Impeach Judge Carter (Updated Response)

As part of my focus on the case of Justin Farnsworth, a convicted sex offender given custody by Dakota County Judge Jospeh T. Carter of an unrelated 9-year-old girl Farnsworth raped for months, I have sent letters to my representatives at the Minnesota Legislature urging them to impeach the judge.

To the honorable Senator Mike McGinn and Representative Tim Wilkin,

As one of your constituents, I must express to you my profound disappointment and dismay with the performance of Judge Joseph T. Carter in Dakota County. In a decision earlier this year, Judge Carter granted custody of three little girls to Justin Paul Farnsworth, who lived with the girls' mother. At the time, both Judge Carter and the court-appointed investigator, David Jaehne, knew that Farnsworth was a registered sex offender who had raped a 13-year-old girl ten years earlier. Despite this information, Judge Carter granted custody to Farnsworth of not only the youngest two, who are his daughters, but also the oldest, a 9-year-old unrelated to Farnworth at all.

As almost anyone but a family court judge could have guessed, Farnsworth repeatedly raped and abused the 9-year-old for months until she was rescued by a neighbor.

Judge Carter failed to follow Minnesota state law requiring judges to appoint a guardian ad litem for the children during the custody process. The abandonment of the children by the mother and the sex-offender status of the petitioner should have demonstrated an obvious need for an advocate to speak on behalf of the three girls. His failure to follow the law as well as to apply any standard of common sense disqualifies him for the bench, in my view, if not from the Bar altogether.

Any man with a shred of honor would resign his post under these circumstances. If Judge Carter does not act with honor, I urge you to initiate impeachment proceedings against Judge Joseph T. Carter. We must not wait until he allows more children to be raped and abused before removing him from his office.

Thank you for your attention to this serious matter.

My earlier posts on this subject can be found here, here, and here. If you want to make your voice heard, you can reach Senator McGinn and Representative Wilkins by e-mail:

rep.tim.wilkin@house.mn
sen.mike.mcginn@senate.mn

UPDATE: Thanks to the people who have written or commented on this story. In fact, I think letters, e-mails, and phone calls from outside the county/district would be very helpful, as it will underscore the national revulsion people feel about Judge Carter's actions and the embarrassment he's caused Dakota County and Minnesota. When I get a response, I will post it immediately. If I don't hear anything back by Wednesday, I plan on making some phone calls.

James of Folsom -- a regular Northern Alliance reader and one of the Infinite Monkeys -- pointed out that a recall mechanism exists in Minnesota for judges. I'm looking into whether this qualifies.

Another Kristofian Fantasy

Nicholas Kristof once again takes the germ of a good idea and twists it into senselessness. Kristof starts off his latest column by pointing out the damage that the lack of competition in House races has done to the electorate. As he notes, getting elected to the House once often means lifetime employment:

The U.S. electoral system looks increasingly dysfunctional, and those of us who used to mock the old Soviet or Iraqi "elections" for lacking competition ought to be blushing.

In Arkansas, 75 percent of state legislative races this year were uncontested by either the Republicans or by the Democrats. The same was true of 73 percent of the seats in Florida, 70 percent in South Carolina, 62 percent in New Mexico.

And Congressional races were an embarrassment. Only seven incumbents in the House of Representatives lost their seats this month. Four of those were in Texas, where the Republican Legislature gerrymandered Democrats out of their seats.

He is right; turnover of less than 2% makes the House look less like the people's forum in government and more like a patronage system. Federal employment turns over more than that. He indulges in a bit of hyperbole to make his point -- the Soviets didn't allow anyone but Communists to run, of course -- but nonetheless he uses it effectively to shame ourselves.

Unfortunately, Kristof runs off the rails after that. After suggesting "nonpartisan" independent commissions to conduct reapportionment (is anyone nonpartisan anymore?), Kristof wants to dump the Constitution and elect presidents by direct vote:

Eliminate the Electoral College, so that the president is chosen by popular vote. This was seriously discussed as a constitutional amendment after the 1968 election, when George Wallace's third-party candidacy could have prevented Richard Nixon from receiving a majority of the electoral vote. And in this election, if just 21,000 voters had changed their votes in Nevada, New Mexico and Iowa, the electoral vote would have been tied and the choice of the president would have gone to the House.

In other words, Kristof wants the President selected by New York, Massachussetts, Texas, California, and Florida. Kristof compares the Electoral College unfavorably to the election in Afghanistan, but the truth is that America is a much larger, more far-flung country than Afghanistan; the electorate here differs widely between rural, suburban, and urban settings, as well as regionally. Kristof's vision would lead to the diktat of urban centers over the rest of the United States, a result I'm certain Kristof desires. Gone would be private-property rights and a host of other issues crucial to farmers, ranchers, and others.

All you need to know about that suggestion is contained in the county-based map of the presidential election. Kristof would have the sparse blue districts dictating policy to the vast red areas.

The last suggestion Kristof makes, however, transforms him from Machiavellian to moronic:

Funnel campaign donations through a blind trust. The funkiest idea in politics is to make donations anonymous even to the recipient. Citizens would make contributions through a blind trust, so that candidates wouldn't know to whom they were beholden.

If officials don't know who their major contributors are, they can't invite them to spend the night in the Lincoln Bedroom or write tax loopholes. A donor might boast about having made a contribution, but special interests will realize they can save money by telling politicians that they have donated when they haven't, and then politicians will doubt these boasts.

This one gave me a fit of the giggles until I realized he was serious. With money disappearing into all sorts of 527 ratholes in this past election, Kristof thinks the solution is to make all donations untraceable. Brilliant! I especially like the part about all the boasting making politicians doubt their constituents. I guess Kristof is unaware of a relatively new invention called the "receipt". It's necessary for all money transactions these days. How difficult is it to show a candidate the paper record of a transaction? How about another new invention, the "cancelled check"?

If you want campaign-finance reform, the best method is to quit being so hypocritical about it and insist on full disclosure. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, and requiring instant disclosure on all donations will immediately allow the public to know who finances any campaign. End the silly distinctions between different uses of the same money, and force the cash back into the campaigns to make the candidates politically responsible for its use. Eliminate the 527 tax benefit for outside organizations. If people want to form groups to campaign for their cause, they don't have a right to be tax-exempt while doing so.

Nicholas Kristof and the New York Times have a vested interest in eliminating the Electoral College and hiding campaign contributions, but that doesn't make either one our national interest. If the Democrats fielded better candidates and quit being the party of conspiracy theorists, isolationists, and rabid anarchists, they might win a few elections regardless of the Electoral College.

The Face Of Victory

UPI reports on the changing face of liberated Iraq by featuring sergeant in the new Iraqi Army, Ismin Norhan. The 19-year-old non-commissioned officer is trained, tough, and motivated for victory.

And, by the way, she's a woman:

Norhan's brown hair is pulled back into a bun and tucked under an army cap, unlike the heads of virtually every woman she checks, which are covered by long scarves. She commands at least eight privates as a sergeant. And she speaks English.

"It's good for me to be here," Norhan said. "People are surprised when they see me, but I like the work." ...

It's not easy to be a woman in the fledgling military corps, which is under attack by insurgents and fighting other security problems. Norhan says many people look her in the eye and say it's not suitable for a woman to work outside the house. In Iraq's traditional society, women were allowed only in medical roles in the military under former president Saddam Hussein. It's predominantly men one sees out on the streets in the cities of Iraq. But some women also work in government ministries and in other professions.

"I hear many negative comments from men and women. I don't answer them," Norhan said. "Women also complain when I search them. I tell them it's for their own safety."

Privates in her unit trust her because she is good at her job, Pvt. Mohammed Abdel Munam, 21, said. The group works as a team, forged by their bond of going through training together that included house searches, how to shoot weapons, physical fitness and how to run military checkpoints.

"I'm proud of our ability to work together, because there were no females in the army before," Munam said. "We are comfortable together."

Victory in this war will come in these revolutionary and evolutionary changes. We will not watch a document of surrender being signed on the deck of the Missouri, with the media dutifully recording it for posterity. al-Qaeda will not send a representative to Zurich to negotiate a truce.

Instead, we must watch for the true victories, such as a successful national election in Afghanistan, where both women and men participated in roughly equal numbers. We must celebrate when allies such as Pakistan capture important members of the terrorist networks, which lead inevitably to more captures and the breaking of conspiracies. We have to salute heroes like Ismin Norhan, who feel secure enough to insist on doing her part to help a free Iraq stand on its own.

While capturing or killing Osama bin Laden would be a tremendous tactical and strategic win, the war won't be over until the oppressed are liberated and terrorism discarded as the only means of political expression. Once we get there, as in Europe, we may find that the people of the region will oppose us in multilateral organizations as they find their own voices and represent their own interests. Freely elected leaders who have to answer to their constituents will disappoint us diplomatically and economically. We'll harrumph about ingratitude, but that will also be victory; they won't be blowing us or themselves to bits.

I'm looking forward to the chagrin.

With Specter Humbled, 109th Senate May Be Smooth Sailing

John Tabin wrote in today's American Spectator that the groundswell of outrage surrounding Arlen Specter's comments and pending chairmanship of the Senate Judiciary Committee has had a salutary effect on the GOP. Tabin argues convincingly that the debate has caused Specter to retreat substantially on his independence of action:

If Specter makes trouble for conservative nominees during the next two years, his betrayal, he must now realize, will have consequences. His fellow Senators were nearly willing to throw away precedents to deny him his chairmanship because of conservative mistrust of the kind of things Specter might do as Judiciary Chairman; Specter would be a fool to give them an immediately recent record to point to. As liberal Sam Rosenfeld wistfully put it on the American Prospect's blog earlier this week, "Arlen Specter the independent and outspoken senior senator from Pennsylvania has already lost out on the chairmanship, and at best an empty vessel for carrying out the White House's judicial priorities in the droopy visage of Arlen Specter will be taking the helm."

He says that like it's a bad thing.

Put simply, giving Specter what he desires most under threat of taking it away at the first sign of betrayal keeps Specter on a leash, while cutting him loose would have left him free to cause all sorts of problems in the next session. Now Specter has been forced to commit his unconditional support not only for all of Bush's nominees and reject any abortion litmus test, but also to endorse the so-called nuclear option -- a rule change forbidding filibusters on judicial nominees. Strategically, it's as close to unconditional surrender as one can get.

But how likely will a filibuster be? Mathematically, they're still possible; the GOP only has 55 votes, and it takes 60 to pass a cloture motion ending debate. Republicans have to convince 5 Senators to stop a filibuster, better odds than they had in this session but still not a sure thing.

Looking ahead to the next election cycle -- and yes, I hear all of you groaning out there -- a surprising fact emerges: Senate Democrats carry more risk in 2006 than their GOP counterparts. First, more of them have to defend their seats in 2006, 17 against 15 for Republicans and one independent (Jim Jeffords of Vermont). Looking at the margin of victory or defeat (negative numbers) for George Bush in their states, the Democrats up for reelection averaged a "Bush factor" of -1.95. The 15 GOP Senators, in comparison, have a Bush factor of 12.26, meaning that their states are much more reliably Republican.

A look at individual races shows this gap even more clearly. Republicans only have to defend three seats where Bush lost: Olympia Snowe in Maine (-8.6), Rick Santorum in Pennsylvania (-2.2), and Lincoln Chafee in Rhode Island (-20.6). Of these, only Chafee really carries any risk, but mostly because of the risk that Chafee will either go independent or switch to the Democrats. They couldn't convince him to do that this week, but you can bet they'll try it again, given their problems in 2006.

Democrats have to defend seats in five red states, compared to the three blue states for the GOP, and the gaps are much sharper:

Bill Nelson, Florida - +5.0
Jeff Bingaman, New Mexico - +1.1
Ben Nelson, Nebraska - +33.5
Kent Conrad, North Dakota - +27.4
Robert Byrd, West Virginia - +12.7

Of these, at least Ben Nelson is unlikely to sustain a filibuster anyway, but none of these five can feel sanguine about their ability to defend their seats if they acquire a reputation for obstructionism. Robert Byrd probably won't run for re-election at his age, but getting a Democrat to replace him will be critical for his fellow party members. Conrad's partner Byron Dorgan got re-elected even with the Bush landslide in North Dakota but only because he successfully distanced himself from the naked partisanship of Tom Daschle.

The Democrats may come out talking tough, but they've sat through two election cycles where the GOP have defied history to take more and more seats from them. Harry Reid will be looking at these numbers when he devises the minority strategy for the Senate in the next session and will do whatever he can to stop the bleeding. He'll be lucky not to lose more ground to the GOP in two years, and he won't risk Daschle's open partisan warfare that marginalized the Democrats the past four years.

Judge Carter Broke Policy To Hand Child To Sex Offender

In a follow-up to yesterday's story on Judge Joseph T. Carter's decision to give permanent custody of an unrelated 9-year-old girl to a registered sex offender, the Pioneer Press reports today that Carter broke the rules by not appointing a child advocate in the process:

A court-appointed evaluator who recommended earlier this year that convicted sex offender Justin Farnsworth get custody of his girlfriend's daughter said Thursday he now wishes a Dakota County judge had appointed a child advocate to speak on the child's behalf.

Evaluator David Jaehne, a West St. Paul attorney, said he spoke with the girl and visited the Hastings home before recommending she permanently live with Farnsworth, 31.

"I always talk to the kids. I always go to the home. I interview neighbors," Jaehne said.

But Jaehne said he didn't appear in court. He filed his report to Judge Joseph T. Carter, who last month awarded custody to Farnsworth without appointing an advocate for the child.

On Wednesday, Farnsworth was charged with three counts of felony sexual misconduct involving the girl. Farnsworth is in the Dakota County jail in Hastings on $300,000 bond. ...

Minnesota statute requires judges to appoint guardians ad litem — children's advocates — for children involved in child protection cases where there is alleged domestic violence, child abuse or neglect. Judges can also choose to appoint a guardian in difficult custody cases. Guardians represented 12,500 children in Minnesota last year.

To recap, Jaehne recommended to Carter that custody of Farnsworth's two biological daughters be granted to him permanently after the mother abandoned the children, even though at the time Farnsworth had to register as a sex offender after raping a 13-year-old girl ten years previously. Inexplicably, Jaehne and Carter also gave custody of a third older girl to Farnsworth even though the two are not blood-related; all three girls share the same mother. This older girl ran to a neighbor three weeks later and told her that Farnsworth had been raping her for months.

Yesterday's story had no mention of any other option for placing the children, but today's article mentions a fourth girl who lived with blood relations:

It's not clear what other options the judge could have had, but according to Jaehne's report, Farnsworth's girlfriend had an older child living with her parents.

