Europe Collapsing

The one-two punch of rejections by the French and Dutch of the proposed EU constitution has apparently caused former EU stalwarts to rethink the entire project, even as an economic union. After an Italian minister from a fringe party suggested that the lira may replace the euro in Italy, a French colleague of Jacques Chirac predicted a return of the franc. And perhaps the Briton that has been the biggest booster of the EU, Tony Blair, has decided that a united Europe is no longer worth the fight:

Tony Blair has given up on Europe as an issue worth fighting for, senior allies of the Prime Minister have told The Sunday Telegraph.

A leading Blairite cabinet minister made the admission last night as the European Union descended into deeper turmoil, with doubts surfacing over the future of the single currency.

Mr Blair, who will seek to shift the focus of his administration on to poverty in the Third World this week during talks with President Bush, has told his closest allies: "Africa is worth fighting for. Europe, in its present form, is not."

The signal is an astonishing U-turn for a leader who said three years ago that the euro was "our destiny" and who announced a British referendum by proclaiming: "Let the battle be joined." But one of his closest allies said that Mr Blair no longer believed that putting Britain at the heart of Europe could be his legacy: "Europe is back to the drawing board. Africa will become more important."

In our discussions of the EU crisis today on our radio show, SCSU Scholars' King Banaian made the point that without a viable EU, the euro has become superfluous. Apparently that same argument has occurred to the EU elite, even those who previously championed complete European unity, like the French UMP party. It seems that the rats have begun lining up to abandon the ship even before it starts taking on water -- demonstrating, perhaps, that the EU project had less enthusiasm even among the EU elite than previously thought.

Blair had long lectured on the importance of European consolidation. During most of his career, the EU was his signature project, and he has done more than any other British politician to bring the UK as close as it came to integrate itself within the union. For Blair to relegate it as a secondary issue, or less, means that he truly must have lost faith in the future of the EU. With over 81 percent of Britons demanding that any further moves towards consolidation be approved by referendum -- and the sorry track records that such plebescites already have had in Europe -- Blair has seen the writing on the wall.

Unless something dramatic and unexpected happens in the next few days, more nations will express a lack of confidence in the union and the euro and prepare returns to national currencies. Without a central government, a central currency makes no sense. (via Instapundit)

NYT's Wayback Machine Takes Editorial Board To 9/10

The New York Times has an editorial for tomorrow's edition that argues for a return to the failed counterterrorism strategies that brought us the 9/11 attacks. Not only does the Gray Lady continue the fortnight-long harangue about Guantanamo Bay, but also insists that the only way to deal with terrorists is through law enforcement:

Now that the Bush administration has made clear how offended it is at Amnesty International's word choice in characterizing the Guantánamo Bay detention camp "the gulag of our times," we hope it will soon get around to dealing with the substantive problems that the Amnesty report is only the latest to identify. What Guantánamo exemplifies - harsh, indefinite detention without formal charges or legal recourse - may or may not bring to mind the Soviet Union's sprawling network of Stalinist penal colonies. It certainly has nothing in common with any American notions of justice or the rule of law.

Our colleague Thomas L. Friedman offered just the right solution a few days back. The best thing Washington can now do about this national shame is to shut it down. It is a propaganda gift to America's enemies; an embarrassment to our allies; a damaging repudiation of the American justice system; and a highly effective recruiting tool for Islamic radicals, including future terrorists.

This refrain sounds familiar. Unless I'm mistaken, the NYT also joined the chorus of voices who called for the US to raze Abu Ghraib prison to the ground after the discovery that a handful of idiots on the night watch had abused prisoners. Unfortunately, those critics forgot that the Iraqis actually owned Abu Ghraib, and didn't want it demolished. Now the editors want us to close Guantanamo -- and for what? Because the terrorists there complain about abusing a book, something that an investigation shows the detainees do more often than anything the guards do themselves.

The Times argues that Guantanamo should not be the only military detention facility shut down, either:

What makes Amnesty's gulag metaphor apt is that Guantánamo is merely one of a chain of shadowy detention camps that also includes Abu Ghraib in Iraq, the military prison at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan and other, secret locations run by the intelligence agencies. Each has produced its own stories of abuse, torture and criminal homicide. These are not isolated incidents, but part of a tightly linked global detention system with no accountability in law. Prisoners have been transferred from camp to camp. So have commanding officers. And perhaps not coincidentally, so have specific methods of mistreatment.

Over more than two centuries of peace and war, the United States has developed a highly effective legal system that, while far from perfect, is rightly admired around the world. The shadowy parallel system that the Bush administration created after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks has by now proved its inferiority in almost every respect. It does not seem to have been effective in finding and prosecuting the most dangerous terrorists, and it has been a disaster in undermining America's reputation for fairness, just treatment of the guilty and humane treatment of the innocent.

The notion of relying on Amesty International to supply a fair and impartial survey of any wrongdoing should have died with that idiotic and historically inept reference to Guantanamo as an American gulag. In any case, the US military doesn't answer to Amnesty International but to the elected leadership of the United States, which answers to its people. The military has performed investigations which have not only been supervised by the executive branch but also by Congress, and while some have been left unsatisfied by the results, the reports have shown that abuses have been isolated and the perpetrators punished when discovered.

What the Times argues is that terrorists captured out of uniform, bearing arms against US forces in a field of battle, and/or purposely conducting attacks on civilians should be arrested rather than captured and jailed rather than placed in detention camps. The Times evidently wants to return to the Clinton-era strategy of treating al-Qaeda like a criminal gang rather than a worldwide terror effort that has already proven catastrophically deadly to Americans at home and abroad.

The "shadowy parallel" system that our military uses is no different than any other POW or detention system used in other wars, except that in other wars, we would line unlawful combatants against the wall and have them shot rather than lock them up. Part of that is to gain as much intelligence from them as possible, but the other reason is the increase in delicate sensibilities of the media and the public. The Times wants these terrorists released, and not to their countries of origin -- where they also take a dim view of Islamofascist fanatics -- but to unsuspecting third countries where they can return to their terrorism without fear of prosecution.

And that's supposed to make people like America more?

Prisoners captured during war have never had access to American courts, no matter what the Times might argue about the "basic principles of justice that served America so well in the past". The Geneva Convention clearly states that unlawful combatants can be shot after capture and are only entitled to a military tribunal to determine their proper status. It doesn't require access to civilian court systems for good reasons -- unlawful combatants aren't criminals, they're enemies out of uniform, and they put civilian populations at unnecessary deadly risk.

What the Times and the crybaby Leftist establishment it represents refuse to accept is that America is at war -- a war it did not seek but a war that its enemies insisted on forcing on us. We tried the Times' strategy for more than a decade, and it resulted in stupid legalistic decisions to arrest AQ leadership rather than just killing them when we had the chance. Even arresting them was too controversial for the prior administration, which balked at a deal to capture Osama bin Laden in the mid-90s because of the lack of an indictment. That strategy led to 9/11 and the deaths of almost 3,000 Americans by the lunatics that the Times seeks to protect.

An editorial like this would have been clueless enough on 9/10. Less than four years after the bloody massacre that occured the next day, it's pathetic and embarrassing, and a demonstration of moral cowardice.

Harkin: Christian Broadcasters 'Our Taliban'

Robert Novak reports that stupid statements on Air America aren't limited to the liberal network's hosts. Iowa Senator Tom Harkin appeared on Randi Rhodes' show and called Christian broadcasters "our home-grown Taliban":

On the day before Texas Supreme Court Justice Priscilla Owen was confirmed by the Senate as part of a negotiated compromise, Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin called her "wacko."

Harkin, appearing on liberal Randi Rhodes's national radio talk show, became animated as he said of Owen: "This is not a person to put on the bench for a lifetime appointment. This person is wacko! She's wacko!"

On the same program, Harkin said Christian broadcasters are "sort of our home-grown Taliban." He added: "They have a direct line to God. And if you don't tune into their line, you're obviously on Satan's line."

Thus goes the Democratic outreach to the Christian community. In fact, Harkin and Howard Dean have defined a new era in party-building for the Democrats, where any display of faith makes someone a "wacko", and the equivalent of Islamic lunatics that beat men for flying kites and women for displaying their ankles. If Tom Harkin can't tell the difference between James Dobson and Mullah Omar, then Iowans should check his corn to see what he's been using for fertilizer.

Their fear and distaste for Christians borders on bigotry -- and yet the media eats it up. Christians and other people of faith are increasingly repelled by this rhetoric, and hopefully will remember it when the Democrats claim at election time that they respect faith. If they did, they wouldn't compare Christians to Islamofascist terrorists.

Northern Alliance Radio Today

We're on the air, talking about Qu'ran abuse and other media nuttiness, at AM 1280 The Patriot. If you're not in the Twin Cities, catch us on our live Internet stream at their website. Call us at 651-289-4488 to join in the conversation. We'll also be talking Deep Throat and the potential connections between the stories.

Join us!

UPDATE: Kevin McCullough has just joined us -- be sure to tune in!

No Extra White Smoke At The Vatican

Despite his expressed wishes to the contrary, John Paul the Great's secretary did not burn his personal notes, deeming them too valuable as historical documents for such destruction:

Pope John Paul II's longtime private secretary said Saturday he did not burn the late pontiff's notes as his will demanded, arguing that the papers contain "great riches" and should instead be preserved.

Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, who worked with the pope from 1966 until his death earlier this year, told Polish state radio there are "quite a lot of manuscripts on various issues," but he offered no details.

"Nothing has been burned," Dziwisz said. "Nothing is fit for burning, everything should be preserved and kept for history, for the future generations — every single sentence."

"These are great riches that should gradually be made available to the public."

Personally, this news gladdens my heart. When I first heard that John Paul II had asked for the destruction of the notes, I understood his motivations but mourned for the added loss to history of his personal perspective on more than a quarter-century of world history, on which John Paul had such impact. I thought it would be akin to Winston Churchill having his six-volume history of World War II burnt when he lost the elections of 1945 instead of publishing them.

On the other hand, Catholic priests take an oath of obedience, and I a somewhat surprised that Dziwisz would have resisted his former boss' wishes. Perhaps because it came as a request, Dziwisz felt that he had the option of disobedience in this instance. Obviously, Pope Benedict has decided to overlook this transgression, if it can be called that, as he has named Dziwisz to John Paul's old bishopric in Krakow for his next assignment -- a truly worthy office for a loyal aide to the last Pope.

I look forward to the release of these notes, and am thankful they survived.

UPDATE: Krakow, not Warsaw, as CQ reader Joe K points out. It was correct in the AP story; I just took it down wrong. I've corrected it above.

The Self-Indulgence Of The American Media And Leftist Establishment

Ladies and gentlemen of the blogosphere, dear readers, and friends, I submit to you that this week represents the nadir of responsible thought about the war on terror. We face Islamofascist lunatics who wish to establish Taliban-like tyrannies throughout the Middle East -- and eventually the world -- and who commit real atrocities in their efforts to bring those twisted dreams to fruition. We have seen their videos showing the beheadings of helpless hostages with dull knives, literally sawing off the heads of these victims while alive. They slaughter women and children as indiscriminately as possible. They even blow up Islamic mosques to kill Muslims at prayer.

Now we have had two weeks of debate over whether we have mistreated six hundred or so of these terrorists captured on the battlefield, out of uniform, bearing arms against us. What has been the focus of this controversy? Cattle prods and bullwhips for interrogation? Beatings? Naked pyramids and leashes?

No. It's whether or not we abused a book.

This has been front-page news for two or three weeks now, ever since Newsweek decided to run a poorly-sourced item about Gitmo guards flushing a Qu'ran down a toilet. Now we have the Pentagon report detailing five supposed events where guards mistreated copies of the Muslim scripture, and the media and the blogosphere have reacted like this is another My Lai.

Guess what, people? This is a book. It's not the Ark of the Covenant or Mohammed's horse or a splinter of the True Cross.

If American servicemen at Gitmo have beaten or tortured prisoners, we need to know about it and put a stop to it. However, all of this hue and cry over how we treat printed material -- and even the steps that the Pentagon put in place to treat it "respectfully", such as requiring gloves and such -- demonstrate a complete lack of perspective about who and what our enemy is. These are the same people that put grenades in dolls so that children get maimed and killed when they pick them up, a favorite Taliban tactic in Afghanistan. They fought for the same lunatic leaders who now kill Americans and Iraqis in the Sunni Triangle with carbombs and perhaps-not-volunteer suicide bombers.

They fought for the same people who ordered the massacre of 2900 American citizens on 9/11. And we have our panties in a twist over whether we may have hurt their feelings about how we treated ... a book.

If Saturday Night Live wrote a parody of American hypersensitivity in fighting a war on terror, I doubt they could create something more ridiculous than this. Can you imagine our grandparents having this kind of debate had an American guard pissed on Mein Kampf at a POW camp for German POWs?

Short of ensuring that the Gitmo prisoners belong there and get treated humanely -- three hots and a cot and no abuse -- I couldn't care less about their reading material. If they get Qu'rans, fine. If not, fine. If their Qu'rans get wet, kicked, dropped, laughed at, or ignored, let the military deal with the disciplinary issues, but it isn't newsworthy. Why should we give a damn about it? What happened to our sense of priorities?

The media and the Leftist establishments such as the ACLU and Amnesty International use crap like this to set up impossible standards of behavior, then pretend that we're no better than our enemies when we fail to perfectly meet them. That's why AI used the "gulag" comparison earlier this week, and why Michael Isikoff and Newsweek decided to break the story that rampant abuse of printed material occurred at Gitmo. It's a deliberate attempt to undermine support for a war they don't like, and pathetically, Americans seem to have fallen for the hype.

Some Americans, however, have not. See Michelle Malkin, Austin Bay, and Instapundit for some comprehensive links.

UPDATE: I forgot to include a link to my friend and colleague Paul Mirengoff at Power Line, who also questions our sense of perspective. Also LaShawn Barber.

UPDATE II: We're talking about this on the air right now. Join us at 651-289-4488.

UPDATE III: The always-insightful Ed Driscoll makes an excellent point:

In other words, it's hypocrisy that hasn't been seen on this level since the left and the media (sorry to repeat myself) turned on a dime from claiming that Clarence Thomas trying to hit on Anita Hill was a Crime Against Humanity, but all of the charges that emanated from Bill Clinton's trousers was just between consenting adults.

If the media wants to claim that defacing the Koran in a POW camp full of captured terrorists is the crime of the century, then it needs to follow its own logic to its natural conclusion: no more claiming that "art" such as Piss Christ is a bold artistic statement. No more episodes like this on Law & Order and other TV shows, unless they're roundly condemned by the press. An article such as Rod Dreher's "The Godless Party" should be a multi-part investigative feature in the New York Times. There should be regular articles condemning the attacks of the ACLU against religious Christians or Christmas celebrations.

Because without a similar tone to coverage of religion in the US, Koran abuse stories at Gitmo looks exactly like it is: grandstanding hypocrisy of the worst order.

Exactly.

UPDATE IV: Bill at INDC Journal has a big issue with La Shawn's post -- and he's got a very good point. Be sure to read his entire argument. It's excellent.

Another Great Moment In Palestinian Democracy

The London Telegraph reports this morning that Mahmoud Abbas has suspended parliamentary elections in the Palestinian territories, an unsurprising move considering the popularity of the Hamas opposition in comparison to Abbas' Fatah faction:

Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, has decided to postpone parliamentary elections which had been planned for next month.

The widely-expected move has been criticised by Hamas, the militant group, which said it stemmed from fears it would do well at the ballot box.

Mr Abbas said he had decided to postpone the July 17 poll to allow time to resolve a dispute over proposed reforms to the voting law. He gave no new date for the election.

The delay could stoke tensions between Abbas's Fatah faction and Hamas, which had been poised to make a strong showing in its first legislative campaign.

Hamas had reacted to earlier hints of a delay by accusing Fatah of manoeuvring to cling to power.

Ever since Abbas' own suspicious election as President, in which he ran virtually unopposed and still the election rules changed halfway through the day to boost his numbers, the election results have been disappointing for Fatah. Local elections proved that Abbas has little real mandate from the people, and parliamentary elections would have likely put the terrorist group in control of the Legislature, setting up a power struggle that Abbas had small chance of surviving, politically and literally.

Instead, Abbas now follows the Arafat option. His predecessor held an election after Oslo to mollify the Western nations and fool them into thinking he had transformed himself into a democrat and a statesman. As soon as the aid began to flow, the elections stopped. Abbas may have more commitment to elections, in part because he doesn't enjoy the near-mythic status that Arafat did among the Palestinians, but this suspension shows that his commitment to democracy has its limits -- and retaining power is his top priority.

Elections in Palestine won't make much difference in the peace process as long as the two parties both consist of terrorists. Pitting Fatah against Hamas in a two-party system means choosing between practical terrorists or fanatical terrorists. The former is truly the lesser of the two evils, but neither represents progress. The inclination of the Palestinian people to freely choose the latter, as even Abbas now concedes, shows that not only are the Palestinians not ready for a sovereign state of their own, but that the peace process is a sham and the cease-fire hopelessly doomed.

Poll Shows Byrd In Trouble For Re-Election

Because he has been in the Senate for five decades, Robert Byrd has the reputation of being unbeatable if he chooses to run for re-election, even though West Virginia went for George Bush twice. A new poll suggests that this reputation may be seriously overblown, as he has come up in a dead heat against a Republican who hasn't even announced an intention to run in 2006 (via Don Surber):

A new poll shows Sen. Robert Byrd and Rep. Shelley Moore Capito would run neck and neck in a possible campaign for the Senate seat now held by Byrd.

An RMS Strategies Poll released today reports that 46 percent of 401 registered voters in West Virginia would vote for Byrd if the election were held now.

A total of 43 percent picked Capito, R-W.Va., though she has not announced her intention to run.

