Infinite Monkeys: The Democratic Dirigible

RB at Infinite Monkeys posted an interesting analogy about Howard Dean and the Democratic Party, based on a comment made by Hugh Hewitt on his radio show:

The Hindenburg went into service on March 4th, 1936. It met its fiery end on May 6th, 1937, only 14 months later. About the same length as a political campaign.

Read the rest of RB's brilliant post to find out exactly how that all plays out and how Dean figures into it. The Elder at Fraters Libertas also thinks you should read this, and please note that I've added Infinte Monkeys to the Battleships section.

Bush Planned Iraq Invasion -- So What?

In a 60 Minutes interview to be aired tomorrow, former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill alleges that the Bush administration planned the invasion of Iraq in early 2001:

"From the very beginning, there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go," O'Neill told CBS, according to excerpts released Saturday by the network. "For me, the notion of pre-emption, that the U.S. has the unilateral right to do whatever we decide to do, is a really huge leap." ...

In the book, O'Neill is quoted as saying he was surprised that no one in a National Security Council meeting asked why Iraq should be invaded. "It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The president saying 'Go find me a way to do this,'" O'Neill said.

Of course, this being an election year, Democrats have something to say about this:

"I've always said the president had failed to make the case to go to war with Iraq," Dean said. "My Democratic opponents reached a different conclusion, and in the process, they failed to ask the difficult questions. Now, after the fact, we are learning new information about the true circumstances of the Bush administration's push for war, this time, by one of his former Cabinet secretaries.

"The country deserves to know -- and the president needs to answer -- why the American people were presented with misleading or manufactured intelligence as to why going to war with Iraq was necessary."

Democratic Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts also issued a statement. In 2002, Kerry voted to support a resolution giving Bush authority to wage war against Iraq if it didn't dismantle its presumed illegal weapons program.

"These are very serious charges. It would mean [Bush administration officials] were dead-set on going to war alone since almost the day they took office and deliberately lied to the American people, Congress, and the world," Kerry said. "It would mean that for purely ideological reasons they planned on putting American troops in a shooting gallery, occupying an Arab country almost alone. The White House needs to answer these charges truthfully because they threaten to shatter [its] already damaged credibility as never before."

What a lot of heat and smoke where there's no fire. Of course the Bush administration had a plan to invade Iraq in 2001; it had a significant portion of its armed forces attempting to control Iraq's northern and southern areas. Remember the no-fly zones? Congress had passed a resolution in 1998 proclaiming that the official US policy towards Iraq was "regime change." Iraq had refused to cooperate with arms inspectors and were in material breach of a string of UN resolutions. Saddam had also abrogated the terms of the cease-fire that ended armed conflict in Iraq and Kuwait in 1991. Even prior to 2001, if Clinton didn't have an invasion plan for Iraq, he would have been a fool.

Instead, Bush had a plan, and the Democrats scream because of it. Bush planned for post-war Iraq, and the Democrats howl about exploitation and lies. (Remember when the Democrats screamed that Bush had no plan?) In the event, Bush didn't invade Iraq in 2001 or in 2002. He went to Congress in 2002 to challenge them to rid the US of this decade-old albatross, one way or the other. Bush then went to the UN twice, trying to get them to enforce their own resolutions, based on the same intelligence that convinced Bill Clinton the Iraqis were lying. Bush didn't hide what he was doing, nor did his actions do anything but support the Congressionally proclaimed American foreign-policy objective of regime change in Iraq.

We elect Presidents to think strategically and act to defend and protect the US. Any President who didn't have a plan for an Iraq invasion in the past twelve years would have been derelict in his duty. Rather than gasp with horror, we should ask why it took the US twelve long years, wasting tens of billions of dollars, to resolve the Iraqi crisis.

Danes Find Liquid-Filled Mortars in Iraq

CNN reports a possible WMD find in Southern Iraq (via Power Line):

Danish troops have found suspicious mortar shells in southern Iraq and officials are checking to see if they are chemical weapons, according to Coalition officials. Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, a U.S. Army spokesman, said Saturday 30 to 40 120mm mortars containing liquid were discovered south of Al-Amara, north of Basra.

The shells are being examined, and Kimmitt said it is suspected that the ordnance could be left over from the Iran-Iraq war in the mid-1980s. "Most were wrapped in plastic bags, and some were leaking," he added.

"The first inspections have shown that the mortars contain some liquid," said a Danish official in the city of Basra. "We don't now what sort of liquid or the age of the mortars."

While it is too soon to jump to conclusions, the fact that liquid was found in the mortars indicates either chemical or biological agents, and not mere explosive. If you look at the pictures in Power Line's post on the subject, you'll see corrosion that appears consistent with chemical exposure. I suspect it will only be a few days before the Coalition reports on the composition.

If it does turn out to be chemical or biological weaponry, however, it won't make a bit of difference if it dates back to the Iran-Iraq War of the 80s. The UN resolutions required Iraq to account for and destroy all nuclear, chemical, and biological weaponry, not just those created after 1991. These mortars, if proved to be WMDs, would prove that Iraq continued to possess and hide prohibited weaponry in defiance of the UN. The discovery would also indicate that there are more to be found, and they need to be found ASAP -- before they fall into the hands of the insurgency.

UPDATE: Reuters is reporting that the Danes suspect the mortars hold blister gas:

Danish troops have found dozens of mortar rounds buried in Iraq which chemical weapons tests show could contain blister gas, the Danish army said on Saturday. ... Blister gas, an illegal weapon which ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein said he had destroyed, was extensively used against the Iranians during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war. ... Icelandic bomb specialists working with the Danish soldiers said the rounds had been found concealed in road construction, Iceland's Foreign Ministry said.

The US is sending a mobile laboratory to assist in the analysis.

Bush Continues to Build Strength in the 'Religious' Vote

Continuing the discussion below, the Religious News Service reports that George Bush has built a considerable strength among those voters who consider themselves religious, as reprinted in the Star Tribune:

Polls indicate Bush holds a commanding lead among the most religious voters, a 2004 advantage he did not enjoy over 2000 Democratic nominee Al Gore. In a Gallup Poll conducted Nov. 10-12, Bush held a 67 to 30 percent lead among religious voters over the Democratic front-runner, former Vermont Gov. Dean. In hypothetical head-to-head races with Gephardt and Clark, Bush's lead was 65 to 33 percent. ... The shift could be significant, particularly in the South and Midwest, where religion can spell the difference in a close election. According to Gallup polls, religion is "very" or "extremely" important to the voting decisions of about one in three nationally. And among these Americans, it's advantage Bush.

The article reviews the controversy over Dean's reversal from his earlier secularism and notes that other than Joe Lieberman, no other candidate in the race is identified as strongly with religion as George Bush. I don't think that's so much the problem for Democrats as their strong identification with secularism. In either case, the end result is Bush expanding his base in the past three years, while Democrats continue to fall behind. Inserting a prayer at the start of a campaign appearance won't address the disdain that the Left has demonstrated towards the religious in this country, and as long as the radical leftists remain Dean's main base, the religious will continue to avoid Democrats, to Bush's gain.

Electric Venom's Snark Hunt Goes To Brazil

Venomous Kate, always on the prowl for prime snark, has posted a treasure trove of it just in time for the weekend. She links to my story about Nazi-analogy-spouting Brazilian judges, too, and if you read it make sure you catch the comments as well.

While you're at Kate's, check out these posts on the new non-smoking policy in Riverside County, and a practical joke that took a lot of time and effort, as well as depriving the Tinfoil Hat Brigade of its primary mineral resource.

Colbert King: Dean's a Fraud

Colbert King, the Washington Post columnist and no friend to Republicans, excoriates Howard Dean's attempt to suck up to the religious:

Dean captured the suck-up prize with his revelation that -- praise the Lord -- he has finally found a way to talk about his deeply held religious faith. Most remarkable, and the reason he won going away, was his explanation for how he reached this exquisite moment of sudden understanding. Was it a particular scene, some road-to-Damascus experience, that occasioned such a flash of insight in Dean? What, pray tell, set off Dean's new compulsion to openly discuss Jesus and his mastery of the Bible?

Dean disclosed that his willingness -- no, make that eagerness -- to start sharing his faith with any reporter, microphone or voter within the sound of his voice comes as a result of his travels on the campaign trail. Yes, credit Dean's journey -- not to Damascus but on the road to the White House, which happens to take him down to the Bible Belt in South Carolina -- for bringing about the Democratic front-runner's epiphany. Dean discovered, to use his words, that way down south in Dixie, "The people there are pretty openly religious."

The "Jesus Factor" announcement from Dean's camp last month became one of the many blunders of his December, and one likely to have far-reaching consequences. In the same way that Dukakis's tank ride made him a laughingstock on defense, Dean's bike-path Congregationalism threatens to expose him as a panderer and a pretender on issues of faith. Like it or not, Americans tend to be religious and so prefer executive candidates to whom they can relate on beliefs and values. This tendency is stronger in some regions than others. In New England and California, it's a lot less critical than in the South. It's also not partisan, or at least it doesn't need to be. Plenty of churches in the South and elsewhere preach populist, activist values that translate well to traditional Democratic social policies, while they also appeal to Republican law and order policies and foreign-policy goals such as support for Israel and our identity as a "city on a hill," also known as American exceptionalism.

