Northern Alliance Radio Today

Don't forget to tune in to the Northern Alliance Radio Network today from noon to 3 pm CDT. We have a full slate today, with the usual This Week In Review hour leading off with myself, John Hinderaker, and King Banaian joining Mitch Berg, and we'll be discussing Senate confirmations as well as Minnesota concealed-carry laws and possibly the recent Sgrena evidence, as well as other hot topics from the week. In hour 2, Joel Rosenberg joins us for a couple of segments, and in hour 3, former MST3K comedy genius Mike Nelson will be in-studio for the entire hour with Mitch and the Fraters gang.

If you're in the Twin Cities, be sure to listen on AM 1280 The Patriot. If you're outside our listening area, The Patriot's website has streaming audio of our show for the worldwide audience. Call in and join us at 651-289-4488!

Movie Review: Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy

Last night, I went to a film opening for the first time in years to see the new version of Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy. The books have long been a favorite of mine; I've read and re-read the five-book trilogy enough times that the characters are easily recalled from memory, as well as my own personal characterizations of them. Unlike most books, however, a film version of HGG would necessarily mean making a more coherent narrative in order to be successfuly -- so I went to the cinema knowing that the film would take certain license with the original material.

I was not disappointed.

** SPOILERS BELOW! **

Now, fans must understand that the film version takes liberties with many elements of the books. In fact, when I say that the movie takes liberties, I mean that if the film version dated your sister, not only would you be tempted to take the film out behind the gym after school and beat the living hell out of it, but your father would almost certainly get his shotgun and arrange for some abrupt nuptials. These liberties bear some similarity to those which gave the Yanks such a naughty reputation in Britain during WWII.

However, keep in mind two important facts: Douglas Adams wrote this version himself, and it really does make for a better movie experience. For instance, the movie puts much more emphasis on the sexual tension between Trillian and Arthur Dent and provides a completely separate resolution for it. (It's actually the central point of the film, inasmuch as it has any point at all.) Elements of the first three books drift in and out of the movie, but only the truly initiated will notice it. Zaphod's mission only gets about halfway accomplished in the movie, while Arthur manages to save Earth much more quickly -- and deliberately -- than in Adams' series. Adams created a completely new character, Hamma Kavula, for the film, which John Malkovich chews delightfully as only he can.

Put aside all the changes. The characters remain as vivid and absurd as ever, especially Zaphod, as played by Sam Rockwell, and Marvin the Paranoid Android, voiced brilliantly by Alan Rickman. Zooey Deschanel would not have been my first choice for Trillian, but she does a terrific job, and Mos Def completely surprises me as Ford Prefect -- he's hilarious. The center of the movie, the Guide itself, provides plenty of absurd laughs not only from the narration of the entries (taken straight from Adams' book) but from the Star Trek: TNG style of animation used.

Even the First Mate, who doesn't find British humor and science fiction all that interesting, enjoyed the movie. She especially liked Marvin and his morose commentary, as well as the complete lack of objectionable material. My favorite parts involved the Vogons, which are fleshed out almost exactly as I'd imagined, and the Heart of Gold spaceship. Take a light heart and an open mind, and you'll be singing the theme song "So Long And Thanks For All The Fish" all the way home. Don't be afraid to take the entire family to this one.

UPDATE: Should have been Marvin the Paranoid Android; I should have known better. I've corrected it now.

Mass Grave Of Saddam Victims Found

For those who forget why Saddam presented such a unique threat to the region of Southwest Asia, the Washington Post carries this reminder today. American investigators exhumed the corpses of 113 Kurds, all but five women and children, in southern Iraq, and as many as 1400 may still be buried there -- victims of Hussein's genocide against the Kurds and his other ethnic enemies:

U.S. investigators have exhumed the remains of 113 people -- all but five of them women, children or teenagers -- from a mass grave in southern Iraq that may hold at least 1,500 victims of Saddam Hussein's campaign against the Kurdish minority in the 1980s, U.S. and Iraqi officials said this week. ...

The non-acidic soil at the grave site preserved layers and layers of distinctive Kurdish clothing worn by many of the victims, suggesting that they may have piled on their best clothes expecting to be relocated, investigators said.

Authorities showed reporters some of the remains, including the skull of an older woman with pink dentures and the skeleton of a teenage girl clutching a bag of possessions.

"These were not combatants," said Gregg Nivala, a member of a U.S. team investigating crimes committed by Hussein's government and assisting the tribunal. "These were women and children."

The Post reports that American investigators developing evidence for Saddam's trial now can establish that Saddam murdered over a half-million Kurds in retaliation for their opposition during the Iran-Iraq War, and perhaps millions of Shi'a, as National Geographic postulated late last year. The Marsh Arabs also died by the thousands, although perhaps not as directly, when Saddam dried up their habitat and imposed starvation on their population.

Clearly, Saddam made himself into one of the most successful practitioners of genocide in the past century. Not only did he manage to kill millions of people based on their ethnicity and religion, he also engaged the Western liberal elite to defend him and his sovereignty -- the same people who swore "Never again!" when genocide involved Caucasians, who bombed Belgrade when Bosnians became the victims but conveniently looked away from Arab genocides such as in Iraq and in Darfur.

If these people had been in charge in 2003, Saddam would still run Iraq with an iron fist and he would still be killing his enemies by the thousands to this day. He would still be filling these trenches with bodies of women and children, slaughtered by the hundreds in sprays of machine-gun fire and dropped into landfills like the trash Saddam considered them to be. That would have been a fine legacy for Western liberalism: the unnecessary deaths of millions of more Iraqis and others simply because too many of democracy's leaders made money off of Saddam's kickbacks. Shameful.

CBS: Satellites Show Sgrena Lied

CBS News reports that the American and Italian investigators looking into the death of Italian commando Nicola Calipari and wounding of hostage/journalist Giuliana Sgrena have evidence that Sgrena lied about the incident from the beginning. Sgrena has long insisted that the Italian driver slowed down to under 30 MPH before approaching the checkpoint, whereupon American soldiers opened fire without warning. However, CBS now claims that data from military satellites clearly showed the car traveling towards the checkpoint at over 60 MPH without slowing down at all, triggering the defensive response from the American soldiers:

A US satellite reportedly recorded a checkpoint shooting in Iraq last month, enabling investigators to reconstruct how fast a car carrying a top Italian intelligence official and a freed hostage was traveling when US troops opened fire.

The report, which aired Thursday on CBS News, said US investigators concluded from the recording that the car was traveling at a speed of more than 60 miles (96 km) per hour.

Giuliana Sgrena has said the car was traveling at a normal speed of about 30 miles an hour when the soldiers opened fired, wounding her and killing Nicola Calipari, the Italian agent who had just secured her release from a month's captivity.

US soldiers said at the time of the March 4 incident that the car approached at a high rate of speed and that they fired only after it failed to respond to hand signals, flashing bright lights and warning shots. ...

CBS, citing Pentagon officials, said the satellite recording enabled investigators to reconstruct the event without having to rely on the eyewitness accounts.

It said the soldiers manning the checkpoint first spotted the Italian car when it was 137 yards (meters) away. By the time they opened fire and brought the car to a halt, it was 46 yards (meters) away. CBS said that happened in less than three seconds, which meant the car had to be going over 60 miles an hour.

The Italian position, therefore, has changed. Now instead of arguing that the Americans wanted to kill Sgrena for some kind of secrecy -- but then inexplicably allowed her to get medical attention once wounded -- they now claim that the checkpoint wasn't marked well enough for their driver to identify it. Going 60 MPH on a darkened road that had been widely identified as a terrorist trap, towards the airport that the Italians knew to be highly defended by American soldiers, apparently fits within Italian security parameters.

Sgrena lied, and the driver and Calipari should have known better than to try to speed their way into a fortified airport access. With the attacks on American soldiers taking place by terrorists with vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices, military personnel with any experience and competence should understand the foolishness of approaching any checkpoint at a mile a minute, and should damned well be looking out for any security barriers, especially on a highway that contentious. The Italians only make themselves look foolish by continuing to highlight this as an issue.

Abduction Faked In Georgia Bride Case

The attention-grabbing case of the missing Georgia bride, Jennifer Wilbanks of Duluth, came to a grubby end this morning when she turned up safe in Albuquerque. At first she told police that she'd been kidnapped by a couple who got scared off by the national attention of her disappearance. However, after more questioning, she finally admitted that she'd run off and hadn't bothered to tell anyone:

A Georgia bride-to-be who vanished just days before her wedding turned up in New Mexico and fabricated a tale of abduction before admitting Saturday that she had gotten cold feet and "needed some time alone," police said. ...

Wilbanks, whose disappearance set off a nationwide hunt, called her fiance, John Mason, from a pay phone late Friday and told him that she had been kidnapped while jogging three days before, authorities said. Her family rejoiced that she was safe, telling reporters that the media coverage apparently got to the kidnappers.

But Wilbanks soon recanted, according to police.

Ray Schultz, chief of police in Albuquerque, said Wilbanks "had become scared and concerned about her impending marriage and decided she needed some time alone." He said she traveled to Las Vegas by bus before going to Albuquerque.

"She's obviously very concerned about the stress that she's been through, the stress that's been placed on her family," he said. "She is very upset."

Well, pardon me for my callousness, but her feelings should be the least of anyone's concerns at the moment. Wilbanks walked off without telling anyone where she was going, leaving behind 600 friends and family to panic, her parents to worry that she had been murdered, and the man who loved her as a suspect in her disappearance. Does that just about cover it? Oh, wait -- she also wasted hundreds of man-hours of the Duluth Police Department, the Georgia state police, the FBI, missing-persons organizations, and the media, time that could have been spent looking for missing children.

I'm sure that her family has focused mostly on her safe return and look forward to talking with her soon. However, her thoughtlessness and cruelty don't make her sympathetic in my eyes. She appears more to have a selfish streak a mile wide, and anyone involved with Ms. Wilbanks in the future should keep that in mind.

Chrétien Plays The Gay Card In Adscam

Former Canadian PM Jean Chrétien made an appearance in Philadelphia to accept an award as an "international role model" while his political cronies and aides face ruinous testimony tying his administration to widespread corruption and graft in the Sponsorship Program. Chrétien refused to acknowledge the damage, insisting that the $250 million program which his Liberal Party and close aides turned into an electoral-fraud and money-laundering scheme was good for Canada:

Former prime minister Jean Chrétien defended his handling of the sponsorship scandal last night, as he made his first public appearance since testifying at the Gomery inquiry. ...

And as he did at Mr. Justice John Gomery's inquiry, he said that he accepts responsibility for any mistakes that were made under the sponsorship program, even though he continued to insist it was a good initiative.

"I said I was sorry if mistakes were made. And I said that I have to take the full responsibility of what's good and what's bad when you're the prime minister," he said.

The American gay-rights group Equality Forum has to win an award itself for the worst political timing in years in choosing to honor Chrétien. With even his own party's leadership abandoning his legacy as the chain of corruption creeps ever further towards his office, holding Chrétien up as a role model for gay rights would have its American equivalent in making Richard Nixon the poster boy for environmental activism in government for his creation of the EPA and support of the Endangered Species Act. Both may have solid bases in the historical record, and neither man will be remembered for it. Chrétien will be fortunate indeed if he escapes prosecution for Adscam, hardly a qualification for an international role model.

