Does This Sound Anti-War To You?

General Wesley Clark has spoken many times during the campaign, especially recently, regarding his opposition to the war in Iraq. On Thursday, Clark's testimony before Congress on Iraq in 2002 surfaced, testimony which hardly seemed at odds with the Bush Administration's own position: attempt to get the UN to finally enforce its own resolutions after 12 years, and if not, get as many nations together as possible and take action outside the UN. Clark's representatives deny this, claiming that there is nothing in Clark's testimony that demonstrates anything except his opposition to the war.

They must not have read the general's own article, published after the fall of Baghdad in the London Times:

Can anything be more moving than the joyous throngs swarming the streets of Baghdad? Memories of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the defeat of Milosevic in Belgrade flood back. Statues and images of Saddam are smashed and defiled. Liberation is at hand. Liberation — the powerful balm that justifies painful sacrifice, erases lingering doubt and reinforces bold actions. Already the scent of victory is in the air. Yet a bit more work and some careful reckoning need to be done before we take our triumph. ...

The real questions revolve around two issues: the War on Terror and the Arab-Israeli dispute. And these questions are still quite open. Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah and others will strive to mobilize their recruiting to offset the Arab defeat in Baghdad. Whether they will succeed depends partly on whether what seems to be an intense surge of joy travels uncontaminated elsewhere in the Arab world. And it also depends on the dexterity of the occupation effort. This could emerge as a lasting humiliation of Iraq or a bridge of understanding between Islam and the West.

But the operation in Iraq will also serve as a launching pad for further diplomatic overtures, pressures and even military actions against others in the region who have supported terrorism and garnered weapons of mass destruction. Don’t look for stability as a Western goal. Governments in Syria and Iran will be put on notice — indeed, may have been already — that they are “next” if they fail to comply with Washington’s concerns.

It certainly sounds like General Clark shared the same vision as the Bush Administration -- until he decided to run for President as a Democrat. He goes on to praise Bush and Tony Blair for their "resolve in the face of so much doubt," which also sounds like an endorsement. He does follow that up with a false premise:

Is this victory? Certainly the soldiers and generals can claim success. And surely, for the Iraqis there is a new-found sense of freedom. But remember, this was all about weapons of mass destruction. They haven’t yet been found. [emph. mine] It was to continue the struggle against terror, bring democracy to Iraq, and create change, positive change, in the Middle East. And none of that is begun, much less completed.

The war in Iraq was never solely about WMDs, despite the simplistic protests of those who cannot conceive that there may be more than one reason to take action or make decisions. Saddam had defied the UN by refusing to comply with 17 UNSC resolutions requiring him not only to disarm and destroy his WMDs but also to document the process for verification. Iraq continue to harass the enforcers of the no-fly zones in defiance of the cease-fire that ended hostilities in 1991, a casus belli in and of itself. As we have found after the fall of Baghdad, Iraq was buying and importing weapons in violation of both the cease-fire and the UNSC resolutions and arms embargo. Certainly not least, Saddam and his sons brutally oppressed the Iraqis and committed ongoing acts of genocide, notably against the Kurds and the Marsh Arabs.

Clark changes positions more often than Dean gets angry. For two candidates whose supporters are drawn from the "Bush Lied" crowd, the lack of consistency on the war and other issues is puzzling ... and revealing.

Weekly Snark Attack!

Venomous Kate at Electric Venom has posted her weekly Snark Hunt, and once again I have engaged in shameless self-promotion. Kate was kind enough to include this post about the man who sued his church for spending his donation, a man to whom Kate accurately refers as "asshat." Make sure you check out all of the snark for this week!

Just Because He's Crazy Doesn't Make Him Stupid

... but it does make the Missouri legislature look foolish:

A convicted sex offender says he broke out of a sexual-predator unit in 2001 knowing that a legal loophole would prevent Missouri authorities from charging him with escape. ... Under the civil commitment programs in Missouri and 15 other states, sex offenders who complete their prison sentences can be held indefinitely in a mental hospital if they are deemed likely to commit new sex crimes.

But when Missouri enacted the program in 1998, it did not specify that escaping from a civil facility was a crime. As a result, authorities could pursue Ingrassia only on a charge of felony property damage, for cutting the fence. The crime carries up to seven years in prison.

Thomas Ingrassia had been convicted of four sexual attacks in the 70s and was released from prison in 1997. He had to be committed because he was convicted of stalking, in yet another example of why serial sexual offenders need to be locked up for life. The only difference between Ingrassia and Alfonso Rodriguez is that Ingrassia wasn't as efficient and managed to get caught before his next attack. This must be a surprise when he was captured:

He was captured in October in Florida, where he had remarried and taken an alias.

This puts me in mind of the story of a motorist who gets a flat tire on a highway. He pulls over to the side of the road next to a mental hospital and gets his jack out. A patient wanders over and watches him through the fence, which makes the driver nervous. While taking the tire off the car, he kicks the hubcap accidentally that held all the lugnuts, which promptly disappear down a storm drain. The driver starts swearing and stomping around, but the patient interrupts him. "Just take one nut off of each of the other three tires, use the three to put your spare on, and that will hold you until you make it to a service station."

The driver stares at him for a moment, obviously stunned, and then says, "That's brilliant! Thank you. What's a sharp guy like you doing in a mental hospital?"

The patient smiles at him and says, "Just because I'm crazy doesn't mean I'm stupid."

Obviously Ingrassia has intelligence, or at least cunning, and that makes him doubly dangerous. Even though he can only be charged with felony property damage, he's still subject to his prior commitment, and steps should be taken to make sure he is never again released or inadvertently set free.

Pickering: The Smear Continues

After my post yesterday on the recess appointment of Charles Pickering to the Fifth District Court of Appeals, a lot of the buzz from the left side of the blogosphere has been about Pickering's purported "perjury" in 1990 while testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee. So far, this has mostly manifested itself in the comments section at various blogs, including at Blogs for Bush, but most of the impetus comes from People For The American Way, a radical and hysterical leftist political action group:

Moreover, evidence indicates Judge Pickering did have contact with the Sovereignty Commission. At the time of Judge Pickering's 1990 confirmation hearing, the records of the Sovereignty Commission were still sealed, pursuant to the legislature's directive. However, several years ago, in response to litigation, the courts in Mississippi ordered that the Commission records be made public. A review of those records has uncovered documents indicating contact between Pickering and the Commission. A memorandum by a Commission investigator to the Director of the Commission dated January 5, 1972 stated that "Senator Charles Pickering" and two other state legislators were "very interested" in a Commission investigation into union activity that had resulted in a strike against a large employer in Laurel, Pickering's home town. Also according to this memorandum, Pickering and the other legislators had "requested to be advised of developments" concerning infiltration into the union, and had requested background information on the union leader. Memorandum from Edgar C. Fortenberry to W. Webb Burke (January 5, 1972), at 3. Subsequent memoranda written in 1972 by the same investigator indicate follow-up activities of the nature identified in the January 5, 1972 memorandum. Particularly in light of his 1990 testimony, Pickering's votes in favor of funding the Sovereignty Commission and his other apparent involvement with it are extremely disturbing.

Before this particular meme picks up any speed at all, however, perhaps a look at the facts would be in order. Byron York wrote an excellent and comprehensive article on the entire Pickering smear almost two years ago for the National Review. York reports:

Another PFAW criticism of Pickering on the issue of race concerns the question of whether he ever had any "contact" with Mississippi's racist Sovereignty Commission. The commission, which received state funds, had been created to resist desegregation in the days immediately following the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision. It had its heyday in the 1950s and 1960s, fell into disarray in the early 1970s, and was abolished in 1977. At his confirmation hearings in 1990, Pickering told the Senate that, "I never had any contact with [the commission] and I had disagreement with the purposes and the methods and some of the approaches that they took....This commission had, in effect been abolished for a number of years. During the entire time that I was in the State Senate [Pickering served as a state senator from 1972 until 1978], I do not recall really the commission doing anything. It was already de facto abolished. It was just not functioning."

The PFAW report says that in fact Pickering had a brief conversation, in 1972, with a commission staffer, and thus, contrary to his testimony, he had indeed had "contact" with the commission. In the conversation, Pickering is said to have asked the staffer for information about a labor dispute in Jones County, Mississippi. It appears that Pickering had, by the time of his 1990 confirmation hearings, forgotten about the conversation, but in any event it appears the substance of the conversation concerned not any sort of racial bias on Pickering's part but rather his worries about violence committed by members of the Ku Klux Klan. Chet Dillard, the former district attorney of Jones County, has told the Senate Judiciary Committee that Pickering was worried about a labor dispute at a Masonite plant in which "union members who were also members of the KKK shot into and burned homes in the middle of the night and brutally beat up workers....As a state senator representing Jones County, Charles Pickering had every reason to be concerned about further union violence involving the Masonite plant in Jones County."

Failing to remember a single point of contact 18 years after the fact is not perjury, it's a memory lapse. Furthermore, PFAW attempts to spin this lapse into a dark, sinister conspiracy to conceal racist dealings when the circumstances clearly demonstrate the opposite. It also demonstrates the hysterical and truth-deficient approach that permeates PFAW.

The facts show that Pickering, like many good men and women in Southern politics in both parties, struggled through the aftereffects of American apartheid and tried to do his best to do the right thing, especially as a member of the judiciary. His entire body of work reveals him to be a conservative who believes in and upholds the ideals of equality. The smear perpetrated on him by the left and by groups like PFAW is shameful and unjust and reveals its mouthpieces to be unserious and unworthy of consideration.

