America's "Victim" Enjoyed Guantanamo

The Telegraph will disappoint many America-haters in the UK and around the world tomorrow by publishing the account of a teenager who spent 14 months at the controversial detention center in Guantanamo, where critics accuse the US of cruel treatment of its inmates:

An Afghan boy whose 14-month detention by US authorities as a terrorist suspect in Cuba prompted an outcry from human rights campaigners said yesterday that he enjoyed his time in the camp. Mohammed Ismail Agha, 15, who until last week was held at the US military base in Guantanamo Bay, said that he was treated very well and particularly enjoyed learning to speak English.

Oh, the horror! But if your fragile psyche can handle it, Agha details the tortures he survived at Camp Delta:

"At first I was unhappy . . . For two or three days [after I arrived in Cuba] I was confused but later the Americans were so nice to me. They gave me good food with fruit and water for ablutions and prayer." ... He said that the American soldiers taught him and his fellow child captives - aged 15 and 13 - to write and speak a little English. They supplied them with books in their native Pashto language. When the three boys left last week for Afghanistan, the soldiers looking after them gave them a send-off dinner and urged them to continue their studies.

"They even took photographs of us all together before we left," he said. Mohammed, however, said he would have to disappoint his captors by not returning to his studies. "I am too poor for that. I will have to look for work," he said.

Photographs! Aha! A Geneva Convention violation! And what about teaching Agha English -- is that typical American imperialism, or what? Teaching him to read and encouraging him to continue his education has to be cruel, raising his hopes and making him believe that his life has value and his future could hold almost unlimited opportunity to be free and happy. How dare we interfere with his normal development into a starving lackey for warlords and Islamofascist terrorists. Perhaps the wise people from International ANSWER will convince us yet that our soldiers are brutish thugs and Guantanamo differs little from medieval dungeons; I'm sure they'll want to spread Agha's story as crucial evidence of their charges.

I'll just sit here and hold my breath ...

UPDATE: The Minnesota Star-Tribune carried this story. Their headline? "Released from Guantanamo, boy says he was falsely accused". Well, that's certainly a shocker -- detainees so rarely claim that they are falsely accused. It isn't until the penultimate paragraph that the AP story mentions anything about Agha's complimentary description of his life at Camp Delta. Typical.

Michigan 11%: Another Kerry Runaway

As expected, with 11% of the precincts reporting, Kerry has a large lead over his competitors, taking in 56% of the votes counted in Michigan thus far. John Edwards, at 15%, barely edges out Howard Dean at 14%, although it's possible neither of them will be guaranteed pledged delegates.

In related news, Dean's campaign took another body blow today when union giant AFSCME withdrew its endorsement of Dean, according to Democratic Party officials:

Howard Dean (news - web sites), shut out in the primary season to date, suffered a fresh blow when the head of a major union decided to withdraw his support. Democratic officials said Gerald McEntee, head of the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees, delivered the news to the former front-runner during a meeting in Burlington, Vt.

I'm not aware of any such withdrawal of an endorsement before; normally an endorsement of a losing candidate in the primary is simply not mentioned and the endorsement is transferred to the nominee. Either Dean said or did something that offended AFSCME officials or they feel the need to get as much distance between themselves and the disastrous Dean campaign.

Washington Caucus 21%: Kerry Leads, Dean 2nd

With 21% of all precincts reporting, Washington caucusers are giving John Kerry a large lead but giving Howard Dean a small sliver of hope. Kerry leads Dean, 44%-28%, with Dennis Kucinich perhaps looking at his first pledged delegates in the race, coming in third with 15%. John Edwards is trailing at an embarassing fourth with 5%. Fox News reports Kerry at 52% and Kucinich and Edwards tied at 7%, with the same number of precincts.

Assuming the numbers do not shift significantly, Washington demonstrates that Edwards still cannot carry anything outside of the South and in fact shows poorly in any state that doesn't drawl, as I said last Tuesday. Dean will get a significant number of delegates, but Kerry will continue to add to his lead as well as to the regions in the US where he has won. Michigan, which is extending its caucus hours in Detroit and will report results later than expected, will also give Kerry a large number of delegates if pre-caucus polls prove accurate.

Kerry rolls on, and everyone else seems noncompetitive at this stage. The nomination may well be decided after Wisconsin as Democrats scramble to board the Kerry bandwagon.

Dean: VP A Possibility

Howard Dean, who has staked what's left of his presidential campaign on Feb 17th's Wisconsin's primary, has acknowledged that he would consider a VP nomination:

During a campaign interview for the February 17 Wisconsin primary, Howard Dean left open the possibility he would accept a vice presidential nomination on a Democratic presidential ticket. The former Vermont governor's comments came in an interview with a Milwaukee radio station on Friday.

Asked by radio station WMCS whether he would accept the vice presidential slot, Dean replied, "I would, to the extent, do anything I could to get rid of President Bush. I'll do whatever is best for the party. Obviously, I'm running for president, but whatever's best is what I'll do. Anything."

Dean's problem has been that he will say and do anything to win, leading him to odd reversals of previous policy beliefs and unusual statements. In this case, Dean's not likely to be called to serve at the bottom of the ticket anyway. For one thing, assuming that Kerry wins the nomination, the Democrats will want someone other than another New England liberal in the VP slot. More than likely, they'd prefer to see Edwards in order to broaden their appeal in the South. Also, Dean has proved himself a poor campaigner, prone to questionable statements and famously displaying a political tin ear in Iowa.

In fact, Dean's sudden volunteerism rings a bit hollow when Dean has gone negative on every Democrat who's polled above 10% in any state, except Sharpton, who made Dean look ridiculous in the Iowa debate. Why would Kerry or Edwards want Dean on their ticket now?

The Dean Dot-Com Bubble

Howard Dean's backers are engaging in a bit of eulogism these days, looking back at the wreck his campaign has become and asking themselves what went wrong, or if it ever was right in the first place. The Los Angeles times writes on one possible cause of the grand self-delusion that the Dean campaign became -- their vaunted Internet backbone:

The loose-knit group of academics, software writers and online commentators have identified a range of factors responsible for the campaign's stumble, from the actions of Dean himself and former campaign manager Joe Trippi to those of the media establishment. But some are also blaming their own habitat, what they now describe as an "echo chamber" of Web diaries and Internet message boards that lulled activists into thinking they were winning votes for Dean merely by typing messages to one another.

"We may have been too glued to our monitors to remember that while elections get won by money … they are also won by people on the ground," John Perry Barlow, co-founder of the Internet civil liberties group the Electronic Frontier Foundation, wrote last week on his personal Web log, or blog.

"We will have to turn off our computers occasionally" to talk to voters in the outside world, he wrote.

Others, of course, have other explanations, including some grassy-knoll speculation that the mainstream media felt threatened by Dean's Internet populism and abused his eyebrow-raising antics in Iowa in order to protect their monopoly on the information stream. It sounds exactly like the type of notion that the Dean campaign floated on occasion, such as the tinfoil-hat idea that President Bush knew about the 9/11 plot before it happened and did nothing in order to destroy our civil rights.

In fact, as the article alludes, the Internet was merely the medium, and the Deaniacs treated it as a shiny new toy -- and they weren't the only ones, either. The novelty of Dean's Internet adventure attracted a number of people, the Times notes, that weren't at all sold on Dean. Some of these donated money and some donated their expertise in computer programming, fascinated by the technical challenge but less so with the political message.

The mainstream media, however, only saw the raw numbers of money and volunteers without analyzing the depth of support it brought, and anointed Dean as front-runner. Far from trying to sabotage Dean's campaign, journalists became fascinated with the best domestic political story in the fall of 2003. Howard Dean occupied the primary focus of the national news providers, eclipsing all other Democrats and even George Bush on occasion. The assumption of being in front afforded Dean the opportunity to be the primary respondent whenever any major event occurred. Far from sabotaging Dean, the media enabled Dean to an extent enjoyed by no other candidate -- and not a single vote had been cast.

In the end, Dean's undoing comes not from the national media nor his campaign's Internet strategy. Both are merely tools for candidates to get their message and themselves across to the voters, the latter a novel and forward-looking device, to be sure. Dean undid himself by being himself: an inconsistent and temperamental governor of a small state who had never played on the national stage before last year, a candidate who abandoned positions opportunistically in order to align himself with the most radical and energetic of the Democratic base, and a speaker given to extemporaneous blunders and disinclined to act immediately to contain their damage. In short, Dean made a poor candidate for national office, and all the media and Internet did was to portray him as he is. For that, at least, we can be grateful to Howard Dean's campaign.

Blair May Be Headed For Trouble

Tony Blair, America's staunch ally in the war on terror, may be heading for some electoral problems according to a story in tomorrow's Independent:

Our poll puts the Conservatives, with 36 per cent, one point ahead of Labour, on 35 per cent. This is the first non-internet poll to put the Conservatives ahead since Michael Howard became leader last November. When NOP themselves last polled at the end of September, the Tories were on 29 per cent, nine points behind Labour.

In contrast to his two predecessors, William Hague and Iain Duncan Smith, the new leader has made a favourable first impression on the electorate. As many as 47 per cent say he is doing a good job; only 15 per cent think he is doing a bad job. Perhaps just as importantly, only 13 per cent do not have a view about him. Mr Howard is evidently no "quiet man'' struggling to make his voice heard.