However, the Equality Forum did give Chrétien a chance to trot out a new defense for the Liberal Party against an expected no-confidence vote by Stephen Harper and the Tories. The former PM used the occasion to turn the election issue away from rampant Liberal corruption and graft into a gay-rights issue instead:

Mr. Chrétien was in Philadelphia to be honoured for his defence of gay and lesbian rights, particularly his introduction of same-sex marriage legislation, which may now die on the order paper if the Conservative Party and Bloc succeed in bringing down the government.

Toronto lawyer Douglas Elliott, who argued the 2003 Court of Appeal case that validated same-sex marriages in Ontario, praised Mr. Chrétien yesterday for his support of the same-sex bill and for his role in including the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in the Constitution.

Gays in the United States have long praised Canada for its tolerance and have flocked to the country to become legally married. But during an afternoon panel discussion, Mr. Elliott warned his U.S. colleagues to prepare for setbacks in the Canadian same-sex battle.

The federal law would extend the right of homosexual couples to marry to all provinces, notably Alberta, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island where courts have not legitimized such unions. Mr. Elliott noted, however, that if Mr. Martin's government falls, the legislation will be left dead in the House of Commons.

If gay marriage enjoys the kind of broad-based support that the Liberals claim, the measure will likely survive the fall of Martin's government, although it may face tougher procedural hurdles in the unlikely event that the Tories win a clear majority. If not, then it wouldn't have passed anyway. Nevertheless, that's hardly the reason that Harper will call for new elections, and it certainly isn't the issue foremost on the minds of Canadian voters. The ongoing testimony showing how the Liberals picked Canadian pockets for years in order to keep themselves in power and pay off supporters gives plenty of reason to get rid of the Grits.

This attempt to spin Adscam into a gay-rights issue is not only desperate, it's laughable. It shows that Chrétien and his former party may have reached a point where the only defense left to them is an American-style smear campaign against their accusers on baseless and irrelevant grounds of bigotry.

Janice Rogers Brown, In Her Own Words

One of the most significant travesties of the judicial confirmation war that the Democrats launched after losing the Senate majority in 2003 has been the damage done to the reputations of those jurists nominated to the federal appellate bench by George Bush. Ten of the thirty-four nominations sent to the Senate by Bush have not only been blocked by the minority through the unprecedented use of the filibuster, but they have been vilified by Democrats as "Neanderthals" (Ted Kennedy), "extremists", "theocrats", and worse. Three of these nominees have declined to pursue their nominations, effectively curtailing their careers in public service, in order to restore their reputations and spare their families any further degradation at the hands of rabid Democrats insistent on pursuing strategies of personal destruction. Seven have valiantly decided to fight for their rightful place on the appellate bench.

One of the latter is Justice Janice Rogers Brown, who currently serves on California's State Supreme Court. Brown received her appointment from Governor Pete Wilson in 1996 and has served almost nine years on the bench as an associate justice. Prior to that assignment, Brown served two years as a state appellate justice, and has also held senior staff assignments for Governor Wilson in multiple roles. She also spent eight years in the Attorney General's office, handling criminal and civil cases. In her last election, California voters approved her continuance as a Supreme Court Justice with 76% of the vote -- in a state where Bush only received 45% and Barbara Boxer could only muster 58% of a reliably liberal electorate.

Without a doubt, Brown's experience not only qualifies her for the federal appellate bench, it makes her one of the nation's leading candidates for the position. Her judicial temperament raised no eyebrows in California, belying the notion that she has operated as some sort of covert radical. In fact, her speeches and her writings reflect the type of intellectual independence and philosophical broadness that one would strongly desire for the appellate bench. And yet, Senate Democrats rail against Brown as some sort of judicial rube or rabble-rouser intent on dismantling freedom and liberty.

These Democrats should read the speech that Brown herself wrote and delivered to graduates of Catholic University's Columbus School of Law shortly after her nomination to the federal bench. Brown spoke to the defense of freedom and the choices that one must make to uphold liberty. Brown used an amazingly broad number of influences to urge CU students to choose liberty and freedom by the pursuit of truth:

The question for you will be whether the regime of freedom which they founded can survive the relentless enmity of the slave mentality. It will really be whether you want freedom to survive. The answer may be no. There are many reasons to forsake freedom.

Some will do so because they are ambitious and can only make their mark by setting out upon a new path. Abraham Lincoln described this dynamic many years before he became president. He said there will always be people among us (from the family of the Lion or the tribe of the Eagle) who “scorn to tread in the footsteps of any predecessor,” who thirst and burn for distinction, and who will obtain it “whether at the expense of emancipating slaves or enslaving free men.”3

Some may reject freedom because security has always been more comfortable than freedom and infinitely more comforting to the “herd of independent minds.”4

Perhaps the most likely reason for a negative response is the fatigue engendered by the “accumulated decisions of so many revolutions.”5 Freedom requires certitude and we are now so enlightened that, in Pascal's phrase, “we know too much to be ignorant and too little to be wise.”

I, of course, hope that this generation will rise to the challenge; that our present great necessities will call forth great virtues. Perhaps that is why, when I tried to think about what I might say to you as you commence your life in the law, only one word, one image, surfaced. The word, the image, was “Light.” Sometimes sharp and white, like the flash of a lighthouse beacon. Sometimes the soft, full radiance of sunrise. But, always, light. How odd, I thought. But then the brochure for the Columbus School of Law arrived with the motto of the Catholic University of America emblazoned across its cover. Deus lux mea est. God is my light. And then there was the Cardinal's dinner, held in San Francisco this year. The program began with a wonderful film about the university which was entitled — are you ready — “Sharing the Light.” Aha! At this point, even the dull witted must begin to see ... the light. And finally, leafing through a book of essays seeking inspiration, these words leapt out at me: “The night is for spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light.” (Romans 13:12)

Brown makes clear that having faith does not mean establishing a theocracy or a Christian Taliban. It means defending freedom:

In some ways, it seems we have been moving backward: bringing chaos out of order instead of the other way around. At least that is how things stood until quite recently when, in one instant of anguish, pity, grief, and rage, we had a moment of awful moral clarity. All perspectives are not equal. Evil is not merely a matter of opinion. Suddenly and undeniably, we understood that there are ideas worth defending to the death. There are lies that must be defeated at all costs. Freedom is not free. And it will never be the lasting legacy of the lazy or the indifferent. For what we ultimately pursue is a true “vision of justice and ordered liberty, respectful of human dignity and the authority of God.”15 What we need is to revive our passion for freedom and our determination to defend vigorously, rationally, and without apology, our way of life, which is unique and deserves not scorn nor diffidence, but devotion.

By accepting the beguiling proposition that all perspectives are equal, we left Western Civilization, the God of Light, and light itself, undefended. We left the very spirit of truth desolate and abandoned on its high hill. Indeed, we deemed them unworthy of defense. But, there may have been a reason why Truth, Justice and the American Way are seamlessly conjoined in the phrase with which I began today's exam. There can be no discussion about the nature of justice and the essence of law when human will is made the supreme arbiter of all human values.16 Without truth, there is neither justice nor freedom. “Once truth is denied to human beings, it is pure illusion to try to set them free. Truth and freedom either go together hand in hand or together they perish in misery.”17

If our commitment to truth and justice was, in fact, the foundation of the vision that made America, then moral and cu1tural relativism is more than an educational anomaly, it is a calamity. That is why the lawyer classifieds need a new ad. Wanted: Keepers of the faith; Defenders of light.

That faith to which she refers is the faith that freedom and truth inevitably remain intertwined. Efforts to render truth as relative eventually result in the quashing of freedom. The essence of American ideals of freedom were based in natural law -- that the Creator endowed Man with the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The Constitution further extrapolated these as the right to select one's own rulers, the right to free speech, the right to self-defense, and the right to worship or not worship as one pleased. When the Creator is removed from this equation, then rights become a purely human construct, subject to relativism, and undoubtably mutable to the whims of the moment.

The great secular movements of the twentieth century -- communism and fascism -- left millions of deliberate deaths in their wake as the Creator-designated sanctity of life gave way to utilitarianism. Liberty was sacrificed for the common good, and eventually calcified into the tyranny of the State above all. Dissent, the natural state of human beings and the natural right given by a Creator through free will, became intolerable, and those who practiced it were banished from public life.

If you read what Janice Rogers Brown wrote two years ago, you cannot come away with the conclusion that she represents a threat to freedom. Instead, she is demonstrably one of freedom's greatest defenders, all the more remarkable for a woman who descended from slaves and grew up under the oppression of discrimination in Alabama during the 1950s and 1960s. Her ascension to the judiciary should inspire everyone who has the opportunity to study her and her speeches and writings. That she inspires such vitriol, hatred, and hysteria from the likes of Ted Kennedy and Chuck Schumer says much about them and their Democratic colleagues, and nothing about Janice Rogers Brown.

It's far past time for the GOP caucus to start defending Brown and their other nominees. To do otherwise is to add more insult to the unacceptable slander she has already received.

Stanley Kurtz Understands The Left's Attack On Faith

I wrote two essays today regarding the attack on religious belief by the secular Left in today's politics. From judicial nominees to citizens speaking their minds, the Left has gone on the offensive to portray religious belief as a kind of fascism, with citizens espousing traditional values as proponents of an American theocracy. Stanley Kurtz writes at length about this same phenomenon in National Review Online, specifically taking on Chris Hedges' article in Harper's about how Christians have supposedly declared war on America:

Hedges is worried about extreme Christian theocrats called “Dominionists.” He’s got little to say about who these Dominionists are, and he qualifies his vague characterizations by noting in passing that not all Dominionists would accept the label or admit their views publicly. That little move allows Hedges to paint a highly questionable picture of a virtually faceless and nameless “Dominionist” Christian mass. Hedges seems to be worried that the United States is just a few short steps away from having apostasy, blasphemy, sodomy, and witchcraft declared capital crimes. Compare this liberal fantasy of imminent theocracy to the reality of Lawrence v. Texas and Roper v. Simmons (the Supreme Court decision that appealed to European precedents to overturn capital punishment for juveniles).

Both of these decisions relied on the existence of a supposed national consensus on behalf of social liberalism. In conjuring up that false consensus, the Court treated conservative Christians as effectively nonexistent. That is the reality of where the law is, and where it is headed. It is completely unsurprising that after a long train of such decisions, conservative Christians have decided they’re tired of being trampled on by the courts. The reality we face is judicially imposed same-sex marriage in opposition to the clearly expressed wishes of the American people. Yet to cover its imperial judicial agenda, the Left is now concocting nonsensical fantasies of theocratically imposed capital punishment for witchcraft. Yes, witchcraft is back. Only now traditional Christians have been cast in the role of devious enemies who need to be ferreted out by society’s defenders.

I had not read Kurtz's piece before I wrote my posts earlier today, but Kurtz picks up the same thread and runs with it at length. He points out a proposed speech restriction in California that would make "anti-gay" arguments in an election campaign illegal. While I don't share the same viewpoint on gay marriage as many on the Christian right, the topic certainly should remain open for debate, and several elections have shown that the Christian viewpoint overwhelmingly represents the mainstream of American thinking on the topic. However, the Left wants to make it impossible for Christians to argue their case to the American electorate -- and Hedges thinks that it's the Christians who are acting like fascists?