Is Dean Melting Down Under Pressure?

Blogs for Bush posts today on the strange interview in People magazine with the Doctors Dean, zeroing in on what has to be the most unusual campaign admission since Jimmy Carter revealed the lust in his heart:

Howard: I'm not a big fan of most anti-anxiety drugs, just because they have addiction potential and things like that. You know, once in a while, I take stuff for sleep. That makes sense. But, listen, I don't want to dispense medical advice in PEOPLE magazine. The anti-anxiety drugs are very good for people who —

Judy: And a lot of them are NOT addictive these days.

Howard: Right. And you know anti-anxiety drugs and sleep drugs were essentially the same thing when I was practicing. And my experience was whenever I took a sleeping pill, there would be rebound insomnia and so I didn't like to take them.

I'm not really sure what prompted the People interviewer to ask about medication -- it was a follow-up to a question about anxiety attacks Dean experienced in the past, also a subject I'm hearing for the first time but apparently something known to the reporter. People take medication for plenty of good reasons and most of the time they are effective and cause no problems, and I'm sure that's the case with Dean.

That being said, why is Dean volunteering this information? What possible good can come from admitting that you occasionally need sleeping pills? Not only does this give ammunition to your opponents, but by bringing it up himself unsolicited, it makes it fair game for the campaign; after all, no one can argue that Dean wasn't using the People interview to promote his candidacy. He's made his anxiety attacks and pill usage another addition to the ick factor that has accrued around him, along with his temper and his clumsy exploitation of religion.

Dean seems to be melting down under the glare of a national campaign. Frankly, he's in over his head, and the water's only going to get deeper from now on.

Of Course We're Not Offended, You Sexist Pig

Women's professional sports, with the possible exception of tennis, have always struggled to find a wide audience. The problem goes back as far as the defunct professional women's baseball league featured in the excellent movie A League Of Their Own right through today's WNBA and LPGA. It seems that every time league executives address this problem, some idiot comes up with solutions like the one offered by FIFA president Sepp Blatter for women's soccer:

FIFA president Sepp Blatter has caused an uproar by suggesting women soccer players should wear tighter shorts to bring more attention to their sport. Blatter said women's soccer needed different sponsors from the men's game and should seek to attract fashion and cosmetics companies by featuring "more feminine uniforms."

"Tighter shorts, for example," Blatter told the Swiss newspaper SonntagsBlick. "In volleyball the women also wear other uniforms than the men. Pretty women are playing football today. Excuse me for saying that."

Why is it that when men in leadership positions consider the promotion of women's activities, the first idea that pops into their heads is to tart the ladies up? Uniforms should be designed with the sport in mind, not giving the impression that the players are "sporting women" to dirty minds. It's one thing when women choose on their own to promote themselves in this manner, as golfer Jan Stephenson did in the 80s. Posing partially nude was her own personal choice; she didn't drag the entire LPGA into the photo shoot. When the male president of the league that supposedly watches out for their interests attempts to play mack daddy with their uniforms, it crosses over into the inappropriate and tacky.

Perhaps the time has come for FIFA to find new leadership.

Power Line Explains Where All The Hippies Have Gone

The Big Trunk at Power Line relates a great e-mail from one of their regular readers, Dan Freeborn of the Star Tribune, who has listened to the Iowa caucus debates and found them all too familiar:

It's all clear to me now. These guys are 1960s re-enactors but they have the ethos all wrong. Instead of the summer of love, they're promising the summer of crankiness. Call them The Unmerry Cranksters. With his shallowness and frequent fits of girlish pique, Howard Dean is their Un-Kesey. One pill makes you angry and one pill makes you small and the things that Howard tells you make no sense at all.

Read the whole thing, and if you're not reading Power Line regularly, you should be.

Bush Appoints Pickering To Court, Bypasses Senate

George Bush took the long-overdue step of bypassing the obstructionist minority in the Senate and gave federal Judge Charles Pickering a spot on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals:

Bush installed Pickering by a recess appointment, which avoids the confirmation process. Such appointments are valid until the next Congress takes office, in this case in January 2005. … Pushing for Pickering's confirmation last year, Bush said, "He is a good, fair-minded man, and the treatment he has received by a handful of senators is a disgrace. He has wide bipartisan support from those who know him best."

Pickering has been a target in the Democratic campaign to curtail Bush’s prerogative in appointing federal judges and appellate justices, and Pickering may have been the most ill-treated of them all. Democrats accused Pickering of being a racist – a characteristic hotly disputed by colleagues of all backgrounds, including James Charles Evers, the brother of martyred civil-rights activist Medgar Evers:

As someone who knows Judge Pickering and is familiar with his commitment on matters of race, I could not sit by and watch these groups' attempts to destroy a good man. Let me tell you about the Charles Pickering many of us in Mississippi have known for well over 30 years. …

In 1967, many locally elected prosecutors in Mississippi looked the other way when faced with allegations of violence against African-Americans and those who supported our struggle for equal treatment under the law. Mr. Pickering was a locally elected prosecutor who took the stand that year and testified in a criminal trial against the imperial wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, who was accused of firebombing a civil rights activist. …

Since he was selected and confirmed to the federal bench in 1990, Judge Pickering has continued to amass a record of working to improve race relations in Mississippi and throughout the U.S. After President Clinton held a town hall meeting on race at the University of Mississippi in 1998, Mr. Pickering and Gov. William Winter led the effort to encourage Chancellor Robert Khayat to establish the Institute of Racial Reconciliation at Ole Miss.

Judge Pickering sat on the executive committee of the institute, whose goal is to promote understanding and goodwill between people of different races. Mr. Khayat also chose Mr. Pickering to serve on the institute's board of directors, not only because of his role in helping to shape its mission, but also because he has led a life which exemplifies the institute's primary objective--eliminating racism.

If you believe in equal justice and promotion of diversity, it would seem to me that Charles Pickering would be a terrific appellate justice. Unfortunately, Senate Democrats have decided to take one isolated case, take it completely out of context, and smear Judge Pickering as a racist in defiance of the entirety of his body of work. Ted Kennedy thunders against his nomination because of United States vs Swan, a case where Judge Pickering felt that sentencing a first-time offender who drove a car for two cross-burners to seven years was Draconian. Nat Hentoff of the Village Voice – hardly a right-wing bastion – explains why Democrats and lazy journalists got the story wrong:

Three white men burned a cross in front of the home of a white man and his black wife in a rural Mississippi county. The prosecutors in the U.S. Justice Department's Civil Rights Division made a plea bargain, with no jail time, for two of the defendants. One was the ringleader, a 17-year-old (whose name was not disclosed because he's a juvenile); he pleaded guilty. Also given a deal because of his very low IQ was 25-year-old Mickey Herbert Thomas; he pleaded guilty as well.

The third defendant, 20-year-old Daniel Swan, owned the pickup truck used in the crime. He refused to plead guilty, so the federal prosecutors insisted that he be imprisoned for seven and a half years under the federal hate-crimes statute. …

Therefore, notes York, "When it came time to sentence Swan, Pickering questioned whether it made sense that the most guilty defendant got off with a misdemeanor and no jail time, while a less guilty defendant would be sentenced to seven and a half years in prison."

After convincing federal prosecutors to drop their demand to have Swan sentenced under hate-crime regulations, Pickering sentenced Swan to twenty-seven months in prison, not exactly displaying a “soft spot for cross burners,” as Maureen Dowd accuses from her perch at the New York Times.

Today, Democrats responded predictably:

Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean condemned the timing of the appointment, just one day after Bush visited the grave site of the slain civil rights leader. The nation marks the anniversary of King's birth on Monday.

"I think the president's appointment of Charles Pickering to a recess appointment is an ultimate hypocrisy,'' Dean said while campaigning in Iowa. "Yesterday he went and saluted Dr. King's birthday. Today he appoints a racist to the Supreme Court.''

Dean immediately corrected himself, saying he meant to say the federal bench, not the Supreme Court [emphasis mine].

Senator Lieberman said that Bush’s action today showed “a lack of respect for the judicial approval process,” in a classic case of projection. It’s the Democrats who have shown a lack of respect for the process, hijacking it in order to deprive this President of the prerogative and the duty of filling vacancies on the federal bench and smearing good people like Charles Pickering, Miguel Estrada, and Janice Rogers Brown. It’s just another reason why Republicans need to work hard to secure more Senate seats in the next Congress so that these petty and destructive games will finally stop.

Tekela Will Get Another Shot

Local prosecutors resolved a tragic and infuriating case yesterday by virtually guaranteeing a vicious murderer gets out of prison in less than 20 years:

Tekela L. Richardson, accused of beating a 79-year-old St. Paul woman to death June 17 while stealing her vehicle, pleaded guilty Thursday to intentional second-degree murder. ... Under a plea agreement, prosecutors will recommend that Richardson receive a 25 1/2-year prison term as called for by state sentencing guidelines. That would require her to serve at least 17 years.

However, District Judge M. Michael Monahan reminded Richardson that he is not bound by the plea agreement, and that she cannot withdraw her guilty plea if he decides to give her a longer sentence. She will be sentenced March 15.

In my native California, murder during a robbery is automatically first-degree murder, and the only two options are death or life without parole. California has many issues, but lightweight sentencing is no longer one of them. I am constantly astounded that Minnesotans abide these sentencing trends of mercy towards the criminal at the expense of law-abiding citizens. According to this article, Tekela has been arrested at least four previous times, although no information on their nature or resulting convictions was available.