None of the girls should have been placed in the care of a sex offender, but placing a girl with no relation to the molester in his permanent custody when relatives existed and already had custody of one of the other children means that no excuses exist for the placement of the 9-year-old. Carter and Jaehne rushed this case through without pursuing any other options, without following procedures, in order to hand three little girls over to a convicted rapist.

Why? Both Carter and Jaehne described Farnsworth as a "success story." With the Dru Sjodin case heightening focus on jailing sex offenders for long prison terms, I think they wanted a case to show Minnesotans that sex offenders could be rehabilitated. They used the girls as pawns in a social experiment that went tragically and catastrophically awry. Either that or they're just so frickin' dumb that they couldn't see anything wrong with giving three little girls to a sex offender ... and I'm not sure which reason would be worse.

Minnesotans should demand the resignations of Jaehne and Carter immediately, and if they're not forthcoming, the state legislature should investigate their options for impeachment of Judge Carter.

Iranians Flip-Flop On Nuclear Agreement

In a rhetorical flourish that recalls the best (or worst) of the Clinton Administration and the John Kerry campaign, Iran apparently has decided to stop their refinement of uranium into weapons precursors only after they've made enough of it to turn into weapons:

Iran is preparing large amounts of uranium for enrichment, a process that can be used to make nuclear weapons, days before its promise to freeze all such activities takes effect, Western diplomats said on Friday.

"The Iranians are producing UF6 (uranium hexafluoride) like hell," a diplomat on the governing board of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) told Reuters. "The machines are running." ...

On Sunday, Tehran promised France, Britain and Germany it would freeze its enrichment program in a bid to ease concerns that its nuclear plans are aimed at producing atomic weapons -- a charge it denies -- and to escape a referral to the U.N. Security Council when the IAEA meets on Nov. 25.

Diplomats said they had expected Iran to freeze the program as of last Sunday, the day the deal was reached.

Is anyone paying any attention at all to the Iranian mullahcracy's history? Anyone who thought that the Iranians meant what they said last Sunday, that they were committed to peaceful uses of nuclear power, has to have their head examined. Once again, the Iranians have manipulated the overly credulous Europeans into providing them a diplomatic window in which to pursue their nuclear-weapons ambitions. This window is pretty tight, which tells me that they're much closer to producing a weapon than is commonly thought.

It's may be too late for the UN Security Council to have any effect on Iran's production of the bomb. The EU-3 need to step aside and allow the UNSC to quickly demonstrate whether they'll act or not to stop them. If not, then it falls to Israel and the US, who are the two most likely targets of the nuclear weapons once produced.

The Gloves Are Off

In a welcome development, joint US-Iraqi forces have decided that mosques are no longer privileged areas after seeing so many of them used as terrorist bases in Fallujah. A Baghdad mosque used to exhort Sunnis to join the insurgency was raided earlier today and a firefight broke out:

Iraqi forces, backed by U.S. soldiers, stormed one of the major Sunni Muslim mosques in Baghdad after Friday prayers, opening fire and killing at least three people, witnesses said. In the battle for control of Mosul, Iraqi forces raided several areas overnight, killing 15 insurgents, Iraqi and U.S. military officials said. ...

About 40 people were arrested at the Abu Hanifa mosque in the capital's northwestern Azamiyah neighborhood, said the witnesses, who were members of the congregation. Another five people were wounded.

The message should be clear to terrorists and the would-be lunatics: no hiding place is safe from the new Iraqi government or the Coalition troops determined to ensure its survival. Political correctness has gone far enough. If Muslims have so little respect for their mosques that they use them as weapons caches, recruitment centers, and sniper positions, then we will honor their actions and declare them open territory.

Centrisity Promoting Benefit For Ailing Friend

Local blogger Flash from Centrisity is promoting a benefit for a friend, Ron Rice, who is struggling with esophageal cancer. The American Legion in Chanhassen will be hosting a spaghetti dinner, silent auction, and bake sale tonight from 4 - 9 pm. If you're in the area, be sure to drop by and give a hand. If you can't be there, perhaps you can reach out in other ways. Flash has the contact information you need to help.

Digital Downloads To Rescue Music Industry?

The music industry has warned that they face certain economic doom thanks to Internet piracy. Their trade organization, the RIAA, has pressed forward with an aggressive strategy of lawsuits designed to punish individuals who download music illegally as well as force CD manufacturers to include intricate and intrusive security measures. However, the Guardian reports that at least one major record company credits the Internet for reversing their steep declines:

The music group EMI today said the music industry was bouncing back from the effects of internet piracy, with lawsuits against file traders having had an "educational and deterrent" effect. Although the global music industry recorded a decline of 1.3% in the first half of 2004, that figure represented a 9.6% improvement on the same period in 2003. ...

EMI, the world's third largest label and home to artists including Radiohead and Norah Jones, said its digital music revenues had more than quadrupled in the six months to September 30.

The figure was boosted by the success of mobile phone ringtone sales and online stores such as Apple's iTunes. Digital sales of £12.2m in the first half represented more than 2% of group turnover.

Demand for songs downloaded via computer has surged since Apple launched its iTunes music stores in the UK, France and Germany in June. Microsoft, Tesco and Coca-Cola have also entered the market.

I've understood the industry's war on illegal downloads; after all, as a writer, I'd hardly want others profiting from my work or even disseminating it without my permission. Singers and songwriters deserve compensation for their work, but the music industry's approach often looks more like monasteries trying to sue Gutenberg's printing press out of the market. It doesn't address the reality of a revolution in communication.

The advent of high-speed networking brought technology like Napster and Kazaa, systems that swapped large files over the Internet in a short period of time, without allowing both industries to create new economic models to exploit them. Now, with several years to work solutions, the record industry should have retooled themselves to take advantage of the technology instead of fighting it.

Why should they continue to put themselves in the media-manufacturing business when consumers have demonstrated a willingness to either perform the task themselves or forgo it altogether? The material cost of the CDs, packaging, printing of labels, and shipping product to stores all add to their overhead. Instead of spending all of that money, they could replace at least a substantial part of it by selling music by the song over high-speed Internet connections. The only material costs would be the servers themselves, and the ongoing expense would just be the Internet pipes they lease for connections.

Once all of the record companies shifted to the new model, the change would be revolutionary for the companies themselves and for the consumers. Listeners could download only those tracks they find interesting, while record companies could package albums at a reduced rate to encourage a unit purchase. Consumers could burn their own CDs if they want, or simply load the tracks onto MP3 devices or hard drives (or both). No song would have to go out of distribution ever again, due to the lack of cost for hosting the track. Singers and songwriters would still collect royalties on music that had long gone dormant without convincing a record company to incur the material costs of a re-issue.

Properly managed, such an economic model would benefit the entire market. Unfortunately, up to now the record industry has focused more on establishing an adversarial relationship with their customers instead of listening to what they want. Any industry that does that over a long period of time will experience the decline that the recording industry has suffered. Perhaps EMI's recognition of the new market will finally wake up the other major players to resolve their difficulties in a way that benefits everyone.

Pakistan Bags Another One

Our Pakistani allies have racked up another high-profile al-Qaeda capture, this one wanted for the attempted assassination of Pervez Musharraf and the murder of an American diplomat's family. Osama Nazir planned and executed several bombings of Christian targets and served as an important AQ conduit:

Osama Nazir, considered an important catch, was nabbed from the industrial city of Faisalabad in central Punjab province on Tuesday, a senior security official told AFP.

"He is the most important Pakistani Al-Qaeda operative who was facilitating foreign Al-Qaeda operatives for attacks in Pakistan," the official, who asked not to be identified, said. "He is a prized catch and was a main link between foreign Al-Qaeda operatives and local jihadi (Islamic militant) groups."

Nazir headed a group of 24 militants and masterminded the March 2002 attack on a Church in Islamabad's high security diplomatic enclave in which five people including a US diplomat's wife and stepdaughter were killed.

The US put a $5 million bounty on his head after the murder of the Americans in Islamabad. I'm sure that Pervez Musharraf had an even bigger reward in mind for the capture of his would-be assassin. Nazir, in a way, helped create this partnership between Pakistan and America on the war by making the strategic mistake of attacking the Pakistani head of state. Prior to the assassination attempts (Nazir was not the only AQ operative to try it), Musharraf had been at best a reluctant member of the coalition, under tremendous pressure from the US. Since the lunatics first attacked, Musharraf has been much more enthusiastic about smoking out his one-time allies and the difference has shown in the rash of arrests this year.

The intelligence gets better with every capture, and their networks degrade in at least a direct proportion. George Bush warned us that the war would be long and many battles would not be fought in front of the cameras. His diplomacy in piecing together a Muslim front on this war has paid huge dividends, and at the end, I believe history will show it to have been the decisive factor in the victory.

Common Sense From An Uncommon Source

In a surprising development, the Illinois Supreme Court has smacked down an attempt to use the tort system to put gun manufacturers out of business. In an unanimous ruling, the seven justices told lawyers that gun manufacturers have no responsibility for the crime committed by others with their products:

The Illinois Supreme Court threw out two lawsuits accusing gunmakers of knowingly letting weapons fall into the hands of gang members and other criminals, in a ruling Thursday that the manufacturers cannot legally be blamed for street violence. ...

"The mere fact that defendants' conduct in their plants, offices and stores puts guns into the stream of commerce does not state a claim for public nuisance," the court said. "It is the presence and use of the guns within the city of Chicago that constitutes the alleged nuisance."

The city sought $433 million, the amount it claims it paid in law enforcement and emergency medical treatment for gun violence over four years. The families were seeking unspecified damages.

The court heard two appeals on the same subject and ruled in favor of common sense unanimously in both. In another sign that some courts understand the Constitutional separation of powers, five of the seven justices wrote an opinion urging the state legislature to regulate gun sales and ownership more carefully. While I disagree with the thrust of their argument, the fact that they passed up the opportunity to simply legislate their wishes from the bench and deferred to the legislature instead demonstrates an understanding of the proper role of the judiciary.

Since this is a state court, the precedent this sets is probably limited in scope. However, the trial lawyers who look to get rich off of weapons manufacturers the same as they did from the tobacco industry will surely appeal this decision to the federal courts. Perhaps common sense will also prevail in that venue.

Another Great Moment In Education (UK Edition)

When Robin Williams taught his students the principle of carpe diem in The Dead Poets Society, he did so through impassioned speeches about truth and beauty, as well as an unhealthy dose of rebellion. When an unnamed teacher at a Manchester high school tried inspiring her students to seize the day, she evoked Bruce Willis' Armageddon instead of anything inspirational, and wound up scaring the hell out of a bunch of teenagers:

A schoolteacher, attempting to motivate her pupils into making the most of each day, told them a meteorite was about to smash into the Earth and that they should all return home to say goodbye to their families. ...

The unnamed female teacher made the announcement to around 250 pupils at St Matthew's Roman Catholic High School during their regular morning assembly.

Saying she had bad news, the teacher announced that a meteor would strike the Earth in 10 days' time, and that they should return home and say their "final farewells" to their parents.

After the crowd of 13- and 14-year-olds looked on in horror, and many burst into tears, the teacher swiftly explained that she was only trying to encourage them to "seize the day".

I suppose it may be a bit difficult to come up with inspiring new methods of teaching the same old truths, but telling a group of teenagers that they're all going to die in 10 days just seems like a bad idea in more than one way. Besides the initial fright and panic, just how did this teacher presume that hormonal teenagers would seize the ten days left that they had to live? Presumably, they would not spend them in libraries, pondering the words of dead poets and sniffing flowers along the way.

I don't know if dismissal is in order for this stupidity. Maybe the school administration should tell her that since her doctors have informed the school that she's dying of a terminal illness and only has a few months left to live, she'd be happier spending the little time she has left seizing the day -- elsewhere.

Strib And Minnesota Bar Try Covering For Judge Carter

Tomorrow's Star Tribune carries a defense for Judge Jospeh T. Carter, who granted permanent custody of three little girls to a known registered sex offender, one of which wasn't even related to him. As I wrote earlier and as anyone with a working cerebrum could guess, the sex offender wound up raping the unrelated young girl for months before she finally sought help from a neighbor.

The Strib reports on the response from Minnesota Bar Association president David Stowman. Stowman spoke on behalf of Judge Carter, who has declined to comment on the case. Carter's decision was based on "numerous factors", according to Stowman:

• Farnsworth's prior sexual assault was 10 years ago, and the Dakota County Community Corrections Department has since described him as a "success story."

• The court-appointed evaluator conducted a custody study that recommended that Farnsworth be awarded custody of the 9-year-old girl.

• The girl's mother asked Carter to award custody to Farnsworth, and no one, including the girl's father, who failed to appear, objected.

Let's take these "factors" one at a time:

• Farnsworth managed to stay clean, or at least not get caught, during his probation, which ended in June. Big deal. Perhaps Judge Carter would like to have his children or grandchildren stay with felony sex offenders for a weekend or two if they've managed to get past their probationary period.

• The court-appointed evaluator, David Jaehne, apparently has a similar intelligence level of Judge Carter, which explains why they agreed on this matter.

• The girls' mother hooked up with a sex offender who'd raped a 13-year-old girl and was on probation for it at the time. She then abandoned the three of them to the pervert for months. Still, Stowman and Crater seem to place great store in her judgment about the welfare of her children. What's wrong with that picture?

It's really quite simple, despite the efforts of the Minnesota Bar and the Strib to distract Minnesotans. Two officers of our courts decided that leaving three young girls with a convicted sex offender was a good idea, despite the option of looking for other relatives or even qualified foster homes. How difficult is it to see that Carter and Jaehne made a terrible decision, one with easily-foreseeable disastrous consequences? Instead of watching out for the best interests of the girls, the two of them latched onto the notion of showing off their "success story".

The worst that can happen to Carter and Jaehne is that they lose their jobs. A young girl, who already had to deal with her mother running out on her, now has to live in the aftermath of months of abuse and rape thanks to Dakota County's Dunderhead Duo. Let's not make a bunch of lame excuses for her suffering on top of it all.

Washington Post Fires Ted Rall

In a move eerily foreshadowed by my complaint about Steve Bell and The Guardian, the Washington Post has announced that they will no longer carry Ted Rall's despicable editorial cartoons. After a career of crude scribbles conveying even cruder sentiments, Rall's cartoon depicting a developmentally disabled student taking over a classroom as an allegory for the election provided the final straw for the Post:

WashingtonPost.com is no longer running the cartoons of hard-hitting liberal Ted Rall.