If Democrats have lost touch with this bloc, it's not because religious values have suddenly skewed rightward over the past three decades, but because Democrats have become aggressively secular during that time, and Dean's support comes from the driving forces behind that secularism. Democrats haven't just sat by and allowed the ACLU to chase any vestige of religious expression from the public square; they've actively participated in their efforts and ensured that the judiciary that approves these efforts tends to activism, both political and judicial. When most Democrats pay attention to religious values at all, it's usually to equate them to Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, except when the Democrats figure they need the religious vote.

That's where Dean's pandering comes in. Most politicians have enough of an ear to keep from making their pandering so obvious. However, Howard Dean is proving tone-deaf at almost everything except screaming on the stump. Rarely will you hear of a candidate openly discussing their plans to suck up to a segment of the electorate like Dean did with this issue, and it was done for a purpose. His message to his base was this: Don't worry -- I'm just talking about Jesus down South so that these hicks will fall in line. Otherwise, the only way you'll hear His name escape my lips is if I stub my toe on the rostrum. Colbert King is clearly not convinced of Dean's passion about religion:

After all, this is the same Howard Dean who said that "we have got to stop having the campaigns run in this country based on abortion, guns, God and gays," the same Howard Dean who once said his policy views are not formed by his faith. ... He says he prays daily and has read the Bible from cover to cover, but then reports that he rarely goes to church except for political events. He cites the New Testament's gospels as guiding influences in his life, and then holds up Job as his favorite book in the New Testament -- a flub he has to call back an hour later to correct.

Dean has made it this far in the race by staging himself as a plain-talking outsider whose passion and honesty will change the way things are done in Washington. But actions like this and others make it clear that Dean is fundamentally dishonest, even for a politician, and even people on the Left can see this clearly. King may give him the Panda Bear Award for sucking up, but the Democrats are about to make him their nominee for President based on the most secular segments of their base, and he's likely to thank the Lord for their support. Perhaps he may even quote some New Testament psalms during his acceptance speech.

This Is How Dean Can Win

I don't recall a primary season starting with so many players getting double-digit support:

In Iowa, the former Vermont governor was at 30 percent, with Dick Gephardt at 23 percent and John Kerry at 18 percent, according to the Los Angeles Times poll of likely Iowa caucus goers. John Edwards, a North Carolina senator, was the only other candidate in double digits, at 11 percent. ... A New Hampshire poll showed Dean holding a lead of about 20 points over his closest competitors. The poll done for the Concord Monitor by Research 2000 found Dean with the support of 34 percent, with Clark at 14 percent and Kerry at 13 percent. Others were in single digits.

Normally at this point in a presidential election cycle, the party running against an incumbent has already eliminated all but two or maybe three choices. In Iowa, you would expect the two choices to be Dean and Gephardt, but you don't expect over a quarter of the voters to be split among two other candidates. With Dean's momentum effectively stopped after a disastrous December and only polling at around 25%, he needs a wide-open race to win by a plurality.

Clark, who stole Dean's momentum in December, isn't even a blip in Iowa after a questionable decision to avoid campaigning there in favor of New Hampshire, where he's still 20 points behind. Clark's momentum may be in question after a rhetorical blunder that had heads shaking on both sides of the political spectrum:

Wesley Clark said yesterday the two greatest lies of the last three years are that the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks couldn't have been prevented and that another attack is inevitable. He said a Clark administration would protect America in the future.

"If I'm president of the United States, I'm going to take care of the American people," Clark said in a meeting with the Monitor editorial board. "We are not going to have one of these incidents."

Clark should know better than to issue guarantees. This is the same candidate who suggested that he would hold US foreign policy hostage to European approval, too, and then rapidly retreated and claimed that all "right of first refusal" meant was that he would consult with our allies, failing to elucidate on how that differed from Bush's two trips to the UN. Clark and Dean sound like they are willing to say anything to get elected, even completely contradictory policy statements, and it's rather sad that these are the two odds-on favorites to win. Gephardt, whose brand of populism would hamstring our economy, is nevertheless a consistent and serious candidate who must be chafing at spending decades in national politics just to be dragging anchor behind a screaming New England lightweight and a general who's been a Democrat for about 30 minutes. And Lieberman, who carried the Democratic banner in the closest presidential race in over a century, must be wondering where his party went.

Either of these latter two candidates would make a better opponent to George Bush and thereby force him to be a better candidate as well. But as long as all four are in the race -- five, if you include Kerry -- then Dean's chances of winning look better and better. Even if Dean falters, Clark is the likely winner. The only way the Democrats can recover their wits, it seems, is to have no majority winner in the primaries and have the whole nomination process thrown to the convention, an unlikely and even more destructive possibility.

Karl Rove may be chuckling, but I'm not. I may not be a Democrat, but I expect them to pick responsible people for their leadership.

To Our Friends Down Under: We're So Sorry

It's events like this that cause other countries to decry American cultural imperialism and make us look like a bunch of mouthbreathing morons:

Barry "I still look like Greg Brady" Williams will be touring NSW in March with his more-than-just cabaret show, in which he sings, "teaches Brady Bunch choreography to audience members" and recounts stories from the show.

"Brady Bunch choreography"? Does he mean like the dancing featured on the disastrous Sid & Marty Krofft variety TV series, The Brady Bunch Hour? Perhaps he means the choreography he demonstrated as Danny Partridge was kicking his ass on Celebrity Boxing. Or he could be referring to the moves he tried putting on Florence Henderson while appearing as her son on the original series.

When Williams sticks to telling stories, he can be entertaining and self-deprecating, but Aussies aren't going to be that lucky:

"Barry Williams raps, rocks, belts, sings ballads and in a nod to his Brady character Greg's alter ego, introduces Johnny Bravo for a special guest performance and yes, he still fits the suit," it reads.

There may be no three words in the English language that evokes as much dread as Barry Williams raps, and as if that wasn't bad enough, Barry intends on inflicting the "Johnny Bravo" character onto our hapless allies. You just can't put a price on a cheesy has-been TV star clinging to an "alter ego" character that's cheesier and more never-was than the celebrity. Think of Tim Kazurinsky touring as an old SNL sketch character no one remembers after doing some rap and rock, and you get the general idea.

Australia has been a stalwart ally and a true friend of the US, especially over the past two years, and now Barry Williams threatens to undermine the entire alliance. One performance of Johnny Bravo might lead the entire province of New South Wales to burn the American flag. Can't Donald Rumsfeld or Tom Ridge take his passport away in the interest of national security??

Hell, I'll Take the Job

Glenn Reynolds, the indispensable Instapundit, writes in his MS-NBC column that the New York Times needs an editorial transfusion:

And if you read the Times oped page regularly, as fewer and fewer people seem to do these days, you'll notice a distinct staleness about many of the columnists. The Times oped page needs turnover -- either permanent, or temporary, with columnists sent off to do actual reporting, or something, for six months or a year while they regain their edge. But who would fill the gaps?

Reynolds then discusses a couple of options available to the Gray Lady, including giving occasional guest columnist Dan Savage a regular run while Dowd and Krugman go on an extended vacation. (Maybe Krugman can write another book to follow up The Great Unraveling? He can write about trying to unravel during a record growth period.) Reynolds notes that Savage isn't even outside of the Times' mainstream, which should make the interval relatively pain-free.

I have a few suggestions for NYT's managing editor. Look around the blogosphere for some fresh meat. Glenn notes that writing a column isn't equivalent to blogging:

I write a lot more words than Krugman, but it's mostly blogging -- and the difference between writing blog entries and writing a full-up newspaper column is the difference between improvising jazz and composing a symphony. The composing may or may not be better, on some cosmic scheme of things, but it's definitely a lot harder.

Maybe so, but Glenn also writes columns, and pretty good ones, for MS-NBC and Slate. I could definitely see Glenn writing something that at least matches the quality of Dowd and Krugman, although matching their quality is hardly Glenn's point, I readily concede. I could see people like Joe Carter at Evangelical Outpost or Steven den Beste being able to come up with two columns a week. Perhaps a better approach would be to ask a rotating group of solid-writing bloggers to contribute a column once a week, or once every two weeks. Enable trackback pinging while they're at it, too, in order to energize their blogosphere readership.

I'd love to see a major daily take this kind of risk with a few bloggers and build a bridge between the media and their most involved customers. Perhaps sometime soon ...

Clues For The Clueless

The AP and the Star-Tribune provides another example of the mass media's cluelessness in dealing with matters of religion. Today's entry involves a study of sexual practices in urban areas from the University of Chicago. For the most part, the story remains mildly interesting, as much as it can be when it's mostly telling us what we already know about sexual relations these days -- people wait longer to get married and have more sexual partners than they did before, men have more partners than women, women want "relational" sex and men want "transactional" sex regardless of sexual orientation. (In fact, it sounds to me like they haven't changed much in 20 years.)

Towards the end, reporter Martha Irvine makes the following statement:

Still, Laumann and his staff found that social services, the church and law enforcement have been slow to address this latest sexual revolution. ... And most churches they examined were not good at "giving guidance about how you manage a stable, but non-married relationship,'' Laumann says.