Shirley Shepherd was bound, kidnapped, and beaten to death by Tekela Richardson so that Richardson could get an old woman's car. Richardson should be spending the rest of her life in prison to ensure it doesn't happen again. A seventeen-year sentence is an insult to the victim and her family, and it serves notice that the State of Minnesota does not hold the lives of its citizens in very high regard.

As an aside, notice how the Strib mentions that Shepherd's car is an SUV twice during the article, but declines to provide any detail on the defendant's prior offenses. Is the type of car critical to understanding the story -- or is the Strib attempting to imply that the victim may have been at fault because she drove a vehicle that the reporter or the editor doesn't like? It's eerily familiar to this story and appears to be an editorial preference of the newspaper. Editorial bias comes in many, many flavors ...

Was This At The MoveOn Awards?

It's good to know that stupidity and vulgarity aren't limited to just the American left:

Tony Blair has been called "a complete dickhead" by a leading Spanish politician live on television. The comment was made by Jose Bono, one of the three most powerful figures in the Socialist Party. His remarks were not intended to be heard, but were recorded by a television team while he was talking to Joaquin Almunia, a former Socialist leader.

Mr Bono said: "Hey, and our colleague Blair? He's a complete dickhead (un gilipollas integral). He's an imbecile."

Mr. Bono was foolish indeed, at least in that he didn't attempt to reach for Margaret Cho levels of obscenity. C'mon, Jose! If you're going to toss them out there, you owe it to yourself and your movement to at least make it more memorable than "dickhead". Doesn't that sound so childish -- something that an eight-year-old might say? We're more used to leftists like Cho and Chuck D sounding like 13-year-old rebel wannabes smoking in a bathroom and using various forms of the F-word to make themselves feel tough.

Get with the program, Jose, or get lost. (via Drudge)

Kinsley: O'Neill A Lame Man In Room Full Of Heavyweights

While I am not normally a fan of Michael Kinsley, today's review of Paul O'Neill's book at Slate made me laugh out loud:

O'Neill, according to O'Neill, is a man on whom praise and compliments fall thick as a winter snowstorm. "Paul, you have the balls of a daylight burglar," he quotes a subordinate as telling him years ago. He also quotes himself telling the story to another subordinate. Elsewhere he recounts, with prim disapproval, watching George W. Bush call on White House Chief of Staff Andy Card to rustle up some cheeseburgers. O'Neill believes, he says, that a CEO should be judged by how he treats "whoever is at the very bottom," a remark Card may find somewhat more insulting than the cheeseburgers that inspired it. Later, with characteristic subtlety, O'Neill quotes himself offering to get his secretary a cup of coffee. Very nice. But she might be thinking that getting her own coffee—or even getting his—would be a small price to pay if it meant not having to hear and praise the boss' self-congratulatory anecdotes again and again.

Gee, I don't think Mike likes Paul, do you? O'Neill certainly seems thoroughly impressed with himself, a quality that comes through during his interviews as well. It explains why O'Neill appears so nonplussed when being challenged on his intent, especially in regards to the "blind man in a room full of deaf people," a phrase which Kinsley tries to parse:

Speaking of blindsided, howzabout that killer quote describing Bush in Cabinet meetings as being "like a blind man in a roomful of deaf people"? O'Neill says this is "the only way I can describe it," and I fear that may be the case. It's vivid, and it certainly sounds insulting enough. ... I'm sorry, but how is being uninterested in policy like being a blind man in a roomful of deaf people? Are blind people uninterested in policy? Or, more accurately, do blind people become less interested in policy when they find themselves in a room with deaf people? Does a blind man surrounded by deaf people talking policy issues think: "Oh, hell. These folks are going to go on and on and on about the problems of deaf people. Who needs that? I've got problems of my own." Is that O'Neill's point? And even if there is something about a room full of deaf people that makes a blind man disengage from policy issues, what does this have to do with President Bush and his Cabinet?

Make sure you read Kinsley's review all the way to the final assessment.

Oh, Those Training Camps!

It's amazing what you find when you start looking around the home ... dustbunnies, missing socks, and terrorist training camps:

Saudi authorities have discovered a number of camps outside Saudi cities used for training al-Qaida militants to carry out terror operations, an Interior Ministry official said Thursday.

Two militant figures killed in terror sweeps last year — Turki Nasser al-Dandani and Yosif Salih Fahd Ala'yeeri — commanded the camps, the official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. More camp leaders are being sought, the official said.

The Saudis, who at first kept minimizing Saudi involvement in 9/11 and al-Qaeda, changed their tune dramatically last May when al-Qaeda killed dozens of Saudis in a car-bomb attack. Since that time, they've been motivated to actually look around for the terrorists. I imagine that they were shocked, shocked! to find terrorist infrastructure right there in the heart of radicall Wahhabi country.

Don't get me wrong -- I'm glad they're looking, and I'm glad they found the camps. But I don't trust the Saudis, and if it took them eight months after the deaths of the two commanders to find these camps, I wonder just how motivated they've remained.

Clark Testified For Iraq War Before Congress

Despite basing his campaign on his anti-war stance, General Wesley Clark told Congress in 2002 that the war was justified while they debated the resolution that gave Bush authority for armed action:

Less than 18 months ago, Wesley Clark offered his testimony before the Committee On Armed Services at the U.S. House Of Representatives. ... "And, I want to underscore that I think the United States should not categorize this action as preemptive. Preemptive and that doctrine has nothing whatsoever to do with this problem. As Richard Perle so eloquently pointed out, this is a problem that's longstanding. It's been a decade in the making. It needs to be dealt with and the clock is ticking on this."

Clark explained: "I think there's no question that, even though we may not have the evidence as Richard [Perle] says, that there have been such contacts [between Iraq and al Qaeda]. It' s normal. It's natural. These are a lot of bad actors in the same region together. They are going to bump into each other. They are going to exchange information. They're going to feel each other out and see whether there are opportunities to cooperate. That's inevitable in this region, and I think it's clear that regardless of whether or not such evidence is produced of these connections that Saddam Hussein is a threat."

Now compare that to what Clark has been saying on the campaign trail, as recently as November:

"I've been very consistent... I've been against this war from the beginning," the former general said in Detroit on October 26. "I was against it last summer, I was against it in the fall, I was against it in the winter, I was against it in the spring. And I'm against it now."

Or even yesterday, in a speech at the Franklin Pierce Law Center in Concord, NH:

But instead of ferreting out Al Qaeda, the Bush Administration militarized the war on terror. He pulled a world class bait and switch, and turned America's attention, energy and resources to Iraq. In fact, it's been months since Mr. Bush has even mentioned Osama bin Laden. The only name we hear is Saddam Hussein, and the only country we hear about is Iraq.

General Clark, if this was a bait-and-switch sale, then perhaps you can explain why it was you were on the sales team. The more that Clark goes along, the closer to Dean he gets. (via Blogs for Bush)

UPDATE: Polipundit had this story earlier, and also has an excerpt of Clark's testimony that Drudge didn't use, for some reason:

Our President has emphasized the urgency of eliminating these weapons and weapons programs. I strongly support his efforts to encourage the United Nations to act on this problem. And in taking this to the United Nations, the President’s clear determination to act if the United Nations can’t provides strong leverage undergirding further diplomatic efforts.

City Pages Attacks Lileks -- He Barely Notices

First, let me apologize for being late. If I am the Navy of the Northern Alliance, as the good folks at SCSU Scholars say, then perhaps I am the French Navy at Yorktown -- arriving just in time to celebrate the victory, but not much else.

Yesterday, City Pages published a bizarre attack on James Lileks for daring to express his actual opinions on his own blog:

Lileks wasn't as bad as some of the keyboard warriors I'd read, but there was that gloat and strut, as if Lileks had personally captured Saddam. (Lileks has written of dreams and fantasies where he kicks terrorist ass, and I was somewhat let down that he didn't sketch out a scenario where he grabbed Saddam by the beard and gave the Beast an Adam West Batman thrashing: "All right, you Mesopotamian ruffian, where are the WMD!?" SOCK! POW! "C'mon! Out with it, desert evildoer!")

Historical context is seldom welcome at The Bleat; it's totally irrelevant now that our "debt" to the Iraqis has been paid. For Lileks, the crucial historical moment has yet to happen: "The history texts will note that Baghdad fell on this date, Saddam was captured on that date, and the events between the two events will fill up a paragraph at best. Cruel but true. This was a big event, but there are bigger events to come."

Like Syria? Iran? Or maybe Pakistan, now that it appears our ally was selling nuclear material to North Korea? The Bleat will reveal all in good time.

I'm not about to do a line-by-line fisking of this article, not when fellow Northern Alliance bloggers Mitch Berg and Saint Paul at Fraters Libertas are already doing such a wonderful job at it. Make sure you read every word they write on the subject of James Lileks and this cheap shot from this tabloid wannabe.

Dennis Perrin's main complaint about James Lileks is his support of the war, and that's certainly a fair issue, although one wonders why City Pages feels the need to publish a lengthy discourse on Lileks alone on this issue. I suspect it was to make a splash on the blogosphere, and now they've succeeded. But the manner of Perrin's article is so mean, so sneering, and so condescending that it descends into self-parody. Take for instance this line:

But it's not The Backfence Lileks I'm concerned with here. That's his paying gig. (My exploration of The Backfence will appear in the Spring 2004 edition of Minutiae Quarterly, "The journal that focuses on things you don't even know exist.")

One would suppose that City Pages will be the poster child for Minutiae Quarterly. Perrin certainly qualifies as the editor.

