European Parliamentarians Committing Fraud: MEP

The UK Independent reports that a Member of the European Parliament has secretly been tracking the attendance and participation of other MEPs, and has discovered that many of them falsify their records in order to collect the large per-diem fees paid when the EP is in session:

A senior member of the European parliament yesterday exposed what he claimed was widespread corruption at the Strasbourg assembly by revealing that nearly 200 of his fellow Euro MPs had faked attendance at parliamentary sessions in order to pick up generous daily allowances.

Hans-Peter Martin, an Austrian Social Democrat MEP, said he had seen scores of colleagues signing on for parliamentary sessions which they had missed, to claim a daily attendance allowance of €262 (£175).

"I have witnessed almost 200 MEPs hurrying to the central register to sign on for a session and then watched them drive to the nearest airport or station," Mr Martin told Germany's Bild Zeitung newspaper. "There are countless MEPs who go to Strasbourg and Brussels simply to pick up the €262. They have told me so themselves."

According to today's currency exchange rates, €262 equates to $323.85, just for showing up each day -- and that is just their allowance, not their salary. Martin refused to name specific MEPs, but did note that 57 of Germany's 102 MEPs conducted themselves problematically. He claims to have documented over 7,000 abuses, which would total to over $2.3 million in fraudulent payments to European parliamentarians.

Needless to say, other members of the EP aren't very happy with Martin. The spokesman for the EP president challenged Martin to make his evidence public. However, that notion may be a particularly frightening one for those people Martin may name, and especially embarassing for a German government that has been trying to push a program of national belt-tightening. Martin's experience as an investigative reporter for Der Spiegel gives him a significant amount of credibility, and also the ability to lay out a potentially impressive case, given the chance.

One other reaction is particularly telling: the Socialists have suspended Martin from its caucus in the EP. If nothing else, it indicates how strongly the EU have become tied to the Socialists and their ideology, and how strongly that relationship has tied corruption to the Socialists. (via The Corner)

Sex Being Marked Down for Clearance

In a rebuttal to the adage "sex sells,", the London Telegraph reports on a new study that demonstrates a lower box-office return on films that have explicit sexuality:

A new study has found that films containing explicit sex or nudity do much worse at the box office, earning nearly 40 per cent less on average than more wholesome movies. An analysis of 1,120 cinematic releases over the past four years has shown that films without sex scenes, such as Disney's Finding Nemo or Toy Story 2, earned an average of $41.1 million (£22.3 million), while films with sex have grossed 38 per cent less with an average of $16.7 million.

In 2003, the final year of the study, the gap was even wider, with films without sex earning more than double those with explicit scenes.

Hollywood has long been concerned with a gradual decline in box-office sales, and this may provide an answer. After decades of cramming as many gratuitously naked females (only rarely males) into movies as they can, Hollywood producers have finally succeeded in making nudity boring. This may not be as big of a surprise as you might think, though. The study noted that films with positive, uplifting messages have increased during the study period.

Despite the study's findings that the international audience response mirrors that of American audiences -- results from box-office grosses around the world were analyzed -- not everyone is convinced. The Telegraph notes the comments of Will Self, the film critic from the London Evening Standard, who dismisses the study as a political exercise, and the results as a particularly American phenomenon, due to our excessively religious nature. Of course, it's hard to tell if he was being serious when he said this:

Mr Self added that Americans were more likely to enjoy films with a religious or moral content because Christian belief remained much more entrenched in the US. "We've certainly seen that with the box office success of The Passion in America, which is unlikely to be repeated here," he said. "We are a secular country, thank God." [emph mine]

BBC: Spanish Suspect Islamists in Rail Bomb

While I initially held off on commenting on the Spanish rail bombs discovered this week, it's becoming more apparent -- at least to the Spanish -- that radical Islamofascists have targeted Spain despite their appeasement:

The explosives found on a high-speed rail track on Friday were of the same type and brand used in the Madrid train blasts, Spain has confirmed. But Spanish Interior Minister Angel Acebes said it was still too soon to draw any conclusions about who planted the unexploded device. ...

Several newspapers reported on Saturday that the Spanish embassy in Egypt had recently received a letter signed by the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades threatening to attack Spanish embassies and Spanish interests in north Africa and the southern and eastern Mediterranean region.

The letter warned that the attacks would go ahead unless Spain withdrew its troops from Iraq and Afghanistan within four weeks, El Mundo reported. ... Spaniards have reacted in stunned disbelief at the news of another attempted attack.

Appeasement never works. You think Europeans would have learned that lesson after World War II, but apparently not. They don't hate Spaniards because Spain has troops in Iraq (but it's interesting that Spaniards have focused on that while still denying that Iraq had any connection to the terrorists); they hate Spaniards because they have occupied al-Andalus for over 500 years. They hate Spaniards because they're not Muslims, just like they hate Americans, and Brits, and even the French, who have had their own Islamofascist threats against rail systems to resolve.

So if the Spaniards believe that they will avoid attacks by simply appeasing the terrorists, they should prepare themselves for a long string of surprises like these. There is no negotiating with Islamofascists; they don't want your cooperation, they want you dead. Get used to it.

Northern Alliance Radio On the Air Today!

It's Saturday, so it's time for another installment of the Northern Alliance Radio Network. Unfortunately, I won't be there today -- I have a prior commitment at an Irish-language workshop. (I've got to post on that later on ...) The rest of the gang will be there, reviewing the week's news stories, interviewing important guests, and dissecting the local media. Be sure to tune in if you're in the area.

Kerry Didn't Always Master the Rope Line

Today's New York Times runs a puff piece -- typical weekend fare -- on John Kerry, this time on his supposed skills as a flesh-presser on the campaign trail:

Mr. Kerry, the all-but-nominated Democratic presidential candidate, has been criticized throughout his career for an aloof, inaccessible style on the stump, and his stemwinders are a constant worry for supporters of his White House bid. Yet he is proving adept at the more intimate political ritual of the rope line: the inevitable postspeech meet-and-greet over a rope placed as a security measure to keep the crowd from the candidate. It is a daily dance that has become a central, even dominant element of his schedule. In fact, he sometimes spends more time in that kind of chitchat than in delivering substantive speeches.

Jodi Wilgoren doesn't mention Kerry's most well-known rope-line moment from this campaign season, however (link to my post here):

Sen. John Kerry, all but officially the Democratic presidential nominee, called Republicans he is battling "crooked" Wednesday. ... "Keep smiling," one man said to him.

Kerry responded, "Oh yeah, don't worry man. We're going to keep pounding, let me tell you -- we're just beginning to fight here. These guys are the most crooked, you know, lying group of people I've ever seen."

Why would the New York Times talk about John Kerry's skills on the rope line and fail to mention this disastrous event that appears to have kicked off his month-long decline in the polls? This happened less than four weeks ago! Either Wilgoren is completely ignorant of it -- which calls into question her competence as a political correspondent -- or the Times has decided to ignore it in favor of synthesizing Kerry into a gregarious, likable candidate.

(cross-posted at Oh, That Liberal Media)

UPDATE: Eric at Classical Values has more information on Jodi Wilgoren.

Is Germany Awakening From Its Socialist Coma?

The London Telegraph profiles a new German book that is flying off the shelves in Berlin and around the country, arguing that Germany may be in a fatal economic decline. The book, Germany: Decline of a Superstar, points out the crippling effect the nanny state has had not only on German productivity but also on its inventiveness and its self-sufficiency:

The book argues with a brutal frankness that Germany needs to be completely restructured and that it has been poorly run since 1945.

The result, according to Mr Steingart, is a country where industry is on its knees, where the welfare state is deep in debt, whose inventive minds have been forced into exile, and whose citizens largely hate work. ... "It is simply not profitable or viable to have German workers, who cost considerably more than they produce," Mr Steingart says.

"Our productive core is melting away and Germany is going downhill," he says, drawing on a cigar and leaning back in a leather armchair in his glass-panelled office in central Berlin. "The GDP of both the British and French is higher than the Germans' and this is a shocking discovery for us. In the 1970s, Britain's GDP was only half of ours."

By way of example, the book discusses the Adlon Hotel, a five-star establishment in the heart of Berlin, which was rebuilt almost from scratch after World War II. The Adlon receives foreign dignitaries and the wealthy and powerful from all over the world, and one would suppose that spending a night would cost more than most of us take home in a week. For all of that, the Adlon is still forced to outsource its laundry service by trucking the linens 80 miles to Poland every night. Why? Because the overnight service, transportation costs, and the sheer inconvenience are all outweighed by German labor costs, where the employer has to pay 42% of all social entitlement taxes on each worker.

Germany has been paralyzed on the issue of economic reform, which has undermined Gerhard Schroeder's government in much the same way that the Socialists have challenged the cutbacks proposed by Chirac's so-called conservative government in France. Once the masses have sipped the nanny-state Kool-Aid, you find that their addiction to government stipends resists most efforts at detoxification. In that way, creeping socialism isn't so much of a cycle as it is a steady march towards bankruptcy. The popularity of this book indicates that all hope isn't lost, but it will take a lot more than 50,000 copies to reverse the decline.

One of my first posts on this blog related a story that perfectly captures the problems that Germany will face in trying to recast itself as an economic power. The first step will be to convince Germans like this that they aren't entitled to a comfortable lifestyle without working for it. While that's hardly a revealed wisdom in the US, in much of Europe it would be anathema to suggest that people who don't produce don't have the right to share in the spoils.

Nader: The Magical Mystery Tour Is Dying to Get Off The Ground

The Washington Post profiles Ralph Nader, the consumer advocate-cum-presidential wannabe, who's busy trying to get himself on the ballot around the country. As Brian Faler notes, Nader isn't helping himself with his go-it-alone strategy:

Nader's task would be easier if he accepted the presidential nomination of one of the minor parties that already have spaces reserved on some states' ballots. Some members of the Green Party, which has yet to choose its presidential candidate, want to support Nader. The Green Party nomination would give access to ballots in 23 states, thanks to the party's performance in previous elections. The Reform Party, founded by Texas billionaire Ross Perot, has offered Nader its top spot, along with its seven ballot spots. The Natural Law Party is also considering giving him its nomination and 12 ballot lines, according to John Hegelin, the group's former presidential candidate.

But Zeese said Nader will not accept any of those nominations because he does not want to be too closely associated with any one party, even if it would give him an edge in the chase for signatures. "Ralph sees himself as an independent," Zeese said. "I think what happens is that when you pick one party, you're defined by that party. . . . Rather than being defined by that party, we define ourselves."

Zeese added that Nader hopes to appeal to a broad spectrum of third-party voters and would accept their organizations' support, volunteers and ballot lines. "It's more powerful to have a coalition of third parties come together and say: We are joined together to challenge the duopoly," Zeese said.

So Nader says that he won't run under the banner of any one party -- except in a few states, where he will create a party to ease signature requirements -- but parties are more than welcome to list him as their candidate. What a great guy! He won't represent their parties and he won't lift a finger to promote their parties, but he'll be glad to sit atop their ticket. What's even funnier is that some of the fringe parties are actually considering Nader's suggestion.

