Kerry's Long Record His Biggest Liability

Now that he has moved to the front of the pack, Senator John Kerry's long record of service in the US Senate may be both his biggest qualification and his greatest liability, according to a story in tomorrow's New York Times:

The sheer length of Mr. Kerry's service means that he has built a paper trail of positions on education, the military, intelligence and other issues — stands that might have looked one way when he took them but that resonate differently now.

For example, at the end of the cold war, Mr. Kerry advocated scaling back the Central Intelligence Agency, but after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, he complained about a lack of intelligence capability. In the 1980's, he opposed the death penalty for terrorists who killed Americans abroad, but he now supports the death penalty for terrorist acts. In the 1990's, he joined with Republican colleagues to sponsor proposals to end tenure for public school teachers and allow direct grants to religion-based charities, measures that many Democratic groups opposed. In 1997, he voted to require elderly people with higher incomes to pay a larger share of Medicare premiums.

The rest of the article provides a roadmap for other Democratic candidates to follow in a sophisticated attack on Kerry's contradictory record and positions. Kerry, who has tried to have his cake on Iraq and eat it too by voting for the initial authorization for war and then voting to cut off funding for the troops, has also done the same thing with intelligence and national security in the past:

After the end of the cold war, Mr. Kerry asked why the nation's "vast intelligence apparatus continues to grow even as government resources for new and essential priorities fall far short of what is necessary," as he put it in remarks in the Senate in 1997. He proposed a series of mostly failed measures to cut spending programs for intelligence.

But after the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Kerry said on the CBS News program "Face the Nation," "The tragedy is, at the moment, that the single most important weapon for the United States of America is intelligence, and we are weakest, frankly, in that particular area."

Obviously, George Bush and Karl Rove will be all over those bills and attempts to gut American intelligence operations in November, assuming that Kerry gets that far. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to see Wes Clark or, even more likely, Joe Lieberman take up that argument against Kerry in the final hours before the Granite State goes to the polls.

John Kerry came out of almost nowhere to take Iowa away from a stumbling Dean. Now that Kerry is out in front and in the open, expect all of his rivals -- both current and potential -- to start framing their speeches and attacks on Kerry's most vulnerable Senate actions. Kerry has at least as many inconsistencies as Dean and Clark (the most consistent Democrat, Lieberman, doesn't have a prayer) to exploit.

Due to the nature of the Democratic primaries, any candidate who gets at least 15% of the vote gets delegates in proportion to their share of the overall vote. If Kerry loses momentum under the inevitable scrutiny he will get as the front-runner, the delegates from at least the first primaries will get split up fairly evenly if Edwards can keep his funding up. A brokered primary looks possible, and that will prove to be a disaster for the Democrats.

UPDATE: For another example, this time on the environment, see this post at QandO. I hear Karl sharpening the knives as we speak ...

Aussies Want Republic, Not Monarch

A poll by the Australian newspaper Daily Telegraph finds that a 2-1 majority favors eliminating the British monarch as head of state and officially becoming a republic:

Fewer than one in three (30 per cent) believe the Queen should remain as head of state while 64 per cent favour an Australian in the position.

The national poll of 1200 people shows that support for removing the Queen has grown significantly since the referendum on the Republic in 1999, which was defeated 55 to 45 per cent, and a Newspoll in December 1995, when 56 per cent supported the change.

Most Americans may not even be aware that Queen Elizabeth is the official head of state for Australia as well as the UK. Five years ago, Australia held a referendum on the continuance of this tradition, which was approved by 10 points. The public mood has shifted considerably in the past five years, although Australians overwhelmingly want to keep their current flag and national anthem. If public support remains this strong, expect to see another referendum on the republic in the near future.

I'm Not Complaining, But Those Grapes Did Taste a Bit Sour

Governor Howard Dean, until two weeks ago considered all but a lock for the Democratic nomination for President, explains his stunning defeat in Iowa:

Howard Dean said Saturday he was surprised by the "under the table" campaigning he faced during the Iowa caucus and said the state needs to prevent such negative attacks if it wants to keep the nation's leadoff presidential vote.

Dean said his rivals "had their folks really beating up on the people who went in, trying to get them to change their minds in caucus." ... Asked Saturday for specifics about the negative attacks, Dean pointed to a book distributed by North Carolina Sen. John Edwards' campaign that instructed supporters how to attack other candidates during the caucuses. For example, it told campaign captains in Iowa to describe Dean as an "elitist from Park Avenue in New York City."

"I never dreamed that would happen," Dean said. "And I don't think that's a healthy thing for democracy. It's enough to have it go on for weeks and weeks in the press, but when it goes on inside the caucus, I don't think that's good," he said.

Dean, you may recall, started the negative campaigning months ago, attacking his fellow Democratic candidates as late as this very week by labeling them Washington insiders, implying that they were not trustworthy. As he has so often demonstrated during his campaign, Dean has a very thin skin -- reminiscent of Jesse Ventura in my neck of the woods -- and comes across as a crybaby when he complains. If he thinks that crying in New Hampshire is a winning strategy, perhaps he should read up on Ed Muskie's adventures in the Granite State in 1972.

Suck it up, buttercup, or go home.

Clark Tanks in Debate, Blames ... Republicans

General Wesley Clark, after his mediocre showing in Thursday's debate, blamed the alleged Republican bias of the moderator for his performance:

Presidential candidate Wesley Clark on Friday complained that one of the moderators in Thursday night's debate was carrying out a Republican agenda by questioning his Democratic credentials. Brit Hume of Fox News Channel, who worked as both moderator and questioner during the two-hour debate with the seven candidates, pressed Clark about when he had first realized he was a Democrat. Clark told reporters Friday, "I looked at who was asking the questions, and I think that was part of the Republican agenda in the debate."

Perhasps Clark hasn't realized this yet, but the office for which he is running is President of the United States, not DNC party chairman. That means that everyone has a stake in finding out as much as possible about the philosophy and policy goals of the candidates. The debate audience is not limited to Democrats. Besides, isn't one of Clark's arguments for the nomination that he can attract Republicans to his campaign, based on his military record and national-security policies?

And what was so biased about asking Clark, who registered as a Democrat after he entered the race, why he thought he was a Democrat? As Fox News spokesman Paul Schur said, Clark has been asked repeatedly about his party affiliation during the campaign, and he and his staff should have anticipated the question and had a better answer ready:

"This is not the first time General Clark has been questioned about his party affiliation," Schur said. "His handlers should spend their time on more constructive things, such as trying to come up with reasons for the general's slippage in the polls."

The truth is that Clark has been damaged by a series of misstatements, especially on abortion, where he stated that he favored abortion up until the moment of birth. Add to that his assertion that lobbyists make America safer (based on his time as a lobbyist for Axciom) and that 9/11 was not only preventable but that he would guarantee that there would be no terrorist attacks during his Presidency, and you get the picture of a man who is either not all there or who lies through his teeth. And now that John Kerry broke out of the pack in Iowa, no one needs Clark any more to be the un-Dean. Expect the thin-skinned Clark to drop to a distant third or even fourth in New Hampshire, if Edwards can make a run there.

McJesus?

London's Daily Telegraph publishes an article about the latest spiritual fad sweeping the US -- the megachurch:

An advertisement for the Saddleback Church invites congregants to attend "God's Extreme Makeover" - a revival of Christ in their hearts named after the latest television fad, in which volunteers undergo plastic surgery.

Leaflets at the door to the main hall proclaim "You Can Bring Your Coffee Into Any Venue". Children run around in baseball shirts proclaiming that they are part of God's own squad. The thousands inside are able to sing along to spiritual songs - not traditional hymns - from the words on giant karaoke screens suspended above a light rock band.

This is the United States' latest religious phenomenon. As Americans like going to shopping malls for all their consumer needs in one spot, so self-styled "megachurches" are the fastest growing form of service in the country.

Ah, yes, we Americans love everything when it's bigger and glitzier, even our places of worship. Why have one church with one altar and one celebrant when you could have four major worship groups and 18 minor ones going on simultaneously? Who needs hymnals or songbooks when we can have giant-screen plasma televisions hanging from the rafters? Of course, in our society, you may find it difficult to determine exactly what is being worshiped when televisions are present.

I suppose it's too much to expect that the mass-market, one-stop approach that we love in the retail world would not apply itself to our spiritual life, but it seems we've Wal-Marted Jesus. Smaller churches are just so much less efficient at getting butts into the pews. It's not enough to share the Gospel and enrich ourselves spiritually; we need to be entertained as well, and God forbid (pun intended) we should have to skip our cup of coffee! Nor does the Wal-Mart/Costco analogy stop at just efficiency but also with the "product" itself:

But what their events lack, and what makes them controversial among America's traditionalist Christians, is a clearly defined doctrine. ... They are taught that through God they are victors not victims, and no one is called a sinner. Aping the popular self-help books popular in the modern age the approach adopted is "Jesus meets the power of positive thinking".

Eddie Gibbs, a professor at the Fuller Theological Seminary, has described it as a conscious process to "remove every obstacle that keeps people from coming into the Christian Church".

In other words, they've discounted sin, overstocked forgiveness and discontinued consequences at the Jesus Depot. Look, I'm the first person to recognize that traditional denominations sometimes overdo the fire and brimstone, maybe old-line Baptist and Evangelical denominations more so than others. But there is a difference between striking a balance and simply deleting all of the "negative" parts of the faith, at least if you're serious about teaching and celebrating Christianity. Jesus preached love and forgiveness, but he also taught that actions had consequences, some of them severe, if one did not repent of sin.

The description given in this article (which may or may not be accurate, of course) isn't "Jesus meets positive thinking"; it's New Age self-esteem worship with enough of a Christian theme to bring in the multitudes. Hearing this from the pastor doesn't create a great deal of confidence that the Telegraph is mistaken, however:

"Don't forget Christ used user-friendly language. He spoke to his followers in parables."

Unfortunately for Pastor Rick, this statement betrays his ignorance of at least the historical and rhetorical context of the Gospels. Jesus didn't speak in parables because they were "user-friendly," a ridiculous term for this context anyway. He used parables to illustrate points, but the meaning of these parables often escaped Jesus' audiences and even His disciples. Jesus Himself states that their meaning is not meant to be understood at the moment on at least one occasion. And Jesus did not limit His teaching to a Roman-era version of "I'm OK, You're OK." When Jesus entered the temple, He charged the money-changers, forcibly ejecting them from the temple. One wonders what Jesus would do when faced with the Saddleback Church Cafe.