Even Labour supporters have formed a favourable view of the Tory leader. As many as 36 per cent think he is doing a good job, just 24 per cent a bad one. Any hopes Labour might have had that Mr Howard's political past would ensure he repelled anyone other than committed Conservatives have proven wide of the mark.

The Independent's glee at these numbers does manage to peek through at times in this analysis, and this underscores Blair's problem. For years, Blair had managed to pull the Clinton trick of stealing his opponents' issues while keeping his base happy, meaning that only the true believers on the right consistently opposed him, no little effect. With his partnership with Bush on Iraq came new dangers, and they now appear to be taking their toll on Blair's standing. Instead of mollifying the center-right and holding the left, the left now feels rejected by Blair's insistence on military action -- and the center-right has no loyalty to him. In a separate but related story, 51 percent now disapprove of Blair's performance, worrying numbers in the parliamentary system where a no-confidence vote could end Blair's career:

Tony Blair's loss of public trust after the war on Iraq and the Hutton report is underlined today by a poll for The Independent showing more than half of voters want him to resign. The NOP poll, conducted this week, shows that 51 per cent want the Prime Minister to quit and 54 per cent believe he lied to the nation over the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.

Blair's troubles have been compounded by an admission that he did not know that a claim that Iraq had WMDs ready to fire within 45 minutes referred to short-range tactical weapons and not long-range ballistic missiles. The British government had reportedly allowed the impression to continue that British interests in Cyprus were threatened by this alleged ballistic capability. Now Michael Howard, the Conservative leader, is calling for Blair to resign. Howard's own numbers have increased dramatically since he replaced Iain Duncan-Smith as opposition leader in Parliament, and the Independent reports that Conservatives actually outpoll Labour, just barely, for the first time in years.

What effect will a damaged Blair have on the US? For one thing, Bush will lose his best international ally in the war on terror and in confronting the corrupt governments of France and Russia. The loss will affect Bush's re-election bid here as well. Americans have been impressed with Blair's eloquence and determination, and it is no secret that his enthusiastic endorsement of the Iraq phase of the war bolstered Bush at home, if not abroad. With his troubles mounting, Blair will have to tend his own political fortunes and that may mean distancing himself from Bush in order to hold onto his core support in Labour. While I don't think Blair will pull away from the war on terror -- I think he's deeply and personally committed to it -- I don't see him making any more visits to the US to discuss it anytime soon. It may be that Howard will turn out to be as strong an ally of Bush in the war, but so far I'm not terribly hopeful.

The Independent also includes a snide editorial analysis of the difference between Blair and Winston Churchill, provoked by a Blair supporter's comparison to the legendary British statesman, which is headlined, "Unlike Mr Blair, Churchill had been a soldier". I would say that Tony Blair will have the fight of his political life ahead of him in the next few weeks and months.

Reverberations From A Rack

Variety writes at length today about the continuing aftershocks in the entertainment industry from the Janet Jackson/Justin Timberlake breast-baring incident:

The rehabilitation of Jackson has begun in earnest, and taking the lead is MTV sister network BET.

The vehicle: a series of 10 30-second vignettes featuring a subdued, furrowed-brow Jackson, dressed almost dowdily in conservative black, speaking directly to cable viewers about dignified African-American personages ranging from Sidney Poitier and Harriet Tubman to Marion Anderson and Paul Robeson.

Forget about what BET calls Jackson's "edgy and sexy persona," which exploded during the halftime of last week's Super Bowl game when Justin Timberlake ripped her costume, baring her right breast live before an estimated audience of 90 million people. In the BET spots, Jackson comes off like the mother superior of a nunnery. "Her tone is serious and focused," says a BET statement, and she takes on the "air and diction of a seasoned lecturer."

In addition, Jackson has withdrawn as a performer at the Grammys and organizers are debating whether to require Timberlake to do the same. TNT is insert a 10-second audio delay on the SAG Awards. MTV, which produced the halftime show that offended so many people, was barred from filming a series on a California high-school campus that had previously been approved. Finally, Congress is considering a bill that would increase the fines for indecency tenfold, a bill that the broadcast industry would like to fight but now is in a difficult position in which to do so.

It's amazing how much damage a nipple medallion can cause.

However, this is not a trivial matter, as I tried to explain to a (skeptical) friend the other day. Public broadcasting is just that -- a public issue, as radio frequencies are monopolies. Only one broadcaster can use a particular channel in each market, and so government has licensed broadcasters since 1933 in order to maintain order and to ensure that broadcasters meet the public trust in their programming. Since CBS, for instance, broadcasts on channel 4 in my area using a high-powered transmitter, I cannot make use of this frequency to publish my own point of view. This makes the Super Bowl broadcast very much different than having the Sopranos on HBO. HBO does not monopolize a certain broadcast frequency in order to play its programming; neither does MTV, the Comedy Channel, or any of the other cable networks. Cable bandwidth is owned by the cable delivery service; broadcast channels are owned by the public.

This grant of local monopolies conveys a greater responsibility on the broadcaster to ensure that their programming does not violate community standards of decency. Without a doubt, baring an adult female breast in public is an indecent act, and in most if not all of America it would be considered a misdemeanor for indecent exposure. One does not need to find the bare mammary gland repugnant or shameful in order to understand the difference between broadcasting this on CBS on a Sunday evening during the most-watched TV show of the year and displaying it on the Playboy Channel. The latter service provides subscriptions to viewers who have an interest in that kind of programming and doesn't monopolize public broadcast channels to deliver it.

Nor, as my friend attempted to argue, is the Jackson/Timberlake episode analogous to scenes from National Geographic programs which have showed bare-chested women in tribal areas, living within their own community standards. The context of the Super Bowl halftime show was obviously sexual in nature. The songs being performed contained many references to sex, and the performers gestured in obviously sexual ways. Nelly, for instance, grasped his crotch a number of times, as CBS helpfully zoomed in on the action. Dancers were costumed in bondage-fantasy outfits. Jackson herself wore what looked like a leather butcher's smock/bustier. The effect of Timberlake's gesture was one of power and humiliation, two common themes in bondage-genre entertainment. The wonder isn't that many Americans were offended by such a display, the wonder is that women's groups didn't make more of a protest on Monday morning.

As the owner of the channels that CBS uses to its own profit, the public is entitled to demand a higher standard from the broadcasters and producers of the programming aired. Let's not keep discussing the supposed "Puritanism" of Americans as the problem; instead, keep in mind that the production CBS aired was not appropriate, not for the time, the audience, and the medium.

Sauce For The Goose

In the midst of the outrage du jour -- outsourcing -- India responds with a big "so what":

Most jobs going to India are in the high-technology and professional-services sector. Data released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics show, however, that U.S. job losses are taking place mainly in manufacturing and retail services.

In the professional and business sectors, U.S. employers added workers in the last quarter. Although jobs did shrink — for many reasons, including a burst stock market bubble — employment in computer and mathematical occupations has grown since June last year by more than 150,000. According to the Information Technologies Assn. of America, only about 2% of 10 million computer-related jobs have gone abroad.

In U.S. manufacturing, jobs have been declining, but they have been gradually doing so over two decades. Investments by U.S. companies in India's manufacturing are still quite modest. In India's fast-growing automobile sector, for instance, Japanese and South Korean firms are big players. American auto giants have a comparatively low profile.

While much has been made of $80,000 jobs going to India for $20,000, Mr. Adhikari reminds us that the buying power between the two salaries is about equivalent, especially when you remember that India's per-capita income is less than $500 per year. The message is that the free market and globalization also relate to labor, as it must. We can hardly have a free market for goods if you have protectionism on jobs, or else we would have few markets with which to sell our products overseas. Forcing American corporations to eliminate low-cost labor alternatives will only mean that foreign corporations and governments will fill the market need themselves. Such a policy will increase our trade imbalance as American consumers will flock to lower-price options. Which is preferable: a policy that allows American corporations to profit from lower-cost (but hardly sweatshop) labor, or one that puts American corporations at stark international disadvantage? Where do you have your retirement money invested?

Of course, a free market cuts both ways, and what Mr. Adhikari doesn't mention is that Americans could simply refuse to buy goods and services produced from outsourced labor. That is also a free-market decision, and one that allows the market to work properly. The outcry from consumers is already having some effect to this end, and the perception that India's outsourced call-center services are lower in quality than comparable US services have driven some corporations to end the outsourcing of these jobs. Why not continue to allow the market to drive these decisions?

Walk Right In, Sit Right Down

In the middle of a winter punctuated with flight cancellations and delays due to heightened fears of terrorist attacks, the LAX security detail allowed a known felon to stroll past security and lodge himself onto an airplane without a ticket:

Airport cameras captured it all: On a busy morning at Los Angeles International Airport last month, a convicted felon wearing a sweatshirt, sunglasses and gloves strolled unnoticed past two security checkpoints in Terminal 5 and walked onto a jumbo jet without a ticket.

Kareem Thomas, a 19-year-old Decatur, Ga., resident on probation for burglary, was discovered hiding in an airplane restroom by passengers and was apprehended by police before takeoff.