Rall said he thinks the site dropped his work because of a Nov. 4 cartoon he did showing a drooling, mentally handicapped student taking over a classroom. "The idea was to draw an analogy to the electorate -- in essence, the idiots are now running the country," he told E&P.

"That cartoon certainly drew a significant amount of negative comment from our users," said WashingtonPost.com Executive Editor Doug Feaver when contacted by E&P. But he added that the decision to drop Rall was a "cumulative" one that had been building for a while.

"Ted Rall does very interesting work," Feaver said. "Some of it is not funny to an awful lot of people. We decided at the end of the day that it just did not fit the tone we wanted at WashingtonPost.com."

That's an understatement. Rall's work wasn't funny to almost anyone except Rall, and perhaps not even him. An undercurrent of hatred runs through everything Rall produced, marking him not as a cynical observer but as a seething demagogue who didn't give a damn who or what stood in his way of making his point. He portrayed the 9/11 families as nothing more than greedy widows worrying about nothing more than making a buck; he went out of his way to insult Pat Tillman's memory after his combat death in Afghanistan. We bloggers complain about a lot of people in the media, such as Dan Rather, Chris Matthews, or the Post's own Dana Milbank for their biases. Ted Rall belongs in his own category; he is truly a despicable human being.

Rall, of course, refuses to admit he did anything that justifies his firing:

Rall said he was dropped for one "boneheaded" drawing when WashingtonPost.com has "no problem with 99% of my work." He noted that the site could have pulled the one cartoon without canceling him entirely.

"Nobody bats a thousand -- not me, not anyone," said Rall. "Strong editorial cartoonists take risks. Sometimes they cross the line. Actions like the Post's encourage the kind of timidity that has blandified not just editorial cartoons, but newspaper content overall."

What a typically narcissistic remark, as if no other editorial cartoonist exists outside of Rall. As I wrote in the earlier post, the American stable of cartoonists do brilliant and diverse work, while Rall plays in his own excrement. Rall even plays the pathetic First Amendment ca(na)rd:

"I don't think censorship is ever the answer," mentioning that he publicly opposed campaigns to fire or boycott conservatives Rush Limbaugh and Dr. Laura Schlessinger for that reason.

Governments censor -- private entities exercise editorial judgment. The Washington Post finally exercised theirs. Rall can maintain his "strident liberal voice" from his own website, where his clumsy artwork can spread his message of hatred and vituperation to his blackhearted content.

UPDATE: If you want to see Rall's Nov. 8th cartoon that set the wheels of justice in motion, you can see it here. It's about as disgusting as you could imagine.

UPDATE II: As usual, McQ at QandO and I are in complete agreement.

Time to Spy

According to the USA Today, CIA Director Porter Goss told the new chief of operations to be “aggressive.” Sounds like a cheer from my high school cheerleading days . . . “Be aggressive! Be, be aggressive!” But I digress.

Seriously, what have our spies been doing if not spying? Well, there’s been tell-all books to write and a Kerry campaign to support with dramatically-timed “leaks.” They’ve been much too busy to actually spy on our enemies and need a well-placed boot in the [explicative deleted]. Granted, there are many hard-working, self-sacrificing, patriotic agents out there, but the agency as a whole has been ineffective and lately, almost treasonous.

A source tells the USA Today that Goss’ new espionage plan involves deploying undercover officers to penetrate terrorist groups and rogue states such as North Korea and Iran. The paper reports:

The risky new strategy would be a sharp departure from the CIA's traditional style of human intelligence, in which field officers under flimsy cover as diplomats in U.S. embassies try to recruit foreign spies and gather tips from allied intelligence services. Those methods don't work with terror groups or in countries where the United States has no embassies, such as prewar Iraq or present-day North Korea and Iran.

The new strategy is dangerous - agents could gather much better information but would run a much higher risk of being killed if found out. Goss hinted at this strategy during his confirmation hearing and has told agency officials it is key to his effort to revamp the agency to meet new and unconventional threats.

Former CIA agent Reuel Marc Gerecht’s Weekly Standard article from July 2004 is instructive when it comes to shaking up the intelligence service. (Hat tip: Belmont Club) He offers the following concrete suggestions for reform:

Successful espionage operations against al Qaeda and other Islamic terrorist organizations would be defined by the efforts of a small group of men who seed themselves into these organizations. Some, probably most, of these men would need to be actual case officers--CIA employees--not foreign agents the CIA has recruited. The complexity of the task, target, and culture demands a level and reliability of information that would come much more easily from case officers acting as jihadists. The CIA will be a serious espionage organization ready for the twenty-first century only when its professional ranks are dominated in numbers and influence by such officers, who operate far away from U.S. embassies and consulates.

This means the days of operating under State Department cover are over, at least for some agents. But counter espionage is just not suited for the average CIA recruit, and this will demand a change in hiring practices.

The entire system for finding, training, and deploying overseas case officers of this type needs to be completely overhauled. The "farm," the legendary training ground for case officers in the woody swamps of Virginia, ought to be abandoned. It has never had much relevance to the practice of espionage overseas. It is a symbol of the Agency's lack of seriousness. This new cadre needs to be a breed apart. Their operational half-life in the field might be at most ten years. It is hard to imagine them married and with kids. It is also hard to imagine their coming into being unless these jihadist moles are well paid. A starting salary of a quarter of a million dollars a year would be reasonable. Outsiders will know such a change is afoot when there are rumors of case officers' regularly dying abroad.

There are many young, physically courageous and loyal Americans, and it’s up to the CIA to seek them out and employ them. But this can’t be a politically-correct process, especially when it comes to infiltrating Islamic terrorists groups. The CIA will have to recruit young men of Arab origin instead of white women from Ivy League grad schools.

This change is long, long overdue. Better late than never, though.

The French Fought in Iraq . . .

. . . . . for the enemy. The BBC reports that three Frenchmen died fighting for the terrorists in Iraq. All were young men of Arab origin. (Note: This does not indicate a profile! We would never be so politically incorrect as to suggest such.)

At least a dozen other Frenchmen have traveled to Iraq to join the insurgency, but this report is probably grossly underestimated. At this rate, the only Frenchmen with military experience will be those making such a mess of the Ivory Coast and those fighting for the Islamofacists. Democrats will continue to insist our efforts are not legitimate without help from that courageous nation.

Only A Judge Couldn't Have Foreseen This

You can file this story under criminal stupidity -- on the part of a Twin Cities judge. The Pioneer Press reports that a convicted sex offender has molested again, this time raping his girlfriend's daughter after Judge Joseph T. Carter gave him custody despite his criminal record:

Even though Justin Paul Farnsworth was a convicted sex offender, a Dakota County judge agreed to give the Hastings man primary custody of his girlfriend's daughter and the couple's two other children. The judge said it was in the "best interest" of the children.

On Wednesday, Farnsworth, 31, was charged with sexually molesting the girlfriend's daughter — just three weeks after gaining permanent custody of the girl, who is younger than 10. The little girl cried to neighbors about the sexual abuse and Farnsworth admitted molesting the girl for months, telling police that "whatever she said, I did," according to the criminal complaint.

Judge Carter and the Dakota County court-appointed attorney, David Jaehne, decided that Farnsworth was one of Minnesota's "success stories" and awarded him custody despite being a registered sex offender. Not only did Carter give Farnsworth custody of his two biological daughters, but later gave him custody of the girlfriend's daughter, who was not related to Farnsworth at all. Why?

In an earlier court order, Carter concluded that the mother had "abandoned the children" and pointed out that Child Protection Services was investigating her "parenting style."

The mother could not be reached for comment.

Evidently, Carter and Jaehne were much more impressed with Farnsworth's parenting style, which the unchallenged indictment states included forcing the girl to watch pornography as a prelude to rape. Needless to say, child-welfare workers in Minnesota are less than impressed with the two mouthbreathers:

"It's outrageous they didn't do more in terms of investigating," said Gail Chang Bohr, executive director of the Children's Law Center of Minnesota. "It's very tragic. It's not what we should be doing for kids. The question is, did anyone try to find out from the child if she felt happy and safe?" ...

Child advocates said Wednesday the decision to award custody of a nonbiological child to a felon with a criminal sexual history was startling.

"I've seen judges screen out parents for a lot less criminal infractions than that. This one, I would have thought, would have raised concerns," said Loretta Smith, a staff attorney with the Children's Law Center. "He wouldn't qualify for a foster-care license."

This happened in my home county, and you can be sure that I will stay on top of developments in this case. Carter and Jaehne should both be disbarred, if possible, and at the least should be chased from their jobs by Dakota County residents. The callous disregard for Farnsworth's daughters and the third young girl should be a criminal act. If they had a shred of decency in them, both Joseph T. Carter and David Jaehne would resign their positions immediately.

Osama Impotent: Central Command

The deputy commander at Central Command told a press conference today that the Pakistani Army has cut off Osama bin Laden from his organization to such an extent that bin Laden can no longer direct terror operations (via Drudge):

Pakistan's military has been so effective in pressuring al-Qaida leaders hiding in the tribal region of western Pakistan that Osama bin Laden and his top deputies no longer are able to direct terrorist operations, a senior American commander said Thursday.

"They are living in the remotest areas of the world without any communications — other than courier — with the outside world or their people and unable to orchestrate or provide command and control over a terrorist network," said Lt. Gen. Lance Smith, deputy commander of Central Command.

"They are basically on the run and unable to really conduct operations except, in the very long term, provide vision and guidance as Osama bin Laden does when he provides one of those tapes," he added, alluding to a bin Laden video tape released three weeks ago.

Obviously, I'd prefer to see Osama perp-walked back to the US to stand trial for the cowardly murder of 3,000 American civilians, but that seems to be getting closer. It's important not to underestimate what can be done with couriers, but when one cannot guarantee the reliability of the communication, it is limiting in the extreme.

Winter gets quite harsh in that region, so it is somewhat surprising that Pakistan has made the commitment to keep the pressure on all through the season. It's the right thing to do, of course, but it's still nice to see Pakistan playing along. With any luck, we'll bag them when they get desperate.

Kerry To Share The Wealth

Under a great deal of pressure since the DNC discovered his hoarded campaign funds, John Kerry has agreed to give a substantial portion of it to the DNC in order to fund party-building efforts in the next two years:

Under friendly fire, Sen. John Kerry likely will donate a substantial portion of his excess presidential campaign cash to help elect Democratic candidates in 2005 and 2006, advisers said Thursday.

Party leaders, including some of Kerry's top campaign aides, said this week they were surprised and angry to learn that he had more than $15 million in accounts from the Democratic primaries. They demanded to know why the money wasn't spent to help Kerry defeat President Bush or to aid congressional candidates.

There were no easy answers to those questions, officials close to Kerry acknowledged Thursday, but they sought to assure Democrats in a series of telephone calls that the four-term Massachusetts senator was sharing his political wealth.

Kerry's advisors pointed out that they gave the DNC $32 million during the primaries, but that still doesn't explain away the money that sat unused while Kerry rolled towards the convention. (Yesterday's AP report that Kerry left $15 million in the bank from his federal funds was apparently in error, as the AP has since changed the story.) It also doesn't explain why Kerry sat on the cash and watched as the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee borrowed $10 million for races in Texas, where redistricting left them at a distinct disadvantage. Even if Kerry spends the money on Congressional races in 2006, the damage is done; the incumbents in the new districts will have the advantage over new challengers.

Some of Kerry's campaign staff expressed their surprise and dismay over the revelations on his leftover funds. Some Democrats questioned why, if Kerry had $45 million ready to use at the close of the convention, why he didn't just opt out of public financing altogether. He only gained $30 million by opting in, an amount he could easily have raised in the final 60 days leading up to the election. That move would have saved him from being subject to spending limitations and would have forced George Bush to do the same.

All in all, the incompetence of the Kerry campaign reveals itself more and more each day.

Guardian Insults American Soldiers

The British daily The Guardian covers the news from the liberal point of view in the grand British tradition of partisan reporting; its counterpart, the Telegraph, does the same for Conservatives. I normally enjoy reading both papers as they unapologetically highlight the news from their own honest perspectives, unlike our own newspapers that fake objectivity while slanting their product. Also, I find that the Guardian usually features better writing than many of their American cousins.

One of my least favorite parts of the Guardian are their in-house editorial cartoons, drawn crudely by Steve Bell. They're mostly dull, unimaginative, knee-jerk leftist hack jobs. (In fact, editorial cartooning is the one journalistic area in which I feel Americans far excel.) Today's Bell cartoon seems especially egregious to me, as you'll see:

I have no beef about the image of George Bush, although I think the hairy knuckles around the turkey's neck lacks a certain amount of subtlety. President Bush is a big boy and a legitimate target for ridicule by editorialists, no matter how puerile they or their criticisms might be. However, the assignment of the turkey to our armed services that operate under deadly circumstances to the best of their ability goes too far. No one can doubt that Bell intended to disparage the troops, first by picturing them as one of the dumbest animals on the farm, and second by insinuating that as a whole they commit crimes which require presidential pardoning. It's a cheap shot by a talentless hack.

I'd expect something like this from Ted Rall, and perhaps I should have expected it from the Guardian, but I find it insulting, childish, and terribly disappointing. If Bell wants to insult George Bush and Americans as a whole, that's one thing. Insulting the troops in this manner demonstrates nothing but cowardice and a lack of moral fiber that ill befits a newspaper that aspires to international influence.

More Progress In Iraq

Two breaking stories demonstrate the level of success that the combined Iraqi-American forces have achieved in their pacification mission throughout the Sunni Triangle. First, US troops in Fallujah have found the base of operations used by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his al-Qaeda group:

U.S. troops sweeping through Fallujah on Thursday said they believe they have found the main headquarters of the insurgent group headed by Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

In video shot by an embedded CNN cameraman, soldiers walked through an imposing building with concrete columns and with a large sign in Arabic on the wall reading "Al Qaida Organization" and "There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger."

Inside the building, U.S. soldiers found documents, old computers, notebooks, photographs and copies of the Quran.

The terrorists apparently left so quickly that they had to leave their documentation behind, which may allow the Coalition forces many opportunities to identify and neutralize other AQ assets in the region. Normally, intelligence is destroyed prior to abandoning a position, and the fact that this didn't happen at AQ-HQ in Fallujah either means that the onslaught came much more quickly than the terrorists' preparations, or they simply don't know any better. Either way, the oversight in leaving that information behind will likely haunt the Islamist lunatics fleeing Fallujah.