Nader could have easily gotten on the ballot by running on the Green ticket, as he did in 2000, but something about his ego just won't allow him to work in an organization that he doesn't own lock, stock, and barrel. One other reason that Nader eschewed the Greens this year comes up at the end of the article, where Nader's campaign talks about their outreach to a very different constituency:

Nader has said he will appeal this year to disgruntled conservatives and independents. Yesterday, he posted an "Open Letter to Conservatives Upset With the Policies of the Bush Administration," inviting them to join his independent campaign.

You can bet that any conservatives who might give Nader the time of day -- all four of them -- would lose interest if Nader fronted for radical enviros like the Greens. Nader's move makes sense only if you believe that conservatives would ever support a candidate that routinely rails against the evils of the open market and proposes government intervention on a scale that far outstrips those of the Democrats -- well, mainstream Democrats, at any rate.

If that's why Nader dumped the Greens, he's wasting his time and energy chasing rainbows, or chasing signatures anyway. He now must build his own organization from the ground up in order to meet the signature requirements in each state. Nader himself estimates that he will need 1.5 million signatures in order to qualify in all 50 states, and he refuses to pay for signature gatherers. That means Nader will wind up spending most of his time trying to find volunteers for the grunt work of politics rather than getting his message out -- not a great way to launch an independent bid.

My guess is that Nader will wind up on most of the ballots, as quite a few states have low thresholds. I'd guess that he'll be on at least thirty ballots, and since Nader will likely concentrate on states where neither Kerry nor Bush have a commanding lead, he'll wind up tilting the election to some limited extent. Nader's existence will, at the very least, allow the Democrats to continue their fantasy that only Nader stood between them and their rightful place in power.

Slate: Cleland Poster Boy for Victimization

Michael Crowley, the assistant editor for the New Republic, writes today in Slate about one of the sacred icons of the 2004 Democratic Party, former Senator Max Cleland. Kerry has used Cleland as an example of how eeeeeeevil Republicans get when they're on the campaign trail, but Crowley questions the basis of the Dems' almost religious belief in Cleland's victimization:

Cleland's image as Bush's ultimate victim suits Kerry's campaign all too well. There are no bold new ideas in the Democratic Party today, no coherent policy themes. Even Kerry's supporters are hard-pressed to explain what he stands for. What does define and unify the party is a sense of victimhood—and a lust for revenge. ...

Bush and Chambliss hammered at the fact that Cleland was voting with Senate Democrats against Bush's proposed Homeland Security Department because of its infamous provision limiting union rights. The message was that Cleland was kowtowing to big labor at the cost of protecting America. Most famously, Chambliss ran a vicious ad on Cleland's homeland security votes featuring images of Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. In the popular liberal mythology, the ad disgustingly questioned Cleland's patriotism. "To this day I am motivated by—and I will be throughout this campaign—the most craven moment I've ever seen in politics, when the Republican Party challenged this man's patriotism in the last campaign," John Kerry has said.

But that's not what happened. The ad, though sleazy in its use of Osama and Saddam, didn't question Cleland's patriotism. It questioned his political courage and judgment. It focused narrowly on his behavior in office and his actual votes against the Homeland Security Department. With images of Bin Laden and Saddam flashing onscreen, a narrator declared that, "As America faces terrorists and extremist dictators, Max Cleland runs television ads claiming he has the courage to lead." The ad then listed Cleland's votes against the Homeland Security Department and said he was stalling "the president's vital homeland security efforts." It concluded: "Max Cleland says he has the courage to lead, but the record proves Max Cleland is just misleading."

As Crowley notes, this hardly qualifies as an attack on Cleland, or a smear. Career politicians should expect that their voting record will be fair game in any election. The Bush administration didn't want the department to have to deal with onerous civil-service job protections that protect incompetent and/or malicious employees; the responsibilities of this new department are far too grave to tie up valuable resources when an employee just isn't cutting it. Cleland and other Senators held up the bill -- which the Democrats had demanded -- in order to pander to their Big Labor supporters. It wasn't unpatriotic, nor did Saxby Chambliss' ad claim that. It just claimed that Cleland was so beholden to special interests that it trumped any other considerations when he voted, a not-unreasonable analysis.

However, the Democrats at the time and to this day have painted this ad as a smear on Cleland's patriotism, a charge that corrodes the electoral process by claiming that questioning a politician's voting record equates to a smear campaign. After all, if a candidate's record has suddenly become sacred, what else is there to discuss? You can't argue policy without comparing the record to the rhetoric. All that leaves are personal, ad hominem attacks or meaningless platitudes. Crowley finishes:

There's something patronizing about the way Democrats now view Max Cleland—and faux naive about the way they view his defeat. Was Chambliss' ad really that much worse than what happens in any election? Chambliss' criticism was based on Cleland's actual votes. The fact that Cleland volunteered for Vietnam and Chambliss avoided it means something, but it certainly doesn't mean that Cleland should be immune from all attacks on his Senate voting record. Georgians were voting for senator, not platoon leader, after all. ...

What Cleland brings to Kerry's campaign is the emotional power of victimization—a throwback to the worst of old-time Democratic Party politics, to its emphasis on victimhood over ability and virtue. But whereas in the past it was specific interest groups—minorities, women, gays—who were the noble victims, today it is the Democratic Party itself. Cleland is a reminder to fellow Democrats that they have spend the past three years being persecuted and that it's time to start avenging their humiliations. That's fine as far as it goes. But eventually Kerry will have to stand for something more than Bush hatred and payback. Revenge is not a campaign platform.

Job Growth Soars in March

Job growth may finally be catching up to the roaring economy, as 308,000 jobs were added in March:

U.S. payrolls grew at the fastest pace in nearly four years in March, the government said Friday, in a report that soared past Wall Street's expectations and could play a pivotal role in Fed policy and the presidential election. ... Payrolls outside the farm sector grew by 308,000 jobs in March, the Labor Department reported, compared with a revised gain of 46,000 in February.

When these numbers were released, stock prices jumped and the bond market dropped, indicating that Wall Street was surprised at the strength of the new job creation. It's hard to understand why. Capital investment jumped upward the past few months, indicating that businesses were gearing up for higher production that would require higher employment.

Now that the economic recovery is an undisputable fact and job growth seems to be catching up to it, the Democrats are in real trouble in November. They managed to inadvertently shore up the case for pre-emptive action by trumpeting the testimony of Richard Clarke while pointing out the Clinton's reluctance to engage in it. Now they have an unlikable and inconsistent candidate at the top of the ticket running against a war president and an expanding economy.

Good luck.

UPDATE: The Commissar notes that Atrios, according to his own calculations before the report was released, now acknowledges that the Bush tax cuts are working. I wonder if Atrios will actually agree with himself, or twist into a Kerry-like pretzel to dispute his own criterion.

UPDATE II: Okay, I've just been over to Eschaton to check out the comments ... and I feel like I need to take a shower. Here's one of Atrios' readers, suggesting (with nary a rebuke) that Blackwater Security has some openings, yuk, yuk. yuk. On his blogads, there's this: "George Bush and Karl Rove expect to lose Florida this year. Insidiously, they're targeting Minnesota, replacing lost electoral votes."

Can someone explain to me what's so insidious about a presidential candidate campaigning in Minnesota and trying to win? Certainly, that has to be less insidious than glorying in the brutal murders of four of your own countrymen.

Yesterday Was What?

As you may have noticed, I played an April Fools joke on you all yesterday ...er, by not playing one. Ha ha! Bet I had you all fooled, right?

Okay.

However, if I had played one, maybe it would have been like this post at Fraters Libertas. The Elder thought through what a number of bloggers should have done to celebrate yesterday -- and none of us did. Thank goodness for The Elder.

But Glenn, if you're reading this ... it's all lies. I swear.

Michael Moore: The Jerry Lewis of Germany?

The Boston Globe informs us this morning of a disturbing phenomenon in Germanny: the balooning of Michael Moore's popularity. In an article today about a visit made by Colin Powell to a group of high-school students, Glenn Kessler provides background on the source of German anti-Americanism:

When you want to send a message to a nation that gobbles up the anti-Bush ideas of Michael Moore, whom do you call to deliver it? Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, of course. ...

Most were two or three years old when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989; their parents had grown up under communism. Many told reporters they detested President Bush, and several said they learned a lot about foreign policy by reading Moore's books. Even those who hadn't said one of the school's music teachers manages to talk at length about Moore's condemnations of the Bush administration while kids are tuning their instruments.

Moore, a sharp-tongued filmmaker and author, has turned into something like a cult hero here, so much so that Publisher's Weekly compared his popularity to that of comedian Jerry Lewis in France. Three of his books hit the German top-10 list at the same time. His attack on Bush, "Stupid White Men," sold nearly 1.1 million copies in German -- one-third of the book's total global sales and almost double the sales in the United States. Moore's "Dude, Where's My Country?" also shot to the top of the best-seller list shortly after it was released.

What is it about ranting, idiotic, unbalanced demagogues that so fascinate the Germans? (Of course, I refer to Jacques Chirac and Dominique de Villepin when I say this.) The Bush administration sees the calm and forceful rationality of Colin Powell as the perfect antidote to the wildly inaccurate and paranoid ravings of Moore, and if Kessler's article is accurate, it appears that they are correct. Powell explained the American position on various issues to the German students with patience and respect:

Powell, sitting on a stool in the school's gym, admitted he isn't as avid a Moore reader as the Germans. And he insisted Bush did not invade Iraq for its oil. Iraqi oil sales are being used to rebuild the country, he said. He added that the United States has to pay for oil on the open market just like every other country.

Powell's spiel to the teenagers often veered between pronouncements of policy ("We regret that Israel found it necessary to build a wall for its security . . .") and repeated references to the glories of democracy, as demonstrated in Germany and soon -- in Powell's telling -- in Afghanistan and Iraq.

While I never could understand the French fascination with Jerry Lewis, who usually grates on my nerves, at least he was entertaining in a pleasant way. Moore not only lies, but he does so in that exceptionally embarassing way that people who think they're funny have when they're not. The sheer pretentiousness of Moore and his schtick, even in his one halfway decent documentary, Roger and Me, makes spending any significant time around him or his work akin to getting your teeth cleaned by Ike Turner. It doesn't do any permanent damage, but what would make you agree to do it?

NYT: Shocked at Hollywood Politics?

Jim Rutenberg at the New York Times watches very little television in his role as entertainment critic -- or else he wouldn't have written such a pandering, naive article as today's report on the shocking development that Hollywood has 'suddenly' started injecting partisan politics into its TV shows:

Galvanized politically in ways they have not been since the early 1990's, Hollywood's more liberal producers and writers are increasingly expressing their displeasure with President Bush with not only their wallets, but also their scripts.

In recent weeks, characters in prime time have progressed beyond the typical Hollywood knocks against Washington politicians to calling out the president directly or questioning his policies, including the decision to go to war in Iraq, the support of the antiterrorism law and the backing of a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage.

Translation: Having a Republican in the White House galvanizes Hollywood activists to get partisan with their product. It really doesn't matter who it is; if they're Republican, they're evil and stupid. This is news? Republicans and conservatives have become the generic representation of evil for all Hollywood fare, TV and movies alike. Did Rutenberg ever watch "West Wing"? Has he seen the movies The American President or The Candidate? Apparently Rutenberg never heard of Ronald Reagan and the treatment he got from the entertainment industry either -- and still gets, when they think they can get away with it. CBS showed the miniseries "The Reagans" last year, a hack job starring Barbra Streisand's husband, of all people.

