The Countdown Begins

Folks, we are at T-minus 83 hours and counting until the official release of Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, the final installment in the trilogy directed by Peter Jackson and already considered by many to be the finest epic ever filmed. In honor of such an achievement, I am planning on sacrificing an entire day off at work on the 17th so that I can get in early and see it on the first day of release. Yes, I am willing to eat up a personal day (which I would otherwise lose in exactly two weeks from that date anyway) just for the ability to get in ahead of 95% of the general public -- and also to avoid the crowds of children that may be at the later shows. So far as I know, school is still in on the 17th.

If any of my fellow Twin Cities bloggers have a similar idea and don't mind going to a 10 am showing, drop me an e-mail in the next couple of days, or a comment on this post. You're all invited. I won't even make you pick up the tab, unlike a certain guy over at one of the group blogs. Besides, on his scoring system, I think I'd wind up around -314.

To launch this countdown properly, here's an article on the results of the BBC's Big Read program, which collected votes for the best books in British literature. Over 750,000 votes were cast, and the Lord of the Rings took over a quarter of those. (And Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy wound up in the top 5, which in my mind absolutely validates the entire exercise.) The best part of the article was the effect the contest had on readership.

If I can come up with anything interesting, I'll try to post each day until I see the movie, and on Wednesday I'll post my review.

Deep Thoughts Around The Blogosphere

Tonight I'm having trouble blogging on anything specific, but a number of good bloggers don't seem to be having my problem. Here are a few blogs you should read tonight if you want something significant to ponder ...

For instance, Strange Women Lying in Ponds discusses an article by Leonard Pitts that decries the current generation gap amongst African-Americans. Pitts notes that the current generation of African-American young adults seem to have "no tether to the sacrifices that made their lives possible," and Brant goes Pitts one further, arguing that this applies to this entire generation:

The irony is that because America has essentially achieved nearly every goal of human history -- generations free from want, free from disease, but also FREE FROM STRUGGLE -- young people have been alienated from the very things that make up the stuff of life itself. People have an inherent need to struggle, to strive to overcome nature's daily taunts. ... There is a void in the soul of young people, and all manner of nonsense stands ready to fill it. And what fills it is a sort of nihilism (fed by youthful narcissism) masquerading as struggle.

The Commissar at Politburo Diktat writes a revealing post about the blogosphere itself and its class system. In the Commissar's opinion, there are three levels of blogs, and he discusses his experiences (and his prior persona) in an example of the closed-off nature in the highest-level blogs when he attempted to get a link to his latest blogmap:

The blog-states, eg. Fark and Plastic, are nearly impervious to contact with "outsiders." The Commissar, having looked at the blogs, understood that many of them had Forums that required enrollment. No problem (or so thought the Commissar). He enrolled in Plastic, submitted the Map, and fatuously awaited a flood of Plastic-driven traffic. Wrong. The map was submitted to a queue, where Plastic members evaluated it, and instantly determined that it was not a "Write-Up," but a mysterious "QL." The Commissar was a newbie; he had f*cked up.

Demosophia writes an extensive review of the new HBO miniseries Angels in America and doesn't much care for it. In fact, he views it as an "ensemble lie" that according to Andrew Sullivan intends to perpetuate the tinfoil-hat notion that conservatives attempted to block a cure for AIDS in order to commit genocide against the gay community. The notion that a group of people could get together to do such a thing frightens him:

But the notion that a group of highly talented entertainers can get together and present a drama filled with deliberately manipulative emotional nuance in order to sell a false version of reality is a little frightening. For an example of the corrosive potential of such a project see almost any Oliver Stone movie, especially JFK which sells the travesty of Garrison's destructive and half-insane conspiracy theory (planted by the KGB, according to recently revealed documents) as fact, even though it has been thoroughly debunked and even though the climactic court case resulted in the wrongful conviction and public destruction of an innocent man.

Although I am opposed to the death penalty, Saint Paul at Fraters Libertas writes an interesting argument for having the option available. He quotes from the book Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, from which the TV series Homicide sprang, and surmises that police interrogating Alfonso Rodriguez in the disappearance of Dru Sjodin could use a little more leverage:

Simon’s scenario is one of a suspect who has waived his Miranda rights - which, amazingly, is something most skillful detectives can accomplish with a suspect who’s a non-professional criminal. Although Rodriguez has already lawyered up and has been through the system many times, I think his metaphor of “the Out” remains applicable. But only with a death penalty.

The detectives (or now, prosecutors) can empathize with him. Tell him it wasn’t his fault the state of Minnesota let him free to rape again, and this time to kill. They can tell him they know he’s not a bad person, he just has a sickness that needs treatment. But, the public is in a frenzy, demanding his death. And the only way they can save him, to get him the nurturing and help he truly deserves (sniff), is by getting his cooperation in finding Dru. And if he doesn’t, there’s no way for them to help him avoid the icy fingers of death closing around his throat.

Finally, for a laugh, read this post from a couple of days back at The Cheese Stands Alone. The title is somewhat misleading -- at least the subject matter was not what I thought it might be -- but as LeeAnn notes at the bottom of her post, it could have been a hell of a lot worse.

Chickens Coming Home to Roost?

Dick Gephardt, who may be the only Democrat now running for President with a shot at stopping Howard Dean, takes aim at the Vermont governor and his secret files:

Democratic presidential candidate Dick Gephardt demanded Saturday that front-runner Howard Dean release records of meetings and phone calls about tax breaks given to corporate villain Enron, which Dean denies he did.

Visiting with local Democrats in this town near the North Carolina border, Gephardt alleged that Dean, while Vermont's governor, "met regularly with the corporate chiefs who benefited from the tax windfall he created for them. A chief beneficiary of his tax cuts for corporate special interests was Enron."

Enron is synonymous with evil for the fringe-left, and Gephardt's attack does two things, if successful: it puts a wedge between Dean and his most ardent tinfoil-hat supporters, and it highlights the unusually long seal on his records as governor, which will make the rest of them uncomfortable. It also calls into question Dean's initiative, while governor, to turn Vermont into a tax haven for the richest corporations, another policy that will not endear him to the socialistas. Needless to say, the Dean campaign is not terribly happy about this attack, and is not taking it quietly:

"Just more desperate distortion and negative attacks from Dick Gephardt," Dean spokesman Jay Carson said. "He would rather desperately attack Gov. Dean than talk about his record."

Carson said while Gephardt led House Democrats, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee received $176,000 in unregulated "soft" money from Enron. Gephardt said Saturday the campaign committee raised money from a lot of people, and the reason the Dean campaign knows about it is that the records are open to the public.

Ouch! And let's not get too pouty about distortion and negative attacks, Jay Carson; your candidate is the one who throws around 9/11 conspiracy theories without thinking twice about it. In fact, if it weren't for distortion and negative attacks, Dean wouldn't have any campaign direction. Jon at QandO has similar issues with Dean's reaction:

Cry me a river, Mr Dean. Those are exactly the sort of attacks that you, and every Democratic candidate, have used against President Bush. If Dick Gephardt wants to throw some low blows your way, you'll take it and you'll like it.

Of course, you could take a lesson from it, and raise the level of your criticism. But you wouldn't have much of a campaign left, would you?

Yes, that's just about right.

Underwhelming Irony

Walter Mondale and Zbigniew Brezinski, Vice President and national security advisor during the Carter administration, appeared in the Twin Cities yesterday to speak at Macalaster College, along with William Perry, Secretary of Defense in the Clinton administration. With this line-up, you wouldn't expect a Bush love-in, and you'd be correct:

Former Vice President Walter Mondale accused President Bush on Friday of forcing democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan "at bayonet point" — an approach creating more enemies for the United States than friends and doing little to prevent terrorism.

The administration's policies are at odds with six decades of foreign policy through Democratic and Republican administrations aimed at forming international coalitions to address national security problems, Mondale said. ... "I cannot understand why the current administration believes that throwing all this out the window — to be replaced by what I see to be their radical, unilateral, go-it-alone, in-your-face approach — can strengthen America. I don't see how it can,'' Mondale said. "Their announced doctrine of pre-emption and their policy of dominance frightens our friends and fuels animosity and rage upon which our true enemies rely."

The Carter administration, if anyone cares to remember, helped launch the Islamofascist movement by undermining the Shah of Iran, which allowed the Ayatollah Khomeini to stage a coup that put radical Islamists in charge of Teheran. Later in the same year, this group of "experts" sat around and did nothing but talk when the Iranians committed an act of war and sacked our embassy, holding 53 Americans hostage for 444 days. Until the Taliban took over Afghanistan, the Iranians were the largest sponsor of Islamic terrorism -- in fact, they still probably are. And thanks to the inaction by the Carter administration, it demonstrated the unwillingness of the US to take any kind of action against terrorists or their sponsors, a lesson which we reinforced for 22 years by listening to this kind of advice, until it finally resulted in 3,000 Americans being slaughtered on our own soil.

If it weren't for these men, in other words, our international credibility may not have suffered to the point where terrorists felt free to attack American interests.

I don't recall Mondale excoriating Bill Clinton or William Perry on military action in the Balkans, which Clinton never bothered to bring to the UNSC. In these actions, both Russia and China opposed action, and a UN resolution would have been impossible, but the point is that Clinton never bothered to try. Why wasn't that question addressed to the triumvirate of appeasement?

Furthermore, as I posted yesterday, Bush did work with a fairly broad coalition of nations in the Iraqi conflict, nations which included the UK, Spain, Australia, Italy, Poland, Japan, and over 50 others who lent diplomatic, military, and/or economic assistance. The use of the word "unilateral" is illiterate and ignorant. What they really mean is that we didn't have the permission of France, Germany, and Russia to pursue our national securty interests. Not one of them mentions that these same three countries propped up the Saddam regime and illegally armed him during the sanctions period. Nor do they acknowledge that the Axis of Weasels was never going to agree to remove him while he owed the three nations billions of dollars that now likely won't be repaid.

Mondale and Brezinski represent the failure of American foreign policy to effectively protect American interests around the world, and their approach of doing nothing until a magical and unanimous international consensus approves of action is dangerous and ultimately suicidal.

UPDATE: Big Trunk at Power Line shares my incredulity at this spectacle, discussing an article from our other major daily. Power Line wants his readers to provide ammunition for a response to this partisan attack on the first American foreign policy in 30 years that has effectively confronted terrorism. Be sure to read the entire post and if you blog, add your voice to the protest.

Saudis Scold the Axis of Weasels

President Bush got support for his Iraqi rebuilding contract policy from an unusual source earlier today:

Countries that opposed the U.S. decision to invade Iraq (news - web sites) have no right to protest U.S. initiatives restricting reconstruction contracts to allies, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the ambassador of Saudi Arabia to the United States, said Friday.

Bandar said he thought it was "amazing" that war opponents now "feel they have a right to share in the pie" of reconstruction contracts. He said even more dangerous than terrorists themselves are those who say they condemn terrorism but don't actively fight it.

There is a well-known saying in diplomatic circles that states, "Those who wish to join the feast must help to set the table." Had the Axis merely sat on the sidelines and not gotten involved -- like Canada -- that would be bad enough. But France, Germany, and Russia actively impeded our ability to fight and armed Saddam in defiance of international sanctions, and they fought to keep Saddam in power and maintain his oppressive and genocidal rule. At the end of all that, it's ghoulish to think that these moral midgets would benefit from the sacrifice we and our allies have made in liberating the Iraqis while they sat on their collective rear end and did their level best to see us fail, and are still trying, for that matter.

President Bush is correct. We cannot allow our enemies to attack us without severe consequences. In the same way, we cannot allow our putative friends to undermine us and attack our interests. Otherwise, we will have the same problems with them in the future that our feckless foreign policy of the past 30 years regarding the Islamists has brought us now.