As for Lilek's response, it was perfect in its entirety:

So: do you think the guy who wrote that article called up this site today, hoping he’d find a foamy-mouthed point-by-point reply?

Maybe. Who cares? Let’s talk about the stars.

Lileks, 1; self-important freebie tabloid writer, 0. (Northern Alliance Navy recognized as winner only by Dominique de Villepin.)

Addendum: RB at Infinite Monkeys has a good interpretation of how we all feel about Lileks. Note the lack of Hummels, though ...

Chafets: Sharpton Skewers Dean for Payback

According to Zev Chafets, the "race harpoon" that Rev. Al Sharpton tossed with such effectiveness at Howard Dean was no spontaneous target of opportunity, but a well-planned revenge for ignoring the Reverend on his home turf -- and the fun may have just begun:

A month ago, when Howard Dean came up to Harlem to get himself endorsed by Al Gore, Al Sharpton, the political proprietor of 125th Street, was not invited to the ceremony. It was clear even then that Dean would pay for disrespecting the Rev. On Sunday night in a nationally televised debate in Iowa, he got the bill. ... This time, he called Dean on it. How many blacks and Hispanics, he asked, did you appoint to your Cabinet in Vermont? The answer, of course, is none.

Dean was forced to admit this sin against diversity, and he did it with a moose-in-the-headlights expression. Not since 1988, when Democratic vice presidential nominee Lloyd Bentsen informed his debate rival, Dan Quayle, that "you're no Jack Kennedy" has a candidate been so visibly confounded.

And worse was to come. When, later in the evening, Dean attempted to recover by citing the many endorsements he has received from black officials, Sharpton snapped, "The only people who need co-signers are the ones with bad credit."

Chafets says in this op-ed piece that the moment probably won't resonate in Iowa or New Hampshire, given their small minority populations; these states are among the four that have never elected a black or female to Congress, and Vermont is one of the other two. After that, the primaries go south and west, where Dean's Dan Quayle moment may get a lot of play, and the best part of this for Sharpton is that he won't likely be running the ads. He'll be able to remain above the fray, playing power broker for the African-American vote, while the other candidates rush to get this Iowa moment in front of voters all over the country. This revenge will keep coming, probably all the way to November, if Dean manages to hang onto a nomination that looked all but inevitable a month ago.

Braun To Quit Race, Endorse Dean

Carol Mosely-Braun, the former ambassador to New Zealand and one-term senator who struggled with ethics issues, will drop out of the Democratic primary race and give her support to Howard Dean:

Braun was to officially endorse the former Vermont governor Thursday afternoon during an appearance at Carroll High School in Carroll, Iowa, said Dean campaign manager Joe Trippi. Dean said Wednesday that he welcomed the endorsement of the former senator from Illinois.

"She's a principled person. We just hit it off. I like her a lot," Dean told reporters at a hotel in Fort Dodge, where he was spending the night after starting a statewide bus tour. "It's going to be a big help to us," he said.

Mosely-Braun's help will be hard to gauge. On one hand, Braun had received endorsements from NOW and the National Women's Political Caucusa and of course could provide more of an entree to the African-American community than, say, Al Gore. It's worth noting that none of the above did much to help Mosely-Braun with financing or professionalism, as her campaign constantly struggled to raise money and is now in debt thanks to a failure to properly register for federal matching funds.

But, as the article notes, she did rush to Dean's defense when Al Sharpton attacked Dean on his race record last week, and having Mosely-Braun as an apologist for Dean's record could shore up what has unquestionably been a weak area. Dean hasn't helped by stumbling through references to Confederate flag bumper-stickers and such, of course, but those sorts of things reflect Dean's political tin ear than policy direction. He could use some help in the South and Midwest, and this can't hurt. But even Dean has made the point that endorsements don't necessarily transfer votes, and Mosely-Braun had precious few to give. This should only minimally impact the primary caucuses on its own.

Look for one or two more minor candidates to bail out in the next week or so. No one wanted to be first, but now that Mosely-Braun has headed for the exit, Kucinich and maybe Sharpton may follow soon.

Did Dean Cover For Abusive Staff Member?

Howard Dean, who has accused George Bush of waffling on domestic abuse -- as if the federal government had jurisdiction anyway -- wrote a supportive affadavit for a state trooper on his security detail who later was discovered to be a wife beater, according to ABC News:

In his presidential campaign, and as governor of Vermont before that, Howard Dean has taken a tough, zero-tolerance stand on domestic violence, accusing the Bush administration of not being committed to the issue. Yet Dean said he had no idea that one of the men closest to him was repeatedly abusing his wife. Dennis Madore, the state trooper who headed Dean's security detail for nine years, was "a classic abuser," according to Jerry Diamond, a Dean supporter and former Vermont attorney general who was the lawyer for Madore's wife, Donna, when she filed for divorce in 1997. ...

Court records show that Madore's lawyer, Phil White, also a close friend of Dean, was first made aware of the abuse allegations on March 7, 1997. On May 23, 1997, Dean inserted himself in the case, filing a three-page affidavit at White's request for use in a custody hearing, in which he described Madore as "a firm but gentle disciplinarian" and a "wonderful parent."

According to Diamond, it was a highly unusual move. "I'm sure that there are very few cases on record where a governor might have done that," he told ABCNEWS. Diamond said the affidavit raised questions about the governor's judgment in getting involved and was deeply upsetting to Donna Madore, whom he said suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder because of the domestic violence.

"I think she was shocked, more than disappointed," said Diamond, who said he was authorized to speak for Donna Madore. "She was shocked that the governor would do something like that."

I doubt that Howard Dean actually knew that the state trooper abused his wife in front of their children (attorney-client privilege would have prevented White from informing Dean), but doesn't Dean's affadavit in a Vermont court while governor present some clear conflict of interest? Granted, the judiciary is independent, but filing amicus briefs on behalf of the staff in a divorce proceeding, especially when Dean could not possibly have known the relevant facts at hand, sure looks intimidating to me. I'd like to know how Dean came to the conclusion that Madore was a firm but gentle disciplinarian when he signed the affadavit, which as Dean should know is sworn testimony. Testifying that he had knowledge of something he clearly didn't may not meet the legal test for perjury, but it's certainly not ethical, and as a sitting governor the ethical lapse is even more significant.

It's not like he wasn't warned, either:

But in 1997, Dean, by his own account, ignored a warning he received about Madore just a few days after he filed the affidavit. In a phone call to his Burlington home on June 1, 1997, Maggie Benson — a longtime Dean supporter and friend of Donna Madore — told the governor that Dennis Madore was an unfit parent and that Dean could damage himself politically by being involved.

According to Dean's handwritten notes on the call, he hung up on the supporter because he construed her tone to be threatening. "She said she did not believe Dennis was a good father and I told her the conversation was inappropriate," Dean wrote.

After hanging up on Benson, Dean called the trooper's lawyer, White, who told him to write down his recollection of the conversation. There is no indication in the governor's notes that Benson specifically mentioned domestic violence.

Dean never reported the conversation to the police (and White's omissions should cause Dean to reconsider their relationship). As the executive for Vermont and nominally in charge of law enforcement, Dean had a duty to report the allegations to the authorities. Even as a doctor, if Dean suspected abuse, he would be obligated to report it. This call came from one of Dean's own supporters, and yet all he did was talk to the trooper's lawyer. Having just filed an affadavit a few days earlier, one would hope that he would want to investigate, on his own at least, as to whether his endorsement of Madore as a "gentle" parent was accurate, in order to make sure that justice was served. Instead, Dean took no action at all after the single conversation with the trooper's lawyer.

Howard Dean, who is so good at casting stones, apparently lives in glass houses more frequently than previously thought. While scolding Bush for not paying attention to domestic abuse, Dean spent his time actively avoiding confronting it in his own office. How many more of these issues need to arise before Dean's complete lack of credibility is finally recognized by the Democratic Party?

UPDATE: Blogs for Bush posted this almost simultaneously to me. Also, welcome to all Hugh Hewitt listeners and readers!

UPDATE II: Glenn Reynolds, Andrew Sullivan, and Mickey Kaus feel that this is a cheap shot hit piece. Only Kaus gets specific; he thinks that there is no way that Dean could have known the affadavit was factually untrue. Actually, I agree with that, as my post above states. My issue with Deans actions are these:

1. What is a sitting governor doing by intervening in a divorce proceeding on behalf of a staff member? Doesn't this at least appear to be an intimidation attempt, and also a bit of influence peddling? After all, governors appoint judges, and the judge hearing this case has to be mindful that Dean's support could be helpful to his own career ... which is why governors shouldn't go out of their way to involve themselves in court cases.

2. Why did Dean testify to something for which he had no specific knowledge? Doesn't that also present some ethical issues?

3. The information about the phone call from his supporter is a bit murky, but if Dean heard that Madore was an unfit parent in some specific manner (like abuse), didn't he have an obligation as the head of law enforcement in Vermont to report that information to the police? Failing that, just to withdraw his affadavit in the case?

I agree that Dean probably didn't actively obstruct justice for someone he knew to be an abuser, but it appears that he nudged the Vermont justice system in certain directions to help out a staff member. It points out some questionable ethics from the man who paints himself as a reformer.

