Prayers Answered For Russian Submariners

Seven trapped Russian submariners have been rescued -- alive -- after three days of being trapped 625 feet below the surface:

A Russian submarine that had been trapped nearly 190 meters (625 feet) below the surface of the Pacific Ocean was raised Sunday, and all seven crew members are alive, a spokesman for the U.S. Pacific Fleet has confirmed.

The sub was raised about 4:20 p.m. (3:20 a.m. GMT).

A U.S. Navy doctor on board a Russian ship was evaluating the conditions of the Russian crew, John Yoshishige said.

The rescue mission involved the navies of three countries: Russia, Britain, and some support from the US. A British Scorpio cleared the debris that had entangled its screws, causing the mini-sub to sink to the bottom near the Kamchatka peninsula. Once the Scorpio cleared the debris, described in varying news reports as either fishing nets or an observational attenna, Russian surface vessels attached cables to the sub and hauled it to the surface. The sailors came to the top with little breathable air left, but apparently enough to survive.

Coming as it did around the five-year anniversary of the Kursk disaster which killed 118 Russian sailors in the Barents Sea, Russians and many others around the world feared the worst. Thank God that this time, the Russians asked for help immediately and the British were in a position to provide it.

Two Quick Hits

Just a couple of links to which I want to alert CQ readers before I start babysitting the Little Admiral for the evening:

* My friend Jon Henke, proprietor of the indispensable QandO, has the latest edition of The New Libertarian posted and ready for your reading. It has articles on "the China problem, European economic excuse-making, third-world issues, the Space program, Microsoft, the Supreme Court and more." Jon both writes and edits TNL, which has a number of contributors now. If you're not reading QandO on a regular basis, be sure to start now.

* Venomous Kate has received about two-thirds of what she needs for her Fang Fund in order to pay for the dental work she requires after her terrible accident. As I wrote earlier, Venomous Kate was one of the first bloggers I ever read, along with Asparagirl and Power Line. She's received a lot of support from all of you so far, but if you haven't had the chance to drop a few bucks in her tip jar, please hit it now.

I just heard the door open, so I'm off to play with the Little Admiral for a little while. Have a great evening!

Drew Johnson On Air America

Drew Johnson, the talented cartoonist that has contributed to CQ on occasion, makes another welcome entry to the current debate on Air America. Here's Drew's Draw:

Enjoy!

Trackback Problems At CQ

For those of you who have e-mailed me about the inability to get trackbacks to work, I'm not blocking you on purpose -- unless you are one of the many spammers trying to hijack my blog for your advertising, in which case you can pound sand. Unfortunately, my MT-Blacklist appears to have a string blocking a large number of legitimate trackback pings. I'm trying to figure that one out, and I'm going to ask the brilliant designer behind the CQ interface, Mel from Bonafide Style, to see what she can do about it. (She's cooking up a surprise for us, too.)

In the meantime, feel free to post your link in the comments if the TB ping doesn't work. We will eventually get it worked out.

Azeri Authorities Claim American-Backed Coup Attempt

The authoritarian government in Azerbaijan, which had made some noises about liberalization, has accused an American NGO of fomenting a violent coup and has used this development as an excuse to crack down on political opposition. The Turkish Press reports that the National Democratic Initiative (NDI) strongly denies any such intent, saying only that they wanted to promote free elections in order to transition from autocracy to representative government in a peaceful and legal manner:

Azeri prosecutors announced Thursday they had arrested the leader of a youth group, saying he was plotting to launch a peaceful popular revolution during parliamentary elections in November at the instigation of the National Democratic Institute (NDI).

"The allegations that we are funding a revolution just aren't true," NDI's director for Azerbaijan, Christy Quirk told AFP.

In a statement the NDI said it cooperates with "all political parties" to promote free and fair voting. ...

The organization, which has faced criticism from regimes in other former Soviet republics accusing it of promoting revolutions that swept Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan recently, did not mention any specific allegations in its statement.

The issues involved probably have little to do with any real coup attempt, but instead represent an effort of the Azeri power structure to block the promotion of democracy. The Turkish press notes that the Azeri government also accused the Yeni Fikr youth movement, whose leader they arrested, of taking money from Armenia for their organization. The two nations have often found themselves at odds with each other and both hold long-lasting enmity with each other over the Nagorno-Karabkh dispute in the 1990s; accusing democracy advocates of being in bed with Armenia would equate to a similar accusation in the US of carrying water for Castro.

Publius Pundit has plenty of links on this subject, as does Registan, two of the best blog resources on Central Asia and the Caucasus. Publius links to an AFP report from Baku that notes the Azeri regime announcing new crackdowns on political parties in Azerbaijan, putting planned elections in jeopardy:

The authorities in the former Soviet state of Azerbaijan said Thursday they would clamp down on political parties, vowing to increase control ahead of parliamentary elections and to crackdown on financing from abroad.

The authorities will “strengthen control over the activities of political parties ahead of parliamentary elections,” the head of the justice ministry’s department for registering parties, Fazil Mamedov, said in televised remarks.

Announcing their intention to "control" dissident political parties sounds like bad news for democratization in Azerbaijan. A public and explicit announcement means that they do not care about the international ramifications of their muscle-flexing at home. They must calculate that few people will concern themselves with the internal politics of Azerbaijan. For the sake of those working to liberalize their government, I hope they get proven incorrect.

Muslim Elder Warned British Authorities About London Bomber

An elder at a London mosque tried to involve British authorities two years ago when a group tried to disrupt its moderate congregation through intimidation and preaching of radical Islam, CNN reports today. One of the leaders of the radical group went on to join the terror cell responsible for the July 21 bombing attempts on the London transportation systems:

A leader at a mosque visited by one of the London July 21 bombing suspects says he warned police that Hamdi Issac was dangerous more than two years ago.

An elder at the Stockwell Mosque in south west London says he wrote to a senior police officer urging him to help deal with a group of young people who had been "harassing" and intimidating the moderate Muslims.

Toaha Qureshi, one of the mosque's Trustees, told CNN that Issac -- the alleged Shepherds Bush attempted bomber currently fighting extradition from Italy -- was a prominent member of the group.

Qureshi took the unusual step of informing the local police force in writing that Isaac and others intended to turn his mosque into "another Finsbury Park mosque," at which al-Qaeda connected Sheikh Abu Hamza often preached. The letter warned Brixton police that Isaac and his cohorts preached racial hatred and religious intolerance.

British authorities apparently took no action to contain Isaac. They never discovered that he had entered the country on a forged passport under a false name (Osman Hussain, under which he first was identified after the bombings). He lived in Britain under political asylum, which means that the Home Office had some say as to whether he could continue enjoying British hospitality. Had the British taken these warnings seriously -- and getting a tip from a named source in writing should have pushed them to do so -- they could have revoked his asylum and sent him back to Somalia, the country he claimed to have fled (he actually came from Ethiopia via Italy).

In this case, British Muslims did their best to warn their government about the radicals in their midst. It appears that the authorities did not put much stock in their cooperation despite the public demands that Muslims start providing more support against Islamofascist terror. Like America, Britain seemed more concerned with maintaining their multicultural bona fides than in investigating true security risks. In the future, perhaps Western governments will listen when people like Toaha Qureshi try to speak.

Nancy Clark Checks Out

Yesterday I took my lunch break to feast on the efforts of sports columnist Nancy Clark at the Des Moines Register to denigrate bloggers as rumormongers and liars, while holding herself up as a paragon of the "journalism of verification". Several CQ readers sent Clark their responses to her misfired braodside. Hopefully they will not hold their breath waiting for a response, because apparently Ms. Clark has her own special method of handling criticism from her readers, as CQ reader Seybernetx found out (emphasis mine):

At the risk of "pulling a Nancy", I emailed a reply to Clark's column, saying pretty much what all of you have said here.

The response?

--------------------------

Your message

To: Clark, Nancy
Subject: Feeling a little pressured, are we?
Sent: Thu, 4 Aug 2005 20:35:03 -0500

was deleted without being read on Fri, 5 Aug 2005 14:09:41 -0500

-----------------------------

It seems that all of the effort to provide the "journalism of verification" makes it impossible for Ms. Clark to deal with its consequences.

Sister Toldjah has a great review of this as well, using this episode and others as an argument that the Exempt Media has started a concerted pushback effort against the blogosphere. (She gets her first Instalanche, too!) Be sure to check it out -- it's link-rich and well-put. If you haven't read her blog before, be sure to bookmark it.

UPDATE: Patterico also has a great post on this topic. Check it out.

UPDATE II: Also, check out The Anchoress and her take on the journalistic coma. In fact, all three of the above blogs deserve regular readership, regardless of the topic.

Job Creation A Bummer For The Gray Lady

CQ frequently criticizes the New York Times, especially its editorial board, for its obvious and unacknowledged biases in its coverage (and non-coverage) and its analysis. We should consider how depressing it must be for those editorial-board members, whose staunch leftist politics have put it outside of the mainstream, to see the policies of their opponents achieve such success.

George Bush has had an unbroken string of growth since putting his economic plan into place in 2002 and 2003, which has now resulted in a significant and unexpected (at the NYT, anyway) rise in tax revenues and a major drop in the federal deficit. Now the new job-creation numbers show that new work has picked up across the board. All of this happy news for Americans just seems to bring out the inner pessimist at the Paper of Record, however:

Still, it's not robust. If jobs were being created today at the same pace as in other economic recoveries since World War II, the monthly average would be about 250,000. ...

The rates ticked up slightly for most groups in July, including for African-American men and high school dropouts. That's encouraging because it's generally assumed that if the least-advantaged workers can find jobs, higher-skilled workers will do even better. Nevertheless, employment rates are still well below their most recent peak, in 2000.

Because the demand for workers has been subpar for some four years now, wages have suffered. Average hourly wages rose a surprising 0.4 percent in July, the strongest monthly surge in a year. But they're up only 2.7 percent over the past year, hardly keeping up with inflation. Asked about that yesterday, Secretary Chao replied that overall compensation - which includes employer-provided health care and other benefits - was rising faster than the cost of living. That's correct, but somewhat disingenuous. The fact that workers' raises are, in effect, being diverted to cover the exploding cost of benefits is hardly a positive development.

It's difficult to know where to begin with this nonsense. The overall compensation shows why wages don't rise as fast -- because the employers provide more services to their workers. Twenty years ago, health insurance didn't come as an expectation. Now, most employers not only offer that as a given, but also provide dental, vision, and in some cases legal insurance. Many offer mental-health services for employees and their families. If the cost of these health-care premiums concerns the Times, perhaps they would care to support capping malpractice awards and legal fees in order to help keep the cost of providing these services down.

The Times displays this editorial pessimism in the face of its own news report in the same edition, which paints a much different picture of the economy and the position of workers:

Indeed, most recent statistics point to an accelerating economy after a modest dip in output growth to 3.4 percent in the second quarter, from 3.8 percent in the first three months of the year. ...

The 207,000 jobs added in July indicated the fastest hiring pace since April. Coming on top of revisions to previous estimates of employment gains in May and June that added another 42,000 jobs, average job growth this year was bumped up to 191,000 a month, sufficient to absorb the expansion of the labor force and reduce the slack in the job market.

Job growth ranged widely in July. The retail sector added 50,000 positions in July. Hotels and restaurants added 30,000 jobs. Employment in health care rose by 29,000. In an unexpected sign of increased job market stability, employment in temporary help agencies declined, indicating that employers might be relying less on temporary employees and hiring more workers full time. ...

Average hourly wages of production and nonmanagement workers rose nearly 0.4 percent, the fastest rate since July of last year. And the index of the aggregate amount of hours worked in the economy increased by about 2 percent.

In a particularly encouraging sign, the share of the total population that is working inched up 0.1 percent, to 62.8 percent, the highest percentage since October 2002. Gains filtered through to groups that have had a more difficult time in the labor market over the last few years. Unemployment among blacks declined 0.8 percent, to 9.5 percent, and the Hispanic unemployment rate dipped to 5.5 percent, from 5.8 percent in June.

So we have a real growth in income that has accelerated faster than any time since last July. Unemployment dropped for minority workers across the board, and Hispanic unemployment now almost equates to overall unemployment. Jobs have transitioned from temporary workers to permanent employment. Total employment has hit the highest percentage of the population in three years.

I can see why that depresses Pinch's crew.

The editorial saves its best for last. In a tortured explanation of its depression, the Times lays out the doomsday scenario haunting its nightmares:

As the housing market cooled, high oil prices would probably impose an ever greater toll on hiring and spending. Thus far, the economic drag of higher energy costs has been somewhat offset by the economic boost from appreciating real estate values. But if oil prices stayed high or went higher while real estate prices leveled off or dropped, employers and workers, and the consumers on whom they depend, would all feel the squeeze.

If high oil prices go higher, it will increase the economic model for new exploration, resulting in more oil resources and a stabilization of oil prices. In fact, we're approaching that point now. And in any economy, regardless of policies, when costs get out of hand and real assets undergo significant degredation, it won't be pleasant for workers, shareholders, owners, or anyone else. This isn't economic analysis; it's mindless scaremongering.

The Times just can't celebate good news, not as long as Republicans remain in charge. That is what has the Gray Lady crying the blues.

The New Gitmo Catch-22

Critics of the detention of unlawful combatants at Guantanamo Bay apparently cannot find any reasonable solution for handling terrorists acceptable. After announcing the approval of a new facility for Gitmo detention based on a model county jail system in Michigan to ease the concerns of human-rights activists, the same people complained about the planned release of 200 current detainees to their home countries for further processing:

In a few years, Pentagon officials say, the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, will have undergone a radical transformation.

The sprawling detention site known as Camp Delta, with its watchtowers, double-wide trailers housing rows of steel cells and interrogation rooms will be mostly demolished.

Instead, a sharply reduced inmate population of those the military considers the most hard-core will inhabit two nearby hard-walled modern prisons. The newest of those, which is still under construction, is modeled on a modern county jail in Michigan and is designed to counter international criticism of Guantánamo as inhumane and, to some, a symbol of American arrogance.

The first step in changing the character of Guantánamo, officials say, is to relocate many of the 520 detainees. As part of that effort, Defense and State Department officials said this week that they had reached agreement with Afghanistan to transfer 110 Afghan detainees to their home country. Eventually, the population will be reduced to 320, the capacity of the permanent prison buildings.

This relocation has raised the ire of Amnesty International, which demands a halt to this effort. This, of course, is the same organization which claimed that Gitmo (and Bagram in Afghanistan, which will also release Afghanis to Kabul) formed an "American gulag" earlier this year in its annual report. AI says that because Afghanistan practices torture -- a charge certainly true under the Taliban, less certainly under Hamid Karzai -- the US should not and cannot release Afghani citizens to Afghanistan. On the other hand, they want them released from Guantanamo.

So where, exactly, would AI like us to send them? If we don't release them to their home countries, we would have to select a neutral country and get them to detain these people. The problem with that is twofold. First, these detainees not only conducted unlawful wartime operations against American forces, but also committed crimes in Afghanistan, not in some neutral territory. The neutral territory would have no jurisdiction to keep them detained and would have to release them instead. Second, since AI and other critics have insisted that America give these terrorists the same protections as uniformed soldiers under the Geneva Conventions, the GC requires released POWs to get repatriated to their home countries at the end of hostilities. It doesn't provide for third-party detention.

This exposes Amnesty International as a first-order appeaser of terrorists and a dangerous influence on the war on terror. AI wants these detainees completely released and free to conduct more acts of terror against Western targets. No humane treatment or upgraded facility will satisfy these junior Chamberlains. The Pentagon's efforts to create a facility that will impress such critics will amount to a waste of time and money unless it significantly improves the security of our men and women who staff Gitmo now and in the future.

UPDATE: The Washington Post editorial board sounds a bit more supportive of the concept, and points out the hypocrisy of the critics:

Repatriating detainees for incarceration at home makes sense. There is no good reason for America to shoulder the entire burden of locking up captives in the war on terrorism while allied countries wax indignant about treatment of their nationals who pose as much threat to their home countries as they do to U.S. forces or civilians. If these people are dangerous -- as review panels have found them to be -- it is reasonable to ask their countries to take some responsibility for them. In general, if the administration can accomplish this without releasing people who will quickly take up arms anew, it would be a considerable accomplishment.

The Post then follows with the obligatory human-rights handwringing for people whose rights have received a hell of a lot more attention than that of their victims. It makes sense that, if we cannot rely on the home countries of these detainees to respect basic rules of detention, that we continue to house these terrorists under conditions of our choosing instead. Access to the American civil system for terrorists captured abroad makes no sense whatsoever, and will only lead to an ever-increasing burden on our national security as American troops start getting treated like cops and hauled into court with each capture. Anyone advocating outright release gives up their credibility in any debate on handling captured terrorists at all.

Air America: Spitzer's Difference

Today's New York Post reports that New York's headline-grabbing Attorney General Eliot Spitzer has finally decided to look into the shady business dealings between Gloria Wise Boys & Girls Club and Air America. For jurisdictional purposes, the focus of Spitzer's investigation will start with Gloria Wise, but if allegations of fraud and forgery prove true, Spitzer will no doubt have to expand the scope of his probe:

State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer yesterday opened an investigation into the Bronx social-services agency that made $875,000 in bizarre loans to Air America radio, The Post has learned.

"We are looking into it in consultation with the city's Department of Investigation," Spitzer spokesman Darren Dopp revealed.

The highly unusual loans to the left-wing radio network were made by the Gloria Wise Boys & Girls Club — which was visited by one of Spitzer's investigators yesterday, officials said.

Dopp said Spitzer's probe is examining "the conduct of the board of [the] charitable not-for-profit organization. The question is: Was their action appropriate?"

As CQ's legal analyst Eric Costello noted a few days ago, Spitzer's absence from this investigation seemed rather strange. Spitzer made himself a national name by conducting high-profile investigations into the disbursements from 9/11 charities, and due to his political ambitions, routinely plays for the bleachers whenever he can show himself a defender of the downtrodden in his oversight of charities in New York. In this case, not only did $900,000 disappear from programs earmarked for poor Bronx children and Alzheimer's patients, but the irregularities caused by the disappearance forced Gloria Wise to lose $10 million in further funding for its charitable operations.

That should have made headlines, but the New York Times appears much more interested in digging for dirt on John Roberts' two toddlers than they are in reporting on potential corruption at Gloria Wise and Air America involving city and state grant money. Up to now, it looked like without those headlines, Spitzer had no interest in doing his job. So what happened to change his mind?

After the Air America scandal erupted last month, Internet bloggers and Republican critics began pounding Spitzer for not intervening.

Holding the powerful accountable -- that sounds like what the media claims as its mission. The New York Sun and the New York Post do that, but the Paper of Record makes that mission conditional on whose power is in question. Not a word of Spitzer's investigation into Gloria Wise makes it into the Gray Lady today.

The Post has a couple of other tidbits in the story which prove rather interesting. Rather than serving as a member of the board, which usually means a voluntary position for most charities (not all), Air America founder Evan Cohen actually held a salaried position at Gloria Wise. Cohen was GW's "development director" and earned a $74,000 annual salary. The Post does not describe the specific job duties of that position, but generically a development director would have responsibility for creating new programs and services for an organization, with officer-level access to the money.

Remember the Camp Air America project? That sounds like a handy bit of promotion, doesn't it? It also explains why so much of GW's funding could disappear so quickly and wind up at Air America. Just being a single member on the board would not give Cohen that kind of access -- but a development director could easily cut checks, if not so easily provide the explanations later.

Another suspicious development reported by the Post is the nature of the payments Air America will make to GW. Air America made its first $50,000 payment yesterday. However, DOI officials expressed dismay that the payment went into an escrow account that Air America's attorneys control, rather than one that the DOI would supervise. The DOI wants to supervise disbursements of the returned funds -- but the way the escrow works, Air America attorneys can approve any kind of disbursements it wants. In effect, it amounts to no repayment at all. The netlet only segregated $50K of its money into another of its own accounts.

Can Air America do anything honestly? As long as the bulk of the media continues to ignore this scandal, they probably feel no need to do so.

Keep up with the latest on Air America's scandal at Michelle Malkin and Radio Equalizer.

Dafydd: Crystal Gaza

Israel is just about to evacuate the settlers from Gaza, by force if necessary. Most observers are tearing their hair out, seeing nothing but bad coming from this.

The argument -- and it's perfectly logical, as far as it goes -- is that by withdrawing the settlers and the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) which is primarily there to defend them with checkpoints, searches, and restrained shows of force, a power vacuum will be created. The Palestinian Authority will of course be too weak to maintain its power, so Hamas (and perhaps Hezbollah or Palestinian Islamic Jihad) will seize control instead. (Though Al-Qaeda has also now staked a claim to Gaza, and the strip may turn into a decidedly uncivil civil war instead of smoothly transitioning to Hamas.)

Thus, Gaza will inevitably become a new base for militant Islamists, say those opposing the pullout. Paul Mirengoff at Power Line posts the template of this argument:

The U.S. has, at great cost, overthrown two governments that harbored and supported terrorists. But now, with U.S. encouragement and indeed pressure, Israel is about to transform Gaza into a substantial base of terrorist operations.

The Captain himself has presented this argument ably and frequently, of course, most recently here, here, and again here.

But opponents of the pullout never seem to ask the next question: so Gaza is taken over by Hamas, which launches an attack on Israel... and then what happens?

What happens, I predict, is that Israel -- which would no longer have to fear mass murder of the settler-hostages in enemy territory -- will respond to Hamas as they responded to all cross-national attacks on Israel, most particularly in 1948, 1967, and 1973: with a full military response from the IDF, including air support, which they have rarely used in the territories since capturing them during the Six-Day War (after Gaza and the West Bank were used as staging areas for an Arab invasion of Israel).

