design and construction for new Stillwater crossing over the St. Croix ($9 million) Non-motorized Transportation Pilot...
Today on CQ Radio (2 pm CT), we'll talk about the Yearly Kos convention with one of its attendees, Rick Moran of Right Wing Nut House. La Shawn Barber will join us half-way through to discuss the diversity issue on which the Washington Post reported today. BlogTalkRadio's CEO, Alan Levy, may also join us to talk about his experiences there. Don't miss this roundtable! Call 646-652-4889 to join the conversation! Did you know that you can listen to CQ Radio through your TiVo service? Click here for the instructions. Also, you can subscribe to CQ Radio through iTunes now by clicking this link:...
I suppose one could say that it had almost nowhere to go but up, but this is the second national poll to show support for the war in Iraq increasing. USA Today has a teaser on the poll today, and will offer the details tomorrow. Like all polls, sampling will be key, but a subtle shift can be seen: USA TODAY's Susan Page reports that President Bush is making some headway in arguing that the increase in U.S. troops in Iraq is showing military progress. In the latest USA TODAY/Gallup Poll, taken Friday through Sunday, the proportion of those who said the additional troops are "making the situation better" rose to 31% from 22% a month ago. Those who said it was "not making much difference" dropped to 41% from 51%. About the same number said it was making things worse: 24% now, 25% a month ago. It's not a...
According to ABC, one miracle from the tragic collapse of the St. Anthony Bridge has given a family a new member they thought might have been lost. Doctors delivered a child from an expectant mother in critical condition via Caesarian section, and the baby is doing well: A 34-year-old pregnant woman who was severely injured in the disaster, has given birth to a healthy baby boy, ABC News has been told. Rushed to Hennepin County Medical Center, the woman, whom hospital officials have not identified, underwent an emergency Caesarean section and doctors delivered a healthy baby boy, according to hospital records examined by ABC News. The woman was still in critical condition as of Friday, hospital sources say. ... On her first day at the hospital, she was listed as a Jane Doe because emergency personnel were unable to locate any identification on her, say hospital sources. Doctors eventually were...
Earlier today, I reported on the earmarks from the 2005 federal transportation bill in answer to the argument that Minnesota didn't have the money to properly maintain the St. Anthony Bridge from collapsing as it did last Wednesday. That bill, despite its almost $500 million in earmarks for everything but the I-35W bridge, still provides Minnesota with nearly $3 billion in unearmarked federal funds for transportation, the vast majority of which gets spent on highways. What about state funds? In the wake of the tragedy, many have called for an increase in the gas tax from its present rate of 20 cents per gallon. That has not changed in 19 years -- but that doesn't mean revenues have remained static. For almost every year after 1988, gas tax revenue increases have been "stellar" -- and in the one year they weren't, an interesting phenomenon kept revenue flat: But by no...
Tomorrow morning, I will appear on the Bill Bennett radio show at 6:30 am ET. We'll be talking about the bridge collapse here in Minneapolis and the latest Republican debate. Be sure to set your alarm clocks -- I know I will!...
August 7, 2007
Georgian officials claim that Russian jets invaded their airspace last night and fired a missile, which turned out to be a dud. The incident appears to be an escalation of Russian hostility towards its former republic and NATO aspirant: Russia has been accused of launching an airstrike in an "act of aggression" against neighbouring Georgia. Russia, which has a long history of tense relations with the former Soviet state, has denied the claim. Georgian officials said that two Russian jet fighters violated its airspace and fired a missile which did not explode. A Georgian government spokesman said that the intrusion took place on Monday night when the aircraft entered Georgia's airspace over the northeastern Gori region and fired a missile which fell near the village of Tsitelubani, around 40 miles west of the capital, Tbilisi. This puts a rather interesting twist on Georgia's relationship with NATO. They have made no...
When Gordon Brown picked former Kofi Annan deputy Lord Malloch-Brown to handle Foreign Office management of the UN, Africa, and Asia, Americans groaned at the message that the appointment made towards appeasement and unaccountable internationalism. Americans knew Mark Malloch-Brown from his attack on American free speech last year, and his insistence in 2005 that despite a plague of sexual exploitation scandals and the Oil-For-Food scandal that the UN was "not in the mood for more wholesale change". Now the British can get to know Malloch-Brown as the man who wants to give away the British veto power at the United Nations -- to the EU: The United Kingdom should lose its independent voice at the United Nations and hand over its seat on the Security Council to the EU, according to the new Foreign Office Minister, Lord Malloch-Brown. Last October, when Lord Malloch-Brown was the UN's deputy secretary general, he...
Before I begin this post in earnest, I have to tell readers that I struggled mightily not to write about this local story. I know it has no resonance to overarching policy or national issues, or to anything remotely substantial. Like Allie Shah at the Star Tribune, though, it's impossible to let pass without at least some comment. Police in St. Paul are on the lookout for missing testicles and the men who stole them: A St. Paul man, complaining of chronic pain, wanted to have his testicles removed. When conventional medical staff refused to do the job, he hired other "professionals" to take off his testicles, according to a search warrant affidavit filed Monday in Ramsey County District Court. Two or three people operated on the man, Russell Daniel Angus, 62, a couple weeks ago at his home in St. Paul. He was unconscious during the surgery, and when...
The inspections of the St. Anthony Bridge were difficult and dangerous affairs, according to a Star Tribune report. Spiders thrived on the support girders, and pigeons occupied the steel box sections where fatigue would have caused catastrophic failure. Those dangers don't compare, however, to the treatment inspectors got from passing drivers when lanes had to close to conduct the inspections: Three experts familiar with the bridge said Monday that the impediments faced by inspectors included piles of pigeon guano, poor lighting, road rage and spider webs that could be mistaken for metal cracks. A former MnDOT inspection supervisor told the Star Tribune that even the best inspectors had difficulty making a thorough evaluation of the I-35W bridge. Its sheer length, nearly 2,000 feet, was part of the problem, they said. .. State traffic engineers would close lanes on the bridge for the inspections, and most of the time the lane...
The Washington Post finally realizes that the new ethics bill passed by Congress has little chance of actually enforcing better standards of ethics. Their somewhat belated observation comes on page A11 of today's paper, where they note that the Democratic leadership not only didn't provide any new resources for enforcement, they put most of the onus for compliance on the lobbyists: Government watchdogs and ethics lawyers generally agree that the bill would shed new light on the Washington influence game but wonder how those who don't play ball would be found and punished. Without an effective bureaucracy for managing the flow of new disclosures provided by the law, they say, the legislation won't mean much. "This law will put a significant new burden on the ethics committees and the public disclosure offices in the House and Senate. They have to do more than sticking the reports in a filing cabinet,"...
UPDATE VII: A couple of thoughts that I want to put to the top. First, McQ from QandO spoke about the issue on my CQ Radio show with King Banaian and me (at the 45-minute mark), and I found his argument -- and those of most of the commenters here -- compelling. I think I was more dismissive than I meant to be in the post below. I think this is a real story, and I'm glad that the milbloggers went after it, but as I told McQ, it seems like going after a squirrel with a bazooka. McQ rightly pointed out that it deters other squirrels from appearing! However, a few people have implied that I'm a hypocrite for sticking with the bridge collapse story. As many as thirteen people died in that collapse, and the infrastructure debate has policy and tax implications for the entire nation over the...
Two years ago, the New York Times provided on-line readers with a strong disincentive to read their columnists. TimesSelect, which I called the Firewall of Sanity, charged $50 per year for people who just couldn't get enough of Maureen Dowd, Paul Krugman, Bob Herbert, and Frank Rich. Now the New York Post reports that Pinch Sulzberger has finally realized that he has marginalized his own columnists in an on-line universe (via Memeorandum): The New York Times is poised to stop charging readers for online access to its Op-Ed columnists and other content, The Post has learned. After much internal debate, Times executives - including publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. - made the decision to end the subscription-only TimesSelect service but have yet to make an official announcement, according to a source briefed on the matter. ... In July, The Post reported that insiders were lobbying to shut down the service. After...