UPDATE: A couple of alert readers (pretty darned smart, they are!) have posted comments that the Pastor Rick mentioned in the Telegraph article is Rick Warren, the author of The Purpose-Driven Life, a well-received book on Christian faith. Its description from Publishers Weekly indicates that Pastor Warren is no lightweight:

Warren certainly knows his Bible. Of 800-plus footnotes, only 18 don't refer to Christian Scripture. He deliberately works with 15 different Bible translations, leaning heavily on contemporary translations and paraphrases, as an interesting way of plumbing biblical text. The almost exclusively biblical frame of reference stakes out the audience niche for this manual for Christian living.

Warren's book has some flaws, at least in the view of some readers who have commented on it at Amazon. I still mistrust the mass-market approach to Christianity that inevitably makes it into an encounter group rather than a celebration of Christ's teachings, but hopefully Saddleback can avoid these pitfalls. Just stop selling coffee and make people focus on the message, not the customer service.

Power Line Dissects the Washington Post

Here in the Twin Cities, we are accustomed to our leading newspaper's overt and covert anti-Republican bias, especially when the subject is the Bush administration. Other major broadsheets have similar problems, especially the Los Angeles Times (covered brilliantly by Patterico's Pontifications) and the New York Times. Editorial page preferences don't bother me; the op-ed section is where editors are supposed to take sides. These newspapers allow their editorial bias to inform their supposedly straight news reporting, and that serves no one well.

One newspaper that had been fairly good at separating news from opinion was the Washington Post, which has been fairly straightforward during the Iraq war. Unfortunately, that seems to be changing now that the primary season is in full swing. Hindrocket at Power Line writes a devastatingly detailed critique on the work of the Post's Dana Milbank and Walter Pincus, two reporters whose bias had been at issue in the past as well. Hindrocket provides a first-class look at how reporters, even in the top-line mainstream media, will twist wording and ignore facts in order to write their articles based on their preconceived notions. Usually, reporters are more subtle about it than Milbank and Pincus, especially in this example. You have to wonder what the Post's editors were thinking when they ran this article.

Read the entire thing. It's easily the most worthwhile blog post on the media so far this month.

French Intelligence: Al-Qaeda Severely Damaged, Not Destroyed

The head of French intelligence substantiated George Bush's State of the Union contention that al-Qaeda has been significantly damaged but remains a threat against American and Western interests:

The al-Qaida network has been severely destabilized but not destroyed by the war on terror and still represents a "very motivated and very dangerous" threat, the head of France's domestic intelligence agency said Friday. ... Bousquet de Florian said it "has been destabilized to a large extent" but "retains a capacity to carry out operations."

"Very apparently," November's suicide bombings in Istanbul, Turkey, were, if not ordered by al-Qaida, then "validated by the heads of al-Qaida or by Osama bin Laden himself," he said, referring to the terror network's fugitive leader. Despite losing leaders, fighters, training camps and financing to the war on terror, al-Qaida "remains a structure that is very motivated and very dangerous," said Bousquet de Florian.

President Bush warned Congress and the American people not to get complacent and make the mistake of assuming that the threat had passed, but that progress has been and continues to be gained against al-Qaeda. de Florian gives essentially the same message. While the French intelligence chief does not believe that there were solid connections between Saddam and al-Qaeda, he states that Saddam had been directly funding another terrorist group:

Bousquet de Florian said France has no indication that Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida had links. But he said France has evidence that Saddam's regime financed another group, the Mujahedeen Khalq, which the United States and the European Union have branded a terrorist organization. France cracked down on the Mujahedeen Khalq's French operations last June, raiding over a dozen sites including its walled headquarters in Auvers-Sur-Oise, north of Paris. More than 150 people were detained.

The Mujahedeen Khalq is an Iranian opposition group which for years fought Iran's Islamic leadership from Iraq with the backing of Saddam's regime. It was disarmed by U.S. forces in Iraq soon after major hostilities ended in May.

Those who insist that Saddam was a "distraction" from the war on terror should be paying more attention.

US Captures Key Al-Qaeda Figure

US forces in Iraq captured a key al-Qaeda associate and a leader in Ansaar al-Islam and the Iraqi insurgency:

U.S. forces in Iraq captured a leader of the insurgency who is believed to be a close associate of Abu Musab Zarqawi, described by some as a key link between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein, a senior American official said in Washington on Friday. U.S. troops captured Husam al-Yemeni Thursday, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. He is described by U.S. officials as a top member of the al-Qaida linked Ansar al-Islam group and the leader of an insurgency cell in Fallujah, west of Baghdad.

As in earlier events, US forces gave no details of the capture, nor have they made an official statement, but this looks like a fairly significant win for the Coalition. They've been battling an insurgency cell for a while in Fallujah, and capturing its leader, or one of them, will have a sobering effect on the rest -- especially if the Americans start getting good intelligence from him.

UPDATE: CNN reports that Americans have another senior al-Qaeda leader in custody, given to them by "friendly foreign forces":

A senior al Qaeda operative was captured Thursday in Iraq by friendly foreign forces and turned over to U.S. intelligence personnel, senior U.S. officials said. A U.S. official told CNN that Ghul is a "longtime facilitator, operator" within al Qaeda, and a "significant player." It is believed that Ghul was captured soon after his arrival in Iraq, the official said.

Saluting A Better Captain, Gone To a Better Place

Sadly, an icon of children's entertainment has passed away; Bob Keeshan, better known as Captain Kangaroo, died at age 76:

Bob Keeshan, the television producer who created and ultimately became beloved children's personality Captain Kangaroo, has died. Keeshan, who was born in Lynbrook, Long Island, was 76. Keeshan began his career by creating the character of Clarabell the Clown for the 'Howdy Doody Show.' He used that children's show experience to mold Captain Kangaroo, winning over generations of children and their parents through innovative approaches to interesting topics.

As the easy-going Captain with his big pockets and his bushy mustache, Keeshan lured children into close engagement with literature, science and especially music, adopting an approach which mixed pleasure and pedagogy. Keeshan's approach represented a rejection of pressures towards the increased commercialization of children's programming as well as a toning-down of the high volume, slapstick style associated with earlier kid show hosts.

I don't recall spending a lot of time watching Captain Kangaroo when I was younger, but I was in the stark minority for my generation, and small wonder. Keeshan devoted his life to entertaining and educating children, in the same mold (but different style) as Fred Rogers. Keeshan's devotion to children is aptly demonstrated in this review of his early efforts at presenting high-quality entertainment:

Leaving the series in 1952, he played a succession of other clown characters, such as Corny, the host of WABC-TV's 'Time For Fun,' a noontime cartoon program, where he exerted pressure to remove from airplay cartoons he felt were too violent or perpetuated racial stereotyping.

Farewell, Captain, and Godspeed. (via The SmarterCop)

Power Line: Battle of the Mosque

Big Trunk from Power Line has an outstanding post based on a report of a little-known Marine battle in Baghdad. Known now as the Battle of the Mosque, the 5th Marines took over 1,000 RPGs in an urban battle that lasted over nine hours. The Marines eventually overcame the enemy, killing over 100 Saddam Fedayeen, to the joy of the residents in the area. But even more gripping than the account of the battle is this demonstration of the courage of the Marines under fire:

On the first day of the battle, the battalion reported 34 wounded, most with fragmentation wounds to the head and upper torso. It was only on the day after the battle that the regiment realized the number of wounded was actually 74.

Many of the Marines had not reported their wounds to the corpsman, because they were afraid that they would be medevaced, and not be able to return to their unit in the midst of this intense fight.

Read the entire post, and if you don't get goose bumps thinking about the heart and courage of these Marines, check for a pulse. You may be dead.

Clark Stumbles Again

General Wesley Clark continues to turn this election into an emulation of the Little Bighorn by heedlessly charging into hostile territory without a clue as to what he's doing, and then expecting to succeed on sheer personality alone. (Talk about being unarmed!) Yesterday, Clark attempted a full-speed retreat on his previous statements on abortion:

In his latest statement, Clark reaffirmed his support for abortion rights during an appearance at a Planned Parenthood conference timed to coincide with the 31st anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court ruling upholding a woman's constitutional right to an abortion. ...

Asked when Roe v. Wade stipulates that life begins, Clark said: "I'm not going to get into a debate on viability. . . . Viability is a standard determined by a doctor, and I'm not going to get into a specific time frame." When asked to explain Roe v. Wade, Clark said, "I am not going to go into detail. . . . It's there for everyone to read."

Clark's campaign tried to spin this latest statement as a clarification of his position on abortion. But as the Washington Post's political reporter Terry Neal writes, it actually contradicts Clark's position earlier this month:

Earlier this month, Clark told a Manchester Union Leader reporter that he didn't have a "litmus tests" for choosing judges. He later called the reporter to say, "I'm not going to be appointing judges who are pro-life." Clark also told the paper that he believed abortion should be legal until the moment of birth. His campaign said later that he had not intended to get into a debate over the timing of abortion.

No court has ever ruled abortion to be legal up until the moment of birth, and that certainly wasn't the ruling or intent of Roe v Wade, and most people who support legal abortion would find that position repulsive. But that is exactly what Clark said:

The Presidential candidate also told The Union Leader that until the moment of birth, the government has no right to influence a mother’s decision on whether to have an abortion. “Life,” he said, “begins with the mother’s decision.”

Do I think that Clark wants to kill babies the day before they're born? No, but like so many other issues during this campaign, Clark shifts positions based on the amount of flak he gets after he opens his mouth. It demonstrates a lack of intellectual process on the part of the General, as well as a deficiency in honesty. I believe that Clark had no idea what he thought about abortion, if anything at all, and gave what he thought would be the mainstream Democratic position. When challenged on his inconsistencies and missteps, Clark (or his campaign) blames the media for getting it wrong, and when he's presented with hard evidence -- like his London Times editorial praising Bush and Blair for their tenacity and congratulating them for successfully prosecuting the war in Iraq -- his response boils down to the old joke: "Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?"

