A Little Dioxin In His Borscht

Doctors treating Ukrainian presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko have determined that Yushchenko was poisoned by a powerful chemical known to Americans as the deadliest part of a notorious Vietnam War defoliant -- ironically called Agent Orange:

Ukrainian presidential hopeful Viktor Yushchenko was a victim of dioxin poisoning, but it remains unclear if it was the result of a deliberate act, Austrian doctors treating him said on Saturday.

"There is no doubt," Dr Michael Zimpfer, president of the Rudolfinerhaus clinic where Yushchenko is undergoing treatment, told a news conference."There were high concentrations of dioxin, most likely orally administered.

The disfigurement is a classic symptom of dioxin poisoning called chloracne. It will probably permanently disfigure Yushchenko, a constant reminder of the brutal practice of politics in Ukraine. It is all but impossible to have ingested the poison by accident, and although the hospital refused to characterize it as an attempt at murder, the truth is made obvious by the chemical itself.

Americans first became familiar with the effect of dioxin more than two decades ago when the side effects started showing up in areas that manufactured Agent Orange and other pesticides and herbicides. I recall reading extensive coverage in Time Magazine in the early 80s about the children suffering from chloracne in areas contaminated with dioxin from manufacturing byproducts; in 1983, the government bought the entire town of Times Beach, MO because of the dioxin used in sealing the town's roads.

For the man who has led the Orange Movement to freedom in Ukraine, having barely missed assassination from Agent Orange may be both bitter irony and, in retrospect, a harbinger of success.

Call It The Shotgun Approach

After enduring days of innuendo, character assassinations, and pseudoscandals, Bernard Kerik finally withdrew his nomination for the top job at the Department of Homeland Security for a surprising reason -- hiring an illegal immigrant as a domestic worker:

Bernard Kerik, New York City's former top cop, withdrew his name from consideration to be President Bush's homeland security secretary, a victim of the embarrassing "nanny problem" that has killed the nominations of other prominent officials. ...

While assembling paperwork for his Senate confirmation, Kerik said he uncovered questions about the immigration status of a housekeeper-nanny that he employed. As homeland security secretary, Kerik would oversee the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

"I am convinced that, for personal reasons, moving forward would not be in the best interests of your administration, the Department of Homeland Security or the American people," Kerik said in a letter to Bush.

He said he could not allow personal matters "distract from the focus and progress of the Department of Homeland Security and its crucial endeavors."

Kerik only now had questions about the status of his housekeeper? That sounds awfully convenient. I like Kerik, but he's been in law enforcement for a long time now. He should have known to check her out when he first hired her. He became Corrections Department commissioner four years ago, a position of fairly high visibility in New York. Didn't he think that having an illegal immigrant as a personal servant would be a problem there? I find it difficult to believe that this is the real reason, although you could make the same arguments about Kimba Wood, I suppose.

I believe that Kerik would have done a fine job at DHS, and it's a shame that this -- or something else -- derailed the opportunity. Don't expect to wait too long for a replacement to be named; the Bush administration usually fills these slots rapidly.

Taipei Tiring Of Brinksmanship?

Taiwan's pro-independence parties suffered a defeat in legislative election yesterday, a result sure to please mainland China and a signal that the Taiwanese may be tiring of the adversarial tone between the two Chinese nations:

The coalition that included President Chen Shui-bian's party had been widely favored to win control of the legislature. But the opposition rallied, keeping its grip on parliament.

The opposition won 90 of the 176 seats that are directly elected by voters, while the president's group won 76 seats, the Central Election Commission said. The remaining 10 seats were still unconfirmed, the commission said. ...

Since he was elected in 2000, the Taiwanese president has repeatedly urged Chinese leaders to meet with him. They've rejected his invitations because Chen has refused to endorse their view that Taiwan is part of "one China."

Chen has been telling voters that Chinese leaders will be more willing to talk to him if his party won greater control of parliament. He has warned that if Beijing keeps ignoring him, Taiwan will drift further away from the mainland.

From the vote, it would appear that the Taiwanese do not want to continue a policy that results in severed communications with Beijing. Although most of the island nation wants to remain autonomous from Beijing's control, most fear that an overt independence movement would bring swift military reaction from China. The vote yesterday reflects a more conservative approach, maintaining the status quo of de facto independence while allowing Beijing to plausibly continue its illusion of control.

One woman who voted with Chen feels no such fear, although one wonders whether her faith may be misplaced:

Voter Tsai Ming-tai said she supported Chen's party and wasn't worried about how Beijing would react. "We can't stand China. Whatever we try to do, China tries to block it. Anyway, if a war breaks out, America will help defend us, and China is afraid of that," the 34-year-old businesswoman said.

Given the vehemence of the anti-war movement in the US and the deployment of our forces overseas, I wonder if she isn't fooling herself. Our policy has been that we will provide military support to Taiwan in case of attack from China, but just as in the 1960s and 1970s, I doubt the political will to honor our treaties exists, especially in the House. I think that such action would receive a majority vote, but it would gather few Democrats who worry about the power of MoveOn and International ANSWER in their next election. Much has been made -- correctly -- about the power of incumbency in House races, but the primaries can be highly competitive if someone wants to spend the money.

We can barely muster the Democrats to go after terrorists and to eliminate the environments that produce terrorists after 9/11. I don't see them leaping towards a war with China simply because we signed a paper decades ago promising to protect Taiwan.

But Lance Armstrong Never Quits ...

The AP reports on problems one major Southeastern hospital chain has with Lance Armstrong's Livestrong bracelets that he sells to fund cancer research. It turns out that the rubber bracelets closely match DNR bracelets used at the hospitals that instruct staff not to resuscitate a patient:

A hospital chain is taping over patients' LiveStrong wristbands because they are yellow — the same color as the "do not resuscitate" bands it puts on patients who do not want to be saved if their heart stops. ...

"It could be confusing, particularly in the situation of a code or a cardiac arrest where people have to think very quickly," said Lisa Johnson, vice president of patient services at Morton Plant Mease Health Care, which is part of the chain. "We wouldn't want to mistake a Lance Armstrong bracelet and not resuscitate someone we're supposed to."

I know cancer kills, but who knew fundraising could be so dangerous? One other disturbing note in the story is that hospitals do not standardize on bracelet colors for such designations. What is meant by yellow at BayCare may be designated with purple at another hospital, and by blue elsewhere.

Moral of the story: don't accessorize while at the hospital.

Drop Negative Attitudes Towards Israel: Egypt

Buffalo Springfield once sang, "There's something happening here, and what it is ain't exactly clear" -- which would provide an excellent analysis about Egypt's sudden fondness for the Sharon government in Israel. After warning Palestinians earlier this month that the Sharon government afforded them the best chance for a lasting peace, the official government news service editorialized that negative attitudes towards Israel in Egypt should be shunned:

Egyptian-Israeli relations occupy an important place in Egypt's foreign policy and the first serious signs of openness in [Egyptian-Israeli] relations that we are now observing are important. ...

In addition, the development of relations with Israel and interest in [these relations] can open a window [of opportunity] that will free Egyptian-Israeli relations from any form of reliance upon [Egypt's] relations with the U.S. It is not natural, necessary, or essential for relations with Israel to be influenced by [Egypt's] relations with the U.S. Namely, we hope that [Egypt's] relations with Israel will be strong, self-sufficient and completely independent from relations with the U.S. ...

Objective analysis on this matter cannot lead to any other conclusion. It is time to drop the negative attitudes towards Israel, and relations with it. The basic value of the peace accord between Egypt and Israel lies in the fact that it expunges the term 'prohibition' or 'taboo,' which was created in the past by Arab policies towards Israel, and which turned relations with Israel into an abomination that could not be allowed.

Not only does the editorial (translated by MEMRI) scold Egyptians for negative attitudes towards Israel, but also announces to other Arab nations that Egypt will not respond to their pressure to downgrade its relationship with the Israelis. That's quite a striking statement and a massive turnaround for Hosni Mubarak, who had shown little but the most cursory adherence to the 1979 peace treaty between the two nations.

Why the change? Four weeks ago, people speculated that Mubarak was seriously ill when he had some sort of collapse in Parliament. Mubarak seemed to recover normally and the Egyptian press chalked it up to a cold, his antibiotics, and Ramadan fasting. However, either he may be more ill than disclosed or the experience has him thinking about how to end the Mubarak era in the Middle East.

Whatever the reason, the developments are certainly encouraging. Perhaps the rest of the region will take his advice. (via Instapundit, Roger L. Simon, and Memeorandum)

Powell: No Negotiations Until After Elections

Colin Powell threw a bit of cold water on Palestinian hopes for new negotiations on statehood, declaring that the US would stick by the "road map" and any other negotiations before the Palestinian Authority elections would be premature:

Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Friday an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal could not be rushed, as Palestinians must first elect a president and both sides must begin to carry out the U.S.-backed "road map" peace plan.

"We can't rush it and the road map is the way and the road map is quite detailed with respect to the obligations and the responsibilities of the parties," he told a news conference.

His words may dent Palestinian hopes for a quick return to negotiations leading to a Palestinian state.

Everyone feels a sense of optimism that progress can finally occur with the death of Yasser Arafat -- the palpable relief from all concerned underscores the hopeless nature of his leadership, of course. However, the danger in going too fast is at least equal to that of going too slow. The Palestinians need to structure themselves for peace before any agreement can work. Too many corrupt and radical elements remain with the PA to give anyone much confidence in a peace accord successfully being implemented.

Powell and Bush have the right idea. Wait for the elections to produce a legitimate leader and determine if that person can provide serious partnership for peace. Then implement the road-map strategy to ensure that both sides meet their phased commitments. Simply giving the Palestinians sovereignty in the West Bank without building any track record of trust will quickly result in a complete meltdown of civic order, and probably would touch off a war -- a civil war between the PA and the radical Islamists, and then a war with Israel and maybe even Jordan and Egypt if it spread.

It took us 37 years to get here. Let's take our time and try to get it done right.

Too Much Time On Their Hands

The Washington Times writes today about the emergence of a sport that features television coverage, enthusiast associations, and high-stakes gambling. Look out, ESPN poker challenges, here comes ... Rock, Paper, Scissors?

A 33-year-old body piercer from the District, he is better known as Master Roshambollah, perhaps the most feared Rock Paper Scissors player in the world. Fear being a relative term. Crushing with a fist, cutting with extended fingers, smothering with a flat hand, Mr. Simmons has thrown down for money and sport, in bars and, well, bigger bars. And he's not alone.

Long regarded as the civilized way of settling life's thorniest conundrums — such as who pays for the next round — Rock Paper Scissors is evolving into something else entirely: a genuine, bona fide, almost legitimate sport, sans the towel doffing, fan pummeling and steroid injecting common to its more celebrated peers.

The World Rock Paper Scissors (RPS) Society — yep, there's one of those, too — boasts 2,200 members. The winner of this year's world championship was honored with a parade at Disney World. Simon & Schuster recently published an official strategy guide.

My first reaction to this story was, "You have got to be kidding me." It's also my second, third, and fourth reaction. Patrick Hruby's article for the Times is tongue-in-cheek, but the organizers of RPS are apparently quite serious. I used to think that there was nothing more boring than watching others play poker (or more painful to my finances than me playing it), but the notion that a couple of people squaring off for RPS grudge matches makes ESPN's poker coverage look like the Thrilla in Manila.

If anyone doubted that a significant number of Americans suffer from arrested development, this is it. What's next, the Duck-Duck-Goose League? Hide-and-seek tournaments? Chutes and Ladders Olympics? Find these people something productive to do with all that spare time they have -- please.

What Does Social Security Privatization And Gay Marriage Have In Common?

After a prominent gay-rights organization hinted that they would back the Bush Administration's privatization policy for Social Security, dozens of LGBT activists wrote letters to every member of Congress denouncing the statement and swearing that they will not negotiate for their rights:

Dozens of prominent advocates for gay rights sent a letter to every member of Congress yesterday stating that they would reject any plan to bargain for equal rights, and specifically decried a report that the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest gay political organization, was planning to "moderate" its positions and would possibly support President Bush's plan to create private Social Security accounts.

The letter, titled "Where We Stand," was released by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) in response to an article in yesterday's New York Times. The article quoted officials from the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) as saying that, in light of defeats for gay rights in the Nov. 2 election (including the bans on same-sex marriage passed in 11 states), the organization decided to place less emphasis on same-sex marriage and more on "strengthening personal relationships." One HRC official was paraphrased as saying that the group would consider supporting Bush's efforts to partially privatize Social Security in exchange for the right of gay partners to receive benefits under the federal retirement program.

I'm mystified by the linkage of Social Security privatization and suppression of gay rights. If anything, privatization -- as HRC points out -- would allow Social Security recipients to name their own beneficiaries, an elegant work-around for the lack of domestic partnership recognition. Beyond that, it would appear that the LGBT activists in question put much more effort into knee-jerk reactions against Republicans and the Bush administration than in pursuing policy positions specific to their cause.

How does privatization of Social Security impact gays any more or less than it does any other person in the pension system? It doesn't, at least not negatively. This reaction highlights a trend among single-issue political advocates to lose focus and try to spread their impact across many different debates. The end result transforms LGBT activists (or others, just name an issue) into nothing more than proxies for a political party -- usually the Democrats, as they resemble more of a coalition of special-interest groups than a focused philosophical group anyway.

As such, the impact of their letter-writing campaign will likely only be felt amongst Democrats, who take their votes for granted anyway. The HRC actually has the right idea -- taking the partisanship out of the campaign and opening up to new ideas and new alliances that could boost their central cause: helping gays and lesbians.

The Many Fronts Of The War On Terror

Two stories off the wire this morning show the diverse effort put into finding creative ways to wage the war on terror. The Pakistan Daily Times publishes a report this morning stating that an amnesty program offered by the US to Taliban members who willingly surrender their arms and commit to a peaceful political process appears to have made significant headway:

The US-led military in Afghanistan said on Wednesday that it had been contacted by Taliban members willing to lay down their weapons following an arms-for-amnesty offer by the US envoy to the country.

US military commanders operating in south and southeastern Afghanistan have been contacted by Taliban members declaring their desire to “join the peaceful political process,” the US-led military spokesman, Major Mark McCann, told a news briefing in Kabul.

This new strategy splits the enemy into hardliners and pragmatists and allows the pragmatists a way out of the certain defeat that Taliban hardliners have created for themselves. The defections weaken an already depeleted force with little popular support; it also increases exponentially the possibilities for intelligence gathering. Some will grumble that these amnesty cases will simply backslide into terrorist activity. Some will, more will not, and that's a net gain for our side. In the meantime, it makes recruiting new members in any significant numbers next to impossible as people understand that the Taliban's day has passed.

