Iraqis Get Enthusiastic For Elections

Over the past three months, all we've heard about elections in Iraq is a steady drumbeat of pessimism -- that the violence of the so-called insurgency will keep Iraqis away from the polls, and even that the Iraqis don't truly want democracy. Despite our men and women in Iraq telling everyone they can that this meme doesn't apply in their experience, the mainstream media in America insists on reinforcing this dreadful analysis with every terrorist bombing, making the Islamist strategy pay off in spades.

Tomorrow's Washington Post takes a surprising point of view instead:

The number of Iraqis making sure they are properly registered to vote has surged dramatically, officials said Saturday, calling the rise evidence of enthusiasm for the Jan. 30 elections despite continuing security concerns that have blocked the process in two provinces.

After a slow start to the six-week registration process that began Nov. 1, the number of voters making corrections to official voter lists more than doubled in the final week, according to a final tally quoted by election officials Saturday.

Officials said that more than 2.1 million people went to local election offices to assure that eligible members of their households could vote. About 1.2 million forms were submitted to add names to the voter lists, an involved process that requires providing proof of identification and residence.

Iraqi voter rolls derive from food ration lists, so registration isn't required. That piece of information from Karl Vick explains why the voter information centers didn't get a lot of attention from ordinary Iraqis earlier on, a development that some media outlets apparently misinterpreted as a reluctance to register for the election. Having 2.1 million people out of 25 million take the time to confirm their status demonstrates a high degree of interest in the process and points to a rather large turnout.

The mainstream media intends on selling the Iraqis short, just as they did the Afghanis prior to their election. We heard nothing but how the clannish Afghanis would never embrace democracy, how the warlords would use violence to prevent the election, and how the Taliban remnants would overwhelm the voting centers with terrorist attacks everywhere except Kabul. It all turned out to be nothing but defeatist nonsense. Apparently, it looks like the same is true in Iraq.

One cheer for the Washington Post for finally reporting on the commitment of the Iraqis to govern themselves through democracy, even in the face of the Islamist lunatics. It would have been three cheers, except that they buried this story on page A12. At least they bothered to print it at all.

UPDATE: Welcome Instapundit readers!

Anti-Tobacco Efforts Get A Little Weird

I normally support efforts to remove tobacco influences from minors, especially as a former smoker myself. However, the lawsuits that plagued the tobacco industry for several years bothered me tremendously, as did the capitulation of the growers to what I felt was legal blackmail. After all, tobacco products have carried warnings about their deadly effects for over four decades -- and anyone foolish enough to start smoking (or not to stop) should be understood to have willing borne the health risks.

The settlement proscribed the advertising that tobacco companies could use to promote their products, ostensibly to avoid the aforementioned influence on minors. Again, some of the restrictions made sense. However, the Ohio Supreme Court has managed to push the settlement into another expression of foolishness:

Matchbooks given out at bars and stores cannot bear advertising for cigarettes or other tobacco products under the 1998 settlement involving 46 states and the major tobacco companies, the Ohio Supreme Court has ruled.

Such promotional matchbooks fit the definition of merchandise and are governed by the ban on youth-oriented tobacco marketing in the settlement, which included Ohio, the court ruled unanimously on Thursday.

Matches as "merchandise"? The ban on merchandise intended on eliminating a promotional strategy by the tobacco companies to aim at younger smokers. Brand names turned up on jackets, caps, sports bags, and all sorts of other items, and smokers could use proofs of purchase for discounts or free items. Some of the less expensive materials were given away at promotions.

But matches have one purpose: lighting fires. Not even a tobacco-fighting lobbyist could imagine anyone handing out matchbooks to young kids for any kind of promotion. Restaurants hand them out for advertising -- but not to teens! Merchandise restrictions were meant for those items whose primary use wasn't lighting a cigarette. Indeed, one could say that the cigarette packs themselves represent advertising merchandise just as much as the matches.

The tobacco paranoia has long gotten out of hand, and the settlements states reached with tobacco producers have so many opportunities for mischief that Congress should look into the entire mess. (In Minnesota, the settlement did nothing but make Michael Ceresi richer than Croesus while the money that the state supposedly got for anti-tobacco efforts simply disappeared into the general fund instead.) These settlements promise more courtroom silliness in the years ahead unless Congress steps in and forces people to simply be responsible for their own actions. Smoking a cigarette is a choice, not something forced on anyone -- and if we can't accept responsibility for our own choices, the nanny state that proceeds from that will slowly choke off all our freedoms.

Northern Alliance Radio Today

Don't forget that the Northern Alliance returns from its Christmas hiatus with a live show today, from noon to 3 pm CT. We plan on talking about the week and the year in review -- and if Nick Coleman doesn't figure in somewhere, pigs will fly over The Patriot today.

Be sure to catch us on air or over the Internet, and call in to chat with us at 651-289-4488. If you have a cell phone, you probably have free calling on weekends. We'll look forward to talking with you!

Welcome To Idiotland

A Washington judge has denied a woman a divorce from the husband who beat her after she disclosed her pregnancy to the court. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the AP report that Judge Paul Bastine took the unusual step in order to, er, preserve the family unit for the unborn child:

A Spokane woman trying to divorce her estranged husband two years after he was jailed for beating her has been told by a judge she can't get out of the marriage while she's pregnant.

The case pits a first-year attorney who argues that state law allows any couple to divorce if neither spouse challenges it against a longtime family law judge who asserts that the rights of the unborn child in this type of case trump a woman's right to divorce.

"There's a lot of case law that says it is important in this state that children not be illegitamized," Spokane County Superior Court Judge Paul Bastine told The Spokesman-Review newspaper.

The Left will take this story and decry the use of a fetus to deny a woman's right to divorce an abusive husband, but in truth every party to this action is, to be blunt, an idiot. The woman's unborn child isn't her husband's; the father reportedly is a gang-banger who shot and blinded an old man in 1998, making her claims of avoiding violence a bit hypocritical at best. The mother conceived the child while still married to the man who beat her. And Judge Bastine thinks that keeping all three of these so-called adults tied together serves the best interests of the child?

If Bastine wanted to do something positive for the unborn child, he'd have Child Protective Services remove the baby from the almost-terminally stupid mother and her violent paramours and start an adoption process instead. At the least, he should grant the divorce as quickly as possible. The longer these idiots stay together, Bastine included, the greater chance they can create more mischief towards the child.

What are judges in Washington drinking these days, anyway?

How Convenient

The United States has long opposed a second term as IAEA chief for Mohammed ElBaradei. The BBC now reports that the nomination period has completed, and only one candidate qualified for the post. Guess who?

The head of the UN nuclear watchdog, Mohammed ElBaradei has emerged as the only candidate for the post of the agency's next director general.

Mr ElBaradei hopes to be re-elected for a third term, but the US does not want his mandate to be renewed.

Privately, some US officials have complained that Mr ElBaradei - who has held the post since 1997 - has been too soft on both Iran and Iraq.

The IAEA had inspectors in Iraq for years and yet did not ever resolve the issue of WMDs. For instance, Saddam managed to keep hidden all of the core research of his nuclear-weapons program from the IAEA and UN inspectors in the yard of Saddam's program chief, along with a prototype centrifuge. In Iran, ElBaradei's efforts have allowed the mullahcracy to employ stall tactics while they complete their work to build their nuclear weapons. The Iranians already have the launch vehicle, the Shahab-3, that has the range to strike anywhere in Southwest Asia and even into Europe.

Now, at the expiration of his term, it would appear the only way he could keep his job would be for no one else to apply for it. Not coincidentally, that's exactly what happened. The sole nomination, the BBC reminds us, does not automatically grant ElBaradei a new term. However, it does make it rather difficult for the IAEA's board of governors to select anyone else. We should prepare ourselves for another four years of appeasement and dilatory tactics.

Yanukovych Vows To Fight On Despite Resignation

Viktor Yanukovych vowed to fight on for the Ukrainian presidency despite his resignation as Prime Minister this week, claiming that although he doesn't have much hope of reversing the election, he won't stop trying:

Viktor Yanukovych vowed to fight on for Ukraine's presidency, despite handing the opposition of this ex-Soviet Republic a begrudging victory by announcing his resignation as prime minister. ...

The pro-Russian Yanukovych announced his resignation as prime minister on Friday in a televised address, his first significant concession since losing Sunday's vote, but said he will maintain his claim to the presidency.

"I have made the decision to submit my formal resignation," Yanukovych told the nation.

"We are still fighting, but I don't have much hope," he said. "I will act as an independent politician, as the rightful winner of the legitimate Nov. 21 election."

Some speculate that the real reason Yanukovych resigned now is to avoid having to submit his resignation to President-elect Viktor Yushchenko after he gets sworn into office next month. He prefers to give his resignation to Leonid Kuchma, who told Ukraine in a televised speech that the nation must support the new president:

Later Friday, outgoing President Leonid Kuchma told the nation in a separate televised address that "in 2005, there will be a new president. Every region and every citizen of Ukraine must accept this democratic choice as their own because this person will need your support."

Kuchma didn't mention Yanukovych's resignation in his speech.

The resignation automatically resulted in the dismissal of the Cabinet. Kuchma could now appoint a caretaker government -- in fact, Ukraine law dictates that he has to do so within 60 days, but that's well after Yushchenko will take office. Kuchma doesn't appear to have much stomach anymore to hold back the Orange Revolution, and even if he did, Yushchenko's ability to call out hundreds of thousands to the streets and bring the government to a standstill essentially checkmates Kuchma and his interests. Kuchma has shown that he has one essential quality of successful Western politicians after all: pragmatism.

Happy New Year!

To all CQ reader -- Whiskey, the First Mate, and I wish you a happy, healthy, and blessed New Year. 2004 has been such a terrific year for us at Captain's Quarters, thanks to all of you.

Stay safe, and see you in 2005! In fact, if you tune in the Northern Alliance Radio Network tomorrow at noon CT, you'll hear us live for our New Year's Day broadcast.

UPDATE: I don't know if this is one of the reasons why I'll be thankful for 2004, but at least I only came in second for this award.

UPDATE: I'm even happeier coming in second here.

Next, They Can Force The Times To Wake Up, Too

A California appellate court has ordered the Los Angeles City Council to perform an apparently extraordinary duty -- to pay attention to its own meetings:

During public hearings, members of the City Council talk on cell phones, chat among themselves, read mail or wander around the room. A state appeals court says they should be doing something else: paying attention.

Ruling on a suit brought by the owners of a strip club, the 2nd District Court of Appeal said the 15-member council acts as a quasi-judicial body when it holds hearings and has a legal duty to listen to testimony — or risk violating citizens' due process.

In a hearing involving a strip club owner who was seeking to extend his hours, both sides "had the right to be equally heard, not equally ignored," the court wrote in a decision Thursday, ordering a new hearing.

In the case which sparked the appeal, the city forced the club owner to apply for longer hours, and then rudely ignored the testimony given as the council members had better things to do. I'm usually not terribly sympathetic to strip-club owners, but in this case the court has it right. If the city retains the authority to dictate hours of operation, then they have to provide an effective method to politic for changes or waivers. That necessarily involves a fair hearing, with an emphasis on the literal meaning of the word.

But the big issue isn't due process -- it's the lack of effort by public servants. Los Angeles residents should ask their council why they ran for office if they can't be bothered to pay attention to their business. After all, council members get paid by the taxpayers to conduct city business. If that's an example of how seriously they take serving the community, then LA should feel embarrassed that the court system had to tell them to get to work rather than LA voters.

The next council elections should provide some interesting rhetoric. I propose endorsing the candidates who can stay awake all through the debates, let alone pay attention. Make sure not to vote for anyone who's stupid enough to rationalize their attention-deficit approach with this:

Dennis Zine, a councilman who appeared to be paying attention in the videotape, said he thought the city should appeal.

"It's impractical for us to sit there like students in a classroom paying attention to the professor," he said.

Zine should find better ways to spend his time, and LA voters should find council members that want to work for the taxpayers.

Mrs. Anthrax Wants Your Sympathy

The lawyers working for Saddam's ghoul squad wants the court to show some mercy to one of their clients, Dr. Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash. Dr. Ammash is better known to Americans by her nickname, Mrs. Anthrax, for her work in developing biological weapons for the genocidal regime:

The jailed Iraqi microbiologist dubbed Mrs Anthrax is seriously ill and should be freed, an Iraqi lawyer has said.

Dr Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash is dying from cancer, according to Badih Aref - who represents imprisoned former Iraqi deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz.

The lawyer said his client had asked him to help Dr Ammash, who was in "terrible pain".

Ammash reportedly had breast cancer before the fall of Saddam but had been in remission. Now her lawyers want her freed to get treatment for a relapse, in order to free her from her pain.

Well, at the risk of seeming somewhat callous -- tough s**t.

While Ammash worked overtime for Saddam, he used her weapons and development to kill thousands of women and children. Her work killed thousands of Iranian soldiers as well, and had we not stopped Saddam, eventually her bugs would have found their way towards Americans. Her entire life's work aimed to spread disease and pestilence.

So now she's dying, and dying painfully, according to her lawyer -- while she has access to doctors through her American captors. Her victims died pretty painfully, too, and the Iraqis made sure that she had plenty of them. She would have killed as many Americans and Israelis as she could, and as painfully as she could as well.

Let her get medical attention in prison. It's more mercy than she or the animals she served ever showed anyone.

Patterico Reviews The 2004 Performance Of The LA Times

I'm a little late posting this link, but be sure to read Patterico's excellent review of the Los Angeles Times for 2004, in two parts. Patterico has maintained his high standard of media review that he began in 2003 and gives the LAT its toughest (and fairest) criticism. Don't miss his year-end finale.

More Washington Follies

Michelle Malkin and Stefan Sharansky cover some highly irregular developments in the Washington governor's race recounts -- so much so that the Seattle Times even credits Stefan with rattling Christine Gregoire's credibility. Be sure to read up on the shenanigans that explains why extended recounts can never yield credible results.

Did Abu Marwan Talk?