Right now, Israel's hands are tied in the occupied territories. Israel is an occupying nation, so it cannot go all-out in combat within the territories without violating the rules of civilized warfare. Because Israel is in fact a civilized, Western country, it takes those rules seriously, even when the enemy does not. This is immensely frustrating, of course, since the Palestinian terrorists don't even recognize the existence of any sort of rules of warfare, civilized or otherwise; they have no restraint upon their behavior whatsoever.

But once Israel pulls out of both Gaza and the West Bank, "Palestine" becomes an independent nation in both law and fact (the first time an independent nation of Palestine has ever existed there, I believe). And that lifts the restraints on the IDF -- because even France and Russia would be hard-pressed to find a reason why Israel wouldn't be allowed to defend itself from attack by another independent nation. Even if members of the UN Security Council floated a resolution to condemn Israel, it would be the simplest thing in the world for the United States and Great Britain to veto it.

Note: There is absolutely no doubt that the terrorist groups will claim they "drove" Israel out of Gaza, just as they claimed they drove it out of Lebanon. They will get a little temporary propaganda advantage out of this. But that slight advantage will be more than offset by the improvement in the military situation... especially if Ariel Sharon withdraws in an orderly fashion; unlike Ehud Barak, who ordered the IDF to flee Lebanon as if they had just been routed in battle. (The Israelis departed so quickly they actually left armor behind; they had to send Israeli warplanes to bomb their own tanks, lest they fall into the hands of Hezbollah!) I don't think anybody knows why Barak ordered such a panicked departure; perhaps just the typical Leftist urge towards melodrama.

Here is what to look for to see if my prediction is coming true: once Israel pulls out, a major attempted attack by some terrorist group or groups is inevitable. Because of the security fence (the "wall"), that attack will probably be in the form of rockets, mortars, or artillery fired over the wall. If Israel responds with aerial bombing of significant targets within Gaza and the West Bank, that will tell us that the days of pussyfooting have passed. The Palestinian Arabs will wake up to a new reality, one in which Israel no longer pulls punches in response to mindless Arab terror. I absolutely believe this will create a much better situation than what we have now, with international terrorist groups having significantly less ability to launch attacks on Israel (or on us) from the Palestinian territory than they enjoy today.

But if Israel's only response is a targeted assassination of some Hamas official and a strongly worded letter of protest to Failed Palestinian Leader Mahmoud Abbas... well, then Israel would have surprised and saddened me.

One thing you gotta admit about me: when I make predictions, they are always testable -- and usually very quickly so!

The Explanation Was Almost Worse

Partisans of both sides have long lists of politicians they love to hate. For some on the Left, George Bush and Tom DeLay top their rosters, while others on the Right usually think of Ted Kennedy, Barbara Boxer, and whichever Clinton happens to hit the headlines. Some gather near-universal disdain, such as David Duke -- but he still garners some idiotic support from the fringes.

However, in North Carolina, we may have found a truly unifying figure, one so disgraceful that just about everyone can feel repulsed by his actions. The AP reports that a Charlotte city council candidate had to withdraw after his extracurricular writings came to the attention of a weekly newsletter:

A city council candidate dropped out of the race Friday after it was disclosed that he posted comments to a white supremacist Internet bulletin board more than 4,000 times.

Doug Hanks said the postings were fictional and designed to win white supremacists' trust as he researched a novel he was writing. He said the book was also meant to appeal to white supremacists.

"I needed information for the book and some other writings I was doing," Hanks told The Associated Press on Friday. "I did what I thought I needed to do to establish myself as a credible white nationalist."

That explanation seems rather suspicious to me. As a blogger, and arguably a rather obsessive one, I have written over 5,000 posts for CQ -- but it took me almost two years to reach that number. That averages out to around seven or eight essays a day. It takes time, effort, and desire to do that.

Now we have Hanks posting 4,000 over three years, which adds up to about four times a day, every day, without fail. At what point did Hanks surpass what was needed for his supposed goal of hoodwinking the local Klansmen? Two hundred? Three hundred? Four thousand posts over three years tells me that if Hanks says he did nothing but act like a bigot, he got lost in his role.

That isn't even the worst of it. If that was all, Hanks would just be a cut-rate Duke. Hanks says he did all of this so that he could build enough credibility to write a book. Guess what kind of book?

Hanks said his self-published novel, called "Patriot Act," takes themes from "The Turner Diaries" — the racist novel believed to have inspired Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.

"I saw how successful these 'Turner Diaries' had been and that was the path to take," he told the AP. White supremacists, he said, "have more of a tendency to word of mouth, to say, 'Hey, you ought to pick this up.'"

Riiiight. Hanks tells us that he's not really a white supremacist; he just wanted bigots to like him so that they would buy his book. And he planned on writing the next Turner Diaries so that he could inspire the hate-filled mob to follow in the footsteps of Timothy McVeigh.

It sounds like Hanks violated the First Rule Of Holes: quit digging. The explanation turned out to be almost worse than the original problem. Instead of just being a garden-variety racist, he now argues that he just wants to make a buck off of inciting such idiots to violence.

Fortunately, it appears Hanks' political career will be a short one. However, he has a bright future as a Jerry Springer talk-show guest, and as a man just about everyone can despise.

UPDATE FOR BRUCE: No one thinks this is reflective of Charlotte, Bruce. Unfortunately, idiocy and bigotry don't limit themselves to a particular city or region. And idiocy on this scale has to be considered such a wild outlier that it cannot be reflective of anything except its own depravity.

Novak Apologizes

Robert Novak apologized to CNN viewers today, for storming off the set of Inside Politics and using an expletive in response to an exchange with James Carville. He did not attempt to justify or explain his actions, and did not use the excuse that pressure from the Plame investigation caused his patience to run short:

Robert Novak apologized Friday for swearing on the air and walking off a CNN set, but said it had nothing to do with the federal probe sparked by his revelation of a CIA officer's name in a 2003 column.

"I apologize for my conduct and I'm sorry I did it," he said in an interview.

CNN has pulled him off the air indefinitely. Novak said "I'll follow their guidance" on when he returns.

As Michelle Malkin notes, this is how to apologize and take responsibility, as opposed to the "I'm sorry you were offended" apologies of Dick Durbin and Armstrong Williams, among many others. Good for him, and I hope he returns soon if he learned how to handle himself as professionally as this apology suggests.

I also hope he apologized to Ed Henry and the Inside Politics crew. I think he can skip the apology to James Carville.

UPDATE: Jonah Goldberg has it exactly correct:

Novak screwed up. James Carville is obnoxious. The news here is that Novak screwed up. That it's understandable, human, enjoyable etc., doesn't change the fact that Novak gets paid large dollars to tolerate people like Carville. If you don't like Carville or don't think he's professional or polite, the time to take a stand isn't after nearly a decade of being on TV with him. Obviously, Carvill is full of the bovine excrement to which Novak alluded, but that's pretty much irrelevant. CNN was right to punish him and Novak was right to apologize.

Well put.

Hoist Upon Her Own Petard

Nancy Clark writes a sports column for the Des Moines Register. Bloggers could be forgiven for having never heard of her, but she certainly has heard about bloggers, if yesterday's column gives any indication. She gives vent to a hilarious rant about the credibility of the Exempt Media while denigrating bloggers ... and manages to unwittingly demonstrate why the blogosphere exists in the first place.

First, one has to understand how frustrating it must feel to write a sports column in Des Moines. Iowa's capitol has a population "approaching 200,000", making it more equivalent to a suburb in most places, and hardly attracting much attention from sports teams. That explains why Clark's lead sounds so humorous:

Today I'll be talking with Dan McCarney. The bloggers won't.

I'll also be posing questions during Iowa State's media day to Bret Meyer, Todd Blythe and Jason Scales.

The bloggers won't.

Monday, I'll be chatting with Kirk Ferentz.

The bloggers won't.

I'll also get in a word at Iowa's media day with Drew Tate.

The bloggers won't.

Tuesday, I'll interview Mark Farley at Northern Iowa's media day.

The bloggers won't.

Just when the reader wants to scream, "Who??", Clark says, "This isn't an exercise in name-dropping." Well, no kidding. Her point, such as it is, is to explain that she gets paid to go out and interview people, while bloggers don't. She finds the news herself, firsthand, and then goes through an extensive editorial process through which truth gets delivered to the readers.

Does she know this through personal experience? Uh, no. She had to read a report to figure that out, apparently taking up much of her summer so far:

The State of the News Media Report is an annual review by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, part of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in New York.

The conclusion of the 600-page report was that the traditional "journalism of verification," in which reporters check facts, is being infringed upon by a new model of journalism that is "faster, looser and cheaper."

What results from this bypass of the editorial process that constitutes the "journalism of verification"? Clark explains:

In the new "journalism of assertion," as the report calls it, information is offered with little time and little attempt to independently verify its voracity.

Voracity. Yes, the Exempt Media gets voracious in its attempts to aggrandize themselves at the expense of their readers, especially those who deign to criticize their work. Unfortunately, I believe Clark meant "veracity", which means "truth" and "accuracy".

Great work so far on the part of the layers of fact-checkers and editors. It gets even better from here.

In other words, bloggers and some radio and cable talk show hosts make up stories and spread rumors. Too often, consumers don't know the difference between these lies and mainstream news reports.

Perhaps consumers can't tell the difference between them because the mainstream news reports are the lies.

The report on the threat to traditional journalism focused on political reporting - remember the allegations by the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" that, after weeks of reporting, were found to be unsubstantiated?

Really? Which allegations? The allegation that Kerry lied about his Christmas in Cambodia? The lies about David Alston having served with him during the Silver Star engagement (as well as Alston's lies at the Democratic convention)? His fibs about gun running to the Khmer Rouge for the CIA? Instead of doing actual research on the story for herself, Clark simply parrots a party line that she assumes will go unchallenged. Nothing of significance that the Swift Boat vets alleged in their well-documented book has ever been successfully challenged; the media instead just started reporting that the Swiftvets had conducted a smear campaign and hoped the historians would accept that as a given.

That makes her last piece of advice especially humorous:

Don't accept anything you read on them as truth unless it has been independently verified.

That's why the blogosphere exists, Nancy -- to fact-check lazy columnists who don't check their work. Glad to meet you. Oh, and by the way, I interviewed Lynn Swann and J. C. Watts last year. I interviewed Bernard Goldberg and Rep. Mark Kennedy. You didn't.

Air America: Losing Interest? (Updated)

The New York Sun's David Lombino follows up today on the Air America scandal with news that the loan payback from Piquant Media has lost something in the translation -- namely, the interest owed on it. Piquant Media finally agreed to pay back the $875,000 Evan Cohen misappropriated from Gloria Wise Boys & Girls Clubs for his own personal use and to fund Air America when the netlet seemed ready to collapse. They want to extend payments over two years, but Lombino reports that Piquant will not pay interest on what documents show was supposed to be a loan from Gloria Wise (emphasis mine):

An employee of Air America, who requested anonymity, said yesterday that it received a letter from the city Department of Investigation recommending that the network set up an attorney-managed escrow account for the payments, rather than pay Gloria Wise directly or wait until the department's investigation concludes. The employee said the network made its first payment, of an unknown amount, yesterday.

An official of the city agency, who asked not to be named, said later that the letter asked that the radio network put the entire $875,000 in an escrow account. ...

Piquant LLC, which acquired Air America from Mr. Cohen's Progress Media in May 2004, has agreed to pay $875,000 to Gloria Wise, without interest, in installments over the next two years.

Since when did Piquant decide not to pay interest on the principal? Even if they did not arrange the loans themselves (Michelle Malkin notes that Piquant still has plenty of overlap between old AA ownership and new), extending a reimbursement for misappropriated funds over two years almost by definition should include interest for the retention and use of the ill-gotten monies. Small wonder the DOI wants Piquant to put the cash into escrow; at least that guarantees the payback.

On the other hand, Piquant can claim that the Exempt Media's treatment of the scandal inspired the lack of interest they plan to pay on the stolen funds.

UPDATE and BUMP: CQ's resident non-Power Line attorney, Eric Costello of New York, reviews the issue of the nonpayment of interest in an e-mail this morning:

I, too, read the piece in today's New York Sun about the whole Gloria Wise/Air America/Progress Media/Piquant mess. And piquant it is, too. I think there is one way to cut through some of the fog that you rightly point out in your latest point, the fog produced by the curious lack of interest payments being made by Piquant LLC to Gloria Wise. You need a punch-list of documents to look at. ...

There are, at least, five things at a bare minimum on your punch-list that you would need to help clarify some of the mess here:

(1) Copies of the actual note, or notes, to Gloria Wise from Progress Media and/or Evan Cohen and/or any other entities we haven't heard about yet (let's call them the "Cohen-Progress Group" for the purposes of discussion). (I refuse to believe anyone could be so brain-dead as to dish out $875,000 without getting *something* in writing. Famous last words, I know...)

(2) Copies of the security agreement(s), *if any*, between Gloria Wise and the Cohen-Progress Group.

(3) Copies of the personal and/or corporate guarantees, *if any*, between Gloria Wise and the Cohen-Progress Group.

(4) Copies of the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) filings, if required by the security agreement(s).

(5) Copies of any documents relating to the assumption by Piquant LLC of the obligations of Progress Media when it acquired Air America.

Why are these documents important? Well, the existence (or not) of these specific types of documents, and the details of their terms, are important in that they will tell us whether this was either a sweetheart deal (including, but not limited to, whether Piquant was trying to shed a loan burdensome to Air America onto Cohen-Progress, whose ability to repay the loan would be very problematic), or something negotiated at arms-length. Recall the obligations of the laws of New York with regard to directors of not-for-profits, which require a prudent approach to these kinds of loans.

For example:

(1) What was the original interest rate on the note(s)? If the interest rate was below the rate that would be charged by, say, Bank of America or JPMorganChase, what was the justification for this?

(2) What were the original terms defining "default" under the notes and/or the security agreements? Did Gloria Wise pass up a number of opportunities to foreclose on the note(s)? If so, why this inaction?

(3) What would be the interest rate if there was a default on the note(s) by the Cohen-Progress Group? Did Gloria Wise demand this default interest rate, if it was applicable?

(4) Did the terms of the original note(s) provide for anything like an interest-free period of time to pay back the loan? If so, this would readily explain why Piquant can legitimately pay the $875,000 back without interest, though it would raise questions as to whether this was truly an arms-length transaction. (You have this kind of loan on your car or house, Cap'n?)

(5) What was the security for the loan(s), in the event of a default on the note(s)? Suppose that Progress Media had pledged its assets, which I will assume for this argument consisted solely of Air America's trademarks, goodwill (I heard that!), and whatever tangible assets Progress had. If Progress defaulted on its loan(s), did Gloria Wise make any effort to act under the security agreement(s), if any, to collect on the security? Put another way, could Gloria Wise have taken over Air America? (This, naturally, assumes that no other lenders could have done the same thing at the same time -- highly unlikely. Usually, in the trade, you see what are called "cross-default" provisions, which means if you default under another loan, it's also a default under other loans.)

(6) Personal and/or corporate guarantees are important. Usually, for businesses that are start-ups (which Air America was and is), a bank or other lender is going to ask for guarantees as extra security before it gives a loan. Hence the importance of seeing if any guarantees were given in this case (arms-length again). Could Gloria Wise have gone after Evan Cohen, personally, for any of the $875,000? If they could have, and didn't, why not?

(7) Finally, under the deal transaction in which Air America passed from the Cohen-Progress Group to Piquant LLC, what happened to the obligations, specifically? Did Piquant assume them outright? Were any terms changed? Did Gloria Wise demand fresh corporate and/or individual guarantees to back these obligations from Piquant's principals? If they got these guarantees, why didn't Gloria Wise exercise them?

I'm most interested in the guarantees and security agreements. If Gloria Wise could have lowered the boom on Air America, but didn't, I think we'd like to know why they were so kind and gentle.

Seeing as I'm a stockholder in the New York Times Company and the Washington Post Company (and don't get me started on their screwed-up corporate structure that rigs the game for the controlling families), I thought the MSM (and maybe ol' Eliot) could use a few pointers in stuff to look for, with specificity.

Hopefully some of the management at the NYT and the Post will heed the call and advice of their shareholder and start asking these questions, and more importantly, start reporting the answers.

American Muslims: Fatwa Was CYA Only

After a band of Islamic scholars in America issued much-heralded fatwa against religious violence last week, the media cheered its message as a concrete example of mainstream Muslim opposition to terrorism. However, the edict generated considerable skepticism among analysts, which noted several technical problems with the specific wording, arguing that the fatwa had enough gaps to justify all but the most egregious acts of terrorism. Now the Washington Times reports that the command has failed to satisfy even American Muslims, who sound similar criticisms:

The fatwa condemning religious extremism recently issued by American Muslim groups was so broad it was meaningless, and should have denounced specific terrorist groups including al Qaeda, critics within the U.S. Muslim community say. ...

Muqtedar Khan, a political scientist at the University of Delaware and author of "American Muslims: Bridging Faith and Freedom," said it appeared the main aim of last week's fatwa was protecting U.S. Muslim groups from criticism. And the edict may have fallen short of even that goal, he said.

"They should have been at least specific about events, if not individuals or organizations. They did not condemn al Qaeda or [Osama] bin Laden. It would have had more punch to end all these claims that American Muslims are not doing enough to end terrorism if they had," Mr. Khan said.

When asked about this very point, Ibrahim Cooper of CAIR replied that identifying each covered terrorist group would result in a "laundry list" that would make the fatwa unteachable. He instead referred people to the State Department list of terrorist groups as a handy source to determine which groups fall under this fatwa. As Rachel Zoll notes, this list includes Hamas, a group which American Muslim activists have tried to keep from being recognized as a terrorist organization for years. It also includes Hizbollah, which some argue has a legitimacy in Lebanese politics that overrides its terrorist activities against Israel.

Furthermore, the fatwa treats the problem as that of undue outside influences on Islam, rather than a product of the nature and structure of the faith itself. Omid Safi notes that this renders the edict somewhat historically and intellectually disingenuous, as the radical elements of Islam we see today have almost always existed within the religion. The chairman of the Progressive Muslim Union argues that this treatment precludes any attempt to confront these elements and eliminate them for good by pretending that they either don't exist or that they have nothing at all to do with Islam, neither of which Safi says is true.

I thought that the fatwa was a good first step, but that it came a bit late -- almost four years after the death of 3,000 Americans on 9/11. Obviously, Western Islamic scholars need to review these criticisms and make the necessary adjustments so that they can clearly state what they feel to be unacceptable and prepare themselves for true reform. It shouldn't take another London bombing or WTC attack to get that effort under way. If they want to be taken seriously, then they need to start reforming their mosques and their messages now.

Air America: Arizona Republic Notices It Before NYT

For most newspapers, having an out-of-town paper beat you to a story in your own back yard would prove terribly embarrassing. Not for the New York Times, apparently, as a paper publishing over 2,000 miles from the Bronx has managed to notice the unfolding scandal of Air America's misappropriation of almost a million dollars in city grants and other monies from a non-profit. Arizona Republic columnist Doug MacEachern scolds the Exempt Media, especially the Gray Lady, in allowing this story to continue, as he puts it, moving forward "like a Mack truck in first gear":

A private media start-up with huge political pretensions and meager financial underpinnings uses taxpayer dollars from a Boys & Girls Club to help pay the salaries of high-profile hosts like comedian Al Franken. As a result of these dubious loans and other self-dealing, the Gloria Wise club will be sending no more poor kids from the Bronx to summer camp. It will be providing a lot fewer services, if any, to the Alzheimer's patients it helped. ...

For the Boys & Girls Club, meanwhile, the results have been disastrous. The New York Department of Investigation announced in June that city grants and contracts to Gloria Wise - about $10 million worth - were to be suspended because its officials had approved "significant inappropriate transactions and falsified documents that were submitted to various city agencies."

You don't have to be a Columbia School of Journalism grad to sense that this developing story might have legs.

So far, the evidence shows that the j-school grads may be the only people failing to comprehend the newsworthiness of the story. While a few mainstream media sources like the New York Post and New York Sun have covered the story, and the Washington Times and now the Republic have issued commentaries on it, no other significant newspaper has devoted a column inch to it. None of the broadcast networks has given it a minute of airtime. On the other hand, none of them could give us enough stories about Tom DeLay, Rush Limbaugh, and so on.

It doesn't take a poli-sci graduate to understand the difference in coverage that the Exempt Media gives for scandals involving partisan political players. Take Joseph Wilson, for example. While he busily leaked or outright broadcast falsehoods about his trip to Niger, he garnered huge media coverage, as his opposition to the Iraq war matched their own biases. As soon as the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence showed him to have lied on several occasions about that report and the nature and origin of his assignment, the media ran and hid from the entire mess. Almost exactly a year ago, Howard Kurtz pointed out the dramatic difference:

Outlet.........Wilson Before....Wilson After
CBS.......................30...............0
NBC.......................40...............1
ABC.......................18...............1
Washington Post........96.............2
New York Times.........70.............3
Los Angeles Times......48.............2

The Air America story has the same dynamic, only here we don't have any "after' coverage at all. If the Exempt Media has it their way, that will continue to be the case.

Building A Case Against Iran?

MS-NBC reported last night that American military forces captured a large shipment of shape charges, the kind of explosives used against American military forces by Iraqi terrorists. Sources within the military and intelligence communities told the network that the charges originated with Iran, an allegation that could have potential to escalate already-existing disputes between Washington and Teheran:

U.S. military and intelligence officials tell NBC News that American soldiers intercepted a large shipment of high explosives, smuggled into northeastern Iraq from Iran only last week.

The officials say the shipment contained dozens of "shaped charges" manufactured recently. Shaped charges are especially lethal because they’re designed to concentrate and direct a more powerful blast into a small area.