I surmise that the Left has seen its power slipping away, and they're getting desperate and radical in their attempts to get it back. One pundit said that the illusion that history was on the side of secular socialism has faded in the last twenty-five years, and the emergence of viable media access for conservatives has frustrated their decades-long grip on information dissemination. Whatever the cause, the result has been an open assault on faith, such as that offered by Hedges and the hysterical ranting in the Senate and elsewhere whenever the faithful engage in political debate. Make sure to read all of Kurtz' fine article. (via Shot In The Dark)

Democrats Embrace Faith As A Strategy

In a dramatic shift of rhetoric, the Senate Minority Leader has indicated that Democrats will embrace faith as an electoral strategy for the 2006 electoral cycle ... as long as God coughs up a supernatural event or six:

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid raised a few eyebrows yesterday on the Senate floor when he said it would take a "miracle" for Democrats to win enough races next year to take back the Senate.

"I would like to think a miracle would happen and we would pick up five seats this time," he said during a floor debate over the filibusters of President Bush's judicial nominees. "I guess miracles never cease."

How hypocritical can the Democrats get? For the past two and a half years, they have blocked executive nominations involving people of faith as "extremists" and "out of the mainstream". Senators thunder about the impending theocracy of the GOP majority, conveniently forgetting that the people elected these same Senators through the same democratic processes by which they gained their own seats. Senator Kennedy talks about fellow Catholics as "Neanderthals" because they actually follow the precepts of their faith rather than treat it as a campaign gimmick.

Now Reid feels that the Almighty can be called upon to deliver a majority of seats to the Democrats via a suspension of natural law. Certainly that will be necessary, given their hostility to religious believers, but it hardly amounts to an electoral strategy. Calling upon God to save the Democrats from their own hostility, even in jest, points out just how clueless the Democratic leadership has become.

Republicans, of course, reveled in Reid's conversion:

Republicans were delighted by what they called an "admission" from the highest-ranking elected Democrat in the country.

"After listening to Senator Reid's political spin about judicial nominees for the last several weeks, it is good to hear him come back to reality -- if even for a brief moment," said Brian Nick, spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee. "Senator Reid can do the math: A Democratic Party, plus no ideas, plus obstruction, plus over-the-top partisan rhetoric equals continued minority."

If having Ken Salazar call prominent clerics Anti-Christs and Harry Reid demand miracles from God comprises the new Democratic outreach to the religious communities, then Reid is right ... miracles never cease.

I'm Sorry You Paid Attention To Me

Coloradans who elected Ken Salazar thinking that he portrayed himself honestly as a moderate must have been shocked when he donned the mantle of theological expert this week and declared Dr. James Dobson the Anti-Christ. After waiting a couple of days for a miracle to deliver him unto the Lord, the Right Reverend Salazar finally figured out that his days as a prophet were numbered and offered perhaps this year's lamest apology in politics:

Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar said Wednesday that he regretted calling Focus on the Family "the anti-Christ," saying he had misspoken.

Salazar uttered the theological term, popularized in the 1970s movie "The Omen," in an interview with a Colorado Springs television station about his war of words with the conservative Christian group.

"From my point of view, they are the anti-Christ of the world," Salazar told the station.

Salazar, a first-term Democrat, said he was intending to call the Colorado Springs group "un-Christian," a term he began applying last week after Focus attacked his stance on judicial nominations in the Senate.

"I spoke about Jim Dobson and his efforts and used the term 'the anti-Christ,"' Salazar said in a written statement from his office. "I regret having used that term. I meant to say this approach was un-Christian, meaning self-serving and selfish."

As anyone with any Christian training understands, there is a cast difference between being un-Christian and being the Anti-Christ. The former relates to the commitment, or lack thereof, to the teachings of Jesus as expressed through the Gospel, with connotations ranging from simple identification -- one would not expect a Hindu to act "Christian", after all -- to a derogatory judgement about the state of another's faith. Judging another's faith and standing with God usurps God's role in judging the soul, which specifically is what was meant by Jesus' teaching of "Judge not, lest ye be judged," one of the least understood of His commands.

However, calling Dobson the Anti-Christ equates to calling him the spawn of Satan, a rather damning accusation, one for which Salazar presents no evidence whatsoever. It's a vile thing to say about anyone, especially when the target of the accusation has done nothing but speak about his faith and his views on public policy in open forums of debate. The insult was meant to deliberately humiliate Dr. Dobson and to marginalize him in the political arena -- an arena which he has every right to engage, as a citizen of the United States.

This crude, malicious, and essentially idiotic attack by Salazar mirrors a more subtle campaign by the Left to marginalize all people of faith from political debate. Faith, after all, informs the values of people in all areas of their life and as such influences their politics as well. What Salazar and the rest of the Left want is to drive anyone of faith out of the public arena, leaving the field open only to secular humanists whose moral relativism can be manipulated towards any end desired. Faith requires belief not just in God or a higher Power (depending on your faith), but also in certain immutable Truth. Relativism and secular humanism rely on the mutable Truth of whatever everyone likes at the moment, which sounds very attractive but inevitably leads to disaster.

Salazar's rant blows the cover off of the attacks on Bush, Dobson, and anyone who professes their faith as an important component of their lives. Judicial nominees like William Pryor and Janice Rogers Brown (who won 76% of Californian votes in her last election to the State Supreme Court) have been called "extremists" and "Neanderthals" for their "deeply held personal beliefs", as Chuck Schumer put it, which has become code for "Catholicism" and opposition to abortion. Instead of honestly debating the real issues, the Democrats have chosen to smear people of faith in the hope of driving them underground, to steal their voices and to scare them away from the public square. They want the overwhelming majority of Americans who profess faith in God to shut the Hell up, and leave government to the atheists.

No thank you. We are all Americans, and our government should reflect the values held by the mainstream, not just the faithless.

ADDENDUM: In response to an e-mail I received, let me clarify my position. I believe that secular humanists and atheists also should have their views respected by the political process, and join the debate over public policy. However, what Chuck Schumer, Ted Kennedy, and Harry Reid demand is that all other voices except for secular humanists be excluded from politics due to a major and deliberate misinterpretation of the First Amendment.

The Democrats refuse to consider nominees to important positions that decline to recant religious faith, in a modern-day retelling of the tale of Galileo. They marginalize those who work in the ministry by declaring them theocrats and compare them to the Taliban. They have assumed the Puritanical mantle of Cotton Mather in reverse, burning reputations of honorable and qualified people at the stake for not professing allegiance to the abandonment of religious doctrine. It amounts to nothing less than an unconstitutional religious test for office, only in this case it is a negative test rather than a positive one.

One other point should be made clear: moral relativism isn't necessarily equivalent to atheism or secular humanism. Not all religion teaches absolute truth. However, the underlying philosophy of the two that Man occupies the center of consciousness and morality makes moral absolutes much harder to establish, and the monotheistic traditions on which Western civilization was founded teaches that certain hard truths exist regardless of popularity or social evolution.

Has Harper Missed His Chance Already?

After the testimony of Jean Brault blew open the Adscam scandal and demonstrated the extent of Liberal Party corruption, Stephen Harper had an opening to call new elections and topple the Martin government. He chose to wait until an overwhelming mandate developed to ride it to as close to a majority win as he could get. New polling numbers published in today's Globe and Mail show, however, that Harper may have been too slow on the trigger:

Liberals have clawed their way back into the lead in a tight race for public support as Prime Minister Paul Martin's all-out public-relations campaign appears to have caused the Conservatives to slip, a new poll shows.

The poll, conducted by the Strategic Counsel for The Globe and Mail and CTV, found the Liberals with the support of 30 per cent of Canadians, compared with 28 per cent for the Conservatives and 18 per cent for the New Democrats.

The results strike a blow at Conservative Leader Stephen Harper's hopes for victory just one day after he vowed to force an election "at the earliest possible opportunity."

Harper has allowed Martin to take back the momentum that just a week ago appeared unstoppable for the Tories. Martin's performance in his unprecedented national address had been widely panned, but appears to have been more effective than first thought. His focus on budget bills and his promise to hold January elections has allowed his Liberals to recover their standing among Canadian voters, who now favor delayed elections by almost a 2-1 margin. (Note for American readers: Canadian PMs usually only have televised addresses in times of national emergency; they answer to Parliament and normally address issues directly to the MPs.)

Martin still has a lot of work to do to recover any of his personal popularity, of course; most Canadians still don't trust him to run the government. The grubby deal he cut with Jack Layton had not yet been announced when this poll was taken. However, clearly the Tories have not capitalized on the anger and frustration of the Canadian electorate, and just as clearly Harper may not be the right man to do so.

Frist Stands Firm, Sets No Timetable

Senator Bill Frist reiterated today that the Republicans would accept no compromise that allowed Democrats to filibuster judicial nominees that have received approval from the Judiciary Committee. He told Minority Leader Harry Reid that he would offer up to 100 hours of debate, but in the end all nominees clearing the committee must receive an up-or-down vote:

With a showdown looming, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist refused to budge Thursday on his demand that Democrats forgo filibusters against all of President Bush's past or present nominees to federal appellate court benches or the Supreme Court.

"Throughout this debate, we have held firm to a simple principle, judicial nominees deserve up-or-down votes," Frist said.

But Frist offered to retain the right to filibuster district court nominees in exchange for 100 hours of debate and guaranteed confirmation votes on the nation's highest judgeships. The Senate's top Republican also said that under his plan, senators would no longer be able to block nominees in the Judiciary Committee.

Reid, of course, turned this offer down, describing it as a "big wet kiss to the far right," proving that Jack Layton isn't the only North American politician with a tin ear for phrasing. He demands that Democrats retain the right to deny votes to any nominee they choose, insisting that minority rights would get "extinguished" at the end of 100 hours of debate. "This has never been about the lengths of the debate. This is about checks and balances."

Au contraire, Senator. All along during this battle, we have heard from Democrats that the GOP's rule change was an attack on free speech. Senator Byrd exclaimed on the Senate floor that free speech and debate would be "dead, dead, dead!" if Frist and the GOP put the Constitutional option in play. The Democrats have claimed this as an attack on the First Amendment as well as those "checks and balances" that they claim hinge on the use of the filibuster.

However, this offer by Frist cleverly flushes out the Democrats, although the Exempt Media will certainly miss this nuance. 100 hours of debate equals at least three weeks of Senate floor time, perhaps more, during a normal work schedule. It allows for every member to spend an hour discussing a nominee's shortcomings as well as their strengths. If the Democrats have evidence of unfitness for the nominees, they will have plenty of time to present it.

Why, then, don't they take the offer? Because they would have nothing specific to say, and 50 hours in which to say it. Reid and his caucus would look pretty foolish, repeating the same old tired clichés over and over again for hours on end. They aren't fighting for debate or free speech -- they want to avoid having to defend their opposition at all costs. The Democrats want to limit the debate to sound-bite sniping in the sympathetic press, not be granted scads of time that will ultimately expose the lack of evidence they have of any unfitness or impropriety on any of these nominees.

One cheer for Bill Frist, who finally has engaged in some public relations on behalf of the filibuster limitation. However, 100 hours of debate means that it will take seven months to get the seven nominees currently stalled by the Democrats into a position to get confirmed. That would push one or two off until 2006, and even that might change when a Supreme Court position opens up. Now that we've wasted almost four months of the new session, Frist's offer has a pretty severe limitation as to the number of appellate nominations that Bush can get through this Congress. Perhaps Frist's office needs a calculator before making these offers.