Not so successful is the strategy to literally screw the terrorists out of their radicalism, as one Guantanamo detainee alleged in his tribunal hearing yesterday:

An Australian terror suspect was offered the services of a prostitute by the U.S. military if he agreed to spy on other detainees held at the Guantanamo Bay base in Cuba, according to court documents. In an affidavit unsealed by a U.S. District Court and seen by Reuters on Friday, David Hicks, a 29-year-old convert to Islam, said he was also beaten while blindfolded and handcuffed, threatened with weapons and had his head rammed into asphalt. ...

"Interrogators once offered me the services of a prostitute for 15 minutes if I would spy on other detainees. I refused," Hicks said in the affidavit, which is dated Aug. 5 and witnessed by his U.S. military lawyer Major Michael Mori.

Hicks said he was deprived of showers, sufficient food, access to regular reading material and other social contact, including mail, because he failed to cooperate.

Er, sure. Where were they going to pick up a prostitute -- in Havana? It sounds like a sailor's story to me, especially given Hicks' situation. It's a message coded for Islamic ears. Americans offer nothing but whores and betrayal, comrades! Seventy-two virgins await us!

On the other hand, if something like that had worked, we could have opened up an entirely new front on the war, and made a few bucks in "agent" fees to boot ...

Bush Administration Backs Annan, Cuts Coleman Off At Knees

The New York Times reports that UN Ambassador John Danforth has offered an official endorsement of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, "clarifying" the American position after numerous calls for Annan's resignation, including one from our own Senator Norm Coleman. The US has joined the chorus of voices cheering Annan on, calling into question whether Annan will ever bear any responsibility for the worst financial corruption in history:

The Bush administration said Thursday that it had faith in Secretary General Kofi Annan and did not want to see him leave office, its first show of support for the United Nations official since calls for his resignation last week.

"We are expressing confidence in the secretary general and in his continuing in office," Ambassador John C. Danforth said to reporters who had been alerted by the United States mission that Mr. Danforth would be delivering an important message.

Saying he was speaking for the White House and the State Department, Mr. Danforth said officials had decided to speak up because they believed their earlier reluctance to express confidence in Mr. Annan had been misread.

The Bush administration felt the need to respond after Annan quickly gained the support of various diplomatic blocs after Coleman and other lawmakers in the US called for Annan's resignation, including the Democratic Leadership Council, until they retracted it a day later. Other endorsements came from US allies such as Vladimir Putin and Tony Blair, which isolated the US in the UN. Those who oppose unilateralism must be proud to see the Bush administration retreat in the face of criticism such as this by Nelson Mandela and Bishop Desmond Tutu:

In an open letter on Thursday, a group of prominent South Africans, including Nelson Mandela, the former president; Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and the writer Nadine Gordimer, called the campaign against Mr. Annan "reprehensible and unjust" and said it reflected American arrogance. "Those who call for his resignation," the letter said, "betray the objectivity his position as secretary general demands and regard the United Nations as a mouthpiece to extol and exonerate the policies of the United States of America, right or wrong."

I understand realpolitik, and with the complete nonentity that the UN has become -- which Danforth railed against only last week -- standing alone in our principles regarding Annan's status is probably not worth it. However, it signals a significant retreat on demanding accountability from the Secretary-General for the disastrous incompetence (at the very least) of the management of Oil-For-Food. Why do we need to wait, as Ted Kennedy suggests, a full year or more for the Volcker Investigation to spend another $30 million of the Iraqi's money before holding the boss accountable for the UN's embarrassment? Documents already in hand show that Benon Sevan, Kofi's hand-picked man to run OFF and his direct report, received millions in kickbacks for his complicity in the scandal.

Is the threshold of competence at the UN really that one cannot be indicted for their malfeasance? Is that the expectation for the position? Hell, sign me up!

Another question this generates is that of Coleman's status with the Bush administration. Coleman took a lot of heat from his hometown newspaper by speaking out against Annan and asking for him to accept responsibility for the OFF debacle. Up to now, the GOP has treated Coleman as a comer, a man of the future in the party, and his leadership of the Senate investigation demonstrated their faith in him despite his junior status as a first-termer. Does the White House now want to distance themselves from Coleman? It appears that they have no problem leaving him twisting in the wind here.

Danforth and the White House may have wanted to clear up a dark cloud over Turtle Bay with their statement yesterday, but I think they just fogged up the situation even further.

Jon Lauck Responds To Ethics Questions

After an exchange of e-mails last night between Jon Lauck and myself, Jon posted a long message about the ethical issues regarding revelations that he and Jason Van Beek received money as political consultants for the John Thune campaign and did not reveal that to their readers. Jon makes several good points, and the central rebuttal is this:

I see Captain Ed has noted that CBS has started criticizing bloggers now that they're about to get nailed for "memogate" and noted some in the commentariat didn't like the fact that I was a consultant to Thune, but I did a long post explaining the many problems I saw at the Argus long before I was a consultant. And SDP and Sibby and others (there was criticism going back 20 years, as it turns out, pre-blog, as the blogs discovered and revealed to those who didn't know about it) were criticizing the Argus a year-and-half before any consulting was going on. And the Argus reported I was a consultant on the front page the month after I agreed to be one. Kos and Atrios and maybe other liberal bloggers are consultants too. They have opinions. Good for them. Other bloggers take partisan advertisements, and good for them too. Blogs never claimed to be "objective" as CBS did.

Read the whole thing, as well as Jason's response to the CBS memo from December 8. Again, these two men did good work and I don't believe they meant to hide anything from anyone, in my subjective opinion. However, one of the commenters on an earlier post, Berlin, gave what I think is the most relevant analogy on this that I've read:

No one is saying that blogs cannot express an opinion. That would be absurd. But, unless one is specifically informed to the contrary, one reasonably assumes that an opinion expressed by a blog, or a journal, or a newspaper editorial, is the product of that party's analysis of whatever issue is in question.

Money changes that, which is why any decent publication (and blogs are publications) requires that any financial motive is disclosed.

Lets say I run a tech blog that reviews computers. Lets say I review a new computer X on my blog. I offer it my full support and provide a detailed analysis.

Will knowing whether I was paid $25,000 by the company which made X to write that "analysis" change your opinion of it?

Be honest now.

Addendum: Some commenters wonder why this all matters, noting that (a) no one forces anyone to read blogs, and (b) this essentially boils down to free speech, i.e., even political consultants have the right to their opinion. Actually, I agree, but in the current atmosphere, both points are irrelevant.

Taking the first as a given -- no one forces anyone to watch CBS, either -- the second is more problematic given the McCain-Feingold finance reforms. As Saint Paul pointed out on the air last night, why would the Federal Election Commission treat a blog that receives funding from a political campaign any differently than a mailer or newsletter from the campaign itself, or indeed broadcasted political advertising? That speech is now regulated, especially when the money comes from a corporation or a labor union. The next logical step for these speech-restricted entities would be to start up blogs, or better yet, co-opt existing blogs with established readerships in order to use their editorial content to push their causes. You may not think this a big deal, but what if the Kerry campaign had paid Atrios or Kos to release those TANG documents on October 31st? What if the AFL-CIO paid Matt Yglesias that same day to release the cocaine charges Kitty Kelly made in her discredited biography? I suspect some of the "live and let live" commenters might have a change of heart. (Please note that I only use the above bloggers for hypothetical purposes; I do not mean to imply that they have done or would do any such thing.)

Once that starts, the FEC and Congress will be pressured to regulate bloggers as a form of political advertising. Since the blogs in question will not necessarily disclose these relationships, it puts all of us under a microscope. Most of us could not withstand the financial burden of an FEC probe into our operations; I make a few bucks off of advertising, but nothing that could pay a good lawyer past the initial consultation. It would, in the popular jargon, have a chilling effect on blogging and political speech.

Most of this is an argument against McCain-Feingold rather than an argument for ethical disclosure by bloggers, especially political bloggers. What I argue is that if we don't establish among ourselves some standards of disclosure and ethics, it will make it more difficult to withstand the pressure from the FEC and Congress to regulate our corner of the market.

UPDATE: Hugh Hewitt adds his comments on the controversy here and here. His points on proportionality are especially good. However, I disagree with this point, where he conflates tip jars with employment:

One more thought on the controversy over the Thune campaign contributions to two South Dakota bloggers who were openly pro-Thune: Any critic of these bloggers should also be demanding that all bloggers who hold "fund-raising" support campaigns disclose in detail the sources of their contributions. Among those bloggers who have solicited such funds: Andrew Sullivan and Josh Marshall. Subscription campaigns like the ones run by those two and many others of course carries the possibility that donations will be made on the theory that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." The very first thing one finds at Andrew Sullivan's blog is this:

"PLEASE SUPPORT THIS BLOG!
CLICK HERE TO MAKE A DONATION"

First, those contributions come with just an e-mail address and -- sometimes -- a short note; it's not like they come tied to a demand, and even if it did, you can simply ignore it. Second, accepting donations from a (hopefully) wide spectrum of your audience is not the same thing as accepting employment with one of the people your blog intends on covering. Disclosing donations would be the same as asking Hugh to identify everyone who bought his book (you know, Blog, coming to you in January -- order your copy today).

SDP Responds To CBS, Ethics Questions

In the wake of the CBS hit piece on the blogosphere, Jason Van Beek responded last night to the charges that he hid his relationship with the John Thune campaign:

I began my blog a year before Thune declared his candidacy. I became a consultant for Thune in July of 2004, a year and six months AFTER I began blogging. From the beginning, I have always been very clear about my political predilections. I consistently told readers of my blog that I was pro-Thune. If my blog was a "proxy" for the Thune campaign then it can fairly be said that the Argus Leader and CBS have been proxies for Democratic campaigns since time immemorial. [Good point -- CE.] The difference is that I tell everyone I am not an objective observer. To this day, the Argus Leader and CBS hold themselves out as objective observers. I think blogs in general have pretty much exploded that notion. Yet the "mainstream media" continue to splutter about "dirty tricks" and "ethics" and make a nauseating show of wrapping themselves in virtue.

We discussed this in detail on tonight's Hugh Hewitt show, and we all stressed the fact that Jason and Jon Lauck at DvT have never held themselves out as neutral observers in the Thune/Daschle race. Anyone who read their blogs would immediately understand their political orientation. As Fraters Libertas' Saint Paul noted, most of their information came straight off the pages of the Argus Leader or the national media. One should also consider the fine independent work they did, especially in covering the court hearing in the campaign's final days regarding poll watchers.

These are good points to consider, and my impulse is to give these guys the benefit of the doubt. I don't think they meant to hide anything, and working on a campaign for money doesn't necessarily invalidate a blogger's point of view. After all, the NARN guys did volunteer work for Bush here in Minnesota and I did some promotion for Pam Ward, a candidate for the Minnesota House who ran a fine campaign but lost to an entrenched candidate. We blog on politics because we love campaigns and issues; why wouldn't we be involved?

However, the difference is that we clearly stated on our blogs the relationships we had with the campaigns, and none of us accepted money outside of paid blogads, which of course are plainly visible on our sites. Jason writes an impassioned defense, but he can't be serious in expecting his readers to know his status as a paid Thune consultant because the Argus Leader wrote about it once back in July. Responsibility for disclosure should be on the blogger, not his or her readers.

The fact that his blog existed for eighteen months beforehand isn't exculpatory; it makes the ethical question even more relevant. Did his existing readers know that his status and relationship to the candidate had changed? I'm not a regular reader of Oliver Willis, but when he got hired by the laughably "non-partisan" Media Matters for America, he announced it on his blog. In fact, he bragged about it, and for good reason. Instapundit even linked to it as an example of the spreading influence of blogs. Did Jason write such an announcement? It appears not, and one has to wonder why. After all, a candidate hiring a blogger as a paid consultant would have made a great story.

It seems to me that Jason's business relationship should have been disclosed by Jason, on his blog, in order to give his readers -- which included a lot of fellow bloggers -- the chance to make up their own minds about the independence of his writing. If we knew that Jason got money from Thune, then we could judge whether Jason's analysis was really his own or simply a campaign release. Failing to disclose the relationship took that ability away. It also raised questions, fair or no, about Jason's honesty about his perspective on the race.

Did Jason do his readers a disservice? His readers will give their final decision on his sitemeter. For the rest of us who are fortunate enough to receive these kind of offers, we should learn that only full disclosure will maintain our credibility.

What Are The Ethics Of Disclosure In The Blogosphere?

The CBS report on the payments from the John Thune campaign to the blogs Dasche Vs Thune and South Dakota Politics has the blogosphere debating what disclosure blogs owe their readers. It's a great debate, and one that should have taken place long ago. Pat from Brainster's Blog wrote:

Well, I, for one, am disgusted with Lauck (I never read Van Beek's blog). He owed it to his readers to disclose the fact that he was receiving substantial amounts of money from Thune. And, for the record, our blog received nothing; we did it because we believed in John Thune and despised Tom Daschle.

Jon at QandO also feels used by the two bloggers:

To put this in perspective: recall that Daschle V Thune spent a great deal of time--and got a great of attention--by ridiculing the Sioux Falls Argus Leader, writing:

Look, be an advocate if you choose. That’s great. But just don’t pretend to be "objective."

Ironically, one of the most notorious efforts of the Daschle V Thune blog was an ongoing effort to point out undisclosed connections between a reporter for the Argus Leader and the Democratic Party.

I’ve no problem with advocacy. Bloggers are pundits, not reporters. But their failure to disclose that they were working on behalf of the Thune campaign is a sad deception. [especially of Instapundit, who linked them dozens of time]

It wasn't just Instapundit, either; Hugh Hewitt featured both blogs on his radio show numerous times, trying to help the Thune campaign in its bid to unseat Tom Daschle. We accepted them as members of the fraternity rather than simply an extension of the campaign. Would we have accepted them any less, or treated their posts with more skepticism, had we known that they received funding from Thune's campaign? Probably; at least we would have had the option.

In my opinion, bloggers who wish to do serious work should disclose all funding sources that could present a conflict of interest. In the case of DvT, clearly those payments cast a different light on their writing. Had Thune just bought blogads for their site, we would have seen the sponsorship up front and incorporated that information into our estimation of their credibility. The very fact that they chose not to disclose the payments or sponsorship in general now calls their motives and work into serious question.

Am I angry about this? Not especially. Neither site pretended to present an unbiased look at the race -- DvT overtly supported John Thune from the start of the blog. (Like Pat, I didn't read SDP.) Now that the payments have been disclosed, the bloggers have to answer to the marketplace, and I suspect they will suffer a marked loss of readership -- which is the only coin of this realm. The free market of ideas works similarly to any other free market; if the supplier can't be trusted, people find a different supplier.

As Jon says, this should be a lesson to all bloggers: fully disclose if you value credibility, especially if your mission is ostensibly to counter the bias of the mainstream media in your market, as was DvT. Otherwise, the mission begins to look somewhat hypocritical.