Today on CQ Radio (2 pm CT), we'll welcome Dr Ken Thorpe of the Partnership to Fight Chronic Disease. Dr. Thorpe served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health Policy in the Clinton administration, and his partner Mark McClellan ran the Medicare and Medicaid programs in the Bush White House. Together they believe that a serious effort at preventing and curing chronic disease will save over a hundred billion dollars a year in federal spending -- enough to solve the problem of the uninsured in America. I've posted links to coverage of this effort at Heading Right this morning -- be sure to read the background. In the second half of the show, we'll talk with my friend King Banaian of SCSU Scholars about the economics of the bridge collapse and MnDOT funding. As the country begins to debate infrastructure maintenance and funding, it helps to have St. Cloud State's...
Earlier this morning, I got the chance to appear on Bill Bennett's national radio show. Many of you may have missed this since it came at 6:30 AM ET, but the show's producer was kind enough to send me an MP3 file of the segment. I've podcasted it here, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did....
Once again, the media has brought up the issue of transportation funding as a cause of the bridge collapse in Minneapolis, and once again the article itself contradicts the theme. The New York Times tries to paint the cause as a refusal to raise taxes -- but acknowledges that funding on transportation has hit all-time highs. Decisions on spending priorities and a desire to force change on an unwilling public has more to do with infrastructure maintenance: Even as the cause of the bridge disaster here remains under investigation, the collapse is changing a lot of minds about spending priorities. It has focused national attention on the crumbling condition of America’s roadways and bridges — and on the financial and political neglect they have received in Washington and many state capitals. Despite historic highs in transportation spending, the political muscle of lawmakers, rather than dire need, has typically driven where...
The UN announced its deal to intervene in the Darfur a week ago, with the Security Council authorizing an anemic force of 26,000 troops with equally anemic rules of engagement. Now it looks like the force may get weaker yet or fail to coalesce at all. The UN cannot find 26,000 African troops, and the Sudanese government refuses to allow any other nations to contribute to the force: Sudan will have to accept non-African troops in a U.N.-authorized peacekeeping force for Darfur or face the prospect of new United Nations sanctions, a senior U.S. official said Tuesday. Although efforts will be made to ensure that Africa contributes a large percentage of the 26,000-strong mission, the continent does not have enough trained soldiers to fully staff the force and Sudan will be penalized unless it drops objections to non-African participation, said Andrew Natsios, the U.S. special envoy for Sudan. ... The...
August 8, 2007
Barry Bonds broke the career home-run record held for 33 years by Henry Aaron last night, jolting number 756 out of the park at home in San Francisco. Bonds took a 3-2 pitch into the stands 435 feet away -- and extended a controversy as to whether he deserves the record: The ball exploded off Barry Bonds' bat, a small white sphere streaking through the dark San Francisco sky, headed for the right-center field seats and a hallowed place in baseball history. It was 8:51 Tuesday, a night no one in the sellout crowd of 43,154 at AT&T Park would ever forget, a night to be lived and relived by word of mouth, digital camera and endless reels of highlight tape. On a 3-and-2 pitch from Washington Nationals left-hander Mike Bacsik, Bonds, in his second game after tying Hank Aaron's career home run mark of 755, belted No. 756. In...
Inspection reports on the St. Anthony Bridge show one of the pier supports had shifted in 1996, and made numerous observations of cracks and fatigue in the approach spans in the years since. MnDOT repaired most of these, but the bridge continued to show more significant problems in the years approaching its devastating collapse: State bridge inspectors warned for nearly a decade before its collapse that the Interstate 35W bridge had "severe" and "extensive" corrosion of its beams and trusses, "widespread cracking" in spans and missing or broken bolts. Not only was the superstructure in poor condition, but certain components were "beyond tolerable limits," and one of the bridge's piers had "tilted to the north," they reported. By 2000, the inspectors wrote that "eventual replacement of the entire structure would be preferable" to redecking the bridge. They added: "If bridge replacement is significantly delayed, the bridge should be re-decked." That...
John Gomery, the jurist whose investigation into the Sponsorship Programme eventually brought down the man who appointed him to it, has decided to retire. Tomorrow he will celebrate his 75th birthday by riding off into the Canadian sunset, capping a long and illustrious career with a new commitment to clean government -- even if he took a rather authoritarian tone in doing so (via Newsbeat1): When John Gomery was named by Paul Martin to head the Adscam sponsorship inquiry in 2004, we were skeptical about how much he would accomplish. Under Jean Chretien, the Liberals became ex-pert at covering their tracks, and we feared that the pattern would continue under Mr. Martin. But that didn't happen. To Mr. Martin's great credit -- this fact is too often omitted when people dismiss the man's short prime ministerial tenure as a failure -- he gave Judge Gomery broad powers to get to...
The Democratic failures to end the war in Iraq and to move against the Bush administration has opened a split on the Left, according to The Hill. Calling the leftist group MoveOn a shill for the Democratic Party, antiwar and other leftist activists have split from the group. They plan to lead attacks against Democrats in Congress in 2008: Congress’s failure to secure a timetable for withdrawing American troops from Iraq has split anti-war activists on the tactical question of whether to attack Democrats, who now control Capitol Hill. The split has also underlined accusations among some activists that MoveOn has abandoned its credentials as an issue-based advocacy group and now instead provides cover for Democratic Party leaders. Anti-war activists throughout the country are united in spending August pressing lawmakers to bring U.S. troops home. But tensions within the movement have been bubbling for months over tactics and whether their...
Glenn Reynolds, one of the true pioneers in the blogosphere, celebrates the 6th anniversary of Instapundit today. Glenn launched this indispensable site just five weeks before 9/11, which puts his enormous influence today in an amazing context. He's made himself almost into a public utility in the blogosphere, which I'm almost certain may be more of a curse than a blessing for Glenn. HIs success inspired many of us to follow. Early in my blogging career, I struggled to find my own style, and someone suggested that I emulate Glenn. (If you go back to my first month of blogging, you'll see this pretty clearly.) In a very short period, I learned the error of that approach, and it reminds me of a scene from one of my favorite movies, Rudy. Robert Prosky, playing Father Cavanaugh, says, "Son, in 35 years of religious study, I have only come up with...
Despite the oddly-worded non-denial denial from the New Republic yesterday, the Army did determine that allegations made in its magazine by Scott Beauchamp were false. The New York Times reports this morning that their investigation showed no substantiation for Beauchamp's stories of petty mischief and ghoulish behavior on the part of his fellow soldiers: An Army investigation into the Baghdad Diarist, a soldier in Iraq who wrote anonymous columns for The New Republic, has concluded that the sometimes shockingly cruel reports were false. “We are not going into the details of the investigation,” Maj. Steven F. Lamb, deputy public affairs officer in Baghdad, wrote in an e-mail message. “The allegations are false, his platoon and company were interviewed, and no one could substantiate the claims he made.” ... Yesterday, The New Republic posted another note on its Web site saying its editors had spoken to Major Lamb and asked whether...
Yesterday, I interviewed Dr. Ken Thorpe from the Partnership to Fight Chronic Disease on CQ Radio about the PFCD's efforts to fund preventive health care initiatives as a long-term cost saving initiative for Medicare and private insurance providers. The New York Times throws a dash of cold water on the underlying assumptions of the PFCD's claims today, claiming that preventive intervention will cost more in both the short and long run (via Memeorandum): The current health care system doesn’t pay hospitals, doctors and nurses to keep people healthy; it pays for tests, surgeries and drugs. So Americans often get expensive invasive care of dubious medical benefit while missing out on sensible basic care. Millions of other people go without any care for chronic illnesses like heart disease and diabetes. If Medicare and private insurers paid for more preventive care, Americans would be healthier than they are today and live longer....
Fred Thompson took another step in readying his campaign for its long-awaited launch on September 5th. He appointed Bill Lacy, a former Reagan advisor, to be "committee manager" and take full operational control over the campaign. Lacy has the long-term connections to the GOP that Tom Collamore lacked, some good history with Fred, and he also has the connections to the Republican Party's secular saint that Thompson needs: Bill Lacy, a former strategist for Ronald Reagan, Bob Dole and Republican National Committee, will run day-to-day operations of Thompson's committee to "test the waters" for a presidential run. "He turned around my campaign for Senate in 1994 and, as I move toward a decision on whether to run for president, I am confident he will take our operations to the next level," Thompson, the former Tennessee senator and "Law & Order" actor, said in a statement. "I'm here for the long...