Rutenberg then reviews a couple of recent entries that the limousine liberals in Hollywood thought were trenchant and funny:

On the NBC show "Whoopi," the hotelier played by Whoopi Goldberg delivered an anti-Bush screed when the president, played by a lookalike, appeared at her establishment to use the facilities. "I can't believe he's in there doing to my bathroom what he's done to the economy!" she said.

One of the wise-cracking detectives on the NBC show "Law & Order," played by Jesse L. Martin, referred to the president as the "dude that lied to us." The character went on to say, "I don't see any weapons of mass destruction, do you?" His cantankerous partner, played by Jerry Orbach, retorted that Saddam Hussein did have such weapons because the president's "daddy" sold them to a certain someone "who used to live in Baghdad."

But the season finale of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" on HBO arguably best conveyed the growing sentiment. On that episode, the main character, played by the comedian Larry David, backed out of a dalliance sanctioned by his wife after noticing that his prospective paramour had lovingly displayed a picture of Mr. Bush on her dresser.

Ha ha. Ho ho. Yes, it's this kind of comedy genius that's led to a golden age of television viewership -- having a married guy turn down extramarital sex with another woman because of her conservatism. It's not just the sitcoms, either; later on in the article, Rutenberg tells of an HBO movie that equates oppression and torture of Christians in China with treatment of Muslims here in the US under the Patriot Act:

Mr. Fontana said he wrote a film for HBO called "Strip Search" to explore the merits of the USA Patriot Act. The film, which has not been shown yet, tracks the parallel experiences of an American woman being held for questioning by the authorities in China and a Muslim man being held for questioning in the United States, both on suspicions of terrorism.

"The real question is, if it's wrong for a white American woman to be mistreated in a repressive country, is it O.K. for us to mistreat a Muslim male in this country?" he said. "I don't know the answer, but when does the humanity stop and the fear take over?"

Yes, I recall well the day that Christian missionaries in China hijacked airplanes and flew them into Beijing office buildings, massacring thousands. Don't you? Sure -- it was on an episode of "Law and Order: Special Political BS Unit," and Sam Waterston couldn't get a jury to convict Gutenberg for printing the Bible and starting the whole mess. Since even leading liberal politicians like Diane Feinstein and Joseph Biden have publicly supported the Patriot Act (although John Kerry voted for it, which means he opposes it) and have repeatedly said that there has been not one incident of its misuse, the producers of "Strip Search" have set up straw man and rather easily knocked it down.

Not that you get any kind of analysis from Rutenberg, who accepts at face value the notion that Hollywood was liberal for a moment in 1992 and suddenly rediscovered its leftist predilection since the Iraq War. Not everyone has sheltered themselves like Rutenberg, however, and the increasing stridency of Hollywood entertainers like Larry David and his wife -- who organized a notorious "Hate Bush" event in December -- has not escaped notice from their customers. Television viewership has declined dramatically over the past twenty years, especially in episodic TV. Film box office has struggled as well, although ticket-price inflation tends to mask that more. The entertainment industry's insistence on political posturing at the expense of entertaining its audience has managed to alienate a large part of their market.

Oddly, Rutenberg fails to mention any of these related issues, even as he tries to push the notion that Hollywood is only political at election time. Perhaps he's trying to land himself a job as a screenwriter for fairy tales.

SuperBloggers Congregate at the Lord High Commissioner's Office

If you weren't listening to the Hugh Hewitt radio show -- or if you're allergic to "Going Up The Country" by Canned Heat -- you missed a terrific hour and a half, where Hugh interviewed Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit, James Lileks, and Roger L. Simon, all of which can be found on my blogroll as well. Great discussion and phone calls, and Hugh was kind enough to mention an e-mail I sent in. DC from Brainstorming called in and did a great job.

If you missed it, check out the replay at the KRLA website, and find out the top five blogreads of these blogosphere leaders...

Boston Globe Minimizes Assassination Plot

Today's Boston Globe manages to surpass other American broadsheets in covering John Kerry's association with the Phoenix Project, the assassination plot cooked up by Scott Camil and debated at the November 1971 meeting of the VVAW, where Kerry was present as one of the organization's leaders. However, as reader Pat Curley notes, the Globe tries its best to minimize the seriousness of the plot in order to limit the damage to the home-town candidate:

Senator John F. Kerry said through a spokesman this week that he has no recollection of attending a November 1971 meeting of Vietnam Veterans Against the War at which some activists discussed a plot to kill some US senators who backed the war.

Quite frankly, although Pat feels that the Globe didn't bury the lede, this is one of the weakest lead paragraphs I've read on a major news story (as opposed to human-interest stories, which have more latitude to use artistic prose). Is this news story about John Kerry's faulty memory? No; it concerns itself much more with the plot and the alleged lack of seriousness. Whether or not Kerry remembers being there is a moot point anyway; both FBI surveillance and informant reports put him at the meeting.

Kerry has long been portrayed as not being at the Kansas City, Mo., meeting because Kerry recalled quitting the organization at an acrimonious July 1971 session, four months before the November meeting at which the assassination plot was discussed.

But last week, the Kerry campaign seemed to leave open the possibility that he had attended the November session, after historian Gerald Nicosia said he had found an FBI document that he said indicated that Kerry was there. As a result of Nicosia's assertion, Kerry's campaign said in a statement that while Kerry did not remember being at the meeting, "If there are valid FBI surveillance reports from credible sources that place some of those disagreements in Kansas City, we accept that historical footnote in the account of his work to end the difficult and divisive war."

At best, this is charitable, but I would call this portion a very concerted effort to avoid stating the obvious: Kerry fudged the dates and he got caught, forcing him to backpedal. Even if a newspaper didn't want to be that blunt, the paragraph's passive voice -- Kerry has long been portrayed, the Kerry campaign seemed to leave open the possibility -- really waters down the objective fact that Kerry's campaign changed their story due to solid proof unexpectedly surfacing.

... Camil confirmed historical reports that he had suggested a vague plot aimed at prowar senators, but he said he has no recollection of seeing Kerry at the meeting. "He had nothing to do with this," Camil said. "I don't remember seeing him there."

Another person at the Kansas City session, Larry Rottmann, also said he does not remember seeing Kerry there. A third key player, Randy Barnes, who headed the Kansas City chapter that hosted the meeting, has been quoted in the media as saying Kerry was there. But in a telephone interview, Barnes said he may have confused that session with an earlier one in St. Louis and now is unsure whether Kerry attended the Kansas City function.

"Quite honestly, I am not absolutely certain that John Kerry was at that meeting," Barnes said about the Kansas City session. "A meeting occurred in St. Louis and one occurred in Kansas City. I thought the Kansas City meeting was first."

The Globe tries a bit of misdirection here, quoting Scott Camil and Randy Barnes as saying he didn't recall seeing Kerry at the meeting. However, the Globe doesn't mention that both men are or will be working on Kerry's campaign, as Thomas Lipscomb's excellent original article in the New York Sun noted:

Mr. Kerry denies being present at the November 12-15, 1971, meeting in Kansas City of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and says he quit the group before the meeting. But according to the current head of Missouri Veterans for Kerry, Randy Barnes, Mr. Kerry,who was then 27,was at the meeting, voted against the plot, and then orally resigned from the organization. ...

In a phone interview with the Sun this week, Mr. Camil did not dispute either the account in the Nicosia book or in the oral history.He said he plans to accept an offer by the Florida Kerry organization to become active in Mr. Kerry’s presidential campaign [bold emphasis mine].

The Globe manages to find one other former VVAW member, Rottmann, who doesn't recall seeing Kerry there -- but again, what does that matter if contemporaneous reports and other witnesses place him there? It seems that this article wants to go back and forth between memory loss on one hand, and crystal-clear recollection from the same people insisting that Camil wasn't really serious when he asked several people at the meeting to become assassins for his plot.

Overall, one cheer to the Globe for even mentioning the Phoenix Plot, joining CNN as the only mainstream media outlets to do so. However, their deceptive couching of the circumstances, burying of their witnesses' connections to the Kerry campaign, and just plain poor writing demonstrates the effort that the Globe put into discrediting Lipscomb and Gerald Nicosia.

(cross-posted at Oh, That Liberal Media)

I Get E-Mails ...

First off, I love running this blog. Although it takes a lot of effort to maintain, Captain's Quarters has allowed me to interact with some terrific people throughout the political spectrum -- and I find that the regular readers of this blog are almost intimidating in their intelligence. Friends and family ask whether I'm preaching to the converts, but I have been challenged many times on my positions, which just makes me better at defending my positions or, as happens on occasions, rethink those positions entirely.

Some of you bypass the comments and e-mail me directly, which is fun to read. Lately, I have been receiving suggestions for posts, which is new for me. I do read each of them, even if I don't respond, so feel free to keep sending them to me. If you don't see a post, it's just because I either have decided to focus on another story or I just didn't get to it while it was timely -- but it doesn't mean I don't like getting your suggestions. Whether you send me e-mail directly or comment on one of my posts, I read all responses.

This leads me to why I felt compelled to write this particular post today. This morning, when I got up and checked my e-mail, I had received this message, with the subject line "Bush Is Toast":

Come November that twit pretending to be president will be out on his ass straight to hell. Have a nice trip asshole.

The writer identified themselves as 'Test Name' with the return e-mail addy of 'gwbisevil666' at a domain which I won't name. That's it; no debate, no evidence, not even an explanation of whether the final epithet was aimed at me or President Bush. I suspect that the writer wouldn't care either way.

At first, this amused me, and it still does, but on further reflection, I think it is perectly indicative of the campaign rhetoric from the Kerry camp (and Dean's too, for that matter) this election cycle. Rather than honestly debate issues, the Democrats have made it all about personality since last summer. For some on the left, all you need to do is hate George W. Bush to feel you've fully participated in the national discourse. It's one of the reasons I remain optimistic about November, because I think that this strategy, if it could be called that, has already worn thin with the centrists. Kerry may ride that campaign tone down to the high 30s in the polls.

I'm mulling over issuing a challenge to some of the intelligent Democrats who read this blog -- the kind of people whose blogs reflect intelligence and rational thought, even if we disagree -- on holding a series of debates on our blogs in order to lift the level of discourse. That would make for the kind of blogosphere where we aren't preaching to the choir, where we meet for rational debate and give the other side an opportunity to exchange ideas. Maybe that way we can even engage the "Bush Is Evil" wingnuts ... or at least we can keep getting hilarious e-mails from them.

If the debate idea intrigues you, drop me an e-mail or a comment on this post, and we'll set up a schedule and some ground rules.

Economy Still Steaming Forward

Two stories in today's USA Today demonstrate the strength of the economic expansion. Manufacturing, which the Democrats have used to beat George Bush over the head, turns out to be expanding even faster than the overall economy:

The Institute for Supply Management said its manufacturing index registered 62.5 in March compared with 61.4 in February. The new reading beat the expectations of most analysts, who had forecast a figure of 59.5. ... It was the 10th consecutive month of expansion in the sector, which makes up less than a fifth of the U.S. economy.

The ISM said its monthly employment index climbed to 57.0 versus February's 56.3. February's reading was its highest level since December 1987 [emph mine].