And 11 percent said they were undecided -- a percentage that could sway the vote either way.

It's not supposed to be this way. Byrd, so the argument goes, brings home the pork -- and then sticks his name on every building that benefits from it. West Virginians supposedly revere Byrd's historic role in the Senate, don't want to lose his influence and leadership, and want to allow the old man to retire on his own terms rather than turn him out of office. Even with the strong red-state showing from WV, most pundits have said that taking Byrd's seat is little more than a pipe dream.

If so, then say hello to Shelley "Pipe" Cavito. The Congresswoman has not yet decided to run against Byrd and still runs within the margin of error in the polling. That's a eyebrow-raising result for anyone running against an incumbent, and given the political direction of the state, shows that Byrd is very vulnerable in 2006.

Liberal MP Calls For Suspension Of Murphy, Dosanjh

Not everyone in the Liberal Party has joined Paul Martin's defense of his Chief of Staff and the Health Minister. Saying that the Grewal tapes "made my skin crawl," MP Roger Galloway demanded that Martin suspend Tim Murphy and Ujjal Dosanjh until the completion of an investigation into the tapes:

A senior Liberal MP wants the Prime Minister's chief of staff, Tim Murphy, and Health Minister Ujjal Dosanjh suspended from their posts until an investigation takes place into the growing scandal over the secretly taped negotiations between the two men and a Tory MP who was considering crossing the floor.

Sarnia MP Roger Gallaway says the situation is "totally odious" and "it shows the underbelly of politics that I think is quite unacceptable."

"[Conservative Leader Stephen Harper] will have to deal with [Tory MP Gurmant Grewal, who made the tapes], but we have to deal with our own," Mr. Gallaway said. "The use of the words 'Senate' and 'foreign posting,' even if no offer was made, is totally odious. There are several MPs who are remaining silent but who think Murphy and Dosanjh have crossed the threshold of acceptable political discourse."

Galloway says that his office has received numerous calls from constituents expressing their dismay over the tapes. Other Liberal MPs, talking off the record, confirm that Canadian voters have become outraged, and that they too would like to see Martin take some action against the two men. Absent that, they fear that Martin will have silently endorsed the sale of positions for political purposes:

Another senior Liberal MP in effect dared the PM to suspend the two men: "If the Prime Minister feels it is necessary for his Minister of Health and his chief of staff to step aside, then he should do it. If he remains silent about it, it means he really doesn't have any concerns about it."

Martin may have avoided a no-confidence motion in Parliament, but he may soon face a revolt from his own backbenchers if he stands on his assertion that Murphy and Dosanjh did nothing wrong. Dosanjh himself undercut that argument by claiming that the tapes were heavily edited to show wrongdoing. Given the revelations of Liberal embezzlement and corruption that has just come to light from the Gomery Inquiry, Martin's obstinacy sounds more like stonewalling than a defense, and other Liberals may soon have to decide whether Martin has become too much of a millstone around their neck to retain him as PM.

In other news, the experts who claimed that the tapes had been edited did not inspect the source tapes, but a CD created from the originals. After claiming that zero-signal gaps showed that the tapes had been manipulated, Steven Pausak admitted that "manipulation" may just have been the transfer of the files to CD audio format:

Stevan Pausak, a former Ontario government expert and forensic scientist who trained at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said a 46-second audio segment containing a chat between Mr. Grewal and Mr. Dosanjh about an unspecified reward for joining the Liberal party contains an unexplained dead air gap of 0.3 seconds.

“Two seconds into the recording there is this continuous gap and the signal is missing for 0.3 seconds,” he told globeandmail.com. “The missing signal definitely shows the copy [provided to him by The Canadian Press Thursday] is altered.”

Conservatives say the gap occurred when the master tape was transferred to CD. Mr. Pausak acknowledged “it is possible” such a transfer process could produce the gap.

“If it was done on purpose or by accident, I have no idea,” said Mr. Pausak.

The original tapes have been turned over to the RCMP, I believe, and they will need to authenticate the reliability of the recordings. If the originals exist, why bother to inspect copies?

Arrests Made In McCartney Case

Two Belfast men have been arrested in the murder of Robert McCartney, the man whom suspected IRA terrorists killed in a pub brawl and then covered up through threats and initimidation. The killings threw the Northern Ireland peace process into a crisis and badly tarnished the Sinn Fein (NI) party:

Two Belfast men were charged Friday in the IRA-linked knife slaying of a Catholic man and the injury of his friend outside a pub earlier this year, the first breakthrough in a case that has overshadowed Northern Ireland's peace process for months.

A 49-year-old man will face a charge of murdering Robert McCartney, while a 36-year-old man will be charged with the attempted murder of Brendan Devine, police said. The arraignment was set for Saturday in Belfast Crown Court.

McCartney's sisters — who have taken their campaign to the White House and the European Parliament — said they were stunned by the news — but emphasized that their mission for justice still had a long way to go.

"We hope it will lead to further arrests, because there were more than two people involved. We still have a long way to go in terms of a trial and convictions," said Catherine McCartney. "We are happy this has happened, but we know it is by no means over."

Two Sinn Fein politicians had been present in the pub when the murders occurred but claimed to have seen nothing. Sinn Fein and the IRA initially insisted that they had nothing to do with the murders, but then the IRA offered to kneecap those responsible as an apology to the McCartney family -- an offer the appalled McCartneys refused. The case revealed the extent to which paramilitary organizations in Northern Ireland still control the daily lives of citizens, similar to Mafia families in the immigrant neighborhoods of a few decades ago here in the US.

Congratulations and admiration go out to the brave McCartneys, who stood up to the cowards and terrorists that killed their brother and terrified people into silence. Hopefully this will start a process that will take the guns, bombs, and knives out of Northern Ireland's political processes for good.

CQ On The Stump Tonight (Update!)

I will be speaking at a monthly meeting of Twin City conservatives tonight, from 7-9 PM, on the New Media and its effects on politics and news. The meeting will take place at Park Tavern in Saint Louis Park. I want to thank the folks at Townhall for the invitation; I'm looking forward to the speech and an opportunity to discuss blogs and politics afterwards.

UPDATE: I'm at the Park Tavern and blogging away with the laptop while waiting for my early-bird sirloin steak dinner -- just $4.95. I don't live or work near here, but if I did, I'd probably drop by for a meal often.

In fact, the steak just arrived -- and it's not bad.

Hopefully, I will be able to post a video clip of my speech later tonight. I'm taping it for another project.

UPDATE II: I think everyone involved had a great time, especially me, in my debut speaking engagement. I met a lot of new friends last night and caught up with some existing ones, like Jane Bustad at the excellent real-estate blog Twin Cities Real Estate. Todd from Kowabunga has been a MOBber for a while now, and a couple of the folks from the Anti-Strib also made it, including Darrel (sp?), who originally offered me the opportunity to speak.

I'll be working on the video later this evening -- and maybe I'll post a good excerpt or two from the presentation, if it turns out OK. If not, my next speaking gig will be at the University of Minnesota on June 15th, sponsored by CFACT at Coffman Union. I'll post more details later on. If you're in town, I hope you can plan on being there.

Guantanamo Fog

One of my favorite columnists and bloggers, Michelle Malkin, writes a must-read column in today's Washington Times about the mythology of Guantanamo's Camp X-Ray being the equivalent of the Soviet gulag, as Amnesty International accused earlier this week. This is how the Americans have mistreated the poor dears at Guantanamo:

Erik Saar, an army sergeant at Gitmo for six months and co- author of a negative, tell-all book titled "Inside the Wire," inadvertently provides us more firsthand details showing just how restrained, and sensitive to Islam -- to a fault, I believe -- detention facility officials have been.

Each detainee's cell has a sink installed low to the ground, "to make it easier for the detainees to wash their feet" before Muslim prayer, Mr. Saar reports. Detainees get "two hot halal, or religiously correct, meals" a day in addition to an MRE (meal ready to eat). Loudspeakers broadcast the Muslims' call to prayer five times daily.

Every detainee gets a prayer mat, cap and Koran. Every cell has a stenciled arrow pointing toward Mecca. Moreover, Gitmo's library -- yes, library -- is stocked with Jihadi books. "I was surprised that we'd be making that concession to the religious zealotry of the terrorists," Mr. Saar admits. "It seemed to me that the camp command was helping to facilitate the terrorists' religious devotion." Mr. Saar notes one FBI special agent involved in interrogations even grew a beard like the detainees "as a sort of show of respect for their faith."

I won't belabor the historical illiteracy of Amnesty International, already pointed out by many others, in comparing this to the system of slave-labor camps that sent millions to their deaths in the Soviet Union. I will point out that the people at Camp X-Ray were captured on fields of battle, out of uniform and carrying weapons in opposition to our armed forces. If Amnesty International wants us to hew to the Geneva Convention, we could have just had them shot on capture.

Make sure you read the entire column, and let's make sure people understand that this is a war, not a juvenile-crime prevention initiative. The terrorists in Camp X-Ray fought on behalf of the same people who killed 3,000 unarmed and defenseless American citizens on 9/11. While I don't want them abused, I could frankly care less about their detention otherwise. Let them rot and die there. Better that than releasing them and having to fight them a second time.

Still Rather Clueless

Dan Rather appeared on Larry King Live last night to discuss the outing of Mark Felt as Deep Throat. King couldn't resist the urge to compare the Watergate story to that of the disgraced 60 Minutes II report on George Bush's TexANG service, and Rather couldn't resist the urge to once again claim that no one had proven the Killian memos as fraudulent:

KING: Well, I don't know another word. You might still believe the story, by the way.

RATHER: Well, without getting into that because the panel, this panel that was chosen by CBS to look into it, they issued their report. CBS adopted the report. I said at the time and I say now, I read the report. I absorbed it. I carried forward in my work. Anybody wants to know the panel's version of what happened should read the report.

The situation that we had and still have is the last line of this has not been written. I will be very interested to see the last line of this story (INAUDIBLE) written. But, you know, I've acknowledged that we didn't do it perfectly. I wish we had. Others may say, well, you didn't do it well. They're entitled to that judgment. ...

Now, the documents were a support for those and an important support, and when questions were raised, well, how do we know that documents are true? We had some problems. However, I do want to point out, and I -- listen, anybody who wants to castigate this or fuss with this, have at it. I will point out that the panel, which was headed by a President Nixon, Reagan, Bush family supporter and a journalist who said that George Bush one was one of the greatest people he ever met -- this panel came forward and what they concluded, among the things they concluded after months of investigation and spending millions of dollars, they could not determine that the documents were fraudulent. Important point, that we don't know whether the documents were fraudulent or not.

KING: Are you saying the story might be correct?

RATHER: Well, I'm saying a prudent person might take that view.

A prudent person might take that view? A prudent journalist would have taken into account the recommendations of the document examiners who looked at these memos before publication. Every one of them warned CBS of serious questions about their authenticity, except for the one that only looked at the signatures on the memos.

Furthermore, Rather flat-out lied about the findings of the Thornburgh-Boccardi report. Peter Tytell, the man hired by the panel, reported unequivocally to Thornburgh and Boccardi that the Killian memos had been created by a computer. This excerpt comes from Page 1 of Appendix 4 of their final report:

Tytell concluded, for the reasons described below, that (i) the relevant portion of the Superscript Exemplar was produced on an Olympia manual typewriter, (ii) the Killian documents were not produced on an Olympia manual typewriter, and (iii) the Killian documents were produced on a computer in Times New Roman typestyle . Tytell acknowledged that deterioration in the Killian documents from the copying and downloading process made the comparison of typestyles "to some extent a subjective call." However, he believed the differences were sufficiently significant to conclude that the Killian documents were not produced on a typewriter in the early 1970s and therefore were not authentic.

The report lists in detail all of the discrepancies found by Tytell between known examplars of true TexANG documents and the Killian memos produced by CBS and their rabidly partisan source, Bill Burkett. That information has been in the public record for over four months. To go on national TV and claim that the CBS report does not render a judgment on the authenticity of the Killian memos is false -- and given Rather's proximity and interest in the issue, one must presume that the falsehood is deliberate.

Does anyone at CBS have an issue with one of their featured journalists appearing on national television and lying to the American public? So far, the answer appears to be no.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Ian at the Political Teen has the video in question. And Brainster cuts to the heart of the entire issue with this observation:

You see the problem? When he says nobody's proven the documents false or not, he's demanding extraordinary proof of their falsity. But of course, a real newsman should be in the business of demanding extraordinary proof of their validity. That's supposed to be the difference between CBS News and the National Enquirer.

Abramoff Was Ecumenical In His Lobbying, It Seems

Despite the Democrats' best efforts to paint controversial lobbyist Jack Abramoff as a GOP tool -- especially in relation to Tom DeLay -- further investigation by the Washington Post shows that Abramoff put significant money into the coffers of leading Democrats as well. In fact, two of Abramoff's biggest winners were the present and former Senate Minority Leaders:

Lobbyist Jack Abramoff and an associate famously collected $82 million in lobbying and public relations fees from six Indian tribes and devoted a lot of their time to trying to persuade Republican lawmakers to act on their clients' behalf.

But Abramoff didn't work just with Republicans. He oversaw a team of two dozen lobbyists at the law firm Greenberg Traurig that included many Democrats. Moreover, the campaign contributions that Abramoff directed from the tribes went to Democratic as well as Republican legislators.

Among the biggest beneficiaries were Capitol Hill's most powerful Democrats, including Thomas A. Daschle (S.D.) and Harry M. Reid (Nev.), the top two Senate Democrats at the time, Richard A. Gephardt (Mo.), then-leader of the House Democrats, and the two lawmakers in charge of raising funds for their Democratic colleagues in both chambers, according to a Washington Post study. Reid succeeded Daschle as Democratic leader after Daschle lost his Senate seat last November.

Democrats are hoping to gain political advantage from federal and Senate investigations of Abramoff's activities and from the embattled lobbyist's former ties to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.). Yet, many Democratic lawmakers also benefited from Abramoff's political operation, a fact that could hinder the Democrats' efforts to turn the lobbyist's troubles into a winning partisan issue.

Of course, this is the danger of playing holier-than-thou with baseless ethics complaints. The Democrats have targeted Tom DeLay not because he's committed crimes, but because of his political effectiveness. Ronnie Earle has chased DeLay for years, and still hasn't filed an indictment despite his highly partisan effort to get him behind bars. Howard Dean claims that's where DeLay belongs, and both he and Nancy Pelosi have used Jack Abramoff as a chief reason for their ire.

Now, all of a sudden, the Democrats have become very, very silent. Those that have commented claim no knowledge of Abramoff's involvement with the six Indian tribes that donated tens of thousands of dollars to their campaigns between 1999 and 2004 through Abramoff's recommendations. While the biggest winner in this handout festival was Republican Conrad Burns ($141K), one-third of the largest recipients were Democrats. Here's a list of a few of them:

Rep. Patrick Kennedy: $128K
Senator Harry Reid: >$40K
Senator Tom Daschle: >$40K
Rep. Dick Gephardt: $32.5K

The Democrats all of a sudden have discounted the link between donations and supposed influence-peddling by Abramoff:

A spokesman for Kennedy said the congressman's donations from the tribes "have nothing to do with Abramoff." Kennedy traces the money's genesis to his family's long-standing commitment to Indian causes, to the fact that he co-founded the Congressional Native American Caucus in 1997, and to his personal relationship with Mississippi Choctaw Chief Philip Martin, whom Kennedy met in 1999 on a fundraising trip for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. "They just became close friends," said Kennedy spokesman Sean Richardson. ...

Daschle was familiar with another of Abramoff's Democratic lobbyists, Michael Smith. According to Steve Hildebrand, who was Daschle's campaign manager last year, Smith "helped with a lot of Democratic campaigns." In addition, Daschle was a favorite of Indian tribes and received donations from 64, including five Abramoff clients. "We took about $150,000 in this last election cycle from Indian tribes around the country," Hildebrand said. "Tom is viewed as a champion of Indian issues. We have nine tribes in South Dakota, and they worked hard for him."

But by far the most difficult effort to distance himself from the Abramoff story will be that of Harry Reid. The Post reports that not only did Reid get in excess of forty grand from Abramoff's clients, but that Abramoff hired one of Reid's political aides, who simultaneously helped raise funds for Reid:

James Patrick Manley, Reid's spokesman, also asserted that Reid's connection to tribes was remote from Abramoff. He said that Reid does not know Abramoff. But Abramoff did hire as one of his lobbyists Edward P. Ayoob, a veteran Reid legislative aide. Manley acknowledged that Ayoob helped raise campaign money for his former boss. Lawyers close to the Abramoff operation said that Ayoob held a fundraising reception for Reid at Greenberg Traurig's offices here.

That tasty revelation occurs below the jump in the Post article, but it should send a message to the rabid anti-DeLay forces in the House and at the DNC. Blowing ordinary lobbying efforts and sloppy paperwork into hysterical charges of corruption and ethics violations could hurt Tom DeLay, but it could absolutely cripple the current Democratic leadership.

As I said earlier, glass houses. Stones. Bad idea.

Is Zarqawi Dead?

Rumor #279b on the Zarqawi circuit now has it that the mastermind of the Iraqi al-Qaeda network has died on the operating table -- and is currently six feet under the Iraqi soil that he has bloodied so badly (via Mystery Achievement and CQ reader Soccer Dad):

The Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi - al-Qaeda's leader in Iraq - died on Friday and his body is in Fallujah's cemetary, an Iraqi Sunni sheikh, Ammar Abdel Rahim Nasir, has told the Saudi on-line newspaper Al-Medina. He claims that gunfights which broke out in Fallujah in the last few days involved militants trying to protect the insurgency leader's tomb from a group of American soldiers patrolling the area.