A few days after the capture of Abu Marwan, the leader of an insurgent affiliated with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Coalition forces captured almost 50 terrorists in Saddam Hussein's hometown:

U.S. troops rounded up 49 suspected guerrillas near Saddam Hussein's hometown on Friday, a day after Iraq's most violent rebel groups warned voters against taking part in crucial elections for a constitutional assembly on Jan. 30.

Soldiers of the 1st Infantry Division detained the suspects during a midnight raid in Duluiyah, 45 miles north of Baghdad, codenamed Operation Powder River, the U.S. military said.

The US and Iraqi forces withheld notice of Abu Marwan's capure for six days, a normal procedure that allows for confusion and surprise when dealing with terrorist networks. It also allows for American intelligence agents to interrogate the detainees. The two events may not be connected, but the coincidence certainly appears provocative.

Ohio Recount Partisans Want Another Round On The House

After having blown $1.5 million of Ohio taxpayer money on a recount that resulted in a 0.27% adjustment to George Bush's margin of victory, Buckeye State voters might expect that the idiots who pushed for the recount would go away quietly. Unfortunately, idiots by definition notoriously learn lessons the hard way:

Two third-party presidential candidates asked a federal court Thursday to force a second recount of the Ohio vote, alleging county election boards altered votes and didn't follow proper procedures in the recount that ended this week.

Lawyers for Green Party candidate David Cobb and the Libertarian Party's Michael Badnarik made their request in federal court in Columbus.

The two candidates, who received less than 0.3 percent of the Ohio vote, paid $113,600 for a statewide recount after the vote was certified earlier this month by the secretary of state. They have said they don't expect to change the election results, but want to make sure that every vote is proply counted.

Ohio has to be getting tired of paying for the selfish indulgence of a couple of minor-party stooges acting as fronts for the Democrats and the Kerry campaign. They want to have as many recounts as necessaary in order to (a) delegitimize Bush's solid victory, and (b) manufacture enough votes to reverse it. At the rate we're going -- 300 votes every two months -- in 2084, John Kerry will be declared the winner.

British Minister: UN Only Body With "Moral Authority" For Relief

This statement by British minister Clare Short has stunned me into near-speechlessness:

The president has announced that the US, Japan, India and Australia would coordinate the world’s response.

But former International Development Secretary Clare Short said that role should be left to the UN.

“I think this initiative from America to set up four countries claiming to coordinate sounds like yet another attempt to undermine the UN when it is the best system we have got and the one that needs building up,” she said.

“Only really the UN can do that job,” she told BBC Radio Four’s PM programme.

“It is the only body that has the moral authority. But it can only do it well if it is backed up by the authority of the great powers.”

Short's anti-American bias shines through in this ludicrous and blatantly stupid assertion. The notion that the UN has any moral authority, let alone be the sole sanctuary of it, should have been universally dismissed in the Oil-For-Food corruption that Kofi Annan has tried to cover up all year. As I recall, that also started as a massive relief fund for victims of the UN's unwillingness to give Saddam the boot instead of starving the Iraqi people to death. The Sole Bastion Of Moral Authority managed to put billions of dollars into Saddam's pockets while enriching the member-states that made sure no one unseated Saddam.

And, while we're at it, let's remember that the Paragon Of Moral Virtue at Turtle Bay set up a safe zone for Bosnian Muslims in the city of Srebrenica, encouraging them to seek refuge from marauding and genocidal Serbs. After that, they conveniently stepped aside and allowed the same Serbs to sack Srebrenica without a single UN gun being fired in defense of the refugees -- 7,000 of which were slaughtered while the UN ran away.

Don't forget the up close and personal outreach in Congo that the Secular Saints Of The Order Of Blue Helmets performed to the women and female children. They spread love -- in the form of exploiting the females of almost all ages in exchange for food and water, turning the refugee camps into their personal seraglios and worse.

It's the Clueless Clares of the world who sacrifice the downtrodden of the world to the brutal and incompetent clutches of the UN for the greater purpose of having a single world government. The idea that Short can make this kind of assertion with a straight face shows the depth of corruption on the radical Left. I say bravo to George Bush for bypassing the grifters and rapists of the UN.

Addendum: NZ Bear (and his dad) first noticed Bush's deliberate avoidance of the UN for relief aid. Check out his detailed analysis.

UPDATE: The US has added the UN to the "core group", according to this report by CNN:

Secretary of State Colin Powell conferred by video hookup with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan Thursday on assistance to the victims of the Asian and African tsunamis and then added the United Nations to the core group planning relief efforts. ...

The coalition or core group set up Wednesday by President Bush will hold another conference call among top officials Thursday night. Besides the United States, the participants are Australia, India and Japan.

Top officials of the four countries sought to coordinate their efforts to avoid duplication in a conference call Wednesday night. For the second session the United Nations is being added, said a senior official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

This appears to have been a warning shot across the bow of the UN, as the US did not add them until a videoconference between Kofi Annan and Colin Powell took place. One might imagine that Powell explained all the reasons why we no longer trust the UN with relief aid. It appears from this report that the UN has been invited to participate in the core group, not to lead it. Bush, in other words, plans to make them squirm.

Even In Tsunamis, The Scum Rises To The Top; Let's Beat Them To The Money

Sometimes it seems that human avarice and maliciousness know no bounds. The New York Sun reports today on a number of websites that have sprung up for fundraising in connection to tsunami relief, but these show no connection to known and trusted charitable organizations:

On eBay, sellers are hawking Pez dispensers, a gold necklace, a stuffed mouse, and a "hand-carved" Buddha statue with the promise that proceeds from the auctions will go directly to charities assisting the victims of the tsunami in Asia.

Visitors to tsunamireliefaid.com are directed to a crudely constructed Web site with photographs of those who appear to be tsunami victims and instructions urging users to send relief packages and $10 checks to a P.O. box in Germantown, Md.

As major aid agencies around the globe undertake what could be the costliest and most complex relief effort ever, the catastrophe in South Asia has also given rise to hundreds of newly born charities purporting to raise money for victims. ...

Many of these charities are anonymous and don't have the imprimatur of philanthropic associations. It's unclear if the fund-raisers mentioned above are legitimate. But according to those familiar with online fraud, people looking to donate to the tsunami victims ought to be extra wary of unfamiliar Internet sites and individuals collecting money or goods.

Make sure your generosity benefits those who truly need it and not someone who contributes to their deaths by stealing the relief the victims so desperately need. Contribute through recognized charities, ones that have had long records of success in getting help to people without stealing from them. Many now recommend World Vision for effective use of donated money and material.

CQ reader Jeff Carlson has an interesting suggestion -- one that could make a verifiable charity very happy:

How about a "World Relief Day" where Americans can pledge/donate 1 days take home pay to relief of the disaster victims? A lot of employers might match it as well ...

I suggest January 12th ...

How about it, CQ readers? Does January 12th sound like a good day for our own World Relief Day, where we pledge our take-home pay for that day to tsunami relief? Jeff suggests Red Cross as a beneficiary (the Amazon link), but I think CQ readers might be more comfortable with World Vision. Post your comments and I'll make the decision based on the feedback received. I'll also have a blogroll posted on January 12th of the blogs that link back to it.

Let's see what good we can do here.

Smearing All The Way

In their zeal to overturn the 118,000-vote victory for George Bush in Ohio, Democrats apparently don't care what damage they do. Their latest conspiracy-theory victim is Ohio's Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Thomas Moyer, accused by attorneys in the case of having secret knowledge of voter fraud:

A group of voters had claimed Chief Justice Thomas Moyer "wittingly or unwittingly acquired knowledge of deliberate national and statewide election fraud" and should step aside.

Moyer called the voters' claim "wholly without foundation." He added that he has no reason to remove himself since the challenge doesn't involve his own election and he has nothing to gain by a change in the results. ...

Cliff Arnebeck, an attorney representing the voters, said Wednesday said he was reviewing the documents Moyer referred to.

As to the chief justice's refusal to remove himself, "the important thing about the judicial process is the concept that you have a neutral judge," Arnebeck said. "It's disappointing that doesn't seem to be the priority here."

Once again, the flat-Earthers looking to undermine the very substantial victory in Ohio have resorted to character assassination in order to feed the victim mythology their efforts intend to create. The first victim was Kenneth Blackwell who served as the Democrats' bete noir for simply following Ohio election law. Since one smear job apparently isn't enough, they intend on grinding Justice Moyer's reputation into the ground, using nothing but innuendo and an unsupported whispering campaign.

Perhaps the Ohio Bar should look into the conduct of the attorneys in this case. Publicly denigrating the integrity of the court without any evidence of wrongdoing should result in some sort of sanction. In the meantime, Ohio voters should make clear to Democrats that this whining and post-election nonsense will result in sanctions in the next election -- the kind that ends political careers.

Yanukovych Loses Three Of Four Challenges For Incompetence

The Ukrainian Supreme Court threw out three of current PM and election loser Viktor Yanukovych's challenges to the runoff on the basis that he filed them incorrectly:

Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich's dogged bid to overturn his liberal rival's victory in Ukraine's presidential election faltered on Thursday after the Supreme Court said it had thrown out all but one of his complaints. ...

Supreme Court spokeswoman Liana Shlyaposhnikova said judges had now rejected three of four complaints from Yanukovich's team concerning the organization of last Sunday's re-run of the rigged Nov. 21 poll.

"Two complaints were not considered because the proper time frame for submitting them was not respected," Shlyaposhnikova said. "One was turned down because the demands submitted by the plaintiff were not clearly drawn up."

This strictly legalistic approach from a Supreme Court once considered in the bag of Yanukovych -- when he had the favor of outgoing president Leonid Kuchma -- bodes ill for the PM. Rather than allowing itself to get creative in order to find a way to help Yanukovych, it looks at this point as if they're looking for any excuse to get him out of the way. It also doesn't help that Yanukovych appears to know little about the laws governing election challenges. He knew he would file challenges to the new runoff almost as soon as it was scheduled; how could he not have prepared for it?

Yanukovych is on his way to becoming a lonely, pitiful sight in Ukrainian politics: abandoned by his friends and allies and a reminder of the corruption that almost sentenced Ukraine to another term of corruption and isolation. He's stuck in political quicksand in that the more he struggles, the quicker his career seems to drown. Barring a last-minute miracle from the Supreme Court, which seems disinclined to offer any, he may be out as soon as this afternoon.

UPDATE: Yanikovych also lost in the formerly-loyal Central Election Commission as well:

The Central Election Commission on Thursday rejected Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych's appeal of the presidential revote, saying he had not proved there were any mass violations, a commission member said.

"Evidence submitted in the claim does not prove mass violations" and could not "influence or effect the results of the vote," said commission member Marina Tsavniychuk, reading from the commission's decision.

Yanukovych can now only appeal this decision to the Supreme Court -- the same one that appears to want as much distance between themselves and Yanukovych as possible.

UPDATE: He's 0-for-4 now:

Ukraine's Supreme Court has rejected all four complaints against the conduct of the presidential election lodged by Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych.

All Yanukovych has left is the appeal of the earlier CEC decision. After that, it's checkmate for the nonvictorious Viktor. (hat tip: King Banaian)

AP: Tsunami Toll Now Over 114,000

The AP now reports that new estimates of deaths in Sumatra has pushed the aggregate death toll from the massive Asian tsunamis to over 114,000, expanding one of the worst natural disasters of all time:

The death toll from last weekend's earthquake-tsunami catastrophe rose to more than 114,000 on Thursday as Indonesia uncovered more and more dead from ravaged Sumatra island, where pilots dropped food to remote villages still unreachable by rescue workers. A false alarm that new killer waves were about to hit sparked panic in India, Sri Lanka and Thailand.

The increase came after Indonesia reported nearly 28,000 newly confirmed dead in Sumatra, which was closest to the epicenter of last weekend's massive earthquake and was overwhelmed by the tsunami that followed. Some 60 percent of Banda Aceh, the main city in northern Sumatra was destroyed, the U.N. children's agency estimated, and 115 miles of the island's northwest coast - lined with villages - was inundated.

Indonesia, with around 80,000 dead, was the worst hit, followed by Sri Lanka, India and Thailand. The total across 12 nations in southern Asia and East Africa was likely to rise, with thousands still missing and fears that disease could bring a new wave of deaths.

The tsunamis caused massive damage to sewage systems, spilling raw sewage into water systems and in the general flooding. Rescue workers and aid agencies fear that the dysentery caused by this may double or triple current casualty estimates, not to mention other diseases such as typhoid or e. Coli outbreaks. The corpses lining the streets under the hot tropical sun will only make the disease worse, and right now fuel supplies have run so low even ambulances have to ration gasoline.

While we may not necessarily be looking at a "lost generation" in the Indian Ocean area, the nations will take years if not decades to recover, economically and socially, by the devastation. The West needs to step up and assist as much as possible in order to prevent a massive destabilization of the social and political order. This may be most important in Indonesia, a rare Islamic democracy that has already been pressured by Islamists to institute shari'a as a legal code and move towards a Taliban-like government. Indonesians had thus far resisted the pressure. With the devastation now experienced by the Indonesians, groups like Hamas have an opening to move in and provide assistance -- and gain a huge political advantage from it.

We've argued about the nature of Western stinginess the past couple of days. The West needs to comprehend the nature of this disaster and how it can be compounded exponentially by the war on terror, and approach the rescue efforts as part of our combat strategy.

Gregoire Hits Out At NC Democrats? Only If Democrats Had Capability Of Consistency

In an amazing turn of events, Washington gubernatorial candidate Christine Gregoire lashed out at her fellow party members in North Carolina, calling a revote wasteful and counterproductive:

"This ain't golf. No mulligans allowed here, folks," said Gregoire's spokesman, Morton Brilliant. "It's irresponsible to spend $4 million in taxpayer money on a new election just because you don't like losing this one."

Of course, I'm writing with tongue firmly in cheek. Gregoire made these comments in response to GOP candidate Dino Rossi's request for a revote after a series of irregularities in ballot handling, especially in King County, switched an original 230-vote GOP victory to a 130-vote loss.