Here's a clue for both Laumann and Irvine, who felt it necessary to print this revelation -- churches that prohibit extramarital sex do not exist to give "guidance" about how to maintain sexual relationships outside of marriage. Singletons who show up with their significant others at a Catholic or Protestant church requesting relationship counseling while sharing a bed will be told to stop doing either the former or the latter. Churches believe it to be a sin, and assisting people in perpetuating the sin makes them a party to it.

No one has to join a church, or follow it once they've joined; each person has a free-will choice to make. What Laumann and Irvine suggest is that churches must be co-opted to the relativist values of the day instead of devoting themselves to eternal truths (or their belief about eternal truths). Religions that preach moral relativism cease being religions at all and start becoming new-age encounter groups. The attitude expressed in this article betrays the condescension and disdain the media and academics hold for religious values and organizations. To scold them for not supporting practices that they find not only destructive but in opposition to the core values they cherish is to belittle them. The Strib's editors need to look at these pieces a little more carefully in the future.

UPDATE: A big welcome to readers of Evangelical Outpost, one of my favorite blogs!

And Escape Dean's Paradise?

A border town in Vermont wants to change addresses:

Officials in the popular ski resort area of Killington want the town to secede from Vermont and join neighboring New Hampshire in a dispute over taxes. They say the town's restaurants, inns and other businesses send $10 million a year to the state capital in sales, room and meal taxes, but the state returns just $1 million in state aid to Killington.

Even more galling to the town is a statewide property tax imposed in 1997 to fund schools. The town of 1,092 won a Superior Court order that called the state's method of assessing local properties "arbitrary and capricious," but the state Supreme Court reversed that decision.

After twelve years of Dean's administration and tax policy, the town of Killington is so fed up they'd rather be annexed to New Hampshire. Not much chance of that, according to Vermont's Secretary of State:

Secretary of State Deborah Markowitz said Killington has little chance of secession "absent an armed insurrection type of thing. ... A town is a construction of the state and exists at the pleasure of the Legislature."

Yes, it's just that attitude towards local control in Vermont that makes the town of Killington so desirous of leaving it. I wonder what a Dean presidency would mean -- maybe another one of those embarassing incidents involving guys with Confederate flags on their pickups, petitioning for their home states to leave the country. Oh, let's hope not...

UPDATE: Blogs for Bush has a lot more detail on the tax that is "killing Killington," as they put it.

Qureia: We Want One Middle-East State

Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia threatened Israel with the bomb -- the population bomb, that is:

Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia said Thursday that if Israel unilaterally imposed a new boundary with Palestinian areas he would respond by pushing for a single Arab-Jewish state — a move that could spell disaster for Israel. A single country including Gaza, the West Bank and Israel would mean that the Jewish state would soon have an Arab majority. That would force Israel to choose between giving Palestinians the right to vote and risk losing the country’s Jewish character, or becoming a minority-ruled country like apartheid South Africa.

Of course, this has always been the idea behind the Palestinian offensive against the existence of Israel. The Palestinians have a higher birth rate and at some point will outnumber the Israelis. When that happens, all they need to do is recognize Israel not as an occupying power but as sovereign over the West Bank and Gaza -- and then demand their right to vote. Israel will then either have to deny sovereignty over the territories or deny the Palestinians the vote, which will lead to conflict with the West and the US.

It's a novel approach; I'm not aware of a case where a population demanded to be annexed into a nation against that nation's will, but it's apparent that both sides are down to last option. Qureia and Sharon are both talking victory through surrender, Sharon through his threat to unilaterally withdraw behind a security fence and abandoning Israeli settlements. Hopefully this demonstrates the futility of further armed conflict to both sides and gets them to mediate to a true settlement, one that respects both populations. It's either that or annihilation for one or both.

Did Angelina Jolie Get Duped By Adoption Scam?

This story is disturbing:

HOLLYWOOD actor Angelina Jolie may be forced to hand her adopted son back to Cambodian authorities if claims he is not an orphan are true, it was reported today. The Sydney Morning Herald reported Cambodian child welfare workers as claiming that Maddox, the son Jolie and her former husband the actor-director Billy Bob Thornton adopted two years ago, was sold by his poverty-stricken mother.

The agent that arranged the adoption, Lauryn Galindo, is facing charges in the United States of visa fraud and money laundering amid claims that Maddox's mother sold him for $US100 ($130). Jolie has said that she would never rob a mother of her child.

There's more details at this link. It doesn't appear that Jolie was aware of the scams allegedly run by Galindo, which will make this case doubly tragic if the child is removed from her custody. On the other hand, if the mother sold the child and Jolie truly had no knowledge of it, then perhaps it would be best to leave the boy with Jolie.

Bush To Issue New Lunar Challenge

George Bush intends on challenging America to return to the moon, this time to establish a permanent presence:

President Bush will announce plans next week to send Americans to Mars and back to the moon and to establish a long-term human presence on the moon, senior administration officials said Thursday night. ... Three senior officials said Bush wants to aggressively reinvigorate the space program, which has been demoralized by a series of setbacks, including the space shuttle disaster last February that killed seven astronauts.

The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Bush's announcement would come in the middle of next week.

As someone who grew up with the space program, with a father who worked on the Gemini, Apollo, and Space Shuttle programs, the prospect of another bold new goal in space travel excites me. It will be interesting to see if it excites many others, as times have certainly changed. No longer are we locked in an ideological contest with another superpower for technological prowess or reputation, and that sense of mission very clearly motivated the entire nation during our first lunar mission. A lunar base makes sense if we plan on doing any further manned exploration of our solar system, but will be very expensive to staff and maintain. It will certainly require another type of launch vehicle to take astronauts out of earth's atmosphere, let alone transit back and forth to the moon.

Bush hasn't been content this month to coast to the election. He is sketching policy goals in broad, bold strokes, giving him a dimension I don't think he had before 9/11. It seems to me that he is trying to build a visionary approach to America, extending the notion of American exceptionalism to a greater historical degree than ever. In 2000, he only seemed exciting when compared to Al Gore. In 2004, no Democrat has had the courage to paint a vision like Bush, nor will they be able to now.

To the moon! And Power Line is also pretty excited.

UPDATE: Not eveyone is excited, including Rand Simberg. He's got some good points to ponder.

Immigration Reform Opponents Have Questions to Answer

George Bush, in his proposal to reform the issue of illegal immigration, seems to have done what the election and the Nine Dwarves couldn't -- split the right and shake his base with an outbreak of pragmatic centrism. The day after Bush's proposal for a new guest-worker program and its extension to illegal workers already in the US, the conservatives are lighting up the Internet with dissension and outrage. For instance, the Corner at NRO has several voices all sounding the same alarms: amnesty and surrender, and they're not at all happy about it. So far, very little objection has been made to the concept of a guest-worker program; most of the bandwidth is being eaten up by the idea of allowing those already here to enter the program as a sort of fait accompli.

It's time for a reality check, folks. We have somewhere between 8 to 10 million illegal immigrants (undocumented workers in the PC world, of course), and no way to identify them. What the good and normally rational folks at National Review would have us do is to round them all up and deport them, which sounds like a terrific idea until you start to plan exactly how you go about doing it.

First, we have to find them. That means raids on businesses and homes, demands for documents, interrogations, and endless administrative/judicial proceedings to classify the people arrested. This won't be happening on the desert of Iraq or the hills of Afghanistan -- this will be happening here in the US, and we have due process requirements. How much do you think this will cost? What do you think the effects on our civil rights will be as we try to round up a population that large?

Next, we have to have somewhere to put 10 million people while we wait for their status to be judged and decided. That number exceeds the number of people incarcerated in the US by a factor of at least five. Try to imagine building five times the number of prisons and jails in the US just for this purpose. Or do we build camps to house these people, maybe out in a desert somewhere? Who then guards these camps? Who feeds them while they sit for months waiting for due process to play out? What kind of conditions will these people have to live in while they wait, and what happens when they revolt or prove too unwieldy?

Lastly, just where do we send these people? In order to determine their country of origin, we'd have to have some documentation -- but we don't have any now, because they have no program under which to be documented. We can't just ship them all back to Mexico, because a significant percentage of them aren't Mexican. You may get some cooperation from the deportees themselves, but I wouldn't count on it as a rule.

So now we will have created a situation where we're knocking down doors, rounding up people who we think don't belong here, herding them into camps for deportation to someplace, although we don't know where exactly. If you think Nazi analogies are flowing freely now, just wait; they'll be a lot more accurate under this scenario.

It's all well and good to say that they don't belong here in the first place. I agree with that. They shouldn't have come, and we should have had a better system for dealing with issue a generation ago. We should have insisted on genuine political reform throughout the Americas so that people don't have to come here in droves to earn enough money to eat. There's lots of things that could have and should have been done prior to now, and not just on immigration -- you can play the 'shoulda woulda coulda' game on Islamofascism, too, and argue that we shouldn't be in Iraq and Afghanistan now.