UPDATE: If you want to see what good "friends" the Germans are, take a look at this post at Medienkritik regarding the open operation of fund-raising organizations for the Ba'ath remnants in Iraq:

In the spirit of peace, a number of groups have started a fund-raising campaign entitled “10 Euros for the Iraqi Resistance”. The money will be provided to the Iraqi Patriotic Alliance (IPA) a group dedicated to carrying out attacks against US soldiers in Iraq in collaboration with Saddam loyalists. The common goal is to "liberate” the Iraqi people from the evil imperialist American occupiers. On their website these groups gush with enthusiasm about turning Iraq into another Vietnam for the USA.

Where is the German government who claims to be America's friend? This is open support for terrorist organizations -- and the Germans are supposed to be blocking finances to terrorist groups. Do you want to see your tax dollars going to support German corporations and the German economy when the euros go to groups that are killing our soldiers?

The Definition of Insanity, Part II

This community still has learned nothing about violent repeat offenders:

A 25-year-old Anoka man was sentenced to 27 years in prison this morning for murdering a Minneapolis cab driver last August. Salvador Anthony Pacheco had pleaded guilty to second-degree intentional murder for shooting Mohamed Ahmed Salah in his Red & White cab early in the morning of Aug. 8.

27 years for shooting Salah in the back of the head while Salah was driving his cab. Even if Pacheco serves his entire sentence behind bars, he will get out at age 52, shockingly similar to another violent offender who just reoffended: Alfonso Rodriguez. And if you think I'm stretching the point, what do you think Pacheco was doing a couple of months before blowing Salah's brains out?

Two months prior to the shooting, Pacheco was released from prison after completing a sentence for a gun-related offense in Washington County.

Why is this man not going to prison for the rest of his life? Two months after being released from prison on a previous gun-related offense, Pacheco killed a man who just wanted to work hard and earn some money for his family. Twenty-seven years from now, Pacheco will get out, and I guess we'll have to wait and see how many days he'll take off before he gets back to shooting people again.

After Alfonso Rodriguez' background came to light in the media scrutiny surrounding the disappearance of Dru Sjodin, we all wondered how a man convicted of three rapes, two kidnapping attempts, and assaulting a woman with a knife could ever have been allowed out of prison to escalate his career into probable murder. Bureaucrats involved in Rodriguez's release without an attempt to commit him to a mental institution have received, justly, a great deal of public scorn. Will the same people express the same scorn for the weak and dangerous sentence given to Pacheco?

We have no obligation to release people who have proven their danger to society through repeated sexual assaults and murder. It has nothing to do with rehabilitation or retribution, either; the only issue at hand is public safety. We have an obligation to the Mohammed Salahs and Dru Sjodins to have the freedom to work and relax in public without us populating the area with people who have proven to be human predators looking for human prey.

Rodriguez should have been locked away for life; instead, Dru Sjodin and her family are paying the price for our lack of resolve and our sacrifice of public safety. Pacheco should have been given a life sentence yesterday. Whose family will be asked to sacrifice their daughter or husband on his release? What purpose do you suppose that sacrifice will serve, and does anyone really think that purpose will comfort the family of the victim?

Now the UN is Bugging Out of Afghanistan

During this entire political campaign, we have been told over and over by the Democratic presidential candidates that Bush's failure to allow the UN to control the reconstruction of Iraq dooms the post-war to failure. The US does not have enough legitimacy, according to the Democrats, to implement a peaceful and successful rebuilding of a nation. However, the UN has proven yet again that they are not capable of doing the job -- now they want to abandon Afghanistan, where they are in charge:

The United Nations may be forced to abandon its two-year effort to stabilize Afghanistan because of rising violence blamed on the resurgent Taliban, its top official here warned Friday in an interview with The Associated Press. ... "Countries that are committed to supporting Afghanistan cannot kid themselves and cannot go on expecting us to work in unacceptable security conditions," Brahimi said. "They seem to think that our presence is important here. Well, if they do, they have got to make sure that the conditions for us to be here are there," he said. "If not, we will go away."

Perhaps Wesley Clark, Howard Dean, and other Democrats can explain to us the military strategy of demonstrating weakness under fire; they certainly seem to think it works, since they're insistent that putting the UN in charge of rebuilding is the proper way to handle Iraq. It would seem to me -- a simple observer, not a general with 35 years of experience -- that telling the insurgents that whatever authority is in Afghanistan will pack up and leave after a few more attacks only encourages those few more attacks to come sooner. It's almost as foolish as hiring Saddam's intelligence service as your security force in Baghdad after the war. The sheer ineptitude of saying that the UN is prepared to abandon its mission in a media interview is breathtaking, and demonstrates yet another reason not to trust critical work to the UN.

Now that the UN has botched Afghanistan like it botched Rwanda and Srebrenica, we should demand an answer from Dean, Clark, and Company why we would want them to take over in Iraq. It's time to recognize that this is serious work and only serious people need apply, and the UN should stand aside if all it intends to do is to run away every time things get a little tough. Running away got us where we're at today.

Like Lemmings Over The Cliff

The New York Post has polling results from New Hampshire, and even though the Republican re-election machine has not turned a single gear there, the results are staggering:

Bush gets 57 percent to Dean's 30 percent among registered voters in the American Research Group poll. In fact, Dean, from neighboring Vermont, does worse in the Granite State than a generic "Democratic Party nominee" who loses to Bush by 51 to 34 percent. Another ARG poll this month showed Dean with a 30-point lead over Sen. John Kerry (Mass.) for the Jan. 27 New Hampshire primary, the second test after the Jan. 19 Iowa caucuses.

The new poll seems sure to fuel claims by rivals that Dean would be another George McGovern debacle for Democrats in the general election.

New Hampshire tells the story about the difference between primary voters, who tend to be the true believers, and general election voters, who tend towards the center. If George Bush can get 57 percent of the vote in New Hampshire in December 2003 against a Dean candidacy (51% against any Democrat) without firing a shot, then 2004 looks extremely bleak for Deanies, Dems, and Al Gore. If Al Gore has cinched the nomination for this generation's George McGovern, he is finished in politics, and the left-fringies will be most unwelcome in 2008 for the next Democratic primary season. (Thanks to Power Line.)

Times Follow-Up on Siegman Disappointing

As I predicted in my post last night, the story regarding the meeting between Henry Siegman and Yasser Arafat continues today in the New York Times with very little clarification about Henry Siegman, his motivations, or his past history as an Arafat supporter and associate:

Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, has released a statement saying that he recognizes and respects "the Jewish religion and the Jewish historical attachment to Palestine," in a bid to restore his standing as an advocate of peace after more than three years of conflict. ... Mr. Arafat was said to have made his comments in a meeting last Wednesday in the West Bank city of Ramallah with Henry Siegman, the director of the United States/Middle East Project of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Mr. Siegman provided The New York Times with a summary of the meeting prepared immediately afterward and then translated into English. Mr. Siegman and Saeb Erekat, a Palestinian negotiator who was present, said the summary recounted the conversation. Mr. Arafat approved the summary, both men said. It had the starched quality of an official statement, rather than the feel of a freewheeling exchange.

Siegman's status with the CFR is the only background given (except that Siegman has "known Mr. Arafat for many years"), leaving out the tremendous body of writings that Siegman has compiled -- some of it published by the New York Times itself -- and this gaping omission certainly is at odds with the carefully constructed notion within this story and the AP piece that preceded it that Siegman is some sort of neutral "American Jewish activist" only interested in moderating negotiations. Indeed, this piece makes the communication of the summary seem more like an action with which Arafat reluctantly agreed, rather than the whole point of the exercise.

Again, if Mr. Siegman is the conduit for this supposedly "new" flexibility on the part of Arafat, it would be helpful to readers to know who the man is who has assumed the role of negotiator and what his biases and motivations are. Hiding this information by pretending it doesn't exist does not serve the readers of the New York Times, nor does it ultimately serve the cause of peace for an apologist for terrorism to be portrayed as a partisan for the opposite who is making a noble outreach, as the AP article clearly implies. Mr. Siegman is entitled to his opinions and his positions, of course, but being entitled to opinions does not make your opinions correct or helpful, and in my opinion Mr. Siegman is being unhelpul in the extreme by enabling Arafat's policy of deliberate obfuscation towards the West while Arafat pursues his other policy goal of the annihilation of the Israeli state.

Kinsley: Democrats Between Iraq and A Hard Place

Michael Kinsley describes the Democrats' dilemma in the coming year regarding Iraq in today's Washington Post. It's vintage Kinsley, sneering and mocking towards the Bush administration, but saves it real venom for the incoherence coming from the Democratic presidential candidates:

Among the Democrats, Howard Dean's position is almost coherent. He opposed the war before it started, and he believes it has not turned out well. There is a tiny question of why Dean bothers to have a "seven-point plan" for Iraq instead of just one point: Bring the troops home. After all, Iraq is less of a threat to international order and its own citizens than when Saddam Hussein was in power. If it wasn't worth American lives to improve the situation then, why is it worth more lives now?

It's downhill from Dean. Joe Lieberman probably comes next. He was a strong supporter of removing Hussein by force -- a position consistent with his general worldview -- and yet was prescient in warning, before the war started, about some of the problems everyone points to now. Then come Dick Gephardt, John Edwards and John Kerry. They all supported the resolution authorizing Bush to go to war -- a position with the whiff of strategy about it, given each man's record or lack of it on such issues -- and they all are highly critical of what that resolution has wrought. Trailing the parade is Wesley Clark. His claim to fame is that he supported the use of ground troops in the Balkans. He squandered the non-officeholder's luxury of voting in hindsight on the Iraq resolution by not having his story straight. Meanwhile, he is highly critical of the war as it played out.

Kinsley stresses that the true problem for these leading candidates is their initial support for the war authorization which gave Bush a carte blanche. Even if they insist that the authorization was a mistake, Kinsley says, it points out that they made a tremendous error in judgment, one that by implications renders them unworthy of office. Kinsley sneers about the authorization and its implementation:

But the resolution these gentlemen supported gave warmaking authority to George W. Bush, not to some idealized, all-wise president such as themselves. The resolution did not say, "This authorization to start a war is valid only when used in conjunction with at least two other countries large enough to spot on a medium-sized world map." Nor did it tell Bush to wait until . . . until . . . until when? The resolution gave George W. Bush the authority to decide when the waiting for friends to join in or the foe to back down had gone on long enough. If Bush bungled this authority, entrusting him with it was a big mistake.

This passage demonstrates more about Kinsley's lack of knowledge than Congress' lack of insight. After receiving this resolution, Bush argued for five months to get the UN Security Council to enforce its previous 16 resolutions on this matter, even agreeing to a foolish, last-ditch return of the overblown inspections teams to allow Saddam one last chance at compliance. Only at the last meteorological moment to launch military action prior to Ramadan did George Bush finally give the order that finally initiated action. When action did come, it came with forces from the UK, Spain, Australia, and Poland, and if Kinsley and the Democrats can't spot these countries on "a medium-sized world map," then it explains why Dean hasn't heard that the Soviet Union went out of business twelve years ago.

If you agree with Kinsley that the war in Iraq was a mistake and a failure, then you would have to agree with his conclusion: Dean is the only candidate to lead the Democrats out of the morass. If you think that it was a good idea to liberate 24 million people from a genocidal tyrant that multiple intelligence agencies and numerous sources insist supported terrorist organizations in general and al-Qaeda in particular, then the mistake of these Democrats is not in authorizing the military action, but in pandering to their left wing by running away from their vote.

