NARN At White Bear Lake Super-Store!

The Northern Alliance Radio Network will be broadcasting live from White Bear Lake Superstore this afternoon from noon to 3 pm, in another of our series of live remotes at this terrific sponsor. If you're in the area, come on down to visit us, and maybe find a great deal on a new set of wheels while you're there. If you're outside of the Twin Cities, you can find our Internet stream at AM 1280 The Patriot's site. Call us at 651-289-4488 if you want to join the conversation.

Today's second-hour guest will be Brian Anderson, author of South Park Conservatives. It's a provocative book making a big splash in the punditry this month, and Brian has plenty to tell us about the future of politics based on his research. Stay tuned!

The Return Of Michel Aoun

The Cedar Revolution either gained a large amount of credibility or a giant headache this morning as exiled resistance leader Michel Aoun returned to Lebanon for the first time since Syria forced him to flee in 1990. Aoun wants to run for office in the newly-freed country, describing himself as the "grandfather, father and son" of the democracy movement:

Exiled Lebanese opposition leader Michel Aoun has arrived in his homeland for the first time in 14 years. The anti-Syrian former prime minister's chartered flight from France touched down in Beirut at 1400 GMT.

He is due to address crowds at a mass rally celebrating his homecoming in the capital's Martyrs Square.

Mr Aoun, 70, a Christian hardliner, was expelled from Lebanon in 1991 after failing in his attempt to end Syria's military presence.

Aoun didn't exactly represent unfettered democracy during his tenure as Prime Minister. He tried to retain Christian ascendancy over Lebanon and at the same time drive the Syrians out, a combination that led to his downfall. However, he has impeccable anti-Syrian credentials that many in Lebanese politics lack after 29 years of military occupation. That credibility might make Aoun a key ally for a younger politician to have as the head of state, rather than have the conflicts that Aoun might provoke if made Prime Minister once again.

Interestingly, his supporters compare his return to Beirut as analogous to the triumphal entry of Charles de Gaulle to Paris in 1944. While both men have annoying personalities and -- as the BBC put it -- 'Napolaoun' complexes, the difference between the two is that de Gaulle played a part in the liberation of Paris, albeit not as large as he made it out to be. Aoun may have lobbied the international community to get Syria out of Lebanon, but the Cedar Revolution erupted from those within Lebanon, not so much from those without. This dynamic will not be lost on the Lebanese electorate, who may discount that point somewhat with Aoun (who was forced into exile), but will definitely be felt with those who fled Lebanon rather than stick around to work for its freedom. It's a problem we saw with the Iraqi National Congress after the liberation of Baghdad as well.

The other issue with the de Gaulle analogy was that the Allies allowed the French general to build his mythology as that was seen as essential for the rebirth of French republicanism and the rejection of Communism. However, in the long run, that mythology has kept France from recognizing its status as a second-tier nation for decades, keeping it from solving its problems and eventually resulting in a stupid attempt to make itself a diplomatic superpower by gainsaying anything the Americans do. The Lebanese, who really did freed themselves, have no need for any such mythology.

Corriveau Spread The Wealth (Off The Books, Natch)

In the excitement of the banned Guité testimony coming to light, I missed another significant piece of testimony in the Gomery Inquiry. Serge Gosselin, a Liberal Party pollster, testified that Chrétien crony Jacques Corriveau paid him directly for his work on behalf of the party and had no idea that Corriveau kept the payments off the books:

A federal Liberal pollster and researcher was paid more than $60,000 by a friend of Jean Chretien for partisan activities, including work during the 2000 election campaign, the sponsorship inquiry was told Thursday.

Serge Gosselin, one-time aide to unity minister Stephane Dion, said he vetted campaign billboards and other material on behalf of Jacques Corriveau.

Gosselin was told by inquiry counsel Guy Cournoyer there's no evidence Pluri Design, Corriveau's company, ever passed the bill on to the Liberals for the work.

"Are you surprised to find that for services of an essentially political nature for the Quebec wing of the Liberal party, your services were not billed to the party?" asked the lawyer.

Gosselin said: "It's the first time I've seen this and I am completely surprised."

If Gosselin has paid attention to the Adscam hearings up to now, he can't have been too surprised. Corriveau has emerged as a central financing point for the extensive money-laundering and electoral-fraud scheme, collecting wads of cash from contractors like Jean Brault and stuffing the pockets of like-minded Grits or funding Liberal Party activities outside of campaign-finance regulation. Corriveau was well-placed for such a key role; his design firm got $7 million in Sponsorship contracts but did very little of the actual work, if any at all. The dual influence of being a prime contractor and a close friend of the Prime Minister allowed Corriveau to twist arms for generous 'contributions' from people like Jean Brault.

In proximity to Guité's testimony, Gosselin almost appears as a footnote, but don't be fooled. He substantiates an important part of the case for electoral fraud. If Corriveau indeed paid off Liberal Party contractors with kickback cash kept off the books, then he and everyone associated with the effort would be guilty of electoral fraud. Gosselin's testimony explicitly shows that Corriveau himself acted as bagman, and without any related entry on Liberal Party budgets, that crime becomes crystal clear.

This Is A Cease Fire?

While Mahmoud Abbas talks about Israeli provocations and his Gaza security chief refuses to disarm the terrorists, the Palestinians themselves have taken their cues and acted accordingly. This morning, Palestinians shot an anti-tank missile at a school bus full of children in a Gaza settlement:

Palestinians on Friday morning fired an anti-tank rocket on Friday morning at school bus carrying children outside the southern Gaza Strip settlement of Kfar Darom, shaking the fragile lull in violence. The rocket failed to hit the bus.

A mortar shell also hit a Gush Katif settlement. No damage or casualties were reported in either case.

Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip fired four Qassam rockets at the southern Israeli town of Sderot predawn Friday. The Magen David Adom ambulance service said that several people had been treated for shock.

Soon we will hear the usual excuses from the Palestinians. The attackers were from Islamic Jihad, not Fatah or Hamas. The Israelis started it first. Blah, blah, blah. What possible provocation could result in targeting a school bus full of children? What manner of people would deliberately kill such defenseless and powerless innocents? The location of this attack makes it even more senseless as he Gaza settlements are due to be evacuated anyway.

This isn't fighting for freedom; it's hatred and terrorism. These are the people who will control the state at the political center of the Middle East. It's a sobering thought for those who want to rush headlong into granting sovereignty to the Palestinians.

The Ghost Of Elections Past

Someone should tell John Kerry that the election is over.

Today's New York Times has a profile of the erstwhile candidate, turning around a moribund and singularly unaccomplished 20-year Senate career by pushing a new government program of health insurance for kids in our St. Paul back yard. The reason for this sudden interest in legislation -- Kerry notoriously only has six pieces of legislation to his name after two decades in Congress -- is rather obvious to everyone, even Sheryl Stolberg:

More than an ordinary senator, less than a presidential nominee, Mr. Kerry is a politician betwixt and between. He has more than $8 million in the bank and an e-mail list of three million supporters, yet must still prove himself to fellow Democrats, keeping his presidential prospects alive even as he insists it is too soon to talk about 2008.

Mr. Kerry has made children's health care his signature issue; his stop in St. Paul was part of a national four-city swing this week to highlight his "Kids First" plan, which would provide coverage to 11 million uninsured children, a central theme of his presidential campaign.

He is expanding his political organization and wooing other Democrats, through the time-tested method of political courtship - money. He has given more than $3 million to various Democratic campaign committees, and on Friday night he held a fund-raiser in Boston for the 2006 re-election campaign of the woman widely regarded as his major rival for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination: Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.

"We've been friends and colleagues for a long time," Senator Clinton said on Thursday in a telephone interview from New York, adding, "I'm so pleased that he would do this for me."

In other words, Kerry now has to do the things he failed to do before his last run. He needs to prove that he didn't spend 20 years in the Senate doing little except for primping himself for his eventual presidential run. If he runs again, he has to have some legislative accomplishments, or the dilettante label will come out again in force for the 2008 campaign. And after leaving millions of dollars in the bank at the end of his campaign, instead of spening it in Ohio where he could have possibly made a difference or helping some Democrats win key Senate seats, he's suddenly the Party Man and sharing with others. The most high-profile Senate race in 2006 will be in New York, which is why Kerry has to be seen as supportive to his likely primary challenger in 2008.

Kerry has done everything but make an official announcement to show that he intends on forcing the Democrats to relive 2004, only this time he won't have the luxury of riding on Bush-hatred to keep his polling numbers up. The truth is that Kerry is a dreadful candidate -- no record to speak of, a pretentious speaker, with clumsy political skills that would have killed his career anywhere else but in Massachusetts. Even the Democrats know this. As long as his money holds out and the e-mail list remains fresh, they'll give him some respect as a party leader. Anyone who thinks they'll trust him with another national campaign has spent too much time breathing the exhaust fumes of Kerry's private jet.

One other thing: it's been 97 days since Kerry promised to sign the SF-180 and release his entire military record. That ghost of the past election needs to be put to rest before anyone will risk supporting him again. Something in that file frightens John Kerry, and if he wants to position himself as a combat hero again for a second shot at the White House, we need to see what it is.

Chimeras And Strawmen

I normally avoid reading Maureen Dowd with the same enthusiasm I avoid reading junk mail; typically, one learns nothing and the entire exercise only annoys the reader. Once in a while, in a fit of masochism, I check out her latest rant just to see whether she's improved at all. If today's column gives any indication, Dowd may actually be getting worse with time.

Today's screed manages to be racist, condescending, and just flat-out foolish all at once, with a dash of self-congratulatory classical references thrown in for good measure. Dowd starts off by writing about chimeras -- cross-bred animals that bioengineers have created in labs as part of cloning research -- and manages to transform the subject into a hysterical rant about the coming theocracy.

First, though, Dowd has to show off a little about her grasp of Greek mythology:

I've seen just about every werewolf, Dracula and mermaid movie ever made, I have a Medusa magnet on my refrigerator, and the Sphinx of Greek mythology is a role model for her lethal brand of mystery.

So when chimeras reared up in science news, I grabbed my disintegrating copy of Edith Hamilton's "Mythology" to refresh my memory on the Chimera, the she-monster with a lion's head, a goat's body and a serpent's tail: "A fearful creature, great and swift of foot and strong/Whose breath was flame unquenchable."

Ohhh-kay. She wants to make the point that the Greeks saw chimeras as unnatural, but only as a "pre-Darwinian notion". Why? Because she wants to make fun of people who believe that mixing human cells with animals to create "humanzees", among other atrocities. Dowd's prose drips with condescension as she describes the opposition to such laboratory experiments:

The U.S. Patent Office balked at an attempt last year to patent a "humanzee," a human-chimp chimera. But as the Stanford University bioethicist Henry Greely told Ms. Begley: "The centaur has left the barn." ...

While research on chimeras may be valuable, the [NAS] guidelines, in a fit of "Island of Dr. Moreau" queasiness, suggested bans on inserting human embryonic stem cells into an early human embryo, apes or monkeys.

The idea is to avoid animals with human sex cells or brain cells, Mr. Wade wrote. "There is a remote possibility that an animal with eggs made of human cells could mate with an animal bearing human sperm. To avoid human conception in such circumstances, the academy says chimeric animals should not be allowed to mate," he explained. Human cells in an animal brain could also be a problem. As Janet Rowley, a University of Chicago biologist, told a White House ethics panel: "All of us are aware of the concern that we're going to have a human brain in a mouse with a person saying, 'Let me out.' "

So the only reason people might oppose chimeric research with human cells is that they've watched too many bad Michael York films, according to Dowd, instead of the rational ethical questions about creating life forms with highly unpredictable results. Many of us hold human life as sacred -- but Dowd's getting to that eventually.

It turns out that even half-way through her piece, Dowd hasn't gotten to the point of it yet. Next, she makes the claim that the Bush Administration has created its own dangerous chimeras (hypocrites!) by -- how does she put it? -- "injecting the cells of democracy":

President Bush's experiments in Afghanistan and Iraq created his own chimeras, by injecting feudal and tribal societies with the cells of democracy, and blending warring factions and sects. Some of the forces unleashed are promising; others are frightening. ...

The U.S. invasion also spawned a torture scandal, and its own chimeric (alas, not chimerical) blend of former enemies - the Baathists and foreign jihadists - with access to Iraqi weapons caches.

Get it? Bush created a Frankenstein's Monster when he liberated Afghanistan and Iraq from two brutal tyrannies, the latter of which has been conducting genocide on ethnic groups for over twenty years. Just this week we discovered a mass grave of over 1500 Kurdish women and children. But Dowd's argument is that democracy somehow is not only foreign to Arabs, but unnatural -- about as racist an argument that the New York Times has allowed in its editorial pages in decades. And you have to love the part about weapons caches, which obviously refers to the Gray Lady's abortive attempt to smear the 3ID over the al-Qaqaa cache that they claim disappeared into the hands of terrorists, a story thoroughly debunked by other media outlets even as the last week of the presidential campaign came to a close.

And we still haven't gotten to Dowd's point, as it turns out:

The Republican Party is now a chimera, too, a mutant of old guard Republicans, who want government kept out of our lives, and evangelical Christians, who want government to legislate religion into our lives.

But exploiting God for political ends has set off powerful, scary forces in America: a retreat on teaching evolution, most recently in Kansas; fights over sex education, even in the blue states and blue suburbs of Maryland; a demonizing of gays; and a fear of stem cell research, which could lead to more of a "culture of life" than keeping one vegetative woman hooked up to a feeding tube.

Ah, here we go! Dowd thinks that Republicans are the true chimeras, because the party has a wide range of philosophical thought! For some reason, Dowd finds that threatening, instead of the lock-step, no-dissent nature of the Leftists. Perhaps it's a security blanket for weak-minded people such as Dowd to only come into contact with people who completely agree with her. However, the existence of debate and differing views within the Republican Party does not make it a chimera; its tolerance of dissent and openness to debate on most issues gives it strength, just as dissent and debate does for America as a whole.

Dowd isn't as hysterical and incoherent as she used to be. She's actually worse.

UPDATE: Ann Althouse has much more, including patience to refer to the Federalist Papers to mock Dowd's intellectual pretensions.

Has Northern Ireland Chosen A Return To The Troubles?

The fallout from the retreat of Britain's Labour Party from its previously unassailable majority has implications for Northern Ireland and the Good Friday agreement that has kept the Troubles at bay. Tony Blair's political dominance had kept Northern Irish politics firmly fixed on the center, where moderate Unionists governed with some cooperation from moderate Republicans and kept the extremists relegated to the fringes. However, the British election resulted in a reversal, with the moderate Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) losing all but one of its seats. The anti-agreement Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) led by radical Ian Paisley picked up three of the seats, while the moderate republican SDLP took over the South Belfast UUP seat, the first time a republican has represented that district:

The Ulster Unionist party was in meltdown last night after its leader, David Trimble, lost his seat to Ian Paisley's hardline Democratic Unionist party and what was once the biggest party in Northern Ireland was reduced to only one MP.