But Bush and Congress aren't paid to be philosophers, they're paid to solve problems and protect and defend the US. The problem is here and it needs to be solved realistically. Under this plan, no one gets a free ride to resident-alien status; they get to be guest workers while they, like everyone else, apply for immigrant status. (If you deported them today, they'd still be allowed to apply for a green card anyway.) It also isn't an "earn your way to legality" program that all the Democrats want to see enacted, a ludicrous idea that continues to reward illegal immigration and provides no mechanism for documentation and supervision.

It's a pragmatic and realistic concept that acknowledges the existence of 10 million people who provide cheap labor for American industries that can't attract native employees. It harnesses them into a system that minimizes their potential for exploitation while allowing us to monitor their status and eases the pressure on our border guards so that they can concentrate on real security issues. It may not be perfect and there may be room to adjust it for better success, but so far it's the best proposal for actually confronting the problem in my lifetime.

Postscript: I know a lot of people I respect and with whom I normally agree do not agree with me, so please read Power Line's take on this issue, while Joe Carter at Evangelical Outpost may be still undecided about it. Polipundit says "deport them all," without saying how. California Yankee disagrees with the solution but agrees that Bush is at least bold and visionary, even when he's wrong, at least according to the California Yankee.

On the other hand, some other people agree with me, including Citizen Smash (who lives just south of where I was born and raised), and Professor Bainbridge says, "Let's do it."

Mexico's Fox Pleased with Immigration Initiative

Mexican President Vicente Fox expressed his pleasure with George Bush's new immigration initiative today:

President Vicente Fox on Thursday praised the immigration reform proposed by President Bush and claimed it as an achievement for his own administration. But Fox and other Mexican officials indicated the new American proposal did not meet all their goals. "We're going for more. We're going for more," he told reporters during a visit to a shelter for street children.

Fox has repeatedly urged Bush to legalize the millions of Mexicans who cross the border illegally to work in the United States. The money they send home is Mexico's second-largest source of foreign income, behind oil.

No one will be surprised to hear that Fox is happy; almost any change from the status quo has to be an improvement, with the exception of mass expulsion. Fox probably would prefer an amnesty program, but he's not going to get one. We tried that in the 80s, during the last Republican economic expansion, and as some of my e-mail stated, all that occurred was more illegal immigration.

The true causes of illegal immigration are the poor economies of Mexico and Central America and the need for cheap labor for our agricultural industry. Until those two issues are resolved, especially the local economies of the immigrants, then we will continue to see massive waves of workers looking to solve both problems. Either we can realistically address the result while we try to tend to the causes, or we can stick our head in the sands as we have done for decades.

Blog Update: Iraq War Casualties Website

A new reader of CQ in San Diego sent me an e-mail that asked if I had a link to a website that had updated casualty counts. I didn't, but it seems to me that I should -- so, in the Battleships section, I've added a link to this site at Lunaville. The data appears correct and the sources are solid.

Immigration Reform

George Bush took another bold and controversial step, this time challenging his base on the subject of immigration reform:

Saying the United States needs an immigration system "that serves the American economy and reflects the American dream," President Bush Wednesday outlined an plan to revamp the nation's immigration laws and allow some eight million illegal immigrants to obtain legal status as temporary workers.

"Over the generations, we have received energetic, ambitious optimistic people from every part of the world. By tradition and conviction, our country is a welcoming society," he said. "Every generation of immigrants has reaffirmed the wisdom of remaining open to the talents and dreams of the world. As a nation that values immigration and depends on immigration, we should have immigration laws that work and make us proud," he said. "Yet, today, we do not."

So far, what I've seen and read on Bush's new immigration initiative is long on concept and short on details, but it at least acknowledges two truths: there are some jobs that Americans won't perform at almost any pay rate, let alone at an economically realistic rate, and that we can't deport 8 million people who we can't easily locate. The problem on the right are too many people who scream for "law enforcement" directed at a huge number of people who are mostly interested in keeping their heads down and working hard for next to nothing. In a way, it's sort of like our nation's drug problem: we have a huge agricultural industry that relies on cheap labor. We can't get it here, but no one wants to allow nearly enough people across the border (as permanent residents) to work the fields, so we wind up with a smuggling problem of monstrous proportions. The border patrol tries interdiction, which fails miserably across a 1,500-mile border.

From what the President said, this is not a Carteresque (or Reaganesque, for that matter) amnesty program, as the new guest-worker program won't lead to permanent-resident status. We allow workers from other countries to temporarily migrate to the US to take the jobs Americans won't do. It's the bracero program redux, although instead of being seasonal, it allows for a maximum stay for six years. After that point, either the worker would have to already have a green card for immigration or return home.

You may ask, what if they don't go home? What's the difference between that and what we have now? For one, the workers would be documented, making them a lot easier to track down, and employers would have no more incentive to hire undocumented workers as the labor cost would be the same and the risk would be much greater. This eliminates the problems of the coyotes who are little better than slavers, taking people across the border in inhumane conditions and forcing them to live in bondage until their debts are repaid. (If you've lived in the Southwest, you know that more than once a year you read about dozens of people dying from asphyxiation in a truck or van that transported people like cattle across the border.) Documentation greatly increases our national security by making sure we have a paper trail for everyone who crosses into the US. Finally, the border patrol can then focus on true security issues rather than being overwhelmed by people who flood the borders to support our own agricultural industry.

I can't say too much about the specifics yet; I'll be very curious to see exactly how this will be implemented. I do think that Bush has the concepts mostly correct. I also applaud his boldness. It could have been very easy to let this wait until after the election, but it also would have been the wrong thing to do.

Sailing Through the Blogosphere

Sailing, sailing, over the bounding Main...

Patterico proudly informs his readers that he's cutting back on his blogging by not increasing his time as much as he wanted. If you are as confused about that as his wife, then you don't read the Los Angeles Times. Read about "The Jump" and make sure you check back often with Patterico on media-bias topics especially ...

Jon at QandO dissects the latest David Brooks column on the hidden anti-Semitism in the term neo-con, and wonders why other bloggers can't give Brooks credit for seeing some truth in his column ...

If you've got the bandwidth, Allah's got the pictures. Again. How does he get this great background stuff on the candidates? Oh, yeah, I forgot -- he's Allah ...

DC at Brainstorming has, with the help of NASA, solved one of our most enduring mysteries. If mine are nearby, then perhaps there may be life there. [Ish.] Congrats on the Instalanche, too ...

On a more serious note, Strange Women Lying in Ponds is back from his break -- sort of -- with a good post about a Michael Ledeen article on Iran. My take on this is less that Iran feels the need to stand in opposition to the US for identity purposes than Iran is deathly afraid of the creation of two successful Western-style democracies on its borders. If the mullahs can't stop them, then their days in power are numbered ...

Jennifer quotes one of my favorite authors, the late great Douglas Adams. The answer is 42, but only Douglas Adams knew the question. Jennifer has changed her blog to a group blog, too! I'm scheduled to answer some questions over there soon, so drop by and read their stuff ...

JB Doubtless at Fraters Libertas disses men in black full-length trench coats with belts. Now you tell me that it's out of style! I may need to get a new coat for the Patriot Forum. I'm a complicated man ...

King at SCSU Scholars notes the paradox inherent in the phrase "soccer action" and recommends a prolonged Cheesehead experience to clarify things for you ...

The Patriette wants to warn us all -- be afraid: be very afraid ...

Troubled by the BCS? Wonder why the NCAA has playoffs for Division 1-AA and 1-AAA football but not for 1-A? Still laughing about the coaches who were contractually obligated to vote a championship to a team that probably didn't deserve it? Earthly Passions has the best argument, at least spiritually and morally, why the BCS sucks and nothing but a playoff system will suffice ...

There is absolutely nothing funny about this case and the one it evokes for Venomous Kate. Let's hope that the venom flows freely on this from all corners of the blogosphere ...

Finally, saving the best for last, the Commissar has a quiz for bloggers. No, it's not on Quizilla, Comrade -- such weakness from the bourgeoisie will surely incur wrath of the Politburo Diktat! Comrade Captain scored a 31, and is now out looking for capitalist, uh ... agent as per Comrade Commissar's suggestion. This post was better suggestion, actually!

The Universe Is Male

AP Headline: Universe Lifeless After Big Bang

I'm linking this back to Electric Venom: the Letter of the Day is T!

Joan Crawford's Missing Daughter?

This is just ... uncanny:

(thanks to my buddy, Steve)

Dean Gathers Some Establishment Momentum

The AP published a poll of Democratic "superdelegates" -- those electors who by Democratic Party rules are free to vote their own mind regardless of primary/caucus results in their state -- and Dean has done surprisingly well, capturing 31% of those who have decided on a candidate:

In the first "ballots" cast of the 2004 race, the former Vermont governor has endorsements or pledges of support from 80 Democratic "superdelegates" — elected officials and other party officials who will help select a nominee at this July's convention. Rival Dick Gephardt, the former House Democratic leader who has served as Missouri congressman for 28 years, has the backing of 57 superdelegates. Four-term Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts has the support of 50.

Among the remaining candidates, three-term Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, the 2000 vice presidential nominee, has 25 superdelegates, while Wesley Clark, the retired general who has never held elected office, has 22. First-term Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina has 15.