ABC News reports that a major benefactor to both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama has ties to companies doing business with the Sudanese government currently committing genocide in Darfur. Despite Hillary's prescription for "moving quickly on divestment" to spur an end to the conflict in Darfur, Warren Buffet has no intention of selling his stock: Democratic presidential hopefuls Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have taken tough, conscientious stances against the genocidal Sudanese government and the companies which help fund it. Billionaire investor Warren Buffett, America's second richest man, has not. In what activists are calling "a definite contradiction," Buffett -- whose estimated $3 billion in Sudan-linked holdings have been disparaged by anti-genocide watchdogs -- is helping raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for the White House aspirants. Over the past several years, the Sudanese government has been widely accused of sponsoring the killing of more than 400,000 of its own...
Imagine, if you will, that two young Muslim men got arrested for carrying explosives in their car. Imagine that they got arrested within a few miles of a military base where terrorism detainees are being held. Imagine that their neighbors told reporters about deliveries of oxygen bottles with an unusual level of comings and goings for a couple of single men on their own. At Heading Right, I try to imagine why this very real incident isn't making national headlines. Don Surber has more as well....
Today on CQ Radio (2 pm CT), we have two great guests. First we'll talk to Bill Paxon, advisor to the Giuliani campaign, about Rudy's effort to adoption and "quality of life" for children. These policy efforts hope to answer concerns from conservatives about Rudy's more liberal position on abortion. If you have questions about that, call and ask them! In the second half, we'll welcome back my friend Rob Bluey of the Heritage Foundation, who will talk about the new FISA legislation. Call 646-652-4889 to join the conversation! Did you know that you can listen to CQ Radio through your TiVo service? Click here for the instructions. Also, you can subscribe to CQ Radio through iTunes now by clicking this link: UPDATE: Don't miss my appearance on Fausta's show from Monday! UPDATE II: Wildly off-topic, but congratulations to Michael van der Galien, who proposed in romantic Instanbul (no,...
Georgia continues to press its claim that Russia violated its airspace and fired a missile that failed to explode. They now demand an emergency meeting of the Security Council, and they claim they can bring proof -- including the remnants of the missile: The Georgian Foreign Ministry said Wednesday that radar records compatible with NATO standards showed that a Russian Su-24 jet had flown from Russia into Georgia and launched a missile, which did not explode. Investigators identified the weapon as the Russian-made Raduga Kh-58 missile designed to hit radars, the ministry said. The missile, code-named by NATO as AS-11, carried a warhead of over 300 pounds of TNT, it said. Russia's air force has flatly denied that its planes had crossed into Georgia's airspace. ... The Gori region, where the missile was dropped, is next to South Ossetia. Gen. Marat Kulakhmetov, commander of Russian peacekeepers patrolling South Ossetia, said...
I'm just going on air at A Newt One with John and Jimmy Z, another BlogTalkRadio show. Join us at 646-652-2670!...
I hope that the AP somehow got this story wrong, because if they have it correct, the Air Force has some explaining to do. A woman who filed rape charges now faces related charges -- and the Air Force has given immunity to her attackers: A female airman says she faces a court-martial next month because she refused to testify against three male airmen she accused of rape. The woman is charged with one count of committing indecent acts and one count of consuming alcohol as a minor. The defense says the charges involve the same men she accused of raping her. ... The men received nonjudicial punishments and have been granted immunity for their testimony in the woman's trial, according to documents the defense provided. Can the Air Force really be this tone-deaf and clueless? If the woman consumed alcohol illegally, it pales in comparison to the alleged attack...
August 9, 2007
Rumors swirled yesterday that Pervez Musharraf would declare a state of emergency, postponing upcoming elections and ruling even further by decree to deal with the rise of radicalism in Pakistan. Agence France-Presse now reports that Musharraf has decided against that declaration, despite pressure from key aides to do so: Embattled President Pervez Musharraf on Thursday decided against imposing a state of emergency in Pakistan to cope with growing security and stability concerns, a senior government official told AFP. The military ruler, facing the greatest challenge to his leadership since he seized power in a 1999 coup, decided against the move -- which would have postponed next year's elections -- after conferring with aides, he said. "The president has rejected the suggestions to declare a state of emergency as proposed by his political allies," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Musharraf had been working towards a deal with former...
Illegal immigrants are mad as hell, and they're not going to take it any more. Claiming that the government "terrorizes" illegal by arresting them, activists have set up a hotline in my old stomping grounds of Orange County, California to tip off illegals when and where the ICE will conduct raids on employers (h/t CQ reader Stoo): Responding to a refusal by city leaders to declare the city a sanctuary for illegal immigrants, more than a dozen people gathered outside City Hall on Monday night to denounce recent immigration raids, accusing federal officials of "terrorizing" immigrant communities and breaking up families. A coalition of local immigrant rights groups, including the Orange County Alliance for Immigrants Rights and the Front Against the Raids, announced a planned program to create a hot line that will notify people where and when immigration raids will take place. The program would also coordinate a support...
Investigators have focused on the Institute of Animal Health at Pirbright as the suspected source of the foot-and-mouth outbreak this month in the UK. Now it appears that the lax security that infected animals in the area has allowed something more deadly to escape, and this time humans could be at risk: A reported case of Legionnaires' Disease with alleged links to the Institute of Animal Health at Pirbright is being investigated by officials. The research centre is one of several locations being routinely assessed under national guidance which says every place a patient has visited in the days before falling ill should be investigated, the Health Protection Agency said. Environmental health inspectors have taken water samples from the Institute of Animal Health (IAH) after it was discovered a worker contracted the disease, the Guardian reported. Legionnaire's Disease kills people, not animals, and can be difficult to treat. I remember...
The investigation into the collapse of the St. Anthony Bridge has taken an intriguing and somewhat unexpected turn. The NTSB has issued an alert based on a potential design flaw that could have caused the catastrophic collapse -- and that no inspection would likely have caught: Federal officials investigating the Interstate 35W bridge disaster said Wednesday that they are looking at a possible design flaw in some of the steel plates under the bridge and issued an alert that added weight from construction work may have been a factor in its collapse. Opening a new window into last week's fatal bridge collapse, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said that one of its areas of inquiry involves the design of steel connecting plates known as gusset plates; the material makeup of those plates; and the loads and stresses they bore. Hours later, Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters said the NTSB...
It didn't take long for people to demand higher gas taxes after the collapse of the St. Anthony Bridge. One local crank managed to hold his water for an entire six hours before blaming Governor Tim Pawlenty and tax-restraint activists for killing people on the "death bridge" in the pages of the Star Tribune. It seems that old cranks are in the minority in Minnesota, however, as KSTP's new poll discovered (via Mitch and Freedom Dogs): Many politicians have called for the gas tax increase to shore up aging highways and bridges. "This is really a call to action and this is a duty that we need to fulfill on behalf of the memory of people who've lost their lives," House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher said. But so far, it appears most Minnesotans don't agree. Fifty-seven percent of people surveyed say the state should not increase the state gas tax....
The race for states to gain more influence in the primaries has intensified in South Carolina. In a decision that may give a 2007 start to the 2008 primary race, the state has bumped the Republican primary to January 19th, which may set off a domino effect that could push the Iowa caucus into the Christmas season. At Heading Right, I look at the reasons why this move will almost certainly force a December 2007 start to the 2008 primary race. What can we do to stop these games? We can ask the RNC and DNC to follow their rules and start punishing states who play them -- and we all know the best way to send that message....
Today on CQ Radio (2 pm CT), we'll discuss the latest hit job on Fred Thompson. Not satisfied with the way the media have gone after Fred's wife, Santa Monica attorney Henry Reynolds bought a domain name similar to the campaign's -- and posted several links to the KKK and white supremacists. Fausta will join us to talk about this, and afterwards (or maybe simultaneously), Jim Geraghty of National Review's Campaign Spot will join us to discuss this tiresome false-flag ploy. Call 646-652-4889 to join the conversation! Did you know that you can listen to CQ Radio through your TiVo service? Click here for the instructions. Also, you can subscribe to CQ Radio through iTunes now by clicking this link:...