Both Dean and Clark carry a pattern of inconsistencies, flip-flops, and outright lies that bode ill for a national campaign against George Bush and Karl Rove. I suspect that both candidates will have a hard time finishing any higher than third in the upcoming New Hampshire primary. Clark will not be around too much longer than Lieberman.

Berkeley Supports Kucinich!

Hugh Hewitt had a caller last night from Berkeley who complained about Hugh's treatment of Dennis Kucinich. After assuming that Hugh would cut him off after declaring his support for Kucinich -- as if Hugh could pass up such an opportunity for radio comedy -- he challenged Hugh to say why he was so dismissive of Kucinich. Hugh told him that Kucinich was "loopy," which to anyone outside of Berkeley is fairly self-evident. Predictably, this infuriated poor Peter from Berkeley, who carried on about Hugh's lack of qualification for this judgment. Hugh treated the caller politely and indulgently ... which made it all the more hilarious.

However, as a public service to all of our friends in Berkeley -- all two of them -- I will be happy to explain Why Kucinich Is Loopy, a handy guide to the Quixotean candidacy of the diminutive Ohioan.

* A poem once said, "You can tell a man who boozes by the company he chooses," and you can tell a politician by the people standing with 'em. Check out this other-worldly endorsement on Kucinich's official campaign web site: he claims that a fictional children's book character, Grandfather Twilight, has endorsed his candidacy for President. Not only that, but he's included an interview confirming it on his website:

GT: Children are dying from bombs and guns. The moon sees all of this. But she also sees something else. It is like a dream. Such a good dream, I could hardly believe it at first.

BHB: Tell me!

GT: There is a brave, truth-telling man from Ohio. His name is Dennis Kucinich, a Congressman who is running for President. As you know, I tend to be a calm old man, but when I heard Dennis speak, I got excited. He plans to create a Department of Peace. At last! Why has no one done it before? This is exactly how a wise President should think, what a good President should do! (GT thumped a gentle fist on the table.)

Yes, if you thump a fist on a table, it should always be a gentle fist.

* Kucinich is a man of action. In fact, one of the side benefits of being on the campaign trail has been that his dating profile has been substantially elevated. His campaign staff publicly advertised on the Internet for a date for the earnest, peace-loving Presidential candidate, and eventually found Gina Marie Santore, a 33-year-old Democratic activist from New Jersey. Unfortunately for Dennis and his campaign staff yentas, Santore turned out to have a fiance.

Besides, the Democratic tradition is to have your staff do this sort of thing quietly (see Kennedy, John F, and Clinton, William J).

* The Department of Peace - Has anyone actually looked at this proposal?

Citizens across the United States are now uniting in a great cause to establish a Department of Peace, seeking nothing less than the transformation of our society, to make non-violence an organizing principle, to make war archaic through creating a paradigm shift in our culture for human development for economic and political justice and for violence control. Its work in violence control will be to support disarmament, treaties, peaceful coexistence and peaceful consensus building. Its focus on economic and political justice will examine and enhance resource distribution, human and economic rights and strengthen democratic values.

Domestically, the Department of Peace would address violence in the home, spousal abuse, child abuse, gangs, police-community relations conflicts and work with individuals and groups to achieve changes in attitudes that examine the mythologies of cherished world views, such as 'violence is inevitable' or 'war is inevitable'. Thus it will help with the discovery of new selves and new paths toward peaceful consensus.

The Department of Peace will also address human development and the unique concerns of women and children. It will envision and seek to implement plans for peace education, not simply as a course of study, but as a template for all pursuits of knowledge within formal educational settings.

These elements which I have bolded point their way to re-education camps and bowdlerized learning, where every single element of curricula would have to be filtered through a "peace template" -- can someone tell me what "peace math" might be? Don't kid yourself about enhancing resource distribution, either; that's code for redistribution of wealth which only comes from eliminating private-property rights, the backbone of liberty and freedom.

In fact, I think Hugh may have been wrong -- he may be going a bit too easy on Kucinich. He's not loopy, which I would define as entertainingly eccentric but essentially harmless. Kucinich's views aren't harmless at all; in fact, if he had any more support, he'd be dangerous. The fact that he hasn't any support outside of the confines of Berkeley gives comfort that the lunatic fringe is just that.

Addendum, 11:30 AM CST: I've been musing on this "Department of Peace" proposal this morning, and if you look at everything Kucinich proposes to do, it would appear that the Department of Peace would absorb the Departments of State, Education, and Health and Human Services. Kucinich doesn't explicitly state that it would eclipse the Department of Defense, although you could argue that it would make it superfluous. The costs of such an expansion would be enormous, of course, and the intrusion on freedom of thought and speech would be disastrous. Bear in mind that the people supporting this nonsense are the same who demand a repeal of the Patriot Act as an unconscionable affront to civil rights.

US Battles Al-Qaeda Cell in Fallujah

The US has discovered an al-Qaeda cell in the troublesome city of Fallujah, and is rounding up as many of its members as it can find:

The U.S. military is fighting to uproot a suspected cell of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terror network in the staunchly anti-American town of Fallujah, a military official said Thursday. Two Egyptians and an Iraqi, all believed to be couriers among al-Qaida terrorists and financiers, were arrested Sunday in a Fallujah apartment building where slogans supporting bin Laden were written across a wall in sheep's blood.

Capt. Scott Kirkpatrick, of the Army's 10th Mountain Division, who led the raid, said the men were found with al-Qaida literature and photos of bin Laden, believed to be the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that killed roughly 3,000 people. Kirkpatrick said the U.S. military doesn't know how big the al-Qaida cell in Fallujah is, "but it exists and we are making some very, very serious inroads into depleting it."

The al-Qaeda cell has been busy in Fallujah, firebombing businesses that cooperate with the Coalition and threatening others, such as a music and book store which al-Qaeda insists only Qu'ran verses and music supporting the mujaheddin should be sold. Hair salons attending to unveiled women receive death threats. Residents in Fallujah face arrest by Coalition forces on one hand and death from Fedayeen nutcases on the other, and this may explain why Fallujah has been such a thorn in the Coalition's side. It's an interesting article; it gives an insight into the difficulties of occupation for the residents and for the Coalition.

UK: Anti-War Demonstrators Caused Materiel Shortages in Iraq

Anti-war demonstrators claiming to "support the troops" despite their protests may have trouble explaining this report from the UK's Black Watch:

The commanding officer of the Black Watch yesterday blamed the Government's reluctance to be seen preparing for war for equipment shortages suffered by troops in Iraq. While careful to make clear that the Government's decision to wait until the last minute was understandable, Lt Col Cowan said it was partly forced on it by anti-war feeling among its own backbenchers.

"As a result, many items of equipment were not available in the right numbers, in the right place, in the right working order at the time they should have been and I think that is widely acknowledged," he said.

London, you may remember, hosted several large anti-war demonstrations in the run-up to the war in Iraq. Due to a certain lack of intestinal fortitude among members of Tony Blair's own party, the government was slow to build up necessary materiel, including body armor, leaving troops with incomplete equipment. The British did not want to give more opportunity for massive demonstrations and wanted to avoid being seen as committed to the use of force as an option until the last moment. Such delays unnecessarily endanger servicemen and servicewomen who should be able to rely on their government to supply them with all of the necessary equipment to achieve their mission objectives. Instead, groups like International ANSWER created an atmosphere which contributed to levels of negligence of the troops they claimed to support.

Iran: Political Violence Begins

The political clash between the rigid, ultraconservative mullahs of the Guardian Council and Iranian reformers escalated into violence today, thanks to Hezb' Allah and their allies:

A 200-strong gang of political radicals attacked a meeting of Iranian reformists yesterday in the first outbreak of serious violence since moderates were barred from forthcoming elections. Members of the radical Islamic Hezbollah movement burst into a hall in Hamedan, western Iran. They disrupted a meeting called to discuss the disqualification of 3,605 predominantly reformist candidates from next month's general elections.

The violence erupted after a speaker accused the Guardian Council, the unelected clerical body that vetoed the candidates, of disregarding an order by the supreme religious leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for the disqualifications to be reviewed. "Some 200 people attacked the podium, broke the microphone and beat people," said one witness.

The aggression of Hezb' Allah reveals true nature of the Iranian regime. The Guardian Council must feel their grip on power threatened, and just as the Nazis did in the 1930s, they sent terrorists to intimidate and coerce their citizens into knuckling under. It proves that the GC has no intellectual basis for their arbitrary decision to disqualify thousands of candidates -- indeed, no intellectual basis for their position in Iranian society. Resorting to thuggery absolutely demonstrates their tyrannous position over Iranian society and should put to lie any notion of free Iranian democracy under their current system.

NY Times: Choice Is Bad

Barry Schwartz, a professor of psychology at Swarthmore College, penned an article for today's New York Times op-ed section warning against the pitfalls of too much choice:

[T]here is growing evidence that the emotional logic (the psycho-logic) is deeply flawed. Indeed, for many people, increased choice can lead to a decrease in satisfaction. Too many options can result in paralysis, not liberation.

You may want to think of this as the "Moscow on the Hudson" syndrome; in that movie, a Russian refugee has an anxiety attack when asked to go to an American supermarket for coffee ... and sees an entire aisle of choices. In fact, Schwartz uses similar examples when making his case:

• Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper, psychologists at Columbia and Stanford respectively, have shown that as the number of flavors of jam or varieties of chocolate available to shoppers is increased, the likelihood that they will leave the store without buying either jam or chocolate goes up. ...

• In a study that Ms. Iyengar, Rachel Elwork of Columbia and I are working on, we found that as the number of job possibilities available to college graduates goes up, applicants' satisfaction with the job search process goes down.

Why did the Times decide to print this today, or at all? Well, this isn't just an exercise in psychology, as the beginning of the article demonstrates:

In his State of the Union address on Tuesday, President Bush elaborated on a theme that is near to his heart: the virtues of personal choice.

"Younger workers should have the opportunity to build a nest egg by saving part of their Social Security taxes in a personal retirement account," the president said. "We should make the Social Security system a source of ownership for the American people." Mr. Bush also made clear that "any attempt to limit the choices of our seniors, or to take away their prescription drug coverage under Medicare, will meet my veto."