Mr Trimble, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, had been MP for Upper Bann for 15 years, but lost by more than 5,000 votes, a margin that surprised even the winner, a gospel-singing meat wholesaler, David Simpson. ...

The DUP, now the biggest Northern Ireland party at Westminster, finished with nine seats, saying the unionist people had spoken out against the Good Friday agreement and "pushover unionism".

The DUP leader, Ian Paisley, said Mr Trimble brought the result on himself: "David Trimble took the wrong road."

David Trimble's political career looks finished. He couldn't even hold his own seat in the centenary year of the UUP, a stunning repudiation of several years of peace and relative tranquility in Northern Ireland. He reportedly will consider resigning as UUP leader, which seems almost redundant given the circumstances.

Interestingly, Sinn Fein has suffered no such loss of credibility, despite the involvement of their IRA partners in a brutal, senseless murder and a spectacular bank robbery in the past few months. In fact, SF gained a seat at the expense of the SDLP in Armagh. Gerry Adams, longtime spokesman for the SF and publicly outed as a commander in the IRA just weeks ago, increased his margin of victory in West Belfast by over 4% at the SDLP's expense.

This appears to demonstrate a rejection of the power-sharing arrangement at the heart of the Good Friday agreement by both unionists and republicans. The two extreme parties made significant gains in both seats and overall vote totals, although the SDLP managed to come close to a wash. If free elections give the electorate that best reflects their mood, it would seem that the Northern Irish have once again polarized into absolutist positions. While that does not mean that they have necessarily endorsed a return to active violence, it certainly rejects the only middle ground compromise yet established in the long Ulster conflict.

The lessons that both Paisley and Adams will take from this election are that the people want victory over accommodation. It threatens to reduce the GFA to nothing more than a footnote in the Troubles, since neither man has ever enthusiastically supported the Stormont Assembly structure. If that is borne out in the weeks ahead, the various militias will start feeling the pressure to re-arm themselves and start planning their war operations all over again. Indeed, one can argue that the IRA anticipated this result and started with its earlier armored-car robbery.

With Labour's grip on power slowly fading, its moderating influence in Ulster may well be where it is missed the most. Hopefully, wiser heads will prevail before the bombings and shootings begin.

St. Paul Mourns The Loss Of A Hero

The city of St. Paul lost one of its heroes early this morning when Sgt. Gerald Vick, a two-time Medal of Valor recipient, died in a hail of gunfire while protecting the citizens of our state's capitol. Police have two suspects in custody:

Police said Antonio Alexander Kelly, 27, and Harry Jerome Evans, 32, were being held on probable cause in the shooting of Sgt. Jerry Vick, which happened across the street from Erick's bar about 2:20 a.m.

St. Paul Police Chief John Harrington announced the arrests at 12:10 p.m., saying Kelly was arrested at 3:30 a.m. and Evans was arrested at 10:15 a.m. Evans was covered with mud and appeared to have been hiding.

Vick, a member of the department's vice squad, was pronounced dead at Regions Hospital in St. Paul, Harrington said. Vick had been shot in an alley near 7th and Forest Streets after exchanging shots with two men around 2:20 a.m. The gunmen fled on foot. ...

Apparently, the two suspects were hanging around the bar around 2 a.m., stopping to talk with people, possibly as a prelude to robbing them, authorities said.

Vick and Strong talked with the men and told them to move along. The officers then separated and each went to his own car. When Vick encountered the men near his car, they exchanged a few words before the men reportedly pulled guns and fired several shots at Vick, who was hit several times; Strong returned fire but apparently missed the suspects, who fled on foot.

Any murder of a police officer deals a blow to our community, but in this case it seems particularly cruel. Gerald Vick was one of the men we'd all like protecting us -- brave, caring, and dedicated. Here's the Star-Tribune's description of his service to Minnesotans:

Vick was a well known and highly respected officer, Harrington said.

"Jerry loved what he was doing. Being a cop was phenomenal for Jerry," Harrington said. "He reminds us to never give up that joy for the job. The department's gonna miss the hell out of him."

"I don't think that there is a greater tragedy to befall a community than the loss of a police officer," Mayor Randy Kelly said. "As mayor ... I know I speak for every citizen of St. Paul in expressing our greatest sorrow to Sgt. Vick's family and to his two children."

Vick, 41, was a 16-year veteran of the St. Paul force, Harrington said.

He had received two medals of valor. One came in December 1990 for rescuing a child from a burning home. The other was awarded in 1997, after Vick shot and killed an armed suspect at a crime scene.

Rest in peace, Sgt. Vick. You've earned your rest and your reward, but Minnesota will miss you terribly. Please join me in prayer for his family and friends.

Open Mouth, Insert Foot, Repeat As Desired

As if the Democrats couldn't look more foolish than they already have this session, now Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid has taken to calling George Bush names while the President represents the US at World War II memorials around Europe. Reid called Bush a "loser", in what has to be the oddest case of projection so far this year:

In the course of a discussion on filibusters and Senate rules, Washington's top Democrat gave the 60 juniors a lesson in partisan politics, particularly about the commander in chief. "The man's father is a wonderful human being," Reid said in response to a question about President Bush's policies. "I think this guy is a loser.

"I think President Bush is doing a bad job," he added to a handful of chuckles.

He's a loser, eh? Let's take stock:

A. He beat an incumbent VP for a popular President after two terms of perceived peace and prosperity.

B. He marshaled his own political capital on mid-term elections when supposedly his presence was a liability, and won a majority in the Senate and several house seats.

C. He won his next presidential election despite managing a divisive war and the open hostility of the national news media. He survived a major smear effort by one of the country's biggest news organizations late in the campaign. Not only did he win re-election himself, but he further extended his majorities in both houses of Congress.

Harry Reid wishes he could "lose" like George Bush. He's about to get outfought by a reluctant Bill Frist and watch as Bush's judicial nominees finally get confirmed to the appellate court and the Supreme Court. The real losers are the people who picked Reid and Nancy Pelosi to run the Democratic legislative caucuses.

Reid Wavering On Filibuster?

Has Harry Reid gotten nervous about the upcoming confrontation on judicial confirmations? The AP's David Espo reports that Reid has privately told Republican Senators that he does not plan on endorsing filibusters on Supreme Court nominees except under "extreme" circumstances:

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid has privately told individual Republicans he doesn't intend to block votes on any Supreme Court nominees except in extreme cases, according to officials familiar with the conversations.

At the same time, Reid has declined in private — as well as in public — to offer the type of firm no-filibuster assurance that might help him prevail over Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn. in a struggle over President Bush's conservative court appointments and rules covering future confirmations. ...

"I can never say there will never be a filibuster because I cannot say that," he said recently on the Senate floor. "But I don't think this Senate is in the mood for a number of filibusters."

So far the GOP hasn't bitten on Reid's assurances, and for good reason. Reid wants Republicans to trust his judgment on what he thinks "extreme" means, and he refuses to rule out filibusters or even to give any parameters under which he would endorse one. Given that the Democrats still plan to filibuster the seven nominees that Bush has named to appellate courts, this effort by Reid is as weak as it sounds. It's not a compromise at all, but a "trust me" offer that's laughable on its face.

The fact that Reid feels it necessary to make this effort shows how worried the Democrats have become over the upcoming Byrd Option by Bill Frist. The Senate returns from recess next week and Frist may immediately take up the confirmations of Priscilla Owen and Janice Rogers Brown, probably in that order. When the Democrats attempt to filibuster, as they have promised to do, Frist will appeal to the president of the Senate, VP Dick Cheney, for an interpretation of the Senate filibuster rule as to whether it applies to the Constitutionally mandated duty to provide advice and consent to the Executive. When Cheney rules the filibuster out of order, all it will take to overcome that interpretation will be 50 Senators and Cheney as a tiebreaker -- and both Mitch McConnell and Norm Coleman have assured the GOP that they have the votes to get there.

Reid cannot afford the loss of prestige that such a change will cost him. Nor can he afford to follow through on his threat to shut down the Senate with parliamentary obstructionism without incurring the ghosts of Newt Gingrich and 1995. In fact, such a manuever will only confirm the Democrats as knee-jerk obstructionists, an image which cost them dearly in the 2004 Senate campaign already. He needs to convince enough Republicans to pull away from Frist, but without giving up the option to block judicial nominees at whim. Those two requirements have proved mutually exclusive, which puts us back to where we were when the session began in January.

Now that Frist appears to have toughened up, Reid finds himself with few options except for noncommittal PR manuevers such as this. He may get even more flexible next week, but unless he's willing to come up with something that eliminates the filibuster, he's not saying anything at all worth repeating.

It's An Extremely Claustrophobic World

If you missed Hugh Hewitt's show last night, you missed one of the funniest and strangely compelling endings to a radio broadcast ever. Hugh broadcast his show from Disneyland yesterday as the granddaddy of theme parks celebrates its 50th anniversary this month. Despite being the best political talk show on radio, Hugh likes to spice it up occasionally by switching to fun locales and covering cultural topics -- and when he does, you can expect him to come up with a way to torture his producer, Generalissimo Duane, in some novel and hilarious way ... hilarious to us, of course.

This time, Hugh came up with the fabulous idea of sending Duane through the slow-boat ride, It's A Small World. Those of us who have been to Disneyland on multiple occasions -- I grew up in nearby Cerritos and literally lived next door to it for two periods of my adult life -- know that Small World is only good for two purposes once you're past 8 years of age: putting the smaller kids to sleep at the end of the day, and giving your tired feet a rest.

Neither of these purposes require fifty consecutive trips through the ride, listening to the oh-so-catchy theme song until you're driven crazy by its unbearable cheeriness. However, Duane details on Radioblogger exactly that mission, and how Hugh sadistically finished off what was left of his sanity in the show's final moments. The First Mate and I laughed so hard at Duane's desperation that tears were streaming down our cheeks. (Sorry, Duane, but it was brilliant radio.) He also has pictures, but surprisingly omits the ones where he strangles Hugh in his sleep. Be sure to read the entire post.

Does The Buck Stop At Béliveau?

Michel Béliveau continues his testimony at the Gomery Inquiry today, and it looks like Béliveau may be taking one for the team. Despite testifying that two prominent Adscam operatives had been suspected of running illegal fundraisers by Liberal Party leadership, Béliveau claims that the $300,000 spent from illicit Sponsorship Program money is his responsibility alone:

On Thursday, Mr. Béliveau told the Gomery inquiry how he dealt with the party's financial emergencies by asking for more than $300,000 in cash from people connected to the sponsorship program.

Mr. Béliveau is the first party official to back up in testimony claims that illicit cash payments were used to cover party expenses while Mr. Chrétien was prime minister.

A jittery Mr. Béliveau acted repentant and insisted he acted alone and never informed other Liberal officials. "It was me and no one else. I'm taking the responsibility."

In every political scandal, one person usually tries to shield the leadership from blame by taking it themselves, thus allowing the big fish to claim innocence of any wrongdoing. Here in the States we call it "plausible deniability,", and that's what Béliveau has tried to provide here. In this case that may prove hard to sell. The $300K came from Jacques Corriveau, a close associate of Jean Chrétien, and one would expect that relationship to have more impact on party politics than the one between Béliveau and Corriveau. Put simply, why would Corriveau deal with Béliveau when he has access to Chrétien?

In fact, Béliveau has a history of shady deals involving government money. Andrew Coyne and Angry in GWN both note Béliveau's involvement in flipping Placeteco, a firm for which Béliveau worked, so that Chrétien crony Claude Gauthier could strip the debt from it and force the Canadian government to pay it instead:

In 1998, Mr. Gauthier bought a plastics manufacturer called Placeteco Inc., with the help of a loan from the National Bank. The company was then in bankruptcy proceedings. Yet not long after, the struggling company received a $1.2-million TJF grant. Once again, the Prime Minister's office had intervened, urging bureaucrats in charge of the file, who had expressed reservations about the company's eligibility for assistance, to do "everything legally possible" to see the grant went through. ...

In fact, they did more than that: the money was placed in a secret trust fund, in violation of federal spending rules. The trust fund was managed by Gille Champagne, a fundraiser for Mr. Chrétien. Mr. Champagne then signed the money over to Mr. Gauthier -- who used it to pay back the bank. Indeed, documents revealed that had been the condition on which the loan was made. Yet the condition on which the grant was made was that it be used to "create jobs." When, a short while later, the company went bankrupt, other creditors were aggrieved to learn the bank had been bailed out ahead of them, with public funds. They were perhaps more aggrieved when, thus relieved of its debts, the company was repurchased by Mr. Gauthier.

It's a great way to improve one's financial standing, if one has the friends to make such funding available.

In other testimony, Béliveau also corroborated Jean Brault's testimony regarding the activities of Joe Morselli and Beryl Wajsman. Béliveau testified that their illegal fundraising activities were brought to the attention of Jean Chrétien's chief of staff Percy Downe, but that the Liberal Party, specifically Alfonse Gagliano, continued to use them for Sponsorship Program work. That again connects the Prime Minister's office to the illegal activities of the Liberal Party, a damaging admission from a man who seems intent on protecting the current leadership from the taint of corruption.

The Laptop Follies Continue

Sometimes I have all the luck ...

After getting a good amount of feedback on my laptop problems, as well as reading through some similar issues over at Dean Esmay's, I was able to determine a couple of things about my Toshiba Satellite laptop:

1. An earlier model of the Satellite (the 5005) had almost exactly the same problems as my A65 -- overheating, shutdowns, and slow response from the processor which gets increasingly worse over time. In that case, Toshiba settled a class-action suit from Satellite 5005 owners by giving them $500 each, or a $1500 credit from Toshiba Direct if they returned their computers to Toshiba. Unfortunately, that does not apply to the A65.

2. Toshiba didn't learn much from that costly debacle, if their design of the A65 is any indication, considering my current laptop is a replacement of the defective model I first bought.

3. Like me, Dean bought an extended warranty on his Toshiba Satellite system. Like me, Dean found out that using that warranty means not having a laptop for three to four weeks. I have a desktop, but for blogging as much as I do, the laptop is an absolute requirement.

4. In other words, Toshiba may not be the best choice for anyone who wants a reliable product, which is the polite way of saying "it sucks".

In an effort to correct the problem myself after dinner last night, I wound up using my Oreck handheld vacuum cleaner -- the one that David Oreck uses to pick up a bowling ball in his TV ads -- to try cleaning it out. I vacuumed through the fan first, them reversed the vacuum and blew through the heat-sink vent in the back. This disgorged a large amount of dust back through the fan assembly, so I repeated the procedure a few times. After spending a half-hour with the vacuum, I decided to power it up to see if any progress had been made.

That's when I found out my Qwest DSL was off line, which it was until early this morning.