Further, Kinsley's defeatist hysteria reminds us of the dominating American response to attack over the last three decades: to cut and run whenever we suffered any casualties at all, even in victory. It took several years to pacify, restructure, and launch democratic institutions in Germany and Japan after WWII, and Germany had only been 12 years removed from liberal democracy in 1945. Iraq has never known liberal democracy, and except for Turkey, neither has its neighbors. We never hear an argument from critics that the goal is not worthy; we only hear that the road is too difficult, scant months into the effort. Kinsley and his brethren on the left appear to favor freedom only when it is convenient, and human rights only when it costs nothing. Neither exist under those conditions, a lesson the baby-boomer, TV-movie generation has never understood and probably never will.

UPDATE: Welcome Best of the Web readers! I hope you enjoy the site.

Allah Has Got the Pictures

Allahpundit has pictures of Howard Dean and Carly Simon at a fundraiser, along with a transcript of the conversation associated with each one. What, you don't believe him? Would Allah lie?

Of course not. But maybe Allah would reciprocate a blogroll link ...

UPDATE: Who says prayer doesn't work? Allah has been kind enough to bestow a link upon this blog.

Politburo Diktat: Thomas Friedman, Arafat Mouthpiece?

The Commissar writes an open letter to Ariel Sharon, warning of the same tactic that Yasser Arafat is pushing by stealth, but that Thomas Friedman appears to espouse openly -- the "one-state" solution:

To start, watch out for a certain reporter/worldbeater, friend of Saudi royals, ... da, the anti-zhid himself, Thomas Friedman. ... He and that Palestinian hottie, Diana Butto, are chatting, oh-so-earnestly, about "one state solution." Da! What if Palestinians say, "No problem. Israel exists. From Jordan to Mediterranean. All of historical Palestine. Is good country. We fly Star of David flag over our homes. NOW GIVE US VOTE."

What will happen then? Do you think America would allow the Palestinians to exist within a Greater Israel without a vote? Of course not, and we shouldn't. But what will that lead to? It leads to the overthrow of Israel as we know it, replaced by yet another Arab thugocracy led by Yasser Arafat and his Fatah cronies, and there isn't a thing the IDF can do about it. This, by the way, is the reason that a two-state solution is in Israel's best interests, but only when the Palestinians recognize Israel's right to exist in its present state. The Israelis recognize this, which is why even Ariel Sharon has been willing to meet with a reasonably independent Palestinian Prime Minister.

But if the Palestinians invoke either a one-state solution or the "right of return" and Israel withholds the vote from the Palestinians, Israel will lose American support, and rightly so; we don't cotton to countries who deny a vote to a group of people based on race, ethnicity, or religion. And what would happen to an Israel that loses American support?

But what do you think your Zionist security depends on? Your Fence? Your IDF? Your air force? Your nukes at Dimona?

NO. These are details. Your security depends on Amerika. Take away your Amerikan support, and it is over. We are talking Yad Vashem - The Sequel, "coming soon to a region near yours. Live. And in Technicolor."

You bet that's what will happen. Read the whole thing.

Would You Buy a Used Car from This Man? Or This One Either?

Yasser Arafat hinted at recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, according to a transcription of an interview with Henry Siegman, which this article describes as an "American Jewish activist":

Israel would receive sovereignty over the Western Wall — a remnant of the Second Temple compound — and the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, "because we recognize and respect the Jewish religion and the Jewish historical attachment to Palestine," according to the transcript.

Asked about Israel as a Jewish state, Arafat said that it was up to Israel to define itself, as long as it was democratic and guaranteed the rights of minorities.

Arafat included the reference to democracy and the rights of minorities to appeal to American and EU audiences, but left unspoken the tripping point of refugee return, through which Arafat hopes to establish a Palestinian primacy in Israel. Dore Gold, a Sharon adviser, makes this point in the article.

However, who is Henry Siegman, the "American Jewish activist"?

The AP wire story makes him sound like someone who pursues Jewish interests, as though this interview represented a unique outreach. However, a quick Google search reveals Siegman as an opponent of Israel, as this description on the web site Palestine: Information with Provenance states:

Henry Siegman Author Class: American Jew

Henry Siegman, an American Jew, was born in Europe and had to flee, via Vichy France and Morocco, to the United States. He says that what he went through as a child makes it easier to understand what it is like to be a Palestinian living under the "fear and humiliation" of Israeli occupation.

He is now (2002) a senior fellow on the Middle East at the Council on Foreign Relations, who publish Foreign Affairs.

At this page, this Palestinian support website hosted by an Irish university has a link to a number of abstracts of articles written in whole or part by Siegman. Some of the highlights from these abstracts:

"American Jewish organizations confuse support for the state of Israel and its people with an uncritical endorsement of the actions of Israeli governments," he said, "even when these governments do things that in an American context these Jewish organizations would never tolerate. It was inconceivable that a Jewish leader in America 20 or 30 years ago would be silent if a political party in the Israeli government called for the transfer of Palestinians — in other words, ethnic cleansing. Today, there are at least three such parties, but there has not been a word of criticism from American Jewish organizations. ... This is why I do not look to leaders of Jewish organizations, or to the political leaders of Israel, many of whom are Jewishly illiterate, to define for me the meaning of Jewish identity or solidarity. Classical Jewish sources are a far more reliable guide."

Whenever Americans express opinions about how other countries define themselves and govern their people, they are routinely castigated as imperialist, chauvinist, and/or parochial; if the American is George W. Bush or Ronald Reagan, he is called a cowboy. However, when an American publicly writes, originally in the New York Times, that the political leaders of Israel are "Jewishly illiterate", no one blinks an eye.

As reported by Akiva Eldar in Ha'aretz on November 28, 2000, the statement was made by Ben-Ami in the course of a Cabinet debate over a document prepared by the prime minister's office which purported to catalog a long list of Palestinian transgressions. Ben-Ami opposed the distribution of the document on the ground that no one in the West would be surprised that a people under occupation fails to honor agreements with its occupier: "Accusations made by a well-established society about how a people it is oppressing is breaking rules to attain its rights do not have much credence." ... Indifference to human suffering should not be a litmus test for citizenship in the Jewish state. Israelis, and Jews generally, have been unable to deal with this simple truth. Indeed, deep repression of that truth quickly became so pathological a need that Israelis even resent Palestinian expressions of sorrow and mourning over the disaster they suffered in 1948. Their observance of the Nakba (the Catastrophe) is seen by Israelis—even leftists—as evidence of Palestinian malevolence toward Jews.

The Nabka is seen as provocative because the Palestinians marked the occasion in 1948 to declare war on Israel, along with other neighboring states, and attempted to annihilate the Israelis almost immediately after their sovereignty was recognized by the UN. The mourning is seen as provocative because it includes demonstrations demanding, and providing, terrorist attacks on Israeli citizens. And the first part of this passage demonstrates exactly why Israelis do not trust current Palestinian leadership as negotiating partners; the Palestinians feel unburdened by the need to honor their agreements as Ben-Ami supposedly stated and Siegman concurs. You cannot on one hand urge Israel to negotiate and then excuse the Palestinians from delivering on their promises.

The Oslo accords failed to produce a permanent status agreement for many reasons, but primarily and most importantly because Israel never committed itself to the only goal that could have made possible such an agreement - a viable, sovereign Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza.

No, primarily it failed due to Arafat's refusal to get 95% of what he wanted, instead of 100%. Ehud Barak gave Arafat a once-in-a-lifetime agreement, one that even had it worked would have ended Barak's career, but one that Israel would have honored. Its main defect was that it did not allow for a refugee right of return within Israel, an issue which the Palestinians will not relinquish precisely because they intend to use that to subvert Israel's status through its democratic institutions. Israel knows this; so does the US, the EU, and everyone else, except Henry Siegman.

Not that the people running this web site agree with everything Siegman writes. In an abstract for an article titled "Partners for War", which originally ran in New York Review of Books in January of this year, Siegman states that he wrote Arafat in August 2001, advising him to take three steps in order to assume the moral high ground in negotiations. They were:

1. Present a comprehensive peace plan that would include a statement that a new Palestinian state would not covet "one square inch" of pre-1967 Israel.
2. Offer to accept some Jewish settlements for the exchange of similar land in Israel.
3. Recognize that the "right of return" must be dropped in exchange for alternative compensation.

You will note that Arafat has sometimes mentioned the first, may have mentioned the second, but has never conceded the third point in any negotiations, and today's statement is no different. This does not bother the editors of the site, who include this as commentary at the top of the abstract:

Note what Siegman says were Rabin's views on the Oslo process. Siegman also says he sent a memorandum to Arafat. Do the Palestinians need "friends" who say that racist Israeli considerations should be allowed to prevent the Palestinian refugees taking up their rights under international law to return to the homes from which they were ethnically cleansed in 1948?

At any rate, it is clear from Siegman's prior actions and words that he is not some generic "American Jewish Activist" trying to reach out to Arafat to break a logjam. He is a long-time partner of Arafat, working against Israeli and Jewish interests in the area, even if he himself either doesn't realize it or won't acknowledge it. At least this glowing profile by Ha'aretz by Akiva Eldar of Siegman acknowledges his long-standing ties to the Palestinian Authority leadership and his status as "a welcome visitor in Ramallah, Riyadh and Cairo." That status and his close working relationship never made it into the article from the AP It doesn't make it in the version that appeared on the New York Times' web site this evening, either.

Does this mean that Siegman is wrong? In my opinion, yes. Now that I know his background, I can get a clearer idea of what this story means. In the two years since Siegman gave Arafat those three points, Arafat still can't get himself to commit to any of them, even in an interview set up by Siegman. Without the background, the AP attempts to spin the story into a major breakthrough, while it is anything but. This is another reason why the Internet and its resources are invaluable to anyone who wants to stay truly informed.

Dodgers to Ship Brown to Yanks

Imagine my surprise when I found out -- via Hugh Hewitt -- that the Dodgers were about to close a deal with the Yankees to trade ace starting pitcher Kevin Brown:

The Dodgers agreed to trade pitcher Kevin Brown and his $15-million salary for next season to the New York Yankees for pitcher Jeff Weaver, two minor leaguers and $3 million in cash, major league baseball sources said today. ... The deal would give the Dodgers the financial flexibility they lacked the last few seasons. Hamstrung by Brown's salary, the Dodgers were unable to upgrade a punchless offense last season and failed to make the playoffs for the seventh consecutive season.

Fox made Kevin Brown baseball's first $100 million man, a label he never really lived down in five seasons with the Dodgers. When he was healthy, Brown was brilliant in his surly, intense way. However, he only stayed healthy for most of a season last year, and his brilliance wasn't enough to offset the Dodgers' chronically anemic offense. His $15 million annual salary in years 6 and 7 shadowed their attempts to bring high-powered free agents to Los Angeles.

Somehow, though I think that trading Brown at this point and freeing up the money isn't a bad idea, I doubt that the Dodgers will greatly improve their offense. For some reason, the Dodgers have a perpetual problem generating runs. Even during their last championship in 1988, they were the Improbables, with an offense that may have had trouble with AAA clubs. They won on a combination of brilliant pitching, good defense, thin but timely hitting, and the will of three legendary men: Kirk Gibson, Orel Hershiser, and Tommy Lasorda. After watching the Dodgers the last couple of seasons, the only one with that kind of legendary will on the team was Brown, and now he's gone.

If the Dodgers go shopping in the free-agent bazaar this off-season, they need to find more than just a good batting average; they need to find a clubhouse firebrand, maybe more than one, who can ignite and inspire a team to play above their abilities, to scratch out runs where none exist, and to throw down no matter who they're facing. 25 varieties of LA laid-back will get them exactly where they've been the last few seasons: watching the Giants and the Diamondbacks on TV in October.

