September 1, 2007
The Department of Justice has opened an investigation into the fundraising activities of Norman Hsu, the man who put over a million dollars into Democratic coffers while remaining a fugitive con man. They want to find out whether more than just coincidence linked heavy donation activity between Hsu and at least two households of more modest means -- and the answers could prove very embarrassing for top Democrats: The U.S. Justice Department is investigating possible campaign-finance violations by top Democratic fundraiser Norman Hsu, according to people familiar with the probe. On Friday, Mr. Hsu surrendered to California officials on an unrelated grand-theft charge dating to the early 1990s. Mr. Hsu, who, until earlier this week was one of the biggest fundraisers for Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Rodham Clinton, was booked at the San Mateo County jail, where he was handcuffed and later released on $2 million bail. Wearing a black...
Hamas has found governance significantly more difficult than agitation, now that it owns the Gaza Strip. When confronted with unrest, they resorted to beating protestors, armed and unarmed, and threatened the Associated Press if they took pictures of the proceedings: A protest against Hamas rule by thousands of Fatah supporters turned violent yesterday when Hamas forces began dispersing the crowd, firing in the air and beating demonstrators. The clashes broke out after worshipers held a Friday prayer meeting outside a mosque in a Gaza City public square. Fatah has urged its backers to stay out of mosques, which it says are being used by Hamas to provoke factional fighting among Palestinians. About 20 people were injured in the clashes, including children, according to doctors and witnesses. Two journalists were beaten by Hamas supporters, although neither was seriously hurt. Two other French journalists suffered minor injuries from a small explosion. Fatah...
Fred Thompson will officially announce his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination on Thursday, September 6th, which means he won't take an official role in the previous night's debate in New Hampshire. However, Thompson has decided to take another role for that event instead -- sponsor: Fred D. Thompson, the soon-to-be-official presidential contender, has come under a good deal of criticism in New Hampshire this week for scheduling his formal announcement for next Thursday morning and thus skipping the Republican debate in Manchester on Wednesday night. But that does not mean that television viewers watching the debate will not see him. Campaign officials said Friday that Mr. Thompson had bought a 30-second spot that would be televised nationally on the Fox News Channel, the network carrying the debate, just as viewers are tuning in at the onset. One campaign official familiar with the decision said the spot would be a...
We're almost exactly a year out from the Republican National Convention, and we're already seeing agitators arrive in the Twin Cities. Yesterday, a bicycle rally turned into a melee when police attempted to arrest a rider who had reportedly acted provocatively (via Power Line): Police arrested 19 bicyclists, including three juveniles, after a protest ride took an ugly turn in downtown Minneapolis Friday night. About 200 bicyclists were riding on La Salle Avenue, with two officers monitoring the protest that called for reduced reliance on automobile transportation. The ride was also linked with weekend protests of next year's Republican National Convention in the Twin Cities. When officers tried to arrest a rider they felt had been trying to provoke them, a scuffle broke out, said Minneapolis Police Lt. Marie Przynski. "When the officer went to arrest him, his buddy came up, and they started to struggle with the officer," Przynski...
The Northern Alliance Radio Network will be on the air today, with our six-hour-long broadcast schedule starting at 11 am CT. The first two hours features Power Line's John Hinderaker and Chad and Brian from Fraters Libertas. Mitch and I hit the airwaves for the second shift from 1-3 pm CT, and King Banaian and Michael Broadkorb have The Final Word from 3-5. If you're in the Twin Cities, you can hear us on AM 1280 The Patriot, or on the station's Internet stream if you're outside of the broadcast area. Today, we're holding our last State Fair appearance, and it's been a blast. Tune in to see what mischief we cook up at the Patriot's booth, south of the Horticulture building on Judson. Be sure to call 651-289-4488 to join the conversation!...
Earlier today, I noted Fred Thompson's sponsorship of the Fox broadcast of the next Republican debate, and called it a "shrewd move", which resulted in some, ahem, mixed reviews from CQ readers. It occurred to me that I hadn't explained why I found Thompson's tweak of the debate such a sound move, or at least not in quite a while. Put simply, presidential debates are disasters waiting to happen to candidates. Good things almost never happen at them, and the format is calculated to play gotcha games with candidates in both parties. It forces a "lightning round" mentality onto complex policy issues that rewards simpletons and punishes the thoughtful. What candidate in his or her right mind would want to participate in that exercise? As an example of this, I've spent my afternoon racking my brain trying to find one debate appearance for any Republican candidate that actually resulted in...
So far, so good -- it looks like the last fix applied last night has really solved the commenting issue. I've timed the process at my home, with high-speed Internet access, and it looks like conmments are still executing in 5 seconds, perhaps less. A few commenters have posted their approval; hopefully we will no longer have any issues with comments....
September 2, 2007
The Lebanese Army finally defeated an al-Qaeda affiliate in the Palestinian refugee camp at Nahr el-Bared, a battle which started three months ago. Locals threw rice at the soldiers in celebration as the army occupied the camp: Lebanese troops took control on Sunday of a Palestinian refugee camp where they had been battling militants for more than three months, killing at least 31 fighters who tried to flee, security sources said. Twenty-three more fighters from the Fatah al-Islam group were captured, 12 of them wounded militants detained after the army took over the Nahr al-Bared camp in north Lebanon, a security source said. "The battle is over. The Lebanese army has seized the last positions of Fatah al-Islam in the camp," a senior security source told Reuters. "Most of the terrorists were killed today. The others have been captured. A few might have escaped but the army is hunting them...
On Friday, three also-ran Democractic presidential candidates vowed to skip campaigning in Michigan and Florida after the DNC sanctioned the states for breaking rules on primary schedules. The impact of that pledge seemed marginal at best. It would take the top three candidates signing the pledge for it to have any effect -- and surprisingly, they have signed it: The Democratic candidates have signed a pledge that would forbid them from campaigning in states such as Michigan and Florida that have sought to move their presidential primaries into January 2008. The move ended weeks-long jockeying over which states get to hold early primaries. Democratic leaders in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada, the four states that had been designated by the Democratic National Committee to hold early primaries, demanded in letters Friday that the candidates not participate in the early primaries of other states. The candidates either had to...
The Taliban just released 19 South Korean missionaries that they abducted in Afghanistan weeks ago. While Seoul and NATO have remained quiet about the nature of the negotiations that resulted in their release, the Taliban have proudly proclaimed that they got over $20 million in exchange for the hostages. Guess what they want to do with the cash? SOUTH Korea paid Afghanistan's Taliban more than $20m (£10m) to release 19 missionaries they were holding hostage, a senior insurgent leader said yesterday, vowing to use the funds to buy arms and mount suicide attacks. The freed hostages flew out of Afghanistan on Friday to Dubai en route to South Korea. ... "We deny any payment for the release of South Korean hostages," an official at South Korea's presidential Blue House said in response to the Taliban claim. But the Taliban disagreed. "We got more than $20m from them [the Seoul government],"...
It's doubtful that any newspaper outside of New York City could raise this question, but the Times asks whether we should set aside the anniversaries of 9/11 as a collective mourning date for the nation. How long should the remembrances dominate the day, and how many years should the city and nation conduct the familiar ceremonies of grief? Each year, murmuring about Sept. 11 fatigue arises, a weariness of reliving a day that everyone wishes had never happened. It began before the first anniversary of the terrorist attack. By now, though, many people feel that the collective commemorations, publicly staged, are excessive and vacant, even annoying. “I may sound callous, but doesn’t grieving have a shelf life?” said Charlene Correia, 57, a nursing supervisor from Acushnet, Mass. “We’re very sorry and mournful that people died, but there are living people. Let’s wind it down.” Some people prefer to see things...
Talks in Geneva between North Korea and the US have produced a breakthrough on nuclear disarmament. Pyongyang has declared that it will end all nuclear-weapons efforts by the end of 2007, agreeing for the first time to account for its complete list of programs: North Korea agreed in weekend talks with the United States to fully account for and disable its nuclear programs by the end of this year, negotiators said on Sunday. "We had very good, very substantive talks," U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Chris Hill told reporters. "One thing that we agreed on is that (North Korea) will provide a full declaration of all of their nuclear programs and will disable their nuclear programs by the end of this year, 2007." North Korea's top nuclear envoy said separately his delegation was pleased with the outcome of the talks, held to hasten the end of Pyongyang's nuclear programme, a...
September 3, 2007
George Bush decided to kick-start the September debate on Iraq by getting his own feet on the ground in Anbar. He'll visit the troops, but more importantly meet directly with Nouri al-Maliki to determine how well the newly-announced political reform agreement is faring -- and talk with a few tribal leaders as well (via Memeorandum): Air Force One touched down under the blazing sun at Al Asad Air Base in Anbar province. The White House said the base was chosen because of the "remarkable turnaround" in the province. Bush has hailed Anbar -- a Sunni province west of Baghdad -- as a success, citing the U.S. military's alliance with tribal leaders in fighting al Qaeda in Iraq. Marine commanders on the ground told Bush that "morale is high," despite long troop rotations. Bush stayed primarily in Baghdad the last two trips he took to Iraq, but today he will stay...
Slate will serialize the latest biography of Ronald Reagan this week -- a "graphic" biography that will appear in five installments. After reading the first installment, I can report that it's everything one would expect from a comic book. It lacks insight, fresh perspective, and any kind of context -- and that's just the text. In the first 19 pages of what appears to be a biography of less than 100 pages, Andrew Helfer provides nothing but the same anecdotes that everyone who has read any Reagan biography already knows. We get the "lose the glasses" advice from a co-worker who made it to Hollywood, the ad-libbed baseball announcing, the alcoholic father -- all de riguer material for any Reagan biographer. In fact, that's all we get -- the stories we know married to comic-book representations of the anecdotes. The art, by Steve Buccellato and Joe Staton, hardly qualifies as...
The Janjaweed have had so much success in Darfur that they have decided to go into overtime by attacking each other. The Arab tribes that have pushed out the Christians and the animists from Darfur have started a civil war amongst themselves -- and the latest victims have headed for the same refugee camps as the people they earlier victimized themselves: Some of the same Arab tribes accused of massacring civilians in the Darfur region of Sudan are now unleashing their considerable firepower against one another in a battle over the spoils of war that is killing hundreds of people and displacing tens of thousands. In the past several months, the Terjem and the Mahria, heavily armed Arab tribes that United Nations officials said raped and pillaged together as part of the region’s notorious janjaweed militias, have squared off in South Darfur, fighting from pickup trucks and the backs of...
Certain words and phrases tip off listeners to abject stupidity. "I think I'll buy another vowel" is one of them, as is "What this world is missing is a comic-book, er, graphic biography of Ronald Reagan." One phrase that tops them all has to be "Marxism has never really been tried," the mind-boggling assertion written by James Carroll and printed by the Boston Globe for its Labor Day opinion section (via Harry Forbes): The 19th-century dream of a workers' vanguard leading to a better world was both betrayed and realized, and in each case, labor was undercut. The betrayal occurred when tyrants, in advancing the cause of "the people," actually advanced themselves. The "dictatorship of the proletariat" turned out to be mere dictatorship. Yet the discrediting of the vision of Karl Marx by the 20th-century communisms that claimed him does not vitiate the original vision. Echoing what Mahatma Gandhi once...
McClatchy Newspapers note that despite the new aggressive strategy and tactics taken by the American forces in Iraq, combat deaths have dropped to half of their peak since the start of the surge. Or, perhaps, the decline may not come in spite of the new tactics after all (via QandO): American combat deaths in Iraq have dropped by half in the three months since the buildup of 28,000 additional U.S. troops reached full strength, surprising analysts and dividing them as to why. U.S. officials had predicted that the increase would lead to higher American casualties as the troops "took the fight to the enemy." But that hasn't happened, even though U.S. forces have launched major offensives involving thousands of troops north and south of Baghdad. American combat casualties have dropped to their lowest levels this year, even as violence involving Iraqis remains high. In fact, the combat death rate hit...
Here's a lesson for those prospective Irish speakers among you -- all two or three of you, anyway. It's a joke sent to me via the Admiral Emeritus from my aunt in central California, but it gives readers a chance to learn a little Gaeilge for themselves, a particular passion of mine. An Irishman walking through a field in Ireland sees a man drinking water from a pond with his hand. The Irishman shouts "Na ól an t-uisce, tá sé lán de chac bo!" The man yells back "I'm English, speak English, I don't understand you". The Irishman shouts back "Use both hands, you'll get more in." So what did the Irishman say as Gaeilge? I'll answer in the comments later, but let's see if any CQ commenters can figure this one out....
The Washington Post previews an upcoming book that may change a few minds about Karl Rove and his supposed puppetmaster role in the Bush administration. Rove's advice did not always get followed as most imagine, but rather George Bush mostly kept his own counsel on larger policy and personnel decisions: Karl Rove told George W. Bush before the 2000 election that it was a bad idea to name Richard B. Cheney as his running mate, and Rove later raised objections to the nomination of Harriet E. Miers to the Supreme Court, according to a new book on the Bush presidency. In "Dead Certain: The Presidency of George Bush," journalist Robert Draper writes that Rove told Bush he should not tap Cheney for the Republican ticket: "Selecting Daddy's top foreign-policy guru ran counter to message. It was worse than a safe pick -- it was needy." But Bush did not care...
John Edwards has a strange way of distilling foolishness to its essence, and he showed that talent yesterday when talking about his vision of health care. In remarks curiously ignored by newspapers today, Edwards insisted that his plan would force people to seek health evaluations, whether they desire one or not. It reveals the arrogance and the authoritarianism that waits around the corner when government-run healthcare gets imposed on a free society: Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards said on Sunday that his universal health care proposal would require that Americans go to the doctor for preventive care. "It requires that everybody be covered. It requires that everybody get preventive care," he told a crowd sitting in lawn chairs in front of the Cedar County Courthouse. "If you are going to be in the system, you can't choose not to go to the doctor for 20 years. You have to go...