Addendum: We're filling in for Hugh Hewitt again tonight, and the CBS story will be one of our main topics of discussion. I'm sure we'll also be discussing the ethical ramifications of disclosure for the blogosphere. Be sure to tune us in!

Powell: I'm Not Running, Period

Colin Powell squelched speculation today that his retirement from the Cabinet had freed him up to run for political office. He categorically stated that he would not run for any political office in the future, according to the AP:

Secretary of State Colin Powell said Thursday he won't seek political office, dismissing suggestions that he run for governor or senator in New York.

Asked about a poll that shows him favored in a hypothetical matchup for the governor's race, Powell said, "I'm not going to be running for office even in my beloved home state of New York, as flattering as that poll might be." ...

"I don't think I've ever said I wouldn't be interested in public life again," Powell said. "I think I've repeatedly said over the course of nine-plus years that I've had no interest in political office."

Powell has been the center of speculation to replace George Pataki in Albany, and especially to oppose Hillary Clinton's re-election bid for the Senate in 2006. Three weeks ago, the New York Sun reported on a budding "draft Powell" movement among New York Republicans to derail Hillary's political career before she has a chance to run for President in 2008. However, as I argued at that time, that strategy had many risks for the GOP in a critical mid-term election:

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.

With Powell unequivocally bowing out of both races -- I thought he'd make a better candidate for governor -- it leaves the field open for Rudy Giuliani to pick whichever office he finds more attractive. I would expect Pataki to run for whichever office Rudy doesn't select, even if that means a re-election bid for governor. I don't think Pataki can beat Hillary for the Senate, but Giuliani has enough star power and credibility to beat her. The GOP should be working on a "draft Rudy" effort and accept Powell at his word.

CBS Has Seen The Enemy, And It Is Us

CBS News, reeling under the assault on its integrity, has decided to switch to offense ahead of its report on the fraudulent memos published by its 60 Minutes unit. Tonight, CBS reports on bloggers and their supposed lack of credibility and neutrality, a laughable nit to have picked by a news organization that couldn't be bothered to listen to its own document experts:

While many are must-reads for political junkies, are some Internet blogs also being used as proxies for campaigns? In the nation’s hottest Senate race, this past year, the answer was yes.

Little over a month ago, the first Senate party leader in 52 years was ousted when South Dakota Republican John Thune defeated top Senate Democrat Tom Daschle. While more than $40 million was spent in the race, saturating the airwaves with advertising, a potentially more intriguing front was also opened.

The two leading South Dakota blogs – websites full of informal analysis, opinions and links – were authored by paid advisers to Thune’s campaign. ... The documents, also obtained by CBS News, show that in June and October the Thune campaign paid Lauck $27,000 and Van Beek $8,000. Lauck had also worked on Thune’s 2002 congressional race.

Both blogs favored Thune, but neither gave any disclaimer during the election that the authors were on the payroll of the Republican candidate.

I didn't know that Lauck or Van Beek received payments from the campaigns, but they never pretended to be anything but advocates for John Thune in any case. They claim to have documents proving this, and perhaps they do, but the irony of making that claim seems to be lost on the Tiffany Network. CBS makes a great deal of these payments from the campaign, comparing them at one point to a bypothetical New York Times reporter taking payments from the Bush campaign -- again, an ironic sort of hypothesis, given that the Times practically made itself the Kerry campaign newsletter in conjunction with CBS. (The Gray Lady, you'll recall, wound up breaking the raided weapons bunker story when their CBS partner lost control of it in October.) The difference is that the Times pretends at neutrality, while both bloggers made no secret of their viewpoint.

Make no mistake, though: CBS News intends on using the Lauck and Van Beek to discredit the entire blogosphere. Apparently, CBS couldn't dig up any dirt on Power Line, which ruined Dan Rather's valedictory election campaign, so they went shopping for someone to smear in their place. Even at that, they couldn't find any real malfeasance, such as publishing forged documents, but they darkly reference legal and political action to control the content of blogs. Watch as CBS hypocritically engages in a load of projection:

At minimum, the role of blogs in the Daschle-Thune race is a telling harbinger for 2006 and 2008. Some blogs could become new vehicles for the old political dirty tricks.

As opposed to old vehicles, a perfect description of 60 Minutes in more way than one.

First Amendment attorney Kevin Goldberg called blogs “definitely new territory.”

“[The question is] whether blogs are analogous to a sole person campaigning or whether they are very much a media publication, which is essentially akin to an online newspaper,” said Goldberg, who is the legal counsel to the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

“Ultimately, I think, the decision will have to come down to whether the public will be allowed to decide whether bloggers are credible or whether some regulation needs to occur.”

So now CBS favors regulating political speech? Will CBS, with their vaunted credibility in shreds after the Memogate debacle, agree to allow government regulators pre-screen their content in order to make it more credible? I suspect that ABC and the New York Times may decline to go that far in propping up CBS against the blogs.

Beginning next year, the F.E.C. will institute new rules on the restricted uses of the Internet as it relates to political speech.

“I think those questions are going to have to be asked and answered,” said Lillian BeVier, a First Amendment expert at the University of Virginia. “It’s going to be an issue and it should be an issue.”

Under any other circumstances, that would prompt screams of outrage at Black Rock, but now CBS wants the government to protect them from the big, bad blogosphere. 'Free speech for me but not for thee' must have become the new mission statement at Viacom.

I suppose that, as a strategy, going on attack against the credibility of bloggers at least makes them look like they're trying. If nothing else, it will keep the rest of us laughing until the Memogate report reminds us what a lack of integrity really looks like.

PS: In case you're wondering, neither Whiskey or I took money from any political campaign or party. (And quite frankly, we're a little annoyed that we didn't at least get an offer.) But if we had, we would have announced it. If we hadn't, though, the blogosphere would have figured it out soon enough, and that would have damaged our credibility, not some FEC regulation or government pressure.

UPDATE AND BUMP, 12/9: CBS seems to have little concern about the unregulated nature of blogs when they serve CBS' interests, however. Ratherbiased has a scoop on the new CBS strategy of using lefty bloggers to promote and support its propaganda efforts:

The owner of Nonviolence.org, Martin Kelley, said he got an interesting phone call yesterday from a CBS News publicist for--you guessed it--Dan Rather's "60 Minutes Wednesday", the same program that carried the infamous bogus memos.

"Yesterday I got a call from a publicist for CBS News's 60 Minutes. They're running a story tonight on 'Deserters,' U.S. military personnel who have fled to Canada rather than serve in Iraq. She was requesting that I talk up the program on Nonviolence. In nine years of publishing the peace site, I can't remember ever getting a call from a publicist before. I've talked to reporters from major news networks and papers, and I've talked a booking agent or two to arranging appearances on radio shows, but never a publicist."

"So now CBS News publicists are courting bloggers. That's great: hey, if y'all want to buy me that new Treo Smartphone or a gift certificate to Gohn Bros I'll say Dan Rather is hotter than an armadillo sunning himself between the yellow lines on the interstate."

So on one hand, CBS warns its readers and viewers that blogs are corrupt, biased, and probably full of cholesterol -- and on the other hand, they want to use these same mechanisms to promote its stories defending deserters from the all-volunteer armed services?

Smash Takes On Cowardice

LT Smash has had enough of the media turning refuseniks from the all-volunteer armed services into anti-war superstars, and he's also had more than enough of the deserters themselves. In an open letter to Pablo Paredes, who refused to go aboard his ship for deployment to the Arabian Gulf, Smash points out the essential issue with desertion during wartime and why it's anything but courageous:

When you were planning your dramatic “statement,” did you think for a minute about how this would affect your shipmates? You are a fire control technician on the Sea Sparrow surface-to-air missile system. The Navy doesn’t have a bunch of spare FCs sitting in cold storage. Your ship is going to the Arabian Gulf, and will have to pass through the “threat arcs” of Iran’s Silkworm anti-ship missiles – and in case you haven’t noticed, we’re not exactly buddy-buddy with the mullahs these days. The Sea Sparrow is a critical point-defense system for your ship. So your job isn’t one that the Navy can afford to shrug off – somebody else is going to have to do it.

One of two things is going to happen. Either your shipmates are going to have to pull extra shifts to cover for your absence, or – more likely – somebody from another ship is going to get emergency orders to take your place in the coming days. Maybe that person is married; maybe he even has kids.

And you pulled this little stunt just in time for Christmas.

Deserters undermine morale and unit readiness any time, but in wartime they can cost lives -- and the lives they cost are those who made a commitment to protect and serve their country and honored that vow. In short, it can cost the lives we need the most, while the weasels like Paredes live out their miserable, parasitic existence.

Read Smash's entire post. As always, it's a classic.

South America To Try An EU Strategy?

The Washington Post reports this morning that South America intends on forming a political and economic union between its nations, emulating the EU model in order to compete with Europe and the United States. The notion of unification aside, economic alliances already abound, point out some critics of this latest effort:

Twelve South American countries signed a declaration Wednesday creating a political and economic bloc they hope will put them on a more equal footing with the United States and Europe.

The pact was signed at a two-day summit beginning Wednesday in the ancient Incan capital of Cuzco. But the absence of three presidents - Ecuador's Lucio Gutierrez, Uruguay's Jorge Batlle and Argentina's Nestor Kirchner - raised questions about the strength of their commitment to forming a powerful regional alliance. ...

"In the last 30 years we have sought a Latin America with the capacity for effective international action and we have not achieved it because the countries of South America have been scattered, not unified," Peruvian Foreign Minister Manuel Rodriguez said. "With this new community, Latin America will be fortified."

Strictly speaking from a hypothetical basis, an EU program for South America should prove easier to implement than in Europe. Culturally, the nations share a common experience of colonization and independence, religion, and natural environment. Economically they have all lived in the long shadow of the US, some more successfully than others. Almost all of them share the status of significant underdevelopment. They have not fought long, disastrous wars against each other. Most importantly, they only have two primary languages in use on the entire continent -- Spanish and Portugese -- and so have much less grounds for disagreement and misunderstanding.

Why, then, have their associations generally dissipated into oblivion?

Critics of the new regional organization abound. They note that Latin America already has several political and economic blocs and argue they have little to show for their existence.

Blasco Penaherrera, a former vice president of Ecuador and ambassador to the Organization of American States, said the regional meetings deal with general themes like improving education and battling poverty and never bring concrete results. ...

Penaherrera also was skeptical about South American nations creating a common market, noting that in many cases they export the same products. "The trade situation among South American countries is tremendously negative," he said. "There is no real possibility of increasing sales because they compete with the same products."

Part of the reason for the failure of such organizations as Mercosur may be from a lack of diversity in exports -- a situation that fresh investments could rectify -- but also of that shared colonial experience, something that Europe has never known, being the colonizers themselves. Nations which have freed themselves from the yoke of foreign domination look suspiciously on any attempt to reduce their hard-fought sovereignty. The exceptions in Europe would be the Eastern Bloc, which probably sees the EU as a guarantor of fair trade between themselves and the larger nations of France and Germany.

Another issue that presses on their decision, one that Europe also has blessedly avoided, is the continued presence of Marxist revolutionaries in parts of South America. The nations involved that have remained stable do not necessarily wish to buy that particular problem for themselves. If twenty percent of the EU member-states had significant revolutionary activity happening within their borders, I doubt that the EU as it exists today would ever have gotten off the ground. Political stability has to be an absolute requirement in order for the necessary trust to build between the nations involved in any ambitious confederation, just as an initial prerequisite.

South America might benefit from an EU-type market and political aggregation now, but cannot hope for its success until these underlying issues are resolved. The irony is that once they're resolved, the need for such a confederation probably disappears.

Bribing Europe Through Palestine

The Bush administration announced a new $20 million aid package to be paid directly to the Palestinian Authority, breaking a long-time reluctance to fund the organization while led by Yasser Arafat. The Washington Post reports that Bush wants to make a gesture of support for Palestinian elections:

The money will go straight to the authority, breaking a U.S. restriction on direct financing for the government formerly run by Arafat. It comes as Palestinians are struggling to finance their Jan. 9 presidential election, the logistics of which were agreed upon yesterday by Israel and the Palestinians.

Bush views the $20 million as a token of the United States' renewed commitment to jump-starting the peace process during his second term, according to a senior administration official. This is a "new opportunity to assist in the emergence of a responsible, democratic, moderate Palestinian leadership," the official said.

Certainly the money will help, although it contains stipulations that some of it be spent by the PA to pay off their utility bills with Israel. The money's effect was not intended for Palestine, however; it was intended for Europe, where George Bush has received voluminous criticism for turning his back on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Bush decided at the beginning of his term that while Yasser Arafat remained at the head of the Palestinian Authority, further negotiations were useless. Bill Clinton had exhausted the limits of diplomacy with Arafat over and over again, and Arafat refused to accept any of the deals offered, even the highly-favorable Barak proposals that touched off another intifada. Europeans were aghast at Bush's marginalization of Arafat and pressed Tony Blair to use his influence to get Bush back to the bargaining table, especially after Blair supported Bush in Iraq.

The $20 million in aid became possible with the death of Arafat, even if the money isn't likely to be spent much differently than if he were alive. It's a sop to Blair, who is worth the money and more, so that he can claim more influence over Bush, and so Bush can begin to rebuild diplomatic relationships with Europe. It also keeps the US in the center of the negotiations; we've seen in Iran what happens when we let the Europeans run high-stakes diplomatic conflict.

Whether we get any return on this investment should be seen shortly. If the Europeans start moving past the Iraq invasion to support the emergence of a truly free Iraqi nation, and if they finally start getting tough with Iran, the money will have been well spent. If not, the President has yet another example of European intransigence to use in shutting them out of the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations and our general Middle East policy.

LA Times Misses The Point

The Los Angeles Times attempts to analyze the aftereffects of the political tussle over the intelligence bill that has now passed both chambers of Congress and is on its way to the White House. They conclude that Congress has put George Bush on notice that they can't be pushed around any more -- when the Times misses the fact that Bush just steamrolled them:

President Bush has gotten a fresh education this week in how to deal with an increasingly feisty Congress as he heads into his second term.

The protracted struggle to enact an overhaul of the nation's intelligence community showed that conservative powerbrokers in Congress could not be steamrollered as easily as when Bush first was elected. Republican leaders are not as willing to "win ugly" as when they rammed his Medicare bill through the House last year, with arm-twisting so aggressive that it drew a rebuke from the Ethics Committee. ...

The Republican rebellion that slowed action on the intelligence overhaul was a warning sign that Bush will have to speak clearly — and listen carefully — to his GOP allies in Congress if he is to hold together his party's motley coalition of defense hawks, religious activists and economic conservatives.

Er, no. What it showed was that when the Bush administration finally decided it wanted this bill to pass -- which it took its time doing -- they know how to play power politics to make it happen. Duncan Hunter and James Sensenbrenner leveraged dissenting opinions on the bill by the Pentagon into holding the bill hostage, a move enabled by Denny Hastert's grandstanding play of keeping the bill tabled despite a clear majority supporting its passage. Even a majority of Republicans wanted the bill passed; in the end, only seventy-five voted against it.