The naivete sweepstakes continue in the Democratic presidential primary campaign. Hillary Clinton rightly scolded Barack Obama for effectively negating our nuclear deterrent by proclaiming them "off the table" earlier this month. While the Hillary campaign used that to show how inept Obama is at foreign policy, Fox News did a little digging (via Hot Air): Her views expressed while she was gearing up for a presidential run stand in conflict with her comments this month regarding Obama, who faced heavy criticism from leaders of both parties, including Clinton, after saying it would be "a profound mistake" to deploy nuclear weapons in Afghanistan and Pakistan. "There's been no discussion of nuclear weapons. That's not on the table," he said. Clinton, who has tried to cast her rival as too inexperienced for the job of commander in chief, said of Obama's stance on Pakistan: "I don't believe that any president should make...
Note: the site in question is now Not Safe for Work or family viewing. See Update III. 5:15 -- Now safe; see update IV. It doesn't take long for provocateurs to crawl out of the woodwork to attack candidates, especially in stealth attacks. With Fred Thompson, they've apparently started before he officially enters the race -- and in one case, race is the operative word. Apparently hoping to confuse web surfers looking for Fred's website at www.imwithfred.com, a new site has appeared at www.imwithfred2008.com -- only this site welcomes people to the Ku Klux Klan, "Bringing a Message of Hope and Deliverance to White Christian America!" It includes links to a variety of disgusting racist sites. Who would post something like this as a smear on Fred Thompson? Someone a little too stupid to cover his tracks, possibly? A DNS search gives us an answer. The domain name, registered through...
As fascinating as Henry "Goatsie" Reynolds is, we should get back to actual policy -- and thankfully, the Club for Growth has given us a good reason to do so. Earlier today, they released their RePork Card for Congress, evaluating the members based on their votes on anti-pork legislation. Overall, both parties failed, but one failed spectacularly. Want to guess which one? Even though the Democratic majority vowed to return Congress to a path of fiscal responsibility, the 2008 appropriations bills were stuffed with wasteful pork projects. While Representatives John Campbell, Jeff Flake, Jeb Hensarling, Scott Garrett, and David Obey (1 amendment) offered 50 amendments to strip outrageous pork projects from the appropriations bills, only one amendment, offered by Rep. Jeff Flake, passed. The Club for Growth has compiled a RePORK Card of all members' votes on all 50 anti-pork amendments (see below). "Taxpayers have a right to know which...
August 10, 2007
The Russian government continues its strange game of imperial ambitions, this time bragging about using Soviet-era bombers to overfly American-patrolled airspace. Moscow says it's reviving a grand tradition of Russian audacity by eyeballing American pilots. Americans say that Moscow is reviving a grand tradition of Russian baloney: Russian bombers are reported to have buzzed an American military base for the first time since the Cold War when they flew over the Pacific island of Guam. Moscow said that US fighter jets were scrambled to intercept the two Tupolev-95 warplanes as they resumed the Cold War era practice of flying over Western offshore military installations in a mission on Wednesday. ... "It was always the tradition of our long-range aviation to fly far into the ocean, to meet (US) aircraft carriers and greet (US) pilots visually," Maj Gen Pavel Androsov, the head of long-range aviation in the Russian air force, told...
Stu Bykofsky thinks he knows what ails America, and he's got the cure. What America needs most, Bykofsky writes in the Philadelphia Daily News, is unity -- as provided by our friends in al-Qaeda: ONE MONTH from The Anniversary, I'm thinking another 9/11 would help America. What kind of a sick bastard would write such a thing? A bastard so sick of how splintered we are politically - thanks mainly to our ineptitude in Iraq - that we have forgotten who the enemy is. It is not Bush and it is not Hillary and it is not Daily Kos or Bill O'Reilly or Giuliani or Barack. It is global terrorists who use Islam to justify their hideous sins, including blowing up women and children. Iraq has fractured the U.S. into jigsaw pieces of competing interests that encourage our enemies. We are deeply divided and division is weakness. Not only does...
Pew Research has released its latest poll on media credibility, and newsrooms should take notice of the results. The industry has its lowest marks from its most sophisticated customers, but at least they have better credibility than Congress and the President. No, really: The American public continues to fault news organizations for a number of perceived failures, with solid majorities criticizing them for political bias, inaccuracy and failing to acknowledge mistakes. But some of the harshest indictments of the press now come from the growing segment that relies on the internet as its main source for national and international news. The internet news audience – roughly a quarter of all Americans – tends to be younger and better educated than the public as a whole. People who rely on the internet as their main news source express relatively unfavorable opinions of mainstream news sources and are among the most critical...
Nancy Pelosi has a challenger for her seat in Congress. Using a picture of her son on the podium, Cindy Sheehan announced her candidacy for Congress yesterday in San Francisco: Antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan, who gained international fame by camping outside President Bush's Texas ranch to protest the war in Iraq, announced Thursday that she would challenge House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for her seat in Congress. "The country is ripe for a change," said Sheehan, citing her son's death in Iraq in 2004 as inspiration for her long-shot bid to unseat the first female speaker in history. ... Sheehan admitted she has no funds for a campaign, but planned to immediately get started raising money. Without giving further specifics, Sheehan said she wouldn't accept money from corporations and would run on a platform of universal health care. Sheehan said she also wants to make college affordable and improve ethics in...
Yesterday, I wrote about the NTSB's new interest in the gusset plates that held the St. Anthony Bridge's girders together as a possible cause of its collapse. The Cleveland Plain Dealer reports today on a near-collapse of an Ohio bridge that started with construction work and ended with failed gusset plates eleven years ago (h/t: CQ commenter Mike): Two failed bridges. Two scarily similar scenarios. Last week, the Interstate 35W span over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis collapsed under the weight of rush-hour traffic and construction crews. Federal investigators now wonder whether the design of steel plates joining beams is to blame. Eleven years earlier, the eastbound I-90 bridge over the Grand River in Lake County failed. The reason: the same steel plates, called gussets. They had corroded, then buckled after crews blasted them during painting preparations. ... The spans are Warren truss bridges, made of diagonal compression members joined...
Jim Cannon at Thinking Right has a new project and could use a lot of help -- and the best part is that the more we help, the more we support the troops. Picking up where Blackfive left off, Jim has decided to organize a letter-writing campaign to keep up morale in our fine fighting forces in the 1st Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment. He wants to make sure every Marine in that battalion gets a personal letter from an American expressing our gratitude for the service he or she provides us. Jim has the contact information at his site, and perhaps we'll get Jim on today's CQ Radio show to discuss the project further. In the meantime, help Jim reach his goal of 1000 e-mails to those Marines....
After yesterday's story about Santa Monica attorney Henry Reynolds and his Klan-promoting website, many people wondered whether Henry himself would ever contact me. As I wrote, I did call and leave a message at his law office, asking for comment on the story -- and I would have gladly included it in the original post. Instead, we heard nothing but silence as the MoveOn and DNC contributor changed his Fred Thompson smear site from a white-supremacist linkfest to a John Edwards donor plea, and then to a disgusting pornography portal, and finally to a Wiki homage to his old professor, Frederic Jameson, who taught at Reynolds' alma mater UC Santa Cruz. So far, I have not heard anything from Henry, and I doubt that I will. The frantic content switches and DNS registration changes tells me that Reynolds wants to distance himself from this fiasco at light speed. However, it's...
I enjoy E.J. Dionne’s columns in the Washington Post, even though he and I rarely agree. Besides giving great insight into the opposite side of the political divide, Dionne is just a good writer. In today’s column, he both deliberately and subconsciously reviews the surrender of the Democrats on FISA legislation. Not only does he correctly analyze the depth of the capitulation, he inadvertently shows its cause. At Heading Right, I dissect Dionne's narrative and analysis and look at the underlying problem with the Democrats in Congress. Why did they cave and legitimize a program they called an "abuse" in the 2006 election, and then put Alberto Gonzales in charge of it? There are only two answers for that, and neither reflect well on the modern Democratic Party....