Having one major contributor with a criminal history of fraud can just be bad luck. Having two of them starts looking like a pattern. The Washington Post reports that Norman Hsu has some company with the Hillary Clinton campaign in Sant Charwal, who fled India ahead of the law but still has plenty of cash to throw at Hillary's campaign: Sant S. Chatwal, an Indian American businessman, has helped raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaigns, even as he battled governments on two continents to escape bankruptcy and millions of dollars in tax liens. The founder of the Bombay Palace restaurant chain, Chatwal is one of a growing number of fundraisers in the 2008 presidential campaign whose backgrounds have prompted questions about how much screening the candidates devote to their "bundlers" while they press to raise record amounts. Chatwal's case reached from his native India...
September 4, 2007
Police in Denmark have arrested eight suspected al-Qaeda terrorists in Copenhagen as they have apparently foiled a terrorist attack. The men, ages 18 to 29, were found in raids at eleven addresses -- and authorities found more than just the men: Danish police have arrested eight people with alleged links to al-Qaeda on suspicion of planning a bomb attack. The eight suspects arrested late on Monday in Copenhagen form part of a terror cell with links to a senior al-Qaeda figure, police said. The suspects, aged between 19 and 29, were of Afghan, Pakistani, Somali and Turkish origin, police said. Police report that the men had been under surveillance for quite some time. They had begun producing an "unstable explosive" in a densely-populated area in preparation for an attack. They had lived in immigrant neighborhoods, but six of the eight have Danish citizenship. It's not the first time Denmark has...
Ali Hassan al-Majeed, the man responsible for ordering the chemical weapons attacks on Kurdish villages, will face execution within 30 days. "Chemical Ali" just began his latest trial in Baghdad, but like Saddam Hussein, he could shortly turn up absent from the proceedings: An Iraqi appeals court on Tuesday upheld the death sentence against Saddam Hussein's cousin, widely known as "Chemical Ali," for masterminding a genocidal campaign against Iraq's Kurds in the 1980s. "The nine appeal judges have upheld the death sentence against Ali Hassan al-Majeed, and according to the law of the court, the sentence must be carried out within 30 days," the chief prosecutor in the trial, Munkith al-Fatlawi, told Reuters. He said the court also upheld the death sentences against two other accused, Sultan Hashim, Saddam's former defense minister, and Hussein Rashid, the former deputy head of operations for the Iraqi military. Majeed, once one of the...
Kimberly Kagan makes a powerful case for a substantial change in fortunes in Iraq, and not just in the west. In today's Wall Street Journal, Kagan argues that the metrics and the momentum have shifted to the American and Iraqi security forces throughout the country as commanders ended the whack-a-mole campaign for good with the surge: The initial concept of the "surge" strategy in Iraq was to secure Baghdad and its immediate environs, which is why its proper name was the "Baghdad Security Plan." But as President Bush pointed out during his surprise trip to Iraq, operations and events on the ground are already showing successes well beyond Baghdad in Anbar, Diyala and Salahaddin provinces -- formerly al Qaeda strongholds and hotbeds of the Sunni insurgency. Considering the speed with which these successes have developed, and the rapidly growing grass-roots movement among Iraqis to support the effort, there is every...
Former president and relative moderate Hashemi Rafsanjani defied hardliners to win control of a key body in Iranian leadership. Rafsanjani will head the Expediency Council and become chair of the Assembly of Experts, which acts as liaison between the parliament and the Guardian Council, the real power in Iran: Former Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani was picked Tuesday to head a key clerical body empowered with choosing or dismissing the country's supreme leader, state media reported, in a vote seen as a setback for hard-liners in Iran's ruling establishment. Rafsanjani, long a major player in Iran's complex political scene who already heads a powerful government body called the Expediency Council, received 41 votes to become the chairman of the Assembly of Experts. The assembly is a group of 86 senior clerics charged with monitoring Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and choosing his successor. The Expediency Council arbitrates between legislators and another...
Straw polls have dominated the news of late, what with the Ames poll in Iowa resulting in a boomlet for Mike Huckabee and the Texas poll giving Duncan Hunter a much needed, and much deserved, second wind. Two polls in Minnesota have shown surprising strength for Fred Thompson, one all the more so because he wasn't even listed as a candidate. On August 22nd, the state GOP held a straw poll designed to help boost party donations at the River Center in St. Paul, emceed by local radio host Jason Lewis. Campaign activists for most candidates produced video presentations for poll attendees, but none for Thompson, who was at the time (as now) a non-candidate. His name did not appear on the ballot. On the strength of write-ins, though Thompson won the poll. Exact percentages were not given, nor could I get candidate totals after a phone call to the...
Guess who said this in Sioux City over the weekend as a reason to bolster Iowa's pre-eminent place in the primary structure (via Instapundit): “Iowa, for good reason, for constitutional reasons, for reasons related to the Lord should be the first caucus and primary." I'll give you a hint: it's not Pat Robertson or George Bush -- but if it was, can you imagine the outcry? At Heading Right, I reveal the identity of the prophet and wonder whether the usual suspects will start clamoring about the separation of church and state. For that matter, will Constitutional scholars be able to dissect the reference? UPDATE: Was this a joke? The attendees didn't think so, and the next line from the candidate reminded the audience that he signed the pledge to protect Iowa's position. Michael van der Galien has more: We also see a double standard at work, although the people...
A pair of bombs killed two dozen people in Rawalpindi today, striking at the heart of military power in Pakistan. The terrorist attack comes at the same time as Pervez Musharraf began rounding up political dissidents supporting an exile who plans to return soon: A pair of explosions during rush hour early Tuesday killed at least 24 people and injured scores more in the city of Rawalpindi, home to Pakistan's military. One of the bombs struck a bus apparently carrying government employees, and the other exploded in a busy market area near the nation's military headquarters. Such attacks are highly unusual in Rawalpindi, which is one of Pakistan's largest cities, and also one of its most secure because of the heavy presence of security personnel. The bus blast seemed to be the more deadly of the two, with the vehicle all but destroyed, according to witnesses. Officials said the bus...
Today on Captain's Quarters Radio (2 pm CT), Jim Geraghty from The Campaign Spot joins us to talk about Fred's launch, as well as the upcoming battle in Congress over Iraq. Call 646-652-4889 to join the conversation! Did you know that you can listen to Captain's Quarters Radio through your TiVo service? Click here for the instructions. Also, you can subscribe to Captain's Quarters Radio through iTunes now by clicking this link:...
We have a couple of announcements for my BlogTalkRadio show. We have a new name, Heading Right Radio with Ed Morrissey. BTR and I have decided that we want to brand the talk show name with the BTR blog brand, but that doesn't imply any shift from my blogging here at Captain's Quarters. It's designed to strengthen the brand at BTR, and since we rarely used the entire Captain's Quarters name before today, it allows for a fairly simple transition. We have some exciting guests booked for the show in the next couple of weeks. First, on Thursday we will have Michael Ledeen on tape introducing his new book, The Iranian Time Bomb: The Mullah Zealots' Quest for Destruction. It comes out this month and may have no better relevance than now. I'm also happy to announce that Laura Ingraham will appear on Monday, September 17th to talk about...
The commander of the military forces in Iraq and the man in charge of American diplomacy in Baghdad have urged him to continue on the present course. The AP reports that both General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker see real progress as a result of the strategic and tactical changes and want to build on their successes: President Bush's senior advisers on Iraq have recommended he stand by his current war strategy, and he is unlikely to order more than a symbolic cut in troops before the end of the year, administration officials told The Associated Press Tuesday. The recommendations from the military commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker come despite independent government findings Tuesday that Baghdad has not met most of the political, military and economic markers set by Congress. Bush appears set on maintaining the central elements of the policy he announced...
Flip Pidot at Suitably Flip has done a marvelous job in ferreting out the financial contributions of Norman Hsu to the Democratic Party and dozens of its candidates over the last few years. Whether bundling the donations of others or contributing directly, the convicted con man has made himself indispensable to high-powered Democrats such as Hillary Clinton, Andrew Cuomo, Ed Rendell, and Eliot Spitzer. In fact, Hsu has raised over $1.5 million for Democrats in one way or another, and his modest-means associates have donated some eye-popping amounts as well: Hillary Clinton took by far the most money from Hsu and his suspect donor network - $174,000 net of refunds. Clinton has agreed to turn over only Hsu's direct contributions (just 13% of the total) to charity. Tied for the biggest windfall from Hsu directly were New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and New York Governor (and former Attorney General)...
Hillary Clinton has an interesting view of the American economy, if her remarks to the AARP serve as any sort of guide. She told its legislative conference that Social Security is the "most successful domestic program" in American history, and that only government can make the necessary decisions for its beneficiaries (via reader Online Analyst): "This is the most successful domestic program in the history of the United States," Clinton said to applause from seniors gathered in Washington to push their policy agenda. "When I'm president, privatization is off the table because it's not the answer to anything." She also said she does not support cutting benefits or increasing the retirement age. Seniors can begin collecting partial benefits at age 62, with full benefits available at age 67 for those born in 1960 or later. Clinton said instead she will protect the program through fiscal responsibility and criticized President Bush's...
September 5, 2007
Larry Craig pleads guilty. Larry Craig proclaims his innocence. Larry Craig announces his resignation. Larry Craig says he may not resign. Larry Craig has a serious problem in making decisions: Sen. Larry E. Craig (R-Idaho) is reconsidering his announced intention to resign, if he can clear his name of criminal and ethics charges before the end of the month, a spokesman said last night. Other Craig aides, however, sent mixed signals yesterday about the strength of the senator's desire to remain in the chamber as he pursues a legal challenge to his guilty plea stemming from an undercover sex sting in an airport restroom, as well as an investigation by the Senate Ethics Committee. ... Dan Whiting, Craig's Washington spokesman, told The Washington Post in an e-mailed statement last night: "As he stated on Saturday, Senator Craig intends to resign on September 30th. However, he is fighting these charges, and...
German security forces arrested three terrorists this morning in an apparent plot to attack an American military base. The cell had acquired a large amount of bomb-making materials and had trained in Pakistan to carry out their mission: Three suspected Islamic militants were arrested for allegedly plotting "imminent" and "massive" attacks on the Ramstein Air Base, a major U.S. and NATO military hub, and Frankfurt's busy international airport, German authorities said Wednesday. German federal prosecutor Monika Harms said the three — two of whom were German converts to Islam — had trained at terror camps in Pakistan and procured some 1,500 pounds of hydrogen peroxide for making explosives. And a top legislator said the group could have struck "in a few days," noting a "sensitive period" that includes the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. ... The three suspects — two Germans, aged 22 and 28, and a 29-year-old Turk...
A senior law lord in the UK has proposed that the government take DNA samples from the entire population and store the records in a national database. Not only would that order apply to every British subject and resident, but it would also apply to tourists as well: The whole population and every UK visitor should be added to the national DNA database, a senior judge has said. Lord Justice Sedley said the Wales and England system, under which 4m people's DNA is held whether guilty or cleared of a crime, was "indefensible". He added it would be fairer to include "everybody, guilty or innocent", as it was biased against ethnic minorities. This isn't a passing bit of lunacy from an isolated judge, either. Tories have called for a Parliamentary debate on making the DNA database compulsory. The president of the Black Police Association claims that only through compulsory and...
The New York Times editorial board takes up the case of Norman Hsu and Sant Chatwal today, but not to excoriate their Senator, Governor, and state Democratic Party for their dealings with the pair. Instead, the Gray Lady claims Hsu and Chantwal as exhibits A and B for their argument to push for public financing of elections: The presidential candidates’ gross money marathon is leaving them increasingly open to shady backslappers securing privileged access with big bags of campaign cash on the barrelhead. Senator Hillary Clinton has been burned twice lately by so-called bundlers — aspiring power brokers who harvest large amounts of smaller donations and bundle them into irresistibly giant packages. One Clinton bundler turned out to have an outstanding arrest warrant for business fraud; the other has a history of tax liens, fraud charges and bankruptcy proceedings on two continents. Other candidates in both parties have been similarly...
Germany has an export ban on transfers of technologies associated with nuclear reactors to Iran, in accordance with UN sanctions and its own security policies. However, German systems have been found in the new nuclear reactor at Bushehr, much to the consternation of German authorities. Der Spiegel traces the transactions back to Russia, and Vladimir Putin: A deal involving industrial equipment attracted the attention of prosecutors and customs investigators to S., who has been doing business in German for more than a decade. The electromagnetic brakes, switchgear, spring elements and special cables that the 46-year-old businessman bought up in Germany between 2001 and 2004 were bound for the Iranian nuclear power plant in Bushehr -- a central project in the nuclear program of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. ... The case's true political explosiveness lies in the structure of the business relationships it involved. The Potsdam prosecutors now believe that they...
The announcement of Senator Fred Thompson's bid for the presidency is scheduled for tomorrow, after tonight's New Hampshire debate. That has some people frustrated that Thompson won't take part in the debate tonight (he will advertise at the beginning of the show instead), and wonder when Thompson plans to engage. This morning, the Thompson campaign answered with a new program designed to answer directly to blog readers, such as the community here at Captain's Quarters: On Thursday, Fred Thompson will be kicking off his campaign for the presidency in Des Moines, IA, touring through the early primary states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina before visiting Florida and returning to Lawrenceburg, TN for a homecoming celebration. While on this tour, Fred Thompson will be answering the tough questions, whether they come from a voter at a town hall meeting in New Hampshire or from the nation’s top journalists. However,...