Thomas was unarmed and passed through the airport's metal detectors along with other travelers. But the ease with which he boarded the Jan. 15 Delta Airlines Flight 1972 to Atlanta — particularly at a time of heightened security at the state's No. 1 terrorist target — alarmed passengers on the flight and triggered investigations by two federal agencies and the airline.

"Clearly this was a monumental security screw-up," said Santa Monica resident John Hall, who was a passenger on the flight. "Here I am, along with all the other passengers, taking off our shoes and waiting in endless lines to board a plane and this guy just strolls past the security net."

Even more disturbing than this incident was the response given by the TSA's security director at LAX, Larry Fetters:

"Of course it's worrisome that this happened and we need to make sure that it doesn't happen again," Fetters said. "But we also need to put it in perspective." At LAX, he said, "Millions of people have gone past screening checkpoints in the last year and only one person got through who shouldn't have been in there."

Perhaps Fetters would also like us to keep 9/11 in perspective. After all, in the first eight months of 2001, many millions of people passed through American airport security check points, perhaps even a billion. And only 19 managed to slip through, a failure rate of only 0.0000019%! That certainly makes me feel foolish for even thinking that we were unsafe on 9/11 or any time before or since.

Fetters clearly does not grasp the nature of his job if he expects the public to accept this "perspective" on security. As a retired security expert notes later in the same article, it only takes one person getting past security with bad intent to create a grave danger for travelers and people on the ground as well. The nature of the security breach is so blatant that clearly Fetters wants to distract from his group's embarrassing failure and direct focus to the thousands and more that suffered through the intrusive, but necessary, preflight security procedures. Unfortunately for Fetters, it is these same people who will resent the fact that TSA allowed someone without a ticket to pass through unnoticed because security agents were too busy watching them take off their shoes.

Fetters' response undermines public confidence in this TSA unit's focus on its mission, which is not to play numbers games but to make sure everyone goes through the screening process. If TSA supports Fetters' philosophy of playing the percentages instead of 100% compliance, then perhaps TSA isn't qualified to handle this job, either.

Master Of The Obvious

The Howard Dean campaign, in an e-mail to his dwindling supporters, proclaimed the obvious and stated that Dean had to win in Wisconsin or it's all over:

Howard Dean told supporters Thursday he will be out of the race for the Democratic nomination for president if he fails to win the Wisconsin primary, declaring "all that you have worked for these past months is on the line on a single day, in a single state." ... In the e-mail distributed in the early hours of Thursday, Dean wrote: "The entire race has come down to this: we must win Wisconsin. ... We will get a boost this weekend in Washington, Michigan, and Maine, but our true test will be the Wisconsin primary. A win there will carry us to the big states of March 2 and narrow the field to two candidates. Anything less will put us out of this race."

This requires a reality check for the Deaniacs. First, if Dean manages to win Washington, Michigan, and Maine, then a respectable second-place finish in Wisconsin would be no problem. Obviously, according to this statement, Dean's campaign figures that Dean won't carry any of those states, and looking at the polling numbers thus far, they're right. Michigan polls show Dean trailing badly behind Kerry, 51%-9%, although he is in second place. Washington an Maine are caucusing and no polling data is yet available, but the Tuesday primaries in Tennessee and Virginia don't look any more promising. Dean trails in both states behind Kerry, Clark, and Edwards in data that preceded Kerry's impressive slate of victories this week. In those states which vote rather than caucus -- and we've seen how the Dean campaign performs in caucuses -- Dean isn't likely to gather more than a handful of pledged delegates, while Kerry can expect to claim the lion's share of those in play.

In short, by the time Wisconsin rolls around, Dean may already be so far behind Kerry in delegates and momentum that a Wisconsin victory will say more about Kerry's chances than Dean's. Dean points to Super Tuesday II on March 2nd and says that the majority of delegates will be won on that day, but among the big states voting on March 2nd, he's only leading in New York (in polling from a month ago), while Kerry leads overwhelmingly in California and Ohio. In Massachussets, he's in a statistical dead heat with Kerry in a poll taken last year, but I suspect the numbers are much different today, with favored son Kerry now the frontrunner.

Dean wants to buck up his flagging support by setting expectations low and hoping for a big enough win in Wisconsin to put some wind back in his sails, but if he doesn't have an outright win by the time Wisconsin rolls around, he'll be irrelevant already. I'm not sure what hiring Roy Neel did for Dean, but it's looking more and more than Neel will wind up being his campaign's eulogist rather than its strategist.

Kerry -- Champion Against Special Interests?

The AP reports an "exclusive" on an apparent conflict of interest involving Senator John Kerry from four years ago, when he blocked legislation and later received cash from a beneficiary of his action:

A Senate colleague was trying to close a loophole that allowed a major insurer to divert millions of federal dollars from the nation's most expensive construction project. John Kerry stepped in and blocked the legislation. Over the next two years, the insurer, American International Group, paid Kerry's way on a trip to Vermont and donated at least $30,000 to a tax-exempt group Kerry used to set up his presidential campaign. Company executives donated $18,000 to his Senate and presidential campaigns.

The colleague was John McCain and the project involved was the Big Dig, a highway project often cited as an example of cost overruns and government inefficiency. McCain wanted some government funding of the Big Dig stopped in order to put an end to American Insurance Group's overbilling on the project, which eventually totalled over $125 million, as well as create legislation to prohibit the abuse from occuring again. Instead, Kerry convinced McCain to hold hearings instead, and the legislation was never submitted. As a result, AIG continued to collect government funds, and Kerry collected thousands of dollars in contributions from AIG and its management.

Is this Kerry's idea of fighting special interests?

A few months later in December 2001, several AIG executives gave maximum $1,000 donations to Kerry's Senate campaign on the same day. The donations totaled $9,700 and were followed by several thousand dollars more over the next two years.

The next spring, AIG donated $10,000 to a new tax-exempt group Kerry formed, the Citizen Soldier Fund, to lay groundwork for his presidential campaign. Later in 2002, AIG gave two more donations of $10,000 each to the same group, making it one of the largest corporate donors to Kerry's group.

The insurer wasn't the only company connected to the Big Dig to donate to Kerry's new group. Two construction companies on the project — Modern Continental Group and Jay Cashman Construction — each donated $25,000, IRS records show.

The Big Dig sounds exactly like what you need when Kerry starts talking about how he fights special interests when election records show that he's taken more special-interest money that anyone in the Senate in the past 15 years. As this boondoggle's history shows, Kerry's contributors get their money's worth.

Massachussets Supreme Court: Gay-Marriage Ban Unconstitutional

The Massachussets Supreme Court has ruled that civil unions are not adequate substitutes for marriage and has ordered the Commonwealth to recognize marriage for same-sex couples:

The Massachusetts high court ruled Wednesday that only full, equal marriage rights for gay couples -- rather than civil unions -- would be constitutional, erasing any doubts that the nation's first same-sex marriages could take place in the state beginning in mid-May. The court issued the opinion in response to a request from the state Senate about whether Vermont-style civil unions, which convey the state benefits of marriage -- but not the title -- would meet constitutional muster. ...

The much-anticipated opinion sets the stage for next Wednesday's constitutional convention, where the Legislature will consider an amendment that would legally define marriage as a union between one man and one woman. Without the opinion, Senate President Robert Travaglini had said the vote would be delayed. The soonest a constitutional amendment could end up on the ballot would be 2006, meaning that until then, the high court's decision will be Massachusetts law no matter what is decided at the constitutional convention.

Bear in mind that the Massachussets Supreme Court ruling pertains to its state constitution, not the US Constitution, and that the ruling has no immediate or direct impact on other states. Congress has already passed legislation exempting marriage from the requirement of other states to recognize the laws of other states, so a same-sex couple who gets married in Massachussets won't automatically have that marriage recognized anywhere else. Legislators in Massachussets intend on amending the state constitution to reverse the decision, and this may cause a huge headache. A constitutional ban on gay marriage could not be applied ex post facto, meaning that anyone who gets married under the Court's ruling for the next two years would remain married regardless.

While I am more libertarian than my friends and colleagues and don't have an issue with gay marriage, I have a huge issue with it being implemented on a constitutional basis. Unless the Massachussets constitution actually says that the state shall not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation -- it might, I don't know -- then this ruling goes from interpretation to legislation, and star-chamber legislation is the worst form of governing that Americans experience. Granting rights through judicial activism is the legal equivalent of a sledgehammer -- it hits the target and a lot of surrounding territory and it proves almost impossible to undo.

Take, for instance, the recent SCOTUS ruling declaring sodomy laws unconstitutional. Most people certainly agreed that these laws were foolish and unenforceable, but by declaring that two consenting adults had a constitutional right to do anything they wanted not only opens the door for sodomy, but also adult incest and any number of activities destructive to the social fabric of society. Had the matter been pursued through legislation, the offending laws could have been removed without granting previously unheard-of "rights" for anything else that occurs between consenting adults. Strictly speaking, you can make the same argument for granting constitutional protection for prostitution; it is a business transaction that, when made without the threat of arrest, remains between consenting adults. Previous to that ruling, such an argument could be made only in support of legislative action, but now it could very reasonably support a federal appeal of prostitution or pandering charges. I suspect it will be soon.