Dean's 31% puts him somewhere above his most recent polling numbers of 24%, suggesting that the Democratic establishment may not be as adverse to Dean as first thought, or that the superdelegates may tend to be more radical than the mainstream. If the latter turns out to be the case, it will be a sharp rebuke to the Democrats' superdelegate mechanism, which was designed specifically to resist the hijacking of a nomination by a candidate too far outside the mainstream (and also a split convention).

Superdelegates comprise about 17% of the total number of delegates, and even if Dean were to attract most of them, if he can't pull his numbers any higher than 24-27%, he will have a difficult time locking up the nomination before the convention. More than anyone else, an early front-runner loses ground by not gaining, and Dean hasn't added any support in almost a month. I can't see Dean losing the nomination outright in the primaries, but he may be vulnerable to not winning the nomination outright in the primaries. While there are multiple viable candidates in the race, in the early primaries, I think Dean's plurality will be enough to carry most states. But as candidates drop out, if Dean can't expand beyond the most virulent Bush-haters, then Clark may start winning enough primaries to matter, especially in the South. Superdelegates can change their minds at any time, and if it starts looking close, neither candidate may have a clear majority of delegates before the convention. Regional players like Edwards and Kerry may capture enough delegates to absolutely guarantee no candidate will have a majority.

What happens then? Normal delegates are only required to vote the primary election results on the first ballot. If Dean can't carry the nomination on the first ballot, he never will. The establishment, including the superdelegates, will then look for an electable candidate for the top of the ticket and hope Dean will ride the bottom half. I don't think they'll pick the newest Democrat in the race, either; my guess is that in a split convention, John Edwards could get a much closer look as a viable Presidential candidate, but a Hillary rescue may also be in the cards. Al Gore could also be an option, and he would have the advantage of having stayed out of the bruising primaries, keeping his jersey clean for the big game.

But if Dean is locked out of the top half of the ticket, there is no guarantee he would agree to the VP slot, and what happens with his partisans? Do they meekly go out and support the ticket? I don't think so, except maybe if Al Gore is selected -- perhaps another reason for his surprise endorsement. [Is he that clever?] I think an open convention practically guarantees a meltdown in the Democratic Party. If Dean can't storm the primaries and bring in a majority, he clearly can't match up against Bush and won't get the nomination at all. But if he's locked out of the ticket, the damage will be so great that even nominating Hillary will produce an epic disaster up and down the ballot nationwide for Democrats. It's looking like Dean's momentum loss is producing all sorts of options for the Democrats, and they're all bad.

Karl Rove must be thrilled with the polling today without even looking at Bush's numbers.

Broder on Dean

David Broder, in today's Washington Post, makes the same point as I did in my previous post -- that Dean is fortunate to still be running against eight other candidates:

With nine candidates contesting for votes, he doesn't have to persuade a majority to support him. He just has to turn out the true believers. Even modest plurality wins in those races would translate into a wealth of favorable publicity, and with more money to spend than any of his opponents, Dean could well run the table of the early February contests before anyone else effectively mobilizes a counterattack.

Eventually, of course, Dean will have to expand his support beyond the "true believers" that have lifted him to the top of a very crowded race, a campaign that seems stuck around the 24-27% mark amongst Democrats alone. As other candidates drop out, Dean has to find a way to attract their supporters without alienating his base, something that looked inevitable before December and the series of foolish gaffes he committed with his "plain speaking". The only way another candidate can hope to dislodge Dean, however, is still through the elimination of other competition and an emphasis on Dean's mistakes:

The nationally televised debate here on Sunday, sponsored by the Des Moines Register and Iowa Public Television, was essentially a series of attempts to make Dean explain -- or recant -- some of the remarkable things he has said in the past few weeks. ... To argue, as Dean did, on the day after Saddam Hussein's capture by American troops, that jailing the Iraqi dictator left America "no safer" was a classically ill-timed remark. ... His remark to the Concord Monitor that he did not want to prejudge the guilt or innocence of Osama bin Laden left Dean arguing a legalistic point that once again set him apart from public opinion.

Expect more of this, but David Broder missed the one issue that definitely will figure into a weapon of last resort among the Dem hopefuls: the failure of Vermont to properly protect their Vermont Yankee nuclear facility and Dean's contributions from the energy providers that benefited from the savings in their sale of the reactor. This may be too toxic even for a last-ditch effort to save the Party from Dean; after all, the betrayal of environmental groups may well drive them to vote Green in 2004. However, even if it doesn't get raised in the primaries, everyone knows that the Republicans will be happy to publicize it in the fall. The risk is there regardless of who spills the beans.

In the end, Dean can only be undone if the race quickly collapses to a single opponent in the primaries. The longer the other eight stay in the race, the more certain Dean's victory, no matter what else happens. [More on that in this post.]

Poll: Dean Losing Ground, Bush Approval Ratings Up Again

A new poll from CNN, USA Today, and Gallup shows that while Howard Dean's plurality in the Democratic race is holding steady, the campaign of former Gen. Wesley Clark has emerged as the closest challenger, now polling within 4 points of Dean:

He has the support of 24 percent of registered Democrats who responded. In December, Dean had 27 percent. The difference, however, is within the poll's margin of error of plus-or-minus 5 percentage points.

Clark had the support of only 12 percent of registered Democrats in December and is now within 5 percentage points of Dean, with 20 percent. "Clark is the only Democratic candidate to show momentum in the past month," Schneider said. "The attacks on Dean from his fellow Democrats could be taking a toll on the front-runner."

The numbers seem to show that Dean's support isn't wavering as much as Clark has drawn support from other Democratic candidates. Clark's status as the Clintonista's man in the race as well as his perceived unique ability to carry foreign-policy and national-security gravitas into the general election will probably continue to make him the natural magnet for voters who abandon other Democratic candidates as their campaigns become more hopeless. If Dean is to win the nomination, he has to hope that either he can expand his base or that all nine of his competitors stay in the race until the end.

It will probably make little difference in the end, as Bush's numbers continue to rise, regardless:

In a poll in December, only half the respondents approved of the way Bush was handling Iraq. In the new poll, 61 percent of respondents said they approved. For world affairs, Bush's rating improved from 53 percent to 58 percent. He also gained ground on the economy, with 54 percent saying they approved of his job on the issues, opposed to 48 percent a month ago. Overall, the poll showed Bush with a 60 percent approval rating [emph. mine].

No recent President has entered a re-election year with a 60 percent approval rating, along with a not-coincidentally expanding economy. Bush I had 42 percent and a flagging economy but still had to have Perot in the race to lose to a plurality of votes for Bill Clinton. Clinton had 42% in 1996 and beat Bob Dole with another plurality. While these numbers may change as a polarized electorate prepares for November, they are just as likely to improve as unemployment continues to drop and the economy expands.

Dean, Clark, Gephardt ... anyone coming up against a sitting President with a 60% approval rating and an expanding economy won't have much of a shot in November.

Saudi Arrested with Firecrackers in Boston Airport

German air security seems questionable after a Saudi man was arrested after arriving in Boston with firecrackers in his carry-on luggage:

A Saudi man was charged yesterday for having firecrackers in carry-on luggage on a plane from Germany to Boston amid United States warnings of a possible attack bigger than the September 11, 2001, hijacked plane strikes.

US officials in Boston said that Essam Mohammed Almohandis, 33, of Riyadh had "three small firecracker-type explosive or incendiary devices" in his carry-on luggage on a Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt on Sunday.

The Saudi first told authorities that the tubes in his bag were "artist's crayons," then claimed not to know what the devices were and said that his wife had packed his bag. He is being held for arraignment and faces 10 years in prison.

What could the man have done with firecrackers? Depending on the size of the charge, he could possibly have blown out a window or the cocpit door, or used it to threaten passengers in an attempt to take over an airplane. I'm not sure either plan would work, but having a Saudi sneaking explosive devices onto airplanes landing in Boston sounds pretty bad to me. One has to wonder what the Germans in airport security were doing to let him slip through.

Also, I'm wondering why I had to read about this in the New Zealand News, and not on the AP or Reuters feed on Yahoo! or other American news outlets. After all, a Saudi with explosives on board an airplane is no false alarm.

UPDATE: Apparently CNN carried this story early this morning, but it's dropped completely off the radar screen. I had to do a search on CNN's site to find the story. I guess a Saudi arrested off of an incoming flight at Boston's Logan Airport (where 9/11 flights originated) with three good-sized firecrackers in his backpack is no big deal ... The Boston Globe has this story, but didn't provide a link from the main web page:

The pyrotechnics -- yellow, cylindrical, paper-covered objects which each measured 1 1/2 inches -- throw off a shower of sparks when ignited and would not be capable of destroying a plane if used alone, according to US officials. But they are classified as explosive or incendiary devices under federal law and are prohibited on aircraft, according to a court affidavit. ... Almohandis, a married father of two who works as a biomedical engineer at King Faisal Specialist Hospital & Research Centre in Riyadh, told inspectors he was traveling alone on business when he arrived at Logan Airport on Saturday afternoon on Lufthansa Flight 422.

He has a bail hearing set for Thursday.