“They’ll go right through a very heavily armored vehicle like an M1-A1 tank from one side right out the other side,” says retired U.S. Army General Barry McCaffrey.

Military officials say there’s only one use for shaped charges — to kill American forces — and insurgents started using them in Iraq with deadly effectiveness three months ago.

This report by Jim Miklaszewski gives few details on how CENTCOM or the CIA determined the origin of this shipment, and no one has gone on record with this information as of yet. Obviously these explosives come from somewhere, and as Miklaszewski reports, it could come from a front group like Hezbollah to shield Iran from direct responsibility. Without more details about how this identification was made, though, at best this seems surprising.

No doubt that Iran would love to see the Sunni/Wahhabist terrorists chase us out of Iraq, but it doesn't seem too likely that they would create an alliance with the same people that fought an eight-year bloody war against them. Teheran doesn't have that kind of philosophical flexibility, especially these days. Their efforts will go towards co-opting the radical Shi'a instead, as in Basra where Steven Vincent saw the effect of certifiable Iranian meddling in Iraq. The Iranians support the people who have made it their night jobs to assassinate former Ba'ath party officials and their Sunni partners. It seems unlikely that they would arm the side that their philosphical allies specifically target in the south.

If this does turn out to be true, then we need to start taking stronger steps to dissuade Teheran from interfering in Iraq and from their complicity in killing our soldiers. Let's get more information on why they think it's true, and not just from a few anonymous sources.

Two More AIPAC Officials Charged

The Israeli-American relationship will go through even more strain after federal prosecutors announced indictments for two more former officials from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) on charges of transmitting classified information overseas. The two, Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, join Larry Franklin as targets of the investigation, and Israel now acknowledges that investigators have formally contacted their embassy for further probing into the matter:

Two former employees of an influential pro-Israel lobbying group were indicted yesterday on charges that they illegally received and passed on classified information to foreign officials and reporters over a period of five years, part of a case that has complicated relations between the United States and one of its closest allies.

Although no foreign government is named in the indictment, U.S. government sources have identified Israel as the country at the center of the probe. The Israeli Embassy in Washington also confirmed yesterday that it has been "approached" by investigators in the case. ...

Former AIPAC director of foreign policy issues Steven J. Rosen, 63, of Silver Spring was indicted on two counts related to unlawful disclosure of "national defense information" obtained from Franklin and other unidentified government officials since 1999 on topics including Iran, Saudi Arabia and al Qaeda. A former AIPAC analyst, Keith Weissman, 53, of Bethesda, was indicted on one count of conspiracy to illegally communicate classified information. ...

The indictment alleges that, beginning in April 1999, Rosen and, later, Weissman sought to influence people in the United States government, including Franklin, with whom they first met in February 2003, and used those contacts to gather sensitive and classified information.

With three of its former officers now facing prosecution for espionage activities, although the government seems unwilling so far to actually charge these three with outright espionage, it appears that the USAG's office has concluded that AIPAC may be nothing more than a front for the Mossad. The approach to the Israeli Enbassy seems significant; they must have an idea who the three used as a contact to help move the information back to Israel and want some cooperation on identifying the handler. Perhaps they already know the identity and simply want Israel to get him or her out of the country. If the handler carries diplomatic credentials, which seems likely, then it makes sense to quietly declare him or her persona non grata and allow Israel to resolve the situation with a minimum of fuss.

Some will protest this effort to chase after Israeli "interests" in the US while our ally fights an existential battle against groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, and Islamic Jihad. They will say that the US almost certainly spies on its allies -- they're almost certainly correct about that -- and that all this does is to feed anti-Israel conspiracy theorists. But they're wrong to argue that we should allow our friends to simply raid our classified material at their leisure, no matter what circumstances they're in, and letting Israel and her agents get away with this type of activity when it comes to light would eventually undermine our partnership as it would paint us as nothing more than stooges for Ariel Sharon.

We gather classified information in order to secure the United States and protect its citizens. If such information needs to be shared with any other foreign service, that decision has to be made at the political level through the proper channels. Those decisions cannot be left at the whims of the the people who must be trusted to process and protect the information, or else classification means nothing any more. When people breach that trust, the US needs to prosecute them vigorously to send a message of complete intolerance for breaking that trust.

If that applies to Sandy Berger, and it should, then it certainly applies to AIPAC and the three officials, if these charges can be proven.

Novak Walks Off

Bob Novak blew a gasket today and stormed off the set of CNN's "Inside Politics", one of the usually more sane political reviews on cable news. After having spent years on "Crossfire" with Paul Begala, Michael Kinsley, and Bill Press, one would think that Novak had thick enough skin to do a straight-up three-way interview with Ed Henry and James Carville.

Apparently not.

Novak and Carville started discussing the allegations made by Florida Republican Katherine Harris that the media distorted her pictures deliberately during the 2000 post-election fiasco, colorizing them to make her look more gaudy and overly made up. Up to that point in the interview, the three had conducted themselves courteously, even graciously. When Carville attempted to interrupt Novak, however, Novak got incensed and may have created an FCC violation for CNN:

CARVILLE: Yes. You know the two happiest people in America today about this decision, is Bill Nelson and Jay Leno. I mean --

HENRY: Bill Nelson the Democratic Senator.

CARVILLE: The Democratic Senator and Jay Leno. That -- I mean, they're going to go nuts over this. They're messing with my make-up, but you really don't know who it is. I mean, let's say this: She's going to be good for the humor circuit. She's going to be good for the speech circuit and she's good for a lot. And I think that Nelson -- I think, it's probably no secret that the White House wanted the speaker to run and I suspect that the Nelson people are, you know, feeling pretty good here today.

NOVAK: A couple of points here: The first place, don't be too sure she's going to lose. All the establishment's against her and I've seen these Republican -- anti-establishment candidates who do pretty well. Ronald Reagan, I guarantee you that the establishment wasn't for him. We just elected a senator from Oklahoma, Senator Tom Coburn, everybody in the establishment was against him. She might get elected -- So, wait. Just let me finish what I'm going to say, James. Please, I know you hate to hear me, but you have...

CARVILLE: He's got to show these right wingers that he's got backbone. It's why the Wall Street Journal editorial page is watching you. Show them you're tough.

NOVAK: Well, I think that's b******t. And I hate that. Just let it go.

Carville's comments were made over Novak, starting at "So wait", and clearly got under Novak's skin. Watch the video here for a better idea of what happened. After the expletive undeleted, Novak stood up and and stomped off, leaving behind an amused Carville and a bemused Henry in his wake.

Maybe Bob Novak has had a bad year, but after watching this video twice, I fail to see what got him so riled up. Carville interrupting him? Novak has done too much of that in his career to get sensitive about that now. Carville's needling about showing backbone by standing up to him for interrupting hardly seemed anything more than a playful jab, especially considering what Carville can do when he wants to be mean.

Maybe Novak should think about retirement from television soon. If he can't behave any better than this, the choice may soon be made for him. He simply has no excuse for his language nor his thin-skinned attitude, and he owes CNN and Ed Henry an apology, if not Carville as well.

UPDATE: CNN has announced its suspension of Novak for his behavior on today's show (and has clarified Carville's comment, which I updated in the original post):

CNN suspended commentator Robert Novak indefinitely after he swore and walked off the set Thursday during a debate with Democratic operative James Carville.

The exchange during CNN's "Inside Politics" came during a discussion of Florida's Senate campaign. CNN correspondent Ed Henry noted when it was through that he had been about to ask Novak about his role in the investigation of the leak of a CIA officer's identity.

A CNN spokeswoman, Edie Emery, called Novak's behavior "inexcusable and unacceptable." Novak had apologized to CNN, and CNN was apologizing to viewers, she said.

"We've asked Mr. Novak to take some time off," she said.

I agree. Robert Novak has appeared on television long enough to know how to behave professionally. Even with the snarky reference to the WSJ editorial staff added in, nothing Carville said remotely justified either the expletive or the petulant abandonment of Ed Henry in the middle of the interview. As a CNN correspondent and commentator, Henry is Novak's colleague, and Novak left him hanging out to dry.

I'm sure that Novak has some mitigating circumstances, either some cross words with Carville before the show or during a break, or just the enormous pressure of having most of his media peers vilifying him for his role in the Plame affair most of the last two years. It doesn't matter. He chose to appear on "Inside Politics" with Carville, and he's been around the block with the crafty Cajun enough times to know what that means. Bob Novak ultimately has to take responsibility for his own actions and accept the consequences, and it appears from this Post article that he has, by apologizing for his rudeness. I hope that he will come back soon, without the petulance and the potty mouth.

The Gray Lady Turns Into The National Enquirer

Note: This originally appeared as an update on my post about Jon Corzine and the article regarding the loan to his ex-girlfriend. I'm posting it separately instead.

Speaking of news priorities, now we know why the Paper of Record has failed to report on Air America's misappropriation of city grant monies earmarked for poor kids and Alzheimer's patients. Drudge reports that the Times would rather try to dig up dirt on the adopted children of Supreme Court nominee John Roberts:

The NEW YORK TIMES is looking into the adoption records of the children of Supreme Court Nominee John G. Roberts, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

The TIMES has investigative reporter Glen Justice hot on the case to investigate the status of adoption records of Judge Roberts’ two young children, Josie age 5 and Jack age 4, a top source reveals. ...

A TIMES insider claims the look into the adoption papers are part of the paper's "standard background check."

I didn't realize that Supreme Court appointees had to pass a New York Times "standard background check". Silly me. I thought that the Times' job was to report news, not dig up personal dirt about the adoption of minors by political figures.

Addendum: I predict that nothing will come of this, and the Times will have nothing to report -- allowing them to claim that Drudge got the scoop wrong. It could also be that Drudge has a bad source; it happens. (Look at Walter Pincus' and Nicholas Krystof's source for the Niger report.) Whatever the reason, now that Drudge has published this claim, no one will ever see a Times report detailing the mechanics of the Roberts' adoptions. This kind of muckraking simply has to fly under the radar until something scandalous pops out -- otherwise the understandable public outrage into such an invasion of the children's privacy winds up burying any sensational claims.

UPDATE: CQ reader Creature of Habit sent an e-mail complaining about this development to the Times, which responded with lightning speed:

While the public editor does not usually get involved in pre-publication matters, Bill Keller, the executive editor of the paper, told us that he would not stand for any gratuitous reporting about the Roberts's children. He said that as an adoptive parent he is particularly sensitive about this issue.

In addition, a senior editor at the paper wrote, "In the case of Judge Roberts's family, our reporters made initial inquiries about the adoptions, as they did about many other aspects of his background. They did so with great care, understanding the sensitivity of the issue. We did not order up an investigation of the adoptions. We have not pursued the issue after the initial inquiries, which detected nothing irregular about the adoptions."

One of Michelle Malkin's readers received much the same reply. (Michelle also includes the reader's rebuttal to it.)

My reaction? I don't care how much "sensitivity" the Times thinks they showed to the Roberts during their inquiries. The adoption of their children doesn't have anything to do with Roberts' nomination to the Supreme Court. If they had a tip with substantiation that he used his influence to do something illegal, then asking around about it would be understandable, if potentially explosive when handled incorrectly. However, just because the Roberts chose to adopt does not give the Times the moral authority to start asking questions about it as part of a "standard background check" or any other kind of investigation. The Times should confine their interest to points germane to Roberts' ability to perform as a Supreme Court jurist, not go on fishing trips into the most personal parts of his family life.

If Bill Keller can't tell the difference between the New York Times and the National Enquirer, it's no wonder that his readers can't, either.

UPDATE II: Brit Hume reports at his Fox blog that the Times reporters wanted to look into the sealed adoption records, and that they had no particular reason for asking:

The New York Times has been asking lawyers who specialize in adoption cases for advice on how to get into the sealed court records on Supreme Court nominee John Roberts' two adopted children.

There is no indication The Times had any evidence there was anything improper in the family's adoption of five-year-old Josie and four-year-old Jack, both born in Latin America. Sources familiar with the matter told FOX News that at least one lawyer turned the Times down flat, saying that any effort to pry into adoption case records, which are always sealed, would be reprehensible.

Well, we have anonymous sourcing, which doesn't make for a definitive statement. I'd prefer that the attorneys who heard this come forward and say exactly who did the asking. If the Times has asked attorneys to find a legal way to do something unethical and downright despicable, then we should hear who at the Times has made those calls.

That being said, since Bill Keller and his staff have already admitted to making inquiries about the adoptions despite having no cause to suspect anything unusual about them, then this has some credibility. If true, it demonstrates an even lower moral and ethical standard at the Times than previously suspected. One of my commenters may have been right to scold me about my comparison of the Gray Lady to the National Enquirer; that may be unfair to the latter.

In Remembrance Of Steven Vincent

Our Northern Alliance Radio colleague King Banaian has posted the audio from the last NARN interview with Steven Vincent, conducted just before his departure to Basra where terrorists murdered him and wounded his colleague. As King notes at his own site, please download the file to your computer first before playing it. It's sampled better than webstream quality, so it will keep his site from taking too big of a hit.

Corzine Loaned Money To Girlfriend ... And?

When money gets moved between politicians and labor unions, conservatives get concerned about the relationship between the two and rightly suspect foul play. Of course, having union officials loan money to politicians, especially on a personal basis, raises an issue of impropriety or at least a conflict of interest. However, when the money goes the other direction on the basis of a clearly personal relationship, it hardly seems newsworthy ... except at the New York Times:

Senator Jon S. Corzine provided a $470,000 mortgage to the president of a union that represents thousands of New Jersey state employees in late 2002, then forgave the debt two years later.

The union president, Carla Katz, was Mr. Corzine's girlfriend at the time. The senator said on Wednesday that an investment company he owns gave her the mortgage, then canceled it in December 2004, several months after they had stopped dating.

The loan was not illegal, and Mr. Corzine said he took care of the required gift tax on the money he ended up giving to Ms. Katz.

But if Mr. Corzine succeeds in his race for New Jersey governor this fall against the Republican candidate, Douglas R. Forrester, he could find himself negotiating opposite Ms. Katz, whose union, Local 1034 of the Communications Workers of America, represents 9,000 state workers and is one of a handful of labor groups that will seek billions of dollars from the state for wage increases and a bailout of the state's troubled health care and pension funds.

Perhaps this should concern CWA members, who might wonder if Corzine could pressure Katz on the basis of the forgiven debt. She certainly has a debt of honor with Corzine, and that might present some questions for the rank-and-file of the union, if push comes to shove. Will she stand up to the man who basically gave her a half-million-dollar gift? Does she have the nerve to stage a walkout and possibly embarrass the man who let her off the hook?

However, it hardly appears to be any kind of problem for New Jersey voters. They have plenty of reasons to vote against Corzine, but this really doesn't mean anything. Obviously, she didn't buy him, and given that the debt forgiveness came after the end of the relationship, he didn't buy her either. He paid the taxes necessary and they both got on with their lives. Does the Times really think that this has anything to do with the election?

Meanwhile, as David Kocieniewski valiantly reports on this substanceless financial arrangement as the #2 headline in their Regional news section, the entire paper continues to ignore the Air America financial scandal happening in their own back yard. That's quite a demonstration of news priorities ...

UPDATE: Enlighten NJ thinks that I missed the point on Corzine and this loan, and that his "gift" was meant to ensure union support in the primary. Could be, but I think that's a big stretch. Read their post to see what you think.

UPDATE II: I've copied the post about the Times investigating the adoption of John Roberts' children into a separate post. The developments on both stories made it difficult to keep a coherent thread on this post.

Air America: DOI Says Go Ahead And Return The Money

Today's New York Post reports that one of Air America's assertions about their attempts to repay the $875,000 to Gloria Wise Boys & Girls Club is "inaccurate". Piquant Media issued an announcement a few days ago that the AA parent company wanted to start reimbursing the Bronx charity non-profit, but could not do so until instructed by New York City's Department of Investigations, which has an open case on the money transfers between Gloria Wise and Air America. The DOI says, "Who, us?":

Air America's foot-dragging on repaying $875,000 borrowed from a beleaguered Boys & Girls Club in The Bronx has nothing to do with a probe of the club's controversial loans, city investigators said yesterday.

Officials at the ultra-liberal radio network have repeatedly said Air America intends to repay the money, but claimed they put those plans on hold because of the city probe.

"We're waiting for directions from the investigators on how to proceed," Air America spokeswoman Jamie Horn said this week.

But the Department of Investigation said there is nothing to prevent the radio network from repaying its debt immediately.

"DOI has done nothing and given no instruction preventing payment of money owed to Gloria Wise [Boys & Girls Club]. Any statements to the contrary are inaccurate," said DOI spokesman Keith Schwam.

A spokesperson for Gloria Wise says she expects Air America to start its two-year repayment plan next month, and Air America said it might be sooner. Hopefully that will happen at least on schedule. However, with Air America continuing to provide deceptive answers to basic questions, even while promising to repay money taken through at least unethical business practices, it doesn't build confidence in their credibility.

My guess is that the DOI will also take note of this slipperiness and factor it into their investigation.

Meanwhile, the Exempt Media still has not covered the scandal at all. Hugh Hewitt follows up my column in yesterday's Daily Standard with one of his own on the scandal, "The Air Out There". Hugh has links to the blog coverage and the few print sources reporting the story, and points out the disparity in scrutiny that Air America has received from a scandal-crazed press:

[N]othing is so odd as the black-out of the story in the mainstream media. It took about a week from the first television mention of Eason Jordan's Davos speech for that story to break out into the mainstream media. CNN's Inside Politics blog segment covered the Air America story on July 29, so we may be getting close to break-out day. There is every indication--conflicting accounts, big names, big money--that the story has legs.

We know a lot about the medications Rush Limbaugh has taken.

We know a great deal about Bill O'Reilly's troubles.

But thus far we don't know much about how Al Franken got paid the big bucks last year, when all of the mainstream media seemed to be cheering his debut.

When will the New York Times, which has written dozens of articles on the creation and operation of the liberal-radio netlet, finally write one on the funding scandal in which it finds itself embroiled?

AP Editorializing Through Headlines Again

The Associated Press has returned once again to its bad habit of editorializing with headlines that have no substantion in the story. CQ reader Retired Military sends this latest example of the abuse, topping a story about combat losses for sons of Ohio. Titled "Ohio Families Fed Up With Loss of Marines," nothing in the story offers any such sentiment:

Rosemary Palmer and her husband were making plans to attend memorial services for six Marine reservists killed earlier this week — five of them from the same battalion as her son, Lance Cpl. Edward Schroeder — when two uniformed servicemen came down her street. ...

For relatives of those in the 3rd Battalion, 25th Marines, there has been a sudden spike in such grim visits from uniformed servicemen.

Schroeder, 23, of Cleveland, and 13 more Marines from the Ohio-based battalion were killed Wednesday along with a civilian interpreter in the deadliest roadside bombing in
Iraq.

The Marines' deaths, along with two others slain July 28, brought the battalion's toll to 21 in a week. Eleven of those were part of the same Columbus-based unit, Lima Company, that lost four Marines in a single day in May.

The only quote that comes close to meeting the "families fed up" allegation in the headline is from someone not related to the servicemen killed in action. The manager of a local donut shop "threw her hand over her heart" when informed of the fatalities and exclaimed, "I'm all for protection but this is getting a little bit ridiculous."

From the headline, one would expect that the AP had some protest to report, or at least more than a single quote from someone actually from the families mentioned in the story who protested the continuing involvement of the US in Iraq. Instead, we read about people who understandably express shock and sadness, but no expressions of protest or dissent.

The AP needs to get a new headline writer, new editors, or probably both.

UPDATE: AP did a little fixing of its headlines, I see. I have the cached copy here.

Jesse Taylor at Pandagon noticed it as well, and he has a GIF of the original headline.

Friends

It's good to have them. And ... once again ... glass house, meet stones.

Speaking of friends, Michelle Malkin has a new book coming out soon called Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild. She gives her readers a sneak peek at the Munch-inspired cover. Trust me, this book will knock your socks off when it gets released in October. Start saving the pennies now.

Air America: IBD Wonders Where The Exempt Media Went

Investors Business Daily publishes an editorial about the Air America funding scandal that took almost a million dollars from a Bronx non-profit. IBD asks, as we have, why the Exempt Media has gone AWOL:

New York City's Department of Investigation is looking into charges that $875,000 from a Bronx nonprofit group and an affiliate whose budgets are generously stuffed with local, state and federal grants was inappropriately used to fund Air America, the left's counterattack on the colossal success of conservative talk radio.

The two groups — the Gloria Wise Boys & Girls Club and Pathways for Youth — said they thought they were making a loan to the network. But when Evan Montvel Cohen was working as both chairman of Air America and director of development for Gloria Wise, some red flags should have been raised.

Jeannette Graves, president of Gloria Wise's executive committee, has said that without her authorization or knowledge, Cohen siphoned $613,000 from the organization to himself and Air America. Cohen also allegedly used money from the groups for personal medical care.

While this mess is being sorted out, the city has suspended its ties with Gloria Wise and Pathways. That means money intended for poor minority children and Alzheimer's victims was instead used to make sure the financially tanking and ratings-troubled Air America could keep blathering.

Public funds used to prop up a business! Just the kind of scandal that left-leaning media would die for. Yet for some reason they're giving this one a pass.

Is it because there are no mean ol' conservatives to blame?

Of course not! The Exempt Media doesn't have any biases, even though IBD noticed as I did in my Daily Standard column yesterday that they couldn't run enough stories on Rush Limbaugh's addiction to painkillers. When he tried to keep his court and medical records sealed during the investigation, the Exempt Media went to court to get them released and provided daily, breathless updates on the status of the legal action.