In North Carolina, the margin of GOP victory in the agricultural commissioner race was about half of the disputed ballots lost in a predominantly Republican county. In Washington, the disputed votes come up to at least five times the new margin of victory. Yet in North Carolina, Democrats break the rules to order new statewide elections while in Washington a revote is considered a waste of taxpayer money.

It's not likely that Rossi will get his revote; it requires approval from the Democratic-controlled legislature. Perhaps the two incidents will finally put paid to the meme that Democrats are defenders of the "count every vote" concept, however.

CQ In The Sun

The New York Sun has published an opinion piece I rewrote about the Vatican's conclusion-jumping regarding the Sri Lankan refusal to admit Israeli aid workers this week. As you may recall, the official Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, accused Israelis of being "too often preoccupied with making war" because of their supposed refusal to help the Sri Lankans. Not only was it sloppy journalism -- the truth had been long discovered by bloggers -- but the conclusions reached by L'Osservatore Romano smacked of knee-jerk anti-Semitism.

You may need a subscription to read this -- I automatically get logged into mine by my browser -- but if you don't already subscribe, you should consider it. The Sun supports bloggers in a very real and literal way and has excellent reporting and writing. Plus, it has one of the richest interfaces for a newspaper I've seen.

UPDATE: You're not going to believe this, but the independent Catholic wire service that apparently first translated L'Osservatore Romano now claims they screwed it up:

Vatican, Dec. 30 (CWNews.com) - The following is a corrected version of a story that appeared on CWNews.com earlier this week, in which a crucial error in translation caused a serious misinterpretation of the news. CWNews apologizes for the error.

Vatican, Dec. 28 (CWNews.com) - The Vatican newspaper has denounced a decision by Sri Lanka to reject emergency aid offered by the Israeli government. Sri Lanka declined the Israeli aid because it would have been furnished by a military team.

Nice. Apparently, Catholics have lots of problem checking sources. No word from the Jerusalem Post on their translation or any retraction.

Operation Pentagon Patriots Scheduled For Monday

After receiving and posting an e-mail from an active-duty career officer at the Pentagon regarding the demoralizing effects of walking past anti-military moonbats every day, I had hoped that a few readers in the DC area could put together a small demonstration of support. I'd hoped that even a few people could help keep spirits high among those working tirelessly for our security and freedom.

Am I happy to tell you how wrong I was to set my expectations so low!

Thanks to Pierre at the Pink Flamingo Bar & Grill blog and Kfir Alia at Protest Warrior, we may have started something that will not only perk up the people entering the Metro gate at the Pentagon but will show DC and the media just how much support America has for its fighting men and women. Kfir e-mailed me today with the good news:

Operation Pentagon Patriots … is a go!

Here’s the operation description:

“Word is out that we have a group of angry lefties attacking our brave service men and women of the Pentagon at the Metro Station entrance. It is vital that ProtestWarriors are out there to show support for the job these men and women are doing everyday. Ever since 9/11 this special group of individuals have been working around the clock defending our way of life. The least we can do is get out there to show our support and say ‘Thank You’ for what they are doing. The libs have been out there every Monday morning, and we have been asked to come out and show them who’s boss in this town.

So let’s meet at the Pentagon Metro station at 6:30 in the morning. Just show up before you head off to work or school (bring a Thank-You type support sign if possible) and let the true freedom fighters of our Republic know that the American people support their mission.”

If you can be in the DC area on Monday morning to attend the rally, go to Protest Warrior's site to join the DC chapter. If you've already joined the DC chapter, use this link to get the necessary information to sign up for this demonstration of support. It's important to work through Protest Warrior to make this demonstration a success. You don't have to join, but contact Josiah, the chapter leader, to let him know you're attending and to get the relevant information. They have the experience necessary to maintain message discipline and to ensure that everyone has a good, safe morning.

Big thanks to Kfir and Pierre (and Josiah!) for jumping up and taking this project from wish to reality. I'm hoping that CQ readers can send me a few pictures of the rally so I can post them here.

Brave Sir Robin Demands Run-Away Date

Minnesota Senator Mark Dayton accompanied Joe Lieberman on his fact-finding trip to Iraq, after Dayton petulantly demanded that someone take him there. Dayton managed to sound a bit more coherent on this trip, echoing Lieberman's call to stay the course on the scheduled January elections. However, he still took the opportunity to demand a schedule for our withdrawal:

Wrapping up a trip to Iraq, Sen. Mark Dayton said he's convinced the United States must take efforts to quicken Iraq's self-sufficiency.

"That process needs to be accelerated,'' Dayton, D-Minn., told reporters in a conference call from Israel Wednesday, after spending the day in Iraq meeting with U.S. troops and U.N. and Iraqi officials.

"We've been there for 18 months now ... We've got to start to define the remaining amount of time necessary for our forces to be there before they can leave with a victory secured."

Once again, Dayton displays his utter incomprehension of our efforts in Iraq. The point of our mission isn't to set up an exit date and then get done as much as we can before then; it's to establish a functioning, democratic, federal government and establish a stable security force to keep it safe. Instead of focusing on making sure we succeed at that mission, Brave Sir Dayton worries that we won't run away fast enough.

Nor was that the only demonstration of Brave Sir Dayton's incoherence. After jumping on the uparmoring hype earlier this month, Dayton finally had the chance to actually ask real servicemen about their equipment -- and then refused to believe them:

Dayton, who sharply criticized the Bush administration for not providing U.S. troops with enough armored vehicles, said troops he spoke with in Iraq said they are getting the equipment they need.

"But I think we got an incomplete picture of that,'' he added.

What? Does he think that the soldiers and Marines lied to him? Maybe he has a grand conspiracy in mind that involves every serviceman in Iraq, Donald Rumsfeld, George Bush, and Karl Rove, all working together to make Dayton look like a paranoid idiot. The only flaw in this theory is that Dayton does that so well all by himself.

Iraqi Terrorists Get Stupid -- Really Stupid

In the aftermath of the Mosul bombing last week, the Washington Post reported comments made by former DIA analyst Jeffrey White that the next phase could be a full frontal assault on an American military base. At the time, I wrote that such an attack would be so blindingly stupid that American military planners should welcome it. I also wrote that Iraqi terrorists were lunatics, not idiots, and that the Saddam remnants knw better than to take on American forces in open battle.

Apparently I overestimated the intelligence of the enemy:

United States troops and warplanes killed at least 25 insurgents who used car bombs and rocket-propelled grenades to try to overrun an American combat outpost in Mosul on Wednesday afternoon, the American military said. It was the fiercest fighting the restive northern city has seen in weeks. ...

The attack began about 3:45 p.m., when insurgents armed with a car bomb tried to blow down the concrete barriers of the combat outpost, which is manned by a small force of soldiers. An armored military vehicle then sped to the outpost.

The armored vehicle "found itself pretty much in the middle" of a improvised car and roadside bombs that had been set up to attack any American vehicles coming to the aid of the outpost, said Lt. Col. Paul Hastings, a military spokesman in Mosul, using military acronyms for improvised roadside bombs and car bombs. The armored vehicle, he said, fired its .50-caliber machine gun to explode or disable the bombs, and proceeded to the outpost.

There, the American troops were attacked by a coordinated force of about 50 insurgents who fired rocket-propelled grenades and semiautomatic weapons.

So far, it sounds like a well-planned attack. The enemy put the Americans into a booby-trapped corner and pressed their attack with coordination and skill. It sounds like the worst fears of the Washington Post came true.

And then ...

At that point, two F-18 and two F-14 military jets swooped down on strafing runs and also fired Maverick missiles, wiping out much of the insurgent force. "That's when the close-air support came in and did a job on them," Colonel Hastings said.

So much for the big fear of a frontal assault.

That's why a frontal attack on American forces makes no sense whatsoever. One would suppose that insurgents fighting an asymmetrical war would understand that issue and, in fact, have that provide the overriding reason for fighting asymmetrically in the first place. The sudden change to frontal assaults either demonstrate a degradation in insurgent leadership or a desperation to try every last option to drive the Americans out. It could also be a combination of both, especially after the heavy losses suffered by terrorist forces in Fallujah.

The stupidity and desperation of Zarqawi's terrorists show that the upcoming elections have them rattled and the American military has them on the run. A few more assaults like this and even their sympathizers in the Sunni Triangle will understand their cluelessness.

Lieberman: No Delay In Iraqi Elections

Senator Joe Lieberman told the American media today that Iraqi elections must go forward as scheduled, negating a push for delay that had started to gather some momentum among the mainstream punditry:

Sen. Joe Lieberman, traveling in the Middle East Wednesday, said there is strong support in Iraq for the Jan. 30 election, and postponing it would only be a victory for the insurgents.

In a telephone call from Tel Aviv, Israel, the Connecticut Democrat said conditions in Iraq, including an increase in trained Iraqi security forces, have improved since his last visit in July. And he said the escalating violence aimed at intimidating Iraqis to postpone the election or not vote is not working in most of the country.

Lieberman could have won the last presidential election if the Democrats had been smart enough to nominate him. Instead, they ran their worst candidate since Michael Dukakis and wound up getting shut out of the White House and pushed into full retreat in both houses of Congress. Lieberman has what John Kerry lacks: serious understanding of the Islamofascist threat and their desperation to derail our efforts at building a representative democracy in the Middle East.

Lieberman's report that most of Iraq wants elections to move forward may help get the truth out to American voters. Coming from a Democrat, that information will carry more weight with editorial boards around the country. Hopefully, Lieberman's efforts will stiffen the Democrats' spine as well.

Tear Down This Wall (And/Or We'll Kill You)

Mahmoud Abbas apparently tried to reach Reaganesque levels of rhetoric this afternoon while campaigning through West Bank towns for the presidential election. He stopped in Tulkarem and Qalqiliya and told crowds gathered there that Israel had to tear down the wall in order to get peace:

Interim Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas made a campaign run Wednesday through West Bank towns living in the shadow of Israel's separation barrier, urging Israel to tear down the huge structure that he said would never help peace. ...

"I say to our neighbors ... no fence will bring peace or bring you security," Abbas told a rally at a Tulkarem stadium just 500 yards from the barrier. ...

Later, Abbas traveled to the nearby town of Qalqiliya, which is almost entirely cut off by the barrier. Abbas toured the wall and addressed a crowd of several hundred supporters.

"We hope the Israelis will take the wall down," he said. "If the Israelis want to reach a fair and just peace, they will take down the wall."

Abbas aims his rhetoric in the wrong direction. If he wants the wall to come down, the Palestinians need to stop blowing up buses and pizzerias in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. The Israelis may have put the wall up, but the Palestinians built it -- in fact, they literally built it, supplying the cement for it out of supplies intended on assisting Palestinians rebuild their towns. They also figuratively built in on the corpses of the women and children they've murdered in their bloodsoaked orgy of revenge they call an intifada.

Perhaps Abbas intended to evoke Ronald Reagan standing outside the Berlin Wall, perhaps not -- but Abbas misses the point if he did. The East Germans and Russians built the Berlin Wall to keep its subjugated population from fleeing into the West and freedom. Israel built its wall to keep the barbarians from slaughtering the already-free citizens of Southwest Asia's only other functioning democracy. A call from the barbarians to tear down the Israeli's only effective defensive structure as a trade for "peace" should result in gales of laughter on the other side, and a continuation of its construction.

One last note: the AP sets a new low for bias in its reporting. Take a read of this passage, emphasis mine:

"The Palestinian people have accepted the election laws and will therefore accept its results, even if Abu Mazen gets only a small majority in the polls," said analyst Ali Jerbawi, referring to Abbas by his nickname.

It's a nickname in the same sense that Night Stalker was Richard Ramirez' nickname. Abu Mazen is Mahmoud Abbas' nom de guerre, the identity he used when directing terrorist attacks against Israeli citizens. For the AP to glibly overlook this and pass of the use of Abbas' terrorist handle -- a use which calls his status as negotiating partner into question -- shows a contempt for AP's readership and a desire to cover up the less savory aspects of Abbas' past.

Guess Who's In The Courtroom With Saddam?

Last week, Arthur Chrenkoff took a look at Saddam Hussein's legal team, a collection of ambulance chasers from around the globe who regualarly work to shield enemies of Western civilization. One attorney formerly represented Nazi stooge Klaus Barbie and bragged of a personal friendship with the genocidal Cambodian Pol Pot; another represents that bastion of human rights, the Palestinian Authority. At the time, both Arthur and I noted the sad exclusion of Ramsey Clark, who openly begged for an invitation.

Apparently Clark's supplications found an audience, as the BBC informs us:

Mr Clark - who held office in the 1960s under President Lyndon Johnson - said his principal concern was protecting the rights of the former Iraqi leader. ...

Left-wing activist Mr Clark described the special tribunal established to try members of the former regime as a creation of the US military occupation.

He said it had no authority in law as a criminal court.

Clark tried to get onto Slobodan Milosevic's legal team as well, and had visited with Uncle Saddy just prior to the March 2003 invasion that toppled Hussein from power. This new employment gives Clark the opportunity to continue his career as an apologist and mouthpiece for every murderous tyrant and genocidal maniac with whom he can make contact. Clark stands on the side of murderers and tyrants, and mostly it appears he does so for the notoriety he receives from it.

In the end, these two despicable wretches probably deserve each other. Happy hunting, Mr. Clark.

Democrats Opt For New Election In Disputed Tally

At the end of the election, the recount discovered anomalies in the ballot totals -- leading to a large number of uncounted votes for the statewide office. As a result, Democrats have pushed to dump the election altogether and order a new special election to settle the matter.

Washington? We wish. Try North Carolina instead:

Following nearly two months of court fights and wrangling over lost votes, the North Carolina Board of Elections on Wednesday ordered a new statewide election for the closely contested race for agriculture commissioner.

Republican Steve Troxler leads Democratic incumbent Britt Cobb by 2,287 votes in final results from the Nov. 2 election. However, that figure was left in doubt by the discovery that an electronic voting machine error in Carteret County eliminated 4,438 votes that were cast early.