During a telephone conversation from the city of Fallujah with the Saudi newspaper, Nasir said al-Zarqawi was taken there after being injured in the city of Ramadi around three weeks ago, and may have been treated by two doctors who had worked with his aides in Baghdad. He said the two doctors had stopped a serious haemorrhage in al-Zarqawi's intestines, but that after his condition worsened last week, the militant died on Friday.

Nasir adds that in his will the insurgent leader left the order that no funeral should be held for him and the right to announce his death should be left to the al-Qaeda leadership in Afghanistan and Osama bin Laden.

The Al-Medina newspaper reports that it also called the headmaster of a school in Fallujah, who preferred to remain anonymous, but confirmed that many people in the city were aware of the fact that al-Zarqawi had recently been taken to the city.

I certainly hope this report is true. I also hope that the information in it leads Iraqi and American forces to locate his tomb, and to use a particular, natural method to soften the ground before exhuming the body for identification. However, these reports leave me pretty skeptical. Faking one's death makes it more convenient to move around, for one thing. For another, if he's really dead, that $25 million reward for bringing in his body would prove almost irresistable, I think, for some of the people involved in his funeral.

Iraq Wants More US Involvement, Not Less

Today's Washington Post reports (on page A19) that the Iraqis, far from viewing Americans as an occupying force manipulating their politics and security, instead believe that we have withdrawn too much from both. The new government's foreign minister met with top US officials to request that the US involve itself more closely with efforts to get their permanent constitution written and to provide more leadership on security:

To prevent the breakdown of Iraq's troubled transition and a potential civil war, Iraq's new government appealed to the Bush administration yesterday to take a much more assertive role, particularly on four key political and military issues, according to Iraqi and U.S. officials.

In talks with Vice President Cheney yesterday and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Wednesday, Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari requested greater U.S. and coalition help in crafting a new constitution. The deadline is now less than three months away, but deliberations have been slowed as Iraq still works on the composition of a constitutional committee.

With time running out for writing the constitution and then holding elections in December for a permanent government, Zebari warned that the United States has withdrawn too much, leaving the new government struggling to cope and endangering the long-term prospects for success.

Specifically, Iraq wants the US to get around to confirming President Bush's nominee for John Negroponte's replacement as ambassador. Bush named Zalmay Khalilzad to the post last March, when he picked Negroponte for the new national intelligence czar post. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee, chaired by Dick Lugar and Joe Biden, have yet to hold hearings for Khalilzad despite the strategic and pressing nature of the appointment. The Post reports that Khalilzad will get his hearings next week, three months after his selection. That's because the SFRC was finally able to get past the higher-priority ambassadorial postings of the Slovak Republic, Malta, and Luxembourg in their last session.

By the way, expect to see some mild fireworks at Khalilzad's hearing. The Village Voice already alerted the Left that Khalilzad has -- gasp! -- worked for an oil company before. The nominee represented Unocal during the Clinton-era negotiations with the Taliban that hoped to establish a pipeline across Afghanistan to gain greater access to oil production in Central Asia and the Caucasus. The Ted Rall/Michael Moore contingent have long claimed that this effort was the true motivation behind the Afghanistan phase of the war on terror. This will give the Democrats an opportunity to show how far they've slid to the radical Left. If this thoroughly debunked conspiracy theory plays any role at Khalilzad's hearing, we'll know the lunatics have seized control of the asylum.

Iraq's efforts to bring Americans closer to the political and security processes of the new government shows that far from being oppressive occupiers, we probably have been too sensitive to the appearance of becoming that. We should quit worrying about appearances and make sure that the mission is successful.

It'll All End In Tears, I Tell You

The unequivocal rejection of the new EU constitution by two of its founding nations have left members of the EU elite profoundly shaken, the Guardian reports today. Even though polling numbers in France and the Netherlands have predicted substantial losses for weeks now, apparently no one prepared a Plan B. As a result, confusion has broken out at Brussels:

Jean-Claude Juncker, the Luxembourg prime minister who holds the rotating EU presidency and who was said to have been on the verge of tears when he heard news of the Dutch vote, summoned Gerhard Schröder for emergency talks. As the German chancellor travelled to the Grand Duchy, the Elysée Palace announced that Jacques Chirac would fly to Berlin tomorrow to discuss the crisis.

Such stalwarts of Old Europe, who issued bleak statements on Wednesday night after 61% of Dutch voters said no to the constitution, are still insisting in public that ratification must continue.

As he prepared to fly home, Mr Schröder tried to calm the atmosphere: "Ratification must continue. We must decide what to do at the end of that process. Every form of overreaction at this stage is wrong."

But the first cracks in this front appeared yesterday when Jose Manuel Barroso, the European commission president, pointedly refrained from calling for ratification to continue. "We're in a period of reflection," he said.

His officials went even further in private as they expressed sympathy with Britain, which wants to postpone its referendum. "A pause is very realistic, we have to recognise the realities," one official said.

The proposed constitution and the existing EU charter both require unanimous ratification among all member nations for any new constitution to be approved. Therefore, it would seem that insisting on holding votes in the rest of the EU states amounts to nothing more than an exercise in futility.

Germany's insistence on continuing with the vote even though the Dutch have rejected it by almost a 2-1 margin send an odd message. Europeans might interpret the Germans as saying that they will impose the constitution on member-nations despite their vote, or simply that the Germans and others who run the EU have a substantial hearing problem when it comes to listening to their electorate. Neither conclusion will improve the EU's chances of avoiding further rejections, especially in Britain, where it faces an already skeptical population.

The elite's only hope is for a revote in the two countries that rejected the pact. In France, that might work, as the reasons for the rejection had more to do with the leadership of Chirac and his team than the pact itself. For the Dutch, however, it would be out of the question. Their referendum had the highest turnout seen for a Dutch election in years and the overwhelming landslide against the Constitution shows that the Dutch have no desire to integrate themselves any further into an EU that is moving in its current direction. Demanding a second vote -- or worse, ignoring the referendum and having their parliament approve the constitution -- would be political suicide.

It's back to the drawing board, or maybe even a warning signal to EU wonks that entrenched national interests will not allow for the kind of political union that they envision. The EU might need to settle for remaining an economic alliance and give up what appears to be a fantasy of a European political confederacy.

Have The Grewal Tapes Been Altered?

The Globe & Mail updated its report on the Grewal tapes a short time ago with the news that an audio expert says that the tapes show an "abnormality" that could indicate tampering:

Stevan Pausak analysed a 46-second segment of the recordings and says there's a break in it that indicates a portion may have been cut out.

He says the abnormality occurs in a recorded phone chat between Mr. Grewal and Health Minister Ujjal Dosanjh in which they discuss future job prospects for the MP in exchange for crossing the floor.

He says there is a discontinuity in the audio file, what he calls a “zero-signal gap” of about 0.3 seconds. The signal goes abruptly to zero in that interval, and afterward it continues.

I'm not an audio expert, but I do work with audio files as part of my job. The zero-signal artifact could mean that an audio sample has been cut or erased, as Pausak states. However, on voice-activated recording equipment, which one frequently finds in telephone recording systems, zero-signal artifacts are common. They occur when the voice levels drop so low as to deactivate the recording, and then the machine senses the someone speaking again. It's the bane of investigators everywhere, precisely because it makes the sound on the audio appear artificially choppy. It's one reason I switched to a system that sensed an off-hook condition for automatic recording instead of the voice activation system.

I would suspect that such a short dead-air space indicates the equipment had trouble sensing the voice rather than any foul play. Of course, other artifacts may be found that drive investigators to another conclusion, but if that's all they find unusual about these tapes, it doesn't sound like much of a problem to me.

One question I would ask is whether the tapes that Grewal produced were the original tapes from the recording or whether he copied the conversations off to another media. If it's the former, it's almost impossible to alter source tapes in the manner that Martin and Dosanjh suggest. If the latter, anyone with a digital editor could have accomplished it.

Not One Dime: The NRSC Bleg

The Duke at Pekin's Prattles received a letter from Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, sounding a curiously desperate note in their efforts to raise money this month. Frist claims that new funds are necessary to ensure that all of Bush's judicial nominees get their up-or-down votes:

Dear Friend,

I need your help.

I ask that you immediately make an online contribution of $25, $50, $75 or even $100 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC). To make a contribution on their secure server, please click here.

As Senate Majority Leader, I want to assure you that, if the Democrat's campaign of judicial obstruction resumes, I will not hesitate to use the Constitutional Option.

We must ensure that President Bush's qualified judicial nominees get the up-or-down votes they deserve.

That's why we need to counter the Democrat's attacks and misinformation - including the multi-state, multi-million dollar advertising by liberal special interest groups like Moveon.org and People for the American Way.

I have asked the NRSC to spearhead Republican efforts to support President Bush's judicial nominees as we bring them to the floor of the Senate for fair up-or-down votes.

To prepare for these battles, NRSC Chair Senator Elizabeth Dole has set a goal of raising $50,000 for the month of June from fellow online Republicans.

This money is essential to our efforts to fight back against the obstruction of Senate Democrats, led by Harry Reid, Dick Durbin, Chuck Schumer, and John Kerry.

And so I urge you to support the NRSC immediately with a contribution of $25, $50, $75 or even $100. To make a contribution, please click here.
We need your support today!

June will be a defining month for President Bush and the Republican Senate Majority.

I have asked the NRSC to be prepared to support President Bush's nominee if there is an appointment to the Supreme Court.

We must be prepared to support the President's nominee to the Supreme Court should a vacancy open.

I am counting on you to help the NRSC prepare for what is likely to be one of the toughest and most consequential debates in recent memory.

Help us deliver on the principle of up-or-down votes for the President's judicial nominees.

Our need is urgent and our cause is just.

Sincerely,

Bill Frist, M.D.
Senate Majority Leader

P.S. To support the NRSC and make a contribution of $25, $50, $75 or even $100 today, please click here.

No doubt the NRSC would like to improve its fundraising, but to claim it needs more money from Republicans to force a vote on the floor of the Senate defies common sense. All the GOP needs to get a vote is the spine to demand it. We already funded their current majority; it already exists.

Claiming, as Frist does, that the NRSC needs $50K to counter "multimillion-dollar advertising" doesn't make much sense at all. PFAW and MoveOn have access to lots of George Soros' money, granted, but fifty grand simply won't have any effect at all. Besides, what's the point of advertising at this stage? The only reason it has any effect is because the GOP leadership dragged their feet in getting to this issue, waiting months while PFAW and MO polluted the issue by smearing Bush's nominees, with only a tepid response from the Republican leadership.

Tell Senator Frist that he doesn't need to empty our pockets to call for a vote. He needs to simply fulfill the campaign pledge made by the NRSC in 2004 by insisting on a vote for every judicial nominee that gets approved by the Judiciary Committee. Until he takes action to ensure that, Not One Dime.

Tapes Edited: Dosanjh

The tapes that Conservative MP Gurmant Grewal took of conversations between himself and Liberal Party leaders have been spliced and edited to mislead listeners, Ujjal Dosanjh protested today. Dosanjh claimed that Grewal has altered evidence to make the Liberals appear to have offered a quid pro quo in return for Grewal's support or at least his abstention:

As the New Democrats filed an official complaint with the Commons Ethics Commissioner calling for an inquiry and the Conservatives insisted that senior officials in the Liberal government had tried to buy an MP's vote, Mr. Dosanjh charged that the recordings are not only badly translated but pieced together from different conversation and edited to cut out sections.

In a written statement he issued yesterday, he alleges, for example, that it appears there are "two obvious cuts" where the phrase "cabinet is quick" is spliced into a recording to make it appear as though the Health Minister is indicating Mr. Grewal could expect a quick cabinet appointment.

In another case, according to the statement, it appears the word "deniability" had been spliced in from another conversation, where Mr. Dosanjh suggested that Mr. Grewal might get an appointment as a parliamentary secretary, as current Public Works Minister Scott Brison did initially when he defected from the Tories in 2003.

The Tories did not let that accusation sit too long:

"Was it spliced on the grassy knoll? Where's their evidence for this? Do they just say these things?" asked Tory MP Monte Solberg. "I think the evidence points to them trying to buy a vote."

This latest defense presents a danger to the Liberals. Up to now, they've all insisted -- from Paul Martin down -- that nothing on the tapes amount to evidence of criminal behavior. Dosanjh's new charge appears to acknowledge just the opposite: that the transcripts clearly show Dosanjh and Martin's chief of staff Tim Murphy did their best to convince Grewal that specific rewards would await him if he crossed the aisle in advance of a confidence motion. Otherwise, why would they have been edited?

That pits the Liberal defense on the chance that someone can prove deliberate editing of the tapes. After having played chicken once and lost, it's surprising to see Dosanjh try it again. If they cannot prove that edits have been made, or can conclusively prove that no edits took place, Dosanjh will have given away the game.

Another component of Martin's defense came under attack, this time by BQ leader Giles Duceppe. Martin has claimed that the tapes show only that Grewal tried to sell his vote rather than the Liberals attempting to buy it. But as Duceppe pointed out, that explanation creates the question of why the Liberals never reported this ethical and criminal lapse on Grewal's part:

Bloc Québécois Leader Gilles Duceppe said the Liberals' defence is crumbling.

"They say an MP wanted to sell his vote," he said.

"Why didn't Mr. Martin immediately notify the RCMP, and say, listen, there's an MP who approached us who wants to sell his vote?"

Why indeed? Either Martin and Murphy had no qualms about listening to the sales pitch, if you believe the Liberals, or the offer came in the other direction. No third option exists. It appears that the Liberals have begun to run out of arguments with which to defend themselves, and like any organization reaching desperation, have switched to the shotgun-excuse method to see what sticks.

More Clinton Cluelessness On Larry King

Larry King had Bill Clinton on as his guest for last night's show, and the talk-show host asked Bill Clinton about his assessment of Mark Felt in his role as Deep Throat. Clinton delivered a jaw-dropping response that dripped with irony:

KING: ... What do you make of the Mark Felt story? Is he an American hero?

CLINTON: I think he did a good thing. And I think it's -- it was an unusual circumstance. I think Felt believed that there was the chance that this whole thing would be covered up. Ordinarily, I think a law enforcement official shouldn't be leaking to the press because you should let criminal action take its course.

When he did that, he obviously believed there was a chance that the thing would be covered up. And there was some evidence -- we now know that there was also a problem with trying to use the FBI, and the IRS, and other agencies of the federal government for political purposes back then. So there's some reason to believe he was right.

I don't think that -- he always felt ambivalent about it, apparently. And I think that's good. Because, on balance, you don't want law enforcement officials leaking to the press, even the truth, much less some vendetta or something that's not true. But under these circumstances, I think he did the right thing.

What we know is that Felt took part in those efforts in Hoover's FBI to use the bureau for political purposes. Felt at one point immediately after Hoover's death had possession of Hoover's Official/Confidential files, the supersensitive political dossiers that Hoover used to retain power for almost 50 years. Felt eventually got convicted of illegal break-ins of the same sort as Watergate, receiving a pardon from Ronald Reagan. Pretending that Felt, one of Hoover's most trusted aides, somehow stood apart from the corruption at the Bureau flies in the face of both history and common sense.

If Felt wanted to act heroically, he could just as easily have retired or quit from the FBI and gone public with the information. Alternately, as the #2 executive of the nation's premier law-enforcement agency, he could have started his own investigation of Watergate publicly and openly. Instead, he chose to hide in the shadows and dole out only that information that targeted his enemies in the White House who had passed him over (and other Bureau stalwarts) for the top job in order to give it to an outsider. That doesn't make Felt a traitor, but it certainly doesn't make him much of a hero. As I wrote yesterday, it provides a microcosm of the corruption in Washington in both the White House and the FBI in which Felt was very much a participant.

But the irony comes from Clinton's track record with inside sources revealing wrongdoing. Linda Tripp blew the whistle on his tawdry affair with Monica Lewinsky not because she objected to the sex, but because the White House tried to pay off Lewinsky with a job at Revlon the same way they did with Web Hubbell, who mysteriously stopped cooperating with investigators after getting a few hundred thousand dollars in consulting work at Revlon through Clinton crony Vernon Jordan. She had attempted to get law enforcement involved earlier and had been labeled a crank by the White House staff. She saw how Clinton's staff stalled an ongoing criminal investigation and tried to stop it.

Taping personal conversations between herself and Lewinsky doesn't make Tripp a hero either. However, she at least came forward publicly and didn't hide behind a "Deep Throat" persona (which may have been a more appropriate code name for the Lewinsky scandal anyway). Does Clinton now believe that Linda Tripp "did the right thing"? Good Lord.

Nor was that the last of the silliness from Bill Clinton on Mark Felt:

KING: You think it's good that it came out now?

CLINTON: Yes, sure, while he's alive. I just think -- you know, apparently his family encouraged him to do it. I'm just reading between the lines, but he looked pretty sprightly and pretty spiffy there, you know, at 91.

The sprightly and spiffy Felt has suffered from dementia for years after a stroke and often doesn't know what year it is. Todd Foster, who had the scoop in 2002, described Felt's regression in a nursing home where he would knock on doors in the middle of the night, believing that he was still in the FBI doing investigations. Three years ago, he was unable to commit to an admission of being DT because his mind kept playing tricks on him, and he continually made contradictory statements. Felt is alive and ambulatory, but he's hardly sprightly or spiffy.

Sometimes one has to wonder what color the sky is in Bill Clinton's world.

527s Acquire New Opponents: Congressional Black Caucus

What issue could possibly draw conservative Republicans and the Congressional Black Caucus into a legislative alliance? This morning, the Washington Times reports that the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act's provisions on campaign limits hit sour notes with both groups, as traditional African-American outreach efforts got starved in favor of the massive influence of George Soros' 527 strategies in 2004:

Some members of the Congressional Black Caucus are teaming up with conservative Republicans to push for the first major changes in the 2002 campaign-finance reform bill, most admitting that they made a mistake in voting for the bill three years ago.