Layton Suffering From Projection

Jack Layton, the leader of Canada's New Democrat Party (NDP), accused Tory leader Stephen Harper of cuddling up to separatists in his quest to topple the Liberal government. Layton also played into fears of Nova Scotians that any government collapse prior to a budget vote will steal their Atlantic Accord money away from them, bringing hot retorts from the Conservative leader:

NDP Leader Jack Layton struck back at Stephen Harper on Thursday, saying the Conservative Leader will be "getting into bed with the separatists" if the Tories and Bloc Québécois work together to defeat the Liberal budget.

He also warned that if the budget is defeated, it could endanger accords recently signed between the federal government and Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia. The Atlantic accords protect equalization payments from cuts because of increased energy revenue.

"[The accords are] at risk if Mr. Harper calls an election, because Mr. Harper will be getting into bed with the separatists, who didn't support the Atlantic Accord," Mr. Layton said in Halifax. "... So I think the people of Nova Scotia should be calling on all parliamentarians to make sure this budget is adopted before there's any election."

Harper, who yesterday told the press that he would no longer hesitate to table a no-confidence motion after Layton cut his deal with Martin, scoffed at the notion that Layton had the best interests of Nova Scotia in mind when he allied with Paul Martin:

"If the NDP supports the Atlantic Accord as it professes, why did they miss a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to insist the accord be separated from the budget and passed immediately? Did the prospect of power make it okay for them to join the Liberals in selling out Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador?," Mr. Harper asked.

Layton could not have chosen his words less carefully. Harper may well play into the strategy of separatists by allying with BQ on a no-confidence vote. However, Liberal corruption in the Sponsorship program demands some action, and the attempt to take away this session's Opposition Days earlier this month shows that the Liberals cannot be trusted to do anything except hang onto power any way they can. Allying with BQ to stop rampant corruption and restore some credibilty to government does not sound unreasonable.

However, Layton's accusation of whoring one's self for political purposes becomes outrageous when one considers the deal he cut with Paul Martin just to scoop up more tax money for the NDP's pet programs. The Gomery testimony has shown that the Liberals won their last few elections with stolen government money and influence peddling. Now Layton has (perhaps) enabled them to hang onto power for a few more months, instead of facing the voters to accept their judgment. Why? To pick the pockets of the same Canadians who got fleeced by Adscam, by the same players, only on a much grander scale -- so the same people can spend the increased money.

If anyone should feel sheepish about their political bedfellows, it's Jack Layton and the NDP.

Finally, An Energy Policy Worth Pursuing

George Bush spoke out yesterday about energy policy for a new push to get a comprehensive energy bill passed for the first time since his first election to the White House. Bush made an attempt yesterday to take his case directly to the people in order to press Congress to get past the gridlock and get some basic work accomplished to address the pressing needs for energy production in the US:

President Bush presented a plan on Wednesday to offer federal risk insurance to companies that build nuclear power plants and to encourage the construction of oil refineries on closed military bases in the United States.

Mr. Bush also proposed giving the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission the authority to choose sites for new terminals to receive liquid natural gas from overseas. ...

"This problem did not develop overnight, and it's not going to be fixed overnight," Mr. Bush said in his speech at the Hilton. "But it's now time to fix it. See, we got a fundamental question we got to face here in America: Do we want to continue to grow more dependent on other nations to meet our energy needs, or do we want what is necessary to achieve greater control of our economic destiny?" Most of Mr. Bush's speech was a restatement of White House energy policy, but the plan to build refineries on closed military bases startled energy experts outside the administration. Administration officials said that bases could either be leased or sold to private companies in open bidding. At present, there are about 100 closed bases in the United States, but some have already been redeveloped as commercial airports or economic free zones for businesses.

Building more nuclear power plants has long been a part of Mr. Bush's energy policy, but offering federal risk insurance to companies or investors willing to try to get approval for them is new. In his speech, Mr. Bush said that his goal was to reduce uncertainty in the building and regulatory process, and to protect companies from construction delays beyond their control.

Bush concentrated on building facilities for power generation, and for good reason. We have not built a nuclear reactor in the US since the early 70s, and we have also not built a gasoline refinery for almost the same amount of time. Meanwhile, our power consumption has increased over 30% in the past twenty years without adding any extra generating capacity on line. That means we increasingly have relied on our reserve capacity for generation, until we have finally reached the point where it no longer exists. Any incidents resulting in significant down times at existing refineries creates emergency supply issues, as the Midwest saw two years ago when a refinery fire caused a massive increase in consumer fuel prices, as supplies had to be shipped in from other parts of the country.

The proposed use of closed military bases for refineries makes perfect sense. Most of these bases require a massive clean-up effort to transform them into civilian use, due to the chemical residue of decades of military use. Refineries don't require that kind of initial investment, and they serve American security needs as well as consumer needs. Moreover, since the land belongs to the federal government, the environmental analysis process can be streamlined, allowing these to come on line much quicker than on commercial land, where environmentalists have held up refinery production for decades.

Nuclear power and LNG imports will play an important role in energy production, especially nuclear power, as more and more of our transportation starts relying on electrical power rather than fossil fuel for energy. But to start making an impact in the short term, we need the expanded refinery capacity to come on line as soon as possible. Congress should endorse and protect the expansion of refining capability now.

NAACP Internal Report Concludes Mfume Cronyism Allegation 'Difficult To Defend'

Kweisi Mfume, former NAACP president, faces a scandal just as his campaign for the Democratic nomination for Maryland's open Senate seat gets launched. Mfume, who wants to replace Democrat Paul Sarbanes, has been accused of misusing his position at the civil-rights organization to assist women he reportedly either had inappropriate relationships or harassed in a sexual manner. According to the Washington Post, an internal NAACP report says that such allegations will be "difficult to defend" given the evidence presented:

Members of the NAACP executive committee first saw the report detailing the allegations against Mfume at an October meeting in Washington, about a month before Mfume announced his decision to step down. The document has been a closely guarded secret -- one board member said the copies that were distributed were numbered and collected after the meeting. Most members reached this week declined to discuss it.

The document was intended as an assessment of the allegations as the organization's leaders evaluated how to handle the claims of the mid-level employee, Michele Speaks.

Speaks hired an attorney and asked for $140,000, two years' salary, in exchange for agreeing not to file a complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission or pursuing a lawsuit, according to the report. Speaks could not be reached for comment. Her attorney, Kathleen Cahill, declined to comment.

The NAACP hired Marcia E. Goodman, a Chicago employment lawyer, to analyze Speaks's allegations. In the memo, Goodman concluded that some of Speaks's claims -- including an assertion that Mfume "touched her on the hip" -- largely amounted to a "he said-she said" dispute. But Goodman wrote that others were more problematic.

Speaks could mount a credible claim of workplace harassment because of "the impression [that was] created that a woman must provide sexual favors to Mr. Mfume or his associates in order to receive favorable treatment in the workplace," the lawyer wrote in the memo.

In an interview yesterday, NAACP Chairman Julian Bond would not say whether the organization's board ultimately decided to pay Speaks.

The NAACP has been through this before Mfume. Mfume's predecessor, Benjamin Chavis, cost the NAACP over $300,000 to settle sexual discrimination claims after he got booted out of his leadership post. The board appears to have learned a lesson from that embarassment: don't go public. Except for the member who leaked the report to the press, those board members contacted by the Post have all stonewalled on the reasons for Mfume's abrupt and surprising departure last year, when the rumor was that Mfume and Bond had a falling out over the tone and direction of the NAACP's politics.

That now looks like an excuse, a spin which allowed Mfume to leave his post by looking too moderate for Bond. Another memo given to the Post appears to confirm that these allegations against Mfume are part of a track record going back to at least 1998, when two of his female subordinates got into an argument in the offices over Mfume and his dating habits. One of the women got disciplined, and one of them got promoted shortly afterward -- and the Post's description of the memo strongly implies that Mfume's girlfriend is the one who got the promotion. The attorney who wrote the memo also alleged that Mfume tampered with witnesses to block the NAACP's internal inquiry into the incident.

None of this will look good in a Senate campaign that undoubtedly will be hard fought, first in the primaries and then in the general election. The Republicans want to pick up Sarbanes' seat badly, and have a good shot at it in moderate Maryland. They have an excellent candidate who has proven himself ready for the national stage in Michael Steele, the current Lieutenant Governor. Mfume looked like a strong selection, especially after the spin coming from Mfume's camp about how his moderate intentions for outreach to the Bush administration caused him to be forced out of the NAACP leadership post by the hard-liner Bond. However, now that this story has fallen apart in favor of a more sordid explanation, Mfume can expect a hard primary challenge from Democrats who cannot afford to give away another Senate seat.

Expect Mfume to back out of the race, probably by this summer, if this report gets substantiation. If true, we'll see a string of women who will eventually go public with the information, and apparently the NAACP found it credible enough to warrant an expensive legal analaysis just before Mfume's departure.

CQ Media Notes II

I'll be appearing on RightTalk Radio tomorrow afternoon with Bill Ardolino and Jeff Goldstein on "Citizen Journalist", from 3:10 - 3:10 pm EDT. It'll be great fun to be a guest on someone else's blog-based radio show, so be sure to tune in. I'll be sharing a segment with Kate from small dead animals, so Canada's political tribulations will definitely be one of the topics.

Jeff's been asking his readers for some questions to ask us. This could be the toughest interview I've yet had to face, if their responses are any indication at all...

UPDATE: Er, that should be 3:10 - 3:30. Boy, will I catch hell for that error today!

Austin Bay: Will Canada Be The Next Failed State?

One of the bitter ironies of the Canadian Adscam scandal involves the status of Quebec. Originally, the government launched the Sponsorship Program as a public-relations effort to convince Quebeckers that they are a vital part of the Canadian federation, hoping to combat the separatists that had gained enough political power to force a referendum on independence -- which lost, but only narrowly, a few years ago. After seeing $250 million of Canadian tax money disappear into the pockets of Liberal Party activists and the party coffers, however, the momentum away from separatism has been reversed. Now 54% of Quebec favors separation from Canada in some form:

Mr. Martin found himself in the thick of a revived national unity debate after a poll placed support for independence at 54 per cent — its highest level in seven years.

Quebeckers are recoiling from daily corruption allegations emerging from Justice John Gomery's inquiry, but they don't justify the country's breakup, the Prime Minister said.

“The separation of Quebec is not the answer to abuses like this,” Mr. Martin told The Canadian Press during an interview in his corner office, a sparsely decorated white room in the Langevin building across the street from Parliament Hill. ...

But a federal lawsuit and criminal charges against people implicated in the sponsorship scandal has acted as an accelerant to smouldering separatist sentiment in Quebec.

Too bad the Liberals didn't concern themselves with separatism while they had the opportunity to do something about it. Instead, they used the money designed to ease the cultural tensions and build Canadian nationalism to line their own pockets and use the program as a party slush fund outside of electoral regulations in order to retain a grip on power. It beggars the imagination to think that Martin could be serious when he scolds Quebeckers for considering separatism when his own party stole their money.

How serious is the threat of dissolution north of the 49th? Austin Bay takes a tongue-in-cheek look today at the previously-unthinkable status of Canada as a "failed state":

Here's a thumbnail sketch of that analysis: Say Quebec does become a separate European-style nation-state -- a "people" with cultural, linguistic, religious and historical identity (never mind the objections of Mohawk and Cree Indians living in Quebec). Quebec has the people and resources to make a go of it, though the economic price for its egotism will be stiff. British Columbia also has "nation-state" assets: Access to the sea, strong industrial base, raw materials and an educated population.