Some may see this post title as unnecessarily provocative, but it fits the Ellen Goodman column that the Boston Globe approved for print today. Goodman decries what she sees as an overabundance of Y chromosomes in the blogosphere, and pale Ys at that. She joins the voices of criticism that have arisen after the Yearly Kos convention about the lack of diversity among the attendees, and levels the same charges against the blogosphere as a whole: Last week, these progressive political bloggers not only attracted 1,200 to Chicago for the Yearly Kos convention, but made it a designated stop for seven out of the eight Democratic candidates. Nevertheless, there is another, less flattering way in which broadband has followed broadcast and the liberal political bloggers mimic the conservative talk-show hosts. The chief messengers are overwhelmingly men -- white men, even angry white men. I began tracking the maleness of this...
Today on CQ Radio (2 pm CT) ... someone will join me to talk about the week in review. It could be Duane "Generalissimo" Patterson from the Hugh Hewitt show as usual, but he's traveling to Philly to toss out the first pitch in tonight's Phillies game. It could be NZ Bear of the Victory Caucus, to talk about the war effort and developments this week. It could be Jim Cannon of Thinking Right to talk about his new project for the Marines in the war zone. Or heck, it could be you! Call 646-652-4889 to join the conversation! UPDATE: Also joining us was Chris Muir, the artist behind Day by Day, and Gary Gross on John Murtha -- don't miss the podcast... Did you know that you can listen to CQ Radio through your TiVo service? Click here for the instructions. Also, you can subscribe to CQ Radio...
Perhaps George Bush reads the polls over at KSTP. Yesterday he told Reps. James Oberstar (D-MN) and Don Young (R-AK) that he would veto any gas-tax increase Congress passes until it reforms the way it appropriates money for transportation: President Bush said Thursday that he would be opposed to any steps by Congress to increasing the gasoline tax to raise revenues for national bridge repairs in the wake of Minneapolis' bridge collapse. "Before we raise taxes, which could affect economic growth, I would strongly urge the Congress to examine how they set priorities," Bush said, accusing lawmakers of focusing on their own parochial concerns above such national concerns as bridge conditions. ... The president's comments came in response to an idea proposed by Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, a member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, who said the country has as many as 500 bridges of the same design...
I've been reading The Reagan Diaries in fits and starts as other reading assignments take priority, but the personal point of view in this book fascinates me. Years ago, I read Winston Churchill's The Second World War, which gave the same point of view but with a retrospective narrative. This shows Reagan's reactions in real time, and it's intriguing. For instance, take a look at the entry for August 10, 1982, to see what's changed and what's pretty much stayed the same: Things continue to look better in the Middle East [Israel had invaded Lebanon that summer]. Met with Israeli opposition leader Shimon Peres of the Labor party. He's quite a contrast to Begin and believes once the P.L.O. leaves Beirut Israel should leave Lebanon. Believes we must also resolve the Palestinian problem. Surprisingly, he wants us to continue befriending the Arabs and wants Jordan brought into the peace process...
New York City has deployed radiological detectors throughout the subway system and at bridges and tunnels tonight in response to a threatened terrorist attack. The city has not raised its alert status yet, but the attack was specific for tonight (via One Jerusalem): New York city police increased security throughout Manhattan on Friday and at bridges and tunnels in response to what they called an "unverified radiological threat," but said the city's alert status remained unchanged. The New York Police Department said in a statement it has increased the deployment of radiological sensors on vehicles, boats and helicopters and had set up vehicle checkpoints in lower Manhattan and at bridges and tunnels. Police confirmed the increased security was in response to receiving information that a dirty bomb may go off around 34th street in Manhattan on Friday evening. The Empire State Building, New York City's tallest building, Madison Square Garden...
August 11, 2007
Last night, the First Mate and I went to dinner with old friends of ours from Marriage Encounter, longtime Minnesota residents who moved to Florida a couple of years ago. As Minnesotans often do, we started discussing the weather differences between here and there, and they told us that they live in a part of Florida that rarely gets hit by hurricanes, although they get strong winds from them as they dissipate. I remarked that we hadn't seen any damaging straight-line wind storms here in the Twin Cities since they'd left, knocking on the wood table for luck. Well, we didn't get it. Mere hours later, around 3:15 this morning, we woke up to a pounding at the house -- a real, honest-to-goodness Midwestern thunderstorm, complete with lightning and torrential winds and rain. Storm alarms rang all through the city, so we went downstairs to the basement and watched the...
Martin Luther King Hospital in Los Angeles has one of the worst reputations in the nation among major metropolitan hospitals. In 2004, the Los Angeles Times ran a devastating exposé on the hospital, showing how federal funds went to waste in a mismanaged muddle that spent far more per patient than any other hospital in the area. Yesterday, the federal funding disappeared -- and so will MLK Hospital: Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital shut down its emergency room Friday night and will close entirely within two weeks, a startlingly swift reaction to a federal decision to revoke $200 million in annual funding because of ongoing lapses in care. The extraordinary developments mark an end to nearly four years of failed attempts to reform the historic institution, treasured by many African Americans as a symbol of hope and progress after the 1965 Watts riots. Los Angeles County health services director Dr....
Well, the United Nations peacekeeping efforts have one undeniable quality: consistency. The Pakistani peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo have moonlighted as security for gold smugglers. They also traded arms to one of the more notorious African militias to get their share (via Instapundit): The BBC has obtained an internal UN report examining allegations of gold smuggling by Pakistani peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It concluded that Pakistani officers provided armed escorts, hospitality and food to gold smugglers in east Congo. ... The Pakistani battalion at the centre of the claims was based in and around the mining town of Mongbwalu, in the north-east of the country, in 2005. They helped bring peace to an area that had previously seen bitter fighting between the Lendu and Hema ethnic groups. But witnesses claimed Pakistani officers also supplied weapons to notorious FNI militia commanders in return for gold....
I believe it was sometime during the Rathergate debacle that mainstream media apologists insisted that blogs could never compete with newspapers in terms of quality because of the "layers of editors and fact-checkers" that bloggers didn't have. This guaranteed better quality, we were told -- and have been reminded of that ever since. That's why many of us will not hesitate for a moment to jump on Jon Henke's bandwagon at QandO this morning, as he discovers that Managing Editors need some extra layers in Cincinnati: During a debate among GOP presidential candidates on Sunday, Fred Thompson, though officially undeclared as a candidate, declared war on breast cancer. Thompson, a cancer survivor himself, drew on his family's experience to remind everyone of cancer's reach and our nation's need to fight to win. "My mother-in-law died of breast cancer, my mother. My wife has breast cancer. My young daughter has breast...
This probably won't get much attention in the media today, but new budget numbers show that George Bush's sunny deficit predictions were off the mark. It turns out that revenues are better and the deficit is smaller than predicted, and will likely balance much more quickly. That is, it would have until the Democrats decided to reverse the tax cuts that fueled the increased revenues: The federal deficit so far this budget year is running sharply lower, driven by record revenues pouring into government coffers. The Treasury Department reported on Friday that the government produced a deficit of $157.3 billion for the budget year that began last Oct. 1. That's a substantial improvement from the red ink figure of $239.6 billion produced for the corresponding 10-month period last year. ... The White House predicts that the deficit this year drop to $205 billion. But the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicts...
Now we know why the Democrats caved on the FISA adjustment earlier this month that allowed the warrantless surveillance to proceed at the NSA on international communications. The same reporters that blew the program's cover in December 2005 now report that a FISA decision earlier this year forced the NSA to get warrants on purely international calls that happened to pass through American telephony switches. That reduced surveilled traffic by 75%, which forced Congress to act: The prelude to approval of the plan occurred in January, when the administration agreed to put the wiretapping program under the oversight of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The court is charged with guarding against governmental spying abuses. Officials say one judge issued a ruling in January that allowed the administration to continue the program under the court’s supervision. A ruling a month or two later — the judge who made it and its...