However, so far today it appears as if the problems have abated. I'm not losing any performance at all so far, and the fan hasn't even kicked into high gear once. (It had been running high for a while.) While I still have some other issues with the system, notably the 30-minute battery life when the WiFi is turned on, at least it looks like I can rely on it to stay powered up.

Thanks to all of you who provided me such great feedback on laptops yesterday. I especially loved all the "Buy an Apple!" e-mails and comments I got. You guys just don't give up, do you? I'd actually considered it when I bought the Toshiba, but my desktop is a PC and I network with it and other machines in my house. Using an Apple on a Microsoft network isn't impossible, but it's more work than I want to do, especially given the generally higher costs of the Power Books.

I'll eventually buy another laptop and keep the Toshiba as a spare. I have other projects that need my attention and funding before I can do that, like a family vacation this summer and subsidizing the Little Admiral's upcoming new digs. For those of you who offered to get me good pricing on other machines, I may be calling on you in the near future to see what we can arrange. In the meantime, I'll keep my Oreck vacuum handy as an essential blogging tool. (Your jokes about this admission should go directly into the comments section ...)

AIPAC Got Top Secret/Codeword Information

Michelle Malkin has been following the case of Larry Franklin, who had been accused of stealing classified information on Iran from his post at the Office of Special Plans and passing it to AIPAC, a pro-Israeli group. This case has received little fanfare from the media and the blogosphere, probably in part because of the Sandy Berger case and the strange unwillingness on the part of the government to aggressively pursue Berger's violations, especially before the election.

However, Michelle points out a Newsday report from yesterday which shows why the Franklin case should be making more of a splash. It turns out that not only was the material classified, it actually had one of the highest possible classifications -- Top Secret/Compartmentalized, also known as Codeword classification, meaning that the information directly impacts the national security of the United States:

An analyst in a controversial Pentagon intelligence office was charged yesterday with passing top-secret information to two staff members of a pro-Israeli lobbying group here.

Charged was Larry Franklin, an Iran specialist who worked in the Office of Special Plans, established by Pentagon Undersecretary Douglas Feith in order to give Pentagon civilians an independent source of intelligence that could bolster the case for war with Iraq.

He was charged with passing highly classified information about potential attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq to two individuals identified by sources as staff members of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in June 2003, shortly after the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

It was not clear yesterday whether the information was passed on to Israel. Intelligence sources said the classification - Top Secret Sensitive Compartmented Information - was often used to protect information from electronic surveillance where disclosure might tip off a foreign government that its communications were being monitored.

But the involvement of Feith's intelligence office and the public affairs committee - the premier pro-Israel lobbying group here and one of the city's largest lobbies - made the charges particularly sensitive.

I don't care if the documents were leaked by a Medal of Honor winner to Tony Blair himself -- releasing TS/C information to any outside source is by definition espionage and should result in the strongest possible government response. In this case, it appears that Franklin followed the path of Jonathan Pollard, who passed along highly classified information to Israel. Pollard's rightly serving a life sentence for carrying out his own notion of foreign policy. Even if the information never went any further than AIPAC, Franklin committed a clear and jaw-dropping crime, if these allegations can be proven.

Those of us who were outraged by Berger's destruction of top-secret documents should be just as outraged over these developments in the Franklin case. Anyone who works with classified information at any level understands the consequences of unauthorized transmission; for those who work at spook-level with codeword classifications, those consequences are continually reiterated. If guilty, Franklin knew exactly what he was doing, and deserves no mercy or sympathy on the premise of helping out an ally of the US. Only the people Constitutionally in charge of the government (IOW, the President) makes those decisions.

Keep up with this story at Michelle's blog as it develops, but don't let hers be the only voice calling for immediate action against everyone involved in this security breach.

Congratulations, Mr. Blair

It didn't exactly equate to smooth sailing, but Tony Blair can enjoy a glass of champagne in celebration of his third consecutive term as Prime Minister today after securing a majority win for his Labour Party. While the Conservatives ate into that majority by creating a swing of almost a hundred seats, Blair still has a significant margin of 66 seats despite worries that the Iraq War might force Labour to govern from a minority. Blair focused on the positive as he announced his intention to form the new government:

Tony Blair has said that he has "listened" to the British public and has a clear idea of what they want for Labour's historic third term in power.

Mr Blair spoke outside Number 10 after visiting Buckingham Palace, where the Queen asked him to form a new Government, following the election victory. ...

"The Queen has asked me to form a new government which I will do. It's a tremendous honour and a privilege," Mr Balir said.

He told the press gathered outside Downing Street that he had "listened and learned" and his Government would now "focus relentlessly" on the priorities of the British people.

He promised "a radical programme of legislation" and said he would place particular priority on re-establishing respect in classrooms and on the streets.

Mr Blair had earlier acknowledged that Iraq had been a "divisive" issue, but called on the country to unite.

"It is clear that the British people wanted the return of a Labour Government, but with a reduced majority. We have to respond to that sensibly and wisely and responsibly."

Despite a sense of momentum swinging back towards the Tories and a respectable election result, Conservative leader Michael Howard shocked Britons by resigning his post as party leader after failing to topple the popular Blair:

Michael Howard, the Conservative leader, has announced that he is to step down from his position "sooner rather than later", and that he will not lead the party at the next election.

Mr Howard had conceded defeat in the general election at about 4.15am, saying that his party had made "a significant step towards recovery" after a strong showing in the polls.

But speaking in Putney, taken back from Labour last night by Justine Greening, he said that he would step aside when "the party has had the opportunity to consider whether it wishes to change the rules governing the choice of his successor".

Mr Howard said that he was now 63 and that by the next election he would be too old to lead the party.

Howard made a few foolish statements in the campaign's final days about accepting nothing less than total victory over Labour as anything but a defeat. Trying to rally a party from a 166-seat deficit in one election after the sitting government successfully prosecuted a war is and should be a monumental task, and not one for breezy predictions or standard-setting. Having said it, though, Howard made it difficult to continue his leadership in the absence of that specific result.

In fact, Howard may be right in resigning anyway. After initially supporting the Iraq War, Howard tried to beat Blair over the head with it, issuing contradictory and confusing blasts about supporting the effort but decrying the "lies" that led to it. Howard never made clear why he supported the war effort if he felt that Blair based it on lies, nor did he specifically show that Blair lied about Iraq at all. Howard basically absorbed the arguments of the radical anti-war crowd and grafted them onto the Conservative platform, a strange operation that may have attracted a few more votes but gave most Britons little confidence in Howard's ability to govern.

Blair now has a mandate to continue his course in Iraq, if he so chooses. The worst of Iraq is behind him, and the next election could be as far off as 2009. It gives him a freedom to act that did not exist in the previous few months, given the tight victory that he achieved last night. Meanwhile, the Tories have an opportunity to select a leader with better political skills and a clearer message to match up against Labour in the next cycle. All of these look like good news for Britain, and good news for the US.

UPDATE: Mark Steyn live-blogged the elections, and gives us his spot-on analysis:

9.30am BST Yes, Labour's 60-65 majority was achieved with only 36% of the vote - an all-time low for a winning party in Britain. That reflects an election in which the traditional party labels didn't quite capture the real divisions in the electorate. Nonetheless, I'd say it's worse news for the Tories - not just because it's an unprecedented third consecutive loss for the party but because such recovery as there was was so pathetic. In the days before the election, a lot of Tories told me that the real measure of their success was whether and by how much they'd break the 200-seat barrier. And even that was a conscious effort to lower expectations. The Conservatives are presently on 195 seats. That would have been regarded as a disaster for Thatcher, Major or even William Hague, and swift resignation would have followed. The Tory leadership's ability to spin this as a great "improvement" is confirmation of just how shrivelled the modern British Conservative Party really is.

And three hours later, Howard resigned. Coincidence, or prescience? I'm opting for the latter, having followed Steyn for quite some time. Be sure to read the rest of his live-blog.

Will Liberals Refuse To Leave?

The Liberals may not leave office willingly if a no-confidence vote tied to a budget amendment succeeds, according to Liberal House leader Tony Valeri. The Globe and Mail reports that the Liberals intend on arguing that a failure on a budgetary procedural motion cannot equate to a no-confidence motion, making it more difficult for the Conservatives to bring down Paul Martin's government:

The House of Commons will vote within two weeks on a motion calling on the government to resign after the Speaker of the House of Commons ruled against Liberal attempts to scuttle the vote.

But government House Leader Tony Valeri announced the Liberals would not call an election should they lose that vote, because they don't consider it one of confidence.

That move was greeted with anger by the Conservatives and the Bloc Québécois.

Conservative House Leader Jay Hill raised the spectre of involving Governor-General Adrienne Clarkson, saying she would likely express her concern to Prime Minister Paul Martin if the Liberals ignored a defeat on such a motion.

The Liberals intend on pulling out every stop to keep themselves in power, apparently up to and including a basic disregard for protocol. They stripped the Tories of their Opposition Days to keep them from tabling a straight no-confidence motion, although Harper managed to get one back on May 19th, which puts the election squarely in the middle of summer. Now they claim that an amendment that passes the House which clearly and explicitly calls for the government to resign -- over a budget issue, which actually plays into Liberal electoral plans -- does not amount to a loss of confidence.

Technically and procedurally, they can make that argument. However, politically speaking, it sounds like a stupid and grasping way to deny people fresh elections after all of the revelations of corruption and electoral fraud coming from the Gomery Inquiry. Liberals outside of Martin's circle, who want to avoid elections more to keep themselves safer from prosecution, have to ask themselves if playing Clintonist word games about the definition of "confidence" really helps their party disassociate itself from the stench of the money-laundering conspiracy their party used to grasp power in the first place. It may keep elections at bay for a few weeks or even months, but the Gomery testimony appears to build a more coherent narrative depicting systemic Liberal corruption, and looks less and less like Martin's characterization of a few bad apples skimming the government till.

At some point, the Liberals have to ask themselves which is more important: hanging onto power now in order to protect the guilty, or fresh elections (in which they still stand a chance of winning) and an opportunity to purge Liberal leadership of the corrupt elements which have humiliated the party of late. If the reaction of Tony Valeri gives any indication, it appears that the Liberals in the end will stand only for a greedy grasp on the levers of power and closing ranks to cover up for the corrupt. In that case, the Liberals may even defy a clear no-confidence motion, which will rupture Canadian politics altogether and may result in the disintegration of the federation in the long run.

Liberals In Quebec: Laissez Les Bon Temps Rouler

The Globe and Mail reports today that Liberal Party activists channeled over $300,000 in illegal cash drawn from Adscam sources into electoral efforts in Quebec. An upcoming Gomery witness has indicated that the money came from Chrétien crony Jacques Corriveau, a familiar power broker in the Sponsorship Program scandal:

Senior Liberal organizers allegedly showered about $300,000 in cash on Quebec ridings held by the opposition during the 1997 federal election campaign, The Globe and Mail has learned.

Michel Béliveau, a close supporter of former prime minister Jean Chrétien, made the allegation in preliminary interviews with members of the Gomery inquiry into the sponsorship program.

Mr. Béliveau is scheduled to testify today about allegedly receiving the cash from Jacques Corriveau, another Liberal supporter and close friend of Mr. Chrétien, who got millions through the sponsorship program in the 1990s.

The testimony would be the first by a Liberal official describing illicit cash transactions in contravention of Canada's electoral laws. It builds on allegations from Jean Brault, former president of Groupaction Marketing Inc., who told the inquiry of secret payments to Liberal officials in the 1990s and early 2000s -- including payments to Mr. Corriveau he was told were "for the cause."

If Béliveau testifies as predicted, it will mark the first real threads of electoral fraud perpetrated by the Liberals through the Adscam monies. So far, the Gomery Inquiry has documented plenty of personal enrichment at the expense of the Canadian taxpayers, and even Liberal Party featherbedding at favored ad agencies, but this will demonstrate that the primary purpose of Adscam was to get unregulated cash into the hands of Liberal Party leaders in order to gain an unfair, and unregulated, advantage over the other parties.

Béliveau's recollection that he received the money from Corriveau and from provincial Liberal minister Marc-Yvan Cote makes it more difficult for Martin to pretend that a small, breakaway contingent of Liberal ministers created the entire Adscam issue. That cash went directly to ridings in Quebec held by other parties and which chronically ran short on cash for the Liberals. The sudden infusion of a large amount of money had to be noticed by many within the party structure, especially since funds weren't coming from any other source. That would appear to implicate a large portion of the Liberal Party in Quebec with responsibility to keep the books for election contributions and outlays, and not just a couple of renegade Grits playing cowboy.

The picture keeps getting more focused even as the conspiracies continue to widen.

UPDATE: Had to fix the title -- I used the second person plural conjugation for 'rouler' instead of the infinitive. Thanks to CQ reader Mitch for reminding me of my high-school French. Carol Stein Armstrong, my late and much-respected Frech teacher, thanks you as well.

Palestinians To The Polls, To Embrace Hamas

To emphasize a point I made earlier today, the AP reports that Palestinians have begun voting in municipal elections across most of the territories today -- and are expected to deal the so-called moderates of Fatah a blow. Election observers expect a big mandate for Hamas, and even PA president Mahmoud Abbas tried to cut a deal with the terror organization to delay mid-summer parliamentary elections in the face of withering public support for Fatah:

Palestinians voted for local governments in dozens of towns and villages across the West Bank and Gaza Strip on Thursday in a contest that is expected to boost the Islamic militant group Hamas and could foreshadow results of parliamentary elections in July.

The ruling Fatah party of late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, plagued by allegations of corruption after 10 years in power, is increasingly concerned Hamas will rout it in local voting and in the national election.

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas recently proposed to Hamas to delay the parliament vote until the end of the year in exchange for bringing the opposition group into his Cabinet now, senior Hamas officials said Thursday. Hassan Yousef, a Hamas leader in the West Bank, said the group rejected the offer.

Another bad sign for Fatah is the heavy voter turnout, as opposed to the embarassingly light turnout for the presidential election, which Hamas boycotted. It took the dismantling of identification processes and a two-hour repeat run on polling stations by Fatah members to get the turnout in January's election from 30% to 70%. In contrast, 35% of Palestinians had already voted in the first few hours of these elections, and the turnout may exceed that of the bogus presidential results.

The AP attempts to spin this as a vote on local issues, not on international politics or war. It sounds similar to the old canard that Germans supported the Nazis because the trains ran on time. If the AP analysis held water, then Abbas would not be playing Monty Hall with Hamas, trying to get them to join his Cabinet and push off July's parliamentary elections, which will almost certainly result in strong Hamas domination. Abbas knows this and understands what it means -- the marginalization of Fatah and the succession to power of the really fanatical terrorists (as opposed to the mainstream terrorists of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade).

When given the choice at the ballot box, the Palestinian electorate has consistently chosen terrorism and war over negotiation and peace. They still want to wipe Israel off the map. When negotiation and peace start winning elections in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, then people like Abbas will be able to disarm the terrorists and reach a peace accord with Israel. Until that day, a series of temporary cease-fires will be the best anyone can do.