That was just one radio show host with a personal addiction and potential criminal activity in acquiring the drugs. At Air America, we have a whole radio network that got their hands on government grants intended for poor children and Alzheimers patients, illicitly using it to keep themselves on the air, and now find themselves the target of a city criminal investigation. Yet none of the same media outlets can find space or time to even report on the existence of the investigation.

Nope, no bias here. Just move along, folks. Look -- Karl Rove! Over there!

During Limbaugh's troubles, IBD points out that Al Franken wasted no time using his legal problems to repeatedly denigrate him on Air America's broadcasts. However, I don't want to blame Franken for the Exempt Media silence -- and I say that with no sarcasm intended. After all, Franken spoke to the New York Sun's reporter when he could have just refused point-blank to discuss the issue, and his interview moved the story forward significantly. In fact, one can truly say that Franken has done more to report on the Air America scandal than the New York Times.

Is that a status that Bill Keller finds acceptable? Does the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times and the broadcast networks really want that to remain the case? So far, it seems that they do. (via Power Line)

Europe To Radical Islamists: Bye-Atollah

Europe appears to finally have awakened to the threat of radical Islam within its own borders after the series of London bombings conducted by home-grown Islamist terrorists. Governments throughout the Continent have decided to start expelling radical imams glorifying jihad and inciting their congregations to violaence:

Countries across Europe are working to expel radical Islamic clerics who glorify and condone acts of terrorism, in hopes of stemming the tide of extremism among impressionable Muslim youth.

France deported an imam to his native Algeria on Friday for incendiary sermons at mosques in Paris, and at least eight more extremist clerics are expected to be banished in the coming weeks.

Italy expelled eight fundamentalist Palestinian preachers on Tuesday for not holding proper residency permits, Italian news agency ANSA reported.

The British Home Office announced recently that it will introduce an anti-terror bill that criminalizes "indirect incitement of terrorism," and is creating a database to identify those who preach intolerance and run Web sites promoting jihad, or holy war.

The measures, adopted after the July 7 London transit bombings, are part of a campaign across Europe to root out extremist imams who help radicalize disenchanted Muslim youths and recruit them for violent causes.

We may finally witness the death of judgment-free multiculturalism in its most hidebound sanctuary. The moral relativism that allowed Europe to pretend that Islamist radicals calling the faithful to murder had the same value as the rabbi callng the congregation to pray appears to have suddenly disappeared as 'regular' Europeans find themselves targeted by the terrorists. When the victims remained in remote locations such as Tel Aviv or Jerusalem -- or New York -- the Europeans could comfort themselves by proclaiming their open policies towards the Palestinians and the free hand they gave their burgeoning Muslim populations.

Now, however, those policies have been shown to provide no protection from Islamist violence, and points up a fundamental misunderstanding of the enemy on the part of our European allies, as well as many here at home. Islamists do not attack Western nations because of our geopolitical goals. They murder us because we are not Muslims, and we still hold power. Their mission isn't to teach Westerners manners, it's to destroy Western civilization altogether and replace it with a worldwide Caliphate. And not just Western civilization, either, but also all infidel strains of Islam and any other basis of modern thought.

Tolerating this type of activity in the name of free speech doesn't win anyone Brownie points among the terrorists, either. They see it as a tactical opening for them and a strategic weakness for us that they are all too delighted to exploit. Preaching murder and violence does not get protection from the law, even here with the First Amendment. That activity falls within one of the few legitimate exceptions to protected free speech and exercise of religion, and it's high time that all governments recognize that and act to enforce it.

Deporting such vile hatemongers and masterminds of mass murder will not silence them, of course. They will relocate to the dwindling number of Islamist-friendly locations. It will help avoid them beguiling Western youth into transforming themselves into walking bombs, though, as we saw in London last month.

Is It 2008 Already?

Gallup has decided to get a head start on the next presidential election by beginning to build its polling data now to read trends and create projections for later in the cycle. However, one handicap presents itself -- a lack of declared candidates. Instead of waiting for volunteers, Gallup simply picks the two likeliest candidates from each side, in its own humble opinion, and asks registered voters who they prefer.

Gallup predicts that John McCain and Rudy Giuliani will emerge as the GOP frontrunners. For the Democrats, Gallup predicts that Hillary Clinton will face John Kerry in the primaries as her biggest rival. In that, they must be the only people other than Kerry himself to take his remaining potential as a major candidate seriously. Their own polling shows that; for the first time ever, more voters disapprove of Kerry than approve of him (48-42). And Kerry hasn't even begun campaigning!

Putting aside Kerry, Gallup may have selected the other candidates reasonably well, although Giuliani's entry into the race is far from certain. Interestingly, Gallup picked two moderates and no conservatives for the GOP, while they picked two liberals and no moderates (like Gov. Phil Bredesen of Tennessee) for the Democrats. I think it highly unlikely that Republicans will settle for a choice between two centrists in the primary, and even less likely that the conservatives will settle on McCain as their standard-bearer. He has spent too much of his political capital on press performances while turning his back on Republican goals in the Senate. Giuliani generates broader respect, even if his politics gives him the tinge of Nelson Rockefeller. More likely would be Giuliani against a conservative, possibly one of the governors or George Allen, who serves in the Senate now but has held executive office before.

Not surprisingly, both Giuliani and McCain score remarkably similar scores against Hillary Clinton, who almost everyone figures will win the Democratic nomination. Both GOP candidate beat her, 50-45. (They both cream Kerry, 54-41, meaning that Kerry without Bush-hatred has no standing except for the base, who would vote for Nixon if he ran as a Democrat.) All that tells us is that a moderate will beat a liberal in a general election -- hardly a stunning outcome. Gallup could easily reverse that result by pitting Bredesen or Mark Warner against, say, Rick Santorum or Jeb Bush.

Gallup had the right idea in building a model that could be used for tracking electoral trends. They may have done better to poll for better frontrunners than the quartet they anointed for the first round, Hillary notwithstanding.

Summer Brings Few Changes In Canadian Politics

Now that Canadians have avoided the dreaded summer election, it appears that the tug-and-pull of electoral politics has also taken a seasonal break. According to a new poll from Environics, almost no change at all has taken place in support for the main parties since the pre-Gomery period:

This latest survey shows that, nationally, 34 percent of eligible and decided Canadian voters would support the Liberal Party if an election were held today, compared with 36 percent in the March-April period (this difference falls well within the margin of sampling error). The Conservative Party now has the support of 31 percent (versus 30%), while the New Democratic Party is also holding steady at 20 percent (versus 19%). One in ten (11%) Canadian voters remain undecided about which party might deserve their support (down from 13%).

Across the country, party preferences have moved modestly in some regions. The Liberals have lost some ground in Quebec and on the Prairies, and widened their lead in the Toronto area. The Conservatives have made gains across western Canada where they had been losing ground in previous surveys. The NDP has suffered some losses in Manitoba and Saskatchewan. The BQ continues to hold a massive lead in the province of Quebec.

The movement in this poll from the early spring falls, as the report states, well within the margin of error. The effect of the Gomery inquiry and the explosive nature of the Brault testimony seems to have dissipated since the series of skillful Liberal manuevers kept control of the government in the hands of PM Paul Martin. The numbers also appear to underscore a lack of progress for Tory leader Stephen Harper in his outreach tour, but at least shows that he has not lost ground, either.

Taking a longer view, however, the Liberals should worry about their election prospects. They may have done better to hold the snap elections this summer, before Judge Gomery issues what might turn out to be a very difficult report. In the past five quarters, the Liberal position has eroded by five points, which falls outside the margin of error and demonstrates a long-term slippage. In April 2004, the Tories trailed the Grits by ten points; now the gap has shrunk to three -- again, on the perimeter of the margin of error. Conservatives could have pulled even had they absorbed all of the Liberal loss, but the five points spread itself to the NDP and the undecideds.

The same trend shows itself among party leadership. Martin has dropped significantly, by a whopping nine points in fifteen months. Unfortunately, Harper only picked up two of those points, and actually now sits at his peak approval -- which is the same as it was in the last poll. Jack Layton benefits the most from Martin's drop, going up eight points over the same period, although it appears the April 2004 poll may have been an outlier.

Despite his steep losses, Martin still outpolls Harper by nine points and Layton by fourteen. Ironically, however, both Harper and Martin have lost a third of their approval ratings during that time, while Layton and BQ leader Giles Duceppe have seen theirs soar; the latter enjoys a 64% approval rating even though only 9% consider him the best choice for PM.

Odd results, no?

Canadians seem rather torn on the direction they want their nation to move. A new Liberal-driven minority government seems the most likely if elections get called, but Layton and the NDP will once again play kingmaker. BQ will probably fall short of pushing the NDP aside and allowing a Tory-BQ minority government to form.

The best possible result at this point would come after a damaging report from Judge Gomery, one that clearly reviews all of the testimony and evidence. Unfortunately, that won't come until next winter, perhaps even the early spring of '06. Unless Stephen Harper can capture the imagination of Canadians and change the electoral calculus significantly, an election may do the Tories little good at all.

Addendum: For readers unfamiliar with the mechanics of Canadian elections, the national preferences will not mirror the split of seats in Parliament. Anything above 40% will likely gain a party the majority in the Commons, due to multiple-candidate ballots in most ridings. BQ's 11% will win them more seats than NDP's 20%, or close to it, because BQ concentrates all of its support in Quebec, where NDP's support comes from a spread across the nation. It's similar to national polling numbers for American presidential elections -- a good guidepost, but the state-by-state polls really tell the story here.

Terrorists Murder Author, Blogger Steven Vincent

The BBC reports this morning that author and blogger Steven Vincent was kidnapped and murdered by terrorists near Basra. His female Iraqi translator survived the kidnapping, but the terrorists dumped Vincent's bullet-ridden body outside of the city within hours of his kidnapping:

The pair were kidnapped by five gunmen in a police car as they left a currency exchange shop, Lt Col Karim al-Zaidi said.

"Both were later shot, but Vincent was killed, while the girl [translator] is alive," said Mr Zaidi.

Mr Vincent was shot several times in the head and body, said Mr Zaidi. The translator, Nour Weidi, was seriously wounded.

This death hits closer to home for me. Steven had appeared on our radio show several months ago when his book In The Red Zone first came out. While Steven supported the general war effort in Iraq, his writings did not fall into the category of cheerleading for Bush or every part of the American strategy. He wrote and spoke movingly about the tragedy of the Iraqi people -- the tragedy of the long oppression of Saddam Hussein, and the tragedy of their liberation and difficulty in adjusting to their new status. His book was personal, gripping, and brilliant -- a must-read for anyone wanting to know about Iraq and the war.

Lately, the BBC says, Vincent had written about the issues in the British sector around Basra. He had told people about Shi'a radicals infiltrating the local police in the area, taking advantage of their position to assassinate former Ba'ath party members. His kidnappers may come from that group, rather than a Zarqawi faction; one would suppose that the latter would have taken advantage of Vincent's notoriety in the West for a ransom demand or at least a videotaped execution and statement. His business relationship with Nour Weidi could also have offended locals -- he wrote about that danger in his book, and it could explain why she got shot as well as Vincent.

Unfortunately, we will likely never know the full circumstances.

This is quite a blow for everyone who cares about the Iraq issue, the blogosphere, journalism -- but most of all, for those of us whom Steven touched in one small way or another. He knew the risks and went to Iraq anyway because he felt that the stories and voices of the Iraqi people must be heard. That kind of courage will be missed most of all.

Godspeed and farewell, Steven.

UPDATE and BUMP: Smash has a great suggestion on how to best show your condolences for the Vincent family. Mark Tapscott has a great suggestion as to how to remember Vincent for his work: add him to the Freedom Forum's journalist memorial.

Other reactions from the blogosphere:

Michelle Malkin (with links)
Marc Landers
Lorie Byrd
Arthur Chrenkoff
Publius Pundit
Mark Tapscott
La Shawn Barber
Cori Dauber
James Joyner
Jim Henley
Danny Glover (National Journal)

NARN links:

Power Line
Mitch Berg
King Banaian
Fraters Libertas

Report Says Dems Intimidated Voters Far More Than GOP In 2004 (Updates!!)

Please be sure to read the update at the end.

Be sure to read UPDATE II as well. The trolls may have overstated the issues with ACVR as a front.

I missed this when it first came out in yesterday's Arizona Central Bizwire, but an independent report from the new American Center for Voting Rights Legislative Fund identifies far more incidents of voter intimidation and fraud on behalf of Democrats and their candidates than it did on behalf of their opponents. Their report, available here on their website, makes it clear that Democrat complaints about Republican conspiracies consist of little more than a classic case of projection:

While Democrats routinely accuse Republicans of voter intimidation and suppression, neither party has a clean record on the issue. Instead, the evidence shows that Democrats waged aggressive intimidation and suppression campaigns against Republican voters and volunteers in 2004. Republicans have not been exempt from similar criticism in this area, as alleged voter intimidation and suppression activity by GOP operatives led the Republican National Committee to sign a consent decree repudiating such tactics in 1982. However, a careful review of the facts shows that in 2004, paid Democrat operatives were far more involved in voter intimidation and suppression efforts than their Republican counterparts. Examples include:

* Paid Democrat operatives charged with slashing tires of 25 Republican get-out-the-vote vans in Milwaukee on the morning of Election Day.

* Misleading telephone calls made by Democrat operatives targeting Republican voters in Ohio with the wrong date for the election and faulty polling place information.

* Intimidating and deceiving mailings and telephone calls paid for by the DNC threatening Republican volunteers in Florida with legal action.

* Union-coordinated intimidation and violence campaign targeting Republican campaign offices and volunteers resulting in a broken arm for a GOP volunteer in Florida.

Most of these incidents have received plenty of attention in the blogosphere, but have received little systematic analysis in the Exempt Media. The complaints of the Democrats have received plenty of media play, and they have formed the basis of some embarrassing grandstanding by leading Democratic politicians, notably Barbara Boxer's efforts to decertify Ohio's electors in January which held up the certification of Bush's victory for two hours. However, the ACVR report shows almost all of their claims to have no merit whatsoever.

Be sure to read through all the details of the report. It takes a comprehensive view of all the so-called "irregularities" of the 2004 election and makes minced meat of Democratic claims of victimhood. It will not change any minds among the True Believers, but the rational moderates will have this much more information with which to judge the vanishing credibility of Democratic leadership.

UPDATE: Joe Gandelman at The Moderate Voice says that the ACVL has some controversial and potentially partisan financing. He's checking into it now. It's worth maintaining some skepticism on this report until more is known about the organization, which came into existence this past February and describes itself as a non-partisan effort to ensure clean elections. I'd consider Joe to be a pretty solid resource on this type of issue. I don't think all the mea culpas he issued on his post were warranted -- after all, we could get most of the information in this report from media accounts -- but he does have a point about ensuring that the group isn't acting as a front.

UPDATE II: I still haven't seen much about where ACVR gets its funding. I have seen plenty about how Mark F. "Thor" Hearne worked on the Bush/Cheney campaign in 2000 and 2004. But the other signatory to the report is Brian A. Lunde, who by this description hardly appears to be a right-wing idealogue:

Brian A. Lunde (1976) served as national field director for Jimmy Carter's presidential campaign, as executive director of the Kentucky Democratic Party and as executive director for the Democratic National Committee before becoming a partner in Lunde & Burger, a political consulting and government relations firm in McLean, Va.

This description also includes Lunde's former DNC board membership as his background. Also here. Here, too. Lunde shows up attached to Helping Americans Vote on this site. His only campaign contribution in the past four years went to Congressman Mike Ross (D-AR). And for those wondering if Lunde went from Ted Kennedy to Pat Buchanan, here's a tidbit from this past May:

Meanwhile, a federal grand jury reportedly has subpoenaed the records of two other lobbyists -- Brian Lunde and George Burger -- hired for $50,000 by Scanlon to win Democratic support for the amendment. Proponents of the amendment had wanted it attached to an election-revision bill that Dodd had sponsored in the Senate.

The two Democrats, Brian Lunde and George Burger, in turn are said to have paid $10,000 to a third lobbyist linked to Dodd, Lottie Shackelford, to secure the senator's support for the single-sentence rider that would have unshuttered the casino closed by Texas authorities.

It appears that the report, at least, has some bipartisan credentials, even if the Democrat has some lobbying baggage. (More on Lunde can be found on this Google search.) It doesn't mean that it's completely unbiased, but it doesn't appear to be the fraud that some commenters claim it to be, either. (h/t: John R.)

UPDATE III: Joe Gandelman, ever the gentleman, updated his post to note my findings on Brian Lunde. Joe still maintains that he regrets getting involved in the story and thinks the Arizona Republic did a poor job in its coverage by not mentioning the controversy surrounding the group's status. I agree with that, too; the Republic pulled the story from its website rather than address the issues. My feeling is that the partnership between a Democratic activist and a GOP activist makes this report bipartisan -- but doesn't guarantee anything else other than that. It does negate the allegations of fraud (at least relating to the bipartisanship of this report) made in the comments of his blog and mine.

I encourage people to read the report and then check the sources, and make up their own minds on the report's credibility.

LAST UPDATE: It looks like The Commissar and Pat from Brainster did a better search at Open Secrets (I searched on Occupation) and found an additional couple of donations to George BUsh for 2004, around $4,000 between him and his wife. It looks like Lunde did a Zell in 2004. Again, read the report and check the sources for yourselves. (Thanks to the Commissar and Pat for dropping me an e-mail on the subject.)

Miller's Conscience Goes Unrewarded

Judith Miller and her status as First Amendment martyr has provided a lesson in the shifting principles of the Exempt Media during her imprisonment for protecting her sources. She has not garnered the sympathy normally garnered from her media colleagues -- not because she broke the law and defied a court order, but because she protects sources they don't especially like. The latest example of this got the attention of Editor & Publisher, which reports that an independent writers group has rescinded an award for Miller:

The board of The American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA) has voted unanimously to reverse an earlier decision to give its annual Conscience in Media award to jailed New York Times reporter Judith Miller, E&P has learned.

The group's First Amendment committee had narrowly voted to give Miller the prize for her dedication to protecting sources, but the full board has now voted to overturn that decision, based on its opinion that her entire career, and even her current actions in the Plame/CIA leak case, cast doubt on her credentials for this award. ...

Anita Bartholomew, a freelance journalist who has contributed to Reader's Digest, wrote in a resignation letter, "The First Amendment is designed to prevent government interference with a free press. Miller, by shielding a government official or officials who attempted to use the press to retaliate against a whistleblower, and scare off other would-be whistleblowers, has allied herself with government interference with, and censorship of, whistleblowers. When your source IS the government, and the government is attempting to use you to target a whistleblower, the notion of shielding a source must be reconsidered. To apply standard practices regarding sources to hiding wrongdoing at the highest levels of government perverts the intent of the First Amendment.”

Well, if a whistleblower has access to anything useful, doesn't it usually mean they work within the government? In this case, the whistleblower got the media to report on what appears to have been a CIA effort to undermine the White House on the war by sending the spouse of one of their analysts on a mission and then have him leak inaccurate accounts of the report he filed. Whether that whistleblower was Karl Rove or another CIA analyst, that story needed to come out.

ASJA argues for a subjective basis on which to apply anonymity, primarily a political basis. If the person reveals information about people the media dislikes, then the source deserves protection and the journalist should have a legal shield against subpoenas. If the source, however, gives information that the media finds inconvenient for their predetermined narrative, then any journalist protecting that source deserves only scorn from her colleagues.

I wrote about this two weeks ago for the Weekly Standard:

Anonymous sourcing seems to have gone out of style faster than a long hemline at a summer fashion show in Paris. Six weeks after pillorying the critics of Woodward and Bernstein for their use of an anonymous source who abused his power to leak information to the Post, Broder saves up his contempt for the man who attempted to tip off the press that Wilson needed more investigation. Broder also appears not to have read the committee report--a bipartisan report that contradicts Broder's assertions of Wilson's performance in almost every detail.

The media has made their position clear: Not all anonymous sources are created equal. Those who discredit Republican presidents, like Mark Felt and Joe Wilson, get celebrity treatment and the best rhetorical defenses. Others can expect contempt and ridicule.

It didn't take long for ASJA to prove my analysis correct.

Islamic Jihad's Bad Aim A National Scandal: PA

Now we know what it takes to get Palestinian terrorists to stop killing Israelis long enough to allow them to withdraw from the Gaza Strip -- terrorists with bad aim killing Palestinian children. Islamic Jihad announced that it will observe a cease-fire intended to allow Israel time to get out of Gaza after they killed a 5-year-old Palestinian boy in a botched missile attack in Beit Hanoun:

A major Palestinian militant group promised Wednesday it would fire no more rockets at Israelis during Israel's planned withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, after a barrage inadvertently killed a 5-year-old Palestinian boy. ...

There was no claim of responsibility for the assault Tuesday night, which was aimed at a large gathering of Israeli withdrawal opponents in the town of Sderot just over the Gaza border.

Instead, the rudimentary rockets hit a house in the Palestinian town of Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza, killing the 5-year-old and wounding 10 other people, including six children. Four are children of a former Palestinian Cabinet minister, Hisham Abdel Razek, a senior official in the ruling Fatah party.

Neither Islamic Jihad nor Hamas would take responsibility for the botched attack, but IJ had spent the past few months defying the cease-fire as part of the triangle strategy I've described often here at CQ. That allows two of the three main terrorist factions -- IJ, Hamas, and Fatah -- to endorse cease-fire agreements while the third ignores them. When Israel responds in kind, then the other two blame Israel for violating the cease fire and begin attacking again. This strategy has played itself out more regularly than Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown, and yet people routinely take the Palestinians seriously when they pronounce their willingness to stop terrorist attacks on Israeli buses, pizzerias, and so on.