What did the White House do? It inserted a clause that redundantly stated that the bill could no nothing that prevented the Dept. of Defense from fulfilling its statutory duty, a meaningless addition which allowed Duncan Hunter to withdraw while saving some face. Sensenbrenner didn't even get that much; the White House told him that the check was in the mail, and his concerns on immigration would be addressed next year. (Sensenbrenner voted against the bill.) Hastert suddenly stopped being the center of attention and moved the bill for passage lickety-split.

Wow, they really taught that George Bush a lesson!

When George Bush talked about spending political capital, he didn't just mean against Democrats. He meant that he intended to leverage his agenda through both parties in the upcoming session of Congress. He made it possible for many of these Republicans to get elected in the last two cycles, and all signs point to even more coattails in the next mid-term elections. Far from having to kiss up, the Bush political genius puts him at an advantage, especially in Congress, where they need a strong Bush to win their next election. They saw in this attempt to hijack one of Bush's bills that he still holds the cards.

The Times indulges itself in thinking that Bush has become a weak sister after another stunning national gain for the GOP. It's that thinking that will create another opportunity for Bush to do it again in 2006.

Sharpton: Shakedown Or Sellout?

One of the more odd aspects of this presidential campaign was the emergence of Rev. Al Sharpton as a mainstream political candidate. Sharpton first rose to national prominence as an advocate of Tawana Brawley, who hoaxed people into believing that she was raped and mutilated by a gang of white yuppies in New York. Sharpton at one point accused a prominent lawyer of being one member of the gang before a court ruled that Brawley had concocted the whole incident. While such an embarrassment would ruin others, Sharpton instead continued to grow in stature as a representative of the African-American community, albeit from the fringe -- at least until 2003.

Thanks to an extremely sympathetic media, Sharpton's candidacy for the presidency received little critical commentary; in fact, his bid was given more credibility than that of Carol Mosely-Braun and Dennis Kucinich, who at least had run and won elections in the past. The media sought out Sharpton to weigh in on issues, keeping his visibility and credibility high. Eventually Sharpton started the Howard Dean collapse by slamming him for minority representation in his Vermont administration, a charge which left the former governor dumbfounded and unable to respond. (Vermont's African-American community amounts to less than 1% of the overall population, making the charge something of a cheap shot.)

After losing the primary race, Sharpton campaigned instead for John Kerry, making numerous appearances on Kerry's behalf. In fact, Sharpton gave one of the most impassioned speeches at the Democratic Convention, running over his time in order to break Kerry's rules and personally attack George Bush. Voters defiinitely received the message that Al Sharpton represented the black community, and that Sharpton believed in John Kerry.

Unfortunately, that message was bought and paid for by the DNC. According to the Village Voice and AP's Nedra Pickler, the Democrats paid over $86,000 in fees and expenses to Sharpton to flack for the eventual loser, an unprecedented act:

The Democratic National Committee paid Sharpton $86,715 in travel and consulting fees to compensate for his campaigning for Kerry and other Democratic candidates, according to reports to the Federal Election Commission. ...

n an interview with The Associated Press, Sharpton said he was paid for travel and he didn't know how much he had been reimbursed.

"They asked me to travel to 20 or 30 cities to campaign, and I did that," Sharpton said. "What am I supposed to do, donate the cost of air fare?"

But records show that while most of the money was to reimburse travel expenses, Sharpton was paid $35,000 as a "political consulting fee" 15 days after the election. The consulting fee was first reported in this week's edition of the Village Voice.

Democratic National Committee spokesman Jano Cabrera said the party paid Sharpton at the request of the Kerry campaign.

No other Democratic candidate received a fee for campaigning on behalf of the party's nominees. None received reimbursements for travel expenses, either. Nor were these payments made public; as DNC spokesman Jano Cabrera put it, the payoffs were part of "private negotiations". I'll bet.

This sordid transaction belies any enthusiasm Sharpton expressed for Democrats or John Kerry, and instead either amounts to a shakedown by Sharpton or a payoff by Kerry. In either case, Al Sharpton sold out his community by taking the leadership role that he craved and the media gladly encouraged and cashing it in for $35,000. And why was John Kerry so eager to pay Sharpton under the table, especially when he hasn't even paid his own campaign staff the money they're owed, even now? Because Kerry could not afford to lose a single percentage point in the African-American community, and so he sought their votes the old-fashioned way. He bought them by paying off their supposed champion.

CBS News made a big deal about two bloggers selling out to campaigns without any disclosure. What does it say about Democrats when one of their own mainstream candidates shakes them down for cash in order to support them?

UPDATE: Here's the Village Voice article. It's mostly a run-down of Sharpton's involvement with a woman who worked for him, but it does briefly mention the payments to Sharpton by the DNC. One wonders why the Voice didn't spend more of its focus on that.

Being The Wrong Crowd

Today's Star-Tribune runs a cautionary tale for teenagers who think that their behavior has no consequences. Unfortunately for one Minnesota teen, his night of debauchery and crime left him permanently disabled and fortunate not to be dead. His so-called friends showed their true colors the moment things went sour -- demonstrating exactly why parents warn their children about running with the wrong crowd:

Minutes after he was thrown from a stolen car and paralyzed after a night of drinking and joyriding, the teenage boy begged his buddies not to leave him behind in a roadside ditch.

"Please don't leave me here to die," the 14-year-old from Stewartville, Minn., pleaded with friends, according to a police report.

But that's what they did, according to a juvenile petition filed in Mower County this week charging four teenage boys with felonies in connection with the Nov. 4 incident near Racine, Minn.

The 14-year-old was no angel; he participated in the car theft -- a major felony -- as well as smashing mailboxes and general mayhem. Since the other teens involved were a couple of years older, it appears to be a case of a young boy trying to fit in. He must have thought rather highly of these hooligans when he went out that night. Now, of course, he learned that character shows through in small ways as well as large, and the idea that these idiots would think of risking anything to help an injured "friend" must surely look as foolish to the young boy now as we adults instantly recognize from experience.

Parents often warn their children about hanging out with troublemakers. This lesson could teach a few before they get left, broken and freezing, in a country ditch in the middle of nowhere by cowards they unfortunately idolize.

Lends Women What?

The Washington Post should hire better headline writers. On an article detailing a visit by California's governator to a conference on women and families, which he sponsored, the Post titled the article thusly:

Schwarzenegger Lends Women His Muscle

I'm sorry, but given the treatment Schwarzenegger got from the press during the last weekend of his recall election, that headline conjured up something completely different than what the article delivered. Instead, William Booth writes dishy, somewhat gossipy coverage of a routine political event, one in which Arnold's friend and co-star enthusiastically supported his outlook on women's issues:

All those accusations of unwelcome gropes in hostile work environments? A distant memory of a recent unpleasantness, it seems. Because when the actress Jamie Lee Curtis introduced California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger at his Conference on Women and Families here on Tuesday, the audience of 10,000 -- about 9,995 of them female -- gave the Republican action hero a standing ovation.

"Welcome to the estrogen festival!" announced Curtis, who described her co-star in 1994's "True Lies" as a caring, compassionate gal pal who gets it. "He is," Curtis sighed, "the ultimate girlie man."

When a top button on Curtis's silk blouse came undone onstage, the governor looked down and said, "I didn't see anything."

Maybe he is a girlie man ...

John Kerry, Deadbeat (Part Deux)

The revelation that John Kerry still had $15 million left in his campaign treasure chest stunned Democrats, who rightfully asked themselves why the money hadn't been spent more aggressively in Ohio and other close races, or even spent on tight Senate campaigns in the final days of the election. As the Washington Post's Al Kamen reports, a specific set of Democrats had a much more personal interest in the money:

There are rumblings that, despite a recent discovery of $15 million in leftover campaign money, some of the Kerry campaign advance team are having trouble getting paid for the last several weeks of the campaign. Worse, many of them have not seen a per diem check since the end of August, we're told, and they do not know when they're going to get paid.

Phone calls apparently don't get returned and, if they do, the mantra is "next week" or "you're on my list."

I see now how John Kerry planned on balancing the budget: he just wouldn't pay the bills. This is not Kerry's first time for leaving workers in the lurch, either. Last July, Kerry left an $847 bill unpaid for a small airport used by the Kerry airplane:

When the biggest plane to ever land on the island touched down with U.S. Sen. John Kerry and his entourage, airport manager Al Peterson never imagined he would have trouble getting paid. ... But a caterer who bought food on the island for Kerry's campaign jet ducked one bill and haggled over another.

"Apparently they don't feel like he needs to pay fees to the airport," Peterson said. "I gather the senator objects to that because his aide quoted him as saying that he already pays taxes on the island."

Peterson is out $847 from the two visits Kerry has paid to the island since he became the presumptive Democratic nominee.

It's good to see the rich help out the little people, isn't it? Where are all those class warriors on the Left now?

Floridians Had No Problems Voting

According to a post-election Quinnipiac poll, Floridians reported no problems casting votes in this year's election and overwhelmingly had confidence that their votes were counted properly:

Most Florida voters had no problem casting a ballot on Election Day and many say they are confident their vote was counted correctly, a poll shows.

More than nine in 10 respondents said they had no problems, other than having to wait in long lines, according to the Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday.

Voters felt strong confidence in the results, with 75% saying they had very or somewhat confident their votes were counted properly. Predictably, this broke out along partisan lines. Only 5% of Republicans expressed a lack of confidence -- but 42% of Democrats felt uneasy about whether their ballot received proper handling. Since all ballots look exactly the same and both parties vote at the same booths, the only explanation for this discrepancy has to be the four-year campaign by Democrats to undermine public confidence in voting whenever and wherever they lost. They've managed to dispirit Democrats, and if they continue their whining, may kill their turnout altogether.

Call It An Intervention

Kitty Kelly opened her latest copy of Washingtonian magazine and was shocked to find herself removed from the masthead, where her name has, er, graced the magazine for thirty-two years. When she protested to her friend and editor Jack Limpert, he delivered the truth that the rest of us already knew about the sleazy, undersourced "biographer":

After a relationship of more than 30 years, Washingtonian magazine and writer Kitty Kelley are divorcing, and the terms are not amicable. Kelley is in a snit because the mag unceremoniously booted her from the masthead of its current issue, citing her controversial book "The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty." In an e-mail last week, Editor Jack Limpert lashed Kelley for what he called the book's partisan timing and its irresponsible reporting about President Bush:

"We are always willing to attack the policies, and the behavior, of the President," Limpert wrote to Kelley. "But it seems to us that the office deserves respect. We don't think we should attack a President personally -- his relations with his wife and family, his use of alcohol or other drugs, things like that -- without a very solid basis for doing so. . . . We felt strongly enough that we didn't want readers to feel that your appearance on the masthead meant we endorsed the book."

Kelly has a legitimate beef with the way this was handled; Limpert dumped her without even informing Kelly of the change. When asked why he had neglected to contact Kelly to inform her of the end of a thirty-two year relationship, Limpert told the Post that he didn't want to have to tell Kelly that she wrote a "sleazy, irresponsible book." Well, Mr. Limpert, that's your job. If you end a 32-year relationship, you owe the other person the courtesy of notice and an explanation. If you don't have the courage to do that, then your magazine should reconsider its relationship with you.

In the end, Limpert's lack of testicular fortitude does everyone a disservice, especially Kitty Kelley. Her friends should have staged an intervention long ago, warning her that her unsupported allegations were destroying her credibility and forcing her colleagues to act to protect their own. She has made her career by writing one trashy, anonymously-sourced biography after another, from Elvis Presley to Frank Sinatra to Nancy Reagan, each one an attempt to outdo the last.

She hit her nadir this fall when she released The Family, a supposed exposé of the Bush family that purported to reveal W's use of cocaine at Camp David during the Reagan years. Her source for this allegation was Sharon Bush, W's ex-sister-in-law. No lover of the Bush family, Kelley reported in her book that Sharon confirmed unnamed sources who claim that W snorted coke. The revelation sent the Left into paroxysms of delight ... until Sharon vehemently denied having said any such thing:

Sharon Bush, who is divorced from the president's brother Neil, said in a statement: "I categorically deny that I ever told Kitty Kelley that George W. Bush used cocaine at Camp David or that I ever saw him use cocaine at Camp David. When Kitty Kelley raised drug use at Camp David, I responded by saying something along the lines of, 'Who would say such a thing?'

"Although there have been tensions between me and various members of the Bush family, I cannot allow this falsehood to go unchallenged."

Moreoever, as Limpert notes, Kelley timed the book's release for the peak of the general election campaign, less than eight weeks before Election Day. No one looking at the calendar can doubt that the author intended to influence the election by publishing unfounder rumors as fact in a time frame that used to be too narrow to mount any rebuttal. Now, with the Internet and thousands of people working on pseudoreporting such as Kelley's, that type of bombshell more frequently detonates in the throwers' hands rather than at the victim. In any case, it's hardly a track record that makes legitimate news organizations eager to work with an author.

That explanation is what Jack Limpert owed Kitty Kelley, and it would have been beneficial for her to hear it directly and forcefully. His criticism would at least have provided an opportunity for Kelley to mend her ways, although I doubt she would have changed her lucrative formula either way. If more of her friends and colleagues would hold her accountable in this way, perhaps she would understand what an embarrassment she is for all concerned.

Does Anyone Like This Intelligence Reform Bill?

The Washington Post weighs in on the compromise intelligence bill which finally passed the House yesterday and goes to the Senate today. While the Right has its own problems with the bill, it appears that the Left dislikes it at least as much:

THE RHETORIC emanating from Capitol Hill the past few days may have created the impression that, after a hard-fought battle over key provisions, Congress worked its way to a sensible plan for reorganizing the U.S. intelligence community. Sadly, that is far from the truth. The 600-page omnibus measure on its way to approval yesterday had not been read or carefully considered by the vast majority of members, including some of those most involved in its construction. ...

That shake-up, driven by an odd combination of election-year politics and the determination of the Sept. 11 commission to leave a mark, may improve the quality of intelligence information supplied to the president and other key policymakers; we have our doubts. Like the passage of the USA Patriot Act or the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, it has been mandated hastily and with scant consideration of its long-term consequences.

The Post's editorial board has many objections to this bill, including many that I don't share, but we both have the same suspicion that the so-called intelligence reform will hinder data gathering and analysis, especially the latter:

And, most important, will this massive wartime reorganization help or hinder the critical task of bolstering the CIA's operations on the ground in difficult and dangerous places such as Iraq and Iran? Will it diminish or increase the likelihood that future intelligence judgments will fall victim to "groupthink," or political influence by a presidential appointee?