Jerry Lewis: Sinatra Was Mob Bagman

An upcoming biography of Frank Sinatra includes recollections from Jerry Lewis that appears to confirm the rumors of Sinatra's involvement in Mafia business. The Guardian (UK) reports that Lewis offers an anecdote revealing that Sinatra nearly got caught while muling $3.5 million through New York customs in the 1940s:

In an interview for a new biography of Sinatra, Lewis is quoted as saying of the Rat Pack member: "He volunteered to be a messenger for them. And he almost got caught once ... in New York."

As he passed through customs, Lewis says, Sinatra was stopped by officials who started to open the suitcase he was carrying. Inside, says Lewis, were notes to the value of "three and a half million in 50s". But the customs officers were distracted by the crowds of people trying to catch a glimpse of the singer and aborted their search.

Had they not, claims Lewis, "we would never have heard of him again".

Sinatra had long been suspected of such ties to organized crime by American law-enforcement agencies, especially by the FBI and J. Edgar Hoover. His Las Vegas holdings intertwined with known mob bosses in an era where such connections only existed by invitation, and Sinatra socialized with such high-profile Mafia figures as Sam Giancana and Lucky Luciano. However, Sinatra and his people have always denied any illegal activity took place as a result of these associations, claiming that Sinatra viewed the bosses only as devoted fans of his music.

Having Jerry Lewis go on record with such stories is quite a coup for Robbyn Swan and Anthony Summers. Sinatra's contemporaries have always remained mum on the subject out of respect for Sinatra, or perhaps for other reasons. The Guardian reports that other sources have further corroboration of Sinatra's Mafia aspirations, practically guaranteeing that the book will fly off of bookshelves once published. As for me, I'll pass. I never really understood the reverence displayed for Sinatra, who may have been a sensation in his youth but whose expert style couldn't quite cover up a weak voice and an ever-present arrogance. At least now we know the source for the latter.

Palestinians Refuse To Disarm Terrorists

For those who keep thinking that the Mahmoud Abbas era of Palestinian politics has anything new to offer, the news keeps offering one rebuttal after another. Reuters reports today that key Palestinian Authority security figures have no intention of disarming terrorists within Gaza or the West Bank, despite the roadmap initiatives for peace and any pledges made by Abbas to the Israelis:

The Palestinian Authority reiterated Wednesday it had no intention of disarming militants despite constant Israeli calls for such a move and a recent pledge to crack down on unlicensed weapons.

The announcement came amid growing friction between armed factions and security forces following the arrest of two Hamas men after a gunfight Monday night. The militants were accused of planning to attack Israel in defiance of a cease-fire.

"We have no intention of withdrawing arms of resistance," Rashid Abu Shbak, the head of the internal Preventive Security Service, told a news conference in Gaza.

One of the key agreements between the various parties involved in arranging for a Palestinian state was that the PA had to get control of security within its territories, and in order to do that, the various militias (terrorist groups) had to be disarmed. In addition, those militias that the PA wished to transform into a state security system would have to come under complete PA control. Now the PA has announced that it has no intention of fulfilling that mandate.

I have written in the past about the Palestinian triangulation strategy, or the three-step, in which one or two of the main players of force agree to cease-fires but a third balks. This allows them to continue attacks on Israelis until they get the counterattack that "justifies" further terrorism from all three. Disarming the militias makes it almost impossible to use this highly successful political strategy in the future.

It also points out the domestic politics in play. One CQ reader took me to task the other day for writing that Palestinians don't desire peace, saying that I painted them with too broad a brush. Well, the Palestinians keep electing Hamas in overwhelming numbers, first by over 65% of the vote in February civic elections and possibly even higher numbers later this month, if the polling bears out. The PA doesn't operate in a political vacuum; if the Palestinians didn't support the terrorists, they'd already have disarmed them, or banished them altogether from the territories. It's a conundrum that has effectively trapped the few Palestinians in the PA who really want a negotiated solution. They've lionized the people who kill women and children in buses and shopping malls for so long that they created an overwhelming political obstacle to getting rid of them now.

Notice, however, that the PA does have some rules for use of weaponry that they're willing to impose on terrorists:

Abu Shbak said militants must still honor their commitment to the cease-fire agreed by President Mahmoud Abbas and should not take their weapons out in public.

"Arms of resistance should not be displayed in streets. Arms of resistance should not be used in family feuds. Arms of resistance should not kill a woman who goes out with her fiance," he said, referring to the recent killing by two Hamas militants of a woman they accused of immoral behavior.

Shbak fails to mention that terrorists should not shoot or attack Israeli citizens -- just that they shouldn't let their weapons be seen on the way to or from such an attack. This statement is truly emblematic of the Palestinian commitment to peaceful co-existence with Israel.

Confessions Of A Frustrated Blogger

I'd love to post more tonight, but my Toshiba Satellite laptop has decided to start shutting itself down every hour or so, making detailed research into the Gomery testimony almost impossible. I have an extended warranty on it, but that would require me to send it in for repairs, and it would likely take three or four weeks to get it back. I haven't been terribly enamored of this machine since I bought it, and I'm liking it less and less as I go along.

I'll have to get back to working on it tomorrow. In the meantime, I'll be watching The Last Of The Mohicans, the terrific 1992 Daniel Day-Lewis version with one of the best film scores ever. I may have more access to the redacted Guité testimony by then. If not, I'll continue to work on some of the more interesting, unreported aspects of his testimony instead.

Guité Testimony Redacted On Personal Loan (Banned Testimony)

With the publication ban mostly lifted on Chuck Guité's testimony at the Gomery Inquiry after a dizzying series of judicial rulings this afternoon, the only question that remains is what has been withheld from the public. After spending a few hours working through the first two days of testimony, it appears that the only part of Guité's testimony still subject to the ban involves a personal loan given to the lobbyist by Groupaction and Jean Brault. In fact, although the repayment came due in April 2002, Guité never paid it back -- and he continued to invoice Groupaction for his work.

This strange arrangement caught the attention of the inquiry:

MR. ROY: Okay. On April 19, 2001, you borrowed a sum of $25,000 from a company owned by Groupaction, or a part of the Groupaction Group of Companies called Alexsim Inc. Société Immobilière, and I am referring now to pages 293, 294 and 295. ...

This is a demand loan dated April 19, 2001 for $25,000 signed by you, which provides for reimbursement in one year, on/or before April 19, 2002. It carries a rate of interest or carries interest at the rate of 2 per cent a year -- 3 per cent, sorry. And at page -- the following page is the cheque payable to you for $25,000, dated April 19, and at page 295, the deposit slip in your bank account with CIBC on April 20 for $25,000. ...

Now, in April of 2001, you had already started to receive some fairly -- you had been paid by Groupaction $76,000, and I am at page 41. Between August '99 and July 2000, you had received $76,000.

In other words, Guité had already collected much more than the loan amount in fees charged to government contract work, pulling traceable cash out of Jean Brault's companies -- and taxable income. Guité makes it clear that he needed the cash for buying a new boat, and wanted to avoid any tax liability:

MR. GUITÉ: My boat had been sold the year before [to Paul Coffin -- CE]. So when we got back home after making the offer on this boat, this new boat, I had to have, I forget, $55,000 or $60,000 on May 3rd when they were going to deliver the boat and the rest we financed with our bank.

I could have taken $25,000 out of our company, but I was taking no revenue out of the company because of my pension and the amount of tax I would have paid. If I took $25,000 out of my company, our company, I would have probably paid half of it in income tax. If my wife would have taken out, it would have been the same because the money that I was making at that time with the company, I was paying my wife a salary, a fairly good salary. So taking another $25,000 out of the company, either on my income or her income, would not have been wise to do that.

Instead, he had Brault and his Groupaction act as a bridge financier, as Roy put it, and simply forgot to pay back the loan on time. Nor has Guité paid any interest at all on the loan, even at the modest 3% Brault charged him. His faulty memory, however, did not extend to the fees he continued to collect from Brault despite his default on the Groupaction loan:

MR. ROY: Okay. Now, am I correct in saying that this 20 loan has not been reimbursed?

MR. GUITÉ: It has not been reimbursed and we all know the reasons why. I cannot talk to Mr. Brault. My -- I wouldn’t say my commitment -- my responsibility, once we can talk to each other, that loan has to be paid. It is a loan.

MR. ROY: And how come no interest has been paid? You can pay interest without talking to ---

MR. GUITÉ: Well, when I approach ---

MR. ROY: --- the lender?
MR. GUITÉ: --- Mr. Brault, whenever I can, Mr. Brault may say “Look, it is $25,000, 3 per cent per annum. You are now a year a half overdue; it is $28,000, whatever it is.” But I will respect that loan when the time permits.

MR. ROY: But you continued to, based on -- you continued to invoice Groupaction in 2001 and 2002. You sent a bill for $27,000 in October 2001 and a bill for $23,125 in January of 2002. Was there any reason why no interest was paid in the meantime on the loan?

MR. GUITÉ: I don’t know. Those invoices have nothing to do with the loan [emphasis mine -- CE].

So let's make sure everyone is clear on this. Brault works through Chuck Guité in order to make sure that he gets as much access to government contracts through the former Liberal minister. He pays Guité hundreds of thousands of dollars, income liable for taxation. Suddenly Guité asks for a loan based on a deal closing that will result in large fees coming from Groupaction so that he can buy a boat without incurring some sort of capital-gains tax, and Brault gives him another $25,000 for a year at below-market interest. (Brault could have made more money opening a savings account.) Not only did Guité skip paying Brault even the interest due on the loan, however, he continued to demand fees from Groupaction far exceeding the amount of the loan.

Does it occur to anyone that this money not only avoided taxes, but also could easily have avoided scrutiny as a political payoff?

At any rate, the Canadian taxman will certainly take notice of this money now. It looks like Guité may need to file an amended tax return for 2001 sometime in the next few months.

Guité: Gagliano Assured Gov't Revenue For Ad Agency

Here's a taste of what one can expect to read now that the publication ban has been lifted on Chuck Guité's testimony, just minutes after I received a good deal of it from a covert source. (UPDATE: The ban is back in place now.) Guité testified about the purchase of Vickers & Benson by American interests and how the buyers had concerns about maintaining the government revenue streams that existed at the time. Guité acknowledged that the contracts meant millions of dollars to V&B and that without some sort of guarantee, the sale might fall through. Guité knew who to call-- Alfonse Gagliano, who possibly reached out to Paul Martin:

CG: And then, not to take too much time, the same applies as we talked about this morning; there has to be a Canadian entity within V&B to maintain that. So I met with the V&B people. I discussed it with them and we had probably, I would estimate five, six, seven phone calls between Toronto –– sometimes I was in Toronto; sometimes I was at home –– and the buyer in the States to assure them that if this is done, you will maintain the Canadian business. …

ROY: So how were you able to give comfort to the parties that the apple cart would not be upset and that the acquirer could expect basically the same revenue stream generated from government business?

CG: Because I met with Mr. Gagliano. …

ROY: What exactly did you tell him and what did you get by way of an answer?

CG: I told him what was happening, and I wanted assurance that the volume of business that V&B had from the government would be maintained. We probably talked about it and so forth, and he said “I will look after that.” So I don’t -- if he spoke to Mr. Manley -- I think he was at Tourism then ---

ROY: He was responsible for Tourism Canada ---

CG: --- and the Bank ---

ROY: --- as Minister of Industry.

CG: And I think Mr. Martin was at the Bank at that time.

ROY: In 2000?

CG: Yes, I would think so.

ROY: He was Minister of Finance?

CG: Minister of Finance.

ROY: Yes.

CG: And I got a call from Pierre Tremblay about a week later.

ROY: Saying what?

CG: Saying that “It will be done.”

ROY: What will be done?

CG: The interfe -- I don’t want to use that word -- the Minister had spoken to both ministers and the volume of business would be maintained.

ROY: How could such an assurance be given if we are to start from the premise or operate from the premise that all advertising contracts are let out after a competition process?

CG: I think that the system could delay it.

ROY: Could delay what?

CG: The competition. It has been done in the past.

ROY: But short of that, what else can be done?

CG: Re-compete it and have V&B win it again.

ROY: In other words, arrange for V&B to win the competition?

CG: Definitely.

So Chuck Guité went to the Liberal Party fixer, Alfonse Gagliano, who had Pierre Tremblay get back to Guité and assure him that the American buyers of V&B would lose no money -- maximizing V&B's sale price. Guité understood that the Liberals could delay or even put the fix in for competitive bids, ensuring that only those firms which had the proper connections would get government contracts.

I'll be reviewing the testimony today and tonight and writing new posts as I go. Keep checking back.

UPDATE: Paul Martin's involvement in this episode did not escape notice of the Globe and Mail. Tu Thanh Ha reported it for Canadian readers, along with the startled PM's denial through his spokesman:

Martin spokesman Scott Reid dismissed the testimony as a third-hand — and false — allegation.

"The Prime Minister never involved himself in the contracting process — never involved himself in the determination of contract awards. Period," Mr. Reid told The Canadian Press.

The Conservatives, meanwhile, jumped all over the testimony from Mr. Guité.

Tory MP Jason Kenney said the Prime Minister "has not been telling the whole truth" when he says he was unaware of what was going on in the 1990s.

"He was just some sort of hostage in this scandalous affair? Canadians don't buy it. Paul Martin's integrity is in tatters."

It seems that way, at least for now. Will Martin go on national TV again?

Guité Testimony Upcoming On CQ

Thanks to a new source, I have received an extensive amount of the testimony given by Chuck Guité last Thursday and Friday under the publication ban. This testimony will take me hours to review for content, so please bear with me. I will start posting excerpts and analyses of what I've read tonight, when I have some time to properly review the material. Keep checking back here for updates.

GOP: Pelosi Silence On Democratic Ethics Issues 'Hypocritical'

After spending weeks screeching about the alleged ethical abuses of Republican Whip Tom DeLay, Congressional Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi suddenly came down with a case of laryngitis when several Democrats were found to have the same problems as DeLay in their travel arrangements. The GOP now wants Pelosi to back the same investigations for these Democrats as she demanded for DeLay, and calls her silence "hypocritical":

House Republicans called Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi a hypocrite yesterday for not demanding investigations into new ethics questions that have arisen about the travel of her fellow Democrats.

"She demanded an investigation into [Majority Leader] Tom DeLay, but hasn't said a word about these Democrats who have done the same thing," said Rep. Patrick T. McHenry, North Carolina Republican. "If she doesn't call for investigations into her fellow Democrats, then it's clear she's being a hypocrite."

Republicans are wondering why the California representative won't ask for investigations into Democratic Reps. Norm Dicks of Washington, Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, James E. Clyburn of South Carolina and Neil Abercrombie of Hawaii, all of whom face questions about accepting travel paid for by lobbyists.