Democrats challenged the election, on reasonable grounds, it appears to me. The error came from the machine and not any fault or fraud of election workers, but losing more votes than the margin of victory is significant. However, the Democrats would have to have won those votes by a 3-1 margin in order to win the overall election, and since the county votes Republican, it makes for long odds.

The Republicans suggested that the revote remain just within the county where the votes were lost in order to avoid inconveniencing the entire state. An earlier order by the board requested this solution, but a judge threw it out. The three Democrats on the five-member panel argued that the law required a complete state revote. However, the Democrats didn't seem nearly as interested in sticking with the letter of the law when ordering the new election:

An order for a new election normally requires four votes, but board chairman Larry Leake and his fellow Democrats decided they weren't ordering a new election, only amending their earlier order, which required only a simple majority. Troxler characterized the move as a partisan trick.

So now North Carolina has to stage a statewide special election for this one race at a significant cost to the taxpayers. The turnout for such an election is estimated to be about 10% of the votes cast in the November election, making the resulting winner less than credible regardless of who it will be.

At least, though, that process will give a fair opportunity to both candidates. Too bad Washington Democrats don't see fit to give Washingtonians the same opportunity in their governor's race, which had a much smaller margin on all three vote counts and was plagued by incompetence, especially in heavily Democratic King County. The Democrats only appear interested in fairness when it benefits themselves, not the voters.

On The Matter Of Stinginess

After the foolish comment made by UN undersecretary Jan Egelend about Western "stinginess" towards disaster relief, we wondered exactly to whom Egeland could refer. After all, Americans give more private donations in both time and money than any other nation. More specifically, we asked ourselves exactly how much the Europeans pitched into the relief effort through official government channels. Thanks to Reuters Foundation AlertNet, those figures are now available to us (via Instapundit):

Australia: $26M, plus five military transports and 50 specialists
Austria: $1.36M
Belgium: One military transport to deliver UNICEF aid
Britain: 370K (pounds), $100K, plus $481K of materials to Sri Lanka
Denmark: 45 tonnes of supplies, $1.82M
EU: "Ready to release" 30M Euro, 3M Euro already released.
France: 100K Euros ($140,000)
Finland: 500K Euro.
Germany: 2M Euro.
Greece: 17 doctors and staff.
Italy: 2 helicopters and crew.
Netherlands: 2M Euros.
Poland: $336K
Spain: 1M Euros pledged, 19 volunteers
Sweden: Two communications specialists and some tents and radios.

Now put that against our initial pledge of $35 million, plus 12 US Navy vessels and 5,000 sailors to support rescue and humanitarian aid, and tell me who's being stingy. Americans donating through Amazon have collected almost eight times what the French have sent, apart from our official government contribution. Only Australia comes close to our efforts -- no surprise if you know any Australians, a brave and noble people.

Egeland used his moment of fame to besmirch those who have always responded to catastrophes around the world with our time, money, and prayers. He would have done better to look closer to home. I notice Norway, Egeland's home country, is conspicuously absent from this list, and France might as well be.

UPDATE: As Gaius Livius prompts me in the comments, let's not forget Japan, who's also ponied up $30M.

Why The MSM Has Run Aground

Hugh Hewitt writes a companion piece to his new book in today's Weekly Standard column, explaining why the mainstream media has suffered body blows to its credibility and how they opened the door to the inevitable reaction:

The new recruits to big journalism and their mentors did not work overtime to assure that, in the elevation of tolerance of ideological minorities, there would remain representation of majoritarian points of view. In fact, majoritarian points of view became suspect, and the focus of pervasive hostile reporting and analysis. Crusading journalists seemed to be an ideological pack. By the time the new millennium arrived, legacy media was populated at its elite levels by as homogeneous a group of reporters / producers / commentators as could ever have been assembled from the newsrooms of the old Hearst operation. Big Media had hired itself into a rut--a self-replicating echo chamber of left and further-left scribblers and talkers and self-reinforcing head nodders who were overwhelmingly anti-Republican, anti-Christian, anti-military, anti-wealth, anti-business, and even anti-middle class. These new journalists had no tolerance for majoritarian points of view, and the gap between the producers of the news and the consumers of the news widened until the credibility gap between the two made Lyndon Johnson's look modest by comparison.

As we see in Nick Coleman's rant this morning in the Star Tribune, it isn't just the hiring rut that caused the blog reaction. It's the arrogance that leads people like Coleman to believe that they can simply lie and threaten people into silence. It's the movable feast of media ethics that create debacles like the National Guard forgeries at CBS, which came from an already-discredited source that CBS management knew wouldn't withstand scrutiny -- and the hubris that allowed Dan Rather to "personally vouch" for their authenticity in order to quiet the criticism.

If it were simply bias, the blogosphere would remain a hobby for a few lonely souls who disagreed with the culture and cult of leftism. It goes far deeper than that, and the media knows it. Otherwise, we'd already have seen the report from CBS' "independent" investigation into its election-season fraud, and Nick Coleman would be struggling to find work in the freebie, alternative-news tabloids. It's an overt hostility to an entire political philosophy and contempt for the intellect of the consumers that keep the MSM ever on the edge of catastrophe.

Read all of Hugh's thoughts on the subject, and don't forget to order his new book on the blogosphere, Blog.

Nuclear Weapons Out Of Al-Qaeda's Reach?

The Washington Post starts a three-part series today on the threat of nuclear terrorism which concludes that the threat of a chemical or biological attack is more likely. Unless al-Qaeda can get high-level assistance from Russian or Pakistani nuclear forces in detonating the devices, nuclear weapons appear to be outside their capability.

Experts have concluded that AQ does not have the capacity to manufacture its own nuclear devices, which means that they would have to steal or purchase one. However, setting off a nuclear bomb requires a high level of expertise, as the weapons have safeguards built into them to avoid such a scenario from playing out:

Newer Russian weapons, for example, are equipped with heat- and time-sensitive locking systems, known as permissive action links, that experts say would be extremely difficult to defeat without help from insiders.

"You'd have to run it through a specific sequence of events, including changes in temperature, pressure and environmental conditions before the weapon would allow itself to be armed, for the fuses to fall into place and then for it to allow itself to be fired," said Charles D. Ferguson, science and technology fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. "You don't get it off the shelf, enter a code and have it go off."

The strategy would require help from facility guards, employees with knowledge of the security and arming features of the weapons, not to mention access to a launching system.

Even the older ordnance has its challenges:

"There is a whole generation of weapons designed for artillery shells, manufactured in the 1950s, that aren't going to have sophisticated locking devices," said Laura Holgate, who ran nonproliferation programs at the Pentagon and the Energy Department from 1995 to 2001. "But it is a tougher task to take a weapon created by a country, even the 1950s version, a tougher job for a group of even highly qualified Chechen terrorists to make it go boom."

Transportation also presents difficulties, although the Post may oversell the point here. Plutonium, which Russian weaponry uses, emits a higher rate of radiation and therefore theoretically would be easier to catch at the secure ports through which they must transit. However, this also leaves out the possibility that AQ could have lower-level infiltration in Russian border security organizations that would negate the safety barrier. After all, the Russians have their own Islamist problem and the borders that would give AQ the best access are part of the Russian areas of unrest.

Dafna Linzer reviews a host of other obstacles to terrorist development of a viable nuclear threat, all of which sound comforting notes. Chief among them is a lack of a stable environment in which to build the weapon, but Linzer leaves until last the reason why AQ has been deprived of such a necessity:

Al Qaeda has been on the run since the United States deprived it of a haven in Afghanistan, making it more difficult for the group to operate on such an ambitious scale.

The war on terror also deprived AQ of three other routes to nuclear capability that Linzer fails to mention in this first installment. First, the alliance with Pervez Musharraf exposed the Khan proliferation network, a resource that would have assisted AQ in both development and detonation, and possibly even delivered fissile material. Khan had no compunction against trading with Islamist zealots, as his connection with the Iranian regime clearly shows. Our removal of Saddam kept the Iraqis' core nuclear research out of AQ hands; in fact, it delivered it to the Americans. Saddam's capture convinced Moammar Gaddafi to rid himself of his nuclear-weapons program (as well as chemical and biological WMD) rather than share it with lunatic terrorists.

In short, our forward strategy of engagement against terrorists has kept them on the run and shut down the networks which could have created resources for terrible attacks that would have dwarfed 9/11. Too bad the Post chooses to downplay that and instead credit the idiocy of the terrorists for our safety.

Nick Coleman Goes Insane

Minneapolis Star-Tribune columnist Nick Coleman went off his meds today, or on some new ones, in writing a smear job on Power Line, who he sees as his archnemesis these days. Without bothering to do any research whatsoever, Coleman accuses the "lads" of being unaccountable sellouts and worse:

The lads behind Powerline are a bank vice president named Scott Johnson and a lawyer named John Hinderaker. If you read Powerline, you know them better by their fantasy names, Big Trunk (that's Johnson) and Hind Rocket (Hinderaker). I will leave it to the appropriate professionals to determine what they are compensating for, but they have received enormous attention from the despised Mainstream Media and deserve more.

Oh ho, a penis reference from Coleman! What a great way to express his superior intellect and standards, seeing that he is a newspaperman:

I work for a dopey old newspaper committed to covering the news fairly while Powerline doesn't make boring commitments.

I guess "covering the news fairly" includes making thinly-veiled wisecracks about penis length in Minneapolis' "mainstream" newspaper. But Coleman, after all, "knows stuff" that we don't. Why, he even fixed it so that a Republican (gasp!) could get elected governor:

In 1990, I reported that this newspaper's endorsement of DFL Gov. Rudy Perpich was decided by then-publisher and Perpich crony Roger Parkinson. He had quashed the decision of the newspaper's editorial board, which had voted in favor of the Republican challenger, Arne Carlson.

The truth got out, the Republican won and the public was served.

He goes on to accuse the guys at Power Line of taking money without disclosure from various interests which Coleman never bothers to identify. He can't, because it's untrue, as John explains in his amusing reply to Coleman's rant. In fact, all Coleman had to do to find this out was either to read what they had written, or simply pick up the phone and call them. Their phone numbers are available through their website, and certainly their e-mail address gets prominent display on their site.

In his undisguised hatred and fear of being held accountable for his mediocrity and bias, Coleman demonstrates why news sources like the Strib left themselves open for a counterreaction from bloggers. He not only failed to check out his assertions, he made them so ridiculous that they beg for the pinprick that this windbag so richly deserves.

Since he wants to tell true stories, let me tell one that explains a bit more about his approach to criticism. Not long ago, Coleman mixed it up over a column he wrote about a lack of books at a local school with a couple of our associates, Mitch Berg and Craig Westover. Since we all have our own radio show here in town, Mitch invited Coleman to join us on air with Westover to debate the issue. Instead of accepting our offer or even offering a professional refusal, Coleman left Mitch a barely coherent rant on his voice mail, demanding that Mitch post the "twelve shittiest things [Mitch] ever wrote about my kids" and payment of $1000 dollars to the school before Coleman would appear. (For the record, the only thing Mitch ever wrote about his kids was that they attend the same school system that Mitch's kids attend, something Coleman could have determined had he bothered to research the issue.)

I didn't know that the Strib demands $1000 for interviews, nor did I realize that they pay for interviews, but apparently that's the journalistic standard at the Strib these days. After all, Mitch contacted him in his capacity as a representative of the paper which employs Coleman; what else are we to think? When Mitch refused to pay for the interview, Nick Coleman sent a threatening e-mail proposing to "expose" us as cowards -- and then wrote a ridiculous column that referred to Westover as "Captain Fishsticks".

Namecalling, extortion, and threats -- that's the standards that Nick Coleman apparently wants to defend in his latest column. And Nick wonders why blogs like Power Line exist?

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers! You should make sure to read Mitch Berg's more in-depth response. King Banaian also notes how cool it is that Coleman essentially has to ride our coattails now.

Vatican's Anti-Israel's Bias Slips Out

The Vatican embarrasses itself today in its newspaper, mistakenly scolding Israel for not offering aid to Sri Lanka when in fact the anti-Semites in the island nation refused entry to the Israeli aid delegation. In the language they used to issue their judgment on the only nation in Southwest Asia that allows Christians unfettered religious freedom, the Vatican revealed a bias that calls into question John Paul II's famous outreach to Jews:

The Vatican newspaper has denounced what it called a decision by the IDF to deny emergency help to disaster victims in Sri Lanka.

Calling for "a radical and dramatic change of perspective" among people "too often preoccupied with making war," L'Osservatore Romano singled out Israeli military leaders for declining a request for emergency medical help.

Contrary to the Vatican report, an Israeli plane carrying 80 tons of food and medical supplies worth $100,000 was set to depart for Sri Lanka Wednesday morning. At the request of the Sri Lankan Foreign Ministry, a team of some 150 Israeli medical and security personnel aborted their planned trip to the island nation Tuesday night.

Oops! I guess the Vatican doesn't take its mission to provide the Truth to the world too seriously these days. The blogosphere had the Sri Lanka/Israel story hours ago, another short-sighted and pointless example of Islamic anti-Semitism that hurts themselves more than it could ever hurt the Jews bearing the aid the Sri Lankans need. Instead of spending a few minutes getting their story straight, the Vatican mouthpiece wasted little time jumping to a conclusion that has to force Catholics around the world to question the Vatican's true attitude towards Israel and Jews.

Question 1: Why did an official Catholic newspaper fail to research the issue before issuing an opinion?

Question 2: Why did L'Osservatore Romano automatically blame the Jews?

Question 3: Who wrote that editorial, and at what level was it approved?

The Vatican has generated a lot of publicity during John Paul II's reign out of their outreach to Israel and the worldwide Jewish community. This incident appears to betray a completely different attitude towards them in the upper echelons of the Catholic Church. When leaders within Christ's Church take the side of tyrants and terrorists and turn on the one small oasis in a desert of oppression for Christians, we Catholics have to wonder where the Vatican is leading us.