Rather than actually reorganize the structure of American intelligence services, currently split into several alphabet-soup bureaucracies with all of the attendant barriers bureaucracies bring, the 9/11 Commission and this bill simply slaps a new layer of bureaucracy on top of it. Besides the NIC, a worthwhile effort, that's the reform prescribed by the Commission -- a collection of bureaucrats. That means the same barriers will exist at the operational level as do now; the only merge takes place at the management/executive level. Every piece of analysis will have at least one and probably two more levels of management through which to pass, which increases the chances that more will be lost, not less. And the man at the president's ear will have no operational control over the analysts and the data gatherers.

What kind of reform is that?

The entire bill should be dumped. I don't have a problem creating reform in steps; immigration reform can come in a separate package, as can other aspects of this bill. But the steps that we do take should move us forward, not backward, and this proposal almost guarantees that result.

UPDATE: Easily the best analysis of the machinations behind this bill appears on Power Line in a post by Deacon. It's entitled "Advantage, No One", and you should read the whole thing.

Hinzman For President in 2036!

Michelle Malkin reports on the activities of Jeremy Hinzman, a deserter who ran to Canada rather than fulfill his obligation to the Army. Already a darling of the anti-war Left, Hinzman apparently wants to crank up a career in politics, John Kerry style, by reviling his former comrades of the 82nd Airborne (the ones who didn't run squealing into the Great White North) as war criminals:

Hinzman and his lawyer plan to argue to Canadian immigration officials that American soldiers are guilty of war crimes and that forcing Hinzman to fight in Iraq would have likely made him a war criminal. Among the witnesses testifying on Hinzman's behalf is former U.S. Marine Staff Sgt. Jimmy Massey, the Winter Soldier of the 21st century, who claims his platoon killed “a bunch of innocent civilians.” Massey has been making the rounds in the French media and other America-hating swamps.

Beautiful, isn't it? At least Kerry made it to Vietnam, somewhat briefly, before returning to smear his fellow sailors and officers as murderers and criminals. Hinzman served a tour in Afghanistan, only after being denied conscientious-objector status, and bugged out before the Army deployed him to Iraq. The Canadians embraced him as a hero, a refugee from the oppressive and warmongering Bush administration.

However, as Malkin points out, the conscientious-objector status was designed for draftees, not those who enlist of their own free will. Its implementation recognized that the involuntary nature of the draft swept into uniform a number of people who truly opposed military action of any kind, regardless of provocation or circumstance. Those with CO status received clerical, stateside postings instead of combat assignments.

Hinzman did not get impressed into service; he joined the Army of his own free will, fully knowing that war always remained a possibility. As Malkin says, he "happily cashed in his Army paychecks" until that possibility became a certainty with the 9/11 attacks. He tried to argue that he opposed the Iraq war for reasons of conscience, but that's not the way CO status works -- and the voluntary enlistment makes that argument moot.

It boils down to this: Hinzman gladly took the money and benefits that the Army offered until such time as we needed him. When that time came, Hinzman wants us to believe, he suddenly discovered his inner pacifist. And when that ploy failed, he settled on crapping all over the rest of the men and women serving in our armed forces as a strategy to avoid his freely-made obligations.

In other words, Hinzman is a disgusting coward, a low-life who should be serving a long stretch in Leavenworth for his desertion during wartime. His absence could easily have cost lives in Iraq, as the 82nd Airborne (like all military units) trains as a group, with each member having their own specific responsibilities. Losing a good soldier because of operational degradation due to Hinzman's cowardice would amount to the bitterest irony I know.

Canada should expel Hinzman immediately. If not -- if Canada truly wants to stand as a beacon for the craven and unfaithful -- then we should rethink our border and trade policy with our northern neighbors.

Ukraine's Orange Movement Keeps Rolling

The Orange Revolution of Viktor Yushchenko continues unabated, as the Ukrainian Rada passed a compromise electoral-reform measure that outgoing president Leonid Kuchma signed. The agreement puts into place a new run-off election between Yushchenko and Kuchma's hand-picked successor, Viktor Yanukovych, for a watered-down presidency:

Ukraine's parliament adopted a package of electoral and constitutional changes Wednesday in a compromise aimed at defusing the nation's political crisis less than three weeks before a rerun of the disputed presidential vote.

The vote came as a surprise after days of political maneuvering and massive street protests. It suggested that opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko's camp had determined that the prolonged unrest could ultimately weaken the country and his own position ahead of the Dec. 26 repeat vote.

The package was approved in a 402-21 vote with 19 abstentions, drawing a lukewarm endorsement from Yushchenko's supporters. Lawmakers stood and cheered as President Leonid Kuchma signed the measure.

It's hard to see where this amounts to much bad news for Yushchenko. New elections are set for December 26th, about the soonest it could get done under any circumstances. He got the replay of the run-off election he demanded rather than a complete restart of the entire election. Some of the powers the office had (and the article does not specify these) were transferred to the Rada, but in light of Yushchenko's popularity, that may ultimately benefit him, and certainly benefits Ukraine.

The Orange supporters did not get Yanukovych fired, although they did get another head on a stick, that of Kuchma's prosecutor general. Yanukovych will run against Yushchenko in the run-off and has been granted a leave of absence by Kuchma to campaign. (Nice boss, eh?) In a fair election, of course, it will make no difference; Yushchenko had a commanding lead before the last election, and his courage in standing up to Kuchma and Yanukovych will resonate even further this time around. Yanukovych's attempt to buy off Yushchenko with the Prime Minister job, on the other hand, looks craven and desperate in comparison.

Speaking of courage, rumors of Yushchenko's health have swirled around the globe. Over the space of six months, Yushchenko has aged about twenty years, and speculation has it that the Kuchma government had him poisoned in an unsuccessful assassination attempt. Yesterday, the Times of London reported that doctors had settled on poisoning as a diagnosis for his illness. However, the AP reports that the doctors deny saying any such thing:

Doctors are still running tests to try to determine what caused the illness, said Dr. Michael Zimpfer, the Rudolfinerhaus director, although he acknowledged that poisoning was one of the possibilities being investigated.

Zimpfer rejected as "entirely untrue" a story in the Wednesday edition of the London daily The Times, which quoted Dr. Nikolai Korpan — the Rudolfinerhaus physician who oversaw Yushchenko's treatment — as saying that Yushchenko had been poisoned and the intention was to kill the candidate.

Korpan also was quoted as denying making the remarks.

The transformation of Yushchenko's face has been horrifying. In July he appeared to look like a Western-style politician -- young, energetic, and handsome. By the time the elections were held, his face had sagged, become pockmarked, and his eyes now appeared like two beads between heavy and sagging eyelids. Whatever the cause may be, it certainly looks unnatural. Maybe it wasn't poisoning, but doctors seem relatively unconcerned about the potential for contagious disease as the answer to the riddle.

And just in case anyone considers the Russians to be fair arbiters of the Ukrainian political crisis, consider the remarks made by the Kremlin's mediator -- a man who ostensibly needs to work with both sides to reach a consensus:

"I am deeply convinced that only Yanukovich's victory will allow Ukraine to remain an integral and united country," Russian parliamentary speaker Boris Gryzlov said during a visit to Kazakhstan.

Asked to comment on Ukrainian opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko, who has proclaimed himself the new president, he said: "The self-declaration of oneself as president should be qualified as cheating."

So is he a mediator, or Yanukovych's talent agent? I've heard Terry McAuliffe be less partisan ... well, maybe once ...

Don't forget to keep checking in with SCSU Scholars and King Banaian, who keeps producing the best commentary this side of Kyiv on the Ukrainian political upheaval. King spent significant time in Ukraine (as an economic-reform consultant) and worked with Viktor Yushchenko and a number of other players in this drama.

Berry Quits, A Day After Her Term Expired

Only in Washington could an official resign from an office she no longer occupied, but the Bush Administration won't complain anytime soon. Mary Frances Berry, along with Cruz Reynoso, decided to "resign" rather than battle the government in court and possibly against federal marshals, allowing two new Bush appointees to take their seats on the Civil Rights Commission:

Mary Frances Berry, chairman of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, resigned yesterday after more than two decades of criticizing the administrations, both Democratic and Republican, that she served.

Berry, an independent, and Vice Chairman Cruz Reynoso, a Democrat, sent resignation letters to President Bush a day after the White House moved to replace the two. Both had resisted leaving Monday, arguing that their terms would not expire until midnight Jan. 21, 2005. The White House maintained that their six-year terms expired on Sunday, and that they had been replaced.

In brief letters to Bush, Berry and Reynoso said that they believe they still have time left to serve but that it is not worth the fight.

"Given that the conclusion of my tenure is only a few weeks away, a legal challenge would be an unwise expenditure of resources," wrote Berry, a civil rights history professor at the University of Pennsylvania. "Therefore, I am resigning my position as commissioner on the United States Commission on Civil Rights effective immediately."

And so the Berry Era ends at the CRC with a growl, not a roar as she threatened earlier. As I wrote yesterday, Berry's unseemly behavior in defying an appellate court ruling and the language on her appointment from Clinton makes a farce of the mission of her board: enforcing the law. Berry typifies the kind of bureaucrat that we often see in Washington DC, such as J. Edgar Hoover, who see their office as a birthright and refuse to leave quietly and with dignity. Hoover had to be carried out of his office, and it looked like Berry wanted a similar (but much livelier) exit.

So long, Mary Frances, and don't forget to take your baggage with you on your way out.

Cracks In Partisanship On Social Security Appear

The first cracks in the partisan divide on Social Security appeared this evening, with Florida Congressman Allen Boyd (D-FL) announcing that he would support George Bush's plan to save the plan through privatization:

President Bush's call for private accounts within Social Security drew an early expression of bipartisan support Tuesday when Florida Rep. Allen Boyd stepped forward to the disappointment of Democratic leaders.

"There are some of us who are willing to work across party lines" on legislation to repair Social Security's solvency, he said.

"This is the only bipartisan bill that I know of," Boyd added at a news conference where he said he would serve as the chief Democratic supporter of legislation drafted by Republican Rep. Jim Kolbe of Arizona.

And that's the entire problem with the Democratic approach to both Social Security specifically, and to bipartisanship in general. Bush received an inordinate amount of criticism for polarizing Washington during his first term, with Democrats castigating him for not working in a spirit of bipartisanship. And yet only George Bush bothered to come up with anything creative to address the looming disaster of Social Security, while all his opponents could do was scream about the sky falling and, at the same time, try to scare old people into thinking Bush would steal their pensions. Rep. Boyd just pointed out that the emperor has no clothes.

For his trouble, he can expect that the Democrats will do their best to marginalize him in the next electoral cycle. At the moment, they've lowered the hysterics, focusing instead on the costs for transitioning to private accounts. Boyd and Kolbe point out that the $2 trillion price tag (over 10 years) for conversion pales before the estimated $22 trillion the existing system will have to suck out of the economy over the next 75 to remain solvent. The GOP has the winning argument, which may explain why Democrats preferred unity and hysterics rather than reasoned debate on the issue.

Now that Boyd has broken the ice, expect to see more Democrats come on board to tackle this critical problem. Until we resolve our Social Security catastrophe-in-waiting, any program of fiscal responsibility will necessarily fail, as a ripple gets overwhelmed by a tidal wave.

Hell No, I Won't Go

Kofi Annan has answered calls for his resignation by refusing to leave before the end of his current term, an unsurprising development after Tony Blair suddenly endorsed Annan's continued leadership:

Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Tuesday rejected calls from several U.S. lawmakers for his resignation, saying he will "carry on" at the helm of the United Nations for the next two years.

Five Republicans in the House of Representative on Monday backed a call last week by a GOP senator for Annan to resign amid allegations of corruption in the U.N. oil-for-food program. But outside the United States, there is no clamor for the secretary-general's resignation, and he has picked up support from many of the 191 U.N. member states.

Well, now there's a shock: the majority of the world's kleptocracies support the man who presided over the largest swindle in world history. Even with his son hip-deep in the scandal, Annan refuses to accept any responsibility for the Oil-For-Food debacle, and the normally sensical Blair lets him off the hook:

"I have had the occasion to be grateful for his leadership on many occasions," Blair said in London, "and I very much hope that he is allowed to get on with his job ... without criticism that I think, if people analyze it for a moment, they will see that it is unfair."

Unfair? Does the Secretary-General have responsibility for the performance of the UN bureaucracy or not? Imagine, if you will, if the UNSCAM scandal involved Halliburton in any way (or the Carlyle Group). People around the world would be screaming for Bush's and/or Cheney's resignation and Congress would start looking at those impeachment statutes with more than just an academic interest. Imagine again that Ken Lay had been left to run Enron while conducting his own internal investigation into the corruption and stonewalling investors who wanted to bring in their own independent auditors.

Annan's job was to make sure that UN-administered programs were administered properly and ethically. Benon Sevan was Annan's own hand-picked executive for the program, and yet no one has offered any proof that Annan ever looked into whether Sevan's operation conducted itself properly -- the first task of any executive is to require some sort of reporting from their subordinates, after all. If Annan cannot even do that effectively, then what good is he?

As long as Annan sits at the head of the UN, the US should withhold all funding for all UN programs, including dues. Let's starve him out of the job.

Egypt Announces Peace In The Middle East (Film At 11?)

The French news agency AFP reports that Egyptian ruler Hosni Mubarak has announced a comprehensive peace agreement for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been achieved -- and then clammed up:

"An important understanding, that could constitute an agreement in principle, has been reached by Egypt, Israel, the Palestinians and the significant international parties -- the United States and the European Union -- on a comprehensive solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," the official news agency MENA quoted senior Egyptian sources as saying Tuesday.

No other information was included in the announcement. We'll be sure to keep our eyes on this situation as it develops. If this turns out to be substantial, the Northern Alliance will cover it as we sub for Hugh Hewitt tonight at 5 pm CT. Be sure to tune us in.

Domestic Terrorism?

The Washington Post reports on a series of arsons in a controversial Maryland development that destroyed a dozen houses and damaged a number of others in a single day. While law-enforcement officials and the builder showed reluctance to attribute the sophisticated arsons to anyone in particular, the development had been the subject of a bitter fight with environmental groups:

A preliminary investigation found traces of a fire-starting accelerant in four houses that were the first to be examined by investigators, officials said. Damage was estimated at $10 million, and William E. Barnard, the state fire marshal, said it was the biggest arson in state history. In addition to the 12 homes destroyed, about 30 were damaged, authorities said.

Investigators said more than 20 fires were set. Some houses were burned to the ground, and the second floors and roofs of others were burned out. The structures seemed to have been targeted at random, investigators said, with some houses spared while others nearby were destroyed.

Investigators said the fires were confined to the unoccupied section of the development, away from homes where people live. About 70 houses had been finished or were under construction in the subdivision, and 319 more were planned, the developer said.