"As we expressed in earlier letters, Madame Leader, it appears more and more that your repeated calls for an investigation of Mr. DeLay are more driven by politics than by any real concern for the House rules," Mr. McHenry, with two other Republicans, wrote in a letter to Mrs. Pelosi yesterday.

Pelosi and the other House Democrats celebrated what they saw as a key political victory when the GOP rolled back rules changes for ethics investigations. They thought that Democratic efforts to paint Republicans as corrupt had worked and that they had a clear path to railroad DeLay out of the GOP leadership, if not Congress altogether. However, the Republicans apparently used their time wisely and did some investigations of their own -- and hit pay dirt on a number of Pelosi's colleagues.

Now the Democrats have been hoisted upon their own petard. They can't very well claim the moral high ground on ethics if they give their own members a pass. Either they will have to drop the efforts against DeLay, or they will have to sacrifice a number of their own representatives to pursue the GOP leader. With the number of people who fall under the bar Pelosi set increasing by the day, the House itself will lose interest in the whole thing ... and Pelosi may find herself out of leadership herself.

Expect this whole ethics issue to quietly go away, replaced by other issues that don't risk the Pyrrhic victory that now stares Pelosi in the face.

It's A Family Affair

Iraqi security forces captured Saddam's nephew over the last few days near Tikrit, where he had been financing and directing the ex-Ba'athist insurgency. Ayman Sabawi is the son of Sabawi Ibrahim al-Hassan, the captured half-brother of Saddam who wound up in Iraqi hands after Syria turned him over to Baghdad.

Sabawi himself has been a naughty boy. He and a contingent of his fellow dead-enders got caught red-handed with a cache of arms, apparently trying to carry on the work of his father and uncle. No word on whether he holed up in an unusued latrine hole like Uncle Saddam before surrendering to the countrymen he tried so desperately to kill in increasingly cowardly ways.

Senior AQ Leader Arrested In Pakistan

The Pakistanis arrested a senior al-Qaeda leader who not only ran the terrorist network in Pakistan but also allegedly masterminded two assassination attempts on Pervez Musharraf. Abu Farraj al-Libbi has been held for several days by security forces, who held off on announcing his arrest until this morning:

Pakistani security forces have arrested the al Qaeda mastermind who planned assassination attempts against President Pervez Musharraf, Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said on Wednesday. ...

Al-Libbi, a native of Libya who authorities say is a close associate of terror mastermind Osama bin Laden and acted as al Qaeda's operational chief in Pakistan, was arrested earlier this week, Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed told The Associated Press. ...

Al-Libbi is accused of masterminding two bombings against President Gen. Pervez Musharraf in December 2003. The military leader escaped injury but 17 others were killed in one of the attacks.

He is accused of taking over as al Qaeda's operational chief in Pakistan after the March 1, 2003, arrest of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the terror network's alleged number three. Mohammed was later handed over to U.S. custody and his whereabouts are unknown.

The Pakistanis captured al-Libbi after a shootout in their northwest provinces, an indication that Musharraf's efforts to woo the chieftains of the area may be paying off. One cannot doubt the pleasure Musharraf will have in trying the man most responsible for the twin assassination attempts on his life, although hopefully the Pakistanis can get some decent intelligence information from him and his partner first.

Musharraf will not likely share al-Libbi with the Americans, even though he has turned over more than 700 suspected AQ operatives to us since 2001. The FBI doesn't have al-Libbi on its wanted list, and given the issues involved with the Pakistani operations al-Libbi ran, we're unlikely to develop a late interest in him at Musharraf's expense.

Bush Uses Russian Visit To Drop In On Some Nearby Friends

There are times when one has to feel a bit of sympathy for Vladimir Putin. The beleagured Russian president scored a diplomatic triumph when he successfully arranged to have George Bush and other world leaders visit Moscow for the sixtieth anniversary of the end of the European phase of World War II this week. However, Bush has changed the itinerary for his travel to include visits to former Soviet republics Georgia and Latvia to celebrate the democracy movements flourishing on Russia's border, and Bush can claim that Putin practically forced him to do so:

President Bush's attendance, by the side of Russian President Vladimir Putin, at next week's Red Square parade celebrating the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe is meant to recall the great wartime alliance that defeated Nazi Germany.

It's a coup for Putin. But Bush is making stops on the way to Moscow and back that are much less pleasing to the Russian leader. The president starts and ends his trip in ex-Soviet republics, Latvia and Georgia, that will be the backdrops for rhetoric on the power of democracy.

Bookending his Russia stay with visits to two countries with continuing frictions with their enormous neighbor has Bush walking a diplomatic tightrope. He must showcase the young democracies on Moscow's doorstep without further inflaming an already tense U.S.-Russia relationship, where cooperation is needed on challenges like North Korea and Iran.

Experts on Russia say Bush couldn't do it any other way. With the American president venturing into the neighborhood for the Moscow ceremony and its inevitable references to the Soviet Union's brutal wartime dictator, Josef Stalin, he had no choice but also to support loudly a couple of the burgeoning democracies that emerged from the failed U.S.S.R..

"It's actually quite cleverly planned. It would be disastrous for him to only go to Moscow," said Anders Aslund, the director of the Russia and Eurasian program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The mission to Latvia has triply sensitive connotations, since Bush will meet with all three Baltic leaders. Estonian and Lithuanian leadership have refused to attend the Moscow ceremonies because of Putin's unwillingness to acknowledge the illegality of the Soviet annexation of their countries in the days after Stalin's victory over the Germans. They do not see Soviet victories as events to celebrate, but simply as markers of one foreign dictator driving another out of their country. Their absence from the Kremlin parades was meant to embarass Putin, and Bush's meeting with them prior to the celebration will only emphasize that.

Georgia remains an open issue for Putin as well. Russian troops still occupy part of Georgia despite its independence and well after the rejection of Kremlin puppet Eduard Shevardnadze. Georgians have little use for Vladimir Putin and will ensure that Bush gets a rousing reception in Tbilisi, the flashpoint of the democracy movement.

However, Putin's invitation left Bush little choice but to make some acknowledgment of the democratic movements in the area. Domestically, ignoring all of the former satellite states in favor of making Putin feel good would put Bush on the defensive regarding his foreign policy goals of pushing democratization, and rightly so. Overseas, it would have been a signal that Bush only meant his inaugural speech as pretty words, but that Scowcroftian realpolitik had reasserted itself in American policy. Obviously Bush could tolerate neither.

Putin will get his big parade for V-E Day. He'd better enjoy it; the price tag will be enormous.

Guardian: The Neocons May Have Been Right After All

It isn't often that one reads an endorsement of George Bush's foreign policy in the pages of the British left-wing newspaper The Guardian, even with a string of caveats and wait-and-see admonitions. Today, however, the Guardian runs an opinion piece by Max Hastings warning the British Left that dismissing the efforts of Bush and the so-called neocons on transforming the Middle East risks ignoring the real progress that has been made:

The greatest danger for those of us who dislike George Bush is that our instincts may tip over into a desire to see his foreign policy objectives fail. No reasonable person can oppose the president's commitment to Islamic democracy. Most western Bushophobes are motivated not by dissent about objectives, but by a belief that the Washington neocons' methods are crass, and more likely to escalate a confrontation between the west and Islam than to defuse it.

Such scepticism, however, should not prevent us from stepping back to reassess the progress of the Bush project, and satisfy ourselves that mere prejudice is not blinding us to the possibility that western liberals are wrong; that the Republicans' grand strategy is getting somewhere. ...

Those who say that Iraqis are incapable of making a democracy work may well be proved right. But until we see what happens on the ground over the months ahead, we should not write off the possibility that the Iraqi people will forge some sort of accommodation. A premature coalition withdrawal promises catastrophe for them, not us.

This gives a taste of the literary ass-covering that Hastings attempts to convey as a warning to his political allies. He also includes many red-meat references to Bush's "simplistic" policies, "crass" execution of such, and the supposed naivete of the American administration. However, in the face of the successful elections of January and the belated formation of a democratic government in Baghdad, Hastings now has to admit that these blundering Americans may have done something that all of the decades of European sophistication and previous American neglect failed to produce: real change that actually attacks the root causes of dangerous radicalism.

Nowehere does Hastings hold to the leftist defenses as he does with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, on which he uses his rhetoric as a veritable Maginot line, and to similar effect:

Today, deprived of Iraqi support and with Syria also in retreat, the Palestinians are chiefly dependent for their own future upon international goodwill; a doubtful commodity. Israelis have always believed that their own security is best served by ensuring that the Palestinians are as weak as possible. Washington seems to acquiesce in this view.

Many of us, by contrast, believe that the best chance of peace lies in creating a settlement that offers a Palestinian state the chance of political, economic and social viability. Today the new Palestinian leadership is talking, because there is nothing else it can do. The litmus test is whether Israel accepts an ultimate commitment to withdraw from the West Bank. If this remains unlikely, it seems naive to suggest that peace prospects are improving, merely because violence is temporarily eclipsed.

Despite what Hastings believes, the issue has never really been whether Israel will fully withdraw from the West Bank. If nothing else, American pressure could guarantee that result if it actually meant that the Palestinians would stop making war on Israel. In this case, it's Hastings' turn to be simplistic and naive. The Palestinians were given that opportunity during the Clinton Administration's final months, when Ehud Barak risked his political career to offer them 95% of the territorial demands they made, excepting only Jerusalem and trading Israeli land for a few major WB settlements. Arafat declared a second intifada as an answer to Barak's offer.

The Palestinians do not want a negotiated peace for the West Bank. The Palestinians and their terror-based leadership want nothing less than the destruction of Israel and the exile of the Jews living there now. Until those circumstances change, the only peace possible will necessarily be temporary cease-fires designed to undermine the radicals and the bombthrowers until a Palestinian middle class with economic and social stakes in peace get strong enough to push the terrorists from power. So far, the Palestianians have shown little inclination to make that transition, electing Hamas and Fatah politicians who differ only in tactics, and not at all in the long-term aim of Israeli extinction.

Believing that Palestinians will suddenly embrace the existence of Israel if the world treats them with respect and kindness ignores the entire decade of the 1990s, when Bill Clinton hosted Yasser Arafat more often than any other world leader in an attempt to do what Hastings suggested. It didn't work, not because the world didn't treat them nicely, but because they didn't get what they wanted. When they stop wanting the elimination of Israel, then they will have peace.

That's the difference between European and supposed neocon diplomacy today. One deals in naive, wishful thinking, and the other understands the dynamic of power. Hastings makes the mistake of identifying the two incorrectly.

Why Would Medarex Say No?

Hugh Hewitt noted the case of Amanda Twellman-Dieppa, a young woman facing a terminal cancer diagnosis after suffering since her teen years through extensive chemotherapy and radiation. She has tried everything to beat the cancer but has not been lucky enough to be successful. Her family has discovered that a New Jersey pharmaceutical company, Medarex, is developing a new drug (MDX-060) that targets lymphoma receptor CD30, which might help Amanda survive her cancer and take up her active lifestyle once again.

Medarex, however, initially refused to provide MDX-060 to Amanda, as it still is going through trials and is considered experimental. The company has made it through Phase II FDA trials, however, and the FDA would allow emergency use for the drug as long as Medarex agreed to its use. The drug was between trials, and told Amanda to wait for the next trial, which was supposedly a few weeks away from starting. Unfortunately, new trials were apparently delayed, and yet Medarex would not allow for the emergency use.

Late-breaking developments have Medarex's president taking up the issue personally, and hopefully a resolution can be reached tomorrow which will allow Amanda to try MDX-060. Drug companies dealing with oncological remedies must have overwhelming interest in their products from the desperately ill, so the bureaucratic response is understandable to a point. However, telling a dying woman that she has to wait for an unspecified trial period when even the FDA would be willing to certify it for her treatment demonstrates a lack of compassion that thankfully appears to be an isolated case at Medarex.

If you get a chance, drop Medarex an e-mail encouraging them to reach an accommodation with Amanda. It could save her life.

25 Years Ago: Operation Nimrod And The First Saddam Test

Twenty-five years ago this week, Saddam Hussein first tested the mettle and will of the West by covertly launching a terrorist attack against an Iranian embassy in London, ostensibly by Iranian rebels against the Ayatollah Khomeini. Six terrorists took over the embassy at Princes Gate on April 30, 1980, touching off a six-day standoff that ended after the crack British commando squad SAS saved all but two of the hostages and killed all but one of the terrorists.

The Scotsman publishes a retrospective today of Operation Nimrod, the rescue plan which the SAS implemented almost flawlessly and which still remains one of the most successful counterterrorist operations ever. Michael Howie spoke with operation designed Clive Fairweather to review the politics involved, both before and after, and the effect that Saddam's attack and the SAS response had on global politics.

A number of aspects of the Princes Gate attack continue to shape events to this day. For one thing, Princes Gate tested the will of Margaret Thatcher, up to that time a somewhat unknown quantity as a world leader. Her predecessor, Edward Heath, had caved in to terrorist demands earlier and had paid a huge political price for doing so. No one expected Thatcher to allow the terrorists to leave the country, but in the aftermath of Nimrod, a legend developed that Thatcher ordered the deliberate killing of the terrorists to send a message to others so inclined:

According to one SAS assault soldier shortly afterwards, a highly sensitive message was passed on from Thatcher just before the attack began. It was relayed, verbally, to the assault team.

The soldier claimed: "The message was that we had to resolve the situation and there was to be no chance of failure, and that the hostages absolutely had to be protected. The Prime Minister did not want an ongoing problem beyond the embassy - which we took to mean that they didn’t want anybody coming out alive. No surviving terrorists."

While this caused a sensation in Europe, transforming Thatcher's image into a bloodthirsty vigilante, the result was that foreign terrorists steered clear of the Iron Lady (alhough the IRA had no such hesitation). Both Iran and Iraq interpreted Operation Nimrod as an indication that Britain would tolerate no Jimmy Carter-style dithering, as was happening with the American embassy hostages in Teheran. Neither would challenge Thatcher directly again, and when America elected Thatcher-like Ronald Reagan to replace the hapless Carter, both would rely on only the most indirect of efforts against American interests.

However, as it turns out, the vigilante image resulted from a fundamental misunderstanding of Thatcher's orders, as Fairweather recalls for the first time since Nimrod:

"The Home Secretary, Willie Whitelaw, issued everyone with a clear set of orders," he says. "They were that we had to play it long, that the rule of law must prevail throughout, that the police must be in charge and that only minimum force could be used with the aim of rescuing all the hostages. His last instruction to us was that no terrorists were to leave the country. A lot of people, with a wink and with eyebrows raised, thought that last one meant ‘kill them’.

"Not so. That simply meant we could have taken them out of the embassy and taken them to Heathrow but that no-one was leaving the country’s airspace.

"People thought the message from Thatcher was ‘waste them’, but that wasn’t the case. The message was to rescue the hostages, not kill terrorists."