What Massachussets is saying is that rights are without boundaries and exempt from all restriction and definition, but that simply isn't so. The right to free speech is bound by restrictions on libel and slander and inciting riots. The right to peaceably assemble is similarly limited. The right to vote depends on citizenship, legal status, age, and residency. To say that a marriage is a right which is not bounded by restrictions is to open the door to all sorts of "redefinitions" of marriage between consenting adults, including polygamy and polyamory.

As I said earlier, I'm not unhappy with the immediate result of legalizing gay marriage, but I am upset that another court has usurped the legislative process yet again to promulgate law by fiat. Representative democracies work by allowing the people to create and impose the laws under which they are governed so that even if you personally disagree with the result, you (a) had an opportunity to be heard, either directly or through your representative, (b) limit the scope of the policy to its intended result, and (c) retain the ability to revisit the issue at a later date if the policy turns out to be misguided. Court decrees granting broad "rights" eliminate all three of these natural safeguards, distancing the process of legislation from the people it affects and increasing the sense of powerlessness of the electorate. This sense of powerlessness results in sharply polarized politics, such as we see now on abortion, and it places too much political meaning in the judicial process, resulting in the acrimony and stalemate on judicial confirmations at all levels.

Massachussets resident may indeed desire to recognize gay marriages. Unfortunately, the only choice left to them now is to allow their court to set an extreme precedent or to block any redefinition entirely by constitutional amendment. Total victory or abject loss have become the only two options in American politics anymore, thanks to judicial activism, and until we insist on curtailing this activism we will continue the disenfranchisement of the American electorate in favor of government by robed diktat.

UPDATE: The decision, via Instapundit.

Chase-Related Crash Wasn't

My local police department has discovered that a state-patrol crash just before Christmas that supposedly resulted from a perp chase was actually caused by a speeding trooper giving another trooper a lift to a hockey game:

A state trooper intent on getting an off-duty colleague to a hockey game allegedly used her squad car's lights and siren and reached speeds of up to 126 mph before crashing into a civilian car in Eagan in December. The trooper then told investigators she had been pursuing a violator when the accident took place, and told an Explorer Scout riding with her to lie about what happened, according to a criminal complaint filed Tuesday. ...

According to the complaint: [Jennifer Lee] Schneider initially told a trooper investigating the accident that she was on her way to the Eagan Civic Arena to watch her husband — also a state trooper — play in a hockey game. She told the investigator she saw a motorist go through a red light and, in pursuing the vehicle, crashed her squad car.

But after receiving an anonymous tip, the State Patrol suspected Schneider had filed a false report and asked the Eagan police to investigate.

The highway where Schneider drove 126 MPH is a wide road, but the offramp is a tight and partially blind spiral, amd if Schneider went any faster than 60 MPH, it would have been grossly negligent, even if she snapped on her lights and siren moments before plowing into another driver. More to the point, when we hear a siren and see emergency lights, we expect that the unit is responding to an emergency and isn't a super-taxi for off-duty troopers. Further, we expect troopers to be honest when interrogated, not lie to cover up for each other.

Interestingly, Schneider's one flaw in her cover-up was the Explorer scout who rode along with her and her fare when the crash occurred. Initially the Explorer kept quiet about the truth, but that promptly changed when he was approached by Eagan investigators:

Immediately after the accident, an Eagan officer arrived and was asked by Schneider to transport Olson to the arena. When another trooper arrived to investigate the accident, Schneider indicated that the Explorer Scout was her only passenger.

"The kid came clean right away," Mayer said of the Scout. ...The Explorer Scout, Kyle Paulson, 19, of Oakdale, was reluctant to talk about what took place. When asked if he got a lesson from what happened, he said he learned the importance of one thing.

"Integrity," he said.

It would appear that the Explorer actually received a valuable education from his ride-along, one that Schneider never managed to absorb during her tenure with the State Police. She is lucky no one is dead. When it comes time to prosecute, I hope someone remembers that. That could just as easily have been my car, or my son's car with my granddaughter inside, that Schneider hit at high speed just so her husband's colleague could play in a hockey game. Someone with such little regard for the lives of Minnesotans doesn't belong in a trooper's uniform and should receive a sentence that will make that clear to any other law-enforcement professionals who feel tempted to start their own high-speed taxi services in Minnesota.

But What Did It All Mean?

Now that the final speeches are over for the evening and the races are more or less decided, even if the eventual delegate splits may still be a bit murky, let's take stock of the results and try to make some sense of the numbers.

The big winner: John Kerry, no matter what the fools at MS-NBC think. In the past two weeks, John Kerry has won in every contested area of the country except the South, unless you count Missouri as part of Dixie. Edwards won one state in his own backyard and came close to winning another thanks to the "Little Dixie" area of Oklahoma, as one pundit on CNN put it tonight. He had a distant second-place finish in Missouri, the biggest prize of the night. Otherwise, Edwards failed to resonate anywhere other than the South, and while we all know that the Democrats need some star power below the Mason-Dixon line, Edwards isn't shining bright enough yet to be attractive anywhere else.

The big loser: Howard Dean. He gambled that the states and their delegates would be more evenly split, but all his absence did was to give more momentum to the normally sonorous Kerry. Instead of making inroads in delegates, Dean squandered what little enthusiasm his movement had left and saw most of his finishes fall out of the money. He only got delegates from New Mexico and possibly Arizona tonight and failed to get over 10% in most of the rest of the states. Two larger states, Washington and Michigan, hold primaries on Saturday, with Maine caucusing on Sunday. Dean has to win one of these or he is officially toast.

Second-biggest loser is Wes Clark. He was 1200 votes away from retiring from the race, but the razor-thin victory over Edwards keeps Clark on life support, probably through Tennessee and Virginia on February 10th. If he doesn't win one of these primaries -- and I mean win it, not fall into a virtual tie with Edwards or Kerry -- he's out, too.

Treading water is John Edwards. Although his speeches and his TV appearances are impressive, he's not translating into a national candidate yet. He's building an impressive resume for 2008, but unless he can win outside of his comfort zone, he's going nowhere in 2004 except to the bottom of the ticket. His lips say, "No, no," but the polls say, "Yes, yes!"

As I posted earlier, Joe Lieberman is the official martyr of the Democrats. While Dean whines about his media treatment, Kerry hides his Botox treatment, and Edwards gets the star treatment, Lieberman managed the unbelievable feat of having both sides of the Democratic party shaft him in its zeal to find the Next Big Thing in politics. First it was Dean and then Clark, and now neither of them is in the hunt; remember when people debated which one would be VP for the other? Their partisans (Gore and the DLC, respectively) made Lieberman the sacrificial lamb for absolutely no gain whatsoever. Too bad he was the most electable candidate they had for November.

My guess is that Dean and Clark both fail to win Saturday or next Tuesday, and Kerry takes everything except Tennessee, which goes for Edwards. Get ready to say goodbye to the two Mr. Nutbars.

UPDATE: Welcome to Best of the Web readers!

The General Wins A Pyrrhic Victory in Oklahoma

Wesley Clark finally did what Howard Dean has yet to do: he won a state primary. Clark just barely edged out Edwards in Oklahoma, Clark's so-called last stand, by less than 2,000 votes, and Kerry coming in three percentage points behind. Can we say recount? No need; the delegates will be split almost evenly between the three candidates, making Oklahoma a meaningless victory for Clark. The General needed to prove he could win a state outright after coming in third while focusing all his efforts in New Hampshire. He can point to this and claim victory, but in truth everyone knows that Clark cannot compete against Kerry nationally, or probably even Edwards regionally in the South.

To emphasize this, he's coming in second in neighboring New Mexico, trailing Kerry 37%-23% and barely leading a dormant Dean by three percentage points. He's trailing Kerry in Arizona as well by a wider margin, 43%-27%, and these were the states in which he supposedly had the greatest strength.

Clark managed to bump Kerry off of the TV with his victory speech for Oklahoma. "We won the non-New England portion of New Hampshire"?? Did part of the Granite State migrate south? I think the General doth protest too much. He won't get another chance this election cycle, so perhaps it's best he gets it out of his system now.

North Dakota Goes Strong for Kerry

The North Dakota caucuses are over, and with all precincts reporting, Kerry has taken half of the vote. Clark came in 26 points behind at 24%, and Dean came in a distant third at 12% and out of the money. Edwards finished just behind Dean, and while I don't think Edwards did a lot of campaigning in North Dakota, these results don't build confidence in his ability to have anything more than regional appeal. So far, Edwards has only won one state in his own backyard, South Carolina, and is running neck-and-neck with Clark in Oklahoma. Kerry has won in the mid-Atlantic region (Delaware), Midwest (Missouri), Upper Midwest (North Dakota), and Southwest (Arizona, possibly New Mexico). Outside the two states I mentioned and Missouri, Edwards hasn't finished better than third and is running fourth in Arizona, New Mexico, and North Dakota. No one seems to be talking about Kerry's national reach.

What does this mean? I think Edwards may have run four years too early; he isn't known enough to be a national candidate yet. If Hillary Clinton decides not to run, or loses her re-election bid for her Senate seat, Edwards could be the early favorite for 2008.

Mountain Time: Arizona, NM Precincts Reporting

Arizona and New Mexico are finally reporting their first precincts, and so far they favor John Kerry. With 42% reporting, Kerry is leading Clark, 41%-26%, with Dean coming in at 17%, just above the threshold. New Mexico, with 15% reporting, Kerry is leading with 29% with Dean and Clark tied at 25%. CNN is also showing Kerry ahead in the North Dakota caucuses, at least on TV, although they haven't updated their website yet. Edwards is off the radar screen in these states, questioning his electoral stamina outside of the South (depending on how you define Oklahoma).