"If I had the chance to vote again, I wouldn't vote the way I voted," said Rep. Gregory W. Meeks, New York Democrat, who along with most of the CBC supported the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act after they were promised by Democratic leaders that the bill would not harm their constituents or funding bases in order to garner their support.

Wait -- the BCRA's sponsors weren't completely honest about the bill's effects? Stop the presses! However, unlike most, the CBC's concern remains mostly with the financing rather than the free-speech issues that the bill's other components created:

Three years and a failed presidential election later, black politicians saw their political grass-roots organizations starved for funds under the new rules, as so-called "527s," private political groups so named for the Internal Revenue Service code provision under which they are organized were able to raise unlimited amounts of money for partisan purposes, subsequently siphoning off the cash. ...

In the 2004 presidential election, many of the black civic groups were supplanted by 527s, which attempted to turn out the black vote on their own, a strategy that Rep. Albert R. Wynn, Maryland Democrat, said had proven to be inadequate. Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, who was expected to surpass his 2000 predecessor Al Gore, received 85 percent of the black vote, compared with Mr. Gore's 90 percent.

Remember how John McCain, Russ Feingold, and the rest of the BCRA apologists told us that their bill would remove the big money from politics and allow for better grass-roots activism? It didn't turn out that way, and at least the CBC recognizes it and wants to do somthing about it, as inadequate as their response might be. They swallowed the notion that a bill sponsored by two politicians and championed by a political-action organization that gets its funding from Soros and other heavy hitters actually wanted to reduce the influence of the very people who funded it.

In fact, they bought that notion so well that they sold out the First Amendment to ensure it became law -- and the White House lacked the guts to protect freedom of speech and veto it.

It's telling that the first corrections that Congress wants to consider to the BCRA focus on getting more money into their pockets instead of restoring protections to political speech. Someone once wrote that no man's liberty or property was safe while Congress is in session -- and the BCRA is just the latest example of the truth contained in that proverb. This might be a good time to remind this new bipartisan alliance that the entire BCRA should be scrapped, instead of trimming it at the edges.

Will Famine Destabilize The Korean Peninsula?

Nicole Winfield reports in the Associated Press that the Kim regime has begun a mass relocation effort, driving millions of citydwellers to the countryside in what looks to be a desperate effort to fend off a catastrophic famine. Food-distribution NGOs report that despite the lack of significant weather or agricultural incidents, what little production Pyongyang gets out of its farms may drop so precipitously that millions may face starvation:

North Korea is sending millions of people from its cities to work on farms each weekend -- another indication that the risk of famine is particularly high this year, a U.N. official said yesterday.

The U.N. World Food Program (WFP) is the only aid organization that has a presence outside the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, and its officials have reported the movements of the North's people from cities to farms, said Anthea Webb, spokeswoman for the Rome-based agency. ...

The WFP recently launched a new appeal for food donations, saying the supplies that let it feed 6.5 million North Koreans were dwindling and forcing it to cut off aid to children and the elderly. That followed a WFP request to governments for 500,000 tons of food for North Korea this year.

Of the $202 million that the agency appealed for this year, it has received about $72 million -- and practically all of it has been consumed, Miss Webb said.

"Unless something happens very soon, by the end of August, the only people we'll be feeding are 12,000 children in hospitals," she said.

She said a combination of factors was making 2005 particularly at risk for famine. Although the harvest was not any worse than expected this year, it is combined with declining WFP food aid, government reforms that have driven up prices and cuts in government rations, she said.

According to that description, it appears that the famine has been artificially induced, to an even greater extent than Stalinist agricultural systems naturally produce them. At a point in time where rumors have flown for months about the stability of the Kim regime, such an artifical result has to beg the question: is Kim deliberately touching off a famine?

What would Kim gain by doing so? First, he could use the impending catastrophe to squeeze more aid out of Western countries. Already, donor nations suspect that, like dictators before, Kim reroutes the aid to his military and political leadership while leaving the peasants to starve. Aid donations have tailed off significantly over the past year because of the lack of verification on their use, and that may be causing Kim some problems with his military.

Even more sinister, reports coming from Pyongyang noted that Kim faced unprecedented criticism in the streets of the capital, although it remained mostly anonymous. A series of incidents, including a massive explosion at a train station, has analysts wondering if Kim may be facing significantly organized opposition for the first time in his life. Emptying the cities may not have anything to do with a bad harvest or food shortages, but may be a defensive measure designed to keep his enemies from banding together to topple his regime.

If the famine is legitimate, it still means serious trouble for security in the Korean Peninsula region, as well as an obvious humanitarian disaster. Whether or not the North Koreans starve in the cities or in the countryside, famines cause irrational behavior on the part of the starving and the dictatorships that preside over it. In order to distract his people from their misery, Kim could decide to launch an attack on South Korea or on American or Japanese assets in the region, if events get desperate enough in North Korea.

What to do? Donating food and resources that only go to bolstering the regime are counterproductive in the extreme, but the Western world can't sit back and let millions starve, either. Kim may be bluffing, but if so, he knows what stakes get the most results from the West. The best solution will be to insist on on-the-ground verification that increased aid will go to the millions that Kim has used as pawns, instead of blank checks that his army and Politburo will greedily cash.

Online Coalition Responds To The FEC

Mike Krempansky at Redstate has posted the response from the Online Coalition to the Federal Election Commission about their proposed regulation of Internet activity during elections. Mike has made it available in PDF and HTML format. The credit for this goes to Mike himself, who has been a lion in this fight. I am honored to have been asked to be a signatory to this effort.

Please make sure you read the response, and drop Mike a comment thanking him for his hard work.

The One That Got Away

Todd Foster of the News-Virginian writes today that he had the Deep Throat story three years ago, and would have published the explosive secret three years ago in People Magazine. However, several factors led People to decline the scoop -- mostly the family's demand for money, as well as the mental incapacity of Felt himself:

I've been waiting three years for what happened Tuesday: That W. Mark Felt would be named "Deep Throat."

Actually, he was outed as Deep Throat by relatives and an attorney who began pitching me the story in June 2002, when I was a regular contributor to People magazine. ...

Ultimately the story died because of money. The Felt family and their attorney wanted a lot of money, and People magazine - with my blessing - backed away in what would have been a case of "checkbook journalism." Reputable news organizations don't pay a penny for news. This also was during the Jayson Blair plagiarism scandal at The New York Times. The ethical meters at news organizations were tuned to full alert, or should have been.

That wasn't the only reason Foster backed off of the Deep Throat exclusive that he had carefully cultivated. After People decided to walk away, Foster shopped the concept to HarperCollins as a book project. That would allow the family to take part in the proceeds without compromising journalistic standards or Foster's sense of ethics. He hired a co-writer to help out with the legwork and had high hopes of making the biggest splash in national politics and journalism in recent memory.

However, once he and his partner actually worked with Mark Felt, they quickly found out that he no longer had the capacity to make that decision himself. Foster describes some of their experiences with Felt, and how his story changed repeatedly due to his dementia:

Jess made three trips to Santa Rosa in late 2003 and sent me transcripts from his taped interviews with Deep Throat and the Felt family.

Ultimately, Jess advised me that we could not in good conscience go through with this book. The contract with the book publisher stated that our information had to be bulletproof, that we had to be able to prove Felt was Deep Throat.

It could not be done then and it cannot be done now, unless Woodward himself can produce documentation.

Even Felt himself claimed during several sections of the taped interviews that Woodward made up the source Deep Throat.

"I just thought he was making it up," the then 90-year-old Felt told my partner. ...

The problem with Felt is that three summers before, he had suffered a stroke and briefly was sent to recuperate in a convalescent home. ... On Nov. 8, 2003, Felt told my writing partner when asked if he wanted to come forward: "You can tell them that I am Deep -- that I was Deep Throat. The only thing is that Deep Throat is a little different than you probably have in mind. Deep Throat was not anybody real inside that was furnishing information. It was somebody confirming information."

Then Felt described his motive for coming clean then: "I guess I want some money for my family."

Earlier in that same interview, Felt said he didn't remember anything about Deep Throat, even saying at one point: "Well, I wasn't a Deep Throat."

Of Woodward, he said: "I don't think I ever provided information to him."

Later, Felt said: "I thought Deep Throat was another source entirely."

It was only after prodding and coaching from his daughter and the family's attorney, John O'Connor of San Francisco, that Felt even gave his lukewarm admission.

This puts an entirely different spin on Felt's admission and the hesitation of Woodward and Bernstein to confirm it. If Foster's report is correct, then Mark Felt has no capacity to make that decision for himself -- and it looks like his family engineered the admission for some financial gain. Given that Vanity Fair eventually broke the story, one has to wonder what they paid the Felt family for the exclusive.

It also becomes more understandable why the two Post reporters initially stated that they would wait until the source died to confirm the identity. Woodward had visited Felt several times over the past few years and must have known of Felt's incapacity. No doubt when he heard that Felt had announced his identity as Deep Throat, he and Bernstein must have questioned the veracity of the news, as Felt sounds incapable of making that decision, and probably the two must have known that it was out of character for a man who felt as conflicted as he reportedly did over his role.

Foster's article suggests that this revelation is nothing more than perhaps the last tawdry event in a tawdry scandal, where eventually no one was a hero and Felt's admonition to "follow the money" applied to everyone involved. (via Romanesko)

UPDATE: MS-NBC reports that Vanity Fair denies paying the Felt family for the story ... but it looks like they'll collect their money nonetheless:

The family of W. Mark Felt, the former FBI deputy director whose alter ego as Deep Throat has been revealed, appears ready to cash in on his newfound fame.

And if money is what they want, Felt’s family stands to reap a huge financial windfall, according to literary agents, who estimated Wednesday that a book deal could be worth up to $1 million.

“That is assuming he has a compelling story to tell,” said Glen Hartley, president of Writer’s Representatives LLC, based out of New York. “A book could easily be valued in the six figures.”

As news broke that Felt was indeed the secret source who guided two young Washington Post reporters as they uncovered the Watergate scandal, Felt’s family offered to sell family photographs — the first in an apparent flood of money-making opportunities.

Yeah, well, down the hatch.

Dutch: We Are The Knights Who Say ... Nee

Fresh on the heels of the French rejection of the proposed EU charter, the Dutch have driven a stake through its heart with an overwhelming 'nee' to match the Gallic 'non' of Sunday:

Dutch voters overwhelmingly rejected the European constitution in a referendum Wednesday, exit polls projected, in what could be a knockout blow for the charter roundly defeated just days ago by France.

An exit poll projection broadcast by state-financed NOS television said the referendum failed by a vote of 63 percent to 37 percent. The turnout was 62 percent, exceeding all expectations, the broadcaster said.

Although the referendum was consultative, the high turnout and the decisive margin left no room for the Dutch parliament to turn its back on the people's verdict. The parliament meets Thursday to discuss the results.

The Dutch turned out in much greater numbers than anticipated, thanks in part to an assertion by Dutch politicians that they would not consider a referendum failure binding on their decision process unless the turnout exceeded 35% and the Nee vote got at least 55%. If the exit polling holds up, both of those thresholds not only got met but far exceeded. The Dutch have made an unequivocal, 2-1 statement of defiance to the EU and the architects of this Byzantine constitution.

The EU will need to regroup. No one expects the alliances to fall apart, but the nations of Europe have to ask themselves if they want a homogenous entity on the Continent with top-down sovereignty -- or if they shouldn't try to build a model closer to that of the United States, with states' rights built into a united federal system with a concise and limited constitution for use as a framework for a limited but sovereign federal government.

The current efforts of the EU to define itself looks more like our original Articles of Confederation than anything approaching unity. The results this week look similar to what they were here as well. Eating one's cake and having it too is a pipe dream, a Holy Grail of politics that winds up either as comedy or tragedy. Thankfully, so far, it has only been the former.

UPDATE: Mitch in the comments points out correctly that the proposed constitution itself doesn't resemble the Articles at all -- it's all about setting up bureaucracies upon bureaucracies, and of course, he's right. Conceptually, however, the EU nations have lived in a fantasy that they can meaningfully unite under one government structure while retaining their own complete and individual sovereignties -- which is one of the reasons why the mind-boggling document looks the way it does. It's a way of creating a federal government that gives the appearance of sovereignty without any nation actually giving theirs up.

Our forefathers tried that and it failed. They didn't have the foresight to try binding sovereign states together by means of unelected and unaccountable bureaucracies. Of course, the designers of the EU constitution had the advantage of coming after the establishment of the United Nations, and this looks like the exact same kind of abortion. In fact, that may really be the better analogy.

Hospiblogging Once Again

I'm spending the morning at the hospital while the First Mate undergoes a regularly-schedule maintenance procedure related to her kidney transplant. The wireless connection at the hospital is unusually slow today, which means my posting will be limited. I'll try to catch up on a huge backlog of e-mail and work on a couple of speeches I have scheduled, while keeping an eye on the wire services for breaking news.

In the meantime, here are a few items that might interest CQ readers:

* If you are looking for greeting cards, motivational knick-knacks, and original gift ideas, give The Stickmans a visit. It's a new outfit (partly owned and operated by my uncle, the Tenor Saxman) with unique and whimsical merchandise. Tell them the Captain sent you.

* Don't forget about our Not One Dime logo contest. All of the Not One Dime posts and my reporting on the judiciary can be found in my Judiciary category.

* King catches Strib columnist and Air America host Nick Coleman in another dishonest misrepresentation, but notes that complaining to the Strib about it is utterly pointless.

* Fraters Libertas notes that Minnesota will not have a poet laureate, nor a state mime. Thank God and Tim Pawlenty for both, although I would nominate Nick Coleman for the latter if he'd accept.

* Radioblogger has a transcript from a Hugh Hewitt interview with Senators Santorum, Ensign, and Talent -- all of whom support the constitutional option if the Democrats filibuster any more judicial nominees.

* Mike Krempansky has been working hard on the response to the FEC at Redstate, while Scared Monkeys asks, "Should blogs trust the FEC?" Michelle Malkin (and I) both say no.

* Jon Henke announces the release of the latest edition of The New Libertarian. If you don't already know this, Jon is the most rational and convincing proponent for Neolibertarianism in the blogosphere. I read QandO every day, and so should you.

* For updates on the Canadian situation, be sure to check out Stephen Taylor, Newsbeat 1, and Angry in the Great White North.

Back later with more ...

Indonesia Issues Warning To Aussies On Colby Case

Indonesia warned Australians that their protests on behalf of Schapelle Corby, the young woman sentenced to twenty years for drug smuggling, will drive a wedge between the neighboring countries at a time when cooperation in the war on terror is most needed. It also threw a bit of cold water on the notion of a prisoner exchange:

Calls for a tourist boycott of Bali to protest an Australian woman's 20-year sentence for smuggling marijuana onto the Indonesian island are driving a wedge between the two countries, an Indonesian official said Monday.

Several travel agents have advocated the boycott, along with relatives Schapelle Corby, 27, who was convicted and sentenced last week for smuggling 4.1 kilograms of marijuana onto Bali in October.

Many Australians believe Ms. Corby's tearful claims of innocence.

Indonesian foreign ministry spokesman Marty Natalegawa warned against a boycott, with negotiations to start next week on Australia's push for a prisoner transfer agreement that could let Ms. Corby and 13 other Australians in Indonesian prisons serve their sentences at home.

“With the greatest respect -- and the greatest sympathy, also, even for the feelings of Australians to Miss Corby's case -- using this case [to] drive a wedge between the two peoples and two governments is ... not advisable,” Mr. Natalegawa told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio. ...

Australia hopes to expedite a prisoner exchange treaty following the Corby verdict. But Mr. Natalegawa said the process would likely to take longer than Australians hope -- if an agreement is reached at all.

Indonesia would oppose an interim deal tailored for Ms. Corby, he said.

Far be it from me to complain about heavy penalties for drug traffickers. I have no idea if Ms. Colby actually did try to kite 4 kilos of pot through Bali customs, or if it was planted on her as she claims. All I know is that giving a 20-year-old woman a twenty-year sentence for smuggling pot while giving the mastermind of the bombing that killed over 200 people -- scores of them Colby's fellow Aussies -- a 30-month sentence amounts to a slap in the face to the so-called friendship between Indonesia and Australia.

Indonesia should take that into account when deciding on Ms. Colby's fate, whether or not she was framed. Australians should also take that into account when making their vacation plans.

Iraq: US Not An Occupying Force

The newly elected government of Iraq has requested an extension of the US mandate for providing their security from the United Nations, telling the world body that arbitrary timetables should be put aside and the Iraqis themselves should determine when the US presence would no longer be necessary. The Shi'ite Prime Minister, Ibrahim al-Jafaari, emphasized that American forces are not occupying Iraq but serve as "friendly forces" assisting the newly elected democratic government:

Iraq's month-old transitional government announced Tuesday that it had asked the United Nations Security Council to extend the mandate of the American-led forces here beyond the end of this year, and said Iraq's need for outside military assistance, not pre-set deadlines, should determine when American troop withdrawals should start. ...

Mr. Jaafari said Iraq's need for outside military assistance, not pre-set deadlines, should determine when American troop withdrawals should start.

"The multinational forces are not occupying forces, they are friendly forces, and they are helping us to establish security, carrying out missions in the interests of the Iraqi people, and under the authority of the government," Dr. Jaafari said. The government, he said, wanted an extension of their mandate "until we have defeated terrorism and restored security across the country."

The UNSC immediately and unanimously extended the mandate into 2006 as a result of Jafaari's request.