Schwartz argues that more personal choice decreases the quality of life, causing anxiety and depression. People are happier, he says, when choices are limited and responsibility for decision-making processes rest elsewhere than completely on the individual. In Schwartz's view, the sense of missed opportunities puts too great of a stress on an individual, who will likely second-guess their decisions and always wonder if they would have been better off with different decisions.

Schwartz's solution -- no bonus points for you if you saw this coming -- is to reduce or eliminate choices, especially in government-entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare. Nothing better encapsulates latter-day liberalism (which means socialism, as opposed to classic liberalism) than this condescending and patronizing pop-psychology fingerwagging. Choice makes some people miserable, so the solution is to reduce everything to the lowest common denominator so that we can make sure everyone is equally miserable. You can't decide on a jam when you have 24 choices? Let's make only six varieties so everyone can feel good about themselves. Unable to analyze various medical plans to determine what's best for you? No problem -- let the experts in the government come up with a single plan. Too many investment choices? Let's fix it so that there is only one government-controlled investment choice; that way if it tanks, everyone is equally damaged.

All of this mischief comes from a misunderstanding of equality. To most people, it means equality of opportunity and treatment, but to the left, it means equality of results, and that is the essence of socialism. It's not that we wouldn't like to see everyone get rewarded equally, but not everyone has equal talent, not all talent is fully realized or even fully utilized, and not all production has equal value. Use jam as an example: most people might be satisfied with only six flavors of jam and may never try all 24. That does not mean that most people wouldn't enjoy more choice or prefer a flavor not included in someone's arbitrary selection of the six "allowed" flavors. And in the case of Social Security, the single "choice" given is mandatory extraction of a healthy chunk of individual income placed in a fund that will not even pay back the principal deposited, much less keep up with inflation or grow in any way.

The research Schwartz sites applies more to retail marketing than it does to public policy, and the Times' publication of this paternalistic propaganda reveals their sympathy to socialism. (Certainly you will have never seen the phrase "choice tyrannizes people more than it liberates them" in a Times article on abortion, where "choice" arguably equals the ability to kill another individual.) It's designed to appeal to those who are willing to surrender their freedom for the illusion of comfort and tranquility. For me, I'd much rather second-guess myself than allow others to dictate a paucity of options based on their opinion of what's best for me.

Interviewed by Jennifer's History and Stuff

I recently had the pleasure of being interviewed by the readers of Jennifer's History and Stuff, an excellent blog. Jennifer also notes that we both love Bayfield, Wisconsin -- cool coincidence!

Make sure you check out the interview and everything else at Jennifer's.

Hoist Upon His Own Petard?

Howard Dean, who pioneered the national Internet campaign, is finding out that the Internet is a double-edged sword, as reported by Newsweek and MS-NBC:

You live by the Internet, you die by the Internet. Just ask Howard Dean. One minute, the Democratic presidential hopeful is harvesting new voters, and campaign contributors, online. The next, he’s being haunted by tech-savvy turntablists. Since his kinda-crazy concession speech in Iowa on Monday night, a bunch of audio files mixing music to his exhortations have been circulating on the Web. “We’re going to South Carolina and Oklahoma and Arizona and North Dakota and New Mexico. We’re going to California and Texas and New York!” It's the type of stuff you’d hear at nightclubs, not political rallies. The highlight? Repeated splicing and dicing of Dean’s “Yeagh!” outburst. ...

Thanks for inventing the Internet, Al!

Fellow Northern Alliande blogger James Lileks gets a big mention and the best recommendation for his hot dance mix, Yeagh, and the article provides a link to a shorter entry from Jonathan Barlow. Howard Stern remixed Dean's strangled war cry as well, and yesterday I listened to yet another mix on the KQ Morning Show on my way to work.

Dean managed to do what Iowa voters could not: he has made himself into a national joke. New Hampshire seems to be laughing; CNN reports today that Kerry has vaulted to a 10-point lead against Dean:

The Massachusetts senator leads the former Vermont governor 31 percent to 21 percent in a poll conducted Tuesday and Wednesday, following Monday's caucus victory. Retired Gen. Wesley Clark was third in the poll with 16 percent, followed by Sen. John Edwards at 11 percent and a badly slumping Sen. Joe Lieberman with 4 percent.

In last week's pre-Iowa poll, Dean was the front-runner at 29 percent. Clark was No. 2 at 20 percent, with Kerry third at 15 percent.

Kerry has passed both Dean and Clark, who also seems to be fading -- as I predicted earlier -- now that New Hampshire voters have an un-Dean option that doesn't require supporting a nut like Clark, whose recent outrageous statements have been largely ignored by the media as it focused on Iowa. Edwards seems to be building up to a stronger showing; he's bounced up a couple of percentage points since Iowa, although well within the margin of error.

The verdict: Dean is in trouble -- and so is Clark. At least they're not Lieberman, whose campaign is just about dead.

Dead Scientist Believed Iraq Had WMDs

Months after the suicide of a British government scientist threw into doubt Anglo-American claims of WMD possession by the Iraqis and touched off accusations of a murder conspiracy to silence the analyst, the BBC admits that it has an unbroadcast interview with the late David Kelly in which he insists that Iraq had WMDs and posed an immediate threat:

The weapons expert slashed his wrists near his home in Oxfordshire, southern England, in July 2003 after being exposed as the source of a claim by a BBC reporter that the prime minister's team inflated the threat posed by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, to justify war.

One week before senior judge Lord Hutton delivers his report on Kelly's death -- a judgment that could be critical of ministers -- the BBC said it would broadcast later Wednesday an interview it recorded with Kelly in October 2002, which it has never shown. UK Prime Minister Tony Blair said in September 2002 that Iraq's weapons could be deployed within 45 minutes.

In one excerpt of the interview seen by CNN, Kelly was asked if "they" posed an "immediate threat." It was not entirely clear if the reporter was referring to Saddam's weapons of mass destruction.

Kelly replied: "Yes they are. Even if they are not actually filled and deployed today the capability exists to get them filled and deployed within a matter of days or weeks. So yes, they are a real threat."

The BBC had this interview for fifteen months and never released it until now, while the British news service printed allegations of fraudulent intelligence analysis. Don't you think that knowing Kelly's position on WMDs before the start of the war might have some bearing on the hysterical interpretations of his suicide? It certainly establishes that Blair and his government were honestly given and used the specific intelligence on which they publicly based their arguments for military action and didn't make it up out of thin air.

So now do we get to hear an apology for the past several months of protesters making Kelly out to be a martyr who was killed by the Bush/Blair crime family for threatening the omerta of warmongers? Nah. You see, even though the Tinfoil Hat Brigade was wrong this time, it doesn't mean that Bush and Blair aren't still evil incarnate.

Addendum: The BBC notes that this will not shower glory on Auntie Beeb:

BBC correspondent Nicholas Witchell said the programme made "very uncomfortable" viewing for the BBC.

"What the BBC will be hoping is that the best way to demonstrate the strength, and it would say the integrity, of its journalism, is to be seen to be reporting very robustly, very fully and very candidly, on a story which does in some respects reflect badly on it," he told BBC News at 10.

UPDATE: Sullivan had it first, which I just found out.

9/11: An Iranian Operation?

A German trial of an alleged al-Qaeda accomplice was halted when a surprise witness implicated the Islamic government of Iran in the 9/11 attack on the United States:

On what had been the eve of his widely expected acquittal, the trial of the second person charged by German authorities as an accomplice of the Sept. 11 hijackers was thrown into turmoil Wednesday after prosecutors disclosed the existence of a surprise witness purporting to link Iran to the hijackings.

The mysterious witness, who goes by the name Hamid Reza Zakeri and claims to have been a longtime member of the Iranian intelligence service, is said to have told German investigators that the Sept. 11 plot represented what one termed a "joint venture" between the terrorist group al-Qaida and the Iranian government.

German authorities are skeptical of this assertion, according to the article, saying that the two-year delay in relating this connection and its obvious implications make the story "look a little bit constructed." The German federal police just turned over the transcripts of interviews with the witness and now have to substantiate his credibility to the court, which gave a 30-day recess in order to make a determination. If it turns out to be unsubstantiated or just demonstrably false, it appears that the defendant will probably be acquitted, making the BKA's sudden introduction of this witness even more ... convenient.

However, if the BKA and/or the CIA can substantiate significant parts of his story, it may change the dynamic of the Persian Gulf situation immediately. Bush made it clear than any entity involved in 9/11, either by direct participation or by actively supporting the perpetrators, are considered to be in a state of war with the US. Also, it has been widely reported that senior al-Qaeda operatives have been staying in Iran, although questions remain about their status as guests or prisoners. Iran is the birthplace of modern Islamofascism and has been the largest supporter of terror groups in the past three decades.

German prosecutors and CIA analysts better make sure their information is as good as it possibly can be. We cannot afford to allow governments to attack our country by proxy -- but we cannot make the mistake of punishing Iran for an attack with which they had no involvement.

Separated At Birth?

Le Taliban, C'est Nous

Does anyone remember the stories of Taliban-led Afghanistan, where kites were outlawed and officials roamed the streets looking for men with no beards? Apparently the French remember them all to well and are about to adopt some of the same tactics:

France’s plan to bar religious symbols from state schools took a further confusing turn by Wednesday after the education minister said a proposed ban on Muslim veils could also outlaw beards and bandannas if they were judged to be a sign of faith. ...

Education Minister Luc Ferry made the surprising statement about disciplining bearded students on Tuesday in a National Assembly legal committee hearing about the draft law on the ban due to be debated next month. Discussing the plan to remove Islamic headscarves from state schools, he told a communist deputy who asked about a pupil with a beard, “As soon as it becomes a religious sign and the code is apparent, it would fall under this law.”

When this new law was first proposed banning headscarves, yarmulkes, and ostentatious crucifixes, a wave of disbelief and ridicule crashed across the blogosphere, until some pundits tried to tell us that we didn't understand the subtleties of French culture and secularism. France, we were told, had freed itself from all bonds of religious inflexibility because of events like the Dreyfus affair, and the secularism that France enforced was a necessity for their forward progress over the past century. Americans were cautioned not to apply North American standards to a uniquely French problem.