Pervez Musharraf sees fewer and fewer options for remaining in power, and he may decide to declare an emergency despite pressure from the US and the West. The warning of de facto martial law comes as Musharraf negotiates with Benazir Bhutto for her return and her alliance against the extremists that Musharraf once courted: A top adviser to Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf acknowledged Tuesday that the general's options for staying in power are increasingly bleak and said that a declaration of emergency is being considered as a way of keeping him in office. Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, president of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League, said that while a complete military takeover under martial law had been ruled out, a state of emergency that would allow for the postponement of elections for up to a year and the curtailment of individual liberties was still on the table. "Martial law is a very...
Who'd have predicted this? Norman Hsu, the convicted con man and Democratic fundraiser extraordinaire, has skipped bail -- again (via Michelle Malkin): California businessman Norman Hsu, a former New York apparel executive and major contributor to Democratic candidates and causes, failed to appear for a bail reduction hearing Wednesday, leading to speculation that he again is a fugitive from the law, FOX News has learned. Hsu's attorneys say they do not know his whereabouts, and that their client did not surrender his passport. Let's see. After pleading guilty to fraud in 1991, Hsu jumped bail rather than appear at his sentencing hearing for his agreed-upon three-year stretch. Fifteen years later, the long arm of the law finally caught up with Hsu after funneling over $1.5 million to Democrats around the country. So what did the California court do? Let him out on bail again -- and Hsu has apparently skipped...
Today on Heading Right Radio (2 pm CT), we'll welcome two great guests. First, Robert Bluey of the Heritage Foundation joins us to talk about Hillary Clinton's assertion that Social Security needs no reform and that "privatization never works". Fausta will be our guest in the second half to preview the debate. I'm going to ask both where they think Norman Hsu has hotfooted it after jumping bail for the second time, and we're going to talk about Fred Thompson's new blog effort as well. Call 646-652-4889 to join the conversation! Did you know that you can listen to Heading Right Radio through your TiVo service? Click here for the instructions. Also, you can subscribe to Heading Right Radio through iTunes now by clicking this link:...
UPDATE: A commenter tries to pass this off as a smear by the Post by claiming that Alexi Giannoulias didn't administer the loans to Michael "Jaws" Giorango and that Giannoulias was only 18 years old when Jaws got convicted of his crimes. Donna uses one out-of-context sentence from this Rich Miller column in 2006 to bolster that argument -- "There’s no real indication that the Giannoulias family bank did anything illegal. The younger Giannoulias didn’t even work at the bank when most of this stuff went down." However, that's not really true. First, Jaws got convicted of crimes in 1989 and 1991, when Alexi Giannoulias was 13 and 15, respectively, but also in 2004, when Alexi was 28 and in charge of loans at the family bank. He also admitted to approving loans to Jaws and his associates in 2005 in order for them to buy a casino fleet in...
Chuck Schumer wants America to know that the men and women of the armed forces are basically a bunch of incompetents who can't fight terrorists. The Senator said that the departure of al-Qaeda from a vast swath of western Iraq had nothing to do with the new, aggressive military strategy and tactics of the US forces there, but instead because of "warlords" that America has enabled: And let me be clear, the violence in Anbar has gone down despite the surge, not because of the surge. The inability of American soldiers to protect these tribes from al Qaeda said to these tribes we have to fight al Qaeda ourselves. It wasn't that the surge brought peace here. It was that the warlords took peace here, created a temporary peace here. And that is because there was no one else there protecting. Remember when the criticism of the Bush administration was...
Tonight, the crew at Heading Right will live-blog the Republican presidential debate in New Hampshire. The debate starts at 8 pm CT and runs to 9:30 pm CT on Fox News Channel. We'll have several of our A-list hosts commenting on the debate in real time, so be sure to keep hitting the refresh button and follow along with the analysis. At 10 pm CT, I'll moderate a post-debate roundtable with four BTR hosts. Fausta Wertz, Rick Moran, Jim Lynch, and Mac Ranger will review the event and talk about the high and low points for the participants. I imagine we'll also discuss Fred Thompson's decision to announce tomorrow rather than earlier and miss this debate. Be sure to tune in! UPDATE AND BUMP: We're under way!...
The New Hampshire debate has finally ended, and once again, nothing will really resonate past the next couple of days. Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani had a pretty good night. Both of them sounded sharp and handled the tough questioning by Fox. Giuliani gets the edge here in that he really had no bad moments in the debate; he took a couple of potential problem questions and worked them to his advantage, including one about his personal life. Romney got hit pretty hard by a military father who was clearly upset by Romney's glib answer about his sons volunteering to help his political campaign as somewhat equivalent to military service. He also had a bit of a wobble on Chris Wallace's "Fee-Fee" characterization, which will stick with Romney, I think; it's just too funny to miss. And it's one of the reasons I think these debates are nothing but campaign...
September 6, 2007
Fred Thompson managed to overshadow the New Hampshire presidential debate by officially announcing his candidacy earlier in a taped session of The Tonight Show. Noting that "it's a lot more difficult to get on the Tonight Show than a presidential debate," Thompson wound up getting more air time -- and more questioning -- than any of the debate's attendees: After months of false starts, staff shake-ups, and questions about the seriousness of his intention to run for president, Fred Thompson rolled out his presidential candidacy this evening with a two-pronged, guerrilla-style entry into the race that sought to take the spotlight from his Republican opponents as they squared off in a debate. Choosing “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno” to declare “I’m running for president of the United States,” Mr. Thompson said, “I don’t think people are going to say, ‘That guy would make a very good president but he...
Taliban elements have stepped up attacks on NATO forces in Kandahar and Helmand provinces over the last week. They have ambushed British and American forces in fairly large numbers, sometimes throwing hundreds of their fighters into the battles. The new autumn offensive appears more vigorous than the fizzled spring offensive -- but every bit as disastrous: International and Afghan troops backed by air power killed scores of Taliban militants as heavy fighting intensified across southern Afghanistan, officials said Thursday. The latest bloodshed in the insurgency-hit southern desert provinces of Kandahar and Helmand took the rebel toll in recent days to more than 350, while two British troops have also died. More than 40 Taliban fighters were killed in a 12-hour battle on Wednesday with US-led coalition forces in Kandahar's Shah Wali Kot district, where rebels appeared to have regrouped in recent weeks, the coalition said. A small group of rebels...
The Syrian government announced this morning that it had fired at Israeli military planes that had violated its airspace. So far, the BBC has not reported a response to this announcement from Israeli government or military sources: Syria says its air defences have opened fire on Israeli war planes which had entered Syrian airspace. The action took place "without causing human or material loss", according to the official Syrian news agency, SANA. The agency says Israeli jets entered Syrian airspace from the Mediterranean Sea heading northeast at dawn on Thursday, but were forced to leave. This sounds a little fishy. Why would Israeli military jets overfly Syria from the Mediterranean -- and especially heading northeast? Where would they be going, Iraq or Turkey? Neither nation would have given them an especially friendly aloha. The pilots would have to have been seriously lost to have flown such a mission. Besides the...
Sometimes politicians can be so adorable when they're clueless, and California Deputy Attorney General Ralph Sivilla is a case in point. The New York Times' Leslie Wayne and Carolyn Marshall asked Sivilla why the state didn't ask to keep Hsu locked up without bail, and Sivilla had to defend that decision while Hsu high-stepped it to Oakland and perhaps points beyond: Ralph Sivilla, a deputy California attorney general, said the government had believed that Mr. Hsu was not a flight risk, based on the amount of his bail, his promise to relinquish his passport to the court and the fact that he had turned himself in. “Those circumstances had seemed to suggest that he was not a flight risk,” Mr. Sivilla said. “There was something hanging over his head. There were things in place.” When asked whether he thought Mr. Hsu had left the country, Mr. Sivilla said, “I would...
Australia's John Howard warned Russia that uranium sales could end if Russia does not take steps to guarantee that their product doesn't wind up in Iran or Syria. Following on the heels of Der Spiegel's exposure of Russian machinations to get German equipment to Bushehr, an Australian rejection could make it difficult for Putin to act as an energy czar in Asia: Australian Prime Minister John Howard said on Thursday he would tell Russian President Vladimir Putin that he would not approve the sale of uranium to Moscow if there was any possibility it could be resold to Iran or Syria. Howard said he would put Putin "through the ropes" when he meets him on Friday in Sydney on the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific leaders' forum. ... Australia, with 40 percent of the world's reserves of uranium, exports the mineral to 36 nations and hopes to sign a deal with...
Last night, I posted about Chuck Schumer's jaw-dropping assertion that the US military had nothing to do with the success in Anbar, Diyala, and western Iraq in throwing off al-Qaeda goons. I noted that Chuck apparently never bothered to read reports from independent journalists who have reported from the front during the surge. He also hasn't bothered to read the foreign press, including war critic Martin Fletcher of the Times of London, who spelled out clearly what role the Americans played in destroying AQI's grip on the region in a story from a week ago (h/t: commenter Bennett, and empahses mine): I had met Captain Patriquin while embedded with US troops in Ramadi last November. He was a big man, moustachioed, ex-Special Forces, fluent in Arabic and engaged in what was then a revolutionary experiment for a US military renowned for busting doors down. He and a small group from...
If anyone wants a lesson in how to lose a reputation for diligence, honor, and honesty, all they need to do is get confirmed by Congress for a vital role in American security. Eight months after the Senate confirmed David Petraeus as commander of American forces in Iraq, the same Senators who voted for his confirmation have now begun a character-assassination campaign to discredit him. At Heading Right, I look at the sudden use of the phrase "the Bush report" in describing Petraeus' testimony, and how it seeks to undermine the integrity of this career officer for the political expediency of the anti-war Democrats. Of particular note is the fact that the same Senators who didn't cast a single vote against this highly-regarded commander taking over the effort in Iraq suddenly feel that Petraeus would conspire with George Bush to deliver a dishonest report to Congress. Which is more likely...
Today on Heading Right Radio (2 pm CT), new BTR associate Adam Lambert joins us to talk about his new job as my counterpart with the progressive radio hosts. We may debate a little while we're at it, so be sure to call and get your arguments heard! Also, I interviewed Michael Ledeen earlier today about his new book, The Iranian Time Bomb: The Mullah Zealots' Quest for Destruction. You won't want to miss this interview, and the book is even better. Call 646-652-4889 to join the conversation! Did you know that you can listen to Heading Right Radio through your TiVo service? Click here for the instructions. Also, you can subscribe to Heading Right Radio through iTunes now by clicking this link:...
Senator Larry Craig continues his curious tap-dance on the national stage today. After offering broad hints that he planned to rescind his resignation, Craig's office now says that he will almost certainly depart unless Minnesota overturns his guilty plea before September 30th: Sen. Larry Craig has all but dropped any notion of trying to complete his term, and is focused on helping Idaho send a new senator to Washington within a few weeks, his top spokesman said Thursday. "The most likely scenario, by far, is that by October there will be a new senator from Idaho," Craig spokesman Dan Whiting told the Associated Press. The only circumstances in which Craig might try to complete his term, Whiting said, would require a prompt overturning of his conviction for disorderly conduct in a men's room at the Minneapolis airport, as well as Senate GOP leaders' agreement to restore Craig's committee leaderships posts...
When Bruce Bartlett wrote a scathing critique in the Wall Street Journal eleven days ago on the Fair Tax, I pointed out although much of what he wrote intrigued me, his strange use of Scientology's long-defunct connection to the proposal amounted to demagoguery. This led to a brief e-mail exchange between Bartlett and me, in which he claimed that "I didn’t actually mean to smear the FairTax by mentioning the Scientology connection," and that "As far as I know, there is no direct connection between the FairTax organization and Scientology." I offered to post his replies as a means of clarifying his intent, but he replied that he would respond in more detail in another forum. He's as good as his word. Today, Bartlett writes about the Fair Tax at The New Republic, and he drags Scientology back into the argument again. This time, however, he extends it into a...
Osama bin Laden will release a new video for the sixth anniversary of the 2,996 murders he ordered on September 11th, 2001. What does a psychopathic mass murderer have to say that has any interest to the world? Apparently he needs to debut his new facial hair style: Osama bin Laden will release a new video in the coming days ahead of the sixth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks in what would be the first new images of the terror mastermind in nearly three years, al-Qaida's media arm announced Thursday. Analysts noted that al-Qaida tends to mark the Sept. 11 anniversary with a slew of messages, and the Department of Homeland Security said it had no credible information warning of an imminent threat to the United States. Still, bin Laden's appearance would be significant. The al-Qaida leader has not appeared in new video footage since October 2004, and he...
Yesterday, the campaign team for Fred Thompson asked the Captain's Quarters community to participate in a new kind of interactive forum. They gave us the opportunity to ask specific, substantive questions of Senator Thompson and submit a few representative entries to the campaign. Next week, Thompson will answer these questions as well as some from a few other blogs in videotaped messages through his campaign website. Earlier today, they asked me to select the questions for the candidate. In order to allow reader participation for the selection as well as the generation of questions, I asked longtime faithful readers Peyton and Deb to form a committee with me. Together we came up with six -- we pushed the limit a little on that -- and sent them to the campaign late this afternoon. They've indicated their delight with the process, and we should start seeing the answers soon. Most of...