UPDATE: I corrected a line to read "good defense" rather than "good offense" in the 4th paragraph. Mea culpa.

France Settles Executive Life Claims - Again

France has agreed in principle to yet another settlement in the Executive Life criminal lawsuit, one sore point among many between France and the US:

Negotiators from France and the United States have reached a $760 million settlement in principle with United States prosecutors over charges related to the failed California insurer Executive Life, French officials and lawyers involved in the negotiations said today. The settlement, which both sides hope to complete by Monday, involves both a federal criminal investigation as well as a civil lawsuit filed by the California insurance commissioner, who is seeking damages to compensate policyholders of Executive Life.

As I posted earlier on this topic, I lost a small sum of money in the Executive Life collapse. At the time, Honeywell (my employer) had invested a significant amount of its retirement and 401k accounts in this company, and when it went under, we all felt the pinch. As I recall, it resulted in changes to Honeywell's investment strategies, both in direction and personnel involved.

The blog Risk posts on this topic today, giving more background on the case and an explanation of the potential impact of a settlement for its victims and the players in the scandal. (It also links back to my original post.) I may be seeing a small amount of money -- very small -- if this settlement is secured.

Wireless City, USA

Every Captain has a home port, and this Captain's hometown has decided to be the first wireless city in the nation:

CERRITOS, Calif. - Browsing the Web from this Southern California city may soon become an outdoor sport.

The first phase of a project to establish citywide wireless Internet access is slated to begin next month. Ultimately, anyone with a laptop or wireless device will be able to surf the Web from virtually anywhere in the city's 8.6-square-mile area.

When my family moved to Cerritos in 1970, it was a small town on the fringe of LA that consisted in large part of dairies ... with lots of cows ... that you could smell from everywhere, it seemed. During the real-estate boom in the 70s, the dairies all sold out for development and Cerritos is now a thriving, upscale neighborhood where I couldn't afford to live if I cloned myself three times over. Across from my old high school (go Dons!), where a pasture used to be is now a megaplex of retail shopping, theater, and hotels.

Cerritos has long pursued a policy of early adoption of technology. The library, also across from my old high school, was one of the first nationwide to use RFID to manage its inventory and automate the check-out process. Well before any other community, Cerritos installed fiber-optic cable for an experimental cable TV/telephone system from GTE, which was supposed to deliver movies on demand and digital telephony. In fact, this system may have been the reason Cerritos was not able to adopt any other high-speed Internet access technology:

The 51,000 residents of Cerritos, located 26 miles southeast of Los Angeles, have not had DSL broadband access to the Internet because the city is too far from the telephone company's central office. Cable Internet access has not been an option, either, Hylton said.

City-wide WiFi is just another way in which the Captain's hometown keeps innovating, and I wish them the best of luck in its implementation.

Lá Breithe Sona Duit a Mitch!

Go wish Mitch Berg at A Shot in the Dark a happy birthday. He's apparently four months older than me, which means he's ancient.

Let's Play "Spot the Media Bias"

Steve Gigl at Helloooo Chapter Two! alerts his readers to the following story from the AP, reprinted in the Star Tribune with the following headline:

Driver hit while talking on radio call-in show in SUV

Steve Gigl adds:

Does "in SUV" tacked on the end there supply any useful information? To say it differently: do you lose anything by just reporting "Driver hit while talking on radio call-in show?"

No, it doesn't, but note that it does associate four "evils" of the Left in one story:

* driving, instead of using public transportation
* SUVs, the new epitome of conspicuous consumption
* using cell phones while driving
* talk radio

When this came across the wire, the news desk at the Strib must have tripped over themselves rushing this to print with the superfluous mention of the SUV. Only when you read the article do you read that she had pulled over to the side of the road to make her call, and was in fact struck from behind. What you won't read is that being in the SUV probably saved her life or kept her from more serious injury (she was hospitalized in stable condition, which indicates that the accident was more than a fender-bender).

Volokh Conspiracy Posts on SCOTUS Campaign Reform Decision

The Volokh Conspiracy, one of the best lawblogs in the blogosphere, has a series of interesting posts about yesterday's decision to uphold major sections of the McCain-Feingold reform laws. Eugene Volokh supported the restrictions on soft-money contributions, but not the free-speech restrictions on corporations and labor unions:

Rehnquist and O'Connor switching sides: I tentatively think the Court's decision on soft money contributions was probably correct, or at least quite plausible. As I've argued before, I do think that contributions (as opposed to independent expenditures), should be more subject to restriction.

I think the Court was wrong, though, to uphold restrictions on business corporations' (and some nonprofit corporations') and labor unions' right to express their support or opposition to candidates. There's a precedent for this -- Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce (1990) -- but I think that it was mistaken, largely for the reasons Justice Scalia mentioned in that case, and that the Court was mistaken to extend it.

The problem, as he notes in a later post, is that most entities are corporations -- including the media:

So far, the restrictions on corporate speech related to campaigns have excluded the media, at least as to some of its functions ("news stor[ies], commentar[ies], or editorial[s]," in the BCRA statute that was just upheld). But (1) it's not clear why some corporations should have more statutory speech rights than others, and (2) these exemptions from the media are, under the Court's logic, matters of legislative charity; legislatures could, if they wanted to, restrict newspapers, TV stations, and cable programs owned by corporations just as they restrict speech by other corporations.

I made a comment in yesterday's post on this subject that the only entities that can now legally run a targeted message in the final days of an election are newspapers and other media outlets, and that this gaping oddity would keep the media happy; after all, who wouldn't like to have the last word in an election guaranteed by the Supreme Court? But Justice Thomas, in his dissent, also foresees an end to this privelege:

The chilling endpoint of the Court's reasoning is not difficult to foresee: outright regulation of the press. None of the rationales offered by the defendants, and none of the reasoning employed by the Court, exempts the press. "This is so because of the difficulty, and perhaps impossibility, of distinguishing, either as a matter of fact or constitutional law, media corporations from [nonmedia] corporations."

Media companies can run procandidate editorials as easily as nonmedia corporations can pay for advertisements. Candidates can be just as grateful to media companies as they can be to corporations and unions. In terms of "the corrosive and distorting effects" of wealth accumulated by corporations that has "little or no correlation to the public's support for the corporation's political ideas," there is no distinction between a media corporation and a nonmedia corporation.

Be sure to read Eugene's entire post on this subject and the entire Thomas excerpt. Finally, Eugene noted that the decision in this case came it at a whopping 90,000 words -- longer than most novels -- and challenged readers to give a specific example of a longer SCOTUS decision. So far, only one has met the test:

Tim Sandefur, though, tells me that the Dred Scott case (1857) was over 100,000 words, not counting the arguments of counsel.

Of course, the Dred Scott decision famously, if regretfully, ruled that the "Negro" had no rights which white men were bound to respect and returned a runaway slave to his owner. It seems to me that word count may have a direct relationship with the amount of rationalization it takes to subvert constitutional concepts.

Leaving The Kids With Dad Is An Improvement?

When I first heard this story, I thought that the police had handled it properly, but then I read it a bit closer:

Four young children and the teenage baby sitters who reportedly took them were found safe inside a South Minneapolis apartment building Tuesday afternoon. Police returned the children to their joyous father around 10:45 p.m. The teenagers, however, faced possible kidnap charges, police said.

The children were returned to their father, and the teenagers have been arrested. A happy ending, you say? Ah, but then you missed this, like I did at first:

Addison had last seen his children Sunday morning as he headed off to church. He left them in the care of longtime baby sitter Benetta Daidii and her friend, Elisha Harris, both 13. The girls lived doors apart in their South Minneapolis neighborhood.

He maintains he made the right decision to leave his children with the pair despite the fact the two were runaways and had taken refuge in his home for the weekend [emphasis mine].

Are you starting to question the father's judgment a bit now? How about the fact that the four children in question were 5, 3, 2, and 1 years old? Would you leave four children that young in the care of any two 13-year-olds, let alone two 13-year-old runaways? If you're still inclined to give Daddy the benefit of the doubt, read on:

Saturday morning the pair began cleaning the house and helping with the children, he said. The girls took the children to McDonald's with his permission, but then took off to the Mall of America, returning about midnight with the children.

An angry Addison scolded the girls. He told them they would need to return to their families Sunday. He had notified Benetta's grandparents, her primary guardians, of her whereabouts and told them she had taken off with the children.

On Sunday morning, the teens weren't ready by the time Addison decided to go to the service. When he returned at 3 p.m., no one was home. By 9 p.m., he called 911 and explained to the dispatcher what had happened and told her he thought they might have gone back to the Mall of America. She told him to talk with Mall of America security.

When he didn't hear from them early Monday, he called 911 again.

So Daddy has the two dear runaways sitting the children on Saturday, and they promptly run off with the children until midnight. Four children under 5 out until midnight with a couple of runaways. When they bring the children home, Daddy tells them that he's going to tell their families where they are and that they will have to go home, but in the meantime, can you watch the kids again?

Either this man is terminally stupid or those girls have something on him. In either case, why would they leave the four kids in his custody? I shudder to think who their next babysitter will be. Michael Jackson?

You Wouldn't Read This in the Strib

Joe Soucheray writes an excellent article about the odd way we handle sexual predators, both specifically in Minnesota and in general:

Ever since Rodriguez was arrested for his possible involvement in Sjodin's disappearance, we have all learned a great deal about Level 3 sex offenders. That's what Rodriguez is. When you reach his level, it means you are likely to commit another sex crime. Imagine that.

No other criminals get their own levels. There are no Level 1 ticket scalpers as opposed to Level 3 ticket scalpers. There are no Level 3 bank robbers, or Level 1 purse snatchers. And yet, when it comes to sex offenders, we give them levels.

We do attach levels to criminal actions; there are different classes of felonies, for example, although I couldn't tell you what the thresholds are. Felons themselves are not given levels, as Soucheray states, except sex offenders. Why do we do this? Because it makes it easier for them to be released back into our community, that's why. There's Bob. He groped young girls on their way home from school, but it's OK that he's working at Abercrombie and Fitch because he's just a Level 1 sex offender. Yes indeed, I feel much safer now.

My solution is simpler. I wouldn't have any levels, and the people who dreamed up levels in the first place would have to seek legitimate employment. If you commit a violent sexual act against another, you go to jail for life. End of story. I don't want to hear about troubled childhoods because the guy was thrown out at second base in an unfair play when he was in second grade.

I don't want to support an entire industry made up of unwise do-gooders who obviously aren't doing any good. Rape is rape. Knifepoint is knifepoint. Accept no excuses. Go away for life.

Joe tells it like it is in the Pioneer Press, in an article we wouldn't see in the hard-left Star Tribune. Read the whole thing, and not just because he agrees with me. Read it because it's the truth.

Burn All the Flags You Want -- Just Don't Speak

Conservatives profess a love for literal interpretation of the Constitution; liberals call for a conceptual interpretation; but I don't know who came up with the idea that the Constitution means everything except what it explicitly says. However, the Supreme Court has upheld major provisions of the McCain-Feingold Campaign Reform act:

A divided Supreme Court upheld the broadest restrictions on campaign donations in nearly 30 years Wednesday, ruling the nation is better off with limits on the financial influence of deep-pocket donors even if money never can be divorced from politics.

Rooting out corruption, or even the appearance of it, justifies limitations on the free speech and free spending of contributors, candidates and political parties, the court said in a 5-4 decision.

After decades of unusual behavior being recognized as "speech" and freed of all reasonable restrictions -- like nude dancing or burning flags, for example -- the Supreme Court has ruled that Congress can restrict the rights of people and groups to commit actual political speech! You know, I could have sworn I read somewhere that Congress isn't allowed to pass laws restricting speech ... hmmm ... where was that?