From the very start, Fairweather insists, the plan was to avoid bloodshed. "The police, who had controlled the operation throughout the six days superbly well, always wanted it to end peacefully.

"The terrorists wanted publicity for their cause, which they got. But they literally lost the plot when they started trying to get other Arab countries involved in the negotiations. They must have been exhausted.

"They would probably still be alive today had they not opened fire on one of the hostages. At the end of the day, police had no option but to commit the SAS to the assault. It should be said that the SAS played a very small part in the operation compared to the police."

That hasn't stopped people on the Left from smearing Thatcher and the SAS as thugs who deliberately busted into the embassy to murder the terrorists. One such person is Chris Cramer, who started off on April 30th as a hostage but faked a heart attack to convince the terrorists to let him go. Cramer, at the time a BBC employee, spoke years later (2002) about his experience at Princes Gate (emphases mine):

I won't roll out the victim syndrome for you at all -- well, maybe I will for two or three minutes. My own humbling experience was 20 years ago last week. Not, of course, as I remember it. It was actually last Wednesday at about 4 o'clock in the afternoon. Not, of course, that I remember it because it has no affect on me. Tomorrow I fly to London for a reunion, the first in 20 years. And I'll come back to you and let you know how that feels next year, if you like.

My experience was very brief. I was stupid enough to apply for a visa inside the Iranian Embassy in London in April 1980. I was stupid enough to be there when Iraqi terrorists stormed it. I was there for a very, very short time. I was there for precisely 28 hours. Not that I remember it, because I'm a member of your profession. We don't do PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder].

I was fortunate enough to have a slightly troubling stomach condition, having been in Zimbabwe, which manifested itself in a very short space of time. It's a most incredible heart attack. And I do fantastic heart attacks. I do great heart attacks. So convincing with my heart attack that the people there were embarrassed and threw me out.

And I was released after 27 hours into the hands of the Metropolitan Police in London and two days later into a dreadful bunch of terrorists called the SAS, who were probably worse than the terrorists inside the Iranian embassy.

And four and a half days later, Maggie Thatcher, in one of her rare moments of triumph, deployed the SAS in broad daylight to storm the embassy and they rescued all but maybe one or two of the hostages. Two were murdered. The SAS conveniently took out five members of the terrorist group and forgot to take out the sixth. So that was my brief, humbling experience.

Despite the successful rescue of his soundman, Sim Harris, Cramer has repeatedly told people that the real terrorists that day were the SAS instead of Saddam's henchmen, which certainly set the stage for the next twenty-five years of news coverage by Western media of Saddam Hussein and his genocidal rule. Without bothering to learn the facts, the media assumed that Thatcher had ordered the SAS to kill everyone in the embassy, when in fact she intended only to ensure that the terrorists not be allowed to leave the country. And despite the years since Princes Gate, not much has ever been reported about Saddam Hussein's involvement in staging the attack, nor have the media ever covered the Iraqi dictator without playing a similar moral equivalency card or deliberately averting their eyes from his crimes. Eason Jordan famously admitted on the cusp of Iraq's liberation that he deliberately withheld reports of Saddam's crimes from his CNN audiences in order to gain access to Baghdad -- even on at least one occasion forcing his reporters to use regime-provided copy as CNN's supposedly independent report about Iraqi activity.

And where is Chris Cramer these days? He now heads CNN International.

It appears that Western conservatives learned the correct lessons from Nimrod and Princes Gate. The Exempt Media and the Left remain as clueless as ever.

Be sure to read the entire Scotsman piece on Nimrod.

And The Jihadis Would Like A Better Vision Plan, Too

The American military has seized a letter intended for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi which chastises the terrorist leader of the Iraqi "insurgency" for huge failures and plummeting morale of the jihadis. The letter, written by another al-Qaeda figure, starts by greeting Zarqawi respectfully but quickly dresses him down for poor performance:

The letter -- which never refers to al-Zarqawi by name -- is written to Sheik Abu Ahmad, a name not known to be used by the militant leader or his followers. But supporters often call al-Zarqawi the Sheik or Sheik Abu Musab in letters and on Web sites.

"What has happened to myself and my brothers is an unforgivable crime, but God will punish the oppressor," the letter reads. "I swear by God that you will be asked about what happened to us because you have not asked about the situation of the migrants. Morale is down and there is fatigue among mujahedeen ranks.

"There is discrimination by some of the brethren emirs. God would not accept such actions, and a simple mistake delays victory, so what about big mistakes and gross guilts? Many underestimate them and are lenient toward them."

The letter is dated April 27, the military said.

The author of the letter also "admonishes 'the Sheik' for abandoning his followers" after last year's U.S. siege on Falluja, west of Baghdad.

It appears that all is not well among the fanatics, who have the same issues of esprit de corps that any other unit has. The fact that such criticism exists within a notoriously top-down organization speaks volumes about the effectiveness of the counterinsurgency in Iraq. The brazenness of correcting Zarqawi by letter shows that his credibility among the lunatics of AQ may already be seriously damaged.

Zarqawi's retreat from Fallujah represented a major defeat for the insurgency, even if Western news agencies were slow to recognize it. The terrorists had staked their reputation on defending what they called the City of Mosques, practically daring the Americans to drive them off. Their prestige soared when the Americans backed off an offensive last spring designed to free the city, instead agreeing to allow Fallujah to operate autonomously with a militia ostensibly loyal to the interim Iraqi government. It quickly became apparent that the city remained in control of Zarqawi's lieutenants and became a base of operation for terrorist missions throughout Iraq.

In November, a joint Iraqi-American task force made mince meat of the terrorist bands controlling Fallujah in a few days. Instead of holding out to the last man as promised, Zarqawi fled the City of Mosques and saved his own hide while hundreds, if not thousands, of his followers wound up dead or captured. That humiliation presaged the decline of the overall insurgency, which led to the need to scold Zarqawi for his poor performance as an AQ mastermind.

Under the circumstances, it's easy to see why military sources have become more confident that they will capture or kill Zarqawi soon. Arabs understand and respect power, but they won't abide a coward or incompetent, and so far it looks like Zarqawi qualifies as both. He's killing Iraqis and Arabs instead of so-called infidels, and even the terrorists know that will spell certain doom for their efforts and themselves, and sooner rather than later. It won't be long before someone tips the Iraqis off to where he can be captured, or before someone simply puts a bullet into the back of his head to end the misery immediately.

Are The Liberals Buying Their Survival?

A Conservative MP with the memorable name Inky Mark claims that the new Liberal survival strategy will rely on buying Tory MPs in order to undermine Stephen Harper. Mark told the Canadian media in several interviews that the Grits attempted to induce him to switch parties in exchange for an appointment to the foreign service or to the Senate:

Conservative MP Inky Mark says the Liberal party is trying to woo him by offering him an ambassadorship or Senate position.

Mr. Mark said in several interviews Tuesday that he was approached by an unnamed cabinet minister who offered him a position in a phone call last Friday.

"The suggestion was that well, maybe, well, there must be something that I want, right?" Mr. Mark said in an interview with CBC Newsworld Tuesday in Ottawa.

"The minister said this?" the reporter asked him.

"The minister said that. Perhaps I would like to be an ambassador for Canada. I said, no, I travel enough. I don't think I want to do that," Mr. Mark answered. He did not disclose who it was.
He repeatedly declined the offer, saying he was not interested, he said.

Then the Liberals implied that a Senate position could come his way, Mr. Mark told CTV Newsnet.

The Liberals appear to have a habit of offering lifetime appointments in exchange for political favors, a manuever that may not be completely illegal but certainly has ethical shortcomings. The approach reminds one of Benoit Corbeil's allegations almost two weeks ago, when he told CBC that federal judgeships were used to reward Liberal Party activists for their work. Now faced with the collapse of their government, the Liberals have fallen back to the same cronyism, but this time with Tories as the beneficiaries.

It doesn't take a mathematician to realize that removing no more than two or three Tory MPs from Parliament would make it almost impossible for Harper to carry a no-confidence vote. In this case, Mark would not have even needed to switch parties; accepting the new position -- especially the Senate appointment -- would have made him ineligible to vote on the no-confidence motion. Paul Martin's shabby deal with Jack Layton created the almost-even split of seats which makes this kind of bribe worthwhile to the Grits, and apparently having made that arrangement, selling off ambassadorships and Senate appointments follows rather easily.

Inky Mark went public with his bribe offers. In doing so, he may have spooked any other Tory MP that might have been tempted to accept such an offer from Martin's Monty-Hall administration. We may not know that for sure until a head count can be done when the no-confidence motion gets tabled. Don't be too surprised to see a couple less Tory MPs than expected when Harper finally gets his opportunity.

UPDATE: Corrected Benoit Corbeil's information to reflect it came from an interview, not sworn testimony. (h/t: Wedgie)

A Note On The Canadian Publication Ban

I have received a number of e-mails questioning why I am not posting testimony that is subject to the publication ban. I have explained this in previous posts, but the number of these e-mailed queries appears to be increasing, which demonstrates pretty clearly that Canadians have reached a high level of frustration with Justice Gomery's blackouts.

I am not in Canada, and I am not attending the hearings. I do not have firsthand access to the testimony. I did have a source for that kind of access during the Jean Brault testimony, but that source has since stopped sending that material. I do not know whether he/she feels as though the Canadian government had tracked them down and need to be much more discreet, or whether they just don't have access to the testimony any more. I have yet to find another source -- but if I can find one who will provide me with reliable information, I will publish the information on this site.

Just to be clear, I have never been threatened or even approached by law enformencement agencies regarding this testimony, either Canadian or American. I apologize for the disappointment of my Canadian readers; I assure you that I am disappointed as well.

Farewell To A Collaborator

The Washington Post publishes an odd obituary today on the suicide death of Edward von Kloberg III, a lobbyist who relished working for some of the twentieth century's worst leaders and most bloodthirsty tyrants. Kloberg jumped to his death two days ago in Rome, leaving behind a lengthy suicide note and apparently a town fascinated by his appalling line of work:

As part of Washington's image machinery for more than two decades, Edward von Kloberg III did his best to sanitize some of the late 20th century's most notorious dictators as they sought favors and approval from U.S. officials.

A legend of sorts in public relations circles, he counted as clients Saddam Hussein of Iraq; Samuel K. Doe of Liberia; Nicolae Ceausescu of Romania; the military regime in Burma; Guatemalan businessmen who supported the country's murderous, military-backed government; Mobutu Sese Seko of the former Zaire; and, in a figurative coup of his own, the man who overthrew Mobutu and renamed the country the Democratic Republic of the Congo. ...

Washington is a city of advocates and image enhancers, but only a few have staked their reputations as representatives of despots, dictators and human rights violators. For von Kloberg, the job was a social exercise as well as an all-consuming effort. As he wooed potential clients, he often highlighted his own bad press. There was a lot.

Epithets abounded. The authors of "Washington Babylon," a muckraking book about powerbrokers, wrote: "Even within the amoral world of Washington lobbying, [he] stands out for handling clients that no one else will touch." Washingtonian magazine once named him one of the city's top 50 "hired guns."

By far the most outrageous and lasting public impression of von Kloberg came from a notorious "sting" operation by Spy magazine. For a story the satirical journal titled "Washington's Most Shameless Lobbyist," a staff writer posed as a Nazi sympathizer whose causes included halting immigration to the "fatherland" and calling for the German annexation of Poland.

According to the magazine, von Kloberg expressed sympathy for the fake client -- and her $1 million offer. And then he was drubbed in print. Shortly afterward, he showed up at the opening of Spy's Washington office with a first-aid kit and sported a trench helmet, "so I can take the flak," he announced.

Friends of von Kloberg saw the article as a revolting caricature of a man whose grace and charm were displayed at intimate dinner parties he threw to unite disparate voices -- 3,500 dinners, each with 12 guests, he estimated.

Perhaps his friends have an appreciation for the morbid and the cynical that inspired Spy's criticism, but Von Kloberg's work should have inspired nothing but disgust. While lawyers must often defend people they know to be guilty of terrible crimes in order to ensure that the justice system works, nothing says lobbyists must represent all clients. It isn't as if Von Kloberg took on a couple of clients that later turned out to be embarassments. He went out of his way to represent mass murderers, brutal tyrants, and genocidal madmen. In fact, he delighted in it, if Adam Bernstein is to be believed.

Of course, those who collaborate with such monsters always have their rationalizations. Von Kloberg insisted that his work helped to spread democracy, although trying to take on a client that wanted to "annex Poland" to the Fatherland in the 1980s stretches that explanation far past the breaking point. Ceausescu allowed Bibles to be printed in Romania for the first time in decades after Von Kloberg got him a few trade concessions, but the dictator never modified his Stalinist mode of rule and wound up dying like Mussolini after his country overthrew his despotic government. Most egregiously, he publicly backed Saddam Hussein's gassing of Kurds as part of an effort to stem the spread of Arab fundamentalism, even though Kurds are not Arabs and the Iraqis are, even acknowledging himself the travesty of his work.

All that it takes to allow evil to flourish, a proverb teaches, is for good men to do nothing. However, before it reaches that stage, evil requires the efforts of little functionaries like Von Kloberg rationalizing and packaging evil as anything else but what it is, so that good men do not recognize it until it is too late. Adam Bernstein shouldn't be writing paeans to a man like Von Kloberg; the Post should be writing exposés to shame them back into the shadows, where they belong with the other roaches and rats.

House Ethics Violations: Not Just For GOP Any More

The attempt to ensnare House Majority Whip Tom DeLay in ethics violations may be backfiring on House Democrats, whose own ethical closets have a skeleton or two making an appearance. Two Democratic Congressmen have accepted travel money from the same lobbyist that involved one of DeLay's aides, and now Democratic outrage has given way to a series of rationalizations:

At least two aides to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and two Democratic congressmen received travel expenses initially paid by lobbyist Jack Abramoff on his credit card or by his firm, internal records of the lobbying firm show.

Longtime House ethics rules that applied to the 1996 and 1997 trips to the Northern Mariana Islands have strictly prohibited lawmakers and their staffs from accepting any congressional trips from lobbyists or their firms.

DeLay's office and one of the lawmakers, Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., said they had no knowledge that Abramoff or his firm paid the expenses. The office of Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., did not return several calls seeking comment.

Abramoff, whose lobbying is under criminal investigation, pressed his clients, the Northern Marianas government, to reimburse him for the travel because of concerns the payments might draw scrutiny from the House committee that investigates lawmakers' conduct, the documents obtained by The Associated Press show.

While the Abramoff violations involve only two of DeLay's aides, they directly implicate Clyburn and Thompson, who accepted over five thousand dollars in travel expenses each for the trip. The delegation traveled to the Marianas with Abramoff eight years ago, and the lobbyist still has not been reimbursed for the money he laid out for airfare and hotel expenses. That makes everyone who accepted money guilty of ethics violations -- which, curiously enough, does not appear to include DeLay personally.