September 7, 2007
State and federal authorities arrested the fugitive of the year, Democratic fundraiser Norman Hsu, last night in Colorado. Paramedics took him off a train heading for Chicago on a backboard, and he spent the night in the hospital with an unknown illness or injury (via Memeorandum): Fugitive political fundraiser Norman Hsu, who skipped out on San Mateo County authorities this week rather than face sentencing for a 1992 fraud conviction, was apprehended Thursday night by federal and local lawmen in Grand Junction, Colo. Authorities said Hsu was taken into custody at St. Mary's Hospital in Grand Junction at 7 p.m. local time. He had been on the lam for almost two days after failing to appear in a Redwood City courtroom Wednesday to surrender his passport. Hsu was taken off a passenger train at the Grand Junction train station earlier in the day by paramedics who requested a backboard to...
In yet another entry in the Russia Is Not Our Ally series, the UK had to scramble fighters to intercept eight Russian Tupolev-95 Bear bombers as they appeared headed for British airspace. The Russians have bragged about provoking NATO fighters in this manner, and it's becoming an expensive game, at least for the West: The RAF scrambled to intercept eight Russian nuclear bombers heading for Britain yesterday in the biggest aerial confrontation between the two countries since the end of the Cold War. The Tupolev-95 Bear bombers were approaching in formation when they were met by four Tornado F3 fighter jets. Defence sources said that the Russian pilots turned away as soon as they spotted the approaching Tornados and did not enter British airspace. Norway had earlier sent four F16 jets to shadow the Russians as they neared its airspace in what Moscow insisted was a training mission. The bombers...
Fred Thompson spent the day of his official launch campaigning in Iowa, seeking to exploit the diffidence Republican voters have felt over the slate of GOP candidates in the state. Some wondered whether Thompson might have focused on Super Tuesday states first, especially in the South, but the campaign feels that Thompson has an opportunity to surprise people in Iowa: Fred D. Thompson took his bid for the White House to the campaign trail Thursday, vowing to compete aggressively for the support of Iowans and pitching steady, experienced and conservative leadership. "I still have the same common-sense conservative beliefs I did when I ran in 1994," the former senator said in a speech at a Des Moines conference center, a not-so-subtle reference to criticism about the changing positions of his main Republican rivals, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani. "The preseason is over,"...
What is it with left-wing radio hosts? Al Franken squared off on Laura Ingraham's producer at the 2004 Republican National Convention and tackled a protestor at a Democratic rally. Now Ed Schultz apparently bruised a woman after arguing politics with her and her husband in a Detroit Lakes, Minnesota bar (via Power Line): The conversation went sour when Nagle said he respects Joe Lieberman, the Independent Democratic senator from Connecticut known for supporting the Iraq war. Nagle said Schultz said he doesn’t like Lieberman, and then commented that if Nagle felt so strongly about the war, his family should go over and fight in it. The daughter of Nagle’s fiancee serves in the Army and may soon go to Iraq. His fiancee’s son-in-law has served in Iraq. “It was at that time that Mr. Schultz completely lost control, in my opinion,” Nagle said. “He became enraged, and then our interactions...
Clinton administration official Jeff Robbins wonders in today's Wall Street Journal why people like Jimmy Carter, Stephen Walt, and John Mearsheimer seem so obsessed with American Jews exercizing their right to political speech, and so silent about the influence of Wahabbist petrodollars competing in the same arena. The former American delegate to the highly anti-Semitic UN Human Rights Commission points out that Saudi Arabia drops millions of dollars and leverages political clout through its commercial partners to pursue its anti-Israel agenda, and yet these three (among many others) quake with fear when American citizens organize to refute it: If the charge that American Jews are able to stifle criticism of Israel is simply silly, the leveling of the charge that there is something nefarious about Jews urging support for the Jewish state raises questions about whether Messrs. Walt and Mearsheimer have descended into a certain ugliness. And the tactic of...
The Times of London has done some digging into the lines of control for the city’s mosques and finds a disturbing development. Almost half of them have come under the leadership of the same radical sect that spawned the Taliban, and the new leader has called for the shedding of blood in a jihad against the West. Ironically, Britain has subsidized the indoctrination of these jihadists that produce 80% of their homegrown Islamic clerics. At Heading Right, I ask how bad the situation has to get when even Pakistanis complain about British Muslim extremism. Will Western nations surrender to the extremists by refusing to defend themselves, or will they act to curtail the influence and spread of deadly and seditious organizations? Britain appears to be the test case....
ABC News reports that some intelligence analysts believe that the newly-trimmed and blackened beard featured in the upcoming Osama bin Laden video may be false. It could indicate that Osama has hotfooted it to a country where a beard would make him stand out from the crowd, which would require a phony for his videos: Intelligence sources tell ABC News they believe the expected video message from Osama bin Laden is authentic, recently produced and evidence the al Qaeda leader is still alive. U.S. authorities now say they have a transcript which they say is aimed at potential suicide bombers who he urges to carry out missions against the West. ... "It does look oddly like he is wearing a false beard," Richard Clarke, a former White House counterterrorism official and now ABC News consultant, said. "If we go back to the tape three years, he had a very white...
General David Petraeus sent a letter today to the men and women under his command in Iraq, updating them on the progress since the start of the surge. The letter can be read here, and it has every hallmark of an open, honest evaluation of the current situation in Iraq. For instance, while Petraeus praises the progress in western Iraq as "greater than any of us might have predicted six months ago," he acknowledged that Baghdad still needs more work: The achievements in some other areas -- for example, in some particularly challenging Baghdad neighborhoods and in reducing overall civilian casualties, especially those caused by periodic, barbaric Al Qaeda bombings -- have not been as dramatic. However, the overall trajectory has been encouraging, especially when compared to the situation at the height of the sectarian violence in late 2006 and early 2007. He also notes the lack of concrete progress...
Today on Heading Right Radio (Note Time Change: 1 pm CT!!), Duane Patterson joins me for the week in review. We'll have lots to discuss, including the New Hampshire debate, Fred Thompson's official launch, the effort to discredit General David Petraeus before his testimony, and much, much more! Call 646-652-4889 to join the conversation! Did you know that you can listen to Heading Right Radio through your TiVo service? Click here for the instructions. Also, you can subscribe to Heading Right Radio through iTunes now by clicking this link:...
ABC News has the transcript of Osama bin Laden's newest video, and as Hot Air notes, it blasts Democrats for not following through on their promises of dhimmitude: “People of America: the world is following your news in regards to your invasion of Iraq, for people have recently come to know that, after several years of tragedies of this war, the vast majority of you want it stopped. Thus, you elected the Democratic Party for this purpose, but the Democrats haven’t made a move worth mentioning. On the contrary, they continue to agree to the spending of tens of billions to continue the killing and war there.” Osama has a couple of options for Americans to completely surrender to al-Qaeda and stop the terrorism against our people: “The first is from our side, and it is to continue to escalate the killing and fighting against you.” The second is to...
The First Mate and I will head to Southern California for the next two weeks to catch up with family and make some business contacts. It's not a vacation, but more a move to my West Coast offices. I'll be working my normal jobs from the road, and still doing my normal Heading Right shows. That's one of the exciting features of working in the New Media -- I can be at the office anywhere that has high-speed Internet access. I may decide to take weekends mostly off during this time, but do check in as I'll probably want one or two threads each day just to keep the blog warm. I'll be sure to post some pictures of SoCal on the blog -- and maybe we'll arrange a get-together with local Captain's Quarters readers while we're here!...
September 8, 2007
With the focus on political progress heightening in advance of the testimony of General David Petraeus, the Iraqi National Assembly has come under pressure to start approving legislation from the agreement two weeks ago between the leaders of the various factions on reform. That effort got a boost today when the Sunnis ended the final political boycott of the Assembly: A small Sunni Arab bloc ended its parliamentary boycott Saturday, returning to the legislature as it considers key benchmark legislation demanded by Washington amid increasing pressure to end the political deadlock. The return of the Iraqi Front for National Dialogue ends the last boycott of parliament, which had contributed to the political paralysis. ... Major Shiite, Sunni Arab and Kurdish leaders said they had agreed in principle on some of the 18 issues that the U.S. has set as benchmarks. Among them were holding provincial elections, releasing prisoners held without...
Most of the focus for Norman Hsu's dubious fundraising has fallen on Hillary Clinton, who benefited enormously from Hsu's efforts. Less attention has been given to Hsu's connections to her main rival Barack Obama, but the Washington Post reports that Hsu did a little walking for the candidate who claims to want a different kind of politics. Hsu brought Obama one of his biggest fundraisers: Before becoming a major bundler for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign, disgraced Democratic donor Norman Hsu helped host a 2005 California event for Barack Obama's political action committee and introduced the senator from Illinois to one of the biggest fundraisers for his presidential bid. Federal Election Commission records show that Hsu gave $5,000 to Obama's Hopefund PAC in connection with the fundraiser and that people publicly identified with Hsu and his companies gave an additional $19,500 to the PAC in 2005 and 2006. Mark...
A US court entered a judgment against Iran for the terrorist attack in Lebanon that killed 241 Marines, awarding victims and their families over $2 billion in damages. The judge found the mullahcracy "legally responsible" for actions of Hezbollah, based on the Iranian financing for the terrorist organization: A federal judge yesterday ordered Iran to pay more than $2.6 billion to nearly 1,000 family members and a handful of survivors of a 1983 bombing of a Marine barracks in Lebanon that killed 241 soldiers. The ruling brought cheers and tears from survivors but faces long odds of being fulfilled. "This court is sadly aware that there is little it can do to heal the physical wounds and emotional scars," wrote U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth in his order. But he expressed hope that "this extremely sizeable judgment will serve to aid in the healing process and simultaneously sound the...
Last week, the world press reacted with delight when British commander General Sir Mike Jackson ripped Donald Rumsfeld and the Bush administration for its post-invasion planning for Iraq. Today, Jackson continued his criticism of Rumsfeld, calling his planning "intellectually bankrupt", but underscored the need to stay in Iraq and insisted that critics have prematurely declared the mission a failure: The general who led the British army from the 2003 Iraq invasion until last year said that it was "too soon" to declare Iraq a failure and that Britain and the United States have a "moral commitment" not to withdraw troops prematurely. "I just think it would be wrong to pack up before the conditions are right, and without the agreement of the Iraqi government," retired Gen. Mike Jackson said in an interview Friday. But he stressed that significant troop withdrawals from Iraq should come only when Iraq can handle its...
The terrorists arrested in Germany had a deadline for their attack on Ramstein Air Base and the Frankfurt airport, given to them by their al-Qaeda masters: September 15th. Why that date, rather than the more obvious 9/11 anniversary? AQ has more current politics in mind: Three suspected Islamist militants who were planning to attack U.S. installations in Germany had orders to act by Sept. 15 and knew police were hot on their trail before their arrest, a magazine said on Saturday. The plan was foiled on Tuesday when police arrested two German converts to Islam and a Turk in the biggest German police operation in 30 years. According to surveillance details published in Der Spiegel magazine, the men had been given a two-week deadline for their planned strikes in a late August call from northern Pakistan that was monitored by German police. Congress set a deadline on September 15th as...
September 9, 2007
Fred Thompson has noted, as I have recently, the ineffectiveness of presidential debates in their current format. On the day of his official launch into the presidential race, Thompson told Sean Hannity that the format did little to enlighten American voters on the issues or where the candidates really stand on policy: It is not designed really to illuminate people's thoughts and feelings. Thirty-, 40-second sound bites, you know, to questions that hopefully will elicit some kind of a comment about one of the other participants, something like that, to make a little story, that sort of thing. I kind of think that Newt's idea of going back to the Lincoln-Douglas debate-type format, where you have two people sit down or stand up and, you know, take an hour or so, and maybe an hour-and-a-half and discuss maybe one particular category, one particular topic, and get in-depth and go back...
The New York Times has its reporters wearing out some old-fashioned shoe leather in attempting to trace down the source of Norman Hsu's prodigious amounts of money, used to float $1.6 million in personal and bundled contributions to Democratic candidates and organizations. The result? The Times discovered that the companies Hsu listed appear to have only one produce -- salaries for Democratic contributors: At the center of the ever-deepening mystery of Norman Hsu, the fugitive fund-raiser who was captured after a brief flight from the law last week, is the question of how he evolved from a bankrupt swindler in 1992 to a wealthy donor to many Democratic candidates, and a bundler of campaign contributions to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2007. A review of financial records for one of Mr. Hsu’s companies begins to shed light on some of his recent activities, including his dealings with a circle of...
The Washington Post tells the story of the surge from inside the Bush administration in a lengthy and intriguing article. Headlined as "Among Top Officials, 'Surge' Has Sparked Dissent, Infighting," the compendium from the Post's reporters actually tells quite a different story. While the surge initially produced dissent -- even within the military command -- the results have united the administration and the military more than at any time over the last eight months. In the beginning, Republicans outside the administration objected to the new initiative and the Pentagon's new chief, Robert Gates, wanted to start drawing down troops. Having just lost an election with Iraq as a significantly contributing factor, the GOP wanted to see an exit strategy by 2008. George Bush wanted to take one final shot for victory, and he pressed for the surge to give the Iraqis enough time to start creating the political environment where...
Will Al Gore's endorsement bring a boost to whomever he blesses, or will it represent the kiss of death to its victim? The Washington Post analyzes its potential and comes up with little more than a shrug: Former vice president Al Gore's pronouncement that he is likely to endorse one of the Democratic candidates for president before the primary season is over has set off a slew of speculation about who his choice might be. Truth is, the courting of the "Goreacle" began many months ago. Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) and Gore huddled in Nashville in December, and Gore has also met with former senator John Edwards (N.C.). Gore and Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (Conn.) conferred as recently as last week. ... It seems safe to predict that Gore will not be endorsing the bid of the senator from New York. A more open question might be whether he would...