Texas Redistricting Upheld by Federal Court

This bodes well for the Republicans in the next Congress:

A three-judge federal panel Tuesday upheld a new congressional map for Texas that the Republicans pushed through the Legislature after months of turmoil and two walkouts by the Democrats. he decision followed a December trial in which Democrats and minority groups argued that the new map tramples the rights of Hispanic and black voters.

But the judges said Democrats failed to prove the plan violates the Constitution or the Voting Rights Act, designed to protect minority voters. The opinion also noted that the judges ruled simply on the legality of the Republican plan — not its "wisdom."

The Texas delegation to Congress consists of an even split between Democrats and Republicans after Rep. Ralph Hall switched to the GOP this week. Republicans may take up to six more districts in the next election, making a switch in control of the House impossible for the Democrats, even if it was unlikely anyway. While this is mostly a one-off event, it seems to be adding to the momentum Republicans have been gathering as the election rolls ever closer. I'll predict that the Republicans may wind up with as much as a 35-seat majority in the House in 2005, and possibly more if Dean gets the nomination.

Israel and Libya: Together Again For The First Time?

The Jerusalem Post is reporting in its latest edition that diplomatic talks have quietly begun between Israel and Libya aimed at normalizing relations (may require free registration):

Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom's bureau chief, Ron Prosor, met with a Libyan representative in Paris two weeks ago to talk about opening a dialogue between the two countries, Channel 2 reported Tuesday night. ... Kuwati newspaper A-Siyasa, meanwhile, reported Tuesday that a high-ranking Israeli delegation is expected to visit Libya in the near future with the aim of laying the ground for the signing of a peace agreement.

According to the paper, Israeli and Libyan officials met last Friday in Vienna in the presence of a senior American diplomat and agreed to send an Israeli delegation to Libya in the near future.

If true -- and the Kuwaiti newspaper seems to be confirming it -- this could be a blockbuster development for a true peace process in the Middle East. Libyan dictator Muammar Gadhafi appears to have received a clear message from the Bush-Blair coalition: business as usual is over, and provocations will be answered in a severe manner. At the same time, Sharon has been making unequivocal statements about disbanding settlements, gestures which may have more to do with proving Israel's sincerity about working with other Middle East leaders for normalization.

The news, assuming that the talks produce an open diplomatic relationship between Israel and Libya, will reflect incredibly well on Bush's bold and (T.) Rooseveltian foreign policy. Ever since Bush and Blair have demonstrated that the Anglo-American alliance will no longer passively allow Islamofascists to hide behind the skirts of Arabic dicatators, we have seen real progress in engagement from Libya, Iran, and now restored diplomatic contacts between Pakistan and India. By eliminating the region's largest army and most dangerous dictator and reversing a decades-long course of appease and retreat, Bush and Blair have given impetus for every leader in the area to back away from confrontation and make their best deals for peace before the US Army chases them out of a spiderhole. (heard on Hugh Hewitt)

UPDATE: Blogs for Bush notes that Ha'aretz is carrying the story and identifying some of the players, with this interesting addition:

Meanwhile, in comments published Tuesday, Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi was quoted as saying he is ready to compensate Libyan Jews whose properties were confiscated. He also said he is prepared to allow Libyans to travel to Israel, according to Arab press reports.

Very, very interesting; Gadhafi will give money to Jews? The boycott seems to be falling apart.

Don't Let The Cabin Door Hit You On The Way Out

Two international air carriers insist that they will not comply with US requirements to have armed sky marshals on board designated flights:

The decisions by South African Airways and Thomas Cook Airlines, the charter flight arm of Europe’s second biggest travel firm, deepened a dispute over a move Washington sees as essential to outwitting al-Qaida and other extremist groups. ... German-owned Thomas Cook Airlines, which flies to Orlando, Fla., from Britain and also flies through U.S. airspace to the Caribbean, ruled out using marshals in any circumstances. “Thomas Cook Airlines has not changed its policy that if presented with a sky marshal on any of our routes, the flight would be canceled,” it said in a statement.

South African Airways, which has 28 return flights a week to Atlanta and New York, also said it would not for the time being meet U.S. demands.

Without trying to sound too jingoistic -- I'm sure that both airlines will survive nicely without its American business -- but if they don't want to meet US security standards, then they can keep their airlines out of our airspace and allow other carriers who take security more seriously to service passengers instead. After 9/11, we would have hoped that the entire global travel industry understood the necessity of having intervention possible if an airplane is hijacked and used as a guided missile against American or other Western targets. For the most part, they have understood and cooperated. Even the British pilots aren't refusing to comply, but are just asking for some clarifications and some rules:

“The fact that you have got people behind you in a pressurized cabin with guns and bullets is not a happy thought,” said a spokesman for the British Airline Pilots’ Association, which represents most of Britain’s 9,200 airline pilots. “But if the government persists, we want certain conditions laid down.”

That is not an unreasonable position to take. Thomas Cook and South African Airways are behaving as if 9/11 was fiction and 3,000 people dead is merely an error. Not only am I glad that these two Luddite Airways organizations won't soon be flying into our airspace, their attitude should cause some other nations to review their flight status as well. Terrorists aren't just targeting Americans, after all, and if the Islamofascists know that they can board a Thomas Cook flight and meet no meaningful resistance, you can bet that they will take advantage of that information one day, and soon.

Power Line: CLE Test Case Continues

The Big Trunk at Power Line continues his excellent series on the continuing legal education requirement for Minnesota lawyers on "elimination of bias" today with a recap of Eliot Rothenberg's hearing before the state Supreme Court:

My day-job colleague and Power Line reader Peter Swanson attended the Minnesota Supreme Court hearing in the Elliot Rothenberg case yesterday. ... Peter has kindly forwarded us his notes on the hearing, in bullet point form organized by topic.

Swanson's notes make for fascinating reading. It becomes apparent that Rothenberg cuts an impressive figure before the bar, and the justices are loath to revoke or suspend his license for his principled stand. Nevertheless, they interrogate him and opposing counsel Assistant Attorney General Ruth Flynn thoroughly, if professionally and politely. Read all of Swanson's bullet-point notes, but the conclusion is certainly a bit breathtaking, considering Rothenberg's livelihood is on the line:

· The final question was for Rothenberg from Justice Paul Anderson. "Assume we disagree with you," Justice Anderon began. He continued by asking what would be the "remedy" short of involuntary restricted status. Justice Anderson praised Rothenberg as honorable and a person of "distinction" in the Minnesota bar. He also made reference to Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," saying that when you make a principled stand, you accept the consequences.

· Rothenberg responded to Justice Paul Anderson with words to the effect that there was no price tag on Rothenberg's principles.

Check out all of the links from the Big Trunk to get a more complete picture of the issue and its ramifications.

Boswell: Rose Has Changed Nothing

Pete Rose has written a blockbuster new book about his life in which he finally admits he gambled on baseball while managing the Cincinatti Reds, after 14 years of public denials. Charley Hustle no doubt believes that this public admission of guilt will unlock the doors of the Hall of Fame and possibly allow him to manage a team again. Initial public reaction indicates that fans hope for the same thing.

Allowing Rose back in the game is a big mistake, though, and his public admission appears to be not only less than heartfelt but less than complete as well.

Thomas Boswell agrees with this assessment in today's Washington Post, and Boswell reminds us that Rose strung us all along for 14 years of denials and counteraccusations, both from himself and his many proxies:

"I'm sure that I'm supposed to act all sorry or sad or guilty now that I've accepted that I've done something wrong. But you see, I'm just not built that way," wrote Rose. "So let's leave it like this: I'm sorry it happened and I'm sorry for all the people, fans and family it hurt. Let's move on."

No, let's stay right here.

As Boswell notes, Rose uses an odd construction: it happened, it hurt. Not I did, I hurt, as if the gambling was a third-party action imposed on him, or the 14-year war he waged on baseball's management and investigators was something completely separate. This makes complete sense if you combine that with the first part of this statement: I'm not built to feel guilt. This pathology is more commonly known as sociopathy, a lack of conscience and empathy, in which the only person in the world who truly exists is the sociopath and everything else just happens. Rose manages to make his "admission" scarier than anything else he's ever done before.

Rose continues to deny that he bet on the Reds while managing the team, something that John Dowd found ample evidence to prove in his investigation. This is no mere technicality. While gambling on baseball at all risks a lifetime suspension from the game strictly for hygienic purposes, gambling on one's own team -- whether to win or lose -- calls into question the credibility of these games and possibly puts players at risk. As a manager who bet heavily on your team to win a particular game, Rose could have played each of these games like Game 7 of the World Series. Overtaxing key pitchers, such as allowing an ace starting pitcher to go too long or start with inadequate rest or throwing in a reliever too quickly or too soon after a long stretch in a previous game, could cause arm and shoulder problems. Not only that, but it could cause these players to be unavailable in later games unnecessarily. And on games he didn't bet on at all, gamblers could easily have deduced that he would do a lot less to win, saving his resources for another game he thought he could win and on which he could bet heavily. This doesn't even take into account the possibility that by running up significant debt, he could be pressured into throwing games later by criminal elements.