Washington Post Starts New Bush Meme, Trots Out Stinginess For An Encore

The Washington Post runs to the rescue of Jan Egeland by both reinforcing the UN undersecretary's assertions of American stinginess and creating a new smear against George Bush, this time for not exploiting the deaths of 60,000 people for his own political gain:

The Bush administration more than doubled its financial commitment yesterday to provide relief to nations suffering from the Indian Ocean tsunami, amid complaints that the vacationing President Bush has been insensitive to a humanitarian catastrophe of epic proportions. ...

Although U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland yesterday withdrew his earlier comment, domestic criticism of Bush continued to rise. Skeptics said the initial aid sums -- as well as Bush's decision at first to remain cloistered on his Texas ranch for the Christmas holiday rather than speak in person about the tragedy -- showed scant appreciation for the magnitude of suffering and for the rescue and rebuilding work facing such nations as Sri Lanka, India, Thailand and Indonesia.

After a day of repeated inquiries from reporters about his public absence, Bush late yesterday afternoon announced plans to hold a National Security Council meeting by teleconference to discuss several issues, including the tsunami, followed by a short public statement.

The Post's John F. Harris notes approvingly that Bush's camera grab puts him in the same class as Gerhardt Schroeder and other world leaders. Harris also reports on another figure in Europe that beat Bush to the television cameras: Bill Clinton, who got wide press coverage for issuing an insipid statement in Britain about the importance of coordinating the international response to the disaster.

We will hear more of this in the days ahead, how Bush cares more for his vacation than the suffering of the Asian victims of the tsunami, and so on. Harris reports on whispers in the political and international communities that the aid package put forth and Bush's absence shows his arrogance and disdain for the human tragedy. Leslie Gelb from the Council on Foreign Relations gets a quote telling Post readers that Bush had to "show people that this matters to [him], that [he] cares."

Of course Bush has to act to assist the governments suffering from the tragedy, but how does getting on TV and acting weepy -- Bill Clinton's specialty -- help them in any material way? Bush put his energy into getting the largest aid package of any nation deployed ($35 million and growing). He redirected a carrier group to the Indian Ocean (USS Lincoln), and he sent the USS Bonhomme Richard and 5,000 sailors to Sri Lanka (via Instapundit). Post readers should ask themselves what helps tsunami victims more -- self-serving TV appearances or thousands of helping hands arriving on the scene, not to mention the cash?

The worst part of this article is Harris' endorsement of the stinginess meme that even Egeland had abandoned by this afternoon:

Among the world's two dozen wealthiest countries, the United States often is among the lowest in donors per capita for official development assistance worldwide, even though the totals are larger. According to the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development of 30 wealthy nations, the United States gives the least -- at 0.14 percent of its gross national product, compared with Norway, which gives the most at 0.92 percent.

Harris deliberately uses the narrow definition of assistance, that given directly by governments. As many bloggers have already noted, that definition hardly tells the full story. Americans donate more money privately and volunteer more hours than anyone else in the world. The American economic structure that allows people to retain most of their own earnings also allows them to make much more effective use of donor money and time. (However, I note with some satisfaction that Norway only donates 0.92% of its GNP. Egeland sneeringly referred to those Western countries that keep 99% of what they make; I guess his native country belings in the same class.)

While the Post has its own issues with bias, I hold them in much higher regard than the New York Times because it usually manages to get its facts straight. This article seriously challenges my generally positive opinion of the Washington Post.

Yushchenko Wants A Blockade While Yanukovych Xeroxes Voters

Viktor Yushchenko has called on his populist movement to blockade a cabinet meeting called by a defiant Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, refusing to accept defeat in Ukraine's presidential run-off. Meanwhile, the protests that Yanukovych presented to the election commission look suspiciously alike, according to officials:

Viktor Yushchenko, fresh from his victory in Ukraine's disputed presidential race, called on his supporters Tuesday to blockade the Cabinet of Ministers building to prevent his opponent from holding a government session.

Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, the Kremlin favorite who has come under increasing pressure to concede defeat to Yushchenko, returned to work Tuesday after taking a vacation to campaign ahead of last Sunday's vote.

Ukrainian prime ministers do not leave office until replaced by the President. So far, Leonid Kuchma has not released Yanukovych from his duties and shows no particular rush to do so. That allows Yanukovych to conduct government business despite his loss at the polls. Yanukovych could conceivably continue to run Kuchma's government until Yushchenko gets sworn in and fires him.

Of course, Yanukovych hopes that his challenges to the runoff will result in either a reversed decision or at least another runoff. He has yet to file an official challenge, but Yanukovych has pointed to a number of complaints that the CEC has received to justify his objections. However, election officials have had to contend with a strong sense of deja vu when reviewing them:

Yanukovych's team has yet to file an appeal, and the Central Election Commission's Davydovych said that many of the complaints they had received, purportedly from individual voters, were "printed on the same computer, with the same text, the same envelopes."

"This is on the conscience of those who do that," Davydovych said.

Yanukovych obviously lacks the subtlety to get away with voter fraud. He would have better spent his time in Seattle rather than Kyiv.

Minnesota Media Both Tacky And Clueless

A business complex exploded in nearby Ramsey today, killing at least two people and critically injuring a third. A gas buildup apparently caused the blast, which destroyed the building:

A gas leak was believed to have set off the explosion about 9:45 a.m., leveling the single-story structure along Hwy. 10 in the city of Ramsey, said Capt. Bob Aldrich of the Anoka County Sheriff's Office.

However, Aldrich said more investigation was needed to confirm the cause. Investigators planned to talk to a man who had pulled up to the building just as it exploded. The man's car was damaged, but he was said to be uninjured.

The explosion will require more investigation, but the odor of natural gas at the scene makes firefighters pretty confident that a gas leak is the culprit.

However, that's not why I'm posting about this. Our local media swarmed over the site, quite literally, as a CQ reader e-mailed me earlier this afternoon:

As you have undoubtedly heard about by now, a small business building in Ramsey on highway 10 exploded today, killing at least 2 with possibly others still missing. As an emergency services volunteer in Hennepin County, I was put on standby and had my scanner running so I could listen to the rescue and recovery operation. I also tuned into the local media coverage of the incident while I waited to see if my services would be needed.

A little while after dogs were brought in to assist in the search, rescue crews appeared to have located something. The news media observed that tarps were being raised and one station admitted it was probably because of their presence overhead (one station tried to suggest other possible reasons for the tarps initially but the tarp path to the ambulance left little doubt as to the tarp's function). While recognizing the tarps were in place to provide privacy and dignity to the remains being removed from the blast site, no effort was made by the news media to actually provide privacy that was being sought.

On my radio, I heard a request being made by the fire command to have all news media choppers clear the air and provide a 5 mile radius around the scene. The Anoka County dispatcher contacted each news organization and relayed the request.

Nobody moved.

The fire commander, clearly irritated, asked that the FAA be contacted and that the radius should be expanded to 10 miles.

Nobody moved.

At one point the fire commander said all the helicopters, except channel 11 [the local NBC affiliate -- CE] had backed off but then ended his transmission by saying another helicopter was moving into the area again. Even as the helicopters were backing off, news crews on the ground using towers on their news vans zoomed in on the ambulance looking for any angle that would sneak past the privacy guards in place.

Remember this when the media spouts off about supporting local responders in the war on terror instead of military action. The fire captain wanted the area cleared to maintain at least a few moments of dignity for the victims of the blast, and the various Twin Cities news organizations treated it like a Hollywood wedding. The truth is that the media only gives a damn about local responders when it suits their political purposes; otherwise, the media routinely ignore them. Everyone involved in this should be ashamed of themselves.

A Cost Of $5000 Per Vote

Ohio has officially finished the recount demanded by the Green and Libertarian parties and encouraged by the Democrats and the Kerry campaign. The result? President Bush's lead diminished ... by 300 votes:

Election officials finished the presidential recount in Ohio on Tuesday, with the final tally shaving about 300 votes off President Bush's six-figure margin of victory in the state that gave him a second term.

The recount shows Bush winning Ohio by 118,457 votes over John Kerry, according to unofficial results provided to The Associated Press by the 88 counties. Lucas County, home to Toledo, was the last to finish counting.

The state had earlier declared Bush the winner by 118,775 votes and plans to adjust its totals to reflect the recount later this week.

That certainly proved a productive use of Ohio's resources. The Secretary of State estimated that Ohio's taxpayers will eat about $1.5 million for the complete recount, far outpacing the $113,000 the Greens and Libertarians paid for the effort. When that money isn't available for more voting machines or a few workers get laid off because of the budget crunch, perhaps Buckeye State voters will remember that this useless bill was brought to them by the Democrats and fringe parties.

I've heard of vote-buying before, but $5000 a throw seems a bit steep, even for free-spending Democrats.

UPDATE: Dorian at Alarming News (guesting for Karol Sheinin) notes the AP headline bias that commenter TG Harris also noted.

Goodbye, Ms. Sontag, And Good Riddance

The execrable Susan Sontag died today at the age of 71 of an undisclosed illness. Perhaps I should be more charitable in my assessment of her now that she has passed away, but she and her ilk represent the worst of the hypocritical Left, especially in the wake of 9/11:

Susan Sontag, the author, activist and self-defined "zealot of seriousness" whose voracious mind and provocative prose made her a leading intellectual of the past half century, died Tuesday. She was 71. ...

Sontag called herself a "besotted aesthete," an "obsessed moralist" and a "zealot of seriousness."

Here's what the obsessed moralist had to say about the 9/11 attacks:

"Where is the acknowledgment that this was not a `cowardly' attack on `civilization' or `liberty' or `humanity' or `the free world' but an attack on the world's self-proclaimed superpower, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions?" she wrote in The New Yorker.

"In the matter of courage (a morally neutral virtue): whatever may be said of the perpetrators of Tuesday's slaughter, they were not cowards."

No, of course not; targeting women and children for death is so courageous, at least in Sontag's worldview. Bill Maher said much the same thing, and I hear it still from time to time, the Sontag meme that will not die. It does not take courage to drive an airplane full of frightened noncombatants into a business structure when you think Allah will grant you 72 virgins on the other side. These lunatics committed these acts because they lacked the courage to engage in armed combat with people who could shoot back. They were and are moral and physical cowards, people who kill women and children because they cannot stand up as men. Those who defend their actions, like Sontag, are at least as despicable for granting them credit for their murders.

Sontag's entire political ouevre reeked of cowardice. She gave literary and intellectual cover to America-bashing after 9/11, a continuation of her life's work. (The AP also notes that Sontag once wrote that "the white race is the cancer of human history.") All she did was bolster our enemies and try to weaken our own resolve. In any other time, she would have been shunned by American society. Sontag deserves nothing but scorn, regardless of her death. She improved the world only by leaving it.

Addendum: As I wrote to Glenn Reynolds, I will probably have to mention this post at my next confession. For now, I don't feel like being charitable to the near-treasonous just because they died in their sleep, rather than screaming like the terror victims she so callously discounted.

UPDATE: In a deeper look at Sontag's life, the Los Angeles Times' Steve Wasserman includes this corker from Sontag:

Sontag had never been so public as she became over the next three years, publishing steadily, speaking constantly and receiving numerous international awards, including Israel’s Jerusalem Prize, Spain’s Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts, and Germany’s Friedenspreis (Peace Prize). Upon accepting the prize from Jerusalem’s mayor, Ehud Olmert, Sontag said of Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians: "I believe the doctrine of collective responsibility as a rationale for collective punishments [is] never justified, militarily or ethically. And I mean of course the disproportionate use of firepower against civilians."

Sontag lectured the Israelis on the disproportionate use of firepower against civilians in the middle of a decade of exploding Israeli buses and pizzerias. Always siding with the terrorists and against the democracies. That's Sontag for you.

Tsunami Toll Now Above 55,000, Expected To Rise "Sharply"

The death toll from the Asian tsunamis has risen sharply today as aid agencies now say that 55,000 deaths have been confirmed -- and that number is expected to get a lot larger soon:

Logistical problems hampered a massive humanitarian relief operation along Asia's devastated shores as the death toll from a huge earthquake and killer tidal waves surged past 55,000.

With the scale of the catastrophe rapidly unfolding, the confirmed number of dead in 10 countries shot up to 55,175, with Indonesia's Aceh province accounting for half of those killed, or 27,174. In Sri Lanka, 17,640 are dead.

The fear that outbreaks of disease could unleash a second wave of tragedy on a region struggling to cope with the first also loomed large with decomposing bodies and sewerage contaminating water sources.

Short of war, the world has not seen such an immediate catastrophe as the Indian Ocean nations are tragically experiencing now. An entire generation has died for some communities, and disease threatens to wipe out what's left. Aid needs to get to the survivors, and fast.

Western nations plan to meet the call, with the US pledging $15 million to start. That met with some disapproval yesterday, as the UN's emergency relief coordinator called America "stingy":

"The United States, at the president's direction, will be a leading partner in one of the most significant relief, rescue and recovery challenges that the world has ever known," said White House deputy press secretary Trent Duffy. But U.N. Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland suggested that the United States and other Western nations were being "stingy" with relief funds, saying there would be more available if taxes were raised.

"It is beyond me why are we so stingy, really," the Norwegian-born U.N. official told reporters. "Christmastime should remind many Western countries at least, [of] how rich we have become."

"There are several donors who are less generous than before in a growing world economy," he said, adding that politicians in the United States and Europe "believe that they are really burdening the taxpayers too much, and the taxpayers want to give less. It's not true. They want to give more."

This is a typical European response, where people who want to "give more" do so by confiscating other people's money. In fact, Americans are among the least-stingy people in the world -- once you count private donations. As McQ at QandO noted yesterday, America gives far more in private donations and volunteer efforts than their European counterparts. In fact, Americans donate seven times more per household than Germans and put in six times the amount of volunteer work.

How despicable that Jan Egeland uses the deaths of at least 55,000 people to pursue his political ambitions. The UN undersecretary should already know these figures. He should also understand that when governments don't steal everything they can from their citizens, the citizens can be trusted to do the right thing with their money. Egeland's sneering Eurocentrism symbolizes everything that is wrong with the UN: politics over people, ideology over humanity. Egeland provides yet another reason for the US to stop paying UN salaries until they clean house at Turtle Bay.