Carl Cameron: Ted Kennedy Fighting to Stop Dean

Carl Cameron reports on Fox that Ted Kennedy, John Kerry's fellow Senator from Massachussets, intends to rally the Democratic mainstream to force Howard Dean out of the race so that he doesn't "sap enthusiasm" away from the front-runner. Kennedy and others -- probably the Clintonistas -- are concerned that Dean may be gathering his resources for one last two-week blast at John Kerry (and perhaps John Edwards) that will damage his/their chances in November.

Pardon me, but if this is true, this has to be the stupidest campaign strategy so far in a year that has seen some very strange campaigning. Kennedy proposes to do what the first round of primaries could not: energize Dean's base and reverse his flagging momentum. Tonight's results have delivered a body blow to Dean's campaign -- he didn't win a single delegate so far, although he looks like he'll get some in New Mexico -- and left alone, Dean's campaign may have died from starvation. But a "smoke-filled room" decision to torpedo what's left of his run at the nomination will enrage his base, shrunken but still significant, who may revolt against the Democrats, perhaps even convincing the egotistical Dean to run as an independent. If not, they may go Green in November. This is the very thing they have always accused the party leadership of trying to do, and now it looks like they may not have been paranoid after all.

Far be it from me to give helpful advice to the Democrats, but they should ask themselves this question: is there any way in hell Dean can get the nomination? Not at this point, not realistically. If so, then why bother pulling out the bag of tricks now? Let him fade out on his own accord, and then welcome his base into the convention. The Democrats cannot afford to drive them off.

Oklahoma 66%: Edwards Edging Clark, Kerry Gaining

Oklahoma may be the Super Bowl of tonight's elections, with three candidates closing in on each other as more precincts come in. At the moment, 66% of the precincts have been counted, and Edwards is just ahead of Clark by 1200 votes. Kerry, who had been as much as 8% behind the two, has now closed to within 4% of the leaders. It's obvious that Clark did not get the big win he needed to continue, especially after almost emptying the magazines in New Hampshire.

It certainly looks like the Democrats are about to nominate a Massachussets liberal to face off against the Texas centrist, although there's a lot more electoral battles left to fight, and Edwards may still carry some momentum if he wins Oklahoma; but if the margins remain the same, any win will only slightly change the delegate totals, and so Oklahoma may just be a wash. Edwards reiterated again on Fox that he will not accept a VP nomination. It will be interesting to see if he sticks to that in July.

Lieberman Withdraws

Senator Joe Lieberman, who had the most consistency between his policy statements and his record of any of the major candidates and who had the strongest credentials on foreign policy and national security in the Democratic candidates, announced his withdrawal from the primaries tonight.

Chris Dodd spoke after Hadassah Lieberman's introduction, starting (oddly) with a chant of "Let's Go Joe!" Let's go where? Other than that, Dodd was an excellent speaker, staying optimistic while delivering a eulogy, no mean feat. Dodd seems pretty likable -- not his politics, certainly, but on the stump he's got charisma. Lieberman spoke next, graciously congratulating Edwards and Kerry on their victories, and then mentioning the rest of the candidates as well. He spoke about staying strong on defense and terror -- "we've been attacked by enemies who hate us more than they love life" -- an excellent line. He's standing by his centrism, and well he should.

He got a laugh when he said that he may not have "shouted the loudest" in this campaign; no kidding. He's accepting the verdict of the voters. However you want to cut it, though, Lieberman's fate was decided when both Al Gore and the DLC dumped him, the former for the radical left, and the latter to chase after a faux-Democrat, Wes Clark. Lieberman deserved better for his service to his party than to exit with two knives stuck in his back.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers! And Jay Reding has the same perspective on Lieberman.

Kerry Wins Arizona Without Any Precincts Reporting

CNN and Fox are both calling Arizona for John Kerry, even though neither have any precincts reporting at all. Fox is also reporting that Joe Lieberman is about to address his supporters, which means he's about to thank everyone before he joins Dick Gephardt in looking for an analyst position with one of the networks.

Arizona was the other key state for Wes Clark. Normally conservative, you could have expected Arizonans to come out in support of the former four-star general. However, Clark's continuing gaffes and stumbles ripped the momentum away from his campaign and allowed Kerry and Edwards to marginalize Clark as a somewhat unstable and unwelcome presence in the race.

Clark has pulled slightly ahead of Edwards in Oklahoma with 37% of all precincts reporting, but edging out a win by a few hundred votes simply isn't enough.

OKlahoma 8%: Clark, Edwards, Kerry

With 8% of all precincts reporting, Clark is slightly edging Edwards 30%-29%, and Kerry is hanging in with 23%, leading to a situation where Oklahoma's thin delegate total will be almost evenly split between the three candidates. This will not be enough to keep Clark's supporters energized, especially since Clark isn't finishing in the money anywhere else so far (party rules require 15% of the vote before being assigned delegates). It's possible that Clark may finish better in Arizona, but that appears to be his only other hope, and he's unlikely to finish on top there.

In Delaware, with 29% of the vote in, Kerry is the only one finishing above 15% (he's got 50% so far), meaning that he could capture all of Delaware's delegates. Lieberman actually is edging Edwards for second place at 11%, and Dean is just ahead of Clark for fourth place at 10%.

Now Oklahoma has 14% of its precincts reporting, and Edwards has edged ahead of Clark, 31%-30%, with Kerry at 24%. Stay tuned!

Edwards Wins South Carolina, MS-NBC Suggests Kerry Withdraw

As expected, Senator John Edwards has won South Carolina, by a good 15-point margin, 45%-30% for Kerry. With 48% of the precincts reporting, Howard Dean only received 5% of the overall vote in South Carolina, finishing fifth behind Al Sharpton and Wesley Clark. Dean is now on TV explaining that he will not withdraw, although he acknowledges that his supporters are going to have a "tough night" tonight. Right at the moment, he's saying that in order to keep jobs in America, we have to stop giving tax breaks to companies that move offshore -- even though he himself set up a crucial tax break in Vermont for those very same corporations. The energy and enthusiasm of his supporters, is way down, and it sure seems that regardless of Dean's message, it will be very difficult to light the spark again. I just don't see the passion any more.

I started off watching MS-NBC, but had to quickly change the channels as Chris Matthews, Joe Scarborough, and Dee Dee Myers practically anointed him as The Candidate Who Will Rescue Us and came close to recommending that Kerry pack it up -- even as he is projected the winner in Missouri and Delaware based on exit polling, the two big prizes of the night. For some reason, Hardball is determined to bury the lead and focus on the one race everyone knew Edwards would win. Why didn't Edwards do any better in Missouri? He's about 30 points behind a runaway Kerry win.

In Oklahoma, Clark is barely staying on top by 2 points over Edwards, with Kerry five points back with just 3% of precincts reporting. All three are finishing above the line for delegates, but again Dean has fallen way off the pace here, tying (so far) with Lieberman at 9%. A tough night indeed. Now if Edwards can beat Clark in OK, that might be news, and it might force Clark out of the race, but even if he does, it will be by a thin margin.

More as the results come in ...

'Bare' With Us

I have learned an interesting lesson in cultural blogging today -- if you write about a really hot topic, especially involving sex, then you can expect to get a whole bunch of new readers via search engines. Captain's Quarters has recently been averaging between 50-70 page views an hour during prime time (around 40 unique visitors). Today, however, after writing about the Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake Boober Bowl halftime show, I have been receiving over 300 page views an hour from referrals from search engines.

Don't get me wrong; I like getting new readers, and I hope that all of them take a longer look around the blog to see if they find any other interests here than a grainy picture of a 37-year-old's right breast (which is not posted on this site, but you can go here and tell them I said hello). I'd just hate to have so many of these visitors never check back in, and I hope the increased traffic isn't keeping regular readers from accessing the site. This is the reason I never posted about Paris Hi1ton or her video -- it's not representative of what I do with the blog.

So what would be representative? Take a look around, and if you like what you see, bookmark and/or blogroll me. Hope to see you back here soon. In the meantime, good luck on your searches.

Deadly Ricin Found: New Terrorist Attack

Just in case anyone thought that the war on terror had ended, reality intruded overnight as the deadly poison ricin was found in the Senate complex:

Following the discovery of the deadly toxin ricin in the mailroom of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, much of the Senate complex will be shut down Tuesday, the Senate Web site said. "The Capitol will be open for essential personnel only. All tours will be canceled until further notice. Senate office buildings will be closed today. This includes the Hart, Dirksen, and Russell Senate Office Buildings," according to a statement on the Web page.

Tests on a white powdery substance found in the mailroom indicate the presence of ricin, U.S. Capitol Police Chief Terrance Gainer and Frist said late Monday. Frist said he considers the incident a "terrorist activity."

Of eight tests conducted throughout the day, six were positive for the toxin, with a ninth and final test due Tuesday. "From a scientific standpoint, this is ricin," Frist said. "It is in all likelihood sent with intent to harm."