In fact, it could have led to this:

U.S. and Iraqi forces swept Thursday through an insurgent neighborhood in central Baghdad, arresting 104 suspected guerrillas, the Interior Ministry spokesman said. Nine of those arrested were believed to have fled from Fallujah, where U.S. and Iraqi forces launched a major offensive against rebels on Nov. 8.

Most of the arrested were Iraqis, but some came from Syria and Arabs of other nations. The capture of so many at one time also indicates a level of surprise -- which demonstrates that the Americans and the Iraqi government have the momentum and a fair bit of very recent intelligence. Underground insurgencies rarely put that many of their members together at a single point, and it almost sounds like Coalition command received a tip about a meeting.

I would not be surprised if the material found in AQ-HQ leads to more such captures in the next few days.

UPDATE: The New York Times reports that the military doesn't think this was Zarqawi's hideout, but also says that several such bases have been discovered:

Several command and control centers operated by insurgents have been discovered in Falluja, a top Marine officer said today, but he denied reports that one of them was the headquarters of the Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

A great amount of intelligence material was recovered at the centers, including computers and ledgers listing fighters, the officer, Lt. Gen. John F. Sattler, commander of the First Marine Expeditionary Force, said at a briefing outside Falluja, west of Baghdad.

As I said, expect to see that intelligence used in the next few days to gather up a number of terrorists throughout the Sunni Triangle. These dicoveries have a habit of cascading outwards exponentially.

Only Prosecution Will Stop It

Ohio has discovered two verified cases of voter fraud, a husband and wife who voted by absentee ballot and then voted again at the polls, claiming their ballots had been lost. They also have identified at least 18 other possible cases of intentional double-voting. The AP reports that Buckeye State election officials have yet to decide how to handle the case:

Prosecutors were trying to determine Wednesday whether charges should be filed against a couple in Madison County accused of voting twice. In addition, Summit County election workers investigated possible double votes found under 18 names. ...

The couple who voted twice in Madison County cast absentee ballots in October, then voted in person on Election Day, county elections director Gloria Herrel said. The couple said election workers told them their absentee votes were lost, prosecutor Steve Pronai said.

In Summit county, typically the votes were made by absentee ballot or in person, and then a second vote was cast with a provisional ballot in another precinct, elections director Bryan Williams said.

Under Ohio law, people who vote twice could be charged with election fraud, falsification or illegal voting, according the Secretary of State's Office. The maximum penalty for the most severe charge is 18 months in prison.

I fail to see the conundrum here. We have been debating about ensuring the validity of our elections for four years now, after the Florida debacle that gripped the nation for five weeks, throwing the presidential election in doubt. Double voting is fraud. If Ohio wants to discourage people from committing voter fraud, then it has to aggressively prosecute those cases which give them clear evidence of the crime.

If we intend on having clean elections, we have to punish those who attempt to circumvent the controls. Even Afghanistan knows that, and they've had one free election in their entire history. If there are no negative consequences for cheating, within a few election cycles we'll be electing the most efficient crooks instead of the best candidates.

Banning The Bell: National Chains Disconnect From The Communities They Serve

The Boston Globe reported yesterday that the Salvation Army, the pre-eminent charity for supporting the most downtrodden among us, can no longer ring its bells or put its trademark red kettles outside Target or Best Buy stores as the national chains get positively Grinchy about their no-solicitation policies:

As the Salvation Army kicks off its annual red-kettle program today, a growing number of retailers, from Best Buy to Target, are banning Salvation Army bell ringers from their doors -- to avoid having to choose between competing charities and out of concern for customers, they say.

That's created a schism in the retail world, with rival chains banking on kettle-carrying volunteers to set them apart as more civic-minded.

Hugh Hewitt wound up devoting almost all of his radio show last night to this topic, as listeners overwhelmingly reacted negatively to this new policy. Most of the ire was directed at Target, although Best Buy also banned the bell this year. The difference may be that for Best Buy, this continues their policy (I believe) while for Target it represents a change.

They issued a statement claiming that Target has always had a no-solicitations rule, and that they found it difficult to make an exception for the Salvation Army. I appreciate Target's rule on solicitors; I find it annoying to be accosted by the rainbow of nutbar causes and con artists that accost shoppers elsewhere. However, lumping the Salvation Army in with the rest of the hucksters stretches credulity. The Salvation Army, as Hugh pointed out, has the lowest overhead and supports the most heartbreaking cases of any major charity group, making them not only the first such organization but also the best. You never hear about Salvation Army management keeping Upper West Side lovenests with donor money, as happened with another national charity a few years ago -- one that regularly enlists corporate management to extort donations through payroll deductions.

Moreover, the money raised in those red kettles stay in the communuties from which they're raised. Money raised in the Twin Cities go to the destitute right here in our neighborhood. Tossing the Salvation Army into the street denies the connection to the local community that Target and others tout in the public relations. It's the one charity where we can be assured we are helping our neighbors, where our money stays in our own community.

The notion that Target finds it "difficult" to make exceptions to their own internal policy is absurd. Management gets paid to make value judgments all the time -- they don't hire seven-figure executives just to have them rely on zero-tolerance policies. The Salvation Army surely is worthy of such an exception, and their passive, cheerful presence at Target's doors will do nothing to detract from the shopping experience of their customers. Either Target should commit to replacing the money that their ruthless policy enforcement denies to the Salvation Army or let them come back. Failing that, our family may need to make a new holiday policy ourselves.

Bipartisanship On Ag Secretary?

CNN reported last night that Karl Rove has had conversations with Senator Ben Nelson (D-Nebraska) about replacing Ann Veneman as Secretary of Agriculture. Nelson, a centrist in one of the reddest states in America (Bush +33), might join Norman Mineta as the other Democrat in George Bush's second-term Cabinet:

President Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove, spoke to Nelson about the possibility in a telephone conversation last Friday, according to the two sources familiar with their conversation. Nelson has thus far declined to accept what the sources described as an offer or solicitation.

Nelson told CNN he could not confirm or deny that an offer from Rove was made, adding that he is "happy" in his current job.

But when pressed as to whether he would consider the job if Bush offered it, Nelson said, "Any time the president talks, you listen."

Nelson will be pressured by Democrats to decline the position, as his resignation from the Senate would allow the Republican governor of Nebraska to nominate his replacement. That would stretch the Republican majority to 56-43, with one independent caucusing with the Democrats (Jim Jeffords, who chose the spectacularly losing side in 2001). In truth, the difference would be negligible, as Nelson already supported a significant part of Bush's legislative agenda. Symbolically, however, it would be another red-state retreat that would marginalize the Democrats further as the coastal party.

However, I expect that Nelson may actually take Rove up on the offer nonetheless. In an age of terrorism, Agriculture plays a much more significant policy role than ever. The department remains highly involved in homeland security, protecting the domestic food supply from poisoning or sabotage, as well as its traditional role in managing the massive role of farming in American lives and exports around the world.

In terms of Cabinet appointments, it may not be the State Department, but it's no backwater, either. It certainly beats serving in a Senate where his party has lost control and shows no sign of renaissance, and where he likely will lose re-election anyway.

How Europeans Resemble Radical Muslims

Irshad Manji writes a brilliant op-ed piece in today's New York Times giving her impressions of the difference between Europe and North America in how liberal Muslims are treated. She also includes her thoughts on the role of religion in Western life, one of the best rational answers I've yet seen.

Manji, who has traveled extensively between North America and Europe, and writes about the difference between the two in how they react to Muslims. For North Americans, she writes, the issues revolve around radicals who use Islam to justify terrorism. In Europe, they're much more concerned about headscarves than terrorists:

To get there, allow me to observe key differences between the debate over Islam in Western Europe and North America. In Western Europe, the entry point for this debate is the hijab - the headscarf that many Muslim women wear as a signal of modesty. By contrast, the entry point in North America is terrorism.

Some might say that difference is understandable. After all, Sept. 11 happened on American soil. But March 11 happened on European ground, yet the hijab remains the starting point for Europeans. Meanwhile, it makes barely a ripple in North America.

Why so? Manji writes that Europe is in the throes of a full-blown identity crisis, and that even the most liberal of Europeans -- actually, especially the most liberal Europeans -- see daily reminders of faith as threatening to their cherished secular humanism. In their own way, Europeans are every bit as paranoid about their identity as radical Muslims. This translates into policy decisions such as shutting Turkey out of the EU, even though it might slow up some Muslim immigration to Europe and even though Turkey has adopted all of the hallmarks of Western nations.

Manji also defends religion against the secular humanists of Europe who question her reliance on the belief in God:

Religion supplies a set of values, including discipline, that serve as a counterweight to the materialism of life in the West. I could have become a runaway materialist, a robotic mall rat who resorts to retail therapy in pursuit of fulfillment. I didn't. That's because religion introduces competing claims. It injects a tension that compels me to think and allows me to avoid fundamentalisms of my own.

Be sure to read Manji's essay in full.

Democrats Tee Off On Kerry

Earlier today I wrote about the $45 million John Kerry left in his primary election fund instead of spending it on his election or other Democratic races. The AP now reports that Kerry also left an additional $15 million unspent from his federal general-election funds, and his fellow Democrats are now demanding to know why:

Democratic Party leaders said Wednesday they want to know why Sen. John Kerry ended his presidential campaign with more than $15 million in the bank, money that could have helped Democratic candidates across the country. ...

"Democrats are questioning why he sat on so much money that could have helped him defeat George Bush or helped down-ballot races, many of which could have gone our way with a few more million dollars," said Donna Brazile, campaign manager for Al Gore's 2000 presidential race.

Brazile is a member of the 400-plus member Democratic National Committee, which meets early next year to pick a new party chairman. One high-ranking member of the DNC, speaking on condition of anonymity, said word of Kerry's nest egg has stirred anger on the committee and could hurt his chances of putting an ally in the chairmanship.

After a record fundraising effort, Kerry left more than $60 million on the table, or roughly a dollar for every vote that George Bush won in the election. $45 million had to be spent before the convention, but Kerry could have passed it on to fellow Democrats, especially in Senate races. He had plenty of time in which to do that, as the books closed on primary funding at the end of July when he accepted the nomination. While his fellow Democrats struggled to raise funds -- in part because many donors focused on the presidential race -- Kerry kept it all to himself.

At least with the primary funds, he could claim the excuse that spending it on himself was illegal. The $15 million in federal funding represents 20% of the entire budget for the general election. How in the world could John Kerry leave 20% of his funds in the bank while he pulled advertising from state after state in the final days of the campaign? Democrats will demand answers from Kerry -- and they're unlikely to sit still for the kind of wishy-washy answers he gave the American electorate in the campaign.

Put frankly, Kerry's hoarding of the money makes him look like a selfish bastard, and a rather stupid one at that.

Kerry's Ebenezer Scrooge impersonation is not the only issue with which his fellow Democrats are dissatisfied. A Democratic activist that sank $6 million into efforts to turn out the Hispanic vote declared that Kerry never tried to help:

"John Kerry did not compete adequately for Hispanic votes, period," said Simon Rosenberg, founder and president of the centrist New Democrat Network, a political organization independent of the national Democratic Party. "If we don't reverse the gains that President Bush made, we can forget our hope of being a majority party again." ...

Among Rosenberg's complaints were the Kerry campaign and the DNC lacked a national strategy for Hispanics and did not spend enough money on advertising or enough time campaigning in Hispanic communities and did not employ enough people on the get-out-the-vote effort.

That understates the problem that Kerry presented for Hispanic voters. When Kerry affected their voting at all, he turned the heavily Catholic demographic off by claiming to believe in life at conception while explaining his support for partial-birth abortion. His wife, meanwhile, traveled to New Mexico and insulted the Hispanics whose families go back centuries by lumping them together with illegal immigrants. Perhaps Kerry tried a bit too hard for his own good. At any rate, Rosenberg managed to come up $6 million more than Kerry.

Kerry has made some noise about running for President again in 2008. I'd say he'll be lucky to run for re-election to the Senate.

Marines Find Sarin In Fallujah

Big Trunk at Power Line points readers to a slideshow on USA Today's website that reveals a disturbing find in the soon-to-be former terrorist stronghold in the Sunni Triangle. The second image presented is this:

The caption on this photograph reads: "Marines discover 40 vials of suspected Sarin gas while searching a house in Fallujah, Iraq. It was secreted in a briefcase hidden in a trunk in the courtyard of the house. Two mortar tubes, three mortar rockets, compass and fire maps were also found."

So here we have the WMD for which we sought, hidden in Fallujah either by foreign al-Qaeda terrorists or, more likely, remnants of the Saddam Hussein regime that knew where to get them. I'm no expert, but I think that 40 vials of this chemical could ruin the day for thousands of Iraqis, American troops, or people anywhere in the world that the terrorists could reach. This picture appears to answer George Bush's critics, and it shows that a lot more of this material is still probably floating around in Iraq. It demonstrates the critical necessity to reduce all of the "insurgent" strongholds as quickly as possible, before someone gets the chance to use it.

As Trunk notes, check out the German and Russian labeling on the sarin packaging. Why do we still concern ourselves over whether they approved of deposing Saddam Hussein?

UPDATE: Please make sure you check out the picture at USA Today, where the label is clearer. The labels do not say 'ANTIDOTE', nor is it packaged the way an antidote would be. Antidotes to chemical weapons are typically stored in syringes, ready to use instantly.

UPDATE II: CQ reader khr128 says that these are indicator tubes, a test for the presence of sarin and not a delivery mechanism for sarin itself. Could be -- I'm not familiar enough with delivery mechanisms to say, although the USA Today report makes a clear statement that these are sarin gas tubes. I'd question why anyone needs 40 indicator tubes at a time ...

UPDATE III: CQ reader Peyton Randolph provides more info. I'm updating the post rather than just leaving this in the comments:

Those are marked as samples of soman, sarin and V- agents, the three main sorts of nerve gas. The Russian matches the English label, "For operating instructions..." and the German seems to be "Handle with Care." (yeah, no kidding. Like warnings on Hotpockets that the contents will be hot after microwaving.) There's an obscured date on the lower right of the Russian label - "Okt 1..." A "born-on" date? A "serve by" date? (A clever lieutenant-colonel just translated the German next to the date for me as "Good until..., so these are beyond their expected shelf-life. Probably not safe to stir into your coffee, though.)

Considering the labeling, I doubt that these are Iraqi nerve agents. If not, though, then why are Russian chemical weapons being found in Iraq? Or, are they German? (Ruh, roh!) What could be the designed purpose of such a kit? Surely not, "Give these a try, and see if you like them." Possibly live-agent training for chemical warfare personnel, but why the variety?