This development will surprise those who assumed that radicals like Muqtada al-Sadr spoke for the Iraqi majority -- a forgivable impressions for Americans who rely on the American media to inform them. Sadr gets a lot of press, but has only a small minority of the Shi'ite population behind him, especially since he lost Najaf and Karbala so badly during his own fight against the Americans. Sadr's vacillation between politician and warlord has mostly revealed him to be equally inept in either role. (See here for John Burns' own evaluation of Sadr from last year.)

Regardless, many Americans still see ourselves as an oppressive occupying force that creates strife in Iraq. Now we have two successive Iraqi governments, this one elected by the Iraqis directly, who have told us otherwise. They understand that American and British power stands between them and complete chaos while they complete the process of de-Baathification and rebuilding of a reliable and subservient security force that will enforce the law and defend their elected government. The Coalition doesn't create the violence in Iraq, and an early withdrawal would only encourage the terrorists there to step up their efforts to topple democracy and install a Taliban-like oppression across Iraq.

Jafaari doesn't want that, and his stand against it demonstrates once more that the secularists have taken charge in Iraq -- probably strengthened by the fanatical nuts like Zarqawi who insist that Islam demands the indiscriminate murder of Iraqis by the hundreds. We need to stay until the job is finished and Iraq can stand on its own as a democracy, able to defend itself against internal terrorists and external enemies. The Iraqis themselves know this and want us to stay. We should listen to them instead of the defeatist voices of our own media.

US Stopped Nuclear Material Bound For Iran

Condoleezza Rice revealed in a speech yesterday that a consortium of nations, including the US, stopped nuclear material from reaching Iran as well as other rogue nations over the last nine months. The participating nations of the Proliferation Security Initiative have quietly cooperated on eleven interdictions during that time, at least one of those directly involving Teheran:

The U.S. and its allies in a program to stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction prevented Iran from obtaining material for its nuclear weapons program within the past nine months, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said.

``The trans-shipment of material and equipment bound for ballistic missile programs in countries of concern, including Iran'' was blocked as was the transfer of ``equipment used to produce propellant'' to a ``ballistic missile program in another region'' of the world, Rice said. ...

Rice gave no details but said that the U.S. and 10 of its partners in the initiative have cooperated on 11 successful interdiction efforts over the past nine months. Iran was the only nation interdicted that she cited by name.

``PSI partners, working at times with others, have prevented Iran from procuring goods to support its missile and WMD programs, including its nuclear program,'' she said at the State Department in Washington.

Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control Stephen Rademaker said the U.S. is withholding details of the interdictions to ensure continued cooperation from countries that do not want their participation made public.

This announcement puts even more pressure on the EU-3 to contain the nuclear threat that Iran represents. If Iran has attempted to import banned technology, it demonstrates a desire to turn its so-called peaceful nuclear energy program into something more sinister. And notice that Iran, who must have expected that shipment to arrive, never publicly demanded its release once held up. Those who believe that Iran needs such a program when it sits on top of one of the world's largest oil reserves should rethink their position in light of this news.

Many people still believe that the war in Iraq provides a distraction from other (and arguably more) important global security issues. Perhaps it does for them, but the Bush administration once again appears more than capable of dealing with more than one strategy at a time.

UPDATE: Who was the man who made the diplomatic arrangments to get over 60 nations involved in PSI? Why ... none other than that hardass meanie, John Bolton. Go figure. (h/t: The Kid)

Grewal Transcripts Released

The suspicions about vote-buying in the Liberal government deepened today when the Conservative Party released the transcripts of conversations between MP Gurmant Grewal and various Liberal Party leaders, including PM Paul Martin's chief of staff. Earlier, when it appeared that the Tories would resist releasing the entire set of tapes, Martin insisted that a deal had never been offered -- but after reviewing the transcripts, Canadians may reach a different conclusion:

Transcripts and audio files from meetings between Mr. Grewal, Mr. Murphy and Mr. Dosanjh were posted on Mr. Grewal's Web page Tuesday.

According to the transcripts, Mr. Martin agreed to meet with Mr. Grewal.

"I talked to the PM moments ago," Mr. Dosanjh is quoted saying in the tapes during a meeting with Mr. Grewal on May 17. "He said he will be happy to talk to you over the phone tonight or in person if you want to move."

Mr. Grewal has accused the government of offering patronage positions if he and his wife tipped the balance in favour of the Liberal government during the confidence vote on May 19.

In the tapes, there is at least some suggestion of a possible Senate and cabinet appointment for the Grewals if they abstained from the confidence vote, though no specific offer is laid out.

Mr. Dosanjh talks vaguely about possible positions that may be offered to the Grewals.

"Nobody will make you totally blunt promises," Mr. Dosanjh said. "That is not done in politics, usually. Cabinet right away may be possible."

The question of whether a specific appointment was offered appears not to be clarified in the tapes. While both Mr. Murphy and Mr. Dosanjh fall short of saying there would be a specific reward for the Grewals' votes, there at least appears to be an understanding there would be some sort of benefit given if they did.

Stephen Taylor has the links to the transcripts on his site. While the G&M reports that no explicit offer of positions for Grewal and his wife appear in the transcripts, the totality of the conversations make clear that the Liberals wanted to assure Grewal that no ambiguity existed in their efforts to draw them across the aisle. In this conversation on May 17th, Ujjal Dosanjh and Tim Murphy want to assure Grewal that he will be able to rely on Martin and the Liberals if he switched sides:

TM - Absolutely, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to preclude that if obviously you have to feel where you are comfortable doing and where your personal stake is and what holds you and your wife, let me make it absolutely clear that we are a welcoming party we will do everything we can, obviously for us continuing to expend our base in BC and in prominent communities in this country is a political priority for us. It is a welcoming mat that has a lot of nice Comfy fur on it. Laughs.

UD - I think what Tim is saying about trust is that most of these things do have our trust and you have to feel comfortable with that and at the end, of course if Chief of Staff say that certain conduct ought to be rewarded in due time that trust is kept 99.9% of the times. Sometimes you can’t do it circumstances will kill you. I told him about my conversation with the PM.

TM - Let me put one more fact that we can keep this one fact in this room. As I understand from my perspective, you know, I have two things I’m going to say One of which is, David Peterson, in terms of Belinda Stronach, David Peterson was the conduit. DP called me on Friday. And obviously we had a conversation to meet him and Belinda on the basis of trust and not surprisingly, if it did not work out then Stronach didn’t wanted to be in a position of being burnt by the discussion and so we did it on the basis of trust. Between us it didn’t happen but it was on the basis of trust. Ujjal Dosanjh is a crucially important minister in the govt and yet I could not tell him because I had given a promise, until today. Right? So, that I think is lesson about two things. One of which is, we live up to our commitments. Secondly, this conversation no matter what happens, something that happened to us that Saturday. And in fact, no one knew that we were doing it and this is the proof that we can do it. No matter what happens. So I want you to know that and that level of comfort.

Also, this conversation between Dosanjh and Grewal on the 19th sounds like an offer would come soon after an abstention or an outright switch:

UD -- I’m OK, I talked to Tim, I met him after lunch in his office. It can be OK but with some gap of time. Like Scott Brison, Scott Brison was made Parliamentary Secretary, that thing can not be ruled out. That, PRIME MINISTER can say to you or not. If that can not happen right now, that will be done in 2 or 4 weeks. You do understand that, right. Those are the thing that can happen. Gradually, when you hold the roots, while you sacrifice, I’m sure rewards are there at some point, right. No one can forget such gestures but they require certain degree of deniability. A Big Laugh. Right, You understand this.

GG -- Belinda Stronach and others position, they had a straight forward deal.

UD -- You see, every circumstance is different. Your circumstances are different, mine were different, Scott’s were different. All circumstances are different. Right now, when Scott came, then there was not that much danger. PRIME MINISTER thought he could have been given a cabinet position, ‘coz, one minister had the responsibilities of two portfolios. Did you know that. So it was an easier thing to
do.

That not only sounds as though Dosanjh reassured Grewal that his reward would only be a couple of weeks away, but that similar tactics were used in seducing Dosanjh and Brison to the Grits. Dosanjh seems very comfortable talking about these benefits on behalf of the Prime Minister and his chief of staff.

Perhaps the Liberals can console themselves by telling everyone that no explicit deal existed, and the media can substantiate that in the most literal sense. However, after reading the totality of these transcripts, it's completely unreasonable to think they were talking about anything but a quid pro quo for Grewal's vote.

Most Notorious Political Whodunit Climax: Deep Throat Confesses

The mystery of the identity over "Deep Throat", Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward's mysterious inside source for their Watergate exposés, has intrigued Americans for over thirty years. The media has played a number of games and written millions of words in analyses trying to decipher the code, including the Washington Post which published the exposés and maintains a web site dedicated to the question of its source's identity. Today, according to Vanity Fair, the guessing game is over -- as Mark Felt has confessed to being the elusive mole inside the Nixon administration:

W. Mark Felt, who retired from the FBI after rising to its second most senior position, has identified himself as the "Deep Throat" source quoted by The Washington Post to break the Watergate scandal that led to President Nixon's resignation, Vanity Fair magazine said Tuesday.

"I'm the guy they used to call Deep Throat," he told John D. O'Connor, the author of Vanity Fair's exclusive that appears in its July issue.

Felt, now 91 and living in Santa Rosa, Calif. reportedly gave O'Connor permission to disclose his identity.

Felt had long been considered one of the leading candidates for Deep Throat. First off, he's still alive, and Bernstein and Woodward had promised to reveal their source's identity once he (or she) died. Felt had worked for J. Edgar Hoover for decades and had risen to the top ranks of the FBI under his tutelage, but got passed over for promotion when Nixon went outside the bureau after Hoover's death for political reasons. Felt eventually got convicted of complicity in other illegal break-ins and searches against the Weather Underground, but received pardons from Ronald Reagan shortly afterwards. Felt knew where to send the Post's reporters for evidence, and he had a lot of motivation to torpedo Nixon. Felt's involvement fits in with the FBI modus operandi of the time, when Hoover and his subordinates played for keeps with the secret information they compiled.

Oddly, however, neither Woodward nor Bernstein chose to confirm Felt's confession:

Carl Bernstein, who with Bob Woodward broke the story as Washington Post reporters, issued a statement neither denying nor confirming Felt's claim. Bernstein stated he and Woodward would be keeping their pledge to reveal the source only once that person dies.

At 91, one would expect Felt to have grown past any need for self-aggrandizement, but perhaps he wanted one last fling of publicity before he shuffles off the mortal coil. It seems strange that the two reporters would refuse to confirm a source who publicly outs himself; surely, their responsibility for his confidentiality would end there. This whodunit may not yet have reached its resolution, Felt's claims notwithstanding.

UPDATE and BUMP: The Washington Post confirms it with a statement from Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. The hesitation may have been an indication that Felt took them by surprise:

The Washington Post today confirmed that W. Mark Felt, a former number-two official at the FBI, was "Deep Throat," the secretive source who provided information that helped unravel the Watergate scandal in the early 1970s and contributed to the resignation of president Richard M. Nixon.

The confirmation came from Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the two Washington Post reporters who broke the Watergate story, and their former top editor, Benjamin C. Bradlee. The three spoke after Felt's family and Vanity Fair magazine identified the 91-year-old Felt, now a retiree in California, as the long-anonymous source who provided crucial guidance for some of the newspaper's groundbreaking Watergate stories. ...

In a statement today, Woodward and Bernstein said, "W. Mark Felt was 'Deep Throat' and helped us immeasurably in our Watergate coverage. However, as the record shows, many other sources and officials assisted us and other reporters for the hundreds of stories that were written in The Washington Post about Watergate."

The accompanying article has people describing Felt as a "hero", while some of the commenters here are more inclined to see him as a traitor. I don't think either applies. Felt worked with the Post for his own personal motivations of revenge and frustration at being passed over. If Nixon had made him Director of the FBI, he never would have lefted a finger for Woodward or Bernstein.

On the other hand, having decided to pursue wrongdoing by the White House, Felt's complicity in similar activity against terrorist groups like the Weather Underground would have made it difficult, if not impossible, for him to have any chance of success. Becoming a whistleblower probably made it possible for the truth to get out, even if that did provide a measure of personal satisfaction (short-lived as it was) for Felt.

Like the scandal he helped expose, Felt and his role were much more complicated than a simple hero-or-traitor binary choice allows.

So We Screw Up! Quit Griping!

Jon Carroll at the San Francisco Chronicle has had enough of the scandals involving the Exempt Media, especially those involving factual errors and inadequate sourcing. Does he take his fellow journalists to task for their shoddy and, in some cases, dishonest work? No -- he'd rather tell the critics to shut up and listen regardless of whether reporters get the story right:

Look: Newspapers are a human enterprise run by fallible beings. Surgeons make mistakes; accountants make mistakes; journalists make mistakes. As Steven Winn pointed out last week, we apologize too darn much for making mistakes. Of course we're sorry, but the quest for perfection is just that, a quest. We never get there. You never get there. We hate hate hate it when we get facts wrong, but we are actually after bigger game. ...

The media are under attack because we try to find stuff out. We are under attack because we say what we believe to be true. (Even more annoyingly, we are protected by the Constitution.) We are a reality-based institution in a faith-based culture, and we are paying for it. Journalists die doing their jobs, which is more than you can say for lobbyists, TV commentators or corporate lawyers.

The problem is that we are fair-minded. We know that we make mistakes. We want to get better. The fair-minded have no chance against zealots. Zealots lie because the ends justify the means, and we say, "Oh, gosh, we're going to investigate and strive and improve." Are the zealots going to investigate and strive and improve? Of course not: They have an agenda, and the agenda does not include self-assessment. The zealots are working out of the Che Guevara handbook, friends.

The media are not under attack because they "find things out" -- they're under attack because all too often, they don't bother to try to find things out, and instead print what they believe to be true. There's nothing wrong with that in an editorial, but when journalists pass off their beliefs without any factual basis as "news", it winds up misinforming the public.

Both Eason Jordan and Linda Foley probably really believe that the US military has orders somewhere to kill journalists in war zones. That doesn't make it true -- and it shouldn't form the basis of allegations from news organizations or their management without substantiation. Carroll haughtily uses the death of journalists to out-flank critics who haven't faced death, but wants to defend those journalistic critics of American servicemen who die in much greater numbers and percentages trying to defend civilian lives while attacking terrorists and armed enemies. The hypocrisy not only staggers the imagination, but sickens and disgusts as well.

Mary Mapes may have believed that the Killian memos were authentic, but that's because they fit both her preconceived notions of George Bush's TexANG service and her absolute lack of knowledge on military documents. Unlike the Eason Jordan and Linda Foley scandals, however, Mapes and CBS actually hired document examiners prior to publication, who told them not to use the memos -- and they ignored the advice. Unlike Newsweek, who admitted their faulty report, CBS still claims that the Killian memos might eventually be authenticated despite the numerous typographic, format, and factual anachronisms their own document experts have identified.

In the end, Carroll's screed amounts to this: we consumers of the Exempt Media have no business complaining about poor quality and deliberate deceptions perpetrated by its most celebrated members. While the media must be protected by the First Amendment at all times, any attempt by their customers to exercise freedom of speech by criticizing their performance amounts to "zealotry", a conspiracy to destroy them by pointing out their flaws. How dare we question their work!

You really have to read the entire piece to believe it.

Guilty Plea In Adscam

Adscam has its first major conviction, as Paul Coffin agreed to plead guilty to 15 of the 18 counts of fraud and corruption he faced. The plea shifts his upcoming trial to a sentencing hearing, which will begin on August 16th:

Advertising executive Paul Coffin pleaded guilty Tuesday to 15 fraud charges in connection with the federal sponsorship program, marking the first plea in the scandal that threatened to topple Paul Martin's minority Liberal government.

Mr. Coffin, the first person charged in the scandal, had originally faced 18 counts. He was arrested by the RCMP in 2003 in connection with the matter. Three of the original charges were withdrawn by the Crown during Tuesday's hearing.

Mr. Coffin, head of Montreal-based Communication Coffin, had been accused of submitting $2-million in false or inflated invoices as part of his handling of federal sponsorships of car and mountain-bike races, among other events, between 1997 and 2002.

Coffin's plea marks a major milestone in the Sponsorship Program scandal, which saw at least $355 million of government funds disappear into the pockets of Liberal Party activists and cronies. Up to now, the issue of criminality had been treated as an academic question, with some people wondering if the scandal would or could result in any convictions.

The sudden guilty plea on a large percentage of the charges may mean something else as well. With the Gomey Inquiry limiting itself on issues of specific criminality, the Crown prosecutors may have cut a deal with the ad executive to start talking on a wider range of topics. That also could explain the two-month delay in sentencing for Coffin; the punishment he faces for his part in corruption may well induce him to deliver much more specific testimony about Jacques Corriveau, Chuck Guité, and perhaps others more closely associated with the current Prime Minister.

Coffin's plea may leave us with many questions for the moment, but it also provides us with an answer about the danger that faces the various Adscam players. The stakes just got a lot higher for all of them.

California Legislature Lightens Students' Load

California has provided yet another Great Moment In Education with the Assembly mandating the length of textbooks for use in its public schools. According to the just-approved AB 756, no textbook used in California public schools can exceed 200 pages:

Lawmakers voted Thursday to ban school districts from purchasing textbooks longer than 200 pages.

The bill, believed to be the first of its kind nationwide, was hailed by supporters as a way to revolutionize education.

Critics lambasted Assembly Bill 756 as silly.

"This bill is really the epitome of micromanagement," said Assemblyman Keith Richman, R-Northridge. "(It's) absolutely ridiculous." ...

But Assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg, a Los Angeles Democrat who chairs the Assembly Education Committee, said critics are thinking too narrowly.

The Democrats in charge of the Assembly have decided that the value of a textbook lies in its bookshelf width, and they claim that the critics are thinking too narrowly? My native state has tried many silly ideas in education before, but cutting off textbooks by page count has to be one of the dumbest yet. Since when does a book's value come in the number of pages it contains? What's next -- comic books instead of textbooks?