I doubt that this event will be spectacular enough to remind some of the danger the US still faces from terrorists -- foreign and domestic -- but it will underscore for most the need for continued vigilance. Hopefully no one at the Senate complex got enough exposure to get sick from this attack. Ricin is twice as deadly as snake venom and can kill through inhalation or contact.

Feb 3: Super Tuesday 1

John Kerry is poised to take five of the seven states going to the polls today and finish a strong second in the other two:

After back-to-back wins in Iowa and New Hampshire, Sen. John Kerry was hoping for a sweep in the biggest test yet for Democratic hopefuls, seven states holding primaries or caucuses. But the race's two Southerners were angling to slow the Massachusetts Democrat's gathering momentum. Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina was counting on a victory in South Carolina's first-in-the-South primary on Tuesday to keep his own campaign alive. And retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark of Arkansas hoped for a win in Oklahoma and a respectable showing in both Arizona and New Mexico to propel his campaign into the next round of contests.

Howard Dean, of course, has already surrendered in these states, and has laid off even more campaign workers as his organization has burned through over $40 million in just the first two contests:

One-time front-runner Howard Dean was hoping to put his campaign back on track, but was looking beyond Tuesday's contests — where he is not running any TV ads and where polls show he is badly lagging — to later races. Dean's campaign, which has severely cut back on spending, engaged in another round of layoffs, aides said Monday night.

Real Clear Politics shows Kerry leading in four states and second in two. The only state missing is North Dakota, which holds open caucuses instead of primaries, and which is normally heavily Republican anyway. In one of the two states he trails, Oklahoma, RCP only has Kerry behind Wesley Clark by two percentage points, and Oklahoma voters may calculate Clark's chances as low when they actually hit the voting booths.

My prediction is that Kerry takes all states except South Carolina, where he caused a minor kerfuffle when he claimed that John Edwards couldn't even win his home state, a comment he later said referred to a general election in November and not the primary. I predict Edwards wins South Carolina by five percentage points. Kerry edges Clark by three or four points in Oklahoma. Everywhere else goes strong for Kerry, and Edwards emerges as his only viable opponent.

Clark is done after tonight and sometime in the next week acknowledges his defeat and endorses Edwards as the Clinton efforts gravitate towards the only Southerner left in the race. Lieberman and Sharpton also bow out after tonight, even though Sharpton might win a few delegates in South Carolina. Dean continues to pursue his Ross Perot strategy, but within the next two weeks he will discover that the race has passed him by; incompetence and financial mismanagement have combined to make Dean all but irrelevant.

Germany Repents?

Germany, whose Chancellor acted as though he was married to French President Jacques Chirac, now regrets its diplomatic breach with Britain and the US and will start distancing itself from French foreign policy:

Germany is seeking to distance itself from France's tight embrace and realign itself more closely to Britain and America, senior German officials signalled yesterday. They said the row with Washington over Iraq had been "catastrophic" for Berlin and Chancellor Gerhard Schröder had become "a prisoner" of President Jacques Chirac's campaign to oppose the war to topple Saddam Hussein last year.

After two years of standing so close to France that the two leaders literally stood in for one another at EU conferences, the Germans have belatedly discovered the world doesn't love the French. Now that the Chirac administration is buried in scandal and especially since Germany found out that French opposition to the war in Iraq had more to do with salaries than scruples, Germany wants to make nice with the Anglo-American alliance. They've even begun to entertain the possiblity of supporting the Coalition in Iraq, perhaps even with troops.

All of this is welcome, of course, but it had better be accompanied by some public statements of support for the efforts of Britain and the US to rid the world of a dangerous and unstable tyrant. Schroeder made enough reckless statements getting himself elected on the anti-Great Satan platform; until he renounces this publicly, he's not to be trusted and we should start building relationships with his political opponents instead.

One Tin Soldier Rides Back In

Tom Laughlin, the actor better known as Billy Jack, has thrown his snakeskin-banded hat into the ring for President:

The 72-year-old actor, who lives in Camarillo, is one of 13 candidates running against President Bush in the Republican primary. Laughlin, who first ran for president as a Democrat in 1992, said he's campaigning to draw attention to a two-party system he deemed "so corrupt it can't function anymore."

He described himself as a "messenger" candidate and said he wasn't disappointed by the New Hampshire primary, in which he earned 154 votes to Bush's nearly 34,000.

For those of us who suffered through the terminally saccharine "Billy Jack", the thought of the New Age-ish Laughlin running as a Republican inspires chortles of incredulous glee. Why not run as a Democrat, like Laughlin did in 1992? I suppose the novelty wouldn't be noticed in a crowded Democratic primary, and he might have trouble distinguishing himself from Dennis Kucinich.

At least Laughlin is well prepared for his likely experience in this election cycle. Don't forget -- his first starring role was in "The Born Loser".

Is Bush a Conservative?

Mitch Berg, my Northern Alliance comrade at A Shot in the Dark, asks us to blog on the question that may present George Bush his toughest political challenge in 2004 -- is Bush really a conservative, and if not, will the "true believers" bolt?

While it's a time-worn principle for the media to call anyone to the right of Roger Moe a "Paleoconservative", Bush has clearly been no such thing at any point in his career. Oh, sure - he's a social conservative in all the ways that make the social conservative crowd happy; pro-death penalty, pro-life. There's nothing wrong with that - except the myopic notion that being socially conservative makes one conservative in any other way. He's also a conservative in the way that I expect any president to be; he favors a strong military (and acted on that belief even before September 11, thank God).

But he, like his father, has never been a fiscal conservative. Which was why I supported Steve Forbes for President, until the moment George Bush was nominated.

David Frum at NRO also tackles the first question, at least, in his diary today. Frum also notes that while Bush is undoubtedly personally conservative, he has governed primarily from the center. Frum also details some interesting demographics to explain Bush's caution at becoming too ideological, although I disagree with Frum's macro analysis that America has grown less conservative since 1980.

Many people have postulated that Bush, rather than being his father's son in terms of presidencies, is much more the heir of Reagan. However, I think that Bush is much closer to Nixon than Reagan, and I'm not the first to say so. Nixon, for all his reputation as a right-wing vampire, governed to the left-center on everything but the war. He created the EPA and the Endangered-Species list, a regrettable piece of legislation that has significantly damaged private-property rights throughout the western states. Bush has also not hesitated to create or expand government programs such as prescription-drug benefits through Medicare, an enormously costly program.

While Reagan never fully delivered on his promise to shrink government, he had a built-in excuse: Congress was controlled by the opposing party throughout both of his terms, and the Senate most of the time as well. Bush had no such excuse, and it has become apparent that very little changed legislatively on pork when control of Congress shifted to Republicans. Lacking leadership from the White House, which continued to call for new spending on a host of domestic issues, the Republican Congress has gorged itself on tax revenue. Perhaps the lesson from this is that for fiscal restraint, the optimal political configuration is for the House to be controlled by the opposite party of the President. The natural tension between the two parties make for better public awareness of taxation and spending and keep a lid on the pork, at least as much of a lid as possible these days.

But will that apply to this election? No, because there are two mitigating, and in my mind superceding, issues at stake in this election cycle: the war on Islamofascist terror and judiciary appointments. Absent the first, Bush probably would be facing a primary battle this year from a more traditional conservative, perhaps someone along the lines of a Pat Buchanon without the far-right baggage. Bill Frist comes to mind, although I don't know if he's red-meat enough for the true believers. As long as Bush stays strong and on the offensive in the war and in building the military to fight it, he will hold his base. Judiciary appointments are always an issue for presidential elections, but this one is even more sensitive: as many as four Supreme Court openings may occur during the next term, and the conservative base understands that conceding this prerogative to John Kerry would be a tremendous setback for conservatives, an earthquake with aftershocks felt for years to come.

So I think at the end of the campaign, the conservative base will make the necessary calculations and support, perhaps even with enthusiasm, the re-election of George Bush. Does that mean they'll only make happy sounds throughout the process? Absolutely not; they will bargain and barter for as many concessions as they can extract for their public support. But in the end, sitting on their hands on Election Day truly means losing power where it counts for years on end, and they worked too hard to get where they are to backslide all the way to Square One now.

UPDATE: Thanks to all of you who posted the nice comments ... Power Line also addresses this issue. Their verdict? He's not as conservative as he could be, but in my opinion, he's as conservative as he wants to be, which is not terribly conservative at all.

Ledeen: Iranian Appeasers and Dante's Inferno

Michael Ledeen at the National Review writes about the proposed trip to Iran by three US lawmakers, and wants to put a "Reserved" sign for them on the seventh level of Dante's Inferno:

Sorry to say, I haven't reread Dante's "Inferno" for some years, but I still remember his description of a very low and extremely unpleasant level of hell that houses traitors. Surely abject appeasers of evil qualify for the same treatment, and we must note grimly that three prime candidates have recently come forward to swell the ranks of that overheated realm: Senator Joe Biden of Delaware (D.), Senator Arlen Specter (R.), of Pennsylvania, and Congressman Bob Ney of Nebraska (R.).

All have undertaken to "improve relations" between the United States and the theocratic fascist regime of Iran. Specter announced over the weekend that congressional staffers would soon go to Tehran in the first stage of the appeasement program. After supping in Washington with the Iranian ambassador to the U.N. at a dinner helpfully facilitated by the State Department, Specter proclaimed that Iran had "helped us in the
fight against al Qaeda and in the Afghanistan situation. I don't think we have given them sufficient credit. They deserve credit." And since "They are showing some signs of wanting to improve relations. Now is a
good time."