The Palestinian Authority singled out this one incident for particularly harsh criticism. Cabinet minister Mohammed Dahlan stated:

"What took place last night is a national scandal," Dahlan said. "This is unfortunately not the first time that Palestinian victims are being killed. ... We should put an end to this by any means, by force, or by pursuing and convincing."

The Palestinian minister makes the argument, therefore, that only those terrorist attacks that kill Palestinians by accident, rather than ones that kill Israeli civilians on purpose, qualify as a "national scandal". The scandal appears to involve the aim and training of the terrorists rather than the attacks themselves.

Do the world and the US propose these leaders at partners for peace, as the basis for a stable sovereign government? From their actions and rhetoric, it appears that all we're getting is a secular Taliban, or a Ba'ath regime without the ideology, that intends on providing aid and shelter to terrorists -- as long as their aim improves.

UPDATE: The peace didn't last long. IJ now denies it will honor any cease-fire:

Official Islamic Jihad sources on Wednesday denied a news report that quoted the organization as having foresworn Qassam rocket attacks until after the completion of the disengagement. ...

[Islamic] Jihad agreed to a truce earlier this year but it has since been behind a number of deadly attacks, including a suicide bombing in Netanya last month.

Israel should remain on high alert and respond to IJ provocations, as necessary. Palestinians, meanwhile, should learn to duck.

A Blogger In Need

One of the first blogs I ever read was Electric Venom, the domain of Venomous Kate and a nice blend of political debate and personal venting. She taught me a bit about the etiquette of blogging and gave me some good advice early on. If one can be said to be an "old-school" blogger, Venomous Kate certainly qualifies.

Now she needs our help. She went cycling with her young son and had a bad accident which has knocked out a number of her teeth. In order to pay for the enormous dental bills, she has asked for donations to her PayPal account. As far as I know, this is the only bleg Kate has ever staged at Electric Venom, amazing since a visit to her site shows how much time and money she has spent on the aesthetics. If you can, drop a few dollars in the PayPal account. After all, how can we have an effective Venomous Kate without her teeth? (via Instapundit)

Note: You may need to use the PayPal link on her left sidebar rather than the one on the post. The post link doesn't seem to work.

Questionnaire Provides More Answers On Roberts

The Washington Post reports this morning that a questionnaire and other documents released by the White House provide more answers about the judicial philosophy of John Roberts, revealing his impulse towards judicial restraint and deference to Congress in fashioning law and policy. These revelations should soothe conservative nervousness about the potential for Roberts to become another David Souter, while causing more liberal anguish and opposition:

Responding to a question about judicial activism, Roberts said, "When the other branches of government exceed their constitutionally-mandated limits, the courts can act to confine them to the proper bounds. It is judicial self-restraint, however, that confines judges to their proper constitutional responsibilities." ...

The new documents disclosed by the archive that reflect Roberts' skeptical views regarding a "fundamental" right to privacy include a lengthy article on judicial restraint that he apparently drafted for publication in a journal of the American Bar Association under the name of then-Attorney General William French Smith, his boss.

The article approvingly quoted from a dissenting opinion by Justice Hugo Black in a 1965 court decision, in which the majority held that a Connecticut law forbidding the use of contraceptives was unconstitutional. Black's opinion, as cited in the draft, complained that the court had used "a loose, flexible, uncontrolled standard for holding laws unconstitutional." The draft article said that "the broad range of rights which are now alleged to be 'fundamental' by litigants, with only the most tenuous connection the to Constitution, bears ample witness to the dangers of this doctrine." ...

A second memo, sent by Roberts to the attorney general on Dec. 11, 1981, summarized a lecture six years earlier by then- Solicitor General Erwin N. Griswold at Washington and Lee University, which touched on the same theme. Griswold's lecture, Roberts said, "devotes a section to the so-called 'right to privacy,' arguing as we have that such an amorphous right is not to be found in the Constitution. He specifically criticizes Roe v. Wade."

The words "so-called" do not appear in Griswold's lecture. But Roberts drafted a letter to Griswold, signed by Smith, saying he was cheered that Griswold made "many of the same points" that the administration had about these matters.

Those quotes should get NARAL and its political allies into overdrive, and indeed the Post quotes the pro-abortion group president as accusing Roberts of running a "lawyerly" political campaign, intended on deceiving people into thinking that he has an open mind. Open-mindedness, however, isn't what NARAL or the Left want from a Supreme Court nominee; they want someone who will parrot the party line on privacy rights, primarily Roe v Wade, without opening their minds to the poor legal craftsmanship of the decision. NARAL and Senators who rely on the abortion-lobby support want a nominee who will pledge to be bound by stare decisis, which means applying a bullheaded closed-mindedness to any new cases which might substantially challenge previous court precedent.

Nor does the reporting from the Post sound exactly neutral in this case. The Post breathlessly tells its readers that "the White House did not previously disclose Cheney's role in questioning Roberts more than two months before he met Bush," and leads with the shocking information that the administration had started interviewing candidates for a potential Supreme Court opening months ago, including Roberts. Mike Allen and R. Jeffrey Smith make it sound quite conspiratorial, later noting that he met several times with AG Alberto Gonzales, Bush advisors Andrew Card and (cue the Imperial Theme) Karl Rove, among others in at least three separate interviews before Sandra Day O'Connor stepped down.

Well, excuse me for noting the obvious, but people have talked about the certainty of at least one Supreme Court nomination during this Bush term since the 2004 Presidential campaign. In fact, for both parties, the issue generated plenty of fund-raising fodder, hardly making a secret of the point. One would hope that any president who had this many potential openings facing him would have already begun to develop a short list of potential nominees to fill the spots. One does not start narrowing down candidates without first meeting with them to judge their temperament, their philosophies, and their willingness to go through the ever-increasing insanity necessary to get confirmed.

Common sense tells us that any administration could not possibly conduct its due diligence on a key position such as this court opening in the couple of weeks between O'Connor's resignation and the announcement of Roberts as her replacement. Even at that, the media griped at the length of time Bush took to make his decision -- and then later claimed he rushed the announcement to distract people from the Plame leak investigation. The lack of 'disclosure' that Cheney and others met with Roberts prior to O'Connor's resignation means nothing, and in the context of this article, sounds rather silly.

The documents released show that the White House does not feel the need to hide Roberts' view from the Judiciary or the American public. It strengthens their case that the remaining unreleased documents have been withheld for principled reasons, protecting the Executive attorney-client privelege. The Senate has plenty of information from which to derive their assessments of John Roberts as an attorney, a jurist, and a Supreme Court nominee. Now, conservatives also have their answers on Roberts' dedication to judicial restraint and conservativism as well, and can reasonably deduce that he will not transform into the Second Coming of Souter, once installed.

Dafydd: Imminent Domain

This one slid under the electrified fence, wriggled through the bales of razor-wire, and nearly escaped. Fortunately, my elf-eyed wife Sachi caught it in the spotlight at the last moment.

After the Supreme Court held in Kelo v. New London that the city of New London could seize non-blighted residential real estate and sell it to a developer for no other "public use" reason than the fact that pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, Inc. would pay more property tax on that land, many of us predicted that it would be open season on private property... and not just residential, either. Why not seize a group of small businesses, throw the owners out with a cut-rate payout, and sell the land to a much larger corporation? Wouldn't the public be better served by a brand, spanking new commercial apartment complex than some dirty old auto-parts stores?

Well, I know you'll be shocked, shocked to learn that the City of Oakland -- whose mayor is the former governor of California and champion of the little guy Jerry Brown -- has done exactly that, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Thriving businesses, including Revelli Tires and Autohouse, the latter owned -- formerly owned -- by first-generation immigrant Tony Fung, have been told to pack up and move out, find somewhere else, go away, because Oakland needs their property for a wonderful new private apartment complex.

Oakland also evicted Tony Fung, Revelli's next-door neighbor and the owner-operator of Autohouse on 20th Street. "I am a first-generation immigrant, " Fung told me. "This is my American dream."

To hell with Fung's dream -- the City of Oakland seized it, so that someone else can build on it. And without offering enough money for Fung to relocate his business, he says.

It's all part of Oakland's downtown redevelopment. When reporter Debra J. Saunders caught up with Brown, he was in full Captain Renault form:

"I know Revelli," said Brown. "He fixed my brakes, twice." Brown lives seven blocks away from Revelli's shop. He admitted that Autohouse and Revelli Tires are not blighted, but told of other buildings nearby that were crime- ridden and vermin-infested before the city pushed for redevelopment.

"You cannot have a downtown with this kind of abandonment," said Brown. And: "There is a greater good here," in eradicating the blight and replacing it with homes.

I'm shocked, shocked to find that Eminent Domain is going on in here!

Your takings, sir.

Lest we think Jerry Brown might not have a heart of gold, but perhaps some other element (Plutonium springs to mind), he hastened to reassure us that he's still fighting for the little guy:

The mayor also made a pledge: "It's not easy, but I personally pledge to do everything I can to get [John Revelli] located." Fung, too.

It almost raises a lump in the throat. Or perhaps one's gorge.

So until and unless each and every state in the Union gets busy and enacts a state constitutional amendment insisting that "public use" actually means, you know, use by the public, don't imagine for one second that your own property is secure. Assume all property is under imminent threat of Eminent Domain whenever the local Eye of Sauron notices its existence.

Air America: Exempt Media's Dead Air

And on the eighth day after the revelation about the financing scandal at Air America, the Exempt Media (or, as NY Times managing editor Bill Keller called it on Charlie Rose last night, the "quality media") remained ... silent. Not a word so far about the deceptive transfers of almost a million dollars in non-profit donations and government grant monies to the liberal radio netlet has appeared in any major media outlet except for the New York Post and the Washington Times, and two excellent articles at the New York Sun that showed how deep the scandal runs.

Today Michelle Malkin and I attempt to address the issue ourselves. Michelle has a new column out today (also here) about why the usual suspects in the civil-rights establishment have not erupted in outrage over the theft of government grants intended in part for poor and overwhelmingly minority children:

If a conservative radio network had been entangled in a scam to steal from black children to line the pockets of wealthy white con artists, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton would already be staging hunger strikes in protest. But both have hefty political and financial stakes in Air America's success — and the big mouths aren't about to badmouth their friends.

Air America's flagship New York City station is housed on Park Avenue at WLIB-AM, owned by Inner City Broadcasting. The company shunted aside its black-themed talk format at WLIB to accommodate Air America. In return, Air America made room for a few minority radio hosts and also entered into lucrative lease management agreements with Inner City Broadcasting, which owns and operates 17 radio stations in five markets.

The co-founder of Inner City Broadcasting is New York media mogul Percy Sutton, best known as Malcolm X's lawyer and former Manhattan borough council president. Sutton helped bail Sharpton out after Sharpton was ordered to pay former Dutchess County prosecutor Steven Pagones over the Tawana Brawley race hoax. Sutton also raised and donated money for Sharpton's 2004 presidential bid. Sharpton still broadcasts a Sunday radio show on WLIB. Sutton and Jackson are longtime friends and partners. Sutton served as Jackson's 1988 presidential campaign finance chairman. Jackson has lobbied on Sutton's behalf. Sutton sits on Jackson's Citizenship Education Fund. As original investors, Jackson and his wife reportedly hold more than 23,000 shares in Inner City Broadcasting.

Michelle does brilliant work in uncovering these financial ties between Air America and the spokesmen who hold themselves out as protectors of their constituencies. Don't bet on any of these men to call attention to the financial shenanigans surrounding Air America and Evan Cohen. The poor kids of Brooklyn have little standing next to the commercial interests of their supposed champions.

In my new Daily Standard column, I look at the absence of the Exempt Media, wondering what it takes to get journalists interested in a story:

We often hear journalists claim that their mission consists of afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted. One crucial element must therefore put powerful people under a spotlight. Some journalists say that they fight for the little guy, the downtrodden, which means that the story must include victims. Still others like investigative work, digging through arcane paperwork and doubletalk to reveal misdeeds that otherwise would never come to light, which means that a crime or at least unethical conduct would help draw interest. And finally, big money always attracts a crowd and helps audiences relate to the disgraceful actions unveiled by the reporter.

Thus, the perfect journalistic storm would arise when powerful people victimize the poor and downtrodden, breaking laws or at least ethical constructs, by taking money meant for their benefit. That sort of story will get anyone's attention. All it takes is one reporter to tell the story, and the rest of the media will jump all over it. Right?

Actually, this perfect-storm story is already percolating in the blogosphere, and oddly enough, hardly anyone in the mainstream media is paying attention to it.

Brian Maloney, who broke the story in the blogosphere, continues to work hard to keep the pressure on the Exempt Media to start covering the scandal. Eventually the demands of their audience will force the media outlets to start providing coverage of this scandal.

Let The Lawsuits Begin

In Ohio's second Congressional district, the GOP has apparently held the seat against a well-funded challenge from a Democrat who recently returned from Iraq. Jean Schmidt beat Paul Hackett by four points and 3,500 votes, a margin that in ordinary circumstances would suggest that recounts would be pointless. However, given the high profile assigned to this race by Democratic activists trying their best to elect an anti-war veteran to Congress, Ohio's voters should expect more of the same hysterical charges of election stealing that we saw after the 2004 election.

Barbara Boxer will be warming her voice up for the morning talk shows after her first cup of coffee, I presume.

Lori at Polipundit has followed this story much more closely than I have, for reasons which I'll cover in a moment. She says that the media will spin this as a loss for Bush, even though she sees it as a win, or a hold at the least. Perhaps. However, Hackett did come a lot closer than Kerry did in 2004 in this same district (Bush 64-36); the Democratic full-court press had its effect. I'm not sure anyone could make a case for anything better than a draw here.

In the end, it doesn't matter much, because in 2006 this district simply won't get the national attention it drew here. The Democrats will not have the resources to dedicate to this one single seat that they did in an off year special election. Without the overwhelming focus on this rock-solid conservative seat, it will revert to a fairly easy GOP race next year -- especially if the Democrats foul the atmosphere with a slew of pointless lawsuits.

The Blogometer -- a great new service (and free!) from the National Journal -- notes that MyDD noted my lack of interest in this race, although Chris complimented me in being effective at influencing races. It's true; I didn't have much of a dog in this race. Congressional races tend to be more about the local politics in the district rather than national issues, a fact which the Democrats discovered tonight. Since I have little information about the district, I decided to keep my mouth shut and just follow the coverage during the stretch run. Part of building an influential voice is knowing when to use it, and when to let others use theirs and stay silent.

Addendum: Michelle Malkin notes that the stolen-election meme has already arisen at the once-sane Talking Points Memo, courtesy of Josh Marshall:

Late Update: Schmidt pulling ahead late. Did the call go out to Diebold?

However, it gets worse at the usually-rational MyDD (in the comments, not the posts):

In a 50-50 race, the last county reporting, after a huge time gap, is the Republican stronghold. They blame the delay on the WEATHER (which can't be too different from the other counties) and their website goes offline before they finish the count.

Does anybody DOUBT that something's rotten in Clermont?

Hackett must have observers there, and I hope they're taking notes. We need to be ready for rapid reaction to any hints of what the GOP pulled tonight.

The Clermont County Board of Elections has to go under the microscope, starting NOW. ...

"Just reported on local news here in Cincinnati (channel 19)that there were "voting irregularities" (*channel 19's words not mine) in Clermont & that the remaining precincts were being counted by hand." ...

First time post on mydd.com. My friend is the assistant financial director for Hackett and for the past week or so has been calling me to do "opposition research". I simply checked the blogs and forwarded the info, they loved it down there so thanks for all the comments from everyone. Even though my friend is currently at the Hackett party, she is again calling me for the numbers and info, I second the notion that mydd has the best election coverage.

More importantly, can anyone tell me how 50% of a county reports at the exact same time, and how the other half sits around waiting?
PS does anyone have more details on those "voting iregularities?

No lead holds any meaning to the True Believers, and they'll all be hiring lawyers in the morning, unless Hackett concedes soon. Failing that, we'll be hearing Max Cleland comparisons for the next couple of months. Feh.

A Storied Name Returns To Arizona Politics

Democrats hold the governorship in Arizona at the moment, but Janet Napolitano won't rest easily tonight after seeing who just tossed his hat in the ring for her job in 2006. Don Goldwater, the nephew of legendary Republican conservative and Arizona statesman Barry Goldwater, has decided to run for Napolitano's job:

Republican Party activist Don Goldwater announced his candidacy Tuesday for governor in 2006, sounding some of the same conservative themes once heard from his uncle, 1964 presidential candidate Barry Goldwater.

"The state is headed in the wrong direction," said the 50-year-old candidate. "We must return to the basic principles of limited government, individual liberty and economic freedom."

Goldwater said he would push for tax cuts and school choice and combat illegal immigration. He said he would fully enforce a voter-approved immigration law, including its requirement that voters produce identification at polling places.

He called illegal immigration destructive to the state's health care industry, a burden on public schools and a threat to public safety.

Napolitano has managed to keep on top of Arizona polling by presenting a more moderate approach to politics than the Mad How antics of the DNC chief. In fact, on Howard Dean's last visit to Phoenix, Napolitano would not meet with Dean, preferring to disassociate herself from the radical and irrational direction of current Democratic leadership. She has kept herself from making the big mistakes that would sink her career in a blue state that has twice gone for George Bush, the last time by eleven points.

That may not suffice in 2006. For one thing, Arizonans have become increasingly disenchanted with moderate approaches to illegal immigration, a common theme among the border states. In 2004, Arizona passed a referendum requiring photo-ID verification at all polling places by twelve points, despite the opposition outspending the initiative's supporters by a 5-1 margin. Napolitano opposed the measure (as did John McCain), and voters have little confidence that she will enforce it. Goldwater plans on making that an issue in this election, along with other illegal immigration issues. As his primary opponents all appear to be moderates, he has a good chance to rise above the field.

More than that, however, Goldwater brings the name and, the GOP hopes, the magic along with it. It may be possible to overestimate Barry Goldwater's impact on Arizonans, but it isn't easy. Goldwater fought to preserve and extend the conservatism of the American West when the intelligentsia roundly ridiculed it and Nelson Rockefeller-style politics dominated GOP circles.

Forget John McCain; Goldwater was the true maverick, a man who followed his own principles even when the press ridiculed him for it. He didn't have any interest in sucking up to the media, nor did he sell out for his backers or his own financial interest. Goldwater didn't always hew to the GOP party line, either. When asked about his position on gays in the military during the "don't ask, don't tell" debate in the 1990s, Goldwater famously declared that the only criteria he demanded was that a soldier shoot straight.

Now his nephew has decided to step into the legend's shoes, and at the age of 50 could have plenty of time to transform himself into a presidential contender for 2012 or 2016. If he can knock Napolitano out of the governor's house, it also opens up some interesting possibilities for the Bush White House in 2007. Rather than get stuck with McCain as its perpetual gadfly in the Senate, Bush can find some irresistable appointment for the press diva, allowing a Governor Goldwater to appoint someone more reliable for his Senate seat. Expect Karl Rove to take considerable interest in this race.

The GOP has to love the possibilities in Phoenix. In Arizona, never bet against a Goldwater.

UPDATE: Nephew, not son, which I knew before I started typing this post. I was keeping an eye on the news on TV and for some reason rearranged the Goldwater family tree. Thanks to The Texas Times Dude for the correction.

Tapscott: No One Mourns The Wall?

Mark Tapscott wonders why the mainstream media and the blogs haven't shown more interest in a statement by the New York Times' Bill Keller last month essentially admitting that "even sophisticated readers of The New York Times sometimes find it hard to distinguish between news coverage and commentary in our pages." Mark writes that no one seems all that shocked to hear Keller admit this:

I blogged at length on Keller's memo and the committee report June 28. But besides postings by other bloggers, reports in Editor & Publisher, some pieces in Salon and Slate and an edition of PBS's excellent "On the Media" radio show hosted by Bob Garfield, Keller's comment has all but disappeared since its initial public appearance in mid May.

That invisibility might be attributable to some degree to professional courtesy among editors, but my guess is that it is more related to not wanting to call attention to the fact Keller's statement so profoundly concedes what critics have said for so long and thus confounds all of those MSM denials over the years since Spiro Agnew's first mention of the "nattering nabobs of negativism."

I agree with Mark; this should have received much more attention. Mainstream media outlets, mostly newspapers, that have a regular editorial section constantly defend themselves from allegations of bias by asserting that a "wall" exists between news reporters and the editorial staff. This wall supposedly keeps any editorial biases from appearing in the manner in which the publication reports news stories. It seems that Keller might admit in his statement that such a wall only exists in the utopian concept of a newspaper and not in its practical application.

On the other hand, it could mean something different. A local newspaperman once told me that my suspicions about our local newspaper and its editorial bias were fundamentally correct but my understanding of how it happens was off. Technically, he assured me, the wall exists. Editorial-page staff do not influence the placement and editing of the news sections. The bias enters the system because the newspaper/media organ tends to hire and promote people who think alike -- in this case, with strong leftist biases.

This causes a cognitive disconnect when media critics start complaining about the biases of news reporting at places like the New York Times or the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. Bloggers such as myself will point out evidence of what we think is editorial tampering in news reporting. The newspaper, knowing that the processes in place don't give that kind of access to the decisionmaking on news reporting, scoff at the allegations and hold them up to show us as rubes. In fact, the bias exists, as this journalist told me -- but results from the monolithic mindset that afflicts most news outlets due to the "birds of a feather" syndrome, and not any deliberate attempt to skew reporting, at least not directly.

Keller's remarks therefore probably admit less but mean more than people think. I doubt that he intended on saying that the wall has crumbled and editorialists have infiltrated news reporting. What I think he meant was that the bias exists with or without the wall. That presents a much more difficult problem for papers like the Times. If the processes really were corrupt, fixing them would not be terribly difficult. The problem exists because newspapers have created a tunnel-vision mindset, one so entrenched that most of those involved can't even detect it for themselves.