I don't think that this is the "look at what Sadaam did!" smoking gun that we'd like, but it's not a good thing to find in the enemy's hands, either.

We've got some pretty smart readers here at CQ...

UPDATE IV: Even more smart readers in comments now pretty much agree that these are testers of one sort or another, probably dating back into the 80s, and not deployable sarin. As Peyton said, it does get one wondering why they felt the need to retain these testers.

Powell vs Hillary: A Tactical Mistake

My friends at the New York Sun report that the Empire State GOP is pressing Colin Powell to run against Hillary Clinton for her Senate seat in 2006. Republicans like Rep. Peter King wax enthusiastic about having a high-profile candidate like General Powell to stand up to the Clinton machine, especially one who has benefitted from relatively positive press coverage during most of his career. Rep. Vito Fossella has started a "draft Powell" movement to entice the retired Secretary of State to join the fight against the odds-on favorite for the 2008 Democratic Presidential nomination.

I agree that Powell makes an impressive candidate for any office, but in this case, the GOP may be walking into a trap. To paraphrase John Kerry, the 2006 Senate race is the wrong fight at the wrong time, and for the national GOP, Powell is the wrong man.

In running for re-election in 2006 ahead of the 2008 primaries, Clinton gives the GOP a perfect opportunity to tie her down to leftist policy positions that she will have a hard time defending in a general election. New York, especially New York City, is significantly more liberal than the rest of the nation, and winning there requires more than just a sop to the left-wing base of the Democratic Party. For example, HillaryCare -- her health-care debacle in her husband's first term as President -- would be much more palatable in her adopted state but would spell disaster for 2008. Republicans can push her into a corner by forcing her to adopt a leftist national policy in 2006, and then beat her up over it for the following two years.

However, if Powell ran against her, Hillary and her expert political team would turn the tables and run against the Bush Administration instead. Powell, having been a key part of a foreign policy that enjoys only middling support in New York and less than that in the Big Apple, would quickly find himself on the defensive, and the New York Times would ensure that he stays there. Every crackpot conspiracy theory about Bush and his team would be thrown at Powell under the legitimate cover that Powell's service under Bush should be considered by the electorate.

Imagine that campaign for just a moment. Hillary will demand that Powell answer questions such as, “Did you support the invasion of Iraq, or did Bush overrule you?” “Why did America fail to convince France and Germany to sign onto the rebuilding of Iraq? Why did foreign policy fail under your direction?” “How could you make that presentation to the United Nations when you opposed the precipitate action Bush wanted?” The GOP would find itself forced to endure the 2004 campaign all over again, and Hillary’s national media profile would guarantee that it would color every political campaign in the country.

This forces Powell into one of two responses, neither of which will be palatable to the GOP. Either Powell spends the entire campaign defending the Bush Adminstration, which won't exactly endear him to the New York voters who went for Kerry by 18 points, or he will be forced to air some dirty laundry about his policy disagreements with Bush and his national-security team. That option will put the entire GOP ticket on the defensive all year long and make it difficult to retain the 10-seat advantage Republicans enjoy in the Senate, let alone pick up seats in various red-state contests. It also may complicate any mid-term Cabinet appointments needed by Bush, and it will deplete the political capital Bush needs to push his agenda in Congress, especially judicial nominations.

General Powell is undoubtedly an asset to the Republican Party and should consider a run for significant electoral office, but the GOP has to ask itself what it hopes to accomplish with the 2006 Senate race. If they want to add to their advantage and come closer to a filibuster-proof majority, then pitting a member of the loyal dissent against the best political machine the Democrats have to offer is a losing bet. Rudy Giuliani would make a better opponent to challenge Clinton and has at least the same chance as Powell to beat her, and will make it easier to handicap her for the 2008 race even if she prevails in 2006.

Iranians Have Nuke Plans, NYT Hasn't Got A Clue

A group of Iranian exiles claim that the Khan network of Pakistan has already given the Iranian mullahcracy the necessary plans for nuclear weapons as well as a small amount of weapons-grade uranium, making the Iranian claims of developing nothing other than a peaceful nuclear-energy program suspect:

Iran obtained weapons-grade uranium and a design for a nuclear bomb from a Pakistani scientist who has admitted to selling nuclear secrets abroad, an exiled Iranian opposition group said on Wednesday.

The group, that has given accurate information before, also said Iran is secretly enriching uranium at a military site previously unknown to the U.N., despite promising France, Britain and Germany that it would halt all such work.

"(Abdul Qadeer) Khan gave Iran a quantity of HEU (highly enriched uranium) in 2001, so they already have some," Farid Soleiman, a senior spokesman for the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), told reporters.

"I would doubt it was given enough for a weapon," he added.

The State Department lists the NCRI, the political front for the People's Mujahideen Organization, as a terrorist organization -- think Sinn Fein and the IRA. However, Reuters reports that diplomats regard the NCRI as the best source of information on Iran's nuclear program and that the group has delivered accurate and timely information to the IAEA in the past. It seems that the Iranians have at least one mole within the program -- and that the Iranian resistance may be better organized than some think.

Of course, this confirms American suspicions about Iran's nuclear ambitions. It made little sense that a country with the vast oil reserves of Iran and the ability to refine it in great quantities would turn to nuclear power for domestic energy production. However, Iran's fairy tale convinced many people, not least the editorial board of the New York Times, who hailed the recent agreement between Iran and the EU-3 as a breakthrough for peace:

Nobody knows whether Iran is really ready to give up its ambitions to have nuclear weapons, but its commitment on Monday to freeze all uranium enrichment work and invite back international inspectors is a welcome step toward nuclear sanity. ...

The fact that Iran agreed to these terms after several days of hesitation strongly suggests that even the hard-liners now ascendant in Tehran are susceptible to economic appeals. Some of them clearly understand that without increased foreign trade and investment to generate more jobs for a rapidly expanding labor force, the mullahs' grip on power could be threatened.

First, the entire problem with the agreement reached by the EU-3 is that "nobody really knows whether Iran is really ready to give up its ambitions to have nuclear weapons". The agreement has not put any verification into place as yet; Iran could be refining uranium as we speak, and probably are. Iran has not acknowledged having the Khan plans for nuclear weapons, nor have they opened their research facilities to prove their peaceful intentions.

The idea that Iran succumbed to economic pressures demonstrates the hopeless naivete of the Gray Lady. Iran has plenty of trading partners, and everyone knows that economic sanctions are an iffy prospect at best. France and Russia allowed themselves to be bought off by Saddam Hussein, who had actually invaded and raped another country to earn his sanctions; Iran's transgressions being much more amorphous, the likelihood of having Chirac stand fast on punitive sanctions seems as likely as him kissing George Bush's feet.

Iran caved just after the American elections, when it became clear that they had to deal with another four years of Bush rather than the appeasement-minded John Kerry. Instead of trading openly for nuclear fuel, the mullahcracy understands that Bush intends to keep the pressure on Europe to push this to its diplomatic conclusion, so that Bush can exercise other options when Iran continues to defy the non-proliferation treaty.

This latest agreement is nothing more than a stall tactic, but it's the only one left to them with Bush in the White House. As long as they give the impression of diplomatic progress on the issue, Iran knows Bush cannot press for more action. And as long as the mullahcracy knows they can easily hoodwink the Western media into swallowing their story about peaceful energy production as their sole reason for nuclear development, they know that Bush will remain handcuffed in his options. Fortunately for Iran, the New York Times exists to appease dictators and regurgitate their public-relations efforts.

Addendum: Apparently, the NYT editorial board doesn't read their own paper.

Hillary Will Run For Re-Election Before Presidential Bid

Hillary Clinton told aides that she will run for re-election to the Senate in 2006 even if she plans a run for the Presidency in 2008, according to the New York Times:

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton has decided to run for a second term in the Senate in 2006, despite arguments by some Democrats that such a move could complicate her potential bid for the presidency in 2008, her advisers said on Tuesday. ...

The disclosure of her re-election plans seemed intended to stanch what aides said was rising speculation among Democrats, particularly since Senator John Kerry's loss two weeks ago, that she might need to forgo the Senate race to focus entirely on running for the White House.

"It's not an issue," said Howard Wolfson, an adviser to Mrs. Clinton. "Senator Clinton has said she is running for re-election. She is raising money and moving forward."

Mandy Grunwald, her longtime media adviser, said, "The questions about the presidency are flattering. but she'll deal with that in the future."

Others are not so sanguine about Hillary's decision. Adam Nagourney and Raymond Hernandez report that James Carville declined to endorse the idea of a Senate run so close to her expected Presidential campaign. As the article points out, she would have only fourteen months from November 2006 to the Iowa caucuses in 2008, meaning that she would no sooner win re-election than be forced to announce her presidential bid. Otherwise she risks losing fundraising opportunities and giving away momentum to another candidate, such as John Edwards, who has the next four years open on his calendar.

The New York GOP has to be delighted with her decision. Granted, she probably wins re-election rather handily unless she faces off against an exceptional candidate; Governor George Pataki has indicated interest, but probably only Rudy Giuliani would be able to beat her. Even if she wins, however, the Republican campaign will be designed to specifically tie her to policy positions that she may later regret during a presidential campaign, when the mass of voters will swing more conservative.

Retiring from the Senate after one term would avoid this trap, and Hillary should reconsider her plan if she's serious about the Presidency. Normally, being a one-termer would also be a heavy negative in a presidential campaign, as a single term does not provide much opportunity to build a political record. (Just ask John Edwards about that problem.) Obviously Hillary doesn't suffer from that. The Democratic Party has plenty of people who want her and Bill to return to the White House in order to recall the days of the trailer-park Camelot, where Guinevere remained faithful but Arthur chased every skirt around the Round Table. At least in a Hillary presidency, he wouldn't be goldbricking from his job while doing so.

PETA: A Subsidiary Of Comedy Central

PETA has launched a new campaign that threatens to reveal the organization as a union of performance artists instead of animal-rights activists. Their latest crusade is to convince the world that fish are intelligent individuals with hopes and dreams that should be spared from the dinner table:

Touting tofu chowder and vegetarian sushi as alternatives, animal-rights activists have launched a novel campaign arguing that fish — contrary to stereotype — are intelligent, sensitive animals no more deserving of being eaten than a pet dog or cat.

Called the Fish Empathy Project, the campaign reflects a strategy shift by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals as it challenges a diet component widely viewed as nutritious and uncontroversial.

"No one would ever put a hook through a dog's or cat's mouth," said Bruce Friedrich, PETA's director of vegan outreach. "Once people start to understand that fish, although they come in different packaging, are just as intelligent, they'll stop eating them."

Arrgh. How much further will PETA go? They've turned themselves from a semi-serious voice for humane treatment of animals into a complete joke -- although their ties to terrorist groups like the Animal Liberation Front hardly qualify as funny. Trying to convince us that catfish are the equivalent of cats point to even more silliness in the future. Will we be regaled with advertising that exhorts us to stop using antibiotics because they're cruel to microbes?

They have convinced one person that fish equate to cats and dogs, however. I'm sure that PETA will be gratified to learn that Atomizer from Fraters Libertas has added cats to the menu. We haven't received word yet from the St. Paul diocese if Catholics can eat them on Fridays...

Kerry Can't Stop Hoarding Money

The AP (in the Boston Herald) profiles John Kerry in today's edition in his return to the Senate after losing the presidential election two weeks ago. The story focuses on Kerry's equivocating on a possible Presidential run in 2008, but the real blockbuster isn't Kerry's unrealistic notions of a do-over but the $45 million he never spent during this last election cycle:

Sen. John Kerry, who has $45 million left from his record-breaking Democratic campaign, hinted on Tuesday that he may try again for the presidency.

On his first workday back in the Senate since losing his White House bid, Kerry remained far from the spotlight, granting interviews to hometown reporters and joining the depleted corps of Democrats as they elected the party's new Senate leaders.

The news of the $45M nest egg surely has to dismay his supporters, especially with the less-rational of them claiming that the race was so close. The money comes from his primary-season campaign fundraising, not the public money for the general election. That, supposedly, was money Kerry didn't have in June and July to get his message out, and by the time August rolled around (after the nomination), he couldn't legally spend it. How smart was that?

Democrats should ask for an accounting from the Kerry campaign. Even if Kerry couldn't spend the money, he could have transferred some or all of it to other Democratic campaigns around the country, most notably in the Senate. A few million dollars may have made a difference in places like South Dakota, where his own Minority Leader lost by just two percentage points over the GOP challenger. Other Senate races could have been rescued by some assistance from the Democratic frontrunner. Why didn't he use it instead of hoarding it?

Contrast that to the extensive party-building efforts of the GOP standardbearer; Kerry's selfish money handling guarantees that no one will trust him with the next nomination. His campaign rolled from one disaster to the next, and if he keeps talking about running again, four years is an awfully long time to get a Freedom of Information Act request processed for the rest of his military and FBI records. It also gives him another four years to add to his mountainous record of flip-flops. In fact, he already started in this interview (emphasis mine):

In his first extensive interview since his Nov. 2 defeat, Kerry was asked by the Fox News affiliate in Boston about running again in 2008 and reminded the questioner that Ohio is still counting votes from 2004.

He then said, "It is so premature to be thinking about something that far down the road. What I've said is I'm not opening any doors, I'm not shutting any doors." Kerry added, "If there's a next time, we'll do a better job. We'll see."

What is that supposed to mean? That he conceded before he didn't? Ohio announced yesterday that 81% of the 155,000 provisional ballots were valid, meaning that around 125,000 would be counted. Even if Kerry won every single one of them, he still loses by 11,000 votes. Casting doubt on the legitimacy of the election now does nothing but feed the conspiracy theorists and far-left lunatics that turned off half of America the first time around.

John Kerry should be satisfied to still have a Senate seat left and take some time to smell the Franklins. He earned it; he found a way to take it with him into political death.

Looks Like A Link To Me

Those who keep claiming that Saddam Hussein had no links to terrorism have yet another report from which to avert their eyes. The AP reports that Congressional investigators keep documenting more destinations for the $21 billion Saddam stole from the UN Oil-For-Food program:

Saddam Hussein diverted money from the U.N. oil-for-food program to pay millions of dollars to families of Palestinian suicide bombers who carried out attacks on Israel, say congressional investigators who uncovered evidence of the money trail.

The former Iraqi president tapped secret bank accounts in Jordan — where he collected bribes from foreign companies and individuals doing illicit business under the humanitarian program — to reward the families up to $25,000 each, investigators told The Associated Press.