Environmental activists have fought the development in the Hunters Brooke subdivision for five years, arguing that the construction endangers one of the last pristine sweet-magnolia bogs, along with endangered insects and a couple of varieties of plant life. The failure of their effort to stop the build automatically provokes the suspicion that homegrown terrorists like Earth Liberation Front may have set the fires to drive out homeowners and potential buyers. The arsons follow a series of robberies and racial tagging in the subdivision.

Apparently, someone really wants Hunters Brooke to disappear, and so far the only ones who have fought it are the environmentalists. The builder downplays that suggestion, and law enforcement only says that they will keep their options open. However, whoever set the fires qualifies as a terrorist, as the intent to drive people out of the development seems clear enough.

Whether ELF or another lunatic-fringe group is responsible, they should be tried as terrorists and locked up for a very long time, as a message to others. Regardless of the motive, we cannot allow people to burn down buildings they dislike just because they have a cause in which to believe. That's little different than Islamofascists that wanted to destroy the World Trade Center or to attack civilians anywhere. The cause does not justify or even mitigate the means.

The people who burned Hunters Brooke only believe in the rule of violence. In the past, we've treated such people with an unserious attitude. It's time that ELF and every other flavor of bombthrower starts getting life sentences for their terrorism.

Intelligence Bill Gains Enough Support To Pass

The intelligence bill that encompasses many of the 9/11 Commission's recommended changes in the structure of military and civil bureaucracies in order to consolidate their assets appears assured of passage, now that the main critics of the bill have been mollified by last-minute wording changes. The New York Times reports that Duncan Hunter has agreed to endorse the bill with a new proviso:

Congressional leaders reached final agreement Monday allowing passage of a bill to overhaul the nation's intelligence community and enact the major recommendations of the independent Sept. 11 commission, including creation of the job of national intelligence director to force the C.I.A. and other government spy agencies to share intelligence about national security threats.

The agreement ended a nearly monthlong stalemate over the bill, which had been endorsed by President Bush and the Sept. 11 commission but had been opposed by a group of Republican lawmakers close to the Pentagon who insisted it would dangerously dilute the authority of the Defense Department over intelligence needed on the battlefield.

The Republicans, led by Representative Duncan Hunter of California, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said they were satisfied by a last-minute revision of the bill to include a sentence requiring that the new intelligence director operate under guidelines that do not "abrogate the statutory responsibilities" of the Defense Department.

Getting beyond the qualities of the bill itself, about which I have some serious reservations, there should be no doubt about the dynamics of this exercise. George Bush just stood up to his base and got what he wanted -- an intelligence reform that many of them felt did not go far enough and in the wrong direction. The change for which Hunter blocked the bill's passage is, as Christopher Shays put it, a "face-saving measure" designed to cover the fact that Hunter caved on his opposition.

For some, of course, the bill goes too far rather than not far enough; the ACLU opposes it for its centralization of intelligence assets and greater cooperation between law-enforcement and intelligence agencies. The ACLU apparently slept during the 9/11 Commission hearings and neglected to read their report. One of the better analyses done by the commission showed how detrimental the "wall" between law enforcement and intelligence gathering had become to national security. Many people pointed out the inability of analysts to "connect the dots", but that deficit sprang directly from Justice Department edicts, some given by Commissioner Jamie Gorelick herself during her tenure in Justice. The ACLU apparently feels more comfortable putting their trust in terrorists than in American law-enforcement and intelligence personnel.

For dissenting Republicans, however, all is not lost. The upcoming Congressional session allows plenty of opportunity to address immigration and border policies, which James Sensenbrenner angrily vowed to pursue next year. The idea that only one bill could be passed to deal with the myriad of security issues facing the nation seems rather silly, and instead of wasting time blocking this bill Sensenbrenner could have worked on a companion bill instead. This legislation has been making its way to a vote for months. Why hold it hostage at the last moment?

The President sent the message that he wants his legislative agenda enacted and that he refuses to be held hostage to gadflies on either side of the aisle. When he spoke of spending political capital, he meant with the Republicans as well as with the Democrats. Bush has built the party into a juggernaut, perhaps the most successful politician in decades in not only getting himself elected, but also in transforming a political party -- not always for the better -- and pushing it to new heights. He just reminded everyone who the boss is. I think they got the message.

Barghouthi Runs The Mario Cuomo Playbook

First he's in, then he's out. Then he's in after his wife drafts him, but now he's got second thoughts. Mario Cuomo? John Kerry? No, we're talking about Marwan Barghouthi, the living martyr of the Palestinians, who currently resides as a guest of Israel under tight security -- having been convicted of multiple counts of murder from his career running the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. Barghouti, it seems, has had second third fourth thoughts about running for the Palestinian Authority presidency:

Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouthi is considering pulling out of a presidential race to avoid splitting his mainstream Fatah faction, an Israeli-Arab lawmaker said after visiting him in jail. ...

He said that Barghouthi told him that he planned to hold discussions on a number of unspecified issues with [Mahmoud] Abbas and other Palestinian Authority leaders and then he would "make his decision whether he will take part in the election or not." Asked if Barghouthi would run, El-Sana said: "As far as (running for) head of the Palestinian Authority, he is considering the matter. A decision has not yet been taken."

"I believe in the end ... he will act responsibly and take a decision that serves the unity of the Palestinian people," El-Sana told Reuters outside the prison.

The Barghouthi cha-cha derives from twin aspirations: to grasp legitimate power and to embarrass the Israeli government into releasing him. I wrote earlier that Barghouthi's first demurral surprised me, as running for president from inside an Israeli jail would certainly boost visibility for his efforts to build international pressure against his continued incarceration. After all, when you're serving five consecutive life terms, a hobby helps pass the time a bit more quickly.

Under Yasser Arafat, the Palestinians would have lept to such a pointless and futile tactic. (Of course, under Arafat, there would have been no presidential elections -- at least no contested elections.) It's a measure of the seriousness on the Palestinians' behalf that they not only have failed to embrace such a self-defeating move but that they have actively attempted to squelch it. Unlike Arafat, the rest of the PLO power structure appears ready to dump intifada for something more constructive, and obviously Barghouthi doesn't fit those plans.

I predicted that an Abbas-Barghouthi race would provide the Palestinian people an opportunity to send a message about their readiness for peace and negotiation. Electing Barghouthi would demonstrate an absolute rejection of the bargaining table for more war, and like a canary in a coal mine, would warn the West that a Palestinian state would be nothing more than another, more secular Taliban promoting terrorism worldwide. It may or may not be encouraging to see the Palestinian autocracy try to take that choice away from the electorate.

More Doom And Gloom From Langley

The New York Times rehashes some old news on Iraq in today's edition, as they report on a CIA cable that gives a pessimistic prognosis for Iraq. The cable acknowledges the progress made by the Coalition to some extent but predicts a long and rocky road ahead -- as if that should be news to anyone:

The cable, sent late last month as the officer ended a yearlong tour, presented a bleak assessment on matters of politics, economics and security, the officials said. They said its basic conclusions had been echoed in briefings presented by a senior C.I.A. official who recently visited Iraq.

The officials described the two assessments as having been "mixed," saying that they did describe Iraq as having made important progress, particularly in terms of its political process, and credited Iraqis with being resilient.

But over all, the officials described the station chief's cable in particular as an unvarnished assessment of the difficulties ahead in Iraq. They said it warned that the security situation was likely to get worse, including more violence and sectarian clashes, unless there were marked improvements soon on the part of the Iraqi government, in terms of its ability to assert authority and to build the economy.

Together, the appraisals, which follow several other such warnings from officials in Washington and in the field, were much more pessimistic than the public picture being offered by the Bush administration before the elections scheduled for Iraq next month, the officials said. The cable was sent to C.I.A. headquarters after American forces completed what military commanders have described as a significant victory, with the retaking of Falluja, a principal base of the Iraqi insurgency, in mid-November.

First, one has to wonder about the characterization of "much more pessimistic"; no one in the Bush Administration has said anything except that the violence in Iraq would only get worse the closer we come to their election. The "insurgents" know that a freely-elected legislature will have much more credibility than the interim government developed in concert between the Anglo-American Coalition and leading Iraqi citizens. The terrorists intend on broadening their campaign of intimidation and provocation in hopes of either keeping Iraqis away from the polls and scared off of security jobs, or touching off an interdenominational civil war -- or all of the above. Bush and his team have repeatedly said as much, which is the main reason that the Coalition shifted strategies to a much more aggressive military approach in Samarra, Fallujah, and elsewhere.

Somehow the New York Times, which purports to be a newspaper, must have missed all of these speeches by George Bush where he promised nothing but a tough slog. Stamping out terrorism isn't the same as liberating Grenada from a bunch of third-rate Cuban patrols, and the Administration has never suggested it was. The Times uses the tried-and-true strategy of erecting a strawman -- the supposed "easy victory" promise -- and then knocking it down.

On one point, however, the Times concedes that their editorial board may have been misinformed, at the least, when they warned that new CIA chief Porter Goss wanted nothing but yes-men:

In recent months, some Republicans, including Senator John McCain of Arizona, have accused the agency of seeking to undermine President Bush by disclosing intelligence reports whose conclusions contradict the administration or its policies. But senior intelligence officials including John E. McLaughlin, the departing deputy director of central intelligence, have disputed those assertions. One government official said the new assessments might suggest that Porter J. Goss, the new director of central intelligence, was willing to listen to views different from those publicly expressed by the administration.

In fact, what Goss wants to do is to keep CIA cables out of the political spotlight. These leaks intend on embarrassing the administration into changing policies, and the CIA operatives who shovel these out to eager news organizations like the Gray Lady use their supposedly non-partisan positions to wield potent political power. Having a political CIA should worry everyone, whether one disagrees with George Bush or agrees with him. What's more, the leaks only give one perspective on the situation in Iraq, because the rest of the data remains classified, and for good reason -- we have troops on the ground there who bear the brunt of any adverse reaction from the data.

Does the rest of the data bear out what this cable says? Maybe, and maybe even probably, since no one with half a brain expected anything less from Iraq or the terrorists in Southwest Asia who desperately cling to the hope of gaining the upper hand there. But word from the boots on the ground, written in e-mails home to family and friends and in numerous milblogs, show that the majority of Iraq has progressed nicely. The press manages to miss that story pretty regularly as well.

I'm sure the Times patted itself on the back for this important scoop, but those of us who have remained informed and kept our ears open already knew this would remain a tough fight until the end. Don't expect that the terrorists will go away so that free Iraqis can elect a democracy in peace. However, just as in Afghanistan, you can expect that the elections will take place regardless and the Iraqis will create the democracy they need and want, and that example will serve notice to the kleptocracies of Southwest Asia.

Now The DLC Embarrasses The Star-Tribune

Saturday, the Star-Tribune ran an insipid editorial regarding Senator Norm Coleman's call for the resignation of UN chief Kofi Annan for the incompetency and corruption at Turtle Bay, especially for the Oil-For-Food debacle. The Strib called Coleman's request "a sordid move," accused Coleman of being nothing more than puppet seeking to "fawningly please ... his GOP masters." It finished by calling Coleman an "embarrassment," all for demanding some accountability for the failures of the UN.

Now it appears that the Strib's embarrassment may extend not just to the GOP but to the Democrats as well, as Instapundit notes this evening:

As we argued last week, one of America's most urgent foreign policy needs is to retool international organizations and traditional alliances to provide collective security against the global threat of jihadist terrorism. The United Nations can and should be a central part of this new collective security system, but only if the organization is systematically reformed to serve that purpose.

Unfortunately, the United Nations' credibility has been steadily eroded by its own misdeeds, with a burgeoning scandal over its incompetent and sometimes corrupt management of the Iraq oil-for-food program being the most damaging example. Last week it was reported that the son of U.N. secretary general Kofi Annan received a series of payments from a Swiss firm that won a lucrative contract under the oil-for-food program. This development has fed growing doubts that the United Nations will be able to own up to its problems or reform its operations so long as Annan remains at the helm.

The Democratic Leadership Council has echoed Norm Coleman's call for Kofi Annan's resignation, calling his retreat the price for UN credibility. The DLC recognizes that while Annan heads the UN, the scandal surrounding his son Kojo's involvement in the UNSCAM corruption that put $21 billion in Saddam Hussein's pockets will continue to discredit any investigation into the debacle. The Democrats need the UN to retain some credibility in order to argue against the supposed unilateralism of George Bush, and while Annan sits in the chair, that becomes more and more impossible.

So what next for the Strib? Do they accuse the DLC of being partisan shills for GOP masters? Will the editorial board make the insulting suggestion that the DLC focus on something more pressing, like recounts in Ohio? Or perhaps they'll realize the only embarrassment in Minnesota resides at 425 Portland Avenue South in Minneapolis.

Bring A Crowbar And A Jackhammer

George Bush today appointed two new members of the Civil Rights Commission, replacing two whose terms have expired. However, at least one of them may need to be bodily removed from the offices as she threatens to stay put until she is good and ready to go:

President Bush on Monday moved to replace Mary Frances Berry, the outspoken chairwoman of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission who has argued with every president since Jimmy Carter appointed her to the panel a quarter century ago.

But Berry balked at leaving now, arguing through a spokesman that she and vice chairman Cruz Reynoso, who also is being replaced, have terms that run until midnight Jan. 21, 2005. The White House maintained that their six-year terms expired Sunday and that Berry and Reynoso had been replaced.

The last time Berry went to the mattresses with George Bush was almost exactly three years ago, when she threatened to keep the first Bush appointee, Peter Kirsanow, from taking his seat on the commission. The AP covered the story on December 7, 2001:

Administration officials are trying to avoid a three-ring circus at Friday's regularly-scheduled meeting of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, but they may have little luck since the committee's chairwoman has taken the role of ringmaster.

President Bush's appointee to the commission was sworn in at the White House Thursday night and planned to attend the commission's regularly scheduled meeting, but commission chairwoman Mary Frances Berry said the administration will have to send in U.S. marshals to seat Peter Kirsanow, a Cleveland lawyer and member of the largely conservative Center for New Black Leadership.

Believe it or not, that dispute took six months to adjudicate, the circus finally coming to a close only after a federal appellate court told Berry that Wilson was through. That same decision also made clear that the next term starts at the time the last term expired, which goes to the heart of the current dispute. Berry's prior term expired on December 5, 1998, at which point President Bill Clinton offered Berry another term. However, he didn't get around to formally appointing her until January 26 of the following year -- and Berry insists, despite the appellate court ruling on the Kirsanow case, that her current term expires six weeks from now as a result.

Predictably, the outgoing staff blame the Bush administration for the impasse, with reasoning that underscores why Bush replaced as many of them as he could:

Bush also replaced the commission's staff director, Les Jin, with Kenneth Marcus of Virginia. Jin said Berry's and Reynoso's tenure dispute stems from a disagreement with the White House about when they began serving their six-year terms.

"The commission has had a long history of independence and of trying to protect civil rights," Jin said. "And it just seems like we would have been much better served if they (the White House) had tried to take the initiative to engage in a conversation about a smooth transition rather than try to heighten a battle over six weeks."