The challenge, for those who admit this problem, is to fix it. Given the size of the effort needed to do so, it really isn't so surprising after all that most would prefer not to acknowledge it.

Dionne Tosses Out The Constitution

Something about Republican executive nominations seems to make George Bush's opponents suffer short-term memory loss. First Senator Ted Kennedy and now Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne forgot about the Constitution regarding two different nominees. In today's Post column, Dionne argues that the Senate Judiciary Committee should transform itself into the secular Inquisition by interrogating John Roberts about his Catholicism during his confirmation hearings:

Conservatives have long argued, correctly, that religiously inspired voices have a legitimate place in the public square. Limiting religion to the private sphere relegates it to what the theologian David Tracy has called the "harmless reservations of the spirit."

But if religion is to play a serious role in politics, believers have to accept the obligation to explain themselves publicly. That's why it would be helpful if Roberts gave an account of how (and whether) his religious convictions would affect his decisions as a justice. President Bush has spoken about the political implications of his faith. His nominee should not be afraid to do the same.

For a group that regularly jumps up and down about the constitutionality of their right to protect sources -- which appears nowhere in the Constitution -- journalists (and Democrats) seem awfully eager to overlook the language that actually exists in the document. Dionne says, "Of course, we shouldn't have religious 'tests'," as if that concept provided some sort of guideline that circumstances could overrule. Article VI, Clause 3 states quite clearly that "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."

It doesn't get much clearer than that, and it absolutely answers Dionne's entire argument. Why shouldn't the Judiciary Committee ask him about his religion? Because it's against the law to decide his confirmation on that basis, and therefore inappropriate to ask about it.

But let's go a little farther on Dionne's train of thought. Dionne argues that because Tom Coburn got excited about having a Catholic on the Supreme Court, that somehow opened the door for Dick Durbin and the rest of the Senate to demand Roberts answer for his Catholicism. This isn't cross-examination in a criminal trial, and Coburn's reasons for delight don't change the Constitution. Durbin can feel free to tell American voters whatever he likes about why he doesn't like Roberts, just as Coburn can in supporting him. Neither of them can make his religion a reason to vote against him for a nomination, as the Constitution makes clear, and that makes questioning him about it for his confirmation completely inappropriate and technically illegal.

Dionne then uses Mario Cuomo and John Kerry's experiences on the campaign trail to justify the secular attack on Roberts' faith. Both men came under considerable fire from Catholic bishops during their electoral campaigns at various times, Kerry most recently during the last election. Since both men support abortion and regularly vote to enable even the most extreme uses of that procedure, Catholic bishops and many of the congregation wanted steps taken to deny them the Eucharist, abortion having always been explicitly in opposition to the Catholic catechism. Cuomo and Dionne use those experiences as an excuse to override the Constitution.

However, that obtuse argument doubles back on itself. Dionne and Cuomo effectively argue then that the Catholic Church overrides the Constitution through proclamation -- the exact problem they supposedly want to avoid through interrogating Roberts about his faith. A proclamation denying a Catholic the Eucharist does not override Article VI and demand religious tests for office.

Besides, both men ran for office proclaiming their Catholicism and making it part of the reason why voters should elect them to office. Some bishops and laity reacted to that not by saying that they should be disqualified from public office, but that they should be disqualified from Communion while supporting abortion. Neither took the threat seriously, and it appears that Catholic bishops didn't take it seriously, either. And the voters who pointed out the problem with Kerry's stance, myself among them, wanted to highlight Kerry's problem with truthfulness and consistency rather than create a barrier for a non-believer to achieve public office.

If Democrats and journalists insist on using the anti-Catholic strategy Dionne urges, they will not only disregard the explicit language of the Constitution but alienate even larger swaths of the American public with their win-at-all-costs ethics. After all, one doesn't need an emanation from a penumbra to understand Article VI. If that isn't clear enough for Democrats or journalists, then their attempts to justify abortion through a tortured reading of the Fourth Amendment have no credibility whatsoever, making this entire exercise unnecessary anyway -- as it should have always been.

UPDATE and BUMP: If you'll permit me a personal note on this, I'd like to touch on Dionne. I met E.J. at the Heritage Foundation event hosted by Mark Tapscott. While I rarely agree with him, he came to the event with a constructive attitude, asked a couple of very good (and tough) questions, and afterwards greeted me graciously. I wish I had been able to talk with him more at the time.

Sometimes we get caught up in rhetorical battles, and we forget that the people on both sides can be very nice folks with whom you'd be happy to tip a drink after the debate. Dionne strikes me as just that kind of man. I still think he's completely wrong on this point, though.

UPDATE II: [Deleted. Thought better about feeding trolls.]

Air America: Another Legal Consultation

Earlier, New York attorney Eric Costello reviewed the known facts and allegations surrounding the scandal at Air America and gave us his trenchant observations. He laid out the possibilities for legal action and criminal investigation, if the reporting from the New York Sun and the blogosphere proved correct. In a follow-up e-mail, he reviews the applicable laws in more depth and points out where Air America and Gloria Wise might face some tough scrutiny, assuming Eliot Spitzer ever decides to get involved.

Further to my email of this morning, I had a bit of free time on my hands, so I went spelunking into the various areas of New York State laws and regulations regarding not-for-profits. A few items of interest turned up, which I pass on to you for whatever you think it's worth. You may quote me on this.

In this email, "EL" stands for the Executive Law, "NPCL" stands for the Not-for-Profit Corporation Law, and "NYCRR" stands for the New York Code of Rules and Regulations (i.e., New York's equivalent of the CFR).

In no particular order:

(1) Investments

I did find out that Section 512 of the NPCL, entitled "Investment Authority," fairly broad discretion in the types of investments that not for profits may make. BUT --

Section 717(a) of the NPCL imposes duties on directors and officers with regard to this power, as follows:

"In the administration of the powers to make and retain investments pursuant to section 512 (Investment authority) [...], a governing board shall consider among other relevant considerations the long and short term needs of the corporation in carrying out its purposes, its present and anticipated financial requirements, expected total return on its investments, price level trends, and general economic conditions."

So query if the investment by Gloria Wise in Air America was subject to this analysis, and whether it met any of these tests. In particular, did the investing of hundreds of thousands of dollars in an unliquid enterprise have an impact on the needs of the corporation? Given that Wise, it seems, has gone bust, that's an interesting question.

(2) Reports

Section 172-b of the EL requires various types of reports to be filed annually with the Attorney General. Depending on the levels of gross revenue and support, there are different requirements. Assuming Gloria Wise had gross revenue and support of >$250,000 in any fiscal year, that would require them to file, by the 15th day of the fifth month after the end of their fiscal year (whenever that is -- check their bylaws), an annual financial statement with audited financials from an independent certified public accountant, with audit report. The president and chief fiscal officer have to certify, under penalties of perjury, that the financial statements are true and correct to the best of their knowledge. Rather like a corporation filing with the SEC.

Some of the specifics about these annual financial reports can be found in 13 NYCRR Part 92.3. Among other things, even if the registrant doesn't file an IRS 990 with the IRS, they must file it with the NYAG (Part 92.3(b)(2)).

Bottom line: just as with Enron's 10-Ks filed with the SEC, there's stuff filed under oath out there that we, the public, can look at. See next item. What kind of disclosure there will be regarding related party transactions, the terms of the note(s), default(s), would be interesting to know.

(3) Public availability

13 NYCRR Part 100.1 says very specifically:

"Unless otherwise exempt from disclosure pursuant to State or Federal law, [...] financial reports and other documents required to be filed pursuant to [...] Article 7-A of the Executive Law become public records of the Attorney General."

Section 172(b), cited above, is part of Article 7-A of the EL.

13 NYCRR Part 100.2 says:

"Copies of all [...] annual financial reports and other documents filed with the Attorney General and not exempt from disclosure pursuant to State and/or Federal law shall be open to public inspection subject to the following requirements:

(a) A request for inspection shall be made in writing and shall include the name and address of the person seeking the inspection.
(b) Such inspection shall be subject to the applicable provisions of Article 6 of the Public Officers Law.
(c) Such inspection shall at all times be subject to the supervision and control of the Attorney General or his assistants.
(d) The Attorney General is authorized to charge a reasonable fee for copying and postage.
(e) Filings may be inspected, by prior appointment, at the offices of the Charities Bureau during regular business hours or will be mailed to the requestor upon payment of all copying and postage fees."

Bottom line: anyone can ask for Wise's financials. Including the MSM.

(4) Spitzer Nastygrams

The NYAG, under Section 175 (2)(e)(i) of the EL, can take action "in the name and in behalf of the people of the State of New York" if an organization:

has failed or is failing to apply the funds solicited from the public in a manner substantially consistent with its charitable purposes or solicitation

Even more interesting, the NYAG can take action to enforce Section 172-d(1) of the EL, which prohibits making:

any material statement which is untrue in [...] [a] financial report or any other forms or documents required to be filed pursuant to [Article 7-A of the EL]; or fail to disclose a material fact in [...] [a] financial report [...]

Bottom line: the NYAG has no shortage of nasty questions to ask the directors and officers of Gloria Wise. Should he feel the urge, naturally. Where this would lead is another Good Question.

All of this, I hope, is of interest to you and your other readers, who might decide they'd like to do a little investigating on their own. I believe the NYAG still has offices at 120 Broadway in New York City.

If you happen to find yourself in the neighborhood, why not drop by AG Spitzer's offices and ask them why they haven't yet taken a look at the shenanigans at Gloria Wise.

Americans Coming Together Falls Apart

John Fund notes in OpinionJournal's Political Diary (e-mail subscription only) that the grassroots organization Americans Coming Together has quietly closed its doors. I have not yet seen any press release announcing this; in fact, the ACT website says nothing at all about a cessation. However, ACT last updated its blog almost a month ago. Given all the political tussles this summer, it sounds as if no one's home at ACT.

Fund writes:

Last month, ACT quietly shut its doors and went out of existence. Remarkably, its demise attracted almost no media attention. But that doesn't mean it didn't teach its backers some lessons. Privately, some Democrats admit that ACT's emphasis on using paid workers to gin up voter turnout was eclipsed by Republican efforts to motivate volunteers to do the same work for free. In the end, ACT will stand as a monument to how big money in politics -- such as the $37 million spent by Mr. Soros in 2004 -- isn't nearly as important as having a candidate with a coherent message and supporters who believe in their own nominee rather than merely disdain the opponent.

Fund also mentions the embarrassment and dismay that ACT caused the Democrats when the AP reported that ACT hired convicted sex offenders to do their door-to-door canvassing for the voter registration drives it conducted. It turned out that the hiring couldn't even be blamed on poor oversight, but a deliberate attempt to rehabilitate the worst offenders by sending them to people's homes in an effort to collect their personal information. Their spokesman made this policy clear when asked by the AP:

ACT does not believe the felons it sends door to door pose a threat to the public, said Mo Elleithee, a Washington-based spokesman for the group. "We believe it's important to give people a second chance," Elleithee said. "The fact that they are willing to do this work is a fairly serious indication that they want to become productive members of society."

ACT later found more suitable tasks for their contingent of second-chancers, but the damage had already been done. In the end, as Fund notes, the Democrats spent millions on ACT and its shenanigans, while the Reublicans did the same work with volunteers, managing to avoid sending felons and sex offenders to the doorsteps of families. The Republicans also fielded candidates with coherent political messages rather than a presidential contender who offered up memorable quotes such as, "I voted for the eighty-seven billion -- before I voted against it."

If ACT has closed its doors, it won't be missed, not even by deep-pocketed Democrats looking to rescue failed campaigns.

DNC: Please Never Take Us Seriously Again

My apologies and newfound respect go out to Jay Carson, who apparently got out of the DNC just before the roof caved in on common sense and rationality. The Howard Dean-led DNC has decided to deride President Bush for staying physically fit while in office:

WASHINGTON, Aug. 1 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The following is a fact sheet released today by the Democratic National Committee:

The White House this weekend announced that
President Bush received good news during his annual physical. Doctors pronounced the President to be in "superior" physical condition, which media reports attributed to his rigorous, six day a week exercise routine. While President Bush has made physical fitness a personal priority, his cuts to education funding have forced schools to roll back physical education classes and his Administration's efforts to undermine Title IX sports programs have threatened thousands of women's college sports programs.

"President Bush's has dropped the ball when it comes to fully funding physical education in public schools and women's athletic programs at the college level," said Democratic National Committee spokesman Josh Earnest. "His personal habits indicate that physical fitness is not just fun and games for him. Don't our kids deserve the same opportunities to be physically fit? President Bush should stop running from his responsibility and make sure that all American children have access to physical fitness programs."

The Anchoress attempts to instruct the DNC on how to respond rationally to good news:

ATTENTION DEMOCRATS: If you want to be taken seriously - at all - in the next two elections, then you must learn appropriate responses. In this case, the appropriate response to good news about the president’s health is this:

We are happy to hear that President Bush enjoys good health, and we wish him continued good health as we proceed to work with him when we can, and in loyal oppostition when we feel we must, for the good of the nation we all cherish.

That’s called…A MATURE RESPONSE.

What I find most hilarious about the DNC screed is its implicit stance that unfit children somehow equate to government failure. Why? Does it take a government program to get kids off the TV and video game box? Does it take a village to strap a pair of athletic shoes on a kid and have him jog? Do we need government oversight to have people make sure that kids eat healthy?

Or maybe ... just maybe ... George Bush isn't everyone's daddy, nor Laura the national mommy. Perhaps the parents of these children should take some responsibility for their health -- as the Bushes have for themselves and their healthy daughters.

Joining me in laughing ourselves silly over this insipid attack spot are Michelle Malkin, Polipundit, and Lyflines.

Not That We Blame You, Of Course ...

Bill Clinton has a new spokesperson, the AP reports this morning. Jay Carson replaces Jim Kennedy, who has a new job flacking for Sony Pictures in Hollywood. Carson has a long history with the Democratic Party -- and something tells me that this new job might have provided a way for the Democrats to shorten it a bit:

Former President Bill Clinton has hired a new spokesman, a veteran of the Howard Dean 2004 presidential campaign and New York City's 2012 Olympics bid.

Jay Carson was also a former press secretary for Sen. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., and has worked for the Democratic National Committee. Clinton's office announced Carson's hiring Tuesday.

Hmm. Let's see: Dean campaign -- self-destructs. NYC's Olympic bid finished out of the money. Tom Daschle managed to go from the Senate caucus leader to private citizen. The DNC just got co-opted by Mad How disease, whose series of illogical and outrageous eruptions have even caused people like Harry Reid to distance themselves.

Either Jay has gotten desperate to get away from failure, or the Democrats have decided he's a jinx that needs to go where he can't do much further harm. Best of luck, Jay ... you'll need it.

Air America: A New York Attorney Consults

CQ reader and New York attorney Eric O. Costello, Esq. has followed the Air America story over the past several days here at CQ, Michelle Malkin, and Radio Equalizer. He sent me an e-mail this morning that comprehensively looks at the legal issues surrounding the transfer of $875,000 from a Bronx non-profit to Air America -- and also the notion floated by Al Franken that a "forensic" investigation had already brought this to Piquant Media's attention. Mr. Costello has kindly consented to publication of his observations:

I am a lawyer, admitted in New York State since 1992, with a fair amount of experience in corporate transactions (I used to do a lot of corporate/SEC work -- I'm mostly in litigation, these days). I also was on the board of directors of a not-for-profit corporation for over a decade, serving as one of that corporation's officers as well. Please excuse any rambling that occurs in the following text (which you may quote from, freely, as I use no names other than my own).

Frankly, I'm aghast that the directors and officers of Gloria Wise approved the loans to the Air America affiliate, as has been reported. Aside from the obvious fact that there would be problems in taking funds earmarked for specific purposes (possibly violating the terms of the monetary grants -- had the monies come from a foundation, and the foundation was made aware of the diversion, Gloria Wise's name would be mud forevermore, and word gets around the foundations pretty fast), and aside from the fact that this would have been a very large chunk of Gloria Wise's liquidity (assuming a $400,000+ series of loans -- where the hell were Gloria Wise's accountants in this?), I would imagine it would be highly problematic, under the charter and by-laws of Gloria Wise, to make such loans to Air America's affiliate.

Typically, the charter and/or by-laws of a not-for-profit spell out what restrictions there are on investments that can be made. (Query: what's in the charter and by-laws of Wise?) It's been a while since I've looked at the New York Not-for-Profit Corporation Law, but I can well believe that the loan to the Air America affiliate would not be allowed, especially (as I'll bet is likely) it was unsecured, or secured only by unregistered and illiquid stock. At my not-for-profit, we stuck to bank accounts and CDs for any cash waiting around to be applied for the purposes for which it was earmarked. The insurance company that provided the "D&O" insurance for Gloria Wise must be having (to use the, ahem, non-legal phrase) the screaming whim-whams.

Follow the money, but also follow the minutes of the meetings of Gloria Wise's board of directors. There should be some discussion in there, and (ideally) a written presentation to the board discussing the investment, considering this would be a material amount of Wise's cash resources. That is, if the directors of Wise were doing their job properly.

(This doesn't even get into the mind-bending conflict-of-interest issues here, which others have pointed out. On my board, we had long and involved discussions on the subject of officer and director conflicts, and we eventually adopted a conflicts procedure, after getting a lot of advice on the subject from experts in the field. This was funded by a grant from a foundation that wanted to strengthen our corporate structure and activities. Thanks be to God, the other officers and directors of my not-for-profit were blessed with sense, both of the common sense and moral variety.)

The use of the term "forensic" by Al Franken is interesting. "Forensic accounting" is a term well known in the legal community. I've attended CLE [continuing legal education] courses on "accounting for lawyers" that talk about exactly that -- and usually this comes up *after* the fact, after some corporate entity has gone ker-splat (another legal term there, forgive me). It strikes me that if Franken is using the term correctly (I admit, a good question), this would imply that the new owners of Air America didn't know of the issue before they bought in, possibly because of poor documentation of the loans (i.e., no note, no record). Poor documentation of loans is a Bad Thing, to use yet another legal term.

By the way, anyone know the terms of the loan(s)? What interest rates, what term, what security? Was this a sweetheart loan, on terms that Air America couldn't have received at, say, Bank of America or J.P. MorganChase (or other Enron lenders). Any personal guarantees by individuals here, considering this was a startup? If so, anyone collecting on them? If not, why the hell not?

Finally, one last point: I doubt the FCC or SEC has jurisdiction over this matter (private firms, and Air America doesn't own stations, as far as I know), but you know who has statutory oversight over New York State not-for-profits? The New York Attorney General's office. That's right, ladies and gentlemen, E. Spitzer, Esq., Scourge of Wall Street, with an assorted collection of trophies mounted on his wall, would be the point man for any investigation of this matter. Surely (we ask rhetorically) Spitzer will be eager to investigate such blatant conflicts of interest, risky lending, and other sort of malfeasence, no? That is, unless his run for governor is putting a crimp on his time.

In my reply, I pointed out that Jeanette Graves alleges that the Gloria Wise board knew nothing of most of these transfers, but Mr. Costello quickly replied:

Even if Graves is telling the truth, *somewhere* there's got to be something in the board minutes of Wise. We had regular updates on the budget and balance sheet of my not-for-profit, complete with hard-copy presentations, and it would strike me that a $400,000+ loan is going to show up on the balance sheet *somewhere*, and any director worth his or her salt is going to ask questions about this, rubber stamp or no.

I admit, that's a darned good point. I serve in essentially the same position as Ms. Graves for a local non-profit here, one with just a fraction of the Gloria Wise budget. However, that kind of money should have shown up in their budget statements, which gives a whole new dimension to this scandal.

Eliot Spitzer, where are you? And where is the mainstream media?

Gray Lady Weeps Over Bolton Appointment

The New York Times editorial board works itself into quite an emotional state this morning over the recess appointment of John Bolton to the UN. In fact, their editorial today goes so far as to praise Condoleezza Rice's performance at State, which they haven't bothered to do as a stand-alone opinion, just to take a swipe at Bolton:

If there's a positive side to President Bush's appointment of John Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations yesterday, it's that as long as Mr. Bolton is in New York, he will not be wreaking diplomatic havoc anywhere else. Talks with North Korea, for instance, have been looking more productive since Mr. Bolton left the State Department, and it's hard not to think that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's generally positive performance in office is due, in part, to her canniness in dispatching Mr. Bolton out of Washington.

The editors just spew nonsense in this lead. Rice has long been one of Bolton's most public supporters, arguing strongly for his confirmation and yesterday speaking in support of his recess appointment. Her decision to choose a more low-key undersecretary instead of Bolton obviously resulted from a decision made by Rice and Bush to send Bolton to the UN after John Danforth resigned.

The Times gets even more silly with this statement:

There is plenty to complain about at the United Nations, but real work happens there, and it requires the services of men and women who know how to wring agreement out of a group of wildly different and extremely self-interested representatives.

All this proves is that the Times, despite calling itself the Paper of Record, does little checking of the record on its own. The Times may not recall the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), for which the Arms Control Association credits Ambassador Bolton as chief architect. He got a dozen nations to agree to the treaty to interdict WMD components during shipping. One of those interdictions stopped nuclear material from reaching Iran, as Rice mentioned in a speech two months ago. The ACA credits PSI with helping to convince Libya's Moammar Gaddafi to drop its WMD programs by successfully interdicting shipments of centrifuge components for its nuclear program:

The one successful interdiction that has come to light was an October 2003 operation to seize centrifuge components destined for Libya. U.S. officials credit the interdiction with helping to further convince Libya, which had been conducting secret disarmament negotiations with the United States and United Kingdom for several months, to publicly renounce its WMD ambitions and programs two months later.