Oil-producing Alberta might join the United States and instantly find common political ground with Alaska, Louisiana, Texas and Oklahoma. Canada's struggling Atlantic provinces might find statehood economically attractive and extend the New England coastline. A rump Canada consisting of "Greater Ontario" -- with remaining provinces as appendages -- might keep the maple-leaf flag aloft. As for poor, isolated Newfoundland: Would Great Britain like to reacquire a North American colony?

Austin has some fun with this concept, and up to a month ago, I might have laughed this off as well. Americans may not appreciate the tensions that exist within our Northern neighbor, and Adscam has inflamed them to record levels. The recent Quebec polls represent just one aspect of the interprovincial tensions. If readers take the time to read through the excellent comments left here by Canadian readers, it quickly becomes apparent that citizens of most Canadian provinces have their own issues with federation as well.

I for one don't find this instability encouraging. We may have our differences on international policy and other issues with Ottawa, but we have a long and treasured relationship with a united Canada. We share one of few demilitarized international borders based on centuries of friendship, trust, and a shared sense of mission, even if our cultures differ in small but significant ways. Dissolution will abruptly and sharply change that relationship, complicating not just our security situation but the nature of the North American continent altogether.

For this reason, I remain absolutely stumped about the lack of interest shown thus far by the American media in the Adscam scandal. Though a Liberal government collapse looks imminent and probably unavoidable, even a newspaper as close to Canada as the Minneapolis Star-Tribune has barely mentioned it. The lack of interest in Canadian politics will catch Americans with their pants down if Quebec goes its own way and precipitates a general collapse of the national system in Canada, an embarassing development for a country that takes such an interest in global politics.

CQ On Hugh Hewitt Tonight

I will be an in-studio guest tonight when Mitch Berg fills in for Hugh Hewitt tonight, between 5-8 pm CDT. We'll be discussing the judicial confirmation fight for most of the show, but probably will work in other topics as well. Be sure to tune us in, either on your local Salem Radio affiliate or via our Internet stream. Call in and join us at 800-520-1234!

Coffin: Adscam Used Front Agencies

Paul Coffin testified under the publication ban on the Sponsorship Program scandal, and provided yet more blockbuster testimony -- which Justice Gomery released for immediate publication this time. Coffin testified that Chuck Guité and other federal bureaucrats deliberately set up front agencies to hide the direction of government contracts to companies with strong Liberal Party ties:

Federal bureaucrats awarded a highly-sensitive contract to promote Ottawa's Clarity Act to a low-profile Montreal ad agency, hiding the fact that the campaign was actually subcontracted to Groupe BCP, a firm with well-known Liberal ties, testimony released Wednesday reveal. ...

--Mr. Coffin's firm twice was retained by bureaucrats to act as a front and pretend to do work that was in fact farmed out to BCP, a Liberal-friendly firm, and Gingko Group, an ineligible ad agency

--Mr. Coffin lied in his application to get his firm, Communication Coffin, selected as one of the agencies managing federal sponsorships. And the very day his agency was selected, he received hefty federal contracts right away

--He agreed with Judge Gomery's suggestion that he submitted deceptive invoices at the request of Chuck Guité, the bureaucrat who ran the sponsorship program, as a way to circumvent the normal tender process.

Even when he was supposed to be paid a flat fee, Mr. Coffin said he was told by Mr. Guité to bill by the hours, under a loosely-defined category called production costs.

Coffin's testimony shows that the corruption extended so far into the government that even the career bureaucrats understood the scam and furthered it on behalf of the Liberals. Coffin received plenty of cash for his front in the scam; he received $86,000 just to secretly redirect work to Groupe BCP. He also picked up almost twice that amount to serve as a beard for Gingko, an agency that never received certification to do government contracts.

Guité has plenty to worry about if Coffin keeps going in this direction. Guité is the only government employee facing corruption charges -- at least so far -- and Coffin apparently dealt closely with him. Coffin, in fact, submitted fictitious invoices on a regular basis, apparently encouraged to do so by Guité in order to make sure that the Sponsorship Program money had been thoroughly fleeced. Canadians will be surprised to learn that not only did Liberal Party functionaries loot the program, but they conscientiously went back over the books to ensure that every last dime went out the door and into the waiting pockets of Liberal cronies.

Coffin continues his testimony tomorrow. Guité has to wonder what more damage he can possibly do.

No Publication Ban At CQ

CQ reader Western Separatist wrote me earlier today about the publication ban in place on the testimony of Paul Coffin and Chuck Guité, and whether I would publish accounts of the testimony in defiance of the ban. Just to reiterate my position, if I have a reliable source for the information, I will publish the testimony. Right now, I do not have a commitment from a source to provide it -- but we will keep working to find one.

Volcker: Annan Not Cleared At All

Contrary to Kofi Annan's claims to the contrary, the Volcker Commission did not clear the UN Secretary-General of wrongdoing or incompetence in its written report last month. That comes directly from Paul Volcker himself, who found himself rather amazed by that statement from the head of the United Nations:

In an interview aired yesterday with Fox News, Mr. Volcker took direct issue with Mr. Annan's insistence that he had been exonerated by investigators probing both his role in overseeing the Iraq aid program and conflicts of interest involving a key contract awarded to a Swiss firm that employed Mr. Annan's son.

"I thought we criticized [Mr. Annan] rather severely," Mr. Volcker said of his panel's interim report, released March 29. "I would not call that an exoneration."

Asked point-blank whether Mr. Annan had been cleared of wrongdoing in the $10 billion scandal, Mr. Volcker replied, "No."

Perhaps Volcker was naive enough to think that Annan appointed him to "find the truth," as Volcker describes his mission later in the interview. However, Annan's spin of Volcker's interim report -- the investigation continues to this day -- should clearly show Volcker that Annan used him and his reputation to hide his culpability behind a series of ambiguous findings, and claim that as exoneration. Annan created the Volcker Commission as a reaction to investigations spinning up in the US, which have subpoena power that Volcker lacks. He deftly used Volcker to capture jurisdiction and ensured that subpoenas could not be put into play, making it easier for people to hide documentation and refuse to assist with the investigation.

If Volcker is surprised that such an arrangement leaves the field wide open for Annan to play spin doctor, then he is more foolish than previously thought. That may explain why two of his three lead investigators quit in protest this month, after being overruled on the strength of language in the report that allowed Annan to spin it the way he did. Volcker should reconsider his efforts on behalf of Annan, to whom he reports, and contemplate marrying his efforts to that of Senator Norm Coleman and his investigation, which does have subpoena power and could actually find the corruption Volcker says he seeks.

No Syrian WMD Transfer? Not So Fast ...

Reports based on the release of addenda from last year's Iraqi Survey Group (ISG) report by Charles Duelfer claim that the ISG stated categorically that no evidence existed of WMD being shipped into Syria, one of the explanations given by several high-ranking officers at CENTCOM for the lack of WMD found in Iraq. However, the Washington Times reports this morning that the ISG report did not make any such categorical denial of WMD transfers. In order to understand the nuances of the ISG addenda, take a look at the wording of the original CNN report:

"ISG judged that it was unlikely that an official transfer of WMD material from Iraq to Syria took place," the report said.

The group also said it had been unable to complete its investigation because of security concerns and couldn't rule out an "unofficial" transfer of material. ...

"It is worth noting that even if ISG had been able to fully examine all the leads it possessed, it is unlikely that conclusive information would have been found," the report said.

What does this tell us? First, by its inclusion in the addenda and not the main body, it tells us ... nothing. The data remains inconclusive, and that's all. ISG could not go into Syria, nor into the Bekaa Valley that until this week was controlled by Syria, to determine if any kind of transfers took place. The only conclusion they could reach is that official transfers never took place, meaning that Saddam's files contained no records of any such movement of materiel between Iraq and Syria. The report further tells us that had the ISG had the time and resources to follow up on the leads provided, they still probably would find out nothing, given the geopolitical difficulties of invading Syria to complete the investigation.

Had Duelfer and the ISG meant to conclusively state that no WMD transfers of any kind had occurred, it would not have been left as a footnote or an addendum. That usage indicates an explanation for an unfulfilled mandate of the mission, not a positive conclusion, as a close read of the language used indicates.

The Washington Times article makes this more clear. In reading other parts of the same addenda, the ISG obviously did not intend to close the books on a Syrian transfer of WMD, and in fact still believe that such a scenario not only was possible, but somewhat likely:

Inspector Charles Duelfer, who heads the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), made the findings in an addendum to his final report filed last year. He said the search for WMD in Iraq -- the main reason President Bush went to war to oust Saddam Hussein -- has been exhausted without finding such weapons. Iraq had stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons in the early 1990s.

But on the question of Syria, Mr. Duelfer did not close the books. "ISG was unable to complete its investigation and is unable to rule out the possibility that WMD was evacuated to Syria before the war," Mr. Duelfer said in a report posted on the CIA's Web site Monday night.

He cited some evidence of a transfer. "Whether Syria received military items from Iraq for safekeeping or other reasons has yet to be determined," he said. "There was evidence of a discussion of possible WMD collaboration initiated by a Syrian security officer, and ISG received information about movement of material out of Iraq, including the possibility that WMD was involved. In the judgment of the working group, these reports were sufficiently credible to merit further investigation."

But Mr. Duelfer said he was unable to complete that aspect of the probe because "the declining security situation limited and finally halted this investigation. The results remain inconclusive, but further investigation may be undertaken when circumstances on the ground improve."

The media spin on WMD remains in full force. The truth is that without a full reckoning and complete access to the entire Southwest Asia area, no WMD search could possibly be complete. Nor does the evidence in the report support a conclusion that the WMD did not exist, as the above quote shows. Duelfer and his team did not stop because the WMD didn't exist; they stopped because they had run out of time, resources, and jurisdiction. Duelfer recommends further investigation, a clear indication that he believes the question remains open on WMD transfers to Syria, a recommendation that CNN and other media sources predictably leaves out of their reports.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers! BTW, Sundries Shack also noticed the same point yesterday; take a look at Jimmie's post there as well.

Did Yesterday's Report On Brown's Speech Do Her Justice?

The Los Angeles Times reported yesterday on a speech given by Justice Janice Rogers Brown, a courageous speech given her current limbo between openly derisive Democrats and squeamish Republicans in the Senate, which I linked here. However, one of the attendees blogged about Brown's breakfast speech and claims that not only did the Times take Brown out of context on key points, but that their "reporting" only consisted of reprinting and rewriting the original article in the Stamford Advocate.

Benedict Blog tells a more interesting tale of the Red Mass speech by Brown, one that convinced him that not only would Brown make a terrific appellate justice, but in a fair world would be headed for the Supreme Court:

Why does the Times make no mention of the breadth and depth of Justice Brown's intellect? Profound. Thoughtful. Erudite. Those, or words like them, should have been used to describe Justice Brown's presentation. After announcing her theme (would Abraham Lincoln still consider the United States the "last best hope of Earth"?), Justice Brown delivered a lecture which touched on the work of Alexis de Tocqueville, Stanley Fish, C.S. Lewis, Lenin, George Weigel, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Stephen Macedo, Servais Pinckaers and others (one very particular "other" is discussed in greater detail below). She wove post-modernism, atheistic humanism, "freedom for excellence", creative design, cosmic accident, useful idiots, the Enlightenment, the Restoration, and the purported perfectability of man into her 35 minute commentary. And she was no slouch at turning a phrase: In response to a question from an audience member, she responded, "From the Garden of Eden to the Tower of Babel to [another example which I did not get down - Justice Brown speaks quickly!], any time man puts himself on a par with God the project ends badly."