Dean: Unilateralism Sounds Great To Me

Howard Dean has castigated George Bush endlessly over "unilaterally" going to war in Iraq -- even though we were joined by several nations in actual combat and many more in diplomatic and/or material support -- but unilateralism used to sound really good to the combative Vermont governor, regarding Bosnia in 1995:

After long and careful thought, and after several years of watching the gross atrocities committed by the Bosnian Serbs, I have reluctantly concluded that the efforts of the United Nations and NATO in Bosnia are a complete failure. ... Since it is clearly no longer possible to take action in conjunction with NATO and the United Nations, I have reluctantly concluded that we must take unilateral action. While I completely agree with you that no ground troops should be committed for other than humanitarian purposes in Bosnia, I would ask that you take the following steps in Bosnia. First, lift the arms embargo as it applies to the Bosnian government. Second, enforce a full embargo of the sort that is now in effect in Iraq on the Bosnian Serbs and upon Yugoslavia. Third, break off diplomatic relations with Yugoslavia. Fourth, commit American air power to support the Bosnian government until the situation is stabilized and the civilian murders and atrocities by the Bosnian Serbs have been stopped.

Note the reservation Dean expresses about using ground troops for anything other than "humanitarian purposes". In other words, bomb the hell out of the Yugoslavians but don't get our skirts dirty in the Balkan mud. And also please don't do anything that might actually resolve the situation; just bomb Serbs until they stop committing atrocities, instead of creating a situation with a commitment of combat troops to make sure it stops for good. We were able to stop the atrocities for the moment, but we still haven't found a way to create a stable environment for the Bosnians, Kosovars, and the Serbs to coexist without tearing each other to pieces. We've been committed there for almost ten years and have no exit in sight, and yet the Left calls Iraq a "quagmire".

Half-hearted steps like these are what gave the impression that the West in general and the US in particular were paper tigers, possessing mighty forces but bereft of will to use them in our own defense and in defense of liberty. The notion of electing another executive who would perpetuate the same policies that led over the course of three decades to 9/11 frightens me more than Dean's numerous reversals and prevarications ever could. (via Power Line)

UPDATE: Blogs for Bush asks an interesting question: is this one of the reasons Howard Dean has sealed his records for 10 years?

The Commissar Smokes Out a Ringer

The KGB had nothing on the Commissar from the Politburo Diktat. (In both meanings of the phrase.) Comrade Commissar, using his secret network of spies, has discovered a plot amongst Agonist readers to funnel global resources into the fight to remove Goerge Bush. It's unclear from the message whether that relates to financial resources, which would be illegal, but it certainly does not rule them out:

I further believe that the present Bush administration poses a serious threat to world peace and is incapable of doing other than "stirring up the pot" by its involvement. ... During the past months I have studied both the history and activities of both George W. Bush, and his administration, and have come to the conclusion that they are dangerous to world peace, and should either be impeached or voted out of office a.s.a.p. Being a non-American, you may wonder at my audacity; yet their exploits now encompass the globe, and we are many who are not pleased about it!

The author of this message, Lovernuts (I kid you not), wants to set up a closed community where he can rant in private to the already converted, because he's tired of actually debating with people who disagree with him:

Daily I have read news posted on the Agonist and discover that many folks (though, not all), support this view. I have further discoved that many folks are frustrated by the rampageous trolls and the ensuing arguments that abound there. It then occured to me to create a website and install a YaBB Bulletin board on it, and only invite those who share a common goal. Initially I solely assume the responsibilty of inviting potential members who might share the same goals. This is decided by my first reading ALL posts of a previous member to ensure Bush supporters are not included [emphasis in original].

What Lovernuts is admitting is that his ideas fail in a free-market, free-speech environment and so he is taking his ball and going home. Read the entire piece on the Politburo Diktat. It's a great indicator of the left's increasing inability to abide dissent and increasing proclivity to simply ban it. And they consider Bush to be a threat to liberty and civil rights?

Socialism: The Minnesota Explanation

Yesterday I did some driving around in the afternoon when I'd normally be working and I caught a little bit of Michael Medved on the radio. I'm not a big fan of Medved's show, but yesterday he had a pretty provocative subject: Who voted for Bush in 2000 that won't vote for Bush in 2004? After all, polls among major demographic groups all show Bush and Republicans making inroads, some pretty significant, over the past three years, and if that's true, the Democrats have to find people switching the other way. Alternately, they could claim to be energizing a large group of people who didn't vote at all -- that's Howard Dean's claim -- which theoretically could counterbalance these Republican gains.

Those would have been intelligent answers. What Medved got was a procession of silliness: callers mouthing empty slogans like "Bush lied, people died," with no discussion of policy at all. When challenged by Medved for supporting evidence in either policy or actual implementation, without exception none of the callers could come up with anything. I think they expected a Michael Savage-like ten seconds on the air, and when pressed, had nothing to offer, giving Medved's listeners some great moments in radio comedy.

By far the funniest of these was a young lady from our state, who described herself as a college student and a Republican who wants socialism and doesn't think Bush can deliver it. Medved, obviously amused, asked her what she meant by socialism, and she replied that she wants to go to college for free and thinks everyone else should be able to go without paying tuition, too. Now, obviously this young woman has not yet been schooled in the art of demanding socialism by proclaiming it as a selfless and noble system under which every person is given equal distribution of resources, and so on; she took the breathtaking and refreshingly honest course of telling us it would benefit her directly.

Medved then asked if she thought a janitor working two jobs to put his own kids through a technical school should be forced to pay for her college education. She said, "Oh, I'm not asking him to pay for it, the government should pay for it." When asked where she thought the government got the money, if not from taxpayers, she said, "Well, it just should be free."

Nothing encapsulates the thinking of the socialist left better than this young woman's brief appearance on radio. It just should be free. Never mind that universities employ hundreds, even thousands of people to deliver an education, or that the authors of the textbooks spend years researching and writing them, or even that students consume electricity, natural gas, water, sewage, and so on. It just should be free. Why should it be free? Because she wants it. Why should health care be free? Because people need it. How can they be free? Government pays for it. Where does government get the money? By taxing the rich. Who are the rich? Everyone who can afford these things now, and more than that.

To take this young woman's example, then, what happens if socialism is only applied to higher education and all tuition and fees are abolished in higher education? The first thing that happens is that the private universities go out of business, either from starvation or excessive mandatory control by the federal government. After all, many of these are church-based, like the University of Notre Dame or Texas Christian. After that, the state-sponsored universities lose the most commercially employable professors as wages will require strict control; socialism, after all, rejects market control in all aspects.

Since government is footing the entire bill, higher education will become an entitlement, just like primary education, and everyone will go who wants to go regardless of their qualifications. Colleges will become vastly more overcrowded, but they will not be allowed to expel anyone outside of the most disruptive, as everyone will have the right to be there. Soon, college diplomas will be little more than attendance certificates as the faculty that is left is pressured to continue promoting failing students to protect their self-esteem and to keep their production levels up. (Think of it as the current varsity football team program for the entire student body, if you will.) It will be another level of public high school and just as effective.

Socialism is a utopian ideal for the shallow-minded, like the young Minnesotan college student on yesterday's show. It imagines a world where people do not act in their own self-interest at all, which means a world where people have no free will. It conjures up benefits without cost, freedom without choice, and peace without liberty. It's a shame that this young lady's Minnesota education never taught her that.

Democrats: Feel The Love

MoveOn finally held its awards presentation last night, and the Drudge Report has a partial transcript from the event. The Democrats apparently intend on cornering the election market in hate this year:

MARGARET CHO (Comedian) --

* "Despite all of this stupid bullsh-- that the Republican National Committee, or whatever the f--- they call them, that they were saying that they're all angry about how two of these ads were comparing Bush to Hitler? I mean, out of thousands of submissions, they find two. They're like fu--ing looking for Hitler in a hawstack. You now? I mean, George Bush is not Hitler. He would be if he fu--ing applied himself." big, extended applause) "I mean he just isn't."

CHUCK D (Rapper -- Public Enemy)

* "But truly, seriously, quite frankly, the people are smart enough to realize that the world is important and we only have one life [or right, unclear], that's tired of this bullsh--, or better than that, tired of this Bushsh--" (big applause)

* "Son of a Bush and his crew is at it again, because, we do not want 8 years run by a Colon, a Bush and a Dick." (big applause)

AL FRANKEN

*"I'm Al Franken. I'm here to present the funniest ad award. I'm a last-minute substitution, former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill was supposed to be the presenter, but unfortunately he was murdered."

MOBY

*Said he had "contempt" for Bush, called him a "big fat f---ing liar."

Yes, it's truly a vulgarian's delight at MoveOn. Note that in this transcript there are no policy challenges, no discussion of Bush's record or -- even better -- no discussion of their own policies and the Democrats' records. It's just another Bush hate-in, in the same mold as the Hollywood version put on by Larry David's wife last month. For supposedly "creative" people, these "entertainers" sound exhaustingly alike. If this is all they have to bring in November, they'd better be prepared for a complete meltdown.

Another Time Round the Blogosphere

Since I'm not feeling too much like doing any original writing so far this evening, I'll point you to some good work being done by others with more to say ...

Power Line gets to be the first port in the storm, with a terrific series of posts on Paul O'Neill and Ron Susking, and their new book and interview tour. Hindrocket broke the story about the true nature of the documentation used by the pair in asserting a conspiracy to invade Iraq -- documents which turned out to be normal energy-policy data. Today, the Big Trunk posts the entire transcript of Katie Couric's interview with O'Neill (primarily) in full retreat:

O'NEILL: Yeah, and the other thing that's good, today the book is going to be available, and this red meat frenzy that's occurred when people didn't have anything except snippets -- as an example, you know, people are trying to make a case that I said the president was planning war in Iraq early in the administration. Actually, there was a continuation of work that had been going on in the Clinton administration with the notion that there needed to be regime change in Iraq.

COURIC: So you see nothing wrong with that being at the top of the president's agenda 10 days after the inauguration?