So Saddam stole money from the UN, most of it from the US and the West, and put a significant chunk of it into the pockets of the families that suicide bombers left behind. That certainly sounds like funding terrorism to me. While some people may argue that the Palestinians only targeted Jews, I'd say that targeting Jews counts. I'd like to hear someone offer a good reason why it doesn't.

Matthews Meltdown Continues

Chris Matthews, speaking on Hardball last night, made the ridiculous assertion that the Islamist lunatics in Fallujah are ... well, I'll let Chris tell ya:

MATTHEWS: Well, let me ask you about this. If this were the other side, and we were watching an enemy soldier, a rival—I mean, they‘re not bad guys, especially—just people that disagree with it. They‘re in fact the insurgents fighting us in their country.

I guess Matthews is singing from the Michael Moore hymnal these days, turned to page 147, "Iraqi Minutemen, We Praise Thee". As for them not being bad guys, tell that to Nicholas Berg and Margaret Hassan.

The Honor Of Radical Islam

Islamofascist terrorists apparently butchered their second female captive, CARE worker Margaret Hassan, as Al Jazeera claims to have a videotape of her murder:

Kidnapped aid worker Margaret Hassan was believed to be dead Tuesday after a video received by Al-Jazeera television showed a hooded figure shooting a blindfolded woman in the head. ...

The video shows a militant firing a pistol into the head of a blindfolded woman wearing an orange jumpsuit, Al-Jazeera spokesman Jihad Ballout said. "She was presumed to be Mrs. Hassan," he told The Associated Press.

The station initially said it would air parts of the video, but Ballout then said it would not.

Kidnaping civilians as hostages paints a cowardly enough picture of Islamist lunatics, and carving their heads off for the camera makes them look almost infantile in their perversity. Putting a bullet into a woman's hooded head is so cowardly that it takes one's breath away. Together with the discovery of the Polish woman's mutilated and disemboweled corpse yesterday and it's difficult to conclude anything except that those responsible have to be tracked down and killed at all costs.

These are not freedom fighters or Minutemen, as Michael Moore notoriously proclaimed them earlier; these aren't even animals, as animals kill to eat or defend themselves. I can only describe them as ghouls, living demons who live to smell the blood of others in what appears to be some pseudosexual release. They live without a shred of honor or dignity, and like any other psychopath, only derive pleasure from the torture of others.

We can never take the pressure off of these "people." No matter what we do, they will never stop killing, and if we're not careful they'll come here for their next victims. Only when we have stamped the last of these sick bastards into the next world will we have any security in this one.

An Unclear Picture In Pyongyang

The BBC reports this morning that pictures of North Korea's personality-cult leader seem to be disappearing from their prominent displays around Pyongyang:

Some portraits of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il have reportedly been taken down in Pyongyang, news agencies quoted diplomats as saying on Tuesday. The portraits were removed from some public buildings, the diplomats said. ...

An unnamed diplomat told the Russian news agency Itar-Tass that at receptions hosted by the North Korean foreign ministry, guests had recently only seen pictures of Kim Jong-il's father, Kim Il-sung, and a mark on the wall where a portrait of the North Korean leader used to hang.

"Only a light rectangular spot on the yellow whitewashed wall and a nail have remained in the place where the second portrait used to be," the diplomat said.

The French news agency AFP quoted a diplomat as saying that one place where pictures of Mr Kim had certainly disappeared from was the Grand People's Cultural Palace.

The BBC speculates that Kim may have ordered the removal of the portraits in an attempt to reduce the country's focus on him, although in the past Kim has certainly promoted the personality cult purposefully. Others wonder if the change means that something has happened to Kim and Pyongyang might be keeping it quiet. The removals aren't happenstance; an unnamed diplomat told the Russian news service Itar-Tass that orders had been given to take the portraits down.

The Soviets used to keep their transitions secret until the last moment, usually attributing a premier's absence from official duties to a cold. When the Soviets lost a few premiers within a couple of years in the 1980s, people joked that the Russian cold was apparently fatal. This unusual activity in Pyongyang looks suspiciously like the Russian cold has migrated to the Korean Peninsula.

Marine Shoots Wounded Iraqi, Film At 11

An NBC News embed videotaped a Marine shooting an apparently wounded Iraqi POW in a Fallujah mosque yesterday, giving American audiences a front-row seat to an apparent war crime and sending antiwar activists into paroxysms of recrimination:

The U.S. military is investigating whether a Marine shot dead an unarmed, wounded insurgent during the battle for Falluja in an incident captured on videotape by a pool reporter.

The man was shot in the head at close range Saturday by a Marine who found him among a group of wounded men. The wounded men were found in a mosque that Marines said had been the source of small-arms and rocket-propelled grenade fire the previous day. ...

The Marines told the pool reporter that the wounded men would be left behind for others to pick up and move to the rear for treatment. But Saturday, another squad of Marines found that the mosque had been reoccupied by insurgents and attacked it again, only to find the same wounded men inside.

Four of the men appeared to have been shot again in Saturday's fighting, and one of them appeared to be dead, according to the pool report. In the video, a Marine was seen noticing that one of the men appeared to be breathing.

A Marine approached one of the men in the mosque saying, "He's [expletive] faking he's dead. He's faking he's [expletive] dead."

The Marine raised his rifle and fired into the apparently wounded man's head, at which point a companion said, "Well, he's dead now."

It's important to remember that (a) we have only seen one aspect of this incident, (b) none of us yet understand the context of it, and (c) this represents one Marine's actions, not official US policy or the American rules of engagement in Iraq. However, as Mitch Berg notes, that hasn't stopped some on the port side of the blogosphere from turning this into another Abu Ghraib:

But a number of leftyblogs, not being themselves rocket scientists, are trying to create an Abu Ghraib-like scandal out of this - and pin it on the Administration:

Lambert, while showing captures of the photos of the murder: "Let's watch Bush win Iraqi hearts and minds!"

Matthew Gross entitled his piece "Culture of Life", and said "Someday, not too far away, we'll tell the kiddies how the U.S. was once looked up to around the world, as a beacon of moral virtue. And you know what? They won't friggin' believe us."

Get a grip, people. It's not an administration policy, and it's not a sign that America is in decline. It's an alleged murder, with (it is likely) extenuating circumstances, none of which will help the Marine much if he's found guilty. It's a symptom of what a rotten thing war is.

Demagogue also has a typically helpful comment: "Remember, we are at war and it is important that we "Support Our Troops" - even the ones who are executing captives."

Well, we are supporting our troops, even when they get charged with war crimes -- at least, we'd like to see a court-martial before we give the Marine a first-class hanging, a concept that seems alien to some bloggers. Already, though, more context for this incident has surfaced, even in the CNN report. Perhaps this was on the mind of the Marine who killed the wounded captive:

About a block away, a Marine was killed and five others wounded by a booby-trapped body they found in a house after a shootout with insurgents.

Perhaps incidents like this were on the mind of the young Marine while in the middle of the combat zone, with responsibility for the safety of his unit. Or perhaps incidents like this, related to me by CQ reader Peyton Randolph, where a young woman was maimed for her efforts in assisting the wounded. The missing woman, Peyton reports, is a veteran of Iraq who had been home for three weeks after a wounded civilian she went to assist pulled out a gun and blew her kneecap off. The actions of the enemy in this war have to have some impact on the reasonable actions our forces take in protecting themselves and the people around them.

I suggest that everyone take a deep breath and let the Marines and the Navy Dept. investigate the incident and issue a report. Unless someone comes up with a memo that shows Donald Rumsfeld telling our troops that they can shoot anything that moves, this isn't an indictment of the war effort; at worst, it's one Marine that committed a crime, and from where I sit, it's probably not even that.

ACLU Succeeds In Attack On Boy Scouts

The ACLU has won another victory against that oppressive paramilitary organization that threatens the liberty of every American. Branch Davidians? Al Qaeda? The Vibe Awards? No -- the Boy Scouts. The Pentagon settled a lawsuit with the ACLU by ordering its bases not to officially sponsor any Scout group as long as the organization requires a belief in God:

The settlement, announced Monday, came in a 1999 lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, which says American military units have sponsored hundreds of Boy Scout troops.

"If our Constitution's promise of religious liberty is to be a reality, the government should not be administering religious oaths or discriminating based on religious beliefs," said ACLU lawyer Adam Schwartz.

The Pentagon said it has long had a rule against sponsorship of non-federal organizations and denied that the rule had been violated. But it agreed to send a message to posts worldwide warning them not to sponsor Boy Scout troops or other such groups.

It's a darned good thing that the ACLU defends us against such a frightening enemy. Helping to raise young men committed to bettering their community and supporting their country could create all kinds of trouble later on. Why, those same boys might just aspire to leadership positions, helping others who are less fortunate, and serve as an example to other young men. Thank God whatever that now they will just hang out, get bored, and get into trouble. When they rob you, beat you, kill you, just remember to thank the ACLU from saving you from any mention of God in the public square.

UPDATE: For those who think that the Boy Scouts require belief in Christianity, please read their FAQs. They require Scouts to profess a belief in God, not Jesus Christ.

And The Winner For Best Switchblade Artist Is ...

The First Mate hates awards shows like the Oscars or the Emmys. She not only feels like they're self-congratulatory tripe, but that they bore her to tears. She hates the speeches most of all. Most of the time, I agree, although I watch the Oscars every year, probably due to some deep-seated masochistic impulse. Fortunately, the world of hip-hop has provided a new way of making the awards exciting -- by stabbing the losers:

A fight broke out near the stage at the Vibe awards ceremony as rapper Snoop Dogg and producer Quincy Jones were preparing to honor Dr. Dre., and one person was stabbed, authorities and witnesses said.

Dozens of people sitting near the stage Monday inside a hangar at the Santa Monica Municipal Airport began shoving each other as the show wound down about 7:30 p.m., a photographer who covered the event for The Associated Press said.

News video showed chairs being thrown, punches flying, people chasing one another and some being restrained.

Sounds like an exciting new development in entertainment awards, no? Maybe the Academy should try this at the Oscars. Michael Moore could square off with Ron Silver. Alec Baldwin would have a deathmatch with his brother Stephen. It may beat Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon stupefying the world with one of their incoherent political rants.

The funniest part of the story wasn't the PR flack who called the rumble a "disruption", seemingly equating the stabbing of a person to someone streaking the stage or picket line. It was this Suge Knight quote stressing the need to keep the Vibe awards going:

"It's really important that we don't take a negative incident like this and do away with the awards," Suge Knight told reporters.

This from the man who went back to prison for beating up a parking-lot attendant while on parole. And he's the voice of reason.

It's time to reflect on the so-called culture of hip-hop. We've been multicultural about this long enough. All this has become, and probably all it ever was, was a gang war with teenagers supplying the money for weapons and drugs. The industry is one disgrace after another, terrorists selling terrorism and murder. People claim that parents thought the same thing about early rockers like Elvis Presley, but all I know is that when they put together shows, we didn't hear about them knifing or shooting each other.

Another Example Of Bipartisan Cluelessness

Last week, Brent Scowcroft demonstrated that Democrats don't hold a monopoly on cluelessness. That same day, another Bush 41 advisor showed off his own cluelessness on terrorism. James Baker urged Israel to release a Palestinian who masterminded several of the attacks that murdered scores of Israeli civilians (via Power Line and LGF):

uring an interview with host Larry King on CNN last night, James. A Baker, the former U.S. secretary of state, who currently serves as the Bush administration's special envoy on Iraqi debt, called on the Israeli government to release Marwan Barghouti, the jailed Palestinian leader who is serving five life sentences in an Israeli jail for ordering attacks against Israel.

Israel has ruled out any early release for the popular Barghouti, often mentioned as a successor to Yasser Arafat, who died on Thursday. Israeli foreign minister Silvan Shalom was quoted yesterday saying that Barghouti would remain in prison until "the last days of his life." ...

"There is now. . . . in an Israeli prison a man named Marwan Barghouti, who is one of the young guard of Palestinians," Baker told King last night, speaking about the post–Yasser Arafat era. "And if the Palestinians are going to make this work against the really hard-line elements, the Islamists and some of the people of Hamas, they're going to have to have a coalition of the young guard and the old guard."

Baker continued, "[I]t would be really a very positive step in the right direction if Israel would release Marwan Barghouti so that he could participate in bringing about this transition."

For the edification of Mr. Baker -- who should know better -- here's a Wikipedia thumbnail sketch of Barghouti's career as a member of the "young guard":

By the summer of 2000, Barghouti and Arafat had grown increasingly at odds with each other, with Barghouti accusing Arafat's administration of corruption and his security services of human rights violations, and Arafat was planning to fire him shortly.

However, as the Second Intifada began, Barghouti became increasingly popular as a leader of the Fatah Tanzim militia. This was perhaps due to the transformation of Tanzim into an organization more resembling militant groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad, responsible for dozens of civilian deaths in drive-by shootings. Under Barghouti, the Tanzim has also carried out suicide bombings in Israel under the name al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades.

His role as a leader of the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades landed him on Israel's most-wanted list, and he escaped an Israeli assassination attempt in 2001. However, he was captured by Israel on April 15, 2002 and indicted in civilian court on charges of murder and attempted murder stemming from terrorist activities carried out by forces under his supervision.

Throughout his trial, Barghouti largely refused to offer a defense, arguing instead that the court lacked jurisdiction and that the trial itself was illegal. Barghouti said that he supported armed resistance to the Israeli occupation, but condemned attacks on civilians. He was convicted on May 20, 2004 of five counts of murder, one of the victims being a Greek Orthodox monk, resulting from three terror attacks, one north of Jerusalem, one in Tel Aviv and in the West Bank. He was also found guilty of one count of attempted murder resulting from a failed suicide car bomb. He was acquitted of 21 counts of murder in 33 other attacks. On June 6, 2004, he was sentenced to five life sentences for the five murders and 40 years imprisonment for the attempted murder.

So what James Baker suggests to Israel is that they should release a man who resembles nothing more than a cut-rate Osama bin Laden -- and for what? To put him in charge of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades again, now called the Yasser Arafat Brigades? Bill Clinton convinced Yitzhak Rabin to shake hands with Arafat instead of killing him, and what did Rabin and Israel get for it? Two intifadas and the assassination of Rabin, although that came from a radical Israeli.

After 9/11, one would think that the notion of releasing terrorists on the idea that they will magically turn into rational beings would have died a well-deserved death. Having one of the architects of our foreign policy as little as a dozen years ago offering this as advice to a country far more scarred by terrorism than we have been is little short of embarrassing.

Atlantis Found?