Captain's Quarters readers participated in a new kind of interactive campaign rolled out by the Fred Thompson campaign on their launch date. The Thompson team asked our community to give them a handful of substantive questions, and the Senator would answer us directly in taped video responses. We had scores of questions from which to choose, and we sent six to the campaign as respresentative of the whole. I've been told that the campaign will start to release Thompson's answers later today or tomorrow. Stay tuned, as we will have the video available here when it's ready!...
September 10, 2007
Yesterday, while spending my time on the West Coast, my sister treated the First Mate and me to Hollywood afternoon -- tickets to the theatre and dinner at a unique LA restaurant. It has been years since we've been to a play that didn't feature a family member or friend as part of the cast; I think the last play was Blood Brothers with David Cassidy at the Orange County Performing Arts Center. This time, we went to a more storied venue, the Pantages on Hollywood Boulevard. For those who have not experienced it, the Pantages is one of the grand venues of the Los Angeles stage. Its breathtaking internal design and decor make it a destination stop all by itself. In fact, as we entered it, we saw tour buses stopped outside its entrance. This time, however, the play most definitely surpassed the surroundings. Wicked comes from the novel...
What should President Bush do with an ethics reform that leaves the American people in a worse position to discover and fight pork-barrel spending? Robert Novak notes the dilemma in which Bush finds himself as Congress reconvenes. Can he afford to veto their vaunted new ethics bill -- and can he affort not to veto it? The final version of the widely celebrated ethics bill, approved by overwhelming margins in both the House and Senate a month ago, finally and quietly made its way last week from Capitol Hill to the White House. It surely will soon be signed into law by President Bush. What only a handful of leaders and insiders realize is that this measure, avowedly dedicated to transparency, actually makes it easier for the Senate to pass pet projects without the public -- or many senators -- being aware of it. Until now, one or two senators...
Fouad Ajami writes eloquently in today's Wall Stret Journal about the status of sectarian relationships and prospects for unity in post-surge Iraq. Ajami asks interesting questions about the Sunni-Shi'ite split in context of American action in Iraq, but one point comes through clearly -- the Iraqis will work with winners, and they know that means the Americans: Abu Reisha and a small group of like-minded men, he said, came together to challenge al Qaeda. "We fought with our own weapons. I myself fought al Qaeda with my own funds. The Americans were slow to understand our sahwa, our awakening. But they have come around of late. The Americans are innocent; they don't know Iraq. But all this is in the past, and now the Americans have a wise and able military commander on the scene, and the people of the Anbar have found their way. In the Anbar, they now...
Pakistan's exiled former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, returned in triumph today. Triumph turned to a ticket to Saudi Arabia in less than eight hours, however, as Pervez Musharraf had Sharif deported shortly after his arrival: Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif returned to Pakistan from a seven-year exile, hoping to campaign against the country's U.S.-allied military ruler, but was immediately charged with corruption and deported to Saudi Arabia hours later. On his arrival from London, black-uniformed commandos surrounded Sharif inside his plane; he was taken into custody and charged, then then spirited to another plane and sent to Jiddah, where he was whisked away in a convoy from the airport, witnesses said. In Islamabad, the government defended its decision to deport Sharif in defiance of a Supreme Court order saying he had the right to return to Pakistan, claiming it was in the "supreme interest" of the country. Sharif's deportation came...
Two years ago, rapper Kanye West made headlines by accusing George Bush of hating black people in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. The hate continues, as West threw a tantrum over not winning an MTV award for any of his five nominations last night: Rapper Kanye West threw a tantrum in front of media after missing out on the five awards he was nominated for. "That's two years in a row, man... give a black man a chance," West said. "I'm trying hard, man, I have the... number one record, man." West, who gatecrashed the stage at the MTV Europe Awards after failing to win the prize for best video, said he would never return to MTV. This was just the capper on a night that MTV will want to forget. Their evening featured a fight between Pamela Anderson husbands Kid Rock and Tommy Lee, the latter of whom got...
ABC News reports that Osama bin Laden has a second tape released last week, recorded at the same place as the first. The new tape references 9/11 more explicitly than the last: A second tape from Osama bin Laden was recorded in the same location as the video released last week. People in the intelligence community who have seen the tape feel it is directly related to the 9/11 anniversary since the al Qaeda leader introduces the prerecorded martyr video of one of the 9/11 hijackers, Waleed al Shehri. Waleed al Shehri was one of the hijackers on American Airlines flight 11 that crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. What would that mean? Did Osama look over his notes after the first tape and say, "Damn, I forgot to read pages six and seven!" Was Osama having a senior moment? Perhaps, though, this tape may provide...
Using a schoolyard manipulation of General David Petraeus’ last name, MoveOn asked in a full-page advertisement whether this honorable commander would betray his nation for the sake of a temporary political advantage. Calling the MNF-I commander “Betray-Us”, the Democratic activist organization accused the general of deliberately misreporting the results of the war effort to boost the Bush administration. At Heading Right, I question who's betraying whom. I question MoveOn's patriotism. I suggest that MoveOn and the Democrats who support the organization would gladly commit character assassination of the lowest order against a man who has served this nation for decades in such an honorable fashion that the Senate voted unanimously to give him command of our forces in Iraq just eight months ago. Michelle Malkin calls it "despicable". I'd say that's putting it mildly. Later today, we'll hear from a man who served with Petraeus. Keep checking back for that...
More accurately, Elections Canada -- the agency that oversees elections in our neighbor to the north -- has granted an exception for Muslim women to show their faces at polling stations for identification. The action by the agency defies the nation's Parliament, which specifically required facial identification for voters: Prime Minister Stephen Harper blasted Elections Canada Sunday for going against a parliamentary ruling by allowing Muslim women to wear veils and burkas while voting. The move goes directly against a unanimous vote in the House of Commons this past spring to make visual identification mandatory when casting a ballot. "I profoundly disagree with the decision," Harper told reporters in Sydney, Australia where he is attending the APEC conference. "We just adopted this past sitting, in the spring, Bill C-31, a law designed to have the visual identification of voters. That's the purpose of the law. "That was the law voted...
I'm fortunate to count Colonel Joe Repya among my friends in Minnesota. The retired soldier, a veteran of Vietnam, Desert Storm, and Operation Iraqi Freedom joined me as a co-host two weeks ago for my radio show at the State Fair and spoke at that time of the coming smears on General David Petraeus. After today's MoveOn advertisement, Col. Repya asked if he could respond here at Captain's Quarters. Today, Monday, September 10, 2007, US Army General David Petraeus, Commander of Multi National Forces – Iraq will be publicly persecuted by some members of the US Senate. Not all will join in the attacks, only those Senators more politically vicious and partisan will participate. They will be the same Senators who only months ago voted unanimously to appoint General Petraeus to run the Iraq war. Remember this is the war that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) recently told American...
Today on Heading Right Radio (Note Special Time: 1 pm CT), Rick Moran joins us to talk about the implications of the Osama bin Laden tapes, as well as the Petraeus testimony and much, much more Call 646-652-4889 to join the conversation! Did you know that you can listen to Heading Right Radio through your TiVo service? Click here for the instructions. Also, you can subscribe to Heading Right Radio through iTunes now by clicking this link:...
General David Petraeus has finally started his long-awaited testimony, but some people just can't abide hearing his report. Several protestors had to be ejected from the chamber, and one familiar face was among them: Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan was arrested Monday in or near the hearing room where Gen. David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker are testifying on the situation in Iraq, according to the U.S. Capitol Police. Four anti-war protesters were arrested for disorderly conduct. One of them, who was not named, is being taken to George Washington Hospital “due to complaint of injury” and is also charged with assault on a police officer. According to the information from the Capitol Police, Sheehan and the other three were shouting in a hallway. The constant protests clearly irritated committee chair Ike Skelton, who called them "a**holes", according to Allahpundit's video at Hot Air. St. Cindy didn't make...
Quick -- someone take a look at Rupert Murdoch. Does he have a bomb vest strapped under a white sheet and hood? No? Someone should tell Keith Olbermann's psychiatrist so he can up the meds a bit for the NBC "news" anchor: Al Qaeda really hurt us, but not as much as Rupert Murdoch has hurt us, particularly in the case of Fox News. Fox News is worse than Al Qaeda — worse for our society. It’s as dangerous as the Ku Klux Klan ever was. At the risk of enabling such anti-intellectual twaddle, let's be clear about what Olbermann says here. Al-Qaeda killed thousands of Americans on 9/11 and has killed hundreds, if not thousands, worldwide in terrorist attacks. It seeks to impose a radical Islamist Caliphate on the entire world. The Klan oppressed millions of blacks in the US, infiltrating local and state governments in order to ensure...
People have wondered which candidates would fear a Fred Thompson candidacy the most. Tonight we may have an answer. The appearance of a snarky anti-Thompson website got journalists interested in its origin -- and that led to a surprise: An opposition research-laden website called "phoneyfred.org" has surfaced that hammers the GOP's newest presidential candidate for his policy positions, lobbying work, previous dating life and ties to John McCain. There is no disclaimer on the site and the anonymous e-mailer who sent along the link declined to identify himself/herself. The domain was secured last month from a Utah-based web-hosting provider, Bluehost.com. Reached by phone, an employee of the company declined to identify who had purchased the site. Clearly, though, this is no amateur effort. The volume of information and the way that it's sourced reeks of a grasstops hit-job. Repeatingly calling Thompson "Phoney Fred" in the on-message style of political operatives,...
September 11, 2007
After days of tortured explanations of why her campaign would hold onto bundled donations from Norman Hsu even after donating his direct contributions to charity, Hillary Clinton finally announced that her campaign would return Hsu's funneled money to their donors. Her campaign also announced how much money that would involve, and it turned out to be many times more than first thought: Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign announced tonight that it would return approximately $850,000 to about 260 donors who had been recruited or tapped by Norman Hsu, the disgraced Clinton campaign fundraiser who recently fled arrest and is now under investigation for his fundraising practices. The Clinton campaign also disclosed tonight that it had decided to begin running criminal background checks on its bundlers — the dozens of individuals who raise hundreds of thousands of dollars from donors on behalf of a candidate, as Mr. Hsu had done for...
The first of the California jihadis to get convicted on terrorism charges received a 24-year sentence yesterday. Hamid Hayat traveled to Pakistan to learn terrorism in al-Qaeda training camps in order to kill Americans, and it turned into a family business: A California man convicted last year of aiding terrorists and lying to the F.B.I. was sentenced on Monday to 24 years in prison. The man, Hamid Hayat, an American citizen of Pakistani descent, was solemn and attentive in court on what was his 25th birthday. He showed little reaction as an assistant translated the proceedings and stern words of Judge Garland E. Burrell Jr. of Federal District Court into Urdu. “Hamid Hayat attended a terrorist training camp,” Judge Burrell said, “and returned to the United States, ready and willing to wage violent jihad when directed to do so, regardless of the havoc such acts could wreak on persons and...
A bomb-sniffing dog in Ankara helped Turkish authorities stop a massive terrorist attack on the anniversary of 9/11. A van full of explosives in a parking garage would have devastated the center of the large city, and it would have served as a counterpoint to the messages released by Osama bin Laden in the past week: Police in Turkey's capital, Ankara, have prevented a large bomb from exploding, the city's governor said. Sniffer dogs detected a van stuffed with explosives in the centre of the city, preventing a "possible catastrophe", Governor Kemal Onal said. ... Ankara's governor said a large quantity of explosives had been left in the van which had a false licence plate. It was parked in a multi-storey garage in Kurtulus, a densely populated area of central Ankara. This would make three terrorist attacks thwarted in the past week. Earlier, German and Danish authorities rolled up Islamist...
George Will should get a lot of mileage from today's column, in which he declares the surge a failure. That declaration will no doubt attract opponents of the war and get cited by them, handily appearing as it does in conjunction with the testimony of General David Petraeus. Normally rather thoughtful, Will bases this conclusion on two very weak arguments, both of which are so easily rebutted that it makes one wonder why the normally excellent Will didn't think it through better. First, he argues that Bushs' appearance in Anbar proves the surge didn't work: Before Gen. David Petraeus's report, and to give it a context of optimism, the president visited Iraq's Anbar province to underscore the success of the surge in making some hitherto anarchic areas less so. More significant, however, was that the president did not visit Baghdad. This underscored the fact that the surge has failed, as...
Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell told the Senate that the NSA caught the terror cell poised to strike at Ramstein Air Base in Germany because of the NSA’s expanded powers. The New York Times reports that the detection predates the new FISA legislation, and therefore McConnell was mistaken, but the Times forgets the purpose of the legislation in that analysis. At Heading Right, I supply the missing context that eludes Eric Schmitt in his reporting. It shows the new FISA legislation as a requirement for effective counterterrorism activity, and in fact proves that Congress absolutely needed to reinstate the NSA's authority to capture the kind of communication in real time that led to the discovery of the terrorist targeting Ramstein's air base -- and our men and women in the armed forces....
One of the more enduring myths of the 9/11 truther movement involves the rapid collapse of the Twin Towers after being hit by the commercial jets six years ago today. The conspiracy theorists insist that a self-initiated collapse could not have occurred, and even if it did, it could not have progressed so rapidly. Their theory has government agents spending two weeks in the building, planting explosives without disturbing the offices in the building, and waiting for that special day when a couple of planes hitting the towers would give them an excuse to demolish them. Instead, their theories on the impossibility of collapse just got demolished at Cambridge: The study by a Cambridge University engineer demonstrates that once the collapse of the twin towers began, it was destined to be rapid and total. ... Dr Seffen was able to calculate the "residual capacity" of the undamaged building: that is,...