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 review the week's stories. However, I want to note that Ron Paul's wife has had to go to the hospital in Iowa this morning during the Ames straw poll event. CQ readers know I'm not a big fan of Rep. Paul as a politician, but we should all pray for his wife to recover...
August 12, 2007
The Ames straw poll in Iowa has concluded in a racous day of policy and showmanship, and in the end the man who spent the most money in Iowa won the most votes. However, the real winner may be the man who spent nothing but time and effort in hopes of breaking out of the second tier: Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney emerged on top at Iowa GOP’s straw poll Saturday in Ames. The win boosted the former Massachusetts governor’s standing as the party’s frontrunner in Iowa, although attendance at this first show of Iowa campaign strength appeared to fall short of expectations. ... Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee had said his campaign’s future depended on a strong showing in Ames. He finished in second place, with 2,587 votes or 18.1 percent. Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas placed third with 2,192 votes, 15.3 percent after campaigning aggressively to be the...
Pope Benedict will produce on a new doctrinal announcement that will declare tax evasion a social injustice. The focus, says the Times of London, comes from a budget crisis in Italy, where avoiding taxes has become as much of the culture as good food and flirting. Outside of Italy, Catholics might wonder when rendering unto Caesar went from unpleasant necessity to honored status: Pope Benedict XVI is working on a doctrinal pronouncement that will condemn tax evasion as “socially unjust”, according to Vatican sources. In his second encyclical – the most authoritative statement a pope can issue – the pontiff will denounce the use of “tax havens” and offshore bank accounts by wealthy individuals, since this reduces tax revenues for the benefit of society as a whole. It will focus on humanity’s social and economic problems in an era of globalisation. Pope Benedict intends to argue for a world trade...
It takes a while for the Star Tribune to get to its buried lede in today's update on the St. Anthony Bridge collapse, but engineers have thrown more cold water on the theory that construction work caused the disaster. The story focuses on the fact that MnDOT and construction crews did not consider the effect of the extra weight on the bridge, but the story answers the question itself: As federal investigators continued to pursue evidence Thursday in the Interstate 35W bridge collapse, state officials said they had no reason to analyze the potential impact of resurfacing the bridge before authorizing that work. The Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) said it didn't need an analysis beforehand because the resurfacing work wouldn't add weight to the bridge. Construction officials and some engineers deny or doubt that the resurfacing contributed to the collapse of the steel deck truss bridge. However, an unusual...
How many of us, growing up as kids, dreamed of throwing out the first pitch at a major league baseball game? Granted, a lot of us dreamed of actually playing on the team, too, but being able to be on the field at all, taking part of a ritual shared by Presidents and prophets, rich and poor, all brought together by love of the national pastime, was a fantasy many of us played out in our heads as children. As an adult, though, that fantasy could easily turn into a nightmare. What happens if the ball doesn't make it to the plate? What if I trip and fall? What if I show up to school in my underwear just as the final exam finishes -- oh, wait, that's another nightmare. Our friend Duane "Generalissimo" Patterson had to face his dreams and nightmares in one of the least friendly confines in...
When Democrats campaigned in the 2006 midterm elections, they promised to reform the pork-barrel practices of previous Congresses once they took control. They have certainly changed the process, but not in the manner they promised. Instead, for the second time this session, they have buried their earmarks and made accountability nearly impossible while using federal dollars to bolster their incumbencies (via Power Line): Despite promises by Congress to end the secrecy of earmarks and other pet projects, the House of Representatives has quietly funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to specific hospitals and health care providers under a bill passed this month to help low-income children. Instead of naming the hospitals, the bill describes them in cryptic terms, so that identifying a beneficiary is like solving a riddle. Most of the provisions were added to the bill at the request of Democratic lawmakers. One hospital, Bay Area Medical Center, sits...
After tonight, anyone writing about a presidential candidate named Thompson will not feel forced to use his first name. Tommy Thompson, the former Wisconsin governor and Bush administration official, has withdrawn from the race tonight after a disappointing result in the Ames straw poll: Former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson dropped out of the race for the 2008 GOP presidential nomination tonight, a day after he finished a disappointing sixth in the Ames Straw Poll in Iowa. "I have no regrets about running," Thompson said in a statement released by his campaign. "I felt my record as Governor of Wisconsin and Secretary of Health and Human Services gave me the experience I needed to serve as President, but I respect the decision of the voters." Thompson is the first casualty of Saturday's Straw Poll. He had pledged to leave the race if he didn't finish first or second in the non-binding...
August 13, 2007
Moammar Gaddafi agreed to end his nuclear-weapons program in 2003 after Saddam Hussein's groveling surrender in a spider hole, a program that had developed enough to produce weapons-grade plutonium. American and British negotiators won the release of the hardware Saddam produced for the program, and the international community agreed to end its diplomatic isolation on the assurance that Gaddafi would come completely clean on its nuclear capabilities. The French went too far, offering two weeks ago to take Libya nuclear again -- and now it turns out that they don't need to do so: Nuclear experts claim that Libya is sitting on a stockpile of almost 200 barrels of uranium despite agreeing in 2003 to dismantle its nuclear programme, The Daily Telegraph has learned. The revelation that Libya allegedly has not yet complied with the international agreement to get rid of its supply of uranium will be a particular blow...
The Wall Street Journal takes a look at Mike Huckabee's surprisingly strong performance in Iowa and wonders whether conservatives might take a second look at the governor of Arkansas. Unlike Mitt Romney and Sam Brownback, Huckabee didn't bring busloads of supporters to Ames, nor did he spend vast amounts of money on the straw poll. Yet he managed to beat Brownback and steal Romney's thunder on the basis of a live performace of "Free Bird" and a large dose of conservative stumping: The biggest winner of Iowa Republicans' weekend straw poll of 11 presidential rivals may well turn out to be not Mitt Romney, whose first-place finish here was expected, but surprise runner-up Mike Huckabee, the guitar-picking former governor of Arkansas. Should Mr. Huckabee capitalize on his second-place showing here Saturday to get a second look from demoralized Republicans unhappy with their choices -- and to get much-needed funding --...
The nomination of Hillary Clinton as the Democratic candidate for President appears to be the most clear point in a murky primary. She has consistently led the field since the start of the year, and the Clinton political machine has trained for this moment for six years. Barack Obama's recent foreign-policy stumbles seem to have reversed his momentum, and no one else has the standing to challenge Hillary. Does that frighten Republicans? Not as much as it does Democrats, according to the AP's Ron Fournier: Looking past the presidential nomination fight, Democratic leaders quietly fret that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton at the top of their 2008 ticket could hurt candidates at the bottom. They say the former first lady may be too polarizing for much of the country. She could jeopardize the party's standing with independent voters and give Republicans who otherwise might stay home on Election Day a reason...
The Republicans lost control of the House and Senate for the first time in twelve years in the last midterm elections. Voters sent the message in 2006 that massive spending increases and political corruption would not be tolerated. We thought that politicians would have listened to that message. Robert Novak, in his column today, explains that neither party's leadership has heard. Democrats need to clean their own house. At Heading Right, I call for Republicans to do the same. We cannot sit back and let Jeff Flake and John Campbell do all of the heavy lifting on porkbusting while GOP leadership in the House supports John Murtha and the Democrats on earmarking. If Republicans want to stand for limited government, fiscal responsibility, and clean public service, then they have to start producing leaders who fight for those principles rather than hypocritically using federal power to protect their own personal interests....
Major attacks in Iraq have dropped 50% since the start of the surge, USA Today reports. The majority of the improvement comes from the reduction of the al-Qaeda network in western Iraq, which has kept them from conducting large-scale operations: The number of truck bombs and other large al-Qaeda-style attacks in Iraq have declined nearly 50% since the United States started increasing troop levels in Iraq about six months ago, according to the U.S. military command in Iraq. The high-profile attacks — generally large bombs hitting markets, mosques or other "soft" targets that produce mass casualties — have dropped to about 70 in July from a high during the past year of about 130 in March, according to the Multi-National Force — Iraq. Military officers say the decline reflects progress in damaging al-Qaeda's networks in Iraq. The military has launched offensives around Baghdad aimed at al-Qaeda sanctuaries and bases. "The...