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

I guess that five members of the Supreme Court didn't manage to find that in the Constitution. Too bad, maybe they would have changed their minds. Sounds pretty convincing to me, as it did to Justice Antonin Scalia:

"Who could have imagined," Scalia wrote, that the same court that gave free-speech protection to tobacco advertising and sexually explicit cable TV shows "would smile with favor upon a law that cuts to the heart of what the First Amendment is meant to protect: the right to criticize the government."

So, if you find yourself with some free time on the day before Election Day, here's a few fun, SCOTUS-approved activities you can do to keep yourself involved:

* Dance naked in public
* Make porn movies in college classes (except in NY)
* Burn 1000 flags
* Burn 1000 crosses

Just don't -- whatever you do -- take out an ad in a newspaper or television discussing a candidate's voting record. Then you are an enemy of the state, unless you happen to own the television station or the newspaper; if so, just call it an editorial and you're a true-blue American patriot.

Bet you don't see a whole lot of newspapers arguing that the Supreme Court made a mistake on this one.

UPDATE: Power Line has an interesting post about this decision. Hindrocket notes that the Democrats will be the biggest losers in this election cycle, and wonders why SCOTUS justices frequently seem to become more activist during their tenure. In my opinion, it's an old story: power corrupts.

Captain's Quarters On the Air Tonight

Hugh Hewitt has invited me to comment on last night's Gaffney-Norquist debate tonight on his show. I'll be joining other noteworthy bloggers giving commentary and perspective on this issue. Make sure you tune in to hear what I sound like (and try not to be too disappointed when I don't sound like Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean, OK?).

If you don't know where to find Hugh's show, here's a roster of stations nationwide that carry it.

UPDATE: I had a blast on Hugh's show. If you didn't get a chance to hear me, the show may be replayed later, but I can't find anything on that so far. (If you're in the LA area, KRLA will replay at 8 PM PST.)

My impressions of my first time on the air as a featured guest ... My experience started with Scott Johnson, the Big Trunk at Power Line, e-mailed me that Hugh wanted to have me on the air tonight. I had read the same thing on Hugh's site, but since I hadn't appeared on Hugh's show before, I didn't know how to get in touch properly. Scott was kind enough to get me the phone number for Duane, Hugh's producer, and chat with me for a while. I called Duane shortly afterwards to make the arrangements, and Duane was very helpful.

I rushed home, and spent the drive thanking God traffic was improved over yesterday. After I told my wife about the invitation and the arrangements, she told members of our family and a few friends so that they could listen in. (Nothing like having your family in the audience to make you feel reeeeeeeeeal calm.) After I got home, I reviewed my blog entry and the Gaffney article, and Duane called right on time. I was put on hold for a couple of moments while Hugh was preparing to go live, and just like that, I was on the air.

Hugh was gracious and enthusiastic in his introductions, endorsing the blogosphere as, I believe, the new intellectuals that are revolutionizing the political process, and then asking us questions regarding our blogged reactions to the Gaffney/Norquist debate. Fortunately, Scott went first, allowing me to collect my thoughts a bit more, and then Hugh asked me about my reaction. If you had a million dollars, I probably couldn't tell you what I said, but I believe I discussed a different aspect of my reaction than I had posted last night. I know I shamelessly mixed metaphors (links in a chain morphed into bricks in a building), but other than that, I don't think I did too badly.

Hugh alternated between Scott and myself, allowing us to talk at length, never interrupting us or cutting us off, which I found surprising for the tight time format radio requires. I can't speak for Scott, but I felt like Hugh gave us plenty of time for responses to very well-crafted questions. In what seemed no time at all now, our segment was over and Duane's friendly voice was back on the line, encouraging me to go out and blog away.

In short, I had a blast. I hope Hugh and Scott did too, and all of you who listened.

After I got off the phone, I called around looking for reviews. I asked the toughest critics I could find ... my wife, my mother, my father, and my son. (I'm not stupid, after all.) Everyone loved the show -- I may have expanded Hugh's audience! -- but the best part was when I called my son. He said the topic had him a bit lost as he hadn't heard the debate we were discussing, but he also told me that my 18-month-old granddaughter, the Little Admiral, was listening -- and she recognized my voice!! That's the best review I've heard so far.

Can't wait to do it again! If you heard the segment, please leave me a comment to let me know what you thought.

The Northern Alliance

I'm honored and somewhat stunned to note that Captain's Quarters has been added to Hugh Hewitt's Northern Alliance blogroll in his latest reorganization. As you probably know, I am a long-time fan of Hugh's columns and his radio show, especially when I get caught in scenic drives on the way home from work, like I did last night.

I don't listen to a lot of talk radio because I find that a great deal of it is shrill and annoying, and even when people don't make a habit of screaming into a microphone, they still tend to get childish and demeaning. Hugh keeps his focus on facts, which is no surprise if you read him in the Weekly Standard, and at the same time makes his show very entertaining. Hugh has a great sense of humor, which is more than people can say about so-called comedians on the left these days (for instance, Janeane Garofalo).

If you want an example of how well Hugh manages his show and keeps it focused on facts, you have no better opportunity than tonight when he replays his Gaffney-Norquist debate. If you don't have the show in your area, listen through the Internet via his web site.

Fresh Buggy, er, Bloggy Goodness

The new Carnival of the Vanities is up at Signal + Noise, and this time I remembered to send something in! The host blogger usually comes up with a new way of organizing the entries, and Chris is no exception. He has creatively used the insect world to assign categories to posts. My post, I Am Angry, is listed under the "pugnacious North American hornet" category ... cooooool!

I'll post more about the various entries and link back to them later on ...

Axis of Weasels Aren't Preferred Providers

Surprise, surprise! The Defense Department doesn't want to contract with French, German, or Russian companies in the rebuilding of Iraq:

France, Germany, Russia and China -- countries that strongly opposed the U.S.-led war in Iraq -- are not on a Defense Department list of countries eligible to compete for $18.6 billion worth of contracts for the reconstruction of Iraq.

Countries that either participated in the Coalition effort in the war or supported it -- including Britain, Australia, Spain, Italy, Poland, Turkey and Japan -- are on the list, which was in a memo posted on the Pentagon Web site Tuesday.

Be prepared to hear a whole lot of blathering from leading Democrats on this issue for the next few weeks, demanding that the Bush administration quit insulting our "friends" and to quit making the list unilateral. However, if they do, the Bush administration can point out that 63 countries are on the approved list, including a number of Arab countries.

Procurement specialist Prof. Steven Schooner from George Washington University said it was "disingenuous" to use national security as an excuse and predicted an angry reaction from those nations excluded.

"This kind of decision just begs for retaliation and a tit-for-tat response," said Schooner, according to Reuters.

Didn't these countries made enough money supplying the apparatus that oppressed the Iraqis? I don't really care if they're angry; they couldn't be counted on to assist us anyway, especially France. Besides, I somehow doubt that the Iraqis really want to have Saddam's enablers around to "help" them. France, Germany, and Russia have been "helping" the Iraqis into mass graves for years now. If they feel differently, the Axis of Weasels can deal directly with the Iraqis in July, but somehow I think their standing will not have improved much by then, if at all.

UPDATE: Go see QandO for Jon's take on this. He makes an excellent point about power politics, and let's not forget, we didn't start that game.

Al-Qaeda Suspect Arrested in Minneapolis

A suspected associate of Zacharias Moussaoui, and apparently he's talking:

Authorities in Minneapolis on Tuesday arrested and jailed a man suspected of associating with the Al-Qaida terrorist network and having knowledge of some of the activities of Zacarias Moussaoui, a law enforcement official said.

The official said the detainee has confirmed some of investigators' suspicions about Moussaoui, who was arrested while learning to fly a Boeing 747 jet at an Eagan flight school two years ago and now is the subject of the only U.S. prosecution related to the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

The jailed man, whose name was withheld, has described Moussaoui's activities at an Al-Qaida training camp in Afghanistan several years ago, the official said.

So far, the arrest has been kept pretty lo-profile. The suspect's name does not appear on the list of prisoners being held at the Minneapolis jail, and his arraignment proceedings were sealed. We may not know a lot more for a while about this mysterious operative, but we know the investigations are far from over, and unfortunately they are close to home.

Grover Norquist and Frank Gaffney, Grudge Match?

Hugh Hewitt moderated a debate this evening that was a lot more illuminating than that of the Democrats. Hewitt hosted Frank Gaffney and Grover Norquist, the latter of which was one of the subjects of the former's article in FrontPage.com's new article, A Troubling Influence. The article delineates in great detail the extent of the influence that radical Islamists have had on conservative circles, including but not exclusive to Grover Norquist. I haven't read the article in detail -- I plan to do so over the next day or so -- but I had read stories about the article and I was familiar with the general themes. The accusations are deeply disturbing. As Power Line capsulizes it:

The thesis of Gaffney's article is that Norquist has worked on behalf of, and together with, an American fifth column of Islamists and Islamist organizations. According to Gaffney, Norquist has successfully sought to turn his political connections to the advantage of these Islamist individuals and organizations.

In an odd way, not having read the article, I felt like I had a better perspective on the debate itself. Instead of calibrating arguments in my own head based on my knowledge of the material, I was forced to listen in the moment and try to make a judgement based on detail and presentation. Both men communicate well and obviously have public-speaking experience, and so neither had a technical advantage over the other. Hugh tried to keep both men focused on facts, reeled them in when they started to wander into personal ad hominem attacks, and forced them to answer critical questions that seemed to be avoided.

In my mind, Frank Gaffney clearly spoke with more conviction and more factual presentation than Norquist. Norquist started off the debate by challenging Gaffney to come up with "just one" specific charge, and Gaffney continually responded during the one-hour segment with specifics. Norquist, however, never acknowledged Gaffney's presentations. He would start off after each charge by saying something to the effect of "I appreciate the opportunity to refute this" or "Journalists have looked into this and found nothing." I find that type of approach a bit annoying after the third or fourth time; it's a mannerism that allows the speaker to gather his thoughts while he tries to continue holding the mike. Norquist, who had to have read the article (he said he had), should have been prepared for Gaffney's charges and had responses ready.

By the end of the segment, Gaffney had made several specific charges regarding Norquist's association with people such as Sami al-Arian and other known Islamists with ties to terrorist groups or charity front groups, and Norquist was left decrying Gaffney's attacks on his "patriotic" associates and insisting that people read his web site, as if an organization's web site substitutes for an independent investigation. At one point, he accused Gaffney of writing the article to raise funds for Gaffney's organization, implying it was bankrupt.

It seemed to me that of the two, Gaffney kept his arguments to factual statements, ones that could be refuted or affirmed by indepedent investigation, while Norquist's arguments deteriorated almost exclusively into passive-aggressive personal attacks, such as, "I ask everyone I know why Frank says these things about me, and no one can understand it," or "All Frank had to do was call the White House and ask," or "I was just 100 feet away from Frank, and all he needed to do was ask me." Gaffney focused on facts and in so doing revealed questions about Norquist's motivations; Norquist focused on motivations and made himself seem much more suspicious. If Grover Norquist intended to dispel suspicions about his motives and his character, he failed miserably.

Hugh Hewitt will replay the hour-long debate in its entirety tomorrow night in his third hour.

Grand Forks Sheriff: Dru Sjodin Not Likely Alive

Following the release of the affadavit unsealed by the court in the disappearence of Dru Sjodin and the arrest of Alfonso Rodriguez, the sheriff's office appeared to have given up hope of finding the young woman alive:

Hopes of finding a missing college student alive faded Tuesday, as authorities confirmed a finding of her blood in a suspect's car and revealed that they had found one of her shoes near the Red Lake River. .... Grand Forks County Sheriff Dan Hill said he thinks it unlikely that she is alive.