This is a woman who possesses both searing intelligence and great humility. She talks about philosophy as fluently as she does about jurisprudence (she dealt handily with a question from the audience about Immanuel Kant), and seems equally well-versed in the realms of intellectual history and moral theology. ...

Why does the Times not repeat any of the historical evidence which Justice Brown offered in support of her position? Near the beginning of her remarks, Justice Brown used some logical jiujitsu to score a telling point. Just as adherents of the "cosmic accident" school of creation like to say that it was a unique and utterly specific set of circumstances which gave rise to the Big Bang and thence the formation of the universe, Justice Brown maintains that it was a similarly unique and specific set of circumstances which led to the formation of the United States. And, like it or not, a belief in God was one of the elements without which we would not have the founding documents -- or nation, for that matter -- we have today.

Benedict also finds the more inflammatory parts of the speech highlighted by the LAT to have been taken out of context. In discussing the notion of these times being perilous for people of faith, Brown specifically referred to Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith, a book which attacks religion and its influence -- and one which has received broad support from the media mainstream, as Benedict demonstrates by quoting from the book reviews at major newspapers:

"Dangers and absurdities of organized religion," "irrationality of all religious faith," "perfect tyranny," "radical attack," "ruthless secularisation," and, best of all, "pugilistic attempt" and "sustained nuclear assault." Note the ulra-aggressive language, all of which which would seem to confirm the truth of Justice Brown's "war" statement. And all unreported by the Times, even though the man whose work inspired those comments was specifically identified by Justice Brown. Why do you suppose that is?

Only the editors of the Times could answer that question, of course. The article does state that it got its original reporting from the Stamford Advocate, but it apparently cherry-picked its coverage based on the story it wants to sell about Janice Rogers Brown. The intellectual dishonesty of the Los Angeles Times continues unabated, apparently.

Layton Begins Rationalizations

After having enabled a possible lifeline to the embattled Prime Minister and a Liberal Party swimming in corruption, Jack Layton defended his alliance with Paul Martin last night by claiming that getting his budget preferences passed outweighed the cost of leaving corruption in place for another seven or eight months:

Mr. Layton said it is clear there will be an election on the corruption issue either next month or in "seven or eight" months, but that he hopes to accomplish something through the budget in the meantime.

"We'll say [in an election] that we worked for the people while all the other parties were just taking care of their own business to their own advantage. Ordinary people will make their own decisions and I'm quite confident that what we're doing now will help us," he said.

If the NDP leader thinks that allowing the party that stole hundreds of millions of tax dollars from the Canadian treasury to remain in power amounts to "work[ing] for the people," I'd say that the NDP should prepare for their 19 seats as a historical high-water mark. Their small base may have a soft spot for high taxes and government spending, but they don't have one for selling out to corruption. If Layton found a thief in his business, embezzling thousands of dollars, would he tolerate keeping him employed for seven or eight months because he didn't like the composition of the labor pool available to replace him? Or even more to the point, would Layton allow that embezzler to stay around because he agreed to bring in more money than he steals?

It's not as if Layton defends the Liberals on the corruption point, either. He acknowledges the corruption, but claims it pales in comparison to developing an NDP-friendly budget:

Mr. Layton said he is fully expecting accusations that he is supporting a corrupt Liberal government, but said his party will be voting in favour of a good budget, not the Liberals.

Mr. Layton said NDP voters expect his party to make sure the Liberals deliver on their promises.

"I know that there will be people who will say, 'Ah, yeah, that's Layton. He loves corruption. The NDP, they just love corruption. They're really corrupt themselves because they support the Liberals.' That's a totally ridiculous accusation. We're helping people. We're opposed to corruption," he said.

Perhaps Layton never heard the poem that reads in part, You can tell the man who boozes by the company he chooses -- and the NDP has chosen its company, and named its price. Layton has tricked out his caucus to direct $4.6 billion in more taxpayer money into control of a Liberal government that has already proven itself unworthy of trust. And Layton speaks of ensuring that the current Liberal government keeps its promises? As much as Layton wants to spin this, the political machination involved is much too obvious: Layton saw an opportunity to score the tax hikes he wanted and sold out the already-victimized Canadians to get it.

Stephen Harper had a more clear-eyed view than his NDP counterpart on the transaction:

Conservative Leader Stephen Harper, who is campaigning in Southwestern Ontario this week, said the deal was nothing more than an attempt to bury the sponsorship scandal with billions of dollars from the public treasury.

"I guess my first response is Mr. Martin and Mr. Layton think $4.6-billion worth of taxpayers' money is the price to make corruption go away," Mr. Harper said during a break from a late-afternoon fundraiser.

"I wonder if the taxpayers of Canada are going to think the same thing."

Somehow, I rather doubt it. Layton may have scored a short-term budget victory, but he has now married the NDP to the Adscam corruption and any other scandals yet to come from the Martin government.

Martin Purchases NDP Votes To Retain Power

Paul Martin, whose minority Liberal government appeared to approach collapse in the wake of the explosive Adscam testimony, may have used Canadian tax money yet again to retain power -- this time by spending it on NDP budget priorities in order to buy Jack Layton's support and fend off an expected no-confidence vote next month from the Tories:

The New Democrats have reached an "agreement in principle" with the Liberals on support for a key budget vote, says NDP Leader Jack Layton.

The tentative deal could help the minority Liberal government survive. Layton said the details of the agreement are still being worked out, but it involves a guarantee of $4.6 billion in new investment in "people and the environment," plus an increase in foreign aid.

He said Liberal promises of tax cuts for small-and medium-sized businesses will remain, while large corporations will no longer get planned cuts.

Even having the NDP on board doesn't guarantee that Martin will defeat a no-confidence vote. The additional 19 MPs still only provides Martin with 151 votes, with 155 needed to defeat an attempt to topple his government. It does make it tougher for Stephen Harper's Conservatives to get to 155, however. Assuming that BQ will vote with Harper, he has 153 members -- which means both sides will play Monty Hall with the three independents. Two come from the west, and may therefore have more sympathy for the Tories, but the sure bet on a Liberal collapse looks long gone.

Ironically, Martin may have saved his party by conducting the same kind of manipulation of Canadian tax money as Adscam, albeit legally this time. He has taken money from the tax base and used it to satisfy political allies and garner support for the Liberals. Layton, on the other hand, has deliberately bolstered a government with demonstrable ties to corruption and graft -- a position that will not likely win many new converts to the NDP among Canadians.

Frist: No Deal Without Confirming Current Nominees

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist called a rare, impromptu press conference on the floor of the Senate to tell the media that he will not accept any compromise which does not include up-or-down votes on all of Bush's judicial nominations. Presumably this closes the door on the extended negotiations that had taken place between Frist and Minority Leader Harry Reid, as the Democrats have already insisted that they should retain the right to block so-called "extremists" from the bench:

Reacting to a Democratic offer in the fight over filibusters, Republican leader Bill Frist said Tuesday he isn't interested in any deal that fails to ensure that the Senate votes on confirmation for all of President Bush's judicial nominees.

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid had been quietly talking with Frist about confirming at least two of Bush's blocked nominees from Michigan in exchange for withdrawing a third nominee. This would have been part of a compromise that would have the GOP back away from a showdown over changing Senate rules to prevent Democrats from using the filibuster to block Bush's nominees.

But Frist, in a rare news conference conducted on the Senate floor, said he would not accept any deal that keeps his Republican majority from confirming judicial nominees that have been approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

"My goal is to have fair up and down votes. Are we going to shift from that principle? The answer to that is no," Frist said.

Fine and good. Now will someone tell me what their negotiations covered during the past three months? It cannot have taken 100 days of this session to reach the same positions that existed at the beginning of this session -- that the GOP would insist on majority vote, and the Democrats would block appellate nominees any way they could. If it takes that long for both Reid and Frist to get back to square one, then maybe both caucuses need to question the efficacy of their leadership.

Adscam: The Graft In The Details

CQ reader Ed_in_Cda points out an article in today's Ottawa Sun which delineates some interesting transactions relating to Sponsorship Program money. Ad agencies in the program spent over $600,000 on a series of soccer matches pitting three international soccer teams against Canadians in Quebec and China. Most of the money went towards gifts for the athletes, although most of that cash went elsewhere instead:

A Montreal ad firm used $120,000 in sponsorship money to offer all-expense paid trips to bring three soccer teams from as far away as Vietnam to Quebec, the Adscam inquiry heard yesterday. Groupe Everest also dipped into the funds meant to boost national unity to buy $500,000 in gifts such as parasols and Timex watches for former PM Jean Chretien to hand out during his 1999 Team Canada mission to China.

Agency VP Diane Deslauriers took credit yesterday for orchestrating the soccer match at the 1997 Quebec Games that saw French-speaking teams from Hanoi, France and Western Canada fly in for a "friendship" game.

Deslauriers said her firm billed Public Works $120,000 to finance the teams' expenses on top of securing a $220,000 sponsorship for the Quebec Games -- reaping a total $49,000 commission.

Groupe Everest made almost $50K in commissions on a contract of $220,000, while billing Public Works $120,000 for financing services. How much of those expenses can be corroborated through receipts? Obviously, flight arrangements can be expensive, but spending $120,000 to get teams involved in a $220,000 event doesn't make a lot of sense, either economically or mathematically.

That isn't the last of the unusual math applications discussed in Adscam testimony yesterday, either:

Benoit Renaud, an Everest subcontractor who specialized in promotional items, testified yesterday that he billed the sponsorship program almost $500,000 for 12,340 items destined for Chretien's 1999 Team Canada trip to China.

Renaud said he only paid $166,000 for items ranging from Swiss Army money clips to pewter spoons and golf club covers.

The remaining $282,597 went toward the hours that both he and his brother Alain put into the purchase and administrative costs, Renaud said. According to his time sheet, Renaud put in 300 hours at $90 per hour -- or an entire month of 10-hour days.

Renaud spent twice as much on salaries for himself and his brother as he did on the gifts he bought the athletes? Even at the rates mentioned, 300 hours at $90 amounts to $27,000. Assuming his brother got paid at the same rate, that amounts to $54,000, a huge sum for one month's work of work -- but far below the $287,000 in salary and "administrative" costs associated with Renaud's shopping spree.

What kind of "administrative" costs can amount to over $200,000 in a single month? Perhaps administrating transfers of cash to the Liberal Party as part of the money-laundering effort that Adscam provided?

Syria Leaves Lebanon After 29 Years

The Syrians have accomplished what almost no one expected -- they have actually left Lebanon without a shot being fired to chase them back across the Bekaa Valley. Even the Syrian intelligence services have packed up, or at least that's what the Syrians say:

Syria will declare a formal end to its 29-year military involvement in Lebanon today with a "farewell" ceremony in the Beka'a valley - four days earlier than expected.

Hundreds of Syrian troops left the country over the weekend after burning documents, demolishing walls and filling bunkers. Yesterday, Syrian intelligence abandoned Anjar, the headquarters of Rustum Ghazaleh, the intelligence chief who was once the most feared man in Lebanon. He was reported to have left for Damascus last night but was due to return for today's ceremony.