CNN has rescheduled the YouTube debate for Republican presidential candidates for the week after Thanksgiving. Most of the field has committed to the debate, with the notable exception of Mitt Romney (via Memeorandum): The Republican Party of Florida, CNN and YouTube will announce Monday that the organizations' Republican presidential debate will be held on Nov. 28, two months before Sunshine State voters hold their gateway primary into "Super Tuesday." Originally, the three partners targeted Sept. 17 as the date for the debate that will feature video questions submitted by voters through YouTube. But some campaigns expressed concerns about the timing of the event and the debate partners worked to find an alternative date. .... (NYT) The campaigns of Rudolph W. Giuliani and Senator John McCain have signed on, according to CNN, which will broadcast the event. CNN said it had not heard from Mitt Romney, who has been critical of...
The Karl Rove era will come to a close at the end of this month, as George Bush's key aide has told the Wall Street Journal he will return home to spend time with his family. For any other departure, that would sound like a euphemism for "I got canned". For Rove, who has served as Bush's effigy for many of his critics, the wonder is how he managed to put up with the abuse for so long: Mr. Rove, who has held a senior post in the White House since President Bush took office in January 2001, told Mr. Gigot he first floated the idea of leaving a year ago. But he delayed his departure as, first, Democrats took Congress, and then as the White House tackled debates on immigration and Iraq, he said. He said he decided to leave after White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten told...
Molotov cocktails left on doorsteps. Bombs placed under cars at the homes of targets. Death threats in public communiques. Are these new tactics for al-Qaeda or Hezbollah? In fact, they're part of the new offensive by animal-rights activists targeting the Jules Stein Eye Institute at UCLA, and only incompetence has kept them from scoring their first kill (via Mitch): THE HOME OF DR. ARTHUR ROSENBAUM isn’t hard to find. He lives a few blocks south of Sunset Boulevard, near the UCLA campus, in a white two-story house with a front yard jammed with aspen trees. There is a short driveway on the side of the home, and during the evening, a bright, white light illuminates the carport. If someone wants to sabotage the doctor’s car under the cover of night, a flashlight isn’t needed. On Sunday, June 24, just that kind of person struck. Rosenbaum, a highly regarded pediatric ophthalmologist...
Today on CQ Radio (2 pm CT), we'll be talking about two topics -- the results of the Ames poll in Iowa and the resignation of Karl Rove. We'll have Rick Moran of Pajamas Media with us for both topics and discuss his provocative column this morning on Rove. Call 646-652-4889 to join the conversation! That includes you, too, Karl .... Did you know that you can listen to CQ Radio through your TiVo service? Click here for the instructions. Also, you can subscribe to CQ Radio through iTunes now by clicking this link:...
Minnesota's MnDOT has already decided on a conceptual bridge design and will attempt to fast-track the replacement for the St. Anthony Bridge. Rather than go through the normal process of vetting designs and then contracting for the construction, the bridge will be designed and built almost simultaneously -- leading some to wonder if the state may be rushing a little too fast: Little is known about the next Interstate Hwy. 35W bridge, but what officials do know is that the new span over the Mississippi River will go up fast. Real fast. An official told the Associated Press today that a preliminary design already has been selected, but would not give details. ... Under a more routine construction timeline, Beckel said, design work -- drawing up and reviewing plans, pulling permits and talking with agencies such as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to keep them abreast of developments --...
No sooner did Karl Rove announce his retirement than some people started speculating that he would hitch his wagon to another presidential campaign. At Radar, Ray Gustini called Fred Thompson's spokesman and former Rove aide Mark Corallo to ask if the Fred team had cleared a desk for Rove. Not exactly: Asked about the prospect of a Rove-run campaign, former Rove spokesman and current Thompson spokesman (ahem) Mark Corallo tells Radar, "I really don't think Karl Rove is going to have anything to do with any campaign in 2008... I talked to him today, and we shared some e-mails and I told him, 'Enjoy your time with your family and take care of [your wife] Darby.'" Rove has proven himself invaluable to the Bush administration, and if anyone would consider asking Rove to join, it would be Fred. He's already defended Scooter Libby and helped him raise funds for his...
Surveys taken around the world about sexual habits of men and women all have one thing in common: men claim to have more sex partners over a lifetime than women. Supposedly, this reflects a primal urge for procreation. Men act promiscuously while women act more to provide a family unit for children. There's only one problem with this explanation. It doesn't add up -- literally: One survey, recently reported by the federal government, concluded that men had a median of seven female sex partners. Women had a median of four male sex partners. Another study, by British researchers, stated that men had 12.7 heterosexual partners in their lifetimes and women had 6.5. But there is just one problem, mathematicians say. It is logically impossible for heterosexual men to have more partners on average than heterosexual women. Those survey results cannot be correct. ... Sex survey researchers say they know that...
This post will need multiple disclaimers. First, the CBS poll has had sampling issues in the past, and this one has a relatively small sample of Republican voters (only 302 respondents). Second, national polls do tell an important story, but not as important as state-by-state polling. Third, this poll got conducted over a weekend, which tends to skew polls more to the center and left. Given that, CBS reports that Giuliani continues to strengthen his lead, and Fred Thompson may be falling back: According to a new CBS News poll out Monday, Rudy Giuliani retains a significant lead nationally among Republican primary voters in the race to become the party’s presidential nominee. In all, 38 percent of Republican primary voters favor the former New York City mayor, a slight increase from last month. Senator-turned-actor Fred Thompson is next; he's favored by 18 percent of Republican primary voters, a seven-point drop...
August 14, 2007
Der Spiegel has reflected and led overwhelming German opposition to the war in Iraq practically from the moment of the invasion in 2003. They have often featured George Bush on their cover in unflattering pictures and with negative headlines such as "Power and Lies", an issue last year in which they declared Iraq lost. However, they finally sent their own reporter for an in-depth tour of Iraq, and the magazine realizes that the world media has missed the story (via Medienkritik): Since June, Ramadi residents have only known the war from televison. Indeed, US military officials at the Baghdad headquarters of Operation Iraqi Freedom often have trouble believing their eyes when they read the reports coming in from their units in Ramadi these days. Exploded car bombs: zero. Detonated roadside bombs: zero. Rocket fire: zero. Grenade fire: zero. Shots from rifles and pistols: zero. Weapons caches discovered: dozens. Terrorists arrested:...
Yesterday had a special and chilling significance for the people of Berlin. Forty-six years ago, the East German government started construction on the barrier that would become the Berlin Wall, a structure that stood for decades to keep communism's victims inside the Soviet-sponsored prison that was East Berlin. That characterization appears especially apt with the discovery yesterday of a seven page order that shows for the first time that the regime gave explicit shoot-to-kill orders to its guards -- and included women and children in the directive: Now, coinciding with the 46th anniversary of the start of construction of the Berlin Wall on August 13, 1961, a seven-page document has surfaced in an archive of Stasi files that contains an explicit firing order. It was issued to a special team of Stasi agents tasked with infiltrating regular units of border guards to prevent their colleagues from defecting. "It is your...
Rudyard Kipling understood the futility of appeasement. In his poem "Danegeld (AD 980-1016)", he wrote the oft-quoted words, "once you have paid him the Dane-geld, you never get rid of the Dane." Now appeasement has a more modern lesson, thanks to a woman in Brunswick who thought she could outwit burglars by giving what they wanted: A cottage owner in Germany tried to ward off burglars by leaving canned foods on her doorstep, but robbers found the offerings so tasty that they broke into the house to get second helpings, German police said on Tuesday. The woman who owns the cottage and adjacent garden in Brunswick, western Germany, had left a note for potential burglars not to bother breaking into her cottage but to help themselves to the canned foods on her doorstep, police said. "The polite appeal that they treat themselves apparently just increased the appetite of the hoodlums,"...