Ledeen goes on to detail several areas in which the Iranian government still oppresses its own people, most disgustingly in its traffic of young Iranian girls as sexual slaves. Ledeen also notes that the Iranian government has hardly been conciliatory in its speech and attitude towards the US, and it seems difficult to understand why Specter, Biden, and Ney think that this is the propitious moment for gestures of goodwill. Even looking past all of the terrorist support that Ledeen reports in detail, the mullahs just disqualified almost all of the reformers running in the next election. Does that sound like a "good time" to open a dialogue with the Governing Council?

Ledeen, in this case, is absolutely correct. Not only are such gestures futile with current Iranian leadership, they are counterproductive to the organic agents of democratic change in Iran. The reform movement has gathered great steam recently, assisted by the hardliners' lockout of reformers from the election. Just when this populist movement seems to be reaching critical mass, the three Senators propose to throw cold water on it by tacitly endorsing the regime. And for what? Does Iran propose to turn over al-Qaeda and Hezb' Allah terrorists to us, or even to stop sheltering and supporting them? No. Instead, the mullahs continue to lecture the US about having the proper attitude towards Iran before any normalization of relations can occur. In other words, when we learn our place as dhimmis, then they'll deign to talk to us.

Specter, Biden, and Ney should halt all plans for traveling to Iran until the Iranians can send true representatives of the people to meet with an American delegation. Until then, we should stop trying to act friendly to the people who fund terrorist actions against us. (via Blog Iran)

Blair, Bush Nominated for Nobel

Norwegian legislator Jan Simonsen has nominated George Bush and Tony Blair for the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to remove Saddam Hussein:

Even though the five-member Norwegian awards committee keeps the nomination list secret, those making the nominations often announce their candidate. Norwegian lawmaker Jan Simonsen has nominated Bush and Blair several years in a row. Simonsen wrote that by removing Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, they lessened the chance of a war.

Look for this nomination to fail. Two years ago, the Nobel committee gave the award to Jimmy Carter for his work on the treaty with North Korea ... the one that allowed the Kim Jung-Il regime to arm itself with nuclear weapons, thanks to the toothless agreement that Carter championed. They also famously gave one to Yasser Arafat, the godfather of terrorism, for showing up in Oslo and not agreeing to much and eventually reneging on the little agreement he gave. Based on results, the Nobel Prize ought to consider renaming the peace award after Neville Chamberlain, since its recipient or the very award itself often honors appeasers and murderous thugs.

Super Boob Halftime Show: A Mistake?

During my live-blogging of the Super Bowl, I mentioned the Janet Jackson-Justin Timberlake strip show that occurred at the end of the halftime show. Apparently, I was mistaken in my initial viewing of the scene, as the NFL, CBS, and MTV have apologized for an unplanned "wardrobe malfunction":

CBS apologized on Sunday for an unexpectedly R-rated end to its Super Bowl halftime show, when singer Justin Timberlake tore off part of Janet Jackson's top, exposing her breast. ... The two singers were performing a flirtatious duet to end the halftime show, and at the song's finish, Timberlake reached across Jackson's leather gladiator outfit and pulled off the covering to her right breast.

The network quickly cut away from the shot, and did not mention the incident on the air.

But there was a sticker over the nipple, as I said during my live blog, and now that I've replayed it on my TiVo, it doesn't appear to be accidental, either. Timberlake definitely reached across and grabbed her costume intentionally -- you can see the fingers flex into more of a fist, and his arm tenses up as he pulls his hand back towards him. Jackson doesn't react very quickly to the liberation of half her rack, either, although if you were being charitable, you could interpret that as shock. TJ Simers says in today's LA Times:

MTV issues a statement: "The tearing of Jackson's costume was unrehearsed, unplanned, completely unintentional," and knowing how weird some of the Jacksons can be, maybe she does wear silver stars strategically placed wherever she goes.

Shock, by the way, which would be shared with the entire viewing audience, although in my house it barely registered except as a crowning example of why the Super Bowl should concentrate on football and skip the ridiculous halftime show. (Watching Nelly continually grab his penis was another good example, and I note that hardly anyone even bothered to comment about that.) It registered with a lot of other people, though, because CBS was flooded with complaints, according to the story. The NFL says that MTV will not be producing any more Super Bowl entertainment, and MTV claims it had no knowledge of it.

Power Line, however, agrees with me that the moment was far from unintentional. (Hindrocket posts a picture of the event, if you'd like to see Janet imitating LaToya.) Hugh Hewitt, returning from Minnesota, notes:

Looks like the blowback from the tackiest Superbowl ever is pretty intense. Good. MTV and the NFL have as much in common as Howard Dean and FDR. Whaddaya think Paul Brown would think about the half-time show? Halas? Lombardi? Here's a suggestion: Hall of Famers pick the music talent next year, not 25 year olds with chin hair and NYU degrees. Tony Bennett, anyone? A great game interrupted by idiots.

On the other hand, with commercials dominated by Levitra and Cialis, this may be the perfect capper to the Erectile Dysfunction Bowl. I mean, if Janet Jackson's exposed breast doesn't turn you on, the commercials might say, you should give us a try. If you think that the Great Booby Affair lacks subtlety, then you obviously didn't sit through endless shots of footballs going through tire swings in an attempt to sell dinghy delights. All that was missing was the stock footage of rockets launching and trains going through tunnels.

UPDATE: The FCC was none too amused by the breast-baring spectacle, either:

The chief federal regulator of broadcasting said Monday he is outraged by the Super Bowl halftime show which wound up with singer Justin Timberlake tearing off part of Janet Jackson's costume, exposing her breast. Timberlake blamed a "wardrobe malfunction," but Federal Communications Commission chief Michael Powell called it "a classless, crass and deplorable stunt." ...

The two singers were performing a flirtatious duet to end the halftime show, with Timberlake singing, "Rock Your Body," and the lines he sang at the moment of truth were: "I'm gonna have you naked by the end of this song." With that, Timberlake reached across Jackson's leather gladiator outfit and pulled off the covering to her right breast, which was partially obscured by a sun-shaped, metal nipple decoration.

A local radio station, KQRS, reported on its morning-drive show that CBS had admitted to planning the stunt with Timberlake and Jackson. They claimed a wire report as their source, but I haven't seen anything about that at all. My guess is that if CBS 'fessed up to deliberately creating this stunt, it will be the last Super Bowl they see for a long, long time.

Super Bowl: Second Half

7:38 - King suggests that "Saving Silverman" was better than the first half of the game. Well, maybe he's right; you don't get to see Neil Diamond on screen too often, and I don't think you'll ever see R. Lee Ermey play a gay football coach again.

7:43 - Streaker on the field before the kickoff. Who said there's no action in this game?

7:58 - The Bud Light chimp commercial was worth a chuckle. The Panthers were lucky that the second-down pass play was ruled incomplete. It was obviously a catch, and the fumble would have resulted in a New England touchdown. Like the two teams, the officiating has been mediocre during this game.

8:06 - Scariest line of the night: "Erections lasting longer than four hours require medical attention." Owwww. That ought to keep you from trying Cialis. What's with all of the E.D. commercials, anyway?

8:11 - Did anyone else think that the Gillette commercial was just a tad overwrought? Using a Gillette is like having an angel by your side? I note that the 3rd quarter looks an awful like like the 1st.

8:19 - No scoring in the 3rd quarter; still 14-10 Pats. The Mall of America ad was pretty good, but I have a feeling that was just regional. If anyone outside of the Minnesota market saw it, let me know.

8:23 - Antowain Smith scores a rushing TD, and the Pats take their longest lead of the game. The PAT was successful, but it keeps looking like the snap is off.

8:28 - James Ph. made a comment about a Carl's Jr. commerical on the 1st-half post, but that one was regional, James. What happened in the commercial? Great catch by Steve Smith, too.

8:31 - Great run by Foster, breaking tackles and tearing holes in the defense for a score. I could have done without the hot-dogging, though. Going for two? How many of you agree with this? Not me ... and that's why. Dumb.

8:34 - Great Simpsons MasterCard commercial. "D'oh! Stupid voiceover!" Speaking of stupid voiceovers, we're back with Greg and Phil.

8:44 - Nice pick! That should fire up Carolina. He should have just taken the touchback, though. (Hindsight is 20/20, of course ...)

8:52 - What a play by Jake Delhomme! That's a Super Bowl record: 85 yards! Now you go for two.

9:05 - That is the second play blown by Manning against Givens on this drive.

9:06 - Nice drive by Brady and the Pats. It should be 27-22 after the PAT. But they've left a lot of time on the clock for Delhomme and Steve Smith ...

9:08 - Yeah, I'm good at math! The Pats went for two and got it, so now it's 29-22 Pats. This has turned into a good game, which is good because the commercials are pretty poor this year. James -- I miss Carl's Jr. I used to love their Super Star burger and the fried zucchini. Mmmm .... fried zucchini ... Nice runback by Carolina, but it's getting called back. Figures.

9:12 - King is right. The lamest commercials so far are the AOL Top Speed commercials. Designed to appeal to your average mouth-breather.