According to Reuters, an American researcher claims to have found the lost city of Atlantis in the waters off Cyprus:

Robert Sarmast says a Mediterranean basin was flooded in a deluge around 9,000 BC which submerged a rectangular land mass he believes was Atlantis, lying about 1 mile beneath sea level between Cyprus and Syria.

"We have definitely found it," said Sarmast, who led a team of explorers 50 miles off the south-east coast of Cyprus earlier this month.

Deep water sonar scanning had indicated man-made structures on a submerged hill, including a 3-kilometer-long wall, a walled hill summit and deep trenches, he said. But further explorations were needed, he added.

"We cannot yet provide tangible proof in the form of bricks and mortar as the artifacts are still buried under several meters of sediment, but the circumstantial and other evidence is irrefutable," he claimed.

Now I'm no marine archaeologist and can't analyze this report. But I've been facinated with the legend since I was 8 years old and discovered a book about Atlantis in my elementary school library. I read that book cover to cover (probably when I was supposed to be doing math homework or improving my atrocious cursive) . . . twenty years later, I'm still intrigued!

Rice Gets the Nod

ABC reports President Bush will nominate Condoleezza Rice to replace Colin Powell as secretary of state. I think most of us expected this announcement, and I believe it's a good move, overall.

Addendum from Ed: Whiskey and I agree on the selection of Dr. Rice, which is also being reported by the AP. She's up to speed, she knows the players, and will provide powerful representation for George Bush overseas -- more so than Powell, who was assumed to be at odds with Bush's policies on the use of American power in Southwest Asia.

One of the big tasks ahead of Dr. Rice mirrors that of Porter Goss at CIA: cleaning out the partisan career bureaucrats that have acted to defeat Bush's foreign policy. Bush has apparently decided not to simply acquiesce to the inevitability of only middling control of State, which has been the reality for both Democratic and Republican administrations for years.

Sun Offers Free Operating System

Sun Microsystems announced today that its long-awaited new version of its Solaris operating system would be priced to compete strongly against Microsoft Windows. In fact, in contrast to the expensive XP, Sun plans to offer its operating system for free:

After investing roughly $500 million and spending years of development time on its next-generation operating system, Sun Microsystems Inc. on Monday will announce an aggressive price for the software - free. ...

"Hewlett Packard sells a printer at a low price and makes a lot of money on printer cartridges. Gillette gives you the razor and makes a lot of money on the blades," said Scott McNealy, Sun's chief executive. "There are different ways to drive market penetration."

Solaris 10 will be unveiled Monday at an event in San Jose, though it won't be formally released until the end of January. It will work on more than 270 computer platforms running on chips from Sun, Intel Corp. or Advanced Micro Devices Inc.

The price of earlier versions of Solaris typically ran between hundreds and thousands of dollars - depending on the system that was being run by the software, said Tom Goguen, Sun's vice president of operating platforms.

Sun also has promised make the underlying code of Solaris available under an open-source license, though the details have not been released. With access to the code, Solaris users will be able to take advantage of its features when developing their own software and systems.

If successful, the struggling Sun might just eclipse Microsoft on its core product and vault back into the top tier of tech firms. It would hoist Microsoft on its own petard, as Bill Gates swamped the competition for Internet supremacy by offering its browser for free. Microsoft buried Netscape with this marketing ploy, and only recently has Mozilla begun to grab a toehold on operating systems. (I use the new Firefox 1.0, and prior to that have used Mozilla for almost a year.)

I've never seen Solaris before, so I have no idea how compatible it is with existing software such as Firefox/Mozilla, the Microsft Office suite, and so on. If Solaris X is completely compatible with Windows software -- which seems unlikely -- Microsoft has a huge problem on its hands.

UNSCAM Put $21B In Saddam's Pockets

The Senate Committee on Government Affairs has discovered that corruption in the UN Oil-For-Food program put over twenty-one billion dollars into Saddam Hussein's hands, more than double the previous estimates, which already boggled the mind:

Saddam Hussein's regime made more than $21.3 billion in illegal revenue by subverting the U.N. oil-for-food program — more than double previous estimates, according to congressional investigators.

"This is like an onion — we just keep uncovering more layers and more layers," said Sen. Norm Coleman (news, bio, voting record), R-Minn., whose Senate Committee on Government Affairs received the new information at hearing Monday.

New figures on Iraq's alleged surcharges, kickbacks and oil-smuggling are based on troves of new documents obtained by the committee's investigative panel, Coleman told reporters before the hearing. The documents illustrate how Iraqi officials, foreign companies and sometimes politicians allegedly contrived to allow the Iraqi government vast illicit gains.

The findings also reflect a growing understanding by investigators of the intricate schemes Saddam used to buy support abroad for a move to lift U.N. sanctions.

Apparently this new figure only includes those transactions that the committee could verify. Coleman told reporters that he was angered at the UN's refusal to cooperate more fully with their probe. This lack of cooperation should temper any enthusiasm for using the UN to solve global issues of any import, let alone nuclear disarmament and security. Saddam proved that the UN could be bought, along with a healthy chunk of the Security Council, and the Senate committee final report hopefully will point out who bought whom, and at what price.

Senator Joe Lieberman concurred in Coleman's analysis, saying that Saddam corrupted UNSCAM in order to fund his military ambitions. Unfortunately, not all Democrats had the scales fall from their eyes:

But the committee's ranking Democrat, Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, said "for the most part the U.N. sanctions achieved their intended objective of preventing Saddam from rearming and developing weapons of mass destruction."

Oh, really? Why did Levin think Saddam took the $21B -- to build a university in Baghdad? The AP obtained testimony from the counsel to the committee that specified exactly where the money went (emphasis mine):

"Saddam Hussein attempted to manipulate the typical oil allocation process in order to gain influence throughout the world," Mark L. Greenblatt, a counsel for the Senate panel's permanent subcommittee on investigations, said in prepared testimony obtained by The Associated Press.

"Rather than giving allocations to traditional oil purchasers, Hussein gave oil allocations to foreign officials, journalists, and even terrorist entities, who then sold their allocations to the traditional oil companies in return for a sizable commission."

The reference to terrorist groups referred to evidence that the regime had allocated oil to such organizations as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and the Mujahadeen Khalq, a group seeking to overturn the government of Iran, Greenblatt said.

Foreign leaders and journalists -- the same people who kept telling us that Saddam was safely in a box and that sanctions were all that were necessary to keep him toothless. Saddam also funded terrorist entities -- the same people who bomb civilian targets, the ones we're presently trying to stamp out. So much for the "wrong war at the wrong place at the wrong time".

CIA Shake-Up Reveals Democratic Hypopcrisy ... Again

Less than six months after the release of the final report from the 9/11 Commission, new CIA Director Porter Goss promises to deliver what the panel recommended and the Democrats demanded -- a shake-up of the intelligence community that received such harsh criticism for its overreliance on technology and closemindedness. Now that Goss has actually taken action, however, Democrats have been howling about the "purge" at Langley.

Today, though, Goss picked up important political support for the housecleaning from the one Republican that every Democrat hailed during the election cycle:

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) yesterday supported CIA Director Porter J. Goss's shake-up of the intelligence agency, which he described as "dysfunctional" and not providing President Bush with the information needed to conduct the war on terrorism.

Reacting to stories about potential resignations of CIA officials in response to actions taken by Goss and his staff, McCain, appearing on ABC's "This Week With George Stephanopoulos," said, "A shake-up is absolutely necessary."

One of the continuing themes of the 9/11 Commission and the presidential campaign was the poor quality of the intel going to the President prior to both 9/11 and the Iraq war. Democrats pushed for change, and the Bush administration has delivered. Earlier, the Patriot Act (which received bipartisan support) changed the processes so that information could be shared between intelligence and law-enforcement agencies, as well as allowing both to use investigative techniques for counterterrorism that were already legal in organized-crime and child-pornography investigations. Now Bush has named his own CIA Director, who is busily replacing career officers in order to effect a new mindset at Langley, and hopefully a decidedly less political one than had been demonstrated over the past few years.

The hue and cry from the left is instructive; having been given exactly what they wanted, they now complain about the solutions. They paint the Patriot Act as an entreé to Big Brother, even though it fixed the gaping hole in information-sharing and took the handcuffs off that the 9/11 Commission blamed for our lack of preparedness. Now they claim that Goss is politicizing the CIA with this housecleaning, which they claimed only told Bush what he wanted to hear in the run-up to Iraq. Nor do the Democrats reconcile how they regarded the CIA to be so incompetent prior to both 9/11 and Iraq but so spot-on regarding their assessment of post-Saddam Iraq, with the same people in place. (These people, by the way, were the ones that they complained the 9/11 Commission protected by not naming names.)

Only one consistent theme runs across the entire opposition: they're just sore they're not in power. Schizophrenic policy statements and contradictory allegations like this are a good part of the reason why.

UPDATE: Jon Henke at QandO, the essential neolibertarian blog, reminds those who are shocked, shocked! to see a housecleaning at the CIA that the last Administration did the exact same thing ten years ago. May this effort be more successful than the last.

Powell Resigns

As expected, Secretary of State Colin Powell has submitted his resignation and will leave the Bush Administration in January, CNN reports this morning. No one seriously expected Powell to stick around through a second Bush term, and some speculation has him taking over the World Bank.

Now, Washington and the media have already begun the guessing game surrounding the open position. The AP offers John Danforth as the leading candidate:

Most of the speculation on a successor has centered on U.N. Ambassador John Danforth, a Republican and former U.S. senator from Missouri, and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice.

I'd expect Rice to get the nod over Powell, but Danforth is an intriguing selection. He probably would sail through the confirmation process, while a Rice nomination might provide yet another platform for Democrats to demagogue on Iraq. Of course, now that the election is over, denying them that platform is less of a concern.

The AP also reports that Scott McClellan expects to announce four resignations today. I suspect that the Bush Administration already has its nominees selected, just as they did with the Attorney General position.

Good News From Afghanistan

Since the mainstream media has decided that Afghanistan, without gunfire and kidnappings, is rather boring, Arthur Chrenkoff has continued his efforts to inform Americans about the excellent progress being made in the former Taliban tyranny. His work appears in both OpinionJournal and in his own blog. It's impossible to excerpt and too important to miss; be sure to read the entire article.

Democratic Humor On Display

James Carville, one of the leading voices for Democrats over the past 12 years, displayed the kind of class and inclusiveness that Democrats accuse Republicans of lacking on yesterday's Meet the Press. Bill at INDC Journal points out this exchange with Tim Russert on air:

MR. RUSSERT: George Bush have a mandate?

MR. CARVILLE: The only politician in America I know with a mandate is Jim McGreevey, Tim.

MS. MATALIN: Oh, gee.

MR. CARVILLE: No, of course he does. I mean, he's going to...

MR. RUSSERT: Who's running this guy's material, Mary? This...

MS. MATALIN: Oh, I'm not. I'm not getting up anymore.

Can you imagine the outcry if Karl Rove -- or hell, even Mary Matalin -- had made fun of James McGreevy's sexual orientation on national TV? ACT-UP would already have pickets outside Capitol Hill demanding someone get fired, and the New York Times would be clucking its editorial tongue at the GOP for insensitivity and sexual bigotry. The Ragin' Cajun probably gets a pass.

Carville at least provides a glimpse into the hypocrisy and double standards of the mainstream media and the Democrats. If the Democrats publicly disown Carville, I'll take that back. I won't be holding my breath.

NYT Says Republican Gains In South Erode Political Center

The New York Times's Robin Toner analyzes the political realignment taking place in the South and concludes that the nation has become more polarized since Democrats have lost ground in their traditional center of power. However, Toner uses contradictory racial arguments and ironically engages in a bigoted fallacy about Republicans to reach her conclusion:

In the new Congress, only 4 of the 22 senators from the 11 states of the old Confederacy will be Democrats, the lowest number since Reconstruction; as recently as 1990, 15 of those Southern senators were Democrats. In the House, the Democrats suffered smaller but still significant losses in Texas, where a Republican redistricting plan took down a group of veteran lawmakers, including the paradigmatic Southern conservative: Representative Charles W. Stenholm, a 13-term deficit hawk and longtime leader of the Blue Dog Democrats, a group of centrists in the House.

This moment has been a long time coming. Ever since the national Democratic Party fully embraced the cause of civil rights 40 years ago, shattering its hold on the so-called solid South, Republicans have been making steady inroads among culturally conservative white voters in the region. But the acceleration of this trend is important for the next Congress: some of these Southern Democrats, along with Northeastern Republicans, were among the last remaining lawmakers in the political center of an increasingly polarized House and Senate.

This, of course, can only reflect reality as long as one believes that only Democrats can shepherd the political center. It's a narrow-minded view that holds all Republicans as extremists in lockstep with one another, a view which should amuse the GOP faithful taking part in the Arlen Specter debate on my blog. All that has changed is that the political center has moved from Southern "Blue Dog" Democrats to Northeastern and Western GOP members of both sections of Congress.

The GOP controls the center now, a major change from decades gone by, and the Gray Lady despairs at the thought. The desperation comes through in Toner's analysis, where she blames the loss of Southern power on the Democrats' support of civil-rights legislation 40 years ago instead of their party's radicalization over the past ten years, contradicting herself in at least two places in her analysis:

Merle Black, an expert on Southern politics at Emory University in Atlanta, noted that for much of the 20th century, Southern Democrats used their clout and their safe seats on Capitol Hill to "defend the South against civil rights legislation." But after Lyndon B. Johnson and the national Democratic Party pushed through the major civil rights legislation of the 1960's - a move that Mr. Johnson is said to have said at the time would cost his party the South - Democrats in the region became adept at the art of biracial politics.

Southern Democrats of Mr. Breaux's generation were canny coalition builders. In the 1970's and beyond, they continued to exercise substantial power in both the House and the Senate, rising by virtue of their seniority to run many of the major committees. They began to suffer some of their heaviest losses in the Reagan era, as the Republican realignment gathered steam in the region.

However, earlier in her analysis Toner reminded her readers that Democrats held two-thirds of all Southern Senate seats as late as 1990, and that was before the South helped elect Bill Clinton. Also, if the Democrats became adept at "biracial politics", then why would supporting civil-rights legislation in 1965 have torpedoed them in 2000, 2002, and 2004? And how can Toner explain Republican ascendancy in the South given that civil-rights legislation had been sponsored by the GOP and had to be pushed through a recalcitrant Democratic caucus?

The Democrats lost the center because they've allowed their party to be led by extremists like James Carville and Terry McAuliffe and represented and funded by the likes of Barbra Streisand, Whoopi Goldberg, and the Stalinists at International ANSWER. Over the past two years especially, Democrats have clearly shown that they do not represent the center or any moderate positions but have devolved into a poorly-organized fiefdom run by antiwar extremists and politically-correct nannycops. If the New York Times considers that the center of political thought in the US, they need to hire analysts that get outside of the Upper West Side more often.