O'NEILL: Absolutely not. One of the candidates had said this confirms his worst suspicions. I'm amazed that anyone would think that our government, on a continuing basis across political administrations, doesn't do contingency planning and look at circumstances. Saddam Hussein has been this forever. And so, I was surprised, as I've said in the book, that Iraq was given such a high priority. But I was not surprised that we were doing a continuation of planning that had been going on and looking at contingency options during the Clinton administration.

COURIC: Because of the Iraq Liberation Act that was passed in 1998 almost unanimously by the Senate and near unanimously by the House.

O'NEILL: Absolutely.

And of course, the best part is where O'Neill endorses Bush in the election. No, really. Check it out, and check out Power Line's entire series on this topic.

The California Yankee stays on top of the scandal in Connecticut involving their embattled Republican governor, John Rowland. In today's post, Dan provides a good thumbnail history of the issues and notes that he's impressed with Rowland's tenacity, if nothing else. I haven't posted on this, but my take is that Rowland should resign, and if he doesn't, he should probably get impeached. But that's just me -- and I don't live in Connecticut ...

Joe at the Evangelical Outpost manages to get ahead of the curve; he's starting a new ClarkWatch feature, similar to my (and everyone else's) DeanWatch. Knowing Joe, we'll get every bit of Clark's loony ramblings, such as the fact that he feels a woman should be able to terminate a pregnancy until ... well, until the water breaks, I guess ...

Jon at QandO picks a bad day to stop sniffing glue -- and then writes brilliantly on the underlying issues that will complicate our efforts to bring democracy to Iraq...

Finally, the Commissar explains the Iowa Caucus. Sort of. It's scary ...

Whither the Dean Angst?

Hugh Hewitt had a fun time on his show tonight discussing the source of all the Dean rage after reading this article in the Los Angeles Times today:

Dean bristled at those who questioned his motives. He had long had a habit of popping off in public, but until he became governor, no one paid much attention. Now they did. Wisecracks lightened the mood during Dean's drawn-out news conferences, but on occasion, his flippancy curdled.

An avid radio listener, he would phone talk show hosts from his state-issue car, raining instant responses on surprised critics. He traded barbs with a welfare mother who had called in to complain about his policies, Hogan recalled. When a station in the town of Waterbury ran a Republican legislator's rebuke of a visit by Hillary Rodham Clinton, Dean called in, angrily comparing him to a barnyard animal, recalled the offended politician, J. Dennis Delaney.

There's more angst in the article, but it's mostly an election-year background puff piece. Hugh challenged his listeners to come up with a good explanation as to how this man from a privileged background became so angry. I couldn't listen to the entire show and didn't have time to call, but I did send this in by e-mail:

A couple of thoughts, the first tongue in cheek:

Howard's mom discussed how poor the Deans were in their Park Avenue digs. Why, the dining room had to double as a nursery when they had Howard! That means little Howie had no privacy at all, and had to always be surrounded by the aroma of pommes frites and pheasant under glass that he was not allowed to eat, not to mention possibly having close encounters with the silverware. Maybe the term chafing dish took on a whole new meaning in Chez Dean.

A bit more seriously, after listening to the descriptions of Howard's supposedly middle-class upbringing (why, they even treated the servants like real actual people!), I can see two dynamics at work. One, it may be that the Deans couldn't quite keep up with the Bushes and the Kennedys and that some of these silly statements from Dean's camp have some bearing on reality, or at least Dean's take on it. Or it could also be that Dean feels uncomfortable with the wealth and privilege he had as he grew up and the guilt is gnawing at him. I suppose it could be a combination of the two in some odd way, a guilt over privilege but a strong desire to demonstrate that he wasn't as privileged as others. Something of these dynamics have put a giant chip on his shoulder, and I think you're right, it goes back far beyond this election cycle, and probably before his career in public service.

It's Your Fault I Was An Idiot

Sometimes I wonder what attraction a nanny-state society holds for people who think for themselves ... and then I'm reminded that some people don't think things through at all, and want a big mommy to make everyone give you do-overs:

A 55-year-old man is suing a local church because it won't give back a $126,000 donation he gave during a deep depression five years ago. ... After five months of antidepressants and counseling, Mager said he asked for the money back. But leaders at the Cloquet Gospel Tabernacle church said no. They had already used the money for new family ministry space. ... Mager's change of heart is confounding to church leaders because the letter he sent with the cashier's check seemed so genuine, Doebler said.

"He felt some remorse for some past actions and he wanted to make it right with God,'' Doebler said, recounting the letter. "At the time, we were taking it on good faith that this is what he wanted. It was hard to know what we were dealing with since it was anonymous.''

Mager gives a church $126,000 -- anonymously, so there's no question of duress or undue influence -- and then five months later changes his mind and demands the money back. Why? He says he suffered from depression and couldn't be held responsible for his actions. The church is somehow supposed to know this despite the anonymous submission and not spend the money for five months on the offhand chance that the donor would be tacky enough to ask for it back months later. Of course the church refuses, saying that the money had already been spent, and of course Mager runs to a lawyer to sue them.

Nice guy, Mager.

This is exactly the kind of dispute that should have taken no more than an hour in court to dismiss. The function of the tort system should not be to protect people from their own stupidity, nor to make charitable organizations vulnerable to refund requests based on the whim of the donor. Instead, Mager has tied up valuable court time and has wasted the church's resources (not to mention his own) on legal fees, resources that I am sure are scarce enough as it is.

Note to the plaintiff: grow up and take some responsibility for your actions. I'm sorry you suffer from depression, but next time, get help before you start writing checks. It's not the church's fault you sent them $126,000 anonymously -- it's yours. Your action, your fault, your responsibility. Stop wasting court time and taxpayer resources.

Max Boot: Don't Break Out The White Cane Yet

Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, provides an amusing and trenchant response to former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill's weird comment that George Bush is like "a blind man in a roomful of deaf people":

The breathless revelation from former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill that the president was disengaged at Cabinet meetings — like "a blind man in a roomful of deaf people" — reinforces the old stereotype that George W. Bush is a taco or two shy of a combination platter. And, in a way, the charge is warranted. Bush definitely must have been asleep on the job to have hired a whiny back-stabber like the former Alcoa chief as his Treasury secretary and have waited two whole years before canning him.

Boot continues by looking at the oddly partisan charge of stupidity, noting as I did two days ago that the Left loves to paint Republicans as stupid. No doubt that Bush's lack of talent at public speaking gives them an opening for this particular slander, one that was being made against him even while he ran for President against a purported near-genius and fellow son of privilege Al Gore. The inconvenient facts of Bush's more successful run in academia -- Bush received a higher degree and better grades, for one thing -- didn't deter his critics from painting him as a bufoon and a puppet, much like his political inspiration, Ronald Reagan.

Sure, we're in an election cycle and the heat has naturally turned up from campaigning, but it's clear that an elitist and almost offended attitude has permeated the Left's irrational reaction to Bush -- and it's due to his success. Reagan experienced the same backlash, but his genius at communication and warm, personal style blunted it. Bush, who does not share Reagan's talent at communication or projecting an image, has no such buffer. Instead, Bush relies entirely on his success, the American public responds to it, and it's driving his opposition nuts. Listen to the candidates in Iowa thunder on about Bush being evil, to the point where frontrunner and Tinfoil Hat Brigade commander Howard Dean can repeat paranoid conspiracy theories on NPR and still maintain his MoveOn base. Or, for that matter, that MoveOn can promote two different ads on its website equating Bush to Hitler and still remain a viable political entity. This level of attack surpasses anything that came before, including the irrational component of the Clinton-haters.

If Bush maintains his polling numbers, look for even crazier attempts from his opponents to slander him as a vacuous dullard who sold his soul to Satan for thirty drops of oil ... and look for the American public to utterly reject the Weekly World News style of politics in November.

Sympathy For The Devils

I'm puzzled by this piece in tomorrow's Washington Post that tells the story of former Ba'athists in Iraq and how difficult life has become, now that their privileges have been revoked:

Less than a year ago, Ismael Mohammed Juwara lived high in the food chain of President Saddam Hussein's Iraq. He was a secret policeman feared and respected among his comrades and in his hometown, enjoying a cornucopia of privileges from the government. ... Now, as he scrapes out a living by selling diesel fuel illegally, he is a pariah in the new Iraq. "We were on top of the system. We had dreams," said Juwara, a former member of the Mukhabarat, the intelligence service that reported directly to the now-deposed president. "Now we are the losers. We lost our positions, our status, the security of our families, stability. Curse the Americans. Curse them."

The entire article consists of several long whines from former Saddam loyalists who used to hold positions of power and privilege before Saddam's departure, and who now have become pariahs among their victims. Juwara decries treatment like this:

Besides his economic woes, Juwara expressed deep feelings of humiliation. He told of a trip to the Central Bank in Baghdad on a quest for records of his account in Thuluiya. He said the bank records were looted after the war. "You know what they told me? 'You are from Thuluiya. You are a dog. Go and ask Saddam for the money,' " he recalled. "A few months ago, they would never have treated me like that. They wouldn't dare."

Ah, yes -- they wouldn't dare. Why not? Because Juwara likely would have arrested them on the spot and tortured them for the crime of not respecting him. Williams paints this picture to scold the Coalition for mistreating this poor Gestapo agent secret policeman by not employing him in the new security forces. However, by detailing his former side benefits over four paragraphs, it's clear that Juwara isn't motivated by a love of his fellow Iraqis but by the free land, free construction, superior health care, higher rations, discounted appliances, liberal traveling policies, and the fear he could see in the eyes of those whom he dominated. Would author Daniel Williams want this man to be his local policeman -- a man who tortured people for a living and who still thirsts to dominate them?