Fay Vincent also agrees with Boswell and counsels Bud Selig to wait for Rose to demonstrate actual contrition and life changes before considering Rose's reinstatement:

So far, Vincent doesn't see signs of a reconfigured Rose life. In fact, he says, there is "every evidence" that Rose is still a conspicuous gambler. "We were misguided [in 1989]. We thought he would be contrite. It just wasn't in him. I wish he were more contrite even now. John Dowd [who headed baseball's investigation] is owed a big apology," said Vincent, adding that Rose even hurt those who tried to defend him. Vincent cites one well-known baseball author who "wrote five pages about how there was 'not a shred of evidence' in the Dowd report" and another "who excoriated us for running roughshod over Pete's rights. Where are those people today?"

Boswell ends his article with a reference to Shoeless Joe Jackson, who still has not been reinstated to the active list so that he can be posthumously added to the Hall of Fame. However, Jackson's case differs in many ways from Rose's. Jackson actually threw games and accepted money for it (not all of his supposed conspirators ever saw a dime), although at the same time Jackson confessed and returned the money, honestly contrite over what had happened. Jackson, along with the other Black Sox and all of their teammates, were being exploited shamelessly by their owner, Charles Comiskey. Most of all, Jackson never operated his entire career under The Rule as Pete Rose did. While I don't think you can compare Jackson's reinstatement to Rose's request, the one thing that Pete can't ever say was that he wasn't warned of the consequences of betting on baseball.

Rose has sullied his reputation, lied repeatedly, leveled false accusations against baseball management directly and through his many proxies, and damaged the integrity of the game. His sociopathic "admission of guilt" should only serve to shame himself and those supporters who claimed that baseball had no evidence of any transgression on Rose's part. If this is the best Rose can do after fourteen years of being locked out -- a smirking half-truth served up with the spin of victimhood, all to make a fortune from the saps who cheered his defiance during his exile -- then let Rose have his profits and continue to watch baseball on TV.

Addendum: The Los Angeles Times also weighs in on this in an editorial today, "No Hustle to Reinstate Rose":

Rose recognizes that his best bet (pun intended) to enter Cooperstown is being elected by sportswriters, because many scribes who saw him play arguably would be inclined to recognize him for his amazing on-field accomplishments. But players only qualify for the sportswriters' ballot for 20 years after their last game — which for Rose was in 1986. After 2006, Rose would face the decidedly tougher challenge of being elected to the hall by his fellow players — some of whom have publicly said they wouldn't vote for Rose.

Whew. Now Rose's timing makes more sense.

To borrow one from Instapundit -- indeed.

UPDATE: Deacon at Power Line also takes a swing at this.

Seattle P-I: Stupid Is as Stupid Does

What a relief to quit writing about the Strib! Fortunately, as I wrote last week, I've discovered an even bigger example of the Tinfoil-Hat Brigade in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. As I saw on Blogs for Bush today, their Opinion section continues to attract the oddities. Today's exercise in Looneyvision comes to us via the P-I from guest columnist Neal Starkman, who claims to have discovered the reason George Bush remains popular with the electorate:

The answer, I'm afraid, is the factor that dare not speak its name. It's the factor that no one talks about. The pollsters don't ask it, the media don't report it, the voters don't discuss it. I, however, will blare out its name so that at last people can address the issue and perhaps adopt strategies to overcome it. It's the "Stupid factor," the S factor: Some people -- sometimes through no fault of their own -- are just not very bright.

Starkman reaches this conclusion by determining that people of normal intelligence couldn't possibly be satisfied with George Bush's approach to the economy (which grew 8.2% in the last quarter, the best in 20 years), or the fact that he freed almost 50 million people in Afghanistan and Iraq by deposing two of the worst dictatorships in the world at a minimal cost of life, or in how he has refused to appease terrorists and the dictatorships that produce them. In fact, he carps about the loss of freedom that the Patriot Act has meant for Americans, and then suggests the following solutions for the excessive stupidity that he's discovered in America:

I don't have a solution to this problem. To claim I did would belie my previous arguments. But I do have some modest suggestions that might provide a start for discussion: an intelligence test to earn the right to vote; a three-significantly-stupid-behaviors-and-you're-out law; fines for politicians who pander to the lowest common denominator and deportation of media representatives who perpetuate such actions.

I have a better solution: taking education out of the hands of the unions that have used schools for everything but learning over the past 50 years, passing school voucher programs to inject competition into primary education, and thereby empowering parents to take charge of their children's education, instead of being subjected to various diktats from the academia elite. Said elite and union power structure, of course, consists mainly of leftists on university campuses and their intellectual progeny.

Stupid people can be easily identified, says Starkman:

You know these people; they're all around you (they're not you, else you would not be reading this article this far). They're the ones who keep the puerile shows on TV, who appear as regular recipients of the Darwin Awards, who raise our insurance rates by doing dumb things, who generally make life much more miserable for all of us than it ought to be. Sad to say, they comprise a substantial minority -- perhaps even a majority -- of the populace.

If Starkman is too dense to understand that the Darwin Awards are 90% urban legend material, then I think we've found at least one member of the Stupid Society already.

UPDATE: The Swanky Conservative gives this a thorough fisking, too. (via Zygote Design)

Has the Democratic Establishment Thrown In the Towel?

Further confirmation of Dean's inevitability will be forthcoming as early as tomorrow, as the AP reports that former Senator Bill Bradley, who vied with Al Gore for the nomination in 2000, will endorse Howard Dean:

Former U.S. Sen. Bill Bradley, who lost the Democratic nomination for president to Al Gore in 2000, is expected to endorse front-runner Howard Dean, party officials said Monday. ... Dean has changed his campaign schedule to appear Tuesday in New Hampshire for a surprise announcement, state campaign director Karen Hicks said Monday.

Dean can now claim endorsements from both major Democratic contenders from the last election, and even though Bradley represented the more liberal wing of the party -- until Al Gore decided to swing left over the past couple of years -- his endorsement has to be seen as an Establishment endorsement, perhaps even more than Gore's. Bradley commands respect across the political spectrum and if he gets involved in the campaigning, he will provide a steady and erudite image, something that the sometimes-frothing and always careless Dean could use.

In the contest for the swing voters in the center for the general election, this will have little to no impact. However, for the primaries, Bradley's endorsement will further energize the base for Dean and will probably demoralize the other Dems' campaigns. Look for a couple of candidates to drop out soon, likely Edwards and Mosely-Braun.

AP Review of Debate: Smoke and Fog

The AP writes an unusually critical review of yesterday's Democratic debate, noting the lack of honesty and factual argument that has become the rule rather than the exception, especially in regard to Howard Dean:

For a brief time in their debate Sunday, Democrats seemed to be hewing to a New Year's resolution to stick more carefully to the facts on taxes, the budget and more. But old habits die hard. ... Dean repeated his frequent claim that middle-income Americans have not seen their taxes go down under Bush: "There was no middle-class tax cut," he declared.

In fact, their taxes did go down. But Dean went on to explain what he really meant — that most people are worse off because college tuition, health care premiums, property taxes and other state and local taxes or fees have gone up by more than Americans have saved under the Bush tax cuts.

But the head scratching did not end there.

Dean and the other candidates keep demonstrating either their lack of honesty or their lack of knowledge during these debates, and one has to wonder when the Democrats will finally decide to pull the plug on the debate format and instead just stick to normal stumping. For another example of the general cluelessness that these debates seem to showcase, consider this:

The discussion turned into a critique by several candidates against the weaknesses of free trade agreements. Carol Moseley Braun and Dean were among those who said trade agreements must include strong labor, environmental and human rights standards.

But Braun voted for NAFTA when she was in the Senate and Dean voiced support for that deal and the China agreement before he entered the campaign.

On The Other Hand, Maybe They Deserve Each Other

I've often taken the Minneapolis Star-Tribune to task for its editorial policy, claiming that the newspaper's knee-jerk Leftism ill serves its readership. Sometimes, however, I wonder if it's really true after reading letters printed in reaction to their articles -- letters like this one, for instance (fourth item):

On Dec. 29, Native Americans commemorated the 1890 battle at Wounded Knee, where some 300 unarmed Lakota (Sioux) Indians were massacred by U.S. troops. On Jan. 2, the Star Tribune ran an article about L. Frank Baum, the "Wizard of Oz" creator, and his book on holiday window displays.

Baum's masterful window decorating might merit a 24-column-inch tribute, but running it so close to the Wounded Knee anniversary is, at best, insensitive. Following Wounded Knee, Baum publicly championed the genocide of the Sioux.

As editor of the Aberdeen Pioneer in South Dakota, Baum wrote of the slaughter that "our only safety depends upon the total extirmination [sic] of the Indians. Having wronged them for centuries we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of the earth."

I've withheld the name to protect the idiotic. I suppose that it may not be unreasonable to expect the Strib to know about the anniversary of Wounded Knee, since it was a significant event in the general area, even if it was hundreds of miles away and over a century ago. Since the story didn't include Baum's tenure as editor of the Aberdeen Pioneer, likely the newspaper never knew about it. For someone to then expect the editors to have advance knowledge of Baum's "genocidal" editorial, written 114 years ago, and then associate a perspective on The Wizard of Oz with both this editorial and the anniversary of Wounded Knee boggles the mind, especially since the story appeared four days after the anniversary.