The primary campaign has turned into a very long dance for Barack Obama, who seems determined to prove at every opportunity that he has two left feet. In New Hampshire, Obama told a crowd that the US military effort consists mainly of "air raiding villages and killing civilians" -- which his tone-deaf campaign confirmed moments later to reporters (via The Corner): Obama defended his push to prosecute a tougher military effort to root out al-Qaida on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, which drew criticism from primary rivals for sounding too bellicose. “Now you have narco drug lords who are helping to finance the Taliban, so we’ve got to get the job done there, and that requires us to have enough troops that we are not just air raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous problems there,’’ Obama said. Campaign spokesman Reid Cherlin said Obama was not endorsing the current Bush...
The Clinton Presidential Library holds an estimated two million documents relating to Hillary Clinton's activities as First Lady -- a record on which she has explicitly based her campaign for the presidency. She has a page dedicated to it on her campaign web site. Her mantra, "strength and experience", rests on her tenure in the White House. So why won't the Clinton library open these records to the public? The Los Angeles Times reports that the presidential library won't release them until after the 2008 election. At Heading Right, I note the contradiction of a candidate running on a record she won't publicly release, even though other First Ladies have been more forthcoming with their papers....
The mainstream media that has taken to pillorying the departing Karl Rove essentially for playing its own game now decries the natural evolution from its own outrage. A federal judge has ruled that journalists must reveal sources for an article that smeared a government bioterrorism expert and falsely reported him to be the prime suspect in the anthrax attacks -- and this courtroom should provide familiar surroundings (via Michelle Malkin): Five reporters must reveal their government sources for stories they wrote about Steven J. Hatfill and investigators' suspicions that the former Army scientist was behind the deadly anthrax attacks of 2001, a federal judge ruled yesterday. The decision from U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton is yet another blow to the news industry as it seeks to shield anonymous sources who provide critical information -- especially on the secret inner workings of government. ... In lengthy depositions in the case,...
How bad is the ethics bill that the Democrats just pushed through Congress? Even lobbyists have started to point out its loopholes to the Washington Post. Under the new rules, Representatives and Senators will no longer be able to accept free meals -- unless the lobbyist also provides money for their re-election at the meal. No, I'm not kidding: Activists on the reform side of the lobbying debate have been celebrating that Congress finally got around to passing an ethics bill. The question is: Should voters celebrate as well? Paul A. Miller, a former president of the American League of Lobbyists, thinks the hoorahs should be muted, and he has a point. The legislation bars lobbyists from providing meals and gifts to lawmakers, a provision long sought by the advocates of change as a way to keep well-heeled interests from buying their way into the hearts of decision-makers. But Miller...
I wonder if ABC got Al Sharpton's endorsement on this decision. Don Imus, whose racially-charged description of the Rutgers womens' basketball team not only got him fired but started a backlash against rap music, has reached an accommodation with CBS that will bring him back to the airwaves on its rival station: Don Imus has reached a settlement with CBS over his multimillion-dollar contract and is negotiating with WABC radio to resume his broadcasting career there, according to CBS and a person familiar with the negotiations. Imus and CBS Radio "have mutually agreed to settle claims that each had against the other regarding the Imus radio program on CBS," the network said in a statement Tuesday. ... CBS confirmed only that the settlement had been reached. The person familiar with the talks told The Associated Press that Imus is taking steps to make a comeback with WABC. The person, who...
We have a great show lined up for today! Today on CQ Radio (2 pm CT), Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) joins us to discuss the FISA legislation just passed by Congress -- and threatened again by Nancy Pelosi. The ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee will bring us up to date on why the legislation was needed, and how it is at risk now. In the second half of the show, former presidential candidate Steve Forbes will talk to us about his role in the Giuliani campaign, and what the Mayor intends to do about tax policy. Call 646-652-4889 to join the conversation! BUMP: To top, and to link to NZ Bear's post at the Victory Caucus, in which administration officials told him that Iran's influence has grown among the insurgents. Be sure to read the whole thing. UPDATE II: Great show -- I may have excerpts up...
I guess we can call it the Big Bridge, but that may hit too close to home for J. Richard Capka, the federal highway official tapped by the Department of Transportation to run the Minneapolis bridge rebuilding project. Capka got terminated from that ill-starred project in 2002 and has remained a controversial figure ever since: The federal highway official responsible for the rebuilding of the collapsed Interstate 35W bridge was dismissed in 2002 as chief executive of the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority after his leadership of Boston's controversial "Big Dig" tunnel project came under fire. J. Richard Capka, the nation's federal highway administrator and a retired brigadier general in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, arrived in the Twin Cities on Monday night in preparation for the first public meeting today on the design and construction of the new bridge. Gov. Tim Pawlenty and state transportation officials say they are determined...
If you missed today's edition of CQ Radio, then you missed an opportunity to hear Rep. Pete Hoekstra give an impassioned explanation of the need for the recently passed FISA legislation -- and the need to make it permanent. Here are a few of the points you missed: On Nancy Pelosi's vow to have Democrats revisit FISA after the August recess: "They've so demagogued this bill ... It's consistent with the other things Democrats are doing on a national intelligence basis and a national security basis. You know, they may decide to extend the civil liberties protections that Americans have to foreign terrorists." (08:10) Wasting intel resources: "They've asked the intelligence community to do a national intelligence estimate, which requires a lot of resources out of the intelligence community, on global warming." (08:20) On the supposed attack on civil liberties from the FISA legislation: "Ed, excuse me, if the Speaker...
The Associated Press issued a pretentious "fact check" to counter the so-called "spin" around Barack Obama's statement earlier today that the Bush policy in Afghanistan was to bomb villages and civilians. His campaign confirmed Obama's analysis of the Bush policy, which Obama spokesman Reid Cherlin said consisted "solely of air raids and bombing of civilians." Here's the AP' Nedra Pickler and her version of a fact check: A check of the facts shows that Western forces have been killing civilians at a faster rate than the insurgents have been killing civilians. The U.S. and NATO say they don't have civilian casualty figures, but The Associated Press has been keeping count based on figures from Afghan and international officials. Tracking civilian deaths is a difficult task because they often occur in remote and dangerous areas that are difficult to reach and verify. Well, no one said civilians had not gotten killed....
August 15, 2007
ABC News reports that the greatest terrorist threat to the American homeland does not come from the Middle East, but from the Northeast. The report by the New York Police Department's Intelligence Bureau appears to conflict with an FBI analysis that considered the home-grown threat minimal, but provides the names of the mosques and prisons where the risk is greatest: U.S. law enforcement officials say they have identified more than two dozen "clusters" of young Muslim men in the northeast United States who are on a path that could lead to homegrown terror, ABC News has learned. "Any one of those clusters may be capable of carrying out a terrorist action that will result in fatalities," Rand Corporation terrorism expert Brian Jenkins tells ABC News. In a report to be made public today, New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly concludes the 9/ll attacks were an "anomaly" and the most...
As longtime CQ readers know, my nickname came from the period in my life when I was a Star Trek fan. I don't think I qualified as a Trekkie; I never attended a convention, and the only outward sign of my Trekophilia was my personalized license plate and its "Carship Enterprise" frame. I also dated, had a life, and got married. Now Trekkies want to do the same, and a new dating service promises to take them where few of the men have gone before: By day, 28-year-old Scott Josephson is an educational software writer. By night, or during any of his free time for that matter, he is a Trekkie. In fact, Josephson's obsession with "Star Trek" has evolved to such a degree that he is now attempting to watch all the TV episodes, from the original version all the way through "Enterprise" — in chronological order. But "Star...
Texas will execute Kenneth Foster on August 30th for the murder of a man whom prosecutors acknowledge was killed by someone else. Foster's crime? He agreed to participate in armed robberies and did with two incidents, but the murder occurred extemporaneously at another, unplanned place. Is this execution fair? It's certainly legal: Kenneth Foster Jr. is scheduled to be executed in Texas later this month for the murder of Michael LaHood, even though everybody -- even the prosecutors -- knows Foster did not kill the man. Mauriceo Brown, who has admitted to shooting LaHood to death in August 1997, was executed last year, but barring an unlikely 11th-hour commutation from Gov. Rick Perry and the Texas Board of Pardons and Parole, Foster will meet the same fate on Aug. 30. On the night of Aug. 14, 1997, Foster, Brown, DeWayne Dillard, and Julius Steen were drinking and smoking marijuana when...