The Syrians chased themselves out of Lebanon after the idiotic assassination of Rafik Hariri, one of Lebanon's wealthiest men and most popular as well. Bashar Assad did more to create Lebanese nationalism with one bomb than he ever did in the 29-year history of his and his father's occupation of their western neighbor. That bomb united Christians and Muslims alike on the nature of sovereignty and gave them both a martyr.

The bomb's shock waves continue to be felt. Lebanon's security chief has apparently resigned ahead of being sacked for insubordination to the new interior minister. Jamil Sayyed is a known collaborator with the Syrians. Ali al-Hajj, who ran the internal security bureau and also collaborated with Damascus, has placed himself at the disposal of the Prime Minister but may have left his position. Another Quisling, Raymond Azar, has left Lebanon entirely, flying to Paris ostensibly on a "mission" for the military intelligence which he headed, but more likely a mission to escape the coming wave of retribution for the Lebanese enablers of Syrian oppression.

All of this bodes ill for Hezbollah. These high-level collaborators in the Syrian military/intelligence complex could have helped Hezbollah remain armed, a power with which to reckon in any post-Syrian political arrangement. With their best allies getting purged from the security forces, it appears that Hezbollah's status as an armed militia has a limited future. Stripped of their miltary and intelligence cover, the terrorist group either will have to convert to legitimate political activity or fight a newly-sovereign Beirut for control of Lebanon. And with the land link between Hezbollah and their Iranian sponsors cut off by the 135,000 American troops in Iraq, Hezbollah can no longer count on winning a fight, either against Israel or even the Lebanese Army -- especially if the Americans and French respond to defend the new sovereign democracy in Beirut.

Judicial Nominee Refuses To Remain Silenced

Janice Rogers Brown refuses to conduct herself under a cloister while milquetoast Republicans and hostile Democrats hold her career hostage for over two years and counting. The Los Angeles Times reports that Brown told an audience on Sunday that a cultural battle has formed in which people of faith face punishment from secularists for their beliefs:

Just days after a bitterly divided Senate committee voted along party lines to approve her nomination as a federal appellate court judge, California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown told an audience Sunday that people of faith were embroiled in a "war" against secular humanists who threatened to divorce America from its religious roots, according to a newspaper account of the speech. ...

"These are perilous times for people of faith," she said, "not in the sense that we are going to lose our lives, but in the sense that it will cost you something if you are a person of faith who stands up for what you believe in and say those things out loud." ...

The Advocate quoted Brown as lamenting that America had moved away from the religious traditions on which it was founded.

"When we move away from that, we change our whole conception of the most significant idea that America has to offer, which is this idea of human freedom and this notion of liberty," she said.

She added that atheism "handed human destiny over to the great god, autonomy, and this is quite a different idea of freedom…. Freedom then becomes willfulness."

Of course, the folks at PFAW and others already aligned against Brown will use this speech to claim that she is an extremist, one much too dangerous to put on a federal appellate bench. They might have a difficult time convincing the overwhelming majority of people who attend religious services on a regular basis that believing in God makes one an extremist, but they will do their best to do so nonetheless. When they do, they will go further in proving Brown's point than she dared to go herself.

In fact, Brown's speech serves as a perfect test for Ralph Neas and Nan Aron. Her implication that faith has become a litmus test for political appointments practically dares her opposition to use it against her politically over the next two weeks. If the Democrats start quoting from the speech in debating her confirmation, then the flimsy pretense of Chuck Schumer's "deeply held personal beliefs" will have been finally stripped away from their arguments. Brown has upped the ante by forcing the Democrats to attack her faith and her philosophical underpinnings.

The Democrats won't hesitate to use it, of course, and in doing so they will have demonstrated precisely what she argued -- that people of faith cannot hope to be treated equally with secular athiests by the political elite of the Left.

I think Justice Brown may have more political savvy than we realized. Not only has she proven herself an excellent jurist, but she has courage and wit. She will not remain silent while her enemies unfairly trash her reputation and her record. If our appellate courts do not have room for a Janice Rogers Brown, then it only reflects the unworthiness of the people entrusted to confirm her into that position. If the Republicans cannot muster the votes to defend her nomination, then we all should be ashamed of ourselves for putting them in those seats.

Grounded Air Marshal Sues To Get Common Sense Into Security

The Los Angeles Times reports this morning that a federal air marshal has been reinstated to flight status after a suspension for criticizing the nonsensical dress code that practically identifies them to terrorists. The day after Frank Tereri filed a lawsuit alleging that his right to free speech had been infringed, the FAMS suddenly completed its seven-month investigation into allegedly hostile acts by Tereri and decided that they had no basis in fact:

An air marshal who was grounded after criticizing the Federal Air Marshal Service over security issues was told last week to come back to work, a day after he and the ACLU filed a lawsuit that threatened to call wider attention to his complaints.

Frank Terreri contends a dress code requiring many agents to wear coats and ties makes them easy to spot in the mass of casually dressed passengers and undermines the marshals' ability to protect passengers.

Officials said they grounded Terreri, president of an air marshal group, in October after he sent an e-mail to other marshals criticizing a colleague for providing People magazine with details of her operational routine. The e-mail had created a "hostile workplace" for the other marshal, officials said. They stripped Terreri of his badge and gun and confined him to desk duty for almost seven months. ...

On Friday, the day after Terreri filed suit accusing the government of violating his 1st Amendment rights and endangering the public by stifling whistle-blowers, officials notified the Riverside man that he had been reinstated and should report for duty the following Monday.

What a fortunate coincidence! What do you suppose the odds are on that?

FAMS does not want these complaints to air in a public courtroom. Despite the best efforts of Michelle Malkin and others, this issue still has not hit the radar screen of most Americans. The air marshals must provide coverage to a certain percentage of flights every day, but an increasing shortage of agents makes that impossible. The Times article notes that the number has dropped further, to 1400, which means that only 700 agent teams exist for the thousands of flights in the US daily. At one time two years ago, FAMS employed over 4,000 flight agents.

What's causing the agents to leave? Tereri's treatment for criticizing FAMS certainly provides an answer to that question. So does a system which bases its entire strategy on secrecy, and then insists that agents take actions which readily identify themselves to anyone who cares enough to watch. Air marshals must dress in sport coats and dress shoes, although FAMS claims ties are optional. They must use separate exits to avoid passenger security points -- in full view of the other passengers. At hotels, FAMS requires agents to demand discounts for which they must identify themselves as air marshals.

If your covert status on a job was the only real edge you had in staying alive on every flight you took, would you work for people clueless enough to force you to follow those rules? It's difficult to blame Tereri for speaking out against FAMS management. It's even more difficult to understand why Congress has not intervened to staunch the exodus of air marshals that threatens to take air security back to pre-9/11 status.

Snatching Defeat From The Jaws Of Victory, Part 12a

Senator Bill Frist appeared on the edge of victory this morning in forcing through the Bush nominees for federal appellate courts after a renewed push by GOP conservatives to get tough with the recalcitrant Democrats who have filibustered them. However, a late report from USA Today hints that Frist may have buckled under the pressure, considering an unprecedented arrangement that would allow two Democratic Senators to demand bench appointments for their cronies as a ransom for the up-or-down votes that Bush's nominees should already have received:

In private talks with Majority Leader Bill Frist, the Senate's top Democrat has indicated a willingness to allow confirmation of at least two of President Bush's seven controversial appeals court nominees, but only as part of a broader compromise requiring Republicans to abandon threats to ban judicial filibusters, officials said Monday.

At the same time he offers to clear two nominees to the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals for approval, officials said Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., wants a third appointee to be replaced by an alternative who is preferred by Michigan's two Democratic senators. ...

Officials said as part of an overall deal, Reid has indicated he is willing to allow the confirmation of Richard Griffin and David McKeague, both of whom Bush has twice nominated for the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals. At the same time, the Democratic leader wants the nomination of Henry Saad scuttled. Democrats succeeded in blocking all three men from coming to a vote in 2004 in a struggle that turned on issues of senatorial prerogatives as well as ideology.

This wavering demonstrates beyond a doubt that Frist cannot lead the Republicans as a majority party. Remember that this issue led the entire Senatorial campaign last year, and in 2002 before that, as their highest domestic priority. Conservatives and libertarians have broadly agreed that out-of-control judicial activism presents a danger to freedom and representative democracy, although they see the threat somewhat differently. The election of an increased Republican majority in the Senate directly resulted from that alliance -- a mandate to confirm justices with a stronger commitment towards constructionism.

Instead of restoring majority control to judicial nominations as mandated by the voters in two successive elections, however, it looks like Frist may surrender and validate supermajority thresholds for seating federal judges. Not only that, but Frist may go even further in his capitulation. Now the Democrats insist that Senators have the power to nominate judicial appointees in direct contravention of the Constitution. Frist may agree to let two Democrats from Michigan pick judges from their own provincial preferences, eliminating a presidential prerogative and fundamentally changing the balance of power even more significantly than the obstructionist filibusters ever did.

Hopefully, this idea dies the quick death it deserves. If the GOP leadership sells out its majority and undermine the Constitutional privileges of the executive, then we do not deserve to run the Senate. The NRSC will never see another dime from me, nor will any Republican who supports this kind of capitulation.

CQ In The News: Denver

While I was hard at work on my project this weekend, Linda Seebach of the Rocky Mountain News wrote a column about bloggers and journalism, one of the more popular topics these days in the blogosphere. I knew that Linda planned on writing the article before it got published, but I missed it when it came out in all of the long hours we put into finishing the move. Linda, who has a long pedigree in the news business, agrees with me that journalism does not depend on newsprint for its existence or identification:

Are bloggers journalists? Sure, when they do journalism, and Ed Morrissey, Captain Ed at the Web log called Captain's Quarters, certainly was doing journalism when he blew open a Canadian corruption scandal that was under a judicial publication ban in Canada.

There's been hardly any coverage of what the Canadians call "AdScam" in the U.S. press, although something that could cause the Canadian government to fall ought to be of interest to that country's southern neighbor ...

While the ban was in effect, there was even a question about whether Canadian newspapers and broadcasters could tell their readers about Morrissey's posts; one official said the commission was considering whether to prosecute a Canadian Web site that linked to Captain's Quarters. Either the official is hopelessly naïve, Morrissey said, "or he gets the Captain Louis Renault award for being shocked, shocked that free speech goes on in a democracy."

Well, the witness' trial was postponed and most of the publication ban was lifted, although it no longer served any purpose anyway. The accuracy of Morrissey's source was confirmed, and he has continued to follow the story. But he now has the company of Canadian media.

I call that journalism, and we can only hope that Canadian bloggers will perform a similar service during our elections, when politically active American organizations (although not established media) are muzzled by the detestable McCain-Feingold campaign finance law.

Linda also notes the post at Jay Rosen's Pressthink, where Chris Nolan wrote about stand-alone journalists in a similar vein. Linda treats me quite kindly, but many other bloggers perform journalism on a regular basis as well as diarize on their personal lives and provide punditry to their regular readers. Be sure to read her entire column.

Where's Alan Funt?