Now that Democrats have opened this Pandora's Box, they want to do their best to close it. Clyburn never heard of his benefactor, or so it seems:

The records state Preston Gates [Abramoff's lobbying firm] paid hotel and airfare for Thompson and Clyburn for travel to the island in January 1997. The two lawmakers filed reports to Congress saying a private, nonprofit group, not Abramoff's firm, paid the travel.

Clyburn said in an interview he had never heard of Abramoff at the time, and provided a copy of letter showing he was invited by the nonprofit foundation. "That's all I know about it," he said.

Ignorance of the law usually provides no defense, nor does ignorance of a violation -- except in Congress, where ignorance is not only accepted, but practically revered. The AP quotes a legal expert in Congressional ethics that advises readers that ethics regulations only apply to those members who actually display competence:

Jan Baran, a Washington lawyer who specializes in ethics rules and campaign finance, said lawmakers and their aides probably would avoid any findings of wrongdoing by demonstrating they had no knowledge of the lobbyist payments.

"If a member generally doesn't know what's going on, it's hard to see how the member would be held to violate ethics rules," he said.

Of course, that's the entire reason that DeLay finds himself in the middle of these allegations of unethical conduct. He has been a tremendously effective legislator and political infighter, and the Democrats want him sidelined. However, as DeLay himself warned, he has done nothing that Democrats haven't also done, and in this case, apparently a few things less than that. Democrats tried to nail him for hiring his family as staff when many of their own members do the same thing, and spend the same amount of money doing so. Now they attack the travel records of his aides and in doing so, nail two of their own Congressmen in the process.

No wonder DeLay wanted the ethics probe to continue. At this rate, he may well neutralize ten or twenty representatives on the other side of the aisle before anyone lays a glove on him.

Harper: Tory No-Confidence Effort "Unanimous"

Stephen Harper came out of a Conservative caucus meeting tonight vowing to table a no-confidence motion as soon as possible, adding that the Tory caucus had unanimously backed his strategy:

Conservative Leader Stephen Harper emerged from a caucus meeting late Monday night, saying his party cannot support the government and that a vote of confidence should take place as soon as possible.

Harper called the decision "unanimous," declaring that his party remains committed to defeating a Liberal government "mired" in corruption scandals.

"It is also apparent that the Liberal party does not today have the support of the majority of members of the House of Commons," he said. "It should face the House of Commons in a vote at the earliest possible opportunity."

Harper had a number of difficulties in getting to the point where a no-confidence vote could be introduced, and he's not there yet. Earlier, of course, the NDP aligned itself with Paul Martin in order to block Harper's momentum towards elections. Before that, the Liberals postponed all but one Opposition Day. Monday, Liberal MPs led by Tony Valeri apparently blocked an attempt for Harper to get one through to the floor, wanting to force Harper to use his only guaranteed Opposition Day to call the vote. That will create summer elections, which apparently all parties dislike and the electorate will likely resent, to the Tories' disadvantage.

Harper has few options. Waiting for Gomery to finish his report will mean almost a year between now and the next election, and his own hesitation will amount to a tacit endorsement of the notion that the Adscam corruption did not rise to a level requiring the removal of the government. With the Liberals pulling out all stops to keep a no-confidence vote from being tabled despite the inevitability of the effort, he needs to take advantage of the limited openings he will get. A midsummer election may be the price he has to pay. It appears that his caucus understands this as well.

Exempt Media Attacks Bloggers ... Again

The Exempt Media has decided to take another whack at bloggers and the exercise of free speech, this time in the Washington Post. Brian Faler writes in tomorrow's edition about the upcoming Congressional action exempting bloggers from the FEC's upcoming Internet regulations, and his article heavily emphasizes the notion that bloggers can serve as Trojan horses for political campaigns:

The FEC requires candidates to disclose their expenditures, including any payments to bloggers, in periodic reports to the government. Some bloggers also disclose their financial relationships with candidates, but they are not obliged to reveal those payments, and the agency recently said it is not proposing requiring them to do so.

Some election law experts want the FEC to reverse that policy, saying it gives campaigns the opportunity to use ostensibly independent blogs as fronts to create the illusion of grass-roots support, mount attacks on their opponents and disseminate information to which candidates do not want their names attached.

"The concern is that somebody is blogging at the behest of a campaign and nobody knows it," said Richard L. Hasen, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles who maintains a blog on election law.

"If, for example, you are a U.S. Senate candidate and you have a blogger who you're paying to write good things about you and bad things about your opponent, it will eventually come out. But that may not come out until after the election," Hasen said.

"But even if it comes out, there's something to be said for having the information right there, so when you click on the Web site you see it says 'Authorized by Smith for Congress,' " he added. "Voters rely on those pieces of information as cues in terms of how much stock they should put in what someone is saying."

Of course, this is why I urge people to fight for complete and immediate disclosure of all contributions and disbursements as the only effective campaign-finance reform possible. If campaigns had to disclose that information as they went along -- on a weekly or even a monthly basis -- then we would know who got paid what money and for what reason almost immediately, not when it's too late to make judgments about it. It would put an end to the necessity of 527s and such silly distinctions between "hard" and "soft" money, and the cash would flow directly to the candidate, who would then have no choice but to take responsibility for how it was raised and spent. Instead, we have politicians like John McCain who pass legislation supposedly taking the money out of politics while having his campaign staff remain at his beck and call through their employment at Reform Institute, funded by left-wing groups and individuals such as George Soros.

Funny that Brian Faler doesn't write about that, or that Professor Hasen doesn't appear terribly concerned about it either. McCain and RI took in over $100,000 from George Soros in 2004, and like amounts from other leftists groups, while Thune paid a couple of bloggers a few thousand as consultants. Which of the two poses a greater danger of corruption to the political process? I suppose we should feel flattered that the Post considers blogging to have such an impact on politics that merely hiring a couple of local bloggers made the difference in the campaign -- even though they wrote the same type of posts before they were hired as afterwards.

This article wants to scare people, and Congress, into fighting the proposed exemption for bloggers by creating a strawman of rampant corruption in the blogosphere that doesn't exist. Even if campaigns decided to start "buying" bloggers, it would only reflect their ignorance of the marketplace. After all, why buy what one can get for free? Most of us write for our own purposes, not that of a candidate or party, and what revenue we need to justify our expense and time we generate through advertising. Buying a blogger might be more arguable for disclosure simply as a sign of cluelessness.

The so-called reformers reveal themselves again as more frightened of the power of free speech and the inability of former media elites toe control the information flow. They want to regulate us into silence and clear the field for the Exempt Media to once again tell people what to believe. Fortunately for the rest of us, those days have long since gone by.

An End To The Publication Ban?

Requests for delays on trials for Jean Brault and Chuck Guité may result in the lifting of the publication ban currently in place for Guité's testimony. Lawyers for the two key Adscam figures requested continuances until September to prepare their defenses, with Justice Gomery due to rule on releasing embargoed testimony tomorrow or Wednesday:

Lawyers for Jean Brault and Chuck Guité have requested that their clients' joint trial on fraud and conspiracy charges be delayed until September.

Jury selection is currently scheduled for June 6 but lawyers for the two men say the sponsorship inquiry will still be sitting at that time.

A judge will decide Wednesday whether to grant the request.

Just as before, the proximity of the criminal trial provided one of the key rationales for Gomery's publication ban. He based the blackout for Canadian citizens on the notion that with a trial so close to the inquiry hearings, the jury pool risked getting tainted by free reporting of what politicians and the media have already heard. With that proximity eliminated, Gomery has little excuse to keep the proceedings hidden from the Canadian citizenry.

In fact, Brault tried getting a postponement during his inquiry testimony to the fall, but only succeeded in pushing the trial back an extra few weeks instead. Perhaps with Guité also requesting an extension, the two may be more successful in opening the summer up for a potential election campaign. If Guité's testimony proves as explosive as that of Brault, it could touch off another wave of voter revulsion that might finally crumble the supports for Paul Martin and the long-time reign of the Liberal Party.

Gee, Thanks, Pat (Updated)

Proving that not all hyperbolic idiots occupy the left side of the political spectrum, Pat Robertson returned political stupidity to a fair and balanced position by proclaiming American federal justices as a greater danger to the US than the murderous terrorists who killed over 3,000 people on 9/11:

"Over 100 years, I think the gradual erosion of the consensus that's held our country together is probably more serious than a few bearded terrorists who fly into buildings," Robertson said on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos." ...

Confronted by Stephanopoulos on his claims that an out-of-control liberal judiciary is the worst threat America has faced in 400 years - worse than Nazi Germany, Japan and the Civil War - Robertson didn't back down.

"Yes, I really believe that," he said. "I think they are destroying the fabric that holds our nation together."

I don't care what side Robertson supports -- describing federal justices as worse than Nazis amounts to the same kind of irresponsible rhetoric as proclaiming Christianity to be the darkest threat in this nation's history. Neither comments help resolve the debate, and neither can come close to rational thought.

Pat Robertson has long embarassed the Right, and this statement is yet another example of why many of us wish he'd shut up. For the delusional paranoids who gathered this weekend to obsess over an impending Christian theocracy, Robertson surely had to be Exhibit A for the conspiracy nuts.

Go away, little man.

UPDATE: Just to let the Exempt Media off the hook in this one instance, this does not appear to be a case of the NY Daily News twisting Robertson's words. While ABC wants to charge $20 for a transcript of the show -- uh, sure -- Google's new video transcript service shows quite clearly that the exchange took place just as the Daily News reported it:

GS: ... Democrats will appoint judges who don't share our values and the out-of-control Judiciary in "courting disaster" is the most serious threat America has faced In more than 400 years of history. More serious than Al qaeda and nazi Germany and Japan and more serious than the civil war?

PR: George, I really believe that. I [th]ink they are destroying the fabric that Holds our nation together. There is an assault on marriage. There's an assault on human sexuality. As judge Scalia said, they've taken sides in the culture war, and on top of that, If we have a democracy, the democratic processes should be that we can elect representatives who will share our point of view And vote those things into Law.

As I stated above, Robertson continues to prove that his primary accomplishment in opening his mouth is usually a change of feet.

Italians To Present Rebuttal Today

Italian investigators working with Americans on the shooting that left commando Nicola Calipari dead and Giuliana Sgrena wounded will present a rebuttal to the American report that they released yesterday without proper redaction, which the BBC reports will challenge American conclusions about the nature of the incident. The Italians plan on disputing earlier contentions that Italy kept Calipari's mission a secret and a key issue of the timing of the warnings:

Correspondents say the Italian report will reply point by point to the Pentagon inquiry, which recommended that no disciplinary action be taken against the soldiers involved in Calipari's death. ...

Italy says at least three troops opened fire on the car taking freed hostage Giuliana Sgrena to Baghdad airport with Calipari and a second Italian intelligent agent.

Italian newspapers say an Italian reconstruction of events show the US authorities were informed of the operation to release Sgrena several hours before the shooting, though the US denies that.

Reports say the experts who drafted the Italian report will also claim that a three-second warning given by the US troops was not enough time for the car to stop.

Readers who have followed this story closely will already see the holes developing in the Italian rebuttal, if the BBC report is accurate. First, the three-second warning does not reflect on American action nearly as much as it indicates the rate of speed that Calipari's car approached the checkpoint. By acknowledging the three-second time span, Italy admits that the car traveled at much faster speeds towards the checkpoint than Sgrena first claimed, making the reason for shooting the car plain. Second, it demonstrates that the Americans did try to warn the driver to slow down and did not simply open fire, either out of malice or incompetence.

As far as whether the Americans knew about Calipari's mission at all, Italian newspapers answered that question in March, when two of them reported that not only did Italian commander not tell the Americans about the hostage release, he may not have known about it himself. General Mario Marioli sent his report to Rome, where presumably investigators still have access to it. The reason for the secrecy emerged within days of Sgrena's release and subsequent wounding, when Italy's ransom payment to the terrorists became public knowledge. Under those circumstances, the notion that Americans had been informed of the progress of Sgrena and Calipari becomes very doubtful; Italian secrecy about the mission from its American partners becomes a likely explanation for the miscoordination.

The rebuttal will be out this morning, but it sounds like the same vacillating story we've heard from the Il Manifesto crowd all along.

Tories Losing Their Nerve?

After new polling emerged showing that Liberals have rebounded significantly from the initial Adscam revelations, a Tory MP from the Liberal stronghold of Ontario has announced his preference to delay new elections, throwing the upcoming no-confidence vote into doubt:

Cracks appeared yesterday in the Conservative Party's plan to topple the Liberal government at the earliest opportunity as several leading Tory parliamentarians insisted the decision isn't final and one central Ontario MP said a vote should be delayed.

"I've said for a while that I don't think we should be going to an election right now," said Larry Miller, the Tory MP for Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound, in a radio interview Saturday.

"Ultimately the choice will be out of our hands, but that's what the majority have said here and that's what I'll take back [to caucus]."

The interview, aired by CKNX-FM in Wingham, Ont., was immediately seized upon by the Liberals as fresh evidence that Tory Leader Stephen Harper is forcing an election that few Canadians want.

Party disunity is the last thing that Stephen Harper needs at this point. He needs to concentrate on the BQ MPs and the three independents for vote collecting, not the Conservatives who should stand ready to support his move against Paul Martin and the Liberals, especially after Martin's grubby NDP deal with Jack Layton last week to buy his support. Any such public wavering in his own party will make it almost impossible to gather the votes necessary to win new elections.

Miller's objections are short-sighted. First, Harper will likely only have one opportunity to table a no-confidence vote, thanks to the stripping of all but one Opposition Day from the Conservatives by the Liberals last month. The rest will disappear if Harper waits as Martin will likely prorogue Parliament before the other seven days appear on the Parliamentary calendar at the end of the session, putting off any action until fall at the earliest. Second, more revelations will come out about Adscam about Chuck Guité's involvement when Justice Gomery lifts the publication ban on his testimony, although that may happen late in an election campaign.

In a way, the publication ban assists the Liberals in putting these strains on the Tories. If the polls are to be believed -- and there may be some reason to think that they shouldn't -- it appears that like their American counterparts, Canadian voters have a short attention span. Their outraged over Jean Brault's testimony and the evidence corroborating it appears short-lived indeed. It's hard to imagine that a plurality of voters can still support a political party that deliberately constructed and implemented a money-laundering scheme that stuffed cash into the pockets of high-ranking political officials and defrauded the government of millions of dollars, but if so, it's because the steady stream of revelations have been interrupted by Gomery's blackout.

Miller spoke more supportively of Harper later in the day, but his initial hesitation may reflect the lack of true momentum that Harper needs to push Martin and the Liberals out of power in Ottawa. The Tories need to find that momentum again and get their message out to the Canadian voters, reminding them of the stakes involved in delay.