UPDATE: Oops! Egeland must have gotten a memo from above, because he's backtracking as fast as he can:

The international response to a catastrophic tsunami in Asia has been quick and generous, a senior U.N. official said on Tuesday, playing down his earlier comments that wealthy nations were stingy. ...

Egeland told reporters on Tuesday: "I've been misinterpreted when I yesterday said that I believed that rich countries in general can be more generous."

How, exactly, can one misinterpret the word "stingy"? CNN also reports on Egeland's retreat.

Protestors At Pentagon Aim To Destroy Morale

I received an e-mail from an active-duty officer currently posted at the Pentagon, decrying the stupidity of the moonbats that congregate outside the entrances to the facility to protest the war. Usually, the protests involve a handful of disorganized and mostly quiet people. This morning's protest, however, got ugly very fast:

Captain Ed--

I'm a lieutenant colonel currently assigned to the Pentagon. The area around our Metro entrance is a popular location for moonbat protests; there's a nice lady who stands out there maybe once a week with a sign. Occasionally, there are others. Of course their signs accuse us Pentagon types of genocide, etc., but imbued in their citizenship is the right to be cluelessly ignorant. Those of us in queue to enter the building are instructed not to react. It's hard to comply, but the policy prevents escalation.

This morning, it took every ounce of professionalism not to react. For today, the moonbats were highly organized...about 50 of them. Two were arrested for getting out of line during just the 2 minutes I was out there. They had all the typical moonbat signs..."No Blood For Oil" and "Remember Fallujah" (this one held by a nice 70 year old lady...I do remember, ma'am, how the local residents strung up our contractors). The largest poster trumpeted a "There Are No Innocent Bystanders" theme.

I wish I had photos.

I've about had it with these intellectual midgets who don't understand we're at war. I wish I could compel each to read Hugh Hewitt's book "If It's Not Close..." as it explains our very real struggle in terms even a moonbat might comprehend. The constrast between this morning's protestors and the service of our troops in country could not be more stark. Even if the protestors were correct (and they're not), they're protesting the wrong building...we execute the President's orders. No more, no less. Go march in front of the White House, please.

Having said that, it's their right to protest. Bring it on. But I'm wondering if among your readers is someone in the D.C. area who could organize and execute a PEACEFUL pro-military demonstration at the Pentagon Metro entrance? You have no idea how much it would help morale.

I don't agree with my reader's assessment of the protest as some sort of mistake that wound up at the wrong building. I believe that the protestors intend on undermining morale among the fighting corps of this nation, weakening our military resolve to carry out the orders of the duly elected government which it serves. The protests aim at men and women like my reader (who asked me to withhold his name, for obvious reasons) to destroy their sense of purpose and duty. They want good and honorable people to leave military service so that the great evil they see -- American power -- crumbles, leaving us at the mercy of those who will destroy us.

For those who live in the DC area, I ask that some effort be made to counter the effects of these demoralizers. It won't take much. Men and women like this reader know that they have support, but when they don't see overt expressions of it once in a while and have to come to work every day to this nonsense, it grinds down the spirit. Certainly we have some patriots in the area who can organize a loose effort to simply stand at the entrance and thank those who protect us from our enemies?

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers! I want to point you to the About Me page to explain my nickname, as the post and (very kind) referral from Instapundit may leave people with the wrong impression.

Osama Demands Boycott, Sunnis Respond: Coincidence?

On the day that Osama bin Laden issued a call for Muslims to boycott the upcoming Iraqi elections, the country's largest Sunni party pulled out of the elections, claiming that they should be delayed by six months or more:

The largest political party representing Iraq's Sunni Muslim minority announced Monday that it would drop out of the Jan. 30 election, dealing a fresh blow to the vote's credibility on the same day the top Shiite Muslim candidate survived a car bombing.

The withdrawal of the Iraqi Islamic Party, combined with the assassination attempt on cleric Abdul Aziz Hakim, heightened concerns that the parliamentary election may produce a lopsided result, further alienating Sunni areas where the armed insurgency is growing.

The withdrawal of the Islamic Party may cause a loss of some credibility amongst the Sunni in Iraq, but the Sunni as a group hardly have supported the concept of democracy in the first place. Their withdrawal only surprises the Western media, and even that I suspect is overblown. The Sunni face an unprecedented loss of domination over the Kurds and the Shi'a in Iraq and don't like it one bit. Their only strategy is to boycott the elections and claim their illegitimacy later as a grudge to be nursed.

The boycott announcement also comes at an interesting moment, just when Osama issues a fatwa of sorts warning Muslims that those who participate will become infidels:

In calling on Iraqis to boycott the election, the speaker praised Abu Musab Zarqawi as an "amir," or prince of the al Qaeda organization in Iraq, who is leading the fight against "the Americans and [Interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad] Allawi's renegade government."

"The groups affiliated with him are good," the speaker says. "We were pleased with their daring operations." Zarqawi, a Jordanian-born Palestinian, has asserted responsibility for many of the suicide bombings and beheadings in Iraq over the past year and in October publicly pledged his fealty to bin Laden.

So Osama says "boycott," and the Sunni Islamic Party jumps. No one should be terribly surprised over this, as the Sunni Ba'athists have cast their lot with the Wahhabist al-Qaeda "amir" Zarqawi, who has conducted a bloody and barbaric campaign against Iraqis who have the temerity to desire self-determination and freedom.

The Saddam remnants want a return to Sunni domination, and their easy association with AQ, Osama, and Zarqawi shows what Iraq would become if they succeed. Their refusal to participate in elections therefore does not break my heart in any significant way. Those Sunnis who believe in freedom will make their way to the ballot box.

This does, however, reinforce the wisdom of the proposed federal system in Iraq, which the Shi'ite leader Ali al-Sistani opposes. A federal system will allow the Kurds to govern themselves in peace without undue interference in the Arabic tensions in southern and central Iraq. (Kurds, as they will not hesitate to remind you, are not Arabs.) Assuming that the Sunni eventually participate, they will have their own political stronghold in Baghdad and the rest of central Iraq, while the Shi'a will have their power base in Basra. It allows all factions to have their own space while keeping the country united at the top. Just as in America, these competing demands will put a lot of pressure on the federal government to allow as much autonomy as possible -- but the structure can withstand that and eventually allow the tensions to be expressed at a table rather than at the point of a gun, or with the appearance of a suicide bomber.

To get there, we have to have elections, and we have to make Iraqis confident in their existence. Delaying elections only feeds the conspiracy theorists and fatalists who refuse to believe in democracy and the rule of law. Regardless of Sunni participation, the elections must proceed.

Gonna Have To Face It, They're Addicted To Polls

The Los Angeles Times runs a major story in its Nation section this morning that looks like a refugee from October. Peter Wallsten obsesses about George Bush's approval rating based on recent polling despite the results from the big poll on November 2nd:

Despite a clear-cut reelection and the prospect of lasting GOP dominance in Congress, President Bush prepares to start his second term with the lowest approval ratings of any just-elected sitting president in half a century, according to new surveys.

That distinction, which pollsters and analysts blame on public discontent over the war in Iraq, comes as Bush begins drafting two major speeches that could quickly recast his image: an inaugural address Jan. 20 and the State of the Union soon after. Bracketed between them is the Jan. 30 election in Iraq, another milestone that could affect public impressions of Bush.

In two words: so what? First, George Bush just won the last election in which he'll ever run. Polling at this point is essentially meaningless. In fact, the whole point of term limits is to free politicians in their last term from worrying about approval ratings and allow them to do their jobs with more long-term vision.

The headline on the article also underscores the Times' cluelessness: "Reelection Honeymoon With Voters Eludes Bush, Polls Say." Re-elected officials don't get honeymoons. Sometimes they have political capital, but in this case that has nothing to do with approval ratings from a Gallup poll but the fact that Bush carried a number of new GOP lawmakers into Congress. The freshman class in the House and Senate knows that their expanded majority comes from George Bush and his leadership. They're not worried about a 49 in December 2004, before they even get sworn into office.

Bush's approval ratings will only matter in the next Congressional election cycle -- 22 months from now. What can change in that time? As Wallsten notes, Iraq will hold its first democratic elections, Afghanistan will continue building their democracy, Ukraine has already thrown off the shackles that bound their own, and the Palestinians will hold the first presidential elections in a decade -- which gives the US an opening to exploit for a resolution to the Palestinian problem. In short, we will have moved two years further into Bush's forward policy of engagement in Southwest Asia and will have a better perspective on its results.

At that point, Bush's approval ratings matter indirectly only as far as he impacts individual Congressional races. However, as the Times also notes, he went into the election with a 49 and still won re-election with a 3-million-vote margin and managed to win 4 additional seats in the Senate as well as add more seats to the GOP majority in the House. Bush apparently doesn't need more than a 49 to beat the Democrats into oblivion as he has done in three straight election cycles. Maybe Wallsten and Gallup need to start polling on Democrats to find out why Bush keeps winning.

Republicans Demand Voter Rolls In King County

Republicans in the state of Washington refuse to go gently into that good night for the moment, demanding to see the complete voter rolls for King County to determine if any fraud caused the shifting voting totals for Washington's biggest county and Christine Gregoire's margin of victory (hat tip: The Anchoress):

Washington Republicans, girding for a possible court challenge of Democrat Christine Gregoire's razor-thin victory for governor, on Monday demanded a list of the 900,000 who cast ballots in vote-rich, problem-plagued King County.

Democrats accused the Republicans of being on "a fishing expedition" and urged them to concede or face the public's wrath for dragging out an election already eight weeks old.

Republican state Chairman Chris Vance said his party and other backers of GOP candidate Dino Rossi have nagging questions about the vote count in the county that tipped the race to Gregoire by a scant 130 votes last week.

"We want to know who voted in the election, and it's hard to know where we go from here (with a possible court challenge) before we get some answers," Vance said in an interview.

"We're mostly posing questions. King County is where we saw the votes changing. King County is the one county that was allowed to take ballots that were declared dead in November and bring them back to life in December."

The GOP didn't yet commit itself to an election challenge, which would come after the certification expected on Thursday. The party is split on whether a full-blown election challenge would damage more than benefit them, even if it overturned the governor's race results. Right now, they want to gather as many of the facts together in a short period to make that decision.

I have tremendous sympathy for the Washington GOP and Dino Rossi's campaign. Rossi won the election on the first count and the first recount. In fact, one could argue that he's ahead on vote counts, 2-1. Gregoire didn't help with her inane comments that a 230+ margin was a "virtual tie" and a 42-vote margin amounted to an actual tie, nor did King County give voters any confidence in their credibility by continually "finding" lost ballots only during the recount.

However, the hand recount has a solid legal basis, and even without the additional ballots, Gregoire won by 10 votes -- not a tie, not even a virtual one, despite Gregoire's stupid assertions to the contrary. It also was inevitable given the paltry margin between the candidates in the first two counts. The GOP will not gain any credibility by pressing for yet another recount. What would be the point? Not only will recounts have less and less standing with Washingtonians, but it costs a lot of money to stage them -- money that could be put to other uses.

If Republicans want to challenge the results, the only basis on which to move forward will be election fraud, and that appears to be their strategy now. They've collected affadavits from 300 people who claim their votes weren't counted -- but that reminds people too strongly of the Florida debacle. How could they know their specific votes were not counted, unless they submitted their ballots in such a way that they saw them rejected? A better avenue is to gather the voter rolls and demand that King County reveal their policies on military ballots. Both should already be transparent to voters in Washington, and resistance by King County and the Democrats to release the information points to some issue they want to hide.

If they fail to find evidence of fraud (as opposed to marginal incompetence), then the GOP needs to drop the issue and prepare Rossi for a Thune-like run at Maria Cantwell's Senate seat. The governor's chair is already damaged goods for this term, and the GOP needs to avoid going the Al Gore route, especially given Gore's notable lack of success.

Yanukovych Supporter Found Dead, Suspected Suicide

The fallout from the collapse of Viktor Yanukovych and the ascendancy of the Orange Revolution in Ukraine took a dark twist this evening, as a minister who backed Yanukovych was found dead from a gunshot wound:

Ukraine's Transport Minister Heorhiy Kyrpa has been found dead at his holiday home near the capital Kiev. The minister is reported to have gunshot wounds and officials said a gun was found near his body.

Mr Kyrpa, 58, appointed in 2002, was a staunch supporter of Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych.

Local media in Ukraine reported Kyrpa's death as a suicide, apparently brought on by the Yanukovych loss in the presidential election. Americans may recall the various conspiracy theories surrounding the death of Vincent Foster a decade ago, whose body was also found with the gun that killed him. Despite several investigations concluding that Foster committed suicide, including one by Ken Starr, many still believe that his death was part of a vast conspiracy by the Clintons to hush up alleged crimes.

Given the verified poisoning of President-elect Viktor Yushchenko, how far do you think the conspiracy theories will reach in Ukraine, whatever conclusion the evidence supports? Both sides will concoct mythologies with Kyrpa's death at the center that may take decades to unravel. The death may undo much of the high spirits Ukrainians enjoy at the moment of their democratic triumph and remind them that Ukraine still has a long way to travel.

Protesting Factual Errors In The Paper Of Record

I sent the following e-mail to Daniel Okrent, the public editor (ombudsman) for the New York Times regarding the factual errors in today's column by Brent Staples. I'm hoping for a response in the next day or two.

Dear Mr. Okrent,

I must protest (politely!) the misleading column printed by the New York Times in today's edition by Mr. Brent Staples. In his haste to concoct a conspiracy among Republicans to count prisoners where they reside for the census, Mr. Staples either failed to research the data on which he based his conclusions or he deliberately misled his readers.

Mr. Staples states that we have a "felon class" of 13 million people. That would be news to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, which puts the entire American prison population at all levels for all crimes (not just felonies) at just over 2 million at the end of 2003. Moreover, the rate of growth slowed in 2003 to 2.6%, down from the 3.5% rate over the past decade. Violent offenders, by the way, accounted for 63% of the increased incarceration, while drug-related crime -- which Staples claims is the main cause -- only accounted for 15%.