"I certainly hate to be discouraging to the family or anyone, but it looks to me now that it's more of a recovery mission than a rescue,'' Hill said, in an interview with The Associated Press.

Sjodin's mother, Linda Walker, said family members were "outraged'' by Hill's assessment.

Maybe it's just me, but I hardly think it helpful to tell people that Dru is likely dead, and it's unnecessarily hurtful to a family undergoing something akin to a water torture. If I was her parent, I'd be outraged as well. It certainly calls into question the sheriff's motivation in cancelling searches as was done earlier this week.

However, a look at the evidence does point to the worst possible conclusion:

* DNA match between blood found in Rodriguez' car and sample from Dru's toothbrush
* Dru's shoe found by the river
* Distinctive knife found in car matches sheath found nearby Dru's last known location
* Rodriguez lying about his whereabouts at the time of the abduction:

An affidavit unsealed later Tuesday had a major new piece of information: Rodriguez's account of his whereabouts at the time Sjodin disappeared from a Grand Forks mall parking lot. According to the affidavit, Rodriguez told police he had been at the Columbia Mall that afternoon, and saw a movie, "Once Upon a Time in Mexico,'' at a theater near the mall until 7 or 7:30 p.m. Police said the movie wasn't shown at any theater near the mall that day.

This is the criminal mastermind that the brain surgeons in our state decided wasn't an exceptional risk to release back into society. Let me stress again that this idiot was released in May. He couldn't go six months without involving himself in another attack, and this time the only thing we've found of the girl is her blood and one of her shoes.

Stories like this led to California's three-strikes rule, where a third felony conviction results in a minimum 25-years-to-life sentence. The existence of sexual predators like Rodriguez, whose family even knew better than to release him, requires a similar option in Minnesota. For all of the death-penalty debate that's currently going on here, it would have been a moot point if Minnesota had done its job and protected Dru Sjodin and the rest of our young women from monsters such as Rodriguez.

Must we wait until the monsters learn to kill the witnesses before we put them away for life?

Around the Blogs in 80 Seconds

Another of those linkfests for when I only have a few minutes at lunchtime ....

First off, I've blogrolled Fresh Bed Goodness, another fine Minnesota blog. She recently linked over to my post abound abandoned infants, and she also has some thoughts on the same subject. Check her out.

Hugh Hewitt sent me an e-mail earlier informing me that my third task is to have my picture taken while giving a Hummel to James Lileks. Hmmm. I'm thinking that James is probably already on red alert, looking for lunatics holding Hummels. This will take some thought and cunning, which is difficult for a jack-booted thug. (I'm sure you understand.) More on this later, but on his blog, Hugh wonders if the Democrats will make Dean apologize for his outrageous accusation that Bush had advance knowledge about 9/11 and failed to act. I somehow doubt that such a request would come from these regularly-scheduled hatefests; perhaps Lieberman or Gephardt, who seem to be the only two adults in the room, may speak up.

Jon at QandO is unhappy with Dennis "Most Eligible Platform" Kucinich. Can't say as I blame him.

The Sophorist has a post about a new group forming in opposition to PETA that's about to go all George Soros on their collective vegan a**. He's got links to the ads, too. I'll have to check those out when I'm not at work (it's all about the bandwidth here.)

Susie at Practical Penumbra wants you to vote for Ambient Irony over Captain's Quarters at the Wizbang Weblog Awards ... and she tracked back to here to tell everyone to do that. Hmmm. Fair's fair, and now I'm tracking back to her post to tell everyone she's wrong. (Although, to be fair, AI ain't a bad choice, folks.) Speaking of which, I notice that Captain's Quarters seems to be stalled at 5 votes, but QandO is at 8. Don't forget to vote! Twilight Cafe wouldn't be a bad choice, either.

Venomous Kate hurt her back and is taking some time off. Drop her a note to say "get well soon."

Cayankee doesn't get it. Neither do I.

More later ...

Bad Medicine at NIH?

The Los Angeles Times reported on Sunday that several key people at the National Institutes of Health have received consultatation payments from pharmaceutical companies that call their impartiality and integrity into question:

"Subject No. 4" died at 1:44 a.m. on June 14, 1999, in the immense federal research clinic of the National Institutes of Health. The cause of death was clear: a complication from an experimental treatment for kidney inflammation using a drug made by a German company, Schering AG.

Among the first to be notified was Dr. Stephen I. Katz, the senior NIH official whose institute conducted the study. Unbeknown to the participants, Katz also was a paid consultant to Schering AG.

Katz and his institute staff could have responded to the death by stopping the study immediately. They also could have moved swiftly to warn doctors outside the NIH who were prescribing the drug for similar disorders. Either step might have threatened the market potential for Schering AG's drug. They did neither.

This has been going on since rules were changed in the mid-90s.

While pharmaceutical companies routinely do their own valid research, the co-opting of NIH scientists seems troubling to me. the NIH is supposed to be impartial. As the story says later, NIH scientists are among the highest-paid government employees, so it isn't like these researchers can claim poverty. Now two members of Congress would like some answers:

Two congressional leaders on Monday called upon the director of the National Institutes of Health to account for all payments that drug companies have made to researchers at the federal agency over the past four years.

The leaders — Reps. W.J. "Billy" Tauzin (R-La.) and James C. Greenwood (R-Pa.) — said that their letter was in response to articles in Sunday editions of the Los Angeles Times detailing millions of dollars in consulting fees and stock options paid by companies to NIH employees.

Read the whole stories.

Weblog Awards Recognize CQ, Friends

Patterico's Pontifications alerted me overnight that the 2003 Awards at Wizbang have added Captain's Quarters to their newest and last category, Most Egregious Blogs -- er, no, sorry, that's Most Egregious Omission! This category recognizes those blogs that were overlooked in the initial nomination process.

Nor does the good news end there. The nominees include a number of CQ friends, including QandO, Twilight Cafe, Molotov Cocktail Frank, Jennifer's History and Stuff, and a bunch of other good blogs as well.

A big thanks to those who put in a good word, especially DC at Brainstorming. Vote early, vote often!

Wizbang Weblog Awards: My Ballot

Wizbang has the 2003 Weblog Awards polls open, and now's the time to get in (while the lines are short!). I'm not amongst the finalists, is mór an trua é, but I've only been blogging for two months now, too. I'm using the awards to take a look at some blogs I haven't yet seen yet, and so far I'm pretty impressed. What was it that Groucho said about not belonging to a club that would have him as a member? I think I'm understanding that now.

I'll post my selections for each of the categories below. As not all polls are yet open on the Wizbang site, I'll probably do a few at a time, and then update this one post as I go along. I'll move it to the top of the blog every time I update. Feel free to leave me comments about my selections, especially about how brilliant and perceptive they are. Of course, if you disagree, make sure you go to Wizbang and counteract my votes with your own...

Best Overall Blog - Power Line. There are some fine blogs on this list, but not only do I believe that the commentary is top flight, the design is outstanding as well.

Best New Blog - Electric Venom. No surprise that Allah Is In The House is running away with this one; it's a great blog. I've been having a lot o fun at Venomous Kate's, though, and I can't believe that she's only started this year and has over 275,000 hits!

Best Group Blog - Power Line again. This was an even tougher choice; Oxblog, Samizdata, and Volokh Conspiracy are all terrific too.

Best Foreign Blog - The Dissident Frogman. It was a tough choice between DF and Merde in France, who is enjoying a slim lead over an excellent Tim Blair at the moment.

Best Humor Blog - The Politburo Diktat. This was actually the first category I voted in. Hail the Comrade Commissar!

Best Looking Blog - Sugar White Sand. Beautiful background and colors. Thoughtprints was also impressive.

Best Female Authored Blog - Meryl Yourish.

Best Liberal Blog - Amygdala.

Best Conservative Blog - Hugh Hewitt. I'm hoping this is the dreaded third task. Interestingly, he's running just ahead of Instapundit for second place behind Andrew Sullivan. I don't know if I agree with the idea that Instapundit is a conservative blog -- I think Glenn is more independent than conservative.

Best Media/Journalist Blog - OpinionJournal's Best of the Web, without question.

Ecosystem Awards

Higher Beings/Mortal Humans - Lileks. (I actually screwed up my vote on this one, but that's my choice.)

Playful Primates - Electric Venom. I got to cast the first vote in this category!

Large Mammals - Roger L. Simon. Practical Penumbra was a close, close second.

Marauding Marsupials - Unbillable Hours. This was a virtual tie between this one and The Cheese Stands Alone, both of whom I think are outstanding. I think the mascot made the difference for me, or at least his name.

Adorable Rodents - Earthly Passions. This was another virtual tie with the Patriette. Read both, vote for one or the other. You may need a coin flip. Patterrico's Pontifications also deserves a look. LATE BREAKING UPDATE: Give a look to Yale Diva; it's a stylish and fun blog with a great sense of humor.

Flappy Birds - Clarity Amidst Chaos. You'll have to read through his comments to find out why. Blogrolled, too.

Slithering Reptiles - Anticipatory Retaliation. Check out the visitor map!

Crawly Amphibians - Fringeblog. I warn you, this is a minority opinion.

Flippery Fish - The Swanky Conservative, a well-designed blog. It should be moving up the food chain after this!

Slimy Molluscs and Below - AllGuiness. Anyone who names his blog after God's greatest brewed drink gets my vote.

Most Egregious Omission - You could vote for Captain's Quarters, or QandO or Twilight Café. Actually, there are a number of blogs in this category that I've blogrolled before, and any of them would be a good choice. (But hey, vote for me anyway!)

You can voteevery 12 hours, so if you're caught between two or three deserving candidates, you can split your vote. I believe the polls are open until Friday night. I'll post the results when they lose!

DNA Evidence in Dru Sjodin Case: PD Sources

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reports in tomorrow's edition that the police have matched the DNA of the blood in the suspect's car to Dru Sjodin:

A preliminary DNA analysis of blood found in Alfonso Rodriguez's car matches DNA taken from a toothbrush belonging to missing North Dakota college student Dru Sjodin, two sources close to the investigation told the Star Tribune on Monday.

They and a third source close to the investigation confirmed Monday that investigators had found a knife in Rodriguez's car in a search conducted on Nov. 28, the day after Thanksgiving.

Someone close to the investigation wants to let people know that they have the right man, although the evidence is sealed at the moment. That may change later this week after a judge reviews a motion to vacate the seal order. The leaks may complicate efforts to bring Rodriguez to trial, but that's not what everyone is worried about at the moment. They want Rodriguez to tell the police where Dru is at, and they also want the public to know that he's the one responsible:

All three sources expressed frustration that the evidence had been sealed, sparking rumors and the leaking of bits and pieces of incomplete and occasionally incorrect information. "This should have been out a long time ago," one of the sources said. "People have been panicking and afraid to go to the mall. Their lives have been put on hold."

The DNA match is not the only new evidence to be leaked to the media, either. The knife that was found in the car has been matched to the sheath found at the mall where Dru was believed to have been abducted:

The knife found in Rodriguez's car belongs to a sheath that comes in a set, one of the sources said. The sheath was located early in the investigation near Sjodin's car, which was parked near the entrance to the J.C. Penney store in the Columbia Mall. ... The sheath could only belong to a particular knife sold exclusively in a home improvement store in Grand Forks as a set, one of the sources said. "So the person who dropped this sheath had the knife." ...

A knife matching the knife that authorities knew went with that sheath was found when Rodriguez's car was searched. It was taken for processing by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, which made the preliminary DNA match a few days later, the source said.

It will just be a matter of time, I suspect, before Dru is finally found. What a nightmare for her family and friends, and what a waste of a young life. For more on my feelings about this, please read this.