DBD Coming Back To CQ

For those who have noticed that the daily Day by Day cartoon has stopped displaying on the site, this hiatus is only temporary. I am rearranging some elements of the site in order to improve load times and add a new sponsorship slot. DBD will likely appear at the top of the left column later tonight. In the meantime, please be sure to visit Chris Muir's site to catch up to Damon, Jan, Sam, and Zed and their latest hilarious and timely commentary on current events.

The Smear Continues On Brown

Earlier today, alert CQ readers noted an exchange on Fox News Sunday between Juan Williams and Bill Kristol on the nomination of Janice Rogers Brown. A complete transcript is not yet available, but this partial Google Video transcript will demonstrate the ludicrous lengths to which the Left will go towards smearing respected jurists with false charges in order to convince people that they are "extremists":

JW: The second point to be made here is, Bill, If they had a real debate about people like Priscilla Owen and Janice Rogers brown, the American people would say these folks are too extreme. Even republicans have said that in the case of Priscilla Owen and her rulings in Texas --

BK: Which Republican was that?

JW: In fact, a majority of --

BK: Wrong, wrong, dead wrong. His testimony, his recent testimony on the hill --

JW: He said he didn't mean what he written but he wrote that she was an activist judge which is exactly what Republicans are complaining about, that these judges have become activists legislating from the bench. If you listen to Janice Rogers attitude about people with disabilities, affirmative action, if you go on and on, she --

BK: That doesn't say anything about people with disabilities. When has she ever written about people with disabilities? She was reelected by the people of California with 75% of the vote. She's highly rated by the A.B.A. And people are saying --

JW: This is a debate that we should have.

BK: Absolutely. The republicans want to have it. They offered 100 hours of debate on the floor of the senate on each of these nominees If the democrats would guarantee an up-or-down vote. The republicans to want debate these nominees.

Got that? Not only is she a religious extremist who wants to deny minorities access of affirmative action, now she's hostile to people with disabilities. Can Juan Williams add any more Leftist bogeymen onto Brown? He certainly tried; according to one CQ reader, Williams conducted a mini-filibuster on Fox that left everyone else dumbfounded in the face of his hysteria about Brown.

The Left has no evidence of any extremism about Janice Rogers Brown or any of the other nominees. They talk in sound bites about extremism and "deeply held personal beliefs" and attempt to convince people that the nominees will attack minorities and the disabled -- but they have absolutely no evidence of any such hostility. When they get challenged for specifics, they simply make up stories designed to scare people. Meanwhile, judicial ethics demand that the nominees refrain from defending themselves.

If the Left wants to make an argument for their continued marginalization, then Juan Williams is their perfect spokesman.

The Despicable Leak

Michelle Malkin is rightly outraged over a leak that has exposed the names of American servicemen in Iraq involved in the Giuliana Sgrena incident, and much more. The PDF file has been published by the Italian media, and lists not just the names of the men cleared in the accidental death of Nicola Calipari, but also the following strategic information:

* An itemization of IEDs and VBIEDs deployment techniques which have been most effective,
* An analysis of the tactical strengths and weaknesses of specific checkpoints along "Route Irish",

* Combat readiness assesment of the units and soldiers involved,

* A detailed description of how the checkpoint is laid out,

* Exact grid locations of various assets.

* Details of how checkpoint searches are set up and executed

* Details of how checkpoints are expected to deal with approaching vehicles, including threat assesment methods.

* A statistical analysis of "normal" traffic approaching the checkpoint.

* It names the soldiers involved and details the specific actions taken by those soldiers. It names the soldier who killed Calipari.

In other words, its release likely will mean that Iraqi insurgents can now tailor their attacks to the American strategies for defense at our checkpoints, which will not only result in more Americans getting killed, but also more innocent people as a result of even further confusion as rules of engagement have to be changed. Idiots like Kevin Drum might find this a cause for celebration, but anyone with a brain should understand why this information was redacted in the first place -- and why it should have remained so.

UPDATE: Austin Bay has an excellent analysis of the document.

Organizing The 'Theocracy' Witch Hunt In New York

As further evidence of the Left's efforts to chase the religious from all public debate, a conclave of secular humanists and Leftists have gathered in New York to strategize on the further marginalization of religious belief, issuing dire warnings of the impending secular Apocalypse by theistic Anti-Christs. The Washington Post reports that Democratic politicians, People for the American Way, and assorted anti-religious groups have assembled to hiss at pictures of Bill Frist, among other activities:

Secular humanists and leftist activists convened here over the weekend to strategize how to counter what they contend is a growing political threat from Christian conservatives.

Understanding and answering the "religious far right" that propelled President Bush's re-election is key to preventing a "theocracy" from governing the nation, speakers argued at a weekend conference.

"The religious right now has an unprecedented influence on American politics and policy," said Ralph White, co-founder of the Open Center, a New York City institution focused on holistic learning. "It is incumbent upon all of us to understand as precisely as possible its aims, methods, beliefs, theology and psychology."

The Open Center, founded 21 years ago, played host to the two-day conference at City College of New York called "Examining the Real Agenda of the Religious Far Right."

People for the American Way, a liberal advocacy group that opposes religion in the public square, co-sponsored the conference, which drew about 500 participants.

"This may be the darkest time in our history," said Bob Edgar, general secretary of the left-leaning National Council of Churches and former six-term Democratic congressman from Pennsylvania. "The religious right have been systematically working at this for 40 years. The question is, where is the religious left?"

PFAW has put itself in the center of the Democratic efforts to filibuster appellate nominees of George Bush over the past two years and more. It has raised funds for Democratic Senate candidates and staged protests all over the country. Now they openly endorse such hate-filled conferences such as this, where Bob Edgar talks about nominating a handful of people who believe in God to the appellate court as "the darkest time in our history" -- as opposed to slavery, Civil War, Jim Crow, the Great Depression, the Sedition Acts, Watergate, and so on. It's the Hysterics Conference, attempting to paint religious belief as the new witchcraft and church-going Americans as its new purveyors.

Edgar isn't the only one spouting deranged and hyperbolic rhetoric in New York, either:

The United States is "not yet a theocracy," Joan Bokaer, founder of TheocracyWatch.org, said Friday night, but she argued that "the United States is beginning to fit the model of a reconstructed America."

Tax cuts combined with increased funding for faith-based social programs and decreases in welfare spending, Ms. Bokaer said, were examples of "the theological right ... zealously setting up to establish their beliefs in all aspects of our society."

She compared the Federal Communications Commission's threatened crackdown on indecency on television with the Taliban, the repressive Islamic rulers of Afghanistan who harbored Osama bin Laden's terrorist network until toppled by a U.S.-led invasion.

"Indecency police are a major part of theocratic states," Ms. Bokaer said, flashing a picture of Islamic women covered head to foot under the title, "Taliban: Ministry for the Protection of Virtue and Prevention of Vice."

This rant relates to the enforcement of existing FCC regulations keeping indecent material off of public broadcast airwaves, regulations which are hardly new or an indication of any recent political shift. The commissioner most vocal about enforcing them, Michael Powell, was a Democratic nominee to his post. Congress supported increasing fines for such violations in a bipartisan vote. So who are the extremists here? If such regulation offends the majority of Americans, the laws can easily be amended or struck down by Congress.

The use of the Taliban imagery sets up just another hysterical strawman, arguing that Christianity as practiced in America -- or anywhere else, for that matter -- winds up as extreme as Islamofascism, and that the current administration somehow exists as a Trojan horse for such efforts. Not only is such a charge ludicrous, it's patently offensive, given the amount of effort expended and criticism received (from the same Leftists that make this comparison!) in Bush's efforts to liberate people from Islamofascist rule. Nowhere in the world can they point to a single Christian 'theocracy', not even the Vatican which may be the only government that actually qualifies as such, where such traditions exist.

This orgy of namecalling and paranoid conspiracies gets its impetus from such politicians as Howard Dean, Al Gore, and Ken Salazar, who have green-lighted a war on religion from the Left, especially during this debate over judicial filibusters. They have rationalized the unprecedented obstruction of qualified judicial nominees for their religious beliefs by creating out of whole cloth a threat to the Republic from Christianity, which managed to co-exist with democracy and promote it for over 200 years up to now.

They have created a modern-day voodoo called Dominionism and smeared all church-going people as covert members of its conspiracy. Supposedly, all Christians have worked for centuries to transform America into an Old Testmant-based theocracy with high priests instead of elected officials -- somehow forgetting that for Christians, the New Testament takes precedence over the Old. Otherwise, we'd live under the same precepts as Orthodox Jews, holding Saturday as the Sabbath, eschewing pork, and avoiding cheeseburgers.

The ignorant, bigoted, and the paranoid members of the Left, in this case, hold positions of power in the Democratic party. PFAW in particular has a central place in their electoral politics and strategies, especially when it comes to fighting judicial nominees. These people want to recreate Salem 1692, only they want to discredit faith in itself as a source of values. That's what the modern Democrat Party has decided to endorse in 2005.

When Edgar asks what happened to the religious Left, he misses the point. Religious liberals -- and there are many -- have finally awoken to the fact that the Democrats don't just oppose conservatives, they oppose faith and believers expressing their values in the public square. They want to impose a secular prerequisite on any political debate, where any argument that might come from faith-based values such as opposition to abortion have been predetermined to be invalid and therefore extremist. That cuts out not just conservatives, but a wide swath of the center-left as well from engaging in political debate.

These paranoid bigots have almost guaranteed the demise of the religious Left. The Democrats have made clear in their rhetoric that they hate faith, and they hate those who practice their faith.

BUMP: To top.

Liberian Women And Children Victims Of UN Peacekeeping

The degradation of the United Nations continues apace under the moral authority of the Kofi Annan administration. The AP reports that UN peacekeepers sexually exploited Liberian women and children in the same pattern as they did in Congo and several of the other UN assignments:

UN peacekeepers sexually abused and exploited local women and girls in Liberia and more accusations are expected, a UN spokesman said Friday. ...

"The allegations range from the exchange of goods, money or services for sex to the sexual exploitation of minors. The peacekeeping department here in New York as well as the mission on the ground are taking appropriate follow-up action," he said.

A UN official speaking on condition of anonymity said the number of allegations could eventually total 20.

The head of the mission in Liberia, Jacques Paul Klein, is to step down when his contract expires at the end of the month, a UN spokesman announced Thursday. His deputy Abou Moussa will temporarily take over.

So what the UN proposes is to leave the man responsible for this behavior in charge for another month -- and then to promote his right-hand man "temporarily" in his place. Wow, that'll teach them to rape and pillage the locals! Small wonder almost every UN deployment has resulted in what the UN itself defines as war crimes.

How can anyone doubt that the UN needs diplomats who talk tough and demand action, rather than milquetoast ambassadors who concern themselves more with the proper arrangement of seating at dinners rather than reform? Efforts to block John Bolton's appointment to Turtle Bay amount to little more than an endorsement of the current UN regime and its track record of disgusting corruption and criminal lack of discipline. Anyone still laboring under the illusion that Annan should remain in his position should be ashamed of themselves.

Jack Kelly: GOP Needs A Spine

Jack Kelly of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette makes the argument that the GOP has lost political momentum through the lackadaisical effort of its legislative caucuses, especially in the Senate, since the elections last year. Kelly writes that a lack of effort and basic competence in the Republican leadership has allowed the Democrats to bounce back from their stunning defeats, assisted by an ever-willing Exempt Media:

Democrats may have been waxed at the polls last November, but they're running rings around Republicans in the public relations battles so far this year. Consider:

* Polls indicate a majority of Americans agree with President Bush that reform of Social Security is needed, and about half of Americans favor his plan to permit workers to divert a portion of their Social Security taxes into personal retirement accounts. But in the most recent poll (taken for CBS April 13-16), only 25 percent of respondents indicated they were "confident" Bush would make the right decisions about Social Security, while 70 percent were "uneasy."

* The president's nomination of Undersecretary of State John Bolton to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations is in trouble after waffling by GOP Sen. George Voinovich of Ohio forced postponement until May 12 of a vote in the Foreign Relations Committee. Nominees rarely gain strength while they twist in the wind.

* In a poll taken by Ayres-McHenry (a Republican firm) on April 4, 78 percent of respondents said senators have a constitutional duty to vote on judicial nominees. Yet in a recent poll taken for Senate Republicans, 51 percent of respondents opposed ending the Democratic filibuster that has been blocking votes on Bush's nominees for federal appeals courts.

Democrats benefit enormously from having most of the major media in the tank for them. Although media bias is more egregious than ever, it's not exactly a new phenomenon. You'd think Republicans would be prepared for it by now.

Plenty of blame exists for these developments, and Kelly spreads it around to everyone, including the White House, for not focusing on legislative business more effectively. He argues, I believe convincingly, that a tactical loss on one front was expected, but losing on all fronts shows a serious lack of competence in party leadership. Read all of his excellent column today, and consider just how much of the President's expressed priorities have even been addressed by this session of Congress yet. The only issues that have moved through the Senate, for instance, are one portion of tort reform, the bankruptcy reform act, and a highway bill still under debate. Nothing on the Patriot Act renewal, Social Security reform, or the judicial confirmations that the GOP advertised as its highest domestic priority. They haven't even gotten the additional funding passed yet for the war on terror.

Not exactly a track record of excellence as the fourth month of the session draws to a close...

French May Yet Approve EU Constitution

The Guardian (UK) reports that Jacques Chirac has made some progress in turning around what would have been a devastating loss in the upcoming plebescite to approve the new EU constitution. Polling now indicates that the French favor the constitution by a slim but unstable margin, with many who now support it saying they may change their minds:

Opinion polls out this weekend show for the first time that a majority of French people intend to vote in favour of the European draft constitution next month.

The two surveys, carried out for Le Monde and the Journal du Dimanche, found that 52 per cent supported the draft constitution and 48 per cent opposed it.

But a large proportion said they might still change their minds ahead of the 29 May referendum - 24 per cent in the Le Monde poll and 30 per cent in the other survey.

However, with French unemployment now over 10% and the government pressing for further labor reforms to bring France into a market-based economy, that lead looks short-lived. As the Guardian notes, today's May Day celebrations of labor will undoubtedly include protests over the loss of a holiday on May 16th, which precedes the referendum by less than a fortnight. Many French workers see the new constitution as a further threat to employment as industries will have an expanded ability to relocate to other European locales where the labor force doesn't expect 32-hour work weeks and the entire month of August as a holiday.

Even more interesting is the polling from the Netherlands, which the French see as a bellwether EU nation. The referendum for ratification takes place on June 1 for the Dutch, and so far the measure looks to be heading for a resounding defeat, with 58% voting no. That may let the French off the hook, as the constitution must have universal approval among all EU nations. If the French see a defeat upcoming in the Netherlands, they may decide that a yes vote carries little risk of immediate application, while maintaining French influence on EU politics. The Socialists are also using British opposition to the constitution as a reason to vote for approval, appealing to traditional Franco-British tensions.

In the end, I'd expect this to squeak by in Paris, but that hardly represents a resounding endorsement of Chirac's EU policy.