The result will either be that textbook publishers start producing their work in volumes for the California market, or they abridge the material enough to slide under the 200-page limit. The first option will result in higher costs, as the consumer will have to buy each volume separately and the unit cost will go up due to the extra covers, typesetting, editing, etc. The second option shortchanges education rather than pocketbooks. Neither of these reactions, nor AB 756, truly addresses the real issues behind California's appalling educational performance: lack of competition and accountability in the government-mandated, union-run state educational monopoly.

Educated people already know that one cannot judge a book by its cover. We thought that the obvious corrolary of notjudging it by its page count would be understood implicitly. I'm sure we're correct, for most places. The intellect-challenged state capitol in Sacramento appears to be an exception to that rule.

Mid-Term Senate Race Tough For Democrats

Ronald Brownstein points out in today's LA Times what has been pointed out here and elsewhere in the blogosphere about the 2006 Senate races -- that Democrats will find themselves in an uphill battle to regain any of the ground they've lost over the past six years. The numbers will once again be against them, as they defend more seats than the GOP and in tougher states:

Democrats are optimistic about their chances of ousting GOP senators in Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, states that voted for Democratic presidential candidates John F. Kerry in 2004 and Al Gore in 2000. But the Democrats are unlikely to regain a Senate majority — in 2006 or soon thereafter — unless they can reverse the GOP consolidation of Senate seats in states that have supported Bush.

Since 2000, both parties have gained Senate seats in the states they typically carry in presidential campaigns. But this political partitioning provides a clear advantage for Republicans because so many more states backed Bush in his bids for the presidency.

If Democrats only gain in their part of the map, "it's like saying, 'We're going to win more home games but never worry about road games,' " said Matthew Dowd, a political advisor to the Republican National Committee and senior strategist for Bush's reelection campaign. "They could have a great home record but never win a majority."

Republicans control 55 Senate seats and Democrats 44, with Vermont independent James M. Jeffords holding the final spot. In next year's midterm election, Republicans will defend 15 seats and Democrats 17. And Vermont voters will choose a successor to Jeffords, who is retiring.

I wrote about this seven months ago, just after the last election. I noted the five most likely red-state seats that the Democrats would lose in 2006, based on current voting trends. Brownstein points out a statistic that adds to this analysis, which is that Republicans now control 44 out of the 58 Senate seats from states that Bush has carried twice, while the Democrats control 28 of 36 of the seats from states that went for both Gore and Kerry. Not only does that show that the GOP could achieve a Senate majority just on that basis alone, but it also demonstrates the remaining potential for gains favors the Republicans, not the Democrats.

Normally, one would advise the Democrats to start attacking the GOP on their home turf, but the cyclical nature of Senate elections plays against them in 2006. More Democrat seats will come up for challenge than Republican in this election. They will have to defend against more GOP challenges overall. Even worse, they have more red-state seats at risk than blue-state seats for the Republicans.

Now with the successful arrogation of the Seven Dwarves, those blue-state seats mean less to the GOP than they do to the Democrats, as RINOs like Lincoln Chaffee and Olympia Snowe will not be seen as great losses for most within the Republican Party. The only blue-state race that means anything will be Rick Santorum's re-election in Pennsylvania, which does promise to be a tough contest. Ken Mehlman has worked hard to improve his chances for re-election by campaigning heavily in African-American districts, with some success.

Compare the possible loss of three seats, only one of which reliably voted for the GOP, against the five that the Democrats have at risk. Only Robert Byrd's might be considered a likely Democratic hold, and only if the doddering Byrd runs again for the seat, a probability at this point. The rest of the four will have to defend the continuing obstructionism of their caucus, a losing electoral strategy that led to a loss of four seats in the last election. Any promises to work with the Bush administration will lose any credibility in the face of the unprecedented onslaught of filibusters on executive appointments. Voters will remember Ken Salazar's promises to Colorado voters to support up-or-down votes in the Senate, only to turn around and support the knee-jerk filibusters that Harry Reid demanded.

The key for Republicans will be to run candidates in these contests who can articulate the conservative policy positions in a naturally attractive way, and who will stick to their principles after election, rather than those who value clubbiness and the "comity" of surrender to the minority. It would also help to have Senate leadership that can look at these numbers and understand that the GOP represents the majority -- and start to act accordingly.

Chirac Sacks Raffarin, Names De Villepin As PM

Jacques Chirac, after his humiliating defeat this weekend on the proposed EU constitution he helped create and heavily promoted, responded by firing his Prime Minister and naming a familiar anti-American as his replacement. Dominuque de Villepin gained notoriety here in the United States by reversing course at the UN on Iraq after assuring Colin Powell that France would stand by the US:

Promotion of the loyal Villepin could be a sign Chirac intends to fight back after the referendum humiliation and keep open his options for seeking a third term in 2007.

A career diplomat, aristocrat and sometime poet, Villepin won applause at the United Nations and plaudits at home on the right and the left for opposing the U.S.-led war in Iraq, but angered and frustrated Washington.

Washington and Paris have since been rebuilding ties.

Raffarin's departure was expected, as he has not been a popular PM in France during a period of economic stagnation. Unemployment is now over 10% and the budget shortfalls caused Raffarin to insist on some market-based reforms, none of which won him any friends in the streets of Paris. De Villepin will likely return to the common socialist approach that landed France in the mess it is today, an approach encouraged by the French 'non' to the EU charter.

Most people had expected Chirac to name Nicolas Sarkozy, the leader of the right-wing UMP, as PM. However, Sarkozy wants even more market-based reforms than Raffarin to cure France of its economic ills, and the Chirac government clearly has no stomach for that fight. Instead, Chirac wants to appease the madding crowds by giving them what they crave -- a sense of French superiority as embodied by the poet-diplomat de Villepin, as well as a healthy dose of anti-Americanism. The BBC notes in contrast that he embodies the kind of elitism that French voters rejected in the referendum, and that his unfamiliarity with elections and his difficult relationship with Parliament will also handicap him in the weeks ahead.

De Villepin may be enough to keep calls for Chirac's resignation at bay in the short run. However, the underlying economic problems in France won't magically disappear through Gallic pride alone, and until the French start rethinking their Ponzi-schemed economic system, it's guaranteed to get worse. By the time Chirac runs again in 2007 -- probably against Sarkozy -- even the French may have figured that out.

Not One Dime Goes National

Imagine my surprise when, after reading Howard Kurtz' excellent profile of Jeff Jarvis in the first half of his lengthy column today, I scrolled down to see that he had linked CQ and the Not One Dime campaign. Kurtz quoted my post explaining the effort without comment, except to say that I have called for a financial boycott of GOP leadership.

For those who may come here for the first time from Kurtz' link, the Not One Dime campaign urges people to withhold donations to the National Republican Senatorial Campaign until they eliminate the judicial filibusters and get President Bush's nominations an up-or-down vote in the floor of the Senate. The NRSC raised millions of dollars from Republican voters by promising that judicial confirmations would be their highest domestic priority, but then after winning an eleven-seat majority, incomprehensibly dawdled for months before addressing the issue. That delay allowed the opposition to paint the effort to return to the 214-year tradition of majority rule on judicial confirmations as "extremist" and created the environment for the Seven Dwarves to betray their election-year promise to guarantee fair treatment to the judges nominated to the federal appellate bench.

The Not One Dime campaign does not encourage people to vote for Democrats or to withhold funds for all GOP candidates. It specifically targets the NRSC, as that typically comes under the control of the Senate GOP leadership -- the same leadership that showed so little backbone and had to be forced by grassroots activists to finally start working on the nominations. We want people to save their money to contribute directly to those Republicans who don't sacrifice the Constitution in the name of maintaining the clubbiness of the Senate. The money that goes to the NRSC maintains the current leadership in their positions of power, as incumbent Senators have to remain loyal to this failed management team in order to get their funding. No doubt some of the NRSC money would also wind up in the campaigns of the Seven Dwarves, and I for one will not ever contribute to their campaigns again for any reason.

Some who have questioned this effort claim that by attacking the NRSC and current Senate leadership, we will be cutting off our nose to spite our faces, a point Timothy Goddard graphically registered with a tongue-in-cheek logo submission. In response, I would ask people to assess where we stand in relation to the priorities that the GOP set at the election and at the beginning of the session. They've porked up the highway bill, gone nowhere on Social Security, and have caved into the Democrats on the issue that they claimed as their highest domestic priority and used for generating millions of dollars in contributions. Asking for even more money to win a larger majority, as I pointed out before, is analogous to buying your dog a Cadillac when you discover he can't drive your Dodge Neo.

The problem isn't the car, people. It's the dog driving it.

Don't forget about our logo contest for the Not One Dime campaign. I've received a number of submissions now, and I'm hoping to start posting a sampling of them in the next couple of days. The new URL for NOD is now active -- www.notonedimemore.org -- which for the moment just leads back here. Make your feelings known when the NRSC asks for your money; either contribute nine cents, or nothing at all, with an explanation why they won't see any more from you until they fulfill their election pledges or elect leadership that can.

Grewal Tapes Contain Bribe Offer: CTV

The Canadian network CTV reports tonight that the complete transcript of the Grewal tapes contain much more than the curious dance conducted between Tim Murphy, the Prime Minister's chief of staff, and Tory MP Gurmant Grewal. Despite Liberal denials, the transcripts apparently contain a specific offer of a ministry for Grewal in exchange for his vote on May 19th:

CTV News' Ottawa Bureau Chief Robert Fife reports that the Prime Minister knew of the negotiations.

According to Fife, the full four hours of transcripts of Grewal's taped conversations with a top Martin aide and Health Minister Ujjal Dosanjh show:

* Martin was ready to talk to Grewal about defecting like he did with Belinda Stronach
* Grewal was offered a government position two weeks after the vote

The transcripts could be released Tuesday. Conservative House Leader Jay Hill has said the party will be turning the tapes over to the RCMP soon.

The federal ethics commissioner Bernard Shapiro is alsohave expected to announce Tuesday whether he will conduct an investigation into the alleged Liberal deal-making.

Could it be that Stephen Harper played "chicken" with Paul Martin on the Grewal tapes -- and won when Martin didn't flinch? If the CTV is accurate, it appears that the Tories have gaslighted the Liberals into demanding the release of information that will wind up indicting them, rather than exonerating them. Perhaps Murphy wasn't as artful a dancer as first reported.

Is Religious Education An Official Government Duty?

CQ reader BR brings an unusual document related to the House travel kerfuffle to my attention. It appears that Caitlin O'Neill, who works for Nancy Pelosi, forgot to file her disclosure form (PDF) for a trip she took to Havana, Cuba. O'Neill, who BR says is the granddaughter of former Speaker Tip O'Neill, identifies the purpose of her trip -- as an official duty of Congress -- as "religious education".

Has religious education become an official government duty? What would Pelosi's allies at the ACLU say about that?

That's not the end of the unusual aspects of this trip. Expenses totaled almost $1400 for the five-day trip to Havana, including $400 for meals. Of course, the American taxpayer didn't get stuck with this bill, which is the reason O'Neill and Pelosi had to file the disclosure. The entire cost of O'Neill's trip was borne by the Universal Life Church.

This is where the questions really start. From reading its website, the ULC doesn't require much in terms of religious education for its membership or its clergy. In fact, the church openly states on its website that it grants ordination on line, instantly, for free:

You can become a legally ordained minister, instantly, online, at this website. The Universal Life Church is totally non-denominational, interfaith and welcomes all religions. After you fill out the ordination form, you will receive a pop-up instant credential, which serves as your receipt of your ordination. Print it immediately.

As a ULC (Universal Life Church) minister, you can officiate one wedding ceremony or you can make weddings, funerals, baptisms, house blessings, etc. your business. You can even start your own ministry. The Universal Life Church is interfaith and non-denominational.

We have, online, free training for ministers, an online, one-year seminary program, where you can receive a diploma to enhance your knowledge and your credibility, and a monk program.

So O'Neill claims to have pursued religious education as a government duty, in Cuba, where we oppose the oppressive regime of Fidel Castro. She says the Universal Life Church paid her way, despite their granting of free ordinations to anyone who signs up on their website. None of the services or training on their website requires acolytes to travel to Cuba for certification.

So perhaps the House Minority Leader can explain why Caitlin O'Neill went to Cuba in the middle of last December for five days as a guest of a fake church that issues mail-order ordinations. The explanation had better improve on the "religious education" that O'Neill claims. Otherwise, Pelosi and her caucus would be well advised to back off on criticisms of faith-based initiatives coming from the Bush administration.

Russia To Leave Georgia

Russia and Georgia finally completed an agreement that will end Russian military occupation of Georgian territory by 2008. Both governments have announced the successful conclusion of talks that were hastened by Georgian threats to declare Russian visas illegal:

Russia has agreed to withdraw its remaining troops from Georgia by 2008.

The deal was announced in Moscow by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov after he held talks there with Georgian counterpart Salome Zurabishvili.

Mrs Zurabishvili called it an "important and constructive step", and said Georgia had achieved its goal.

Russia currently has two Soviet-era bases in Georgia, whose continued presence has been a source of tension between Moscow and Tbilisi.

The two bases are home to about 3,000 troops.

This will make the Russian battles against separatists in the Caucasus more difficult. Georgia's bases have Russia a strategic anvil in the south against which they could press from the north. It also kept Chechen rebels from escaping Russian efforts by slipping over the southern border, or at least it gave the Russians some ability to screen for that.

Georgia, on the other hand, not only throws off the last vestiges of Russian/Soviet colonialism but also becomes more of a bystander in the Caucasus. The hard line of Vladimir Putin in the region threatens to set fire to the various ethnic segments. Georgia doesn't need the headaches that come with "hosting" Russian regiments that will undoubtedly be targets for various kinds of terrorism and insurgent attacks.

Putin, however, rarely gives away the store, even when he has little choice. One has to wonder what Georgia promised in return for the Russian departure.

Did Democrats Take Drug Money In Exchange For Pardon?

I missed this at Patterico's site the other day, but his intrepid and dogged work on exposing bias at the Los Angeles Times may have led to an even bigger story -- one the Times may have covered up for political reasons. This story reaches back to the final days of the Clinton Administration, when a flurry of questionable pardons flowed from the Oval Office. The most notorious was the pardon of Marc Rich, who later turned out to be heavily involved in the Oil-For-Food scam.

However, a more damaging revelation never got published, thanks to the LA Times, which buried the story according to the LA Weekly. It centers on the pardon of Carlos Vignali, whose father donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to various Democrats who lobbied Clinton on the younger Vignali's behalf. The father also hired Hillary Clinton's brother, Hugh Rodham, as his representative for $200,000, which Rodham returned when the payment was made public. All of this got some press at the time, but later slid off the pages of most newspapers.

What made the LA Times more culpable than those? It had evidence in 2001 that the father also was suspected of drug trafficking by the DEA, but suppressed it until well after the furor died down. Read all of Patterico's post for details. The LA Times has a lot for which to answer -- and the Clintons and the Democrats need to explain why Vignali got a Get Out Of Jail Free card based on pusher money.

DeLay Travel Probe Reveals Massive Democrat Violations

The hounding of Tom DeLay continues to backfire on House Democrats, as the AP has discovered in a review of travel disclosures. Far from being a singular problem in the GOP Whip's office, it turns out that a number of Pelosi's comrades have also been remiss in disclosing their travel expenses and the people who paid them:

Scrutiny of Majority Leader Tom DeLay's travel has led to the belated disclosure of at least 198 previously unreported special interest trips by House members and their aides, including eight years of travel by the second-ranking Democrat, an Associated Press review has found.

At least 43 House members and dozens of aides had failed to meet the one-month deadline in ethics rules for disclosing trips financed by organizations outside the U.S. government. ...

While most of the previously undisclosed trips occurred in 2004, some date back to the late 1990s. House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer recently disclosed 12 trips, the oldest dating back to 1997. ... Hoyer's undisclosed trips were nearly doubled by Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Calif., with 21. Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., reported 20 past trips and Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md. reported 13. ... Staff members for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., disclosed 11 prior trips, while staff members for DeLay, R-Texas, had 4. Rep. John Linder of Georgia, a former chairman of the House Republican campaign organization, belatedly filed 9 trips, as did Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif.

Glass houses. Stones. Whoops.

Perhaps the Democrats might want to rethink this witch hunt. It appears that enough sorcerors abound on both sides of the aisle, and the Democrats can't afford to lose their own leadership in an attempt to torpedo DeLay. They have enough problems as it is keeping up with the GOP.

Let's Remember Them All

Longtime CQ readers will remember my friend Mike the Contractor, who spent a long time in Iraq both in the Seals and as a contractor. I've published some of Mike's letters in the past, especially those to his young sons in explaining the war on terror. Today Mike sends this message to his friends and family, reminding us of the role that his contractor friends continue to play in protecting Americans and Iraqis in the most dangerous areas. Mike will return to Iraq in the near future to continue this work himself.

On this Memorial Day, we honor the military men and women who have been killed in action while defending our freedoms. After seeing fallen military brethren that I have served with receive official honors and family compensation, I thought it would be appropriate to honor some other comrades-in-arms, which are my contractor brothers who also paid the ultimate price over the last couple years.

This e-mail will go out to a couple hundred military friends as well as civilians. Many of you already know very intimately what armed contractors do and also what it is to lose someone who has gone into the fray with you.

For those who don't, there are two (2) main kinds of contractors in war zones.

The kind that you have frequently seen on TV pitifully held hostage and beheaded on video are the un-armed kind. They generally work for companies like KBR (a Halliburton subsidiary) or construction or oil companies and are the completely innocent people who are doing the major rebuilding and support work in Iraq. Their slayings are particularly heinous at all levels including the Islamic Qur'an that states "If you kill someone who is not himself a killer, it is as if you have killed all of mankind."