Not once does Williams give any context to this story, preferring to equate Juwara to an Everyman instead. Would Williams have written this story from the perspective of a former Gestapo agent after the fall of Berlin in 1945 or 1946, sympathetically telling about all of the lost perks and marks of respect that poor Klaus has to endure, without ever mentioning the fact that the people who treat him like a pariah are the same ones he terrorized on behalf of a genocidal madman? How about talking about former secret policemen in Serbia under Milosevic, or in South Africa under apartheid? If there is a difference between these, it's only because the torture and genocide under these latter two examples were less heinous than in Iraq.

Both Williams and the Post had an obligation to inject a little context into poor Juwara's griping and "bellowing" about his comeuppance. Their failure to do so makes this article tremendously unbalanced and, in its quest for sympathy for sadists and murderers, morally bankrupt.

UPDATE: Welcome to Instapundit readers!

Secret Documents Inquiry Launched

After Paul O'Neill's appearance on 60 Minutes included a document labeled "SECRET," Treasury officials have requested an investigation into its release:

The U.S. Treasury requested a probe on Monday of how a possibly secret document appeared in a televised interview of Paul O'Neill, as a book criticizing the Bush administration that uses material supplied by the ex-Treasury secretary hits the stores. ... "It's based on the (CBS program) '60 Minutes' segment, and I'll be even more clear -- the document as shown on '60 Minutes' that said 'secret,"' Treasury spokesman Rob Nichols told reporters at a weekly briefing. Nichols said the probe will focus on how possibly classified information appeared on a television interview as one of O'Neill's papers.

While this is going to look vindictive, no matter what Nichols says, once that document appeared on TV, an investigation cannot be avoided. Classified information can't just be tossed around, and its connection to a former government official who is flacking for his new book looks very suspicious. O'Neill and Suskind were foolish to allow its publication, as at least O'Neill is bound by the terms of his security clearance to protect that data until it is declassified by the relevant government agency. Just having the 'SECRET' designation on the top of the page makes any defense based on ignorance moot, and O'Neill -- as a member of the National Security Council -- has to know better.

Classified information does not exist for the purpose of high government officials to sell books. The Department of Justice or the Treasury needs to determine whether any other classified documents are in O'Neill's possession.

Power Line: O'Neill and Suskind Deception

Hindrocket at Power Line reports on an e-mail from Laurie Mylroie exposing a deception on the part of former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and his cowriter, Ron Suskind, on evidence of a conspiracy to invade Iraq:

"Suskind claimed he has documents showing that preparations for the Iraq war were well underway before 9-11. He cited--and even showed--what he said was a Pentagon document, entitled, 'Foreign Suitors for Iraq Oilfield Contracts.' He claimed the document was about planning for post-war Iraq oil (CBS's promotional story also contained that claim)[.]

"But that is not a Pentagon document. It's from the Vice-President's Office. It was part of the Energy Project that was the focus of Dick Cheney's attention before the 9/11 strikes.

"And the document has nothing to do with post-war Iraq. It was part of a study of global oil supplies. Judicial Watch obtained it in a law suit and posted it, along with related documents, on its website[.] Indeed, when this story first broke yesterday, the Drudge Report had the Judicial Watch document linked (no one at CBS News saw that, so they could correct the error, when the show aired?)"

As it turns out, this document is part of a series of maps and analyses of petroleum resources and commercial producers in the Middle East, also including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, both of which were and are nominal allies in the war on Iraq and on terror in general. No one has ever seriously suggested an invasion of either country, and indeed Saudi Arabia has been our major staging area in the Persian Gulf until just recently. Since oil is our primary energy source, and the Middle East is our primary resource for oil, it makes sense that Cheney's energy taskforce would produce such a document.

What does this do to O'Neill's contention about the Bush administration's conspiracy to commit war on Iraq at the beginning of the term? Well, probably not too much, since any responsible administration would have to have a war-plan for Iraq in 2001, no matter who was in office. The staging of thousands of troops for a mission of containment had to have options if that containment failed, which it undoubtably had started to do. As I remarked earlier, I'm sure that the Clinton administration had a military plan for the invasion of Iraq, too.

What this revelation may do is to paint O'Neill as even more out of the mainstream of this administration, someone in whose judgment the White House may have had little confidence, and if this is an example of his work, small wonder. This report had been held up by the pair as clear evidence of vague misdeeds, and its collapse will badly damage their case (and their book). O'Neill and Suskind apparently did little research into their evidence prior to publication, especially considering how high-profile Cheney's energy committee has been and how much focus the committe's findings and supporting documentation and testimony has received. If this proves out -- and Power Line's post leaves little doubt if you follow the links -- O'Neill and Suskind can be painted as amateurs in over their heads, perhaps even dangerously so.

In A Rational World ...

... Howard Dean would have already dropped like a rock in the polls, based on the extraordinary number of gaffes he's already committed, such as his remarks after Saddam's capture. So far he's had a Teflon candidacy, but a couple of incidents yesterday may have put a big dent in his shields:

Under fire in a campaign debate, Howard Dean conceded Sunday night that he never named a black or Hispanic to his Cabinet during nearly 12 years as governor of Vermont. "If you want to lecture people on race, you ought to have the background and track record to do that," Al Sharpton snapped at the Democratic presidential front-runner in an emotionally charged exchange in the final debate before next Monday's Iowa caucuses. ...

"You keep talking about race," the former street activist chided Dean when he had a turn to ask a question. He said that not one "black or brown held a senior position, not one. . . . It seems as though you've discovered blacks and browns in this campaign."

Dean bristled at that and said it was untrue. He said he had had "senior members" of his staff who were minorities, but Sharpton cut him off and said he was asking about his Cabinet, which has fewer members.

"No, we did not," conceded Dean, whose state has a population that is nearly 98 percent white.

Carol Mosely-Braun let him off the hook, but he still wound up looking rather foolish. To top that off, he managed to get rude with a voter, abeit a Republican, later on (via Blogs for Bush):

"Please tone down the garbage, the mean mouthing, the tearing down of your neighbor and being so pompous," Ungerer told the former Vermont governor and Democratic front-runner. "You should help your neighbor and not tear him down."

"George Bush is not my neighbor," Dean replied.

"Yes, he is," Ungerer said, to which Dean responded: "You sit down. You've had your say and now I'm going to have my say."

Spoken like a true ... doctor, as Marjorie Williams notes in her column:

The man is a doctor. This is the least-examined chapter of his career. But suddenly it all makes sense: Where else but in medicine do you find men and women who never admit a mistake? Who talk more than they listen, and feel entitled to withhold crucial information? Whose lack of tact in matters of life and death might disqualify them for any other field?

Read all of Williams' excellent and entertaining column. Little by little, Dean the man is sneaking past Dean the packaged candidate, and perhaps the media is prepared to finally start reporting it. Perhaps.

Post the Tape!

Comrade Commissar at the Politburo Diktat has a transcript from an underground video that may prove rather popular once it makes its way onto the Internet. In fact, it gives a new meaning to the phrase, "Move On":

Iowa Hilton: Ahhh. Ahhh. Some Stud: Ohhh. Vohhh. Your votes. I want your votes.

IH: (looking at network news cameras): Hi [giggles].
SS: What do you say? I can save you. Come here. Caucus with me for eight hours.
IH: I don't wanna vote this way. I got to work for a living, and I've got kids.
SS: How do you wanna vote? It'll only take 15 minutes.
IH: This way.
SS: You're not gonna be able to hear my opinion good from there.
IH: Yeah I can.
SS: Here.

Read the rest, but be aware that it contains certain bourgeois expletives and decadent references to body parts that Young Communists should not read. On the other hand, transcript gives good overall description of political system of American imperialist running dogs, da. Read the whole post and then report to Commissar for reeducation at first opportunity.

What's The Rush?

Over the past four decades -- from the Summer of Love to the Bratz Kids -- our children have been under increasing pressure to become aggressively sexual earlier and earlier. Little girls who aren't even in middle school start wearing makeup and getting expensive hairdos, and now parents are taking it to another level:

To celebrate her birthday, Lauren Potter decided to spring for a day at the spa. She and a friend, Ana Zdechlik, spent an afternoon getting facials, manicures and pedicures. They ended the day by having their hair spiked. Such birthday luxuries are not uncommon, except for one thing: Both girls are 11. ... [T]eens and "tweens" (10-to 12-year-olds bursting to be older) can get a French Upgrade or Glitter Topcoat for their nails, a chin wax job, Blemish Blaster Facial, eyelash and eyebrow tint or paraffin foot dip. They can also get a temporary henna tattoo or step into a glass shower and get a sunless "Magic Tan" that will last a week. If mom decides to hang around, there's a mother-daughter day special for $195 per person.

While Freud correctly notes that we all are sexual beings, overt sexuality had traditionally been postponed until mid-teens at the earliest until the 1960s and 1970s rolled around. Ever since then, overt sexuality has been pushed further and further back into childhood, until it seems that the entire period after toddlerhood has become an extended adolescence. The problem with sexualizing young children is that they inevitably start acting sexual, experimenting with sexual contact and obsessing on physical image and popularity with the opposite gender. Far more than boys, the pressure on young girls to sexualize has increased tremendously.