The Bush administration is enforcing the law, a mission which should have been the focus of the Civil Rights Commission rather than a years-long turf war designed to promote Mary Frances Berry rather than civil rights. Berry continually put herself above the law, holding the commission work hostage while she threw her temper tantrums and attempted to trump the will of the people with the weight of the bureaucracy. Now she's trying to hang on to every last second by using an argument she lost over two years ago. Greedy and grasping hardly begins to describe it.

The Anchoress Gives Maureen Dowd More Than She Deserves

Maureen Down inveighed against the upcoming holiday season in a poisoned-pen missive that tripped the bitterometer to new records, even for MoDo. In fact, she expressed a desire to "rip [Frosty the Snowman's] frozen face off." Apparently, Dowd has all the Christmas spirit of Ebenezer Scrooge on a bad night (pre-Ghosts, natch):

I've never said this out loud before, but I can't stand Christmas.

Everyone in my family loves it except me, and they can't fathom why I get the mullygrubs, as a Southern friend of mine used to call a low-level depression, from Thanksgiving straight through New Year. ...

I've given a lot of thought to why others' season of joy is my season of doom - besides the obvious fact that yuppies have drenched the holidays in ever more absurd levels of consumerism.

I think it has to do with how stressed out my mom and sister would get on Christmas Day when I was little. I remember them snapping at me; they seemed tense because of all the aprons to be sashed and potatoes to be mashed. (In our traditional Irish household, women slaved and men were waited on.)

It might be exacerbated by the stress I feel when I think of all the money I've spent on lavishing boyfriends with presents over the years, guys who are now living with other women who are enjoying my lovingly picked out presents which I'm no doubt still paying for in credit card interest charges.

Perhaps I'm the wrong person to write about Dowd's vendatta against the HanuChristmaKwanzuka season, as the Comedy Channel put it recently; I've been playing Christmas carols in my office all day, and when I get home, I plan to add more to the rotation. Someone should address Dowd's rather self-centered reasons for dissing the holiday spirit, so I nominate The Anchoress, who writes a moving and sobering account of what the holidays mean to her brother -- who lays dying in a hospice, "enjoying" what surely is his last Christmas season:

You are fearless in your fuming distaste for the season. Scrooge was fearless, too. He scathingly remarked that there was "more gravy than grave" about his first spectral visitor, Mr. Marley, but finally acquiesced to his partner’s truth. You dare to mock the sweet sentimentality of “It’s a Wonderful Life,” but surrender nothing to the truths contained therein. And this is where I believe you part ways from Mr. Scrooge, and where I begin to fear that while the curmudgeonly old miser was capable of conversion, redemption may be beyond your ken. ...

I understand you may have already stopped reading this; after all, I am a nobody, a silly woman sitting at her computer, posting to you from her largely unread blog – albeit not wearing pajamas – why should you listen to a word I say? Why should you care about my quaint little red-tinged, sappy, all-too-American concern for your well being? I understand. But if you are still reading, may I presume to give you a little advice, not from me, but from my brother, S?

You see, S is not supposed to be alive at this hour. Every doctor, every nurse has been telling us for five weeks that his death was imminent. It would be “days.” It would be “hours.” His end would come “this weekend.” And yet he is still with us. He is weary and wrecked, and some would say the merciful thing would be to simply give him a shot and let him go to sleep from which he would not wake. But, no, that would be so wrong, and our loss, because as long as S is here, we all learn together.

It's impossible for me to excerpt any further. Read the whole thing, and then go hug your family.

The Swiss Mapplethorpe?

The Swiss have entered political territory familiar to many Americans about the role of government in supporting the arts, especially when artists go out of their way to repulse and insult their sponsor. AFP reports that Pro-Helvetica, the Swiss arts council, faces demands for cuts in funding after presenting a controversial and tasteless display in Paris:

An exhibition at Switzerland's cultural centre in Paris, which sheds the more common image of orderly Swiss society in favour of political rebellion and a vomiting actor, triggered an uproar in Switzerland.

The "Swiss-Swiss democracy" exhibition by avant-garde artist Thomas Hirschhorn, which opened in the French capital over the weekend, includes photographic paste-ups, graffiti slogans and tracts.

It also features an actor feigning vomiting while another urinates on the photograph of the right-wing Swiss justice minister, Christoph Blocher.

It typifies the artistic communities in both countries that they only honor the process of democracy when it results in their candidates getting elected. Otherwise, quite literally in this case, they piss all over it. Not too surprisingly, Blocher's party has called for the Swiss government to cut all funding to Pro-Helvetica, which issued an unfortunate explanation:

Pro Helvetia backed Hirschhorn in a statement Monday, saying the artist had a right to question democracy and insisting that the exhibition was not meant to target the minister specifically.

I hope they used the word "target" specifically, because its use just adds a dash of comic irony to the image of hitting Blocher's photograph with a stream of urine. If that doesn't represent targeting, then are we to assume that the artist simply dropped trou and got lucky ... er, so to speak? Apparently, Pro-Helvetica cannot operate with any intellectual honesty, which alone should cause the Swiss to question its funding priorities in the arts.

This demonstrates once again the problem with governments becoming patrons in the arts. As with the Robert Mapplethorpe display, what taxpayer money usually buys winds up infuriating most of the people who funded it -- for example, the infamous "Piss Christ", which was a crucifix dropped into a beaker of urine. (What is it with artists and bodily fluids, anyway? Didn't most of us get over that obsession at potty-training?) Artists demand artistic freedom and subsidies, a ridiculous position at best. If government funds art, it has every right to dictate its terms, and if artists don't like the terms, they should seek funding elsewhere.

Ideally, in a free-market economy such as ours and in Switzerland, artists shouldn't want government money; they should create art on their own, and if successful in the open market, they can thrive. If not, they can find another, more useful manner in which to contribute to society. So often we find that government funding amounts to nothing more than subsidizing the mediocre or worse, which in this case sounds like a precise diagnosis.

I don't hold much hope that the Swiss will reach these conclusions, seeing as how these truths have escaped Americans for years. The legions of mediocre artists will do their best to milk the public trough for all the money they can get.

Mr. Bean Speaks Out Against Hate-Crime Legislation

Rowan Atkinson, the British comedian best known for his antics on television shows like Mr. Bean and Blackadder, intends on speaking out against a British effort to pass hate-crime legislation that will make it illegal to create a hostile environment for religions:

Rowan Atkinson, the Blackadder comic, is to warn MPs that a Bill outlawing the incitement of racial hatred could undermine free speech and stop comedians making fun of religion.

Atkinson will head a coalition of comedians, writers and academics at the launch of a campaign against elements of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill tonight.

The Bill, due for its second reading this week, will create a new offence of incitement to religious hatred to protect faith groups - particularly Muslims - from hate attacks.

This is not much different than the myriad of free-speech restrictions enacted by universities and colleges in America, and Atkinson rightly opposes the same creeping criminality from invading British speech. What has happened to the idea of "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me"? Ample legislation already exists for speech which specifically directs or demands violence against others. However, the notion that the state can decide which political speech springs from "hate" and which springs from reasoned debate only derives from the philosophy that the state must remain supreme over the individual -- indeed, that the state has omniscient insight into the mind and soul of an individual.

Hate speech, while repugnant, remains as just words. Words have power to convince but none to harm, except in terms of libel or slander -- which, again, ample legislation already covers. Hate-crime legislation attempts to create criminality where no crime has occurred, and puts more control over political debate into the hands of the government. The cure for bad speech is not handcuffs but more free speech. It's a lesson that we all should have long ago learned; unfortunately, our citadels of higher education have been too busy imposing the same restrictions on speech that the UK proposes.

This also applies to hate-crime legislation in general. In many American jurisdictions, the motive for a crime surpasses the crime itself. It amounts in many cases to additional charges for political incorrectness. The proper adjudication of cross-burning (to use one example) is to charge its perpetrators with arson and throw the book at them during sentencing. When the morons who beat Matthew Shephard to death got convicted, they got long sentences for their crimes, as they deserved. Making it into a "hate crime" only means that we care more about some victims than others, that juries have to reach a judgment about the personal convictions of the defendant rather than the defendant's actions, and motive gets promoted from an element of a crime to a crime in and of itself.

The British proposal represents the logical extension of this approach: criminalize the motive before any crime can be committed. It's another step to the thought police and re-education camps. Bravo to Atkinson for understanding that this is no joke.

Iranian Students Mock Khatami

In another sign that so-called Iranian "reformers" have lost their credibility among the masses, Iranian students today heckled President Mohammed Khatami in a speech to mark Student Day at Tehran University. Khatami, who had been a favorite of the reform-minded students, appeared shocked at the hostile reception:

A visibly-shaken Khatami defended his record and criticised the powerful hardliners who have closed newspapers and jailed dissidents.

He asked students to stop heckling and accused his critics of intolerance. ...

"There is no Third World country where the students can talk to their president and criticise the government as you do now. I really believe in this system and the revolution and that this system can be developed from within," he is quoted as saying.

But student leader Abdollah Momeni complained that there was is no difference between the president and the authoritarians who thwarted his reform programme.

The students understand that Khatami essentially sold the reform movement out in order to remain in power. As the mullahs act to consolidate their power this year by closing newspapers and arresting bloggers who dare to speak out against the government, students have lost all patience with those who promise reforms but deliver nothing but oppression. A political explosion is building in Iran, and as the safety valves of debate and protest continue to get closed off, the closer we are to detonation. Khatami and his so-called reformist allies will suffer the effects of the blast just as surely as the Governing Council mullahs to whom they sold out.

Meanwhile, the US should do everything it can to reach out to the people and groups supporting democracy and reform in Iran. In the face of European incompetence and impotence on Iran's nuclear-weapons ambitions, the only way to stop the Iranian bomb is probably a home-grown overthrow of the mullahcracy that is bent on acquiring WMD.

UPDATE: Welcome Instapundit readers!

Awards Updates!

It's the most wonderful time of the weblog year, apparently, as awards continue to come forth. First off, Kevin has corrected the problem caused by massive cheating at the 2004 Weblog Awards. The cheating appears to have been confined to just the Best Overall Blog category, and the votes have now been reset to their proper numbers.

Meanwhile, thanks to everyone who continues to vote for Captain's Quarters -- once per day per computer! -- in the Best Conservative Blog category. I'm still leading LaShawn Barber and Right Thinking From The Left Coast, two terrific blogs you should check out when you have the chance. VodkaPundit looms in the background, just waiting to make a last-minute run, I think.

John Hawkins at RightWingNews has concluded his Warblogger Awards, which used a panel of distinguished bloggers to select the winners rather than a web poll. Not surprisingly, Instapundit topped the list, but CQ managed a tie for eighth with Roger Simon and Tim Blair -- fine company and a very pleasing result.

Be sure to check out both awards and take advantage of the links to discover some new blog horizons.

Send Your Thoughts And Prayers ...

... to our good friend King Banaian at SCSU Scholars, whose father-in-law just passed away this weekend. Drop him a note or a comment, if you get a chance.

LA Times Blows Roof Off Of MLK Hospital And Its Supposed Underfunding

As a native and former resident of the Los Angeles area, one of the continuing issues in the local media was the operation and budget at LA's Martin Luther King Hospital and Drew Medical Center. Its location and its patient base ensure that the hospital requires plenty of government funding, but it has long been an element of faith in the area that MLK/Drew suffers from underfunding due to racism and neglect. Without a doubt, the services there routinely rank as the poorest in the state (if not the nation), and until now, underfunding and racism seemed to be the easiest answers.

Today, however, the Los Angeles Times publishes an exposé of MLK/Drew, and the truth not only disputes all of those allegations but also provides a microcosm of all that ails California's public and private sector:

For years it has been a heartfelt cry: "This hospital desperately needs more money!"

Whenever Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center is criticized, as it often is, the response from supporters is the same. They say Los Angeles County leaders never wanted King/Drew built in the first place — and have been trying to starve it ever since. ...

The numbers, however, tell a different story. Though widely believed, the notion that King/Drew is being shortchanged is false. The medical center spent more per patient than 75% of the public and teaching hospitals in California, according to a 2002 state audit that looked at fiscal year 2000.

The difference is stark when King/Drew is measured against the three other general hospitals run by Los Angeles County. It spent $492 more per patient daily than Olive View-UCLA Medical Center, $685 more than County-USC and $815 more than Harbor-UCLA in 2002-03, county figures show.

The hospital with the most comparable budget is Harbor-UCLA, a much bigger facility 10 miles away. Last year, Harbor-UCLA had nearly $372 million to work with, not much more than King/Drew's $342 million. Harbor-UCLA, however, did far more with its money.

It's not so much what MLK/Drew did with its money as where it went, which appears to be almost everywhere except patient care. The Times carefully documents a multitude of destinations for the taxpayers' money that MLK/Drew's supporters insist amounts to starvation:

* In five years, MLK/Drew spent $34 million on employee injuries, far more than other (and larger) city hospitals, including damages to "psyches" and injuries suffered at the hands of other employees. Sitting down appears to be one of the most dangerous activities at MLK, costing the hospital more than $3 million over the past ten years from staff falling out of their chairs.

* Overtime is a bonanza for those who managed to stay in their seats, as employees rang up almost $10 million last year in OT -- 61% more than Harbor/UCLA, which has 400 more employees. Fifteen employees made more than $50,000 in OT. Why? Perhaps because MLK/Drew has an astronomical absenteeism rate. The hospital spent over $14 million on temp workers for fill-ins, compared to $3.1M over at UCLA. Workers miss weeks and months out of the year with little disciplinary action being taken, such as in these examples:

Sherri Echols, a nursing assistant, was warned three times about her attendance problems in 2002 and 2003. She was finally suspended in April for 30 days after missing more than 18 weeks of work without permission over those two years, said a disciplinary letter in her county Civil Service Commission file. ...

Some employees, such as nurse Elaine Pitts, go for years totting up warnings. In 1999, after her second suspension for absenteeism, Pitts was told she was allowed just one unscheduled absence a month. She was absent or sick for about two months out of the next 10, finally losing her job in June 2000, records show.

"Unnecessary expenditure of this sort is totally unacceptable," an administrator wrote in her termination letter, "particularly in this time of limiting resources for patient care."

Pitts lost her chance to appeal when she was absent for her own hearing.

The debacle at MLK/Drew gets detailed analysis from the Times, which surprisingly takes on one of the California Left's sacred cows here. The people of Los Angeles, especially in the depressed areas that MLK/Drew serves, holds onto the notion that the county and state deliberately starve MLK/Drew as an article of faith. No doubt that they will see this piece as an attack on their religion of martyrdom, but they should instead direct their ire to the system which allows these abuses to occur unchecked. Most of their problems can be traced back to California's insane workers-comp laws, which allow workers to linger with the mildest of complaints far beyond any reasonable recovery time, and which allows stress disability to stretch on indefinitely with no forced resolution point.