Somewhere in Washington, Karl Rove is Delighted

Former VP Al Gore has decided to endorse Governor Howard Dean:

Former Vice President Al Gore (news - web sites) will endorse Howard Dean (news - web sites) for the Democratic presidential nomination Tuesday, a dramatic move that could tighten Dean's grip on the front-runner's position and usher more support from wary party elite.

As stated several times in the article, this all but assures Dean of the nomination. While I highly doubt that Al Gore is anywhere near as popular with his party as the writer would have you believe -- let's not forget that this was the man who couldn't carry his home state when he was running on eight years of prosperity and relative peace -- he's correct about the effect of this announcement on the media, which inexplicably still thinks he's a man of political substance. He's not a man who stands by his friends, even those who stood by him, as Joe Lieberman found out tonight:

In choosing Dean, Gore bypassed his own vice presidential pick in 2000, Sen. Joe Lieberman (news - web sites) of Connecticut, who is struggling in his bid to capture the nomination. Lieberman even waited until after Gore made his decision last December not to run before embarking on his candidacy. ... Lieberman spokesman Jano Cabrera said Gore did not tell the Connecticut senator about the endorsement, which Lieberman had sought.

Lieberman, who stood by Gore during the long, nightmare aftermath of the 2000 election and who even waited for weeks before campaigning this year to see if Gore would run again, doesn't even merit a telephone call from his former running mate. Sorry, Joe. You get to find out about it from the media, like everyone else. Don't call Al, he'll call you. What a pathetic and detestable way to treat the Senator from Connecticut.

Why is Gore endorsing Dean now, instead of waiting to see how the Governor handles himself in the primaries? Hugh Hewitt discussed this on his radio show and web site (scroll up) and concluded that Gore wants to set himsef up for 2008, after the inevitable Dean meltdown, and lay claim to Dean's leftist following. Paying the Clinton wing back for real and imagined slights was another possibility. Hugh thinks that Gore can deliver the African American vote, but wouldn't the Clintons be better at that? (Gore will do better than Dean, but that's not saying a whole lot.)

I don't buy the idea that Gore is making Machiavellian moves for a run in 2008. First, Gore could have run this cycle if he wanted; Democrats practically begged him to do so, and Lieberman made a fool of himself waiting on Gore's decision, especially in light of today's events. After blowing what should have been a walkover in 2000 and going refusenik in 2004, Democrats will not be excited to see him return from the dead for the 2008 cycle. Second, if Dean's candidacy turns out to be a McGovern-like implosion, those leftists that Gore covets will be persona non grata for the next few election cycles, George Soros' money notwithstanding. They will be positively radioactive. All he will have succeeded in doing is driving the party into the Clintons' wing. Of course, if Dean wins by some miracle, then 2008 will be a re-election campaign and Gore (and Hillary) will have to wait another four years.

No, I think Gore harbors a grudge against the centrist Democrats, the realist, DLC wing associated with the Clintons, and he thinks that he can translate his popular-vote success in 2000 into a similar result in 2004, thus depriving Hillary of her only realistic shot at the White House (in eight years, she's old news) and assumes the role of party kingmaker, and likely DNC chairman, as Hugh also predicted. Gore has gone more radically left since the last election, or more accurately has become more honest about his leftist views, and should feel at home with the Deanies. As a presidential candidate, he's done. As kingmaker, he's taking his big shot.

Just wait for him to claim the invention of the Internet campaign for himself, though.

UPDATE: Power Line is less than impressed with Gore's treatment of Lieberman, too. And Jettison at Blogs for Bush describe the Gore endorsement as the start of the 2008 Hillary campaign.

Howard Fineman Rips the Other Howard

I swear to you that this will not be the Anti-Dean blog, but the man just gives so much material that it's hard to keep up with it all. On MS-NBC, Howard Fineman writes a splendid and pointed article on Dean's adventures in truthtelling, in this example regarding the closed files of his governorship (via Instapundit):

Dean’s public reaction to the mini-furor was revealing. When Matthews asked about the records, Dean—with a straight face—came up with this defiant howler: He had had the records sealed not to protect himself, God forbid, but to protect the privacy of HIV-AIDS patients. I think Chris was too stunned to laugh. As it turns out, the identity of such patients is automatically shielded; and, of course, Dean had long since gone on record with the refreshingly candid admission that the advent of the presidential campaign was the real reason. Politicians never seem to get the concept of irony: Here is a guy who is running on the notion that he is a fearless, truth-telling outsider, and he’s covering up the reason for covering up.

Dean campaigns furiously, in both senses of the word, and his fury has a sense of self-righteousness that opens him easily to charges of hypocrisy. This mini-crisis started out small, but he managed to blow it up into a big deal by accusing Bush of sealing his records as governor (false, although Bush tried) and then laying the blame off on AIDS patients, of all people. That should be, especially to the leftists that swarm to Dean's anger and self-righteousness like mosquitoes to a wide-open door, an appalling and insensitive bit of excuse-making.

Earlier, in January, Dean had acknowledged that he had the files sealed for political considerations during an interview on Vermont Public Radio, “Well, there are political considerations. We didn’t want anything embarrassing appearing in the papers at a crucial time in any future endeavor.” Fineman notes:

What about the interview last January, in which he talked about “future political considerations?” Said Dean: “That was sort of a smarty remark. I mean I wasn’t really being very serious about that.” Memo to the governor: When you speak to us from now on, please tell us when you are being serious and when you are merely making another “smarty remark.”

Perhaps the Governor will be good enough to inform us all when he's being serious, because thus far, the only time we can tell he's lying is when his lips move. Fineman finishes by talking about Dean's professed admiration for Harry Truman:

As for the original terms of the agreement to sequester his records, “I didn’t have anything to do with those negotiations,” Dean explained. Hardly a tough-guy answer, and an ironic moment. Just the night before, on “Hardball,” Dean had called President Harry Truman—the guy with “The buck stops here” sign on his desk—one of his heroes. It’s hard to imagine “Give ‘em Hell Harry” saying “I didn’t have anything to do with those negotiations.”

Top 10 Howard Dean Flip-Flops

One aspect of Howard Dean's appeal supposedly rests on his rock-solid convictions and penchant for truth-telling. However, as the Carpetbagger Report noted in September, this does not represent the Howard Dean reality:

Yet, despite these examples, I would argue that Howard Dean has flip-flopped more times, on more issues, than any of the Dems running for president. It's a continuing problem that may ultimately come back to haunt his campaign. In fact, it's so bad I decided to make a list.

I'm not talking about Dean's mistakes or apologies. I don't care that Dean mysteriously called Latin America "the most important hemisphere in American history" last week. It's easy to overlook the fact that Dean, when asked last month if he supported gay marriage, said, "I never thought about that very much." It may not matter that Dean said Saddam Hussein's fall from power is "probably a good thing" earlier this summer. No one will remember that he falsely accused John Edwards of avoiding talk of his support of the Iraq war before an anti-war Dem audience in California.

Carpetbagger Report, which pointedly is no fan of the current administration, then gives Dean a thorough fisking. I don't want to repost the entire article, but here are a few highlights:

6. "Regime change" in Iraq

In March, before the U.S. invaded Iraq, Dean sounded a lot like Bush on the possible war, suggesting that disarming Saddam Hussein, with or without the United Nations, should be America's priority.

According to an interview with Salon's Jake Tapper, when Dean was asked to clarify his Iraq position, Dean said that Saddam must be disarmed, but with a multilateral force under the auspices of the United Nations. If the U.N. in the end chooses not to enforce its own resolutions, then the U.S. should give Saddam 30 to 60 days to disarm, and if he doesn't, unilateral action is a regrettable, but unavoidable, choice.

When the U.N. chose not to enforce its resolutions, Bush followed Dean's position and launched a unilateral action against Iraq.

Since then, Dean has held himself out as someone who has opposed the war all along.

As I posted earlier, Dean's truth-telling leaves a lot to be desired. Now his supposed rock-hard convictions look an awful lot like convenient political positions, although I would say that point 5, Cuban Sanctions, I'd give him the benefit of the doubt after Castro's brutal crackdown on dissident; that changed a lot of opinions, a re-evaluation that was long overdue on the left. Make sure you read the entire post. Hopefully, the Carpetbagger Report will maintain access to this post. (via FratersLibertas)

Recognition -- of Sorts -- at Fraters Libertas

Hey, I'm a jack-booted thug! Thank God, I found out ... my feet were killing me, and now I know why. Apparently my Vogon poetry touched a nerve over at Fraters Libertas, and now they've built another coalition to stop Hugh Hewitt from ... doing something. What do I know? I'm just waiting for the mysterious third task, like any other good jack-booted thug. So far, their alliance consists of such luminaries as Mr. Cranky, Infinite Monkeys, and Puzzlestud. Ed Asner is apparently standing by to act as a mascot, albeit a surly, egotistical one that reeks of Hai Karate. It's enough to make this thug nervous, uff da.

While you're checking out their nefarious schemes, check out this post on their site as well. If you can think of anything sillier than a Catholic school using the beautiful but nihilistic song "Imagine" in a memorial service -- Imagine there's no heaven -- I'd like you to leave me a comment describing it.

The Death of Hope, on the Shores of Lake Pepin

Another dead baby has been found abandoned in Minnesota.

I don't need to post the details of this poor child's short life and tragic death, only to say that the baby only lived between one and five days and was abandoned on the shore of Lake Pepin. I don't need to do so because the details, such as are known, are depressingly familiar: the corpse of the baby is found by strangers, abandoned as garbage, with the usual call from authorities for information about the mother so that the child can be identified and the mother treated by professionals. When the mother is found, probably a frightened teenager, she will have a heartbreaking story of fear and hopelessness that will mitigate the barbaric abandonment of her infant child. The litany has become a complete process of its own.

Impending childbirth may be the most hopeful event of our human existence. The potential of the child to make a difference in the world is bound only by imagination. No matter what circumstances into which a child is born, that child can move mountains. Think about the people who have made a difference, just in recent history, such as Martin Luther King, Mohandas Gandhi, and Nelson Mandela. Bill Clinton rose up from a poor and broken home to become the leader of the free world, a remarkable achievement whatever you think of his politics.

So what happens for a young person to have no hope at all when faced with an unplanned pregnancy? While the litany above seems to be the same, the mothers themselves come from different circumstances; some fear their parents, some fear abuse, some fear the future, and I can certainly understand why. Having children under the best of circumstances can be daunting. Giving birth alone and unsupported exponentially magnifies the fears. But many couples wait years to adopt babies, wanting nothing more than to provide a loving home to children whose birth parents cannot support them under their present circumstances. And Minnesota hospitals allow birth mothers to leave newborns up to three days old in their custody, no questions asked.

Why do these mothers opt to abandon the child under circumstances where death is inevitable?

I doubt that it's a purposeful choice, but instead it's borne out of despair, of utter hopelessness. The mothers do not think of the child as such, nor do they think of the potential joy and hope that the child represents. All they can see are the obstacles, the recriminations. In its way, it is a type of sickness, but it's neither physical nor necessarily mental; it's a spiritual sickness, being cursed to only see despair and death. It springs from the culture of nihilism and materialism, where life itself is irrelevant because it is essentially hopeless in and of itself. If we all end up dead anyway, what difference does this child make?

If only they understood how precious and sacred that life is, if only they could know the hope that child will represent to her family once they are over the shock -- or failing that, the hope that child would represent to a childless couple who only want the chance for hope. If only they had hope for themselves, they would have hope for their children.