Well, unfortunately, this is the result of trying to stifle legitimate freedom of expression and religion; you make yourself into the thought police as you free yourself from all bonds of common sense. French police will be tasked with determining whether a beard is meant as a religious symbol, as opposed to a cultural symbol, or just a disinclination to shave. I'd like to see the guidelines on that process; I suspect it will rely on racial profiling. What happens when a beard is discovered, to the dismay and outrage of the French authorities? Will police have razors to shave off offending whiskers, or simply arrest the criminals and take them to the hair stylist? Even if this particular interpretation of the law is rejected, the law is still so broad that the police can literally decide on the spot if a certain item of clothing is too ostentatiously religious and force the wearer to remove it, or face prosecution.

The French may believe that they are upholding the principles of liberté, égalité, fraternité, but they are turning themselves into a Western Taliban in order to maintain only the patina of cultural freedom. Is this a serious partner for multiculturalism, peace, and freedom? I think not, and I find it curious that the people who are most enraged over Bush's "failure" to convince France to join the war in Iraq are the same people who accuse the Administration of attempting to create the same exact atmosphere here as we're seeing in France.

Nancy Pelosi Frightens A Nation

From the reaction around the blogosphere, you'd think that President Bush's State of the Union address was simply a crowd-warmer for the real entertainment of the evening -- Nancy Pelosi's performance in the Democratic response that almost immediately followed. While both Daschle and Pelosi were both devoid of any specifics, at least Daschle looked like he liked being there; Pelosi's face was frozen into a mask of terror, with wide bulging eyes that seemed to be saying, "Stop me before my face shatters!"

Nor was I the only one who noticed Pelosi's odd facial expression. The Instapundit, Glenn Reynolds, said: "Bush looks better now that the Democratic reply is on. Nancy Pelosi's unblinking, wide-eyed stare-into-the-camera delivery is just creepy. ("Please meet my captors' demands.")" Roger Simon's wife, screenwriter Sheryl Longin, has another reaction: "Botox." In fact, a number of Simon's readers said the same thing in his comments section along with another possibility, summed up nicely, if pruriently, by this comment: "Pelosi must be about one face lift away from having a beard."

The Elder, at Fraters Libertas, scolds Saint Paul for violating the non-compete clause in his (I'm certain) highly lucrative blogging contract and then follows with this description of Pelosi: "Finally, Nancy Pelosi WTF? She is one scary looking broad. With those eyes she looked like an freakin' barn owl. I almost expected her to swoop out of her chair and snag a field mouse (or Tom Daschle) in her talons at any moment."

Finally, Jay Reding at least has the good manners to feel badly about focusing on Pelosi's appearance ... but still notes this, which can serve as a wrap-up:

Pelosi looks like a victim of a bad botox operation... granted, that's rather superficial, but it's also distracting. Her eyebrows are locked in a continued raise. Her delivery is atrocious and canned. If this is the best the Democrats can do, they're screwed.

The Suddenly Rudderless Dean

Howard Dean, still smarting from the thumping he took in Iowa this week, shifted strategies for the second time in two weeks, according to the Washington Post:

Former Vermont governor Howard Dean shifted his campaign strategy Tuesday to emphasize domestic issues over the war and temper the red-faced outbursts like the one he delivered after losing Iowa, the candidate and his advisers said. Dean, after huddling with top aides to regroup from the stinging loss in the Iowa caucuses, sought to portray himself here as a more traditional policy-minded candidate focused on education, health care and jobs. The front-runner for much of the 2004 Democratic campaign suggested he would ease up on his year-long crusade to change the Democratic Party. ...

Dean's strategy shift, the second in as many weeks, comes as the onetime front-runner is fighting to regain momentum. A loss in New Hampshire could signal the beginning of the end of a campaign that only weeks ago seemed almost invincible, Democratic strategists say, though Dean has vowed to stay in the race until the end of the primaries.

Last week, Dean tried shifting down the rhetoric, thinking that his drop in the polls during the past month may have meant that the "red meat" schtick had worn a bit thin. In the aftermath of the debacle, he reverted to type, engaging in a display that has been compared to everything from an inappropriate high-schoolish pep rally to primal-scream therapy -- which perhaps he needed Monday night. Now, even if the previous angry-man persona worked before, questions about his temperament were so universal after Monday's display that to continue using that persona risks cementing an image of lunacy that has already begun to be hinted at by opponents.

Dean has six days in which to undo the damage done to his status as frontrunner and image as an inevitability for the nomination before the first primary. As the article states, Dean has plenty of funding left for a nationwide campaign, while John Kerry is so cash-poor at the moment that he's mortgaging his half of the family house in order to keep the doors open in New Hampshire. John Edwards is also rolling the dice in the Granite State. Neither are running any ads at all in the first Super-Tuesday run of states scheduled for February 3. If Dean wins New Hampshire decisively, he could starve Kerry and Edwards of any significant funding. If Dean loses, especially if he loses as badly as he did in Iowa, his funding won't matter; his credibility as a candidate will be shot, just as Gephardt's was Monday night.

The Captain, Unedited: Thoughts on the SOTU Speech

For tonight, I will be posting as I watch the State of the Union address President Bush will give to Congress. I'll update this particular post as the coverage on C-SPAN continues, perhaps even mixing in comments from the First Mate, who will try her best to stay awake for the entire event ... NOTE: You can read the entire speech at Blogs for Bush. And welcome to all Instapundit readers.

7:34 - Oddly, a former Congressional clerk, Donnald Anderson, is being interviewed by the CSPAN hostess, explaining the layout of Capitol building. Fascinating (yawn) stuff! No wonder C-SPAN tops the prime-time ratings. At least it's not Peter Jennings.

7:41 - They're filing into the Senate, slowly, mostly dawdling by the door. Or maybe they're filing out. Yep, they're leaving ... well, that was really fascinating, too.

7:45 - They're now filing into the House chamber, and Cheney and Hastert are at the podium. A brief spatter of applause for something that must be occurring off camera. The First Mate complains that this sounds boring (she's blind, so she can't see the action-packed scene unfolding in front of us).

8:00 - Getting down to business now. I've always admired the procedures, processes, and traditions of Congress. It's very impressive to see the announcements and the applause as each dignitary is introduced by title only.

8:07 - President Bush is introduced to universal applause, which is gracious, although of course some people are more enthusiastic than others. He's taking his time, shaking hands and greeting members of Congress. Again, it's an almost comforting display of manners after the past several months of character assassination on the campaign trail. You'd almost get the impression that we're all here to work together and find solutions to this nation's problems.

8:13 - Starting off with national security and a hat-tip to the men and women of the armed forces, and then right to the economy ... a good start, as is the challenge of staying the course, both at home and abroad. Standing ovation #1. Saint Paul from Fraters Libertas posts a comment that makes me laugh out loud, and lose my place. Thanks, pal.

I'm going to put the rest in extended body post ...

8:19 - Challenging Congress to renew the Patriot Act: definitely on the campaign trail and not shrinking from his own record. Of course, only half of Congress applauded, despite the wide approval given to the legislation two years ago. Impressive. I'm a bit surprised he led with this, but he has been bold all through his first term, and he isn't backing down now.

8:24 - Bush introduces the current Iraqi Governing Council President, Adnan Pachachi, as he wrapped up his status report on Iraq and Afghanistan. I would have liked to see Bush make the case again for military action in Iraq -- but he made it clear when discussing Libya and why diplomacy worked with Gaddafi. Words must be credible, and no one will doubt American credibility again. UPDATE: Instapundit has the correct quote, and a link to something very similar on his blog from a couple of days ago.

8:30 - Now I'm reading Saint Paul's extensive comments instead of watching the darned speech! Hilarious. This guy should get a blog. Oh, wait, never mind.

8:32 - The world without Saddam Hussein is a better and safer place. Outstanding line. I almost stood up myself. Even better: America will never seek a permission slip to defend the security of our country.

8:37 - First specific legislative announcement: doubling the National Endowment of Democracy's budget, and for the first time he turns his attention to domestic issues. Almost the entire first half-hour was taken up by foreign policy and national security, where he is strongest. Expect him to return to these themes towards the end to finish strong.

8:42 - Saint Paul notes: "A Republican president bragging about a 36% increase in Federal spending on education. I join the Democrats in sitting on my hands for that one. If only I were bloated, I could do a Ted Kennedy impression." Yup, that's about right.

8:45 - Excellent explanation of Congress' choices on the tax issue: if they don't act to make the cuts permanent, it will equate to a tax increase. Expect that line on the campaign trail, too.

8:48 - "Focus on priorities" - that means prepare for targeted spending cuts. After increasing education spending 36% over three years, you'd hope so! Now he's rolling directly into immigration. Note the distinct lack of enthusiasm for this program.

8:53 - Tort reform for medical lawsuits: a poke in the eye to John Edwards? But he didn't follow it up with any specifics, which is a little disappointing. Bush wants to support the private system of health care instead of a single-payer government-run system. Yeah, that's news.

8:58 - I am a bit surprised that Bush's support for abstinence programs got a standing ovation not only from Bush's party but from a significant number on the other side of the aisle. Rolling right through that to marriage and its definition, he draws a line in the sand: if activist judges continue redefining marriage, then he will support a constitutional amendment to define it for good. He followed up with a quick line about treating individuals with compassion, but I wish his statement had included a stronger statement on behalf of those who do not fit within that definition. Bush signaled that he will stand with the traditional, religious right on these issues. Interesting, but not terribly surprising.

9:04 - Cute child alert!!! Cute child alert!!! Okay, nice touch, but just a bit corny. Ashley, your message to our troops has been conveyed, and it's warmed the hearts of America. What the heck are you doing out of bed at this hour, young lady? Get right back in your bed and go to sleep!

9:06 - "May God continue to bless America," and George Bush finishes after a shorter SOTU speech, just under an hour. I am always a bit surprised at how well Bush can speak when reading from a prepared text. I think he did a good job tonight laying out the rest of the year, but what was missing was his vision for a second term. As a launch vehicle for his Presidential campaign, I think it fell short. At the start, he spoke about the dangers of going backwards, returning to past policies that left the US vulnerable to attack. I expected him to return to those themes at the end of the speech and give us a taste of what he has in mind for his second term, if re-elected.

Did you notice that Mars and the moon were never mentioned in this speech? I wonder why.

9:17 - Democratic response, with Tom Daschle and Nancy Pelosi, starts off with a reference to the armed forces and Pelosi's resume (ten years on intelligence committees). She's a worse speaker than Bush; she's nervous as hell. What's a "true international coalition" as opposed to one that includes dozens of other nations? Is France truth?