The ISM measures 20 manufacturing industries and reports expansion in all twenty. That may account for the dropping numbers of jobless claims, which indicate that companies have stopped trimming payrolls in the first quarter, which is traditional in retail markets especially, and are ramping up hiring to meet the needs of the expansion. In addition, inflation was non-existent during the same reporting period, which indicates a true expansion instead of simply wage and price puffery.

In short, while we are still waiting for extensive job creation, the stage has certainly been set for it. The economy is expanding at rates not seen in over fifteen years while keeping inflation under control, and the unemployment level still is below the average of the past two decades. John Kerry will have a tough time running against these numbers.

Iraqi Scientist: I Saw the WMDs

The Australian newspaper, The Age, features an interview with a scientist formerly in Saddam's employ who insists that Iraq maintained stockpiles of WMDs, at least until he was arrested and almost executed in 1998 (via Drudge):

For seven years, before he was tortured and sentenced to death, Rashid (not his real name) worked at the top of Iraq's scientific establishment. He says he regularly met Saddam Hussein and his cousin and strongman deputy prime minister Abdul Tawab Huweish. After the Gulf War he was put in charge of a taskforce code named "Al Babel" to develop stealth technology to make aircraft and missiles undetectable on radar.

Rashid, who now lives in Melbourne, also claims to have had access as a trusted insider to secret underground bunkers where chemical weapons were stored. "Saddam gave me access to everything, he was so desperate to perfect the stealth technology," he says.

Now Rashid's great fear is that Saddam loyalists still active in postwar Iraq may get to the chemicals and weapons he saw hidden away before fleeing for his life.

Rashid was arrested by the Mukhabarat, tortured, and set up to be executed for suspicion of disloyalty to Saddam in 1998. Until then, Rashid had access to all facilities in his capacity as a researcher into stealth technology, and claims Saddam himself told him and showed him where chemical and biological weapons were being stored. In his interview with The Age, Rashid mentions several specific locations for underground storage bunkers, including an intriguing assertion about an island in the Tigris River in Baghdad.

His fear is that remnants of Saddam's regime will get to them before the Coalition and use the WMDs on either Coalition troops or the Iraqis themselves. If that happens, it will make yesterday's attack in Fallujah look like a ticker-tape parade.

Brother, Can You Spare a Kidney?

I have another First Mate update, and unfortunately this time the news is not so good. The friend who had generously volunteered to donate a kidney has received notice that her medical tests show she will be unable to do so. Her own kidney function falls below the thresholds needed to qualify as a donor. She had no idea that there was any problem, and it's not a serious issue for her; in fact, she probably won't require any treatment.

I didn't realize how much I was counting on this transplant emotionally until I got this call on Tuesday. The First Mate had spent all day Monday at the hospital getting an angiogram done -- which came back okay -- and we knew our friend had been at the transplant center at the same time, working on her own evaluation. Up until that time, whenever my wife had felt poorly or had little energy, we would tell ourselves, "In a couple of months, the transplant will be done and it will all get better." After the call, that emotional crutch was kicked out from underneath us, and now we're looking at a five-year wait for a cadaver donor. Needless to say, we're pretty devastated, although we are hopeful that somehow this will all work out.

Thanks for all of your support in the past; I always share comments and e-mail on these posts with the First Mate, who very much appreciates all the kind thoughts and prayers expressed. I'll keep you up to date on any further developments.

While you're thinking about this, keep Julie from Fidler On The Roof in your thoughts as well. She's had some bad news about a family member, although things seem to be improving.

Iran Still Playing Games: IAEA

The International Atomic Energy Agency reports that despite Iranian claims of full cooperation with IAEA inspectors, Iran has continued to interfere with the inspections and block the investigations into its nuclear program:

An internal report by the United Nations nuclear watchdog agency challenges Iran's contention that it has provided international inspectors with free access to workshops where it has manufactured parts for centrifuges. The document contradicts Iranian assurances this month that it had allowed inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, unrestricted access to the sites during inspections in January.

"The agency's visit was 'managed' by the Iranians in the sense that the inspectors were not permitted to take pictures with IAEA cameras or use their own electronic equipment," said the document, which was first reported by Reuters and obtained Wednesday by The Times.

The last time that the IAEA or the UN issued a critical report on Iranian cooperation, the mullahs responded by throwing the inspectors out of the country and accusing them of being dupes for the US. This time, the Iranians again deny that they have provided anything less than full cooperation, but have not issued any threats. The Iranians continue to insist that their nuclear program relates only to domestic energy production and that IAEA concerns about weapons proliferation are baseless.

Well, maybe. However, for a country with massive oil reserves, nuclear energy seems like an odd and expensive way to generate electricity, and the discovery of enrichment centrifuges on military bases doesn't give confidence to their peaceful intentions. I believe that the Iranians have fixed on Saddam's cheat-and-retreat strategy and will stick to it until a show of force makes the mullahs on the Supreme Guardian Council understand that either they or Syria will be the next focus in the war on terror. The choice will be left to them; Syria is already looking for ways to shed their status as a rogue state.

Muslim Cooperation in the UK

Two stories from the London Telegraph show how the war on terror has divided the Muslim community -- and how imams and other leaders of Islam continue to demonstrate their disloyalty to their nation and their insistence that the only law worthy of recognition is Islam. The first article looks at the reaction of the families of the eight Muslims arrested in the UK after months of surveillance, netting a half-ton of explosives and preventing a large-scale terrorist attack:

Britain's most prominent Muslim leader last night demanded a crackdown on "rogue" Islamic preachers, blaming them for brainwashing young men with sermons promoting holy war against the West. Iqbal Sacranie, the secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, was backed by the families of some of the eight men arrested in Tuesday's anti-terrorism raids in south-east England. ...

People such as Omar Bakri Mohammed, the leader of Al-Muhajiroun, which campaigns for an Islamic state in Britain, brought "much harm to the Muslim community". He said: "These elements are preaching a message of hatred and violence that is against the Koran. They have nothing to do with Islam. There are more than a thousand mosques in Britain. We are not aware of this sort of activity in more than one or two."

The families of the suspects have called upon the British government to pass laws similar to our old Alien and Sedition Law, specifically to prohibit the teaching of violence and treason in Britain's mosques. They believe that today's leaders of Islam in Britain are perverting it into a supremacist movement that teaches their children to disobey civil authority and to commit violent acts. One father even called upon Muslims to quit listening to imams altogether and to study Islam through books instead -- a brave act in an increasingly radicalized Muslim community. In fact, these families all have acted in an honorable manner; instead of calling the police racist and spouting platitudes about the suspects, they have used the occasion to try to call other Muslims back from the brink of madness.

On the other side of that brink, however, is the mullah Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammad, who has told his flock to cease cooperating with British police in the war on terror and not to recognize their authority over Muslims:

Muslims cannot co-operate with local authorities against other members of the faith, the outspoken leader of an Islamic group has said. ... Sheikh Omar told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "Muslims have a unique way of life. Co-operating with the authorities against any other Muslims, that is an act of apostasy in Islam."

This fundamental difference highlights the difficulty in working with even the more mainstream Muslim groups. For them, the only law is Islam; cooperating with local authorities outside the ummah is a voluntary choice, made on a case-by-case basis. The sheik, who has been agitating for an Islamic state within Britain, makes it clear that the peace and safety of the UK is a secondary consideration to supporting Muslims no matter what crimes they commit. You can't just dismiss the mullah as a crank, either, since that same message comes from mosques all over Britain, and indeed all over the world.

At least in the UK, rational Muslims have formed public-action groups to counteract the strident rhetoric of clerics such as Sheik Omar. Here in the US, the only voices we hear are from the Council of American-Islamic Relations, which spends its time and effort griping about ethnic profiling and the bad manners of Americans while making no effort to assist in our own security. No one could doubt that had those arrests taken place in the US, CAIR would have been using their face time on TV claiming that the whole investigation was a frame-up and the result of bigotry towards the Religion of Peace.

The EU's Slow Surrender to Islamic Anti-Semitism

The European Union, faced with a growing and increasingly restive Muslim population from centuries of colonialism and proximity to the Middle East, consistently refuses to face the problems caused by this community. In its latest report on anti-Semitism, the EU has rewritten its conclusions to avoid offending Islamist groups:

A study released by the EU's racism and xenophobia monitoring centre astounded experts by concluding that the wave of anti-Jewish persecution over the last two years stemmed from neo-Nazi or other racist groups. "The largest group of the perpetrators of anti-Semitic activities appears to be young, disaffected white Europeans," said a summary released to the European Parliament . "A further source of anti-Semitism in some countries was young Muslims of North African or Asian extraction.

"Traditionally, anti-Semitic groups on the extreme Right played a part in stirring opinion," it added.

The headline findings contradict the body of the report. This says most of the 193 violent attacks on synagogues, Jewish schools, kosher shops, cemeteries and rabbis in France in 2002 - up from 32 in 2001 - were "ascribed to youth from neighbourhoods sensitive to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, principally of North African descent.

"The percentage attributable to the extreme Right was only nine per cent in 2002," it said.

Why did the EU rewrite the headlines and misrepresent the data in the report? For the same reason it suppressed a German report last year that fingered Arab gangs for the large uptick in violence against Jewish victims: the EU doesn't want to face the problem of its Muslim immigrants. One does not need to be a closed-borders fanatic to recognize that the growing masses of poor, disaffected, and unassimilated Muslims cause enormous problems in Europe -- especially in France and Germany, the former of which has gone so far as to outlaw any religious ornamentation in its schools in order to gloss over the sectarian tensions.

The EU apparently has decided to abdicate its role as a protector of its citizens in order to appease the most unruly of its communities by making excuses and averting its eyes. It wouldn't be the first time that the Europeans sacrificed their Jews in order to buy peace from a fanatical minority, although the last time, at least most of them had the taste to wait until they were occupied by the Nazis. This time, apparently, they want to get ahead of the curve. Not only does this point out a strong lack of character on the part of European leadership, it also demonstrates the utter cluelessness of the very people with whom the American Left insists that we must reach consensus on our national security.

UPDATE: The AP apparently only read the headlines and the conclusion.

Paul Hornung to Notre Dame: Sell Out

Paul Hornung, who had an illustrious, Heisman Award career at Notre Dame and a brilliant Hall of Fame NFL career, may have had his Al Campanis moment last night in a radio interview when he stated that Notre Dame needed to lower its academic standards in order to attract black athletes:

Football great Paul Hornung said in a radio interview that his alma mater, Notre Dame, needs to lower its academic standards to "get the black athlete."

"As far as Notre Dame is concerned, we're going to have to ease it up a little bit," Hornung told Detroit's WXYT-AM in an interview before the Michigan Sports Hall of Fame banquet Tuesday. ... "We can't stay as strict as we are as far as the academic structure is concerned because we've got to get the black athlete," Hornung said in the interview. "We must get the black athlete if we're going to compete."

Notre Dame, for its part, vehemently disavows itself from Hornung's statement, which come at an unusual time for the storied Notre Dame football program. First, as any Fighting Irish fan will tell you, the sidelines look tremendously diverse on any given Saturday in South Bend. Second, the Irish hired their first African-American head coach two years ago, after stumbling with George O'Leary, who had engaged in a little resume padding during his career. While it's true that ND has gone a long time between national championships -- its second-longest drought -- they have been competitive for the most part.