Now we have preteen girls spending $100 or more to get henna tatoos and paraffin foot dips instead of playing board games, getting eyelash coloring and fingernails painted instead of playing soccer or swimming, and basing their self-esteem on make-up and "shimmer body exfoliations" instead of their intellect, their personality, and their souls. After that, who can wonder why HBO then airs shows such as "Middle School Confidential", where 13-year-olds casually talk about oral sex on first dates with their 14-year-old boyfriends? Is it any wonder that abstinence-only sexual education proves no more effective than traditional methods? Why would we be surprised when eating disorders strike girls at adolescence and even younger now?

Shame on the parents who allow their daughters, in the article as young as five years old, to be indoctrinated into such a shallow set of values. They're selling a typical American illness: if it feels good, do it. One parent said:

[She] brought one daughter in for a faux tan earlier in the day, then had to bring her other daughter in. "Expensive day," she said. "I think it's a good idea," [she] said. "Teens have so much expendable money now. What else are they going to spend it on?"

Maybe that's part of the problem, too. Maybe our children get too much money too early. Because if that's the justification for allowing them to turn their daughters into shallow, self-obsessed, precocious targets for exploitation, then I guess you can't blame them for buying drugs, either.

Power Line Puts O'Neill in Perspective

Deacon at Power Line writes an excellent post putting former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill's comments on George Bush and his administration in perspective:

Bush was under no obligation to allow O'Neill to read him and, in fact, O'Neill admitted to Time that it may have just been Bush's style to keep his advisers guessing. Moreover, it seems rather odd to expect Cheney not to have adjusted his economic views in light of developments since the heady days of Gerald Ford (for example the success of the economy under Ronald Reagan, about which Cheney tried to remind O'Neill). O'Neill's underlying complaint seems to be that Bush and Cheney favored Reaganomics over the economic policies of Ford (remember "whip inflation now?"). Whether one adjudicates between these competing approaches through ideology, expediency, or "evidence and analysis", it is difficult to dispute the administration's preference.

Besides offering this election's strangest metaphor ("like a blind man in a room full of deaf people"?), O'Neill doesn't deliver much of anything else except typically hostile anecdotes from a fired employee. Some of this sounds awfully familiar, too, like supposed Presidential detachment during meetings, blank and uncomprehending looks; it's the same stuff they trotted out about Reagan. After all, if you want to make the Left feel good about attacking a Republican, you paint them as stupid and lost, while maintaining that they are so clever that they planned an invasion of a country and connived everyone into buying into it, including the previous President and Congress in some sort of neat time-traveling trick. As during the Reagan administration, the Left's frustration boils down to how clever those stupid Republicans can be.

One other point about O'Neill's reflections on Iraq. He claims that he never saw convincing evidence of Saddam's WMDs, but unless he had some sort of tax plan for Iraqi nukes, why would a Treasury Secretary even be part of the equation? Does O'Neill truly expect that he would have access to top-secret intelligence that has nothing to do with the Treasury Department? I find it odd that the question hasn't even been asked in most stories regarding O'Neill's comments.

Sympathy For The Pimp Family

Patterico has a terrific post about the LA Times and its deceptive headlines and editing, continuing his critical series on bias at the West Coast's biggest newspaper, to which he affectionately refers as the Dog Trainer:

I urge you to read the following hilarious article in yesterday's Dog Trainer titled South Bay Couple Plead Not Guilty to Running Call-Girl Ring From Home. My suggested headline would have been: "Clearly Guilty Couple Asserts Lame Defense." My headline would confuse you if you read only the information contained on the front pages, which makes the couple sound like very nice people being persecuted by misguided law enforcement officials. The details supporting my suggested headline all come -- after the jump.

"The jump" is the difference between the featured paragraphs of a story on the front page and the Paul Harvey portion stuck in the back of the section. This is somewhat less of an issue in the online version, although readers still may only read part-way through a story before deciding that they've read enough of the detail. That is one of the reasons journalists are taught to write news stories in an inverted-pyramid structure, with the most important facts weighted to the beginning of an article. Although human-interest stories don't strictly follow this structure, it is less than honest to hide critical details for the last third of the story.

When people talk about media bias, subleties like this are often missed. It's not the blatant editorial slants that cause problems because blatant bias is easily recognized. Bias appears in how a story is written, in what's included or excluded, and in how facts are emphasized or glossed over. Bias also manifests itself in headlines, placement, and whether a story is covered at all. Read through this entire post and Patterico's other bias issues in his Dog Trainer category.

Stiff Sentences for Hardened Criminals?

Okay, if I am a firm believer in tough sentencing laws for sex offenders (see my previous post), then these guys need to be given some stiff penalities for smuggling:

A federal grand jury on Friday indicted a Los Angeles man on charges of trafficking in counterfeit tablets of the anti-impotence drug Viagra that he purportedly obtained from a drug company in China, a U.S. Attorney's Office spokesman said. ... Agents seized about 10,000 blue pills stamped with the same markings as Viagra tablets, including the name of Pfizer Inc., the world's largest pharmaceutical company and the maker of Viagra. ... The charges of conspiracy, trafficking in counterfeit goods and selling a counterfeit drug carry a potential maximum penalty of up to 18 years in federal prison and a $2 million fine.

Please feel free to come up with your own puns and drop them in my comments section. However, also notice that the maximum penalty for smuggling counterfeit Viagra is only five years shorter than the sentence Alfonso Rodriguez received for kidnapping and raping a woman in 1980. I have no problem with the 18-year-sentence of hard time (heh) for the smugglers, but if that's fair, why only sentence a two-time sex offender to 23 years when he's obviously not getting the message?

It's Not Difficult At All

The Star Tribune asks the wrong question in a featured article today about the disposition of released, high-risk sex offenders, titled "Is it too hard to commit dangerous sex offenders?" The case of Alfonso Rodriguez, who allegedly kidnapped the still-missing Dru Sjodin last year, has made the question of civil commitment for high-risk sex offenders a hot topic in Minnesota:

The Rodriguez case has horrified the public, putting the commitment process under the spotlight and making it an explosive political issue. The public attention prompted the Corrections Department to send 145 new commitment cases to county attorneys for review. If, as expected, that review increases the number of sex offenders who are committed, taxpayers will have to pay millions more every year for their treatment in secure psychiatric facilities.

There are now some 200 sex offenders held at secure psychiatric facilities in Moose Lake and St. Peter. Each costs state taxpayers more than $300 per day -- three times as much as an inmate in prison. In all, the state spends nearly $20 million a year on the sex-offender treatment program. Lowering the standard for who should be committed could also raise new constitutional questions about indefinitely confining people because they might commit a crime, lawyers say.

It turns out that the state of Minnesota has released more than 50 of the highest-risk sex offenders in the last four years without referring them to civil commitment, a controversial process where the state declares an inmate too dangerous to release and commits him to a mental facility indefinitely. The civil-commitment process costs a great deal in court time, psychiatric evaluations, and second-guessing the true danger of each individual.

But that really isn't the issue. The solution to the entire problem is to lock people up for life after committing serious sexual offenses. Alfonso Rodriguez had already sexually assaulted at least three women, kidnapping two of them, when he was convicted for his last offense. Instead of getting a life sentence, Rodriguez served his full sentence of twenty-three years, and because he served the entire sentence, he wasn't required to report to a parole officer after his release or fulfill any counseling requirements. A mere six months after his release, Dru Sjodin disappeared, leaving traces of blood in Rodriguez's car, and she hasn't been heard from since.

People who claim that life sentences for sexual assault is overkill ignore the high recidivist rate of the people who commit serious sexual offenses, known as Level 3 offenders:

The test used by corrections officials predicts that of offenders who score 8 or higher, 57 percent will commit another sex crime. Such a score makes it likely that when they approach the end of their sentences corrections officials will put them into the high-risk category -- level 3. Among those who score a 13 or more, 72 percent are predicted to commit another sex crime. Rodriguez scored 13.

Penal philosophy in our country has evolved into a debate between two approaches -- punishment vs. rehabilitation -- when in fact the most important component is protection for society. We lock murderers away for life without parole because once someone has deliberately killed another human being, society cannot trust them not to break that taboo again. However, the recidivism of murder is a lot lower than sexual assault, and sex offenders get progressively more violent. Look at Rodriguez as an example. His last conviction didn't teach him not to offend; it taught him to get rid of the witness, a lesson that may keep him from being convicted this time.

In releasing these people back into society, all we are doing is giving them the opportunity to find more victims, offering up our wives, sisters, and daughters as sacrifices to an ideal of rehabilitation that bears little semblance to reality. It's time to take action to keep these predators off of our streets permanently once they've been identified through their own actions, and stop trusting a civil-commitment process that fails to protect us more often than not. Violent sex offenders should never be allowed out of prison, and that removes all the difficulty described in this article.

Iowa: Patron State of Lost Causes?

Iowa's major newspapers published their endorsements today -- and they neatly managed to avoid picking a winner:

Iowa's largest newspaper endorsed North Carolina Sen. John Edwards for the Democratic presidential nomination while three other Iowa newspapers went for Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry in weekend editions.

Note the complete absence of names like Dean, Clark, Gephardt -- it seems that Iowa newspapers are determined to extend this primary race as much as possible. It's very surprising that none of the broadsheets saw fit to endorse Gephardt, a progressive Midwestern who has a strong record of supporting labor and a centrist national-security outlook. It's almost as if they deliberately chose lost causes to keep some hope alive for these stumbling campaigns. After all, four Democrats are polling in double digits, and Edwards isn't even one of them.

Remember -- the longer that there are more than two or three viable candidates in the primaries, the better Dean's chances of winning the nomination with the plurality of the radical left.