9:16 - There has never been an overtime in the Super Bowl? Carolina's aiming for the first one.

9:17 - The Pats got burned on their blitz! Big mistake, and Jake Delhomme connected perfectly for the TD. PAT good -- it's all tied up now,

9:19 - Kasay kicks the ball out of bounds ... nice job, fool.

9:25 - It's going to come down to Vinatieri, after all ... Brady is doing an excellent job in getting the Pats into field-goal range.

9:27 - HE MADE IT! And the fans go wild ... There are still four second left on the clock, though. A runback could win the game for the Panthers!

9:29 - That's the end of what turned out to be a really good game -- the Pats win it, 32-29. Lots of excitement and great plays, and we watched until the final play. A fan couldn't ask for more, really. The Wang Chung putdown in the Subway commercial was a nice finish to the spectacle.

Big thanks to everyone who hung out with me for the Super Bowl, especially King and James Ph. You guys made this a lot of fun for me!

Super Bowl: First Half

5:40 - How could Vinatieri blow a 31-yard field goal attempt? It looked like the snap came to the wrong side of the holder, and the timing got thrown off. Speaking of being off, the commercials so far are not impressive. The "monkey on the back" car commercial was exceedingly lame, and the Bud Light commercial was only good for a slight grin. They spend $2 million a minute for these?

5:45 - The Panthers can't get any offense going so far, and the second set of commercials is just as lame as the first.

5:49 - The First Mate liked the Bud bikini-wax commercial. I was cringing. Go figure.

5:55 - The H&R Block commerical with the Willie Nelson advice doll was the first really good commercial so far. The Don Zimmer moment was classic.

5:59 - The Panther's Wil Witherspoon just blew up a reverse better than I've seen in a while, and kept the Patriots from getting a field goal. So far I'm less than impressed with every facet of this game -- the (nonexistent) action, the lack of creativity in the advertising, and the dull commentary from the CBS crew. The only thing making me happy is King's commentary...

6:09 - End of the first quarter. 0-0. The Sierra Mist commercial was cute, but nothing different from what we've seen before from them. And the kid was mistaken, anyway; Mike Ditka comparing football to Levitra is just wrong. (Note to Levitra and Ditka: Guys don't watch football to get sexually aroused, or at least most guys don't.)

6:13 - OK, the donkey who wanted to be a Bud Clydesdale was pretty funny, but somehow I suspect this may be a continuing series of increasingly-stupid commercials. Look for a play on Rudolph at Christmastime.

6:19 - That's a great idea -- let's give kids who steal music prime-time commercials as a reward. Nice going, Pepsi. I think I'll skip their product for a while.

6:30 - I think that was a bad spot, and finally something interesting happened in the game! It won't result in a reversal, though. The Budweiser farting horse was definitely good, but having the Charmin commercial directly follow sort of seems like an ass theme is developing, here, especially after the Bud donkey. Yeah, told you they wouldn't reverse it. I think it was a dumb challenge.

6:38 - So far, this ain't Adam Vinatieri's night, is it? A Starsky and Hutch remake -- I heard about this from Emmett on Hugh's show. Looks like a broad comedy, though; wasn't the original played pretty much straight? Nice Muhammed Ali appearance for Linux, too.

6:44 - Thinker, I'm with you ... neither of these teams look like they belong in a Super Bowl. This is the longest time ever in a Super Bowl without a score.

6:46 - Jeez, finally!! Brady to Deion Branch for the first score of the game, and Vinatieri manages to convert the PAT. It's about time someone did something.

6:48 - Greg Gumbel and Phil Simms. Greg Gumbel and Phil Simms. Greg Gumbel and Phil Simms? This is CBS's A-team?

7:00 - And finally Carolina gets it together, scoring on a third-and-10 bomb to Steve Smith. Impressive drive. This might finally be a game.

7:05 - Now it gets exciting! Great bomb from Brady to Branch. King, I love good defensive battles, but Carolina's offense was just inept prior to their last drive. The Patriots should be up by six points, too.

7:09 - Now that was an impressive answer by the Patriots. King, I love bagpipes, and that Sierra Mist commercial was pretty good, but the Levitra commercial that followed it just took all the fun out of it.

7:13 - Carolina finishes the half with a 50-yard field goal, and after 27 minutes of offensive ineptitude, we get 24 points scored in the final 3 minutes. Now we get to watch the Janet Jackson halftime show and the CBS analysts try to make the first 27 minutes seem exciting.

7:29 - I have new drinking game -- every time Nelly grabs his package, you have to drink a shot. We'll all be tanked by the second-half kickoff.

7:34 - Nice way to celebrate a Super Bowl on Sunday evening -- by tearing off Janet Jackson's bra and letting her flop out into the open. Yeah, I saw the sticker on the nipple, but still ...

7:36 - The NFL Network's "Tomorrow" commercial was cute. Who knew Jerry Jones was that limber?

I'll be starting a new post for the second half.

Dean Sinking in South Carolina, Won't Get Delegates

The Post and Courier report that Edwards and Kerry are locked in a statistical dead heat -- and Dean has fallen far off the pace (free registration required):

Edwards, a native of South Carolina and a senator in neighboring North Carolina, was at 21 percent. John Kerry was at 17 percent, Al Sharpton at 15 percent and Wesley Clark at 14 percent in an American Research Group poll.

Howard Dean was at 9 percent, Joe Lieberman at 5 percent, Dennis Kucinich was at 1 percent and 18 percent were undecided. South Carolina will hold its primary Feb. 3, a week after New Hampshire's Tuesday primary.

Edwards has come up from 12 points to take the thin lead, but the real story is Dean. He's tumbled from 16 percent and a contending position, or at least in a position to get some delegates. Now he's in fifth place, behind Al Sharpton, of all people. Dean's credibility is about to take a beating on the first Super Tuesday of this primary season.

Super Bowl Prediction

... because I do so well at predictions -- here's mine:

Carolina Panthers 27, New England Patriots 24. BBD&O, 2 Clio nominations.

I think I will be live-blogging the Super Bowl, mostly to review the ads. We'll see if that works out ...

February Link Love

February, the month of love ... St. Valentine's Day, Cupid, and the like ... and so it's time to spread the link-love around the blogosphere a bit.

The Commissar has discovered a new initiative from the Left: a deck of cards with the 52 most dangerous bloggers. Captain's Quarters has been assigned the ten of diamonds (I would have expected the two of clubs, myself). Every card is a clickable link to a dangerous right-wing blogger. I may ask the Commissar to send me over the graphic for my card, and I'll include it on my blogroll. Comrade Commissar continues to outdo himself ...

Power Line has a great post on Churchill, one of my favorite historical figures as much for his failures as for his successes. Big Trunk notes the relationship between the BBC and Churchill and shows how the BBC has always taken the side of totalitarians in defense of the Left ...

Brant at Strange Women Lying In Ponds sparked a blogosphere controversy when he parsed Mel Gibson's remarks on the Holocaust. Specifically, he took issue with Gibson's subordinating the Holocaust with Stalin's systematic slaughter of millions for political purposes. "Atrocities happened" is a strangely passive way to affirm the historical fact of the Holocaust. After receiving a large amount of strong criticism, Brant replies here. Read both posts. At the very least, Mel Gibson strangely tried to split hairs when it wasn't necessary, unless he really doesn't believe that the Holocaust was an organized and purposeful attempt to eradicate Jews strictly for being Jewish. ...

The Sophorist links to an interesting study on homeschoolers and their academic achievements, community involvement, and overall satisfaction with life. None of this surprises me, but it's interesting to see it substantiated. Next, maybe someone will ask this question: why can't we get results like this from public schools? ...

DC from Brainstorming writes a great post about the (sob) Patriot Forum, including the fact that she missed seeing me there. She also mentions that she's applying for membership in the Northern Alliance and in the next post, DC shows that she takes immediate action on directions from the Lord High Commissioner. I think we need more women in the Alliance, myself ...

Speaking of Hugh Hewitt, Steve Gigl returns quickly from his self-imposed hiatus to blog about his meeting with Hugh and James Lileks at the Young Life fundraiser last Friday. Let's hope Steve's hiatus turns out to be short ...

King Banaian at SCSU scholars continues his series on the new academic standards for Minnesota high school graduation, specifically on social studies. You'll need to review the entire series to get a good grasp of the issue, but in this post King notes the misleading presentation, or at least its rationale, given by opponents of the new common-sense standards. King also notes their refusal to even consider the new standards. Typical bull-headedness from the NEA-affiliated Education Minnesota crowd; they're even griping about home-schoolers being overrepresented in the process ...

Patterico thinks that Justice Scalia should recuse himself from the case regarding the White House energy task force. I'm no lawyer, either, but I can see Patterico's point. Any real lawyers want to weigh in on this? ...

The good news: Electric Venom has found a new hosting service for Venomous Kate's expansion plans. The bad news: no Snark Hunt so far this weekend. Maybe tonight, if we're all lucky ...

Finally, Jay Reding reviews the "Bush Lied" meme and finds it lacking in substance. First off, you'd have to prove that Bush knew there weren't WMDs in Iraq while using them as a single casus belli (which he didn't, of course), meaning that he would have to disregard the data coming from the entire Western intelligence community. The closer you look at this meme, the more it falls apart.

More link-love later in the month ...