No one expected that John Bolton would get an easy hearing for his confirmation for UN ambassador, especially given the get-tough attitude that George Bush wants to take with Kofi Annan and the entire corrupt executive at Turtle Bay. However, those challenging Bolton's confirmation have turned this into a parody of the attitudes that presumably permeate the American Left -- a cacaphony of complaints about how destructive yelling and scolding can be to one's self-esteem, played out on a stage where only the biggest egos get the microphones:

In a new allegation against President Bush's nominee for United Nations ambassador, a woman who worked under John Bolton in the early 1980s has complained that he tried to fire her after they clashed over US policy on infant formula in developing nations.

Lynne D. Finney, now a therapist in Utah, wrote to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Friday, saying Bolton mistreated her when they worked in the General Counsel's Office at the US Agency for International Development. Her accusation is the latest salvo in a pitched battle over Bolton's nomination. ...

Yesterday, Senator Barbara Boxer of California, a Democrat on the committee, distributed Finney's letter to reporters. An aide to Boxer said Democrats will push to include Finney's allegations in the list of claims to be probed.

According to this letter, Finney refused to back up national policy on the use of baby formula in developing countries, and Bolton lost his temper. He yelled at her, and told her he'd get her fired, although apparently she stayed on the job. Did this happen last week? Last month? Last year?

No -- it happened twenty-two years ago.

You know, it was just seventeen months ago that Ted Kennedy roared into a microphone that Janice Rogers Brown was a "Neanderthal" unworthy of consideration for the federal appellate bench. How about addressing that before getting to what people said ten and twenty years ago?

Quite frankly, I don't care if Bolton got snappy with subordinates twenty-two years ago -- and considering the absolute morass of corruption at the UN, impatience almost sounds like a prerequisite rather than a hindrance. Democrats still have not read the memo that starts This nation is at war, preferring to live in the fantasy world of political correctness that they have constructed where smiles and handshakes get everyone what they want. The only possible way this could get sillier is if the Republicans start to buy into this.

Over a thirty-year career, everyone who ever accomplished anything will leave behind peers, subordinates, and even bosses with hurt feelings and axes ready to grind. The fact that the Democrats have dug twenty-three years into history in order to find one should create laughter about their own lack of perspective and incompetence, not doubts about Bolton's qualifications. This may be the silliest confirmation process yet staged by Boxer and her gang of idiots.

The Coming Dean Debacle

The selection of Howard Dean as DNC party chairman has clearly become a liability for Democrats looking to recapture the center, as Donald Lambro writes in today's Washington Times. Democratic pollsters have discovered a significant 'parents gap' in last year's presidential election, as Bush topped Kerry by almost 20 points among moms and dads. Not only did these mainstream voters find more alignment with Bush, but the active sellout of the Democrats to the Hollywood entertainment elite producing ever more violent and inappropriate fare for children have turned large numbers of them away:

An analysis by a Democratic think tank argues that Democrats are suffering from a severe "parent gap" among married people with children, who say the entertainment industry is lowering the moral standards of the country.

The study, published last week by the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), the policy arm of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, admonishes Democrats to pay more attention to parental concerns about "morally corrosive forces in the culture," and warns that the party will not fare better with this pivotal voting bloc until they do.

In the 2004 election, married parents supported President Bush over Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts by nearly 20 percentage points. Mr. Bush frequently talked about the importance of faith and morals in his campaign and the role that parents played in raising their children. Mr. Kerry and his party, much of whose campaign funding and political support came from liberals in the entertainment industry, rarely touched the issue.

"Democrats will not do better with married parents until they recognize one simple truth: Parents have a beef with popular culture. As they see it, the culture is getting ever more violent, materialistic, and misogynistic, and they are losing their ability to protect their kids from morally corrosive images and messages," said the study's author, Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, co-director of the National Marriage Project of Rutgers University and a senior fellow at PPI.

Remember the moment in New York when John Kerry declared that the potty-mouthed antics of Whoopi Goldberg and her friends constituted the "heart and soul" of America? At the time, it hardly made a blip in Kerry's polling, and probably by that time most parents had already decided to support Bush instead for the reasons given. However, that moment cemented Kerry and the Democrats as fatally out of touch with mainstream Americans. Neither Democrats nor Hollywood has yet to get the message.

Howard Dean's installation as DNC chair proves that much. Dean represents the radical left of the party, wrapped up in a tie and rolled-up shirtsleeves but extremists nonetheless. Democrats wanted to harness the energy and power of the International ANSWER/MOveOn contingent by embracing them through Dean rather than pushing them towards the Greens. However, as the Democrat polling shows, all Dean does is attract more obstacles for reaching out to centrists:

In an attempt to reach out to evangelical Christians in the Republican red states, Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, has been talking much more about values and "the culture," and sprinkling his attacks on Republicans with phrases from the Bible.

"We need to kick the money changers out of the temple and restore moral values to America," he said last week in Florida.

But an online survey of 11,568 Dean supporters released earlier this month by the Pew Research Center found that such religious or culturally conservative appeals may not play well with liberal Democrats.

Among the Pew findings, 38 percent of Dean supporters polled said they had no religious affiliation, compared with 11 percent of all Americans; 91 percent supported same-sex "marriage," compared with 38 percent of all Democrats; and 80 percent said they were liberals, compared with 27 percent of all Democrats.

For a man who notoriously gave up his religious affiliation over a bike path, spouting Bible verses will not likely convince any of the faithful that the Democrats have suddenly opened their arms to religious voters. Opposition of key Senate Democrats to judicial nominees with "deeply held personal beliefs" speaks much louder to churchgoing Americans than a couple of Biblical non-sequiturs from Dean. Dean's pandering on religion won't win him any support, but according to the results above, it could severely cut into his personal approval base if he does it often and publicly enough.

The Democrats have wound up with the worst of both worlds with Howard Dean. He's too radical to appeal to the voters in the center with any credibility at all, and if he gives more than a token effort to do so, he'll lose the people who put him in power at all. We tried to warn them ... but they just wouldn't listen to us.

More Publication Bans In Gomery Inquiry

The Gomery Inquiry has imposed new publication bans, as expected, on upcoming testimony into its investigation of corruption and money laundering in the Sponsorship Program. Chuck Guité and Paul Coffin will testify shortly, after Gomery hears from some other figures associated with Adscam:

The Gomery Commission is scheduled to go after some big game in its hunt for the perpetrators of the federal sponsorship scandal, and once again it will have to go undercover.

A temporary publication ban will shroud the testimony of long-awaited witnesses Charles (Chuck) Guite and Paul Coffin. ...

Because their trials, beginning in June, will follow their Gomery appearances so closely, the testimony by Coffin and Guite will fall under a temporary publication ban imposed this month for commission witnesses who also face criminal trials in the near future.

After each completes his testimony, Gomery will rule on what parts of it can be broadcast, and what parts must remain under ban so as not to prejudice the witnesses' right to a fair trial.

A similar ban was applied this month to the testimony of former Groupaction agency owner Jean Brault, also charged with fraud and conspiracy, and it proved an imperfect instrument.

That's putting it mildly. Gomery's publication ban only applied, of course, to rebroadcasting the specifics of Jean Brault's testimony. If one was either fortunate or well-connected, seats were available for the public hearing in which Brault testified to accepting and making bribes and kickbacks in exchange for contract renewals, as well as hiring Liberal Party workers who never performed any work at all for Brault -- but spent their time on party business, off the books.

Politicians will know the specific testimony of the two witnesses at the end of each day, if not almost in real time. Some media sources will watch and hear Guité and Coffin tell everything they know about Adscam and the politicians who profited most from it on live TV feeds that they will be barred from rebroadcast. The only people left in the dark will be those Canadians who have seen their money stolen by the people they trusted to wield power lawfully.

As part of the 'imperfection' mentioned tangentially in the Montreal Gazette, I had hoped that the brouhaha over my publication of Brault's testimony would have convinced Justice Gomery of the folly of publication bans. Apparently not. If my original source can get me reliable information on the testimony under the ban, I will republish it again here.

See What A Vote Can Do?

On a day when Senator Mitch McConnell announced that the GOP has the votes to force a rule change on filibustering judicial nominations, the Democrats have suddenly discovered the notion of compromise. Joe Biden announced today, shortly after McConnell's announcement, that the Democrats will float a proposal to allow all but two of the seven nominees receive an up-or-down vote in the Senate:

U.S. Senate Republicans have the votes to ban any more Democratic procedural roadblocks against President Bush's judicial nominees, a top Republican said on Sunday.

A spokesman for Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada promptly questioned the claim, while another Democrat, Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, floated a possible compromise to avert a fight that could bring the Senate to a near halt. ...

Biden, appearing on ABC's "This Week," said, "I think we should compromise and say to them that we're willing to -- of the seven judges -- we'll let a number of them go through, the two most extreme not go through and put off this vote" to end the filibuster.

Isn't it amazing what a backbone can accomplish? Now that the Senate GOP caucus finally started acting as a majority party, the Democrats now understand that Harry Reid backed them into a corner. If they filibuster Priscilla Owen and Janice Rogers Brown, the Republicans will force the rule change down their throat. Despite the bluster coming from Reid, if the GOP has the votes, they eventually will use them. That leaves the Democrats with two highly unpalatable choices, thanks to Reid's threats: they either shut down the Senate during wartime and stop legislation that mainly benefit their constituencies, or look like idiots and do nothing at all.

Biden may not be the brightest member of the Democratic caucus, but he's wiser than Reid. He understands that if the Republicans have two choices -- no opportunity for their nominees to get votes for two years or a few weeks of bad press -- even Bill Frist will eventually pick Door Number Two. The only way out will be a compromise, which allows the Democrats to look magnanimous and still hold the filibuster as a trump card.

Needless to say, Frist would be an idiot to bite at this. For one thing, agreeing to such an arrangement amounts to a validation of both the unprecedented use of the filibuster and the notion that the judicial nominees are "extremists". It also solves nothing -- it just postpones the fight until a Supreme Court seat opens up. The compromise amounts to nothing except a tactical retreat for Democrats to avoid a huge loss. If Frist accepts such an offer, it will signal that he has no intention of providing leadership to the Republican contingent.

Stay tuned.

Project Success

Thank you for all checking back while I worked on my project for my day job this weekend. I had actually planned on blogging a bit in the early mornings and late evenings, but starting on Thursday night until today, my days have lasted more than fifteen hours of constant trouble-shooting and preparation for the project. Unfortunately, that left me little time for reading news sources and none at all for writing. I haven't even had an opportunity to catch up on all of the excellent comments entered on the site.

Without getting terribly specific about my work, which I like to keep as separate as possible from my blogging, I run a 24x7 call center in the Twin Cities area. Thanks to the terrific executive team for which I work, our business has grown tremedously over the years, and we finally outgrew our offices. Last year we decided to relocate, but we could not find appropriate space until four months ago -- and we had to move my the end of this month.

Call centers involve a tremendous amount of technology, including computers, telecommunications, and especially when the business can tolerate no down time at all, these technologies present ... interesting challenges. I think I can give you an idea of how my weekend went when I say that this is one of the most interesting few days I've had on the job. However, after several days of nerve-fraying obstacles and nail-biting tension, the main part of the project went off quite successfully.

Unfortunately, this has left me utterly exhausted -- and we still have a lot of physical work to do to complete the move. I plan on spending tonight catching up on reading and getting the first good night of sleep I've had in a week, and then get back to my regular blogging schedule tomorrow morning.

Earlier today, Bill Ardolino asked me to appear on his Citizen Journalist radio show on Thursday afternoon. I'm looking forward to chatting about Canada, blogging, and the tension between the GOP libertarians and conservatives. I hope you can all join us!