The other kind of contractor is the kind that I was and served with. We are fully armed with American as well as foreign weapons. We work for government contracted security companies and/or specialized medical support companies that primarily hire former special operations personnel. Many of the men I worked with were on leave of absence from a Special Forces unit or like in my case a Reserve Navy SEAL unit. There is virtually no chance that any of us could ever be taken alive and to my knowledge, none of us have.

But no matter how well you plan or train, you can certainly die a violent death like anyone else. In fact as I look back over my 334 days in Iraq, I realize that there are well over a dozen contractors who I knew who died there. Scottie Helvenston, who was slain in Fallujah and hung on a bridge on March 31, 2004 is probably the only one with any public name recognition. American names like Roy Buckmaster and foreign names like Cristoph Kazka will only be remembered by their eternal friends and relatives and the Lord.

I will pick 2 men to profile here whom I worked with closely and who were killed a few short weeks after I returned home to the privileged surrealistic world we call America. I will state their names as they were released to the press but I will leave out the name of the agencies they worked for.

Todd Engstrom and Dave Randolph were not just shooters, they were Team Leaders and Program Managers for two different security companies operating at the same time out of a forward operating base near Fallujah. Because I was a medic, I was honored to work for and with both of them in the last months of a contract to secure and dispose of explosive ordnance. But it really didn't matter who you worked for at this place, affectionately called "the Rock," because we all felt like brothers in the same family and Todd and Dave made that happen. They were friends to all of us and obviously the closest of friends to each other.

Todd was qualified to teach the Sate Department Alpha & Bravo course, so he made sure that everyone on site had ample opportunity to qualify on his course even if they worked for a different company. Todd's company set up combat shooting courses all the time even though temperatures went over 130 in the summer and their operational work schedule was oppressive. I remember one week where the course was a 12 station AK-47 shoot-on-the-move timed evolution. We were issued only Iraqi ammunition to shoot because it misfired so frequently (we always loaded good American or Russian ammo in our operational magazines) and required you to clear your weapon several times on the course. Guys from Todd's company challenged guys from Dave's company to compete against them. Dave showed up on the last day and set the course record on his first run.

Todd and Dave were just about the best leaders I have ever seen. You may have heard instructors or leaders say, "I will never ask you to do something I wouldn't do myself." Todd and Dave never said words like that (Dave rarely said anything without an F word in it). They didn't have to. They were always right there with you doing it. And although they were both strong enthusiastic leaders, they were not reckless.

Whether it came to patrolling the outer regions of the FOB at night, clearing areas strewn with unexploded ordnance, or going on convoys outside the wire, both of them had only one thing in mind - bringing back their men alive. As such they made sure that everyone knew every job. Everyone had their own maps and knew all of the main routes as well as escape and evasion routes. Everyone had the communications plan, medevac plan, intelligence summaries, all of it. Because Todd and Dave literally led from the front, they made sure that they could be replaced by anyone of us if disaster struck.

While I was processing back into the U.S. at Fort Bliss Texas in October of 2004 I was notified of the death of Todd Engstrom who was in the lead vehicle when an improvised explosive device was detonated north of a place called Taji.

The following month, while I was home around Thanksgiving with my family, David Randolph was killed by an RPG that exploded into his lead vehicle on a convoy between Fallujah and Baghdad. Next to him was another man I worked with who I will call Avin. Although Avin was not his real name, it is close enough for those who know to remember. Avin's brother is another SF contractor that I know and greatly respect. He was in country at the time and flew home with the remains of Avin and is now back in Iraq, which is why I leave his family names out of this.

In each tragedy, the remaining contractors instantly unleashed 'violence of action' to vanquish the enemy, cross-loaded their guntrucks with the bodies of their fallen leaders and friends and got out of the kill zone.

American contractors get paid OK on a daily basis, once we are actually working in the war zone. However, when a contractor is killed in action, there is no fanfare, no pension for the family, not much in the way of life insurance.

A memorial fund has been set up for the families of Todd Engstrom and David Randolph and Avin by their respective company. Dave & Avin have surviving children.[I will post the website for this as soon as I have it -- CE]

"No greater love has a man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends."
John 15:13

Coalition means partnership. This Memorial Day, please know that the Coalition Forces of Iraq who paid the ultimate price, be they men or women; military, government or civilian; American, Iraqi, British or more than 40 other nationalities, included all who love freedom as their partners and friends.

Michelle Malkin has an excellent roundup of other Memorial Day tributes.

Accuracy In Media: CQ Is Journalism

In an unintentional response to Professor Conrad Fink's hyperbolic dismissal of bloggers as journalists in Saturday's Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Sherrie Gossett writes about my coverage of Adscam for Accuracy In Media today and reaches a different conclusion. Gossett writes:

In one of the most dramatic stories to date of blogger influence, an American blogger listed the details of inflammatory testimony in a Canadian government corruption case-testimony that was under a publication ban enacted by the judge. Soon the blogger's website was inundated with hundreds of thousands of hits from Canadians hungry for information, but shut out of the story by the ban. It was a unique case of a lone blogger disseminating information the media were unable to publish.

Ed Morrissey, the writer of Captain's Quarters blog, started reporting on the testimony on April 2 in an entry titled "Canada's Corruption Scandal Breaks Wide Open." The political scandal involved allegations of bribery, kickbacks and illegal campaign financing to the tune of tens of millions of dollars which found their way into liberal party coffers. Canada's Prime Minister Paul Martin appointed the Gomery Commission to investigate the charges and determine whether to bring charges against government officials. ...

While insightful journalists have previously suggested no one yet can judge the future path and potential influence of citizen journalism and blogging, here is a truly unique incident whereby a blogger was able to inform the public when all of Canadian media was under a publication ban. In this instance, the flexibility and quick moves of a one-man operation trumped what all major media were able to do in Canada. It's reminiscent of cases where ham radio operators have disseminated crucial information during natural disasters and political crises-information unavailable by other means.

Ironically -- this is no joke -- I used to be a ham radio operator several years ago. My call sign was KJ6FR, and I held an Advanced license, the second-highest certification. I took part in Field Day almost every yeaar, and I even manned the most noted ham-radio station on a volunteer basis: the Queen Mary, which hams around the world know quite well. I still have my equipment but have long since let the license lapse. I looked over the radio gear I have and thought about the similarities between blogging and ham radio, and how both allow the creation of virtual communities dedicated to public service and friendship.

Read all of Gossett's column in AIM. (via Marc at Cranial Cavity)

Confidence Votes This Week? More Or Less

Canadian politics may have taken a breath after the failure of the Conservative/BQ no-confidence efforts on May 19th, but all indications are that they will come back into full swing this week. Despite a hasty comment by Stephen Harper earlier this month that the Tories would "probably" not try again if their first attempt failed to bring down the Liberal government, the CPC has made it clear that they plan to contest another confidence motion this week:

The House of Commons is heading back to work after a week off, with the Conservatives holding what they say is a “loaded gun” to the head of the governing Liberals and threatening another non-confidence vote as soon as Tuesday.

Jay Hill, the Tory House leader, said Sunday his party hasn't settled yet on its final strategy. But he pointedly refused to rule out a new confidence test, despite the fact that Prime Minister Paul Martin survived one just 10 days ago.

“As long as we have this loaded gun sitting there, they're going to have to take it seriously,” Mr. Hill said in an interview.

That motion has already been tabled. They also want to work on stripping C-48 out of the budget in committee, a move that the CPC hopes will convince the NDP to switch sides and support the Tory/BQ alliance and convincingly oust Paul Martin. However, BQ leader Giles Duceppe has suddenly opened the possibility that they will support the budget -- if the Liberals can cough up money for Quebec in the same manner that Martin did for Jack Layton and the NDP:

The Tories and Bloc Quebecois are charting different courses in the wake of their failed attempt at toppling the Liberal government, with Gilles Duceppe suggesting he might support the federal budget if it includes more spending on Quebec priorities.

"We want (the budget) not to be adopted and so we'll vote against it - unless there's something new in that budget that we think could be good for Quebec," Duceppe said yesterday on CTV's Question Period. ...

Though Bloc officials acknowledged it might be too late to bring amendments, Duceppe's suggestion that he might seek funding for Quebec put him in a crowded category.

Premiers from Ontario, Saskatchewan and Atlantic Canada have each met with the Liberals over the past few months to secure more spending for programs, as did the NDP in its deal to back the budget.

In other words, Quebec wants to join Let's Make A Deal, with Paul Martin continuing his role as Monty Hall. If Martin can promise even more taxpayer funds for Quebec, the BQ might follow the NDP into the Liberal alliance -- making the Tories feel mighty lonely.

At some point, Canadian taxpayers might need Stephen Hawking to keep track of how much Martin's efforts to retain power has cost them, now and in the future. This episode has turned a common experience in all representative governments -- the Granting Of The Pork -- into a strange public and personal spectacle centering on Paul Martin. Never before have we seen such blatant buying and selling of influence in order for one man to keep his hands on the levers of government; in this case, it truly reminds one of the old analogy of sausage-making. The difference is that Adscam has turned Canadian politics into an HBO Undercover documentary, and we found out that sausagemaking in Canada has become a one-man monopoly.

It appears that the CPC will have to match Martin dollar for dollar in order to hang onto its current position, which already is at a disadvantage for a no-confidence motion. Either that, or they need to take some bold steps to differentiate themselves from Martin's sausage grinder and become the party of fiscal sanity and responsibility, and start playing for the long game rather than hoping to turn out the Liberals this summer. The latter strategy may grant less satisfaction but probably will guarantee more success in the future.

In Defense Of Home Schooling -- In The Strib?

The Minneapolis Star Tribune recently hired Katherine Kersten as a featured columnist, a major step for the far-left Twin Cities daily. Long reviled for its outrageous bias and intellectually bankrupt editorials, the Strib has recently attempted to balance itself as more critics discover their shortcomings -- critics with voices of their own, such as Power Line, Shot In The Dark, Fraters Libertas, and other Twin Cities bloggers who regularly point out their inconsistencies. They hired D. J. Tice as an editor a few months back in order to demonstrate fairness in their news reporting, and Kersten now joins the Strib to give better balance to local columnists.

Kersten is no middle-of-the-road commentator, either. She provides some of the driving force behind the Center for the American Experiment, a local conservative, free-market think tank that has grown in stature and influence tremendously since its founding 15 years ago. Kersten lends the Strib real diversity in thought, and her column today on home schooling is a great example. While the media has always treated home schooling as a danger to children, a process that has the potential to churn out undereducated and maladjusted children, Kersten shows that the process works better than public education:

In 1990, the state had about 10,000 home-schoolers; today, there are more than 17,000.

Most of these kids do well academically. Studies show that home-schoolers, as a group, score well above average on standardized achievement tests.

It's not hard to see why home-schooling succeeds. Home-schooling parents, unlike classroom teachers, can focus on exactly what their children need.

They're also free to ignore the shifting and time-consuming educational fashions of the day. (Remember the recently deceased Profile of Learning, with its fuzzy-minded "performance packages"?)

Home-schooling parents can emphasize literary classics over contemporary children's fiction, which generally features a simplistic style and a narrow, adolescent mind-set. They can nurture their children's minds and hearts free from the alienated, heavily conformist youth culture.

Is home-schooling a luxury available only to the well-to-do? Not at all. A study released by the National Center for Educational Statistics in 2001 found that home-schooling families' average income is similar to that of other families. The study also found that 25 percent of home-schoolers are minorities.

Of course, these numbers threaten the public-school monopoly that the state and its unions in which they have such vested interests, and not just for money. The failed programs that Kersten mentions also involve social engineering, some of it less subtle than others. A proposal in front of the legislature at the moment would require three-year-olds that enter the public education system to get psychiatric evaluations to determine what "socioemotional issues" need attention.

Home schooling avoids all of these intrusive, objectionable treatments and processes that turn normal children into lab rats and Ritalin-induced zombies. Kersten homeschooled her own child and discusses others who have done the same, and the support groups and resources available to those who choose this route for their children's education. The cost for this education is around $400 per year -- probably less than one would pay for supplies, fees, and transportation with public schools in a typical year.

Congratulations to Kersten on an auspicious start in her new position -- and at least two cheers for the Strib for listening to their audience and hiring Kersten.

It's Their Fault For Hitting Back

Anti-Israeli bias occurs so frequently in the American media that it hardly bears remarking when it occurs. However, a short blurb in today's Scotsman demonstrates that same bias exists worldwide. In a three-paragraph article titled "Israeli air strike on Palestinian rocket positions," the Scotsman assigns blame to Israel for breaking the truce in the first paragraph:

VIOLENCE flared in Gaza with an Israeli air strike on Palestinian rocket launchers only hours after Israel's Cabinet approved the release of 400 prisoners as a gesture to Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas.

It gets worse in the second paragraph. It uses an IDF statement on the operation to make it appear that the attack was pre-emptive and unprovoked:

The Israeli air strike last night was a rare attack since a February truce. The Israeli military said it targeted rocket launchers just before a planned attack from northern Gaza and two launchers were destroyed.

Those war-mongering Israelis! Why, those rocket launchers may have been there strictly for defensive purposes, in case the IDF invaded Gaza. Oh, wait:

The Islamic Jihad said one of its cells, which had just fired three rockets at an Israeli village, was the strike target.

Perhaps The Scotsman has hired Emily Litella as a copy editor or headline writer. Given the information that The Scotsman chose to bury at the end, shouldn't the headline read, "Palestinians Launch Rocket Attacks, Israelis Respond"? And in the lead paragraph, shouldn't the text note that the violence flared in Gaza when the Palestinians launched their rockets, not when the Israelis responded to the attack?

I normally like The Scotsman, but this betrays their anti-Israeli bias, as well as an obtuse intellectual dishonesty that damages their credibility.

Will 'Non' Mean 'Oui'?

French voters turned out in heavy numbers to send a message to Jacques Chirac and the European establishment, trouncing the proposed new EU constitution by a 14-point margin. The loss not only deals a severe blow to Chirac's aspirations of Continental control -- it may portend the end of his career in France, as politicians there have called for new elections:

Unhappy French voters on Sunday derailed plans to further political and economic integration in Europe, decisively rejecting the proposed European constitution and thumbing their noses at the country's governing elite, which had pleaded for approval of the measure.

The turnout was heavy and the margin of defeat was wide, with about 57 percent rejecting the constitution and about 43 percent voting for it. Opposition leaders harnessed widespread disenchantment over a variety of issues, including the unpopularity of President Jacques Chirac, the weak French economy and fears that the country would lose its clout to a strengthened European central government. ...

In a brief televised address shortly after the polls closed, Chirac said he accepted the will of the voters, even though he had lobbied heavily for approval of the constitution. "I'll defend in Brussels the message from the French people," he said.

He did not comment on his own political future, or announce any changes to his government, which has sagged badly in opinion polls. Critics amplified their calls for him to resign before his term ends in 2007.

While Americans might take some well-earned schadenfreude at Chirac's plight, given his efforts to turn France into our diplomatic enemy, in fact this shows that France as a whole still deeply believes in its socialist model. That attitude does not spring from its ruling class but from its electorate, which has gladly accepted a stagnant economy and double-digit unemployment because its nanny state still buffers the effects of those conditions from the individual workers.

In fact, the 'Non' may be irrelevant in the end. The society that the French defended in their vote today will disappear soon enough, as the rest of Europe will not long support the French in their self-indulgence. While Germany and France controlled the union, they could get away with breaking the debt ceilings and budgetary expectations set by the existing EU compact. Now that they have thumbed their noses at the new constitution, that control and influence will rapidly dissipate -- and they will find themselves forced to reform or face expulsion and devastating trade disputes with an otherwise united Europe.

The far left and far right in France are celebrating tonight on the streets of Paris, delighted in their rejection of the sensible market-based reforms that the rest of Europe wants. They may have won the battle, but that victory will only be temporary, and will consign them to second-tier status in Europe from this point forward.

Another Sign Of Insurgency's Failure

Today's Washington Post notes a significant event in the foreign-based "insurgency" that has killed hundreds of Iraqis as well as American troops in Iraq. The terrorists of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi found themselves faced off against native Iraqi forces after killing a local tribal chief while the Marines watched from the sidelines. Most significantly, the Iraqis who had had enough of the Zarqawi insurgency were Sunnis:

For four days this month, U.S. Marines were onlookers at just the kind of fight they had hoped to see: a battle between suspected followers of Abu Musab Zarqawi, a foreign-born insurgent, and Iraqi Sunni tribal fighters at the western frontier town of Husaybah.

In clashes sparked by the assassination of a tribal sheik, which was commissioned by Zarqawi, the foreign insurgents and the Iraqi tribal fighters pounded one another with small weapons and mortars in the town's streets as the U.S. military watched from a distance, tribal members and the U.S. military said. ...

The Sunni Arab tribe involved in the clashes, the Sulaiman, lost four men, Salman Reesha Sulaiman, a member of the tribe, said in an interview after the fighting, which occurred during the first week of May.

On the Zarqawi side, 11 foreign fighters were killed outright, plus an unknown number of other foreign fighters and their Iraqi allies in U.S. bombing runs after local tribes tipped off their location to the Americans.

The fighting at Husaybah was a dramatic sign of the fractures in support and allegiance the foreign fighters are experiencing, several Iraqi political leaders and other Iraqis said. The battles also revealed what appeared to be fissures within the network's top leadership, they said.

The fighting started when the local tribal sheikh invited the Marines to a goodwill lunch to promote good relations between his tribe and the Americans. Zarqawi ordered him assassinated for the crime of collaboration, and proudly took credit for the murder after it occurred. However, Arabs don't take kindly to the killing of their tribal leaders, even by accident; they won't stand for their deliberate killing, regardless of the reason.