He also managed to push through a repeal of the noxious UN resolution equating Zionism with racism in 1991 during his earlier tour at Turtle Bay. If the Times thinks that didn't take some wheedling and diplomacy, then it has neglected its UN beat for far too long.

None of this really matters much, anyway. Bush used the recess appointment to show the Democrats that their irrational obstructionism has rendered them increasingly irrelevant. The same can be said for the editorial board of the New York Times.

UPDATE: We're getting some traffic from James Wolcott, whose idea of biting wit is to say that I look like a child molester and that CQ commenters are "several rungs down the evolutionary ladder". Small minds generate small thoughts, and I also notice that Wolcott doesn't have the guts to allow comments on his site. Anyway, welcome aboard.

Err America: Franken Speaks, Buries The Excuses

David Lombino has another installment in the emerging financing scandal at Air America that Brian Maloney first uncovered last week. Today, Lombino publishes an interview with Al Franken that demolishes attempts by Air America supporters to defend the netlet from its connection to potential wire fraud and misappropriation of government grant money intended for poor kids and Alzheimer's patients (via Michelle Malkin):

Mr. Franken said he has learned details of the story only in the last week. He said Piquant LLC, current owner and operator of the radio network, found a record of the transfers while conducting a "forensic" investigation into the finances of the previous owner, Progress Media, which was run by Mr. Cohen. That internal probe was conducted before the city agency became involved, Mr. Franken said. Efforts by The New York Sun to reach Mr. Cohen for comment in recent days have been unsuccessful.

A Piquant spokesman said yesterday that Gloria Wise would be compensated regardless of the amount of money it transferred. Mr. Franken said he did not know if money from Gloria Wise had been absorbed by the network and used to finance its operations. He said Piquant's payments to Gloria Wise were scheduled to begin this month but were prevented from going through while the city investigation continued.

A spokesman for the Department of Investigation, Keith Schwam, said that if Air America discovered the transfers before the city probe began, "They neglected to tell anyone at DOI or in the city about it."

So Piquant Media knew about this problem months ago but kept it quiet? That appears to corroborate its earlier statement that it decided "months ago" to pay back the money. However, why didn't it start paying it once the forensic investigatin turned up the problem? More importantly, why didn't their accountants and Piquant Media turn over these findings to Gloria Wise's board and to the authorities?

Instead, the charity group continued without its funding for another several months, losing government contracts when it couldn't meet its obligations under the previous earmarked grants to provide services to the poor kids and Alzheimer's patients. While Gloria Wise Boys & Girls Club struggled along, Piquant Media and Err America stayed silent, at least on this one injustice where a corporation took money from the downtrodden to line its own pockets. Funny how that happens when the pockets getting lined are one's own.

Franken's admissions clearly shows that Err America and its new management knew of Evan Cohen's irregular transfers of money, but also shows that they intended on keeping it to themselves for as long as possible. If their statement about resolving to repay the money "months ago" had any truth to it, they would have notified Gloria Wise's executives at the time of the discovery as well as the competent authorities of the state. They also would have come up with a better initial statement blaming everything on previous ownership; if they had already decided long ago to pay the money back, why didn't they say so in that first press release?

So far all we have heard from Err America is a lot of double-talk and self-serving half-truths. That still beats what we've heard from most of the Exempt Media, which has avoided this topic despite the blockbuster nature of the story. That will be the topic of my Daily Standard column tomorrow. Perhaps media outlets like the New York Times, which regularly runs fawning articles on the struggling netlet, will finally look into the tawdry details of Err America's grab at city grant money intended for the poor and sick.

UPDATE: A CQ welcome to Lucianne readers. Regarding "Err America", I used that earlier in my blog to describe their efforts at audience-building. I did like RBMN's drowning/waterpistol proverb, though ... gotta use that myself sometime.

UPDATE II: Check out these observations from a New York attorney.

UPDATE III: To answer Mr. Buddwing in the comments -- yes, we should note that Franken didn't lawyer up and issue a standard "no comment" in response to Lambino's request for a response. It would have been very easy to do so, although if he plans on running for office, eventually he will have to answer for this scandal. He doesn't exactly apologize for the malfeasance, but he didn't commit it, either.

Gray Lady On Plame: Never Mind

The New York Times finally noticed in its wall-to-wall coverage of the Valerie Plame leak case that Plame hardly equated to the deep-cover agent her husband, Joseph Wilson, claimed her to be. Far from learning the name and occupation of Wilson's wife from a Deep Throat inside source at the White House, it turns out that all Robert Novak had to do was read a book:

One of the most puzzling aspects of the C.I.A. leak case has had to do with the name of the exposed officer. Why did the syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak identify her as Valerie Plame in exposing her link to the C.I.A. in July 2003 when she had been known for years both at the agency and in her personal life by her married name, Valerie Wilson?

Mr. Novak offered a possible explanation for the disconnect on Monday, suggesting in his column that he could have obtained Ms. Wilson's maiden name from the directory Who's Who in America, which used that name in identifying her as the wife of Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former ambassador.

Mr. Novak did not explicitly cite the directory as his source. Nor was this his first public reference to the Who's Who listing. In a column in October 2003, three months after he had first disclosed Ms. Wilson's name and her role, Mr. Novak cited the published listing as evidence that Ms. Wilson's identity was "no secret."

But in drawing renewed attention to the published listing, Mr. Novak seemed to suggest more directly than ever before that the scrutiny that has focused on which of his sources provided him the name might have been misplaced, and that he might well have figured it out by himself.

So let's get this straight. Ambassador Wilson has so much concern for his secret-agent wife's cover that he gets her listed under her maiden name in Who's Who In America as his spouse. Then, just to ensure that she remains as anonymous as possible, he starts leaking information on the secret trip she arranged for him at the CIA to investigate Saddam Hussein's attempts to make a deal in Niger. And just to make absolutely sure that no one figures out who Valerie Plame is, he goes public and writes an op-ed stating for the record that the CIA selected him for this assignment -- which raises eyebrows everywhere, since Wilson never worked for the CIA before.

Now I understand Wilson's rage when this carefully constructed curtain of secrecy fell to the ground, courtesy of Robert Novak.

This just caps an already-ridiculous meme, one started by the media and one which indicts no one but themselves. The media demanded to know who leaked Plame's name to Novak, but none of them wanted to reveal their inside sources to resolve the mystery. Now we know why. None of them can read a book or do their own research, except for Robert Novak -- which explains why Patrick Fitzgerald seems to have lost interest in him.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers! No, I'm not vacationing in Sag Harbor with Mickey Kaus, but I'll bet he and I would be reading the same book if we were -- Who's Who seems to be a great journalistic guide to everyone the CIA wants to hide these days.

What's In The Water In Massachusetts?

The commentary has begun to percolate on the recess appointment of John Bolton to the United Nations post, for which Senate Democrats twice filibustered rather than allow a confirmation vote. The comments have predictably shown their partisan bias. Republicans, except for George Voinovich, have offered their support and decried the necessity of a recess appointment. Voinovich reiterated his opposition to Bolton but pledged to support him and his work in the future. Democrats, for the most part, have emphasized their opposition to Bolton but kept their remarks rational.

However, in this last group, we have already seen two exceptions, and to no one's great surprise, the exceptions come from Massachusetts' Senators, Ted Kennedy and John Kerry. Both remain true to form in their reactions. Kerry gets his facts wrong, and Kennedy sees dark conspiracies and abuses of power. Kerry first (emphases mine):

"The president has the right to make this recess appointment, but it's the wrong decision. It only diminishes John Bolton's validity and leverage to secure America's goals at the U.N. John Bolton has been rejected twice by the Senate to serve as our Ambassador to the United Nations. This is not the way to fill our most important diplomatic jobs."

Kerry gets it wrong yet again. A filibuster does not equate to a rejection; it means that the minority refused to let the Senate vote to accept or reject the nomination. Bolton did not get rejected by the Senate at all, and had the Democrats not filibustered the vote, he would have won confirmation, albeit on a narrow margin. That foregone conclusion led the Democrats to stage the filibuster in the first place.

Either Kerry has spent twenty-odd years in the Senate without learning the difference, or he's just lying for effect. Given his history of Christmas in Cambodia, running guns to the Khmer Rouge, and so on, I'll leave it to CQ readers which explanation suits them best. At least Kerry has read the Constitution, however, which is more than one can say for his senior partner:

"The abuse of power and the cloak of secrecy from the White House continues. ... It's a devious maneuver that evades the constitutional requirement of Senate consent and only further darkens the cloud over Mr. Bolton's credibility at the U.N."

Cloak of secrecy? Bolton has gone through months of attacks in the media for his nomination to this position as well as a highly contentious Senate hearing. His confirmation literally received endless debate in the full Senate. The White House has talked about the possibility of a recess appointment for weeks. Some secret!

As far as it being an "abuse of power" that evades "Constitutional requirement" of a Senate confirmation, perhaps Senator Kennedy might like to read Article II, Section 2, Clause 3 of that same Constitution:

Clause 3: The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.

No abuse of power there; the Constitution clearly gives the President the exact power he just exercised. The Senate appears to have abused its power by denying Bolton an up or down vote on his confirmation, however, because the word "filibuster" doesn't appear anywhere in the Constitution, nor does the right of endless debate.

Each party has its shrill and un-credible voices. Unfortunately for the Democrats, they picked their leadership from that contingent.

Dan Rather Tells Us What He's Learned (Not Much)

One would think that the past year has provided many life lessons to former CBS anchor Dan Rather, who lost most of his credibility by presenting faked memos in a smear job on President Bush at a critical moment of the election, and then continued to insist that the documents were authentic (or not proven inauthentic, depending on which day he spoke). Perhaps chief among those lessons would be to authenticate the documents, recheck your sources for their biases, learn how to apologize and admit error ... most people would learn those sorts of lessons from Rather's experience.

Rather gives quite a different list to Esquire Magazine, however. In a strange and utterly superficial bit of fluff, the man who insists that his role as a journalist takes precedence over any other assignment instead channels Larry King in this guest column. Some of his pearls of wisdom amount to little more than inanities:

One good thing about having a birthday on Halloween is that people tend to remember it.

You trust your mother. But you cut the cards anyway.

Always marry a woman from Texas. No matter how tough things get, she's seen tougher.

Some, however, reflect directly on his experience in the news business. For instance, he makes an argument that journalists don't really have an obligation to get a story right as long as they make enough noise:

Many of the people who call it [Memogate] do so for their own partisan and/or ideological purposes. No crime was committed here. The central facts in the story were correct, and they have not been denied. A pillar of support for the story has been called into question and remains in question. We don't know everything yet. More will come out. Whatever mistakes—real or imagined—that were made were not born of political bias nor of prejudice. Did we do it perfectly? No. Are there things I wish we'd done that we didn't do? Yes.

The press is a watchdog. Not an attack dog. Not a lapdog. A watchdog. Now, a watchdog can't be right all the time. He doesn't bark only when he sees or smells something that's dangerous. A good watchdog barks at things that are suspicious.

Say what? It looks to me that Rather wants us to allow big-dog journalists to bark without ever checking the yard first. That lesson could very well explain why Rather and CBS decided to run with a story that had a single source, with documents that even their own examiners wouldn't authenticate, in order to accuse the President of desertion -- sixty days before an election. Good dogs may bark at suspicious noises, but good journalists check their facts before going to press. And when bad journalists don't bother to do that, the Exempt Media insists that its levels of editorial checks and balances exist to ensure that such stories never see publication.

As we have seen, when everyone fails to do that, a bunch of so-called watchdogs wind up in the doghouse, including the big dog himself. Unfortunately, in most cases, that only happens after the big dog has gone out and taken a big bite of an innocent person's leg.

Obviously Rather wants to continue barking at the moon without addressing the central facts in the case. He just continues to insist that those facts, as floated in these ludicrously faked documents, still stand up to his standards of truth. Those standards, as he explains, don't really involve truth at all, of course, but mere suspicion, making Rather a high-paid and overblown Joan Rivers.

CBS really needs to put Dan Rather out of their own misery, if not Rather's. Every time Rather speaks, he makes himself more and more of a caricature, and he buries the credibility of CBS a little deeper.

Bolton Gets The Recess Nod

John Bolton accepted a recess appointment as ambassador to the United Nations this morning, bringing to a close a long and embarrassing chapter of Senatorial obstructionism. Bush didn't hesitate a single day of the Congressional hiatus to elevate Bolton to the top spot at Turtle Bay, a cesspool of corruption and intrigue that sorely needs a firm voice and a stubborn disposition:

"This post is too important to leave vacant any longer," Bush said.

Senate Democrats had blocked Bolton's nomination in a dispute over documents amid accusations that Bolton doesn't have the temperament for the nation's top U.N. post.

Under the Constitution, the president has the power to make temporary appointments without Senate confirmation when Congress goes into recess. Lawmakers began their current break on Friday.

The recess appointment puts Bolton at the United Nations until at least January 2007.

Senator Chris Dodd tried a last-minute rhetorical block on Bolton's appointment, warning the White House that a recess appointment would mean that Bolton does not have the "confidence of Congress" in his new position. Quite clearly, the President doesn't care. Bolton always had Bush's confidence, and right now Bush wants that position filled by someone who undoubtedly speaks directly for George Bush at all times. He also wants someone who will take on the difficult task of reforming the UN, a task which quickly proved too daunting for the more courtly John Danforth.

If the Democrats want to stamp their feet and pout over this, they have no one to blame but themselves. They have made the filibuster for executive appointments a regular factor instead of the rare technique it had been before the last two sessions of Congress. They still have not learned that elections have consequences and that when voters put a party in charge of both the Executive and the Senate, it means that they intended to see smooth implementation of that party's agenda.

The filibuster on Bolton should particularly embarrass the Democrats, although it won't, as the UN ambassador post is a political appointment that only lasts as long as the president wishes. Unlike judicial nominations, it does not carry a lifetime commitment -- and as such, Congress has historically given the President leeway in selecting those whom he feels best represent his policies. Filibustering over a document dispute for this long, especially since the effort was made so transparent with the prior example of Miguel Estrada as simple political obstructionism, says much more about the confidence of Democrats about their future as a minority party than it does about their confidence in Bolton as UN ambassador.

ADDENDUM: Here's an interesting look at recess appointments by recent presidents. Thus far, Bush has 106 in over 4 years; Clinton had 140 in two terms, and Reagan had a whopping 243.

The Continuing Scandal At Air America

The New York Sun takes on the Air America story today and advances it by leaps and bounds, talking with the president of the non-profit which had its money taken by Air America founder Evan Cohen. It turns out that Cohen didn't just get money for the netlet, but also managed to get plenty for his own pockets as well while sitting on the Gloria Wise Boys & Girls Club board:

Initially, members of the executive committee viewed Mr. Cohen fondly because he had thrown a tremendously successful fund-raising affair for Gloria Wise in Manhattan last year. They recalled being impressed by the wealthy clientele and the large sums of money he raised, according to Ms. Graves.

Because of that confidence in Mr. Cohen, she said, the executive committee approved two loans to Air America, one for $80,000 and another for $87,000.

Ms. Capell said she had met Mr. Cohen several times.

"He was very suave, a very wonderful young man. He left a very favorable impression," she said in a telephone interview.

After the initial two loans, Ms. Graves said that just before the launch of Air America her organization lent the network another $213,000, authorized with a rubber stamp of her signature on a document she said she never saw. More recently, Ms. Graves said, Gloria Wise made a wire transfer of at least $400,000 to Air America without her knowledge.

In addition, according to Ms. Graves, the longtime executive director of Gloria Wise, Charles Rosen, later told the board he had lent an additional $35,000 of the organization's funds to Mr. Cohen for medical expenses. According to Ms. Capell, the board member, Mr. Cohen told Mr. Rosen he needed $25,000 to pay for chemotherapy. Mr. Cohen told associates that he recovered from brain cancer, according to Ms. Capell. Later, Mr. Cohen asked for $10,000 - which he was lent - be cause his father, a businessman in Asia, was "gravely ill," Ms. Capell said.

Ms. Graves said that she knew of the personal loans to Mr. Cohen, but that she thought they were taken from Mr. Rosen's personal discretionary budget, "not the agency's."

Now we have potential wire fraud, forgery, and fraud by deception, and probably a host of other potential charges against Mr. Cohen for his actions with Gloria Wise and Air America. Ms. Graves also tells the New York Sun that AA has agreed to pay back $800K over the next two years, not just the $480K originally noted by the Bronx News. Fortunately, Gloria Wise remained solvent, despite the wording in Piquant Media's earlier statements which tended to suggest otherwise.

Clearly, though, AA did not pay a dime back before this investigation broke open. Nor did they agree to pay back the illegal transfers immediately, which again underscores their fragile economic status. They still have to meet that payroll, including that of their stars, who apparently don't mind taking their money ahead of what's owed to the poor kids, elderly, and Alzheimers patients served by Gloria Wise.

Michelle Malkin and Brian Maloney have plenty more on this story, including lots of links to past and present indicators of AA's precarious position. The New York Post also has started to cover the issue, which should garner even more national attention.

One certainty has arisen: this is no "phony" story. Air America had better get out in front of this, and its supporters should stop blaming the blogs for AA's miscreancy and demand that AA resolve the issue forthwith. Two years of dragging out payments for stolen money means two years and more of albatross-dragging for an enterprise that cannot afford any more baggage than it already has.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers!

French Adman: We Are A Nation Of Children

The president of France's largest advertising agency has delivered a scorching assessment of the state of his nation, blaming politicians for turning France into a nation of children and the electorate for demanding such treatment in the first place. Maurice Levy wrote a front-page opinion essay in Le Monde, the leading French newspaper, warning his fellow citizens of France's steep decline and pointing to the loss of their Olympic bid as a result:

Maurice Lévy, the head of the media giant Publicis, whose company owns Saatchi and Saatchi and has offices in 100 countries across six continents, said France had failed to get the 2012 Olympics because the world now saw it as a nation of perdants - "losers".

For good measure, he described the 35-hour week as "absurd" and the wails of complaint that followed Paris's loss of the Games to London as "pathetic". ...

"Later, when it was necessary, alas, to make redundancies, the compensation was set at 90 per cent, therefore allowing those made redundant to earn yet more without working. Why in that case, make any effort to find a job? In doing this, trying to avoid any difficulties for them, we have turned the French into children.

"The final straw has to be the absurd decision to introduce the 35-hour working week when we were told repeatedly that we could work less and earn more. How on earth in this context can we expect the same French people to accept necessary reforms?"

With French unemployment soaring, one would have expected that the ranks of job searchers would have put tremendous pressure on Chirac and the government to improve the economy. Chirac has bought them off instead, giving 90% of their former wages as unemployment insurance to the workers, making them uninterested in change -- and in working altogether. At the same time, the French have cut back work to 35-hour weeks and maintained the month-long holiday that starts today.

Levy wants to wake the French up from their nanny-state hallucination of French vigor and power, and oddly, the Olympics may help in dashing cold water on French illusions. We may not relate to the crushing disappointment of the French in losing this bid, for two reasons: we have won a number of these bids over the past twenty years, and our bids involve regional pride rather than national standing. Certainly the French associated a great deal of their self-image into competing for this bid, and losing to the British turned out to be a crushing blow. For the first time in a generation, it has the French doing some badly-needed introspection.

Will it make a difference? The economics of France have deteriorated so badly that it will likely take much more than a lost Olympics and a front-page scolding before French voters reject the socialist nightmare they have brought onto themselves. Their time has almost run out, however. With the dangers of massive immigration now coming to life in their burgeoning and increasibly radical Muslim population, further immigration has become almost impossible, which means less low-level workers to fuel the nanny state. Their neighbors just rejected the EU pact that might have helped France maintain its socialist structure for a little longer, uninterested in paying for France's shirking of work through their own sweat. Paris may be forced to give up its protectionist tariffs on agriculture, meaning that farmers will have to compete at lower prices.

All of this adds up to a terrible adolescence for the French electorate. Unless the French can find and support courageous French leaders who will roll their sleeves up and seriously move the French state away from their socialist addiction, the French will not likely grow up at all until their state completely collapses.

Saudi King Dies At 84

The Saudi king who both opened an era of closer relations with the US and lent legitimacy to the radical Islamists which target us died earler today. King Fahd had ruled in name only for the past decade after suffering a debilitating stroke and real power had been wielded by his brother, Crown Prince Abdullah, only three years younger at age 81:

"With all sorrow and sadness, the royal court in the name of his highness Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz and all members of the family announces the death of the custodian of the two holy mosques, King Fahd bin Abdul Aziz," according to a statement read on state-run Saudi TV by the country's information minister. ...

The Saudi statement said the new King Abdullah announced that his half brother and the Saudi defense minister, Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, 77, would be the nation's next crown prince.

During his rule, the portly, goateed Fahd, who rose to the throne in 1982, inadvertently helped fuel the rise of Islamic extremism by making multiple concessions to hard-liners, hoping to boost his Islamic credentials. But then he also brought the kingdom closer to the United States and agreed to a step that enraged many conservatives: the basing of U.S. troops on Saudi soil after the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.

This will not mean much in terms of any change to the relationship between the US and Saudi Arabia. Abdullah has run the country for Fahd for ten years, and Abdullah's policies are the ones in play now. The real key to the future of Saudi-American relations may not be either Abdullah or Sultan, but whoever comes after that. Abdul-Aziz had many sons, but they have all reached old age. At some point the Saudis will have to turn to the second generation of royalty to lead their nation, a diverse generation that has both more Western and more radical Wahhabist elements than the first.

With the older generation fading away, we will probably see the true future direction of Saudi royalty in ten years or so. By that time, we had better have beaten and discredited Islamofascism, or our task may be made exponentially more difficult by the Saudi succession.