Baum's editorials were not satirical, a la Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal; Baum's proposals, although somewhat ambivalently delivered, were really meant to urge the US to annihilate the Native Americans. Instead of writing an informative message educating us about Baum's terrible editorials, though, the letter-writer opted to show off and accuse the Strib of insensitivity. At best, it's idiotic, and at worst, he's attempting to hijack the atrocity to make himself feel superior, a deeply disturbed thing to do.

Economy Coming Up Roses for Bush

It will be interesting to see how Democratic hopefuls spin this:

In many ways, the economy is on a more solid footing than five years ago, as many of its excesses have been wrung out. Companies have cleaned up their balance sheets and pared their payrolls to the bone. Any upturn is flowing rapidly to the bottom line. Recent months have profited investors more than workers (the stock market posted its first positive year since 1999 in 2003, rising more than 25 percent), but that could change soon. Facing increased demand, confirmed last week in a report showing a sixth straight month of rising manufacturing activity, businesses are finally beginning to add workers. Even the "jobless recovery" is becoming no more. The Labor Department reported last week that the widely watched four week moving average of jobless claims fell to its lowest level since early in 2001. That number, 355,700, is well below the 400,000 threshold considered the dividing line between an expanding and contracting labor market and close to the 350,000 level at which employment typically accelerates.

US News goes on in its lengthy article to wring out several Joe Average stories, where points are scored using personal stories of representative temp workers, CEOs, middle managers, and so on, but the overall message of the article is that the US economy is poised to expand like mad in 2004. Economics is not my strong point, but it sure seems clear to me that the Bush administration has made all the right moves in getting the rebound we all wanted. The timing may not be too comfortable for the Democrat who runs against Bush in November, however ...

Then there's also this, regarding the economic outlook from the International Monetary Fund:

True to the old adage about rising tides, the U.S. recovery appears to be lifting economic boats worldwide. Indeed, stateside success, according to the International Monetary Fund, should spur the planet to enjoy over 4 percent growth in 2004, a rate not seen since before the 2001 recession. ... But most nations can still thank the United States--where tax cuts and record-low interest rates are fueling seemingly insatiable consumer demand--for their good fortunes. "The global recovery is quite dependent on the U.S. recovery," says Andrew Pyle, a vice president at Scotiabank in Toronto. "At the end of the day, since the Asian crisis, the single largest engine of world growth has been the States."

Bush won't be holding his breath for the global gratitude due him and his administration for this growth, but voters in November will certainly be prepared to demonstrate it, especially if Dean winds up at the top of the Democratic ticket. (via Blogs for Bush)

Power Line Hot Reads

The guys at Power Line are working hard on Sunday, posting on a variety of interesting topics. Hindrocket starts out with a look at Howard Dean's newfound evangelism on the stump, so far highlighted by misidentifying the location of the Book of Job and complaining about the ending. Deacon notes an article in National Review by Lawrence Kaplan that proposes that Dean will move to what he thinks is the center, but in reality will wind up with a McGovern-Mondale type of campaign, with similar results. Big Trunk reviews two articles today, the new Mark Steyn column about the lack of consensus on reality between the Deaniacs and just about everyone else, and an excellent overview of Bush's national security strategy and how it hearkens to the Grand Strategies of the previous century.

Make sure you read everything they've got today.

A Giant Step For Freedom

After teetering on the brink of collapse, the loya jirga in Afghanistan has almost miraculously reached agreement on a new constitution, giving men and women equal rights and striking a balance between a strong presidency and Parliamentary oversight:

Just a day after warning that the meeting, or loya jirga, was heading toward a humiliating failure, chairman Sibghatullah Mujaddedi announced that last-ditch diplomacy had secured a deal. ... The charter was amended to grant official status to northern minority languages where they are most commonly spoken, an issue which had brought the meeting close to collapse. ... After the new draft was circulated, the 502 delegates gathered under a giant tent in the Afghan capital rose from their chairs, standing in silence for about 30 seconds to signal their support for the new charter.

Is it perfect? Not really; Islamist factions insisted and received provisions for Afghanistan to be an Islamic republic and also got a ban on alcohol, but there will be no mullahs passing supreme judgment on government and no Shari'a. It's a good start, and especially since all 502 delegates in the end voted to support the result. That certainly bodes well for a country divided along tribal, religious, and ethnic lines for centuries. Most importantly, it appears to respect these demographic components and allow everyone to have a voice in a representative democracy, a far cry indeed from the days of the Taliban or the corrupt governments that preceded it.

A lot of work remains to be done in Afghanistan, but there is no doubting that the Afghanis can rise to the occasion. The ludicrous notion that this region is not ready for responsible self-government can be laid to rest in the near future and, afterwards, maybe President Bush can finally get some credit for freeing tens of millions of Afghanis from the brutal, oppressive rule of the Taliban and the exploitation of al-Qaeda.

Does the GOP Have a Chance with African-Americans?

Today's Washington Post has an interesting editorial by Jonetta Rose Barras that persuasively argues that the Democrats may be losing their iron grip on a traditional base of their power:

In 2002 the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a liberal think tank, asked black respondents in its national survey to identify themselves as either Democrats, independents or Republicans. Although 63 percent claimed to be Democrats, the number was down from 74 percent in 2000. The decrease occurred in nearly every age group, including among respondents 65 and older (where the drop was from 82 percent to 75 percent). There was a significant increase in those calling themselves independents, especially between the ages of 26 and 35. Respondents identifying themselves as Republicans also increased: Between ages 26 and 35, the share tripled, going from 5 percent in 2000 to 15 percent in 2002.

These changes occurred during an administration that the Democrats are touting as radically right-wing; obviously, this section of their base isn't buying that message. As Barras states, the African-American demographic is increasingly well represented in the middle class, with college degrees and an appreciation for market-based economics as opposed to government entitlement. More significantly, they also increasingly resent what Barras calls "plantation politics": a social pressure to conform to a partisan agenda that more and more obviously does not benefit them.

The Bush campaign has set a public goal to attract 25% of the African-American vote, a huge improvement over the 8% it received in 2000, but still a modest goal; after all, 75-25 qualifies as a huge landslide in any election. Barras provides examples of Republicans who have received significant support from this group, but the examples hardly represent the Bush base of the Republican party (Schwarzenegger and Bloomberg). However, if the Bush administration would pick up the banner of school choice -- even if limited to selected urban areas -- there may be a huge upside in inner-city support with almost no risk of alienating anyone who would be supporting Bush anyway, as I argued earlier.

Barras intends her article to be a warning to the Democrats, but it serves as notice to the entire field. The African-American vote is not to be taken for granted, but increasingly is available to those candidates who can promise real progress for African-Americans, not simply increases in entitlements and more bitterness for their children. Real equality and acceptance will only come when their children have opportunities for first-class education and to build friendships and networks with children from all walks of life. School vouchers have the ability to deliver this, and the Democrats are too hamstrung by their associations with teachers' unions to put them into wide practice. This is the opening that Bush and the GOP needs, and next term Bush has to deliver if they want to compete for the African-American vote in 2008. (via Real Clear Politics)

UPDATE: Blogs for Bush has picked the story up as well.

Pioneer Press: We're Onto You

Art Coulson, editor-in-chief of our smaller but significantly more intelligent local newspaper, the Pioneer Press, writes in today's Opinion section that they have had enough of canned letters to the editor:

We welcome letters to the editor from readers on just about any topic and written from just about any perspective. ... What we don't welcome, and won't publish if we can help it, are letters signed by but not written by the sender. These include forwards of messages bouncing around the Internet, cut-and-paste jobs from political Web sites and outright frauds sent by special interest organizations over false names and addresses.

For some reason during this particular election cycle, activists on all sides have discovered the Letters to the Editor section of their local newspapers and insist on filling them with all sorts of one-off blurbs for their candidate or cause du jour. Instead of featuring reader response to stories that the papers have run, readers get sloganeering on the cheap, and inevitably each side gets the same number of these missives in each edition, sort of an equal-time rule for the Letters section.

As a blogger, of course, I don't feel the need or the inclination to write letters to newspapers any longer except on those occasions where I disagree with content so strongly that I feel a rebuttal should appear on their own pages. In fact, last night I submitted my first such response in months to the Star Tribune in response to the exercise in futile bitterness that they ran today in their Opinion section, although I submitted it as a Counterpoint, which allows for a longer word count. They may or may not print it, but the Star Tribune does have a good track record on running strongly opposed responses to their editorials.

What neither paper will print is plagiarism, the newest fad among the Letters set. Websites for causes or candidates are no longer satisfied with pushing their supporters to write their own letters -- now they put the letters fully written on the websites and ask their followers to send them into the paper with their own names and addresses. I receive several e-mails a month urging me in on this action, and I'm amazed that people respond to it. In my mind, it would be an admission that not only am I unable to write for myself, but also that I can't think for myself.

Art Coulson agrees with this and puts it in rather unique terms:

Think about it this way: Would you allow your children to cut and paste someone else's words from the Internet and submit them to their teachers as their own work? ... We editorial board types have a name for these letters — "astroturf," as in fake grass roots.

After all, if causes feel like they need plagiarism to promote them, then the credibility of both the cause and its supporters are destroyed. Let's leave the Letters section to the readers who write their own and focus on better uses of our time.