Nor did Zarqawi make his presence in Husaybah particularly popular after the murder. He forced the women to cover themselves from head to toe, and forbade the men from wearing "Western" clothing. Satellite and music stores had to close their doors, and Zarqawi's minions openly bragged about making Husaybah another Fallujah, perhaps forgetting Fallujah's eventual fate.

Eventually the provocations became too much for the Sulaiman, which reacted with surprising force and vehemence. In this, they embodied the hope of American policy regarding the insurgents -- that the Iraqis themselves would rise up and fight them on their own, without American prompting. In fact, as the Post reports, both sides took care to avoid hitting Marine positions in order to keep them from entering the battle on behalf of the Sulaiman -- Zarqawi for obvious reasons, and the Sulaiman for reasons of honor. Once the Zarqawi terrorists went on the run, the Sulaiman provided intelligence to the Marines, who attacked them from the air.

This demonstrates the progress that America has made in Iraq, and how much damage that Zarqawi's indiscriminate killing of Iraqi civilians does to his cause. The Sunni have not remained monolithically opposed to Americans, and tribe by tribe may have started to realize that the collapse of the Ba'athists does not necessarily mean that they face slavery by the Shi'a. In fact, after Husaybah, they understand even more clearly that slavery comes from Zarqawi and his ilk -- and they're willing to fight to defeat it.

An Unusual Bleg

I have a favor to ask of CQ readers in my area, and it may sound unusual at first...

I've been approached by a top-notch representative of public speakers to develop my efforts here into a speaking tour. This service represents some of the finest conservative speakers; while I don't want to get into the specifics, you can trust me that it's a good opportunity to expand my audience and the reach of CQ. If successful, it could eventually lead to the possibility of becoming a full-time, self-sustaining blogger -- something akin to Pinocchio becoming a real boy.

In order to work on marketing this possibility, I need to find a public speaking opportunity fairly soon that I can videotape and use to demonstrate my skills (or expose my lack thereof, I suppose). I plan on writing a few different speeches, but the focus of my first would be the New Media and its implications for politics and culture. I need a venue to deliver the speech and an audience, sans rotten fruit, for genuine reaction and interaction. My friends and associates already have worked on this, but so far we haven't found the right combination.

If CQ readers within reach of the Twin Cities have an upcoming event which I could help promote and that would benefit from my appearance, please e-mail me and let me know. I even promise not to wear the Notre Dame jersey and captain's hat.

ADDENDUM: I want to thank the people who have hit the tipjar on the site of late. I don't usually mention it, but those donations really do help me keep the site going.

UPDATE: A few questions from e-mail:

How big an audience do you need?

Not big, just enough to register a reaction on the video.

What kind of audience? Would students work? (God knows we can always use some guest speakers, particularly conservative ones.)

Sure! I'd love speaking with students. Hopefully, the topic and the speaking style will keep them engaged.

How much feedback?

It depends ... uproarious enthusiasm = as much as I can get. Scorn = as little as possible. Seriously, I'd probably like an interactive Q&A to go along with this, so I'm hoping for an audience that will get involved in the discussion, pro and con.

And importantly, what’s the topic of the talk?

New Media and its impact, although I'd be open to other topics.

Parents Without A Clue

This story pops up every once in a while, proving that stupidity and cluelessness has a strong streak of repetition. A Nashville mother is the latest parent to get arrested for hiring strippers for a minor child and his buddies to celebrate a birthday:

A mother faces criminal charges after she hired a stripper to dance at her 16-year-old son's birthday party. Anette Pharris, 34, has been indicted by a grand jury on charges of contributing to the delinquency of a minor and involving a minor in obscene acts. The boy's father, the stripper and two others also face charges. ...

Anette Pharris took photos at the party and tried to have them developed at a nearby drug store. Drug store employees notified authorities, police said.

"Who are they to tell me what I can and can't show to my own children?" the mother said.

Where to start with Pharris? Let's establish some baseline assumptions. I'm not that much of a prude that I think a naked body corrupts everyone who sees it. However, I do think that teenagers who already struggle to understand sexuality and their own urges are not helped by having parents provide writhing strippers and lap dances to their 16-year-old sons. And while Pharris may have more of a voice in determining appropriate entertainment for her own child, she certainly doesn't have the right to determine it for his friends.

This is what happens when parents decide that being buddies with their kids and indulging every impulse they have is more important than parenting. Parents are the primary teachers of their children, and while it's important to keep lines of communication open, that doesn't mean that parents have to capitulate on every urge their teenagers have. All Pharris taught her son was that she has no judgement or morals at all, and that it's perfectly OK to indulge every hormonal impulse no matter what the circumstances.

Last lesson: if one really insists on being this stupid, buy a digital camera.

ADDENDUM: The First Mate had me in stitches this morning after I told her about this story. When she calmed down, she casually asked me what kind of birthday cake would go with that particular party theme...

How The Seven Dwarves Have Impacted The Presidential Race

Yesterday on the Northern Alliance Radio show, I made an assertion that the judicial confirmation compromise both sprang from the presidential aspirations of its key GOP proponents and that it had affected the 2008 race already. We didn't have time to hash it out, as the hour came to a conclusion shortly afterwards, but Ralph Hallow has more on the latter hypothesis in today's Washington Times. He astutely notes that the GOP base may draw closer to George Allen of Virginia, who has resolutely stood for the principles enumerated by the GOP during the last election while the Seven Dwarves face irate voters back home:

Last week's Senate compromise that averted a showdown over filibustered judicial nominees was actually the opening salvo of the 2008 presidential campaign, several veteran political observers say. The unexpected consequence of the filibuster compromise is to give a boost to the presidential prospects of Sen. George Allen, Virginia Republican.

"Allen was very vocal in support of changing the rules to eliminate the filibuster of judicial nominees and took the right position in condemning the compromise," said Free Congress Foundation President Paul M. Weyrich.

Conservatives have strongly condemned the compromise as a politically motivated gambit by Arizona Sen. John McCain, key Republican broker in the deal that ensured confirmation of three of President Bush's nominees to federal appeals courts.

I argued yesterday that the wide-open presidential race actually encouraged this nonsense. While the Democrats already have a frontrunner of sorts in Hillary Clinton and a couple of other wannabes -- John Kerry, as an example -- the GOP hasn't established anyone as a frontrunner. Dick Cheney's refusal to run (and his high negatives) left the field open, and the Republicans have not groomed anyone to step up. That left a vacuum where the highly ambitious could hope to establish themselves in the media as party leaders. At least some of the Seven Dwarves took advantage of that strategy by painting themselves as reasonable conservatives, ones who could reach accommodation across the aisle where this administration was either unable or unwilling to do so.

In other words, they sold out Bush and their duty to protect the Constitution for a few photo ops and a boost to their national aspirations. Lindsay Graham, Mike DeWine, and most of all John McCain fall into this category. Unfortunately for them, that strategy appears to have blown up in their faces, as the Bolton filibuster demonstrates the ineptness of the Seven Dwarves in caving into Democrats' demands that legitimized the use of the filibuster on executive nominations strictly because of policy disagreements.

McCain gets the most blame among analysts, but Majority Leader Bill Frist doesn't get completely off the hook either, making his own presidential bid look less and less likely to succeed:

Mr. Frist's base of support remains strong, said Family Research Council President Tony Perkins. "I don't think Frist is wounded -- betrayed by McCain and a few of his other Republican senators, but not wounded, not among social conservatives," he said.

But Mr. Keene said the compromise did serious damage to Mr. Frist's credibility. "Frist is the loser in that he has demonstrated an inability to hold his own majority together," said Mr. Keene. "But out in the country and among the Republican base, he will be viewed as someone who at least tried."

"Frist is hurt to the extent he had an opportunity to be seen as a hero to the conservative movement and that opportunity was taken away from him by John McCain," said Mr. Weyrich.

The compromise was hailed as a victory by Democrats, and many conservatives questioned Mr. McCain's motives in recruiting other Republican senators to join an ad-hoc coalition -- now derided by some critics as "the Seven Dwarfs" -- in support of the deal.

"McCain could not bear to see Frist as the big winner, so he got his buddy [South Carolina Sen.] Lindsey Graham and [Ohio Sen.] Mike DeWine involved in this," Mr. Weyrich said. "That's what this is all about."

Laura Ingraham referred to both DeWine and Graham as MITs -- McCains In Training. They expected to get the same love from the press that McCain gets for being a so-called "maverick", and they may well receive it in the short run. They will discover, however, that one must win primaries in order to run in a general election, and that people tend to vote for those who don't stiff them when the pressure builds. Both might find that, far from building political capital for a national campaign, they may have mortally wounded themselves for re-election to the seats they hold now.

This has changed the landscape for the 2008 campaign. Now we have even fewer national figures who can successfully engage the base for a presidential run. George Allen may be the one figure who rises above this debacle with a national following strong enough to vault him into the upper echelon of contenders. Keep an eye out, though, for GOP governors to step up after 2006. I think we may have a winner right here in Minnesota, if he decides to toss his hat in the ring.

CQ - The End Of The World As We Know It

It's the end of the world as we know it,
And I feel fine ...

An alert CQ reader pointed out an op-ed in yesterday's Atlanta Journal-Constitution that used Captain's Quarters as an example of how the media faces destruction in today's new market. Did Conrad Fink, a professor of journalism at the University of Georgia (go, Bulldogs!), talk about how blogs discovered the truth about the Killian Memos? Did Professor Fink review the Eason's Fables episode, where the vice-president of a major American news organization got caught committing slander on multiple occasions overseas? How about Newsweek's false report on Qu'ran flushing at Gitmo, and the role that bloggers played in forcing Newsweek to address its faulty editorial policies and reviews, let alone its inherent bias?

Er, no. Instead, he lionized the journalism industry for -- get this -- actually reporting on Kyrgyzstan and criticized me for reporting on Adscam testimony:

First, in late March, a street revolution overthrew the government of Kyrgyzstan --- one of the "stans" carved out of the old Soviet Union's eastern empire. The United States has a military base there --- big surprise to many Americans.

And, Washington has staked out Kyrgyzstan, along with Afghanistan and the other "stans," as a major battleground against terrorism --- and oh, by the way, as a major sector of American influence in one of the potentially most explosive challenges ahead in this new century: Our guarded relationships with China and Russia.

A street revolt in a small, far-off, unheard-of Asian nation is important to us? You bet, and the mainstream media were on the story.

Fink argues that the AP covered this because it has the resources to do so, a point that seems rather obvious and unremarkable. Most of the Exempt Media reporting on Kyrgyzstan came from the AP and Reuters; perhaps the New York Times has a reporter in Bishkek, but I rather doubt it. But bloggers have reported directly from Kyrgyzstan and surrounding territory as well, and places like Registan aggregate the best of them.

Why is Fink so concerned about this? He believes that bloggers like me and Registan will attract so many readers that we will drive newspapers into collapse, and uses Adscam as an example of the evils of the blogosphere:

Now consider a possible news industry of the future, perhaps reduced to delivering sparse headline-coverage on Palm Pilots. Would such a news industry maintain correspondents in the Bishkeks of the world? Where, in this worst-case scenario, would we get news?

My second example might offer clues: There has been under way in Canada a hugely important federal investigation into charges --- I emphasize, unproved allegations --- of money laundering and kickbacks in government. The federal judge leading that investigation banned publication of details on grounds that potential jurors might be prejudiced.

Enter the new media.

A blogger in Minneapolis --- a self-described conservative, amateur blogger --- began posting details he said he obtained from an anonymous source in Canada who approached him with the story. The blogger cautioned that, yes, his reporting was based on that single source and, no, he had no corroboration.

Established mainstream newspapers in Canada were prohibited from reporting details, but Canadians, hungry for those details, flocked to the blogger. He reported 400,000 hits a day from Canadians. Indeed, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported traffic was so heavy one day that his Web site crashed.

Just think: Uncorroborated information from an unidentified source relayed by an amateur blogger with no journalistic training made allegations reaching into the highest level of the Canadian Liberal Party, to people close to the prime minister.

Of course, Fink leaves several points out of this frightening scenario. First, the Gomery Inquiry was a public hearing. The politically connected could watch or hear the testimony, and people lucky enough to get seats could see it as it unfolded. The Canadian media had TV feeds in some locations. The only thing the publication ban prevented was the information getting to the true victims of the corruption. Second, as Fink notes and unlike the practice of Exempt Media outlets, I informed my readers of the nature of my source up front. Third, I confirmed the veracity of the source within 24 hours of publication through a number of contacts I made in the Canadian press, who had seen the testimony firsthand.

Oh, and unlike Newsweek -- I got the story right.

I don't know how Fink comes to the conclusion that I have had no journalistic "training" whatsoever, or why that's germane to a story that gets reported correctly and in a timely manner. In fact, I majored in communication at Cal State Fullerton (when I bothered to attend), and while I didn't finish, I did take one or two classes in journalism, both there and in high school. It probably won't surprise anyone to learn that journalistic "training" is overrated, especially at the college level. Most real journalists, as opposed to self-righteous journalism professors, will tell you the same thing; journalism is a craft learned by practice, not a science taught through lecture.

Besides, the industry is a market, just like any other. If people want reports from Krygyzstan, the market will drive resources there. The AP and Reuters make their money precisely because newspapers won't pay for bureaus in Bishkek. The broadsheets pay the AP and Reuters to do the reporting for them. If Professor Fink had paid a little more attention, he would have noticed that bloggers like CQ and Registan noticed the Kyrgyz activity from the wire reports and stoked interest in the story. Advertisers, which pay for bloggers as well as broadsheets, respond to readers in the same way regardless of the medium used. The real issue isn't whether that kind of reporting will disappear -- it's whether the broadsheets, with their clunky 24-hour news cycles, will ever adjust to the AP's pace in order to stay ahead of its readers. Obviously, we know where to look for the news as it happens.

Professor Fink claims in his conclusion that he holds no brief for the newspaper industry, but then states that the broadsheets have stood watch over this nation's interests like no other medium has or ever will. That's the cri de coeur of the dinosaur, and it will be the echo of the paper medium as it disappears into history. It reveals his essay as nothing more than a self-serving rant, trying desperately to discredit bloggers and anyone else who dares to report and comment on current events without a diploma from dear old Georgia or a similar member of academia.

UPDATE: The inestimable Victor Davis Hanson weighs in on this general topic in today's Washington Times.

UPDATE II: I had the lyrics slightly incorrect, but Hoystory straightened me out.

It Depends On The Entertainment

No one doubts that the United Nations has had a terrible past few years. They wound up supine to a genocidal maniac in Iraq, whose pockets they stuffed with billions in cash through corruption and incompetence while his people starved. Their peacekeeping missions have proven worthless as the troops stand by and watch civilians get massacred. Those women and young girls who are unfortunate to wind up at refugee camps get used by the soldiers and the UN management officials as prostitutes merely for subsistence levels of food, or an occasional dollar in return for sexual favors. Kofi Annan urges action in Darfur, but can't bring himself to declare the Arab rampage there a genocide, which would force the Security Council to intervene. This corruption and incompetence has been proven to run to the highest levels of the UN, and the organization still cannot bring itself to hold its leadership accountable for the organization's myriad failures.

So what is the UN's main concern these days? According to the New York Times, it's that President Bush hasn't RSVP'd for their big anniverdary celebration in San Francisco:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has indicated she will not attend. So has former President George H. W. Bush. The controversial nominee for United Nations ambassador, John R. Bolton, has not been heard from, nor has President Bush, who was sent an invitation in February.

Getting big-name administration officials to attend events outside Washington is always a long shot because of their busy schedules. But in the case of the 60th anniversary celebration of the founding of the United Nations, which will take place in San Francisco late next month, some organizers are wondering if something beyond scheduling conflicts is at play.

Nancy L. Peterson, president of the United Nations Association of San Francisco, a nonprofit group that has been planning the celebration, said no explanation had been offered by the White House. But she said some members were worried that President Bush's seeming disdain for the world organization might be behind the silence and no-shows.

"We are a month out, and that's cutting it close," Ms. Peterson said. When asked if San Franciscans felt slighted, she said, "I think the administration is slighting the American people by not stepping forward on behalf of the United Nations at this turning point."

On the contrary -- I think the administration might be sending a message that perfectly resonates with the American people's perspective on the UN. It has little to do with San Francisco, although the people there have invariably been rude and abusive when the nation's leaders visit there, underscoring the general self-indulgence and immaturity one usually sees in the political class in that region. The snub has everything to do with the fact that no one in Bush's administration wants to celebrate or salute the current corrupt management at Turtle Bay, and that is exactly what this event would do.

The truly laughable part of Dean Murphy's report is the mention of John Bolton's lack of response. First, Bolton has yet to be confirmed to the post of UN ambassador, so technically he has no reason to be invited, let alone attend. Moreoever, the New York Times has done nothing but encourage the Bolton opposition, engaging in the same character assassination launched by Harry Reid and his minions, and have staunchly and publicly opposed his confirmation. The UN, according to these Democrats, want nothing to do with Bolton at Turtle Bay. Now suddenly they send him an invitation to this celebration, and the Times wants to know why he hasn't responded? Murphy and the Times can't be that stupid; they are, however, pretty hypocritical in mentioning it.

The UN has collapsed into a crime family, where money and personnel intended to assist the most vulnerable instead work to the support of the most evil tyrants, where forces intended on protecting the innocent abandon them to enemies and sexually assault the female survivors, and where the various dictatorships and kleptocracies who pursue slavery and terrorism run committees that focus their ire on Western nations for not putting even more resources at their disposal to continue these travesties. Its management has proven itself above accountability and its membership has encouraged all of it for a chance to handicap the Western democracies in their bid to spread true freedom and liberty across the globe.

What's there to celebrate?