9:20 - "Politically connected firms like Halliburton" -- they're all politically connected, Congresswoman. Trust me.

9:23 - I'm sorry, but Pelosi's eyes look panicky to me. I almost expect her to tell us that we're getting very, very sleeeepyyyy ... Daschle is much more comfortable in front of the camera.

9:27 - Labelling all food products with their country of origin? This is an issue?

9:29 - So far, Daschle speaks in broad conceptual strokes but hasn't actually offered any specific proposals except labelling food with its country of origin.

9:31 - Daschle wants to live in a world where American power is respected and not resented. Power is always resented. If you don't know that, you're not a serious person.

9:37 - Ted Kennedy is being interviewed on C-SPAN, and he's almost incoherent. He's better on his impressions of Iowa. First Mate on Kennedy's assertion that people have radically different views in Iowa: "It's because he only spoke with Democrats!" Well ... yeah!

Overall, I'm moderately impressed with Bush's performance. He offered some specifics for the coming year, hammered on national security, but spent quite a bit of time on domestic priorities as well -- in fact, almost an equal split. We only had to deal with one "awww cute" story, so that's a plus. But Bush offered no broad vision for a second term; perhaps he felt that it would be inappropriate for a SOTU speech to do so. That may be a minor mistake.

As for the Democrats, Pelosi was perfectly awful, mostly in delivery but also in substance. Daschle was much better, the best speaker of the night, but offered nothing specific except one bizarre food-labeling program. If this is the best speech the DNC could write, then they are in deeeeeep trouble this year.

UPDATE: VodkaPundit was real-time blogging, too, but in over 30 separate posts. Start here and scroll down. Also Outside the Beltway, somewhat more cogently than me. Robert Prather at Insults Unpunished also live-blogged it. Patriot Paradox has an extensive analysis of the text, and likes what he sees.

State of the Union Address Tonight

President Bush delivers his State of the Union address to Congress tonight, starting at 9 pm EST. I'll be watching tonight on C-SPAN and intend on posting stream-of-consciousness commentary during the speech and a wrap-up at the end. I hope you'll drop by and check it out.

Assuming, of course, that I can stay awake ... it's been a long day.

Milestones

I noted earlier today that Captain's Quarters has just exceeded 50,000 visitors one week shy of four months after I began. Almost 35,000 visitors have come in the last month! I've had an absolute blast, still can't believe I get all the great visitors I do, and I'm lucky enough to receive some of the brightest commentary in response as anyone else's blog I've read. (The readers are smarter than I am!)

I wanted to come up with a way to express how I feel about the wonderful experiences I've had with CQ and interacting with all of you. I think this expresses my outlook and my future plans better than anything. (You may think I need medication after you hear it, though ...)

Note: QandO, which has helped me out tremendously, has recently switched to Movable Type and has its own domain now: http://www.qando.net/blog/. If you haven't blogrolled or bookmarked QandO yet, make sure to do so!

Clark: The Big Iowa Loser

Now that the dust has settled from the Iowa caucuses, some lessons can be taken from the results. First, the obvious damage was mostly done to Howard Dean, and the obvious benefits went to John Kerry and John Edwards, two candidates who weren't even close to Dean up until two weeks ago. Dean had the ground organization, the national recognition as front runner, and also sucked up most of the political oxygen leading up to last night.

How did Kerry and Edwards do it? They stayed on message and continued to quietly plug away while Loud Howard made stupid mistake after stupid mistake. Going to Plains to suck up to Jimmy Carter on Sunday was probably a mistake, especially since he came away with no endorsement and only a lukewarm greeting from the former president. Yelling at senior citizens during Q&A sessions may have been the last straw for Iowans looking at Dean, and if so, a Republican can take credit for derailing his campaign. However, the wheels have been coming off the Dean campaign ever since we got Saddam Hussein in custody, and it continued straight through to the end. Dean's strange speech after the caucus, featuring Dean screaming and pumping his fists with that strange smile of his, may put the final nails in his political coffin, but we'll see what happens in New Hampshire.

Dean can still come back by winning New Hampshire, but the biggest loser yesterday didn't bother to campaign in Iowa at all. Feeling that Dean had the state wrapped up, Wesley Clark surrendered back in November. Establishment Democrats clearly wanted Clark to be the un-Dean, predicated on their belief that Dean was virtually unstoppable in the current field. The Clinton contingent drafted Clark into the party and into the race -- possibly not in that order -- to bring in an outsider that they could control. Now that both Kerry and Edwards stomped Dean, they're the un-Deans and no one needs Clark now, and they have the advantage of actually being Democrats. Clark has no niche in this race any more, and you can expect the Clinton/McAuliffe faction to swing to Edwards, who may be a stronger candidate than anyone thought before, especially in the South. Clark is finished.

The end result? There is a strong possibility that if Dean takes New Hampshire and Edwards takes his home state of South Carolina, then we may see a catfight all the way through the primary season, where Edwards takes the South, Kerry the Midwest and establishment industrial North, and Dean picks up the West. Under that scenario, no one winds up with a majority of delegates prior to the convention and the Democrats have an August donnybrook on their hands.

Mark Noonan at Blogs for Bush has some good thoughts on last night's results as well.

UPDATE: Just to show you how wrong I might be, Joe Carter at Evangelical Outpost lists five reasons why I'm all wet on this one. He makes a good argument, but Clark's demonstrable falsehoods about his position on the war and his ludicrous until-the-birth-certificate-is-signed position on abortion will kill him, and like I said earlier, those looking for the anti-Dean no longer need Clark. Of course, Joe predicted we'd all be wrong about Iowa ... so his track record is better than mine this week!

McSnake!

From the land of blue-sky lawsuits, the Pioneer Press reports on one of the sillier examples to grace our court system:

Joanne Borgerding was sitting in a packed Eagan McDonald's at lunchtime, eating a chicken sandwich and reading a book when something moved beneath her booth. Dancing in the air by her legs were "little movable eyes" that were attached to a dark, 2-foot-long snake.

"I looked face to face at it," Borgerding said. "I know people in the drive-up heard me — I screamed that loud."

Borgerding also flew out of her booth and in the process injured her foot so badly that she says she has permanent nerve damage. She asked McDonald's insurance company to pay her medical bills, but the company denied her claims, she said. Now she is seeking in excess of $50,000 in a personal injury complaint that she expects to file in Dakota County next month.

A garter snake somehow got into the restaurant and got under Borgdering's booth at McDonalds -- no doubt, a startling and upsetting experience. But she stumbles while getting out of the booth and claims permanent injury, and blames it on the restaurant? How is that the fault of McDonalds? Do they have a snake-friendly door? Not likely here in the Upper Midwest; most if not all business use a double-stage entry to save on heating costs.

Borgerding said she pushed off on her right foot to get away. She didn't fall, but twisted her body trying to escape. She said her whole body ached for a couple of days, and she had shooting pain in her foot. ... Borgerding said no McDonald's employees came to her aid that day, and messages she left for the owner were not returned.

"We didn't do anything right away because we didn't know what to do," former McDonald's employee Neil Urbanski said on Monday. "Because we didn't know what type (of snake) it was, we didn't want to touch it. … The lady got mad at us because we weren't helping her. … No, she wasn't hurt at all."

Oh, so she's mad because McDonald's doesn't train all of their employees in snake control, despite the obvious need to do so. That makes more sense. From now on, every McDonalds will have a McSnake McCharmer. And since the booth tripped her up, they'll get rid of all booths from now on; everyone can stand up while they're eating instead. That should make her happy!

Borgdering simply sees an opportunity to play legal Lotto and is taking it as far as she can. Why should we care? For one reason, lawsuits like these drive up costs both at McDonalds and for insurance overall, even when they get thrown out of court (and they're more likely to be settled). Silly lawsuits like these caused McDonalds to turn down the heat on their coffee, which now gets served slightly warmer than tepid these days because some idiot didn't know better than to stick a cup of hot coffee in her crotch while driving. They also waste court time that could be used to expedite lawsuits with merit and criminal cases that take forever to work their way through to conclusion, costing us plenty of money for the high-priced talent that occupies. Finally, these lawsuits deter people from operating businesses, resulting in lower capital investment into the economy and fewer jobs.

Iowa Stunner

Howard Dean laid an egg:

Shaking up the fight for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts won the Iowa caucuses Tuesday night, according to CNN projections. John Edwards, a first-term senator from North Carolina whose once listless campaign gained new life in Iowa, was in second place, according to initial party results. Howard Dean, a former governor of Vermont and presumed front-runner in the Democratic race, was in third place.

Iowa normally favors the strongest organization, which undoubtedly Dean brought, but coming in at less than half of Kerry's turnout. Dean could have escaped with little or no damage with even a strong second-place showing, but a distant third suddenly spotlights all of Dean's weaknesses.

Iowa, in general, is overrated as an indicator and most of the time Iowans get it wrong. As former DNC chair and current Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell just said on Fox News, he got elected Attorney General in Philadelphia with more votes than the total cast in Iowa tonight. But there is no escaping the fact that Dean had a significant lead here just two weeks ago and let it slip through his fingers, and that will be a difficult image to overcome when voters consider his viability in a national campaign against a fully-armed George Bush and Karl Rove.

What happens now? Dean still has significant strength in New Hampshire, but the stink of Iowa may change that this week. Edwards is not a factor there, but Kerry will be sure to leverage the momentum to convince New Hampshire voters that Dean can't hold up. Clark, who earlier appeared to be the likely anti-Dean, may also be damaged by the strong Kerry and Edwards finish.

One thing for sure -- Gephardt is finished. He couldn't poll better than 11% in what really was his own back yard, geographically speaking. He got beat by two Northeasterners and a Southerner, and any way you look at it, he won't go anywhere from here. All major news networks are reporting that Gephardt will announce his withdrawal from the race either later tonight or early tomorrow.

If Dean can come back to win New Hampshire, then Dean still controls the nomination race. However, if Kerry or Clark can win New Hampshire, Dean will be out, one of the quickest meltdowns in American election history. However, if that happens, you can expect that a significant percentage of Dean's base to either vote Green or not vote at all, which may cripple the Democrats across the entire ballot in November. For an example of Dean's base and their reaction, check out this post from Blogs for Bush.