Where were you six years ago? That morning, I went to work early, as I usually did, to eat breakfast at the office and take my time preparing for my day in the call center. That doesn't usually involve television, and any websurfing I did took place before 7 am CT. By the time the first plane took off from Logan Airport, the normal routine of measurement review and staff meetings had already started for me. The first time I heard that anything was wrong on that day was a phone call from the First Mate. She told me about the first plane crash, and at first I assumed it had been caused by poor visibility in New York. A co-worker then told me about news of a second crash, and I knew that we had been hit by a terrorist attack. As I wrote three years ago: Work came...
Today on Heading Right Radio (Note special time: 11 am CT), we welcome Rep, Tim Walberg (R-MI) to discuss his opposition to the No Child Left Behind program and its proposed extension. At the bottom of the hour, we'll be joined by a man I'm proud to call my friend, Lt. Colonel Joe Repya, who will discuss the testimony of General David Petraeus yesterday and today on Capitol Hill. Don't miss this show! Call 646-652-4889 to join the conversation! Did you know that you can listen to Heading Right Radio through your TiVo service? Click here for the instructions. Also, you can subscribe to Heading Right Radio through iTunes now by clicking this link: Also, I want to remind people that it's not too late for Captain's Quarters readers to sign the petition urging Congress to allow the surge to continue....
If you missed today's installment of Heading Right Radio, you missed a barn-burner. We had two terrific guests on the show: Lt. Col. Joe Repya of the 101st Airborne (ret.) and Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI). Although our discussion mainly centered on No Child Left Behind, I asked Rep. Walberg about the testimony of General David Petraeus and the attack on his integrity and sense of duty in the MoveOn advertisement in yesterday's New York Times. In his clear and measured style, Walberg held little in reserve in expressing his contempt for MoveOn (emphases mine): EM: Yesterday, Senator John Ensign, who runs the National Republican Senatorial campaign, called on Democrats to return monies donated to them by MoveOn -- MoveOn.org. Would you agree with that after the advertisement that they placed in the New York Times yesterday? TW: Well, only if they don't agree with them. I'm fearful there are many...
Captain's Quarters welcomes back Senator James Inhofe for a guest post regarding the testimony of General Petraeus. Thank you, Ed, for the opportunity to once again address your readers. This site is a valuable resource for Americans who want to support our troops and get the truth about our progress in Iraq. Just recently, we entered our fifth year of engagement in Iraq. I think it is safe to say it has stretched on longer than many of us anticipated at its onset. However, we have seen significant signs of progress as a result of General Petraeus’s troop surge strategy. Iraqi cities which used to be terrorist strongholds such as Ramadi and Fallujah are now not only secure, but kept secure by Iraqi security forces. Iraqi citizens are participating in "Neighborhood Watch" programs and circle undetonated roadside bombs with orange spray paint to warn passersby. And our troops are developing...
Congress voted on a nonpartisan bill to act as a tribute to the victims of 9/11, including the men and women who died at the Pentagon six years ago. Supporting such a resolution would seem rather uncontroversial. However, to the man cultivating a reputation as the House's resident eccentric, nothing is too uncontroversial to make into a moment for him to call attention to himself: Rep. Dennis Kucinich, Democratic presidential candidate and no stranger to contrarian views, was the sole congressman Tuesday to vote against the House's Sept. 11 commemoration resolution. Tuesday's nonbinding resolution was a relatively short document. It had 12 "whereas" clauses — stating things like what happened the day of the terrorist attacks, who was affected and how terrorists have been targeted since then — and six resolution paragraphs establishing Sept. 11 as a day of remembrance, extending sympathies to families of victims who died and honoring...
If not, he's doing a pretty good impression of it on the campaign trail today. After Mitt Romney attempted to distance himself from the Phoney Fred website, Thompson blasted Romney in no uncertain terms. Romney's team says 9/11 should be a day free from political consequences: The statement from Todd Harris, communications director for Fred Thompson, accuses Mitt Romney's campaign of a "half-baked cover-up" of what he alleges is the association between a Romney consultant and a hastily pulled website that said nasty things about Thompson. Harris concluded with the kind of rhetoric that tends to warm Democratic hearts: "This latest episode only serves to prove what many voters are already figuring out: Mitt Romney will do anything, say anything, smear any opponent and flip flop on any position in order to win. The American people in general and the Republican Party in particular deserve better than this." Romney spokesman...
September 12, 2007
The Wall Street Journal has tracked down the source of Norman Hsu's cash, and the good news is that the People's Republic of China didn't provide the funds -- at least, not some of them. However, the bad news is that Hsu apparently moved from Ponzi schemes to outright embezzlement as a former Woodstock backer proved as inept at background checks as the Democratic Party: New documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal may help point to an answer: A company controlled by Mr. Hsu recently received $40 million from a Madison Avenue investment fund run by Joel Rosenman, who was one of the creators of the Woodstock rock festival in 1969. That money, Mr. Rosenman told investors this week, is missing. Mr. Hsu told Mr. Rosenman the money would be used to manufacture apparel in China for Gucci, Prada and other private labels, yielding a 40% profit on each...
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe unexpectedly resigned today, apparently tired of political battles over diplomacy and economics. The move stunned the political establishment in Tokyo, which had prepared for an Abe defense of a counterterrorism policy that had encountered some resistance: Embattled Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said on Wednesday he would resign in hope of making it easier to extend a naval mission in support of U.S.-led operations in Afghanistan, sending shockwaves through Japan. The hawkish Abe, who took office a year ago promising to boost Japan's global security profile, has suffered low support rates and dwindling clout after his ruling camp suffered an election drubbing in July, but the announcement came as a bolt out of the blue. "I determined today that I should resign," a weary-looking Abe told a news conference. "We should seek a continued mission to fight terrorism under a new prime minister." This comes...
Vladimir Putin dismissed the Russian Prime Minister and his government almost three months ahead of scheduled elections. He had been widely expected to do so, but he crossed up the analysts and nominated an unknown as a replacement: Russian President Vladimir Putin has accepted the resignation of PM Mikhail Fradkov and nominated a financial crime investigator to replace him. Victor Zubkov, head of the federal financial monitoring service, is a relative unknown in Russian politics. ... First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov has long been considered a frontrunner for the presidency, and Russian media had been speculating that he could be made premier. Russian markets didn't budge at the announcement of Fradkov's resignation, but they may hiccup a little at Zubkov's nomination. Ivanov had widely been seen as Putin's favorite, having accompanied him at many public events. Vedemosti, the Russian business publication, had already been discussing Ivanov's ascension as a...
Congressional politicians usually make a point of supporting colleagues within their own caucus when it comes time for re-election campaigns, for several reasons. One reason is just pure karma — no one wants to see their own re-election endangered by an intramural attack. More importantly, majorities tend to be fragile, and a loss of majority means a loss of committee assignments and power. However, that hasn’t stopped some Democrats from suggesting that a few less Democrats in Congress may be just what’s needed. The purity campaign gets a boost from at least one Democratic Representative, and finally we have some basis for bipartisan agreement. However, unlike in the Senate where the numbers overwhelmingly favor the Democrats, the GOP could grab back the lower chamber if the activists get too successful in their campaign to rid the Democratic Party of its moderates and conservatives. At Heading Right, I take a look...
The US has confirmed that Israel did overfly Syria and dropped munitions as Syria had accused. The US remained coy about the nature of the strike and its intended target, but the area in which the strike occurred indicates a push back against weapons transfers to Hezbollah: A US official has confirmed that Israeli warplanes carried out an air strike "deep inside" Syria, escalating tensions between the two countries. The target of the strike last Thursday remained unclear but Israeli media reported that a shipment of Iranian arms crossing Syria for use by the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia in Lebanon was attacked. ... Another theory gaining ground yesterday was that Israel was deliberately attacking the Russian-made Pantsyr air defence system recently bought by Damascus. The sale includes provision for the Pantsyr system to be shipped on to Iran and it is possible the Israeli attack was co-ordinated with America to probe...
Since Alberto Gonzales will clear out his office in four days, the search for a replacement Attorney General qualifies as a high priority. The Bush administration has floated a few names, but reportedly leans toward former Solicitor General Ted Olson -- and already it has generated some heat from Democrats in the Senate: The White House is closing in on a nominee to replace Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, with former Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson considered one of the leading candidates, administration and Congressional officials said Tuesday. Reports of Mr. Olson’s candidacy suggested that President Bush, in choosing the third attorney general of his presidency, might defy calls from Democrats and choose another Republican who is considered a staunch partisan to lead the Justice Department. Mr. Gonzales is departing after being repeatedly accused of allowing political loyalties to blind him to independently enforcing the law. “Clearly if you made...
Last week, CIA director Michael Hayden warned Americans against complacency in the war on terror, as six years have passed without an attack on the US homeland. Hayden worried that Americans may already have regressed to a 9/10 state of mind. Investor's Business Daily conducted a poll to determine whether Hayden has cause for concern, and found out that we remain resolute in our fight against terrorists: • 70% of Americans believe we should not quickly pull out of Iraq o Includes 73% of Democrats (more than the 71% of Republicans) • 69% believe we should increase surveillance of terrorists o 61% believe we should wiretap suspected terrorists without a court warrant • 63% believe we should not release prisoners from Guantanamo Bay IBD conducted the poll between September 4th and 7th, as the nation prepared for the testimony of General David Petraeus and as the Democrats launched their attack...
Today on Heading Right Radio (Note special time: 1 pm CT), Eric Egland joins us to talk about his primary challenge to John Doolittle here in California. Eric served as a military intel officer in Afghanistan and Iraq, and later wrote a book advocating support of the war. I met Eric at CPAC and we'll talk about lots of issues, including the continuing war and how his experience can be put to use in Congress. In the second half of the show, Terry Jones of Investor's Business Daily joins us to discuss their latest poll, which shows that Americans remain determined to beat terrorists and achieve victory on our terms in Iraq. Call 646-652-4889 to join the conversation! Did you know that you can listen to Heading Right Radio through your TiVo service? Click here for the instructions. Also, you can subscribe to Heading Right Radio through iTunes now...
The Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party received warnings that Hsu had a bad record with money as early as June of this year, several sources report, but did nothing to distance themselves from the Hillraiser. Jack Cassidy, a California businessman who recognized Hsu as a shady character, sent messages imploring Democrats to avoid Hsu, to no avail: Hillary Clinton's campaign couldn't explain yesterday why it blew off warnings about felon-turned-fund-raiser Norman Hsu - and the Daily News learned FBI agents are collecting e-mail evidence in the widening scandal. Clinton was forced Monday to give back a whopping $850,000 raised by convicted scam artist Hsu after learning his investment ventures were being probed by the FBI as a potential Ponzi scheme. ... Yesterday, the campaign insisted it did all it should to vet Hsu after California businessman Jack Cassidy warned in June that Hsu's investment operation was fishy. Cassidy...
Three weeks ago, seven soldiers serving in Iraq wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Times outlining their opposition to the war and the new strategy employed by the Bush administration in 2007. Today, Editor & Publisher notes that two of the authors, Sgt. Omar Mora and Sgt. Yance T. Gray, died in an accident in Iraq on Monday: The Op-Ed by seven active duty U.S. soldiers in Iraq questioning the war drew international attention just three weeks ago. Now two of the seven are dead. Sgt. Omar Mora and Sgt. Yance T. Gray died Monday in a vehicle accident in western Baghdad, two of seven U.S. troops killed in the incident which was reported just as Gen. David Petraeus was about to report to Congress on progress in the "surge." The names have just been released. ... The accident in Iraq occurred when a cargo truck the men...
The US military in Iraq has evidence from a rocket attack that they claim prove Iranian involvement in Iraq. The briefing, scheduled for tomorrow, will display the Iranian markings from a missile that killed one civilian and wounded eleven troops: U.S. military officials in Iraq tell ABC News that a rocket used in an attack on coalition headquarters at Camp Victory Tuesday was made in Iran. Officials say the rocket, which narrowly missed its target, was fired from an area of Baghdad controlled by Shia militia leader Moqtada al Sadr. Officials say it landed so close that it shook the windows of the al Faw Palace, which houses the operational headquarters of U.S. forces in Iraq. The top two American military officials in Iraq -- Gen. David Petraeus and Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno -- both have offices in the building. A video teleconference of senior officers was abruptly halted as...
Looking for the perfect scandal name for the Norman Hsu scandal? The connection noted in today's Wall Street Journal gives a perfect opportunity to create an enduring label for the rapidly-expanding scandal behind one of the Democratic Party's biggest fundraisers. The apparent con of Joel Rosenman, the man behind the Woodstock concerts in 1969 and 1994, makes this ... Hsustock! Speaking of music, Hillary Clinton remains tone-deaf about the damage that Hsu's money has created for her and her Democratic allies. After finally announcing that her campaign would return Hsu's bundled donations, Hillary suggested that the recipients return the refunds: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, whose campaign is returning $850,000 in contributions linked to disgraced fundraiser Norman Hsu, indicated Wednesday that donors who contributed that money could donate to her presidential campaign once again. "We're not asking that that be done," she said in a teleconference with reporters. "But I believe...
UC Irvine has touched off a firestorm, thanks to a particularly gutless move by Chancellor Michael Drake in rescinding a job offer for its brand-new law school. Well known liberal law academic Erwin Chemerinsky had accepted UCI's offer and contract to become the first dean -- but Drake told Chemerinsky that "conservatives" had hounded him into breaking the contract: Just days after he signed a contract to become the first dean of UC Irvine's new law school, Erwin Chemerinsky was told this week that the deal was off because he was too "politically controversial." Chemerinsky said in an interview today that UC Irvine Chancellor Michael V. Drake had flown to North Carolina on Tuesday and told him at a hotel near the airport that that he did not realize the extent to which there were "conservatives out to get me." Chemerinsky, one of the nation's best known constitutional scholars and...