Notre Dame has always maintained that scholarship and athletics were not mutually incompatible programs, and for decades has fielded the teams that proved it. As recently as 1988, Notre Dame won a national championship with these same standards while benching star athletes for academic and rules violations. Rather than being proud of the integrity of his alma mater, Hornung instead endorsed the notion that a national championship justifies the exploitation of young men, challenging the Catholic university to lower its standards for athletes to those of Florida State and USC.

It's sickening, and Notre Dame should cut all ties with Hornung. We fans of the Irish love this university not because we attended it -- I didn't -- or because of Irish heritage, but because it has stood for integrity and excellence for over a hundred years, and we have few other examples of this in college sports. If Hornung can't be proud of that, then he needs to find somewhere else to work.

Kerry Losing Ground In Key Swing State

In a state that George Bush would love to win and Kerry can't afford to lose, Kerry has dropped seven points in the past five weeks:

John Kerry's numbers have slipped in Pennsylvania, a statewide poll released Tuesday shows.

The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee lost ground to President Bush in the latest poll conducted for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. The Keystone poll by Franklin & Marshall College showed Bush leading Kerry 46 percent to 40 percent among 565 registered voters. Kerry lost 7 percentage points since the last Keystone poll in February. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.

The drop mirrors the free-fall that Kerry has experienced nationwide over the same period of time. Kerry dropped from 47% to 40% while Bush's numbers held firm at 46%, and Kerry's disapproval numbers went up the same amount. Nader's entry has pulled 3% of voters away from the two national candidates, but presumably mostly from Kerry. Kerry only leads among those voters 65 and older. The Keystone poll reports responses from registered voters instead of likely voters, which tend to favor Republicans a bit more, so the news is doubly bad for John Kerry and the Democrats. The poll was conducted over the weekend, after the fallout from the Clarke testimony and book publication.

Just to remind everyone, Al Gore carried Pennsylvania by 5 points in 2000. If Bush can take Pennsylvania, it puts Kerry in a deep hole, since the Keystone State represents 21 electoral votes. Having George Bush poll this strongly in a Rust Belt state while the economy is still revving up signals a deep problem with the Kerry campaign, who should be holding onto a state so close to his own. If this continues, Kerry will take his rightful place amongst the giants of electoral flops, McGovern and Mondale. (via The Corner)

Addendum: Here's a handy Electoral College vote calculator. You'll notice that had the 2000 census been applied to the 2000 election, Bush would have won 8 more EC votes. Changing PA to Bush puts him 60 EC votes ahead of Kerry...

Don't Run

In an effort to invoke the ghosts of Somalia, Iraq' "insurgents" have mutilated the bodies of five Americans and dragged them through the streets of Fallujah, dismembering them and hanging them from a bridge in the heart of the Sunni Triangle:

Jubilant residents dragged the charred corpses of four foreign contractors — including at least one American — through the streets Wednesday and hanged them from the bridge spanning the Euphrates River. Five American soldiers died in a roadside bombing nearby. ...

Associated Press Television News pictures showed one man beating a charred corpse with a metal pole. Others tied a yellow rope to a body, hooked it to a car and dragged it down the main street of town. Two blackened and mangled corpses were hung from a green iron bridge across the Euphrates.

"The people of Fallujah hanged some of the bodies on the old bridge like slaughtered sheep," resident Abdul Aziz Mohammed said. Some of the corpses were dismembered, he said. Beneath the bodies, a man held a printed sign with a skull and crossbones and the phrase "Fallujah is the cemetery for Americans."

In 1993, when minions of the local warlord did much the same thing in Mogadishu, the US turned tail and ran out of Somalia as fast as it was able. That incident instructed Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, and every foe of the US that Americans could not bear casualties in any conflict -- that the US was nothing more than a paper tiger, unwilling and unable to stomach real battle. Create a disgusting enough spectacle and the Yanks would get out.

We cannot afford to have that happen again. This is what needs to happen in Fallujah: seal the town off, go house to house, tear the place apart looking for the terrorists who did this, making sure that the process is as uncomfortable as possible. Demolish houses where contraband weapons are found. If people put up an armed resistance, kill them. Leave no doubt as to our intentions and our will to prevail.

If they want to send a message by stringing up the bodies of Americans on their bridges, we can send a message that we won't be stopped. We'd better do it now, while they're paying attention.

Kerry Flip-Flops On Gas Prices, Campaign Tone

We may have the most gymnastic presidential candidate ever fielded in modern American history. John Kerry has mastered the art of the flip-flop, changing positions with blinding speed on such issues as the war in Iraq, funding the troops, gay marriage, and corporate taxation. Now Kerry has changed positions on the gas tax in a desperate bid to find an issue on which to recapture any momentum possible to reverse his free-falling poll numbers:

Seeking to drive down crude oil prices, the Massachusetts Democrat called for a policy in which the United States applies greater pressure on oil-producing nations to increase production and said U.S. officials should temporarily suspend filling U.S. oil reserves. ... Kerry argued that diverting oil intended for U.S. reserves directly to the market will help depress gas prices, although analysts say that probably would have a negligible effect. ...

The political ad released today by the Bush campaign contends that Kerry supported raising the gas tax 11 times in Congress and backed a 50 cent a gallon tax increase.

In 1994, Kerry publicly supported, but did not vote for, a 50 cent per gallon increase in the gas tax, as one way to help balance the federal budget. Soon after, Kerry backed away from that idea and, as a presidential candidate, now opposes any increase. He did vote several times for a smaller increases in the gas tax in 1993.

Then there's also this silly sort of flip-flop that just puts a bit of icing on the cake:

Kerry has no plans to deviate from his new strategy of focusing on domestic policies and staying generally more positive than Bush in ads, the strategist said. There are no plans for a more aggressive Kerry push back.

Yet in speeches, Kerry is often harshly critical of Bush. At a fundraiser Monday night in San Francisco, Kerry said, "It is a disgrace that this president and his party traffic in prejudice against gays and lesbians and others in this country." Wade said the "others" includes African-Americans, citing Bush's position on affirmative action and appearance at Bob Jones University in 2000.

Yes, I can see how calling Bush a racist bigot maintains Kerry's facade as the more "positive" campaigner.

The problem with gas prices is not just crude-oil supply, although that certainly has an impact. Despite what Kerry says about ANWR, domestic drilling would relieve pricing pressures to a degree and allow the US to bargain more effectively with OPEC. Kerry wants it both ways -- he takes the administration to task for not being tougher on OPEC but then sides with environmentalists in tying both of Bush's hands behind his back. Until we have the political will to produce our own oil, OPEC will continue to play hardball with us. This dynamic was proved out in the Reagan administration, which encouraged domestic oil production and broke OPEC's back on pricing, leading to several years of inexpensive fuel costs.

But the other problem the US faces is refinery capacity. The US has built no new refineries in 30 years, thanks to the efforts of environmentalists that have protested each proposed facility. Whenever a refinery experiences a temporary shutdiwn, as a major Midwestern facility did a couple of years ago, regional prices shoot through the roof as fuel must be shipped in to cover the shortfall, usually from the Gulf Coast. A President Kerry beholden to environmental interests would likely be highly unwilling to correct this problem. In fact, a President Kerry would likely be part of the problem.

Until we address a realistic and non-hypocritical view of supporting our own needs for oil production, gas prices will remain high, and Kerry has no realistic proposals for lowering them.

World Court Not Political?

President Bush received a storm of criticism when he withdrew the US from the International Criminal Court, claiming that its mandate was much too broad and checks on its power too few, which would lead it to pursuing political ends through bogus criminal prosecutions. Well, if it the World Court is any guideline, it looks like Bush's critics may owe him an apology:

The International Court of Justice on Wednesday ruled that the United States violated the rights of 47 Mexicans on death row and ordered their cases be reviewed. The United Nations' highest judiciary, also known as the world court, was considering whether 52 convicted murderers had received their right to assistance from their government in a case filed by Mexico. ...

In hearings in December, lawyers for Mexico argued that any U.S. citizen accused of a serious crime abroad would want the same right, and the only fair solution for the 52 men allegedly denied diplomatic help was to start their legal processes all over again. Juan Manuel Gomez said that Mexico "doesn't contest the United States' right as a sovereign country to impose the death penalty for the most grave crimes," but wants to make sure its citizens aren't abused by a foreign legal system they don't always understand.

U.S. lawyer William Taft argued that the prisoners had received fair trials. He said even if the prisoners didn't get consular help, the way to remedy the wrong "must be left to the United States." In its written arguments, the United States said that Mexico's request would be a "radical intrusion" into the U.S. justice system, contradicting laws and customs in every city and state in the nation.

The problem with the court's ruling is twofold. First, it has no standing in the American criminal justice system and therefore its rulings have no legal weight to overturn jury verdicts or appellate court rulings. Therefore, any expectation that their decisions must carry legal weight within the US is a violation of the sovereignty of our own judicial system, which would be made subservient to the World Court under these conditions. That should be unacceptable to all Americans, especially considering that the World Court recognizes no appellate authority.

Second, and somewhat related, is that such a ruling, if accepted by the United States, would end state sovereignty over criminal justice by forcing all cases to be tried through federal courts. Most criminal law exists as state penal codes, not federal law, and each state has its own court system to try cases resulting from violations of those codes. The federal appellate system only has jurisdiction in regards to ensuring that the states act within the federal Constitution. Federal courts cannot just insert themselves into non-federal criminal cases, and an expectation that they can underscores the lack of basic understanding that the World Court has of the US justice system. (The judge who handed down the decision is from China.)

The notion that an arresting officer must inform suspects of their consular rights is ludicrous. Americans don't require "papers" for internal travel the way most other countries do, and often the nationality of suspects at the time of arrest can't be known. That's what lawyers are for, and our courts routinely throw out convictions for failure to provide effective legal counsel. Either American police would have to tell people they can contact their consulate at every single arrest -- a ludicrous and confusing instruction for Americans being placed into custody -- or the US would have to require everyone to start carrying papers identifying their nationality and right to travel internally. Neither would be practical, and the latter would be a serious restriction on our freedom.

But that's not really what the World Court wants anyway. The ICJ intends on complicating as many death-penalty cases as possible for political purposes regardless of jurisdiction or common sense. I am no fan of the death penalty; I oppose it for religious as well as pragmatic reasons, but I'm outvoted, and I accept that. However, that doesn't mean that I want the UN or its autocratic, appeal-less bureaucracy involving itself into American jurisprudence.

No WMDs -- Semicolon

For the past few months, the American public has accepted as established fact that Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction, thanks in part to the David Kay report, which held out little hope of finding any WMD caches in Iraq. However, the finality of the WMD status may not be as cut-and-dried as Americans imagine, as the current weapons inspector keeps finding more references to them in his ongoing investigation:

In prepared testimony, the CIA's new chief Iraq weapons inspector said he does not rule out finding weapons of mass destruction, adding "we regularly receive reports, some quite intriguing and credible, about concealed caches" of weapons. ... Duelfer is testifying Tuesday behind closed doors before the Senate Armed Services and Intelligence committees. His comments contrast with those of his predecessor, David Kay, who has said he does not expect that any weapons of mass destruction will be found in Iraq.

In prepared testimony, Duelfer said fear of retribution is still a significant stumbling block as the Iraq Survey Group he heads seeks information from Iraqi managers, scientists and engineers.