Stay tuned!

UPDATE: Power Line says the only ones more confused by this result than they are the Democrats themselves. It certainly fits the oddball results. Professor Bainbridge has the best line of the night so far:

6:34 [PST]: It gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling to think about how unhappy Deaniac Hollywood lefties like Garofolo, Reiner, Sheen, etc... must be right now.

Heh. He has the same reaction to Dean's post-caucus speech as I did: what color is the sky in this guy's world? He just got spanked and he's screaming out the names of states he's gonna WIN WIN WIN!!!

Check out Daniel Drezner, too, who actually predicted the outcome of the race and has some interesting initial thoughts about the meaning of the results. Also, PoliBlog has a series of short but good posts on the Iowa caucus. Start here and scroll down.

Iraqis Tiring Of Foreigners (But Not The Ones You Think)

MS-NBC reports that the Coalition continues to make progress with gathering cooperation from Iraqi citizens, who are tiring of the insurrection:

For six months, the Arab foreigners lived quietly in a Baghdad neighborhood with their wives and children, until neighbors tipped off U.S. forces they could be insurgents. On Monday morning, American soldiers came to the door of a brown-brick house and — speaking in Arabic over a loudspeaker — ordered those inside to surrender. When the raid was over, three men were dead, a Syrian and two Yemenis. Two of the men were shot trying to escape; the other blew himself up in the front yard. Inside the house, U.S. troops found a weapons cache.

The U.S. military had no comment on the incident. But witnesses and Iraqi police described how Iraqi civilians, increasingly frustrated with guerrilla violence, are cooperating with the U.S.-led coalition to catch suspected rebels.

Other Iraqi neighbors applauded the move.

Read the whole article. Iraqis are beginning to realize what a future without the Ba'athists might bring and they are anxious to get on with it. To whatever extent that foreign jihadis were tolerated before, they certainly are becoming more unwelcome with every Iraqi civilian death from insurgent bombing.

Edwards = Kucinich?

Senator John Edwards, making a surprisingly strong showing in the Iowa caususes thus far, made an odd statement to the press as he and Rep. Dennis Kucinich made a strategic alliance to share caucusers this afternoon:

"Both of us believe in a lot of the same things, and we like each other very much," Edwards said. "But both of us also recognize at the end of the day, caucus-goers will have to make their own decisions about this."

Edwards seems to just be after the all-important children's book endorsements that Kucinich has monopolized thus far. More on the Blogs for Bush website.

Iowa Predictions

Okay -- even though I could just post this tomorrow with a publish date of today and try to get a reputation as a Carnac the Magnificent, I'm going to make my prediction now about the Iowa caucus results ...

Here's how I see it panning out tonight:

Dean - 27%
Kerry - 23%
Edwards - 21%
Gephardt -18%

And what would this result mean?

Dean's organization will ultimately be strong enough, I think, to win the day in Iowa -- but his stumble here will reverberate throughout the first part of the primary season. That will keep more candidates in the race for a longer period of time as they feel that Dean can be beat. However, that will eventually help Dean in the long run. His nationwide organization is too strong and already too entrenched, and as Professor Bainbridge noted earlier, his fundraising allows Dean to run a 50-state campaign, while the others are running 10- or 20-state campaigns at best. For the near term, Dean only commands a plurality of the Democrats, and he can only win if multiple viable candidates stay in long enough for Dean to win a string of primaries on the front end. If that happens, momentum will carry him against whoever winds up the anti-Dean after mid-March.

New Hampshire will be the first real test. Even if Dean slides in at #2, a win in New Hampshire will unlock enough of a plurality to carry the first few states. That will be enough.

Prove It! ... er ...

Rumors have been spread among Northern Alliance blogs, and I want to clear something up with the American people right now:

Despite what you may have heard, I did not have lunch with other NA bloggers last Friday.

I did not have an enjoyable break from work with two intelligent and witty guys at a nice and affordable chain restaurant.

I didn't share some great stories about our personal lives and blogging experiences. No siree. Not at all.

Most of all, I did not have in my possession any kind of object that represents the Lord High Commissioner, one that reportedly travels more than I do. I categorically refute all allegations to the contrary. If those who would target me for such libel had any proof, any proof at all, I challenge them to produce it!

Oh, crap.

Uh ... it all depends on your definition of possession ...

Reiner and Sheen Write Another Comedy

Hollywood heavyweights Rob Reiner and Martin Sheen wrote an opinion piece in today's Boston Globe in support of Howard Dean in New Hampshire's upcoming primary:

AS THIS PRESIDENTIAL campaign began, we knew that something fundamental was at stake: Our country faces a growing threat to our liberty and justice in America. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison spoke of the fear that economic power would one day seize political power. That fear is now being realized -- under the Bush administration, pharmaceutical companies draft our Medicare laws. Oil executives sit in the vice president's office and write energy bills. A majority of the reconstruction contracts in Iraq have gone to the president's campaign contributors. This president has squandered the goodwill of the world abroad while pursuing reckless fiscal policies here at home all for his personal agenda and that of his campaign contributors.

Those zany Hollywood limousine liberals! They're experts because Reiner produced a comedy about the White House and Sheen stars in a drama about the White House. (Me, I just stayed at a Holiday Inn Express overnight.) They're pretty hilarious, too, taking Bush to task for having "oil executives sit in the vice president's office and write energy bills," and then in the next breath endorsing Howard Dean. This is the same Howard Dean, one supposes, who ignored security breaches at Vermont's only nuclear plant in order to allow the energy provider to sell the reactor ... one of several energy providers who donated large sums of money to Dean's presidential campaign:

Nearly a fifth of the roughly $111,000 collected in its first months by Dean’s presidential political action committee, the Fund for a Healthy America, came from people with ties to Vermont’s electric utilities, according to a recent Federal Elections Commission filing.

Furthermore, if Reiner and Sheen want to appeal to New Hampshire voters, why are they writing op-ed pieces in a Boston newspaper? Don't they have newspapers in New Hampshire, or did Reiner and Sheen flunk geography? Perhaps the people of New Hampshire don't really cotton to Hollywood stars with more money than brains telling them which candidate to select. I assume both men are registered voters in California; perhaps they would do better to concentrate on Dean's campaign there, if he makes it that far.

And of course, that's the big question tonight.

Carter Plays Coy

Today's Washington Post describes in detail Howard Dean's trip to Plains, GA to meet with the man who has spent the last two decades as a pariah in his own party come Presidential election time -- and who oddly feels the need to play coy:

Jimmy Carter spent much of the past quarter-century as a pariah among fellow Democrats. ... But presidential reputations move in cycles. Today, the former outcast was hailed as a hero by former Vermont governor Howard Dean. No longer shunned by politicians, Carter said he was flattered by the attention for a "has-been politician" -- but he also seemed eager to ensure that Dean did not take liberties in his pursuit. ...

Pressed in recent interviews about why he would leave Iowa at crunch time, Dean said he could not turn down an invitation to appear with a former president he admires. But when a visitor to the Maranatha church -- thousands come from out of town annually to hear Carter's Sunday-morning homilies -- thanked Carter for inviting Dean, Carter quickly interjected "I did not invite him," before adding "I'm glad he came."

Maybe Dean now realizes one of the reasons Carter has never been completely embraced, even by members of his own party. It only partly related to his resounding defeat in 1980 and his abysmal performance in his single term of office. Carter, like Dean, ran as an outsider in 1976 and vaulted ahead of a number of nationally recognized Democrats who had the misfortune of following Nixon's final term, when the national mood supported outsiders. Even the incumbent Republican Gerald Ford, who finished Nixon's aborted term, had a strong challenge from maverick Ronald Reagan.

Once elected, Carter behaved with self-righteous arrogance towards both parties, eschewing any form of compromise in favor of his idealistic principles. In that manner, his presidency resembled Woodrow Wilson's in everything except its intellectual weight. Like most idealists thrust into an office for which they are ill-suited (unlike Wilson, whose faults were different), Carter never articulated a coherent vision of what he wanted for America; he mostly focused on what he opposed. Even his own party tired of his arrogance, putting Carter in the unusual situation of having a hostile Congress that was controlled by his own party.

Now, on the cusp of being embraced and even pursued by Howard Dean and other Presidential candidates, Carter's arrogance still rises to the occasion. Dean wants Carter's endorsement, and while it's understandable that Carter wants to wait a while longer to decide who to endorse, Carter's specification that Dean came uninvited should be a message to all of the Democrats. Carter has the "Sort-Of Welcome" mat out in Plains, and if you want to cross over it, be prepared to wipe your feet while kneeling.

UPDATE: Welcome to Shot In The Dark readers, and a big thanks to Mitch! And check out Professor Bainbridge's take on this, too; he looks at the Time article on the Dean self-invitation and speculates on Dean's future.

Media and Political Notes

A few items from the media that probably don't measure up to a full post on their own, but still seem interesting ...

First this story from the AP regarding comments by Dan Rather on coverage for nominating conventions:

CBS anchor Dan Rather says the day is coming soon when there will be virtually no live coverage of political conventions on television networks. The Democrats and Republicans are to blame for scheduling four-day conventions that do little except advertise their established positions and candidates, he said.

This actually makes sense and it's one of the few times I'll agree with Rather. Modern nominating conventions only serve to anoint predetermined winners and so generate very little in terms of real news. Only the keynote and acceptance speeches have any significance, and networks generally still carry those live (and should continue to do so). They also fail miserably as entertainment, making them even less suitable for wall-to-wall live coverage. How often do you need to hear state delegations announce themselves in the manner of "From the great state of North Slobokodia, home of the largest fossilized bat-dung ball in North America"?

If for some reason no one candidate goes into the convention with a majority of delegates, you can expect the networks to give plenty of live coverage to the real drama as it plays out, and they'll be more than willing to juggle their schedules to do so. Until then, catch them on C-SPAN.

Next comes two separate blurbs from IMDB's Movie & TV News section regarding election issues. First is a report that Howard Dean is getting a much tougher time with the networks than other Democrats:

According to the CMPA, only 49 percent of stories about Dean have been positive versus some 78 percent about his rivals. The study also found that NBC was harder on the Democratic candidates than the other networks, while ABC presented the most positive assessments of them.