September 13, 2007
Like Mark Twain, the demise of the detention center at Guantanamo Bay may have been somewhat exaggerated. The US has transferred nineteen captured terrorists to Gitmo this year, including the latest from Afghanistan. Only identified as "Inayatullah", he admitted to running an al-Qaeda organization in Iran: An Afghan national accused of links with al-Qaeda has been transferred to the US detention centre at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, the Pentagon has said. The man, named only as "Inayatullah", was captured during operations in Afghanistan, a Pentagon statement said. The US military say he admitted being the leader of al-Qaeda in Zahedan, Iran and planned and directed al-Qaeda terrorist operations. ... "Inayatullah met with local operatives, developed travel routes and coordinated documentation, accommodation and vehicles for smuggling unlawful combatants throughout countries including Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan and Iraq," the Pentagon said. Guantanamo Bay serves a useful purpose, whether people want to acknowledge it...
Norman Hsu sent a suicide note to a distribution list of friends and associates before he jumped bail last week. The Wall Street Journal reports this morning that the missives, which arrived via FedEx last Thursday, explicitly warned that he would kill himself over the exposure of his past business practices: Before Democratic fund-raiser Norman Hsu skipped a court hearing and temporarily vanished last week, he typed out a suicide note and sent copies to several acquaintances and charitable organizations, according to people who received it. The one-page note, signed by Mr. Hsu, "very explicitly said he intended to commit suicide," said one of the recipients in an account corroborated by others, including law-enforcement officials. Mr. Hsu also apologized for putting anybody "through inconvenience or trouble," the recipient said. The letter, which began, "To whom it may concern," arrived by FedEx at the addresses of several recipients last Thursday, the...
The German public television channel ZDF recently ran a documentary on 9/11. According to Henryk Broder in Der Spiegel, the program took an unusual approach, but unfortunately one that seems all too familiar now to Americans, and Broder wonders whether people have become too stupid to comprehend objective reality: Everything, as it happens, is relative. Three hairs in a bowl of soup are three hairs too many, while three hairs on someone's head are relatively few. Even the oldest jokes about this theory of relativity, the ones that wouldn't even get a laugh out of drunken fools, suddenly become precious pearls of humor to those who saw Tuesday's ZDF documentary titled "Sept. 11, 2001 -- What Really Happened." Some might say the documentary was relatively harmless compared with the wildest conspiracy theories that have been circulating since the attacks, such as the one claiming that 4,000 Jewish New Yorkers who...
Guns don't kill people -- plantains do. At least they drive grocery-store workers to murderous rage, according to the Orange County Register. One worker stabbed another at the end of a fistfight over how to stack vegetables: Among the piles of plantains and cucumbers at La Carreta Supermarket on Chapman Avenue, the two men stacking produce began bickering about the right way and the wrong way to do their job, police said. The argument became physical and the two men took it outside, throwing punches in the store's parking lot, said Orange police Sgt. Dan Adams. That's when it got ugly. Abraham Marquez, 24, pulled out a steak knife, stabbed his co-worker in the arm, Adams said. Someone driving down the street saw the brawl and called police. Even with shoppers and workers in the store, it was the only call police received about the fight. Marquez ran, leaving his...
You can tell the man who boozes, by the company he chooses ... and the pig got up and slowly walked away. The poem by Clarke Van Ness warns people that they will be judged by the actions of those with whom they choose to associate -- and even a pig has enough sense to walk away from disaster. Hillary Clinton has a big problem with her associates, and it's self-inflicted. Lost in the Norman Hsu shuffle, the news that Hillary has asked former Clinton national-security adviser Sandy Berger to join her campaign should cause even more questions about her judgment and her ethics: The more experienced Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, has relied largely on her husband and a triumvirate of senior officials from his presidency—former secretary of state Madeleine Albright, former U.N. ambassador Richard Holbrooke and former national-security adviser Sandy Berger (who tries to keep a low profile after pleading...
The advertisement accusing General David Petraeus of betraying America got bought on the cheap, the New York Post reports. In a gleeful broadside to their rival newspaper, the Post checked on ad rates and discovered that MoveOn received a 60% reduction from the regular price for a full-page black and white ad. At Heading Right, I argue that the New York Times became a participant in character assassination, and have removed the last feeble fantasies about the objectivity of their publication. The Sulzbergers have to act to rescue the once-significant publication from the train wreck of Pinch's management if they expect anyone to take the so-called Paper of Record seriously in the future. This week, it just descended to the status of fringe-Left rag, and I say that as a long-time reader of the Times. (via Memeorandum)...
Remember when people acted outraged after the collapse of the St. Anthony Bridge in Minneapolis because of the neglect of American infrastructure? We don't spend enough on maintaining what our grandparents bequeathed us, as some poetically put it. Others offered more prosaic and predictable rants aimed at people who oppose tax increases; one Minneapolis crank blamed the Taxpayers League for the thirteen deaths. Had we taken more money from the people, they claimed, the bridge would have received proper maintenance and never would have collapsed, even though no one knows to this day what initiated the disaster. Before we start blaming a lack of money, though, let's take a look at the amount of wasted funds that this Congress approved even after the bridge collapsed: Six weeks after a fatal Minneapolis bridge collapse prompted criticism of federal spending priorities, the Senate approved a transportation and housing bill Wednesday containing at...
The Washington Post reports that evidence of a nuclear partnership between North Korea and Syria has received top-level attention in the Bush administration. In what appears to be a reverse of the problems of 9/11, the data has bypassed much of the intelligence bureaucracy and gone straight to the top: North Korea may be cooperating with Syria on some sort of nuclear facility in Syria, according to new intelligence the United States has gathered over the past six months, sources said. The evidence, said to come primarily from Israel, includes dramatic satellite imagery that led some U.S. officials to believe that the facility could be used to produce material for nuclear weapons. The new information, particularly images received in the past 30 days, has been restricted to a few senior officials under the instructions of national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley, leaving many in the intelligence community unaware of it...
In a war on terror where our enemies seek to infiltrate their way into our nation, why has Congress and the Bush administration failed to secure the border? The 9/11 Commission pointed out the problem three years ago, and despite two decades of promises, we have done little to resolve it. Texas's homeland-security chief confirmed yesterday that the lax controls have allowed terrorists to enter through the southern border (via The Corner): Texas' top homeland security official said Wednesday that terrorists with ties to Hezbollah, Hamas and al-Qaida have been arrested crossing the Texas border with Mexico in recent years. "Has there ever been anyone linked to terrorism arrested?" Texas Homeland Security Director Steve McCraw said in a speech to the North Texas Crime Commission. "Yes, there was." His remarks appear to be among the most specific on the topic of terrorism arrests along the Texas-Mexico border. Local and elected...
Today on Heading Right Radio (Note special time: 1 pm CT), we will have two great guests on the show. First we have Linda Bridges, co-author of Strictly Right: William F. Buckley Jr. and the American Conservative Movement. We'll ask Linda about the insights we can find in her book about the father of the modern conservative movement. In the second half, we'll talk to one of the most important conservatives in office, Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma. Dr. Coburn will tell us about how pork gets a higher priority than bridge repair, and we'll find out what the doctor prescribes in cleaning out the federal budget. Call 646-652-4889 to join the conversation! Did you know that you can listen to Heading Right Radio through your TiVo service? Click here for the instructions. Also, you can subscribe to Heading Right Radio through iTunes now by clicking this link: BUMP:...
Austrian security officials arrested a group of radical Islamists for suspected terrorist activity yesterday in Vienna. These terrorist suspects went high-tech, as their contributions to global jihad appear limited to the Internet: According to information obtained by SPIEGEL ONLINE, one of those arrested is the presumed head of the German-language Global Islamic Media Front (GIMF), founded in fall 2005. Its model was the international GIMF, which came into being sometime around 2002 -- originally only in Arabic -- in order to redistribute al-Qaida material on the Internet. ... Austrian authorities revealed on Thursday their belief that the suspects arrested were in direct contact with al-Qaida over the Internet. According to Erik Buxbaum, Austria's general manager for public security, Austrian terror specialists followed events 'live' while the groups communicated. E-mail traffic was observed, and the group of young Muslims was kept under observation as part of a "large bugging operation" code-named...
The National Republican Congressional Committee has launched a new effort today to connect with GOP voters by engaging on the issues. In their premiere, Reps. John Boehner and Roy Blunt talk about the importance of Iraq for American security. I've posted the YouTube of the presentation: I like the NRCC's approach. It's good to see the Republicans engage on policy in a direct and positive manner, and the minority leadership make good spokesmen for the GOP. We'll keep checking back on Rediscover Your Party as subsequent episodes appear....
I moved out of California almost ten years ago, and besides my family, I rarely miss it. It's not that I dislike the Los Angeles area, but I prefer the pace of Minnesota living. The weather has its ups and downs -- waaaaaay ups and waaaaaay downs -- but it's cleaner, less crowded, and more personable. Certain things just don't transfer, though, and one of them is Dodger Stadium and Dodger baseball. It's been ten years since I've last been to Chavez Ravine, but I'll be going tonight to watch the Dodgers battle the San Diego Padres for the wild-card spot. We have baseball in Minnesota, but as fun as a Twins game can be, there is no better spot to watch a major-league game than Dodger Stadium. The stadium sits in Chavez Ravine like a crown in the hills. It has a spectacular view even without the baseball game....
September 14, 2007
If the definition of insanity is repeating the same actions over and over despite consistent failure, then the American judiciary needs a shrink when it comes to Norman Hsu. Despite having run out on his sentencing for a nolo contendere plea on fraud 15 years ago, and despite having jumped bail when finally brought to justice for jumping bail before, a Colorado judge set a $5 million bail for Hsu: A judge ordered a cash bond of $5 million for Norman Hsu, the shadowy Democratic fund-raiser, after Colorado authorities told the court here that Mr. Hsu might have been involved in another multimillion-dollar fraud investigation involving dozens of investors in Orange County, Calif. The revelation that Mr. Hsu, a fugitive for 15 years in a California fraud case, might be implicated in another fraud investigation came after New York investors learned this week that $40 million they had invested with...
When I first heard that George Bush would address the nation this week after the testimony of General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, I wondered who had made that mistake. The Republicans had put the Democrats back on their heels after the MoveOn debacle on Monday had revealed the low character of their base, and the news from Iraq made their rush to abandon Iraqis just when they had started to fight our enemies look even more craven. Momentum has shifted away from the defeat-and-retreat caucus. Why interfere with that, unless President Bush had a heretofore unsuspected piece of good news that would provide a conclusion that surpassed what Petraeus had to say? Why not let the best voices on this issue resonate a while longer? If President Bush wanted to top Petraeus and Crocker, then he needed enough substance to make it worthwhile -- and he didn't. It's...
The elation expressed by the Russian military over their new vacuum bomb has dissipated. The Russian news service Novosti notes today that the US has a more powerful bomb that goes deeper in the latest in phallus-measuring that apparently has started between Russia and the West (via Memeorandum): The U.S. has a 14-ton super bomb more destructive than the vacuum bomb just tested by Russia, a U.S. general said Wednesday. The statement was made by retired Lt. General McInerney, chairman of the Iran Policy Committee, and former Assistant Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force. McInerney said the U.S. has "a new massive ordnance penetrator that's 30,000 pounds, that really penetrates ... Ahmadinejad has nothing in Iran that we can't penetrate." He also said the new Russian bomb was not a "penetrator." I think this is a slap at Russian manhood, actually. It's the military equivalent of accusing someone...
UC Irvine Chancellor Michael Drake defends himself in the Los Angeles Times today for his firing of Erwin Chemerinsky as the school's first dean for their new law school. He claims that he did not renege on the signed contract a week after signing it because of Chemerinsky's political views, nor did he get pressured by the UC regents, donors, or politicians. So why did he fire Chemerinsky and embroil UCI in a completely avoidable controversy? Incompetence: The University of California at Irvine over the last several months has conducted a nationwide search for the founding dean of our school of law. Last week, I made an offer to Duke Professor Erwin Chemerinsky, an eminent academician, legal scholar and commentator. I subsequently made the very difficult decision that Professor Chemerinsky was not the right person for the dean's position and informed him that we were rescinding our offer and continuing...
Guess who's back in the sights of investigators? Following a theft of sports memorabilia at Palace Station Casino, law enforcement confirmed that they interrogated OJ Simpson in connection to the crime: Metro police confirmed early Friday morning that O.J. Simpson was questioned in connection to a theft at the Palace Station Casino. Police spokesman Jose Montoya said Simpson was questioned about a hotel room break-in at the casino late Thursday night. Montoya said the theft involved sports memorabilia, but offered no further details. Police said Simpson has been released and is believed to be in Las Vegas. Palace Station is a second-tier casino, but a good place to stay anonymous and gamble lightly. I'd say that it's a good place to stay out of trouble, but OJ can't manage to do even that much. And besides, he owes Fred Goldman $33 million -- what's he doing at a casino? Las...
If al-Qaeda hoped to win the Sunni tribes in western Iraq back to their banner, they severely miscalculated in their assassination of Sheikh Abdul-Sattar Abu Risha. Instead of cowing his tribesmen and intimidating them back into submission, 1500 of them defiantly lined the road for his funeral, swearing revenge on AQI: Mourners vowed revenge and perseverance Friday at the funeral of the leader of the Sunni Arab revolt against al-Qaida militants who was assassinated just 10 days after meeting with President Bush in Iraq's Anbar province. ... "We will take our revenge," the mourners chanted along the 10 kilometer (6 mile) route to Risha's family cemetery, many of them crying. "We will continue the march of Abu Risha." ... Many high-ranking officials were on hand for the funeral, including Iraq's interior and defense ministers and National Security Adviser Mouwaffak al-Rubaie. "We condemn the killing of Abu Risha, but this will...