Duelfer agrees with Kay's assessment of Saddam's Iraq as having maintained programs, especially in biological weapons research, that were in clear violation of UN sanctions, which would be more than sufficient to justify military action on its own. However, Duelfer's continuing investigation leads him to believe that there's fire to go with all of the smoke, and that cooperation of the engineers and scientists that worked on these programs will assist as soon as more of Saddam's regime is rounded up.

This may not be the best time to go public with Duelfer's optimism on WMDs; after all, if it turns out that Duelfer's wrong, or that he can't lay his hands on any this year, it may backfire on the US internationally all over again, just like last year when Kay's report seemed to put an exclamation point on the search. However, since the rest of the world has already written off any possibility of discovery of stockpiles of chemical and biological agents or weapons, perhaps there is no real downside in talking about it now. While I don't think that military action in Iraq needed WMDs for justification (there were plenty of good reasons outside of that), finding some now would certainly silence some of our critics overseas, and not just a few of them here at home, for that matter.

Stay tuned.

Politburo Diktat: New Map, with Party Lines!

Comrade Commissar at the Politburo Diktat has crafted another of his ingenious maps of Bloggahland. With accuracy guaranteed (all disputes will be settled by the Party, so Trotskyites be warned!), the Commissar shows how the alliance of the Vast Right Warlike Confederation has the Moonbat Colony of Leftieland surrounded. The map itself provides links to many different bloggers, arranged as only the Commissar can do. Definitely a must-see!

Caption Contest Winners!

Guest judge Jon from QandO -- a smart and informative blog that should be on your daily reading list (like you need me to tell you that) -- has made the final decisions in this week's Captain's Caption Contest. Just to refresh your memory, in case you can't scroll down three posts, here's the picture:

Here's Jon's picks, in his own format ...

After a lengthy review, we have a 44 way tie for "You Sick Bastard". My god, people, go call your mother and apologize. Immediately.

However, only one of your mothers will be talking to a winner. The results are:

----------
Runner-up #3 (or: The "topical, pithy, amusing....you're Jay Leno!" award)

"Actually, I pulled her away from the bus before I pushed her under it."
Posted by Pat Curley March 27, 2004 08:23 AM
----------

Runner-up #2 (or, The "ewww....I never thought I'd miss the relatively discreet days of Al and Tipper Gore getting it on" Award)

John, dear, they're on the other side.
Posted by Stephen Macklin at March 27, 2004 03:48 PM
-----------

Runner-up #1 (or, The "I worked in every single joke about John Kerry known to man, because quantity should still count for something, right?" Award)

After accidentally fracturing his wifes arm in three places while recreating the infamous "sonuvabitch-knockdown technique" for the press, President-wannabe Kerry finds himself divorced from his primary source of campaign funding. In unrelated news, the French-looking senator will be announcing a new television program, airing on the Fox Network, titled "A Millionaire wants to Marry Who?," where thousands of bachelorette's will compete for the war-veteran's hand, based on their liberalness, family fortune and desire to fund his run for the Presidency.
Posted by scotty at March 26, 2004 04:31 PM
----------

Winner - (or, The "I laughed, I cried, I projectile snorted pea soup out of my nose" Award)

The power of John compels you! The power of John compels you!
Posted by Edward Yee at March 28, 2004 01:59 AM
---------

Report to Sick Bay Immediately (or, The "I am simply shocked that you would reopen the wounds of Vietnam for Caption Contest gain" Award)

Kerry to reporters: "So I was sneaking up on the little VC bastard, just like this and ..."
Posted by Bill at March 30, 2004 02:46 PM

---------

Congratulations to all the winners, and thanks for joining in the fun! As always, comments will remain open on this post for those who wish to impugn the character of the judge, the Captain, or the people in the picture. Feel free to throw in more suggestions, even if the contest is over, if you're in a Dennis Kucinich type of mood.

If anyone has a great idea for this Friday's picture, drop me an e-mail with the URL or the picture attached -- and let me know if you want to guest judge the contest as well!

The Uzbek-Guantanamo Connection Keeping The Lid On Terrorism: BBC

US detainment at the Guantanamo military camp has received more than its share of abuse, especially from the BBC, as an affront to "international law". However, deep within a story about the latest violence in Uzbekistan, the BBC itself shows that the Guantanamo policy has kept terrorism from spreading in Central Asia.

First, the report shows that the Uzbek secular dictatorship gets results in its battle with terrorism:

Uzbekistan says 20 suspected militants have blown themselves up during a fierce gun battle with special forces in the capital, Tashkent. ... Witnesses said four armed militants entered a house, which was then surrounded by the security forces.

An interior ministry statement read out on television said 20 militants blew themselves up with home-made explosives after being surrounded. Three policemen were killed and five were injured.

Uzbek authorities blame a long-standing Islamic group, Hizb ut-Tahrir, for the violence, but its London representatives disavow any connection to terrorism or armed resistance. Another group, well-known throughout Central Asia, could also be the source of the violence, even though they have been quiet of late. The reason for their relative silence is that their leaders aren't there any longer. Guess where they are?

Another group under suspicion is the home-grown Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU). The group initially aimed to overthrow Mr Karimov and replace his administration with a Muslim government, although in 2000 its objective changed to establishing a radical Islamist state across Central Asia.

The group's leader Tahir Yuldashev is accused of orchestrating a series of deadly bomb attacks in Tashkent in 1999, one of which nearly killed Mr Karimov. However, Shahida Tulaganova of the BBC's Central Asia Service says the group, which fought alongside the Taleban during the Afghan conflict, is now in tatters with many of its leaders being held by the US in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The IMU picked the losing horse in Afghanistan -- probably believing a little too much of what they heard in the British and French press about the futility of armed action in Afghanistan -- and got rounded up with the rest of the Islamofascists. Since they're in Guantanamo, their organization has been unable to do much damage ... which is exactly why we aren't just releasing terrorists back into Central Asia.

It's nice of the BBC to finally recognize this, even if they bury it at the bottom of their articles.

Shot In The Dark Back From The Darkness

Just a quick note to let everyone know that Mitch Berg's fine site, Shot In The Dark, had its ISP disappear out from underneath him yesterday -- and it took his domain name with it, at least temporarily. His site can be accessed at http://www.shotinthedark.info ... be sure to update your blogrolls and bookmarks!

Captain's Caption Contest #5!

Last week, I mentioned that behind every good man was a good woman -- but this week, it looks like John Kerry may have the proverb reversed:

Sharpen your wits, maximize your Internet speed, and put your creative talents to use, and tell us what caption you think belongs with this picture (courtesy of DC from Brainstorming)! This week's guest judge: Jon from QandO, an excellent libertarian/economics blog that is on my daily-read list. The contest will remain open until Tuesday, March 30, at 6 pm CT, so be sure to enter early and enter often!

BUMP 3/27 -- Lots of creative entries so far ...

BUMP 3/29 -- After a day (mostly) off, I'm putting this back to the top ...

CLOSING 3/30 6:10 PM: It's going to the scorecards -- thanks for all your great entries!

QandO Review of 9/11 Commission

My laptop has gone in for repairs, so I'm not able to comment too much on the news this morning -- or even receive e-mail, for that matter. While I'm working on that issue, please make sure you take a look at QandO today on the 9/11 Commission and its reports. McQ is all over the data contained in the reports, pointing out the fallacy of Clintonian prioritization of terrorism, especially in regards Osama and the Taliban. He's done some eye-opening work.

Don't forget that the Captain's Caption Contest finishes up at 6 pm CT today, and Jon from QandO will be our guest judge. In the meantime, if you've sent me e-mail, I will eventually get it ... but it may take a bit, so your patience is very much appreciated!

Did Clarke's Team Keep the FBI In The Dark?

Dueling statements by members of former counterterrorism "czar" Richard Clarke's team andthe FBI leave the impression that they didn't tell the FBI everything that they needed to know about terrorist activities in the US, calling into question Clarke's contention that the FBI failed to aggressively pursue terrorism:

The nation's former deputy counterterrorism czar said yesterday that Al Qaeda operatives trained in Afghanistan came through Boston Harbor on liquid natural gas tankers from Algeria and that officials considered Boston a "logistical hub" for the terror network's activities in New England before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

"The LNG tanker was an underground railroad for these guys to come into the country illegally," he said. "Were a majority just looking to come to the US and start over again? I think that's a safe bet. What we don't know is what percentage had other motives." Cressey's description of what counterterrorism officials in the White House and intelligence agencies knew about Al Qaeda's presence in the Boston area clashed with statements made last week by Kenneth Kaiser, the special agent in charge of the FBI's Boston office. Responding to a reference to Boston-based activity by Al Qaeda in Clarke's new book, "Against All Enemies," and a radio interview in which the former White House aide criticized the FBI for not passing the information on to local authorities, Kaiser told reporters last week that the FBI had found no evidence that stowaways on the LNG tankers had ties to the terror network.

Kaiser's comments related to Clarke's accusation that the FBI knew of terrorists coming in through the LNG port in Boston and did nothing about it. However, that story changed somewhat yesterday when Roger Cressey and an unnamed associate issued these statements:

But Cressey said in an interview yesterday that the White House information came from "other intelligence sources" and that the FBI, which was not focused on terrorism until after the attacks, may not have known the full picture. He added that "there are still gaps in our knowledge of what was going on in Boston," so any definitive statement by the bureau is suspect.

"The ability of the bureau to have a real good idea of what was going on at those locations -- those apartments and elsewhere -- was not as good as it could have been," he said, referring to apartments where suspected Al Qaeda members lived.

Another former national security official, speaking on condition of anonymity, agreed with that analysis. "Our interest in this came from foreign intelligence reporting, not the FBI," he said. "The FBI was responsible for looking into it, but two and two may not have been put together.

In other words, Clarke's team wasn't sharing its information with the FBI, and now they want to blame the FBI for not following up on what Clarke's team didn't tell them. It appears that Clinton's counterterrorism team has gone into full CYA mode since 9/11. Here's another example:

Describing concerns that the LNG terminal might be a target on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Clarke wrote in his book that "had one of the giant tankers blown up in the harbor, it would have wiped out downtown Boston."

But Cressey's initial account contained a misstatement. He said, inaccurately, that the Al Qaeda connection led to a Coast Guard order that LNG tankers from Algeria could no longer dock in Boston Harbor.

Distrigas spokeswoman Julie Vitek said that while the last Algerian tanker docked in January 2002, it was the company that chose to switch its supplier to Trinidad -- primarily because that source was closer and the company signed a long-term contract.

The Coast Guard confirms that no government order was ever received barring Algerian LNG tankers from Boston. Clarke and Cressey can't get their facts straight, which Cressey maintains is due to his shift at the end of 2001 to focus on cyberterrorism for 10 months before leaving for the private sector -- a focus that seems to have permeated Clarke's entire team.

Clarke should answer this question: if the FBI needed to pursue terrorists more aggressively, shouldn't their team have been sharing their intel with the FBI? Why didn't that happen?

Brits, Filipinos Score Victories Against Terrorism

Twelve terrorists are in custody in the UK and the Phillipines today as major terrorist operations have been disrupted. In the Phillipines, four Abu Sayyaf Islamic terrorists were arrested and eighty pounds of explosives confiscated:

The Philippine president, Gloria Arroyo, today said that a terrorist attack on the scale of the Madrid bombings had been averted with the arrest of four Abu Sayyaf members and the seizure of 36kg (80lb) of explosives. The suspects, who allegedly trained with Jemaah Islamiyah, south-east Asia's al-Qaida-linked terrorist network, had planned to bomb trains and shopping malls in Manila, Ms Arroyo said. ...