Bravo to the Los Angeles Times for an important look at what truly ails MLK/Drew and California. Read the entire article.

Jack Straw Suffers From UN Delusions Of Adequacy

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, commenting on the proposed structural changes to the UN currently under review, asserted that the rules change on pre-emptive military action would have resulted in an approval of the Iraq invasion had they existed prior to 2003:

New rules being proposed for a reformed United Nations might have allowed the United States and Britain to carry out their invasion of Iraq with the approval of the world body, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said.

"Had this new jurisprudence been there, I think the Security Council would probably -- you can't be certain -- have decided to take Chapter 7 action against Iraq in respect of human rights abuses," Straw told the daily The Independent.

"That would have been as much a basis for determining an ultimatum by the Council as weapons of mass destruction became. They are dealing with situations before a latent threat becomes imminent. That's very important," he added.

You can't be certain, indeed. Straw has performed magnificently over the past few years, but he must be suffering from delusions if he thinks the Security Council would ever have approved military action against Saddam Hussein. Whatever the new rules propose, the UNSC always had the option of using military force to disarm Hussein. The terms of the Safwan cease-fire had been continually violated by the Iraqi regime, and sixteen UNSC resolutions had been roundly ignored. The UNSC could have acted at any time to re-open hostilities on those bases alone; it simply chose not to.

Why? The member-nations of the UNSC disparage pre-war intelligence on Saddam's WMD activity now, but they supplied a good deal of it themselves. Everyone agreed that Saddam had not only not complied with requirements to destroy his existing WMD stocks but appeared to be producing even more. They simply lacked the will to do anything about it other than continue a ridiculous sanctions regime that wound up enriching Saddam himself beyond all dreams of lucre, as well as a few of these same UNSC member-states.

While Straw is correct that the new rules would have allowed one more mechanism to bring justice to Saddam, they do nothing to supply the will required to do so -- or to remove the corruption that made it impossible.

American Consulate In Saudi Arabia Under Attack

Gunmen of unknown identity shot their way into the American consulate in Jiddah, injuring two people and reportedly taking foreign workers hostage, according to the AP:

Attackers using a car struck the heavily guarded U.S. consulate with explosives and machine guns on Monday, injuring several people but no Americans. After a gunbattle inside, one attacker was killed, two were arrested and two others were surrounded, Saudi security officials said.

Saudi security forces also said they believed four of the attackers had seized an unknown number of hostages inside the building amid the fighting. Area residents spoke of seeing Saudi forces enter the consulate shortly before a fierce gunbattle was heard inside. A short time later, the gunfire stopped.

In Riyadh, the U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Carol Kalin said two local staff members were injured, but all American staff were safe.

Saudi Arabia had been relatively quiet over the past year, although American workers in the kingdom live under strict security for their own safety. The Washington Post profiled the lives of Americans in Saudi Arabia a few months ago and noted that fewer appeared willing to stay, with all of the threats surrounding them. I suspect this incident will not make them feel any more sanguine about their situation.

Once again, though, when terrorists strike at American embassies, they mostly victimize the locals who work there. The same was true in Tanzania and Kenya, when al-Qaeda bombed our embassies there; their attacks killed 200 Africans and a dozen Americans. I doubt that the irony will be lost on the Saudi government as they prosecute the attackers they've arrested.

Tiffany Network Doing More Streetwalking For Viacom

The Hollywood Reporter analyzes the relationship between CBS News and its parent, Viacom, in the latter's promotion of its assets. Earlier this year, the news show 60 Minutes raised eyebrows throughout the media world when they interviewed Richard Clarke and helped him promote his new book -- without revealing that Viacom published Clarke's book through one of its publishing subsidiaries. The Hollywood Reporter (via Netscape News) informs us that this practice continues at CBS even tonight, with their highly-promoted interview of singer Bob Dylan:

A "60 Minutes" interview with Bob Dylan that was set to air Sunday about his new autobiography marked the third Simon & Schuster book this year to get exposure on television's most venerated newsmagazine.

The publisher's marketing department might want to take all the credit. But it probably doesn't hurt that S&S and the network "60 Minutes" calls home, CBS, are owned by the same parent company, Viacom. The newsmagazine stirred up angst among media watchdogs in March for not disclosing that fact on-air during a report on the S&S-published book about the Bush administration by former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke.

After the Clarke flap, "60 Minutes" made sure to include a disclaimer before an April segment on another S&S book, from Bob Woodward. But considering the frequency with which the disclaimer has been used in recent months, including with Dylan, it seemed as familiar a refrain as "Like a Rolling Stone."

Other recent Viacom/CBS cross-promotions on 60 Minutes include profiles on Jim Carrey, Matt Parker, and Trey Stone at the same time their Paramount films premiered. Paramount is, of course, a subsidiary of Viacom. They've interviewed Comedy Channel stars Jon Stewart and Dave Chappelle and reported on the game show "Jeopardy!", all Viacom assets.

If it seems like a sellout ... well, of course it is. None of the above stories represented breaking news or earthshaking events, and for a telemagazine such as 60 Minutes, they appear pretty lightweight. Even so, not only did the show cough up their valuable air time for Viacom promotions, CBS in turn heavily promoted those segments during their other shows, in effect doubling down on the cross-promotional effort. For instance, during the NFL game on CBS today, viewers constantly saw ads for the Bob Dylan interview with the come-on line, "Why is Bob Dylan giving his first television interview in 19 years?" Until and unless they watched 60 Minutes tonight -- or read this article -- they woulnd't find out that it's because Viacom has published his autobiography through Simon and Schuster.

CBS News has taken the reputation of its storied past and thoroughly sold it out in 2004. Under these circumstances, the puzzling behavior of Dan Rather and Mary Mapes in the Memogate scandal becomes more clear. The brass at CBS has used 60 Minutes to sell out to Viacom's commercial interests -- why shouldn't Rather and Mapes do the same for their political interests? The once-dominant and admirable news division, the House that Edward R. Murrow built, has transformed itself into a corporate shill, and its denizens understand that better than their viewers.

Rumors have it that the independent investigation into the Memogate fiasco is close to its conclusion and that the report will shortly be released. In the past, I've argued that both Dan Rather and CBS News president Andrew Heyward should be forced out. While I still believe that, it's apparent that the news division has been co-opted by Viacom and that such a move will likely have little effect on CBS Nesws.

Pardonnez-Moi, Mon Bombe Est Dans Votre Valise

In a rare moment of levity in the war on terror, the AP reports that French police lost track of explosives they planted in travelers' suitcases in order to train their bomb-sniffing dogs. Their actions caused 90 planes to get delayed around the world:

Police at Paris' top airport lost track of a passenger's bag in which plastic explosives were placed to train bomb-sniffing dogs, police said Saturday. Warned that the bag may have gotten on any of nearly 90 flights from Charles de Gaulle, authorities searched planes upon arrival in Los Angeles and New York. ...

French police at Charles de Gaulle deliberately placed up to five ounces of plastic explosives into a passenger's luggage Friday evening, police spokesman Pierre Bouquin said.

But a "momentary lack of surveillance" led to the bag being lost on a conveyor belt carrying luggage from check-in to planes, he said.

Authorities immediately alerted the relevant airlines that one of between 80 and 90 planes that left the French capital from 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. Friday could be carrying the explosives, Bouquin said.

I understand the need to use real explosives in order to train the dogs, and without detonators the plastique should be harmless. However, why the French police feel the need to practice with live explosives in a civilian airport escapes me as completely as that five ounces of plastique escaped the French. In an era when we're trying to keep this stuff off of civilian airplanes, the French decide to start sticking into the suitcases of travelers. Couldn't they just as easily have tested this in a more controlled setting -- like a military air base?

The AP report laughingly speculates what some lucky traveler might think when the suitcase is opened. The problem with laughing at it is that security at the destination might be more competent than it was at the departure, and that lucky tourist may well wind up in a jail until this gets unraveled.

UPDATE: The French have ended this particular training program:

French police on Sunday ended their practice of hiding plastic explosives in air passengers' luggage to train bomb-sniffing dogs after one such bag got lost, possibly ending up on a flight out of Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport. ...

Police say there was no chance the explosives could go off since they were not connected to detonators. Still, Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin was critical of the mistake.

"The fight against terrorism and insecurity is a priority for the government," a statement by his office said. "But (Raffarin) made clear his concern in the face of the way the training for explosives searches was conducted at Roissy Charles de Gaulle."

Hiding explosives in passenger luggage without adequately ensuring that they can be retrieved -- a matter of concern? Mon dieu! Perhaps there's hope for the French yet...

I Vote For Bill Clinton

With all of the troubles facing UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan at Turtle Bay -- graft, corruption, multiple investigations into his operations, his son's involvement in at least a major conlfict of interest, and calls for his resignation -- we may have an opening at the top of the UN soon, either through removal or Annan's resignation. Republicans have led the charge to insist on accountability from UN leadership for the disastrous results of their management of the Oil-For-Food program, and Senator Norm Coleman's call for Annan to step down is completely appropriate.

However, it does leave the question as to whom the GOP would consider an appropriate replacement for Annan, and we cannot just advocate abdication without having a constructive candidate in mind. Best of all would be Professor Reynolds' suggestion of Vaclav Havel, a man of surpassing integrity and clarity of thought. Unfortunately, he has such clarity of thought that I'm fairly certain he's too smart to accept it. Why would Havel allow his reputation to be hijacked by an organization of kleptocrats and corrupt bureaucrats, when all of the authority for reform would reside with the criminals?

We need another suggestion. Surprisingly, I think Bill Clinton would make a fine choice. And before my colleagues vote to toss me out of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, hear me out.

First, no one can deny Clinton's personal political gifts. Despite running the White House as his own personal seraglio and turning a blind eye to the true threat from Islamofascist terror, many around the world still see Clinton's presidency as a golden era of transatlantic comity -- you know, back when he did pretty much whatever Europe wanted him to do. He builds consensus based on that personal charm and has the gifts to get people to the table; Northern Ireland is one example of this. He would bring a non-threatening American viewpoint to the UN bureaucracy that has been sorely missing. His election would also allow the other UN member-states to demonstrate their supposed lack of anti-Americanism as well.

What would George Bush get for backing Clinton? First, he'd get Clinton out of his hair at a minimal cost. Second, he could then claim a spirit of bipartisanship by reaching out to one of his bitter political rivals. And while Clinton wouldn't bend over backwards for Bush by any means, Clinton did offer defenses of the American strategy in the war on terror while the rest of his party did the Pied Piper routine behind International ANSWER and MoveOn. That defense in the UN could disarm some diplomatic tension over American strategies.

Not enough, you say? Still wanting to strip me of my GOP stripes? Well, how about this: could Hillary run for President while Bill served as UN Secretary-General? Constitutionally, yes, but politically, her run for the White House would be a dead letter. No one, including the Democrats, would want to see that much power concentrated in the hands of one family.

So -- would he accept it, knowing it would cripple a return to the White House? Please. We spent eight years with the Ego From Another Planet. Does anyone really think he'd pass up a chance to run the world?

Bill Clinton for UN Secretary-General -- if not now, then in 2006. Let the Man from Hope run the world's most hopeless organization. It would be the best service he ever gave his country.

All In The Family

The London Telegraph has more background on the role played by Kojo Annan, son of the UN Secretary-General, in diverting funds from Iraqis in the Oil-For-Food program. Records now reveal that Kojo lobbied UN officials at their official functions to get contracts for the Swiss firm Cotecna, which finds itself in the center of the massive corruption at the UN:

The son of Kofi Annan, the United Nations Secretary-General, lobbied for business contacts at gatherings of UN officials on behalf of a company in the same year as it won an oil-for-food programme deal, it has emerged.

The second disclosure in a week about Kojo Annan's role with the Swiss company Cotecna Inspection Services, which secured the $4.8 million (£2.46 million) UN contract to monitor goods entering and leaving Iraq in 1998, has raised embarrassing questions for his father. The details were revealed in Cotecna company documents handed over under subpoena to US congressional scrutineers who are investigating the oil-for-food scandal in which Saddam Hussein is thought to have creamed off more than $20 billion.

In one billing memo, a US investigator told The Telegraph, Kojo Annan, 29, claimed fees and expenses for eight days' work in July 1998, including six days in Abuja "during my father's visit to Nigeria". On another, he claimed expenses and $500 a day for a 15-day trip to New York and the UN General Assembly in September 1998 for meetings on "special projects".

Supposedly, Kojo worked in Cotecna's African business unit at the time. However, with the UN leader's son pressing the flesh on behalf of his company with the same people who report to his father, it wouldn't be difficult for a blind man to see the conflict of interest present in such activities. Why was Kojo allowed to lobby at official UN events? Who gave him authorization to do so?

The corruption of UNSCAM keeps getting closer and closer to the top. Editorial boards such as the Star-Tribune's may keep trying to smear the investigators to stop the dots from being connected, but the UN more and more resembles an organized-crime family -- literally, in this case -- rather than a credible multilateral organization.

Further Signs Of Israeli-Egyptian Rapprochement

In another significant sign that Egypt and Israel may be drawing closer, the two nations swapped prisoners at the Taba checkpoint today, resolving another irritant between the two nations:

Egypt freed an Israeli Arab man convicted of spying in exchange for Israel's release of six Egyptian students Sunday, a swap that signaled a warming of relations that had been severely strained by the four-year-old Palestinian uprising. ...

Egypt released Azzam Azzam, who was sentenced in 1997 to 15 years in prison after an Egyptian court convicted him of espionage. At the time, Azzam ran a textile factory in Egypt, and Israel has denied he was an agent. ...

Israel, in turn, released six Egyptian students who had sneaked into the country in August and were arrested on suspicion they tried to kidnap Israeli soldiers and commandeer a tank.

The swap is the second major development in this past week that seems to show improving relations between the two countries, and especially between Hosni Mubarak and Ariel Sharon. Earlier, Mubarak made a stunning statement that Sharon -- long reviled as a war criminal by Arabs -- represented the Palestinians' best chance for peace. In fact, he told the press that if the Palestinians didn't hurry up and conclude an agreement with Sharon, they likely would not see one in a long time, an allusion to Sharon's political troubles.

These developments have been made possible by two major developments: the death of Yasser Arafat and the offer of unilateral withdrawal from Gaza by Sharon. The latter is the boldest move towards peace by Israel since Ehud Barak offered Arafat 95% of what he demanded, only to be rewarded by another bloody intifada for his courage. The former proves that the Bush and Sharon administrations chose the correct policy by refusing to negotiate with Arafat, who would never have provided any kind of concession in negotiations. With the old, unreconstructed terrorist out of the way, even the other Arab governments feel free to negotiate with Israel. Arafat's presence as Great Leader prevented them from achieving peace as surely as it did the Israelis.