London Arrests Seven More As Bombing Cell Collapses

British investigators captured another seven suspects in a raid earlier today connected to the July 21 bombing attempts. Even though Britain and Italy feel that they have all four would-be bombers in custody, they continue to raid locations and make arrests, indicating that their earlier captures may have resulted in a wealth of new intelligence:

Police arrested seven people Sunday during a raid on an apartment in southern England, bringing to 21 the number in custody in the relentless hunt for accomplices in the failed July 21 transit bombings.

Investigators determined to prevent further attacks also were probing possible ties between two of the bombing suspects and Saudi Arabia, British newspapers reported. Police were searching for anyone who may have recruited and directed the attackers and built the explosives.

Police arrested the six men and one woman during a search of two buildings in Brighton, on the southern coast, said a Metropolitan Police spokeswoman, speaking on condition of anonymity because her department does not allow her to give her name. So far, 18 people have been arrested in Britain and three in Italy.

She said police believed there were more people at large who were involved in the July 21 attacks, in which four bombs partly exploded, and the deadly July 7 suicide bombings.

Police have discovered several connections between the bombings and Saudi Arabia, which seems certain to reignite the debate about the role the Saudis have in fomenting and promoting Wahhabist terrorism. One suspect called Saudi Arabia shortly before his arrest, and another spent a month there in 2003 receiving what he told his friends was "training". That may or may not have happened before May 2003, when al-Qaeda first attacked the Saudis themselves and forced the desert kingdom to confront the Islamist terrorism it had harbored, either deliberately or through its own neglect.

Italian investigators also arrested two brothers of the bombing suspect it captured a few days ago, Osman Hussain. It turns out that Hussain gave the Brits a false name and passport when he emigrated to Italy. His real name is Hamdi Isaac and he comes from Ethiopia, not Somalia. He lied in order to get political asylum in Britain. His brothers Fati and Remzi had allegedly harbored him after the abortive bombing attempt, which is how his true identity apparently became known.

He has told Italian authorities that the July 21 bombers had no affiliation with al-Qaeda and did not intend on killing anyone. The entire stunt was designed as a protest about Britain's involvement in Iraq, he now claims. That seems rather unlikely; why go to all the effort to fake a passport, claim asylum under the fake identity, and then pull a stunt like the July 21 bombing attempts for a mere political protest? Further, Isaac and his Italian attorney also claim that the bombing conspiracy came together at the last moment. That also seems unlikely, as the bomb technology reportedly matches what AQ uses and would have to have taken some time to develop independently of any terrorist support groups.

Isaac plans on fighting extradition to the nation for which he created a false identity to enter. He will need better arguments for that to succeed than his assertion that the failed July 21 attacks amounted to nothing but a benign statement of dissent.

Dafydd: Flipper the Duck

Patterico has noticed an astonishing claim by Howard Dean -- no, I mean astonishing even on the Dean Scale -- a few days ago (I can't find the exact date).

Here comes Mr. Chairman:

The president and his right-wing Supreme Court think it is "okay" to have the government take your house if they feel like putting a hotel where your house is.

Let us all ponder this audacious argument. My old dictionary defines "chutzpah" as Lizzie Borden pleading for mercy from the judge on grounds that she's an orphan. But next year's edition will eschew written examples in favor of a photo of Chairman Dean.

What Dean has done, of course, is simply to flip the political identity of the justices on the Court; in Dean's world, it was the "right-wing" caucus on the Court -- Stevens, Breyer, Ginsburg, Souter, and Kennedy -- that ruled in favor of the city of New London, CT, in the Kelo case; while the "left-wingers" (Scalia, Thomas, Rehnquist, and O'Connor) desperately tried to stick up for the little guy. It's Howard Dean through the looking glass!

Patterico has also noticed the thundering sound of a million crickets chirping in the MSM auditorium; or as Paul Simon (the successful singer, not the lefty senator) wrote, the "sounds of silence." It's hard to imagine so many quiet noises if it had been Bill Frist or Tom DeLay who casually flipped left and right; Dana Milbank in particular would have gotten at least four op-eds out of it.

In honor of Howard "Flipper" Dean, herewith, offered for your approval:

They call him Flipper, Flipper, quick to the cameras,
No-one you've seen, spins faster than Dean,
And we know Flipper, lives in a media bubble,
Truth lies in rubble, watch Howard preen!

He's a hot tipper, Flipper, makes the news fright'ning,
Giddy they seem with "I Have a Scream,"
They know their Flipper feeds them the soundbites to plotz for,
Cheap dirty shots whore, he's on their team!

Iran Calls Europe's Hand

The mullahs of Iran moved today to push the nuclear nonproliferation talks into further crisis after a unilateral deadline they set for a European proposal expired. Iran announced that they will once again begin processing uranium ore, a step that likely will bring an end to the EU-3's efforts to reach accommodation with Teheran:

Iran has announced it will resume its controversial nuclear programme imminently in the face of a European Union appeal to wait for talks.

Officials said they would inform UN nuclear inspectors of the move on Monday and then begin converting raw uranium at a plant in Isfahan.

The UK, which is leading EU attempts to negotiate a compromise, said the move would make further talks difficult.

In fact, diplomats tell the BBC that offering any new proposals while Iran processes uranium will be pointless, and they expect Europe to defer to the IAEA instead. That will force the agency to find Iran in noncompliance with the nonproliferation pact to which Teheran is a signatory and prompt the United Nations Security Council to review the dispute. This means that the US now can take the lead on pressing for further economic sanctions on Iran, a step long desired by the Bush administration in order to curtail Iran's involvement in terrorist operations.

The UNSC will probably see a tremendous fight over this issue, one which will look very similar to the debate on Iraq. Again, France, Russia, and China all have commercial and military ties to the Islamic republic and have vested business interests in keeping sanctions off of Teheran. However, they can hardly recommend no action at all for Iranian instransigence on nonproliferation; to do so would send a green light for other nations so inclined to start arming themselves with nuclear weaponry. Russia hardly wants to see the Central Asian republics that formerly comprised the Soviet Union to get ideas about countering Iranian nuclear power. For that matter, neither would China.

So what will happen, if Iran does not back down and Europe pulls out? I suspect that France, Russia, and China will agree to some form of economic sanctions only after referring the matter back to the IAEA once for renegotiation while Iran continues working on the bomb. After that, they will work once again to undermine the sanctions and keep their commercial interests alive in Iran, just as they did with Iraq.

The one wild card will be the Anglo-American partnership that took matters into their own hands in Iraq after the UNSC refused to act after sixteen formal demands for Iraqi compliance on their cease-fire agreement. The three other veto-wielding UNSC members will recall that their obtuseness led to a war despite their best efforts to prop up their last client state. It might convince them to put enough pressure on the Iranian mullahcracy to reconsider their position. It probably won't work, but they will certainly want to try.

Conclusion Jumping At CQ

On July 25th, I wrote that leftist vandals piled flags from the yard of a family mourning the loss of a son-in-law who died serving his country in Iraq. An arsonist had piled all twenty flags adorning the yard of the Wessel home under their daughter's car and set them on fire, totaling the vehicle and narrowly avoiding setting their house on fire. I had assumed that only someone who wanted to stage a protest to the war would do something that stupid and dangerous to make a point.

Well, I was wrong. It turned out to be pointless after all:

Two teenage boys were charged Thursday with burning 20 small American flags set up in honor of a soldier who died from injuries suffered in the Iraq war.

Police said the boys apparently did not know the significance of the flags they took from the yard and set afire under a car belonging to the soldier's sister-in-law. The vehicle was destroyed.

To be honest, I'm not sure what's worse -- being wrong, or knowing that teenage boys consider the flag only suitable for kindling. It still sounds suspicious to me, as it hardly takes all twenty flags to set a car on fire. Like Glenn Reynolds, I think that the fact that every single one of the flags went into the flames meant something, even if it turns out that the Wessel home was just one stop on a night of destruction and debauchery for these two unsupervised morons.

Libby says that a simple sorry from bloggers such as myself would suffice to correct the conclusion-jumping of last week. She's right, and I am sorry for reaching that conclusion before all of the facts came in. I blew this one, and I do apologize.

Mark Kennedy, Northern Alliance, And A Troll

The Northern Alliance broadcast yesterday from the first Patriot Picnic, a listener-appreciation event from AM 1280 The Patriot. John Hinderaker has already posted a couple of pictures from the event from his first-hour appearance. He had to leave to join his family for a vacation, but he did get a chance to listen while we -- lovingly -- skewered him for his partial defense of the Kelo decision. (John, we can tell you apart from Karl Marx and Fidel Castro, even if our listeners can't. You're the one without the beard.)

As you might sense, we had a terrific time at Staring Lake Park yesterday for our live show, and we had a great crowd on hand. In our second hour, Rep. Mark Kennedy dropped in for an interview, and he sounded fit and ready to take on the Senate race to replace Mark Dayton next year. Kennedy gave our listeners a taste of his passion and encyclopedic grasp of the issues facing Congress, and turned in what I felt was his most impressive media performance of his career.

This free picnic had its share of comedy outside of the NARN, too. One of the local trolls decided to come out of the woodwork. He decided to cleverly disguise himself in garb that he apparently thought would help him blend into the Patriot's crowd:

This clown actually rented this tricorner hat from a costume shop, a fact he revealed to Brian "Saint Paul" Ward when he got up to ask Kennedy a question. Anyone at the picnic not wearing a tricorner hat (IOW, all the rest of the humans there) could see that he appeared one musket short of a Minuteman, and when he attempted to harangue Kennedy, he removed all doubt. Of course, the streamers he attached to his hat tipped us off -- one says "TAX CUTS FOR THE RICH", another says "TORTURE", and the third says "TREASON".

Kennedy, unsurprisingly, issued a smack-down on the three-part question that Mr. Troll had obviously prepared. Brian even let him ask a follow-up question, something we don't normally do, but Mr. Troll refused to leave the stage for at least fifteen minutes afterwards. I'm sure he went off and told his friends that we SILENCED HIM AND DENIED HIS FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHTS TO FREE SPEECH. The last we saw of Mr. Troll, he followed in Kennedy's wake as he left the amphitheater.

All in all, we had a great time and enjoyed hanging out with our many friends from The Patriot, as well as the terrific food from Three Sons Catering. We were even happy to help the local costume industry get a bit more business as well as relieve a local lefty of cash that could have gone to International ANSWER or MoveOn. A fine success!

Roberts Papers Reveal The Conservative Within

Today's Washington Post editorial on John Roberts, "Young Lawyer Roberts", reviews the documentation released so far by the Bush White House on their Supreme Court Nominee -- and finds that (surprise!) Roberts will not transform into the second coming of David Souter. However, beyond branding Roberts as an unabashed conservative, the Post doesn't do much except excerpt passages from long-passed legal debates within the Reagan administration, passages that hardly show him as the reactionary that Democrats desperately want people to believe:

While it's dangerous to make judgments based on a quick and necessarily spotty reading of quarter-century-old documents, the picture that emerges from the first wave of papers, including a huge batch unveiled from Judge Roberts's tenure as an adviser to President Ronald Reagan's attorney general, shows a lawyer fully in tune with the staunchly conservative legal views of the administration he was serving -- and indeed, at times to the right of some of its leading conservative lawyers.

Those who fear or hope, depending on their political positions, that Judge Roberts might be a stealth nominee in the mold of Justice David H. Souter -- a supposed conservative whose performance on the bench turned out to be far more moderate than predicted -- will find no support for such predictions in the papers that have emerged so far.

It doesn't take long for the Post to try to gin up a bogeyman, however, as it describes Roberts as "expressing hostility to affirmative action programs and to a broad application of the Voting Rights Act." Expressing hostility? That's editorial-speak for opposing interpretations of both not grounded in the law. The use of emotional language in describing Roberts' position doesn't appear accidental. The next sentence states that Congress should craft legislation that outlawed practices that did actual harm to minority voters in the proposed VRA instead of creating an amorphous, subjective standard of judging the "effect" of policies that would give courts wide latitude in arbitrarily creating new law through precedent. In short, he wanted Congress to write the law intelligently and clearly so that its interpretation and application could objectively apply regardless of which court ruled on it.

That doesn't sound like hostility; it sounds like common sense.

Another point which disturbs the Post was Roberts' objection to state prisoners using federal habeas corpus to file lawsuits. In 1981, that effort had tied up federal courts with a slew of ridiculous and inane court actions from inmates who literally had nothing better to do with their time than appear in court. It got them out of the prison yard and extra time at their facilities to prepare their cases. They mostly represented themselves or got pro bono representation, so it cost them nothing. Roberts made sensible arguments for curtailing the access, something the Post even acknowledges was needed -- but then blames Roberts for "the high court and Congress hav[ing] since gone too far."

So Roberts got Congress and the Supreme Court to go too far just by writing this one little memo? Is that what the Post wants us to believe?

The Post needs to rethink its approach to judicial criticism and quit issuing hysterical rants based on advisory memos, especially by applying emotional language where it doesn't belong to juice up an exceedingly weak case. It should take heart in Roberts' assistance to Sandra Day O'Connor in her confirmation process instead of treating it as an indication of some latent dishonesty, especially since the media has spent the last few weeks extolling O'Connor as a judicial saint. It won't make any difference in the confirmation of John Roberts, but getting a grip would have a salutory effect on the Post's credibility.

Scotsman: Sham Iranian President Heralds Military Junta Against Liberals

In a rare moment for European media, the Scotsman published a powerful article today about the "sham" election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as Iranian president and the effect it will have on liberating influences on the Islamic Republic. The first fruits of this election, swayed by an increasingly powerful Revolutionary Guard, showed themselves in the execution of political prisoners this week:

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the incoming Iranian "elected" president, will assume his post next month, but his presence is already felt in the political circles and on the streets of Tehran. Since his election, under the banner of a renewed Islamic revolution, the clerical regime hanged six people and sentenced another to death in the space of seven days. ...

Indeed, the real story of this election is the metamorphosis of the Guards Corps from an ideological army to an omnipresent political/military powerhouse. With Ahmadinejad's win, the IRGC is now able to spread it wings over all key centres of power in Iran. This may account for the most major power realignment within the ruling theocracy since Ayatollah Khomenei's death in 1989.

The first success of the IRGC's resurgence took place during national municipal elections in 2003. Then, in the February 2004 parliamentary elections, at least 40 former IRGC commanders won seats. Shortly after, Khamenei appointed a top IRGC general as head of Iran's national broadcasting.

Ahmadinejad's election has triggered more than just these executions. The new national chief of police has ties to the IRGC. Supreme Leader Ali Khameini has also put the intelligence/terror services under the control of the IRGC, and their nuclear weapons program has also ome under their direction. The Governing Council even put IRGC leaders in charge of newspapers and other Iranian media, as well as municipal councils and the like.

For a nation flirting with nuclear weapons, the establishment of a military junta with such extreme ideological philosophies does not bode well for peace in the region. It looks like Iran may have decided to prepare for total war, if these accounts are accurate. They rigged an election to ensure that a hardliner would be their point man while the Governing Council consolidates power through the use of their military in all domestic areas of Iranian life. Student protests have increased as a result, and some consider this hopeful as it might finally wake Iranians to the threat of military dictatorship in the name of Islam, finally dropping the illusion of democracy from their eyes. By the time that happens, however, it may be too late to stop Iran from going to war.

What enemy awaits the creation of Fortress Iran? The mullahcracy probably thinks the US plans to attack it as part of the war on terror. Certainly Iran qualifies, as a big supporter and host of Islamofascist terrorists. They may decide to press the issue themselves by attacking Israel and holding Europe hostage through its Shahab rockets, which could deliver nuclear warheads to the capitals of the Continent now.

One thing is certain. Military juntas do not make these kind of preparations without an end goal in sight. The mullahcracy plans on doing something with its military control over Iran. We need to find out what it is and stop it while we can.

Rethinking Saint Colin

Today's Washington Post contains a glowing profile of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the changes she has made in the nation's foreign-policy arena. Robin Wright and Glenn Kessler note her many substantial and subtle changes at a department often seen as an obstacle to carrying out George Bush's foreign policy goals. In doing so, an undercurrent of unspoken criticism of Rice's predecessor seems apparent:

Now six months on the job, Rice has clearly wrested control of U.S. foreign policy. The once heavy-handed Defense Department still weighs in, but Rice wins most battles -- in strong contrast to her predecessor, Colin L. Powell. White House staff is consulted, but Rice designed the distinctive framework for the administration's second-term foreign policy.

In short order, she has demonstrated a willingness to bend on tactics to accommodate the concerns of allies without ceding on broad principles, what she calls "practical idealism." She also conducts a more aggressive personal diplomacy, breaking State Department records for foreign travel and setting up diplomatic tag teams with top staff on urgent issues. ...

In the interview, Rice said she discovered on her first European trip that, particularly on the Iran issue, "somehow we'd gotten into a position where it was the United States that was the problem . . . that was not a good place to be." So she formulated action that put the onus back on Iran and, later, North Korea.

"Sometimes the power of diplomacy is not just saying no, but figuring out a way to protect your interests and principles to help the other guy -- or in this case the other countries -- move forward as well," Undersecretary of State R. Nicholas Burns said. "It is the kind of diplomacy some of our critics had felt we were no longer capable of, that we were a kind of superpower saying 'yes' or 'no' but not anywhere in between."

When Rice first got nominated to this position, Democrats and editorialists expounded on the dangers of the president eliminating dissent from his Cabinet. They held Colin Powell as the last person of stature that would keep honest debate on policy occurring at the highest levels of the administration. Rice, by comparison, represented an attempt to surround the President with "yes men", so to speak, that would simply do his bidding without argument. The results in Rice's case, these experts predicted, would be further isolation and withdrawal of cooperation from allies around the world.

This started towards the end of Powell's reign at State. Media organization love Colin Powell, and for good reason: he looks and sounds impressive, he served his country honorably for decades in and out of the military, and he communicates his clear and precise thinking with a moderation and gravitas that undoubtedly attracts attention. The media decided that Powell, who they had earlier derided for not airing his personal and policy differences with Bush publicly, was the Oracle of all wisdom on foreign policy and repeatedly featured him in article after article during Rice's confirmation period and for a short time thereafter.

Now, however, the Post appears to have changed its mind, although one would have to have some familiarity with their previous coverage of Powell to recognize it. First, the article states several examples of Rice acting what many suppose Bush's policies demand. She initiated one-on-one contact with North Korea in order to get the multilateral talks back on line. She overrules Donald Rumsfeld on foreign-policy efforts. Rice reinvented the policy on Iran, working with Europe to set a slate of incentives that the US would back in exchange for a verifiable cessation of their nuclear program. She even found a formulation that the Bush administration would not veto at the UN which allowed the International Criminal Court to investigate war crimes in the Sudan.

Rice did all of this in six months. Powell, for all his gravitas and supposed opposition to Bush, could not do this in four years, a fact only obliquely referenced by Wright and Kessler on the fact that Powell couldn't get the Bush administration to even drop the "axis of evil" connotation for Iran. The Post also notes with a heavy helping of snark that Rice may "break ... State Department records for foreign travel[.]" Certainly the notoriously home-bound Powell never threatened to do that in his tenure at State.

Once again, the media has "misunderestimated" George Bush. First, Powell may never have provided the dissent that his aides proclaimed through anonymous leaks to journalists. If he did, he certainly didn't dissent very effectively. Second, this calls into question whether these positions that Rice has reversed ever were Bush's policies or Powell's. If Bush insisted on them, Rice certainly has changed his mind -- something that Democrats and the media tried to convince Americans that could never happen without Powell at the helm at State.

The Post appears to have decided that Condi Rice has the right stuff to lead State, and even gets Senator Joe Biden, one of her critics during her confirmation, to grudgingly agree. They also seem to realize that Rice's spectacular success calls into question all of the fawning coverage given to Colin Powell, especially towards the end of his time at State. They don't have the courage to do this re-evaluation overtly, but they leave enough subtle clues to make this conclusion quite easily reached.

Leftists Stage Backlash While Air America Admits Its Theft

Brian Maloney has the latest installment of the Air America disgrace that revealed the liberal radio netlet's misuse of government funds under founder Evan Cohen's direction. Leftist bloggers have begun their inevitable backlash defending Air America, calling the story "phony" and irrelevant to Air America by trying to distingush between AA and its original owner, Progress Media -- which only had the one asset and whose chief executive sat on the board of the non-profit it helped to bankrupt through this "loan".

Well, the Left simply hasn't caught up to reality. Air America said in its second press release on this matter that it planned to pay back the money, a very strange thing to do if it didn't take it in the first place. As I pointed out yesterday, it's also a very convenient position to take -- considering that Gloria Wise has gone bankrupt and closed its doors. Apparently that little detail didn't go unnoticed by Air America's other critics, and the netlet's spokesperson told Fox News this:

"We're committed to paying this money and the terms are being worked out... We are awaiting direction from the investigation into how to proceed."

That certainly indicates that AA believes it took the money improperly, and also that it has had contact with the investigation into Gloria Wise's collapse and possible malfeasance with its grant monies. We know that Air America has had problems finding competent management (and an audience), but I doubt they'd be anxious to cough up $480,000 for no reason, especially in their present financial condition. It hardly sounds like a "phony" story to me.

Barbara O'Brien claims that the story is so obscure that she had difficulty tracking it down. On that point, she may be right. I wonder why that may be. Can anyone here at CQ come up with a reason that the Exempt Media might be disinclined to report on a story that shows Air America misusing government funds and taking money from poor kids and Alzheimers patients? Anyone at all?

Oh, let's not see the same hands ...

UPDATE: Brian Maloney, not Mulroney. I'm suffering from Canadian withdrawals at the moment. (h/t: Tory, GOPinion's editor) Also, the Politburo Diktat explains Google to Barbara O'Brien.