One of the arrested men, Redendo Cain Dellosa, had claimed responsibility for a February 27 explosion on a passenger ferry in which more than 100 people were killed, Ms Arroyo added, although no official conclusion about the cause of the blast had yet been reached.

Dellosa is said to have trained in explosives with Jemaah Islamiyah militants on the southern island of Mindanao.

A second suspect, Alhamser Manatad Limbong, allegedly planted an October 2002 bomb that killed a US serviceman in the southern city of Zamboanga. He also allegedly executed US hostage Guillermo Sobero in the same year.

At almost the same time, British police seized a half-ton of ammonium nitrate explosives and arrested eight people. Ammonium nitrate was the main component of the Oklahoma City bombing by Timothy McVeigh and the Manchester blast at a UK shopping mall in 1996:

Peter Clarke, Scotland Yard's deputy assistant commissioner, said detectives carried out 24 raids across London and the Home Counties.

Two men were arrested in Uxbridge, one in Ilford, one in Horley, one in Slough and three in Crawley. All the suspects are believed to be Muslims and British citizens of Pakistani descent. They are now being interviewed by anti-terrorist detectives. ... Ammonium nitrate fertiliser was recently used by terrorists in bombings against British targets in Turkey and the bombing of a western residential compound in Saudi Arabia.

It was also used in the Oklahoma bombing in 1995, is believed to have been used by al-Qa'eda in the attack on the US embassy in Nairobi in 1998, and was the major ingredient in the biggest of the bombs used by Islamic terrorists in Bali which killed 202 people in 2002.

The British used a task force of over 700 officers to root out the terrorists in their midst. With the recent developments in Pakistan and diplomatic reversals in Libya and Syria, the comprehensive anti-terror strategy seems to be paying off.

Kerry Continues to Slide: Poll

After a week in which former national security and counterterrorism apparatchik Richard Clarke helped the Democrats beat up on George Bush by claiming he was uninterested in terrorism prior to 9/11, a new poll by CNN/Gallup/USA Today shows that someone's being hurt by it -- but it's not George Bush:

Among likely voters surveyed, 51 percent said they would choose Bush for president, while 47 percent said they would vote for Kerry, within the margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points. (Full story)

Three weeks ago, as Kerry was cinching the Democratic nomination with a string of primary victories, he led the president by 8 points in a hypothetical head-to-head matchup among likely voters, 52 percent to 44 percent.

While that's technically within the outer reaches of the margin of error, it is the first time that Bush has polled over 50% since John Kerry won the March 2nd Super Tuesday; in fact, looking at the breakdown of the poll, it's been almost three months since Bush did this well -- and that was when the presumptive Democratic nominee was Howard Dean, who always matched up poorly against Bush. Kerry has lost 16 points against Bush since February 16th, when he led in a head-to-head poll 55-43. As Hugh Hewitt notes, that's 16 points in 40 days, an absolute free-fall during a period when the Democratic nominee should be sucking up all the political oxygen, not just sucking in general.

When you dissect the numbers even further, the news looks more grim for Kerry. Among likely voters, Kerry's firm support has dropped from 45% to 40% since March 7th, with an identical 7% leaning Kerry. Bush's firm support has gone up from 38% to 44%, with 7% leaning his way, up from 6%. Not only has Bush firmed up his base, he's attracting more independents. Why?

CNN's analysis figures that the Bush campaign's depiction of Kerry as a tax-and-spend liberal -- a quite accurate depiction -- has outweighed the damage that Clarke's book and 9/11 Commission appearance has done. CNN doesn't mention the damage Kerry's done to his own campaign, including the now-famous dodge, "I voted for the $87 billion -- before I voted against it." John Kerry's unfavorable numbers went up 10 points in the last 40 day. Bush's approval rating rose to 53%, up four points and the highest since mid-January.

Here's the key statistic in the polling, and why the Clarke broadside has missed its target -- in fact, why it hit Kerry instead. Near the bottom of USA Today's breakdown of the numbers is this question: If a situation arose that required the president to make a decision about sending U.S. troops to war, who would you trust more to make that decision: John Kerry, or George W. Bush?

Kerry Bush
Mar 26-28 41 52
Jan 29-Feb 1 50 45

That's sixteen points, same as the shift over the last 40 days. All Clarke and the 9/11 Commission has done is to remind people how clueless US policy on terrorism had been for a decade prior to 9/11, despite provocation after provocation. It's also reminded people that Bush, unlike his predecessor's team (which includes Clarke), responded forcefully when attacked and has actually made a dent in terrorism. Also -- and this is another critical point -- the Democrats that noisily climbed aboard the Clarke bandwagon wound up endorsing pre-emption, especially Bob Kerrey, who wondered aloud why we didn't attack Afghanistan after the embassy bombings in Africa in 1998 or the USS Cole in 2000. Pre-emption had been Bush's policy alone, and now the Democrats have endorsed it, making themselves look silly and opportunistic after spending months denouncing it.

Instead of being wounded by the debate over the past week, Bush has been lifted as the electorate has been reminded that a war is still on -- and the Democrats have no strategy to fight it. They change positions to match the prevailing wind, and in that strategy John Kerry is the perfect standardbearer for the party.

Al-Qaeda Intelligence Chief Dead?

Pakistan's recent military offensive may have been more successful than first thought -- according to radio intercepts, their intelligence chief, a mysterious man known only as Abdullah, may have been killed:

The radio transmissions disclosed that a man named Abdullah had been killed and that the death caused a great deal of distress among the al-Qaida forces, a Pakistani intelligence official said on condition of anonymity.

"He was a very important person for al-Qaida," the official said. He added that interrogations of suspected al-Qaida members led the Pakistanis to believe that Abdullah was the group's top intelligence official.

US intelligence officials confirmed that an Abdullah was indeed considered to be the top intelligence official, but they are careful to remain noncommittal on whether the Abdullah reportedly killed is the same man. If so, the death combined with the dispersal of what remained of the AQ brigade that the Pakistanis attacked would be a major defeat for al-Qaeda, accounting for the consternation that the Pakistanis reported on the radio chatter.

They didn't get Zawahiri, but this may be almost as good.

UN Shifts Blame on Baghdad Bombing in August

The UN finally released its official report on the August bombing of the Baghdad UN headquarters, and Kofi Annan has cashiered the chief security specialist and reprimanded two others:

The UN secretary general has asked for security coordinator Tun Myat to quit after a scathing report on last year's bomb attack on the UN's HQ in Baghdad. But Kofi Annan refused an offer to resign from his deputy Louise Frechette, his spokesman Fred Eckhard told reporters at the United Nations. ...

The report suggests that UN officials failed to ask searching questions before deciding to return UN staff to Baghdad, under heavy international pressure. The report was particularly critical of two UN officials in Baghdad, accusing them of "a dereliction of duty" and "a lethargy that is bordering on gross negligence" for failing to shield the office windows with blast-resistant film.

The report also blamed the deceased special envoy Sergio Viera de Mello for not considering the notion that the UN office could come under attack. However, it apparently doesn't mention that the US believed it would be attacked and offered US forces for security, an offer that the UN sniffed at, claiming it would undermine their neutrality. The BBC also doesn't mention that the UN used former Saddam regime security forces -- the same ones that used to spy on the UN -- as its security detail right up to the bombing.

While it's possible the UN report covers these unbelievably naive and foolish errors, those decisions were likely made higher up than the Baghdad mission. If the report doesn't take senior UN management to task (read: Annan), then this is worse than a whitewash.

Pickering, Revisited

60 Minutes reviewed the recess appointment of Charles Pickering, the Mississippi federal judge that ran into the partisan buzzsaw of the Senate Democrats, and strangely enough came up with a much different picture of Pickering than that painted by Daschle, Kennedy, and Company. Needless to say, this has disappointed the Commissar at the Politburo Diktat, who counted on CBS to stick to the party line:

Comrades, get out hatchets. Hack away at Ms. Gambrell. Give her the full "Justice Thomas, Colin Powell, Condi Rice" job. Maybe she is Pickering's lover, da? Maybe she is lesbian. ... No, need 21st Century slur ... Maybe she "accused someone else of being lesbian." Is more up-to-date smear, da? Perhaps she opposes gay marriage. Comrades, if you find nothing, do not worry. Follow Comrade Schumer's example: Just make it up.

Be sure to read the Commissar's revealing look at the interview with Deborah Gambrell, a black lawyer who supports Pickering's nomination and denies the Democrats' smear of Pickering as a racist. While you're there, catch up on all of the Party line at the Diktat.

WSJ: Kerry/Phoenix Project Connection Being Ignored

John Fund writes an excellent column in today's Wall Street Journal op-ed site, OpinionJournal.com, where he notices a double standard between the coverage of the public-service records of Bush and Kerry, and how the national news media speak volumes in their silence on the Phoenix Project:

Reporters spent days hounding White House spokesmen for records on the subject. In the end, it became clear that Mr. Bush chose to serve stateside during the war, was lax in attending guard duty during his last year, and had to feverishly make it up before he was honorably discharged. It's clear President Bush doesn't want to talk about his service, but reporters pressed for answers anyway.

It's time they do the same for Mr. Kerry, who has laid down his actions in the Vietnam era as a marker for his character and, according to the Boston Globe, has refused to release his military records. Instead, Jack Kelly, a respected military columnist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, believes many journalists are "more interested in defeating President Bush than in providing readers with potentially important information which reflects poorly on Sen. John Kerry."

Fund then reviews the details of Thomas Lipscomb's story from the New York Daily Sun, laying out a case for journalistic neglect on behalf of the media. If you haven't yet caught up to the story, Fund's comprehensive review will bring you up to date, except for the complete lack of coverage from the media, which Fund may have anticipated would have been corrected by the time his column went to print. Unfortunately, that's not the case. I wrote a response to Fund's column -- I haven't written to OpinionJournal since I started blogging -- congratulating him for finally taking this story national:

It's a national embarassment that the national news media hasn't at least acknowledged these charges in some measure. The Los Angeles Times last week put together a long story on Kerry's FBI files, and spun the story into martyrdom for Kerry without ever mentioning Camil's Phoenix Project or Kerry's involvement in the debate, by now verified by several independent witnesses. The story was picked up by many newspapers off the wire, and several more (the Washington Post and New York Times prominent among them) wrote their own articles based on it, all ignoring the context of the Kansas City meeting. Only CNN mentioned it, and then only as a sort of "bull session" proposal that no one took seriously. I wrote to the reader reps of the Post, the NY Times, and the LA Times, and have yet to receive a response from any of them after a week.

After blogging about this issue for two weeks and interviewing Thomas Lipscomb on the radio in the Twin Cities, I share his frustration and his suspicions about the silence of the national media. I congratulate the Wall Street Journal for taking this story national and hope that it results in some real journalism from those who, so far, have seemed a lot more interesting in spin than reporting.