AP: Muslim Extremists Increase "Fault Lines" In Islam

Using the brutal murder of Theo Van Gogh in the Netherlands and a Buddhist worker in Thailand, the AP reports that Islam has increasingly become unmoored from the wider world, and that even Muslims now concede that extremists have hijacked the Religion of Peace to excuse their murder sprees:

"The fault lines are growing," said Fawaz Gerges, a professor of Middle Eastern and International Affairs at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, N.Y. "It's not just between the Muslims and non-Muslims. It's also within Islam itself. It's a battle between moderate Muslims and extremist forces that threaten to hijack Islam."

The most recent hot spots zigzag around the atlas — from Liberia in West Africa to the Netherlands to Southeast Asia. They join a growing roster of places already feeling the strains of religious conflict and terrorism along the edges of the Islamic world — regions as diverse as Chechnya, Nigeria, Spain, Central Asia and the Philippines. Even China is worried about separatist sentiment in its vast and mostly Muslim western province of Xinjiang. ...

In Amsterdam, a moderate imam, Abdel Eillah, feared the scales were tipping in a troubling direction among Muslim immigrants in Europe who fail to adapt.

"When I hear young men praise violence in the name of Islam, I fear for my faith and I fear for the world. We must fight it before it's too late," he said after the Nov. 2 slaying of Van Gogh, whose work included harsh commentary against traditional Islam. "I didn't like what Van Gogh said, but he should not pay with blood."

The problem is that too few voices such as Eillah's are being heard from within Islam, and that springs from the funding received by mosques, which overwhelmingly comes from radical sources. Wahhabists and other radical followers of Islam gather huge sums of money and open mosques and madrassas to sermonize about killing Jews and conducting jihad against the West. Either moderate Muslims need to step up their funding of tolerant imams and rational madrassas to instruct the faithful, or they will be overwhelmed by the nutcases -- and their religion will mark them as enemies of freedom and liberty.

The failure of moderate Muslims to speak clearly against the violence and their haste in making excuses for it has been disappointing, especially after 9/11. They issue statements that deplore killing, but then accuse the West of keeping Southwest Asia in a state of poverty and point to our support of Israel as an antagonizing action for Muslims. Even if both were true, nothing excuses the primary targeting and murder of civilians as a means of political expression, and moderate Islam seems to have trouble acknowledging this.

People keep repeating that Islam is a Religion of Peace and that true Islam rejects terrorism. If they want people to believe that and treat Muslims with respect as allies and brothers in freedom, then the so-called true Islam had better start taking a more public stand in combatting the radical mosques and madrassas. Otherwise, they start resembling little more than an Islamic Sinn Fein, a palatable front for what amounts to an Arabic version of Murder, Inc.

You Thought Our Election Was Bad ...

With the death of uberterrorist Yasser Arafat, the Palestinians have the opportunity to shake off the years of corrupt strongman rule and attempt to follow the Afghanis into a functional democracy. So far, as the Telegraph reports, the Palestinians have not jumped out to an auspicious start:

Fears that the struggle to find a new Palestinian leader could bring bloodshed and instability were confirmed last night when the PLO leader Mahmoud Abbas was caught in a gun battle during a visit to Gaza.

Two people were killed and 10 wounded when fighting broke out as militiamen opposed to the visit confronted the bodyguards of Mr Abbas, who was yesterday named as the dominant Fatah faction's candidate for the "presidency".

The Palestinians have shown no predilection for democracy or due process of law -- they've ruled and been ruled by the gun for decades. Arafat never held another presidential election after his initial "victory" in 1996, and the Palestinians never seriously protested their disenfranchisement. As long as they revel in their murderous anti-Semitism, they're unlikely to embrace democracy, and as long as the fanatics of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Fatah are in control, they're unlikely to get the opportunity.

It's time to quit pretending that the Palestinians are ready for statehood. They need to reject terrorism before any "road map" or other peace plan confer statehood onto the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Otherwise we will only be endorsing another state that, under the Bush Doctrine, will immediately become an enemy in our war on terror.

Learning To Be A Majority Party

Both Hugh Hewitt and myself have taken a lot of heat for our position on the Arlen Specter kerfuffle. Our readers keep reminding us of Specter's track record over six terms in the Senate as a center-left gadfly in GOP ranks. I don't want to speak for Hugh -- he can speak well enough on his own -- but I am well aware of Specter's track record, and it's not as germane as people think.

In the first place, Specter's record on judicial nominations is nowhere near as bad as people like to make out. He took part in the original Borking, and Robert Bork has understandably made Specter's ascension to the chair of the Judiciary Committee a personal crusade. However, during the past term Specter supported every one of Bush's nominees -- every one. And if he blew it with Bork, he had the credibility to attack Anita Hill during Clarence Thomas nominations, which allowed the most conservative justice nominated in the past 15 years to take the bench.

The real problem is the air of triumphalism that has infected the GOP faithful after the tremendous victory on November 2. Believe me, I understand that; Mitch Berg, King Banaian, and I sat in a radio studio all night long (until 3 am) providing Election Night coverage in the breaks on Hugh's show, and we were all doing high-fives on the Senate returns. Now that we have a significant majority, the base wants to take it for a spin, and understandably so.

However, picking a fight with Arlen Specter is a poor choice of battles. Specter is not the only center-left Republican in the Senate; Olympia Snowe and Lincoln Chaffee ally naturally with Specter, and John McCain has expressed support for the Pennsylvanian as well. Denying Specter the natural ascension to the chair that he expects will alienate at least these three votes from the whip, making filibusters all but inevitable.

Even that isn't really the issue. Republicans have to learn how to be a majority party. We've talked for years about being a big-tent party, but without allowing members to dissent on issues, talk is all it is. Specter, Snowe, and Chaffee know that their views won't carry the day but they do expect to be able to express them without being threatened with oblivion. In return, they support the majority of the party's initiatives and provide needed support to the President in getting his legislative agenda as a whole through Congress.

If we start demanding ideological purity, we will drive off a significant level of support not only for Bush in the Senate but from the electorate as a whole. Why did the Democrats lose their majority status in the first place? We've spent the entire presidential election lamenting the loss of the Scoop Jackson Democrats, opposition members that supported a strong national defense and foreign policy. The International ANSWER wing of the Democratic Party drove them off over the last years of their majority status when they demanded a politically-correct party line and brooked no dissent.

As an example, can you imagine a pro-life Democrat being given any kind of leadership position now? He or she would be driven from office by a combination of Emily's List, NOW, and a half-dozen other advocacy groups in the next primary.

If we want to maintain our ascendancy, we need to develop the maturity to allow those who agree with us on 75% of the issues to feel as though they belong in the GOP. Specter has already been put on notice, and as long as he has something to lose (the chair), he will be pressured to support the President's legislative agenda and judicial nominations. If he has nothing left to lose, we face not only six years of obstructionism by Specter but likely a coalition of centrist GOP Senators that will coalesce to hold the GOP majority hostage in the next two.

If we initiate a blood purge on the cusp of our majority status, we can expect nothing but internecine warfare during the next Congressional session. We will follow the path trodden by the Democrats over the past ten years.

AQ Targeting US Through Mexico?

Time Magazine reports that al-Qaeda has worked on plans to smuggle nuclear weapons out of Europe and into the US through Mexico, putting border security and immigration back to the center of war strategy:

A key al-Qaeda operative seized in Pakistan recently offered an alarming account of the group's potential plans to target the U.S. with weapons of mass destruction, senior U.S. security officials tell TIME. Sharif al-Masri, an Egyptian who was captured in late August near Pakistan's border with Iran and Afghanistan, has told his interrogators of "al-Qaeda's interest in moving nuclear materials from Europe to either the U.S. or Mexico," according to a report circulating among U.S. government officials.

Masri also said al-Qaeda has considered plans to "smuggle nuclear materials to Mexico, then operatives would carry material into the U.S.," according to the report, parts of which were read to TIME. Masri says his family, seeking refuge from al-Qaeda hunters, is now in Iran.

Masri's account can't be confirmed, and it could just represent a scare tactic on the part of AQ. After all, if AQ had its hands on any nuclear weapons, you can be sure that they would have detonated them already, either in Europe or around Iraq. Even if they're serious, they still have to get the weaponry and move it across the ocean, neither of which is terribly easy to do.

If it is a scare tactic, it's effective only because the southern border is such a sieve and everyone knows it. Both Mexico and the US have to get better control of the US-Mexico border. Bush made a creative proposal last year to create a guest-worker program that would allow legitimate economic workers to enter the US and improve their lives. We also need to work with Mexico to create an economy south of the border which meets the needs of its citizens in order to reduce or eliminate the powerful economic incentives that exist to cross the border illegally. But first we need to create an effective barrier to keep immigration controlled and secure, instead of the free-for-all we've tolerated for decades.

Iran Agrees To Halt Uranium Enrichment

The EU-3 appears to have won a major diplomatic concession from Iran as the Islamic Republic has agreed to halt its uranium enrichment program, which the UN confirmed separately:

Iran has given the United Nations a written promise to fully suspend uranium enrichment, diplomats said on Sunday, in an apparent bid to dispel suspicions that Tehran wants to build a nuclear bomb.

The move also would appear to blunt an American drive to take Iran before the United Nations for the imposition of sanctions.

By issuing the written commitment to the United Nations nuclear watchdog agency — the International Atomic Energy Agency — Iran dropped demands for modification of a tentative deal worked out on Nov. 7 with European negotiators, agreeing instead to continue a freeze on enrichment and to suspend related activities, diplomats told The Associated Press.

"Basically it's a full suspension," said one of the diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity. "It's what the Europeans were looking for."

The Iranians certainly seem worried about American efforts to escalate the standoff to the United Nations. They tried to redefine the agreement they reached with the Europeans earlier in the week to give themselves room to continue their progress on nuclear development. When the Europeans objected and the Americans made clear that we were ready to take the dispute to the UNSC, the Iranians caved.

However, before we break out the bubbly, let's remember that agreements mean little without a solid verification program. Saddam Hussein proved that international inspections mean very little for a regime that wants to hide its illegal handiwork. In fact, inspections only work when governments want to disarm and need a legitimate witness to its completion -- for instance, Libya. If the Iranians are determined to continue their nuclear program, this agreement means nothing. They will simply go farther underground, literally and figuratively.

The EU-3 and the US should insist on a program that guarantees access to all Iranian facilities to ensure they adhere to this agreement. Otherwise, we need to escalate this issue to the UNSC as the next logical and diplomatic step in facing down the Islamist mullahcracy.

Frist Takes Hard Line On Specter

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist declined to actively support Arlen Specter, telling Fox News Sunday that Specter had to agree to back all of George Bush's judiciary nominees if he expected to chair the Senate Judiciary Committee:

A Republican senator who has questioned whether an abortion opponent could win approval to the U.S. Supreme Court must agree to back President Bush's nominees if he is to head the committee acting on those nominations, the Senate's Republican leader said.

Republican Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, in line to become chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has yet to make a persuasive case that he should head the panel, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said on "Fox News Sunday."

This issue had quieted down somewhat over the past few days, and it looked like Specter might settle into the chairmanship chastened but safely. This looks like a moderate escalation in the battle -- a loyalty requirement that effectively puts Specter on permanent probation. While that may play well to the red-meat conservative base, if Frist is serious it may also serve as a final straw to the center-left Republicans that make up the first solid majority they've had in decades.

Frist needs to be careful with this situation. Up to now, Specter understood that he would be under tremendous scrutiny; he's had to beg for his job on the pages of the Wall Street Journal and issue one reassuring statement after another to defuse the crisis. No one doubts that these concessions were necessary, and that the problem is one of Specter's own creation. But to publicly demand that kind of concession amounts to humiliation, and one that Specter may not endure. If Specter decides to rebel against this demand, he will lose the chair, but he may succeed in peeling off a significant part of the Senate GOP from Bush's control -- a potential disaster for the second term.

It's time for cooler heads to prevail on both sides to calm the rhetoric. Specter had all but run up the white flag before, and the GOP had him under their thumb. Frist may have overplayed the hand today.

Arafat's Money Lies Hidden Still

The Scotsman reviews the legacy of poverty that the so-called hero of the Palestinian people has left his erstwhile countrymen. Yasser Arafat managed to siphon off most of the incoming aid to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, perhaps as much as three billion pounds, and even his overindulged and Machiavellian wife may not know where Arafat stashed it:

IN THE poverty-stricken West Bank and Gaza, thousands languish in refugee camps. Outside Yasser Arafat’s former headquarters in Ramallah children beg in the streets.

The late leader himself was also said to have lived frugally, but his fortune, skimmed from foreign aid and taxes and salted away in a network of secret bank accounts, has been estimated at up to £3bn.

Among his officials, there was always the fear that if something happened to Arafat, no one would know where all the money was, such was the culture of mismanagement and corruption.

Now that Arafat is dead and buried, the desperate search is on. There is one person who may know more than most about where the accounts are: Arafat’s 41-year-old wife, Suha, a woman condemned for living an extravagant lifestyle while the Palestinians lived in squalor.

While Arafat lay dying, Suha kept Palestinian officials from coming to his bedside, charging at one point that they wanted to "bury [Arafat] alive". At the time, some speculated that she wanted to use Arafat to extort money from the Palestinians, especially since Suha's expensive lifestyle had been well documented. It seems now that the Palestinians came to Paris as supplicants -- just not humble enough for Suha, at least at first.

The New York Post reported that Suha extracted an agreement for a $22 million annual pension, quite an amazing amount of money for a country supposedly left destitute by the Israelis. The Scotsman also reports this amount (as twelve million pounds, roughly equivalent) and also details the hefty expense account she received. After spending £54,000 a month on housing, supposedly legitimate, she still diverted over £6 million to personal accounts, according to French police.

Suha got hers. Well, that's not entirely accurate; Suha got the Palestinian money, cash intended to rebuild the West Bank in preparation for peace and to reduce the radicalism of the people. In a rational society, this large-scale embezzlement whose only peer is the Oil-For-Food program at the UN would force the Palestinians to re-evaluate their worship for the original terrorist. That they refuse demonstrates the pointlessness mess and the utter futily of peace talks, until the PA changes its constitution recognizing Israel's right to exist.

UPDATE: Never post when you're half-asleep and going in the wrong direction. I've fixed the final paragraph and corrected Suha's annual pension amount.