While Dean and his supporters will use this report to argue against liberal media bias, the truth lies in Dean's front-runner status and has less to do with anti-Dean sentiment at the networks than with the greater scrutiny that comes with being the one in front. The ABC slant towards the Democrats should surprise no one who has to watch Peter Jennings.

The second item may be even more interesting -- apparently CBS turned down a MoveOn ad during the Super Bowl:

CBS has turned down a request from the liberal group MoveOn to buy a 30-second commercial during this year's Super Bowl that is critical of President George W. Bush. The network said that the ad violated a CBS policy that bars the broadcasting of "issue" ads. A 60-second version of the ad, which is critical of the Bush administration, is due to begin running on CNN beginning Jan. 17.

It's the same rationale CBS used to deny an ad slot to PETA, which lead them to complain that CBS was arbitrary in its decision-making, since CBS has run anti-smoking PSAs during past Super Bowls and run other ads "advocating the consumption of meat". However, CBS is under no obligation to sell ad space to anyone and everyone with money; they can exercise their own editorial control outside of elections, where they have to meet legal standards for equal access. If PETA doesn't like that, they can organize a boycott of the Super Bowl, but seeing as how vegetarians probably don't comprise a significant part of its audience, I doubt it will have much impact.

Iran: Tipping Point Coming Soon?

The political crisis facing the Iranian government deepened today as the clerics in the Guardian Council refused to back down from disqualifying thousands of reformist candidates:

Iran's hard-line Guardian Council on Sunday defended its disqualification of prospective candidates for next month's parliamentary elections, further deepening a political crisis. The Guardian Council, an unelected body controlled by hard-liners, has disqualified more than a third of the 8,200 people who applied to run in the Feb. 20 elections. ...

The comments dashed hopes of a breakthrough after Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ordered the Guardian Council on Wednesday to reconsider the disqualifications and laid down criteria that appeared to be easier to meet.

The unelected Iranian mullahs who sit on the Guardian Council for life apparently feel that any attempt at compromise undermines their claim to protect the Islamic nature of Iranian government as envisioned by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in the 1979 overthrow of the Shah. While Iran functions as a republic with democratic processes, all potential candidates for office must pass muster with the mullahs -- and as one might expect, they prefer candidates that support their hard-line take on Iranian society and government.

For the past few weeks, reformists in Iran's legislature have protested the disqualification of thousands of fellow reformists; now that protest has turned into a sit-in with dawn-to-dusk fasts. Despite the entreaties of "supreme leader" Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to compromise, the Council has held fast. Their obstinacy threatens to blow the entire election process into a civil meltdown:

On Saturday, reformist Deputy Interior Minister Morteza Moballegh, who is Iran's chief of elections, warned he would not allow next month's legislative elections to proceed unless hard-liners backed down.

As has been reported frequently, the Guardian Council has become increasingly politically isolated from the people they rule. The Islamic Revolution, accomplished by the mullahs in defiance of the Shah, gave power to the oppressed (or so they thought) and allowed Iranians to be governed by their religion instead of a Western-leaning autocrat. However, twenty years of even more oppressive rule under the mullahs have disenchanted the Iranians as a people, and their patience is wearing thin for these capricious and provocative actions from the Council. If the Council delays much further in compromise, they may find that events will overtake them -- and they'd better hope that whoever rises to command at that point is more amenable to compromise than they've been.

The Iowa Hokey Pokey

Ever wonder how the Iowa Caucuses work? So have I; they aren't elections in which people vast secret ballots. Instead, as CNN explains, it's more like musical chairs, where caucusers walk around in each precinct until the music stops, forming groups that indicate support for each candidate (except maybe Kucinich). Those candidates who do not have at least 15% of the entire caucus must release their caucusers for the next round of the game. In between rounds, the candidates and their representatives harangue the participants with speeches, pleas, and promises in order to get already-committed caucusers to change their minds -- which they can do at any time.

Only when all caucusers are committed to "viable" candidates do the precincts send these representatives on to the county conventions, which aren't held until the middle of March. In fact, Iowa doesn't actually decide on its final slate of delegates until the middle of June, when it finally completes its four-tier primary process. It's a bit hard to understand, then, why so much emphasis is placed on Iowa. Dean had it right -- the process almost guarantees that the most energized and radical elements will have the advantage. Of course, that will benefit Dean the most, too.

The first true test, I believe, will be in New Hampshire, where the entire Democratic electorate votes rather than supercharged volunteers caucusing.

Memo to Telegraph: It's Not All Carrot, No Stick

The Daily Telegraph, normally a sensible if not terribly supportive newspaper, gets itself curiously confused on the meaning of diplomacy:

The capture by the United States of thousands of centrifuges on board a German-owned vessel, the BBC China, en route to Libya has raised suspicions in Washington and London that Col Gaddafi offered to abandon his weapons programme after threats from America, rather than the lengthy British and American diplomacy vaunted by Tony Blair.

The Telegraph story focuses more on the refusal of Foreign Secretary Jack Straw to answer questions about the seizure, but its recitation of a false tautology is a little disappointing. Gaddafi responded to both threats and promises, because that's what diplomacy entails. If the Telegraph feels that diplomacy is only showering money and compliments on other nations that express desires to kill you by, say, bombing your airlines and nightclubs frequented by your military personnel, then they have ceded their position as a serious voice in world affairs. (via Instapundit)

Ted Kennedy Loses His Mind

Ted Kennedy writes a puzzling and dishonest column in today's Washington Post, ironically entitled, "A Dishonest War." The long-time Senator from Massachussets takes Paul O'Neill's recent memoirs and goes the full tinfoil-hat monty:

Of the many issues competing for attention in this new and defining year, one is of a unique order of magnitude: President Bush's decision to go to war in Iraq. The facts demonstrate how dishonest that decision was. As former Treasury secretary Paul H. O'Neill recently confirmed, the debate over military action began as soon as President Bush took office. ... The events of Sept. 11, 2001, gave advocates of war the opening they needed. They tried immediately to tie Hussein to al Qaeda and the terrorist attacks. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld created an Office of Special Plans in the Pentagon to analyze the intelligence for war and bypass the traditional screening process. Vice President Cheney relied on intelligence from Iraqi exiles and put pressure on intelligence agencies to produce the desired result.

Kennedy takes the MoveOn and International ANSWER position that no one prior to the Bush Administration ever took the position that Saddam Hussein possessed WMDs or felt that regime change was necessary to resolve the twelve-year Iraq crisis. However, Congress itself almost unanimously passed HR 4655, the Iraq Liberation Act, which made regime change in Iraq official government policy of the United States. Surely Kennedy should recall this: he voted for it! And in this resolution, Congress made twelve "findings" providing the rationale for this policy change, only one of which mentions the word "weapons", and only in the context of UNSCOM inspectors. The majority of these findings deal with the oppression of the Iraqi people and the failure of Saddam to meet his obligations under the cease-fire and UNSC resolutions.

Bill Clinton's own statement signing HR 4655 into law again only mentions "weapons" once but oppression and aggression multiple times:

Today I am signing into law H.R. 4655, the "Iraq Liberation Act of 1998." This Act makes clear that it is the sense of the Congress that the United States should support those elements of the Iraqi opposition that advocate a very different future for Iraq than the bitter reality of internal repression and external aggression that the current regime in Baghdad now offers. ... My Administration has pursued, and will continue to pursue, these objectives through active application of all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions. The evidence is overwhelming that such changes will not happen under the current Iraq leadership.

However, in today's statement, Kennedy tries to claim that the US policy was based on WMDs alone, and that Bush falsified intellegence to claim Saddam still had them. In fact, from 1998 through the debate on the Iraq war resolution in the fall of 2002, no one seriously doubted that Saddam had retained WMDs, as this Snopes entry demonstrates. If you read the part that gives full context to the quotes, they demonstrate that there was no disagreement on the question of WMDs; in 2002, the debate was what to do about them. To claim that Bush lied about them when the Bush administration used the same intelligence as the Clinton administration is less than honest in itself. Even Ted Kennedy had this to say in October 2002:

We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction. Our intelligence community is also deeply concerned about the acquisition of such weapons by Iran, North Korea, Libya, Syria and other nations. But information from the intelligence community over the past six months does not point to Iraq as an imminent threat to the United States or a major proliferator of weapons of mass destruction.

In public hearings before the Senate Armed Services Committee in March, CIA Director George Tenet described Iraq as a threat but not as a proliferator, saying that Saddam Hussein — and I quote — "is determined to thwart U.N. sanctions, press ahead with weapons of mass destruction, and resurrect the military force he had before the Gulf War." That is unacceptable, but it is also possible that it could be stopped short of war.

Ted Kennedy chooses now to put on his tinfoil hat and imagine vast conspiracies of neocons attempting to secretly take this country to war illegally, while at the same time telling everyone what they were going to do. He gives quote after quote of Adminstration officials telling everyone who would listen that they intended to resolve the 12-year quagmire that Iraq had become. Containment was failing, as the allies that Kennedy prizes so much had already begun covertly shipping arms to Iraq, arms which later were used against US, British, Spanish, and Polish soldiers. Bush and Blair went to the UN twice to get them to finally endorse the enforcement of 17 separate resolutions and they refused, led by the same nations whose weapons were found in Iraq after the war.

Kennedy excoriates Bush for implementing the foreign-policy objective Kennedy himself voted into law. Clearly, Kennedy voted for HR 4655 with no intention of doing anything to realize its intent other than throwing $97M at Iraqi ex-patriate groups and a whole lot of hot air into the political arena. If you need a demonstration why Democrats cannot be trusted with national security policy, just read this column.

UPDATE: Power Line dissects this piece from another perspective, and also see the discussion on this post at Blogs for Bush.

A Bit of Journalistic Irony

As I read over the main web page of today's Minneapolis Star Tribune, I noticed a link titled "Editor's Note: Why we pulled USA Weekend from Sunday's Paper." Certainly a provocative invitation, I began to wonder why: Financial disagreement? Offensive material? A Bush endorsement?

When I clicked on the link, however, I found that even the explanation had been pulled from the paper. It looks like some sort of conspiracy! I'm sure that a portion of the blogosphere will assign deep and sinister intent to this, just like they do every time a 404 comes up on the White House web site. Those of us who live here will just continue to be amused by the parochial nature of our largest hometown daily.