Make sure you read Fund's article and submit your own responses. If you need background material, here are the links from my blog:

Lipscomb's initial story
Lipscomb's follow-up on the Kerry campaign pressuring a witness
Captain's Quarters' posts: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

I've also covered this at Oh, That Liberal Media and Blogs for Bush.

How To Win Friends and Influence People

Imagine that a group of people would like to win your support for their cause, or at least try to convince you to listen to their side of an issue. Do you think that this is the most effective way to make the case?

Several hundred people stormed the small yard of President Bush's chief political strategist, Karl Rove, yesterday afternoon, pounding on his windows, shoving signs at others and challenging Rove to talk to them about a bill that deals with educational opportunities for immigrants. Protesters poured out of one school bus after another, piercing an otherwise quiet, peaceful Sunday in Rove's Palisades neighborhood in Northwest, chanting, "Karl, Karl, come on out! See what the DREAM Act is all about!" ...

The protest was organized by National People's Action, a coalition of neighborhood advocacy groups based in Chicago.

Leaders said they want Bush to advocate for the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act, a bill that would permit immigrants who have lived in the United States for at least five years to apply for legal resident status once they graduate from high school. The measure would eliminate provisions of current federal law that discourage states from providing in-state tuition to undocumented student immigrants.

Immigrant activists say that 50,000 to 65,000 undocumented students graduate from U.S. high school each year and that many students can afford college only at the reduced, in-state rates given to legal residents.

People have a right to gather and protest in any public space, including sidewalks in non-gated residential areas (gated areas are private property, including the roads and sidewalks), but they do not have the right to trespass on private property or to disturb the peace. Whatever one thinks of Karl Rove, storming his house is illegal, and even putting that aside, it's a stupid way to make your case.

Rove called the police, after the protestors terrified two children who were hiding inside the house (one Rove's, the other a neighbor), which got a typically stupid and ironic response from the crowd:

Shortly thereafter, sirens shot through the neighborhood and Secret Service agents and D.C. police joined the crowd on the lawn. Rove opened his door long enough to talk to an officer, and the crowd serenaded them with a stanza of "America the Beautiful."

I suppose that the crowd had never heard about property rights, one of the keystones of America, nor of Congress, where these debates are best held. Rove agreed to meet with two of the protestors as long as the rest got back on their buses and left his neighborhood, which they did. It wasn't a long conversation:

Rove opened his garage door and allowed Palacios and Inez Killingsworth to enter. The meeting lasted two minutes and ended with Rove closing the garage door on Palacios while she was still talking. ... Palacios, trembling and in tears herself, said, "He is very offended because we dared to come here. We dared to come here because he dared to ignore us. I'm sorry we disturbed his children, but our children are disturbed every day. He also said, 'Don't ever dare to come back,' " Palacios said. "We will, if he continues to ignore us."

If it were my house, the next time they showed up on my property banging on my windows and doors, they'd be talking with a double-barrelled shotgun as I demonstrated my Second Amendment rights. As far as their pet cause goes, if I were Karl Rove I'd be focusing all my energies on killing it just to make a point. However, sticking federal dollars into the pockets of illegal immigrants so that they don't feel so "discouraged" from attending college is ludicrous enough that it won't likely survive in Congress anyway.

Iran Blinks -- Again

Iran has backed down again in its confrontation with the IAEA -- and the West -- over its nuclear program:

Iran has stopped building centrifuges to win the world's trust over its nuclear program, the head of its Atomic Energy Organization said Monday. Gholamreza Aghazadeh said the suspension of the construction of centrifuges had been ordered by the country's Supreme National Security Coucil, Iran's top decision-making body.

Iran suspended uranium enrichment last year under strong international pressure over the aims and dimensions of its nuclear program. But it continued to build centrifuges, which are used in enrichment, despite criticism that this violated the spirit of its pledge to cease enrichment.

Iran had long been defiant about its nuclear program, which it insists is limited to power generation and has no application towards weapon development. Last year, after the invasion of Iraq made it clear that certain members of the UN took disarmament seriously and facing a revolt at home, the Iranian mullahcracy decided to forego the standoff and comply, at least superficially, with IAEA inspectors. Shortly afterward, the discovery of centrifuge manufacturing at an Air Force base led Iran to suspend the inspections, due to a harsh report on their cooperation by the IAEA.

Now, however, Iran has not only allowed the inspectors back into the country but has also announced the cancellation of their centrifuge production. Iran may remain a hard case throughout the inspections, and I suspect that this inspection process will be akin to Iraq's cheat-and-retreat strategy. The difference this time is that Iran knows that consequences will result from a failure to comply, unlike Saddam, who had been confident of a French rescue.

Iran controls 9% of the world's oil reserves and oil production accounts for 20% of its GDP and 85% of its exports. Ask yourself why Iran would be building nuclear reactors for civilian power generation under those conditions, when oil is not only so much cheaper but also so much safer and easier to clean up. That's why the IAEA and the UN Security Council doesn't buy the Iranian centrifuge fantasy. Would you?

French Voters Rejecting EU?

French voters sent a message to the center-right government of Jacques Chirac, who tried to rein in government spending in order to comply with EU budget restrictions. The electorate doesn't approve of Chirac's cutbacks in social spending, and the Socialists are poised to take control:

President Jacques Chirac's government suffered humiliating defeats Sunday in the second round of regional elections in what was seen as a backlash against his painful economic reforms.

The results, which breathed life back into France's left-wing opposition, will increase pressure on Chirac to reshuffle his conservative government and perhaps even ditch his prime minister, the unpopular Jean-Pierre Raffarin.

The French, who already had reneged on their EU obligations for debt reduction, now wants to continue adding to their budget deficits by either maintaining or expanding their social services as their population continues to skew older. Chirac once had designs on controlling the EU by partnering with Germany and Gerhard Schroeder. Now Schroeder is out, thanks to the same need to meet EU debt obligations, and Chirac may have trouble getting a pass from the EU for the fourth year in a row.

Chirac initiated France's irrelevance at the UN, and his political opponents may just answer by confirming France's irrelevance in Europe. If anything, it demonstrates the decadent nature of socialism; once an electorate indulges in the narcotic of cradle-to-grave nannyism, they find it almost impossible to wean themselves off, even when the bills are coming due.

Syria May Be Getting the Message Now

The Australian reports today that Syria, long a haven for Islamic terrorists and a sister dictatorship to Saddam's own Ba'ath regime in Iraq, has approached the Australian government to intercede on its behalf to improve its relations with the US (via Instapundit):

SYRIA has appealed to Australia to use its close ties with Washington to help the Arab nation shake off its reputation as a terrorist haven and repair its relations with the US. Secret talks between the two nations have been under way for months but have become more urgent as rogue nations reconsider their role in allowing terrorists to thrive, in light of the US determination to take pre-emptive military action. ...

Syria's Melbourne-based honorary consul, Antonios Zyrabi, confirmed to The Weekend Australian last night that Syria wanted Australia to help it come in from the diplomatic cold.

As I noted earlier, Syria has been rocked in recent days by demonstrations from ethnic Kurds who see their counterparts in Iraq being freed from the yoke of Ba'ath oppression, and would like the same to happen in Syria. Bashar Assad, the Syrian dictator, also knows that with Saddam out of power in Iraq and the US preparing to transition Iraq to self-rule, American interest in defeating terrorist groups will naturally focus on Iran and Syria.

Iran's mullahcracy has remained defiant in the face of their own domestic turmoil, but Syria faces a much different strategic situation. First, Saddam's downfall has left Syria geographically isolated, as a quick look at the map will demonstrate:

Syria used to rely on the strength of Saddam's Iraq on its eastern border as a smaller kid would rely on his big brother on the playground. Since the US decapitation of the Iraqi Ba'ath regime, however, Syria's eastern border is now dominated by free Kurds and the US military. To its north lies Turkey, a NATO member and a US ally. To its south, it faces Israel and its dominant military forces. Jordan also lies to its south, but Jordan has aligned itself with Washington and at any rate would provide little military assistance if it came down to fighting. Syria's only ally on its borders is its own vassal state, Lebanon, which has drained Syrian military resources for decades as well as complicated its diplomatic posture. Iran lies across a wide expanse of US-controlled Iraq.

In other words, Assad woke up, looked around, and found himself very much alone.

In a nutshell, this explains yet another strategic reason to emphasize the resolution of the twelve-year Iraqi quagmire as a critical step in the war on terror. Prior to last April, Islamofascists could count on a solid geographical block of nations in which to move and hide. With the Taliban ousted from Afghanistan, Musharraf dedicating Pakistani military action to snuff out al-Qaeda assassins, and Iraq removed from the middle of the path, Islamofascists are increasingly caged within smaller geographical territory and unable to hide as easily -- and the governments that support them are now less able to simply shove them across a border when the heat's on.

The jig's up, and Libya and maybe Syria now understand that. Bush, Perle, and Wolfowitz were right.

Kerry VVAW Files Stolen From Historian

After having spent eleven years collecting documentation on the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, historian Gerald Nicosia lost a chunk of it in one night:

FBI documents about FBI surveillance of John Kerry in the early 1970s have been stolen, according to their owner, a historian who lives near San Francisco, California. Gerald Nicosia, who spent more than a decade collecting the information, said three of 14 boxes of documents plus a number of loose folders containing hundreds of pages were stolen from his home Thursday afternoon. ...

"It was a very clean burglary. They didn't break any glass. They didn't take anything like cameras sitting by. It was a very professional job," Nicosia said. "Was it a thrill-seeker who wanted a piece of history? It could be," Nicosia said. "You'd think there was a very strong political motivation for taking those files. The odds are in favor of that."

Nicosia hints that the FBI may have some motivation for stealing the records, but that doesn't pass the smell test. The FBI's peccadilloes from the 60s and 70s are already well known, and anyone who might be embarrassed over Kerry's surveillance is either dead or retired. Can you imagine someone writing a story that says, "FBI Spied On People During The The Vietnam War," and having that shock anyone today? The only people who had anything to fear over those files are the people who were being surveilled -- the VVAW -- and the Kerry campaign.

If you're looking for suspects in the break-in, the police may be interested in a little bit more of the history behind Kerry and his political career (big hat-tip to reader Pat Curley):

Pretense to imaginary forebears may be a misdemeanor as these things go, but breaking and entering is not. Heard of Watergate? Get ready for Lowellgate.

On Sept. 18, 1972, the evening before the primary election during his second attempt for Congress, Kerry's brother Cameron and one Thomas Vallely, both part of his current campaign team, were arrested by Lowell police at 1:40 a.m. and charged with breaking and entering with the intent to commit larceny. The two were apprehended in the basement of a building whose door had been forced open, police said. It housed the headquarters of candidate DiFruscia. The Watergate scandal was making headlines at this time, and it was called the Lowell Watergate.

"They wanted to sever my telephone lines," DiFruscia said recently. Had those lines been cut, Kerry's opponent would not have been able to telephone supporters on Election Day to get out the vote and coordinate poll watchers, vital roles in a close election. "I do not know if they wanted to break into my office," says DiFruscia today. At the time he said, "All my IBM cards and the list of my voter identification in the greater Lowell area are in my headquarters."

Since both men are currently working for the Kerry campaign, perhaps they can explain why they're still working in politics after emulating Richard Nixon in 1972 and where they were last week when this break-in occurred. Until those boxes are returned and the culprits identified, the Kerry campaign certainly seems the likeliest suspect.