Find the mother, yes, certainly, and take whatever steps are necessary under the law to prevent these tragedies in the future. But in the meantime, pray for her. While you're at it, make sure your children and others whose lives you touch understand that hope exists and that obstacles can be overcome. Tell them that whatever the circumstances, they can come to you and you will help them, putting aside judgments and recriminations until and if they are appropriate. Only death is the end of the world. Everything else is just life, and where life exists, so does hope, if you know to look for it.

Let this child be the last.

Dean's Fiscal Conservatism: Fiction?

Jon at QandO has an excellent post deflating -- a bit -- the idea that Howard Dean is a tax-cutting conservative. He quotes from this Boston Globe article:

On the campaign's website, Dean is even more specific, saying that his two cuts reduced the state's top income tax rate from 13.5 percent to 9.5 percent.

But an examination of Dean's record as Vermont's governor has found that the bigger tax cut was in fact signed into law by his Republican predecessor, Richard Snelling. In 1991, Snelling signed legislation authorizing higher tax rates that would "sunset" two years later. Dean, then lieutenant governor, took over after Snelling died, and the rates dropped automatically at the end of 1993.

While the section of Dean's website on his fiscal record highlights his role in eliminating the sales tax on clothing items, it omits the fact that the overall sales tax was raised from 4 percent to 5 percent during Dean's tenure.

Governor Dean did sign in the second of the two tax cuts, which lowered the base rate to 9.5%, but I wonder if the added one percent on sales tax balanced that out. At any rate, Vermont residents are not convinced of Dean's "conservatism", even among Democrats. The Dean campaign referred the reporter to former state Senator and party leader Peter Shumlin, who had this to say:

"Factually, you are correct. He didn't have to sign a bill to sunset the income tax. But he had to sign a bill to keep the other ones up," said Shumlin in a reference to Dean's support for a hike in the sales tax.

Indeed, Shumlin said he is still angry with Dean for raising the sales tax, putting Vermont at a disadvantage with New Hampshire, with no sales tax. "I am still enraged," said Shumlin, who nonetheless is supporting Dean's candidacy. "If Howard Dean had agreed with the Democrats, we would have reduced the sales tax on the working poor and kept in place the high income tax on those who can afford it. It is the same argument he is making against [President] Bush, frankly."

Jon, in his post, mentions that Vermont is ranked 12th in state tax burden by the Tax Foundation. The article also states that Vermont residents pay 10.1% of their income in state and local taxes, which seems pretty high to me. Comparatively, New Hampshire residents pay 6.6%. For a family with an income of $50,000, this amounts to $1750 difference -- enough to put a down payment on a car, or a good chunk of money to save for college education for the kids.

Lastly, Dean makes a lot of noise about the supposed dishonesty of the Bush administration, and Bush's opponents have screeched with abandon every time they find an inconsistency from the White House, no matter how small or ridiculous it may seem (remember the "fake turkey" issue last week?). Here you have Governor Dean taking credit for a tax cut enacted by his predecessor simply because he didn't reverse it. Where's all the screeching from these lovers of pure, unadulterated truth now?

A Few Thanks to Friends

I just took a quick peek at the comments Wizbang's new awards category, Most Egregious Omission, and I see that Patterrico and DC have put in a good word for me! Thanks to both -- I think the category goes on line tonight, so we'll see if I'm included. If not, I'm sure that we'll get a chance to see a number of good blogs who got left out the last time. (Jon at QandO should be among them!)

Thanks again! Hmmm .... maybe I should buy a Karl Marx lunchbox for both of them ...

Hewitt: Dean Lacks Seriousness

Hugh Hewitt doesn't think much of Howard Dean or his campaign, but then again, that's no surprise. Hugh writes extensively today on his blog about the false sense of singularity amongst the Deanies:

The Dean people are too young to know what a rel "movement" looks like. This is a nice campaign, one likely to capture the nomination and get swept aside in a landslide for an incumbent President backed by a booming economy, significant legislative achievements, and a serious commitment to national security.

At the close of business in November, these warriors of December '03 will look at each other with blank or dazed expressions. They never saw it coming. Because they never read a book on campaigns past.

Just read the whole thing and remember this when you keep hearing about the "historic" nature of the Dean campaign.

Opus: A Bad Idea?

A while back, I posted about the return of Berke Breathed to the comics page with Opus, an extension of the popular character from the seminal and brilliant Bloom County comic strip of the 80s and early 90s. So far, I haven't had a chance to see any of the new stuff from Breathed, but if you read this review from uBlog, I haven't been missing much:

The bad news: it's terrible. Somebody said "witty" and Breathed heard "brittle." They beamed "This is a landmark opportunity" and Breathed came away with "Make it ham-handed flummery." I keep thinking about the Sex Pistols' late-90s "reunification" tour, the first of several nostalgia-reapings: Q. Mr. Lydon, why are you and the other sexagenarian Pistols on the stage again, performing full-throated anthems about fatalist nihilism to fans one-third your age? A. Eh, what's this about rebellion? We're here to nick the last bob out of your back pocket, mate.

Well, it's just one opinion, but it's certainly disappointing. The reviewer has already given up on the strip, preferring to purchase old Bloom County books instead. I wish I could get my hands on one of the new strips to see for myself. Anyone else have any insight on the Return of Opus?

UPDATE: I had a chance to see today's Opus while I was out at Panera having dinner, and I didn't think it was all that bad. It was on the same level as Outland, which in my mind is no compliment. It was a bit too dark, except for the penultimate panel, but the topic itself was pretty standard Opus-dream fare from before. Hopefully, Breathed will take this out of Outland territory sometime soon.

Joe Candidate: The New Series from DNC-TV

It looks like Dennis Kucinich is going to get lucky. Cleveland.com is reporting that a 33-year-old stalwart Democrat beat out 79 other hopefuls to land a date with the long-shot Presidential candidate:

After weeks of suspense, Don Juan presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich snagged a date yesterday with Gina Marie Santore, a 33-year-old Democratic party loyalist who currently works for the sheriff of Camden County, N.J. Santore used Internet politicking skills to defeat 79 others who tried to win a date with Kucinich through the Politicsnh.com Web site. She said she was drawn to Kucinich's "attractive platform," more than anything else.

His "attractive platform"? Well, I've seen his picture, so I'd have to think it was his platform she found attractive, although Lord knows, this bald 40-year-old doesn't have much room to talk. The article details that the two are considering Indian food when they get together.

Power Line gets a shot in by reminding us that Bill Clinton used his office to meet chicks, but hey, at least Kucinich isn't married. I just wasn't aware that one of the major duties of campaign workers was to arrange blind dates for their candidates. You would think that they would have more important matters on their minds at the moment, but then, no one else is taking Kucinich seriously, either.

UPDATE: Yale Diva has a humorous take on this as well, and has the same skepticism about finding someone's "platform" attractive. Sounds like what your mom would say when she sets you up with someone.

Breaking the Microsoft Jones

Yesterday I decided to take a radical step: I downloaded Mozilla and installed its browser and e-mail client.

I've used Microsoft Internet Explorer and Outlook for years now, and I've been pretty happy with both overall. Lately, though, I've been frustrated with the security holes in Outlook and its mail interface, and pop-up ads in IE have been driving me nuts. I'd heard that Mozilla addressed both of these problems, so I'm giving it a try.

So far, I'm impressed. The mail client isn't as feature rich as full-blown Outlook, but it matches up well with Outlook Express. I wish it managed signatures; right now you have an option to assign just one to an account, rather than being able to insert from a selection of signatures. It alerts you when new e-mail is on the server but it doesn't automatically download it for you. That may be an option, but I haven't played with it enough to know yet.

The browser isn't too bad either, and has a couple of nice features. First and foremost, it allows you to block pop-up windows. No more lock-ups from badly programmed ads (take that, Orbitz! mwa-hahahahaha!). Instead of opening multiple sessions of the browser, you have the option of opening tabs in one session instead. This is nice when you want to go clean out of your browser when you alt-tab on your desktop. Java scripts seem to run a bit better, too.

On the other hand, the browser doesn't always display sites as well as IE. For instance, your comrade and mine at the Politburo Diktat has done a great job designing his site as a two-column blog. For some reason, Mozilla displays the right column below the left column. I'm assuming that the problem is one of resizing columns that are hard-coded to a certain width. IE must be able to override the hard coding, where Mozilla doesn't, or at least that's my guess. Also, I still have the normal upgrade issues of remembering all my passwords that I've allowed IE to manage for me, but that's hardly Mozilla's fault.

If anyone has any insight into these issues -- or any others I may come across -- drop me a comment. I'll report back as I find more out about Mozilla.

A Day That Might Live in Infamy

Today is the 62nd anniversary of Pearl Harbor, and I was curious to see how it would be addressed by the media, especially now that we're a couple of years past 9/11, this generation's Day of Infamy. So far, it's pretty difficult to find anything without using site search engines. Not many papers are featuring Pearl Harbor stories on their main web pages.

In our area, we have two major dailies. The Star Tribune has four paragraphs -- four! -- on the anniversary. (Don't strain yourselves, folks.) They also reprint a superficial AP article by Matt Sedensky . This is the Sunday edition; there's plenty of room for more insight than this.

The Pioneer Press does a better job; they have a few articles on Pearl Harbor. Unfortunately, one of them is an opinion piece by David Broder that uses Pearl Harbor to excoriate President Bush for not getting an official declaration of war against Iraq -- and equate Iraq with Vietnam:

But Fisher throws down an important challenge when he zeros in on a pattern of congressional behavior that has seen legislators sidestep the question of peace or war. ... As Fisher notes, that has become a common pattern in dealing with possible conflict. He likens it to the Gulf of Tonkin resolution in 1964, which Lyndon Johnson used as authority for the escalation in Vietnam.

They also include the Sedensky article, but none of their articles are linked off of the main web page. That's better than the Los Angeles Times, which has two articles in today's paper. The Times opted for quality over quantity, however. One of them is pretty good, reviewing the service records of two veterans (WWII and Vietnam) and written by a Times staff writer. The other is an excellent story from an Orange County local paper, the Daily Pilot, which recounts the experiences of one family who were caught up in both 9/11 and Pearl Harbor:

In an instant, Deborah Hammett's life began to mirror that of her father.

The 47-year-old was in New York City on a business trip when two planes, commandeered by terrorists, struck the World Trade Center. Surrounded by so much devastation, she felt compelled to help and spent three days at Ground Zero.

Sixty years earlier, her father, Jack Hammett, was at Pearl Harbor when the Japanese bombed the naval installation on the island of Hawaii, drawing the United States into World War II. As a Navy hospital corps man, he had the gruesome job of identifying the dead, with a break every four hours to perform triage on the wounded.

The New York Times also has no links to stories on Pearl Harbor on their main page, even though the AP reports candlelight vigils in NYC. A search for "Pearl Harbor" in today's news returns this search result. Pretty thin stuff; one article for today, and it turns out to be the Sedensky AP article.

The Washington Post? The major daily in our nation's capital? It carries the same Sedensky article, plus the Broder op-ed pice (which, of course, originated in the WaPo), and one well-written piece featuring a Pearl Harbor survivor. None are linked from the main web page. Even its competitor, the Washington Times, can't muster up a featured link to an article on Pearl Harbor. (I tried doing a search for stories, but their search results come back with no dates and are poorly displayed.)

History marches on. I understand that; I understand this is the 62nd anniversary, as opposed to a 70th or 50th or 100th anniversary, and we all know that round numbers are somehow more relevant. But it seems to me that a Sunday edition of the paper has some room for reflection, for in-depth looks at stories that may not be as flashy as the Madonna/Britney osculation. I guess not. It's just an excuse to pad the paper with more advertising.

How long before we just pay lip service to 9/11? Ten years? Five? 2004?

UPDATE: I'm not the only one who noticed this. Michelle at A Small Victory posts her thoughts about this lack of recognition.