Fox has just published its latest poll, conducted during the testimony of General David Petraeus, and it provides some encouragement to the Republicans. George Bush’s approval ratings have bounced back from their nadir during the immigration debate, but still remain rather dreadful. He still beats Congressional job approval ratings from voters of both parties. Bush has a 37% approval rating, up from 31% in June. Voters in both parties ranked Congress below that -- 34% among Democrats and 35% among Republicans. At Heading Right, I analyze the rest of the poll. The Democrats seem to have successfully painted General David Petraeus as an administration hack, although a plurality believe that the situation in Iraq has improved. Rudy Giuliani increased his lead among Republicans while Fred Thompson scored a post-announcement bump, and Hillary Clinton still has major negatives which could portend disaster for the Democrats in 2008....
MoveOn has found its use of the word "betrayal" so clever, it's extending the franchise. In this case, however, they apply it to George Bush and his plan to stick with the surge until its natural denouement: Just days after the group's political action committee caused a firestorm with a full page New York Times advertisement calling Gen. David Petraeus "General Betray Us," MoveOn has launched another commercial using the "betrayal" theme. But this time the group is firing away at a safer target: President Bush. In an ad titled "Betrayal of Trust" released this morning, MoveOn has scripted a fairly rudimentary commercial that flashes "130,000" several times to reflect the number of troops that will still be in Iraq next summer under Bush's redeployment plan. “He’s given us a sham draw-down plan," said MoveOn spokeswoman Nita Chaudhary. "30,000 troops by next July is not a plan to end the...
Today on Heading Right Radio (2 pm CT), I go to the Undisclosed Location in Orange County to do our Week in Review show from Hugh Hewitt's studios. Both Hugh and Duane "Generalissimo" Patterson will join me -- and later in the day (5 pm CT) I believe I will join Hugh for his Friday evening show. Call 646-652-4889 to join the conversation! Did you know that you can listen to Heading Right Radio through your TiVo service? Click here for the instructions. Also, you can subscribe to Heading Right Radio through iTunes now by clicking this link:...
I hope everyone had a chance to catch our weekly round-up with Duane "Generalissimo" Patterson on Heading Right Radio. We actually ran over our time by about twelve minutes, so be sure to download the podcast. Speaking of which, I know that the iTunes subscription has stopped working, due to a URL change on our podcast RSS feed. I will work on a new iTunes subscription feed, but in the meantime, the correct RSS feed can be found on my sidebar, just below the BlogTalkRadio buttons. Tonight at 5 pm CT, I'll be back in the studio with Hugh Hewitt, appearing on his syndicated talk show. Hugh will have a segment or two with Mitt Romney, I believe, and I'll hang around and talk Pittsburgh Steelers football -- or perhaps a more joyful topic for Hugh. Be sure to tune in. Also, a few bloggers got a chance to interview...
Progressive bloggers delighted in the news that a study in Nature Neuroscience "proved" that liberals had better cognitive and analytical skills than conservatives. The lead author wrote that liberals "tend to be more sensitive and responsive to information," which allowed them more flexibility in their thinking. They also supposedly tend to deal better with informational complexity and more open to change when provided with the necessary cues for it. William Saletan had a look at the study, and at Slate, he rips the wide-ranging conclusions taken from very narrow experiments: Let's take the claims one by one. 1. Habitual ways of thinking. Here's what the experiment actually entailed, according to the authors' supplementary document: [E]ither the letter "M" or "W" was presented in the center of a computer monitor screen. … Half of the participants were instructed to make a "Go" response when they saw "M" but to make no...
September 15, 2007
If UCI has its way, Erwin Chemerinsky and Michael Drake may become the next Billy Martin and George Steinbrenner of academia. Days after firing Chemerinsky, and a few days more after hiring him, UCI has begun an effort to re-hire the legal scholar to resolve the controversy over his dismissal. Also, the Los Angeles Times discovers those who fought Chemerinsky's appointment, and it doesn't quite square with Drake's previous explanations (via Instapundit): UC Irvine officials on Friday were attempting to broker a deal to once again hire liberal scholar Erwin Chemerinsky as dean of its fledging law school, just three days after its chancellor set off a national furor by dumping him. ... An agreement would be an extraordinary development after Chemerinsky contended this week that Drake succumbed to political pressure from conservatives and sacked him because of his outspoken liberal positions. The flap threatened to derail the 2009 opening...
Should non-political publications allow their advertisers to criticize political figures in their ads? Is there a limit of exhaustion to political sniping? And what the heck does George Bush have to do with video telephony? Those questions sprang to Bob Mileti's mind when he saw this advertisement for the Bressler Group's Ojo phone in Appliance Magazine. Putting the word "simple" in large type next to a presumably Photoshopped image of President Bush holding their product, the Bressler Group obviously intends to express the simplicity of its device by implying that even someone as "simple" as Bush could operate it. Actually, I initially found the ad amusing, but wondered why a manufacturer would try to sell a product by annoying 37% of the market (according to the latest Fox poll). Also, why would Appliance Magazine -- which has little connection to politics -- want to leap into the high-tension world of...
UC Davis had invited former Harvard president Lawrence Summers to speak at a board dinner during a visit from the regents on September 19th. After his invitation to speak created a firestorm of controversy on campus, the university disinvited Summers in a process that appears to be gaining ground on University of California campuses (via The Corner): After a group of UC Davis women faculty began circulating a petition, UC regents rescinded an invitation to Larry Summers, the controversial former president of Harvard University, to speak at a board dinner Wednesday night in Sacramento. The dinner comes during the regents' meeting at UCD next week. Summers gained notoriety for saying that innate differences between men and women could be a reason for under-representation of women in science, math and engineering. “The regents' dinners have always been informal, social occasions,” said UC spokesman Trey Davis. “Chairman (Richard) Blum and Dr. Summers...
The leaders of al-Qaeda in Iraq will never run short on enemies, mostly because they hate everybody. Today they issued a statement declaring war on the Sunni tribes of western Iraq, a move that will undoubtedly underscore the folly of believing them to be liberators in the post-invasion, pre-surge period: An al-Qaida front group warned it will hunt down and kill Sunni Arab tribal leaders who cooperate with the U.S. and its Iraqi partners, saying the assassination of the leader of the revolt against the terror movement was just a beginning. ... In claiming responsibility for Abu Risha's death Thursday, the Islamic State said it had formed "special security committees" to track down and "assassinate the tribal figures, the traitors, who stained the reputations of the real tribes by submitting to the soldiers of the Crusade" and the Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. "We will publish lists of...
September 16, 2007
The Fighting Irish have to come up with an explanation of a nightmare start to the 2007 season. Last year Notre Dame got exposed as an overrated football team, but this year they look like they belong in Division I-AA, as they have gone winless in three starts -- and outscored by 89 points. Winless Michigan threw off the schneid in Ann Arbor, pounding the Irish 38-zip: The Wolverines humbled the Fighting Irish, 38-0, today in an unprecedented matchup of major college football's winningest programs -- without a win or ranking between them. Mike Hart ran for 187 yards on 35 carries and scored two touchdowns to back up his guarantee of a victory, and freshman Ryan Mallett threw for three scores in a game that seemed over soon after it began. "I like being in the spotlight. For the wrong reasons? No," Hart said. "Hopefully, we'll be in the...
Monday on Heading Right Radio (2 pm CT), Laura Ingraham joins me to talk about her new book, Power to the People, which hit bookstores this week. It's a page-turner -- a deeply heartfelt book that wants to look for ways in which to get beyond red state/blue state labels and act to build America from the values up. In the second half of the show, we'll talk with House Minority Whip Roy Blunt about the Iraq war and the upcoming battles with Democrats on issues such as spending, taxes, and more. Call 646-652-4889 to join the conversation! Did you know that you can listen to Heading Right Radio through your TiVo service? Click here for the instructions. Also, you can subscribe to Heading Right Radio through iTunes now by clicking this link:...
The US has captured the al-Qaeda terrorist who masterminded the assassination of the leader of Anbar Awakening. Intelligence following the murder pinned it on Fallah Khalifa Hiyas Fayyas al-Jumayli, who got captured outide of a town north of Baghdad: US forces in Iraq say they have seized a suspected al-Qaeda militant believed to have been behind the killing last week of a Sunni tribal leader. Abdul Sattar Abu Risha was killed in a bomb attack in the city of Ramadi, Anbar province, on Thursday. ... The US military statement said Jumayli was also responsible for "car bomb and suicide vest attacks in Anbar province, and is closely allied with senior al-Qaeda in Iraq leaders in the region". American intel has Jumayli at the head of the AQI offensive against Anbar Awakening leaders.announced just yesterday. If true, that indicates that AQI has a real problem maintaining operational security. The ability to...
The Times of London believes that the Axis of Evil just "threw a spoke" after an Israeli attack demolished a joint Syrian-North Korean nuclear weapons project. Sources tell the Times that the attack successfully destroyed the facility and anything inside, as Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sent his nephew to check on the damage: IT was just after midnight when the 69th Squadron of Israeli F15Is crossed the Syrian coast-line. On the ground, Syria’s formidable air defences went dead. An audacious raid on a Syrian target 50 miles from the Iraqi border was under way. At a rendezvous point on the ground, a Shaldag air force commando team was waiting to direct their laser beams at the target for the approaching jets. The team had arrived a day earlier, taking up position near a large underground depot. Soon the bunkers were in flames. Ten days after the jets reached home, their mission...
The Washington Post asks the question at the base of the Hsustock scandal, but comes up with few answers. What did Norman Hsu hope to gain by flooding the zone with millions in contributions to Democrats, especially Hillary Clinton? Where did he get the money at the beginning, before apparently fleecing Woodstock founder Joel Rosenman of $40 million? His investors would like the answers to all of the above: To raise $850,000 for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign in just eight months, Norman Hsu tapped an eclectic group of donors that included wealthy investors in his apparel ventures, hotel shopkeepers, a 96-year-old in a Florida retirement home and an auto-body worker who mistakenly thought he would get a tax break for his political generosity. The Clinton campaign has not yet released any information about the 260 donors whose contributions it is now refunding because they were credited to the...
From the armada of trial balloons floating from the White House the last two days, it appears that the Bush administration has shifted its favor from Ted Olson to Michael Mukasey for its choice to replace Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General. Mukasey had been rumored as a potential Supreme Court pick earlier, and has a solid record as a conservative jurist -- which he'll need after getting Chuck Schumer's blessing: One source close to the White House, describing Mukasey as the clear "front-runner," said Bush advisers appear to have decided that "they didn't want a big fight over attorney general" in the Senate, especially when other qualified candidates are also available. The source said Olson, who represented Bush in the Supreme Court fight over the contested 2000 election, would be seen as "very political," despite his outstanding legal credentials. Another well-connected GOP source, who also spoke on the condition of...
The Fred Thompson campaign has begun answering questions from Captain's Quarters readers as well as those of other blogs. In the first response, Senator Thompson answers this question on tax policy, submitted by Dan J on 9/5: Our tax code is overly complex and it seems people spend more time and money finding loopholes or for compliance than anything else. Several options have been floated for reform. Two that interest me are the Flat Tax and The FairTax Act (HR 25, S 1025). Between the Flat and Fair tax, which do you feel would have a better chance or being enacted and would a Thompson administration make reforming--not applying Band-Aids or allowing more bad re-writes of the same terrible rules--the tax code a priority? Here's the answer: More answers will be forthcoming soon. In the meantime, what's your evaluation of the answer and this process?...
September 17, 2007
Chuck Schumer has begun his rapid retreat from his statements of support for Michael Mukasey. The New York Sun reports that Schumer, who had openly championed Mukasey as a "consensus candidate" to replace Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General, suddenly appears unsure of Mukasey after the White House reportedly settled on the retired New York judge for the nomination: President Bush's choice of Michael Mukasey, a retired judge from New York who has received the support of Senator Schumer, to be the next attorney general signals that the White House wishes to avoid a Senate confirmation battle. Still, it is unclear whether Mr. Schumer is willing to shepherd Judge Mukasey through confirmation hearings whose main topic could shape up to be the politicization of the Justice Department during Attorney General Gonzales's tenure. Mr. Schumer, one of the Senate's fiercest critics of Mr. Gonzales, has long touted Judge Mukasey for a position...
The IDF has ended a seven-year silence on the al-Dura controversy, which countless critics of Israel has used to cast its military as a brutal and inhumane force. It now wants France's Channel 2 to release all of the outtakes from the report, claiming that the video sequence that purports to show the murder of a child was staged by Palestinian propagandists working in league French television: The IDF has abandoned its official silence in a seven-year-old case that has been characterized as a "blood libel" against the IDF and the State of Israel. On September 10, the deputy commander of the IDF's Spokesman's Office, Col. Shlomi Am-Shalom, submitted a letter to the France 2 television network's permanent correspondent in Israel, Charles Enderlin, regarding Enderlin's story from September 30, 2000, in which he televised 55 seconds of edited footage from the Netzarim junction in the central Gaza Strip purporting to...
An American security firm that has become synonymous with private security in Iraq will no longer have permission to operate there. The Iraqi Interior Ministry has revoked Blackwater's license after the fatal shooting of civilians after an attack on a US State Department motorcade. The move may put more pressure on the US military to provide support for such events in the future: The Interior Ministry said Monday that it was pulling the license of an American security firm allegedly involved in the fatal shooting of civilians during an attack on a U.S. State Department motorcade in Baghdad. The ministry said it would prosecute any foreign contractors fou