Now, I am aware that Mr. Staples may refer to the number of people in America who have been convicted of a felony at some time in their life, although I find no statistical support for the 13 million he asserts would fall into that category. However, since the point of his column seems to be that the housing of prisoners in rural or suburban areas skews the census, reapportionment, and federal aid, Mr. Staples clearly implies that 13 million felons are incarcerated at any one time -- an assertion that is off by more than a factor of six.

Even more absurd is Mr. Staples' use of New York as an example. In 2003, New York's prison population decreased by 2.8%, one of 11 states whose incarceration rate declined. Even without that information, New York's prison population (77,000 in 2000) won't even amount to a single Congressional or assembly representative even if they were all put into one facility. As your editorial board saw fit to write a nearly identical piece over five weeks ago, Mr. Staples' factual errors and lack of context appears to me to be part of a campaign by your paper to push Congress into rewriting census laws with little benefit. It's a non-issue that the Times insists on beating into the ground, just like their jeremiad against the Masters tournament a couple of years back.

I have plenty of other areas of disagreement with Mr. Staples, but those fall into differences in philosophy and opinion. However, I must express my disappointment that despite your new emphasis on fact-checking your opinion pages, your editorial board allowed these obvious errors to make it into print. I look forward to a prominent correction on the editorial page in the near future.

As always, I thank you for your attention and your efforts.

I'll post an update if I hear back from Mr. Okrent.

More NIMBY Weeping And Illogic From The Gray Lady (Update)

The New York Times takes a second bite at the prisoners-as-census-boosters meme today, this time in a foolish editorial by Brent Staples. Staples argues, as did the Times' editorial board five weeks ago, that the main motivation for mandatory prison sentencing springs from a desire to skew census counts, Congressional representation, and federal handouts:

The mandatory sentencing fad that swept the United States beginning in the 1970's has had dramatic consequences - most of them bad. The prison population was driven up tenfold, creating a large and growing felon class - now 13 million strong - that remains locked out of the mainstream and prone to recidivism. Trailing behind the legions of felons are children who grow up visiting their parents behind bars and thinking prison life is perfectly normal. Meanwhile, the cost of building and running prisons has pushed many states near bankruptcy - and forced them to choose between building jails and schools.

To start with, Staples gets his chronology backwards. Voters insisted on mandatory sentencing because of recidivism. Recidivism necessarily gets curtailed when felons remain in prison, a very simple concept seemingly beyond Staples' grasp. Our prison systems used to parole violent offenders with obscenely short incarceration time to pay homage to the concept of rehabilitation, only to offer citizens up as sacrifices to that ideal. Mandatory sentencing for violent crimes or serial felons reflects society's overdue judgment that prison serves three purposes: punishment, rehabilitation -- when possible -- and most importantly, keeping civil society safe from human predators.

Seldom has a public policy done so much damage so quickly. But changes in the draconian sentencing laws have come very slowly. That is partly because the public thinks keeping a large chunk of the population behind bars is responsible for the reduced crime rates of recent years. Studies cast doubt on that theory, since they show drops in crime almost everywhere - even in states that did not embrace mandatory minimum sentences or mass imprisonment.

So far, of course, the only "damage" that Staples provides are assertions that 13 million people are behind bars needlessly and the lament that their children see prison time as "normal". That may be lamentable indeed -- but not as lamentable as murder, rape, theft, and so on. The mandatory sentencing for serial felons keeps them from committing more crime and creating more victims. In fact, I find it revealing that Staples doesn't bother to decry the criminal victimhood that a decade or so ago that everyone accepted as inevitable. Why is that less lamentable?

But that's not really Staples' big gripe anyway. He mostly opposes counting incarcerated felons as belonging to the districts where the prisons exist rather than their home turf because it means that the cities don't get credit for the population:

Nearly all of the prisoners ended up in upstate New York, where failing farms and hollowed-out cities offered a lot of room for building. Politicians in these sparsely populated districts caught on quickly and began to lobby to have the new prisons located in their communities. As a result, nearly 30 percent of the people who were counted as moving into upstate New York during the 1990's were prison inmates. ...

The New York Republican Party uses its majority in the State Senate to maintain political power through fat years and lean. The Senate Republicans, in turn, rely on their large upstate delegation to keep that majority. Whether those legislators have consciously made the connection or not, it's hard to escape the fact that bulging prisons are good for their districts. The advantages extend beyond jobs and political gerrymandering. By counting unemployed inmates as residents, the prison counties lower their per capita incomes - and increase the portion they get of federal funds for the poor. This results in a transfer of federal cash from places that can't afford to lose it to places that don't deserve it.

Ah, here we come to the crux of the matter. Republicans hold their majority in New York state politics due to skewed census results, and the Big Apple doesn't get the pork Staples thinks it deserves. Had Democrats been more popular in outstate New York, one suspects that neither editorial would ever have appeared in the Gray Lady.

Why does the census credit residence to the district with the prison? The obvious answer: the prisoners reside there. Perhaps the better reason is that the communities housing these prisoners take all the security risks incumbent on this duty -- a duty that the NIMBY-minded residents in the Big Apple have shirked. The city would rather use its valuable real estate for commercial purposes and farm out incarcerating their own felons. I have no problem with that, but one cannot expect the suburbs and exurbs to take on the risk and receive none of the credit.

Further, Staples uses misleading or flat-out erroneous data to support his claims. He states that we have a "felon class" of 13 million people. That would be news to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, which puts the entire American prison population at all levels for all crimes at just over 2 million at the end of 2003. Moreover, the rate of growth slowed in 2003 to 2.6%, down from the 3.5% rate over the past decade. Violent offenders, by the way, accounted for 63% of the increased incarceration, while drug-related crime -- which Staples claims is the main cause -- only accounted for 15%.

Even more absurd is the Times' use of New York as an example. In 2003, New York's prison population decreased by 2.8%, one of 11 states whose incarceration declined. Even without that information, New York's prison population (77,000 in 2000) won't even amount to a single Congressional or assembly representative even if they were all put into one facility. It's a non-issue that the Times insists on beating into the ground, just like their jeremiad against the Masters tournament.

All of this data is readily available, by the way, to anyone with access to Google. The lack of responsible research and the frankly misleading data shows that the Times does not have any interest in responsible journalism or punditry, but instead desires to trick its readers into the knee-jerk reactions it supposedly decries.

UPDATE: Via JustOneMinute's Tom Maguire (hat tip Doug), Daniel Okrent may be celebrating just a bit too soon:

The Op-Ed columnists for the first time operate under a formal corrections policy, and if you haven't been seeing tons of corrections on the page, it may be for the best of reasons: judging by the shrinking volume of complaints I receive from readers, columnists' errors have become much less frequent.

Yes, I'll be sending him an e-mail regarding Mr. Staples.

Hugh Hewitt's New Book Due Soon

Hugh Hewitt's new book, Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation That's Changing Your World will ship soon from Amazon and appear in your local bookstores. I'm waiting for an advance copy for review, but I also plan on buying the book for my daughter-in-law as well. The Elder at Fraters Libertas has already read his copy and gives an excellent review, as does Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit. Who better than Hugh could dissect the ramifications of the New Media's emergence and the potential for the citizen journalists? I'm excited, and even though my blogging has greatly reduced my pleasure-reading time, I plan on putting Blog at the top of my priority list once it arrives.

Any literary agents that want my opinion on the blogosphere, feel free to contact me, of course ...

Fortune Favors The Blog-Ready

Fortune Magazine published an analysis of blogs and the blogosphere, with a business rather than political viewpoint. The verdict: Corporations had better understand blogs and bloggers, or risk annihilation in the marketplace. Their first case study shows how Microsoft failed to grasp the underlying concept of blogging -- free speech -- and suffered a major blow to their credibility:

[Boing Boing blogger Xeni Jardin] titled her critique of MSN Spaces "7 Dirty Blogs" and hilariously sent up the fickle censoring filters Microsoft appeared to have built in. MSN Spaces prohibited her from starting a blog called Pornography and the Law or another entitled Corporate Whore Chronicles; yet World of Poop passed, as did the educational Smoking Crack: A How-To Guide for Teens. Within the first hour of Jardin's post, five blogs had linked to it, including the site of widely read San Jose Mercury News columnist Dan Gillmor. By the end of the day there were dozens of blogs pointing readers to "7 Dirty Blogs," a proliferation of links that over the next few weeks topped 300. There were Italian blogs and Chinese blogs and blogs in Greek, German, and Portuguese. There were blogs with names like Tie-Dyed Brain Waves, Stubborn Like a Mule, and LibertyBlog. Each added its own tweak. "Ooooh, that's what I want: a blog that doesn't allow me to speak my mind," wrote a blogger called Kung Pow Pig. The conversation had clearly gotten out of Microsoft's hands.

Or take the false-marketing approach that made Mazda the laughingstock of the savvy Internet denizens it wanted to attract:

Mazda, hoping to reach its Gen Y buyers, crafted a blog supposedly run by someone named Kid Halloween, a 22-year-old hipster who posted things like: "Tonight I am going to see Ministry and My Life With the Thrill Kill Cult.É This will be a retro industrial flashback." He also posted a link to three videos he said a friend recorded off public-access TV. One showed a Mazda3 attempting to break dance, and another had it driving off a ramp like a skateboard, leading in both cases to frightening crashes. Other bloggers sensed a phony in their midst—the expensively produced videos were tip-offs—and began talking about it. Suddenly Mazda wasn't being hailed; it was being reviled on widely read blogs. ...

"If you fudge or lie on a blog, you are biting the karmic weenie," says Steve Hayden, vice chairman of advertising giant Ogilvy & Mather, which creates blogs for clients. "The negative reaction will be so great that, whatever your intention was, it will be overwhelmed and crushed like a bug. You're fighting with very powerful forces because it's real people's opinions."

I wonder what other blogs Ogilvy and Mather has created for clients, and whether those blogs also try to use anonymous personas to sell product to blog readers. Fortune's analysis does not ask, but it appears that this may be a new corporate strategy to exploit the blogosphere.

It's a fascinating look into to the business aspects of blogging, an area that I haven't given much consideration until now. Give the whole piece a read.

Yanukovich Issues Veiled Threat, Vows To Appeal Election

Viktor Yanukovych does not plan on going out with dignity in the Ukrainian presidential elections. Not only will he not concede, he asserted that the apparent President-elect Viktor Yushschenko should take care to avoid the entire eastern half of his own country:

Ukraine's Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich refused to concede a historic rerun presidential vote Monday, and vowed to ask the supreme court to throw out official results which showed his rival Viktor Yushchenko won by a formidable margin.

"I will never acknowledge such a defeat because the constitution and human rights were violated," he said in televised remarks. "We have lost nothing."

"We intend to get the supreme court to review the outcome of the election and to cancel the results," he said.

International observers -- 12,500 of them, more than double the last run-off -- agreed that the elections were not perfect. However, the head of OCSE, which provided Western observers, noted that the new run-off came "substantially closer" to accepted free-election norms than the last one. Combined with a healthy 8-point margin of victory with all but 0.24% of all precincts reporting, and minus Yanukovych's previous support from Leonid Kuchma and Vladimir Putin, Yanukovych appears headed for the scrapheap of Ukrainian history.

That hasn't kept Yanukovych from making wild remarks and attempting to stir up trouble. He blamed eight deaths of elderly Ukrainians on Yushchenko and the election reforms that briefly blocked "home voting" (absentee balloting), disparaging any celebration of the election by the Orange Revolutionaries. He also threatened his own street demonstrations and appeared to threaten Yushchenko:

Asked by AFP if he intended to call his own supporters into the streets to protest the outcome of Sunday's vote, Yanukovich said: "I am not asking anything of anyone." But he added: "But I can't rule out that groups of people could come on their own" into the streets of Kiev.

Yanukovich said people in some Russian-speaking regions of eastern Ukraine where his support is strongest felt they had been cheated in the election and would feel "unhappy, to put it mildly" if Yushchenko were to travel there.

If that's Yanukovych's idea of democracy, it explains the armed thuggery conducted on his behalf in the last runoff election.

Boston Globe Scoop: Crime Still Exists

Murder has declined nationwide, and New York City has reversed the growth rate for violent crime over the past thirteen years. The Boston Globe covers this -- but as a sideline to a story about a family that has seen three of its sons murdered in New York City during that same period. The Boston Globe titles its article "Murders Drop, Fear Continues":

When one of her sons was gunned down, Louise Brown found the body on a street, streaked with rain and blood. Rather than offer comfort, police officers there ''asked me for his Social Security number," she said, staring blankly and shaking her head. ''I'll never forget that."

More suffering was to come: Two more of Brown's five sons have died in shootings in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, the latest three months ago.

That opening misses some important context. The first murder occurred in 1991 and the second in 1997, and all three happened within blocks of each other. The neighborhood has a thriving gang society and drug trade, and while the mother no longer lives there, all of her sons stayed in the city. Why? The Globe never explains. It does allow Ms. Brown to state her belief in the true culprit:

The experience has made her wonder whether crime is down in any meaningful way, and how deadly weapons end up in angry young hands.

"I want to know where all the guns are coming from that are killing my kids," she said. "Somebody should be held accountable."

We could start with the people who actually did the killing, although one would run afoul of Brent Staples if that approach was taken (see previous post). It's not hard to see where the Globe wants to take this story. They want to use Ms. Brown and her undeniably heartbreaking losses to drive home the point that despite the 13-year decline in serious crime in New York -- a decline ushered in by serious prosecution and long-term incarcerations of serious and serial felons -- the justice system is unfair, arbitrary, and failing, even when their own reporting acknowledges the truth:

Citywide, serious crime is expected to fall for the 13th straight year in 2004. The homicide tally so far this year is down 4.4 percent from last year and should stay below 600 for the third year in a row, a level comparable to that in the early 1960s. New York had a record 2,245 killings in 1990.

Murder is on the decline nationwide. Several other big cities -- including Washington, Los Angeles, and Chicago -- are expected to see their murder rates drop when the 2004 count is made, and an FBI report earlier this month said murders dropped by nearly 6 percent in the first half of the year.

Unfortunately for Ms. Brown, we cannot prevent all crime; all we can do is pursue true justice for its victims. That will not come as long as we make excuses for the criminals or shift blame to the inanimate objects used for the murders. The Globe wants its readers to believe that any crime negates the positive change new, tough policies have brought to the US. One wonders why the Globe would want to retreat on crime.

Europeans Try Taking Page From Democrats In Dealing With Bush

Today's Washington Post reports on the state of US-European relations through the prism of Europe's primary foreign-policy priority, settlement of the Palestinian question. Glenn Kessler writes that Europeans have a threshold of "cooperation" that they expect Bush to meet before dealing with him that closely resembles Democrat ideas of "bipartisanship" -- and promises to be just as successful:

President Bush and his top aides have repeatedly said they want to improve relations with European allies in Bush's second term, beginning with a presidential visit in February. Bush has also said he believes the death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has provided a new opportunity to pursue peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

Yet those twin goals will be continually tested and at times may conflict in the coming year, administration and European officials say.

Few issues separate the Bush administration from Europe as much as which course to pursue in the Middle East. European officials, in fact, have signaled they believe that Bush's willingness to bend to their view on the Israeli-Palestinian issue will be a true test of his sincerity about improving relations.

Europeans might ask John Kerry and Tom Daschle how well it worked out for them, expecting George Bush to bend to the Democrats' view as a "true test" of Bush's sincerity. Bush does not respond well to extortion, nor will he toss aside the push for democratic reform, for which he committed American blood and treasure in that region, just to assist Europe in their quest to make Israel the Czechoslovakia of the 21st century and Palestine the new Munich.

In fact, Kessler's report makes not one single mention of the most salient fact about the conflict, which is that Palestinian terror has made any accommodation by Israel impossible. Kessler writes at length about European exasperation with the US for not publicly pressuring Israel to make peace with Arafat and now Abbas, but doesn't even note that Israelis don't target women and children for death. Palestinians don't die for eating pizza or riding the bus.

The European position has remained firmly on the side of appeasement. In fact, Europe has been remarkably consistent in this approach, appeasing Saddam publicly and privately as well. The only party to which Europe holds any standard of decency is the only functioning, Western-style democracy in Southwest Asia. Why do the Europeans blanch at the idea that the Arabs of the West Bank and the Ba'athists of Iraq should be held just as accountable for their transgressions, more so for their deliberately murderous results? Is it cowardice, an inability to stand up to the petty tyrannies of the region? Or is it Europe's still-vibrant anti-Semitism? Or perhaps a collective guilt for the atrocities that made a Jewish homeland necessary for the survival of Jewish culture and people?

Whatever it is, don't expect George Bush to buy into it. He won't sacrifice the moral and strategic ground of Israel to buy a little kindness and approval from the moral midgets of Europe. Bush wants to press both sides for a resolution to the issue, but he can't make the Palestinians renounce their taste for blood and he won't make Israel stop defending itself from it. If Europe thinks that they can set the bar for cooperation, they will find soon enough that Bush doesn't play that game.

Israel Frees 159 Prisoners, Abbas Not Satisfied

As part of Israel's attempt to exploit the diplomatic opening left by the death of Yasser Arafat and to strengthen the hand of Abu Mazen/Mahmoud Abbas in upcoming Palestinian elections, 159 Palestinians were released from Israeli jails today. True to form, Abbas declared the exercise wholly unsatisfactory:

Israel freed 159 Palestinian prisoners Monday as a gesture to Egypt and moderate new Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, but he called for a "serious release" of thousands of security detainees.

Abbas, trying to persuade Palestinian militants to stop fighting to help revive talks on Palestinian statehood with Israel, has made prisoner releases part of his campaign for a Jan. 9 presidential election after Yasser Arafat's death.

Palestinian leaders want all of the thousands of Palestinians held by Israel released, even (and maybe especially) those who murdered Israeli civilians in pizzerias and buses, and their leadership. Abbas also made headlines this weekend by declaring that Jerusalem would wind up under Palestinian control, and earlier last week served notice that the so-called "right of return" was non-negotiable.

So far, it appears that the only party willing to meet halfway is Israel, as usual. Abbas may deplore the violence of the intifada, but otherwise he's singing from the same hymnal as Arafat. It could just be smart politics on Abbas' part; after all, the likelihood of getting elected on a compromise platform is rather small. However, his campaign rhetoric sets up unreasonable expectations for Palestinians, who will react with rage if Abbas backs down from his demands. Abbas may well wind up a literal victim of his own words if he doesn't watch them more carefully.

Of course, another interpretation is that Abbas very clearly intends on continuing the same failed Palestinian demands -- Arafat without the keffiyah, as it were. While Abbas has demonstrated that he can work outside the threat of violence, his history as a terrorist cannot easily be overlooked. One could conclude that Abbas would rather pursue the stalemate that has hijacked three generations of his people than get creative about finding a solution for coexistence with Israel. Such a policy would then allow Abbas to shift blame once again to the Israelis for renewed violence over the status of Jerusalem and the return of refugees to Israel.

European, Egyptian, and American negotiators need to make clear to Abbas that we will not go more than one last spin on the Palestinian merry-go-round. We want to help them achieve statehood, but only if they get serious about it. If all they intend is more obstructionism and delay, providing political cover for their goon squads to kill more Israeli women and children, then we need to make clear that such a war will get our immediate and full intention -- and that one way or the other, we intend on solving the Palestinian problem. After Afghanistan and Iraq, even Abbas and the nutcases in the West Bank and Gaza will understand that message.

Tsunami Toll Tops 21,000, Disease Threatens Survivors

The death toll from the massive earthquake and the killer tidal waves it unleashed continues to climb. Estimates now number the dead at more than 21,000 and the bodies left in the water have health experts worried about a potential second tsunami of disease:

The death toll in a tsunami that slammed into coasts from India to Indonesia topped 21,000 on Monday as rescuers scoured the sea for missing tourists and soldiers raced to recover bodies amid growing fears of disease.

Sri Lankan military spokesman Daya Ratnayaka said 10,029 people had been killed in Sri Lanka alone.

The addition of more than 5,000 dead in the Indian Ocean island nation brought the total number of people reported dead from the waves unleashed from the world's biggest earthquake in 40 years to 21,559, with some 5,200 injured.

The bodies have not all been recovered, and crisis workers now warn that the rotting corpses in the water threaten water supplies in the areas affected by the tsunamis. In India, rescue workers have lit massive funeral pyres to act quuickly against the new threat. While that solution makes the most sense, it leaves little hope of identifying the individuals killed in the catastrophe. With over 6500 killed in India, it means that many families will never quite know where their loved ones died or know for sure that they have, at least not until they suffer a long, excruciating wait for a phone call that will never come.

In what can only be described as a secondary consideration, the European stock markets are taking a beating this morning. European insurers appear to lead the steep decline, but tourist groups have followed suit as many of the areas damaged and destroyed by the tsunamis were mid- to high-priced resort areas. The declines will keep fresh capital from availability for rebuilding, and the loss of tourism in these areas will stress the economies of these nations just when they need the money most.

Americans will recall the same economic dynamics from 9/11, when we more or less closed our borders and shut down our airline industry. That economic damage was largely and necessarily self-inflicted, although the insurance losses also devastated the capital investment markets, causing a net loss of over 20% on Wall Street. The ripple effects of the tsunamis will continue to be felt for years, if our experience provides any example, and the economic pain of the South Asian nations may prove destabilizing in some instances. We have our work cut out for us in the months ahead.

British Conservatives Get Serious About Smaller Government

In a move that reminds one of the Reagan Era in American politics, the British Conservative Party has emphasized its mission to reduce the size of government in the United Kingdom. It plans on starting at the top:

The Conservatives will cut the number of MPs, ministers and special advisers by a fifth within five years if they win the election.

Proposals for a "smaller government" Bill, to be published this week, will also promise a referendum in Wales on whether to abolish its assembly.

The Tories said yesterday that Labour's constitutional changes had made the country "over-governed, over-regulated and over-taxed".

The rejection by referendum this year of Government plans for a regional assembly in the North East has encouraged the Tories to put plans for reducing the size and role of the state at the heart of their election manifesto.

When the Republicans began their long, slow march to power in the 1980s, they preached the value of smaller government, and not just for cost reduction. Smaller government also has less reach into our personal decisions, allowing greater individual liberty and an unfettered economy to raise the standard of living across all strata. Unfortunately, along the way the GOP lost sight of the goal in its effort to reach the apex of their political momentum. While the GOP still offers more in reduction of regulation than the Democrats, they've hardly proved themselves significantly better than Democrats at reducing the federal government's size or budget.

The British Conservatives intend on putting their money where their mouth is. Reducing Parliament represents the ultimate in government reduction. It means less expense to British taxpayers, both directly and indirectly; less hands means less pork, after all. It also has the effect of concentrating power in fewer hands, a sword which cuts both ways. More interestingly, the Conservatives have also promised to cut the number of "special advisers", political staffers that amount to little more than patronage -- whose numbers have grown significantly under Labour's governance.

The Conservatives have been out of power for years in the UK. In the face of the monstrous bureaucracy that the EU threatens to become, the message of "less is more" may well attract British voters and give the Tories the toehold they need to compete in the next election. If successful, perhaps they will also inspire the GOP to return to the original mission that Republicans promised twenty years ago.

UPDATE: Er, United Kingdom, not United Nations. (Hat tip: Ric Locke.)

Orange On Top (Updated)

Viktor Yushchenko has declared victory in the Ukrainian presidential run-off today, leading current Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych by 16 points with 63% of all precincts reporting. The leader of the spontaneous and peaceful Orange Revolution will apparently complete the triumph of people power in Ukraine:

"For 14 years we have been independent, but now we are free. This is a victory for the Ukrainian people, for the Ukrainian nation," the 50-year-old opposition leader and former prime minister said as his audience broke into applause and chants of "Yu-shchenk-ko! Yu-shchen-ko!"

Yushchenko appeared in public as the central election commission reported that he held a 16-point lead over his pro-Russian opponent, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich, with more than 63 percent of the country's precincts reporting results.

The commission credited Yushchenko with 55.98 percent of the vote, compared to 40.2 percent for Yanukovich. Three independent exit polls published at the close of voting Sunday gave Yushchenko at least a 15-point lead over his rival.

It looks like Ukraine has successfully shaken off the shackles of Russian domination and will move necessarily towards the West, EU, and NATO. Ukraine's push from her former Soviet master, Putin, will create a movement of former satellites, some towards the West, and possibly some towards Islam. While the West justifiably celebrates the freedom of Ukraine, the effect of the Orange Revolution may yet have consequences along the southern border of the former Russian empire that we will find much less palatable.

UPDATE: People wonder what I meant by the above warning. What Yushchenko's victory demonstrates to the former Soviet republics is that Putin's influence has its limits -- and more specifically, that the West will not allow Putin to act overtly against independent-minded movements along his border. The EU and the US both forced Putin to cut ties to Ukraine to which the Russians believe they are entitled. That works well in Ukraine, where the people have a long history of Judeo-Christian society. That may work less well in the 'stans, where the tradition goes more along Islamic lines.

Having just shown Putin to be more or less a paper tiger in a region that the Russians consider to be of key strategic importance, what lesson do you think Islamists in those southern states will learn? I'm very happy that democracy prevailed in Ukraine, and I firmly believe that the West took the principled and correct approach. We had better keep our eyes open for the consequences of our actions, however.

UPDATE II: It's as official as it will get, for now -- Yushchenko has won the election by over 3 million votes, ironically about the same amount that the Kuchma government manufactured in the last election to defeat Yushchenko.

Reggie White, RIP

One of the greats of the NFL has died today at the terribly young age of 43. Reggie White, a man who played fearsome defense as a defensive end for Philadelphia and Green Bay and worked tirelessly for his faith the rest of the time, died of apparent complications from sleep apnea, according to the reports on ESPN tonight. USA Today carried this AP report earlier:

Reggie White, a fearsome defensive end for the Philadelphia Eagles and Green Bay Packers who was one of the great players in NFL history, died Sunday, his wife said. He was 43. The cause of death was not immediately known. ...

A two-time NFL Defensive Player of the Year and ordained minister who was known as the "Minister of Defense," White played a total of 15 years with Philadelphia, Green Bay and Carolina. He retired after the 2000 season as the NFL's all-time leader in sacks with 198. The mark has since been passed by Bruce Smith.

"Reggie White was a gentle warrior who will be remembered as one of the greatest defensive players in NFL history," NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue said. "Equally as impressive as his achievements on the field was the positive impact he made off the field and the way he served as a positive influence on so many young people."

As a fan of the Pittsburgh Steelers and Minnesota Vikings, the sight of Reggie White bearing down on the quarterback made me nervous for 15 years. Even though I rooted against him, his skills and his sportsmanship made it impossible to dislike him. He made the game fun for the fans and tried in his short life to build stronger communities through his belief in Jesus Christ. His passing saddens me, especially since I believed that White had so much more to teach us, but I feel comforted knowing that the Lord will look after him now.

Rest in peace, Mr. White, and thank you for all you gave us.

Happy Boxing Day!

I'm spending the day after Christmas doing some shopping and whatnot, including Mass. I intend to pick up regular blogging this evening.

In the meantime, please read Kevin McCullough's site for news on the tragedy in Sumatra, an earthquake measuring 8.9 on the Richter scale.

UPDATE, 8 PM CT: The quake apparently unleashed a tsunami that killed almost 12,000 people, one of the worst natural disasters of all time. Indonesia has at least a million people homeless and the casualties came from eight different Asian nations.

We need to pray for the people who died in this catastrophe and do what we can to reach out to those who survived. The best bet for that will be the International Red Cross, despite any misgivings about their politics. I'm donating through the American Red Cross and hope you will join me.